Crockett Doob: THREE MICROS • Cleaver Magazine

Flash Nonfiction by Crockett Doob
THREE MICROS

EVERYTHING WITH NOTHING

There’s a bagel place I like a block away from work. I go in there and order “an everything with nothing,” which the cashier thinks is funny, and I guess I do, too.

I’ve tried to change my order to be more healthy. But not only does “a whole wheat everything with nothing” have no ring to it, but those bagels are labeled “WW Everything,” which feels too ominous for these times.

There’s always the plain bagel—and then I wouldn’t get “everything” stuck in my teeth right before work—but “a plain with nothing” just sounds too depressing.

“Everything with nothing” is like life or the ocean or outer space: so much going on, with so much nothing in between.

DO YOU HAVE A CAT?

When I come home from work, I put on jazz and heat up beans. As I stir the beans, I feel good, until the thought comes: Is this depressing?

This is like a thought I used to have when I was in a long-term relationship: Am I in denial? (I was. Not that I didn’t love her, just that I was happy. I wasn’t.)

So maybe the beans and jazz routine is depressing. Or maybe it isn’t and it’s the thinking it’s depressing that’s depressing. Or maybe it’s practical; I’m saving time and energy eating the same thing every night, like Obama wore the same outfit every day; Einstein, too. Maybe I’m like them.

“I am food-indifferent,” I say to prospective romantic interests. Or conquests, who am I kidding? In The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller, she talks about the pattern of conquering and abandoning romantic partners. So maybe statements like, “I hate romantic restaurants,” hurt my love life? Either way, they’re true; I do hate romantic restaurants, and I am food-indifferent.

My old therapist was a foodie, and she was fascinated by my lack of fascination with food. I wasn’t. I didn’t find it at all interesting. But my next therapist immediately told me to read Running On Empty—not by Jackson Browne—by Jonice Webb, PhD with Christine Musello, PsyD, which talks about how food indifference comes from childhood emotional neglect. Definitely depressing.

So I’ll continue to stir my beans every night while listening to jazz. And if I don’t finish the can, I have a wet cat food cover to save the remainder for the next night. Which reminds me of a comment I often get:

“Do you have a cat?”

TOILET SEAT COVERS

The toilet seat covers look oddly regal. Maroon with gold threading.

“I ordered six sets,” my mom says. “Do you like them?”

“Very much. But you only have two toilets.”

“But now we have variety.”

“Mm.”

My mom runs to and from the bathroom after taking her laxatives, continuing conversations from the toilet.

Later, my dad takes me to the upstairs bathroom.

“A little bonus,” he says.

He nudges the toilet seat down.

Thanks to the new padding, the seat goes down slowly. No slam.

He has the sweetest smile as he watches me watch the toilet seat go down.

Crockett Doob lives in Rockaway Beach, NY, and does not surf; he plays drums in a vacant courthouse, works with autistic teenagers, and edits a documentary about a cemetery. His writing has been published in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Fiction Attic Press, Querencia Press, virgo venus press, Literally Stories, Unlikely Stories, Horror Sleaze Trash, and HiLoBrow.