Instead of Not Posting

I thought not to post today, sick of self. But then I'd be like all the rest. Sick of others, too. Terrible diseases, those two. I have a friend who is really sick now, but she started with these two diseases, I think. There are others, many others. But these are bad enough. These will do.

My friend, C.C., and I tried to build a set in my studio yesterday. We had to get lumber and plywood and I do not have a truck, so I suggested we just try to strap it all to the surf racks on my hillbilly-mobile. We spent an hour looking at materials wondering what to buy before we asked for help. C. C. and I are alike in this. It would have been easy enough to locate all the materials and to feel we had done a good job. We could go to lunch knowing that we knew where everything was now when we needed it. All we would have to do later was go and get it. That would be something. Yes, that could have been enough. But heroically this day, we went further, actually buying half of the materials we needed, not yet willing to make a full commitment. But we had enough for a start.

Then came the real fun began. We put the plywood on the racks and started lashing it down with the synthetic string that Home Depot supplies. The day was gray and a bit blustery, and after we ran our lines and tied our knots, a gust of wind caught the plywood and lifted it about six inches off the racks. C.C. looked at me skeptically. "Ah, hell, I'll drive slow. We can keep a hand on it out the window." I stuck the eight foot two by fours in the car and let them stick out the back window, the broken one that won't go up all the way.

We hit the main road at twenty miles an hour, boards flapping a little, but not dangerously.

"I sure hope we don't see any cops."

"Shit, I hope we don't see anyone from work!"

I urged the car up to twenty-five before the wind got under them really well and scared us. I pulled into a parking lot. C.C. looked at me all bug-eyed wondering what I had in mind. We looked at the string that had stretched out a good bit. The boards were really just resting on the racks now.

I didn't know what to do. "I'll drive slower," I told him. "People will just have to go around." C.C. gave a fatalistic chortle. "Yea, they're going to blow off and kill somebody." "Ah, shit," I said "we can hold them down."

Pulling back onto the highway, we caught a break and had no traffic behind us at all as they were all caught at a long red light, so we were able to cruise in slow motion down the four-lane road the way you dream when you're stoned. But we weren't. We just felt ridiculous.

"My whole life is like this," I told C. C. "Ever since I was a kid, everything was just make-do. Hell, this is fun, huh?" I think he'd had enough of this kind of fun already.

"Look," I said, "we can cut through the K-Mart parking lot. We won't have to go fast there. And when we get out the other side, we're off the highway. Perfect."

When we got to the studio, C. C. said, "There is nothing holding the boards down. All the knots came undone."

"See, I told you we were good."

Three hours later, we had put up four eight foot two by fours and two four by eight panels.

"I wish someone had videotaped this."

"Abbot and Costello," C. C. said.

The whole day, though, I kept thinking, "What the hell am I doing? Spending money, making sets so I can pretend? What's wrong with me? This isn't what grown ups do."

And of course, this morning when I talked to my mother on the phone, she asked me what I did yesterday. And I couldn't say. I still haven't told her I rented the studio.

"Oh, nothing."

I think I'll go back to bed now. This didn't come out right. I think my first instinct was best.