Three Zero One: Kits

 Once upon a time, back in the later Noughts, I went mad one summer. That's easy enough to say now, and it would make a good opening for a story or a Spalding Gray kind of performance monologue. I wish I could be telling a lovely young companion about the story tonight, but this is the best I can do.

I went mad that summer--- a small bit of high drama. And what it was about was simple enough. It started off with travel toothbrushes.  Girls had written me about their Morning-After Kits, about the things they put in their purses before going out on Friday or Saturday nights, about the things they took with them just in case, just in case they ended up sleeping over with a handsome stranger. A travel toothbrush was key to everyone's list. Girls sent lists of items, but not one of them wrote to say that she'd bring a toothbrush or a change of clothes on a date with me just in case. None of them indicated at all that I was worth bringing a toothbrush for--- which may have been the one thing I think I wanted or needed. Make a list of cities--- NYC, Atlanta, SE Texas, Oregon, Baltimore, Montreal, Seattle: no one thought to say that to me. Not any of the girls I have longed for and cared about. Which told me all I needed to know. 

That summer I wrote that:

I will be checking purses in the doorway. If there's no toothbrush, no little vial of deodorant, no change of clothes...she doesn't get in the doorway. I will toss the purse or backpack onto the upper walkway and slam the door in her face. No toothbrush, no Mornings-After Kit, and I don't want her around me.

Be clear--- I don't necessarily expect her to use the toothbrush or the change of clothes. I don't necessarily expect her to stay over. That isn't the point. Not at all. The point is that she'd have the toothbrush with her--- just in case. Whether or not she stayed over, I'd want her to have the kit with her. Just in case. If she didn't toss the toothbrush into her purse, it means that I'm not Valuable enough even for the possibility of a first-date morning-after. It means that she'd already decided that I wasn't fuckable. So I will check for a toothbrush and slam the door in her face if it isn't there. 

It was that kind of summer. And that summer I bought two small travel toothbrushes and kept them on my work desk as magical items. I believed that if just had the two toothbrushes--- the kind that lovely co-eds would keep in a Morning-After kit,  then somehow, magically, girls would want to take Morning-After supplies with them when were with me. 

I still have travel toothbrushes with me-- I think that now I have a total of eleven travel toothbrushes, pristine and unopened. They have multiplied over the years. They're still here as magical items. Each of them is a talisman of some kind, a small futile frozen invocation of hope. Girls still haven't brought Morning-After Kits with them when they've gone out with me. 

Again, it's not the idea of the girl staying over and needing the Kit. It's the idea that she'd bring the Kit just in case,  bring it because I was Valuable enough to be someone she might need it for. The toothbrushes mean a lot--- they're still here as magical items, as ways to pray to be just-in-case Valuable.  I wish now, a dozen or so years later, that I'd never asked anyone about Morning-After Kits and what lovely twenty-something girls brought with them in case they hooked up with someone.