Dr. Madlow is under the impression that I have been using the cloister complex as a means of controlling my environment and that I could stand to exercise more of an effort to share myself with the outside world if there is to be any real headway. Cloister complex my ass. Madlow is perfectly one-sided on this and continues to instigate one battle of wills after another. Why must he fight me? To prove he is wrong I hold a garage sale. A sidewalk sale, really, as I have no garage. If I did I wouldn’t show it to anyone.
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Generally I’m a private person. I don’t talk about myself, only others. I don’t invite people into my home. I am not a hostess. Some people have that flair and I applaud them. But in few ways do I find it rewarding to have people, if you want to call them guests, milling about in my private affairs. What bathroom products do I use? What if any shampoo? Breck or Halo? What of this is anyone’s business? The stacks of newspaper in the hall are my own and not to be used as chairs for company. If and when I choose to use a stack as an ottoman or lamp table, that is my affair. As are the foods, if any, I choose to eat or how many cats I keep as pets and whether or not these pets are actually cats. I don’t answer questions about what cities I’ve lived in or questions about my family. Whose business is it my sister’s fourth husband will be in prison until 2009? Nobody’s. Whose business is it that my brother runs a day-care center out of his home? Not mine. These are private matters. And what matters more than privacy? Very little.
The modern appetite is out of control. It expects too much and doesn’t like what it gets. I’ve hogtied myself into the corner with these prices here as it is: $11.95 for an entire collection of eight DownTime Miss lounge- and sleepwear pieces is perfectly reasonable given today’s flagrant glorification of the unrestrained. I think you know what I mean. Dr. Madlow pretends not to understand the connection but he himself subscribes to that freewheeling “cut loose” school of thought I so despise, so his resistance to my own theories of social exchange does not surprise me.
The girl picks up the wiglet I’d thought was one of Ruby’s second litter until I pulled it out from under the bed this morning. She tries it on all wrong, with the bob hanging down over her eyes. Lost lamb. I’d hate to see her ruin the thing so I steer her to a little pig figurine. “This would make a nice gift for your mommy,” I tell her, “or a special little friend to keep for yourself.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Dan Grzeca.
