My bedroom is a forbiddingly chilly place to be, let me tell you, and in winter it's also really cold in there. I think the house's heating is frightened off by the challenge of my room, it retreats back into the safety of the vent. I've gotten into the habit of crossing my arms while in bed, a kind of modified self-hugging, to preserve warmth. I assume a sort of S-shape, on my side, with my arms crossed, and pretend I'm the doomed protagonist in a Jack London story. Only now I've gotten self-conscious about this unusual bed posture. I don't want to project misleading body language. I lie awake in bed with my arms folded and imagine old friends, from high school say, suddenly coming into the room and thinking, There's Ronnie, fed up as usual after all these years. They'd all roll their eyes and leave. No! Come back! I'm not raging I'm just cold! That's the worst, when you feel people's disappointment that time hasn't scumbled the edges of your personality. For this reason it's never advisable to renew old acquaintances or go home for the holidays. Why should people become fuzzier versions of themselves as they get older? Anyone reported to have mellowed never sounds like an interesting person to me.

No wonder I can't sleep. Who could sleep, plagued with such idiotic thoughts? One night I tossed and turned, imagining what it must feel like to be charged by a hippo, to realize in a flash of terrible knowledge that my untimely and violent death will be a darkly comic item in every newspaper in the world, the kind of story that even mature people chuckle over. "Safari Marred by Tragedy as Man Wearing Noise-Canceling Headphones Ignores Warnings To Return to Vehicle, Is Trampled Repeatedly by Indignant Ungulate." Are hippos ungulates? Whatever, the line is funnier that way. The word ungulate is comedy gold, I recommend its use. Look here, I may or may not be characterized by a certain quality of reliable and persistent sourness but I am much more affable than a hippo, or a camel. A camel is an extremely unpleasant animal. Don't let the pleasant association with cigarettes fool you. Unlike a camel, I have never spit in public, not once. I often feel like spitting but I don't spit well, so I refrain. I have trouble producing a discrete wad, my spittle tends toward the indistinct and ropy, with a dribbly terminal aspect, a messy finish, despite my best efforts to hawk a loogy like regular folk. Therefore shame has driven my spitting into the privacy of the home environment, or the fantasy realm of imagined spitting. One time my then-boyfriend D quizzed me about my lack of spitting. This is typical of our level of discourse, we weren't exactly Nick and Nora. I replied that spit is like emotional pain; if you can't express it in an artful or tidy manner, it must be swallowed.