Home body

I made my home, next to a liquor store, in a wooden house as cold and unappealing as I was.

The "open" sign provided a glowing metaphor in March:

there is light in the dark.

A kitschy sign hangs in my living room too, above a stack of firewood, acquired from a nearby yard sale that says, "Home is your sanctuary."

I discovered that it is easy to preserve the sanctuary - just don’t leave.

And don't we all know how easy it is to just not leave. Those sweet weekends of pure dilapidation, the unruly lacking, the euphoria of dis-interaction. Of Amazon and Youtube and the Utima Thule of planning for what we will do tomorrow. It is as beautiful as we meant it to be, as long as it is not contaminated by existence.

I didn't invent the behavior of solitude, specifically the denomination of Hermetism / Agoraphobics, but I follow the rules of one. I work from home and get my socializing in through a small, heat-preserving window on the only floor of my home, where I mentally document the customers of Alpines Liquor as they wipe their boogers on their arm before they go inside. I hear the bells ring all day - a welcome familiarity in the otherwise disturbing quiet. They come back out in a cloud of breath and steam from pre-cooked hot dogs and cigarettes. They have sodas tucked in their pockets. slobs.

I start my morning in the kitchen for coffee and fried eggs, move into the spare room-converted-office to dedicate the majority of my day to zoom meetings with floating heads to discuss friction, the question behind the question, process improvement. In the evening, I cook myself a chicken thigh and baked kale. My groceries are delivered with the setting to leave at the door.

When I am not zooming with the floating heads, I dedicate myself to my home. I am in a close relationship with it. It provides me with things I need (tape, a special kind of pan, an erasable pen) if only I look in its deepest corners. It shows itself to me and plays tricks on me. A goblin ate my socks and all the cat food. He laughed at me when I tripped over the uneven floorboard at the bottom of the stairs. An angel came to me before bed every night to remind me that my aloneness is noble.

Man evolved to seek other tribe members. It was necessary to survive when we hunted Mammoths.

I am a wfh tech cliche, I am not hunting mammoths. I tried and tried to retrain my brain to not need people, the same way some of us are born without our wisdom teeth.

Still, the inner ache kicked inside me with a vengeance, prepared to burn down my sanctuary if I disobeyed her.

I cursed her, wished I could carve out the piece of my body that craves

a man’s touch,

a woman’s laugh

there's something else, what is it?

We love to hate our tech cliches. Within thirty minutes, my uterus flipped through at least fifty men like sweaters on Amazon.

A man I could meet. A contaminant.

It text the contaminant and scheduled a coffee date just a block away from the house.

It told the contaminant she was excited to meet him.

It went to the date, sat down with her shoulders back and her hair folded along her collar bone. She was happy to make conversation.

To her excitement, he announced without unease

You should know, I’m kind of a home-body 

"A home-body?"

I just, enjoy being at home I guess 

"But you’re gone most of the time for work, right?"

He laughs

yeah I guess if I worked from home, I wouldn’t be a home body 

I asked what he meant again 

He didn’t laugh this time 

I guess I’m just, more comfortable at home 

I paused for a moment that I learned was too long a moment for a first date I’m not uncomfortable with the not-home world - I just choose to be home. I am the next step in evolution. I am doing the noble thing - the energy efficient thing - the sacrifice to make sure I dont disturb anyone.

I changed the subject back to his horse and his sourdough bread starter. The floating heads from my zoom meetings prepared me for this moment.

We ended on a high note, shoulder hugged and made the common statement we should do this again sometime.

I returned back home like the good little hermit I was.

The thought followed me back.

I justified to myself; I don’t leave the house because it’s COLD outside. I used that mental blanket for a night.

The next night was it’s too expensive to go out 

The next night was people don’t like you 

but the contaminant just text you to ask how your day was 

The stack of half read self-help books start to chatter 

• you cant only connect when you feel like it
• Who gives a fuck if he doesn’t like you
• maybe you’d just like to sit at a bar with a man for a couple hours wearing that ditsy dress with the cutout in between your boobs that smells like dresser wood

I looked deep into my psychopathically ordered hair drawer, the brush parallel to the heat protectant, the heat protectant above the claw clips, and so on.

This does make me feel, what one might call, comfortable.

My angel looks into the drawer with me. She says the contaminant is feeling rejected.

I am not ready to text him back. It is one extreme to another, and that is in error as we know.

I knew what I wanted, really a wanted, more than sex, more than an orderly bathroom.

I stepped into the liquor store to buy a soda - the cashier commented when I slipped off my mittens to pull cash from my pocket

It’s so god damn cold out there

“Yeah, haven’t left the house in six months” 

She laughed and gave me my change.