Holding Court in Silk and Silence
Living alone: 80% indulgence, 20% dread, 100% mine
NSFW-ish: FaceTimes on shag rugs, emotionally weaponized jasmine, hot sauce abuse & tasteful-ish nudity — as promised in the About page you definitely didn’t read. 😉
The best part of living alone isn’t the silence. It’s how I fill it. The guttural thwup of a cork being pulled from a half-drunk bottle of wine. The glassware jingling while the old hardwood floors quiver under my 1960s hostess slippers, slapping against my heels. The swish of silk. The rustle of vintage magazine pages. The hum of my 1969 IBM Selectric, which I turn on just for the smell of it.
This is my first time ever living alone. I’ve had roommates who traveled most of the month and partners I’d only see for thirty minutes after they got home at 3AM. Each gave me their own kind of silence, but it always came with limitations. Like knowing I could be interrupted at any moment, caught in a floor-length feathered robe and sunglasses, reading my own writing aloud like it was Jane Austen. Or eating three-day-old ramen out of my grandmother’s Pyrex mixing bowl on the kitchen floor. Or practicing Shibari on myself. Poorly.
The silence is different now.
It is expansive, boundless, unbroken.
It is entirely mine, and I love it.
This house is my stage, my sanctuary, and my lab for weird little experiments in mood. I hold court for no one but myself under dim lighting, in lingerie too fancy for its own good and cloaked in marabou shawls I once bought for the Oscars. I compose mental love letters to myself and occasionally remember to pay the gas bill, singing spells of Eartha Kitt and Beyoncé into the mirror.
It’s not all reverie dressed up in a vintage wardrobe. The rituals themselves are, admittedly, ridiculous. And sometimes the freedom goes feral when left to my own devices when no one’s here to stop me. Or judge me. Or even politely text me to quiet down.
The refrigerator opens and closes, opens again. The crunch of late-night snacks, the flick of cigarettes I shouldn’t be smoking, the groan of agony trying to open a frozen-solid bottle of tequila I probably don’t need. I read erotic stories on Reddit, jerk off with hot guys on FaceTime using Bluetooth-controlled toys on the shag rug in my office, and get off knowing my ex and his new girlfriend — the one I knew he’d leave me for — are right next door. I clack away on my laptop as late as I want, pop open as many La Croixs as I want, and drip all the fucking hot sauce I want on the counter because I will clean in the fucking morning when I fucking want to.
And just when I’m feeling unstoppable — clouded in my signature jasmine perfume, silk-draped, two sips past tipsy and high on my own pussy’s perfectly balanced pH — my dog starts barking at what I hope is a skunk and not a serial killer, or if I’m lucky, serial killing skunks (Elizabeth Banks did Cocaine Bear so I feel this movie has legs). I grab a wine key and creep through my house whispering “I’m armed” in a tone that could best be described as dramatically unhinged.
The silence changes.
I remember, for the first time,
I really am alone.
Without anyone eventually in the next room
or on the other side of the bed.
Without any other names on the junk mail
or that fucking gas bill I never remember
because it was in my ex-husband’s name.
With only one pot and one pan and no butcher knives.
The wood floor creaks in corners I’ve never heard. The water heater rumbles for no reason. A possum screams in my backyard, mutilated by serial killing skunks or more likely, the coyotes howling down the block.
The doors lock with a thud. One by one, the lights click off. The soft bristles of my toothbrush echo with each swish and scrub against the tiled walls of my tiny bathroom. I squirt each of the eight steps of my skincare routine onto my face before crawling into bed, shimmying around until my weighted blanket is fully tucked, and listen to the small sighs of the Pomeranian now blissfully asleep after scaring me half to death.
But I sleep well knowing
the silence that sometimes scares me
is the same silence that frees me.
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