Somehow I'm reminded of the "Zed's Dead" scene from Pulp Fiction.
Oh my. This thread seems to have attracted the notice of lurking primitives, arousing their salacious interests, one imagines hippywife, warpy, horse, nadin, and Pedro Picasso have actually been taking notes for their own nefarious purposes, about the private habits of franksolich.
Too bad for the primitives, though; one may look, but not touch.
I have to say however that when a guest sleeping in other people’s homes, franksolich is the model of decorum and modesty, of utmost propriety and rectitude, causing no distress or shock or embarrassment to the hosts; I sleep without clothes only at home, nowhere else.
Surely it must be a shock to the prudish primitives, who of course have no idea what goes on in fundieland.
And I also have to add that never once in my adult life have I ever surprised, embarrassed, or shocked a member of the opposite sex, an ancient personage, or a child. Not once.
Which is remarkable, considering that while I live out in the middle of nowhere, miles from other people, really, I have no privacy, no seclusion , at all. Anyone could invade my territory at will, and I’d be the last person to know of it…..and too late.
The deaf are notorious for being unaware of much that surrounds us, and because this sort of thing inevitably leads to trouble, usually the tendency is to get paranoid about everything and everybody; the shades on the windows, the triple locks on the doors, the alarms and bright flashing lights, the always-looking-over-one’s-shoulder, in dire fear of any potential peril.
Well, I can’t live that way; I refuse to be paranoid.
(And you being a cop, Tantal, sir, you might disagree.)
But one is faced with two choices, black and white; to be afraid of everything, or to be afraid of nothing. Lacking the means of discernment (hearing; the ability to use audio clues to judge if something is dangerous or harmless), there is no “middle ground.†One has to be scared of all that is, or of nothing that is.
I cannot hear a telephone ring, or a conversation on a telephone. I cannot hear a doorbell ring, I cannot hear someone knocking on the door, or rapping on a window. If some sort of barrier separates me from a person trying to get a hold of me, well, even if that person is just a few feet away from me, that person isn’t going to reach me.
And so the always-open-door policy.
This place, as with every place I’ve lived in my adult life, including in the cities of Lincoln, Omaha, Allentown, and Fairlawn (New Jersey), has always been unlocked, both the front door and the back door. Anyone, no matter their business, has always been free to simply walk inside.
The only
guaranteed privacy I’ve had in my life are those fifteen or twenty minutes, cumulative, that one might spend in the bathroom every day, behind a locked door. That’s it.
Such a life demands an almost military-like discipline where, because one never knows who might come in, and when, from about 6 a.m. until 10 p.m., one must be sharp, clean, trim, shaved, cologned, suitably attired, even the shoelaces tied; constantly presentable.
This is not a life where one can be sloppy or casual.
During the middle of the night, however, the probability of intrusion drops to near zero; at least intrusion by people one cares about.