More Than One Me

Danny came over after work today to catch up on the porch in person. We’ve known each other since we were teens, so while most everyone else knows us as Dan and Trilety, we still call each other Danny and Tril.

Names are a funny sort of thing, especially if yours is unique like mine. While Trilety is a common surname in Czechoslovakia, it is a rarity to find someone with it as a first name. (I used to think my name was Irish, until my paternal Irish grandmother said “We are the family McManus, you come from the Czech Bohunks on your grandfather’s side.”) I still feel Bohunk to this day. And I still know of no one with my first name.

And then this morning came, when Jake told me at the coffee shop that his girlfriend’s best friend’s name was. . . .T-r-i-l-l-i-t-y. I felt that feeling I’d first felt in my late 30’s, “You are not the special person you thought were.” At that time, I was just another single, white, nearing middle-aged woman living in a Midwestern city who had finally realized she was, indeed, unremarkable. I felt that same absence of specialness again this morning when I found out about Trillity. 

Even if our two names are homonyms, I still felt stolen. I went to bed as one and woke as many. Out of curiosity, I googled Trillity. No human search results were returned, just a consulting firm in Iowa and an album by Ramirez titled Trillity. The third lyric, just before the gunshots, mentions God, and I swear I can’t escape His name these days.

When you google my name however, the first search result is still a company in Austria that sells street sweepers. This is perfect because whenever the streets are cleaned, I run to the curb to scavenge the steel bristles abandoned by the brushes. Matt nearly peed himself once during the middle of a serious call because I yelped “I have to call you back, the street sweepers are coming!” 

Danny and I always hug upon coming and going. Fortunately, he doesn’t wear cologne. Whenever a man hugs me and leaves his cologne behind, it feels like cheating. I’ve never cheated on a partner but I’ve been the other woman. We end up dabbling in the lives we loathed when our parents lived them.

I brought Danny a slice of cake and his favorite drink. He said, “You’re a gardener. Some people are flowers,” then watched a bird sipping at what he called chicken broth in the bird bath (the heat turns the water yellow-green after two days).

“Do you want to understand men?” he queried.

“Of course,” I replied.

“I really enjoy watching that bird at the broth, but I also want to throw a can at it.”

Is this the difference between the genders?

Boy DNA craves destruction and girl DNA craves the clean up?