I’ll come back and torture you again

working on a new secret writing project. here’s a quote from today’s writing session:

Let’s start with a bath at supper time. The crazy wolfie brain is yelling ‘wine wine wine wine’ and I start to run the tub. The brain says: It’s not tub time now, this is just delaying the inevitable, you know you’re going to drink.

I add bubble bath that smells like cedar. How clever, who invents this stuff. It’s in a nice masculine blue bottle. Nothing pink or frilly about this. It’s anti-wolfie bubble bath. I’m sure of it. This won’t work, I can yell for a long time here.

I sit in the tub until I’m pruney. I read, then fret, then read again, then plan to change the world, the read some more. I ask my husband to make me a bitter drink (black currant syrup, grapefruit juice, soda). No, no, you don’t want to have that now, it’s much better if you drink on an empty stomach, you’re ruining things, don’t do it, shit, I don’t fucking want grapefruit juice.

I get out of the tub, dry off, put on one of my husband’s heavy metal band t-shirts, usually inside-out so that the tag doesn’t scratch me (I can’t cut the tag out of his shirts, only my own). I wear red plaid pyjama bottoms with a drawstring and pockets. The orange Ernie socks. Wet hair up in a pony tail.

Husband is looking at me, hands me my special drink. He doesn’t know what state I’m in (or why). I’m not making dinner I say. But you always make dinner and drink wine while you cook. If you let him cook he’ll ruin it and the kitchen will be a mess and it’s better if you do it all yourself. And then you can drink here in the kitchen where he can’t see what you’re doing, and you can drink from his glass before you hand it to him, and you can make sure you get enough.

I take my special drink and sit in the living room, big floor-to-ceiling windows open. July evening, there’ll be light in the sky until 10:30 pm. I’m facing the courtyard, trees, lots of birds here in this country that we didn’t have back home. New sounds.

I’ll start up again tomorrow night, you know. This might be over for tonight, but I haven’t gone away. I’ll come back and torture you again. This whole bath, special drink, not making dinner, looking outside thing – it’ll get old. I’ll be back. You need me.

I sip the drink, I can hear the husband banging around with the pots so that he can make roast potatoes and sausages (something he can make without asking questions, as he senses – rightfully so – that asking questions right now won’t go over well). I listen to the unidentifiable birds. Across the courtyard the teenager practises his saxophone. The family downstairs has a screamy child. The granny likes to lean over her window railing with the phone in her hand, talking to someone I can’t see, about something I can’t understand, in a language I don’t really speak. She pulls her pink button up cardigan around her. Always the same cardigan, grey skirt, white blouse. Every day.

I sip the drink again. I reach up to rebundle my wet hair into the elastic. It’s nice here. The witching hours are over for tonight.

~

[note: there are extracts from the writing project included daily in the micro-emails. here.]