From: Will Gorham Mailed-By: hampden.charm.net To: jlist Date: Oct 21, 2006 6:48 PM Subject: The End of an Ice Age My friend Sean finds it hilarious that I sometimes neglect to refill my ice trays. He'll come to my house and I'll offer him a drink. When I go to fill his glass with ice, I'll pull one and sometimes two empty ice trays from my freezer before finding one with cubes still in it. No matter how often he's seen it, he'll laugh and shake his head and say, "you crack me up." I've never bothered to ask him why he's laughing, what about my empty ice trays crack him up. I spend more time at Sean's house than he does at mine, and I know how he keeps it. His ice trays are always full, I'll give him that. What's more, he's got one of those plastic buckets in his freezer that usually has two or three tray's worth of ice in it. It's never full, but it's almost never empty. If it is, he cracks his three ice trays into it and immediately refills them with tap water. Sometimes when he does this he even chuckles at the memory of the last time he came to my house. He never says anything at these times, but I know what he's chuckling at, and I say, "yeah, yeah." I know he's proud of his full trays and I let him have it. The rest of his house looks like someone dropped a hairy cigarette bomb on it. And then determined that wasn't enough and dropped another. My house is clean and mostly well organized. It helps that I have a wife, I'll admit it. My wife doesn't care much for ice, so the trays are my purview, which might explain their inconsistent state. And for the most part, the disorganization in our house is limited to the corners strictly within my jurisdiction: my bedside table, my office, the shed out back, my car. But even in those places the chaos is simply a matter clothes piles or accumulated papers and tools. Our kitchen is clean, though the other night we did have a dinner party and, after more wine than expected, decided to leave the dishes for the morning. But an hour after we were awake, the counters were clear. I dogsit for Sean when he goes out of town, which he does maybe six times per year. I'm doing so right now and I swear the same skillet is in the same position in the sink as it was last time. The stovetop is covered with so much grease and chips of burnt food refuse that I could set up G.I. Joe dolls between the burners and they'd look like they were standing knee deep in the apocalypse. Sean has two bookshelves that I helped his bracket to the walls surrounding his television. In addition to his overflowing supply of books, these shelves hold many of the gifts he has been given over the last two years. The tambourine his girlfriend gave him, the two-faced ceramic mask I bought him in Mexico, the Viking hat he bought himself in Disneyworld, a wiffleball bat a friend gave him on the 4th of July, and sunglasses his brother's boyfriend bought at Graceland and left at Sean's house. These items are arranged and spaced on the shelves perfectly, as though on display in a museum. But they're covered with dust, cobwebs, and bits of dog hair that have temporarily come to rest. Next to one bookshelf is a fishtank Sean bought for himself and decorated magnificently (six months after he bought one for me and my darling wife as a wedding present.) His fish all died within a week and the water has evaporated down to a single inch deep. Next to the tank is a boxful of solar walking path lights, which is unquestionably the oddest item in the house since Sean not only does not own the apartment but also has no path around which to place the lights. He has three stone steps out his front door leading to a parking lot. Unless someone also bought him a jackhammer, I can't see how he'll ever install these ground lights. Next to the other bookshelf is a stack of four extra shelves leaning against the entertainment center. These shelves are bowed in the middle so severely that they are now useful only as a small skateboard ramp. The shelves bowed in the first place because after Sean and I installed the first bookshelf, we realized it needed another bracket in the middle just to be safe. Rather than go back to Home Depot, Sean suggested we drink a gin and tonic and watch football and fix the shelves the following weekend. I figured his ice trays needed a workout and agreed. The following Friday I asked if he wanted to fix the shelves. He said yes. We ended up drinking gin and tonics and watching football. Next weekend, the same thing. The next one too. After football season was over, he said, "It's time to really get to those shelves." I agreed. We ended up watching hockey. By the time baseball season started, "shelves" had become our code word for "get a drink." We no longer even bothered with the pretense. He'd send me a text message on a Tuesday: "Shelves?" I'd respond: "Sure, where?" He'd reply with the name of a bar. After a while, even that miniscule effort grew burdensome and we shortened the codeword to "shelf." It was useful enough. After a tiresome poetry workshop, when one of our more ingratiating classmates wanted to know what we were up to for the rest of the night, we'd look at each other and one or the other of us would say, "I was thinking of going home and arranging the books on the shelf." It was a perfect nerdling response for someone from a writing program and the sycophant would laugh appropriately and we'd all part ways. Once we were out of sight, Sean would message me, naming a bar. We'd find the seat furthest from public access and recount the most absurd amoments from the class that just ended. Sometimes, we'd predict the future. Most of the time, we'd get it right, but even if not, we stumbled down the steps satisfied and self-congratulatory. Those were, as they say, the days. But time passes, shelves bow, grime accumulates on the stovetop, and dog hair comes to rest, sometimes temporarily and sometimes not. We did add another bracket to the bookshelf eventually and put up new shelves, when the old ones appeared ready to slip off in between the two brackets we had installed a year earlier. But even that was a year ago. I'm only slightly amazed that Sean hasn't yet bothered to throw out the old, bowed shelves, but I'm glad for his laziness. I get to come dogsit for him and see the remnants of our past relationship all around his house. I found a pack of rolling tobacco when I was looking for dogfood. Sean doesn't roll his own cigarettes and as far as I know, I'm the only friend of his that does. I haven't smoked in quite some time. Life has changed plenty in that time. Sean's having a baby. A month ago he was having twins, but, as the doctor told him and his girlfriend, "things have a way of changing," or, as Sean rephrased it, "potential has a way of diminishing." Sean is supposed to move in with his girlfriend who lives in the next town over, a 25 minute drive southwest. As a matter of fact, he has been meaning to move there for weeks now, but hasn't made much effort at packing up his apartment, not to my eyes at least. When I came over this weekend to dogsit while Sean was up at a wedding in Philly . not his, mind you . I expected to see some large empty spaces in the hair dust where he had moved furniture and packed up belongings, but I see nothing but the accumulated real and symbolic dead skin cells of his recent lifetime here in Oxford, Mississippi. The antique typewriter I gave him nearly a year ago for his birthday is still right where I placed it on his desk, the bow still on it. He cried when I gave it to him and warmed my heart with his emotion. I almost cried when I saw it still sitting in the same place six months later. Now, five months after that, I'm happy to see it in the same place. I figure that once he boxes it up, along with the two-faced ceramic mask from Mexico, and the Viking hat he bought himself at Disneyworld and moves them 25 minutes southwest to Water Valley, they'll remain in that box at least until his yet unborn child is off to college and needs a box for his or her own stuff. I want Sean's child to know me. I'm feeling selfish and possessive of my friend Sean, lately. But I'm trying my best to be gracious, to be happy for him, and to keep myself in his life in a manner that is only positive. I don't doubt that we'll stay close. I know I need him and know I'll make a good faith effort to keep us close even when our separate, growing lives conspire against it. I think he needs me, if only to have someone to chuckle at, for whatever reason, when I show him my empty ice trays. The truth is, in the last few months I've been filling those things up regularly. But I'm thinking I might go back to my old ways. Sean doesn't come to my house as much as he used to, but the last thing I want when he does stop by . when he needs to leave the isolation of the small town 25 miles southwest of this small, isolated town . is to see me cracking ice from the top tray in my freezer and think, "Who is this guy? I hardly know him anymore."