Phoenix condo life: morning-dread, the roach-and-tumbler ritual, the Moms-head dream

pivotal · Oct YDAU

• When: October YDAU (2009), Phoenix condo; "morning is the soul's night"
• What: The signature texture of adult Orin: he wakes at 0730 "soaked, fetally curled, entombed in… psychic darkness," his sweat-shadow "fanned out across his side of the bed like a deck of cards." His "special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches" — the huge Southwest sewer roaches he traps under inverted glass tumblers on the bathroom floor to asphyxiate, then double-Ziplocs into the dumpster. The recurring nightmare: Avril's disembodied head strapped face-to-face onto his own by racquet-gut. Orin has "never once darkened the door of any sort of therapy-professional," so his takes on his own dreams stay "generally pretty surface-level" (n2 p. 0983). This roach-under-the-tumbler ritual is exactly what the A.F.R. later turns against him (event 36).