A Chat With Steven

When you looked at Steven, the very first thing you noticed were his leaves. A dark, waxy green with a lighter underside and faint lines, or is it veins? Whatever it is that plants have, running along from the supple and slightly floppy edges down the branching stem. They weren’t large, but not exactly small either. You would get the urge to say they’re dinner plate sized simply because that feels like a comfortable metaphor to use, but in reality they fell in that undefined area between dinner plates and large teacup saucers. Once your mind had fully parsed the mysteries of Steven’s leaf size your eye would fall from them and down to the stems sticking up from the pot, all 1 2 3 of them. They reached up to staggered heights with a sort of bendy verticality. Not quite strictly standing at attention, but maybe an attention that was starting to waver from far too much standing all this damn time, thinking I mean honestly, what are we even doing this for? I’m this close to just heading down to the pub and to hell with all this, how about you fellas? And then getting in response the half-hearted mutters and grunts you expect from stems that have been at attention all day and are too nervous to quite think about stepping out now. And hence Steven’s begrudged sloop to the sides of still wanting to behave but seriously starting to consider a few cool pints. And then with your eye impatiently wanting to move on to something else you realise that there really isn’t anything else to move on to. Aside from some dirt in a terracotta pot so average and unremarkable as to almost be offensive, Steven really didn’t have much else to offer. No signs of a flower of any kind to be seen, just varying shades of green in a barely over three feet tall package. After a few more seconds of your eye wandering along him morosely, you start to wonder that maybe you could instead look at something, anything else. Its not that Steven isn’t wonderful, you think as parts of your mind hurriedly cut in some breakers so you don’t come off as a totally insensitive ass, but really you’re just more of a floral minded person and while you don’t need bright little flowers to look good, I mean Steven’s a great example of that, just look at him in all his… green. He’s great, totally great! It still maybe, just maybe doesn’t hurt to throw some bloomage on and make an effort, and really that’s just your personal preference anyway. So yeah, you’re great but still, no offense right?

Its unclear what Steven would think about all this if he was, in fact, capable of having an opinion. Being a houseplant though, its rather unlikely he cares either way.

Steven sat on a neat little table just big enough for him and him only, which in turn sat standing in a bright little corner by a window, which in turn sat within a small living room in a small apartment in a small building. The room, like the few other rooms there were, was tidy and bright and really quite simple. Just averagely coloured, inoffensively decorated and quietly arranged to the point where most people’s minds would be desperate for some sort of engagement or excitement after about 3 seconds, and whose eyes would alight on Steven for a refreshing break in colour and shape. That is, before remembering that this is Steven after all, nothing too ground-breaking there either. And in the middle of this neat little box is the Young Man. The Young Man at first glance presented to the casual observer a sight rather reminiscent of the apartment he lived in, that is if the casual observer had seen the inside of his apartment and therefore knew he was reminiscent of it, which would be more than a little distressing if some stranger had observed your home, casually or not. With neat brown hair parted on the side and swept across the top of his brow in a way that suggested it had given up on trying anything new and settled into something comfortable, and square glasses perched on the end of a nose itself perched on the front of a rounded face above a slight and inoffensive smile. The skin on his face and neck was neither pale enough to suggest a hawkish nightlife spent staring at a computer screen, nor tanned enough to bother asking if maybe he had just been to the beach or returned from a holiday. And then going down you would see the crisp white button-up shirt tucked into his pants with a tie done up around the collar. The sleeves of the shirt were rolled up to his elbows, but not in the way of rolling them up to free your arms or get stuck into your work. Rather you could tell they had been rolled up carefully by folding the sleeves exactly four times to just above the elbow, in order to achieve a look that just screamed of having been seen in a magazine as being how to put the Casual in Smart-Casual. Next were straight ironed pants, and then fitting snugly under them were brown basic shoes. Both the pants and the tie higher up were a shade of navy blue, in the belief that this colour was seen as intelligent and thought-provoking, and would lend a certain air of sophistication to the outfit. This thought was in fact provoked in a grand total of zero people the Young Man had ever met. All in all, the Young Man was someone you would think of as being a perfectly lovely individual, definitely someone you would invite to a party, although of course he’s busy so really there no point in inviting him this time, but next time when he’s free, why of course! Great guy, really lovely, very nice to have around, for sure.

Basically, the human equivalent of white sliced bread, only with all that terribly exciting brown crust neatly cut of first.

Now the Young Man we have so thoroughly dissected has lived what is, to his mind, a perfectly content existence. He has what you would expect of his daily routine, waking up early each morning to shower, dress and eat the same simple breakfast he has every day while watching the news. He tut-tuts quietly at the terrible things that have happened in the world since the previous day, thinks the same clever remark he always does about the accuracy of weather journalists when they predict how the day will turn out, and washes up his dishes while the news anchor looks out at the screen and wishes everyone a Lovely Day Out There, And See You Tomorrow as the program ends. He then grabs his proper little briefcase, checks for his keys in the pocket they’re always in, and heads out the door for a good day’s work. After a solid 8 hours at work, which is itself so mind-numbingly boring (like most work is in fact) that it isn’t worth committing to paper, the Young Man returns to his neat little home to put away his briefcase, cook one of the three regular dinner meals he rotates through on a daily basis, and sit on his neat little coach. He then watches the latest in popular programming he heard recommended at work, laughs along with the shows tinny laugh track for its scheduled 30-minute runtime, before finally heading off to dress in his crisp pyjamas and sleep the 8 hours that the National Medical Association recommends for adults to best maintain a healthy lifestyle. To break up the monotony, the Young Man likes to engage himself with laundry and his weekly groceries during his weekend.

Now thus far, you may have noticed that Steven does not seem to play a part in the Young Man’s daily routine. This is because Steven himself was actually a very recent addition to the Young Man’s life and it is at that point where things start to change.

Now at first, the idea for Steven’s existence arose after a comment from one of the Young Man’s co-workers. During his lunch break, he found himself on the receiving end of an observation that maybe he should try getting something living to actually be in his apartment with him. His co-worker was in fact referring to the Young Man perhaps trying to get a girlfriend of some kind, but this facet of the comment took one look at the Young Man and decided that this neighbourhood was far too boring for its tastes and flew straight over his head instead. Throughout the rest of the day, the comment found itself bouncing around with plenty of room to spare in the Young Man’s head, and by the time he had got back home and woke up the next morning, he had arrived at a decision. A monumental, paradigm-shifting decision, that would forever alter the fabric of the Young Man’s life, nay, his very reality.

He would get a houseplant.

And so, allowing a slight tremble of excitement to radiate through him, the Young Man stepped out his front door the very next day and headed towards his new and dangerous future laden with the heady promise of his very own houseplant. Strutting along in a beeline towards the nearest homewares store, he reached the threshold and with a final intake of breath to prepare himself, walked through the door which signalled his arrival with a tinny “bing-bong”. Taking a moment to orient himself with the stores cheerful plasticky map, the Young Man strode along the shining shelves with rows and rows of the latest products until finally he reached the stores little nursery tucked away in the far wall. Upon stopping to browse the plants arranged for just the briefest of moments, the Young Man suddenly found himself joined by a brightly smiling store helper that materialised next to him, and whose name tag declared him to be Your New Best Friend, Bob!. Within seconds, it became clear that Your New Best Friend, Bob! radiated an almost palpable sense that the two of you were going to have just the most wonderful time, truly wonderful and fun, for roughly the next 22 minutes or 3 to 4 retail purchases, whatever came first. Momentarily taken aback by His New Best Friend, Bob!’s sudden appearance, the Young Man was then whisked away through a torrent of beaming smiles, rapid successions of what he vaguely understood as small-talk, understanding nods, and finally found himself neatly deposited back out on the threshold of the store holding in his hands a plant with whom we have already been acquainted. The whirl of conversation and befuddling inquiries that had resulted from what the Young Man briefly recalled as the purchase of his new plant were in fact much more important in what was to come than he at first realised, but for now the Young Man simply headed home, pleased if slightly confused with his new acquisition.

Upon reaching his neat little home, the Young Man took his due time and diligence to research where best to place his houseplant, how and when to water and nourish it, and fitting time into his daily schedules to accommodate for the new changes. For the first few days after its purchase the new houseplant represented no radical differences in the Young Man’s life, seeming to slot effortlessly into the usual routine in such a way that it barely registered with him. Until one day, during the regular morning watering before he headed off to work, a memory of the day he purchased the houseplant shyly sidled into the forefront of his mind and presented him with a line of the store helpers rapid-fire small talk alongside a meaningful little cough. He had said… what was it again? That it helped to talk to plants, right? Something about the vibrations from conversations, and how people started to treat them like a quiet friend to chew the fat with. He had also mentioned how some people gave them a name to help personify the little chats, and the Young Man vaguely remembered having given a response of some sort about that very concept. Deciding that if it helped the health of the plant then it must be the sensible thing to do, the Young Man started monologing as he watered. Somewhat hesitantly at first, but gaining in traction until he was engaged in what he assumed was considered the average vernacular and tempo used when one was chatting to their houseplant. And then later on through the day the oddest thing happened. The Young Man found his thoughts utterly preoccupied with the pseudo-conversation he had that morning, in a way that nothing had ever held his attention like before. Putting it down to the novelty that bringing the plant into his life had caused and nothing else aside, he finished his workday and headed home to a good night’s sleep, casting the briefest of glances into the corner of the room that held the new houseplant as he walked in.

The next morning, something even odder happened. As the Young Man woke up and trundled through his routine, he felt himself drawn to the allocated time for watering more than he had ever been before, and as he sprinkled water over the leaves with his little watering can he instantly fell into a deeper conversation than he had ever had. For all the averageness and perfectly standard mediocrity that had drawn him to the plant when he first got it, it now instead seemed to instil a deep and intense fascination in the Young Man. He found himself talking with more abandon and passion than he even knew he had, and continued like this right up until he glanced at his clock and stopped short as he realised that for the first time that he could remember, he was late. Late to leave, so therefore late for work, and therefore somehow, he was sure, late for every routine he had planned for the day. As he jumped and rushed out through the door in an absolute tizzy, the Young Man had a subtle feeling of something deep within him, something he had hitherto failed to notice starting to grow and bloom, curl out and expand ever so slightly. This little feeling grew throughout the day as he tried his best to ignore it and focus on work, familiar work, and then just go home to get some sleep and start everything back how it was supposed to be the next morning.

The next morning came, and the Young Man sat on his couch with a dilemma. Despite his efforts to retain normalcy, he had found himself rushing through this routine and now had an unprecedented amount of extra time before he had to leave for work.

All that was left was watering the plant.

As he sat there staring at it in what he was starting to feel was all its smug leafy innocence, he couldn’t help but feel a pull from the small feeling inside him that had started the day before and started to wonder whether the plant was pulling all the strings here somehow. You know, in that devious manner that only foliage can muster. Eventually, unsure of whether this was truly the best move, he got up and approached carefully, wielding the watering can like an impromptu shield before gently starting to pour over the leaves. As he did so, the feeling inside him seemed to suddenly lose all patience with the situation and jumped up through his throat, resulting in a jumble of words that eventually resolved themselves into a conversation emerging from an increasingly surprised mouth. As he continued watering and the stream of words poured forth the Young Man found himself becoming strangely at ease with everything happening around and through him. That feeling that had caused him so much disconcertion yesterday seemed to have now firmly placed itself comfortably in his heart and he found that he wasn’t as displeased with this as he would’ve expected. In fact, he felt almost giddy and excited for what the days to come would now feel like and even wondered about whether it was time for some changes to accommodate all these new thoughts and feelings. As he continued with his newly found gift of the gab while watering what he now gladly thought of as the source of all this, he glanced down at the dappled greenery sparkling under the droplets of water trickling over and down its length and smiled as a final memory of the day he had inadvertently changed everything zipped to the forefront of his mind with perfect clarity.

“Oh gosh yes, plenty of people tend to give their plants names! Its like, it makes it a bit more real as they chat while watering and caring for them, going about the day you know?” My New Best Friend, Bob! smiled again as he finished scanning through the bar code on the base of the plant and looked up at the Young Man, who had a slight quizzical look on his face as he gazed at the plant. “I’m sure you’ll soon find yourself giving this little guy his own identity! Now, was that everything today?” “Ummm… Ah, yes. Thank you.” As he continued looking at the green of the leaves and the stems sticking up from the pot, The Young Man had a thought pop suddenly into his head, unexpected and yet feeling, in a way, just right for the situation.

“You know, I think he looks a little like a Steven to me.”