Sinister: holly golightly: 'where's the cat?'

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.

i am posting again. rather soon.

hmm.

***

what happens when you find your life's work -- your real life's work, that 
is -- has been something completely futile? pointless? silly, even?

if i were the emo lindsey, i would cry about it.

if i were the writer lindsey, i would write about it.

if i were the depressed lindsey, i would cry and write about it.

and i suppose at this moment -- or at any given moment on any given day -- i 
am one or all of the above, and so i am writing. and trying not to cry, 
because then my makeup would just get screwed up anyway.

***

i think the most disturbing revelation i had tonight was that this job i've 
been plugging away at silently for a lifetime was one of which i wasn't 
really all that aware. people have mentioned things to me about it, of 
course, but i usually laugh in the most charming, twinkling little giggle i 
have in me and say i like it too much for my own good, but it surely isn't 
my entire existance. they give me a sidelong glance of doubt (and perhaps, i 
now realize, pity) and we move on in conversation to music or books or my 
latest project at the paper.

but the realization of this duty and my dedication to it has crept up on me 
in the last week, and i am appalled at myself and the course of my life. 
everything i say and think and do all boils down to one inevitable hunger, 
an addiction, really, for and to this thing i think i am supposed to cling 
to as part of my inescapable role as a woman in the universe of man.

why? why do i do it?

***

i bought a cat this week. well, to be more accurate, matt and i drove to 
milford, nebraska. to a big country house. and went around back where i 
looked at nine kittens, all of them running around my feet, mewing, 
perfectly content with the state of things in their current location. and in 
a weird sort of brave new world-ian child begetting, i stooped down and 
picked up each kitten, inspecting and petting and testing.

i think i thought one of them would run to me, and i would have an 
earth-shattering epiphany that THIS WAS TO BE MY CAT AND I ITS OWNER.

you read about that.

that didn't happen.

so i picked the one that didn't look like any of the others. she looked like 
her mum, though, and she sat in my arms, purring a bit and looking up into 
my face. i looked at the perfectly symmetrical stripes on either side of her 
grey eyes, and told matt she was the one. her ears were big, and i thought 
the better to hear music with.

the little girl at the house tried desparately to get me to take another. 
'but this one is nice!' she pleaded in her little voice. and i smiled, and 
complimented the pink basket on her bicycle, and said i thought i could take 
good care of the one i wanted. we agreed, then, that my cat was really 
lovely, and she put the baby in a box for me to take home.

so. i took sandwich to the vet shortly after showing her off at the daily 
nebraskan. the nurses at the clinic all loved my little bundle of joy. and 
one of them dropped the big bomb.

'i'm going to give you back to mom, now,' she told the squirming sandwich, 
who didn't actually mind all of the glorious attention she was receiving re: 
her cuteness.

but there it was.

mom.

i'm a mom.

before i've even completed the life's work, i am a mom, now, and have a 
mouth to feed. a body to hold when she cries. another little heart beating 
against my own when i place her on my chest, and watch her face as she rises 
and falls with the movement of my breath.

***

i told someone that i have begun the spinster lifestyle, living alone with a 
cat.

i told someone she was better than a boyfriend.

funny.

funny that she has to stay at matt's until i move in. funny that i can't 
have her with me on this night. for this cosmic acceptance of my destiny. 
for this...well.

for the night that i realized i am forever and hopelessly gone on 
everything, especially any and all members of the male race.

in what might be a subconscious last attempt to grasp love in any tangible 
form, my child is somewhere else, with other people, being loved by them and 
not by me. and loving them. not me.

just like the missing recipients of my humble work.


oh. no. oh. no.



i. lindsey baker. am addicted to boys and having them.


i have spent my life. for them.


oh god.

oh god.



xxx lou



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