The first year I lived in New York, I wound up in yet another bad relationship with a femdom. This relationship was nasty, brutish, and short, as I should have guessed it would be from all the red flags1, but I didn’t emerge from it empty-handed. Shortly before it all fell apart (who else attended that legendarily messy FIST launch party?), my ex gave me a Monstera deliciosa clipping, and though I had my doubts, I decided to let it live. Almost four years later, the single leaf occupies a hulking ceramic jar in my bedroom, now accompanied by something like ten other split fronds that gather (or discharge?) subtle beads of water, like knives under a broken faucet.
I’ve never been good at keeping plants alive. I tend to do the opposite, actually, rationing their sustenance and relegating them to windowless bathrooms. I’ve corrected this tendency as I’ve grown more conscious of it2, though no one would ever accuse me of having a green thumb. But this winter, for the first time, my Monstera is having problems. One of its leaves, an elder that incidentally gets the least sunlight of all of all his compatriots, has turned a sort of translucent yellow, recently and as if overnight.
Probably overwatered it, said Jesse. It’s true that the soil is still moist this long after watering day. Is it possible that I took care of my plant with too much gusto, that I paid it too much attention?
I don’t want my Monstera to die. At first, when it still lived in a jar of water, I almost dared it to. If it hadn’t been for a roommate, who assigned her plants names and personalities and sang to them when she watered them, my Monstera would have become a rubbery tabescence on top of the fridge, doomed to turn up a corpse on the front stoop. Now I’m invested, like when I’ve soldiered through the first four episodes of almost any TV show. In the last year or so, I’ve begun talking to my plants, though not singing to them, and certainly not naming them. They get some encouragement, sometimes in a baby voice, especially the Monstera. I’ll give credit where credit is due.
I don’t think my Monstera will die, but I resent my preoccupation with the possibility. Yesterday, instead of writing—there’s the next installment of my latest series, a piece I pitched for Irresistible Damage, and an essay on dyke cruising that’s been weighing on my soul, not to mention my third novel—I worried about the plant. I hope I don’t resent it so much that I kill it. Or fuss over it so much thatI kill it. I’m hell-bent on setting us both up for failure, it seems.
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Including the untrained dog. Oh, you’re dominant, but Rupert pisses inside?
It helps that people, like Jade and Cristine, give me plants and then expect me to nourish them!
David Davis