Act 2, Scene 3: "Product Porn"

Prior to moving to the burbs, TRL had a product porn fetish for an espresso maker. Not your run of the (coffee) mill Krups, but a serious Italian machine that would cost upwards of $700, probably more, would be high pressure for maximizing taste and crema production, would be aesthetically brilliant, something in-between the brassy old time machines and ultrapostmodern smooth metal and gleam. It would, in a word, be a perfect machine. Practical, beautiful, long-lasting and infinitely pleasurable to both use and gaze at.

And then something new entered his life. A present from N, the neighbor across the street. TRL took in his mail and fed his cats while his wife was having their baby in the hospital, and in return, to show his thanks, N gave TRL the Hydro-Industries ReelSmart automatic hose reel.

Now, the gift did not come out of the blue. N had noticed hoses sloppily snaked against TRL’s house, and they had discussed sprinklers and water pressure. Also, N had raved about his Hydro-Industries ReelSmart automatic hose reel, and TRL had admired it. Genuinely. Which was another sign to TRL that something was happening to his brain.

So when N presented him with his hose reel, TRL was genuinely excited. It is an engineering marvel. It is a plastic box, essentially, that gets attached to the water spigot. 100 feet of hose gets wound inside the plastic housing, and you simply pull out the hose when watering. That’s basic. The brilliant part is winding it back up. No hand cranks, no electric hookups. The ReelSmart runs on water pressure. You pull a lever and the water running through the hose is directed against a cylinder in the plastic housing to turn it, thus winding the hose up. TRL watches as the hose moves into the reel like a sleek snake slithering into its dugout. And just to make sure his set-up was top notch, TRL had sprung for a new hose, the “Apex Reflex Mesh self-straightening Power Coil collared Microshield antimicrobial-protected Neverkink”. One hundred feet of top-shelf deluxe hose. TRL now controlled the water. The lawn was his empire, his Neverkink and ReelSmart his finest tools of governing. Who controlled the water controlled the lawn. And who controlled the lawn controlled one’s life. Espresso maker out, lawn tools in.