Home Alone

It pains me to admit this. But I’m a man.

In contrast, my wife, to her great credit, is a woman—an artistic, multitasking, husband-helping, spouse-supporting woman.

And it seems to me that gender might play a role in how differently Carolyn and I view and treat our time apart from each other.

When I’m away, Carolyn eats exotic foods like gnocchis, gyoza, and spicy kung pao chicken that she doesn’t cook when I’m home.

When Carolyn’s away, I “cook” only what’s stupidly easy. Much of it could pass for cat food, like tuna fish and boiled hotdogs (without buns or condiments, just the naked dogs). I also eat bags of potato chips straight from the bag. I’m determined not to starve.

Alone, Carolyn often does big, messy projects, like replacing the motor in a bathroom vent fan or repairing a hole in a house wall where a colony of bees once set up a hive or making a large stained-glass window to replace the flimsy plastic-covering “window” we had when we first moved in.

But I don’t even try to be productive or to make any home improvements. Instead, I binge watch whole days of TV (often 16-hour-long Korean series) so that I can kill time without feeling too lonely. I depend on the blaring voices from the TV to fill the void in the house … and in my soul.

Many years ago when I was in a high-stress job situation, Carolyn was gone for a month—a month!—to an artist’s colony. I fretted, jittered, and even had a meltdown that rendered me non-functional for hours. When she finally returned from her lengthy, marvelous retreat, I was in such bad shape (this is absolutely true) that a friend of ours told her, “Carolyn, you can never leave Bill alone that long again.”

You might think that’s funny, but I know of another long-married couple that when the wife left for a week’s trip, her husband was absolutely fine, and when she returned, he was dehydrated and practically catatonic. I think, “What did she expect?!”

When Carolyn’s alone, her impulse is to more strictly enforce her quiet solitude. She doesn’t answer phone calls. She meditates. She reads. She writes in a journal. She does qigong. It’s like she’s living in a Tibetan monastery.

When I’m alone, it’s like I’m twelve—on a campout. I don’t shave. I hardly bathe. I don’t do dishes. I don’t clean house. …Until the day before Carolyn comes back, that is. Being home alone feels like I’m in jail. Hard time. Solitary confinement. I’ve got to keep my head down, not speak to anyone, and eat whatever slop they plop on my plate.

When Carolyn tells me on the phone, “I miss you,” I sometimes wonder if she’s just being polite.

When I tell her I miss her, I mean, “I don’t think I’m gonna make it this time.”

At the end of her alone time, Carolyn is more centered, more self-actualized, more artistically and spiritually advanced.

At the end of my time alone, I am—alive.

Barely.

 

 

Bill is the author of Uranus is Always Funny   and the forthcoming book Funny as Hell (HO Press).