Drinking from Straws

"Suckers" by Artist Lisa Rae Winant
Image used by permission on the Artist
20 X 12 / oil on panel


If anyone ever bothered to ask, “What’s the point?” Wendell couldn't find a good way to respond. He’d shrug it off like a fly settling on his shoulder and be on his way, and in this respect it made him a simple man. Sure, people would stare from all directions whenever he took a sip from his beverage, but something about it made him so happy, that he didn’t care what people thought of him.

The genesis of this peculiarity may have begun in childhood. His mother, a self-respecting Christian, always told her young son about the world the way she saw it and Wendell sat and stared at her wild eyes while his mouth maintained its grip on the straw filtering chocolate milk to his taste buds.

For the better part of thirty-four years, Wendell found the stream of liquid through a straw to be exhilarating and couldn’t think of another way. Orange Juice, pasteurized milk, cola, whisky on the rocks, it all tasted divine through the cylindrical hollowness of the flexing contraption. There was something so effortless and so simple about hydration from a straw.

But when he was finally asked by a woman colleague at his new accounting job, his mind began to wander. “What is the point?” she said, while gulping down her bottle of water watching Wendell suck the contents from his bottle of soda. At this, Wendell didn’t have a reply, as expected, but something churned in his brain that had not been activated before. He gave the question legitimate thought.

At first he thought, simply, that it was easier. This was swiftly turned aside by the evidence of the woman sitting beside him releasing large quantities of water with every tip of the bottle. Then he thought, perhaps it tasted better, but this he just as quickly disregarded based on lack of facts. He thought about the noise the straw created by picking up the last drop and witnessed the woman silently wash the rest of her sandwich with the remaining water from her bottle.

As the woman walked back into the office, Wendell thought of those days with his mother, the stories she told, and the years upon years he had spent with her because she wouldn’t let him outside. She always said it wasn’t safe for him and he could only agree, without experience. He was always on this medication or that medication and was always being kept inside. She always gave him a new straw and threw out the used ones.

As the woman closed the door to the break room, Wendell spoke. “There isn’t a point,” he said. He lifted the straw from the bottle and tossed it into the waste basket. He then gurgled down the last bit of cola left and for the first time felt the cold liquid splash against his teeth and swim about his gums. He dropped the empty bottle in the trash and said, “I just didn’t know.”