A Few Hours With Flowers

I’m on the phone with Oona.

“I was gonna bring flowers, but I didn’t know how that would play out,” I tell her. “I don’t want to make her feel bad, I mean, if I brought flowers and Alia didn’t.”

Alia and Oona have been dating for about a month. This is the first time in my life I’ve ever dated someone and they’ve been dating someone else simultaneously. It’s very strange. It doesn’t actually bother me – rather, it’s the strangeness of it that’s unsettling. It’s an acquired taste. Like beer. And I love beer.

“I think it’ll be alright,” Oona considers. “She brought me something the last time.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay. Sorry to spoil the surprise.”

“I’ll pretend to be surprised. Let’s say this conversation never happened.”

“What conversation?” I say.

I’m at the Florateria near where I live. I like the name Florateria. It’s like the cafeteria of flowers. They used to have this fabulous ornate old-style sign, but one day replaced it with something flavourless and plastic. Despite this, I still like them.

It’s so hard to pick flowers. It’s hard to know what’s good. I try to just go with my gut. Go with flowers I like. Nothing too bright. Bright flowers always make me think of fake flowers. I want something kinda subdued. Like me.

I consider the Phlox. Not because they’re that cool-looking, but because they have a cool name. I seem to recall there was a Dr. Seuss character called the Phlox. Or maybe that was a Star Trek character. But google’s not available, so I put that thought away and look at the other flowers. Fuck the Phlox.

Finally I decide on a blue rose, a calla lily, and a white spider. The white spider’s prettier than it sounds. It’s a very spiky flower, but all the spikes are soft. There’s like a bunch of them. They look like one of those cat massagers, with rubber tendrils shooting out everywhere.

The Florateria lady wraps it all up for me and tells me to keep it away from heat sources. I nod and promise to do so.

Walking homeward I think about the fact that I am a man carrying flowers, and what all that means. It’s a very loaded image. It’s one of those images that allows you to dream.

I know that whenever I see a man walking with flowers, I imagine who it’s for, or if it’s for himself. Sometimes a man needs something pretty around the house.

It draws a lot of attention though, that I don’t like. People look at pretty things, and so I take Clark st. home. Clark’s much quieter than St-Laurent.

When I get home I try to figure out what to do with the flowers in the hour or so I’ve got before I leave for the show. For a moment I consider putting them in my fridge, but I don’t know if they’d fit. I imagine taking the grilles out of my fridge to make room, but then I think that’s ridiculous. Also, I don’t know if my fridge is set to the same temperature as the one in the Florateria.

In the end, I decide to put them by a cracked-open window to keep them slightly chilled. I examine the flowers to see if it has any effect.

“Now you won’t wilt, little flowers,” I say to them. Somewhere I heard it was good to talk to flowers. It made them grow more. I don’t think it works on cut flowers, though. I imagine that once they’re cut it’s kinda too late. Talking to them then is more like comforting someone who’s just been cut off at the knees.

Ten minutes before I leave I am imagining carrying the flowers on the 55 bus north. I hate carrying flowers on the bus even more than I hate carrying them in the street. It’s not so much the idea of carrying flowers that bothers me, but rather the kind of weird attention flowers bring you. It’s like suddenly people have permission to look at you. I mean, they do anyway, but it legitimizes their looking. It feels like you’re making a spectacle of yourself. I feel like a circus act. A freakshow. Also there’s that whole sensitive-man thing. I mean, I’m a sensitive man, but somehow, it’s cheesy in some way to appear that way. Or maybe I am scared about teasing. Or maybe I’ve just lived too much of my life as a sensitive man and dealing with the stigma of that, that to appear too much as I am is just way too vulnerable-making. Somehow it’s cheesy to draw attention to the fact that you are a sensitive man. I think I have some weird complex about being seen carrying flowers.

I look around my apartment for a way to hide the flowers. I look for some cardboard. I imagine making some sort of triangular box that can keep the flowers safe and secure. In my head I picture this giant Toberlerone-shaped box that I can carry the flowers in. That would be fucking perfect. But there isn’t much time before the bus is scheduled to arrive.

Finally I get a garbage bag and wrap it around the flowers, careful not to crumple the cellophane. It still looks like flowers, but less like flowers. They could be anything. But then, objectively, I understand that people can see through its thin disguise. But all the interesting bits are hidden. One less reason for people to stare.

The bus trip is uneventful. I find a place to sit where the flowers can be safe.

I’m walking to the venue when I realize I’m walking like a caveman. I’ve got the bouquet up over my shoulder like a club. Somehow flowers brings me right up against my weird masculinity. I mean, I like flowers. They’re really cool. I like their excessive prettiness. I like getting flowers. I like drawing flowers. I like smelling flowers. I find them very charming. But somehow being seen carrying flowers fucks me up in some inarticulate way.

When I get upstairs my friend Andrea is standing with this girl. They call me over.

“What’s in the bag?” Andrea asks.

“It’s a club,” I quip.

“It looked like a big fish to me,” Andrea’s friend says.

“Fish?” I say.

“When my parents used to go out fishing, sometimes they’d bring home these big fish. Like, that big. And we’d wrap them in garbage bags because those were the only bags big enough to hold the fish.”

I think about this a second. She’s right. They don’t make freezer bags that big. I imagine this ginormous ziplock bag. I imagine a ziplock bag big enough to take a bath in.

Suddenly, by the bar, I see Oona talking to some people. She sees me too. She comes over and I give her the flowers.

“Thank you,” she says to me, and kisses me hello.

Kissing Tag

For over a decade of my life I had cross-dressing dreams.
In at least one out of every three dreams I’d be cross-dressed in some capacity.

Sometimes I’d be wearing a summer dress.
In another I’d be all decked out in heels, but incongruously, trying to climb the ladder of a construction crane. I remember another dream where I was wearing pantyhose and sliding down the slick hallways of a school.

And for years I had these dreams. And I always cross-dressed in secret, but I had to tone it down because I was a kid, and living at home, and my parents would definitely not be amused. I had to hide my stash of pretty things.

But university changed everything.
I went to art school and there, basically anything goes.

Art is awesome because if you’re an artist, it’s you job to keep an open mind, to allow for anything, to dream the insane. Compared to that, cross-dressing is rather tame.

And there were a lot of art school girls who wanted to help me shop, and liked to give me pointers. And so one Halloween I went out in this shiny black number. It was my first little black dress. I probably have like, ten, now.

In terms of shoes, I chose unwisely. Not because they weren’t sexy. But because they were.

But it was okay. The blisters were worth it. Because for the first time in my life I’d gone out cross-dressed and basically enacted what I’d been dreaming about for years. It was very strange.

And ever since then I’ve also been pretty open about it. It took a little bit of time to get comfortable with being so open about it, but now it’s not such a big deal. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a big deal, personally. But not such a big deal publicly.

That was a great night. That first time.
And it’s funny too that after that night I hardly ever dreamed about cross-dressing.

Maybe the occasional one.
But when I wake up I slip something even more comfortable on.
Or uncomfortable - depending.
But sexy.
Definitely sexy.

***

Dear lit-loving Montrealers,

I’m going to be doing a reading with some Coach House authors this coming Sunday!
Coach House is launching their fall line of books.

Here are the details.
Maybe I will see you there.

30 October –
Coach House Fall Launch: Montreal Edition

Howard Akler (The City Man)

Adrian Michael Kelly (Down Sterling Road)

Brian Joseph Davis (Portable Altamont)

Sherwin Tjia (The World is a Heartbreaker)

and special local guests

Wanda O'Connor

Larissa Andrusyshyn

Anastasia Jones

Ian Goodman

Hosted by Jon Paul Fiorentino

30 October

8.00 pm

the green room

5390 St-Laurent BlvdMontreal

Free

Plans For The Weekend

Oona’s invited me up to her parent’s cottage for their closing weekend.

“Will there be canoes?” I ask.

“There will be canoes.” she responds. “And a hot tub.”

“A hot tub!” I exclaim.

“They built it,” she explains. Her mom’s boyfriend and someone else in the family are engineers, so creating a hot tub from scratch is what they do for fun. They apparently built the canoe, too.

“What’s this about a closing weekend?” I ask.

“That’s the weekend, usually in the fall, when they like to lock up the cottage and prepare it for winter. They empty the pipes so they don’t freeze, that sort of thing.”

“Oh,” I say. This is all new information to me.

No one in my family has a cottage. My family are immigrants. Instead of a cottage, what we did on weekends was go to garage sales. I know that sounds hopelessly pathetic, but that’s what we did for fun. It was, and remains, endlessly fascinating to me to look over other people’s stuff. It’s a kind of voyeurism. It’s like watching Dr. Phil.

It was my dad’s hobby in particular – garage sales. He’d wake up early on Saturdays and get the paper. He’d drink his coffee and thread his way through the classifieds, circling with a ballpoint pen different sales that were in our general area. Then he would get the map out and figure out the best path to take, so that we could take them all in. The things he liked best were street sales – when four or five houses would get together and decide to all have garage sales together one weekend. It’s been a while since I’ve lived at home, but every time I visit I notice all the things he’d bought over the summer swath of sales.

My dad’s a funny man. Not funny in a hilarious way – rather more odd than that. I believe he’s addicted to garage sales. He used to be addicted to cigarettes, but then he had a small heart attack last year and quit smoking after forty years. Cold turkey. Now he chews Excel gum. Whenever he gets a craving he chews gum.

Anyway, my dad likes to buy little trinkets. Ridiculous little things. All the things that you might look at and go, whoever could possibly want such a thing? He likes to buy. So every weekend my dad goes out and buys lots of little trinkets, but never spends more than $15. And for that I’m tremendously grateful.

Of all the addictions a man could have, garage sales seem to be the most harmless. He never lets it get away from him. His addictions are cheap. My dad enjoys garage sales. Watching WWF wrestling. And, surprisingly, dance music. The kind you might hear at a rave. Every time I get in the car with him the channel is set to a dance station.

One time I asked him about that. The dance music.

In broken english he told me it reminded him of the Gamelan drum music he used to listen to as a kid growing up in Indonesia.

Then he turned it up.

I HEART ANNE FRANK

Owen tells me his plan.

“I’m gonna take the story of Anne Frank and hey - you ever see that movie?”

I shake my head.

“I know the story, though,” I tell him.

“Anyway,” he continues. “I’m gonna take that story of Anne Frank and rewrite it.”

“You’re gonna rewrite it?”

“Yah,” he nods. “

“As what?”

He grins, pausing for effect.

“As a horror film.”

“As a horror film?”

“It’s perfect,” Owen says, holding his hands out in front of him, framing an imaginary scene. “Think about it: Limited number of people, trapped in a place they can’t escape. It’s classic horror movie material. Also, there’s kind of that subtext of illicit adolescent love that needs to be punished.”

“Who’s the killer?” I ask.

“The dad!” Owen looks at me. “He’s the last one standing, remember? He ‘finds’ the diary, but in my version, he rips out all the bloodied pages where people start dying. One day, the body count begins, but they can’t leave, because of all the Nazis outside.”

“What’s the motive?” I ask. “I mean, why would he start killing everyone?”

“Hmm,” Owen goes. “That’s the one thing I haven’t thought about yet.”

“Maybe,” I offer. “It’s the stress of keeping it all together. Of being cooped up.”

Owen squints.

“I want something more scandalous.” Owen looks down. “Incest.” He nods, thoughtfully.

“Incest?”

“Maybe the dad’s sleeping with Anne. He corners her in the bathroom. And he finds her diary. And her growing attraction to that guy – I forget his name – is a threat that pushes him over the edge. But I am also thinking of creating a zombie threat. Like, maybe the Nazis are working on a super-soldier serum, and -”

I shake my head incredulously.

“Owen,” I touch him kindly on the arm. “I hate to be a wet blanket, but what do you think the Anne Frank people are going to say?”

“It’s a parody,” he says. “They can’t sue me.”

“But it’s really irreverent. Anne Frank is like, huge to people. It’s almost sacreligious.”

“Just like any other movie character, like Mickey Mou-“

“Owen!” I say, getting the sense that Owen just isn’t getting it. “Anne Frank was a real person. She existed. She lived. The movie was based on her actual life.”

Owen stops. His eyes are big.

“Anne Frank was real?”

I laugh.

“Anne Frank’s real.”

“Oh,” he says. “Fuck.”

He pauses.

“I’m an ignorant art brat.”

Sunday 29 May – Bök and Tjia at Toronto's Victory Cafe

Christian Bök (Eunoia, Crystallography) and Sherwin Tjia (The World is a Heartbreaker) read at the Victory Cafe. The readings will be filmed as part of the ‘Heart of a Poet’, a new television series for Book TV and Bravo!

We Named Our Streets After Saints

These days I’m constantly crying in the streets. This was an unexpected side-effect. I didn’t know that this would happen. Does it happen to everyone?

One day I’m walking along and bump into Owen. He’s got one.

“Ooo,” I coo. He hands it to me. I rotate my figner along its touchwheel.

“Like it?” he says, more of a statement than a question. “The interface is like a nipple.”

“Oh,” I say, drawing my finger around the light grey areola. “You’re right.” I press the center button and a new song starts playing. I turn the thing around and the shiny mirrored back panel reflects the afternoon sky. The next week I’m looking at the iPod website.

It’s funny. My whole life I’ve never had a portable music player. I was never one of those people. I’d never gotten a Walkman, a Discman, anything. I liked my stereo, though, but all my CDs were at home. I didn’t even know how to rip mp3’s until about a year ago. All this is to say I’d never walked in the streets insulated from its sounds – replacing them with music. It’s very strange, and very beautiful. It’s suddenly like a movie. I begin to focus on people in a way I didn’t before. Suddenly I feel that there is a meaning to the way things are, the way people move, what people look like. Everything becomes more intense. It’s a distorted reality, but not an unwelcome one. Oftentimes I’ve found myself weeping. It’s a little disturbing, actually.

The last time I’d found myself unintentionally weeping was years ago, when my sister and I would go on bike rides together. There was this very steep hill near where we lived. It was intense. It was paved, and you could go down it full-bore for a good twenty seconds before the pavement petered out into gravel and grass. It was semi-dangerous, but we loved it. We’d go down it every weekend. Beginning the descent was like the start of a roller-coaster ride. That much anticipation. And what happened was that you’d be going so fast and the wind would be buffeting your face so much that the moisture in your eyes would be pushed out the sides, and it would stream along the side of your face into your hair, sometimes trickling into your ear. We called it the Weeping Hill.

In the mornings I listen to the Arcade Fire on my way out and down St. Laurent. They are the perfect way to start a morning. They’re angsty but energetic, which is how I feel at that time of the morning. Walking among the teeming pedestrians on St. Catherine’s I like to play Azure Ray, something calm when everything’s bustling. I like people more when there’s lovely music accompanying my looking at them.

I’m thinking less these days. The music fills my head with beauty. This is good. I can have the awfulest thoughts. I repeat the same things to myself, and some of those things aren’t good. Those things sabotage me. They don’t have my best interests at heart. I keep repeating them out of habit. But those thoughts will kill me. The music is a sweet relief, but I’m always crying in the streets.

Turd Reich

Minerva is on the phone with me.

“I need your help,” she says.

“Okay, sure.”

“Come to my place. Bring your camera.”

When I get there, it’s just getting dark. The days are getting longer, but the sun has to set some time.

When I buzz her apartment, I hear a voice.

“Hey!”

I look up.

Minerva’s apartment has a balcony three stories up that looks down on the street below. Her head is this tiny thing, sticking out over the railing, bellowing at me.

“Wait there. I’ll be right down!”

I sit on the stoop and watch the sky get dark. To me, sunsets are always sad. At one point I tried to tell myself that they weren’t – that they were hopeful, because sunsets led to evening, and evening led to night, and night is when people made love. So you see – they were actually pretty happy. But sitting there, the sunset still seemed sad.

She opens the door and is clad all in black. Her backpack is black. She even has a black cap on.

“What are we gonna do? Rob a bank?” I ask, smiling.

Minerva gets this look on her face.

“Better,” she says. “But first – coffee.”

“Coffee?” I ask, mystified. “It’s almost seven.”

“Coffee,” Minerva says determinedly. “I’ll need it for tonight.”

“Everything smells like shit,” Minerva mutters.

“Yeah,” I reply. “The snow’s melting. All the dog shit is thawing.”

“That’s the reason we’re out here tonight.” Min says.

“What – the dog shit?”

“Yes.”

“What?” I frown. “What the hell does that mean?”

“You’ll see,” Minerva says mysteriously. She’s quiet tonight. Much quieter than usual. As we make our way to the Second Cup I sort of stop talking too. The only sound is of our steps crunching on the still unmelted snow.

Once Minerva’s gotten her coffee and I’ve gotten a juice I sit her down and ask her what this is all about.

“Okay,” she says, sipping. “This all started because of dog shit.”

“What dog shit?”

“You remember a month ago I stepped in dog shit?”

“Um. No. But I’ll take your word for it,” I reply.

“Anyway, I did. Just outside my apartment.”

I try to recall, but can’t. I try not to pay attention to dog shit. Or dogs, for that matter.

“A big fucking pile,” Minerva continues. “Just by the edge of the walkway. Some fucker didn’t stoop and scoop!” Min says this so loudly, this middle-aged man typing on his laptop stops and looks at us for a second.

“So a week passes, alright? And then one day, I go out there, and there’s another pile of shit!”

The man looks again.

“I mean – I couldn’t stepped in it again! The only reason I didn’t is because I was looking out for it!”

“Look,” I say, trying to calm her down. “You should put up a si-”

“So this morning I’m up on my balcony,” Min says. “I had a nightmare and I’m up early, and I go out there to see what the temperature is, and I see her.”

“Who?”

“The bitch who’s shitting in front of my building.”

“You saw her?”

“And the woman who owns her,” Min says, with an evil gleam in her eye.

“What did you do?”

“I followed her,” Min says.

Min flung on her clothes fast as she could. She tore down the stairs and emerged on the street, having forgotten her coat. It wasn’t freezing, but it was still pretty cold. The woman and her dog had left a steaming hot new pile in front of Min’s building.

“That pile of shit wasn’t the only thing that was steaming,” Min says. “I was so mad I didn’t need a coat. You shoulda seen me. I was ready to knock that woman to the ground. But I was good. I was careful. She and her dog hadn’t gone far. I followed her all the way home. She lives on Coloniale.”

Me and Minerva look at the woman’s apartment from across the street.

“See that door?” she points.

“The red one?”

“Right.”

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

“I want you to hold this,” Min says, reaching into her bag. She pulls out a roll of toilet paper.

“We’re gonna toilet paper her house?” I ask incredulously.

“Better.”

While I keep lookout Minerva pulls her jeans and underwear down. We’re in between where the streetlights are so it’s pretty dark, but anyone walking by could still see what was going on.

Minerva has her arms to either side, bracing her weight.

“Can you squat?” I ask.

“Not without getting shit on my shoes,” Minerva whispers, then laughs. “Which would kinda be counterproductive.”

It feels like a long time.

I bet it feels longer for Minerva.

“This isn’t working,” she says, grunting. “I have to squat.”

“Aren’t you going to get shit on your shoes?”

“I’ll have to be careful.”

Minerva squats and resumes.

“Uh!” she grunts. I look down at her bum but there’s nothing. It’s just a pre-grunt.

“Is anyone coming?” Min asks.

“Not that I can see,” I reply. I’m astounded by our luck.

“Okay, then,” Finally it happens. Minerva shits on the woman’s doorstep.

“Wu-” Min says, all of a sudden, because she’s losing her balance!

Quickly I grab her shoulders and keep her upright while she finishes her shit.

“Thanks,” she breathes through her teeth, before she groans in relief and the last of the turd works its way free of her ass crack.

“Oh my god,” Min says, pitching some of her weight forward, so she can balance on her toes, still squatting. “Would you wipe my ass for me?”

“Uh,” I say, pausing.

Min turns to me and grins. “Just kidding,” I can see sweat beading on her forehead in the dim street light. “Ha ha! You shoulda seen your face!”

I keep Min upright while she wipes her ass. It’s beginning to stink. You can be with the most charming people in the world but their shit will still stink.

Minerva arranges the wads of used toilet paper around the turd like garnishes.

Finally she stands.

“Ugh. My fucking knees,” Min laughs, holding onto me for support.

We’re halfway down the street when Min remembers.

“Your camera!” she says.

I laugh.

“You wanted pictures?” I ask.

So we go back. I snap a few. The flash is nervewrackingly bright.

I’m about to take “just one more,” when we hear the rattle of a door-chain being drawn open.

Minerva turns to me, eyes wide.

“Run!”

Pulling Their Wings Off

When I was in high school I wanted to be a poet. I thought I was good at it. There were these crazy things I wanted to get out and poetry seemed like a good way to do it. So I used it. I even sought out other people who could do it.

One day in the paper I see there’s this little listing for a poetry group that met once a month at this library in downtown Toronto, so I go down and check it out. I ask the librarian where it is and she tells me it’s usually downstairs, so I go down there but no one’s around. All there are are locked doors. I have a seat because I’m kind of early, and I read a book. I don’t remember what I was reading. Probably I was trying to read deep things about that time, but it was probably something dumb. Maybe it was a Star Trek novel.

I’m down there about ten minutes when I hear footsteps on the stairs. This guy, about 25, with a scruffy beard and wild hair comes down.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” I say back.

“Are you here for the poetry group?” he asks.

I nod.

“Me too,” he says, and sits down on the stairs.

We introduce ourselves and talk a bit. His name is Matt.

After a half hour though, no one else shows up, and we get worried and go upstairs.

“I’m sorry,” the librarian says, when we ask her about the group. “I can’t help you. The woman who normally runs it – she’s got a key to the room, she should be down there.”

In frustration, Matt pulls out his copy of NOW magazine, a Toronto weekly, where we’d both seen the ad for the group. He starts laughing.

“What’s going on?” I ask, confused.

“It says it’s for next Saturday.” he says.

I grin. We’d both made the same mistake.

“Wanna grab a coffee?” Matt asks me.

“Sure.” We head out and decide to have our own poetry workshop.

Matt’s poetry is odd. I don’t understand it at all, but it sounds very nice. His metaphors are crazy. He mixes and matches everything. It’s a little nuts and I can’t make many suggestions. It seemed to work according to a logic all its own. At that time, I probably thought that was very cool.

Matt had some friends who were into poetry and for a while he started throwing these little poetry parties at different friends’ houses. I met some very nice people through it, and one woman actually became a very close friend of mine. Angela. We’re still friends.

Matt became increasingly weird. He talked so poetically all the time it was hard to tell if he was just speaking lyically, or if this was actually how he navigated the world. One day he and I are in the street and he says that everyone’s got these angels clustered around them. That he could see them. They don’t have wings. They just look like people. Some people had a few people following them. Others had a lot. Some just had one.

“How many do you have?” I asked him.

“No, it doesn’t work that way,” he said. “I can’t – people can’t see their own angels. They can just see other peoples’.”

I asked Angela about Matt.

“Yeah – he’s great, but he’s strange. He’s always been that way, but now it’s gotten a lot worse. It’s actually – he’s been diagnosed. It’s schizophrenia.”

“How many does he have?” I asked Matt. I pointed across the street at this homeless guy.

Matt looked over. “He’s got two. One for each arm.”

I laughed.

“How many do I have?” I asked.

Matt looked right through me.

“You don’t have any.” he said.

I was shocked.

“What?”

“Not a one.” he said. “Sorry.”

Then he paused.

“But you can have mine.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“There,” he said. “Now you have one. And now I don’t have any.”

“Wait, wait!” I said. “I don’t want to take your only angel! You might like, need it!”

Matt grinned. “No. I’m done dealing with angels.”

It disturbed me for a long time that I didn’t have any angels. Maybe I had demons.

A little after that, I’d heard through Angela that Matt started taking these pills and he calmed down quite a bit. No more angels.

Every once in a while though, I’ll be on the street and I’ll peer at people, trying to see the angels behind them. But I don’t see anything. I just end up looking at the people, instead.

Morning Glory

It’s Friday night and I’m in Ottawa for the weekend. My friend Jill and I just got back from her friend’s party.

“Jesus, what time is it?” I ask her.

She peers at her watch.

“Um. 3:40.”

“Erg,” I say. “I have to wake up at 7:30.”

“Shitty,” Jill says.

“Yeah,” I concur. I’m in Ottawa not just for fun, but for business too. There’s this workshop I’m attending on writing a thriller. “Do you have an alarm clock?”

“Um, yeah.” Jill goes into the other room. She returns with this little portable thing. “Uh oh. Bad news,” she tells me. “The batteries are dead.”

“Can we plug it in?” I ask.

“It’s not that kind of clock,” she says. “There’s no adaptor thingy or anything. But don’t worry. I’ll wake up at 7:30.”

“Ah,” I say. “I mean, it’s not like I don’t believe you, but this is kind of something I can’t miss.” I’d already paid for the workshop, and they specifically said no late arrivals. Once the workshop got started, they locked the doors.

“Do you have anything else with batteries? Maybe we could borrow them?”

Jill starts looking around. I pick up a flashlight on a side table.

“What about this?” I ask.

“Wrong kind,” she says. “We need double A’s.”

“Nothing,” Jill says, collapsing on the couch. We checked out every consumer electronic item in her apartment but nothing worked. We even checked her vibrator.

“Wrong size batteries, but the perfect size for me,” she’d smiled, returning it to her bedside underwear drawer.

“Fuck,” I say. Then I eye the Yellow Pages. “Wait!”

I start flipping through to the TAXI’s.

“I can have a cab come and call me!” I crow.

I call the first cab company I find but they won’t send a cab to call me unless I’m going to the airport. I call several more, but the answer’s the same.

“Fucking Ottawa,” I mumble, under my breath.

“Hmm. We could stay up,” Jill suggests. By now it’s a little past 4 AM.

“Oh god,” I say. “I can’t. I’m exhausted. And if I don’t get some sleep I’ll be dead in the workshop tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Jill says. “There’s gotta be some sort of telephone wake-up call service or something.”

We flip through the Yellow Pages some more and finally find one. Victory!

“Yes, we do that. But we’ll need a credit card number,” the lady on the other end says.

“Uh,” I cover the mouthpiece. “They need a credit card number.”

Jill shakes her head. I don’t have one either.

“Um. Okay – here’s my situation,” I explain. I tell the woman on the other end how I’m in town for this workshop, and how we have no batteries for the alarm, and how we looked and looked, and how I absolutely have to wake up in time or I lose all the money I paid. I explain that I’m in from Montreal, and I ask her if there’s any way, at that time of the night, without a credit card, that I could get a one time wake-up call the next morning.

There’s a silence.

“I used to live in Montreal,” the woman says. “How is it these days?”

“Uh,” I say. “It’s nice. A little cold, but nice.”

Another silence.

“Well,” she says. “We don’t normally do this, but I’ll call you.”

I grin. Then I thank her profusely.

Then me and Jill have another beer.

In my dream I am in a bus shelter with these other people. It’s fucking freezing. I have a heavy bag full of things I know I need. Across the street is a coffee shop. I ask an old lady beside me to watch my bag while I go get a coffee. Inside the shop it’s warm. I am in the midst of putting cream in my coffee when I see the bus pulling away. I rush out but it’s gone. I see my bag of things on the bus shelter floor. That’s when-

Jill elbows me.

“It’s 7:30,” she mumbles.

I struggle to open my eyes. There’s light behind the curtains. We’d placed the phone right beside my head, so I could pick it up without disturbing Jill.

It hadn’t rung.

I turn my head to see Jill sleeping. She has a small white runnel of dried drool on her chin. I am considering getting my camera and taking her picture when the phone rings.

Running With Scissors, Walking Slowly with a Butcher Knife

My friend Minerva is much better looking than me. In all the ways that she could be. When we walk down the street it’s something that I notice. Other people notice it too. I notice them noticing. They look at her, then at me, then at her again. They always have this questioning look in their faces. As if we were a code they wanted to crack.

***

Minerva’s also a snazzier dresser than me. I kind of wear the same thing every day. In high school our science teacher, Mr. Sanders, loved Albert Einstein.

“I once heard this story about him,” Mr. Sanders says, sitting behind his desk. “It might be apocryphal but - ”

“Sir,” this girl whose name I forget interrupts, “What’s apocryphal mean?”

“It means that it may or may not be true. But anyway – so, one day Einstein’s walking around the research facility where he works and he bumps into a colleague. They get to chatting. They talk for a good long time when Einstein’s colleague asks him if he’s eaten yet – the colleague was just on his way to the cafeteria. And Einstein can’t remember! He can’t remember if he’s just coming from or going to the cafeteria when they ran into each other. Anyway – I thought that that was just the best story.”

Another time Sanders told us another story about Einstein. He told us that Einstein’s closet had 7 suits, shirts, socks, etc. lined up for the week. So he wouldn’t have to think about what to wear – so, I suppose, he could devote more of his brainpower to his obsessions and fascinations.

At the time this was the greatest idea to me. I had a lot of trouble deciding what to wear in the morning and thought it lovely to do away with the ordeal altogether. So I started buying things in multiples. On the rare occasions I went clothes shopping – if I found something I liked, I’d buy a bunch of them. For instance, I like cargo pants with large pockets. Two years ago I bought five pairs of them and I’m still wearing them. Each pair gets days off.

***

“What kind of cut do you want?” I ask.

Minerva is sitting on a chair in the middle of my living room. She’s wrapped in a black plastic garbage bag from the neck down. I have a pair of scissors in my hand. I’m about to cut her hair. I have hardwood floors so it’s okay.

“I don’t know. Something funky, but not too funky.”

“Do you want like, a punk cut?”

“Hey – so I’ve been watching America’s Top Model.”

“Who’s that?”

“It’s not a who, it’s a what. It’s a teevee show.”

“When did you get a teevee?” I ask. I am still circling her head like a buzzard, angling for a starting point.

“I’m downloading them off the internet,” she tells me.

I start laughing.

“Don’t laugh when you’re cutting my hair!”

“I haven’t even started!” I protest.

“Alright. Anyway – get this: there’s a blind model.”

I pause.

“Wow. That’s crazy.” I take a second to think about this. “She can’t, even, like, be narcissistic. If I were a model I’d spend all day looking at myself.”

“Yah. She can’t do runway or anything,” Minerva says. I have this momentary vision of a lanky girl in high heels, dark glasses and a white cane, tapping her way down to the end of the catwalk, camera flashes not affecting her at all – which, come to think of it, might be sorta cool. Stumbling off the runway into the front row’s lap however, wouldn’t be.

“She’s got these amazing eyes though,” Minerva continues. “The most beautiful fucking eyes.”

***

I take a little tentative cut at the back. It floats to the floor.

“I used to model,” Minerva says.

This surprises me. You think you know everything about someone and there’s always something new. Makes me think that I really don’t know anyone.

“Really? When?”

“For a coupla years in my teens. Till I almost got raped by a photographer.”

“Oh my god,” I say. I stop cutting. “What happened?”

“Well, I went out to a go-see down-”

“I’m sorry, a what?”

“A go-see. You know – Go. See? Like you go and they see you, and see if they want to hire you. Anyway, it was in this loft in downtown Toronto. The guy is just this absolute creep. He’s got this weird energy, and there I am, seventeen, in my little black dress, and he starts asking me these questions. Like, ‘Why do you want to be a model?’ And I’m like, ‘I dunno. Cuz I’m skinny, and I’m beautiful. And it pays okay.’ And he tries to lift my dress up cuz he wants to do the pencil test.”

“The pencil test?” I sit down on a spare chair. This is insane.

“Yeah. Like, in high schools. It was this thing among girls. Supposedly if you put a pencil underneath one of your tits, and the pencil didn’t like, clatter to the floor, you were too fat, or your breasts were too big. Or some shit like that. Anyway – after he tries this, he attacks me. I swear to god it was like the movies or something. I ran to the kitchen and I had to grab a fucking butcher knife to keep him away. So I back the hell out of there and when I get back to the agency they’re all irate. They got this angry call from him and they’re all like, ‘When he says jump you say how high!’ and that was the day I quit modelling.”

Min pauses.

“I was gonna quit anyway. The agency told me to quit riding my bike. They said my legs were too muscley. I mean – what did they want me to do? Lie in bed all day and waste away? I mean for chrissakes.”

***

I’m listening to Minerva tell her story and I am suddenly struck with this immense thirst.

“Do you want a beer?” I ask.

“Are you gonna drink while you cut my hair?”

“Oh,” I stop. I didn’t consider that Min might not want a drunken barber working on her head.

“Well. I’d like a drink. Is that going to be a problem?”

“No,” she shakes her head, grinning. “It’s gonna be good. Maybe it’ll even be better.”

I get the beer and take a pull of it.

“Hey!” Min gestures with her head. “A little over here!”

I hold the beer carefully to her lips and she swallows some. Then she belches.

“You know, I still have that butcher knife,” she says.

Big Wave Fall Down Go Boom

On Boxing Day I check my phone messages.

One from my sister.

“I guess by now you’ve heard. Don’t worry. Everyone’s okay,” she says.

What? What’s she talking about?

I try to call her back but no one’s home.

Later that day I’m hanging out with Owen. I tell him about my weird sister.

“You haven’t heard?” he asks.

“What?”

He tells me about the tsunami killing thousands of people. We go to the internet and the body count is like, 30,000 and rising.

“Holy shit,” I breathe. “All of my relatives live in Indonesia. So that’s what she was talking about.”

“Everyone’s okay?”

“Yeah – they all live on Java. Not Sumatra.”

We click on the CNN.com map and see who was hit. All these countries. Sumatra is pretty much wiped out.

A few years ago I was unemployed in Quebec. Not being able to speak french and having no inclination to learn, my options were limited. One day I’m walking flipping through the paper and they’re looking for people to do a study about drinking. Alcohol.

“Nice,” I say to myself, and tear the ad out.

But when I call to apply, they ask me if I have any alcoholics in the family.

“One,” I confess. “My uncle.”

“I’m sorry,” they tell me. They don’t want anyone who has, or is related to someone with a predisposition towards alcoholism. They need a controlled test.

Ever since I can remember I’ve heard stories about my mom’s younger brother. I don’t see him at all - being half a planet apart - but the stories are so outrageous, I’m quietly glad I never see him.

See, he’s not only a drunk. He’s a violent drunk. He likes to trash things. In Indonesia, he used to live with my aunts and my grandmother in this small house. He’d come home in the middle of the night and trash the house, yelling and screaming. He’d smash everything that could get smashed. It got so bad they left the house to him. They actually up and moved one week he was out on a bender.

He also has another addiction: gambling. And when he’s not drinking or gambling, he sets his mind on how to scam people out of their money. He was getting in trouble with the law for awhile – and managing to bribe himself out of it - until he tried to bribe the wrong cop. He spent a little time in prison and on the night he gets out, he goes on a celebration bender - drinking so much he blacks out – falls down wrong on a sidewalk curb – and ends up paralyzed from the waist down.

These days he sits at home in his wheelchair.

My aunts try to get him to go out, to get a job, but he just stays in his room.

My mom sends money overseas to my aunts to dole out to him.

When I heard this, I was incensed.

“Mom! You can’t keep sending him money. You’re enabling him.”

My mother, who has the biggest heart, isn’t up on the Alcoholics Anonymous terminology.

“We can’t just let him starve,” she says. “Don’t worry. Your aunts are holding onto it. I’ve given them strict orders.”

He has to make the trip every day to them because they won’t give him more than a day’s worth of money to eat and to buy necessities. They used to give him money by the week, but within a couple of days he’d be back, having drunk or gambled it away.

It’s weird. I am full of anger and pity for him. Anger because he implicates me, because I’m related to him. Because I’m that much closer to being him. And pity because - what a shitty life. Yeah – he did it to himself, still - it must still suck to live that.

But on Boxing Day I was wondering if, in a rare moment of sobriety and reflection, he was grateful he wasn’t in the tsunami’s path. Or if part of him wishes he were.

I Am An Anarkissed

“That’s called a Mondegreen,” Minerva says.

“What’s a Mondegreen?” I ask, puzzled.

“When you hear something wrong,” she says. “Go to Mondegreen.com. It’s from this song, something like, “’Blahblahblahblahblah and laid him on the green,’ but someone heard ‘blahblahblahblahblah and Lady Mondegreen.’”

I laugh. “That’s awesome.”

“And there’s hundreds of them!” Minerva exclaims. “You can submit your own. There’s all these songs where people just hear the wrong thing. I love it!”

“I was once at this improv workshop,” Minerva continues. “and the guy running it said, ‘Let’s all do solos now,’ but what I thought he said was ‘Let’s all go soulless now,” so I was walking around like a zombie.”

I laugh.

“I’ve got something funny to confess myself,” I say. “I always thought anarchist was spelled with K-I-S-S-E-D at the end. My older brother used to play that Sex Pistol’s Anarchist/Antichrist song and this is before I ever knew what an anarchist was. So for years I just thought it was spelled that way. Until I saw a book with that on the title. For half a second I thought that they had spelled it wrong. But even though I now know the right way to spell it, I think I like my way better.”

“It’s definitely nicer,” Minerva agrees.

“At any rate,” I say, “I think I could only be an Anarchist if it were spelled that way. A gentle anarchy. I mean, I’m not terribly physical, “I point out. “A rubber bullet would break me in two. I’m more of the belief that you can usher in change through making art and hanging out.”

“Or, by making out and hanging art,” Minerva quips.

“I think I like your way better.” I say.