nonrecyclables
Hi, I’m glad you’re here. The idea for this essay of scenes that start with plastics came from seeing a recent report from the Center for Climate Integrity, linked below. If you would like to support my writing, you can subscribe or upgrade your subscription below. Sharing is really appreciated as well. Thank you for reading. 🩷
“The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis.” (Center for Climate Integrity)
“In Images: Plastic is Forever” (United Nations)
♳
One by one, I thread the new strings through the bridge of my classical guitar and wind them around. I meant to replace them days ago — now I’ll have to keep re-tuning all evening. In a couple of hours, there’s a gala for the arts organization I’m in and I’ll be playing some jazz guitar songs with this guy a grade younger than me. I’m not as good at guitar as he is but we make a good duo, with me playing rhythm and him soloing on top. We moved past the time I accidentally sent a text making fun of him to him.
I don’t want to go later because there’s a rumor about me going around. It’s not even believable, but that doesn’t really matter to high schoolers. I recently tried to hook up with one of our co-presidents. She changed her mind when I was in her bathroom though and asked me to leave, then told our friends a lie about that night. I didn’t think she even wanted anyone knowing she was into me. I want to hide in my room tonight, not perform for everyone, for her.
I play through the melody of “Spain” again and again, determined not to mess this up.
♴
She picks the glittery, turquoise one. A lamp in the corner fills my room with warm light and my cat is curled up at the end of the bed. I feel so exposed stepping, naked, into the harness and adjusting the straps, pulling them snug around my legs and waist. It sits uncomfortably on my pelvis, too high up at first. I probably look like I haven’t done this before. I tighten the harness some more. She doesn’t want me to touch her — she just wants me to use this dildo with the big head. I work it through the o-ring and unroll a condom over the curved shaft. She’s smiling at me. I tell her to turn over. She pulls off her lace underwear and I touch her hips, her ass. I pour some lube into my cupped palm. She arches her back for me.
♵
Her brother pulls a baggie of weed out of his backpack and asks if we want to go smoke. We’re outside the dorm, an hour after lights out for the campers we’re watching. She and I fought each other for fun last week and I was sore for days. I admit to the two of them that I haven’t before and she’s excited to smoke me out. We drop our cigarette butts into the receptacle, then walk through campus to this wooded area they know about.
She rolls a joint, talking me through it: “You just inhale deeply and hold it in for a little.” I cough a lot and the two of them laugh, but with me, not at me. “You might not feel it much since it’s your first time.” A new feeling washes in though, and I like how my body feels both heavier and lighter.
We stay in the woods a while longer. I don’t mind the summer mosquitos. She and her brother are talking and laughing, but I’m listening to the sound of the creek.
♶
I was rummaging through the cabinet under my parent’s bathroom sink to look for a pack of Band-Aids and found a clear vibrator hidden in the back corner. It was one of those battery-powered ones where you twist the base, and it looked like it was from the 80s. I was twelve and felt grossed out by what this meant about my parents, naturally choosing to ignore the fact that I existed and had siblings. This was before the time they took me into that bathroom to yell at me that being gay will ruin my life. Is that what you really want? I must not have disguised my discovery well enough — the next time I went to look at the vibrator, it wasn’t anywhere under the sink. The same thing happened to the Christian book about puberty they left on my bed the year before — it was there one day, and a couple of weeks later it disappeared from my bookshelf. I knew I couldn’t ask them why.
♷
“Fuck the Pain Away” is blasting from the big speakers on the bar. I’m topless in a packed frat house basement, spilling a little PBR down my chin with each swig. They’re dancing with me, but my eyes are on her and I don’t know if I’m hiding it. Tonight I’m not trying to count my drinks. Stay in school ‘cause it’s the best.
There are ways in which my quitting drinking doesn’t change anything. I have made some amends, and others I can’t make. Several people have forgiven me and I’m gentler with myself; some old friends and I talk again and I’ve blocked a few numbers. Church basements and one day at a time. But there will always be a history of the nights I said and did things that I found out about from someone else. Solo cups with lip gloss on the rims; passing out on the couch together with my arms around her. Empty handles of Burnett’s and Evan Williams; some friends not knowing if I was still breathing. Glitter on my face and on the floor.
♸
Swiping on some black mascara (I remember her pretty eyelashes but not how often she wore mascara, or if she did around me),
brushing shimmery highlighter along my cheekbones (her hand on my cheek, feeling held in this way I’d been wanting),
applying a rosy balm to my lips (how good it felt to kiss so hungrily),
spritzing a floral perfume onto my chest (that time I noticed her perfume bottles on the dresser and got up to smell them when she left the room).
Someone new is coming over soon, and I still have her toothbrush next to mine (how soon is too soon to throw it out; how long should I save it in case).
♹
Born just in time to make mix CDs with songs downloaded from a YouTube to MP3 converter. To and from crushes, to and from friends, or just for myself to sing along to in the car. I’ve thrown more than one disc out the window when there wasn’t anyone behind me on the highway, deciding I’d listened to it for the last time. One was full of songs I wrote.
Newly sober in the first year of covid, I went on nighttime drives to pass the time and process. Everything was sharper and I had a thousand regrets. I get on the interstate heading north one night, listening to a CD I don’t remember who gave me. There aren’t many cars on the road. I drive over a lake I swam in last summer. A song I love comes on — this is how I first heard it. I could not have seen myself here, in a place I’ve been before, seeing everything all over, as if I could really know. I know there’s so much I’m holding on to. It’s late, but I don’t want to head home yet. Turning it up, turning it over; drowning in it, drowning it out.
Beautiful