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!