In the Voice of Dad

I was a bad boy.

I was a choir boy until two months before they caught me. The church pastor, my parents, even a teacher from high school came to my hearing, but that fuckin judge still gave me 12 months plus two years’ probation.

I’m not a big guy, that’s true. But I was lucky. Us guys from the Soo we ran the laundry. I don’t know if you know what that means, but there were only twenty guys working in there and more than ten of em was from the Soo. So no one touched me, no one touched even the smallest guy from the Soo.

There were some guys who tried to jump me, when I was living at the hotel. They knew I was dealing and that’s what happened to small dealers, bigger guys robbed them. I kept my Winchester in the bar for three months, waiting for them to come see me. So I guess yeah, it’s a good thing that I never got sent down for murder because I was waiting for those guys. But they got wind of it, and they didn’t come downtown for a whole year. Cause yeah, people knew even then I was just a little bit crazy and they knew I’d do it too. So yeah, no one ever bother me, even though I was dealing for a couple years after I came back to the Soo.

Yeah, I was a bad boy and I knew if I didn’t get married, and do the things that a man is supposed to do, you know, have a family, contribute positively to society, I’d be going back there to Guelph, or maybe even worse.

And then one day, your mother, she was back in town, and she come into the Four Winds when I’m in there and I thought, okay. And two months after we started going out, I brought out the ring and asked her. And she said no, and pushed the ring away, but I kept asking, and two weeks later she said okay.

Snow

There was the time we walked from downtown
along the tracks.
The snowy owl perched on the fence of the sugar refinery
was an omen that I missed.
We made it to my house, toes numb but not frozen.
He reached for me, and made me bleed,
But I still thought nothing of it,
until he thought better of it,
and left.

Musical Boyfriend AA Bondy

I have a lot of musical boyfriends. The downside to this, aside from the obvious one-sidedness of the romance, is that you cannot slowdance with a man who is already playing a mournful guitar and lead singing.

My boyfriend AA Bondy will be in Vancouver next month, at a small venue where the performers are so close to the audience, you can smell the smoke on their clothes if you stand up front. This man could sing pages from the phone book and you would love it. The phone book itself would pucker its pages together in shy delight to hear the way he can sound meaning into anything.

I’ve seen him before, and he is no Sufjan Stevens all wide eyed and bedazzled. He is slim, his adam’s apple as bulgy as his eyes. His skin is pale and his eyes are dark. What makes him so attractive is the stillness he is capable of, even in front of the eyes of the audience.

In his previous work, he has sung a lot about god, and vampires, and all the other fearful creatures they conjure in the South to keep children honest and get full grown men off the bottle. His new record, just now on NPR’s first listen page, is called Believers. It will officially release next week. I will buy it promptly, and memorize the words. And on Oct 7^th when he plays at the Media Club, I will likely take my lesbro, and hold his loving, platonic hand, and there will be no slowdancing. But I won’t mind.

Persistence

As a kid, I tried to be a tomboy. Maybe because I wanted to please my mother. My mother loved to tell stories of her own tomboyhood. She told the story of her short hair and shorter temper like it was the fastest route to safety. For her, I slicked my hair back into a ducktail, and fought the boys at school. For her, I played with cars instead of dolls, and got crushes on my best friends.

Paper Bag Princess

In my father's inventory of who has done him wrong,
He lists everyone he's ever loved, except me.
For me, he builds a throne of ice to sit upon,
And sets candles in my palms to keep them warm.

If he wins the lottery, there are plans for a castle,
Made of matchsticks with a mote of gasoline;
His list of those not welcome posted.
A fire-breathing dragon to guard the door.

Vancouver- city of dates

In a city the size of Vancouver, you can go on dates forever; not only is Vancouver a large city, but it is transient with a vast number of people coming a going means there are always unrecognizable faces on the street. Since I became a single person at the age of 31, I have dated a hundred of these strangers. Most were only first dates with no follow up, but in some cases it took more than one drink or movie to figure out I hadn’t found the One. And in one case, I’m still wondering.

I realize that a hundred dates is a lot of people. But I was making up for lost time. A four and a half year old relationship with a woman whose mojo waned and then vanished had left me hungry.

I remember when it first started to happen. The waning began at eleven o’clock one night, when I took her hand and invited her to come to bed and she said “I’ll be there in a minute,” before she turned back to the tv, “after the sports highlights.”

I dropped her hand and went to bed without her, masturbating quickly and then faking sleep when she came to bed an hour later, her hands roaming as I rolled away and pushed her hands away, a phony sleepy grunt covering up my seething resentment.

We continued, I am embarrassed to say, for another two years after that moment, the sex getting less frequent as we learned to hold our desire against one another. For awhile she said she was just tired, then she began to suggest that maybe she had a hormone imbalance or some other kind of pathological damage. I cried in jags in the bathroom, feeling cellulite stretch across my thighs, feeling uglier than I had felt as a gap toothed preteen in my training bra.

But we wanted “it” to work, so we built a home together, even bought a dog that was meant to fill the cavern between our interests. But the gap grew, as did the dog, getting bigger as she added golf to her sports roster and I became involved in civic politics.

And then we began discussing moving from our loft in Yaletown. It wasn’t a practical place to live, and the growing tension and fights couldn’t be contained by the small studio space, with no doors to slam and no living room couch for either of us to sleep on.

I wanted her to break up with me. I wanted her to admit that it was her lack of desire that killed our relationship, but she would not concede. So a few days before we were to give notice to our landlord, I told her very plainly “My feelings have changed.” I could have explained more, but I didn’t. I was angry with her because she had stopped loving me, and I wanted to punish her lack of courage.

I blinked back my tears, the walls of the studio getting closer, and within days I was gone.

And then I was single. I bought new clothes, date clothes. Shorter skirts, bright colours. I built an internet dating profile, I volunteered at events. And I had sex.

My first date was with a woman. At first, I wasn’t even aware that it was a date. My social circle had dwindled during my domestic period and I was eager for friends and lovers, so whatever my intentions were, I was grateful when we bumped in to each other at the grocery store and she suggested we might hang out sometime.

She was taller than me, with darker hair and skin. She had the physical confidence of an athlete, but not the boyishness many lesbians play up. In fact, she was quite feminine, despite the fact that she sometimes wore dress shirts and ironic white loafers to match her leather tie.

I guessed I was on a date with her only at the very end, just as we parted ways to catch our respective busses home. She hugged me good bye, not so unusual for two women who have just spent time gabbing about our ex’s and dissecting film. It was how she hugged me that let me know, her hands going around my waist and squeezing me firmly.

To test my theory, I called her a few nights later. “I have cramps. Can you bring chocolate?”

“Yes,” she said. “And movies.”

The movie was black and white, a classic. I don’t recall the title or whether it actually played at all. I think I had just loaded it in the player when she kissed me. Her lips were supple, in stark contrast to the tight lipped rejection I’d settled with for years.

“You’re so tiny,” She cooed as she peeled my dress from me.

Later, she ground her clit into my hips, then shuddered on my finger tips, her back beaded in sweat. “You’re beautiful. You deserve pleasure.” She said aloud, and it felt like she was saying it for herself as much as for me.

the end of apathy

I have five minutes until my hair dye should come out. Right now, my head looks like an Exxon mistake, a syrupy blue black swirl to the ends, an erratic hairline of an eerie indigo.

It's seven thirty, and my mascara is already gone. Tonight, the National makes me weepy. I have no reason to be weepy, except that maybe I have feelings again, and this is what happens with emotions. I feel tired, and therefore fragile, and suddenly Matt Berninger singing go ahead throw your hands in the air tonight makes me tear up. Itunes tells me I've listened to this song fourteen times since I bought it, but it wasn't until this evening that I heard that lyric as permission to surrender.

I'll go braving everything
Through the shine of the sun

If I lived in New York city, I would want to be Matt Berninger's pal. I think we are similarly neurotic, Type A and then floundering in private. We could sit on cafe patios tsking at people walking by and then confess to each other feeling guilty for the time we'd wasted.

Oh, you wouldn't want an angel watching over, surprise, surprise, they wouldn't want to watch
Another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

Some Confessions

I sometimes give myself tarot card readings... on the internet. My questions have not evolved since my teen years.

When I was thirteen, I went to a New Age conference at UBC. At the merch table, I became a dowser. I bought a pearly white ball that hung on a short string, the end of which looped over your finger. If the ball swung in circles, the answer was yes; if the ball moved back and forth, the answer was no. I could have looked for water. But always, the first question I asked, does he like me?

Nice Lady

It's because of seeing him on the metro. That's why he has crept back into my thoughts. That, and a play he indifferently inspired that's been repping down the street.

On the metro, he was wearing a fedora and a suit jacket. He had his legs crossed, rather like a woman, one might say. I thought for sure he saw me, and I tried to meet his gaze while elbowing my friend bedside me. He looked out the window, either too busy in his head to notice, or trying to avoid me -either seemed possible. He had not aged at all, or, I guess the truth is, that men his age are now a regular part of my life, and so he did not seem old to me anymore.

It was more than ten years ago that I knew him. I've said a lot already, zined him, spoken publicly about him. I've come to see him as a symbol of all the stupid things I've ever done. He made me resent my naivety, even as I mourned its loss. He kissed me a few times, though I think it was the talk of how I inhabited his thoughts that shook me hardest.

He writes still, more than me, and about pop culture things like news headlines and television programs. His prose retains his trademark airy, cerebral quality, like the most offhand observation is ready for the pages of the Globe and Mail.

I'm not sure how to exorcise him from my thoughts. I don't understand why that brief encounter on the train stays with me, why I feel again like a 22 year old girl with a problem she can't manage.

He wanted to write a book about me, at one point. He let me call him Nice Lady, which was a joke only he and I understood. He confided he'd once done drag with a CBC celebrity. I knew enough small details about him to love him. And I did.

Green

It’s very hot. The air feels close and sticky, like the palms of my hands, and I think that Michael is right. “Such a metabolism!” he says when he rubs them, making me feel like my greatest insecurity is a testament to my power.

And so, yes, I think it is about metabolism, because yesterday there were only buds on the trees and today, a tentative green yelps from the tree branches. Tomorrow, there will be leaves. There are very few blossoms here. There isn’t enough time, because the growing season is short. The people respond by staying up until three, clogging the streets, absorbing all the stickiness and looking for others like them.

I feel the urgency too. I think maybe it is closer to my internal clock. I wake up knowing there can’t be time for everything, and the people on the street say, “Yes, you’re right. Depeche."

Michael loves the brave yellow-green of new leaves, but I prefer the heat and deep summer hues. I don’t mind the scent of death in them. I see the cyclic nature in full blooms. I like determination.

Someone wants me to describe him; because the world isn’t just about feelings and opinions. But I never really bother with the visuals. They are important, but they don’t really get in me like his voice. It’s old, sort of womanly, like a lady who knows the ropes. Like a lady who knows how to tie things down and shakes her head at the new girls who can’t walk in heels.

He has the voice of a drag queen, dresses like my grandpa, stares like a lion. He loves an audience; trouble. He’s most dangerous when he’s bored, and I’d have given up my baby teeth in a dirty deal with the tooth fairy, thrown in my wisdom teeth as a bonus, to have found him first. Or, I would’ve transplanted my baby teeth into him, to give him my irreverence for the sanctity of marriage. To have him say “I fuck her and I fuck you.” And have him mean it, without guilt.

He expects me to be harsh, to be all the alienating things about the future that magnetize him. But he knows too about the times when I can crawl into his lap. He wants the lickbitepurr that he deserves.

He can’t say it. So he creates to exorcise the guilt.

“Not like Lolita,” his fiction begins, “a non-sexual obsession.”

“No,” I whisper to the back of his neck, “Not like Lolita”.

When I see him next, I will be old, ten years past a Lolita. I will stand behind him while he sketches her, listing all the ways that I am not his Lolita. Once in a while, he will turn to face me, for a visual reminder of what she is not to be. I will see her unfolding in his eye, a translucent green slip of a girl with a mean look on her face.

He will turn back to his work, before he sees that I’ve been sketching too. A girl, no a boy, who looks just like me, we are so much the same, and underneath it
says:
I fucked him I fucked him.

That is what I think when he sends a message, “work is going too well, not returning calls from anyone.”

Ingesting the hollow comfort of being included in Anyone, I apply alternating streaks of avocado and moss eye shadows. I'm just anyone, so I go out to look for others like me.

It’s what I think about when the punk boy says he wants to kiss me. I smile, stifle a laugh and pull him by his studded belt onto my bed. It’s like we’re making a rock video. He takes my pants off to an emo band, removes my bra to a rock ballad, and kisses down my thighs to something hardcore but with violins. The camera angles shift, from over his shoulder, to close ups of my face. There’s a pause in the music.

“I have a condom if you want it.”

I smile and say yeah yeah yeah, losing myself in a chorus I’ve been singing since I was four. It goes na na na nana.

Then he gets ready to put it in me, and I expect it to be Slint, or Engine Kid, something fast and then slow, then hard and then soft. But it’s pretty much three chord punk. There is enough melody to warrant the pain, and it’s building to something, even if the surprise in the ending is just that it’s over.

The boy runs his fingers through his bleach blonde hair “I’m teething,” he says, swishing water in his mouth. “My wisdom teeth are coming in.” I laugh and tell him that he should try to keep them. Maybe we’ll need them when we’re old.

He falls asleep, twitching and thrashing, and holding on to me. When he leaves, I pull the covers back to see if there are stains. I know you’re supposed to bleed on the sheets. But the only marks are from the lube, still damp, making the flannel sheet a darker green.

Family

I say this as an artist,
because it isn't so bad that I can't have empathy;
My family is a pride of lions,
each with a thorn in one paw.