chapter seventeen.

i lied. or he lied. he admitted last night that he had in fact taken me to his doctor friend. ran some tests and fondled me as doctors enjoy doing (perhaps a little less since i was his friend's unconscious girlfriend) and said that as far as he could tell i was only sleeping, and to let me sleep for a while. the boyfriend agreed that made some sense, given how bad my sleeping habits and ability have been recently. so i slept. i'm not sure what good it did me, other than being famished when i woke up.

i dreamt of doors. lots of doors. scooby-doo-like, if you know what i mean, but only the doors. they were creaking and closing and opening of their own and that was creepy. and i was walking through the doors and i didn't know what i was looking for but i knew i'd know it if i saw it, feel it if i came close. later i crossed a bridge and fell through it. how's that for fucking symbolism? but i always wake up before i break something or kill myself or get killed. dreams are cool, in that sense, in a way life is not.

i've got this thing against time. for most of my life now i've refused to wear a watch. a few months ago i got rid of all the clocks in the house. drove the boyfriend up the wall when the alarm didn't ring the next morning and he was late for something or other, but he has since gotten used to setting some little beep beeping thing he carries around to serve that purpose. i used to say time was a limit we submit to and i refuse to do so, blah blah blah. well it's kind of true. just like i find it rather ridiculous that someone can claim they own land (owning the earth itself? how dare you! how proposterous!), i find it hard to swallow that we would all have to agree that it is eight o'clock. and what's that supposed to mean anyway? it's just a way of saying at our longitude and latitude, when the sun is about way high, we decided to say it was eight o'clock. well i can live with the sun and the weather without needing to apply numbers to them, thank you very much.

i'm glad, mind you, that i can allow myself to live my own way. if i had to hold a job or if i had kids or whatever - or anything, in fact! - i'd have to conform a whole lot more. now i don't. the worse that happens to me is having to wait a long time at a movie theatre because i got there in between showings, or having to order take out when i get to the grocery store only to realized it has been closed for a while (which is less heart wrenching than getting there and seeing all the cashiers count the money and the managers running around and the shelving boys shelving stuff, and you know you just missed your chance and five minutes ago they would have let you in). so since i have that chance, i don't see why i wouldn't exploit it fully. and night and day long ago became words for light or dark, not words for when i sleep versus when i'm awake. sometimes my time difficulty/rejection adds to my already difficult way to relate to others. i don't know when the weekend is unless the boyfriend tells me. i never know the date. the month, sometimes. i mean i'm not dense, if i see pumpkins i know it's october, and if i hear crappy music i know christmas must be in less than three months.

speaking of october. i spent a few years of my childhood completely convinced that the great pumpkin was real. just like linus, you think. no. because of linus. i watched peanuts and i saw linus and he convinced me, the great pumpkin had to be real, because linus was so sweet and so smart and so convinced and really, doesn't that make more sense than santa claus or the fucking tooth fairy, neither of which much visited our home? i thought so. and i never liked candy all that much and people in costumes sort of freak me out and so waiting in a neighbor's garden for the great pumpkin seemed a much more valid occupation than the trick or treating my sister greedily engaged in. the nieghbor didn't quite agree, but after he called my parents he let me stay. not that they encouraged me to believe in the great one, but they encouraged us to be out of the house for long periods at a time. and they didn't express that very politely, so maybe the neighbor felt badly for me. or maybe he figured i wasn't doing anything wrong. the second year he brought me a little stool and a blanket. he was a nice man, i guess. i never really stopped believing in the great pumpkin. well, that is to say there never was a moment when i decided i didn't believe anymore, and nothing happened to shed any light on the mystery. but one year for halloween i was sick and had to stay in bed at my grandma's, and the next year i didn't even think of the pumpkin patch, and that was the end of my active belief.

back to time. when i get asked if i have the time, i say yes, all the time in the world. when people ask what time it is, i make it up. it's usually four twenty or eleven eleven. why not. if time is so important for you, bitch, get yourself a watch and don't bother me any more. if you're late for an appointment, asshole, i don't see how that's my responsibility, and i don't see why i should help you feel worse or better about how late or not you are. gee, what is it with all those strangers putting their crap on random others? if i wanted your life i'd have it. if i wanted to know all about it i would. nobody is that hard to crack these days. but i don't care. get this through your skull and get it right: i do not care about you, your miserable life, your needs and frustrations. i don't care who you are, where you came from, what makes you tick tock tick tock tick tock. and when there are no more tick tocks are you going to blame the faulty battery or are you going to slide to the ground and croak, having taken its battery for yours, its reality for the real thing?

now that we're on the topic of delusional societal issues, it brings back a stupid memory. i was hit on the head with a crucifix once. well, maybe more than once, but i only saw it come down on my skull once, and then everything became foggy and then everything became silvery, like i was surrounded by completely silent paparazzi with huge camera flashes, and then everything went rather dark. my brother hit me. yes, i have a brother. had. i had a brother. he was older than my sister and i. and he was a jerk. big surprise there. well he's in jail now, for something unrelated and a lot more gruesome, and chances are i'll never see him again because in thirty years when they may let him out i'll be dead or he'll be dead or i won't care and he'll be broken. which ever - they're all good options. anyway he hit me with a crucifix. doctors thought i might have brain damage. but then again what do doctors ever know. and they bandaged my head over the stitches and they eventually sent me home, where my agressor lived. bravo. very smart. well in the end it worked out because the social worker they assigned to me fell in love with my brother and well, let's just say he'll be thinking about her, among others, for a long long lonely time. but the whole crucifix in the head issue didn't really improve my vision of religion. ha. i love making understatements.

there was a song that really interested me when i was little. it was about a tiny husband. sung by a woman who said her father had given her a tiny man for a husband. and i meant tiny. i mean that they took a leaf to make him a suit. and that she lost him in her bed (lucky her: usually you try to lose men in your bed and you can't), and she looked for him and then somehow he got roasted and the cat thought it was a dead mouse so he took the tiny hubbie. isn't that gross and surreal? well i used to dream about men being that small, so i could crush them. not all of them, but my brother for sure. my father too. but the whole song was just fascinating to me: what does she mean, her father gave her a husband? and how can he be this tiny? i know: very intellectual questions. but puzzling enough to come back to mind once in a while for all the years since. there was another song too, also sung by a woman, and she said she wanted a husband who was docile and could fit in her pocket. again with the miniature men! mind you that second song was mostly about a tyranic wife who wanted a (tiny) nice husband who would obey her and look pretty. nothing short of the proverbial tables turning, and i've got nothing bad to say about that. i reman, though, a little weirded out by the obviously common wish for a pocket-sized husband. i mean... buy a vibrator, ladies. there's a good pocket sized partner!

some things are just too weird to be true. for everything else, there's mastercard. ha.

my sister slipped an envelope under my door last night. which tells me i need to ask the landlord to come and add a rubber thingie to the bottom of the door, because if a thin envelope can pass, a lot of cold air must be coming in throughout the winter. i've been good about using all my locks, and the boyfriend seemed relieved when i told him about it. he would not have been shocked if i'd said i had decided to leave all doors and windows unlocked at all times, but me adding locks was a shock. in a good way. he hoped i was on a roll and offered to get me more smoke detectors - he installed one, following a fight he somwhat won because i passed out and he figured i would somehwat forget about it and once the detector was up i wouldn't go through the trouble of taking it down - which is a good point considering the height of the ceilings here, and my vertigo - i could have and i considered throwing stuff at it to knock it off, but realistically, chances are i would only manage to strat the beyond loud alarm, and then be stuck with it until the batteries died, unable as i am to get up high enough on a ladder to make the horrible noise stop. so he somewhat won with the one smoke detector, but i said no to more. he worries because i smoke in bed - everywhere, really - pot, hash, whatever i have, feel like or can find (not in that order). and i've got this passing out thing. but really, if i was unconscious, the alarm wouldn't do much for it, and the sound of that crappy ufo-shaped plastic gizmo is enough to send me into a week-long migraine. i'd rather not take the chance of getting migraine for toast. any migraine sufferer out there will understand that i'd rather take the small chance of dying in a fire than risk a life-long migraine. plus, i'm not that much at risk of dying since he did put one detector up. i say good enough. i say everybody happy, now let's never speak of it again.

the envelope was thin. i put it aside. i almost threw it away. but eh, she is my sister. and i can't avoid her forever: i've thought about it, and it would be way too complicated. plus, if she decides to get back into my life, she'll do it in unpleasant and overbearing ways. so i drank half a bottle of wine and then i opened it. the letter, i mean. obviously i had already opened the wine.

i'm lucky that my migraines aren't triggered by red wine. i'd go crazy if they did. well, i'd at least have to find some other favorite liquid, and that would mean a life-long search, no doubt. i never say no to wine (although wine sometimes says no to me... bastard). never. that got me in weird situations, meeting a stranger at a party and drinking an entire bottle of port in the dark in the kitchen, and by myself too, well the sitting in the dark was in common, but the bottle was mine, and what a mistake that was. the hosts found dried port in their washing machine the next day, and although they somehow knew it was due to me, it was rather hard to explain exactly how that had happened. anyway. that's not getting in trouble. that's being silly. i solved the problem of both, though - i don't attend parties anymore. i've lost the will and the energy, and at the same time i lost all the invitations. funny how when you say no enough times, even nicely, people just stop asking and take your no for granted instead. which is fine by me at this point. but there were times when i lost friends or relations or acquaintances because of hospital stays and other accident or injury or sickness-related delays and silences, and at first that really hurt me. i felt it was rather unfair, rather mean of those people, or thoughtless, or selfish, or what. but then i understood nobody wants to be only begging anf begging - they'll only do it when you say yes once in a while, and when you don't, it doesn't matter what the reason is, it just is, and they flock away. there's nothing mean there, just a lack of interest to be always nudging the person. i guess it's similar to friends being estranged when one of them starts a family and the other feels the baby is in the way or whatever. so i tried to stay away from clichés, to not be a rock, not be an island, and yet to not be hurt so much. and it worked. it worked when i realized the parties and cocktails and events and dinners didn't fulfill me anyway, and i preferred my life without. actually, the big revelation was how much more relaxed i was with fewer people in my life. and how much energy i felt was being wasted on people who were simply not worth it for me. people i didn't really love or know, who didn't really love me or care about me, but we were in the same circle, and i invited them and they invited me, and in the end, bleah, enough, throw them out, keep your key, keep your life. those people were life suckers. and i suck enough of my own life, i don't need any help on that.