Parasite

This morning my dog, Ramona Guitar Wolf, woke me up earlier than usual.

            She wouldn’t get off me—licking my face and pawing at my chest—unintentionally digging her sharp nails into my skin and making me say something stupid like, “Oww, fuck, Ramona.”

            The she went over to the door and started in with this tentative bark—intermittent—reminding me of her needs as if somehow I’d forgotten.

            I pleaded with her for just ten more minutes, like a little kid being woken up for school.

            More sporadic barking.

            I sat up and pulled on an old tee-shirt. There’s a hot plate set up on top of the mini refrigerator we found buried in the back shed. I thought about making coffee, but was just too tired and lazy.

            The apartment is in East Hollywood. It’s not large exactly, but it’s not small either. Anyway, it has a lot of potential.

            The way it’s set up is that where I’m staying is the back apartment directly behind a tiny, one room rotting old commercial space that used to be a barbershop. It couldn’t have held more than one or two chairs and the barber must’ve lived back where I am in the apartment. As it stands now the shop has been used mostly for storage—the windows boarded up, the floor torn to pieces—thick with dust and strange, discarded items from the fifties—a reel to reel tape player—a vibrating massage chair in its own special case that weighs at least fifty pounds or more.

            When I first moved in to the back place there was no ceiling in the kitchen and there weren’t three gas appliances hooked up, so hot water would be impossible to get. The electricity was being, uh, borrowed.

            But my friend and I decided we could turn the whole thing into a two bedroom place. We’re both newly sober and really value each other’s support and friendship. There aren’t many people I can truly connect with in this world—especially other men, but my friend I met here is definitely a fellow alien. Whatever planet I came from, he came from, too.

            So even just meeting him was miraculous. Plus he loves Ramona and Ramona loves him. He has a little stray dog he found in the Valley and most nights the four of us pile onto my torn up futon and watch old movies and smoke cigarettes and maybe that sounds lame or boring, but it’s pretty satisfying, you know, and just simple.

            Anyway, the place was pretty fucked up when I first moved in. I’d been out of my…relationship…for a little over a month.

            There was this feeling inside me like I was going to have to build a whole new life for myself overnight. I mean, sitting with the uncertainty of my future and the loneliness that came with no longer having a…significant other and person that I’d loved very much…was completely overwhelming and terrifying. Just the fear of having to live with myself, without the validation of a lover, was enough to make me totally want to act out—find the first person that would have me and cling to them for fucking life.

            It was the same thing with the apartment. Not understanding one thing about construction, I felt like we would have to rework the whole place in a single day—rebuild the kitchen, install a gas heater and cut a hole through the outer wall for the vent, put in dry wall and cover it with joint compounding, break down the wall between the barber shop and the apartment, build a door there, prime everything, paint, put down carpeting, get the hot water set up.

            Actually, it seemed like a lot, so I figured I’d give us the whole weekend to finish.

            That first day I worked till I was sick and dizzy and weak. My friend, who actually knew what he was doing, told me I needed to relax. We’d get done what we could—but it was gonna be a slow process—making little bits of progress each day—sometimes seeming like we’d made none at all.

            I had to be patient.

            Fuck.

            I mean, that’s not my biggest strength in the whole goddamn world.

            I pretty much suck at it.

            But we worked each day and did a little bit more and it was strange, you know, ‘cause I did come to accept the process more and more. We’d just do what we could—not fucking kill ourselves or get all fucking uptight planning everything out.

            And we’ve made progress.

            The kitchen is done now, though the drawers aren’t back in. We’ve got the heater set up and, if the gas company ever shows up, we’ll get hot water.

            We broke through the wall and actually found there was this little secret door that had been covered by the plaster. So to get from one room to the other you have to go through this kind of portal, though unfortunately it doesn’t lead to John Malckovich’s head.

            Now it’s the barbershop room that needs to be stripped and redone. It feels pretty overwhelming, but I know we’ll just do a little bit of work everyday and then, without even realizing it, eventually it’ll all get done.

            So then the challenge for me becomes applying those same principles to the rest of my life—patience—allowing the process to just sort of unfold without obsessive planning or struggling against it. To know that, yes, I’m alone, that my life needs to be rebuilt—but right this time—with a solid foundation—not rushing forward—not running before I can walk.

            It’s fucking scary.

            Every impulse in me fights against it.

            But unless I allow the process to develop at its own pace, I’ll just keep leeching onto people with this utter desperation. Because without them, I am left with the thing I’m most afraid of: myself.

            So I’m learning how to sit with myself today—trying to figure out who the hell “myself” really is.

            And until I figure that shit out, there’s no point in doing anything else.

            Anyway, Ramona was barking at me, remember?

            I put her leash on and stumbled out the door.

I’d get coffee on the way and then we’d walk together, up through Griffith Park. Me in my own world, and Ramona there in hers.

            I’d be alone.

            And that was gonna have to be okay.