sedaris v bell

.written september 14, 2009.

I live in a basement apartment, and my landlords are not small people, so my suspicion is they are generous with the air conditioning upstairs. Our apartment doesn't have its own thermostat, so if they're hot upstairs, I'm especially cold downstairs-- always. Tonight I'm a different kind of cold downstairs, though, one that is notably crispy, and I'm pretty sure it means that autumn is almost here.

We went to bed before midnight because tomorrow is a long day for both of us, and maybe it was the sitting around all day that wore me out, but I had been perfectly content for a while to lie there with Ames's arm curled around my stomach and his forehead resting prettily against the back of my head, contemplating the drift off to a sleep that hasn't actually come yet. It's too chilly, it's too autumn chilly, and though my bladder isn't particularly full with just two cans of Diet Coke, I'm too shivery to just let it sit there.

When I get up, I look in the mirror and I'm satisfied with these new bangs that aren't very new, actually, since bangs are bangs and there aren't very many variations: short, shaggy, side-swept. Sometimes you can combine the variations, and I'm sure I have, since I'm addicted to bangs, but I've been growing mine out since May so that my hair would be more versatile for the wedding, even though I ended up pulling all my hair back anyway. The rest of my hair is a reliable mess, since, in our whole relationship, my hair has inexplicably managed to escape from bobbi pins and ponytail holders after midnight, sprouting up all over my head in a ridiculous and hopefully endearing way. Ames never complains, he usually laughs, but I smooth it down across my head even though he's asleep.

Tripping over various throw pillows and the footie pajamas I wore yesterday evening, I stumble back into the bed I didn't make this morning and think about how we don't have side tables yet. Ames uses his hamper to rest my red-shaded lamp upon, that perfectly matches the duvet, and I've got nothing more than a folded red box from IKEA. I'd like to read that David Sedaris piece right now, from the 2008 Best American Essays collection called This Old House, which actually reminds me of Samuel Johnson's essay about his own boarding house. It's nice to know famous essayists maybe draw inspiration from other, older, more famous essayists. It gives me a chance. I grab my overturned cell phone from my IKEA box table, since the light of it charging annoys Ames (it really is bright, to his credit), and huddle under that red duvet, pressing various buttons incrementally so that I can read the essay without the light being too bright. This piece is amusing. David Sedaris is amusing. He's nostalgic, like me, but I haven't read the end of the essay yet.

I've been thinking of all the essays I'd like to write, and was suddenly inspired that we might be able to go to England after all if Ames and I find grants to pay for our trip. What kind of grant could I possibly get? What paper could I propose to research in London that would justify my attending the theater program, but not necessarily writing about it directly? I'm flooded with ideas, and I remember that Louise Imogen Guiney essay which details her thoughts as she observed a special collection of Tudor paintings in the late 1890s, most of which are now hanging at the National Portrait Gallery, and I think how I've seen them too, and maybe I could base an essay of my own off of hers? And what other essayists could I write about? Charles Lamb and his crazy, murderess sister, and A. A. Milne, and Addison and Steel, and certainly Samuel Johnson, who all lived there in London, where I could be next summer, writing about the same things that I might write about and discuss why that's important, the unchanging intrigue of sites and sounds, regardless of age.

I'm starting to be very excited about that idea, and others, while I read some David Sedaris, and then Ames turns over to face me in his sleep, his arm tucked under the pillow and his knees brushing my legs as he tucks them under himself, so close to me in our roomy queen-sized bed. He is long and lean and the sheet is draped so artfully over his waist, and I think how a Victorian artist might have captured him with the sheet and the pale light of my cell phone, set to Power Save Mode, highlighting all the right parts of him. His hair is sticking up all over, so we're not so different I guess, and I imagine how his eyes would look if he slowly opened them to smile at me, but he sighs with sleep instead, undisturbed now by the light, and I think he must be the most perfect specimen of a human male.

I watch him for a while and let David Sedaris slump across my chest, enchanted by the beauty and peaceful perfection of the man lying next to me; the man who wants me forever; who kisses my forehead and doesn't ever forget to tell me, "Goodnight, sweetie, I love you;" who has long limbs and long toes and can reach anything in the kitchen that we share because we are married; who married me three weeks ago and who has already grown up so much; who is the kindest, most tender-hearted man I've ever known; who squeezes my hand three times while we watch a play or sit in a room filled with people--

--and I kiss that slim, toned arm and revel in the sweetness and smoothness of his olive skin before I slip out of bed again to think about him without distraction.