A day in a life

I've been walking around Wilmette at lunch and peeking in windows..I'm fascinated with apparent emptiness of mansions and stillness of this posh suburban life mid-summer day. No one is home, it seems. To my urban brain this is surreal. How could it be ?..The silence is deafening..where's the bustle, the honking, the profanities ?..Its too quiet, too clean,  a gingerbread village. I get an urge to break a log-cabin mailbox and pee on a bed of pansies. Too perfect ! I could live here as a stray cat perhaps, in another life, but they'd exterminate me next day for sure..For now I imagine myself lost and looking for clues to guide me home. Only it isn't terrifying, rather intriguing and exciting.  Manicured lawns aside, the exteriors look very much inhabited, some sophisticated, others dated, but all cozy and inviting. It must be the architecture, no house is alike, though all are tall, light, airy, with large windows and high ceilings, resembling the descendants of Nordic worriers (or Nazi runaways..) that inhabit them..Very blond blue eyed houses. I caught the news the other day of a "Goldilocks robber" in London -- he is eating the food and taking naps in places he brakes into..I understand !!  And I wouldn't even need to steal. Just sneak in and explore..Be somebody else for an hour, sit in their chair, taste their porridge, fall asleep in their bed. I've done that, sort of..with some men I've been with, when they left for work and I stayed behind pretending to still be asleep..I would put on their shirts and briefs, use their cologne, smoke their cigarettes, etc..Oh, the skeletons I found..No man will ever admit to owning a "stay hard" potion even if there's 5 tubes of it in his sock drawer. I'm horrible. From divorce decrees to weapons to sex toys..My lover's music collection, scribbles of math equations, algorithms and random notes -- I still keep one..My second husband's math books, pages and pages of thesis that took 20 years to write.. My last husband's art on every inch of wall space, from a huge crucifix to tiny prints -- I fell in love with the art first..rubbed a tiny Buddah's belly on a way out wishing he'd fall for me. How careless.  I'd also clean each place spotless, the dishes, the floors, the works -- out of guilt for invading their privacy, I guess..A man that spent a night next to me became an extension of myself not so much through sex but through this intimate bond I'd form with his personal things, his scents, traces of character felt in how he lives, how he takes his tea, the mess left on his desk..or a lack of mess..or a lack of desk. In this one encounter with a man's home I would find out everything I'd want to know about him, and see it all fall in place over time. These casual obsessions ultimately became my own prison, I'd get too involved, too close, because nothing less would do, and you can't stop after a while, can't go back to not knowing, not being a part of someone, at least I can't..but that's a whole different story........