Trainwreck life: A hilarious, not, so start to the day

Here I am wondering what to wear.  I can’t travel light.  Never able to.  Plus, I imagine myself in situations, a certain energy, and each one of those has an outfit which messages.  When I see so and so, or when I see another so and so, or when I am in a certain place.

I am going to London, one of those cities that welcomes a bit of glam, and so I love to dress up.  And being a bit of an old-fashioned girlie-boy, I like to dress nicely when I fly.  At worst, the staff might treat me a bit better.  And for sure, the warm and welcoming smile of the enchantingly beautiful woman sitting next to me is testament to that.  

I don’t dress to kill; I dress to be prey.  And no boys, that doesn’t include you.  

Packed and ready to go, it is early, crack of dawn, but no worries as I am a member of the 5:00 am club…Still, I am running late.  I call the elevator to send down my suitcase.  Yes, there is an elevator in my home.  And before the door opens, the electricity goes off in my house.  Instant panic.  Quick mental survey.

Is it a fuse?  Thank goodness I already sent my hand luggage down and put it in the hall by the front door.  Oh no, I won’t be able to open the gate to get the car out.  What if it is that the neighbourhood has been cut off?  What if it is an unpaid bill.  That happened two weeks ago from the internet.  The Italian post is not always reliable, so if you miss a bill, never mind if you get the next one, it sits there like a ticking time bomb, until, wham, service cut off.

This is how to deal with dead beat bill payers, of which I imagine there are lot’s in Italy.  This was certainly my experience living in South America…it was the only way for the electric company to get the bill paid, be ready to cut you off—they had a whole team of people riding around on motorbikes ready to manually cut you off.

But, I am no angel.  I am struggling with self-care at the moment.  That includes paying my bills.  Okay, there are “good” reasons for that—namely that my wife is hell-bent on bankrupting us by choosing the most expensive path possible through our divorce—we have the process of Oligarchs, only we live straightened means, both pleading poverty.

But, mainly, it is become I am avoiding it, am “lazy”, and am having to make choices about what I pay when…because the truth is that I am up against it.  And, I am becoming really good at avoiding things, including the basics of life.  Not good.

Do you know the collection of stories by Roald Dahl, Kiss Kiss?  Most people know of Roald Dahl’s children’s books and boy did I love Danny, Champion of the World.  I saw myself in Danny and in his father, everything mine was not.  I am reminded of the words of a dear friend who was one of the leaders of a woman’s retreat I recently participated in:

“Feeling the urge to be the man that our father’s never were.” This sentiment is what has made me a submissive…and even though I am no longer a man, not just superficially, the legacy of this feeling has shaped who I am.

A powerful indictment, but so true…certainly in my life.  Yes, absolutely.  My father was not a strong man.  He was weak, self-indulgent, perhaps he really was a narcissist.  He was also kinky, a boot licker, and so I wonder if boot-licking is genetic?  I mean, I have never licked a boot, but I would, and I could see the fun in it.

Anyway, in the book Kiss Kiss, there is a story that was frighteningly close to my life this morning.  It is a story of an aging New York couple, wealthy, relationship not so great.  The wife is off for a holiday, and as she exits the house, her husband is riding the elevator, but the elevator gets stuck.  She can hear him banging away to be let out.  She closes the door behind her and a small smile plays across her lips.  Delicious.  Horrifying.  Scary.

Away for 30 days, of course he perishes.  And that is exactly what would have happened to me had my electricity been cut off just 10 seconds later.  Maybe I wouldn’t have gotten into it.  Who knows.  After all, the story in Kiss Kiss has stayed with me ever since I read it.

What did I actually do?  I went through the house to all of the electric boxes and found that no switch had been thrown.  Then I knew it was an electric cut off.  It was too early to go to the local bar and pay the bill.  But what I discovered is that I don’t even have the bill.

In fact, I don’t even know who provides our electricity.  How could that be?  Well, my wife used to take care of the bills.  And what this means is that if it doesn’t get delivered to our house, it means she gets them electronically, but this one she has neglected to pass on to me.  She is very “good” at passing on the bills from houses that she wants…but this is most probably a way of punishing me.

Sadly, all of my stocks and sauces in the deep freeze will likely go off, depending on how soon the power comes back.  And since she doesn’t respond to my messages, including about such basic things as this, it is all “talk to my lawyers”, one cannot say.

I know she reads the messages, but what is to say that she would have responded to a message from me stuck in an elevator?  That is, if I had a phone.  Except my phones were downstairs in the front hall.

No, I would have died in there.  I would have gotten stuck between floors.  The locking mechanism would have meant I couldn’t get out, though prying all those doors open without a crowbar would have been quite the challenge.  At least I would have had a suitcase to stand on to improve my leverage, or to be able to crawl out.

My only hope?  To be discovered by a friend.  She is expecting me to join her for a trip to a food festival.  That’s assuming that she would have known something was wrong if I simply wasn’t answering her.  She has incredible intuition, that is her great gift, but would she have felt that, felt enough to come to my house and break in?  That’s a lot to ask.

Work colleagues?  The very loose contact I have with them, the so little that they know about me, well, that would be a pipe dream.

Others would have noted my radio silence, including my children, who are expecting to have dinner with me in a few day’s time.  But would they have put two and two together?  How long does it take for people to realise that you are gone?  Off the grid?  Disappeared?  That something is horribly wrong?

And all of the above?  None of them would talk to each other.  So how long until rescue would have come?  Long enough to die?

Turns out it would be long enough.  I suppose that we can survive in a dark and cramped space for a week without water.  But that is already a bit iffy.

What are the lessons of this story?  Always pay your bills?  Know who your providers are?  Have a help network?  Live with your phone glued to your hand?  Watch out for divorce?  Never ride in a lift if you can’t be rescued?  Leave a crowbar in your home elevator?  

I know what I’m going to do: install a phone in the home elevator. Have I learned the right lesson?