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Two would shop for the house. We’d each grab a cart
in the mega market seven miles out of Middletown.
Josh headed for the bulk aisle, where a dozen kinds
of granola, one claiming to save the rain forests,
avalanched into your waiting bag. I’d go
for vegetables—the one thing we
in our quietly warring house agreed on: salad—
hard to believe in those communal days of college
when we all took African Dance, and some learned the Gamelan,
an instrument which took about thirty people to play,
which was supposed to be an entire town in Java,
and once you began you all had to keep going for three days
or else the women would go barren, something like that.
Men on campus were forming support groups
because the feminists kept calling us Patriarchal Rapists,
and though our mission in life was to be third world,
our refrigerator was divided like Europe.
Michelle kept her sprouts and yogurt on the top shelf;
Charlotte took the door; Josh and I split the bottom shelf;
Matt had no shelf—he lived on peanut butter, jelly and matzo.
Keith the sophomore English major stole from everyone
and left Post-It notes apologizing like Williams Carlos Williams.
But there in the checkout aisle with our carts full
we felt like great communal mothers, Josh and I among
real Connecticut mothers who bought chop meat and TV Guide
and I said, "Guess how much?"
Josh said, "How much what?"
"How much it costs."
"A hundred dollars."
"C’mon, guess a number it could really be."
"A hundred dollars."
The register did its drum roll and guess what:
100 dollars and 0 cents.
We looked at one another and there was...joy, I suppose,
a little of which we brought back to the house,
calling them out of their separate rooms
where they meditated, played guitar, read Marx,
smoked pot, masturbated, wept, read Marx,
to come put away their groceries.
— Douglas Goetsch
from First Time Reading Freud