The girls are greedy for plastic. They’ll stoop to anything. Eight sit in my living room now, miniskirts and pantsuits taken in with wooden clothespins. Mrs. D blows it: she crosses her ankles. Foul. Mrs. G pounces up/along the Early American sofa. She unpinches a clothespin from Mrs. D’s lapel: a strange boutonniere. Mrs. D slaps her shins, punishing them. Mrs. G has eleven clothespins now: she clacks when she moves— odds on favorite for the plastic prize. Mustn’t cross your ankles. Hard thing to do: the body seems to want it. Homo Neanderthalus crossed his ankles eating mastodon goulash. A fetus waits crossankled in the womb. The girls sit, middle-class, middle-aged, legs apart . . . wary.
You can understand their avarice: Tupperware is beautiful. I appreciate it. I review it as art. Cylinder and rectangle and geodesic dome: Tupperware comes poly-polygonal. The display table (my hifi) enchants. An Olympic city glimpsed from the Goodyear Blimp; Taliesin West and East and North. They please the hands; glossy, tough, bounceable. Tupperware’s patented seal is hermetic (word derived from Hermes Trismegistus: “magical, alchemical”). Tops have a Buddha’s umbilicus. Plump it with your finger, “wink” the edge and it belches out airtightness. Things are . . . packaged. Last Sunday’s shoddy carcass turns into a neat triangle. The lettuce is a brain inside its own hard cranium, yet easy to trepan. Lazy Susans become animate. Square plastic pegs; round plastic holes. Leftovers are refurbished. They fit. I want to be buried in Tupperware: let the worms cat their hearts out. Gabriel blows his last trump and I pop my lid. Voila!— uncorrupted as the Lady of Lourdes. Tupperware is American, goddammit. It works.
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