He was a gift. A gift for the girl who has everything. A gift that most people would give a twelve year old, but here I am, nearly thirty, sitting in the dark, gazing at him. Falling in love a million times with him. Wishing I could live inside of him.
I guess he is technically a Lava Lamp or at very least in the family of cheesy items one calls Lava Lamps. The box he came in says he is a Glitter Light. It works on the same principles of a Lava Lamp, but the shape and contents are different. Instead of that retro rocket shape, my glitter light is a cylinder. It is full of a liquid that is neither blue nor purple, but a wonderful combination of the two. A bit like a stormy sky. There is a color of Manic Panic hair dye called Lagoon Blue that matches it almost exactly.The glitter is silver and shiny and marvelous. His long base is also silver. I have to admit though, that when I first got him, I didn’t like him. On the side of the box, it looked like his base was gold. A purple and gold lamp just seemed so terrible; like something you’d find at Graceland or in someone’s house on MTV’s Cribs. Someone like Carmen Electra or the actress who plays the daughter on the Sopranos. But silver and lagoon blue is much different. If I were a set designer for a movie that takes place in the future, there would be one in Bruce Willis’ apartment. And he’d go there after a hectic day of chasing androids and stare at it while remembering how his dead wife had given it to him for his birthday.
When you first turn him on, the glitter only moves very slowly. Inching it’s way up from the base, like a strand of DNA. Then, after a while, the DNA breaks up as the liquid gets more hot and other patterns appear. “It looks like stars being born,” Scoresby said the other night. Other times, with all the lights off, light from it dances on the walls and it reminds me of this time I was at a pool party in high school. A night pool party where I sat on the diving board and watched the water throw the same dancing lights everywhere. I was a moody teen and I remember finding that those pool lights had an amazing calming ability. As with everything at that age, I remember writing a poem about it. I don’t remember much about that poem, except I typed it on a Macintosh at school using the font Avant Garde.
So, this goo lamp has taken over my life. Every chance I get, I turn off all the lights and flip him on. He dances and soothes me.