noteface

I have lived in this room since the 28th of June last year. That is eight months. Tonight, for the first time, I saw the lock on my door: A little latch. I can pull the latch across and hook it into the door, so that no-one can get in from the other side.

I locked the door. Because I don't trust the artifice of flamboyance. But what made me feel more afraid than whatever might be outside the door was the fact that I have never seen this lock in eight months. Yesterday morning I walked along a street I walk almost every day. And noticed for the first time the rooftops cascading on a slant. For the first time in four-and-one-third years.

There I was, standing in front of my newly locked door, nauseous at the confrontation of my own detachment.

Suddenly the floorboards felt like a giant moat of history between myself and the door. I had the sensation that when I could finally upheave the courage to unlock and open the door again, I would step out -- not into a hallway -- but into a grey void of nothingness. A vacuum of perpetuity that would leave me completely isolated in my bedroom. As the only person and only thing in the world. My bedroom: the world. I would be unable to step outside because there would be nothing to step into. I could only put my feet behind me and re-close the door.

Quietly.

Four-and-one-third years in this city. I used to look for noise everywhere; now I look for quiet.

It's in my nature to climb the walls of night time. But instead I have been putting myself to sleep. I have force-fed myself until I can only manage horizontal, stripping my organs to get a better night's rest. In various corners of this country I have pressed my wit into strangers. Stolen their volume to make the world calmer. Given my speech into their ears so that they might be asked to think instead of ...

Sometimes I have talked to other women, too. I hate this. It's too familiar and it makes me resent myself. For these women, whispering is not enough. They need to be drowned in words. They take my eights, and put me on the spot. I feel betrayed by my own sex.

When she walked into my bedroom tonight I felt like saying to her: I truly don't mind who you are. But don't you dare pretend around me. I was fuming with politeness.

Everyone is transparent because they think they are opaque. But I have fives and threes inside me, too. So I know how to deal with them. You think you are opaque; you all think you are as opaque as your own eyelids.