Wednesday, August 4
5:45 am

ode

For the past 20 years, I've had a mangy pillow and bolster on my bed. They're tiny and pink - well, they were pink. And they're always, always there.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the rather disturbing sort of person that needs them with me through every nap on the couch or in, ye gads, every foreign bed. Most of the time, they're shunted to the corner of my bed or wind up on the floor, depending on the intensity of my inability to sleep.

People that find out about them are always amused, because apparently, they're not very "me". I usually blather back that my other spiky black rock pillow is in the wash, but I get what they mean. Really, though, I hardly notice they're there half the time.

I remember an ex that was particularly amused by them. Named them, too. I can't recall what the pillow was called, but (and this is pretty stark in my mind) the bolster suffered through the ignominy of "hi, Flaccid!" a lot. This may or may not be why the ex became an ex. Personally though, the pillow really is unnamed, while the bolster's quite sadly known as boh-lester.

No, really.

Once, when I was but a wee child, this classmate of mine very proudly pronounced the word that way. He was, of course, mocked endlessly with oh-so-witty chants varying along the general theme of "boh-lester ah, you molester!" Don't laugh, you thought of it too. I wonder if the poor boy still remembers this. Or maybe he'll stumble across this entry one day, causing scabbed-over, repressed memories to come rushing back. Soon, I'll receive a letter from his lawyer - possibly his therapist.

The point is, I never fully got "boh-lester ah, you molester" out of my head. For awhile, every time I looked at the bolster that phrase would come bubbling somewhat insanely out my mouth. It stuck after the first hundred times, I guess. Just the first part, you degenerate.

Actually, the real point is: will you ever forget that phrase?

Oh, did I mention that my bolster and pillow are pink? And to uncultured olfactory senses, probably pretty rank, too. The stuffing's showing through at the corners of the bolster, and as for the pillowcase? Let's just say that the only way the pillowcase could see better days would be through that whateverscope they're using to check out Sedna.

Yeah, they're getting old. It's sad, but thankfully I've sorta grown out of them.

Except for times when I haven't.

It's precedence that was set way back. The bolster's for happys and the pillow's for sads. So lately, the pillow's been getting an awful lot of mileage. Think big hanky. Yeah, I wouldn't touch it if I were you either. It's a sad, wet, unnamed pillow.

I vaguely remember a quote from a book I once read. The Other Party is speaking to the wife, telling her that her husband loves her. And she sadly goes, "he says you are the sky whose presence and meaning have become everyday. Surely love means less?" Times like these, I'm inclined to agree.

I'm fairly sure (what with the way things have been going and given my infinite capacity for attracting worms) that soon I'll come home and find something gross nesting inside them and I'll finally have to toss them away. And then, I think, I will have lost the very last constant I have left in the world.

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