There's this subset of people in America that buy gifts. When coming back from places, or even just randomly. I'm not one of them, and I don't understand the need to buy something for someone even if it just means you're thinking about them. David Sedaris is one of these people, and his partner isn't but I can accept that he would be a gift-giver since his family and writing is so quintessentially American.
Shot glasses, novelty license plates, bears, I would rather give someone something they will use rather than a trinket to hold on to the past. I made a mistake giving a book to someone a year ago. It was Anna Karenina and I thought because I loved the book so much that maybe it would resonate with them. Of course I was completely wrong, and when I found out that the person had read The Crying of Lot 49 just to appear interested in what I liked I grew tired of the ever trying-to-please personality. Understanding where such a person comes from is easy, their past is filled with having to live up to expectations or they were continually under the foot of someone else and sought to make themselves as small as possible. Small of imprint, small of mind, small of voice. Blame the person and you just get an emotional reaction of vitriol, that you are blaming them for who they are. Sure to an extent that makes sense, mental illness, abuse, they all leave imprints that last and are not easily erased. Covered up, but not erased entirely.
When I left I took everything. Everything of mine. I scrounged through boxes with an anger familiar to me, looking for something that was mine. I found books, papers, what-have-you hidden away in the moving implements of a person who didn't even sleep in the same bed as mine for a month before. I tore them apart looking for things that were mine because I felt so ultimately separated and the though went pouring through my brain "all you have, all you are is mine" a sense of selfish possession of another human being. Where when I said do this, she was supposed to do it then. Anger, resentment, all were used in an effort to imprison and control her in my conception of who she should be.
On the other hand, I accepted parts of her I didn't like, didn't care for. But when they went past the arbitrary bounds I set upon her then I would withdraw and refuse to emote. To relate back to her what it was that had set me off. One example was driving her from work, when I drove I didn't care to be told about what to do especially from someone so prone to cowardice and indecision behind the wheel. She could drive long spurts of open road, Richmond, Washington DC, but anywhere else she became paralysed. Unable to navigate properly. She admitted this and yet still thought to tell me as I was sitting at an intersection to "GO!" when the light had just changed to green. I had a mind to stop, to show her what her effort and exclamation had proved. Nothing. To just sit at the stop-bar with everyone blaring their horn behind me.
Instead what I did was shut down think to myself "Jeezus" shake my head and drive the 1400 feet to home. Take the keys, close the door, run up the stairs, and go to my room. Either that or I would just sullenly sit on the couch wondering who the fuck I lived with. She would apologize for a while, but by the end she just accepted that no matter what she said I would remember it. I would remember everything because in a way I had poured my life sloshing into a jug with hers. Like blood and milk, it mixed and curdled. So when it came to leave I took all I could because her mind, her very being was mine in the sense that I created the person I lived with.
This is all a very circuitous way of declaiming the common aspect of buying trinkets. Gifts. Cadeaux whatever you call them they are trash. They are thrown away like so when their usefulness ends. Diplomas, photographs, everything you take for granted as important belongs in a landfill to the rest of the world. So to fill your life with things is to become them, the collection of things you hold dear. And when you move house what happens to all the bijoux the detritus of your life? It is thrown away. It is spiteful in a way but if I give something I want that person to remember that I was the one who gave it to them, to remember why. Self-important and sadistic? I think so.
Listening to: Pet Sounds-The Beach Boys
Reading: The Sellout-Paul Beatty
