Plagued By Doubt!

#32. July 7^th The Men’s Room Anthologies

I woke up this morning plagued by Doubt.

And it wasn’t the movie Doubt, and it wasn’t your normal infestation either — it was a hopped up army of Doubt attacking from all sides, like locusts.

At first I thought I could take it; thought I could fend off the rabid strike with a bit of carefully tossed out optimism… but woe be unto me…  woe be unto the weak, for like it or not, we shall (supposedly) inherit the earth.

Sleepy-eyed, but confident (blindly hopeful and clueless) I toddle now into the kitchen for a cup of tea as an ear piercing “CRACK-WHACK!”  smacks against the side of the building.  Ducking behind the curtain, I yank up my nerves of soft steel, slide the window open — look down (careful to remain unseen) at the worst looking up.

I am surrounded!

The apartment building is hovering in the air!  Clouds float by, parting just long enough for me to see Brentwood over a mile and a half straight down, a city just big enough to fit on the toe of a lizard!  No time to panic — Doubt is everywhere — swinging from ropes, stakes driven in hard enough to support a dozen tankards!  I peek out quickly again — horror! There is more than one set of the enemy scaling my walls — I pause shocked that Doubt has outfitted Timidity and their friend Apathy in cute little army fatigues with bright red pointy caps — “Those candy coatings aren’t going to protect you if you fall on anything hard!”  I call out laughing ruthlessly with a tut-tut, wondering where Doubt gets off wearing a state-of-the-art Motorcycle helmet while handing out ice cream cones for the craniums of his friends.  Ah well, who am I to judge?  I sigh reaching in my pocket for a handful of Optimism while banging out the dusty screen with an elbow and a cucumber — I let fly my first defensive barrage at Timidity’s pointy teepees.

My shots drift away; mere cotton balls carried in the breeze, vanishing the second they leave my fist.

“Damn!” I shout reaching into the freezer for Inspiration.  “I can do this! I can do this!” I chant, standing on a chair; a savvy warrior.  Leaning out the window I hurl the cubes at not just clinging Timidity, but at Apathy as well; throwing as hard as I can — even lobbing one and connecting with Doubt’s nose — but my efforts are like butterfly kisses.  The blocks of cubes melt on the way down as if microwaved; bleeps of giggling mist falling floppy and delicately.

SMACK RATTLE!

Shaken from my chair, crashing to my knees I am forced to crouch face to face with the freeway of ants on the kitchen’s trash can.

But I refuse to give in!

Suddenly — the THUD-A-THUD-A THUD-A-THUD-A of an army helicopter; Congo drums growing louder and louder; as plates, glasses, vases, pretzels and Fiddle Faddle go smashing to the floor surrounding me in splats of fretful colors, twisted shapes and jagged puzzle pieces of writhing disaster.

“WE KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!”  quacks a monstrously dark and tinny voice through a gigantic bullhorn.  Looking up I gasp.  Gusts of hurricane-screams send the curtains straight out — scooping the floor’s debris into a swirling merry-go-round sucking books off the shelves, shelves off the wall — it’s all I can do to not fly after them — hanging on for dear life to the edge of the sink I too fly straight out and for a moment I give in, close my eyes… and feel the joy of flight; it would be so easy to just… let go—

“STAY HUNGRY!  STAY CONSCIOUS!”  blares another sinister voice like lemony-bleach through the angry bullhorn.  “KEEP STRUUUUUUUUGGLING!”

I open my eyes!

Standing now on the rails of the helicopter — not but twenty feet from the window — bullhorn at his fingertips — is Despair.  I’d recognize that stance anywhere, the smart wry grin, its laidback befriending come-hither sweetness.  (What did I ever see in all that?  How shallow and vapid!)

Calling up all my reserve — fighting against the torrential wind — I curl my feet into the sink, hold now fast to the faucet and finding a place of refuge below the cabinets I grit my teeth — it’s impossible to think with the helicopter rattling the building — the crack of the each driven stake growing closer — the wind roaring like a million swarming bumble bees — but I’m not ready to give up yet.

Doubt!

Timidity!

Apathy and Despair!

I’ve seen them before — but this?  Never have I faced them all at once — and where in the hell are Lucky and Iris anyway?  Just like them to leave me in an apartment in the clouds!  It’s as if they honestly think I can survive the rapids of reality without them!  As if they haven’t a clue as to—

“Hello?” it’s Lucky!

“I’m in here!”  I screech at the top of my lungs, but it’s no use, it would take a miracle for him to make it to me now!

He pokes his head around the cabinet.  “What’re you doing in the sink Jezebel?”  as if we are in the middle of a book club meeting and I’ve spent too much time away from our guests.

I shrug finding his question too fantastic for words; discovering I’ve lost my voice; squeaking incomprehensibly like a rusty car door.

“Here, that can’t be comfortable,” he gently admonishes gathering me up in his arms.  Not a hair on his head is touched by the wind, as he carries me into the bedroom (cool as sorbet) where astoundingly the wind is not blowing; the helicopter is not thudding and the smacks of the climbers does not crack into my already splintering skull.

I lift up a trembling hand, pointing back at the kitchen and rasp: “Out there!  Despair and more!”

He smiles tilting his head to one side and asks softly, without reprimand,  “You’ve been counting the woman writers in anthologies again haven’t you?”

I stare dolefully at my lap, pull absently on a loose thread and do not speak.

“We’ve talked about this my love, I thought we had an understanding.”

I nod, I do not trust my squeaking.

“Do I have to stop bringing home the books?”  he asks with a small kindly hug.  “Is that how we should do things?”

Slowly, sighing deeply, I shake my head no.

“Okay then.”

“It’s just that…”  I mumble as he takes the thread from my fingers, drops it in the trash and takes my hands in his.

“Go ahead, you can tell me.”

“It’s just that…”

“I’m listening, just tell me the number.  And remember this has to be the last time okay?  You’re no Gloria Steinem, this isn’t your fight; unless you want it to be…  Do you want it to be?”

I shake my head, no.  “Too hard,” I say as quietly as a blooming cherry tree.

“Okay then; this will be the last time.  I’m listening, go ahead.”

I cannot find the strength.  Throwing my arms around him, I cannot bring myself to speak the horrible truth; the wind picks up and begins to tear the room apart — pillows — water bottles — encyclopedias — Iris’s bed!  The tornado flies around the two of us like a swirling rash of fighter pilots.  I take a deep breath; cling tighter to his neck and shout above the blaring storm:  “Seven!  Only seven women writers out of seventy-eight!  That’s less than ten percent!”  The tempest is terrible now — howling death and destruction — splitting the ceiling from the wall — I bury my head further into Lucky’s neck and hold on!

“It’s okay!”  He shouts.  “It’s okay!  We can get through this!  We’ve been here before and you’ll be fine!  Just hold on to me and don’t give up! Iris needs you!  I need you!”

The roof goes flying off into the sky and looking up I watch it go with the hope that it takes the ants with it…

With the hope.

Hope?  Hope… I think with a tiny remembering of such a grace.

And slowly, ever so slowly, not all at once, not until Iris comes home and I’ve taken my shower, not until well after dinner and until I have read a little something of mine to both Lucky and Iris, do I find myself, my world, my home, close to the way it had been before… before I had awakened to the battle with Despair and his unmerry men…

I scuffle now through the rubble of Apathy, through the marring of Doubt and the lingering pain of an unprepared for Despondency.  The carnage is awful.  “I just don’t know why I try sometimes.  You have to be a man to be a writer, I don’t believe that but—”

“Don’t say things you don’t believe.  Let it go, you can’t change the numbers but you can go around the statistics.  Just keep at it.  You’d be boring if you gave up.”

“It’s just never been this bad,” I say watching my amazing little family tenaciously sweep up pieces of my computer into the overflowing dustpan.

He smiles.  “And it will be again, but you can’t give up, that’s all I’m saying.”

“But all I’m saying is, that it’s hard!”

“Of course it’s hard,” says my man, tenderly brushing my chin.  “If it was easy, first of all you wouldn’t want to play, and second of all everyone would be you.”

I shudder, but strive to stay focused.  “When you put it like that I guess I’ll have to keep going.”

He laughs, “Gotta keep the sugar out of the poison!”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“I do,” Iris says blowing the glass dust off the cat.  “It means if you don’t show up the enemy wins and it will take the likes of me down with it.”

Floored, I turn to Lucky,  “Is that what you meant?”

He grins and grunts setting the television to rights.  “Exactly.  Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

And through the sticky film of exhausting housekeeping, Iris is, of course angelically beaming.  “See?  I know a little about a little,” she says with a wink.