June 16, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
Hellooo there! I’m new to this group, cleaning house in advance of a home renovation, so you’ll likely be seeing a lot of me here in the coming weeks. Out with the old, in with the new, right?
First, for porch pickup in Verona: a WM Kratt MK1-S pitch pipe (iykyk) featuring 13 hand-tuned bronze reeds with patented tone chambers. Both the top and bottom of the pipe have embossed pitch notations for easy tuning. The whole shebang comes in a red plastic case with a lightly cushioned interior.
This item is 27 years old, a relic, purchased when I was chosen to lead my high school a cappella group. It’s from a time when I still dreamed of studying vocal performance, of becoming a folk singer, of ending up on Broadway, of building a life around music.
Yet it still works like a dream.
TBH, I bombed my college audition and ended up studying journalism instead. Now, I squeeze singing into the cracks of my life. Do local choirs. Accompany myself on the ukulele when I’m home alone.
Sometimes, I still imagine myself performing for other people, imagine myself capable of more. But I’ll never be a real singer, and I don’t actually need a pitch pipe anymore, and it seems a shame to let it go to waste.
Leave a comment below if you’re interested.
June 22, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
For PPU in Verona: a set of three Kosta Boda glass candlestick holders, still like new, purchased off my Macy’s wedding registry nearly 16 years ago.
The bright splashes of blue and green caught my eye, thick brushstrokes splayed against the curve of the glass, forming vibrant tulips. A signifier, perhaps, of new beginnings? Of love blooming?
For a time, they sat on a knick-knack shelf in my home office until I took them down, furred with dust, and tucked them away in a drawer.
By then, I’d learned that everything loses its luster. Even love. Or rather, that love isn’t as easy as you expect it to be. That you change, and that love changes with you. That who you are together softens and fades and becomes something different, something that no longer requires the crystal vases or the casual China or the gleaming glass candlestick holders.
Learning this is both a loss and a sign of growth, I think.
I hope the candlestick holders find a home with someone who keeps them on display, in a sunny spot, maybe, in a window, where the light can shine through the thick, heavy glass and cast rainbows across the walls. There, they’ll have been wiped clean of the dust, of the past, of the weight of other people’s hopes and expectations.
UPDATE: TAKEN
June 28, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
For PPU in Verona: a Disney Princess cash register. A heads up that the register’s drawer is stuck closed (possibly with the key inside), but maybe someone more determined than I can fix it?
Also, the batteries will need to be changed if, for some reason, you want to be subjected to the endless sounds of keys ka-chinging, imaginary items being rung up, the beep of the credit card slot, and the robotic-yet-perky voice saying, “Thanks for shopping!”
When this register entered my home, I questioned whether the person who bought it for my child even knew me. After all, I eschewed gender stereotypes. And I hated the accumulation of useless stuff. Yet here was a toy—all pinks and princesses—that was an homage to culturally constructed femininity and capitalism. I’d hoped to be a different sort of parent. To expose my child to more than that. To show her that she could crush expectations and diverge from the path society had laid out for her.
But what you come to learn as a parent is that it’s not about you. Not anymore. In an instant, you cease to exist as the person you were. Instead, your life now revolves around the life of someone else. Someone who wears triple-layered tutus every day and who hates pants and loves princesses. And you will endure anything for that tiny person.
Well… up to a point.
UPDATE: PENDING PICKUP
August 10, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
Available for PPU in Verona: a (baby) baby grand piano. Perfect for toddlers. Comes with a small bench (also pictured) and a book of songs.
When I learned of the existence of this item, I thought it ridiculous in its needless extravagance, an upscale toy for a spoiled child. I put it on my child’s wish list anyway because I also found it delightful. It made me think of my childhood. Of the 10 years of piano lessons I took in Mrs. Schloesser’s sitting room, her poodle snapping at my fingers. Of the annual recitals, where I squatted into awkward curtsies on a vast stage before scuttling off into the wings. It made me think that maybe my child would follow in my footsteps.
Now, it’s just a reminder that my child is approaching the end of childhood. My child, who will always be my baby.
But she is also, resolutely, her own person. And the piano looks so tiny next to her. In fact, all I can see are her long legs, the way she rolls her eyes, the way she bangs at the piano keys and insists she knows how to play, the way she thinks she knows everything.
UPDATE: TAKEN
June 14, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
For PPU in Verona: combat boots with a comics-esque pattern (bam! pow! zap!), size 9.
My brother bought these for me when I first got into comics, which didn’t happen until I was 37. It’s at this stage of my life that I started a pull list and became preoccupied with cosplay. I was the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. April from Lumberjanes. Mabel from Gravity Falls. Once, I simply went to the latest con as a monument to horror, with tentacle leggings and tentacle earrings and a tank top featuring fan art for Terrorvision, the most ’80s-tastic B-horror movie I’d ever seen.
Maybe I feared getting older. Or maybe I was just bored of who I’d become, a mom who looked like every other mom at school pickup, with her leggings and her tunic tops and her sensible orthotic flip-flops.
When I pulled on those tights and those bomber jackets and those bodysuits and those earrings, maybe I wanted to cosplay myself into a whole different personality.
At my local comic shop, I saw women a decade younger than me with wacky skater dresses and whimsical statement earrings and colorful, quirky glasses, and I envied them.
I couldn’t pull off crop tops or overalls. I was too self-conscious about my thighs to wear skater dresses. But maybe combat boots could be my thing?
Said combat boots have been worn once. They are still like new.
UPDATE: PENDING PICKUP
December 11, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
I’m back with a beauty batch, everyone! For porch pickup:
Middle age has made me invisible. Sometimes, I miss feeling desired. But I’m too lazy (and too cheap) to keep up with a complicated beauty regimen, and I’m too cynical to believe these products will make much of a difference anyway. As such, all bottles / tubes remain unopened!
UPDATE: ALL ITEMS HAVE BEEN CLAIMED
December 28, 2023
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
For PPU in Verona: I have a garbage bag full of clothes that no longer fit me. Jeans that pinch at the waist. Size M and L tops that have become stretched out and schlumpy. Rompers that make me feel like an old lady playing dress-up. Sundresses I bought for the person I thought I could be. A person who can wear strapless bras that don’t shimmy down her torso. A person who can wear skirts without “thigh-saving” bike shorts. A person who lounges on back decks drinking with friends, who goes dancing at night, who flies to New Mexico alone to do yoga and write with strangers, who says yes more than she says no.
A person who moves through the world without worrying about the space her body is taking up. Without worrying about the space she is taking up by being someone who is never completely sure of herself.
I bought these clothes for a person I’ll never be.
Maybe you’re that person?
Comment below if interested.
UPDATE: PENDING PICKUP
January 23, 2024
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
For PPU in Verona: I have a triangle-shaped bedside book holder with an additional drawer for storage (it looks like a tiny A-frame cabin!).
Handmade by my brother, the body is made of walnut, while the drawer is made of mahogany. Both are treated with a clear finish. There are four rubber feet on the bottom, so it doesn’t scratch your furniture.
Read in bed but don’t have a bookmark handy? You can place your open book face down on the roof of the box, which is pitched steeply enough so you don’t crack the binding.
The drawer, meanwhile, is perfect for small items you might reach for in the night, like lip balm, or eye drops, or secret love notes from your child.
The thing is, my nightstand was getting cluttered, so I moved the box to my dresser. And then my dresser was looking cluttered, so I moved the box to a high shelf in the living room. But it still caught my eye every time I walked down the stairs, kept reminding me of everything it held, kept reminding me of everything I didn’t want to think about.
I’m just trying to set boundaries here. But can I be the person who doesn’t need those things anymore?
To be honest, I don’t know if I’m ready to let it go. Not entirely. Not when it was made just for me.
How can I possibly leave it on my front steps, waiting for someone new?
How will I feel when they pick it up and walk away?
UPDATE: PENDING EMOTIONAL RESOLVE
12 hours /days ago
S. Auteri–Local Buy Nothing Facebook Group—Top contributor
ISO: The way things were.
When I look at my future, there is a blank. A hole. An empty space where my brother used to be before he chose to estrange himself from our family.
When I look at it directly, I feel it in my body. An anger I can’t let go of.
And beneath that, grief.
I’ve been in search of the path that will bring us back to the way things were. The magic key. The antidote to this madness. But at the same time, deep down, I know that finding this is impossible.
I wonder if I can travel so far into the future that, eventually, I feel nothing. But with every giddy or terrifying or difficult moment I live through, I think of how I can’t share it with him. And with every milestone I see coming, I think of how it can’t help but be colored by his absence.
He is my only sibling, just three years younger than me. My parents love to tell the story of his birth, of how they placed him in my arms at the hospital and I asked the doctors if they could take him back.
As we grew older, we fought, as siblings do. But we were protective of each other, too. Not friends, but blood.
That was important.
As adults, my brother and I seemed to reach an accord, a place of ease. We joked around with each other at family gatherings. We swapped recipes for pizza dough and roasted Brussels sprouts. One time, he helped my husband build three radiator covers so our newborn wouldn’t burn herself on the ancient, exposed units throughout our house. My husband sometimes raises the possibility of replacing those radiator covers, but I won’t let him. I think they’re beautiful.
I’m so mad at my brother.
I tell myself I’m mad because our parents are growing older. Last year, our father was diagnosed with dementia. My mother is still experiencing pain from a car accident that happened four years ago, even as she cares for a husband who, every day, loses more of himself. For the first time ever, they need our help but, suddenly, there is only me. How could he do this to them?
But really, I am mourning our family. No matter what happened over the years, no matter what I dreamed or what I became, family was the most solid thing in my life. I thought it would always be there.
It’s been two years now since he stopped speaking to us. I sometimes go days without thinking about him. I find it helps to keep him in a box at the back of my mind, buried beneath deadlines and to-do lists and that pile of books on my nightstand.
But then I see something that hurtles me into my past. A photo of him holding my newborn. The small storage box he built for me. The radiator covers. A million tiny things that are a part of my life because of him.
And all I can think of is loss, a loss that sits low in my chest, always there.
I want a future where I feel none of this, but that future seems impossible.
Do you have something that can help?
Steph Auteri’s creative nonfiction work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Creative Nonfiction, under the gum tree, Southwest Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of A Dirty Word: How A Sex Writer Reclaimed Her Sexuality (Cleis Press, 2018.).
Stills from The Whispering Star (ひそひそ星), a 2015 Japanese science fiction film directed by Sion Sono, starring Megumi Kagurazaka.
