My daddy was a greaser. He slicked his hair back with Brylcreem and wore Old Spice cologne. He smoked cigarettes. He played the drums and harmonica. He listened to motown and the blues and American doo-wop and the British Invasion. He wore white shirts and Levi's and a denim jacket that I adopted and wore in high school. He wore dark brown shoes with laces.
My father taught me to use the potty, and he taught me how to read, and he taught me the importance of good oral hygiene. He taught me the difference between longitude and latitude. He taught me to mistrust authority and religion. He taught me that just because we can't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
My mommy was a hippie. She wore glasses and long blonde hair parted in the middle. She smoked cigarettes and sometimes pot. She listened to The Beatles and Janis Joplin and Queen and Harry Chapin. She wore blouses and bell bottoms and a silver peace ring that I adopted and wore in high school. She wore brown thong sandals.
My mother taught me to use the potty, and she taught me how to read, and she taught me the importance of good oral hygiene. She taught me to order my own cheeseburger at McDonald's. She taught me to mistrust authority and religion. She taught me to work hard because life is hard.
Thank you, Mom and Dad.
Much love always, in spite of it all.
Jan 28, 2011
cunt
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood. -The Animals
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut
I find myself, often, thinking about intent and perception. About the way/s I am perceived, and by whom. About the vibe/s I give off. About the discrepancy between how I feel, in my core, in that pit, and about the way I present myself to the world. (Not new ideas, I realize. But then, is anything ever new? iPhone apps, maybe. Not that I would know.)
In my core, in that pit, I am good. I am patient and kind and caring and understanding and humble and fun.
But in my core, in that pit, I am also bad. I am impatient and spiteful and ungrateful and mean and vain and dull.
And how does one balance these things? Is there a balance? I am mistrustful of people who seem too happy, too full of optimism and joy. I see the world through (contact) lenses of reticence and cynicism. There is a lot of shit in the world, a lot of stupidity and ignorance. I am not content to let it slide. But who am I to say, anyway? Always this conflict in me, between honestly believing that personal value is value, regardless of my opinion on the subject, and wanting to shake you and call you a fucking moron for liking that movie. I don't know why I care.
And I wonder why I can't just be nice, pleasant, fun. Share my life with you, my stories, be interested in your life, your stories. I am terrible at small talk. I hear things about myself sometimes, things that make my core squeeze and tighten, the pit blacken and curl in on itself. She is bossy. A bitch. A snob. And as much as I want to know these things, because of my interest in intent and perception, I also don't want to know them, because it hurts. And there is this well, deep and cool and dark, somewhere inside my core, behind the pit, that feels, boundlessly. Such overwhelming joy and desire and gladness and empathy and pain and sadness and despair.
Shut up. Fuck off. I don't give a shit. I want to punch you in the face. Get over it. Grow up. Take some responsibility. Stop whining. Do something.
Tell me. Come here. I'm listening. I'll do whatever I can to help. I admire those qualities in you that I do not possess. I'm okay with it. You are smart, beautiful, talented. I enjoy spending time with you. I'll never judge you, for anything, ever. I'm sorry. Forgive me.
You know?
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut
I find myself, often, thinking about intent and perception. About the way/s I am perceived, and by whom. About the vibe/s I give off. About the discrepancy between how I feel, in my core, in that pit, and about the way I present myself to the world. (Not new ideas, I realize. But then, is anything ever new? iPhone apps, maybe. Not that I would know.)
In my core, in that pit, I am good. I am patient and kind and caring and understanding and humble and fun.
But in my core, in that pit, I am also bad. I am impatient and spiteful and ungrateful and mean and vain and dull.
And how does one balance these things? Is there a balance? I am mistrustful of people who seem too happy, too full of optimism and joy. I see the world through (contact) lenses of reticence and cynicism. There is a lot of shit in the world, a lot of stupidity and ignorance. I am not content to let it slide. But who am I to say, anyway? Always this conflict in me, between honestly believing that personal value is value, regardless of my opinion on the subject, and wanting to shake you and call you a fucking moron for liking that movie. I don't know why I care.
And I wonder why I can't just be nice, pleasant, fun. Share my life with you, my stories, be interested in your life, your stories. I am terrible at small talk. I hear things about myself sometimes, things that make my core squeeze and tighten, the pit blacken and curl in on itself. She is bossy. A bitch. A snob. And as much as I want to know these things, because of my interest in intent and perception, I also don't want to know them, because it hurts. And there is this well, deep and cool and dark, somewhere inside my core, behind the pit, that feels, boundlessly. Such overwhelming joy and desire and gladness and empathy and pain and sadness and despair.
Shut up. Fuck off. I don't give a shit. I want to punch you in the face. Get over it. Grow up. Take some responsibility. Stop whining. Do something.
Tell me. Come here. I'm listening. I'll do whatever I can to help. I admire those qualities in you that I do not possess. I'm okay with it. You are smart, beautiful, talented. I enjoy spending time with you. I'll never judge you, for anything, ever. I'm sorry. Forgive me.
You know?
Nov 22, 2010
Brown Bread and Butter
My maternal grandparents lived on a farm in rural Saskatchewan in a tiny town called Blumenhoff. We would drive across the prairies in December through windswept waves of snow, ice crackling and shimmering in the sun. My little brother and I would write songs to pass the time, or I would re-read the weeding adventures of Mary and Dickon as the merciless wind whipped snow across the frozen highway.
We would stop at the general store-cum-gas station-cum-post office to announce our arrival, and I would pop the cap off of an icy glass bottle of Coca Cola using the metal opener attached to the side of the freezer. My brother and I would buy a dime's worth each of mojos, getting bits of pastel taffy stuck deliciously in our molars to be picked out and savoured later.
Another mile down the road, my father would turn right, into the driveway set between two rows of single trees that tried unsuccessfully to break the prairie wind, and we would be there, finally. Time passes slowly when the horizon does not end.
The neighbour's black and white dog, Snoopy, would bark and come to greet us as we pulled up in front of my grandparents' old farmhouse, a small one-story building nestled into a copse of trees in the middle of nowhere. My cousins built a treehouse in the tallest of the trees, with a bucket attached to a pulley. Summers, we would climb the wooden rungs nailed into the treetrunk and take turns pulling things up, apples or comic books or kittens.
My grandfather would be there, thin and grey and wiry, standing in the twilight on the tiny concrete stoop in his stiff grey winter coat and the hat with the earflaps, a worn red plaid scarf, workboots with the laces undone. And we would pile out of the car and I would run to meet him and he would swing me up and kiss me, his stubble rough against my cheek. Behind him in the coatroom stood my grandmother in her housedress and nylon stockings, dull grey hair in pink rollers, skin soft and sagging, her bosom enormous and pillowy. "I love ya little, I love ya big, I love ya like a little pig," she would say in her German accent, and chuckle, and I would flush in embarrassment.
We remove our jackets, stamp the snow off our boots, and are welcomed into the kitchen, warm with the scent of cinnamon and bay leaves and anise. Plastic fruit magnets adorn the refrigerator, a tall bucket of well-water sits on a stool beside the counter, the ladle hangs on its hook next to the window. We slide in socked feet across the faded linoleum and sit at the formica table while my grandfather fills red tupperware cups with cold water and my grandmother fills melamine bowls with chicken soup. My grandfather sits beside me and carefully butters thick slices of brown bread, cutting the cold butter into small pieces so the bread does not tear.
Isaac and Agnes Ens are both dead, buried together in the unforgiving prairie ground, but to this day there is nothing, NOTHING, in the world like sitting beside my grandfather on a cold December evening in Blumenhoff, Saskatchewan, slurping my grandmother's homemade noodles and chicken broth and eating brown bread and butter.
We would stop at the general store-cum-gas station-cum-post office to announce our arrival, and I would pop the cap off of an icy glass bottle of Coca Cola using the metal opener attached to the side of the freezer. My brother and I would buy a dime's worth each of mojos, getting bits of pastel taffy stuck deliciously in our molars to be picked out and savoured later.
Another mile down the road, my father would turn right, into the driveway set between two rows of single trees that tried unsuccessfully to break the prairie wind, and we would be there, finally. Time passes slowly when the horizon does not end.
The neighbour's black and white dog, Snoopy, would bark and come to greet us as we pulled up in front of my grandparents' old farmhouse, a small one-story building nestled into a copse of trees in the middle of nowhere. My cousins built a treehouse in the tallest of the trees, with a bucket attached to a pulley. Summers, we would climb the wooden rungs nailed into the treetrunk and take turns pulling things up, apples or comic books or kittens.
My grandfather would be there, thin and grey and wiry, standing in the twilight on the tiny concrete stoop in his stiff grey winter coat and the hat with the earflaps, a worn red plaid scarf, workboots with the laces undone. And we would pile out of the car and I would run to meet him and he would swing me up and kiss me, his stubble rough against my cheek. Behind him in the coatroom stood my grandmother in her housedress and nylon stockings, dull grey hair in pink rollers, skin soft and sagging, her bosom enormous and pillowy. "I love ya little, I love ya big, I love ya like a little pig," she would say in her German accent, and chuckle, and I would flush in embarrassment.
We remove our jackets, stamp the snow off our boots, and are welcomed into the kitchen, warm with the scent of cinnamon and bay leaves and anise. Plastic fruit magnets adorn the refrigerator, a tall bucket of well-water sits on a stool beside the counter, the ladle hangs on its hook next to the window. We slide in socked feet across the faded linoleum and sit at the formica table while my grandfather fills red tupperware cups with cold water and my grandmother fills melamine bowls with chicken soup. My grandfather sits beside me and carefully butters thick slices of brown bread, cutting the cold butter into small pieces so the bread does not tear.
Isaac and Agnes Ens are both dead, buried together in the unforgiving prairie ground, but to this day there is nothing, NOTHING, in the world like sitting beside my grandfather on a cold December evening in Blumenhoff, Saskatchewan, slurping my grandmother's homemade noodles and chicken broth and eating brown bread and butter.
Sep 30, 2010
Mary Goes Down At The York Hotel
This room is cold tonight. It has been a long time since I’ve seen the sun. I light a cigarette, inhale, let the smoke burn my lungs. I catch my reflection in the mirror, ghostly pale. From this room on the third floor of what used to be the York Hotel, I feel the shock of the bass drum pounding its way up through the floorboards, a not-unwelcome intruder. I spend most of my time in this room. The furnishings are sparse, blanketed in an ageless layer of dust. The carpet, threadbare even before my time, has long since been removed, and the wallpaper, once a vibrant pattern of ivy weaving its way up the walls, now lies curled in faded brittle strips in the corners. But I don’t need much anymore. A window to look out, a place to sleep. A cigarette. Sometimes I wander these mostly empty hallways, when the nightmares keep sleep from me. I dream that I’m falling, but wake up before I hit the ground.
I have grown shy over the years, preferring the company of my memories and my nightmares, but sometimes, when I am dying for some company, or maybe just for a pack of cigarettes, I make my way downstairs to the bar on the first floor.
The walls of the bar are exposed brick lined with band photographs and plastered with concert posters. Brass footrails run along the bases of the two bars, and mirrors behind the bars reflect bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, rum. It is a lively place, particularly on weekends, when the crowds come to hear the bands. I like the music: The Dead Boys, Forgotten Rebels, The Damned. Something about their outsider aesthetic and their ripped jeans appeals to me, their energy and anger and sex.
On those nights when I venture downstairs, I slip largely unnoticed through the crowds of raving drunk people. They unnerve me. I feel disconnected. Lonely. I quit drinking a long time ago. But every once in awhile, I’ll catch someone’s attention, feel their eyes upon me, feel that shiver run down my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: the thrill of recognition. It both exhilarates and terrifies me, and I wonder if these strangers feel the same.
I turn away from the mirror, take another deep burning drag of my cigarette and look out the window. The weather reflects my mood tonight; icy winter rain beats down from sodden grey clouds. I think back to when I was young and as carefree as a girl of ill-repute could be. Even now, tonight, I would fuck you if you paid me. Not that you would want to. Or even could. Not anymore. But there was a time when I was young, and alive, and beautiful.
A panicked flutter in the pit of my stomach on the nights when he would come to my room. This room. I would wait and watch for him, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening for his footsteps up the three flights of stairs, my lungs (among other things) on fire. And he would come to me, different from the rest, and, like the rest, he would pay to be with me while icy winter rain beat against the windowpane, or while moist summer heat bore its way into the room, making the edges of the ivy wallpaper curl. After, we would share a cigarette, a glass of whiskey, a kiss, and if I dreamed about something more, something other than just this, well, you can’t blame a girl for dreaming.
I wonder what band is playing tonight. It sounds primitive, electric, masculine. Shrieking guitars, a relentless beat. I wonder what day it is. Hell, I wonder what year it is. Not that it matters. I am restless.
I was restless then, too, and wild, living on cigarettes and bottomless glasses of whiskey. Sleeping until dusk and working until dawn. Or, if the weather was bad and the night slow, dancing, by myself or with some of the other girls, passing a bottle back and forth, passing the time. And, always, waiting for him to come.
I go over what happened again and again in my nightmares, trying to piece it all together, but I am left with only disjointed emotions and fragments of memory. They scratch and bite and claw, wild things, trying to get out of my head. They are trapped there, of course, as surely as I am trapped here, in this room, in this building, in this ceaseless nightmare existence. If there was a way to get them out, to get myself out, surely I would have figured it out by now. God knows I’ve had the time.
Smell of whiskey and, faintly, urine. Tobacco smoke. Stale breath hot in my face. Screaming explosion of pain in my jaw as bottle meets bone. His voice low, menacing, even as I scream and twist and scratch and bite and claw. Betrayal like a fist in my guts, pounding pounding pounding. My insides ripped open. Fraying curtains twitching in the slight breeze from the open window. Dead weight as he collapses upon me. Smell of sweat. Blood. Semen. My sudden fury and a burst of pain as bone meets bone and somewhere someone shrieking and now I’m falling, falling through the open window, falling, falling endlessly...
The beat from below is primal, distracting, and the thought of spending another night alone in this haunted room is unbearable. I light another cigarette, catch my reflection, pale and ghostly, in the mirror, and I go down.
I have grown shy over the years, preferring the company of my memories and my nightmares, but sometimes, when I am dying for some company, or maybe just for a pack of cigarettes, I make my way downstairs to the bar on the first floor.
The walls of the bar are exposed brick lined with band photographs and plastered with concert posters. Brass footrails run along the bases of the two bars, and mirrors behind the bars reflect bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka, rum. It is a lively place, particularly on weekends, when the crowds come to hear the bands. I like the music: The Dead Boys, Forgotten Rebels, The Damned. Something about their outsider aesthetic and their ripped jeans appeals to me, their energy and anger and sex.
On those nights when I venture downstairs, I slip largely unnoticed through the crowds of raving drunk people. They unnerve me. I feel disconnected. Lonely. I quit drinking a long time ago. But every once in awhile, I’ll catch someone’s attention, feel their eyes upon me, feel that shiver run down my spine, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up: the thrill of recognition. It both exhilarates and terrifies me, and I wonder if these strangers feel the same.
I turn away from the mirror, take another deep burning drag of my cigarette and look out the window. The weather reflects my mood tonight; icy winter rain beats down from sodden grey clouds. I think back to when I was young and as carefree as a girl of ill-repute could be. Even now, tonight, I would fuck you if you paid me. Not that you would want to. Or even could. Not anymore. But there was a time when I was young, and alive, and beautiful.
A panicked flutter in the pit of my stomach on the nights when he would come to my room. This room. I would wait and watch for him, smoking cigarette after cigarette, listening for his footsteps up the three flights of stairs, my lungs (among other things) on fire. And he would come to me, different from the rest, and, like the rest, he would pay to be with me while icy winter rain beat against the windowpane, or while moist summer heat bore its way into the room, making the edges of the ivy wallpaper curl. After, we would share a cigarette, a glass of whiskey, a kiss, and if I dreamed about something more, something other than just this, well, you can’t blame a girl for dreaming.
I wonder what band is playing tonight. It sounds primitive, electric, masculine. Shrieking guitars, a relentless beat. I wonder what day it is. Hell, I wonder what year it is. Not that it matters. I am restless.
I was restless then, too, and wild, living on cigarettes and bottomless glasses of whiskey. Sleeping until dusk and working until dawn. Or, if the weather was bad and the night slow, dancing, by myself or with some of the other girls, passing a bottle back and forth, passing the time. And, always, waiting for him to come.
I go over what happened again and again in my nightmares, trying to piece it all together, but I am left with only disjointed emotions and fragments of memory. They scratch and bite and claw, wild things, trying to get out of my head. They are trapped there, of course, as surely as I am trapped here, in this room, in this building, in this ceaseless nightmare existence. If there was a way to get them out, to get myself out, surely I would have figured it out by now. God knows I’ve had the time.
Smell of whiskey and, faintly, urine. Tobacco smoke. Stale breath hot in my face. Screaming explosion of pain in my jaw as bottle meets bone. His voice low, menacing, even as I scream and twist and scratch and bite and claw. Betrayal like a fist in my guts, pounding pounding pounding. My insides ripped open. Fraying curtains twitching in the slight breeze from the open window. Dead weight as he collapses upon me. Smell of sweat. Blood. Semen. My sudden fury and a burst of pain as bone meets bone and somewhere someone shrieking and now I’m falling, falling through the open window, falling, falling endlessly...
The beat from below is primal, distracting, and the thought of spending another night alone in this haunted room is unbearable. I light another cigarette, catch my reflection, pale and ghostly, in the mirror, and I go down.
Strange, but also, not strange at all.
Strange for the four of us to be here. And also, somehow, not strange at all. Strange because you don't look like you anymore. Skin stretches across bone, making hollows for shadows to hide in. Your hair is lank and oily; I want to wash it for you, take your bony head in my hands and gently lather and rinse. Two feverish spots of pink adorn your cheeks. They look pretty there but I know you are flushed from pain, from the stifling heat of the room. (From guilt?) The incision that runs vertically up your abdomen seems impossibly long and that piece of you that is normally tucked away inside seems impossibly dark. When I touch it and ask if it hurts, you reply in the negative and I wonder how this can be so. I avoid looking at the bag, not because I am repulsed by it, but because it seems somehow indecent to do so.
Strange for the four of us to be here, yes, but, also, somehow, not strange at all. Because the four of us are here, as we have been and will be. But it has been a long time, and so we remind each other of who we are: I offer to pick your scab for you, he makes jokes about sodomy, she is grossed out by this sudden inversion of bodily functions. We are angry at you, and we are disappointed in ourselves, and we are, all four of us, afraid, but we laugh together. We laugh together in this tiny room while in the room next door a woman dies of cancer.
Strange for the four of us to be here, yes, but, also, somehow, not strange at all. Because the four of us are here, as we have been and will be. But it has been a long time, and so we remind each other of who we are: I offer to pick your scab for you, he makes jokes about sodomy, she is grossed out by this sudden inversion of bodily functions. We are angry at you, and we are disappointed in ourselves, and we are, all four of us, afraid, but we laugh together. We laugh together in this tiny room while in the room next door a woman dies of cancer.
Snapshot Bio
This is the first picture of me. You can just see me there, in the curve of my mother's belly. It is her wedding day and she is wearing a knee-length empire-waisted white dress. Her hair is long and pale blonde and she is wearing glasses. Beside her, my father, in a dark brown suit, Brylcreem-ed hair blowing back in the wind. Soon-to-be-grandparents smile into the camera and behind everyone, a magnolia tree bursting with pink and white flowers.
I spent the first few days of my life in an incubator. This is me, tiny and pink, wrapped up snug as a premature bug in a hospital-issue blanket, tucked into something that looks like a carseat. The incubator is the colour of brown in 1973, the colour of kitchen appliances and floral couches and VW vans with teardrop windows. There is a string of pink beads around my ankle spelling out my last name, but you can't see it here.
I spent the first few days of my life in an incubator. This is me, tiny and pink, wrapped up snug as a premature bug in a hospital-issue blanket, tucked into something that looks like a carseat. The incubator is the colour of brown in 1973, the colour of kitchen appliances and floral couches and VW vans with teardrop windows. There is a string of pink beads around my ankle spelling out my last name, but you can't see it here.
Sep 17, 2010
A Night Alone
I turn the lights out, turn the stereo up, fuzzy guitars and smouldering, hypnotic beats. I slip my panties off, inhale the musky post-menstrual scent of myself on them. I am wet. On the couch here in the dark, I slide my fingers into that warm slickness, feeling the heat spread. I am on fire. Thinking of nothing, of no one, thinking only of myself, and then not thinking at all.
I change into my pajamas, black boy shorts and a thin, tight black t-shirt with a hole just over and slightly to the left of my left nipple. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, in the half-light provided by the bedroom lamp. I admire the curves of my inner thighs, my smooth pale skin, the flatness of my belly, the shape of my breasts beneath the t-shirt. And I dance, seductively, teasingly, in the half-light, in the mirror, dancing for no one, dancing only for myself, and then not dancing at all.
I change into my pajamas, black boy shorts and a thin, tight black t-shirt with a hole just over and slightly to the left of my left nipple. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, in the half-light provided by the bedroom lamp. I admire the curves of my inner thighs, my smooth pale skin, the flatness of my belly, the shape of my breasts beneath the t-shirt. And I dance, seductively, teasingly, in the half-light, in the mirror, dancing for no one, dancing only for myself, and then not dancing at all.
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