In Search of Billy Vila

I like to think that I'm pretty competent at life in general.

I'm all for women's lib, job equality, labor undivided by gender and all that shit - I mean, I did spend some pretty impressionable years of my life crawling around in the dirt with an M-16 over my shoulder and I loved it. So yes, yes sure, "We Can Do It" is damn right - I'm walking proof. I've always tried my best to impress on all the young little Susettes I've mentored, taught, or coached over the years that we Susies should definitely be prepared and more than able to do for ourselves and find our own meaning out in the world.

(Better be making me a sandwich while you're telling jokes, Billy.)

But.

Here's why I know I am just completely fucked if I end up alone: cats are terrible at operating power tools, and I suck at true Billy stuff.

Ironically, this came to my attention in the kitchen one day, when my garbage disposal just... stopped working. Honestly, this was just the latest in a string of Billy things that have gone unfixed, untinkered, uninstalled, and just generally undone in my life over time. For instance, I've lived in my place for a year now and there is still a weird floodlight-y fixtureless bulb inexplicably dangling from the ceiling in my dining area, which would take all of four seconds to swap out with something actually useful that did not, say, burn one's retinas with the searing light of 10,000 suns every time one accidentally flips the wrong wall switch. All I need is a ladder and like two screws and one tiny iota of homeowner's motivation, and this eyesore is no longer scorching dark soot spots into my walls whenever an unsuspecting guest helpfully attempts to turn on a light. But you know what?

I just don't do it.

Instead, I never, ever use that lightswitch. The dining area is a Dark Space. This is my solution.

This is partly because places like Home Depot, with their annoyingly-manly warehouse ambiance and their high shelving system designed to completely emasculate anyone under 5'5" and the sheer essence-de-Billy that a high concentration of their products are bathed in (read: I do not have any idea what that item name is even supposed to mean, let alone what it is for or if it is anywhere in the general conceptual vicinity of whatever it is I came in here looking for so y'know what? I'm just gonna grab this Gatorade and get out of here), just make me want to freeze up and wait for a forklift to mow me down like a baby bunny in the aisle. I just know those orange-aproned smug bastards are watching my bewildered wandering on the closed-circuit system and laughing, hopefully accompanied by ad-lib mockumentary David Attenborough-style narration (which is exactly what I would do if I was ever hired at such a place, until I inevitably got fired for not knowing what the fucking fuck anything any customer ever asked me to direct them toward was, which dismissal would likely occur in under 39 minutes).

(Excuse me? Where are the male cans?)

Another factor in this digging-in-of-heels is that I've just sort of refused to amass the requisite tool repository, in part because I am loathe to spend money on things I do not enjoy using, but also because that set is something a husband should come with. Think of the household tools as the Billy side of the dowry.

Is this shitty, lazy, sexist living on my part? Maybe. I do have in my possession a couple hammers, a tape measure that no longer self-retracts, several tubs of spackle in various states from fully-hardened to completely petrified, and a handsaw with a blade so rusty that angry tetanus colonies are actually visible to the naked eye on its surface, but this is the extent of my home-repair kit. So sue me: this is just not an area into which I am interested in taking the solo plunge, and besides, why buy piecemeal when you're in the market for the aforementioned complete set?

Anyway, one day the sink disposal did exactly nothing when I flicked the operative switch. Naturally, I flicked it a couple more times just to be sure, then turned off the water and walked away, thinking to myself, maybe it'll start later.

I know this is a rather illogical thing to think, because of the whole "magic not existing" part about the way the physical world works (sorry about the spoiler, religious folks). But without a Billy on-hand to make said "magic" happen manually, the disposal was pretty much out of my control. I mean, I can't even put a couple screws into my benign ceiling, and this thing has moving parts that could conceivably chew off my arm Fargo-wood-chipper-scene-style? I don't think so.

(So is this "Pete" guy single, or...?)

So about a week and several hopeful-yet-disappointed switch flickings later, the water drain-time had begun to slow noticeably. Again, at first, I continued along the track of "ignore and hope for Billy-less best," but alas, it did not improve.

I did try one solution, likely mentioned by some Billy in years past, which finally dawned on me a couple days into the disposal's labor strike: I located the circuit breaker panel (proving here that I am innately good at Susie stuff, I had arranged a leaning shelf worth of books and plants and photos over that big battleship grey bitch upon move-in and had forgotten about the existence of that weird door). And then, I actually found the correct switch for the disposal (labeled by the previous homeowner as "Disposal," coincidentally), and with an immense amount of hopefulness, I had flicked that switch, too. And you know what?

Nothing fucking happened.

(Flick it again, Sam.)

So, I did what single Susies have done since time immemorial, when Billy-stuff in their lives has steadfastly refused to just fix itself: I called my dad. He suggested I look for a reset switch on the actual disposal, which I had actually briefly done on the day it crapped out and which switch I had also flicked hopefully, several days ago. But, without more promising options, I gave it another shot, thinking maybe there was perhaps another switch yet-unflicked (about as likely as finding a lamppost in the forest at the back of your wardrobe, but whatever - Let Us Pray). Unsurprisingly, though I again found the dirty Billy-ness of the ugly under-sink pipe-y space - exactly the sort of space I avoid at all costs in my house/life (thank god I don't have a garage) - I did not find a portal to Narnia or another magical switch.

But just as I was crawling back out from the cabinet doors in defeat, you know what else I found?

I found the goddamn plug of the disposal, which had somehow been dislodged from the socket.

(Brain: also apparently unplugged.)

I also found that I could really, really use someone just a little more mechanically-skilled in my life.

If he was good at running his fingers through my hair at night and making me laugh in the mornings, I might even be inclined to make him a sandwich or two.

Kryptonite, Part II

If you were to have performed an engineer's safety inspection on my relationship with Billy Basement, it would never have been opened to the public, because the underlying Susie-Billy Basement infrastructure was founded on some pretty trigger-happy math to begin with. For example:

(Why isn't this working?)

Billy Basement wasn’t a traveler and I was fresh off the boat, literally: I met him mere months after throwing down an anchor in a landlocked life after years of vagabonding adventures aboard Delirium. Billy Basement owned a standardized little place in the ‘burbs while I’d spent my entire adult life moving cross-country on a yearly (at maximum) basis. Billy Basement saw not only his parents, but his entire extended family, at least once a week - not a one of whom, out of four currently-surviving generations, had ever moved away from the metro area where Billy Basement and I resided, while my own Solo clan is a pretty globally far-flung family, even by modern mobile American standards. Billy Basement liked to stay on the couch and Netflix, while I liked... well, just about anything but that. Billy Basement held a job he was already, in his twenties, pretty sure would be the very same one he’d work until retirement, while I was still constantly ditching my latest daily grind on a whim, keeping my longevity record among the ranks of the continuously-employed at just under a year, and bouncing on to the next in my string of tabula rasa do-overs unscathed.

So yes, in the rearview, there were some serious oversights in calculation from the get-go, and they didn't exactly add up any better with time. In fact, with a little distance and a lot of armchair phychologizing by various Friends Like These, I can admit that the basic chalk-outline of why the FUCK I was with him looked something like this: stability.

Billy Basement wasn’t going anywhere – and at that moment in time, after having spent years doing 100%, exactly, unfailingly the opposite, I think I really believed on some level that I was ready to just sit down, so to speak, and join predictable mainstream audience society, too.

("My Very Long Nap: The Billy Basement Story")

To bring the metaphors into the home-life arena, Billy Basement was sensible beige aluminum siding that would responsibly tone down whatever HOA-approved, muted-primary-color paint shade a less buttoned-down neighbor might get cuh-RAY-zee with on their faux shutters. Billy Basement was microwaved Boca Burgers for dinner, because real meat was too messy to cut and cook in the kitchen. Billy Basement was a redundant land-line telephone like your grandparents still have for dialup, just in case his cellphone wasn’t charged (Billy Basement was also a cellphone charger assigned to every room, in case his battery got low during, say, a particularly long Battlestar Galactica marathon). Billy Basement was a system of timers on various house lights so robbers would think he was home at 7 pm every night, except also, in the spirit of abovementioned redundancy, Billy Basement pretty much was home at 7 pm every night, like clockwork. And Billy Basement was a teetotaler, which clearly Just No.

(Well the last thing I need is fat children!)

Billy Basement also wasn’t particularly social outside of his comfort-zone of fellow band members – a trait that I finally made him confront head-on after we’d been together for an entire year and he had weaseled out of every single invite or request for his presence at any event in my own pre-Billy-Basement social circle. It's like you have an imaginary boyfriend, commented one girlfriend jokingly, after the fifth or so time he'd ducked out on group plans at the last minute (a comment which made me cringe, in large part because, as Punchin' Judy helpfully articulated in retrospect, it suggested that my imagination, insofar as boyfriend character creation and development, was abysmally dull). It was time.

In my life, there exist a handful of Billyvillians who’ve stayed in touch since high school days. Now, plus a growing cohort of permanent significant others, we tend to gather once a year or so for a wedding, the hometown summer festival, a new-spouse or new-baby meet-n-greet, a housewarming, a group lake-camping trip - really any legit excuse to get together and catch each other up. And so, one year in, as plans began to circulate for a housewarming/hometown get-together, I downright voluntold Billy Basement to suck it up and make an appearance.

He’d gotten his way about a lot of things over the last 12 months – I’d given up a pretty choice uptown apartment and moved into suburbia with him, I’d quit my bartending night job because the men-chatting-me-up element of it made him unbearably sulky and accusatory, I'd relocated my day job as a gymnastics coach to a new and, although much more competitive, less personally appealing gym on his side of the city, I’d become damn near vegan to cater to his own semi-pushy squeamishness, I’d spent endless hours with his shitty nieces and nephews and insufferably yuppie sister who insisted on calling me by his ex's name and then saying "Oopsies!" (the second half of which was the truly intolerable offense), and mingling with his long-time pals at far too many poorly-attended band gigs, and - no really, believe it! - I’d stopped drinking entirely for the last nine or so months. All of these things were born out of Billy Basement's requests, suggestions, naggings, or guilt-ings, but they were all voluntary. Look, I even exercised enough self-restraint to not surreptitiously put the dude's overalls - yes, overalls - into the Hefty-bags of Goodwill-bound stuff we cleared out of his house when I moved in (though there was no way I could hold my tongue when he actually wore them. No way). I was trying, dammit! And now, I wanted him to have to try for once, too.

(Yes I know dear, but you can't wear them to my friend's house so turn off Caprica and go change.)

Of course, no sooner was Billy Basement's verbal agreement to come with me to Billyville that summer made, than an old ghost, heretofore off my radar for most of the last year, started pinging texts my way to see if I would be in attendance and to say he hoped so.

Seriously, after a completely incomunicado trip around the sun, now when I'm just testing out the H-bomb of a Susie-Homemaker life, this? What the fuck, Billy Builder?

(Sort of gives new meaning to "tailspin.")

***

We're at my friends' house - the same friends whose wedding I went to as Billy Builder's new date maybe half a decade prior. I've brought my own goofy cans of bullshit diet energy-drink so I can have something besides booze to cheers with, there is a fire hopping in a firepit out back and there is food spread out on the countertops and there is music and there are are various-shades-of-drunk friends everywhere, with the occasional stray kid darting from room to room. I have not yet spoken to Billy Builder, beyond a passing hello and a brief introduction from which both Billys found a polite reason to rapidly redirect their attentions. Billy Basement is doing OK at people, and I am done with my girlfriendly preliminary-integration-helper duties. I wander through a kitchen full of familiar faces and walk out to the garage, where there is an auxiliary restroom I'm hoping to snag. And out in the workbench area, by the couches-and-beer-fridge man-corner, are The Mover and Billy Builder, who both call me over. And then The Mover exits stage-left. And then Billy Builder closes the distance between us and touches my waist, then moves his hand to my arm with a sort of gentle urgency, and looks me in the eye, and takes a nervous breath, and starts to talk.

What did he expect from me? I can't really say. Here under a fluorescent shop light, face to face, I am thinking that on the other side of the door is my boyfriend - a truly boring guy, yes, but one with a good heart who is currently adrift among strangers. On the other side of the door is conversation with staccato bursts of laughter that I can hear over the hum of the shop light and the words tumbling out from Billy Builder's lips, which are nearer to mine than I ever thought they would be again. On the other side of the door are some of my closest friends, who are also some of Billy Builder's closest friends, some of whom have said point-blank to me that Billy Builder is the worst thing that I could do to myself, and some of whom have said they'd always hoped  Billy Builder and I would wind up together in the end.

And here on this side of the door, in an entirely separate dimension, my thumb has dented my drink can without my realizing it, I have stopped breathing, and I have so many words spinning at once in my head that none of them are coming out. Billy Builder has fallen silent after delivering every single "I'm sorry" and "I have to say this now" and "I miss you" and "I fucked things up" and "I think you're the only one" I ever woke up heartbroken by dreams of hearing his voice saying, and I'm a goddamn mute. His hand on my wrist is the only solid thing left in the world that's not shaking in increasingly unstable oscillations while the shop light in the rafters is buzzing to crescendo, like the sound of a spinning saw blade ripping something in half.

On the other side of the door is my life three minutes ago.

And on this side is my life now.

(All aflutter.)

***

We are rescued from our own feedback loop somehow. Maybe someone comes out the door, maybe somebody calls for a toast, maybe some kid comes running through the garage to jump on the couch with shoes on. It doesn't matter. Something snaps us apart and then I'm next to Billy Basement, I'm hugging the hostess goodbye, I'm getting in the car, I'm looking out the window at the flickers of weeds and future roadkill in the periphery of the high-beams as Billy Basement and I head for the highway. 

I find myself staring at him and he's a stranger at the wheel in the dim dashboard glow. He's absently humming a little tune to himself that I almost start to recognize, but then Billy Builder's heroin voice is filling my head like a spreading pool of something thick and warm and comfortable, drowning out everything if I just close my eyes.