The Insider

Since I now live in town I am trying to pretend that I am outgoing and extroverted. I accomplish this by smiling and offering a wave whenever someone actually spots me in my dark corner on my front porch. I much prefer the back porch on the old swing where no one can see me, except. old Mr. Brogan who only goes outside to fall asleep on his folding lawn chair next to his tomato plants.

Anyway, last night the noise of my house became too much for my shingle ears. (I have CFIDS, so I catch a lot things quite often, new reader, so this is why you will read..."now that I have pneumonia" or "because I got that toe infection last week" etc...) So I went out to my front porch with the pleasantly dead porch light bulb and I stole the quietest, most invisible section of my porch in which to sleep without bother from neighbors. Come to think of it...the old man next door probably likes me alright, because I am like an old man myself in many ways - though I am young and a woman. Must be a writer thing...

I watched teenagers nearly get hit by a car, a young couple run past falsely thinking that a diner would exist or be open in our small town at 10pm. A drunk hick from somewhere up the mountain drove his beat up pickup up and down the street, swerving like active vertigo, from the Old Jail to Through the Looking Glass. He tossed a Pepsi can out of his car and screamed something about health care before retiring for the night.

My brother eventually joined me on the porch in his dirty unmatching socks.

"I can smell those things from here," I said to him with my eyes closed. He was waiting for our mother to pick him up and take him back to our old home on the Mountain. He is house sitting for us.

"Thank you," he said, resting his feet on the Ottoman so that I might get a better look at the crusty critters.

A couple of teenage girls passed us as attempted to flirt with him, giggling about their hair.

"Really? Him?!" I said after them, but neither my brother nor the girls responded.

After several minutes I could hear the noise of my Latin husband and half-Latin children die down a bit.

"Everyone must be asleep," I said to Leonarrrrrrdo as he came out to join us on the porch.

"No. They are totally disobeying me, but because I have threatened them sufficiently they are disobeying me silently," he said leaning back into his cushioned rocking chair.

"Shouldn't you go back to deal with them?" I asked him.

"No way! This is what I wanted. For them to be quiet," he said. "It was all part of my plan, because I know that no one listens to me, so I tricked them into not listening to me but SILENTLY."

He whispered the last part.

"Whatever," I said, hearing the indoor thumping of our five year old as he attempted to spy on us from his "sneaky" place on the hall steps.

After a while my mother drove up. "I didn't even see you there," she said to me as she greeted the men.

"I know," I smiled. "I am the Insider. Sitting invisibly on the porch is as close as I can come to actually engaging with the world."

"I see," she said. "Come on, Dave. I have to get home and go to bed."

Nearly 40 and my brother is still somehow convincing my mother to give him dinner and transportation on a whim.

It's a strange world. But it's Friday and I am going to clean my house invisibly and then spy on my neighbors from my porch swing later on when I get sick of organizing the play room. And what is really cool about this old house that I am beginning to love in a way I could never love a new house (nerd, remember?), is that there are so many stinking awesome creaky crooked 1865 rooms that we have room for a playroom for once! Like an academic's wife, I can say things like, "Oh, my goodness! There is such a mess in the playroom!" when I am on the phone with suburban/new house friends. I imagine a great amount of jealousy when they hear my lilted, city curbed, excessively large, antique house resident excitement. I can't say "owner". The house I still actually own is not nearly as cool and not at all an ice breaker in a boring conversation unless I begin with, "What did I do for my summer? Oh, I lost my house."