day ninety two.

INSTALMENT THREE - HOMO + ETRA

Though not all of me is a part of my original self, the part that thinks, whatever part that is, stayed in tact and is still with me today, as I sit on the same shelf in a different location. I have been stagnant, bought, used, abused, smashed, thrown into bins, and melted down and had to start all over again. For ten years this has been my life. This cycle has happened so many times, as I suppose it has to other bottles as well, but no matter how many times I am abused then melted down, I have never forgotten my first time. I feel as if no bottle really does.

Ten years ago, I was probably (and still am, compared to brand new and educated bottles I see now) the most naïve bottle I knew. I had spirit, yes, but so did all of the other bottles. I had only been on the shelf a couple of days before I was carried out to begin the first cycle of many, and no bottle or otherwise had given me the slightest hint of how I was to think of myself. I wasn’t proud, but I thought I was worth something beyond $13.95, but hadn’t been put right. My first purchasers (whom I thought were to be known as my master’s at the time), even knew this; that while my spirit was worth $13.95, my shell, my body, was worth nothing. To them, or any of my later purchasers.

I know now but still reminisce. It was near closing time for my little store and my ‘masters’ had just made the deadline for buying me. I was put in a bag, which is a standard practice to be done to us bottles, as we are not allowed to be seen out in public (perhaps it would be too tempting for other purchasers?). A couple of moments later, the purchasers had arrived at their ‘home’ and gone into the ‘basement’. I found out two years after this event, after having been purchased by around the same size of purchasers many times, that they usually drink me in what is called a ‘basement’. Older purchasers prefer to leave me on the shelf for a while, or anywhere on the main level of their ‘home’s.

These purchasers, I now realize, were actually very kind, in terms of snapping away my virginity; they did it very quickly – I have heard horror stories of weak purchasers who have had to give it a couple of go’s before they got it. They were also quick to drain me of my value, which I was horrified to see. I was not in that basement long, and am still not usually in basements very long, unless I am forgotten underneath the couch.

My purchasers quickly tried to take me back to my original home, their faces bright red, which is a normal occurrence for those who have a lot of spirit in them. Angry at the closed door, for my store is not always open (due to the fact that the masters need to ‘eat’ and ‘sleep’), they smashed me on the ground and left me for dead. Little did I know then, that I actually could not die.

After moping all night to a neighboring cigarette butt, who explained my worthlessness to me, when the sun came up, I was swept up by my master and thrown into a bin. So soon after had I both experienced the loss of my virginity and the loss of my former shape, I also lost the shape of the very pieces that made me up, as I was melted and molded, filled and shelved, to experience it all over again.