Don’t worry guys the power’s back on and nobody chopped me into little pieces
In which Nate writes against the darkness, shows great decorum and maturity, and resolves to read Winnie the Pooh in the tub
Power’s out. Laptop says it has about an hour and a half of juice left. It’s not late enough to try to sleep. It’s too hot, too, and humid. I opened the windows, helping one of those problems, worsening the others. I hope the electricity comes back on in time for the AC to cool the place, and dry it out, enough for me to sleep.
I got a bunch of graphic novels at the library today, was excited to start one tonight, was excited to finish Winnie the Pooh as well. I’ve read it with my ears, as an audiobook, several times because it was my oldest’s favorite for a year or so, but that was always interrupted by having to do something. No reading, though. I guess technically I could read something dull and marxist on a PDF on my computer. I guess I could do a lot of things.
The house is quiet without the hum of the AC and the fridge and box fan. Dampened house sounds turn up the volume on the loud cricket chirps pouring in through the screens, the multiple kinds of toads or frogs croaking, the cicadas, the occasional car and squeak of a mouse.
Faint white light leaks in through the kitchen window - no screen here (“We’d like screens for the windows without screens,” I’d said when I dropped our first month’s rent on the day I unloaded the truck, “those screens have been gone a long time,” the property manager had laughed, “they’re not going to be replaced. You have AC.” I’d blinked, said okay, wished for her to get divorced or wake up knowing no one loves her) so the room’s too warm. I type in this room because it’s far away from where my kids are sleeping. If they wake up this early in the night, game over; weekend of pain.
The light comes from a street lamp three, maybe four blocks over. Power’s on across the street, and across the street that’s three houses down from us, and a few blocks out our back window. “If anything was rational,” my wife’d said before she went to bed, “that means they should have the electricity on again soon.“ (I remember just now my grandma always called it “The Electric.”) “Yep. If,” I’d said. “Good night.” “Good night.”
On the wall, shadows of leaves and branches silhoueted by that street light. It looks a bit like a stained glass window in black and white. A cool pattern, is what I’m saying. The laptop screen dims it out, even turned down to the darkest setting short of all black screen. Probably a metaphor in there somewhere.
Fireflies flicker in the backyard, brighter than usual because the nearer street light is out, but few of them. Flicker, dark… flicker, dark… They’d been flashing faster earlier, no dark without one of their lights, at the same time that the sky’d been flashing from lightning high up and far off. I wondered for a second if the bugs thought there were bigger bugs up in the clouds that they were communicating with, or maybe bug gods and the little bugs dancing in celebration and worship. I’m not religious myself, but I enjoyed watching your service, little insects. (I imagine saying that if I am ever forced by extended family to attend one of their churches. It’s a satisfying fantasy of sneering, satisfying only because the scenario fades to black just after the initial reaction.) We’ve seen hundreds, maybe thousands of fireflies lighting up the canopies of the trees lining the park near our house. We see them on late walks. (We do everything late – get up, go to appointments, return phone calls, go on walks, go to bed.) I’ve never seen so many fireflies in one place like that. They’re like little yellow christmas lights blinking. The other night one flew up to our living room window - the lights were off, I was laying down with one of my kids trying to get her to drift off to sleep, and directly across from the open bedroom door was this window and for a moment it seemed like the bug’s light was the size of a quarter, a demigod firefly halfway between the regular mortal bugs and ones making all that lighting up in the clouds tonight, the ones who may have knocked out our power.
I took my kids to a fourth of july fireworks display. My younger was going to stay home because she’s scared of fireworks, but she changed her mind. My wife stayed home because she doesn’t care about fireworks and finds big crowds annoying. We sat too close to hill where they lit off the fireworks. Ashes fell on our heads. Fireflies flashed between explosions. My older said “oooh!” and “wow!” and my younger held her hands over her ears and said “be quiet, fireworks!” and “shut up, fireworks!” She asked me if fireflies like fireworks. I said I guessed so, because of the flashing. My older said “maybe they think the fireworks are great big fireflies!” More gods. “I bet so,” I said, “and they probably think the booming sound are huge toots from the giant fireflies.” That got a laugh, fart jokes usually do with her. “And that’s why it smells so bad,” she’d added, “even worse that YOUR toots!”
The last time our power was out a firefly had somehow ended up in our living room. It flew around at about my knee height and settled inside a dollhouse in our living room which is mostly a toyroom. It blinked inside one of the dollhouse windows. I imagined it at as a nightlight, then imagined a world where all small appliances and all technologies of personal convenience like phones and were made out of bugs. I wondered what an electric toothbrush made of a bug would be like, pictured a giant firefly sticking its orange head in my mouth, it’s spindly antennae tickling my soft palette, one black leg stepping onto my tongue as it pushed its body forward into the opening and I felt grossed out and tried to stop imagining it. I’d seriously considered waking my kids up to show them the firefly in the dollhouse, my wife would have been so mad she’d have probably fed me that bug.
“Like fireflies, daddy?” my youngest asked me recently. She’d learned that bees can sometimes sting you and mosquitoes try to bite you and had insisted “fireflies bite too,” nodding her head hard (hard enough that mimicking the motion gives me a headache). She’d taken a lot of repetition to give that conviction up. On her way back she quizzed me and her sister about if we liked fireflies or not. “Yes honey, I do.” “Fireflies not bite.” “That’s right.” She repeated that at least a dozen times, sometimes with a question mark in her voice, other times a period and others an exclamation point. Say it enough times, it will feel true, and if it doesn’t ask someone to say it to you. That’s a life skill. That’s a life skill, right? That’s a life skill.
One of my neighbors pulls up, loud and young in the four (maybe six?) unit apartment buildings next door. Several voices as they get out, go in. Another neighbor, at least two people talking, gets in another car minutes later, drives off. I try to keep my mind off of being paranoid about sounds at night. That’s a bad trait in the sense of uncomfortable and in the sense of embarrassing.
As an adult approaching middle age, after a childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood spent thinking my father fearless, he mentioned in passing he’d always had a phobia of home invasions. I’d blinked and shaken my head as I retconned years of behavior - checking door locks, stepping outside if there was a noise, being angry if I or my brothers got out of bed and walked around the house in the middle of the night. We’re not biologically related so my same phobia’s not genetic, or at least not genetically derived from his.
My brother Rick sleeps with a pillow over his eyes. I sleep with a tshirt or blanket or sheet over mine. Another friend does the same, with a similar childhood as ours. As I grew up my dad had mentioned a few times incidents of discipline from his own childhood, incidents involving being thrown, extension cords, kneeling on gravel, but always as objections that he wasn’t harsh. I wonder how he sleeps.
My brother Tom tells me Rick had a psychologist tell him he probably has PTSD. I’ve been sleeping in another room than my wife and kids - our house is small, we sleep in one room - for a few weeks because my insomnia means I shift around and wake her up, wake the kids up. One night my wife remembered the next morning was recycling day, woke up, carried out the recycling through the side door of the house, right next to the window of the room where I slept. I woke up to see the door shut and bellowed (my wife says “screamed,” there is, I insist, no issue of my masculinity involved in the choice of words here) “HEY!” picturing someone coming in through that door. I sat up in bed, looking around for something heavy to pick up, “It’s me, Nate!” she shouted from another room, through the door. “Me?! Me who!?” “Me! It’s me! I was taking out the recycling!” I blinked, realized an intruder wouldn’t know my name and speak with my wife’s voice. (I’m not THAT paranoid.) “Sorry I scared you,” she opened the door, “I remembered tomorrow was recycling day. I thought I might scare you, I’m sorry, I’d hoped you were asleep and would stay asleep.” “No, no, it’s fine, thanks for taking that out,” I’d said, not saying I wonder if I have PTSD like Rick might, not saying I worry that’s a silly thing to wonder about, not saying after all I didn’t go to war, I didn’t have it as bad as Rick and Tom, “sorry I forgot about the recycling, sorry to be paranoid.”
(Speaking of paranoid, two or three paragraphs up someone with a flashlight walked through my backyard. I remind myself that I am being irrational as scenarios crawl like quarter-sized black beetles from under the cabinet door of my mind. Knowing that this is irrational does not help me stop - if I was rational I wouldn’t have this response in the first place. When I saw the light in the backyard I shut the laptop, slid off the chair on the floor, walked in a crouch to the window and peered out. The person shone the light up at the post at the corner where my yard meets three other yard, the post that our powerlines run through and with a streetlight that was out for months and that I resented - “it makes it harder to see the moonrise, and the stars!” - when they fixed it. The thing about a stranger outside holding a flashlight in almost total darkness is they are essentially invisible except as a giant floating light, like a fist-sized firefly, so you can’t see if they’re wearing an uniform and carrying a toolbox and are here to fix The Electric or if they are wearing a hockey mask and are carrying a large black sack and are here to strangle and cut you and take away your loved ones who you will not be able to protect because you are weak and soft and slow and stupid and perhaps even too fearful to even attempt to protect them despite all the scenarios you’ve been through about items in the house suitable for gouging, smashing, choking, and of course throwing at or underfoot to slow the inevitable [and the fact that the real fear here is less being the victim of violence and more the bystander of violence who will have to decide whether to hide and hope not to be next or to try to slow the attack and so definitely become next and perhaps escalate the initial attack is how I know that He or They under the hockey mask have the face of my dad when he was a young man and I was a child, and I’m right here and now sure the masked faces haunting his backyard had and maybe still have my grandfather’s face].
And so I stopped peering over the edge of the countertop, sank from high squat to low squat or crouch again and walked back to the laptop, sat all the way down onto the floor, re-opened the laptop, resumed typing. The flashlights have ceased. The resumption of uninterrupted darkness is always a sign your safer, unless it’s a sign that He [it’s always He, let’s be real] or They [all of whom are individually a He] noticed you, knows where you probably are, and circles your house now peering quietly through windows [you are not the only one who knows how to crouch].)
“I’m going back to bed,” she’d kissed my cheek, I’d kissed her forehead, “I am too,” I’d lied then we goodnighted each other. I sat up waiting for the fight or flight instinct to die back down. Like now.
Footsteps through the living room, I can tell it’s her feet, I don’t know how. “Hey. There was someone in the backyard with a flashlight looking up at the post, I think they’re checking if it’s a problem with the power lines.”
“Oh, okay,” she walks toward the bathroom.
“It’s the kind of thing that makes me tense, at least if it surprises me, so I thought I’d mention it, though I know you’re not as paranoid as I am.”
“Okay.” A moment later she comes out of the bathroom. “I thought you’d go to bed early.”
“I will. This is early for me.”
“Well, good night.”
I type the long parenthetical paragraph, feel tense, worried - will I sleep tonight? more than four hours? - an additional and milder kind of paranoia but sleepwrecking all the same, I know from its frequency - what will tomorrow be like if I’m exhausted all day? I have so much I have to get done tomorrow… and I know the room I sleep in will be like an oven, like a sauna, because of the lack of ventilation and my excessive body heat. It’s uncomfortable sometimes even with the AC and a fan blowing directly on me, it will be unbearable tonight, I know it. I could leave the door open, I guess, but then I will hear the cats knock things over, hear my wife get up to use the bathroom, only I will hear them as other sounds, louder sounds, mysterious bumps and creaks and clatters and crashes which can only come from something menacing and of course after the adrenaline wakes me up I will know they are just cats, my wife, and then the embarrassment will add to the wakefulness further. Better to shut the door. Closed doors make your location less knowable. You can pile furniture in front of it, lean your overly large body on it.
Footsteps again.
“Hey, you’re up again.” (And here, dear reader, and I promise you this is entirely true, as I typed this, knowing what I was going to type next, the lights came back on accompanied by the beep of our microwave clock wondering the time and second beep as it wondered why it didn’t know the time and the hum of the AC and the whirr of the fan in what is temporarily my room and I thought, in order, ‘oh good!’ and ‘I’m totally going to sleep well tonight!’ and ‘this is unbelievable timing for this thing I’m writing!’ and ‘I’ll post this thing tonight, maybe’ and ‘I should close the windows!’ So I got up to close the windows, feeling I’d outwaited and outwritten the darkness and fear, with some help from my fantastic partner, and I closed the ones in the living room, and turned to walk to close the bathroom window and echoing through our vents the air conditioner or fan went THUDGE and the lights went out again and I wondered if I should open the windows again or hope the power and so the AC would come back on again soon, then wondered if maybe the AC and/or fan would be broken now. My wife got back up, “oh shit, did you just shut the windows?” “yeah.” “because the air is on?” “yeah.” “maybe we should just turn the air off.” “I think the air outside is cooler so the AC is cooling a house that is being cooled by another source if the windows are open.” “I think the cold air just leaks out if the windows are open.” “I’m not convinced but it’s fine with me if you want to turn the air off. I’ll re-open the windows.” “thanks, good night.” “good night.”)
“I’m having trouble falling asleep.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I was wondering if you wanted to have sex.”
“Uhh, yeah? Let me just go pee.”
I try not to close the laptop with a slam. I grab the flashlight, go to the bathroom. (Earlier: “It’s a little weird peeing by flashlight but I don’t want to piss all over the floor.” “Too manly to sit down, huh?” “So manly that the thought never even occurred to me.”) As I pee by flashlight I can’t help but look out the window that faces the post, where the person outside had been either looking at The Electric or pretending to look at The Electric in order to lull his targets into a false sense of security or looking for a way to climb the post in order to I don’t know fire a cable onto my house with a grappling hook and some shit in order to like zip-line toward the house and fly through the window face first while laughing so smashed glass sprays everywhere as a prelude that will ultimately seem calm compared to the violence that came next or looking up at the post in order to find a spot to hang one or more corpses missing one or more major body parts like a leg or head or face or skin, and I can’t help but then think that standing near a window in the dark with a flashlight pointed downward is going to let Him or Them know exactly where you are (and later as I type this with a laptop screen lighting my face I sit by a dark window through which I hear wind shake tree branches I repeatedly squint into the gloom so I can, I don’t know, have more time to uselessly piss myself before The Terrible Thing happens) and this has got to be one of the least foreplay appropriate trains of thought possible so as I flush the toilet and wash my hands I blink and shake my head and take a deep breath and roll my eyes at my own ridiculousness and I begin to calm down, which gets easier after I turn off the flashlight and after I remember that we’re gonna, you know, do it.
Later we kissed goodnight (I can’t say how much later because the clocks were out so unfortunately I wasn’t able to log the start and end time for my spreadsheet as I prefer to do but, pardon the bragging, I have incredible sexual stamina, so much that sex with me feels like it takes days and days and days) and I felt calm and sleep felt possible and I typed a little more before all that other stuff above happened with the power coming on and going off again and the windows. My body was too warm as it always is at night when I need to sleep so I decide to take a cold bath, as I usually do, so I decide I will stop typing in order to go find the flashlight and the paperback copy of Winnie the Pooh, and try not to think about the bathroom window and the person who was in my backyard and I hope A. A. Milne will help me move from trying not to actually not thinking, so I can keep from returning to the pre-doing-it level of paranoia.
If that fails maybe my wife’d be up for doing it again? I try to think of a joke I can tell her in the morning about waking her up to see if she wants to have sex again. Maybe the joke could have the phrase “it was my turn” in it or maybe “damn baby you’re like sexy, sexy valium” or “your body is way better than any fantasy about a psycho who probly has my dad’s face under his hockeymask breaking into our home to chop us into little pieces” or “hey girl, sorry to disturb you, you looked very peaceful there. I can’t sleep because it is dark with strange noises outside and in, maybe you wanna get naked?” or “yo darling let’s get it on, I got scared in the bathtub while reading Winnie the Pooh.”
Books, sex, and jokes are great to hide behind.