the more sacred rituals I’ve found in this world.
I was making the bed alone the other night, which is probably the most simultaneously lonely and accomplished I’ve felt in a long time, and as I was scooting the queen bedframe away from the wall in order to wedge myself in and stretch the fitted sheet into position, I got to thinking about things that aren’t quite the same without another person around. It sounds more sad than it felt, but between the crafting of hospital corners and folds at the pillow line, there was that quiet consideration of times where the performance of a task makes you aware of your singularity. Makes you feel the place where an extra set of hands and feet and eyes used to be.
I was raised with two very hardworking parents and a live-in grandmother so most of the adult attention I got as a child was relegated to learning-based activities. Bedtime stories and classwork. Every night before sleep I would lie in my grandmother's bed, wrap my arm around her — my head somehow both in her armpit and (probably painfully) on her breast, in what I called the “special spot” — and read a few chapters from a book of my choosing. I remember blowing through the entire Boxcar Children series in particular, how everything in their little impoverished world seemed so perfectly rationed. Berries and milk and glassware and a fun terrier to play with. The Boxcar Children were Anthropologie before Anthropologie was Anthropologie. But more than anything I remember my cheek on her chest and the vibration of her voice, a voice that the older I get I hear more and more of in my own, as she slowly enunciated those twee syllables and tried to drink up these few hours with her, at the time, only granddaughter. I’d sleep in those socks with the grips at the bottom so I wouldn’t slip when I ran on the hard wood and, somehow, I’d always wake up in my own bed.
In the second grade we did a reading exercise where, one by one, we went to the back of the classroom with a teacher’s aide and read a book about a bear into a tape recorder. Then the aide played it back to us so we could learn from our own stuttering and slip-ups. I remember loving it, relishing it, and making voices for all the different characters. And when I reached the end without having made a single blunder, the aide smiled and called me a “good reader.” I believed her.
When I was middle school-aged my best friend and I would open a Word document and take turns writing a paragraph at a time. One person typing while the other had her back turned. Then we’d scroll down so only the last line of text was showing, and switch positions. It’d be up to the other girl to pick up where the narrative left off — filling in any blanks there were, throwing in a ton of poop and boobs and tampon strings for good measure. Once we’d filled a few pages, we’d print them out and lie on our backs on the green basement carpet, reading them slowly to each other like religious texts, cackling at our own jokes and snarfing Pepsi into the throw pillows.
I found a Penthouse Forum in my much-older brother's closet when I was 9 and it was my first encounter with printed porn. I’d been with other, younger kids at the time, who seemed weirded out by the entire notion of sex narrative, but I was riveted. I stole the tiny magazine and brought it back to my room. When friends would sleep over at my house I’d wait for every one in the house to go to bed and then pull the Penthouse out from between my bed and the wall. I’d read all of the stories about chance encounters with nymphos in restaurant bathrooms and inexplicable gym shower orgies to a rapt and slightly disgusted audience of quiet, ceiling-locked eyes, and then drift to sleep wondering what an orgasm was.
One night the first and only boy I ever loved and I went out to dinner and drank wine (we passed for adults! at a nice restaurant in town!). We went to a park nearby and I read him old journal entries and blog posts. I set there beside him reciting my words — the words I knew by heart, and just smiling that unabashed I'm-young-and-don’t-know-how-much-this-will-suck-when-it’s-over smile at him. When we got back to his house that night he had lit tea lights all over his crappy apartment bedroom and had a box of chocolate cake waiting on his bedside table for me. I remember fat rain drops hitting the window like moths and being spooned while he snored lightly and I read “Cranford” with a British accent.
And now I’m in the process of becoming an adult, I guess. Or that ugly pre-adult tadpole with four legs and most of its facial features, but still holding onto the tail somehow. Still just hideous enough to not be ready yet. And when that bed was made the other night — once it was tight and military-grade and I’d climbed inside — I turned on my lamp and read to myself for a while before I set my alarm. Just for that vibration on the pillow.
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