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7.29.2007

Friday night feel good. Sun sets over the trees at the Russian Orthodox cathedral one street down, leaving pink fluffy elephant clouds to say goodnight to the daylight. Mama across the street screams at her kiddies. She would be ashamed if she heard herself. One house over the lesbian couple is watering their too-green lawn. They look at each other when the mama yells again. Cars begin to line the street in anticipation of busy bar night in this blue collar town. It's a funny town, this. My neighbor sported a mullet the day I moved in but he's since chopped it off and looks quite appealing. Everyone looks appealing tonight. He had two dogs, then one, then none. I wonder where they went. An inconvenient nuisance put down I suppose. The neighbors right next door to me are a single mom who dresses like me when we think no one's looking, an early twenties daughter who always arrives home in work-out clothes, and an early twenties son who wears an orange t-shirt and khaki shorts every Friday night when he goes down to the corner bar. These three have heard me having sex. I'm quite sure of that. My living room wall is two inches from their driveway. I hear them when they sit outside smoking, when they slam the screen door coming and going, when they're advising their dog to simmer down. One boy I dated thought it was funny that I didn't like to make out on my living room couch against that living room wall. He teased me when I tried to be quiet, made me come harder and louder than I thought was appropriate for the neighbors. Orgasms are one of the things I'm shy about making public. I am not an exhibitionist. I am, instead, a spy. A voyeur. I like to walk the dog late at night so I can peer into the lit living rooms and kitchens of the houses in my neighborhood. I see middle-aged women wearing nightgowns like my mom wears. The kind that are see-through from repeated washings. An unintentional sexiness. I see the flicker of televisions and feel sad for all of us who are too often bored and unsatisfied with our lives. I see old men standing at the kitchen sink taking their evening pills. They are the same men who spend the day in their yards attending to unruly blades of grass with large shears. They are precise in a way that makes me uneasy. When I walk at night, most of the houses are completely dark. I look at the inflatable lit-up snowmen and American eagles dressed up like Uncle Sam and Snoopy dogs with Halloween costumes on and I wonder what the sleeping people inside must be like. I envy their spirit. The lady across the street, her house diagonal to mine, used to decorate her yard and front stoop for every holiday. Several holidays ago she stopped the decorating. I've seen a medical home-equipment supply truck in her driveway a few times and assume that she is no longer physically capable of festivity. I assume that, as with many sicknesses and new disabilities, she is no longer emotionally capable of festivity. It is dark now and I wonder what the neighbors are thinking as they watch me here in my lit living room.
Flat ginger ale and whiskey sucked through a too-narrow bendy straw picked up from the dollar store. Ashtray full, lungs heavy, head giddy. I know what is wrong and I know what is right and I'd die for the truth in my secret life. Leonard Cohen. Legs restless, skin alive and craving touch. Moments like this I might take your breath away.

Something has happened and I'm content with right now. No tears, no desperate yearning besides the desire to have a naked body between my thighs. An evening spent alone, in pigtails and cotton, I've aged a million years, grown into my own skin and am now bursting forth from the seams in an unprecedented sensuality. A full moon hangs sluggish in the humid night air, barely keeping itself afloat. Pods from the solitary tree in the backyard, engorged after the rain, stick to the soles of my feet. I can't keep my hands to myself tonight. How do you explain these things?