adoptedwriter

I slept eight hours last night.

Eight hours!

Now I'm thinking the shoulder pain that was keeping me awake was not a statin side effect at all, but some kind of reaction to hyperextension that happened when I tried to grab something at a weird angle while I was lying down.

Anyway, it's resolving.

###

And I wrote 500 words on the opening of Chapter 7.

Five hundred words!

I'm thinking the deal with Daria is that she deliberately mistranslates testimony in a court trial, although her exact motivation and the details of that court trial are hazy at the moment.

The voice that's emerging is quite distinct from Grazia's voice. More formal and reflective. Cooler. More analytical.

So, that's a good thing, too.

###

Meanwhile, we are back at war with Eastasia.

What am I talking about?

We have always been at war with Eastasia!

It is impossible to have any sympathy for a murderous mullah who executed anywhere between 7,000 to 40,000 Iranian protesters between January 8th and January 10th of this year.

Nevertheless, I am completely opposed to American interference in what's essentially another sovereign nation's civil war, and I don't want to spend $5 for a gallon of gas.

Plus, of course, the Iran War is a classic wag-the-dog maneuver designed to distract the American public from the fact that the Department of Justice redacted all mentions of Trump's name from the Epstein files.

Disinformation aplenty is aflowin'. But my favorite factoid is that the Trump administration, despite telling Americans stranded in Dubai and Bahrain, Get out, get out, get out! Get out NOW, is refusing to provide them with any State Separtment-mediated assistance. That's my boy, The Donald!

I can't wait for the flood of influencer TikToks: Here's how to escape from Dubai! It's eZeeee! And you can do it, too!

When I mentioned to Ichabod that I was scheduled to work at Schlock every day between now and April 15, he told me, "You can't do that. That's absolutely insane," and began talking to me about self-care.

He's wrong: I absolutely can do that.

But he's also right: It is insane.

Thing is "self-care" is kind of an alien concept to me. New Age fluffle. I mean, my idea of self-care involves eating a gallon of coffee ice cream and vegging out for 12 hours straight to Season 3 of The Gilmore Girls. Which any therapist worth his/her salt would characterize as "self-destruction."

But when I woke up this morning, I absolutely did not want to go into the office. Even before it began to snow! So I called in sick.

That's self-care, right?

I was surprised to feel a twinge of bona fide guilt when I called in. Because Schlock doesn't care if I show up in their office or not. To Schlock, I am simply another ass in an office chair. I have no actual supervisor.

I make my life harder than it needs to be.

###

The work itself is not difficult.

I actually enjoy doing taxes. Doing taxes is not so very different from reading someone's tarot cards.

Yesterday, for example, I got to counsel a 75-year-old woman whose 50-year marriage had suddenly fallen apart.

"Has your husband filed yet?" I grilled her.

Her husband, still living in what was the family home, pays property taxes, mortgage interest, etc. The woman had never taken the slightest interest in the family taxes but had some vague notion they had always itemized.

"See, the thing is, if you're married filing separately, you both need to use the same type of deductions," I told her. "So if he itemizes his deductions, you'll have to as well. Except you don't have as much to itemize. So, you'll have a smaller deduction to protect you against tax liability if he files first and itemizes. Whereas if you file first, you can use the standard deduction, which for you is $17,250—"

Is that so hard to understand?

I didn't think so, but she had a hard time following my logic.

She wanted to do was to talk about what an absolute prick her husband was.

And, of course, I wanted to talk about that too! Girlfriend! He did what with his secretary? And she's how old? Does his secretary not understand that Viagra script or no Viagra script, he's essentially recruiting her to change his Depends?

Except talking about the piggish X was not what this woman was paying me to do.

###

Most of the time, though, I do absolutely nothing.

I am getting paid for it!

But sitting in that office day after day puts me in a Mood.

All I am is a drone, I think darkly. Nothing about me is vibrant or interesting. I've led a bleak life, entirely bereft of the intimacies and adventures that characterize other people's lives.

This is making it very hard for me to interact in a positive way with other people right now.

Like on the phone with real-life Daria the other night, I found myself hugely turned off.

She's Anaïs Nin! Everything she says is pretentious and self-serving. By strength of personal magnetism, she has managed to construct a world in which she is forever the consummate objet du desir; it's the one constant in her life: Everybody wants me!

She uses people! She picks them up by the wing! She tells them, You fascinate me! I want to know everything about you!

Then she drops them.

I was consumed with envy!

This is not an accurate assessment of real-life Daria, whom I don't know all that well, but who's never been anything but 100% supportive, open, and affectionate toward me. No, I was projecting my own negative mood onto Daria.

But even understanding that, it was impossible for me to shake the negativity.

Anyway, the real-life Daria biographical details are not enough to center Part II around. Her relationship with Brian turns out to be not so very different than my relationship with Brian. Closer, definitely. More physical: They slept in the same bed when they visited one another. They cuddled. He would spend hours stroking her back, which was one of the single most thrilling physical experiences she could ever remember; she dissolved in the touch of his fingers trailing down her spine.

But their explicitly sexual relationship ended after the first year or so.

Periodically, over the course of the 35-year friendship, they would try to have sex again from time to time.

But it never quite took.

So, I can't use "sex" as the Big Theme in Part II.

I'm gonna have to come up with a whole fresh subtext as well as a plot.

Sigh...

It was snowing this morning—of course, it was!—while I reviewed my heating expenses for February: $440 for heating oil and $153 to Central Hudson.

That's only half the heating bill for the house.

Fuckin' insane.

Central Hudson needs to be taken over by the State of New York. But I don't know what one can do about the heating oil. Except move to a warmer place.

###

My good deed for yesterday:

One of my clients was a very feisty 87-year old. She appeared primordial to me, like an ancient Baba Yaga, which may have been the racial disparity—she was Black, and I am white—or may have been due to the fact that she'd neglected to put in her dentures.

Anyway, this lady had a Cadillac healthcare plan through the City of New York, her former employer, but Medicare was still taking out $220 a month from her Social Security.

"You might want to look into that," I told her granddaughter. "I mean, it's possible each healthcare provider is providing a different set of services, and she uses both. But it's also possible you're looking at redundant costs and can get an extra $220 a month by getting rid of that Medicare payment."

She's been going to Schlock for 20 years, and I was the first one to point this out to her.

###

In other news, I will be interviewing real-life Daria today after I scamper home from the tax trenches. Here are the questions I've prepared:

1. Can you tell me your five most vivid memories of Mexico?

2. What did it feel like in your body the first weeks after moving from Mexico City to the U.S.—were you more numb, anxious, exhilarated, something else?

3. Is there a specific moment from that first year—at school, in the street, at home—when you realized, “I am not in Mexico anymore,” and what happened?

4. When you think back to meeting Brian in the PD’s office, what are the first three sensory details that come up—what you saw, heard, or felt in your body?

5. What did you think Brian saw in you, and how did that perception change over the years you knew him?

6. How did the relationship move between friendship, mentorship, and sexuality over time, and did those roles ever feel like they were in conflict?

7. Were there specific conversations or arguments with Brian that you feel “made” you—changed how you think about law, justice, or yourself?

8. Did you ever feel a power imbalance because of age, profession, or life experience, and if so, how did you navigate or rationalize it at the time?

9. When you look back now, what do you wish your younger self had known about him—or about you?

10. How did being with Brian interact with your romantic life outside him—did he complicate other relationships, or make them easier to understand?

11. After Brian died, what was the strangest or most unexpected way your grief showed up (a habit, a dream, a physical sensation, a decision you made)?

12. If you had to describe your emotional “role” in Brian’s life in one sentence—as he might have described it—what would that sentence be?

13. When you first realized you were sexually attracted to Brian, what surprised you most about that feeling—his age, his role, your own response, something else?

14. Can you describe your very first sexual encounter with him in terms of mood and pacing—was it slow and negotiated, impulsive, awkward, inevitable?

15. What did Brian do in bed that made you feel particularly seen or desired—not just physically, but as a person?

16. Were there things you only did sexually with Brian and never with anyone else, and what about him made those feel possible or safe?

17. Did the fact that you worked in the same universe (courts, law, defendants) bleed into your erotic life together—role‑play, gallows humor, power dynamics?

18. How did sex with him feel in your body—grounding, explosive, dissociative, comforting, like coming home, like leaving?

19. Was there ever a moment during sex or after where you suddenly felt your age difference very sharply—either in a good way or as a jolt of discomfort?

20. How did your conversations immediately after sex usually go—jokey debrief, political talk, silence, tenderness, scheduling the next time?

21. Did you ever feel like his other lovers were in the bed with you emotionally—comparing, competing, imagining his history—and how did you manage that?

22. Was there ever a specific fight or rupture around sex—jealousy, boundaries, pregnancy scares, STI scares—that you remember as a turning point?

23. When you think of his body now, what are the 2–3 details that come back first (not necessarily erotic—could be scars, smells, textures, nervous habits)?

24. Did you ever notice a difference between “grief sex,” “reassurance sex,” and “just because” sex with him—and if so, how could you tell from the inside?

25. How did your bilingual/trilingual brain show up during sex—were there certain words or dirty talk that had to be in Spanish or French, and if so, why?

26. Did you two have any long‑running sexual jokes or coded phrases—things that would sound innocuous to others but were charged for you?

27. How did you end things physically—was there a clear “last time” you slept together, and did you know it was the last time while it was happening?

28. Looking back, is there anything you regret not doing with him sexually or emotionally—something you were curious about but held back from?

29. Has your body ever surprised you with a grief reaction—arousal at an unexpected reminder of him, or the opposite, sudden numbness with someone new?

30. In your fantasy life now, does he still appear, and if so, does he show up more as a lover, a friend, a ghost, a critic, or something stranger?

31. Imagine you are trying to explain the sexual part of the relationship to a skeptical friend—what is the one argument or image you would use to say, “This wasn’t just another older guy using me; it was this”?

32. How did your relationship to Spanish change after the move—did it feel like a refuge, a secret, a source of shame, a weapon?

33. When did English start to feel like something you could think and feel in, not just translate into, and was there a particular event that marked that shift?

34. Do you experience different “selves” in Spanish, English, and French—if so, how would you describe the personality or emotional color of each language?

35. In simultaneous translation, what does it feel like inside your head—are you ahead of the speaker, chasing them, or hovering in parallel?

36. Can you describe a moment on the job when the emotional weight of what you were translating nearly broke your professional neutrality? What did you do with that feeling?

37. Have you ever made a deliberate choice to soften, sharpen, or slightly alter someone’s words while interpreting because the literal translation felt emotionally or ethically wrong?

38. What does fatigue feel like for you after a long day of simultaneous interpreting—mental fog, physical tension, emotional overload—and how do you come down from that state?

39. Do you ever carry other people’s stories and emotions home with you through their words, and if so, how do you protect or “clean” your own inner voice?

The chicken gurlZ have started laying!

###

And I am 90% certain that the constant dull ache in my shoulder is a well-known side effect of statins (and the reason why they have such a bad rap) and 10% certain that it is a mysterious cancer that appeared suddenly out of nowhere & will kill me in six months (so I better clean the Patrizia-torium and finish the novel.)

Since it does not seem to be resolving, I will call the cardiologist on Monday.

People with thyroid conditions seem to be particularly prone to statin side effects & I have Hashimoto's. Not even sure I would call the ache pain—it's more a thereness that never goes away, that I'm always conscious of, & that therefore messes with my efforts to lose consciousness (i.e. fall asleep).

###

Meanwhile, I went to a Schlock office every day last week and am on the schedule every day for the next week.

I hesitate to call this "work"—though I am being paid to go into the office. Mostly, I sit there and try to hide the fact that I'm reading Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil by pretending to do tax case studies. I display dense tracts on the monitors of the computer assigned to me about depreciation & passive income. See? I am studying! I want to be the best little tax preparer you've ever seen!

Sometimes, I answer phones. Sometimes, I make phone calls: Hey, former Schlock client! Don't you want to spend $250 on something it would take you five minutes to do for free-eee-eeee? Sometimes, I do actual tax returns, and those are always fun.

It all reminds me of that time in the first grade when I got busted by my first-grade teacher for reading Tom Sawyer under the table. "Patty! Put that book away and read your primer!" she'd scold.

This is seasonal work. Come April 15, I remind myself, there will be no further call for your services until next January. You are a farmer! Harvest those tax returns while you may!

I make myself as innocuous and invisible as I can. I even let them call me "Pat"! Who gives a shit? I wouldn't recognize most of the other people in these offices if I passed them in the street. What do I care if they recognize me?

###

If I were more gifted at compartmentalization, I'd work on the novel while I'm at the Schlock office.

But doing nothing eight hours a day is exhausting. When I get back to the casa once my shifts are done, all I want to do is throw fuel in my stomach & watch mindless television. So, I'm not writing then.

I'm still working out what I want to do with the next section of the novel, though. Initially, I thought the next section of the novel would be about sex, but ironically, neither real-life Daria nor real-life Flavia was having sex with Brian at the time he died. Of course, what I'm writing is fiction, not real-life.

Anyway, sometime this week, I will be interviewing (and recording!) real-life Daria at some length. Yes, I will be debriefing her about her relationship with Brian. But I also want to know what it felt like to come to the U.S. from Mexico City at age 11, what it feels like to be able to do simultaneous translation, like how do you keep from getting the languages all mixed up in your head?

UGH. It's snowing again. And I'm gonna have to drive in it.

###

On the bright side, I may have negotiated my way out of a problematic situation with a Remuneration client who has been bawking about paying me half up front. May have, being the operative phrase there.

But that's standard in work-for-hire arrangements, I told him, which is true enough.

Also on the bright side: I slept eight hours last night.

A few days ago, I did something to my back. It was a very weird pain, right between my shoulder blades at the very spot from which my wings would sprout if only I were an angel.

I have no idea what I actually did to produce this pain. And it has partially resolved, but also partially not—now, it's a right-sided ache just below my right scapula with some nerve involvement because I can feel it in my right arm & hand.

It's not heartstoppingly painful.

But when I lie on my right side, it's a dull, steady message from the interior. And I sleep mostly on my right side. So, the ache has been screwing with my sleep. Yesterday, I was absolutely brain-dead but managed to get through the top five items on my To Do List—becawse ya gotta do what ya gotta do. But I didn't enjoy any of it.

###

In Work In Progress news, I tried to start writing Part II but failed to make headway.

For this visit, we'd formulated an agenda, I wrote. Storm King for the Calders, Olana for the Persian arches and views of the Hudson River's tidal inlets (this year blooming with algae). Teilhard de Chardin is buried at the Culinary Institute of America—who knew?—so we were going to pay our respects to the Omega Point and afterwards dine on truffle soup and braised cuisse de canard Bourguignon at the student-staffed French restaurant. Mostly, though, we planned to fuck.

I mean, it's a good cheap laugh, and it sets the stage for chronicling Neal's erotic encounters—but it is not grounded in anything that actually happened: Real-life Daria and real-life Neal did not have a particularly workable sexual relationship.

But since I do want this part of the novel to be erotic, I spent some time last evening reading the rather horrible chick lit writer Emily Henry's rather horrible Funny Story. It was loaded with bad sex scenes! This filled me simultaneously with horror—the sex scenes are baaaaaaaaad—but also hope—because Funny Story was a bestseller, and I could toss off sex scenes like that in my sleep. On the nights I get some.