Telephones and Old Typewriters

It's late at night, and I'm sitting on the counter in the lab, in front of the iBlot, watching him pipet. I swallow and start singing, "I heard there was a secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord, but you don't really care for music do you?"

He smiles, protests, "I do like music..."

"...it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift..."

I don't sing for people, unaccompanied, bare voice rising up and out of me with nothing else to mask it. Contrary of what it seems, I keep these parts of myself guarded. I don't sing, not without music, not like this. I don't sing or wear tanktops. I don't not do it for myself -- I do it for everyone else. I figure they don't want to hear me sing. I figure they don't want to see my upper arms (easily my least favorite part of my body). I don't like imposing, feeling so naked like that. Like this.

***

We were talking about our plans for Thanksgiving, and I was talking about my grandmother's bonfire, the one she has every year. The Friday after Thanksgiving, we put on our coats and sit in the field below my house. We bring guitars and our voices, my cousin sometimes dragging his djembe to join us. We sing all kinds of things -- old bluegrass songs, new indie music, folk music. My dad (age 47) and my cousin Phoebe (age 10) sing M.T.A., a song written when my grandparents were young.

"So your father sings?"

"And my brothers, all of my brothers sing. They sing well."

Of course, I sing too. I don't mention it, but I sing. In the car, in the shower. To myself in the cell culture hood, when everyone has left for the night and I am all alone. But I don't sing as well as my family, not quite. They have strong voices, beautiful voices. Except for a narrow range in my narrow register, my voice is thin, unsupported by a weak diaphragm that can't push out like I want it to push out. I sing, sure. But not like them.

***

We're messing around with mice, Wednesday afternoon, which I hadn't expected. I'd come to school in a button-down shirt over a tank top, which I wouldn't have done if I'd known. The gowns we wear to the animal colonies are yellow, gauzy, hot. I never wear long sleeves under them, because it's too uncomfortable.

I think about it for a moment before I unbutton the shirt, with a fuck it attitude, wearing nothing but the tank top (which has a hole in the front) and my newest bra, an accidental buy with thick straps that makes it look like an old lady bra. This is an unattractive combination. I do it anyway, because I'll die if I don't. And it feels fine, anyway.

Since I was younger, in high school, time has worked against me. Not in the getting-older-and-hating-it way, but in that it takes people away. To death, rarely, but to other places. One day, someone is in your life -- real, tangible -- and then the next, they are somewhere else. All of the people around me are trying to get out of here. Like car parts on an assembly line, we ride to the end and then drop off. Into something else.

Time is cruel in that the amount of time it takes me to get comfortable like this is too often the same amount of time it takes someone to leave. One minute, it's night time and I'm in a tank top, and singing on a counter, with a Sam Adams in my hand, my stomach and riding to my brain, flushing my cheeks along the way. Then the next, he's gone somewhere else. We don't do this anymore. There's a last time, here. There's a last time, always.

But maybe, just maybe, I only allow myself to be comfortable when I know they will be gone soon. Maybe I only want to be comfortable, naked, open when I only know I won't have to do it for too long. Maybe I crave the discomfort. Maybe I want to keep on button-down shirts, cardigans, jackets. Keep my mouth clenched shut. Maybe it's easier that way.

On who?

On me.

***

Late at night, almost 4 AM, I'm standing by the doorway, watching him pipet. It's November. The weather is changing. I know what I want to say. I know what I want to sing.

I swallow, hard.

"Cold skin and bones at this latitude, we ain't paying 'til the heat comes through..."

He turns. Smiles.

"So you take after your father, huh?"

Comfortable. That's what I am. For now.

For now.