If I told you that I had kicked a million milk bottles along a mother lode of streets, you might not wonder which milk bottles I referred to or which streets I had committed to kicking milk bottles along, and you would not be wrong to not be bothered.
The perfume spillage was deliberate, intended to disguise. I believed that. Nevertheless, I concealed my feelings. I decided that he could dissemble his true emotions first. My chosen vocabulary should be equivocal. I could use ambiguous language. So, I expressed no opinion. Hence, I offered no commitment to a course of action. Rather, I recalled […]
It was intolerable. I was not able to endure it. I asked what he was doing there. He told me that the night was too hot. He did not prefer to stay up. He could not sleep. He had been waiting for me, wearing his pyjama bottoms. I asked again what he was doing there. […]
But, now, the pained experiences that followed that last shopping trip must be told.
I reminded him of our most recent adventure, in a nearby branch of Sprouts, and how I had described a clear plastic tub, and its contents. On that occasion, not long before this conversation, I told him that I held in my right hand a clear plastic tub of peanut butter. It was labelled as […]
The only issue with the shopping was not not the shopping. I was a recalcitrant retail therapist. I thought he had hated shopping with me. Hence, I was surprised that he wanted to discuss shopping, at all. Nevertheless, he wanted to discuss shopping.
Each visit to a shop was like each other visit to a shop.
“…and, then, I must talk to you about shopping, and…” I had drifted, in and out of consciousness, but I had heard this fragment of speech clearly.
He considered in silence the cushion, the chair, and all else I had described, that was in this room at that time. He spoke softly, deliberately. I listened intently, earnestly. The deliberateness of his speech at this time was an earnest of the aloofness I was yet to experience.
I thought for a moment that he appeared to be dissatisfied, particularly, with my description of the smallest cushion in the room. I realised, after a moment longer, that he was untroubled by the description. He was, rather, preoccupied by a desire to hear other objects in the room described in similarly effusive fashion. So, […]
