The Refrigerator Memoirs

By: ffluffy

Dedicated to: all closet zen people and kupie and wacker, kerm and cooner, j and d, stockdale, susilla, toy boy and his brother, t, e and e and anyone who has played with magnetic poetry

My brother has an old fridge in his garage. The garage is packed with discarded life items; the fridge is packed with a sampling of high end microbrews. I love to open the door, and peer into the cold interior, each time the selection is different. The beer chooses me.

The fridge in the cabin was so old it had a stainless steel handle that you pulled out to open and pushed in until it clicked to close. Its rounded edges gave it a sensuality only seen on women wearing skin tight clothing from the 70’s. The smell in that cabin was a cross between smoke and pine trees and the fridge clunked when the compressor kicked on so the quiet was never quite peaceful.

The first fridge that was given to me came without an interior light and I am lazy, so I never replaced it. Most of the time it was ok except when you wanted something from the back or you were trying to decide if a food item had mold growing on it. That fridge sort of worked but sort of didn’t. Beer was never quite cold enough and meat spoiled a little too quickly. I gave that fridge to some not so nice type of people who deserved it more than I did.

The fridge from my childhood was yellow but the front was covered with magnets, random papers decorated with drawings, pictures of relatives and take-out menu’s. My favorite memory of that fridge was finding a bowl full of white goopy stuff with no lid on it and dipping my finger in deep to taste it, except it wasn’t pudding, (gag), it was chicken fat. Nothing gets rid of that flavor in your mouth.

My fridge in college had word poetry on it. Friends would come over to hang around and have a beer and make wonderful poems out of strange English words deemed worthy enough to put on a small magnet. Poems like: ‘slather to your orange, this sound upon me’ and ‘delicate whisper like an elaborate symphony to his death’ and ‘weak moment think me’. None of them got published.

The latest fridge that owns me was a freebie from some friends. It came filled with piss and shit and mouse death. I didn’t find the nest until I had turned it on and the compressor had a chance to heat up and cook the mess until the smell filled my kitchen. And then I couldn’t quite identify the stench, but my nose finally picked up on the pee stink above the others and I unscrewed the back. Ten mice bodies lay desiccating on the pan of the fridge, snuggled among hair, poop and urine. As I pulled the corpses out, I found two small cat toy mice that had been nestled amongst the others. It turns out mice can show good will to their likeness. A bunch of man hours and a sixty dollar un-needed/un-returnable/over-priced electric part later this fridge freezes burritos and keeps beer super cold. My sweat and blood has replaced the dead and the poo and a new vinyl drain tube decorates what used to be home to ten mice and their two mannequin buddies.

And next? Who knows? It could be the fridge at school, that isn’t used by anyone but was left by a teacher that I have never met and is filled with five years of stuff sitting at 28 degrees Fahrenheit doing strange biological things. It might be the fridge of my future, perfect in every way or at least willing to accept me for who I am. It has been; in every house, in every shack, in some garages and even in my car, masquerading as a leaking ice chest. Refrigerators exist as art and in graveyards and in my heart.