Groceries
By Alice Clarke
I was dating a poet. He weaved words into prose so effortlessly, like he was reciting the “ABC”.
He sent me a text.
CALL ME. X. It appeared to be stuck on caps lock, but it wasn’t, he just chose to type like he was shouting at me.
He had a mobile that was pay as you go. It had free messages but not free minutes.
I had contract so this wasn’t a problem. My income was salaried. He hadn’t worked in over six weeks.
“Hi kitten.”
“Hey.” We were only weekend lovers.
“I’ve just been to the supermarket and cashed all the 2ps in my apartment.” That was a lot of change. He kept them in empty green bottles in the living room, five bottles at least. You pour the coins into this machine that weighs them, it charges a small percentage, then prints off an in-store store coupon.
“I was stocking up on the essentials and I wanted to tell you, I bought the nice toilet paper,”
“Ok.”
“No listen. I was walking up and down the aisles and I wouldn’t even notice how much it normally costs but do you know the nice stuff is 60p more than the basic.”
“Why didn’t you just get that?”
“Well at first I almost did and then I went to put it back because even though it had two more rolls per packet, it looked rough, like it would hurt your pussy.”
“Oh.”
“And I thought, no, I may be skint but this pussy is important to me. So then I looked at the aloe vera range because that in theory would feel smoother but it was scented.”
I refused to use scented tissue.
“So I bought the good stuff, a four pack that is thick. It’s superior quality. I’ll save opening it till Saturday.”
This was a true romance.
“Oh also, I bought some marinated artichoke hearts. I needed something luxurious to get me through this shitty day-to-day”.
“Would you lick Nutella off my pussy?” I was eating it from the jar with a spoon as we spoke.
“Eugh! Fuck, no! That’s disgusting!”
“It is?” I loved Nutella, so cloying and sweet.
“Yeah, geez, it’d be like feces on your cunt. Like some fucking European porno.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought about it like that.
He paused.
“I would massage raw steak into it though and then fix it up, tartare.”
I considered. Bloodied meat on my vagina?
“Sure.”
“Sure?”
“Sure. We can do that.”
“I’ll walk back and buy a jar of capers.”