Inspections

The man climbed down my attic stairs.

I say “man,” but he was younger than me by at least a couple years. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a man, but you get the idea: twenty-one, twenty-two at the oldest. He came back down, and he was sweating profusely.

It was hot in my house, I’ll give him that. My A/C was off because it’d been making funny crackling noises for a few days, and he was there to figure out why. So he climbed up into my attic to check the HVAC system.

Now, my attic has a certain aesthetic. I wouldn’t say it’s creepy necessarily, but it does have a generally haunted feeling. When he came back down panting, flushed, and dripping with sweat, I didn’t know what to think. The old idiom comes to mind: “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He didn’t tell me what happened up there, just asked politely if it would be alright if he could leave for a little while and come back. He needed to go to the store. He needed to get something.

I don’t know if it was a bout of claustrophobia, or some sudden illness that hit him a little too hard too fast. Maybe it was just a hangover, or an upset stomach from a bad lunch. But I put myself in his shoes, put myself in that attic to feel what he felt, and thought, maybe he saw something.

He came back in less than half an hour and finished the job; he repaired my A/C and bolted, all with a smile on his face. But I haven’t thought about that guy in a long time—not until today when I had a my termite bond renewal inspection.

I’ve known Lacey for years—she’s the company rep who has done the annual inspection since I bought my house. One time she even did me a solid and checked out a nest under my house to make sure it wasn’t actively housing rodents: all she found was squirrel droppings and a dead baby snake (how I discovered the nest is a different story entirely). So because of that she always makes it a point to ask me about rodents, even though they’ve never been a problem.

My original appointment was a couple weeks ago, but my sleep schedule has been ridiculous lately and I totally forgot about it. I can only imagine what was going through her head: my truck is in the driveway but I’m not coming to the door and I’m not answering my phone. I can’t help but turn everything into some plot device: maybe I’m dead inside and my termite bond inspector is the one who finds me half eaten by my cats. Pretty cliche, right? Well, real life doesn’t avoid cliches, it nurtures them.

But I felt horrible wasting her time like that. So when I made a new appointment I was sure to be prepared, sleepy or not. Today I get a call at 11AM, waking me up. It’s Lacey. “Are we still doing your termite inspection today?” Yes, I say, I’ll be at the door in a sec.

So I get dressed and welcome her inside. She’s clearly annoyed with me, brushing past and immediately shining her flashlight in the crevices between different pieces of furniture, and I don’t blame her one bit. Routine questions: any bug problems? Routine small-talk: you’ve made good progress with the home projects. I apologize for missing the last appointment and she laughs, says it’s fine.

Then, as I always do when I have company, I put myself in her shoes. What does she see? What does she think? Well, I start to realize what a state my house is in: I’ve been distracted lately by both busyness and laziness, so I haven’t been very good at keeping my house in order. The recycling is backed up, so my kitchen countertops currently boast an overflow of glass alcohol bottles that have accumulated over time, although Lacey could easily assume I knocked them all back by myself, and recently, considering how I almost missed two appointments in as many weeks.

Then I think about how my lawn mower is still broken and I haven’t taken the time to fix it, so the weeds in my yard are overgrown and my bushes are terribly unkempt. If I were her I would’ve been wondering what kind of hard times Christian Mott has fallen on, which is funny because in reality things have been fantastic.

One of the greatest things I have going on, besides my adventurous schedule, is a new relationship (something I’m sure I’ll expound on eventually). Well, to give a little background, Emily left an outfit behind after changing clothes to go from one kind of event to another, so now I have a set of women’s clothes in my house. Just the one set, lying on my kitchen table by itself. There aren’t even shoes to go with it.

Which brings me to my next realization: there’s still blood on the bathroom sink.

Now, I know how this sounds—trust me, I’m the one writing about it. But I’m sitting there trying to scroll Instagram and not act super suspicious and awkward, like I’m not watching her to see if she notices the blood. Because I forgot about it. Completely. Until she went into the bathroom.

Let’s take another step back to one night last week: Emily is over and goes to the bathroom. She opens the door. “Um, Christian? Can you come here?” I get up from the couch and ask her what’s up. “Well, it looks like there are these drops of blood that keep appearing on the countertop around the sink, and I don’t know what it is. Have you noticed this?”

Talk about haunting.

Except I have noticed them, I tell her, and I think it’s easily explained. It’s something Atlas has done since I’ve had him—Atlas is one of my cats, currently about half the age of Sphynx, the other. He’s always done this weird thing where he picks at the sink plug with his claw, trying to pull it out of the drain. He succeeded once upon a time when the plug was loose, so now he thinks he can always accomplish his little goals if he just keeps trying. I don’t know why, but he’ll do it over and over until his paw bleeds. Then he steps around on the countertop, leaving little specks of blood everywhere.

But get this: I haven’t cleaned it yet, and because of water around the sink, a few of the drops have blended together to look like smears, making it appear as if I did a half-assed (and perhaps rushed) job of cleaning it up.

So there I am, thinking WAY too hard about the details of my life: I’ve told her my sleep schedule is crazy right now; my house is in a state of disarray; there’s a pair of women’s clothes in my house, as well as an inexplicable and indiscriminate amount of blood on my bathroom sink. I’ve been re-binge-watching Mindhunter on Netflix in preparation for the new season, so all of this is happening and I’m just thinking to myself, seriously, how creepy do I look right now?

Whether she saw it or not, I’ll never know. The likeliest probability is that she didn’t notice anything, because she was there to do a job. When she wrapped up, I asked her how work was going with the changeover to a new company. She said that although things were frustrating because of all the new corporate policies, there was an open office position she hoped to get. It would be a pay-cut, they told her, but she said her husband also works full-time, so it doesn’t really matter.

Without prompting she began telling me a couple wild experiences she’d had with other customers lately, including the one right before me: a woman who was going through a divorce and broke down crying on her. “Some really crazy things happen on the job.”

I couldn’t do it, I told her. I couldn’t work a job that required me to go into people’s homes. “Oh yeah,” she said, “it can get scary sometimes, honestly. You meet some real characters. Especially ones who get mad at the company and want to take it out on you, because you’re standing there in person. You’re actually in their house, and they get to yell at you.” I told her I was a writer and always overthink it when people come into my home to do work, yet I’m still curious to hear other people’s stories.

“If you sat down with some of us we could tell you stories for days. You could write a whole book about the things that happens.”

Maybe I will, I tell her.

She went off to her next appointment, and I sat down to type this out. Something about it is just really burning in my brain, but I guess that’s what I get for consuming so much horror and true crime as entertainment. I do hope she gets the job, but I’d be sad to lose her as my go-to termite chick—I don’t want just anybody coming into my home.

Some people are crazy.

Best,

CBM

p.s. if you have any ideas of what else might be causing the drops of blood, or think you know how to prevent it, I’m all ears.

Pluviophile

It’s storming as I write this.

The windows of my wood-paneled study are sprayed with trickling droplets, giving the room the cozy illusion of early winter haze. The water continuously drips from my roof in full, unsatisfied icicles. The distant trees and houses are grayed out beyond the sheets of falling water, separating me from every elsewhere.

(Elsewhere—now, there’s an idea.)

I am alone in this house of rain. Well, alone with the cats.

If you talk to me long enough I’ll eventually tell you rain is my favorite thing on the planet. Sure, there are lots of other things I enjoy too, like coffee, sleep, pretty girls, good music, smooth whiskey; but there’s just something about the falling of drops of water that speaks to me on the deepest level of my being.

Not the sink faucet, or even an awe-inspiring waterfall—none of that business. What I mean is the hose sprinkler in the yard, or the spray from a shower head. Anything, I reckon, that could form a rainbow. Drops falling. Millions of drops of water, all falling at once. I can’t tell you what that is or where it comes from, all I know is it’s a feeling I’ve never been able to accurately describe.

I used to say I would never write about rain. To me it’s the equivalent of trying to write about loss itself, whether it’s through love or death, that hollow emptiness that feels like it could never be filled with anything substantial enough to make a difference. To write about rain would ultimately lead me down a path of disappointment and heartache, because I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. It’s too much. I would fail.

But today I feel a little braver.

The feeling rain gives me is sweet like newfound love, but it’s also a deep yearning, like long lust. Sure, I can sit and watch a crackling fire with the best of them, but I don’t know too many people who would sit and watch the rain like I do. It could never rain for long enough, if you ask me.

When I was a kid that wasn’t the case. I used to have the most wretched fear of storms. I’d hear thunder and see those black clouds forming in the distance, and I’d be sick to my stomach for hours. Couldn’t tell you why. It’s not like I’d ever gone through a bad storm in my whole life, even with growing up on the Gulf Coast, a notable ditch in Hurricane Alley. The closest I’d come to experiencing destructive weather was watching big blockbuster movies like Twister.

The storms we experienced when I was young were so unimpressive my mom used to calm me down by telling me tales of storms past, which usually consisted of about two-and-a-half acres of pine trees twisted up like fifty giant Twizzlers, and Hurricane Frederick relocating her back porch to the front yard.

Nope, I’m completely storm-trauma free, but I was still scared silly at the thought of a bad one. But then, just like that, I wasn’t afraid anymore. Out of nowhere. Instead of turning my stomach to knots, my heart would swell and I’d feel deep in my gut that particular longing that came with the surging of winds and sharp cracks of thunder.

I’d found a muse.

Something in me changed, and I grew up, or I grew up and something changed. Either way, I’m glad it happened. Because I’ve managed to find peace amidst chaos and at the same time learn a valuable lesson: storms can be beautiful if you let them be.

I have the distinct pleasure of living in the rainiest city in the country, but that really only applies to the amount of rainfall per year, not the consistency of precipitation—that award goes to Seattle. But either way you want to look at it, I could always stand to see a little more rainfall.

More rain means more growth, more lush vegetation and ripe fruit. More puddles to splash in. More cups of coffee, more stories read or written by the window. Even those big, scary storms that make you feel like you won’t make it out on the other side. Even those, because even the bad ones are okay in the end. They pass just like all the others. I promise.

Oh, love, don’t ever forget that all storms pass. Your trees might be twisted. Your back porch might be in the front yard. But the storm is over now, and the birds are beginning to sing again. The air is still humid, but the sun is back out, and you’re going to be just fine.

We both will be just fine.

Best,

CBM

Trust

Trust is hard. Very hard.

Just like everything else in this world, it takes so much longer to build it than to demolish it. Destruction is quick and easy, but it doesn’t happen simply or quietly. Once complete, all the rubble has to be picked through and collected before the new foundation can be laid for any future structure.

Take an injured animal, for example. It might be skittish and cower away, or it might be hostile and snap if you get too close. It’s not because it’s standoffish or mean—it’s because it’s been hurt. Maybe hurt really bad. Hurt by something else entirely that has nothing to do with you.

So if you care about the animal and want to help, what do you do? Well, it takes a lot of time and effort. It has to be rehabilitated and loved, and it must learn to love in return. You have to sit with it for hours on end until it gets used to you. You bring it food and other treats to show it that you care. You re-culture it and socialize it to the point it begins to trust again on a grand scale, by showing it you aren’t going to hurt it in the same way it’s been hurt before.

Too many of us walk through life as demolition scenes. We are injured animals, hiding, snarling, doing our best to protect ourselves from any and all future injury. It’s reactionary. It’s survival. It’s safe, but it can also be extremely isolating and lonely.

Personally, trust has gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years. So has not trusting. Somehow, despite being opposites, both have led to proportionately equal amounts of heartache and emotional damage. I tend to overthink and project my fears onto other people, and before I know it I’m randomly convinced someone I know is lying to me.

I know I’m not the only one with this story. There’s a good chance either you identify with it yourself, or someone very close to you does—maybe even your significant other.

Not everyone has trust issues, of course, and in my experience those who don’t usually have a hard time understanding them. It’s almost like trust issues have developed a similar stigma in our society as mental health issues.

If you don’t have them you won’t understand, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be understanding.

There have been times when I’ve tried to express how difficult it is for me to trust within relationships that I’ve been been met with a cold lack of reassurance, as if having trust issues from a past girlfriend is like catching something venereal—as if getting too close will infect her or change her life in some incomprehensible way.

Maybe trust issues are, in and of themselves, a form of mental illness—or more likely, a result of one such as deep-seated anxiety. But believe me, it can be understood and handled appropriately. It’s very much possible to work together and come to a place of mutual understanding and general happiness.

If you want to help someone in your life with trust issues, be patient; attempts to listen and understand will mean more than you could ever fathom. Don’t get angry; getting angry will only increase the level of alarm and distrust. Remember it’s nothing personal; they know better than you do that it isn’t your fault, so there’s no need to make them feel worse about it than they already do. Communication is everything; if you can openly express your thoughts and feelings to them, they’ll feel that much more comfortable sharing their experience with you. Don't give them space unless they ask for it; distance makes the heart grow anxious, and if you’re just going around giving space all willy-nilly like it’s no big deal it’s going to come off the wrong way.

Trust is hard. Don’t get me wrong, ultimately it’s up to the person with the issues to work through those harder memories. They must learn to not let the past define who they are and who they become—at the end of the day that’s the only possible cure. But until then remember that every bridge has two sides, and its entire purpose relies on the strength of its core where those two sides meet in the middle.

So go ahead, meet them halfway. Have breakfast together, or see a movie, or play chess or something. Build that bridge, whatever it takes.

Best,

CBM

Busy

I’ve had a busy year.

In the last twelve months I’ve worked on six feature films. Six.

Days on set are at least twelve hours long, and the most time off I had between projects was nine days. Every job I took came with a steep learning curve I thought might break me in the grip of its g-force, followed by a thousand learning experiences when it didn’t.

I got to work with so many wonderful people, some famous, some not, and I learned how to do things I’d never imagined before. I observed and was taught by a lot of people whom I respect and admire intensely.

Good people. Gracious people. Some of the hardest working folks I’ve ever witnessed.

I got to work on movies, dammit. Something I’d only dreamt of since I can remember. Sure, the hope was vague and uneducated as a kid, but it was always there in one form or another.

Fifth Grade End-Of-The-Year Poll: What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

At first I wrote A Family Man, knowing it wasn’t an occupation but still a genuine hope. (And I thought it would impress my teacher—I was very much a Ralphie Parker.) But then, once I realized our answers would all be read out loud for our classmates to guess who said what, I got embarrassed and told Mrs. Huett I needed to, um, change my answer because I, uh, changed my mind. So I thought real good about what I wanted to do for work…

My final answer? Actor.

As the church folks say, I’ve been blessed beyond measure. About a month ago I wrapped a Spike Lee Production in Montgomery, where I lived for six weeks. Before that I worked a Scott Free Production in Fairhope.

This last year has come with almost too many challenges, all of which have taught me, helped me grow, and given me more confidence than I’ve ever known before. I feel really good about myself these days. Sincerely. I mean, last September I got to quit my day job… That’s literally what they tell you not to do. But I did, and it worked out.

I’ve gotten the chance to endure numerous situations where I thought I wouldn’t succeed, and yet succeeded. I’ve gotten to walk along the precipice of failure and keep my balance. I’ve looked Self-Doubt in the face and stared Fear in the eye, and said to those bastards, “You don’t get to win anymore.”

And I hope life pushes you in similar ways, because to me that’s the best kind of busy.

Best,

CBM