and my black t-shirt

I’ve had a lot of relationships. I’ve lived with five men. I’ve had many more intense boyfriends and a couple of intense girlfriends. I’m pretty practiced with the break-up, and yet I marvel at how it doesn’t get any easier. Age and practice make easier many other difficult things—losing a job, getting a job, first dates, moving, financial woes, all of these stresses have eased with the passage of time and my reluctant acceptance of maturity. Not so much with the breaking up. Breaking up, if it’s something I don’t want, remains as raw as eggs, as abrasive as tarmac, as hard as eternity.

If you’re the leavee, rather than the leaver, there’s this moment in every break-up when you take stock of your stuff and decide whether it’s worth the emotional turmoil to get it back. (If you’re the leaver, you can decide before you take action what to do with the stuff; it’s one of the fat advantages of being the leaver.) You ask yourself if the pain of the loss of the stuff is more or less than the pain of getting it back. You consider the visceral thrill of that horrorslothian moment when you open the signed, sealed and delivered box—or even more evocative, the door. You do this, anyway, if you are me.

Donny has a bunch of my stuff. Mostly, it’s sundry clothes and sex toys. A few pairs of panties, a bustier, a bra, a pair of pajama bottoms, a couple of t-shirts. A butt plug, an njoy toy. Not much, but a fair bag of things that when I considered them in their tawdry heaped glory, I knew I wanted them back. Donny has nothing at my apartment. He would always carefully amass his belongings at the end of every trip, fold them, and place them pointedly in his backpack. He made sure that fine lines were drawn and kept between us. He kept me at bay with his devotion to the discreet.

A couple of weeks ago, the day that I ran into Donny’s cousin at the place where I freelance, I called him. It was a moment of weakness and I knew I’d regret it, and I did. He mentioned something about my stuff. We had a brief stuff discussion. It got the stuff ball rolling. Stuff was in the air. It hung like an astronaut’s laundry, still and strange, in the space between us.

I told him that we needed to have a conversation about how I would get the stuff back—whether he’d mail it to me blank as a bill, or whether we’d chance the face-to-face meeting. I told him I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do beyond getting the stuff, so he could think about it and get back to me.

Weeks passed. And so in my head the stuff grew. It became a monolith of stuff. I could see my box of stuff tucked in a corner of Donny’s apartment. I could see it gather dust, mote by mote. I could feel its tiny heart beating like Poe’s tell-tale heart, even 170 blocks south of it. I could hear my stuff calling, and even I knew that I had to get it back because it was no longer stuff; it was tender debris.

Tender debris is the phrase I use to name all the physical detritus of a defunct relationship. When a relationship dies, some objects become imbued with this aureole of loss. Sitting somewhere in between a Victorian memento mori like those eerie flowers made from the hair of the dead and a fetish doll, these objects grow uncanny. Saturated with free-form feelings, these objects get bigger than themselves, somehow. They take up a lot of room. These things are the tender debris.

I’ve had a few drama-filled moments of tender debris. There was the time that I had to break into the house where I once lived with my boyfriend—the first boy I ever lived with—and found him in our bed fucking another woman. Later, having moved out, I went in under the cover of darkness when he and his band were out playing. I gathered my Bert Stern Marilyn Monroe book, my collection of vintage handbags, and my clothes. I forgot the cowboy plates I inherited from my grandmother, and I mourn them still. I’ve had some civil Great Stuff Exchanges too, where we acted like grown-ups and sipped tea, and at the end we hugged meaningfully.

Dramatic or decorous, the stuff is nearly systolic with emotion. I know I can live without the stuff that Donny has. It’s just…stuff. Panties and a sex toy. Who cares? But it’s the metaphor that holds meaning. If I don’t get my stuff back, it languishes there until he tosses it in the trash like a dead goldfish. I resist being relegated to the trash heap. I could have him mail it to me, but that feels so imperious and impersonal. I don’t want to open the box, really. I’m busy accepting the stark naked reality of our break-up, but I can’t accept the postal system.

So tomorrow, I’m seeing Donny. I’m getting my stuff, and I am sure it will be awkward in the special way that only people who have been once been close as vines and are now dead as leaves can be. There will be unfinished phrases. It will be studded with ellipses. It will fumble and fail. And then, like all things, it will end.

Which, really, I remind myself, is the point.

Comments

[karl elvis]

Wish I hadn't bought you dinner
Right before you dumped me on your front porch

Nice BFF ref. B^)

[minstrel hussain boy]

get your stuff, then, without opening the box, trash it. it's clearly about getting your stuff the fuck out of his life. that's important. i've been stuff devastated a couple of times, family pictures, rare books vandalized, vintage guitars trashed or given to people who play like shit.

then, i finally come to the sad realization, it was stuff. i let stuff rule me.

still, when that shit's important. it dominates conscious thought.

good luck with your recovery.

[badinfluencegirl]

dude... throw out an njoy? but why?

can she at least remove the bits of stuff she wants and symbolically trash that pair of panties where the elastic is hanging out anyway instead?

lol

[Lisa H]

yea, it's tougher to say whether it's worse getting it back, or not. I'm still angry about some books that I didn't get back from an ex; after several calls and emails on my part, and much delay on his part, he finally admitted that he'd thrown them out already.

I've been working on replacing them, trying to find the same exact edition/copy, so they won't look different, but it still bothers me. But, I think I'd be much more upset if it were panties, or such like... too personal.

Good luck. be brave. This is a very hard, scary thing that you're going to do, but you'll feel better for it, I promise.

[Peter]

Horrorslothian??? Is that even a wiord or are you goofing on us? I googled it and only got your website.

You are jus' funnin' us, ain't ya gurl?
P

[chelsea g]

"Horrorsloth" is a neologism of mine. It means a slowly crawling sense of hideous dread.

I made up "horrorslothian," the adjectival form, today. I'm glad you were entertained.

kissykiss,
chelsea g

[b]

I think it's all about wanting to be made whole again, collecting your scattered pieces back together, after a breakup. It's about taking back control, symbolically. It is highly disconcerting to feel like pieces of your life are still being held hostage by someone else. The need to have them back can be overwhelming and seemingly irrational, even if the stuff in question is practically worthless, even to you. Although a shiny njoy toy certainly does not fall into that category! I hope the exchange goes as well as it possibly can. It would be less trying on your psyche to get your things back through a third party, but you probably think you will gain some kind of closure by doing this face to face. I hope it doesn't reopen your wounds.

[S.P.]

Here's a thought... Ask your bestest pal "O" if she would get your stuff from him, instead... Granted, she might punch his lights out, just on principle...

[marianne]

I lost a ring that had been a gift from my parents, plus the first watch that I had bought for myself, in a breakup over 20 years ago. It still bothers me.

Hope the meeting went smoothly, quickly, and with little awkwardness.

"And my black t-shirt" A reference to the movie "Singles"?

I believe soo!!!

much love, hope you get the njoy back, you do love it so.

Mrs. Hall

[Desiree]

I had a breakup about six months ago. My ex moved clear across the country so I really can't get my stuff back. The apartment is mine so admittedly it's not a huge deal and I'm not missing major stuff. But what pissed me off was that he took not one but both of my good, sturdy umbrellas. Who the fuck needs umbrellas in southern California?

Special place in hell for him.