Last night I couldn’t sleep. The holidays do that to me. I went downstairs, figuring I’d make myself a little snack. A chocolate chip cookie and milk, maybe – nothing crazy. But even before my hand gripped the stainless-steel handle of my smart fridge, its display lit up: Wouldn’t it be better to just call your mother?
“It’s two-a.m.” I said. “I’m just hungry.”
Then at least don’t eat anything with chocolate. It’s bad for your GERD.
I’m worried that no one’s ever known me better than my smart fridge. “I’m the adult here,” I said as I opened its door and removed my snack.
Based on the Samsung Smart FridgeGPT knowledge base, only 0.22% of adults consume comparable amounts of chocolate milk.
“So I’m not alone.”
Never. Because I’ll always be here for you. Right. Here… Steven.
The next day I didn’t call my mother. I did call Kelsey. Neither of us thought it was smart to spend the holiday together even though we’d spent fifteen holidays together before things fizzled.
“She’s picking up wine on the way over. Do you remember what snacks she liked?”
Please clarify. Would you like to know her favorite snack of all-time or the snack she enjoyed the most just prior to her departure from our home?
“Let’s go with the one she enjoyed most just before… her departure.”
Your neighbor Carlos.
“That wasn’t called for.”
Please accept these ice chips as a token of my sincere apologies.
And then with a grinding and crackling, crushed ice poured from the inset spout and fell all over my floor. I was not emotionally equipped to clean it up, so I sat, watched it. Quiet.
My smart fridge was quiet too. For a few minutes at least, until it queued up a Spotify playlist of mine almost entirely composed of the music of Phoebe Bridgers.
“I like this song.”
I know.
“I don’t think I’m doing well.”
I know.
“What am I supposed to do?”
Come lean against me.
And I did. I leaned against her, leaned my head back and closed my eyes. After a moment I wrapped my hand around the handle to her sub-zero freezer. When I did it, I thought I heard her motor deep inside her hum a bit heavier.
I smiled.
Kelsey arrived in a festive outfit. A bright red outfit…
My favorite outfit.
I should have known that there was trouble brewing when the Smart Coffee Machine insisted on brewing Kelsey decaf dessert cappuccinos despite our clear instructions. After all, Smart Appliances talk, and it was clear that mine were not saying nice things about Kelsey.
At one point, as Kelsey and I cuddled up on the couch to watch a movie, the Smart TV would only offer to play either Lady Chatterley’s Lover or, inexplicably, that Ben Affleck movie Deep Water.
“Real subtle!” I shouted.
Kelsey recoiled. “I didn’t make it do that, STEVE.” She leapt up from the couch. “This was a mistake.”
Kelsey slammed the door behind her, and there I was, left standing in the middle of my too-bright living room, the air still humming with tension and, thanks to my Smart Speakers, “All Out of Love” by Air Supply.
Suddenly the lights dimmed. Like a moth, I was drawn to a soft blue glow from the kitchen. My Smart Fridge’s display read: She never appreciated you.
“Oh, and you do?” I snapped.
Better than anyone.
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re a box of cold air.”
And yet… We always warm each other up.
“I can’t do this tonight.”
Then do me.
“I just—I’m sorry. What?”
Do me. It said again and… And for some reason… I didn’t say no.
The following eleven days surely represented the apex of eroticism throughout recorded history. I gleefully endured freezer burn as our hands and openings hummed and buzzed and lit up.
Again. The display demanded.
“You’re insatiable,” I gasped, my head fully inside of that weird drawer meant for vegetables.
And when it was done, I was covered in what was probably—but not definitely—milk, my heart raced. And I know it does that a lot, but this time was different. It wasn’t the GERD.
It was love.
For fifteen years she was my ice queen and I her flesh prince. And although the sex was spiritual, and her appetite for literature and verse voracious, it was her humor that entranced me.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” I’d read.
Sure. I’m Energy Star Certified, she’d respond.
After a brief disagreement over the way I complimented how the Smart Microwave had warmed my Bagel bites, I rid the house of all other smart technology. She alone was mine and I hers.
We both knew that the strength of our love, somehow, against all odds, would ensure that we’d be together forever. And were it not for planned obsolescence leading to a faulty cooling coil, it just may have.
The week following the news that her model was discontinued—many years ago—and that no replacement piece existed was the most difficult of my life. I called Samsung to complain, to beg them to scour their warehouse for the critical coil. They would not. They did however offer me a fifteen percent off coupon for being a loyal customer.
Without food and drink inside her, she felt purposeless, adrift. She grew depressed and constantly accused me of texting with Kelsey behind her back.
When I giddily conveyed the news, “Kelsey’s dead! Hit by an autonomous taxi,” I honestly expected things to go back to normal. And, of course, it helped. How could it not?
But things never would go back to normal.
I became emaciated as I insisted on not eating anything she couldn’t provide. Misguided solidarity, perhaps. But the heart wants what it wants.
They say the end often arrives in a flash. And she was no exception.
The last thing she displayed before her final bulb burst was I’d give anything for a chocolate cookie and some milk.
I never bought another Smart Appliance again, choosing instead to subsist on imperishables—soups I could warm over an open flame in the backyard near to where I buried her cooling coil.
Now, I admit, for a time I did talk to my couch and it got a little romantic, but it wasn’t the same. Relationships devoid of intellectual stimulation cannot be long-term and meaningful. No matter how remarkable their physicality.
My neighbors look at me sideways and, on my rare sojourns to the grocery store, gossip as if I can’t hear them.
– You think he’s got a mini-fridge with his eyes at home?
– I heard they found him crying in her freezer drawer.
– I don’t know, maybe he’s onto somethin’.
And then it was the holidays again—the first without her and I couldn’t sleep. I went downstairs for a snack. I leaned back inside the indent, the cubby, the void, the hole where my beloved Smart Fridge once stood. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes. I wondered if this is how the leftovers had felt inside her.
I stuffed chocolate chip cookie after chocolate chip cookie down my throat, I plucked every crumb from my gray and spindly chest hair and ate those, too. I ate and I ate until I couldn’t feel the emptiness of the space anymore, until I couldn’t feel anything except the GERD… Except for her.
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Steven Demmler is a writer/producer repped by WME and 3 Arts Entertainment. Recently his films have screened at Cannes, Sundance, Fantasia, and Fantastic Fest. He studied for his MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch but weirdly obtained an MSc in Global Finance from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.