Misstep

I like newbie practice nights when Aiden can't get childcare...if I stay home, we get several hours of time together. Disadvantage: we have to keep the noise down to not wake up the kid. Advantage: it's not work hours, and it's dark outside.

I wanted to add music to our scening; I've wanted to do it for quite some time, but the last time I suggested it to Aiden, he said "That's a great idea!" and then ignored it like all of my other "great ideas." Now that I'm doing my own scene design, though, it's up to me. I spent a couple of weeks sifting for new music, building playlists of old and new, sorting it into categories and giving it ratings, rearranging my playlists, and finally, using Audacity to build one of them into a smoothly transitioned single track.

I took advantage of last Thursday, or I tried. It went fine, at least from Aiden's perspective, so that's something. But I learned a lesson about insufficient planning that I won't soon forget. My playlist was a tad too short, I couldn't find half the physical objects I wanted, I started to chicken out of the scene as soon as I got home, and then I forgot several of the things I did get together once in scene. He said it was an interesting experience to be on the receiving end of something that got labeled "incorrect" when it didn't seem that way from the bottom. I was glad he had a good time, but Disappointment took a solid chomp out of my ass and I gave myself a very bad evening.

Note: making your own vampire glove by sticking thumbtacks through the fingers of a glove sounds like a good idea, but the result is that the tacks turn themselves around when applied to a victim, and insert themselves in your fingertips instead of his back.

Suffering some post-scene drop and a lot of frustration, I went to bed early with my iPod. Aiden came to find me. He sat down and asked why I was in bed, and I couldn't bring up good words, but I knew I needed a hug. He started to get up, and I sank my fingernails into his arm; my first reaction was to turn away, but I made the effort to reach out and say I needed him in the only way I could muster at that moment. He walked away anyway.

Feeling like I'd taken a punch in the stomach, I got out of bed, put on slippers, and left the house. It was a chilly fall evening. I took a walk around the park across the street and finally settled under a tree, out of view of the street. Hiding in my hoodie, I listened to my playlist and wondered where it had let me down.

The problem, really, was exactly the opposite: I had let down my creation. I'd set out to bring Aiden into my musical world, to show him my experience, to invite him to a part of me he'd never experienced, and I did it badly. His introduction to my world should've been explosive and amazing, but a series of small screwups that would have been inconsequential alone or in a different circumstance instead combined to an experience that was not exactly as I imagined, and was therefore a complete failure. The scene itself was fine when taken by itself. The scene as it served a purpose in my head, the purpose of showing my private world to Aiden, failed.

I returned to the house and went to sleep.