Since I began my blog project Bare Ass 2008! I have lost sixteen pounds and raised $1090 for America’s Second Harvest. The single hardest yet most valuable thing that I have learned so far is to stop eating after 7 p.m. Every person is different, but I am a huge nighttime recreational eater and maintaining this gastric curfew is a key for my weight loss success. However, every night my brain can’t stop thinking about food. Realizing how quickly this can slide to obsession, I decided to think of the non-food items in my kitchen. Then I started imagining about the tiny kitchen lives of these inanimate folks and wondered who would be the most unlikely pair to fall in love? Thus a little piece I like to call “The hidden affair between Potato Masher and Gravy Boat” was born. Save the story for tonight if you like, and read it after 7 p.m. instead of whatever you usually reach for.
Part I: Thanksgiving clean-up
Setting: A Hot Sudsy Sink
The water’s greasy. Don’t you think?
What a silly thing to say. But she is nervous. It vibrates her core. If she wasn’t dunked in water, she knows she would be hot to the touch.
Come closer while we have the chance.
He is not. Nervous that is. She slides into him. The water is scalding. Is it her? Suds lather luxuriously. Lather luxuriously, she likes that. The warm soapy water pushes her further into him. She clicks her curves against his smooth inner walls. He is cool despite the ever-rising temperature of the water submersing them.
I’ve missed you.
You look lovely.
Hardly—there are bits of peel still clinging to her handle. Her cheap rubber handle, so utilitarian. So unlike him. Porcelain fruit-embossed skin that shines, begging to be stroked, polished, displayed. There is a tiny chunk of potato caught in her lattice. She can smell it and hopes she is scrubbed better this time. Prays he doesn’t notice. But now is not the time for these thoughts. They only have the briefest moments. Rubber hands grab and probe; work steadily on Daisy Casserole. But that will only bide so much time.
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