Every winter, one of my gloves goes missing. It happened again this week. I just checked in my pocket and found this sole glove, without its mate. I don’t know how it happened or where I lost it. Like my ex-boyfriend Kevin, the flight attendant, it could be anywhere now.
In the past, I used to buy expensive gloves from places like Barney’s and such. But because one always gets lost, my tastes have gotten by necessity much simpler. I believe this pair was from JC Penney’s. The only requirement I have for a good glove is that there be three vents on the back of it. No more, no less.
I believe it was Kohut who said that human beings have an innate need for a “twin,” or “Other” being. Without it, we feel irritable, distracted, and isolated. Many people find it through marriage, an institution intended to codify this unspoken and unspeakable need. I guess if you were to put a gun to my head and threaten to pull the trigger, I would admit that much of my life has been characterized by a search for the “Other.” Some of you might think that that search was started when I lost my brother Jonathan. Before he died, we had rarely been seen without each other. But I suspect that the search began when I was separated from my maternal grandmother, whom I have no memories of
I resisted wearing gloves all through my childhood. Today, I resist using umbrellas. I guess there is a certain egotism to that. Why do I need to be protected from the world? I am beyond the world somehow, not of it. Sigh. But New York City is a cold place, and now I am often gloved in the winter. Gloved, scarfed, be-hatted.
I suppose a visit to JC Penney’s is in order. But for once, I wish that the missing glove would just reappear somewhere, maybe underneath the clutter in my messy office. But I think that about everything I’ve lost. That beautiful grey backpack. The mirrors on the bottom of my mother’s ash tray. Blue. Look at this glove, so lonely and forlorn-looking. I wonder if it comforts it to know that we’ve all been there.
