Three-thirty in the morning, Friday night. Norman and I are walking home from the bar. He's blissfully buzzed, I'm blissfully drunk. There's a guy about a block away, sitting on the sidewalk playing a banjo in front of the laundromat.
"Wanna go over and talk to that guy?" asks Norman.
"Yeah!" I'm really quite drunk, after just one glass of wine, because I hadn't eaten much all day. I don't really want to go talk to the banjo guy; I just want to go over and stare at him giddily.
We watch the guy for a few minutes. Norman congratulates him for being enough of a freak to sit out in front of a west side Binghamton laundromat at 3.30 AM playing a banjo. And we head home.
I immediately fall asleep on the couch. Alcohol does that to me: warms me up, makes me happy, and puts me immediately to sleep. Norman wakes me up after awhile, whispering "wanna go to bed?" I mumble something unintelligible. He lifts me up, carries me over to the futon, and piles a couple dozen blankets over me before crawling in beside me. I say, mostly unintelligibly: "I love you." He says something back, but I've fallen asleep already and the words lose their meaning.
I wake up ravenous: an unfortunate consequence of drinking, at least for me. I poke Norman awake and insist that we buy some food and make breakfast. He agrees to the plan, but we both lie there for awhile anyway.
"Norman?" I ask, "What do you think normal people are doing right now?"
He answers: "Well, the men are probably watching the Big Game. I don't know what season it is for sports, but there must be a game on. And the women are probably shopping at Sam's Club, stocking up on... uh... big jars of mayonnaise."
I giggle. Norman giggles. I imagine myself buying big jars of mayonnaise at Sam's Club. I imagine him watching the Big Game. I can't help being a little disgusted.
Norman jumps into the shower. I sit on the futon thinking about normal people. Norman's friend Will, who's staying with us for a bit, wanders in and we talk for a few minutes. Will, who noticed that Norman and I had shared the futon, asks, "so, are you and Norman, uh... I mean, involved or... uh...?"
I answer as simply as I can: "Well... no, but... I don't know. It's not like... But... I guess it's just easiest not to bother classifying things..."
Will pretends to understand, but I'm quite sure he has no idea what I'm talking about. Indeed, Norman and I are not "boyfriend and girlfriend," as such, though by most people's standards, we might as well be. He's my dear friend, and I DO love him. We've fallen into certain pleasant domestic patterns. We're housemates who cuddle, ex's who still share a bed sometimes, good friends who sometimes adhere to the "save water, shower together" slogan. And it works, quite well. It's not a desperate, frantic love-affair style relationship. We're "just friends." Uh... sort of. I seriously doubt that Will understands. I seriously doubt ANYBODY really does, other than Norman and me.
The three of us set out for the grocery store.
I cook breakfast: bacon, eggs, English muffins, and hollandaise sauce, with which to make Eggs Benedict. I'm not very good with eggs; two of the yolks break and run all over the pan. I pick the whites off the third one, because they irritate my stomach, and leave them in the pan for Will to pick at.
The three of us sit on the couch, watching a stupid Lifetime movie. Will asks, "so this is 'Television for Women'? What does that mean? Like, feminist TV?" Norman and I explain: "No, not really. There are lots of murders and stuff, and it's really not all that political in the way of feminism... It's sort of derogatory, really... There are just a lot of women in the movies."
We finish eating. I pick up an afghan I'm working on crocheting, and muse to myself about "normal people" again. Funny: sometimes it really just hits me how very different my "family" is from "normal." Norman, peacefully filled to the brim with Eggs Benedict, sips at his coffee and half-closes his eyes; he's sprawled out on the couch looking as comfortable as a cat lying in a spot of sunlight. Will, who never REALLY looks comfortable, is plucking at his guitar in between glances at the Lifetime movie, in which some girl is trying to catch the murderer of her sister. And I am crocheting, my ring clicking gently against the hook. The afghan will be a gift for Norman, but it's made out of ugly second-hand yarn from the attics of various relatives.
This scene is beautiful in its simplicity, in its very ordinariness.
But I find myself imagining a stranger coming in the door and trying to figure out WHAT in the hell is going on... Man, if you're not living it, it's fucking WEIRD. Norman the musician, with his freaky haircut and his dorky ("they're comfortable!") Reeboks, snoozing with a flannel shirt half-covering his face. Will, his long blonde hair tied back, sitting on a stool and poking at his guitar. And Helena, cursing mercilessly about the stupid Lifetime movie, uttering jokes so politically incorrect that they won't be repeated here, whilst calmly crocheting. What on EARTH would the rest of the world THINK?
Just about ALL gender stereotypes are null and void when it comes to Norman and me. After all, Norman was the one who'd turned on Lifetime TV to begin with, and I was the one who started the cursing crusade. The cooking thing, the crocheting thing, are beyond comical, considering the "unfeminine" words that pour out of my mouth. And Norman, who mutters some disgustingly chauvinistic nonsense before closing his eyes, is sweetly cuddling up to me. No wonder Will never looks relaxed; every time I've seen him, he's being subjected to Norman's and my bizarre contradictory behavior.
Yet, nothing about ANY of this is really unusual to me...
If somebody asked me, when I was ten, "where do you think you'll be when you're 21?" I NEVER would have imagined my lifestyle like this. I could not have imagined the sort of freaks and weirdos and "unclassifiable" relationships I'd be surrounded by. I could never have imagined I -- *I* -- would turn out to be THIS. I, the shy child with the weird rock collection and the notebooks, would become a potty-mouth with a domestic streak, a tomboyish klutz with a caffeine habit and a passion for surrealism, a not-so-shy sort-of-adult with a weird postcard collection and some notebooks. Man, I never could have imagined THIS, these people with their Lynchian quirks and intricacies. We are nothing like you'd EVER see on TV. We're not any sort of husband-wife-and-two-point-three-kids. We're not even members of Sam's Club.
I NEVER could have imagined this.
I can't even begin to describe the chaos of this lifestyle. It simply doesn't fit into any categories.
My desk is adorned with freakish remnants of a thousand odd events: a cherished drawing of a fairy-woman, a dried rose from a bush on Seattle, a button that reads "the internet is run by a 13-year-old named Jason," a binder full of wacky research on the occult, and a hundred phone numbers of a hundred weird people. Norman is sitting on a stool in the kitchen, staring at a little boombox and plucking out jazz music. He's wearing a cute brown hat and groaning whenever he misses a chord. His yoga mat is next to my desk. Seven or eight candles are resting on a pizza tin next to the yoga mat. Will, in the next room, is watching the Big Game and stressing about some tragic occurrence with his girlfriend or something. The apartment, dimly lit, is homey and sophisticated, even if it is sort of messy. Looking around, I guess I can't believe this is really MY LIFE. It's all so, so atypical. And I suspect Will NEVER expected, in his whole life, that he'd be the "normal" one in any situation... But, after all, he is the one watching the Big Game...
You know, for as bizarre as all of this is, it's quite peaceful right now. And even though nothing ever prepared me for this sort of life, I've fallen into it quite easily. And if a stranger happened to walk in right now, trying to figure out how this whole scene fits together, and said, "holy god, what IS this mess?" I'd probably just smile and say, "I dunno. Isn't it fun?"
~Helena*