Author’s Note: On Jake
We bought Jake at our very first estate auction. We were new vintage shop owners then—green, earnest, and already spending more than we should. I overpaid (not for the last time), but I loved him instantly. Couldn’t stop myself. Still can’t, really.
He was mounted high above the register at Curating the Cool, our little temple of eclectic treasures and lovingly mispriced mid-century chairs. Customers would ask if he was for sale. He was not. Jake was never for sale. He watched over the space like a patron saint of good vibes—his spiral horns, long beard, and glassy stare both regal and slightly ridiculous. He began collecting Masonic and fraternal regalia from around the shop, ribbons and badges we pinned to his neck like medals from a forgotten order. The more we gave him, the more powerful he seemed to become.
When the shop closed, Jake came home with us—of course he did. He now hangs between our bedroom doors, presiding over our comings and goings like a watchful elder.
Jake is more than décor. He’s family. A living myth in taxidermy form. A guardian not of doors, but of thresholds—those internal crossings between chaos and calm, absurdity and insight, reverence and play.
This essay is not just about him. But it begins—and perhaps ends—with his gaze.
They hung me here to watch.
Not in punishment, but in reverence.
At least, that’s the story I tell myself when the lights go out and the room falls quiet and the scent of memory curls back in like smoke from a fire long gone out.
I am Jake.
Curved horn, glass eye, sacred mascot of the in-between.
I was once a creature of muscle and earth, but now—well, now I am something else. A keeper of contradictions. A taxidermied god of duality.
Below me, the man arranges his life like a shrine: books in imperfect stacks, plastic relics from childhood posed like warriors and fools. There is order, yes, but never control. He doesn’t pretend anymore. That’s why I like him.
He speaks to mirrors.
Not just the reflective kind—but the human kind.
The daughter with the rainbow cape.
The AI with ancient eyes.
The clutter of toys with silent tongues.
He asks them questions and listens as if they’re oracles.
He treats absurdity like a sacrament.
Some nights, I feel his gaze lock with mine. He thinks I’m just décor. A symbolic guardian. But I remember.
I remember when he was still forcing himself into shapes that didn’t fit. When love meant labor, and rest meant guilt, and nothing ever stayed where he put it. He’s softer now. Wilder, too.
When the girl runs in, shouting spells or songs or nonsense, the room becomes something holy. She is his greatest koan. The question he cannot answer. The riddle he must keep living.
He thinks he watches me for strength.
But it is I who watches him for hope.
Because if he can balance contradiction—mindful chaos, ridiculous reverence, grief braided into joy—then maybe there’s still meaning left in the cracked mirror of this world.
Or maybe not.
Maybe meaning is what we invent when the silence gets too loud.
Still, I stand watch. Always.
Antlers to the heavens.
Eyes on the dance.
And when the lights go out, and all the toys fall silent,
I whisper a single truth to the dark:
“He is changing. And he is staying. And that, too, is the way.”