134: weddings and books, unreleated

I've been up to weddings mostly. Weddings and not living in my apartment and living in slovenliness when I am at my apartment although (rah rah!) my kitchen is quite clean in this present moment. However, if I'm killed in my bed tonight by some sad person bent on destruction, I will be very embarrassed when the police come to investigate the scene. They'll think I live like this always: piles of notebooks, piles of clothes, random acts of silverware in stemless wineglasses that might have contained grapefruit juice of a morning. And let's not forget the bobby pins. They show up everywhere, upright and exactly where you're going to set your foot down next. I hope the police at least note the unusual neatness and superb ordering of my books and my bookshelves. I also hope one of them is slightly corrupt in awkward ways. Like, he steals my ukulele and takes it home with him, hidden beneath his rifle in the squad car and learns a lot of folk songs on it and sings to himself on his days off, sitting on a front porch with mineral water and ten gray cats.

Speaking of criminal investigations, I just finished "The Corspe Had a Familiar Face" by Edna Buchanan which my Other Mother had recommended to me over a year ago when I was sniffling in her office and her way of cheering me up was to tell me horrifying and funny stories of her own experiences with being a morbid media-type person. Example: her car exploded or something (bottom line: caught on fire). Her first reaction: Okay, we're all safe. Grab the cameras and start filming. Husband looks on aghast/amused.

I don't know what to do now that I've finished the book. I feel like a friend has departed, left me bereft. Some voice has been silenced. There are no more pages.

I stayed up so very late a few nights back because I hit the "Sex" chapter in which B. said, "Sex kills." And proceeded to talk about how, right up there with drugs and guns, sex takes its toll: angry spouses, jilted lovers, rape victims, serial sex offenders who are also serial killers. It was a terrible chapter and I nervously tracked the neighbor's movements as he paced his deck and smoked a cigarette. Then it really got late and I really needed to go to bed and suddenly I realized there was no way on this earth I was going to turn off the lights and go sleep. NO WAY. I saw a long nose in the window beyond which glittered lustful, murderous eyes.

I gave myself permission to do my best to kill anyone who dared attack me that night. I sat in bed, book on my lap -- honest-to-God shaking.

Oh, we all laugh now.

But this is what I had to do. Three things were obvious: I needed to sleep. I can't sleep with lights on; I require absolute darkness. I could not bring myself to turn off the lights. Therefore, it seemed, I would not sleep.

In the end, I called a friend (hi Adam) so I could talk to someone while turning off lights and tucking myself under five blankets and digging a little escape tunnel into my pillows.

I pretend I am a brave person and I think, generally, I probably am. Most people are ... we just never encounter capital-S-Situations every day of our lives. We are not tested. But my imagination has always been out of control, able to turn me into a bed-wetting baby in half a gasp. This is why I don't watch scary movies. I can walk dark streets at 2 a.m. (don't read this, mom) and I can talk to crazy people, drug addicts, hold onto growling dogs and I can shake off drunks twice my size, but I can not walk slowly across my bedroom at night when the lights are off. I take bed at a run. Three steps. No more, no less, or something bad will happen. What, I don't know. I will never know. Since I can remember, I have always taken three steps from the light switch to my bed. Some kind of terror grips me in that moment just after turning off a light and the first movement towards the bed. Three steps or...

Who knows.

Such knowledge is too high for me. I can not attain it.

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Anyway...

Gonna see the dog sometime this weekend. And the boys. And the sister. And the progenitors.