Thieves of the night

vendredi, le 04 septembre 2009

In the early afternoon I came home after running some real or perceived errands just to find an armed response vehicle in my drive way. I checked my phone to make sure that I hadn’t missed a call from them. I talk to the armed security guard outside my lounge window. He cannot give me sufficient proof that there had in fact been an alarm activation that he had responded to.

Annoyed I make sure he leaves my property and walk into the house, very surprised to find The Princess happily sleeping on the double bed, blissfully unaware of the stranger on the property, blissfully unaware of the anxiety in my voice talking to the security guard a mere five meters from where she lay.

When The Princess and I came back from the shop in the early morning hours, she pottered around for a while with the mysterious things that dogs do and I distractedly fiddled with a bit of this and a bit of that, slightly unnerved by having spoken to L’homme earlier for the first time in nearly 3 months.

Eventually we stop our pottering and fiddling and wander off to bed. With huge big sighs, she cuddles up next to me and I wonder whether she read the ‘Puppy size’ e-mail over my shoulder according to which the more you love, the bigger your sighs. I read for a while before turning out the light.

And in that split second between dream and sleep I have a vivid flashback to the man with the balaclava and the gun and the man with the dreadlocks and the screwdriver that stood at the end of our bed about two years ago and who stole my and L’homme’s Christmas in Paris.

I sit up and prick my ears but all I hear is The Princess’ rhythmic breathing. I slowly lie back, my entire body taut. Then I hear a possible cat making human like noises somewhere on the roof or is it a human making cat like noises? I double check that all the alarms are set, that the cage is locked. I try and convince myself that my fortress is impenetrable, but my mind just cannot get a grip on that thought. The leaves in the tree rustle and a cat loudly plonks to the ground. I listen to the silence but my body refuses to release the fear, my mind refuses to accept the knowledge that we are safe.

Is the me living on my own more scared, more paranoid, more petrified of the deafening sound of a single gunshot that so easily can slice through both legs and leave the stench up gunpowder forever clinging in one's nostrils? No, while L'homme lived with me, I stared down the barrel of a gun on three occasions and my house was burgled once.

As with most other things, I wholly depend on myself to diffuse the fear and paranoia. What I wanted and needed from L'homme was to fulfill a very reasonable expectation in the context of a functional relationship, I needed him to love me, I needed him to be present in the relationship. It occurs to me whether, while he calls himself a functional alcoholic, he is not possibly a dysfunctional human being?

With brown and paranoid eyes I sit on the edge of my bed, peering through the cage over L’homme’s empty chair, into the garden covered in the soft grey light of the full moon.

And I know tonight sleep will not come.

(Caged in by burglar bars, by trellis doors, by fear, by paranoia, guarded by a sleeping dog, this photo was taken at 04:28. When the light came, I could get a few hours’ sleep)