Space

We are calling our new place the Gopa Cabana.

Our next housesit doesn’t start until June, so I found us this one-room schoolhouse to rent. The very charming German owners call the place a “cabana.” This (plus Barry Manilow and the Sanskrit word for “cowboy”) inspired the name.

We haven’t lived in one room together since we stayed at the Villager Lodge in Deerfield Beach back in 1996-97. A prostitute rented the room next door to us who used to shout, “I love you, Booby!” to her boyfriend.

We didn’t stay long.

Recently we’ve had the luxury of housesitting for friends with big houses, so we’ve had multiple rooms in which to avoid stepping on each other’s toes every seven or eight minutes. We value our space, man. We’re artists. We like to be left alone, and we expect the same.

Space management is now going to become a key issue, since there ain’t any.

As I write this, for example, we’re both typing away on our keyboards, in the same room. We might as well be in separate rooms, in one sense, but being actually physically separated by walls and doors and dozens of feet of intervening space sure makes intrusion more difficult.

In other words, I had better learn to mind my own business, or I’m going to drive us both nuts.

***

Speaking of space, I’ve always preferred sleeping in my own bed.

Practically the only time I remember my wife and I sleeping in the same bed was to keep from freezing to death during the ice storm (and total power outage) at Kutsher’s Kosher Country Club in Monticello, New York at the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance in 2003.

By sleeping alone, I strive to guarantee a lack of disturbance caused by bumping into another person during the night, or being bumped into. I’m a light sleeper, and I like to throw my arms and legs around when I yawn, so if I’m too anxious about bumping into somebody, I won’t be able to sleep at all. And if I get bumped, forget it.

In college, I had a friend who was a girl, (though not my “girlfriend,” much as I would have liked) whom I would occasionally sleep with in her dorm room.

There was none of the usual business that goes on when boys and girls sleep together, though. We just listened to music until we fell asleep. Except I didn’t fall asleep.

I was too excited to get much sleep, being eighteen and in bed with the object of my attractions. (note: “excitement” does not guarantee “peace,” what to speak of “happiness.”)

Now that girl is practically the only memory I have from that college, except for student loans. Ah, the glories of coeducation—so conducive to the process of learning.

Anyway, better to train people in the art of brahmacharya. So much less anxiety. So much better your chances of getting a decent night’s sleep. BTW: Good night.