Knock & the Door Won't Be Opened to You

I have a condition called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome, and that often means I wind up sleeping during the day, and being awake at night. This schedule has its negative aspects. One of them is the fact that I'm asleep while everyone else is going about their business.

Few things can awaken the irrational beast in me faster than someone knocking on my door when I'm asleep. First, it scares me, and so that's what is known as a rude awakening. Who likes waking up scared?

Knocks on the door have always scared me, even when I'm awake. I've tried to figure out the psychological root of this, but all I can come up with is that it somehow represents a stranger, insisting on entering my space, without prior written consent. . .One would think I had been traumatized by answering a door and finding some guy in a hockey mask who tried to hack me in half. But nothing like that has ever happened to me. Unless I blocked it out. I guess I could have traumatic amnesia. But then, if I can't remember it, it couldn't have been that traumatic, I am guessing.

Anyway, for whatever reason, knocks on my door set my heart to hammering, and I always run upstairs to look out the window with a view overlooking my front porch.

I learned a long time ago that the decision to answer the door depended strongly on who it was. Since I don't have any local friends (I didn't say "no friends" I said "no LOCAL friends"--just in case you think I'm friendless and decide to come visit me. . .I won't answer the door, you know. Mmm. . ..maybe that's why I don't have any friends. I mean, no local friends).

Anyway.

Peeking out the window is a much less extreme reaction than what I used to do. I used to run to the bedroom to get my gun and have it behind my back with the safety off when I opened the door. Now I just look out the window and usually there's no need for the gun, because I can see it's someone I don't know and don't want to open the door to, anyway.

Some time ago, it occurred to me that I am under no obligation to open the door, just because someone knocked. It's like a Pavlovian response that stems from our need to follow some universally understood pattern: knock on door/open door. But after giving this some thought, I recognized a self-empowering truth: I don't have to answer.

And Experience has shown that I don't usually know who they are, anyway, and if I don't know them, they are probably some local church-goer who wishes to save my soul from its current trajectory to an eternal fiery furnace for which there is no evidence. I used to toy with these people, by answering the door and when they asked if I went to church, or if I'd accepted Jesus as my personal savior, I offered some scandalous and disrespectful retort designed to spin them into spiritual confusion. (Something like "No, I can't accept Jesus as my personal savior, because Satan is my deity of choice, and he doesn't like Jesus very much." Or I'll go to the door with a ketchup-smeared chef's knife in my hand and growl, "Can't you see that I'm in the middle of an important ritual?"

I eventually lost interest in this little game, just like cats who play with a mouse until it stops moving, and then it's no fun anymore. These preachy types were just like another mouse. Or maybe more like lemmings. Either way, they eventually just became aggravating. It wasn't worth me getting my sleep disturbed. And often, the knock interrupted some erotic dream which I was enjoying immensely and would never be able to rejoin when I climbed back in bed.

So I was finally forced to post a sign at my door, which read,

NO SOLICITORS.
IF I don't know you, don't knock.
This goes for church-people too.
Knock, and the door won't be opened to you.
A stranger is just a person I haven't SHOT yet.

I added a little graphic of a hand holding a gun.

I haven't heard a knock since. Although I did find a package that the UPS girl had quietly left for me yesterday.

She didn't knock.

I might need to order some more black candles and a sacrificial dagger.

Maybe I should add an addendum that package delivery people were exempt from a bullet.

Knock & the Door Won't Be Opened to You

Door Christians

Well here's my latest little adventure...I'm one of those people who has to have a certain amount of control over my environment to be happy. When that gets disrupted, it fucks with my Chi, as I like to say. As a songwriter, I often spend long hours working on tracking my music in my home studio. I was in the middle of recording a new song and had already started over twice, and really had it going good this time when....

...there was a knock at the door. My dog, Giz, went to barking, ('Cause it fucks with his Chi, too) and I stood up quickly, tried to lay my guitar down, ripped the headphone plug out, tripped over the guitar cord and muttered an impressive selection of profanities. I checked through the window--some dude and a younger girl. Seemed harmless enough, but hell, the recorder was still on and I HATE being interrupted!

I opened the door and said "Yes?"

Referring to a card in his hand, he says, "Are you Jud? Jud Ba-eely?"

First of all, i am female, and i don't know many females with the first name, "Jud." I wanted to say, "Do i look like a Jud to you? But instead countered with: "No, Jae Baeli. (I gave emphasis on the pronunciation of my last name, Bay-lee). "Who's asking?"

He said, "I'm blah-blah from the First Baptist Church, and--"

I could feel the steam forming in my ears. This makes me so mad. It's like door to door spamming. I kept wishing for a delete button or a block-this-person switch, or even a trap door beneath my stoop. I said, "Do you have any idea how rude it is to just drop in on people? I'm in the middle of something and you have really fouled things up."

He says, "I'm sorry. We were just wondering if you attend--"

I interrupted him again. "I was in a training session with my sex slave, and about to make an offering to Satan, so I don't think we need to continue this."

The look on his face was enough to give me some satisfaction as I closed the door in his face.

I guess this makes me sound awful, but I really hate that shit. I don't want anyone cramming their religion down my throat. If I want to go to church, I can find it--it usually has a huge steeple on the building and lots of singing inside. I'm no pagan or anything, but it's just such a rude thing to do, in my opinion. And knocks on my door have a way of scaring me. My heart rate climbs and my blood pressure soars. Not sure why. So as is the norm in these situations, I began to shake, and then I couldn't continue recording because I was so shaky. I am so mad, now.

So there's a part of my "dark side" for ya. I'm probably going to burn in hell.

Door Christians