chapter eighteen.

***

it's the author here. i don't know what is going on, but our narrator has hit a snag. she isn't talking to me anymore, and that's a problem. i started her as just some woman who was my age. we share many things, but we are also completely different. i gave her some form of life, the only one that is in my power to give, and she has taken that life and turned it into her own. i had no expectations for her, and i had no idea where she was going or what she would do. that has all been up to her, and i have only been the translator, the link between you and her.

she's been shutting out more and more people, and it seems she is now shutting me out, and i am not yet sure how to resolve that. she has walled herself in, and only the boyfriend speaks to me now. this puts me in a weird place. being revealed by her silence is already a surprise, and not a very good one, but not knowing when or if she'll come back, not knowing how i will extricate myself from this mess and finish the story... ouch. i'm not used to being this alone. and maybe that's her point. maybe she felt i needed to be left to myself for a while to understand where she comes from properly, to relay her thoughts better.

authors, of course, are always utterly vulnerable. but here's the secret: we don't want anybody to know! and therefore, finding myself before you, replacing the mirror i had set up to block you from seeing me... well it comes close to the dream in which you go about your daily life and later realize you forgot to get dressed that morning. very close indeed. and she may be somewhat exhibitionist, but i am not. and indeed, what is she? insane is too braod and unclear a word. depression does not cover it all. psychotic? perhaps. but she's also sane and logical most of the time. so. right. i'm the author, and i don't even know what label to put on my main character, on my narrator, on my sole speaking role. i can't apologize for that: she simply is too human to be put neatly in a box. aren't you?

***

i'm back. i don't what that bitch is talking about. i hate interference, and i come and go as i please. if i allow her in, it's only because i feel like it, and that is a highly revolving door, missie. sometimes i say yes, sometimes i say no, and everybody had better step in line. christ. i was here, i was quiet. well i was. the bottles i've been throwing on the living room brick wall sure haven't been quiet. neither have the neighbors as of the fifth bottle. it's like i can see through the floor: i see a lady in a house dress, standing on a bar stool with a broom, and she bangs the broom stick on her ceiling, and the plaster chips a little and the dust falls in her eyes and nose and she sneezes, and then she taps again. tap tap tap tap tap. and again. and i keep my empty bottle quiet until she stops and when she stops i throw another one, as hard as i can, and always harder than the last. and then she taps again. we're free styling. it's neighbors jazz. soon in all good record stores. oh, sorry, it's time for my red wine solo.

yeah well fuck you too, lady. nah, i'm not going to keep screaming through the floor. mostly because i'm getting bored of throwing bottles. and also because to throw another empty bottle i'd need to drink a full one. now i love wine and all, but it'll take me at least half an hour to say goodbye to a bottle full of it. i could empty the contents into a pitcher and drink it from there later, and throw the bottle now, but that would require me to get up and walk to the kitchen and get a picther. oh i'd even have to put shoes on because the way to the kitchen is now littered with glass shards. it's quite pretty actually, with the slanting sun, all those green shards, some lighter, some darker, some almost yellow and some almost black, on the blue floor. i'm too lazy. i'll drink from here, and decide to pick up the broken glass later, when i feel like putting shoes on and stuff. my deadline will be the boyfriend's arrival tonight. because if he sees that he won't even ask, he'll just get a broom and go tap tap tap the downstairs' bitch's face in, until her nose was concave and her forehead was a bloody mess and her teeth joined my glass shards on the floor and tap tap tap until her ears bleed and her lips are torn off. no, that's me, if i had more energy. he'd take a broom and swipe it all away, until the living room was perfectly clean again, until my pretty little toes risked nothing anymore, not the tiniest little scratch from a forgotten green sliver. he wouldn't ask why, he wouldn't give me a sermon. he's good. he's too good. and sometimes seeing him be that good drives me nuts, so i prefer not to give him too many opportunities. so i'll do my own cleanup. and yeah my pretty toes will be at a higher risk than if he'd done it, but at least i won't have to feel like he saved me once again. fuck i hate that. and i love it too. or not. i need it, but hate it. there, that's a lot closer to accuracy.

from my window here i can see children walking to the school on the next block. it’s a high school but sometimes that's hard to believe. not only does my window allow me enough distance to not fear the kids as the teenagers they necessarily are, but also i get somewhat interested. it's like an uncontrolled soap opera. what reality tv really would be if it was actually real. and some of them are so small, so tiny. they look so fragile. well, not all of them, but some. there's a little guy i see almost every day, and he's short and pudgy and not all that pretty (which is what makes him pretty) with his short but too long curly dirty brown hair, and he looks so lost and he's always walking with a spooked look on his face. one day he'll have his pant cuff caught inside his sock. the next he'll be walking to school with one mitten and one glove. there's always something. poor little guy. i have grown fond of him in a way that would no doubt be impoosible to attain if i ever spoke to him. and what would i say? hello, i watch you from my window every day? right. that's a 9-1-1 situation if i've ever heard of one. poor little pudgy guy.

i watch them. the girls who'll be in a strip club or on the street in a few years, or at least they look like that's their career choice and i always wonder about their parents who allow them to go outside like that but then i think back to my own past and i know there's very little their parents can do (and probably very little they would do if they could), and very little their parents actually know. there are boys with their pants' ass practically dragging on the sidewalk, and those are great: they actually motivate me, make me want to spring into action. as long as the action in question is to run outside and grab their pants and pull them fully down. but i guess that's another case for 9-1-1. still, it's tempting.

it's a strange thing. i've never been a people person, so i've never been a people watcher. i've seen some, though. i used to live in a crappy neighborhood where even the grocery store went under, and at the corner where the dead grocery store was, where the bus stops were, there was a man who live in one of those houses built specifically to be on the corner, that has a flat section facing the intersection, with balconies, instead of a regular house corner. that man lived on the second floor and spent his life on his balcony, staring at everything that went on around his corner, at everybody to walked to or from anywhere within his field of vision. he would stand there, never sit, with his hands firmly clasping the front balcony railing. he'd wear a house coat, badly tightened by a fabric belt, and gray wool socks. in winter, he added sandals and sometimes a hat. never pants. and he was never inside. well when he was, he left the door open. in the worse colds of winter, he closed the door but he left the window ajar. i saw him staring at me every day that i lived there. a few times i yelled at him. get back in you old fucker you creep us out. stop staring you pervert, get your own life. he'd never react. i guess staring at stranger was all he had left. but that's just a guess. for all i know he hated his wife and did that to drive her crazy. or he was a sex fiend. i don,t know, but i did find him creepy. that's one of the reasons i had my windows tainted. at least the kids walking to and from school don't know that i stare at them and i creep nobody out.

at one point i started to make a list. little pudgy idiot cutie. blond tiny waif slut with birth mark. white fat ass with afro. nerd with actual duct tape on glasses. blond goddess with uneven legs. but i didn't have the dedication. i can only care so much about all those characters i'll never know, who are about to change in vague and mysterious ways anyway, and usually not for the best. but also there were too many just like me, girls and boys without anything to set them apart, who are just students. and you know that once in school they are invisible. they are not jocks, not popular, not druggies, not yo's, not goths, not the theater crew. they're not even the role playing game gang, not even the audio visual group. they are, quite simply, nothing. because in high school you're either special or you're nothing. which is a lot of bullshit, of course, but for some of us it takes years to realize that. life, high school - at opposite ends of the vague spectrum of the human experience.