Slouching Towards Bethlehem to be Born

Alas, his lifelong desire for the number two was undone by its fulfillment.

Whatever thing we may not lightly have,
Thereafter will we cry all day and crave.
—Chaucer


It’s coming.

But like a parent with an overly curious child, I can’t tell you how I know or why I am so steadfastly convinced of it. All I can tell you is that if you really want to get that first communion wafer you have to believe with all your heart that it really is the body of Christ. Then you have to sleepwalk to the altar and take it.

Death Mask got me thinking when she brought up an excellent point about reciprocal desire; that in her courting sleep-eating she felt she was pushing it away. And she was right. Sleep-eating chose her (as it once chose me), yet as soon as she chose it back it thought a lot about it and decided it might be making a mistake and the only way to know for sure was to spend some time apart to just gather all the feelings you know? Just take a moment to breathe and analyze and sort through all of this shit it’s going through right now.

The mistake is not the desire, but the courting. Specially preparing meals for sleep-eating and going out of one’s way to open doors for it makes sleep-eating feel coddled. Sleep-eating needs its independence.

Except when it doesn’t. Like, for instance, when it comes back to me and I start treating sleep-eating like shit.

I would like a pound of that honey-cured ham eek half a pound of provolone.

See, the thing is, like the Wife of Bath in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, sleep-eating loves he who “was of his love so dangerous to [it].” And in case you have trouble with the Middle English, maybe I’d better explain that the Wife of Bath is saying her favorite husband is the one who “had beaten [her] on every bone.” And if that’s too difficult to understand still, I recommend you go re-read Carver’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” And if you’re still lost, I guess just go write a paper on “Cathedral.”

Teacher says, every time a freshman writes a paper on "Cathedral" Carver makes this face and rolls around in his grave.

The point is, sleep-eating will come back to me because I want it. And because I won’t respect it.