It was Charmin.

Many years ago, Jefferson Jameson Dufresne, whose family and friends call him J.J., knocked on my door for what I assumed was a just-happened-to-be-in-the-neighborhood social call. He sat on the couch, drank a glass of iced tea, and visited with Al and me for a bit. It was a nice conversation, pleasant, a normal conversation, though my end of it was a bit stilted. I was feeling awkward because Al was staring at the floor, nodding and saying uh huh, uh huh which may or may not mean he’s listening. He was no doubt wondering the same thing I was wondering: why the hell has J.J. Dufresne shown up at our house unexpectedly at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon. We didn’t know J.J. very well yet. He was just a guy who briefly dated one friend of mine, groped another, and came with other people to a few of the parties we threw. What’s he doing here now?

About forty-five minutes later, we found out.

That was when J.J. pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket.

“I almost forgot!” he said. “I’m really glad I wrote it down!”

He handed me the note, I read it, and this is when it began. This is when I fall in love with J.J. Dufresene. What I feel is not a romantic love, it’s not any sort of sexual attraction. I’m not going to leave Al and run off to South Dakota with J.J. Dufresne. I don’t want to have sex with J.J. Dufresene, I don’t want to tongue-kiss J.J. Dufresne, and I certainly don’t ever want to see J.J. in the nude, not even to get a look at that weird nub-thing on his chest I’ve heard about. I’m told it has a hair growing out of it and it may or may not be a third nipple, J.J. isn’t sure.

But I wouldn’t mind holding his hand as we walk across the parking lot to the bingo hall or sharing an afghan as we eat popcorn and watch all of our favorite TV shows, one right after another. I would be happy to bring J.J. another glass of iced tea and fix him a peanut butter sandwich. I can imagine myself marrying J.J. Dufresne someday, thirty or forty years from now, when I’m old and fat and forgotten, when I’m lonely widow cooking enough food to feed a family of eight, and he’s a sloppy slob of a bachelor, smelly and unshaven, who has holes in his socks and pee stains in his boxers. If J.J. Dufresne and I got married, instead of having intercourse, we would have matching Lazy-Boys and separate bedrooms. We would buy each other slipper socks for Christmas, and giggle during the sexy parts of movies. We would get a miniature schnauzer. J.J. would refer to me as “Mom,” and I would nag him to take his vitamins, take his blood pressure pills, have you taken your cholesterol medicine. We would each need the other.

The note he handed me said Ask for a roll of T.P.

I gave him two.