Ceramic Pig

A cat is lost on Pitman Street—there is a flyer on the telephone pole in front of my house and, sometimes, I imagine the person who taped it there. A girl, hoodie up and pulled low on her forehead, arm shaking, the word fuck slipping out when she can’t get the tape out of the dispenser right...

I’ve never had a cat. I have a television, though, and I feel lost when I look into it—whether it’s off and I see my blank face or it’s on and holding the latest tragedy, the world burning. The whole world is lost right now. Not missing, exactly, but lacking. Gone from Pitman street. 

I look for connections to hold on to when I feel lost. 

One of my best friends and I always talk about connections, about full circles and coincidences. Just the other day she told me about a party she went to at her esthetician’s house—that sentence, alone, is just so Amber, it makes me laugh. There, she and her boyfriend befriended another couple. The man talked about his ex wife, a literary professor in Baltimore, and how he was much happier now. When he asked how Amber and her boyfriend met, she responded with the ironic truth: in your ex-wife’s class. 

I met K. on an app a month ago. He was thoughtful, and sweet, and respectful of my PTSD and, last week, I gutted him. Sometimes you think you’re ready for something and you’re not—as hard as that is. I like to imagine him five years older and in a room with fairy lights, talking to a couple about how he and a stranger first met. He’ll say I’m so much happier now. 

“In this world, it is too common for people to search for someone to lose themselves in. But I am already lost. I will look for someone to find myself in” (C. Joybell C.). 

I, in true bookworm fashion, found myself in David Sedaris. 

Two days ago, I started reading David Sedaris’ Theft by Finding, a collection of diary entries dating back to 1977-2002. In one entry he talks about hitching a ride from Tucson to Texas in exchange for helping a man unload a grape truck. In another, he mentions falling asleep on a golf course, the day before his new job picking fruit somewhere in Mount Hood. The entry that gets me, though, is a Thursday somewhere in West Virginia and involves a little toy pig:

 December 1, 1977

 I started the day with a ceramic pig but abandoned it after it got to be a drag to carry.

When I was little I went to a summer camp run by my preschool. One day, they gave each of us a disposable camera—disposability is the key—and a choice. We could each pick one toy from the toy bin to be our subject, be our Muse.

My Kate Moss was a plastic pig. 

Now, it’s not ceramic, but it’s pretty fucking close. I spent the day photographing the pig “playing” hopscotch and sitting on the top of the slide—and in the end I got to keep the pictures, the memories, but the toy was passed to someone else. 

I wonder where Sedaris left the ceramic pig and if he remembers.  I wonder how it caught his eye in the first place, why it wasn’t enough. I wonder if it was hard, like in the way telling K. was hard; I pulled him aside, I told him he was cute and sweet all while I was leaving, and it took my gut out, turned it over. 

I’ve read books that say when something is wrong, you say something—and something is wrong in me, a lot. 

Amy Winehouse said, “I’m romantic. I fall in love everyday. Not with people but with situations. The other day, I saw a tramp polishing his shoes. That just gripped my heart.” I feel that so deeply. I fell in love with Amy Winehouse falling in love with a stranger’s moment. I fell in love  with David Sedaris, with the image of a tired boy finding something pink and leaving it behind, hitchhiking somewhere new. And now I am trying to fall in love with the version of me that is trying: trying to let someone get close to me. I’m not ready—but I’m not lost anymore, either.  I’m on my way. 

Sometimes I still find fuzzy pictures of a pink haze alone on a swing set and think, “ oh yeah, my prepubescent Warhol moment.” Laugh. But really, I loved that pig. I brought it everywhere that day and was so sad to put it back in the bin. But it was heavy. And I got tired of holding something that wasn’t mine. 

So I let it go. 


MJ Strattonbatch 2