Rolling Rock I

            Sometimes, it all comes down to an empty beer bottle. In this case, a Rolling
Rock longneck you’d smuggled out of some bar before you stopped by my friend K.’s
place with your friend B. You were bouncing off the walls, drunk and singin’ the blues.
We drank some more and dodged cockroaches in K.’s kitchen and you picked out some
vinyl to spin and B. eventually left and you eventually stayed and I slid down your belly,
surprised you by not being the conservative Midwestern woman you’d expected.

            Two days later, you left for the West Coast with your real girlfriend and I kept
that bottle, kept it for years, gently wrapping it in tissue paper every time I moved
and packing it with the antique glass in a box marked KITCHEN BREAKABLES. It
came with me back to Ohio, and I only put it in the recycling bin when I packed to
move to New York, two weeks after my wedding.