STORY: Wars of Attrition

I was already showered and dressed. To kill time, I was looking down into the alley behind my condo. There wasn't much to see. Just the dumpsters and the shadows of some old unnecessary furniture. Someone had discarded an easy chair. Snow was gathering on its back and arms, like a statue in the park.

Cynthia and I were going to dinner. God, I was looking forward to it. Some foi gras served on edible flowers. Some tartar of sheep testicle. I'm being a sarcastic, in case you didn't grasp the tonal clues. I really didn't want to go, first, because dinner was taking place at a new experimental bistro in a reclaimed part of the city. Eating in places like that usually lead to diatribes with words like 'upmarket,' 'flip,' and 'staging' and other jargon associated with real estate speculation. It doesn't make for engrossing table interchange. What also makes for less than engrossing table interchange is dining with assholes. That's what was going to happen to me. We had a double date with Cynthia's friends. These superior human specimens had one of those American Express cards fabricated from slate or some type of carbon stone, the kind of material that when used in a kitchen and bathroom lines the pockets of aspiring speculators. The idea of spending three hours of my weekend and most of my salary with the bloodsucking nouve rich made me touchy.

According to Cynthia, touchiness is one of my elemental character flaws. The anti-social touchiness flaw might be the clinical name for my condition. It was all pretty innocent though, the ribbing. She made light of the George Washington biography I was reading. She wondered aloud how I was going to apply all the really useful horse-battle tactics of the revolutionary war to the modern world. Jesus. Washington only built a superpower. But whatever, I guess I should be taking my life-choice cues from Tony Robbins or that wealthy barber dousche-bag. 

What escalated everything was the tenacious presence of my old futon. That futon drove her mad-dog crazy. She couldn't stand it. I've had it since I moved into my own place. You could say that futon was connected to my evolution as a man. It was also a bone of contention. 'Boning' being a pretty weighty verb. Seriously. There was a time when I had some weird alchemy going on with the females. Not now. But for a stretch in my early twenties I had a phenomenal run. What my buddies refer to as: 'being on fire.' I was on fire for quite some time. So long that I took it to be some preordained natural state. That was erroneous. But anyhow, my futon was a leftover from those days. My friends made it their mission to relive those nocturnal gymnastics tournaments in graphic detail every time they were over. They called my futon 'the oracle' or 'the ceremonial pyre' or 'the totem of holy erotica' all within earshot of Cynthia. They were trying to help me get a backbone. That's what they said. They were pining for a come-back tour. Buddies always trying to help you by putting you a position they wouldn't be caught dead in.

But Cynthia didn't see this talk for what it was. Desperate reaching. She went on a full-press smear campaign directed at my poor futon. Posture-issues were discussed at length. Articles on household allergen contamination and the sinister reach of mould in old pillows were left by the toilet. Then there were the misdirection strategies, meant to disorient and demoralize. One day, she'd say the futon was quaint, minimalist, so very Eastern. The next day she'd show up with flyers from Sleep Country and a Feng Shui diagram connecting the presence of used mattresses with pelvic thrust deficiency. Apparently, it's a lower dantian issue. Then she'd start to cry about my blocked lower dantian. I was confused. It looked like she was retreating but she was really scorching the earth in a way that made me wonder if she'd been reading my George Washington biography.  

That's when a strategy occurred to me. The futon would have to be sacrificed, in order to avoid future experimental bistro Saturdays with designer house-flippers. Maybe I'd have to retreat and scorch some earth like a pragmatic General with an eye for the big picture smack down. So even before Cynthia could get through her speech - a strangely graphic account on how if she dunked the futon in a vat of hot water the resulting tea could hold enough venereal disease to cripple a small, European city-state like Luxembourg or Monaco - I slung the futon over my shoulder and headed for the door.  Cynthia grabbed her keys, got into her heels and followed me. She just slipped in as the elevator closed. I didn't speak to her. We went into the alley. Snow was on the ground so I flipped a wood skid that was tilted against the wall. I put my futon on it. I turned and went to hail a taxi.

She hugged my arm in the back seat. She kissed me on the shoulder and then picked some random piece of fuzz from her lips. Then she gave me the low-down on things that I shouldn't bring up with her friends at dinner. I was not to comment on their newly discovered allergy to tap water which required every poached, boiled or steamed item to be done so with bottled water. I was not to comment on their decision to legally change their adopted Laotian daughter's name to 'Charisma.' I was to think about serious world problems when discussion turned to their dog's dietitian and be empathetic to the hardships of getting their St. Bernard, Zeus, down to the 20 kilo weight cap levied by their autocratic condo board.  

"Why are you smiling?" Cynthia asked.

"I'm just thinking about George Washington's teeth. I'll bet you think they were made of wood, right? That's the legend. They weren't wood though. It's true that, at the time of his inauguration, he only had one tooth that was his own. But the others were not made of wood. They were human teeth. Taken from a graveyard."

"That's disgusting."

"George knew how to suffer short-term discomfort for tomorrow's victory. I wonder who made those human tooth dentures. Probably Thomas Jefferson. He was good with his hands."  

"Baby, don't say anything weird like that tonight."

"Okay, baby. I was just getting it out of my system."