2/17/2009 - Moonboat

Today my cat received a black [toy] ferret in the mail. Lucky bastard. 

When bored in social situations (this happens often) my mind gets floaty and does that thing they do in movies where the voices of other people become muffled and the thoughts in the main character's head are the loudest voice in the room. 

Perhaps this has never happened in the movies you've seen. Just hang with me.

Once my mind has attained floaty-ness and I have successfully tuned out my present company I attend to my first order of business: imagining the men in the room - one at a time - asleep. This isn't something sordid (i.e. imagining them sprawled naked in bed) but, rather, quite innocent. I imagine them tucked under the sheets, head lolled to one side, breathing softly and perhaps smiling ever-so-slightly. 

There's no real telling why I do this, but when I try to rationalize my new peculiar habit I figure that it stems from recent experiences with a.) my boyfriend and b.) my cat. Both have a way of terrorizing me during the day (Scott gets wily and attempts to convince me that he doesn't like ice cream, or that after-dinner fatigue is due to all my blood rushing to my stomach to aid in digestion; Moxie insists on tirelessly pursuing every "crinkly" material in the apartment and rearranging the household items when I am out) but at night when Moxie is curled at my side twitching his paws as he tracks the Giant Rattly Mouse of his dreams, when Scott is on adrift in some night-vision and singing nonsense songs in his sleep, I feel particularly content, perhaps slightly smug. I feel as if I have captured the beasts and revealed them for the sweet, sleeping children that they are; harmless, if only for a few hours.

And perhaps I envision everybody like that; ultimately harmless. And by that, perhaps, I am comforted.