Pothos Cuttings - a Metric for Masculinity
“You are now officially an old lady,” he said to me when he saw the pothos cuttings in a vase on my kitchen windowsill. That was five or six years ago. I told him the pothos needed trimming and it was a waste to just throw the cuttings out. He shook his head sadly. They are still there. Pothos like to grow long tendrils and look sickly odd if you don’t trim them back. If you do trim them back, the plants can become full, lush and bountiful. I liked my plants lush, so I trimmed the pothos and put the cuttings in water to root. Sometimes I then replant them. It doesn’t make me an old lady.
Steve is a guy. He loves sports and women and action movies. And grilling steaks on a raging barbeque fire. He also loves cooking a delicate spaghetti sauce, but that is how straight Italian men behave. I’m also Italian and love making a good sauce, but prefer a Scandinavian tear-jerker to an action movie and date men. When I date. Which isn’t often. (I tell people that, if being gay means you sleep with men, I’m not gay anymore. It usually gets a laugh.)
So it was with a bit of glee that I chuckled when Steve called me a few moments ago and asked if I wanted the cuttings from his pothos. They were already rooted, he said, and there wasn’t any room for them in his pot.
I reminded him of his previous response to cuttings. He said that must have been someone else. I love inconsistencies in people. It’s part of what makes good writing interesting. It’s part of what makes people interesting. As famously gay Walt Whitman once famously said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
But the main point is that Steve is now officially an old lady.
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Geoff Hoff is co-author of the best selling satirical novel Weeping Willow: Welcome to River Bend
Tags: Humor, Masculinity, Plants, Surreal Reality
June 10th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
My pot is full of Venus Flytraps and Cacti!!! And that is not pothos (yes, the correct spelling), it’s poison oak!!! And I put yak sausage in my “delicate” spaghetti sauce!!! And I like Babette’s Feast!!! Oops.
June 10th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Thanks for the spelling correction. It has been updated in the post. And the photo alt tag. And I liked Spiderman, so there you are.
June 10th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
I have a pothos that needs trimming and re-potting. Someone at work threw it out and I took it home several months ago. I immediately bought a bigger pot and some potting soil, and they’re still in my car. Now that I’m alive again (don’t ask) that will be remedied before month’s end. It’s on my list.
…and I’m closer to being an old woman than either of you. And I don’t sleep with men either. Does that mean I’m not gay?