Master of my domain

Here’s a special post for a special occasion. It’s my wife’s birthday, and I wanted to do something special. So, here’s the first ever RPodcast. It’s a short short story about a man, his job and a baby, with some autobiographical elements in it.

If you don’t want to listen to my reading of the piece, the entire text can be found after the jump. (But you’ll miss photos, some sound effects, and my lulling voice.)

Master of My Domain

Thump.

I pulled one of the earphones out of my ear and listened.

Knock, knock.

Somebody was knocking on the door. That wasn’t good. I held my breath and waited.

Knock, knock.

“Daaaaaaaad!”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted.

”Open the door. I gotta go!”

“Just a second, Jake, hold on.”

I was trying to unlock the door without making any sound. My four-year-old was on the other side of the door, looking for Daddy, and while there were reasons for my hiding in the bathroom, I still had a heart. He didn’t have to know I had locked the door. Actually, he shouldn’t know. He might lock himself in the bathroom. Again.

I am a writer. I am pretty good at shutting out the world when I’m working on a story, but there are certain things that can penetrate any fortress, get around any obstacle and wear down any human mind. They’re called kids.

In my bachelor years I had become accustomed to doing my writing whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted. I always had two laptops somewhere around the apartment when I was working on two things simultaneously. I’d be writing one piece on the sofa, walk over to the kitchen table to make a sandwich, and type another paragraph in the other piece I was working on. I had notebooks and pieces of scrap paper lying around everywhere.

Most days, I was still wearing my sweat pants at lunch time. I was not a morning person.

One of the reasons I had originally put off moving in together with Janet was that I loved that freedom almost as much as I loved her. That, and the fact that she refused to move in with me. She said she wouldn’t move in with me unless my sweat pants moved out.

When I finally decided to dump my pants and move into her apartment, which was admittedly much nicer and bigger than mine, we made some ground rules: I was a writer who needed to write. She wasn’t. She was a human being. I was the missing link.

She worked long hours anyway, so I had the apartment to myself most of the time.

Everything changed with Jake.

First of all, Janet was now home all the time. And so was Jake.

Jake was a morning person, it seemed. He was also an evening and a night person.

There were all the chores that come with a baby, too: changing diapers, feeding, and … well, mostly those two, but they seemed to take up a lot of time. I never really knew how some people could change a diaper so fast. For me, the first fifteen minutes were just the warm-up, working the one-boy crowd, and getting him in the mood for the show.

The taking off the socks to the tunes of “I wanna be loved by you,” the removing of the pants by counting to three and then just yanking them off really fast so Jake would giggle, the tickling of the stomach before opening the tape on the diapers. This was all just the first act of my routine.

An hour later, it was time to thank the audience.

Time flies when you’re having fun, and I was having the time of my life. But, whatever I made in fun times, I lost in money. Apparently fun times don’t equal money. I still needed to work.

And then there was the sleep deprivation. For the first two years, I was like a zombie. I would start writing a sentence, fall asleep in the middle of it, and finish it in the REM phase of my sleep.

When Jake got bigger and started sleeping better, he also learned to walk and talk, and demanded more of my time and attention. Suddenly, clapping hands together just didn’t cut it.

My effective working time shrank to three hours a day: an hour in the morning during Jake’s nap, an hour during his afternoon nap and another hour right after the afternoon nap and his snack. Actually, it was 83 minutes. Coincidentally, that’s the running time of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

About six weeks ago, I put Snow White in the DVD player, planted Jake on a chair, and gave him a carrot and an apple for snacks. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down to write. Maybe it was the coffee, but suddenly, I felt the need to dash to the bathroom.

Somebody was pinching me from the inside, so I just sat on the toilet and tried to relax.

When I woke up there an hour later, I realized I had been sitting on a pot of gold, figuratively speaking. I had just got an entire hour to myself. I felt invigorated, energized, and reborn. In a word: I was back.

That afternoon Jake and I built the tallest Lego tower ever. I felt like my old self again.

Bathroom became my sanctuary. I started to look forward to the little pauses and timeouts I got when I was sitting in there.

At first, it was just that. A timeout, a breather. Then, a week later, I realized I had pulled out my mobile phone and texted a client of mine. And replied to his reply. Twice.

So, I started to sneak into the bathroom every once in a while. After an intense hour of playing cowboys and indians with Jake, I now excuse myself to go the bathroom. He’s totally fine with it. Just the other day, I heard him tell his friends that it was okay for them to come and play because his “Dad was in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out for a long time.”

My bathroom became my oasis, a place where I could be alone and get some peace of mind, and most importantly, a place where I could work.

An office.

In the beginning, I only excused myself from a sticky situation if I was pushed by a deadline. With time, I began to spend even more time in the bathroom. I decided to hide a folding table under the tub. I had wireless Internet at home so I could be online with my other laptop – the one I now kept in the bathroom cupboard, under the sink, behind the toilet paper.

A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

Last week, I stashed some candy bars and chips behind the washing machine, and replaced the shampoo with diet Coke. Let’s just say it was a good thing I was already in the bathroom.

There had always been magazines to read, but instead of comics, I started to carry in trade magazines and journals. I had my cell phone with me – although talking on the phone was a challenge, so I did a lot of text messaging – and my personal hygiene was better than ever because I wanted to sound like a real person using the bathroom.

I washed my hands, I would let the shower run a while, then quickly wash my hair, or let the bath run and dip myself quickly into the bath before going out again, with the towel around my waist, dripping wet.

On average, the bathroom office gave me a good two more hours of mental space every day and it took me about five minutes to set up the office inside the room. Table, bing, laptop, bang, snacks, boom. Done.

It was great. I got work done, I was up to speed with my correspondence, I knew what was going on in the world, and I even had some time to take a nap, if need be.

I had it made.

I opened the door a little bit.

“Yeah, Jake, what is it?”

“I gotta go.”

“Jake, Daddy’s in here. Why don’t you go to the other bathroom, and remember to wash your hands.”

“I can’t.”

“Sure, you can, big guy. I know you can.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Why not? What’s the problem?”

“Mommy’s in there.”