Base camp (sometimes a commune, sometimes army barracks).

Today you baked a birthday cake and had to put a note on it so no one will eat it. You can't find your toothbrush, which means someone borrowed it and everyone claims it wasn't their turn to put the clean laundry in the dryer so it was still sitting in the washer when you went down to see Matt.

There are seven bottles of Nyquil if you need it because everyone remembered to buy some, the kids have multiple ride offers for their plans today and if you need a hug there might be a line forming to your left.

When you go out you have to msg two different people, one of whom is always sleeping, to move their trucks and the dog has been walked four times by ten in the morning. That stuck screen door is fixed before you can bring it up and Dalton would like you to change to his religion, which is the religion of nothing where no one follows any books, they just live from day to day and not worry about being so good and just be happy.

You decline because you can count your ministers on one hand while you reach out and touch both of them with the other.

When you can't sleep there is company.

When you want cookies there are never any left.

When the shit hits the fan they close ranks around you like a shield, buffering you from life and they can keep you there until you feel like being hit by life-shrapnel again, or at least until your thick skin grows back over you like armor.

And everywhere you go you're tripping over love, because that's the way this life was designed for you.

***

Batman invited me to lunch today, mostly as a vulture to pick through my remains all the while pretending to be the benevolent anti-devil, save for the fact that he isn't all that much different, to tell you the truth, though his attempts to hire me to be his sugar baby fizzled out early on. He has a weird sort of chemistry with me.  Hot as fuck and yet I can never read him. I want to know what he feels as he feels it and yet he is always closed off to me, rarely forthcoming, occasionally open and engaging but mostly reserved and quiet.

And I'm only like that when I'm done with life and today I'm not that, I'm just me and I chatter and prattle and fidget and blink and he looks so weary by the time our food arrives that I ask if he'd rather have it boxed up to go.

Maybe. Oh hell, yes, let's do that. 

We brought our food back to his house and set up on his garden patio and it was really nice. Not sunny but very overcast and cool. He gave me his jacket to wear and turned on the heaters and we had a leisurely pre-rain picnic at the glass table.

Then he sat back and asked me point blank why I went back to Caleb.

Oh, it's a hollow-point sort of day, I see.

Because if I don't things are worse. 

Bridget, I can't tell if he's coercing you or if you go willingly anymore. Which is it? No poetry this time. Are you continuing this arrangement because you enjoy it or because he makes you?

Um. 

Does he hurt you? 

Define 'hurt'. 

Jesus Christ. What do you get out of this? 

I shrug. Things. 

Such as?

Honesty. Power. Cole.

What do you mean? 

I don't want to talk about this. 

What does Lochlan say?

I don't know, he just opens his mouth and all of this loud swearing comes out. 

But you persist. 

No, the Devil insists. 

I'm not sure whether to save you or kick you off the ledge into the pack of wolves you seem to tease so constantly. 

I don't recall asking you to pick one or the other. Thank you for lunch. I drop my napkin on the table and leave. Suddenly the heater isn't working that well anymore and it's cold.

The weather is finally perfect for this.

I am NOT going to be sick for this week and weekend upcoming. Je refuse.

Ben does not have pneumonia, so that's good. He has strep which is neat because I got to watch the doctor do the swab test while he gestured at Ben and said, well, which one is in charge of you? I thought it was Mr. C____ and I say no, he just likes to think so and we all have a false laugh because the Devil afforded us a little privacy even though he probably thinks I'm going to procure something to kill him with.

(I would but this doctor is loyal and transparent to Caleb and so I wouldn't get very far and the Devil might not be so forgiving if he thought I actually was going to murder him outright. Instead I'm going to kill him slowly. With my mind. That's how it works.

(I think.)

I'm not killing Ben though. His immune system is fucked. He has some health issues but he does okay and he'll be fine in time for the weekend, he just needs rest.

Snort.

That's my fault. I may have had trouble sleeping so for once I dug right under his shoulder, wedging myself in against him, shaking him back and forth slightly until he came to life and asked what was wrong. I shook my head and burrowed in further and his arms came around me and then he did the pajama puzzle to get them off me and that was that. Oh, boy, were we ever awake now.

He was slow and sleepy and found it hard to breathe so for once it was perfunctory and satisfying instead of hours-long and Olympic. We both fell asleep again for a little longer. He's still there now, but so is Loch, who we found out yesterday is not having trouble breathing from the smoke in the air, but because he has strep too.

I tested negative.

The doctor said give it time, as if I was a seed planted and they were waiting for me to sprout.

(Yes, that euphemism goes for miles because they always promised me I would be taller and I haven't grown since I was ten.)

This one doesn't sprout. She must be a dud. 

Indeed.

So we're going to lay low for a couple of days and see if we can't get everyone better. I get to play nurse. But I'm going to be the twitchy Silent Hill nurse, featureless-faced, wrapped in bandages and sighing in my stilettos because I kept that costume and it's almost Halloween time again.

Oh, who am I kidding? I wear it all the time.

Spoiled/trigger.

A little too familiar. A little too late.

That's all I could think as he stepped forward and used the stopper to draw lines of perfume on me. One from shoulder to shoulder across my back. A short line below each earlobe and a stripe across each wrist, over the scars, the white lines that intersect my life like a highway to nowhere. He replaced the stopper in the bottle (shaped like a big glass candy bow, don't you know) and then bent his head down against my left ear, inhaling deeply.

This. This is you. 

(He hasn't really found a scent he likes since Cartier discontinued Delices. So I mostly wear Flowerbomb by Victor & Rolf. This is their new one. It's called Bonbon.)

(He is very picky about scents.)

Have you had time to think about things? We put our arrangement on hold after I tried to cancel it completely and he refused to let me. His argument? I don't have a choice. I agreed once upon a time to preserve this plan without input. Only he can cancel it. I can't quit. I can only be fired.

He wouldn't fire me.

I could burn his house down and stick a knife in his chest and he still wouldn't fire me.

And yet I'm not allowed to be smart in front of his business partners.

I'm not allowed to be anything except for quiet, delicate, submissive. Obedient. Fierce. Placid. Helpless. Wild. I'm not allowed to want certain things or ask for anything or refuse anything. I'm not allowed up. I can't leave. I can't have the ties loosened and he won't take the gag out. I can't plan for the future because there isn't one. Time is a loop and I smell like sugar.

No, I haven't really had time yet. But I have.

When the power is out all you can do is have sex and eat all the food in the freezer.

Oh and watch the rest of season one of True Detective, because as you know, we're preppers and we had power because we plan ahead.

Jesus. People are so unprepared. Even when I had three dollars to my name I kept a box on a shelf with water, canned foods, snack foods, candles, matches, flashlight and a big sharp butcher knife. Just because you should always be as prepared as you can be. No excuses.

Extrapolated for Bridget-inflation that box is now three generators for three houses, weapons I will not discuss, and enough food, drinks and lights to make twenty people happy for inside of two weeks, if need be. We have more than one storeroom. We are ready.

I'd run out of condoms before anything else.

Ha. No I wouldn't.

Anyway, we're fine. I didn't post yesterday because I was really busy, because we were out in the R8 shopping and had to dodge multiple snapping trees and horrible drivers to get home. It took three hours instead of the usual thirty minutes but that's okay.

Sugar Baby status fully reinstated. More on that later.

Right now I'm attempting to procure a fresh box of pocky sticks from next door because someone got in my stash in between emergencies and left me two boxes. Two. There were two CASES there when I put them away in the first place.

I made a note to fix that when I go for groceries.

In the meantime, Lochlan is feeling better (the rain and wind took away the smoky air) and Ben is now sick with possibly pneumonia. But! I stockpile medicines too. First Aid supplies and even suture kits. Because like I said, I'm prepared.

It's a shame you can't stockpile mental health resources for emergencies though. I don't even know where I would begin.

(PS. True Detective was terrible. It was a mashup of the movies Se7en and Silence of the Lambs with a grey filter and a forced-mood soundtrack that made me want to claw my ears off. Aside from a few shining snippets of dialogue from Matthew McConaughey's character (who then repeated himself ad nauseum, ruining the profundity of it all), it just pushed too hard for edgy bleakness and didn't do anything different OR groundbreaking. At least it was only eight episodes.)

I'll tell you what I mean. I'd rather have metal for breakfast or cold, greasy coffee. That's what I mean.

(Rambles Schambles. This is why I don't drink coffee anymore.)

I lost a bet this morning and was subsequently duct-taped to a chair and then had the new Justin Beiber single played for me while I screamed from the blood pouring from my ears-

Wait.

Actually it was far too soft to be injury-inducing. It was boring and incredibly innocent-sounding. I never met a twenty-one year old in my LIFE who sounded like that. I thought it seemed more like something he would have put out at thirteen or perhaps eight. It doesn't match his baby-gangster image or whatever fashion he seems to be doing.

Argh. I hate popular culture unless it's about something I actually like.

Snarf.

Once I was released from that chair (and the Justin) I spent the remainder of the day in church singing the soundtrack to Miss Saigon (I can do light but it has to be GOOD) at the top of my lungs while I scrubbed the coffee maker and tried to whip Sam's office into shape.

I was paid in coffee. Sam forgot what it does to me, I guess. You could tell already though, couldn't you?

I decided it was going to be a bulletproof coffee day too, which, without actual Internet (cheap fucking church) led us to beliebe (HA. That's not a typo, apparently it's a tweenage verb) that it was coffee with a spoonful of butter in it.

Well, THAT undereducated guess led to an hour and a half of making butternauts who would cling hopelessly to the rim of the cup before melting into the hot coffee itself, all the while making these amazingly quiet little screams of despair.

No one can save you, Butternauts! I told them, since I was the giant in my imaginary play. I like that kind of power. It makes up for everything else.

Oh and it only rained for three hours so far. Fuck.

Short and sweet today but not like me. Today Loch said I was 'tiny and whiny'. Hey if the shoe fits..

Louis Armstrong is singing from the record player on the front porch and every window and door with a screen door is wide open today as we celebrate what should be the final day of fucked-up overly-dry overly-hot weather and things get back to normal with dark endless heavy rain, for at least a week, maybe more. Perfect for sleeping, if I could ever sleep though it's so nice to wake up to the sound at two in the morning and know I can just fall back to sleep for a few more hours.

Well, sometimes I can.

But not always. That's okay. Bring me the rain.

Everything I know about death I learned from a fourteen year old boy.

My stomach growls and I want to laugh at it out loud but when I look to him for the shared amusement he hasn't looked up from the ground. He's sitting on the top step in front of his house and I am marching in small circles around the lawn, crunching leftover piles of snow under my black patent mary janes. My tights are wet up to the ankles and my coat is too short, leaving me to freeze in my Easter dress that is too thin for early spring in Nova Scotia but it's dark blue and that's better than a lighter color on a day like today.

Lochlan's grandfather (who practically raised him while his hippie parents came and went, travelling the world) died four days ago and the funeral was this morning. Now the cars line the streets since everyone came back to their house afterwards for a reception and the boys are wandering around the neighborhood in suits and ties. I take the pins out of my hair. It was in a ballerina bun which makes my head look tiny, baseball-sized. My mother said people with lighter hair should cover or pin it up because these are dark, dreary occasions and then she sighed and looked at my father and asked if I really was old enough to go to this, that maybe nine years old is too soon.

Too soon for what, Mom? I asked her.

Goodbyes. She smiled gently.

No, it's fine. Besides, I'm only going to be floral-support to Lochlan. 

She snorted trying to hold a laugh in as she corrected me. That's moral support, Bridget. 

What do morals have to do with it? I asked but she shooed me out because she had to get ready too.

They are inside with the rest of the grownups drinking coffee and eating church-squares and the boys are at the ball field throwing snow and I am keeping up sentry because I can't imagine being anywhere else. What if he needs me? What if he wants to talk?

You can go. He says abruptly.

Do you miss him? I mean...already? 

Yes. Now go home, Bridgie. 

You think he's still around somewhere? Like hiding? 

No, he's gone. 

Gone where?

To heaven. 

You think there is one? 

Now isn't the time, Bridgie. Go home. 

But I am getting more and more hungry, exasperated and cold. Why can't you just explain what happens so I don't have to keep bugging you every time your grandparents die? 

Because it's not my job! He shouts it and tells me again to go home. It's the first time he's ever scolded me. I don't know what to do with this. He's been a bit of a jerk since he turned fourteen and I don't like it one bit.

I c-can't. My parents are inside your house and I'm h-h-hungry! I start to sniff and my eyes are watering but at the same time I'm attempting to seem like I don't care about his outburst by stomping harder on the snow patches until my slick-bottomed shoes make me wipe out on the lawn. Now my tights have grass-stains, my bum is wet and I'm shivering for real.

He jumps down off the step and picks me up. Come and we'll get some food okay? Then maybe we can watch TV downstairs until everybody goes. 

But the minute we got down to the basement, plates and glasses balanced carefully on a tray which he put on the coffee table, he fell apart. I threw my arms around him and told him I would hold him until he felt better.

That's the thing, Bridget. Death doesn't get better. It's just a hole that's there forever. And every time someone else dies it makes another hole, and another, until there's nothing left of you either. 

I didn't sleep for a week after that. I had this vision of God swinging by and punching a hole in Lochlan with a big apple-corer-type device and I was determined to protect him and yet terrified it might take only one hole to kill him off, and I wondered if that happened if it would make a hole in me.

Burning Van.

She's naked on the phone
Watching them back
No eyes just their stupid grins
They long to be liberal mannequins
And in their tiny room
They eat Chinese food
And they don't call their wives
Cause the girl in the window is
Pressing her breasts
Up against the window pane
The guy they're after
On the floor below her
Is cutting cocaine
Higher than the building

I really really hate it when reality comes in, tripping all over my daydreams that I leave all over the floor (in spite of being asked repeatedly to pick them up and put them away so no one will get hurt) and then starts to bitch and moan about having stubbed toes on the sharp corners of my thoughts and hopes. What the fuck is that? Did you not see the Do Not Disturb sign? Next time at least knock before you interrupt the life I want in favor of the life I have.

Guess who isn't going to Burning Man?

I mean, unless there's a bunch of people here who want to have a burner party with me because I glued LEDS on fucking EVERYTHING and really this wardrobe isn't fit for anywhere else that falls under the heading of reality. Maybe I will wear some of it to the celebrity grocery store. The creepy butcher will like it. I actually stopped going to that store and drive to the Superstore instead these days. They have Japanese candy.

On the upside, the boys owe me BIG TIME because I spent five days straight cooking and stocking the RV only to stand aside as it pulled away from the driveway this morning without me.

Without Loch too, who turned and smiled so goofily at me with a big mix of half-relief and full-regret going on I had to laugh. I've seen that look every time the show run ended. He didn't want to go home but he was sick of it all. It's the definition of bittersweet, his face is. 

 We switched our tickets over to Gage and Andrew who are both fucking crazy and will love it, having gone way back in the day. They promised to take a billion pictures and not touch each other in the touchy camps.

August and Sam had this great eleventh hour epiphany about me. That was great. Sam will do fine. They do great independently of one another when it comes to care and feeding of my feeble brain and outward nightmaring, I don't know why they butt heads when they have to do it together but they sort of made up this morning and it was nice to see.

Duncan said it won't be the same without me there. Especially in the touchy camps.

Sigh. I should have gone. 

Look, I'm trying to spin this best I can here. The stars did no align this week, nothing fell into place, it's all jammed into various unsuitable, opposite-shaped positions that do this life no justice at all today.

I didn't even get to see Lamb of God and Slipknot this week. I was supposed to.

I need to start organizing the new plan, which is a joint birthday party for Ruth and Lochlan. A Sweet Sixteen/Grifty Fifty bash. He remains touched but not disappointed by my efforts overall to make fifty something amazingly special.

(Please don't find it weird that I don't gush about Ruth turning sixteen. I'm still following the original plan to not trot out much info about my kids for higher viewcounts.)

Truthfully a whole host of factors kept us off the RV, the most important of which was how hard a time Lochlan has been having breathing in the smoke from the air quality/forest fires all around us (a new feature bug in him since his accident inhaling a shitload of fuel into his lungs while eating flames on his birthday last year ) and how bad the dust would be for him at Burning Man if he's this bad now.

The second factor was the severity with which Caleb came down on my poor little head with just about every ace up his sleeve that he had. I'm not sure exactly why he didn't want me to go, I mean other than the possibility I might touch Duncan, though, NEWSFLASH, I touch Duncan all the time.

Gosh.

I hope Caleb's picturing that. right. now.

I have to say I love Ativans for breakfast though. I'm so level you could hang a picture with me. I'm fine. I'll be asleep in about three minutes. Prime time deliverance indeed.

Thanks, Matthew.

I feel like I'm losing for money
I feel like I'm losing for free
I feel older than the dead angel on my shoulder claims to be

I feel like we're drinking and driving
I feel like we're running into walls
I feel like swimming in your apathy as a kind of parody
For miles and miles, miles

I feel like somebody's missing
I feel like somebody's missing
I think somebody's missing

Matthew Good lives near Lochlan's mother. I ran into him once. We were both walking our dogs. We're the same age. I wanted to grab his sleeve as he passed and he stared at me waiting to see whether I recognized him or not. His gaze was so intense I was staring back nonetheless and since this was almost five years ago I wanted to tell him that I spent the winter previous sitting in the car in the garage with the motor running listening to his songs while tears ran down my face but I don't suppose that's the sort of thing anyone who writes music wants to hear. Even though it wouldn't have gone like you think. It would have gone more like this:

Matthew, could I have a moment of your time?

Of course. Of course. Cute dog.

Thanks! Yours is too. She a Burmese mountain dog?

No, just a mutt (we laugh and the stranger-ice breaks, plunging us into sudden tepid familiarity).

I wanted to thank you for your songwriting. Honestly there were days when your music was the only thing I could feel.

Tell me about it.

I'm a widow twice over. Sometimes it's hard to feel at all anymore and sometimes I feel everything and you have many songs that just seem to reach inside and squeeze my heart in a hug, but a crushing hug that makes my heart bleed at the same time. Like it feels better even as it hurts.

Maybe you should be the one writing songs. I'm sorry for your sadness but I'm glad if I could help somehow. Is it getting better? Are you alright?

Sometimes. I won't keep you from your walk but I've awfully glad I got a chance to meet you and thank you in person.

I'm glad I got to meet you too.

He gives me a mega-awkward but very tight hug without anything bleeding except for my mind and then we walk in opposite directions. I look back at the end of the block and he's standing on the corner watching me. I turn and tuck my head down, trying to carry my composure before it falls out onto the sidewalk and when I look back on the next block he is gone.

I should have said something.

(But at the same time interrupting everyone else's life so they can spend a moment feeling bad isn't what I set out to be. These things I am learning, only some of them seem like things I already know.)

Migraine breakfast, narco lunch, bathwater dinner and I'll try again tomorrow.

Well it's full speed baby
In the wrong direction
There's a few more bruises
If that's the way
You insist on heading

Please be honest Mary Jane
Are you happy
Please don't censor your tears

You're the sweet crusader
And you're on your way
You're the last great innocent
And that's why I love you

Softer music on the stereo this morning while I eat a banana and drink coffee, an ice-pack on the back of my neck and another on my forehead. Ben sits with me. I'm maxed out on medication and loath to top up in case I wind up with the cycling rebound pain I get when I take too much too soon. If I were less afraid of everything or less perfect in my personal morality I would snort some coke off the counter and call it a day, sleeping until early in the week as the world reduced itself to undone chores, post-binge filth piling up around me like a photoshoot from VICE. Fake as fuck and yet designed to make everyone currently sober wish they could just let go of their white-knuckle grip on life for five fucking seconds. Only life isn't a magazine, life has teeth and those teeth are sharp if you fall behind long enough for it to catch you and eat you slowly, one limb at a time.

This might be Ben's fault. Reformed junkies addicts rockstars have trouble sleeping and so he wakes me often in the hours where my sleep is deepest. He has to reach way down and fish around in the dark to find me and when he does my head breaks the seal, pain flooding into my skull. He feels bad but he also can't help himself sometimes. Rough as he can be, big as he is, he never leaves marks and so I don't think I mind, I just can't reconcile it with this. This pain. This day wasted on gingerly breathing, feeling my way around for oxygen, functional and yet not functioning. He's suggested we have a blisteringly hot bubble bath when we're done our coffee. That helps a lot, actually. Maybe I can relax enough to fall asleep again later if I can convince Ben and Loch to have a Saturday-nap.

Maybe it will go away. Like Jake. Like Cole. Like the Devil because I pushed back and I'm suddenly glad for these little lightning flashes of courage mixed with exasperation, everything colored with my endless selective integrity that actually makes me laugh even as I'm ashamed of myself most of the time. The keening that never ends inside my brain and seems to get loose all the time anyway, that noise that seeks out affection like a homing beacon, landing on the first savior it sees.

So coke would be better by far. Maybe in one of those edgy magazine photo shoots.

 I don't even recognize myself without sleep any more.

You're still you, Ben confirms upstairs as I look in the mirror and I turn to look at him, putting my back to my own face, which sounds painful in it's own right but it's kind of a relief.

How do you know? 

Because you're always inside out and you make no effort to hide that. Why don't you stay put while I go run the bath? Sit quietly with the ice pack. I'll come get you when it's ready.