Exhilerated

Well some people go for coffee in the morning as a pick me up, a sneaky cigggy maybe. Not me. This morning I was feeling all gloomy and wan as the weather and my recent life angst would dictate, having a day off to muse and mellow and wallow and weep if need be (but hadn’t so far). Spending time enjoying the empty house, walking around naked, checking out whether my bottom is the same proportions as last time I inspected it in a full length mirror, seeing how my boobs change shape when I lift up my arms (seriously, tell me I’m not the only one that does this shit) then wondering whether neighbour with adjoining window would appreciate my skinly wanderings so popped upstairs to pop some threads on, but not too many mind, and no shoes or underwear – as a statement of next best thing to nudity. Did some thoughtful potplant rearranging - one out the back to the sick bed, one out to the front of the house to welcome people. Shifting the one out the front millimetres to the left to the right, twisting it just so to show its shiny leaves to best effect – aaah, like that – SLAM. Uh huh, that would be my front door. It wouldn’t, I think to myself, it wouldn’t have just locked me out would it? I twist the brass knob and get no movement. Uh huh, that would be me locked out.

I live in a terrace house – think long and skinny like Charles Dickens England and sharing walls with the two either side, facing the street in a skinny shouldered row. Impenetrable. Fuck. Mind you, the back door is wide open – I can see it in my minds eye, and there is a back yard behind that. Which is capped with a locked garage with electronic roller door. I imagine jimmying rollerdoor and messing with its internal workings, breaking the shed, explaining to the housemates. Fuck. Aaah! Stroke of genius – go to neighbours house and ask to go into their yard and climb the (not that big as I remember it) fence diving our backyards and hey voila, walk into my wide open back door. Yippee. First house – knock knock. Hmm, not home. Vision of these elderly neighbours in sarongs peacefully tendering their orange tree on weekends, I wonder if they might transform into corporate legal types and soulful office corporates on weekdays. Fuck. Go to neighbours on other side. Messy front yard – more cardboard boxes than ours – did they just move in? knock knock. I think I hear movement, maybe see a flash of flesh go past the dappled glass. I’m hopeful. I practice standing there not looking like a salesperson in case they are timid and peek to see who might be accosting them on their doorstep. I try to look very much like a neighbour.

Door opens, head peeks around the door in the way of someone not wearing much in the way of clothes. Hi I’m your neighbour and I was putting out the recycling (lied - couldn’t fess up to having been styling a pot plant) and got locked out. Can I come through and go into your backyard and climb the fence so I can get into my house? I say. He says, opening the door and revealing himself to be tall, dark, stubbled and clutching one handedly at a cream towel doing a bad job at covering his lanky self, sure, knock yourself out, waving his other hand in a manner both offhanded and expansive, lord of his manor.

He is groggy, and I can tell he has just woken up so I don’t talk, just stride purposefully down his hallway, very much wanting to stroll and check out their homewares, feeling somewhat delighted at the crowded interesting, artful disarray of their stuff, but it all goes past me so fleetingly, so tantalising – so many eyefuls to soak in but politeness doesn’t allow me, I don’t even know them, and anyway, now doesn’t seem like the best time for introductions and cups of tea. Boy he is tall. And has disarming dark brown eyes. And bed hair.

We are in his living room, mmm, open plan, and I stop in front of a complicated set of folding glass doors. He reaches up and unlocks something and starts to pull said doors. Mean while someone groans and moves and I realise that there is someone asleep on the couch, clothed, head under a pillow. On the couch! There is such spontaneity just next door to me. I go, oh ok, like this, and reach for some bit of door to pull open, realise its attached, he reaches around to my left and says here, this way, kindly, and I am in a virtual embrace by towel boy, we are almost touching, him with arm around behind me and contorting door in the necessary way. I say oh ok thanks.


Outside now, with him at door in towel, I look at fence and think shit, that is taller than my head and flimsy lattice and flanked with bushes. Fuck. I say, oh, I don’t know if I can climb that. He says, what about at the back around there past the bushes? I walk around past a vined screen and see a little bit of stone wall, sturdier. I go back and say, yeah I think that will be ok, but I might need to use this – pointing at a little wooden chair. He says yeah sure. I take wooden chair and prop precariously on a ledge near the wall, and I stand on it and strain upwards and fleetingly think can I pull myself up that high and anyway where the fuck will climbing this wall take me because our yard finishes there? I dismiss the thought and pull myself up and I am hanging off a thick stone wall which is the wall of our garage and I am pulling myself up to the roof of our garage, and this all happens so fast because I know there is no time to think about not being able to. I stand up and walk along and up the sloping stone edge, avoiding the corrugated plastic which I know might not hold me, walking to the edge of the roof, now somehow on hands and knees crawling over the top – and I can see towel boy still at the door, his head obscured in shadow, his cream towel bright. I check in an instant the other side of the roof for descent possibilities – there is a tree, too close to wall too angled for easy shimmy down, so I stay this side and check out the way down. And I manoeuvre myself around, so that I lower myself off backwards again not thinking can my arms hold me in this strange position but knowing they must, I hang suspended until my foot finds the top of their flimsy fence and I then shift myself around so I lean into the roof, bent arm keeping me joined to it, foot on fence, fronting outwards, facing the handkerchief of dirt below that I must land in and not looking at the deep hole next to it which is the brick stairs down into our garage. Not looking at the large jagged stump in the handkerchief of dirt that I would not be advised to land on. I lower myself and drop. Thud, I’m home! I am cat burglar! I am deft and strong! My heart is beating extra fast, I am exhilarated. I am full of steep edges and sharp drops and fluffy cream towels. I am adventurer. I think lewd puns about future expeditions next door for cups of sugar. I give thanks for homecoming.