Flotsam

So…Oprah had her Favorite Things show, and I thought “I have favorite things! I could do that!”
I imagined, fondly, the looks on my dear readers’ faces as I screamed (well, typed) “EVERYBODY GETS A CAR!”–or shower gel, or whatever–and then your doorbells would ring, and standing there would be an grown man dressed as an elf! With a package! For you!
But, as it turns out, Flotsam does not have the same sort of clout that The Oprah Winfrey Show has—I am still waiting for a response from the companies that manufacture my favorite things, and oddly enough, no offers of sponsorship have been forthcoming.*

So here is my list for 2005. Regrettably, my financial situation makes it impossible for me to provide you with the items themselves:

1. L’Occitane Shea Butter Foaming Cream Bath in Sweet Lemon
2. Hammacher Schlemmer Low-Voltage Hidden Wire Electronic Blanket
3. Ativan
4. The Collected Stories of John Cheever
5. Mode de Vie Creme Essentiel Moisturizer**
6. Hendricks Gin
7. Wonderfalls complete series DVD
8. Tassimo Hot Beverage Machine–w/Twinings Earl Grey Tea and Suchard Hot Chocolate Pods
9. Marks & Spencer Pear Drops***
10. Stila Eyeshadow in Golightly
11. Cedar Summit Dairy Heavy Cream

Of course these are merely things, and on this particular day, this third Thursday in November, what I am truly thankful for is the man whose underwear are on my bathroom floor: The Nearly is my cornucopia. There is no one and no thing I would be more lost without. I have been thinking all day about how to tell him that—I thought about it while I ate turkey, I thought about it while I ate stuffing. Eating creamed corn, I thought about it. Eating apple pie, I thought about it some more.

A few months after we started dating, The Nearly was scheduled to read with a group of local writers. We arrived at the gallery the night of the reading and I picked up a program and found a seat. The Nearly mumbled something and dashed off. My, I thought, He’s really nervous. Then I opened my program.
Now, in the back of the program are the bios, which are read aloud to introduce each writer. They generally go something like this:
“Stanza McPoet is a poet, playwright, and outdoorsman. His work has appeared in Fancy Magazine and Obscure-but-well-regarded Journal. He lives in Katmandu.”
Here is what was printed as The Nearly’s bio:
“The Nearly Fiance is in love with Alexa and wants everyone to know about it.”

The Nearly has a knack for this—the sweeping gesture, and also the eloquent small one: bringing me a snack, before I’ve even started whining about how hungry I am, or slipping a picture in my purse for me to find the next morning.
I do not have this knack. I tell him I love him, I greet him at the door wearing a sexy garment, I tell him I love him again. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.
A few weeks after the reading where The Nearly told the Twin Cities literary community that he loved me, I exited my apartment building to find a piece of paper on the windshield of my car. It was a page torn from a book, part of it circled. At first I thought it had been left there by a vagrant, but then I looked closer and got suspicious.
Do vagrants read Frank O’Hara? I wondered.
The poem The Nearly left on my windshield was this:

“Having a Coke with You”

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irun, Hendaye,
Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in
Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better
happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love
for yogurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the
birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people
and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be
anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in
front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and
forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just
paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in
the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s
in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go
together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes
care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michaelangelo
that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the impressionists do
them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree
when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider
as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some
marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m
telling you about it.

That is how I feel, today, Nearly. I wish it were written on a banner attached to the back of a plane or etched on the head of a pin, but you will have to settle for html.
Happy Thanksgiving.

*If you are reading this, and you are the maker of one of the items on my list (Wyeth pharmaceuticals, is that you?), and would like to donate your product to the readers of this blog, please email me at alexa79@mac.com. Remember, this is a publicity opportunity for you! I have tens of readers!
**So good, it’s like sex for your face
***Courtesy of Ms. Prufrock