TINNITUS

Never had it. I was too busy listening to sounds in the ear. . . . Oh—that was it? The buzzes, the crackles, the squishing, the flooding? Starts like a soft-voiced female accompanying your own voice to start with—then when you stall for a breath, at the first sign of insecurity it takes over like a pirate, overpowering yours, tying up the cook and keel-hauling your voice, which in comparison has begun to sound like Anne of Green Gables who’s arrived late at a school picnic after all the food’s gone, though less demanding and more wicked, as if you’ve rented your sound-box out to sixteen angry comics in a locked green room at showtime.

Meanwhile—intimidated as a nude nun—you say “sorry” far too much, and sign your head over to this new voice that doesn’t hear you anymore, changes the rules of your house, starts throwing out your double-breasted jackets and favourite coloured scarves, that kind of thing, and you wait and watch till you don’t own anything anymore, and you’re fed up with cowering behind the grandmother clock so you excuse yourself and call a perfectly legal ear man, sharp as the rest of your family.