To Dunk or To Drown, That is the Question - #61
Two weeks back, I did a “woopsie!” by posting my last post to the webpage instead of sending as an email, which I didn’t catch till long after the fact. If you missed my last post, a New Yorker parody piece about how the CEO of NASCAR handled the Russian invasion of Ukraine and their business operations in Moscow, please click here: [redacted]
I’m will admit I’m late on posting due to travel, a bad cold, and pulling a muscle during exercise. Enjoy this week’s post.
I heard her last night lusting for a cookie. According to her male lover, from what I made out through the cabinet, she was unable to control herself as the seductive smell of the cookies creeped out from the kitchen. Even if she took just a nibble or, with an espresso, drank only a sip, her senses would be wired through the night and any attempt at sleep would be futile. It’s a dirty routine of delayed gratification – go to the baker on Sunday evenings, buy a box of Miss Sunshine’s creamy cookies, come back home, and slobber through the pillow. You can only buy five at a time, one for each weekday. And I await her, promptly at seven o’clock, to fill me with her poison and go for a cookie. I could care less if she fills me with coffee, tea, or yerba mate. All I seek is the final answer to her newfound crumbling captives: to dunk or to drown. That is question.
It’s Monday morning, she stands alone in the kitchen, and I watch her through the crack in the hinge. She opens my cabinet, the light behind her giving her a halo. Without regard, she grabs me, places me on the island counter, and I can feel the brew getting done – she’s ready to pour. The java flows into me, its steam whipping the air. And now the fun begins. I see her plunge her hand into the cookie box and from it, extract a single victim. It hovers above me. What will she do?
The upside of dunking is simple. She would be able hold half of the cookie with her bony fingers, and let the other half soak in the liquid, like a sponge. She would eat the spongy half, then take a sip. Then repeat, holding half of that part, dunking it, and eating that spongy half. However, at the end, when she’s no longer able to grab only half of the cookie, the issue of dunking arises. To finish with a dunk is to live with wet fingers. Disgusting.
But drowning does not have a sad ending. It’s knowing that the cookie is not a treat in that moment, but rather a happy surprise for the future self. She usually begins with a gentle dab, maybe a full dunk, but hesitates for a moment, wondering how far she can go with torture. Plop! She drops the cookie into my soulless abyss, it succumbing to my depths where it will lie with the honey and sugar. It will dissolve into a nebulous dune – its final calls for help become nothing more than tiny bubbles at the surface. It’s okay, I tell it. You’re safe inside me. Until I’m empty.
If she is dunking, she pulls a reversal at the very end, foregoing her fingers getting wet on the last bit of cookie, and simply chutes the piece into her mouth, chews, then drinks the last of whatever I’m carrying. If she drowned her captive, it’s usually forgotten till the end when I’m lifted into the air and my contents are flushed down her throat. At the second she puts me down, she clocks the doughy slump stuck to my bottom. She gets excited, and with her giraffe tongue, she attempts to scoop it out. I can feel her reaching, but she usually fails, and then resorts to banging me against her lips until the wet, sugary blob of cookie shakes loose and falls into her mouth.
However the cookie gets devoured, the afterthought is always the same. She patters her tongue against her teeth and utters, “Yum!” into the empty kitchen. It sends chills down my handle every time.
I’m grabbed once more. She washes me clean. Places me on the rack. And lets me drip. I watch her, upside down, wipe the counter, and then dries me off with her special microfiber towel, like a mother tending to her child fresh from the shower. I’m put away into the cabinet, and will lie dormant till the next morning, dreaming of tomorrow’s motives: to dunk or to drown – that is the question.