Dear Bennett
Since high school, my mother has kept this one black chair. It wasn’t particularly fancy (or at all comfortable), but it got away with a sense of importance owing to its unnecessarily high backrest. When sitting on the black chair, your body was forced into a very stiff and overly eager position, which always seemed to bring out the worst in its sitters. I, of course, avoided engaging with its fake leather and hard edges altogether, while my mother coddled it like a precious relic for years. To her, the chair stood in the living room like a proud pillar of success. But I knew better, and I saw it for what it really was and for what it could never become.
As unremarkable as the black chair was to me, it was my mother’s preoccupation with it that made it ‘special’. You see, the chair in its fully exposed glory was quite an elusive creature. It spent 99.9% of its life undignifiedly covered by a faded yellow bed sheet, “to protect it from the sun” my mom said. I wondered a lot about the impractical positioning of this chair in front of the full-length glass door that received sun the entire day — why, of all places then, put the fucking thing there? “It’s for when the people come over”, my mom would say, “so that there’s extra space for them to sit”. But again, this made me question life entirely; not only does our lucky guest get the shittest chair in the house, but they get to enjoy it while being baked in the sun and forced to seem excited about it as their spines desperately fight for survival.
Anyway, I would come home every day after school to an empty house, just me and the black chair that I knew to be lurking underneath the cloth that added so much insult to injury. Sometimes I’d put my bag on it, but I would hear my mother’s voice saying “you’re going to dirty the sheet”, so I stopped doing that, obviously. I came to realize then that it was both what the chair represented and how it was hidden that mattered. So I made peace with the black throne that was reserved for lucky guest eyes only, and I eventually moved out of my mother’s house and never saw it again. Until today. On the back of an old trailer, tied down with plastic rope that dug into the now shredded fake leather. Imagine…
I miss you.
Dear Bennett
My mom came to visit me on Thursday afternoon with “a nice surprise” she said. I almost didn’t recognise the chair as her new boyfriend hoisted it to the sand in front of my house. “We’re getting rid of some old stuff”, my mom yelled (she never speaks in an acceptable auditory volume as you know), “and we thought you might want this chair. Do you remember it? It always stood by the…” I directed it to underneath my carport, we ate some dry Chinese food, and then they left. Walking back from the gate I passed the old throne and I saw my entire teenage life sitting awkwardly on the seat, checking me out. The fucking black chair was mine now, I wish you were here to see it.
First on the agenda was a rollie and brandy — you know how I like them. I thought back to the times in my mother’s house and tried to remember what it was like when we lived together. I thought about how much I hated school and how untouchably cool I believed I was. I thought about my old boyfriends and almost forgot that I had actually had sex in that chair. The memories of house parties, sneaking into clubs, low-rise jeans and a shit tone of black eyeliner came rushing back. I could almost taste the kiwi Brutal Fruit and cherry lip gloss I refused to leave the house without. And then… of course, I thought about you.
You’re across the country now and you haven’t looked at your phone in two days. I hate the ‘last seen’ function but I just can’t help but go check if your status has changed. I wish you’d call me so that I could tell you about the black chair and how much you both mean nothing and everything to me.
I miss you.
Dear Bennett
I’m drunk again and I don’t care anymore about good writing. Can you see how quickly I’ve degraded in value? Can you see how much of myself has eroded away? It’s all your fault. Why didn’t you cover me and keep me and protect me from the sun? Why did you forget me in the sand and let our memories become cracks in fake leather? Bennett, I think I am the black chair, aren’t I?
I miss you.
