The Limits of Hospitable Space

I led them to my home.

Mar 04, 2025

This is a chapter from I Hear You Watching, my novel based on my experience with hearing voices and paranoia.

But you can jump in here! The “previously on” will get you up to speed.

Previously on I Hear You Watching…
During Alex’s first date with Lili, his unwanted thoughts went into overdrive. After she left his apartment, he went for a walk and was followed through the streets by unseen pursuers.

A black line drawing of Alex, the protagonist of "I Hear You Watching." He is white, short messy parted hair, glasses. He stares straight at you, unsmiling. He appears to stand in a small corner of popcorn-textured walls and ceiling.

Morning.

I get out of bed and refill my water glass, sit on the couch and drink. Smoke a couple of cigarettes.

I could still be walking. Shuffling up mountain road switchbacks warming in first light. Or watching suburban sprinklers sprout from the ground and fan drizzling beams.

They might’ve been close to giving up. If I’d continued to the end of my street, turned back onto Ventura and kept walking, they might’ve tired of the chase.

Instead I led them to my home.

My blinds are still closed.

I spend a while looking at the corners of the room, seeing how the light is different on each plane—spackle scars under the paint where there used to hang picture frames or a shelf, wood floor so old the planks roll like a sea frozen in time, popcorn ceiling that looks like a painful planet to traverse with bare feet.

These walls represent the limits of hospitable space.

It’s a fantasy I often entertain in public restrooms, that the rest of the world—the universe—is gone. The vacuum of empty space is too strong for me to pull open the door, so I’m trapped in that grimy, fluorescent-lit box.

The fantasy allows for running water and electricity despite the disappearance of everything beyond the restroom. With a working sink and flush toilet there wouldn’t be the obligatory pileup of waste and filth, and I’d have water to drink.

The toilet paper’s outermost layers would be soiled by exposure to the bathroom air, so I’d peel those away and flush them, then ration the rest, eating a square at a time. Two if I’m really hungry.

I’d only sit or stand because the floor would have layers of pee, under-shoe grime, and pubic hairs of all colors, shapes, and lengths. Eventually I’d give in and use soap, water, and paper towels to clean off a patch of floor to lie down. What a strange perspective, a public restroom from floor-level. The stall doors and toilets would look gigantic.

Sleep would be difficult in that small room, with buzzing fluorescent light cast into every corner, spread across the vinyl tile. With any luck there’d be a light switch, and I could sleep in windowless darkness save for the single blinking red star of a smoke detector. I’d settle into sleep by timing my blinks with the light to make it look like the light was either always on or always off.

I’d doze and wake later on that same greasy floor, reach and fumble for the light switch that would seem to have changed places, but when I flicked it on I’d see that everything was the same.

I saw a real ficus once, in a restroom decorated with Portuguese tile. I imagined eating the ficus leaves layered with toilet paper like sushi rolls. There was a small glass bottle on the toilet tank with bamboo sticks wicking lavender essential oil into the air. I could have endured for longer there. The tile was the same on every surface—hypnotic, infinite webs of blue-and-white tessellations; if I ignored the sink, toilet, and ficus, I’d forget which way was up.

If a bathroom has plastic plants, I could pull the plastic apart in strips and weave a mat to lay my head on. Better than touching the floor, but like any surface the plastic leaves would have a film of waste particles and deodorizing spray.

I might eventually go crazy and lick the floor just to sense the presence of other people. I’d remember people as being bitter and sour. I wonder how long it would take for the snap to happen, and after that, how long before I expired.

Lili sends me a text around noon: Feel like a quickie at my place before work tonight? ;)

My chest flutters.

Last night my whole neighborhood rejected me. Today yawns before me—hiding in the dark, hoping those guys don’t show up, smoking cigarettes on the couch until I go to work under cover of night.

Her message on my phone screen almost radiates warmth, like her hand in mine.

I type, I’m free!

The exclamation point feels desperate, but changing it to a period—I’m free.—seems nonplussed or aloof. I wish something existed between the two.

So instead I write, I’m totally up for that. The “totally” might balance out the blank-faced period at the end.

Then I decide it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, as I type, she might be watching a placeholder ellipsis bounce on her screen and wondering what the fuck is taking me so long.

That sounds great. Shall I bring wine? I can’t say “shall,” what a douchebag.

I tweak it. Sounds great. I’ll bring wine?

I send.

I wait.

She might’ve stepped away.

Near the end of another cigarette my phone buzzes.

Bring wine if you want. You’re the one working tonight.

I’ll definitely bring wine—the grocery store is a good place to do some reconnaissance.

Each person I see in the grocery store could’ve been involved. Especially the young men. The guy in the beanie with a basket of beer and Doritos. Early twenties. Round face and a tiny nose. Does he look capable of following a stranger through nighttime streets for two hours? Or the guy carrying an eggplant and a three-pack of toothpaste. Mid-thirties. Neatly parted hair, crooked goatee.

I only get these impressions out the sides of my eyes when I know they aren’t looking, blurry past the edges of my glasses.

I want to write on a card and stop each man on his way out the door and ask them to read it aloud. “You’re busted, crackhead pervert!” If I wasn’t convinced, I’d have them whisper, “Peek-a-boo…”

Instead, each time I see someone who might fit the profile I follow them long enough to hear them speak. This is only possible for the guys who are with someone, which is unfortunately rare.

The loners are the most suspicious.

I spot one guy, late twenties in a Lakers cap, bomber jacket, and basketball sneakers. He’s pale and wiry like a baby bird without feathers. Long face, vague brown mustache under a nose that droops a little between the nostrils—the kind of nose that always looks like it’s running. He pushes a cart with a family-size box of Frosted Flakes, a gallon jar of dill pickles, and a box of Cheez-Its. I follow him from the aisle where he adds a jug of whey protein powder and some chewable vitamins—for him, or does he have kids?—to dairy where he takes two cartons of whole milk, and then to produce where he collects five oranges, a watermelon, and four peaches. As he approaches the scale to weigh the peaches I cut around the pineapples and brush too close, look him almost in the eyes and say, “’Scuse me.”

My heart pounds.

He stops short, says nothing, but I feel him frown at me.

I keep walking slowly. Come on, call me a crackhead. Just say “crackhead” and maybe I’ll go away.

By the time I reach the dried fruits he’s gone.

The next question is whether anyone here is someone my pursuers had spoken to. And if so, do they recognize me? Am I seen as “the crackhead from last night,” now wringing the neck of a bottle of white wine and visiting every aisle but picking up nothing else? Staring at people?

A wave of nausea hits me in the checkout line. I sway, and the slight breeze it creates on my face helps. An old storm gathers in my mind, one I felt in elementary school every time we moved our chairs to sit in a circle—what if I threw up right now in the middle of the circle?

Standing in line we’re too close. If I curled over, I’d let fly into someone’s basket, softening the cardboard shell of that frozen pizza or dribbling into the wrinkled plastic on that loaf of bread. Soaking through that paper bag of mushrooms.

I fear the vomit might come so fast I won’t be able to direct it or stop it. The fragile bubble of the store would burst—the bubble wherein we agree that purchases belong in the baskets and the baskets aren’t helmets or slippers, we don’t climb the shelves, we don’t shout, we handle everything with care to avoid spills, we keep our clothes on, and we don’t vomit on the merchandise or other customers.

I look at an old woman in the next line.

…and definitely not into someone’s purse. Or the large pockets of their dress.

An acid burp rises on the back of my tongue and I swallow it back and grimace.

“He’s gonna throw up.”

“Please, oh god, that would be the fucking best.”

Are they in frozen food behind me? Cereal, two rows down? Is it that guy in the polo shirt? I scan the lines out the corner of my eye searching for eyes looking back at me. I look for the droopy-nosed guy but don’t see him.

“Peek-a-boo…”