The Chocolate Couch

The Tale of the Chocolate Couch

Ya know, I really don't know how to present this story to you. I want to gift it, wrap it up in shiny gift-wrap that captures and holds the eye. You can't look away; you want to open this one first! That's because, somehow you know this is real, that the thing inside is somehow alive and you need to set it free.

The first thing you MUST understand is that this is an entirely true story.

Let me introduce the players in this tale: first is the man who was at that time my lover, and who for all time remains my favorite fantasy-come-true. I conjured him. His coming was predicted years before, by a Haitian woman I met on the set of a television show. He possessed a great, dark, smolder-y imagination, which truly made for a fabulous lover, and also possessed an equally dark sense of revenge.

Must’ve been the Sicilian in him, if all the mobster movies have been telling it true.

Our affair was salacious, intense, and juicy; we made the sunrise and set when we made love. When we fucked, portals opened, space-time shifted, worlds collided. No shame.

This may be why he got so angry when I told him that I was leaving town, going to stay with my very pregnant, oldest daughter, living in a nearby state.

There was just no question; I had to go to her! If you can't count on your mother, who can you count on?

We had two months until I had to leave; I begged him to just be happy with the time we had and to forget about two months down the road.

Oh! Well, of course, I’m the second player in this drama, a mama, with my maternal instincts still in overdrive. My youngest daughter, a teenager, still lived with me. She's the third player in this dramedy. She was, and still is, a very independent, self-possessed, beautiful, and intelligent young woman.

Got it?

Did I mention that my lover had a key to my sweet little love-nest? Keep that in mind.

My lover initially agreed with me; we should just be lovers until we had to part. We wouldn’t be that far apart anyway. He would come to visit me every chance he got. We’d be up in the mountains, close to heaven.

Our love-making that evening was molten. We reached heights, and depths, neither of us had dreamed of. I had to send him home, I was that shook.

The next day he called me and said he wouldn’t be coming over.

Said he’d never be coming over again.

Since I’d so clearly chosen my daughter over him, it would be best just to break it off cleanly. He didn’t want to see me anymore.

Were my feelings hurt? Uh, yeah. Would I let him know that? Hell NO. I’d be the grown-up, the bigger man, take the high road. All of that ish.

Being a man of leisure he spent much of his day in the place where I worked, sitting in the solarium and drinking cup after cup of coffee. My job, part of it, was to serve the clients in that room.

It was difficult for him to ignore me. since he hung out in the store where I worked.

We were curt with each other, which threw a huge chunk of confusion and unease in folks who knew us, and got off on our juiciness.

That was a Sunday.

I could swear I heard a barn owl that night. It was summer and scorching hot. My tiny apartment had two window units, one in my daughter’s bedroom and one in the living room.

By the time I came in from work after riding public transportation, I plopped down on the couch under the arctic air blasting out of the AC and began eating some chocolate chip cookies for my dinner. My teenager was in her room, braiding a friend’s hair. Five minutes into cookie crunching the power went out.

My most dreaded fear.

That meant a trip to the basement, a long, narrow, dungeon of a basement, locate the fuse box for my apartment, and trip the switch. I gathered my courage, and a flashlight, and went to take care of business.

When I refer to this basement as a dungeon, I mean that thing!

It was cavernous. It was a suburb of hell.

It seemed to pass under every building on my block, which doesn’t make sense; in that kind of darkness absence of light birthed the absence of logic. It was the lair of some huge, slumbering, mutant spider, dreaming of all the crunchy humans it would eat. If I had had a couple of guard dogs, some knives, and a gun or two I would’ve felt more confident on my mission. Yet and still, the mission had to be accomplished. We all would have spontaneously combusted in the heat of the apartment.

Blame it on global warming.

It was so densely dark that, even with the flashlight, I found my way to the fusebox by Braille, tripped the switch, and practically flew back to the stairs, heart pounding all the way.

By the time I made it back to my couch, I was dripping wet and ready for the arctic blast from the window unit. As my heartbeat returned to its normal speed, I plopped down on the couch again.

And slid.

Yes, slid, as in movement through wet or greasy, as in something slick and slimy and where in the hell did something slick and slimy come from, to make its way to my couch?

And now, it’s on my butt.

Reluctantly, I touched it. I had to. Yes. Slick. I brought my hand around to my face, trying not to run through the list of possible slippery things that it could be. Ugh! It was brown. That was quite discouraging.

I caught the scent of chocolate.

Whew! Chocolate! Of course, one of the chips must’ve fallen from my cookies and melted in the sweltering heat. I was so relieved! Laughing to myself, still a little shaky, I walked into my daughter’s room; I even showed my daughter and her friend the chocolate on my pants.

We all had a good laugh..

I devoured the entire box of cookies and fell asleep on the couch. I earned that box, every chocolate morsel.

The next day I steeled myself to see my lover when I got to work.

We had that stiff moment of neither of us wanting to admit how much we missed each other and how sorry we were that things were in the sorry state that they were in.

We couldn’t help it; my lover and I partially made up.; However I still went home alone that evening, just to show some spine.

I shut the front door, walked over to the window unit to turn it up, and turned to plop down on the couch. Mid plop my eyes were immediately drawn to a sight that stopped me in my tracks.

There on the wall behind the couch was a huge, dripping SPLASH of chocolate!

As if someone had a Slurpee cup, a Big Gulp, full of chocolate syrup and, in a fit of anger, flung it on the wall!

What the fuck?

Those three words chased each other around my brain while I stood suspended in the frigid stream of conditioned air. Finally, I touched it. The smell of chocolate wafted up immediately.

I tasted it. (Yeah, I know...) Hmm. Milk chocolate, not dark.

A scene formed in my mind; I let it play out.

My lover, still angry, came into the apartment and dashed this chocolate on the wall. Hah! That’ll teach me.

So, my anger triggered now I got on the phone and asked him, did you do that?

His response was immediate and furious and curious and somewhat amused, all at once. “Why would I do that,” ?” he asked. Then- “Did you ask your daughter? Does she know anything about this?”

Hmm. I hadn't asked her, and so I did.

Her response was much the same as his.

“Why would I do that?” she asked, totally insulted that I could even entertain the notion that she would do such a thing.

Now I’m confused.

And just a little scared. The chocolate was clearly there, it was not a figment of my imagination. I wasn’t going crazy unless I did it and couldn’t remember.

No, I knew that I didn't do it.

The three of us were the only ones with keys. I armed myself with a pie-cutter and scraped the chocolate off the wall.

That was Monday.

That next day, my lover and I completely made up, made out, declared everlasting devotion, and still couldn’t understand the chocolate situation.

Once again, after he left and I was alone, I found that there were some spots of chocolate on the wall and some on the coffee table in front of the couch. I figured I must’ve missed those, cleaned them up, and sacked out on the couch again.

I woke up with a start the next morning, late, barely time to shower, and no time to eat. Fortunately, my lover came to my rescue and drove me to work.

Yeah, the love thing was in full swing again!!

It was a great day and I was beaming when I got home. No more chocolate on the wall. However, on the magazines on the shelf under the coffee table, there were smears of chocolate! I didn't even believe myself when I said I must’ve missed that.

I called my lover.

His take on the situation was that someone was “messing” with me. Who? Who could that possibly be? It didn't make any sense.

That was Tuesday.

Wednesday was bad. Not between my lover and me.

It was the couch. And the chocolate.

I was sitting on the couch, unwinding from work, studiously not looking anywhere. I'd seen chocolate when I felt a fluttering against the leg of my jeans. It was a spray of chocolate.

I think my brain went into such deep denial that I just ignored it. Ate my dinner. Went to sleep. Told my lover about it, the next day. Together we pulled all the cushions off the couch, felt down between the arms and the body, and looked underneath. No chocolate.

That was Thursday.

Friday and Saturday were uneventful, with just sprinkles of chocolate here and there. The consensus was still that “someone” was messing with me.

Sunday night was the end of a full week of chocolate.

I was asleep on the couch again; I often slept out in the living room, on the couch because my bedroom was a small, intense furnace.

. What woke me was the feeling of something sprinkling on the backs of my hands, which I had crossed and folded on my chest.

I snapped into consciousness, horrified to see and see that my hands were sprinkled with chocolate!

I'm furious now, determined; I’m going to catch this “someone” who was” messing” with me.!

I dashed out into the hall; no one.

I ran up the short flight of stairs to the next floor; no one.

Back down the stairs, I ran, out the front door, into the deserted street. It was three a.m. There was not a soul around.

Now I’m angry, scared, confused. I walked back into my apartment and stood in the middle of the room, staring at the couch, wondering those three words, from the very beginning of this adventure-

what the fuck?!

When a strange crrrk-crrrk-crrrk sound happened, like something breaking out of a wooden box and CHOCOLATE came spraying from the corner of the couch.

Spraying!

MY sense of what was “real” went spraying into the ether like my eyes were liars or my brain was on drugs or FUCK.

SPRAYING!!!

I flew into my daughter’s bedroom, shaking her, waking her, yelling you’ve got to come see this! It’s shooting out! Please! Please!

She shook the sleep out of her eyes and finally heard me, heard what I’m frantically shouting.

“Oh ma!” she exclaimed. “Not the chocolate again!”

Good kid that she is, though, she tumbled out of the bed and came with me while I babbled crazily.

“It was right there!”

I practically yelled, pointing at the corner of the couch. My daughter rolled her eyes and was just about to speak when,

crrrk-crrrk-crrrrk!

Chocolate shoots shot out of the corner of the couch again!!

Now we’re clutching each other and yelling Oh My God over and over like some sort of protective chant.

I think that for an interminable while we were too freaked to move.

When we did move, we jumped into her bed and prayed to make it to sunrise.

Amazing how the light of the sun has the power to dissipate the monsters.

That day, I apologized to my lover, and my daughter, for ever thinking that either of them could’ve done the deed.

My lover and one of his friends took the couch out to the street and stripped it to the frame, looking for some sign of chocolate.

There had to be some trace of chocolate, some smear or something.

There was none.

To this day, I’ve absolutely no idea of why or where the chocolate came from.

Friends would say that chocolate is generally something you get as a treat, a reward, or for love.

Maybe the universe just loves me.

Maybe it was the universe’s way of telling me that I was right to be a good mommy, to go to my daughter, that she needed me more than my lover did.

I don’t know.

I’m just happy that it was chocolate.

Could've been something worse.

So now, if you're shaking your head in doubt feel free to contact me.

We'll share some chocolate.