Sweet Potatoes, Pin-Back Buttons, and Unrequited Crushes
On objects, memory, and a continuation of wanting
After Anahid Nersessian After Janet Malcolm1
1.
When I was beginning to formulate a thematic structure to contain my writing—aka what am I doing here?—it started to come together through my little collections of stuff. The stuff I’ve been carting through the world since I was a child, a teen, an art school dropout, a career person in New York City, and a homebody in Maine.
Is there something I could say about this pile of pin-back buttons?
Is there something I could say about this fossilized tooth from my first boyfriend?
Is there something I could say about this container of rusted fingernail clippers my grandparents inexplicably saved (and now, so have I)?
I started to take pictures of these things. I started to jot down ideas. Part archival project, part trip down memory lane, part way to pass the winter hours. I started doing the same in the cloud. I began finding and reading these bits and bobs of stories in long-forgotten digital files.
2.
My freshman year of high school I had a crush on a boy we’ll call B. He had blue eyes that were nearly translucent and dark, shaggy hair that hung in his face. During lunch, we all ate in a cement atrium at the center of the school. Some of the space was filled with trees and large plants, so I felt an almost primal longing as I spotted B through the flora while I picked at my pb&j or my turkey on marbled rye. Based on his jeans, his sneakers, and the crowd he stood with at lunch, B seemed like a nerd (judgmental, yes, but I liked the gentle quality he embodied). I wanted to know everything about him.
3.
Someone told me B was the drummer of the school jazz band. I became instantly interested in attending any and all of the band’s events. Pep rallies. School functions. I even went as far as a Popeyes parking lot where they had a fundraising performance on Fat Tuesday. I tried to be the girl in the crowd he’d lock eyes with and fall madly in love with. I ate a square of sheet cake with green, purple, and gold frosting and bobbed along to the songs, but I don’t think he noticed me.
4.
Determination continued. I found a friend who would lead me to the source: I got his AIM screen name. There we began an enriching saga of instant messaging. My screen name was buzZOworthy. I thought it was so innovative, so much cooler than the standard name-plus-birthday-numbers. I spent a lot of time with my pocket thesaurus to come up with it. I don’t remember B’s screen name.
5.
One evening, in the chat box, we decided to use a secret code of facial touching to say hello at school. We’d pass in the crowded hallways and I would touch my ear as I walked toward him. He would pass and stroke his chin. That was that. It was so small, and it felt electric.
6.
After weeks of subtle acknowledgment, I needed to keep the momentum going. I wanted to hint at my desire for him, but I wanted to do it cleverly. On my instant messaging profile, I included a request: “won’t you be my sweet potato...”
7.
My older brother listened to a lot of Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, and perhaps I was inspired by the Cracker song “Sweet Potato.” The lyrics start: Be my sweet potato / Be my honey lamb / Dance around the campfire / Hang around a while. “Be my honey lamb” doesn’t have the same ring.
8.
He sent me his resume. My heart beat faster.
9.
The next week I saw him sitting with a junior at lunch. A junior! She had a cute haircut that struck me as very French. When the bell rang, they headed down the hall together. As they moved through the crowd of bodies, I saw them hold hands. Eventually I learned she was B’s new girlfriend, and her name sounded like it belonged to a woman born in the twenties. I was crushed.
10.
Two years after the sweet potato exchange, now in 11th grade, I formed a “band” with B and a few other classmates. It was my friend Jennifer’s idea. She had strict Chinese parents and a secret tattoo based on the cover art of her favorite indie rock band. She was a very fun kind of provocateur, so we named the band “[Redacted Band Member’s Name] and the Bisexuals.” I played auxiliary percussion and keyboard. We never performed, but Jennifer put up flyers seeking a band manager and one person actually applied. He wrote reviews for Pitchfork and seemed to spend too much time with people much younger than him. If he was a decent guy, I’m sorry. If he was the kind of guy he seemed to be—ew. Luckily, there wasn’t much of a band to manage.
11.
The bass player in the band was a sweet, shy redhead. You could say, “Hey Matt, show me your tongue!” and he’d stick it out and shake his head a little, revealing the world’s longest tongue. It was pointy at the end, which made it feel serpentine. Sometimes I would sit and look at him and wonder how he kept all that tongue inside his mouth.
12.
I wrote one song for The Bisexuals called “Lucky Number 7 I Hate You.” It was about the seventh house I lived in. Our band practiced in house number eight.
13.
My freshman year of art school I had a crush on one of the cashiers at a grocery store called Eddie’s. I was living in Baltimore, majoring in Fiber and minoring in Creative Writing. For an assignment, or maybe just as a journal entry, I wrote a story about my unrequited crush on B and linked it to my unrequited crush on the cashier. One of the threads holding the story together was a sweet potato. “I stabbed a series of four square holes throughout my potato and placed it in the microwave. I let it slowly turn in circles. I should have realized that this was a sign of heartache.”
14.
The afternoon I bought the sweet potatoes at Eddie’s, I learned my crush had a girlfriend. Forlorn, I wasn’t ready to go straight home. I walked a few blocks to one of my favorite spots in the city, OK Natural Food Store. I didn’t know it then, but a man who worked at a nearby art supply store saw me leave Eddie’s and more or less followed me—he was walking his dog, needed something for dinner, and had a curiosity.
I lingered inside OK Natural because it was so warm and comforting. I probably had the “I love books” button pinned to my tote bag. I heard the man from the art supply store asking someone about bread. When I passed him around a narrow corner, I told him about the cinnamon raisin loaf I couldn’t stop buying. He said he was looking for something to go with lasagna, thanked me, and asked for my phone number. I was shocked by how instantly one door closed and another opened.
He would become the first person I thought I would marry.
15.
I love Japanese sweet potatoes. Often I’ll roast one, split it open, and douse it in olive oil and tons of furikake. It no longer feels like a sad, doomed root.
In my journey through Crumbling Relationship Literature, I came across and loved an essay in The Yale Review by Anahid Nersessian. Her essay is modeled after “Forty-One False Starts,” a 1994 piece by Janet Malcolm. So thank you both for the inspiration upon inspiration.