In The Interest of Appropriate Oral Hygiene

Sometimes the things that inherently change a situation, or your outlook on your station in life are things that seems so mundane to the outside world that to mention them is all but pointless. Sometimes when you are so desperately searching for that cosmic-big-bang-universally-explanatory moment…the thing that will crack the code…the “big talk”…all you really need is that one tiny gesture to create clarity.

I created this picture in my mind of the “perfect partner” over many sleepless nights. He was going to be funny, and smart, and tell me repeatedly how flawless I was in spite of all of my many tragic flaws. The words “beautiful” and “stunning” were to be uttered on an hourly basis. There would be some form of initials following his name (ending, for the sake of my mother, in “burg” or “stein”) denoting his station in life. Preferably of the MD, PhD, CPA, or ESQ variety. He would be every perfect thing I could imagine in the gray synapses of my middle-aged brain, because I had waited so long that to accept anything different seemed anti-climatic. Enter The Redneck.

To call him The Redneck would seem cruel and elitist, were it not for the fact that it is etched at the epidermal level into his very being. Somewhere about 180 degrees from the imagined Mr. Wonderful lies the reality. There is no pedestal on which I can daily climb to be reminded by some doting stranger of my glory. There is The Redneck. There are directives. There are expectations. There are a myriad of things that swirl in the ocean of space between his world and mine…adoration on his part is not one of these things. This being the case, maybe there is something a little more real than I could have hoped.

Things can be tenuous in the chasm of space and time that eventually crash into the uncharted realm of “relationship.” In the case of The Redneck and I, if you combined the baggage from my life along with the baggage from his it is entirely possible that airports globally would no longer need conveyors. The baggage in question leaves me (admittedly the more neurotic of the two of us) feeling like at any moment the bottom will drop out, and I will be left in silence with nothing but memories of country music and unconventionally timed beer runs. It scares the shit out of me.
I guess the worst part of loving someone unconditionally for me is in knowing that the other person always has conditions. I find I’m so scared I will crash and burn that I never really fly. I can’t enjoy something I am in constant fear of losing. These are the insecurities placed upon the extremely large shoulders of The Redneck. For this I feel sorry. I only wish he could understand.

We operate on a level that not many ever get to realize. It is a level based 90% on a never-ending stream of laughter and trash talk (so, no MD, but I got the most important qualification), and when that laughter subsides I get nervous that I will be exposed for the gooey-girly mess that I really am.
The need for clarification leads my brain, crammed full of words and explanations I have long used to buffer the world, to spew forth an endless diatribe of crap in order to attempt to process both his perspective and my insecurities. If there is one thing a redneck does not want to do, it’s discuss “feelings.” It is a totally foreign concept. It is like trying to teach a pig to sing. It wastes time, and annoys the pig.

I was treading water in this tank full of “things I wanted to say” and “things I needed to hear” recently. I was feeling totally lost, and unsure about things. I never really know what he is thinking or feeling. He is such an enigma to me that I hate to ask, but desperately want to know that I am still wanted. Still needed. Still have some place in his life that I fit.

We had been spending quite a bit of time at his place. A change of venue after calling my apartment home base for a period of time. Usually our days consist of talk, laughter, bed, waking, and then parting ways for our individual lives. Being that I immediately go home on these mornings, it had never crossed my mind that my oral habits may have been in question. It was what it was. I went home and tended to my dental needs on my own turf.

The Redneck and I were talking, having one of the more serene moments between he and I, when he turned to me recently and said, “Oh, by the way, when I went to the dollar store today I got you a toothbrush and a scrubby thing for the shower, in case you wanted to take one.” There it was. It wasn’t a dozen roses. It wasn’t pathetically sappy verbiage imprinted on over-priced card stock. It wasn’t the eye-to-eye longing glance silver lined with the words “I love you.” It was much more. It was “you have a place in my place.” It spoke more to me than all the words crowded in my head ever could. It said, “I care about you enough to want you to keep your teeth.”

As I brushed my teeth before bed that night I had a thought. Sometimes it seems that in this world so full of words and explanations, the things that really speak to one’s heart are the things that can’t be depicted with vowels and consonants. Sometimes the most life-altering, enlightening, and beautiful moments can occur right over the bathroom sink. Sometimes being loved is no more the simple feeling of minty freshness.