There's a Trick To Pulling All-Nighters
Tue 2006-10-24 16:22:33 (in context)
Keep walking. You can't go home 'til dawn.
Really. If I go home, I go to sleep. There's a bed there, and cats, and I'm sitting around, and sleepy happens. Last night this was absolutely not desirable. If it had, I'd have even more to do right now [one of my freelance work-for-hire gigs, whose creeping lateness my editor is greeting with her usual gently amused tolerance upon which I must not grow to depend]. So to avoid that, last night went something like this:
8:15 PM - Laundry. At the laundromat, not at the bottom of the condo stairs. You can dry two loads for the price of one at the laundromat. Plus you can get out of the house with your laptop and get an extra 1500 words done while waiting on your clothes.
9:30 PM - Home. Folding laundry.
10:00 PM - Leaving home. Walking to IHOP, about a mile and a half. Because I have to get out of the house or I'll get nothing done. It's too full of people. People I'm very fond of, now, but people nonetheless.
4:15 AM - Leaving IHOP some 6000 words later. I have officially worn out my welcome, as is made clear by the extra-pouty smile on the face of the gal on hostess duty. Well, maybe that's just her make-up. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Maybe I've just had too much coffee and I have to have to move. I leave an extra few dollars on the table in thanks for the hours I've hogged it since paying my tab at 12:30 AM, and I move out. Sadly, the new Peet's Coffee in the 29th Street Mall doesn't open until 5:30, and it only takes me about 10 minutes to walk there. I keep walking.
4:35 AM - This is amusing. I'm sitting in the office/lobby stairwell at the Steel Yards Plaza. I had not expected it to be open. I figure, I'll sit in here where it's warm and work until Joe's Espresso opens at 6:00 AM.
5:00 AM - Some 750 or 1000 words later, a policeman shows up on what I suppose is a routine inspection of the garage and stairwell. I say, "Hi." He says, "Hi," and then, "So what are we up to, then?" I say, "Writing." He says, "What, are you a college student?" I say, "No, a freelance writer on deadline."
This gets me no love. I try again. "See, I'm pulling an all-nighter to meet a deadline, so I'm kind of wandering about town to stay awake, and I wore out my welcome at the IHOP. So now I'm just waiting for Joe's to open."
He gives me a look. "Do you not have a home to go to?"
"Oh, sure, I do, but if I walk there and back that's an hour gone I could have been writing."
"OK, where do you live?"
I tell him. And I get some serious deja vu: I'm 17 or 18, walking around my home dead-end block in Metairie at midnight under a full moon. I'm at the top of the levee looking out over Lake Pontchartrain when I hear a car. Police car, heading up the bike path. I step out of the way, but it corrects to keep me in its headlights. Finally the policeman gets out and demands to see some ID; there's a curfew for 16-year-olds and under, and he wants to confirm that I'm older than that. I don't carry my wallet when I go walking at night; if I were to get mugged, I'd rather not give the mugger my driver's license and such. I just carry my keys. So the policeman asks me when I was born, and I rattle out "April 23, 1976," as quickly-but-naturally as I can. Isn't it funny how you have to carefully word the truth to make people believe it? Suspicion is enough to turn true into false and innocence into guilt. Finally I tell him, "Look, we can go down there, to that house right there, and I'll let myself in with this key, and you can ask my Mom to vouch for me. After we wake her up. Which she won't appreciate."
The policeman politely declines. He tells me to be careful out here, a girl alone at midnight up on the levee and all, and he drives off.
So last night I find myself rattling off a description of where I live as naturally-but-quickly as I can, so as not to give the impression that I'm fumbling over, or too slickly performing, a lie. Even though I'm telling the Gods' honest truth.
But they're all just trying to do their jobs, aren't they? Enforce curfew, protect an office building, tell the homeless-looking woman to shoo if she is indeed homeless but let her stay on the warm steps if she does have a home to go to after all... is it just me, or does that seem a little backwards?
6:00 AM - Joe's opens. Joe himself is on opening duty. He doesn't appear to be happy about it. Who would? It's six in the morning. I order a hot tea and pound out another 1000 or 1500 words.
8:15 AM - Caffeine is making me jumpy again. I'm going home. 4000 words to go, but I may have a nap first.
Oddly, I don't feel like sleeping now. I'm just ready to be done with the current project. I don't have the right disposition to work on the same thing for six, eight, twelve hours at a time--it makes me heartsick to try--so why I put things off until I have to get them done all in a single 24-hour span I do not know. I'm looking forward to finishing it, emailing it in, finally getting to work on the rewrites of "Putting Down Roots," The Drowning Boy, and a brand new flash fiction piece called "Turning the Earth" (no relation, it was my hats-o-war assignment at VP, and wouldn't you like to know). But I have to stop for a few minutes. So I blog.
There ya go. A blog post.
Back to the grind now.
(By the way. Aaron's visit this past weekend? Super swell. Chez LeBoeuf-Little glows with the happiness of unaccustomed friends in the house. It's part of why I'm scrambling to finish this project in one all-nighter that appears to be dragging into a second--no time or inclination to work on it while hosting an out-of-town guest--but it was very worth it. Visit again anytime, amigo! Send me some of the pictures you took of Boulder!)