Fourteen Days with Diane

A short story about an old bat.

*Written in 2014. Dedicated to Albert Camus.*

Looks like it’s just you and me, Diane, for the next fourteen days. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue, as we both have our work to do. You in your room, me in mine. You in your space, me in mine. Me writing and hiking around these woods, you doing—well, whatever the hell it is that you do. We’ll find a way to stay out of each other’s hair.

Oh, this soup is simply terrific! You do work wonders with vegetables. You want feedback on your meals, you say? How can I say no? I’m on a strict budget as it is, and I love my own opinion. Let’s begin one of these tit-for-tat relationships, then, where the value of each thing’s murky: you cook the meals, I’ll opine on them, and we’ll call it even. And Diane, don’t think for a second I’d like to see your tits as part of this arrangement. Whatever goes on in that kinky head of yours, keep it to yourself.

Out in the fall air now, I’m tasting it like an apple. I’m seeing the trees and their changed colors; I’m texting others that they should be here to see it; and I’m berating myself for not being “here” to see it. What I’m saying, Diane, is that I’m ashamed of my need for others. Where do you fall on this spectrum, you solitary old bat? You say you moved from Boston and are trained in the fine arts—but what can that possibly mean? (Admit it: you don’t even know.) I wonder sometimes what goes on in that head of yours, what with the move so fresh and your future so uncertain, to say nothing of your past…though I suppose everything has been so tumultuous that there hasn’t been much time to reminisce, if indeed there is anything to reminisce about.

I see you emerge from your room in drab pajamas at 8:16 PM and pass into the bathroom like a ghost. The flush tells me you have left; now the soft close of your door behind you, devoid of all aggression. Are we off to bed so early, my sweet? Alright, then, goodnight. You’re a big girl, you’re an old woman. You deserve the morning worm at this rate. I’m an early riser, too, so we’ll reconvene at the coffee pot.

I suppose it makes sense that you would be up at 4:03 AM, Diane, since I wake around six and fall asleep two hours after you. But still, it seems a little strange—a little surreal is all I’m saying—to see your light on while I take a leak, the deep dark of midnight still lingering out the window. Whatever do you do at this hour?

Waking again at 6:08 AM, I come downstairs and make myself some coffee, then crack open a book in my favorite chair, hoping to read a bit before my day’s and life’s work: to write the great American novel is my task, Diane, and no less. Do you have a purpose? Just think of how much you could accomplish before 8 AM, which is when I usually bear down with all my might. By noon you could nearly conquer the world, assuming you have the strength to endure the darkness—I don’t, myself. Indeed, they say that Churchill read a book before bed each night. Maybe something similar could be said about your pre-dawn activities?

Good Lord, Diane! You snuck up on me like the shadow of a whisper—sorry, that was a little verbose—we’ll just say a shadow…and simply to tell me you like that chair? Well, I like this chair, too, Diane, especially when I’m not being badgered in it. Oh, you also like the seat on the upstairs deck, the so-called “communal” porch? But communal only in name, Diane, since it sits right outside my glass-door. I mean, sure, the spot is nice and the view incredible, but it’s sort of—mine, you know?

Yes, you know. You like the peace and quiet of this place, though, and think it makes a person whole. I’ll let it slide, Diane, you melodramatic cat, but try to relax with all that language. Just remember that you’ve only been here a few days, okay? Moreover I would like to know: how are you broken? All I know of your past is that you used to work in politics, and I think I can guess for which side. For now, I’ll keep hidden under my smiling, nodding face, that my mother worked for an insurance company her whole life and on that side they are just people, too. Of course I want to know what you would do if you were in charge…oh, you haven’t thought about it?—well, precious Diane, now is a perfect time.

Alright, you’ve scurried upstairs and I cannot help but think that I have scared you off, you old sack of nerves. I’ll think on how I can engage you tomorrow, but for now I must bend to work. And oh, Diane, would it kill you to ask me what I’m writing about?

Day 3.

The rain blows sideways this morning, Diane, a leftover from last night’s storm. Did it keep you up? Unfortunately I must imagine your answer, for you are holed up, afraid of the outside world. I would say it’s fine by me but for this uneasy feeling within, dear neighbor, that I have done you wrong yesterday—that I chased you away with evidence of your own ignorance. I was only trying to get to know you better, Diane, in the only way I know how.

If you would only come downstairs before 8 AM, I could tell you how excellent the soup is keeping, now on its third day. See? I had some for breakfast. But you do not, you do not, and now my goodwill toward you, my wanting to help, is turning poisonous without an escape. As I sit here in my writer’s pose, I cannot help but wonder what the hell you’re doing in there, hardly ever slipping past your own guards to take a stroll outside—not even a walk around the house! I can feel your presence through these walls, your distracted thought, your nefarious little planning in that room (which used to be mine, you know…). I cannot focus with you in there. Make some noise, at least…show me you’re alive!

Day 4.

All hope of reconciling our moment on Day 2 is now gone, Diane. Don’t you know there’s an expiration date on these things? Once a certain time passes, it all of a sudden becomes a bigger deal to bring it up than leave it alone…

The day having passed in wonder and in idleness, night now begins her bedtime routine as I stow away my bike, shaking my head at your car which has not moved an inch since you arrived. It gathers dust and perhaps even grows roots through the pavement. I can see your overflow possessions crowding the backseat windows…do you have trouble letting things go, old one?

Now wait, is that—you I see?—sitting in my chair outside, reading a book, and writing in a little journal? But what could you be writing about? Alright, no big deal, I’ll just slide this curtain over…there!...just a little. That wasn’t too bad, was it? Now we’re blocked from view. I do apologize for the awkwardness, Diane, but then again, you sort of asked for it. Ok, computer open. Dusk is gathering. Do try to turn those pages a bit more quietly, Diane. We’re not starting a band out here.

Is that you at my door? Never, ever, EVER bother me in here! What can I help you with? Oh, you wanted to see what it looks like in here? You hope you’re not interrupting anything? Well, I’m not doing anything right now, Diane, if that’s what you’re asking, except giving you a tour of my room—though I was hoping to get some writing done. Is that a fact? You’re a huge follower of Thoreau? You would live in a cabin if you had the means? For God’s sake, Diane, could you be any dafter? That is precisely the kind of sentiment that Thoreau would despise. Moreover, don’t you realize that living like Thoreau is precisely what I’m doing? If you opened a single eye from time to time, maybe you’d realize that other people are living and breathing, too. How dare you use my hero’s name when you don’t have the capacity for understanding a single thing he’s said? Jesus Christ, what the hell am I supposed to do with you, Diane? Yes, nice talking with you, too. Goodnight.

Day 5.

Diane, let’s have out with it: what are you doing in your room, day after day, only emerging to sit ever closer to me at my work, just outside my window, where I can catch your wispy blowing hair and impatiently tapping foot?

You say your purpose is to paint—having been trained in the fine arts, yes—but I hope for your own sake that you’re lying. Because if indeed you have been taught, for example, how to capture your own likeness, then it rends my heart to think you’d have to look at yourself for more than a few seconds—from your deep, shady sockets and sunken cheeks, to the silver hair flowing down the sides of your face. Your teeth are antiques, think about that, your skin merely loose flesh, clinging pathetically to your bones. Your breasts are on a permanent downswing, your eyes as close to black as they’re allowed to get. And your ears remind me of Dumbo. Have you ever heard that ugliness is another form of death, sweet one? Be comely, I say, or be still.

Oh, but maybe I am being unfair. To tell you the truth, Diane, my mood is getting me down today. I am awash in a bit of loneliness. Edward Abbey wonders how he could have forgotten that “the one thing better than solitude, the only thing better than solitude, is society.” I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like to shoot the breeze with someone today—not that I wouldn’t welcome a deep talk if you have it in you. Show me a sign, Diane, rear your ugly head for an instant, and I’ll meet you halfway.

No? Fine, have it your own way, you moth.

Day 6.

Diane, you have just saved me! I came downstairs heavy with my own loneliness, lost in myself, and feeling a bit wayward in my project, when suddenly I saw you staring out the rainy window, as if in a trance, looking dead and ghostlike already. I’m sorry if I frightened you. Next time I’ll stomp downstairs like an elephant. But Diane, you have restored me! You have shown me how wonderful I am!

Do not take it personally, Diane, when I say that I am better than you, for what I am really saying is that I am better than that despicable part of me, which you remind me of.  You have proven to be such a savior! A true hero. I now hop back upstairs with the lightness of a bird because of your self-heaviness. It is true indeed what they say, that we step on the groveled heads of others in order to reach new heights for ourselves, that we climb bent backs on our way to greatness...by the way, Diane, I just finished the soup—it was excellent. Thank you, you say—why, you’re welcome!

Day 7.

After speaking with some people on the situation, Diane, it strikes me that you may be lonely, that you may suffer from loneliness just like me. But if you are lonely, why don’t you find someone—anyone? Humanity will pick you up if you put yourself down, I’ve found. Muster the courage to confess your loneliness, dear one, to say aloud that standards are a thing of the past, that a beating body is all you need for now, and I’m sure you’ll find success. I call it the ‘pool theory’ because when you’re sinking in a pool of water, it’s better to be near the bottom than somewhere in the middle because then you can kick yourself upwards.

In other news, because of your hurried and soft scurrying, which erodes the very fabric of my nerves, I have purchased a box of earplugs. Do you know, Diane, the sound of your own neck? Because I do. Now the terrific axis of my head creaks like a thousand windblown doors, and in this condition it seems unlikely that next week will ever come, that I will ever be rid of you.

Day 8.

Hmm, Syria’s a mess, is it? So that’s what you were doing at 2 AM when I went to pee? No, not at all, the light from your room does not bother me in the least; I was merely wondering what one does at such an hour. And if there are no overseas reports? Kant’s Metaphysics, did you say? You must be kidding. Seriously, I don’t believe you just said that. First you distress yourself over a people who don’t care a lick about you—don’t even know you exist—and then you casually peruse the most complicated of philosophical texts? For what purpose, Diane? I mean, come on, I could slap you in the face with his Metaphysics day after day for a thousand years on end, and you’d still wear that lost, furrowed look, reminiscent of a raccoon in a dentist’s office. Kant, of all people!

But I applaud you for sticking to Western minds, at least. We are too old, Diane, we are too jaded—and here, please note, that I’m ages younger than you—to see the world from an Eastern point of view. We cannot read Eastern texts for anything beyond the occasional wonderment that will float up from the depths of our Western pond-of-a-mind. All the same, it yet becomes clearer and clearer to me, Diane, how shady your world is, East or West, how colossal a waste you are by all definitions and cultures. To think that we shared some pleasantries and that I even, if only in my heart, was open to a conversation! Go away, Diane, go away, go away, go away! Leave me alone and let me write in peace!

Day 9.

Diane, yes, sorry to disturb you, but it turns out that Linda—you know, our housekeeper…wait, you do know her right?...ok, good—has invited us to a local soup-and-games night. She says it would be simply terrific if you could come. (In point of fact, Diane, we’re all a little worried you’re a psychopath, and we think a little outside air would do you good.) So come along, we’ll take your car. I’ll even drive on the assumption that driving isn’t one of those “fine arts” you’re always talking about.

Of course I won’t draw a map, you benighted pigeon. I’ll use Google Maps, and you can direct me on the way. I’m more worried about your Diesel-powered piece of junk than any directions. Regardless of the Mercedes label, and with much regard to the waste-pit in back, I can only imagine this will be an adventurous and smelly ride. Speaking of, take a spin in the shower, will you?

Now that we are on our way, Diane, let us open up a little like the road before us. I admit that I am lost, not in loneliness this time, but in the past. I am thinking of one I used to love, whose world was once fused with mine—but never again, no never again. Do you have a lover, Diane, or more to the point, is it possible that you were once young and desired? No, it cannot be. I won’t even ask.

What’s even more tragic than that you have never been loved, Diane, and probably never will be, is that artists have ruined love, you see, by saying the wrong things about it. How boring the youth with their stories of unrequited passion, how bumbling their explanations of “the one.” But at least they have the matter by balls. By the time an artist has mastered a craft, they are too stuffed with narrative, rule, and tradition to feel what they once felt—to feel the thing that drove them to art in the first place. So they merely perpetuate what has been put down before; they simply amplify the stories that have already been carved in stone.

Art is only words on a page, Diane…or in your case, colors on a canvas. Each and every form is empty and meaningless. Art accelerates the decline of our most precious and painful moments, which are destined to recede into the past anyway to get pummeled further by memory and decay. Oh look, we’re here!

Day 10.

Goodness, I’ve never been caught in a rain like that. Were you outside? No, Diane, I’m sopping wet because I took a shower with my clothes on. Of course I was outside! Anyway, what’s new. Hmm, catching up on the news, are you? As if you had something else to do. The Pacific Ocean is dead? Ah, from Fukushima, right.

Here’s something to consider, Diane. Will you ever see the Pacific Ocean again? At this rate, you might not even see the Atlantic. Even if you do, what will it mean? You’re not going swimming in those old and prejudicial bones; I’d be surprised if you even dipped a toe. So what does it matter if the ocean is blue, a bit warmer, or entirely ruined? You’re not part of it, Diane, because you’ve uninvited yourself long ago. You’d be better off reading fantasy novels about nicer places.

Day 11.

The great fall winds rage outside, Diane, while you and I remain snug within this custom-built wooden house, which for all its size pits us against one another, side by side, enemies over a wall. And yet I realize, as the early November leaves blow wildly and wetly about, that for all I know you might sing my praises, be impressed with my project, and feel that you are outward with your admiration. You know what the saddest thing is, Diane? You might even believe I have a whit of respect for you in return.

When I proclaim to myself and others, “Diane is a worthless old rodent!”, what I am really saying is that everything I have encountered in my life so far has set up a relative standard against which you fail—but spin me a different fate, give me a different past, and who knows what praises I would sing of you! For at the very least you must believe—indeed, Diane, your only remaining hope is—that in some place, at some time, among some people, you would be accepted and loved for who you are.

For example, in a colony of mice.

Day 12.

Ah, that grey shift, your silent passings to and from the bathroom, dreary as a dream! Change your clothes, smell the air, live, live, live! I hate you like a disease, Diane, I hate you like cloudy days, I hate you like a passive lover.

When you insist on acting like a mouse, I have no choice but to run experiments on you. There! I have just passed from my room to the bathroom in my underwear (shirt on, towel in hand, just in case), while your door remained closed. A missed opportunity for you, my sweet hag. No doubt your own body is not safe for any eyes, but have you anticipated the form I have until now concealed under my clothes? The phrase “in the prime of his youth” may fairly be used to describe it.

It is a body the likes of which I guarantee you have never seen, Diane. Let me remove my shirt…Ah, but you miss again. You are so accustomed to pellets that you scorn a royal banquet right underneath your nose. All you will ever receive from life are these little grey meals if that’s all you expect, trapped within your box and spinning the wheels of your faulty mind… Now I am completely naked, Diane, pacing to and fro outside your door with the delicacy of an elephant, knowing you will never emerge. My cells are bulging with water, my hair is still growing wild as a summer bush…!

And yet for all this virility, old one, there were days when this body had even more, days when I walked—rather, years when I slaved—under Cupid’s oppressive agenda. A teenager is convinced that either he is a monster or the world is a monster, and it is this game of chicken that makes him adult. He is obsessed with the word “hypocrite” until then. But what would you know of this? You are so far removed from the age of love-making, Diane—if ever there was such a time in your life—that you wouldn’t know a penis if it smacked you in the face…

And yet, the basis of male existence—in a word, sex—is not extinguished as we age, but rather unravels and discolors, until our thoughts are mere excavations of what once stood on its own. We are faded versions of ourselves, both in and out, we aging men. We still think about sex all the time and will forevermore, but without any conviction, Diane, without any belief. It’s a training we undergo during the most impressionable time of our lives, that one day becomes obsolete. In other words, my mind automatically manipulates every woman I meet into a variety of sexual positions, but I no longer pay attention. How are we to demand attention from others, my wise old crone, when we cannot demand it from ourselves? No wonder the vacant stares from girls behind counters, girls behind bar backs, girls behind displays of meats and other things, girls behind cash registers…they begin looking straight past us, one day, as if we’re a wall. And it’s because we aren’t even looking at ourselves, Diane! And that’s because we aren’t savagely looking at them.

But of one thing you can be sure: however displaced we feel in this scheme of biological purpose, you are even more irrelevant as an unattractive female.

And so I imagine you walking out of your room to grab some of your delicious vegetable soup, stepping right over me as I play with myself. You would see nothing irregular about the scene, intent on getting back to the news—for who knows what could have happened in the world while you were gone those two minutes.

Day 13.

Two more days, Diane, and to commemorate it I’ve left you a little present in the bathroom. As I flick on the fan on my way out, you must be thinking one of two things: either I purged myself of a digestive overflow, leaving an enormous stench, or else I’ve showered. Both are cleansing functions, but one is associated with disease, dirtiness, and impropriety. I wonder, does your mind automatically revert to the best- or worst-case scenario? Are you a glass-half-full or -empty kind of gal? Either way, it doesn’t matter: what’s done is done.

Going back, doesn’t impropriety assume the presence of one who would be offended by it, one who knows what propriety looks like? And isn’t propriety the domain of humans, Diane? For surely animals do what they will, however they wish to do it. When I take a moment to consider your life, though, I cannot in good faith call it human, so routine and limited it is, at least in the present. Nor do I wish to examine your past, because what horrors must lie there for you to have turned out the way you have…nor dare I look forward, because nobody in their right mind expects anything from you from here on out. From everyone else’s perspective, you are over the hill, fried, not worth investing in, shored up, an innocuous ticking time bomb. Do you have any expectations for yourself, even?

All this is to say, it’s extremely doubtful I’ve done anything wrong in the bathroom if only you are here to observe it.

Most of the world has some vitality left, Diane, even if you don’t. And if I, who have had fourteen days to get to know and love you, have in turn grown to hate you, what chance do you have at establishing any intimacy henceforth? For I am the most forgiving of men, Diane, the most open and nonjudgmental of souls. And you have ruined this even for me. All I can do, then, is forget your existence—move on with my life—which, fortunately, won’t be hard at all.

Day 14.

We are all alone in this world, my sweet Diane, all alone…but only you have shut yourself in a room.