Fridge Magnet

So here I am blogging, striving to make something from nothing. This is literally what writing is, but it turns out that not everyone has the same idea of what it is beyond this. For instance, I once came across a Medium article wherein the author pleaded with readers to follow him on Instagram and like his selfies. Worse still, he had a fair number of followers—and this what Medium is all about: Followers and endless articles about how to get them... and so we enter the death spiral.

I am not here to give advice, or even get followers. I am here to make something. Something that can make you, the reader, feel something. With that said, let me step bravely into the future by digging into my past. That is, this seems a fitting time to share a blog I wrote years ago about, yes, a fridge magnet. Until now, it never had the right medium.

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“Save the Date” ~ 2015

Shifting through my mail in the jail-like mail room of my apartment complex, a small embroidered envelope falls into my hands. I open it and pull out a fridge magnet. My friend Steve is on it, with his fiancee. They are wearing matching black pea coats and posing in various romantic winter scenes.

It’s a Save the Date fridge magnet for his wedding, that until this moment I didn’t know was a thing. I envision the rest of their lives playing out in invitations: trips to tropical resorts, children, graduations, promotions, and other milestones to be documented and printed on things.

I remember the last time I saw Steve, it was the same night he introduced us to Efukt, a porn site archive of the most outlandish content. We watched it on the big TV in the leaving room: men and women reeling and screaming at their orgasms. He laughed harder than any of us—that was only a few months ago.

Steve had a propensity for taking his clothes off at parties and has crashed on our couch more than once. But I supposed this is what a woman does to a man, and maybe that’s really not such a bad thing. It’s hard for me to know, because my fantasies are equal parts Efukt and fridge magnet.

I stuck the magnet to the fridge beside my roommate’s. Sometimes I arrange the two in such a way to to make geometric patterns. In the bottom corner of the magnet it notes that a formal invitation will follow, but I’m sure it won’t end there.