Absolute Gentleman

I may have falsely made the reader believe that my days consisted of nothing but dropping the kids at school and daycare, then arriving at the studio with the intention of working every day. The truth is that I have a job — that the studio is a luxury of sorts, and I can access the studio to work any day at any time, provided that my schedule is free of my job and familial obligations. I do not babysit our children because I am the father of these children. Any time I spend with them, no matter how monotonous it is, no matter how much it feels like a sentence, I am not the babysitter.

When you have such obligations, the days march behind one another, and unless you’re close, and your eyes haven’t crossed, vision hasn’t blurred, from lack of sleep, there’s no way to read the name tag to know what day it is.

Now, was that metaphor too drawn out? My idea was to make the days like soldiers marching for some reason, and soldiers have name tags, I think, and so I made the analogy hoping that the reader would understand the connection. Looking at the sentence now, I see that length isn’t a problem. If the metaphor is clear, the sentence length shouldn’t throw the reader off too much. I’m wondering, though, if the phrase “name tag” is a problem. Can the reader successfully make the connection between the days and soldiers without this pretentious metafictional explanation?

A few days pass in this fashion, and when my phone vibrated in my pocket, I wasn’t thinking about how many days had passed since I had given her the keys. In fact, I must have forgotten about the keys completely, as I never even recognized the number on the phone as hers.

“I need you to come down here…”

“I’m busy right now…in the middle of something. What’s wrong?”

“The keys don’t work.”

She was upset, which was a little surprising. They were keys, after all, and my thoughts could have floated toward one of two ways. They showed themselves like a multiple-choice answer in front of my eyes. Is she

a) a lunatic? or

b) severely disappointed by her inability to access the studio?

I didn’t make a choice, but instead thought about how well I must have sold her on the beauty and functionality of the studio, for her to think she could call me at work for this problem. I had been difficult for me to get many people excited about anything I had to offer.

“I went at five this morning,” she said. “I felt like an idiot.”

There was embarrassment too, apparently. I hadn’t accounted for the possible humiliation, although it sounds a little heavy-handed, of standing there for what she thought was a long time, trying to get the door open. There was also the fact that she must have planned this way ahead of time — that it became something that got her excited about her life at that particular moment. Plenty of people awaken at 5 A.M., but who arrives anywhere at 5 A.M.? This studio meant something to her.

Faces. Maybe the distinguishing characteristic of each solider and, in turn, each day, is in the physiognomy. Unless you are perceptive enough to recognize that which strays from the patterns of daily life — unless you get close enough to see the wrinkles in the faces — the days will pass by in a nondescript blur.