Wondering

On behalf of a friend:

Dear Harvey, 

Clearly, I shouldn't be thinking about you. Those two weeks were fleeting and brief, not really heartbreak material. But still. I feel broken and I can't figure out why. But last weekend, I think I started to figure it out. I was writing a letter (to you if you must know) and I remembered you left me hanging. You never responded to my last letter, and because of that I can't help wondering if you're out there. Did you get my last message? And are you OK? 

I have embarrassing thoughts, but seeing as I'm being honest, I'll just dump: I wonder if you think about me,and if you regret dumping me. I also wonder, kind of hopefully, that you were just dumping me as a prëemptive strike: to hurt me before I hurt you. I think about you absently writing my name on a scrap of paper. Even accidentally. I think about you in my apartment, tripping over my cat, and sneezing furiously from your allergies. I don't know why I think these things. It was for so short, and I have dated since then, but... I can't get you out of my mind. 

But maybe I'm just being crazy.  That's what happens when you're left hanging. When you ask a question into thin air. When I know you're behind your computer and getting my e-mails. "Left hanging" isn't even the right way to say it: it's like having your spleen ripped out and not sewing up the hole. OK yes, I'm being dramatic. But if feels like that. It feels like there is a hole in my chest, and my skin is frayed and raw and burning.  

I keep returning to my last letter to you. Wondering if I said something wrong. What did I say to push you away? I wonder. 

Maybe you haven't returned my mail because you are a ghost -- dead in the ground.  I know that's morbid, and it makes me really sad to think about it.  But then I think,  we're friends.  You're the same guy who delivered my cat to me after finding it in the snow. You bought me a whole tin of the hot chocolate I like.  When I told you I thought my chin was ugly, you held it between your fingers and said, "we can fix that."  You're an asshole, but you always made me laugh. You couldn't just vanish without saying goodbye. You wouldn't do that, right? And that's why I can't help but wonder...

Yours always,
Harvey

It's not me, it's you

It's hard to be objective about music.

Sometimes, to obtain a more personal perspective on an album, I like to pretend that I dated the artist in high school and that it ended really, really badly. Like you-continue-to-fuck-her-on-the-sly-for-five-months-after-and-her-parents-catch-you-mid-throes-and-then-her-sobbing-bitterly-and-you-trudge-to-your-car-the-cold-cold-night-and-ask-yourself-aloud-what-the-fuck badly. Then she e-mails you three times a day for a year, trying to get back together.  She calls you in the middle of the night and all you hear is her breathing and sometimes her soft crying.  And you swear that it's her driving by the coffee shop where you work, trying catch a glimpse of your face through the storefront glass.

And then one night, you've had it.  Fueled by vexation, you scribble down every hateful thing you can think of saying to her, and, fueled by white Russians, you seal it with a stamp and plop it in the mailbox at four in the morning.

The next day, your throbbing head considers that four double-sided pages might have been overkill.  But it is done.  The e-mails stop.  The phone calls do too.  She is finally gone.

And the next time you see her is years later, smiling on television.  She has a record deal, a music video, an entourage, fame, money, and most striking of all, a life without you.  The girl that once made your phone buzz all night with text messages, now glares at you smugly from the cover of Rolling Stone.

Armed with this backstory, I popped in Lily Allen's It's Not Me, It's You.  ('Cause really, I wouldn't be able to digest it otherwise.)

Like her debut album, this one is equal helpings of upbeat pop and West London snark.  Everyone's at It is a cynical dance-anthem about drug use that gets the album off to a good start.  The Fear is a standout track; self-aware lyrics and crisp production. The thickly-produced album stays true to Lily's style of hep blog-quality slander. I might consider being offended by Fuck You, but I'm familiar with Lily's sense of hyperbole.

But Who'd Have Known takes me back.  I remember that driveway on a Winter's night, watching my breath float over the dashboard, waiting for the car to warm up.  You stood at the bedroom window and you were crying.  When you put your hand on the window, my eyes darted down  to the empty passenger seat.  The engine was cold; I couldn't wait any more.  My gloveless hands gripped the steering wheel and the car crunched soberly away in the thick snow.

Fag Hag is an embarrassing track.  What the fuck, Lily.

As a whole it's not as impressive as her previous outing, but what sophomore effort ever is?  The songs are a bit more self-conscious and introspective, but I would have hoped that three years later, they would have matured accordingly.  I mean, you still haven't found someone who can fuck you properly?  Who gives a shit?

On my "As if you were my ex-girlfriend music ranking system" I'd give this a Wistful, i.e., decent without pushing me into full-blown regret.  I'll can listen to this voluntarily, but I won't be jerking off despondently to the liner notes.

Scale:

• Shitty (just like our relationship)
• Not bad (but we're not getting back together)
• Three stars (meh)
• Wistful (we had some good times)
• Dammit (I made a terrible mistake)

What's your favourite brand of underwear?

The only thing worse than insipid questions asked at parties are the appeals to get you to answer them. Don't giggle and tell me that you and your bobble-headed friend are doing an "impromptu survey," unless you want to be on the receiving end of a lifetime of enmity. Please also don't preface your flawed statistical endeavour by saying you're doing "research" or a "scientific investigation." I already hate you and your amateur data collection. Appealing to the spirit of scientific progress won't help.

Nor is adding the senseless condition: "what if you had to choose?" This often follows the Would You Rather (WYR) family of Fun Questions to ask at mixers and other social gatherings:

Bib: Would you rather have sex with your dog, or murder one of your parents?
Bub: Both seem pretty abhorrent to me. I think I'll pass on both.
Bib: No, no: what if you had to choose?

What the fuck? Now look, I understand the intricacies of these dilemmas, and I'm not oblivious to the entertainment value in dissecting them. (An aside: a girl in our circle once revealed that she would sooner fornicate with a horse than with her first cousin -- in marked contradistinction to the other respondents. I immediately dubbed her Horses Over Cousins (H.O.C.) and she became a pariah overnight.)

What I take issue with is :

• the kind-of-insulting notion that I might actually someday, somehow, be forced to confront such an asinine issue, and
• the use of imperative-language addenda as a strategy to encourage a response to a question someone doesn't want to/can't be bothered to answer, and
• the fact that I am forced into a bizarre Kubrickian thought experiment to suit the content of the inquiry.

(I suppose I don't really have to bother with this last bit. But I do.)

It was a simpler question, and not a WYR, that prompted one such thought experiment last weekend. It went like this:

"So?"
"I don't actually have a preference."
"Sure you do. Everyone does."
"I don't. In fact, I really don't give a rusty fuck."
"C'mon. What if you had to choose?"

Fuck me. I picture myself... as a secret agent perhaps. Not James Bond, though. No, this mission won't be so easy. Instead of a tux, I'm almost naked -- in ripped pants and bare feet -- crouched on the floor of a Turkish prison cell. My wrists and ankles are bound tight with thick prickly rope and I'm soaking wet. The guards douse me with a bucket of water almost every hour. I haven't been dry since the moment I got here, three days ago. At least I think it's been three days. It's hard to tell. There aren't any windows, only a few bare bulbs dangling dimly on the other side of the bars. My stomach growls, but I've already eaten the parts of the bread not black with mold.

I wake up to the rapping of a nightstick against the cold bars of my cell. The mustachioed guard yells my name, and some other words I can't understand. I raise my eyes slowly to meet his. He is gently laying boxer shorts by Tommy Hilfiger on the stone floor on the other side of the bars. Another guard walks up behind him, a bouquet of Jockey briefs trapped in his thick muscled fist. I watch the guards in a daze. I am covered in sweat and my ribs ache from the nightly beatings. I ponder the plastic capsule tucked in the recesses of my anus.

"Fine, Fruit of the Loom." I took a long sip of my drink.

The Turkish prison was wiped away, and my thoughts inevitably filled with stock images of grown men in fruit costumes, cavorting without shame. And just as automatically, my memories floated back to the discount stores of my youth, to bins overflowing with boxers and briefs and what-have-you. And for some reason [drugs --Ed.] I amused myself with the thought of a beast slowly arising from one such bargain bin of underthings: a monster of unmentionables. Standing in the bowels of Biway, me and the other customers feel a low rumbling under our feet. The pile of undies ascends, and the rumbling grows louder, finally escaping as a roar, through a hole near the monster's bulbous head. Dozens of puckering mouths form in the writing body of the beast, a protoplasm of gussets and elastic waists --

I blinked, reminded of FTL's low quality elastic.

"Wait, can I change my answer?" I asked out loud, but the girl was gone. I took another long sip of my drink, but it was gone too. I absently swirled the ice at the bottom of my glass.

Ships, Passing

Palms flat on the front door of her apartment, her ear hovering close to the painted wood, her soft grey eyes--encircled with lines that crinkled when she was concerned or laughing--were unfixed and wandering.

From the opposite end of the long corridor, her across-the-hall neighbour, Harvey, approached. He smiled, inwardly; the sight of Celica was sweet recompense for a difficult day. He was fond of his neighbour -- too fond, in fact, but he hid it well.

They met on the first day of school, on exchange in Rotterdam. They both lived in the student apartments on campus -- a dormitory for grown-ups. Having only arrived the night before the first day of classes, Harvey had returned from his first day exhausted and loathe to begin unpacking. Celica returned to find the long-closed across-the-hall door finally opened, with the promise of life within. She walked into the apartment. Harvey heard her voice and turned around.

"Hi," she had said.

Harvey was on his knees surrounded with bric-a-brac, seemingly embarrassed for owning it.

"The mess..." he winced, "er, this stuff isn't really mine. I hate it all. I only bring it with me because I love luggage."

Celica laughed. She had settled in month ago and was an experienced veteran compared to Harvey. Though she was a complete stranger, she made him feel comfortable in his new surroundings. He remembered standing up to greet her, and offering his hand. But Celica had a warmth that made the gesture seem awkward and unnecessarily formal. They had clasped hands amused at the distinguished action.

Harvey was disgusted with his pile. "I hate all this stuff," he said. "the only thing I actually need is a stereo and that's the one thing I didn't have room for in my luggage.

And Celica's eyes ignited with inspiration. "I'll be right back".

Celica disappeared through the front door of Harvey's apartment. Before Harvey could process that she had left, she quickly reappeared with a large grey radio in her arms, its power cord dragging along the carpet behind her.

"Now, the CD player doesn't work. The tape player does, but I'm sure you don't have any. But you can use the radio. The radio stations here are pretty wild."

"Thanks," said Harvey taking the large radio from her arms. He placed it gingerly near his mountain of belongings. "I'm Harvey."

"Celica." The she heard someone call her name from outside the apartment.

"I'll talk to you later," she said, and flitted away.

Harvey continued down the Hall, still thinking about the day he met Celica. Celica stood in the hallway braced against her apartment door. Perhaps she had forgotten her keys. He tried again to catch her glance; to get her attention. He said her name,

"Celica,"

With a half-whispered shout down the hall. She didn't hear. He grasped for her wandering gaze, but she looked instead to the ceiling; her fingers tensed against the surface of her apartment door. Then strangely, she echoed dryly,

"Celica,"

Quite matter-of-fact. And Harvey, nearing, and confused, repeated,

"Celica?"

His voice inquisitive and softer. He slowed his advance, slightly, as if to elongate the corridor along which he walked.

Celica leaned her head against the door, as though trying to hear inside. While she listened, at last, her eyes met Harvey's. She smiled.

It would turn out that Celica and Harvey would have a few classes together. She was a year older than Harvey and hailed from Indiana. She thought Harvey's Canadian accent was intriguing and was forever exhorting him to say "about". He certainly hated this, but liked just about everything else about Celica. She was blond, and wise, and warm.

Back in the hallway, she spoke again,

"Celica!"

Loudly. Harvey's confusion further slowed his pace. She pronounced again,

"Celica!"

Even louder. And her eyes rolled to the door, anticipating. As Harvey neared, he spoke in a normal voice. He began to ask,

"Isn't that your name?"

But Celica, startled, moved a step back from the opening door. A tall and drowsy man swayed in the doorway. Frank looked down at Celica with a blurry gaze.

"Hey, you," and after pausing to rub his half-closed eyes, "I was sleeping."

He yawned for a long time. And in the time it took for Frank to exhale, Harvey had traversed the remainder of the long corridor. Harvey found himself standing across from Celica and Frank, fumbling with the keys to his flat.

Celica sighed and chuckled slightly at the oafish Frank drowsily teetering in her threshold. "Go back to bed," she said with a sigh, and gave his big chest a gentle push. Frank retreated into the darkened apartment. Celica turned around to face Harvey, and smiled at him in the afternoon light.

And Harvey, with his keys in his lock, smiled back sheepishly. He was fond of Celica, though he hid it well.

* * *

I got a postcard from her about a year after that. She and Frank were teaching in a village of about 1 000 people. I wrote back. And so did she. And thus began a correspondence that would pull me between the wings of a plane, into the jaws of Texas, through the arms of Celica and on to my legs in retreat.

It seems the power of correspondence is also its fatal flaw: the interlocking of dialogue and ideas, like the teeth of a zipper, is nothing but the blueprint of a beautiful ship. It's ether. In reality, when all is said and built, we suffer the creaking hull and frown at the sails sagging in the weak wind, and wonder what the hell happened.

It turned out we were on different ships altogether. And when they passed, they passed closely, the hulls nudging gently with a dull watery thud that cracked every surface of my vessel. She waved goodbye as her ship shrunk in the horizon, but I stood arms-folded, my legs growing cold with the rising water.

MacArthur Park

I tried to make my own croûtons today. It was a fucking disaster. Here is my recipe for how to destroy an afternoon, and fuck up a Caesar salad:

Ingredients

• 2-3 pieces of dry or stale bread
• Oregano
• Black pepper
• Salt
• 3 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil
• 2 cloves of crushed garlic
• 1 seemingly boundless, but ready-to-pop-like-a-dirigible sense of optimism

Method

• Preheat oven to 200 C (400 F).
• Trim crusts from the bread then cut into small cubes -- or if you want: rectangular prisms.
• Put the olive oil and crushed garlic in a bowl. Add bread. Season with a pinch of salt, add black pepper and oregano as desired. Mix well.
• Place the garlic and oil laden croûtons on a baking tray and cook for ten minutes.

Hypothetically speaking, which one of these steps would you think is the hardest (for me) to complete successfully? Don't answer right away. You might think it's the third task, which encompasses a number of minor steps and multiple ingredients, but that would be incorrect. Instead, look closely at the last one. For some reason, I interpreted this as:

• Place the garlic croûtons on a baking tray, put the tray in the oven, fire up a joint, and go out to the patio for a few minutes to enjoy the warm breeze and afternoon sun. Soak it in, man. Then, if you feel your throat's a little dry, go into the kitchen for a drink of water only to find black smoke pouring out of the oven like the smokestacks at a steel factory, and panic, and open the oven door to face a wall of searing heat and a conflagration of burning oil and bread. After removing the charred remains from the oven, cough a few times, throw out the wasted croûtons with a sense of shame and disgust, and pity yourself while tasting foul black carbon in the back of your throat. Squint and cry from the smoke in your eyes.

Now, obviously I read that last step incorrectly and I felt pretty dumb about the whole episode. Nevertheless, as the smoke the in kitchen cleared, I took a sip of water -- as my throat was still a little dry -- and faced my surroundings. I realized I still had a preheated oven, and all the ingredients at the ready. And damn it, a Caesar salad isn't the same without croûtons. I dismissed the antecedent "incident" as a mere hiccup and started anew. The phoenix of salads ingredients reborn, I mixed the ingredients in the still oily bowl and plopped down the croûtons on the rejuvenated and warm baking sheet. As I triumphantly threw the tray into the oven I remembered: ten minutes.

I walked out of the smoky kitchen and again on to the patio; in the fresh summer air, I reflected thoughtfully. I found myself surprised at having overcome such immediate and thorough failure, with an equally immediate and thorough sense of back-on-the-horseosity. (I have been known to threaten suicide in the face of lesser adversities.) I was encouraged. I felt light. I also felt a little thirsty. And as I returned to the kitchen to get myself a drink of water, I found black smoke pouring out of the oven. I rushed to the stove, threw open the oven door and unleashed a flurry of obscenities; I was not oblivious to the sense of poetic comeuppance with which my words echoed back from the oven's small metal interior, intermingled with face-melting heat and smoke.

I was 0-2 and I didn't try again. I ate my Caesar salad with extra bacon bits as petty compensation for my dual-blunder. It wasn't the same.

A Phoenixess Seemingly Lurking

My power went out late last night. I woke up immediately, and felt a contact lens folding in my eye; I had forgotten to take them out.

Fumbling in the dark, I removed my contact lenses and waited for the power to come back on. The power knocked out my fan, and I rely on the white noise to drown out the silence in my room. As I waited, in the dark, with my eyes closed, I began to dream about a someone who's been on my mind recently. Like a song that gets stuck in your head, this girl has been stuck in mine:

I was walking down a busy street, a lot like Yonge street. It was probably Autumn and the sun was only just starting to go down. I was by myself and I can't really remember where I was going. Almost suddenly it was night-time, and I ran into some of Her friends smoking in front of a bar. In front of some stairs actually, which lead to an underground entrance. I was shocked because Her friends were surprisingly friendly to me, and invited me to join them downstairs.

I politely declined. I said that I had another place to be right across the street, but I am not sure if this was true. As I began to leave, I heard Her voice from the bottom of the stairs, presumably coming from behind the door, which was closed. Still her voice was loud and clear. She said,

"Have the Phoenixess come down -- if he can manage the stairs in his heels."

I don't remember what I said in response, but certainly it was an expression of confusion.

"See you later." She said in response.

The girls, Her friends, finished their cigarettes and started to head down the stairs. I walked away to some place across the street. I found a bookstore and went in, but I couldn't read any of the pages. To me they looked blank, but the other people in the store seemed to manage fine.

I walked back to the top of the stairs of the underground bar somewhat reluctantly. Though I felt it was a bad idea to be there, I stayed there as if waiting for something. I looked down the stairs for what seemed like a long time.

Then I heard Her voice, again, through the door. She asked some questions I can't remember, directed to no one in particular. Then She said plainly, "Are you awake?"

Feeling that She must be speaking to me, I answered, but She seemed surprised to hear my voice.

"What are you doing here, Phoenixess? What are you waiting for?" I was embarrassed that I had revealed my location at the top of the stairs, seemingly lurking. But what was She doing behind the door? How could She both see me, and not know that I was here? What was SHE waiting for? It seemed that She was lurking too.

In my dream, I was getting frustrated.

But I said nothing. I stood there, at the top of the stairs, determined to leave but completely unable to do so. And I as I felt my mind, moving my foot a step down the stairs--

I heard the smoke alarm chirp, my fan begin to hum, and in the distance, outside my window, the wail of a burglar alarm. I stirred briefly and then resumed a dreamless sleep.

Fond memories of horrific events

It was the autumn carnival. I still remember the warm aroma of funnel cakes beckoning us to the tiny stand in the midway, manned by an equally tiny Italian dressed all in white and capped with a proper chef's hat. Engulfed in sugary redolence and warmth, the tiny man poured batter gently on to the oil's surface in the deep fryer. Beneath the awning of his hut the other kids and I watched with rapt anticipation as the nascent funnel cakes took form.

When it was my turn, I pressed my finger to the batter stained glass. I had been eyeing a particular funnel cake since it had first touched the hot oil. With an almost fatalistic sense of purpose, I made my selection. As a topping I requested powdered sugar and whipped cream. The tiny man looked at me with gentle eyes as he handed me the confection.

"That'll be $5.50, please."

I was dumbstruck. My parents had only given me a five dollar bill. I held the five dollar bill aloft, as if to indicate that that was all I had. I recall looking directly at the man with the gentle eyes. Time seemed to stop. He understood.

Without hesitation he lifted the warm funnel cake from my hands and tossed it like a Frisbee into a garbage pail behind me. It sailed over my head, and I turned around in time to watch the delicious pastry, whose history I followed from inception, meet its demise in the fly-ridden steel garbage can.

"Next!" The tiny man said.

I remember walking away despondently with my hands deep in my pockets. Then I noticed that there were a couple of quarters in there. But it was too late. I never ate funnel cake again.

A feeble attempt at narrative

OK. This time I'm going to do it. Here we go. What I need here is a story, which a main character, who does stuff, perhaps sets a goal, has trouble reaching that goal but ultimately succeeds. That's all I gotta do here. Let's try to not to fuck it up.

Billy's Story.

Billy was a young lad who lived at home with his parents. Because he was seven. He went to school like all the other boys and girls, except he hated school. He hated the teachers, he hated math class, he was not exactly a fan of gym either. He felt recess was OK, but nothing to phone home about. He definitely liked lunch. Maybe school wasn't so bad.

One day on his way home from school, he found a shiny quarter. He was excited because for a seven year old, that was a lot of money. I mean, seriously. That would buy him some candy or something.

It took him a long time to get home and when he got there his mother was waiting for him and she was angry.

"What took you so long to get home, Simon?" She said, because that was his name. He had no response but feebly held up his quarter.

"Look what I found!" But mother was not impressed. She snatched the quarter away. "Give me that." She thrust a "Here, go to Howard's Grocery and get everything on that list. And don't waste your time or buy anything we don't need!" She handed him 2 dollars and sent him on his way.

The walk to the store was long, and difficult and Simon only had little legs that didn't move him very far. After about ten minutes, he realised that he was not even halfway there. He was bored so he poked his head into one of his favourite stores. It was the comic book store. He liked this store very much. He was a big fan of comics, and wanted to stay longer but he knew that his task was to get to the store and buy the things for mother as soon as possible. He continued on his way.

As we walked further his legs started to ache and he sat down on a bench on the sidewalk. A man with an accordion walked up to him. He looked dishevelled but friendly. "Would you like to see a magic trick?"

"Sure!" Said Simon enthusiastically.
"OK, but it's one dollar!" the man replied.

Simon knew he shouldn't give the man his money so he said, "no". "Look man, all I gotta do is get to the store, and get this shit. Stop hassling me."

He continued on his way....

And here is where I realise this story is completely bullshit.

...Simon kept walking to the store but he tripped over a rock along the way. It hurt him pretty bad and he stayed on the ground for a long time. He never woke up.

The End.