A battery-operated radio rests beside my bed on hand-painted table. I dig the art of turning it on, slight finger-tip touch tuning it toward a new station. I do not mind the garble, sometimes the static. It’s in me too. Many nights, I have fallen asleep to its hum of voices. I prefer the stations that talk to me; it feels like I have company. A roundtable discussion of politics, some of which I do not understand, but it pushes me toward a more pensive sleep.
And inside my closet beneath old sheets and towels with stains from the drip of my hair is a record player, purchased for ten dollars at stoop sale in Brooklyn. An Italian carried its surprising weight fifteen blocks for me. Records still wait to rotate as I put off getting its needle surgically enhanced or screwed back on or offered some version of CPR. Its body craves an electric outlet over batteries, but it still relies on something to set it off, to turn it on, to make it move.
In my sock drawer, where misshapen cotton searches for its mate, there are various other plastic parts in need of batteries. Colors include pink (or I prefer to notice it as salmon), silver, purple, red. Various widths and lengths and one is called Sharonda and they are all just devices to stimulate what humans can’t. As I search for paroxysms between my thighs, these batteries act as matchmakers, bringing me closer to orgasm.
Aimee Herman 