Medusa and Dolly on the Altar

Memories, sweet and otherwise

Some people have altars; some people have coffee tables; some people have coffee tables that are altars. Atop my coffee table altar sits a can of Duncan Hines Dolly Parton’s Creamy Buttercream Frosting (TM), given to me by my mother. I have never opened it, and I am certain it expired many years ago. I’m sure it is sweet, or bears the ghost of sweetness, but it is certainly not what I want today. To me, it is a nice memory of something I was never meant to actually eat.

I see also a figurine of Medusa given to me by my friend Curtis years ago, with the caveat that I should return it to him when I finished a pilot I was working on. That pilot got finished but I realized it was a book project, and I don’t think he’ll mind if I keep it while working on the novel. Whether or not it finds a publisher, I will offer to return it to him once the first draft of the manuscript is done. I expect he will say no, and that I can keep it, but I want to honor our original agreement.

When I was a kid, Medusa mattered a great deal to me. She matters even more now that I know her better.

When I was ten and eleven and twelve, the boys on the bus called me Medusa because they’d been taught she was the ugliest woman in the world, and they said I was ugly, and they also said I had hair like snakes. (I did, and do. It’s fabulous.)

They did not know that the real story of Medusa was that she was a beautiful priestess raped by Poseidon and then blamed for it by the goddess she worshiped, Athena, who embodied all the divine feminine power Medusa admired. The snakes and the fangs came later, poisonous gifts from the feminine deity of wisdom and war.

Medusa was rejected by her peers, and cursed to live apart from the community she adored. She had sisters who loved her, thankfully, but her anger and her grief and her shame were her main companions.

The story, then, is this: a man assaulted Medusa, and a woman brutally punished her for it, and her entire community backed away. They abandoned her. She was powerful, certainly, but the ones who hurt her had more power, and it was vastly more attractive.

The boys on the bus didn’t know all that, and neither did I. I learned it, though. Most women find out, eventually, whichever character they’re destined to play.

***

My coffee table isn’t all mythical beings like Dolly and Medusa. It’s also got an old letter opener with a handle that appears to be of carved ivory. I have no desire to purchase ivory, new or old, but this was a most unusual gift.

I actually selected it from a big box my friend Jonah Ray Rodrigues offered to those gathered at our friend Neil Mahoney’s funeral in 2021. Neil died a couple days after the terrorist attack on the Capitol, and that week makes me think more of him than of shrieking MAGA hordes.

Neil had collected old letter openers and knives. He once whittled me something, and I snapped it in two when I was angry at him (not in front of him, mind you.) Now I wish I had it, but instead I have the letter opener, and his memorial buttons, and a memorial candle, and memories.

The coffee table also displays an earthenware coffee cup from a set my paternal grandparents gave my parents when they got married in 1978. It contains a melted candle, and will soon contain another.

Did you know that if you can’t get candle wax off a cup, you can put it in the fridge or freezer? You can take it out the next day and gently pry it off, usually. Some things stick forever, though, and there’s nothing to be done about that.

There is a succulent I picked out while shopping at a cute store connected to an airplane-themed coffee shop (it has old airplane seats, go figure.) I killed an orchid my boyfriend gave me, but I have not killed this succulent. He taught me that once a month I should soak the whole thing, even submerge it in water, for around thirty minutes to an hour. I think I’m also meant to spritz the soil once a week so that just the top layer is damp. I forget. I sometimes forget to water what I love, on my coffee table and in myself.

The succulent took a bath yesterday, and it is noticeably happier and plumper today. I also respond well to baths, so perhaps I will get it a succulent friend and this can be a three-bather household - four, if you count the cat who bathes herself and always comes in to look after me while I’m in my own tub.

When I had COVID-19 in late 2022, I tried to take a bath alone, as usual, and she climbed up on the side of the tub to monitor me, as usual. The difference was that, for the first time ever, she tried to get IN the tub with me and perch atop my naked chest, staring into my face.

It reminded me of when new parents put a mirror over a healthy, sleeping infant’s mouth to check that it is still breathing. She had spent the previous few weeks mainly wrapped around my head at night as I shook from fever or hacked up phlegm, so I understood her concern. I saw a wonderful photo recently via

Jenny Lawson (thebloggess)

in which her cat seemed to also want to be glued to her during COVID recovery.

Back then, too, I had heart palpitations whenever I got in a hot bath or had a drop of coffee. It would be several months before my ticker started to mostly behave itself, and of course cats never behave themselves at all.

My cat climbs up on the coffee table sometimes, en route to the desk where I sit and write. There are other things on the coffee table altar - recovery tokens, an old baton twirling medal, crystals, a rock I plucked from the shore of Lake Michigan on Christmas Day, a day I spent alone. I kept the rock as a symbol or reminder that I was really here, really living here, really giving this thing a go. Sometimes I take it with me when I travel.

There is a beautiful small bowl my brother gave me. It is made of olive wood, comes from Tunisia, and was sold at the exotic destination of a Trader Joe’s in New Jersey. It holds a tiny plastic trophy I won with a remarkably insane, hypersexual (and FICTIONAL) story at a Chicago live literary competition show called Write Club.

There is an antique tin of Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafers, empty now except for a kind note from an editor who commissioned a story about chocolate wafers and my grandmother. It was published the year Neil died.

It was also the year that I had a brief relationship that was, on the whole, rather nice and respectful. I hesitate to mention it all, though there are no lurid details and, I think on both sides, no hard feelings.

When it comes to art, we must conceal things, not just out of respect for others, but for the sake of pacing, timing, the beat-beat-punch rhythm of the common joke structure, the necessity of a snappy chapter ending, the need to keep the audience wanting more. If you know everything, there’s nothing more to want.