I'm standing in a bathroom that is not mine, in front of the mirror above the sink, wearing my sister's Elliott Smith T-shirt and another girl's red flannel, suddenly surprised that I look almost exactly like both of my parents did when they were younger.
I'm holding someone else's toothbrush.
It looks exactly the same as the one I accidentally left at home.
The girl with the overused giggle whose flannel I was wearing because I was cold had told me I could use hers if I wasn't too grossed out about it. I don't know why I accepted the offer.
Though we both have braces, the bristles of her toothbrush are softer and less abused than mine.
I try to treat them gently.
I am brushing my teeth with someone else's toothbrush and it is the most intimate moment I have ever experienced in my life, and I am not sure how I feel about that fact.
The owner of the toothbrush is in another room. Her sleeves are too short for my arms, of course, and I stare at the face of my parents in the mirror, thinking how frightening and comforting it is that I am fifty percent of both of them. And how people are made up of genetics and choice, how perhaps I am really made of fifty percent of each of my parents' decisions, and that's what I'm looking at in the mirror. Maybe I am made up of the cereals they bought and the music they listened to and the mistakes they made and the memories which they kept and threw away.
Later, I tell the girl with the overused giggle and the soft-bristled toothbrush about how my sister and I used to get a copy of M magazine - a Tiger Beat type tabloid for preteen girls - at the airport each year when we were younger. And how our dad would read it in his special serious story-time voice, making up for unread bedtime stories, teaching us not to trust the media. Like a good dad. And how he would burp a lot, because of the medication he used at the time, and how he would blow it toward the ceiling so we wouldn't have to smell it.
Gross things can be startlingly intimate.
In a gruesomely beautiful way.
I remember the years when my sister and I began to buy M magazine and no longer knew the celebrities it talked about, because we had grown out of it. We were too old. We were not only too old for bedtime stories, we were too old to make up for bedtime stories, and that was a very sad thing, but I don't mention that part when I tell the story.
I don't use the little rubber tongue bristles on the back of the toothbrush, and when I am done I wash it out carefully and reposition it in the cabinet above the sink, thinking about the grossness of kissing and what people are supposed to do with the spit in their mouths.
When we watch Breakfast at Tiffany's later that night, during the kiss at the end, the giggling girl who let me borrow her toothbrush starts laughing uncontrollably. I ask her quietly what is so funny, and she whispers back, spit, and laughs at my previously mentioned lack of understanding.
Kissing is far more romantic than a borrowed toothbrush, of course, but it is no less intimate in terms of spit.
And no one hardly ever mentions the gruesome intimacy of spit. Or how it holds the DNA of our parents' choices, spilling into our morning coffee.
I don't know.
It's just a thought.
I'm holding someone else's toothbrush.
It looks exactly the same as the one I accidentally left at home.
The girl with the overused giggle whose flannel I was wearing because I was cold had told me I could use hers if I wasn't too grossed out about it. I don't know why I accepted the offer.
Though we both have braces, the bristles of her toothbrush are softer and less abused than mine.
I try to treat them gently.
I am brushing my teeth with someone else's toothbrush and it is the most intimate moment I have ever experienced in my life, and I am not sure how I feel about that fact.
The owner of the toothbrush is in another room. Her sleeves are too short for my arms, of course, and I stare at the face of my parents in the mirror, thinking how frightening and comforting it is that I am fifty percent of both of them. And how people are made up of genetics and choice, how perhaps I am really made of fifty percent of each of my parents' decisions, and that's what I'm looking at in the mirror. Maybe I am made up of the cereals they bought and the music they listened to and the mistakes they made and the memories which they kept and threw away.
Later, I tell the girl with the overused giggle and the soft-bristled toothbrush about how my sister and I used to get a copy of M magazine - a Tiger Beat type tabloid for preteen girls - at the airport each year when we were younger. And how our dad would read it in his special serious story-time voice, making up for unread bedtime stories, teaching us not to trust the media. Like a good dad. And how he would burp a lot, because of the medication he used at the time, and how he would blow it toward the ceiling so we wouldn't have to smell it.
Gross things can be startlingly intimate.
In a gruesomely beautiful way.
I remember the years when my sister and I began to buy M magazine and no longer knew the celebrities it talked about, because we had grown out of it. We were too old. We were not only too old for bedtime stories, we were too old to make up for bedtime stories, and that was a very sad thing, but I don't mention that part when I tell the story.
I don't use the little rubber tongue bristles on the back of the toothbrush, and when I am done I wash it out carefully and reposition it in the cabinet above the sink, thinking about the grossness of kissing and what people are supposed to do with the spit in their mouths.
When we watch Breakfast at Tiffany's later that night, during the kiss at the end, the giggling girl who let me borrow her toothbrush starts laughing uncontrollably. I ask her quietly what is so funny, and she whispers back, spit, and laughs at my previously mentioned lack of understanding.
Kissing is far more romantic than a borrowed toothbrush, of course, but it is no less intimate in terms of spit.
And no one hardly ever mentions the gruesome intimacy of spit. Or how it holds the DNA of our parents' choices, spilling into our morning coffee.
I don't know.
It's just a thought.
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