LARGE LANGUAGE LOVE, DIVINE

Ding Dong Contemplation

…During the spring thaw, Claire gave away her most cherished possession, her Fender guitar, to Janet, who she wasn’t even friends with any more. She wasn’t sure why…

Ding Dong Contemplation

Claire couldn't sleep. It wasn't the summer heat. Deadlines and pressures and too many thoughts and feelings were churning faster and faster.

She floated through the dark house. She parted curtains so a streetlight bled onto the living room table where she placed a solitary Ding Dong. She sat down and put all of her concentration onto the Ding Dong. She told herself she wouldn't eat the Ding Dong. So there. Sort of the cure for insomnia, and everything else. It was about reminding herself she had some control. If she was in control she could relax, mostly.

The more she stared at the Ding Dong the more her storm of thoughts slowed down. What was going on? Almost done with college applications. Done with the visits. UCLA, Dartmouth, Vassar. College and the importance of college was all her parents talked about.

Through the window, the stillness of Cayuga was only occasionally interrupted by a car zooming past. Across the street, Dewitt Park glowed emerald green. She was so lonely. College wouldn’t help. She’d be a social zero. There’d be no Rob. Rob had always been the only person who got her, even though she didn’t actually know her. How do you talk to people when you don’t want them to know you? Her parents now pretended that there was nothing wrong with her. They focused on excellence. If she was excellent there were no problems. Claire wasn’t convinced. Her father had attended Dartmouth and her mother had gone to Wellesley. What had it gotten them? Her father was a compulsive gambler and her mother drank. They didn't love each other and they didn't love her. All of them wandered around a house empty with stuff. You could put more stuff in their house, you could change all the stuff, and it would all be just as empty.

All she wanted was someone to love her and take her loneliness away. She didn't even really care about sex, whatever that meant. Not that much. The only sort of person who could possibly love her would have to be someone totally exceptional. Being exceptional was different than being excellent. The exceptional people lived in albums and in the pages of Melody Maker and New Music Express. People like Robert Smith, or Bernard Sumner, or Peter Gabriel, or Lou Reed. But she’d never meet these sorts of guys, wherever they were, because to do so you also had to be exceptional. She was a mediocre and broken.

There was no God.

The foil wrapper of the Ding Dong glinted dully in the thin light. Claire's stomach gurgled and growled. Even if you had nothing else, you always had control. Excellence was just another word for control. I will not eat you, Claire said to herself, feeling some satisfaction and calm, because right now at this moment, eating the Ding Dong was the only thing in the entire world she really wanted to do.

…Claire discovers something new about herself that is inconceivable and not surprising…