I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THE SPIRIT OF A PHILOSOPHER COULD MORE WISH THAN TO BE A GOOD DANCER. FOR THE DANCE IS HIS IDEAL, ALSO HIS FINE ART, FINALLY ALSO THE ONLY KIND OF PIETY HE KNOWS, HIS “DIVINE SERVICE”
Mid November, the big snow dump had come. The town looked like an ad for gingerbread. Coleman had a new supply and suggested we “do E during the day.” How cutting-edge! Toader and Stace and I went over to his place. His girlfriend, Helena, who lived forty-five minutes East along the highway, was staying over, and his parents were gone.
I’d never been to Coleman’s house before. It was an ordinary townhouse, which made sense, but there is a kind of vertigo in seeing the houses of people you see as characters. Suddenly they’re given a dimension of domesticity, a grounding in everyday reality, basic needs like your own, and it doesn’t seem to fit with your view of them as miraculous apparitions. Coleman gave us each a tab of E in the living room. We had to wait at least twenty minutes for it to kick in. It felt like I was high already, I was so full of nervous energy. I poked around Coleman’s room, where there was a large collection of fantasy and science fiction novels, and a sword, and a map of the World of Warcraft up on the wall. In one place, he had taped a toonie to the wall. Seeing me staring at it, Coleman explained its origin:
“Once, I was over at Toader’s and Brian and I got into an argument about money. I said, ‘Anything is worth doing if you are paid appropriately.’ Brian said, ‘Would you eat this lighter if I gave you two bucks?’ Considering my job at the grocery store pays me eight dollars and hour, and presuming the lighter took me ten minutes to eat, I calculated that I would be making more money by eating the lighter than I would be by working at the grocery store. So I said, ‘Yes.’ Brian didn’t believe me, of course, so I took the lighter apart, poured out all the fluid, and then I used my pocket knife to break the lighter into as many tiny pieces as possible. I tore up a sheet of paper and wrapped each of the pieces of the lighter in paper. Then I swallowed the balls of paper. The metal head was the worst part, because I couldn’t break it into many pieces and so they were big. The processed ended up taking me more than ten minutes, but I think it was worth it because I beat Brian.”
I laughed so hard I almost chocked and then Coleman went back into the living room and put on some techno music. I felt very agitated. My palms were sweating and my heart was beating very fast. Everyone had a look of something between terror and elation in their eyes. The music sounded beautiful. Suddenly a warm sensation came over me, like I’d been swept up by a tropical wave. I started to move my arms to the music. Coleman laughed—a high pitched peel. “It’s starting to kick in,” he said.
The carpet felt very nice under my toes. Like soft, white sand. I felt it with my hand. I lay down.
“The carpet is so soft!” I said. Everyone laughed, or one person’s laugh echoed through the house. But I couldn’t stay on the floor, not with the music going. I had to get up and dance again. It was much easier than usual to follow the music. My body flowed with it and it felt fantastic.
“I used to be in dance as a little kid,” I said. “I love dancing.”
Stacy giggled and the two of us danced. Helena and Coleman were having an intense conversation at the kitchen table. Toader was sitting in the arm chair, watching like a toad on a clock whose eyes go back and forth with the tick of every second.
Coleman said, “We should go outside,” and we agreed. This place was too small for our expanded well-being. We needed to move, to commune with the vibrancy of nature. We put on our coats and our boots, which was a dizzying task, and stomped around monster-like in the snow in the yard. Stacy fell over and began laughing.
Coleman, from on the deck, said, “Look at this.” He tore open a package and dangled a plastic Sticky-hand over the balcony. He got a lighter out of his pocket and lit one of the fingers on fire. It burned for a second and then flaming drops fell from it into the snow. We shrieked and laughed.
“So much better doing it here than in Toader’s house.” said Coleman. He looked like an insane magician.
“Yeah, you stink the whole place up like burning plastic,” said Toader.
“At least I brought in a burning-shit tray so we wouldn’t ruin the coffee table,” said Coleman.
“But you remember that time Brian knocked over the hydrochloric acid he stole? You know how you guys left a huge hole in the carpet?”
“It’s all good,” said Coleman, and he dropped the mutilated Sticky Hand in the snow.
We skittered off into the street. Everyone wanted to talk; we were buzzing and bopping like hummingbirds. Our speech was so fast, we thought surely anyone who heard us would know. We must avoid people!
Toader was saying, “You know I love you guys. You’re like the best friends I’ve ever had.”
Helena was clinging to Coleman’s arm. Stacy and I were talking. We agreed to “Listen, just listen. Then the other person can talk. We can take turns, and it will be cool.” I asked her if any of the stories about her were true. She went off on this frenzied soliloquy:
“Some of those stories are true. It’s hard to have everyone know your business, and know they’re judging you with their little eyes. I’ve done pretty much every drug that exists. I’ve done crack and it sucks. You just wait for the pipe to go around the circle so you can get more crack. I used to go to soccer tournaments in Prince George and I would stay with this girl whose brother was a drug dealer. He have us the crack. He also gave us mescaline once. Mescaline is a really strong hallucinogen. You know how, like, on mushrooms, you’re hallucinating, but you still know it’s because you’re on mushrooms? On mescaline, Batman could walk through the door and you’d think it was Batman.
“I never got gang-banged by rednecks. But I’ve slept with twenty-one guys, and some girls. I keep a list, so I don’t loose track. I put a ‘V’ beside the ones that were virgins. I lost my virginity at thirteen. To a nineteen year old. I met him because I spent a year at the alternative school. That’s where I started taking drugs too, the alternative school. I met Gale McDermott and we used to go over to his house and smoke pot. I did get a lot of work done, so now I’m sixteen and in my grad year. But it was the worst coming over to the high school. No body would talk to me. People are two-faced. They’re only your friend as long as you do what they want.
“I met Brian because I used to play soccer with his sister. I’d go over to her house with a bunch of girls and spend the whole time talking to Brian.
“One time, before I was dating Brian, I threw a party, and a bunch of people showed up that I hadn’t invited. There were so many people crammed into the house that it took twenty minutes to get from the door to the stairs. They completely trashed the place. The next morning, I was in such a bad mood, and so tired, and I had this mess to deal with. My little sister was freaking out so I said I would take her into town to get a McFlurry. I didn’t have license but I’ve been driving since I was nine. I was pulling into the parking lot of the McDonald’s and I must have been out of my head, and tired and stressed, because I stepped on the gas pedal instead of the brakes. I smashed the car though the wall. Knocked out a whole booth. Thank God there was nobody in that booth, or I’d probably be in juvie. But I owe the insurance company $30,000. For the whole rest of the year, I had the front page of the newspaper with the photo and the article taped to the inside of my locker. They called me ‘a local youth.’ I like to say I smashed into a McDonald’s for political reasons.”
I said, “I think it’s cool you’ve slept with twenty-one people. I hate the double standard. You know, how guys who do a bunch of girls are awesome, but if a girl does a bunch of guys she’s a slut. It’s got to be changed. We must make it cool to conquest too! And the only way you can make sure things change is if you do it yourself.”
“Who have you had sex with?” asked Stacy.
“Only Caleb. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you that, but I trust you. I haven’t told anyone that. I’m sorry, I have all these ideas but I haven’t had the time to put them into practice.”
“That’s cool. Be the change. Remember to wear a condom!”
“Sustainable slutitude!”
“Who am I kidding. I never wear one. Feel like snow pants.”
“Birth control pills then. And ask about STIs.”
“I just get them to pull out.”
“To each her own, then.”
Stacy told me that to let out her frustration with Brian and to remind herself that she was desirable, she cheated on him. She’d done it four times so far. She had a second, pseudo-relationship going on with a guy in Vancouver.
“Don’t tell Brian that I told you that,” she said.
“Of course I won’t. How could I? That would start shit. Girls who start shit are not worth my time. Fuck drama.”
“So true, so true.”
Maybe I should flirt with someone else in front of Caleb. Might make him jealous enough to ask me out. Figured I should try to have sex with him if I ran into him today. Would have to pretend I wasn’t high so he wouldn’t feel like he was taking advantage of me.
We ran into Coleman’s sister by the highway. She asked if we were on E. We said maybe. The girl with her said she was from Kitimat. She said that place was “full of squares. Like, if you do drugs once, everyone calls you a slut and no body talks to you anymore.” We said most people here took drugs. It was a really chill town. Some people didn’t, I knew them, I was friends with them, but they were a minority and didn’t moralize too much. The world was better, more loving, more peaceful, and more honest with drugs, we agreed.
Coleman’s sister was off to work and we decided we ought to stop in on Mia.
Mia said, “Oh, you’re all on E!” She bought a tab off of Coleman and while she was waiting for it to kick in, she said, “You all have to try this, it feels so wonderful.”
She got a tray of ice cubes out of the freezer and got us to sit down in the living room. She sat cross-legged behind us, got us to lift up our shirts, and ran the ice cubes over our backs.
“Isn’t that trippy?” she asked.
“That feels so cool,” I said.
We all took turns trailing the ice cubes around various parts of our bodies. Our clothes were half off when Caleb came through the door.
“You guys are such a bunch of E-tards,” he said. “I could take a picture of you all and your ice cubes and use it as an anti drug campaign.”
None of us got the joke.
I ran up to him, my bra straps falling down my arms, and said, “Caleb, you can be a real asshole sometimes and I know I can be a real asshole too, but I want you to know I like you.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, you can be way more of an asshole to me than I can be to you, because at least I’m open, but I don’t want to talk about this because I’m happy. I just wanted to let you know I think you’re cool.”
“I don’t think I can stay sober around you people much longer,” said Caleb. “Coleman, you got any of those left?”
Coleman sold him one and Caleb popped a tab and suggested we visit Dolly and T.B.; they’d want in on this E-fest. It was a good idea. We were tripping over ourselves with anticipation.
By the time we got to Dolly and T.B.’s place, it had started to get dark. In their kitchen, we debated getting booze for when we started to come down, but Mia said, “Why don’t you take more E? Then we’ll all be on the same level.”
We thought about it. It was a violation of our rules, but Coleman said it was the first time he’d done E all month, and Toader played the peer pressure role, and Stacy and Helena didn’t care, and I wanted to be on the same level as Caleb, so we did it. I hid my motivations by not involving myself in the argument. I said, “I’ll do what the rest of you do.” I had no more money left, so I had to give Coleman an IOU, which made him uncomfortable, but I insisted he could trust me, I was not the kind of person who liked to owe money, and we moved on.
We got the dance music started and turned the lights off and the disco lights on. We couldn’t care there were only a few of us. It was better that way, no randoms. This was the best party we’d ever been to! Things started to blur together, like I was spinning in circles, and hours could have passed, but I was dancing and with my good friends and all was good. Will and Nick and some others came over and I don’t know whether they did E or not—I heard someone saying he had to work—and then Dolly suggested, “Electrical Tape Nipple Party!” and Mia said, “Yes! Electrical Tape Nipple Party!” I was confused. Dolly disappeared into her room and came back with a roll of black electrical tape. She said, “You take off your top and I put a black tape ‘X’ over your nipples.” This seemed like the most hilarious, and most natural thing to do, so all us girls threw off our tops and unclipped our bras (the boys helped) and Dolly went around and tore off pieces of tape with her teeth and stuck them to our nipples. When this was done, we pressured the boys. Caleb and Nick and Will and T.B. took off their shirts and we all danced. Dolly mentioned that she was bisexual and Stacy said she was bisexual too and then they made out on the dance floor, which was really just the middle of the living room. The guys crowded around and cheered for them. We were laughing and Stacy and Dolly pulled me in. At first we were all grinding up against one another, an amateur show, and then Dolly asked if I’d ever made out with a chick before. I said I hadn’t, but I supposed everyone had to try at some point, and we made out. Then Stacy and I had to have a turn and Mia appeared with this whip from Dolly’s bedroom, and started whipping us with it as we made out. Somebody was taking pictures and then the neighbors were there—the intrusion of light from the opening of the door was like being pinched—and they said, “What the fuck is this?” and laughed and one of them took the whip from Mia and Mia joined the circle of girls and the whip got passed around the circle while everyone took a turn slapping us with it as we writhed in our small, soft-core orgy.
When that was done, everyone was tired and we danced a little more and then people started to drift to wherever. I thought I should go home, but I wanted Caleb so I fluttered around the apartment like a little butterfly trying to put together when he and Will and Nick were heading back to Will’s so I could invite myself along.
Walking through the heaping slush piles, under the glassy sky, Caleb and I were the only two on E, and we indulged our intoxication together. We kept falling behind or falling over and eventually Will and Nick got tired of us and vanished all-together. Then I asked Caleb back to my place. He agreed and we sat in my basement bedroom and made out and talked about everything or nothing until we had sex and I think I may have had an orgasm that time. Inside my head there was the picture of a flower blooming on a static television screen and I felt really hot and after Caleb said, “I like how everything I do affects you,” which struck me as really sweet. We lay in bed with our eyes closed in a lucid half-sleep full of worm-like visions until I said, “Maybe we should date.”
And then, on the come-down as I was, I was quick to add, “But not like normal people, you know. Like, let’s not make a big deal out of it.”
“Right on,” said Caleb.
“Like not ‘talk about where this is going’, or any of that sappy stuff.”
“Just like fuck-buddies.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good. I got to go though. I’ll talk to you when I talk to you.”
“Okay.”
I didn’t get out of bed and Caleb climbed out the window. I maybe got four hours of sleep and when I got up it was like the whole world had opened up underneath me.
9.2.10
8.2.10
DEAR BUKOWSKI, I DON’T THINK THIS WILL REACH YOU, BUT,
I’ve come to the conclusion
That I don’t like most poems
Either.
The practiced,
Perfect,
Careful
Ones
That come out of writing schools.
They’re too
Precious.
They’re so self-conscious!
How much sex do you think they get?
They probably have long term spouses.
They seem like people who live in spaces that are
Safe
And
Supportive.
I tried.
I really tried
To like them.
I did!
I thought:
This is where I am going to be published.
These people are experts.
I must learn to appreciated them.
But I don’t!
I don’t think I’m learning anything
Except how not to say
What I’m thinking.
How to
Circumnavigate
My impulses.
But I don’t give a fuck!
I like who I am!
I like to be an exploding beacon!
Clear.
Direct.
It’s so bourgeois
Always talking around your guts
Like
You’re afraid of offending somebody.
Well
Today is the day I say I don’t care anymore.
Let them be published and let me get a real job
To support myself.
Let me carry on with my
Websites.
A person must above all
Be free.
A person’s stomach would rot
If they had to suck up to people they didn’t
Care about.
So, I’m going to go pour some more wine
And it’ll be just
You and me.
THE SUPERVISOR
The summer of my second year in Environmental Studies I got a job as a ranger in a park in British Columbia. A dull, easy job.
There was a cabin. Apparently, people were supposed to stay in the cabin and watch for forest fires. Or people hunting out of season. Sometimes hikers might ask us questions. I thought, I can sit in a cabin for fifteen dollars an hour. I would have liked to do research, but fate does not answer to people.
My supervisor was a little blond chick named Taylor, neither attractive nor unattractive. Sporty, I guess is the term. She was not wearing any makeup, her face was boyish, her hair thin, and she wore jeans and a hoody. But she had a nice smile.
It was going to be her and me in the cabin. She’d been doing this for two years.
The first night that we were going to spend in the cabin, she picked me up in a forest service truck. She was cheery in the way sporty girls with descent grades are. She chatted away about the job and her school program. She was neither stupid, nor especially original. She was the kind of girl who snorted when she laughed.
I sat slumped in the passenger’s seat of the car and nodded to her statements. I am a girl too, and I exercise, and I like the outdoors, but I am much more cynical. Much brusquer. People have said I am “aloof.” I am concerned with the abstract and idealistic in life, that is why I have a hard time with casual conversation. When I replied to my supervisor, I joked, but in a monotone.
The cabin was on the side of a mountain. It was up on stilts, with a ladder to the door. It was messier inside than I thought it would be. My supervisor had been here alone for a while, she told me. There was a futon, and a kitchen. The kitchen was full of mugs. While I put my food in the drawers, my supervisor disappeared into a little room on the side, where I saw there was a single bed.
A big window across from the futon looked out over the park. I sat down on the futon and stared out the window. I was glad I had brought books to study, and some CDs for the little radio in the kitchen.
On the walls were maps, information on the park, and the rules for the cabin. I looked at all the posters on the walls.
My supervisor was busy with something. At dusk, she went down to the truck. She came back with two bottles of wine, one red and one white. She said we could drink them later, and put them in the fridge. I felt better about our prospects.
When it got dark, my supervisor and I broke into the wine. We had a couple mugs full and talked about our favorite hikes in Canada.
My supervisor had gotten very talkative and bubbly. I felt like I do in hot tubs. Taylor said we should put on some music. We were going to be here all night, we might as well dance.
I thought, we might as well dance.
Taylor put on a CD. The light in the cabin was warm and golden.
As the music played and my supervisor and I shimmied tipsily. I noticed that she had begun to edge closer and closer to me.
Taylor’s hand accidentally touched me. She burst into a peel of laughter.
I thought, oh no, she is a lesbian, or she is bisexual. I began to gulp my wine. I wondered how I should deal with this.
There was a time in first year when I slept with a girl. Plus, in contrast to my generally blunt exterior, I had a hard time rejecting people. I had slept with many guys just to avoid rejecting them. All that was needed was to shut your head off to the process.
Taylor took my hands in hers. We danced together around the living room.
Taylor said, “One second,” held up a finger, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Alone, I finished the last of my wine. I couldn’t do it. I would have to tell her.
I sauntered up to the bedroom door, which was closed, and knocked.
“Come in!” said Taylor.
I opened the door, walked in, and closed it. I breathed deeply.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’m into guys.”
“Oh! That’s okay!” said Taylor, and she wriggled down her pants. Grinning, her hands on her hips, she displayed a reasonably-sized penis.
I said, in the way I always find something that is, at least, polite, “I suppose that will do.”
NEW FIRST-PERSON VOICE FOR HISTORY
Who cares!
Who cares what I did!
I am happy.
I cannot be shamed.
I hold my head high,
There’s a sentient star
In my eye.
I am Dionysus,
Like my teacher was Dionysus,
Like I would have been
Had I been me
At another point in history.
Though the objects
Around us
Have changed,
We have not changed.
Though the words we use
Have changed,
We have not changed.
I am the patroness visited by
Antoine Roquentin.
I am the muses
Of Henry Miller
And Baudelaire.
Only now
I have an education
And a little
Encouragement.
THE YING YANG SWARMS MY HEAD LIKE A MILLION SPIDERS
It’s the duality,
The duality that gets to me.
How life and
Death
Are the same long process.
How imperfection
Makes beauty, which is better
Than perfection.
How I am in a very happy
Time
Right now,
But I have been thinking
There will be a day
When my friends
Die.
And how there is no good,
No full good,
Not that I know of.
Nothing comes 100%.
Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing.
Nothing nothing nothing nothing
Nothing.
That nothing lurks
At the edges
Of the universe,
Defining it.
So much
Is reliant
On negativity.
Our societies.
Our very
Material
Reality.
The world
Is predatory.
The greatest elation
Is the horrified,
Resigned,
And uselessly defiant
Scream.
O world!
I won’t understand you
By the end of my life,
So much as I crave to.
And yet,
I am happy.
I think myself beautiful.
I love the men I find.
Even though,
I have no hope.
I have no hope
No matter how much brain I have,
To defeat God and Nature
Alone.
Though I will, I will fail.
I will fail.
I fail.
And all the failures are pressing in on us always
And they are the invisible hands that mold us
From the flesh that pushes and grows outwards
With each success.
I have my music.
I will choke myself on music.
I will burn my eyes out with reading.
I will slow my brain,
Agile with writing,
With beer
To make something happen
I can write about.
This poem was inspired by a drunken
Naked conversation
With much more to it
That I’ll let you wonder about
While I take off
To find
Oblivion
Within my current
Resources.
7.2.10
THE METAPHORICAL VOID OF COLOR AND DARKNESS
Once, I had depression.
I had it
For a number of reasons.
I didn’t like the institutional
School system.
I didn’t know
How to control
My emotions.
I was curious.
I wanted to know what being insane
Was like.
There was a certain kind of attention
Kids with bipolar disorder got
In magazines.
I didn’t want my picture
In magazines
(Even though
I did want my picture
In magazines)
So much as I wanted
Whole articles
To debate
My personality.
(Now I am a writer
And hopefully
Good enough
To be the subject
Of theses.)
I tried out being insane
Like other kids try
A part-time job
For the first time.
I wanted to see the world
From an unknown perspective.
I wanted to know what truths
Insanity held.
I threw myself into madness
Like I might have explored
A foreign country.
What I learned was
It’s horrible.
Try insanity
If you’d like
(I did,
And I’m still here,
And I’m cool)
But don’t stay that way.
Of course,
I won’t deny,
It’s possible
I’ve gotten talented
At what I used to call
Insane.
5.2.10
IT OCCURRED TO ME
You are my hero.
I will forever be
A child
Looking up
At you.
You have no time
For me
(You are a hero).
I need more attention
Than you can give.
But you must know,
It must have occurred to you,
That you could run away
From North America
And return
Years later
And I’d still be there,
Older, waiting,
Communing with the women of history
Who’ve waited for sailors.
Maybe I’ll be married
(I wouldn’t put it past me)
But,
Have you ever read
Love in the Time of Cholera?
Do.
How many love letters
Have I written you
That have gone unanswered?
Here’s another,
Dropped into the void
Of you to me.
I will not stop writing letters.
I’m am over
The idea
Of reconciliation.
I just need
To imagine
We’re talking.
Right now,
I am wondering,
Have I ever made you cry?
3.2.10
EX-TOWN- CHAPTER 6:
A WOMAN MAY VERY WELL FORM A FRIENDSHIP WITH A MAN, BUT FOR THIS TO ENDURE, IT MUST BE ASSISTED BY A LITTLE PHYSICAL ANTIPATHY
Caleb did not call me the next day. The phone cackled in my imagination like a vengeful god. I could not call him—it would be presumptuous. Why didn’t he call me? He was the one who knew the plans, was really in the group, had the power to invite me places. I could only assume the thought of me never crossed his mind. He was off with his friends, laughing away, and if he did think of me, it was only a kind of relieved, well, I am here.
I was bored. I couldn’t call Stacy because she was never at home. I didn’t know if Mia had a phone, and I wouldn’t go over if I didn’t know there was something happening. She might be enjoying being alone, or with her boyfriend, and my intrusion would be unwelcome. Same with Toader.
I went over to Toader’s anyhow. He was watching TV. I felt bad. He didn’t know where everyone else was. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go (Will’s? But I had no rights there either…) and walked home. I sulked in my room. One minute I could have torn everything from the walls, the next I could have thrown myself off the roof.
The weekend passed. I read 1984. I watched Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Deprived of his presence, I could study Caleb’s conception of cool.
Of course, in the midst of his big school group, he was unapproachable. Couldn’t let his friends know something had happened between us. Couldn’t just walk up and ask him for some time. That would make me look high-maintenance. I would have glared at him whenever we passed one another in the hall, but that would have given him more reason to avoid me. So I kept my eyes focused on whatever was ahead. I had no idea he was there. I was just as unconcerned as he was.
When other people broke up with someone, or were slighted by someone, they lost no time in bashing that person. But I was incapable of it. I was incapable of saying, “I never want to see that lousy fuck again!” because I did not feel that way. Rather, I was consumed by a need to right wrongs. The more he hurt me, the more I wanted to know why, the more I wanted to change myself so he could enjoy me. In this way, an encounter between us was inevitable. I was gathering emotional momentum
I started drinking at lunch hours with Stacy and Brian. We’d take a few shots, enough to make us funny, but not enough that anyone would notice. We felt authentic. Drunk, getting through the school day became an act of great discipline. Afterward we would roam around town or visit someone’s house.
By the end of school on Friday, I figured I’d waited long enough. I was a little bit drunk. Caleb was standing with a small group of friends, most of whom were patrons of Toader’s. Did his friends know about us? Which answer would have been better for my cause? Either way, I should act like it was no thing.
I asked him what was up for the weekend. He said he didn’t know, a little tired, a little distracted, like I’d interrupted him (I had.) Now I was stuck. I asked could I come along wherever they were going. He said they weren’t planning to do anything. I said, “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?” He sighed. I was putting him out.
“Why are you treating me like this?” I asked.
“I told you, we weren’t up to anything.”
“I don’t care. I just want to spend time with you.”
“Look, I thought you might get like this. This doesn’t mean there’s anything between us.”
My body reacted before my mind. I punched him in the face.
Somebody yelled. I ran back at Caleb. He got the palm of his hand on the top of my head and pushed down and made me trip and fall in the dirt. I stating swearing: “You fuck. I fucking hate you, you fucking fuck.”
He was quiet and had his hand on his jaw where I had socked him. People were laughing and pointing and hooting. A teacher ran up and got between us. Will said, “Later man,” and vanished. The teacher led us both into the school. People stared as if through a glass wall.
Caleb and I had to sit next to one another in the office. We said nothing. I heaved, but I did not cry. Caleb looked tired. I was the first one called into the principal’s office. The principal was a very tall middle-aged man with glasses and thin grey hair. He asked me what had happened. Repentant as a nun, I said, “I’m very sorry sir. I was a personal matter between Caleb and I and it got out of control, sir.”
He said, “You know we don’t allow fighting on the school grounds.”
“Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Miss Day, you are an excellent student. I imagine something did happen between you and Mr. McEwan, but the way you handled it is not something I or anyone else at this school can tolerate. I am going to call your parents, and I will be giving you an in-school suspension for two weeks.”
He picked up the phone and asked for the number where I could reach my mother. I gave it to him. This was going to be the worst part. I zoned out. There were many nods and regretful tones.
After he hung up, the principal told me he would get my teachers to put work packages together for me, and that when I came to school on Monday, I should report to room 104. I said thank you and I left. On the way out, I didn’t look at Caleb. Then I watched my feet the whole way home. When she got back, my mom grounded me. She asked what on earth I’d been thinking. I said the guy had insulted me. She asked what his name was and I said it didn’t matter. My mom said she was worried about me and that she wanted me to start seeing the counselor again. I started screaming. I said, “Those people don’t know anything! It’s all brain chemicals this and genetic disposition that. What I need is someone to talk to! What I need are friends. And you and your Parents Matter More Than Peers, all you’re doing is making it worse. You couldn’t handle anything I have to say. You’d be all like, ‘that’s bad’ like the goddamn absent-minded adult you are. You’d lock me in my room and I’d have to kill myself I’d be so bored and lonely. And then it would be on your conscience, do you understand me?”
I ran downstairs and slammed the door and shook all over. And true to my word, I was so bored and lonely all I could do was sob and invent arguments against everyone I blamed my problems on. I compulsively scratched at my wrists like a stressed animal in a cage will gnaw on its own leg. I could hear my mom and my step-dad talking in the kitchen so I couldn’t go up and get a knife and cut myself for real. Plus kids who did that were “crying out for attention,” while I wanted the opposite independence. Plus, if I accidentally killed myself, or almost killed myself, Caleb would think I did it because of him, and I could not give him the satisfaction.
I didn’t want to drink either, for the same reasons of it being a cry for help, and because I knew in the long run it made depression worse and more obvious. So I endured. I was so used to the feeling, that oroboros of negativity, a howling sorrow whose every form of expression guaranteed humiliation. I hated on nature for being cruel and unconscious, or worse, cruel, conscious, and mocking me, its feeble creation. I was reminded of the Greek gods who created mortals as a kind of entertainment, and also of their redeeming humanness, their own frailty before jealousy and insult. Then my anger was nullified, not in a satisfying way, in a defeated way, because there was no one I could really be angry at. . I had never asked to be alive, never asked to be dropped into this massive, incomprehensible stew, the universe, and I resented whosever’s idea it had been. But it was no one’s idea. And if it was no one’s idea, I was left the emotion existentialists called angst. There was good and bad in all things and I was making myself the dogmatists I blamed for the failures of society if I claimed otherwise. Everything had its tenderness, even the universe, even Caleb.
I thought about going back to therapy, and then I thought, what would I say? I am in unrequited love, that is why I am so sad? Who would take me seriously? Who would not laugh and tell me to “get over myself,” like I already did every day?
So I lay in bed and cried and when that was done, I dreamed of how I wanted to go looking for a copy of Camus’s Sisyphus in the used book-store.
*
The next day, I felt, for the first time, in the insult, like I was over Caleb, a possibility so thoroughly exciting that I repeated it to myself. I am over Caleb. Who gives a fuck about Caleb? Caleb’s not so great. He is in fact rather ordinary. I even went so far as to suggest the accomplishment to Stacy. She congratulated me. Then she told me Caleb had also received an in school suspension, albeit for a week, so we’d be spending it together in the detention room. When I heard this, I was crazy with giddiness, and realized I’d been fooling myself. God I loved him. No matter, I’d put on my best face, my most charming disposition. I’d be the sweetest angel he ever met. Kill him with kindness. Maybe I should even make cookies for him, by way of apology. I spent Sunday making cookies. This made me look domestic and stable and satiated my parents, who were off to the ski trails and too busy to worry about me for long anyhow.
Caleb and I were seated across the room from one another, but at recess, when we are allowed to get up from our desks, but still not allowed to leave, I offered him the cookies. He looked at me like he thought they might be poisoned, but I was eating one, and, unable to convince himself I was a sociopath, he accepted. There was no bruise on his cheek. I’m brittle as a toothpick.
After that, whenever the teacher wasn’t looking, we passed a note back and forth. Together, we created and entire shitty cartoon story about a frog on mushrooms. We decided we should put it up on the wall at Toader’s.
We were given a little questionnaire about our misdemeanor to fill out. “Why do you think violence is not the way to solve our problems?”
I wrote to Caleb: Everyone thinks violence is the way to solve our problems. War in Iraq, anyone?
Caleb wrote: I think this was created for people who failed kindergarten.
I wrote: Probably. Those brain-dead kids who are always getting in shit. Problem is I can’t see this working for them either. Having someone talk to you like you’re blind, that’s not going to make you respect them. I think you need to impress people. Make them look up to you, and then they’ll mimic you. Cultivate a dazzling inapproachability. I think that’s how it works in the army and other hierarchies. Is it okay that I said something positive about the army? Are there solutions to these problems?
Caleb wrote: No.
I wrote: I feel like we should just leave people alone. Maybe we should let them drop out of school. Unless they’re sociopaths, they will try to do something positive with their lives. Sociopaths are a whole other problem.
Caleb wrote: They’d just steal shit.
I wrote: But what if we gave them enough money to eat for doing something they enjoyed? People only steal because they need to support themselves. What do they do in their spare time? What if we got them to test video games?
Caleb wrote: Might work. I think if they don’t wind up stealing or selling drugs, they end up in labor.
I wrote: True enough. Why don’t we just let them do that then? Why are we trying to keep young people sitting down for eight hours a day? No wonder they fuck around. Academics have nothing to do with the lives they’re going to live. We should just teach them to read and cast them free. Schools should be giant libraries or giant trade shops. Plus, separating us would keep the smart kids from having to go at the pace of the dumb ones, which makes us crazy and bored. I think that’s why we take so many drugs. We’re crazy with boredom.
Caleb wrote: I take drugs because they’re fun.
I wrote: Same coin, different side. Why can’t we build a social system that works? It seems like every issue in the world I can blame on people being stupid, or selfish. But that’s so vague. And not humble at all. I don’t like having a big head, thinking I know better than everyone all the time. But I can’t stand how they’ve made things, and sometimes the solution seems so obvious. This is like the only situation where Double Think is acceptable. People might be stupider than you, but you’re not allowed to act like they are.
Caleb wrote: I think we are much smarter than the general population.
I wrote: That depresses me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling like nothing can fulfill me or meet my expectations. Imagine what it must be like to be Brian! No wonder he drinks so much! It’s like the only thing for us is to become the new leaders. What a huge responsibility! How much we would have to critically examine ourselves in order to make sure that we maintained an upstanding morality! I shudder at the thought of the work involved.
Caleb wrote: I don’t want to lead people. I just want to be able to snowboard and listen to music and get high. I don’t want anyone to know who I am. But I do want to help people. I’m going to get a degree so I can do non-profit work in Africa or South America.
I wrote: You’re a better person than I am. I can’t handle that shit. I’m all brain and no hugs. (I don’t hug.) I’ll write a book of political theory, but I can’t go near a sick person.
Caleb wrote: I think that’s bullshit. It’s the hands-on stuff that makes the difference.
I wrote: I think both are necessary. Look at Marx.
Caleb wrote: Communism killed millions of people.
I wrote: I don’t know what to say. Perhaps I have the capacity for evil in me. Theory is just the only thing I’m good at. I have to believe you can make it a force for good.
And so passed the week. People I met once I’d escaped room 104 said they thought it was hilarious I’d punched Caleb in the face. I said I felt bad about it. On Friday Caleb and I drove over to Mia’s. Brian showed up a few minutes later. The four of us hot boxed Caleb’s car and then drove to Tim Horton’s, which, considering the state we were in, became an act of the greatest delicacy. We kept bursting out laughing and forgetting our orders. Finally we sat down at a table by the window with the view of the parking lot and the highway.
I said, “Guys, check it out.”
Four blonde, blue-eyed kids had just walked in, each of them meticulously clean and dressed in pastels and khaki. Christian Highschoolers, Dutch, the local mafia. One had a mullet so well kept it made you want to cry.
“What do you suppose they think of us?” I asked.
“They think we’re going to Hell,” said Mia.
“I get to drive the bus!” said Caleb.
“We can all meet up in Hell and have a party,” I said.
“No, I’m serious,” said Mia. “When I was there, if you did anything wrong, they’d take you into the principal’s office and threaten you with Hell. They do this to little kids! They make themselves out as this force for good and love and yet they’re the most intolerant. If you don’t believe exactly what their Church says, they shut you out. You have no idea how many people in this town won’t talk to me or my family.”
Caleb said, “When you look at the Bible like any other book, it’s really informative and moving, but when you look at it like an inalterable set of rules brought down to humanity by a deity…”
“God is self-contradicting,” said Brian. “He’s supposed to be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Evil exists in the world, therefore God cannot be onmibenevolent. Omnipotence, you all know. If God is omnipotent, can he create a rock so big he can’t lift it? If he can, and he can’t lift the rock, so he’s not omnipotent. And if he can’t create the rock, he’s not omnipotent either. And the concept omniscience is incompatible with the belief that God has free will. A being who is omniscient knows all of his choices before hand and therefore cannot have free-will.”
I said, “Take that, bitches. I think people have abstracted so far from the original concept of God that the word no longer has any meaning. He can be ‘the force for good,’ or ‘everything that exists,’ or ‘the father figure who judges all at their time of death.’ He can be whatever you want Him to be. And if He can be whatever you want Him to be, He looses all credibility as something that exists outside of your own head.”
“A lot of people hold to the tenet that God exists inside of you,” said Caleb.
“So what’s the point of Bible then? And all this ‘if you don’t believe what I believe, you’re evil?’” I asked. “The God from the Bible was a real asshole. I can’t read it without wanting to punch Him in the face (saying that felt funny because of Caleb.) How can people worship someone so rotten and full of Himself? It also really bothers me that He’s always portrayed as a man.”
“That’s just a child’s concept of God,” said Caleb.
“What, are you supporting a kind spiritualism?” I asked.
“Spiritualism helps a lot of people get through their lives,” said Caleb.
“He gets it from his mom,” said Brian.
“Sure, but why does it have to be rooted in this violent, misogynistic tradition?” I asked. “Plus: prayer. Here’s an idea, kids! Instead of going out and working whenever something goes wrong, pray for God to fix it!”
“I guess a lot of people need a concept of God in order to feel like their lives have any meaning,” said Mia. “But pot has done me far more good than the church ever has.”
“To pot,” said Caleb and we all lifted our coffees.
“Why?” I asked. “When the world is empty, you, as a human being, are capable of inventing your own meaning. It’s far more empowering.”
“Existentialism,” Brian mumbled.
“I’m not saying I believe it, I just think that’s what it is,” said Mia.
“I agree,” said Caleb.
“God is the opiate of the masses,” said Brian.
“Was that Marx?” asked Caleb.
“And there’s a story by Hemmingway,” said Brian.
“Are you saying we need religion to keep the masses under control?” I asked. “That’s sounds like something Coleman would say.”
“Fuck Coleman,” said Brian.
“In the Christian school,” said Mia, “it’s definitely used as a method of control.”
“I always think you should play to your hopes for people, not to their bad side,” I said. “One of the things I hate most about religion is the idea that humans are inherently evil. It’s also what I hate about advertising. Appeals to the lowest common denominator. My mom is always like, ‘Those things are brain washing you!’ and I’m like, ‘No, really? Stop worrying. I hate ads so much I actively will NOT buy something because I saw its ad.’”
“I think you’re in the minority,” said Caleb.
“I know. I loose sleep over this stuff,” I said.
“I hate ads so much,” said Mia.
I said, “How bad do you think we’ve freaked out those Christian kids?”
“They’re dressed strange! The must be Satanists!” said Mia.
“I’ve definitely seem them staring over here,” said Caleb.
“In our way, we must be captivating,” I said.
We finished our coffees and then we went back to Mia’s place and watched cartoons, without the ads. We liked cartoons because of the way they presented serious criticism through a childish medium. We wanted our whole lives to be like that.
Caleb did not call me the next day. The phone cackled in my imagination like a vengeful god. I could not call him—it would be presumptuous. Why didn’t he call me? He was the one who knew the plans, was really in the group, had the power to invite me places. I could only assume the thought of me never crossed his mind. He was off with his friends, laughing away, and if he did think of me, it was only a kind of relieved, well, I am here.
I was bored. I couldn’t call Stacy because she was never at home. I didn’t know if Mia had a phone, and I wouldn’t go over if I didn’t know there was something happening. She might be enjoying being alone, or with her boyfriend, and my intrusion would be unwelcome. Same with Toader.
I went over to Toader’s anyhow. He was watching TV. I felt bad. He didn’t know where everyone else was. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go (Will’s? But I had no rights there either…) and walked home. I sulked in my room. One minute I could have torn everything from the walls, the next I could have thrown myself off the roof.
The weekend passed. I read 1984. I watched Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Deprived of his presence, I could study Caleb’s conception of cool.
Of course, in the midst of his big school group, he was unapproachable. Couldn’t let his friends know something had happened between us. Couldn’t just walk up and ask him for some time. That would make me look high-maintenance. I would have glared at him whenever we passed one another in the hall, but that would have given him more reason to avoid me. So I kept my eyes focused on whatever was ahead. I had no idea he was there. I was just as unconcerned as he was.
When other people broke up with someone, or were slighted by someone, they lost no time in bashing that person. But I was incapable of it. I was incapable of saying, “I never want to see that lousy fuck again!” because I did not feel that way. Rather, I was consumed by a need to right wrongs. The more he hurt me, the more I wanted to know why, the more I wanted to change myself so he could enjoy me. In this way, an encounter between us was inevitable. I was gathering emotional momentum
I started drinking at lunch hours with Stacy and Brian. We’d take a few shots, enough to make us funny, but not enough that anyone would notice. We felt authentic. Drunk, getting through the school day became an act of great discipline. Afterward we would roam around town or visit someone’s house.
By the end of school on Friday, I figured I’d waited long enough. I was a little bit drunk. Caleb was standing with a small group of friends, most of whom were patrons of Toader’s. Did his friends know about us? Which answer would have been better for my cause? Either way, I should act like it was no thing.
I asked him what was up for the weekend. He said he didn’t know, a little tired, a little distracted, like I’d interrupted him (I had.) Now I was stuck. I asked could I come along wherever they were going. He said they weren’t planning to do anything. I said, “Can I talk to you alone for a minute?” He sighed. I was putting him out.
“Why are you treating me like this?” I asked.
“I told you, we weren’t up to anything.”
“I don’t care. I just want to spend time with you.”
“Look, I thought you might get like this. This doesn’t mean there’s anything between us.”
My body reacted before my mind. I punched him in the face.
Somebody yelled. I ran back at Caleb. He got the palm of his hand on the top of my head and pushed down and made me trip and fall in the dirt. I stating swearing: “You fuck. I fucking hate you, you fucking fuck.”
He was quiet and had his hand on his jaw where I had socked him. People were laughing and pointing and hooting. A teacher ran up and got between us. Will said, “Later man,” and vanished. The teacher led us both into the school. People stared as if through a glass wall.
Caleb and I had to sit next to one another in the office. We said nothing. I heaved, but I did not cry. Caleb looked tired. I was the first one called into the principal’s office. The principal was a very tall middle-aged man with glasses and thin grey hair. He asked me what had happened. Repentant as a nun, I said, “I’m very sorry sir. I was a personal matter between Caleb and I and it got out of control, sir.”
He said, “You know we don’t allow fighting on the school grounds.”
“Yes sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Miss Day, you are an excellent student. I imagine something did happen between you and Mr. McEwan, but the way you handled it is not something I or anyone else at this school can tolerate. I am going to call your parents, and I will be giving you an in-school suspension for two weeks.”
He picked up the phone and asked for the number where I could reach my mother. I gave it to him. This was going to be the worst part. I zoned out. There were many nods and regretful tones.
After he hung up, the principal told me he would get my teachers to put work packages together for me, and that when I came to school on Monday, I should report to room 104. I said thank you and I left. On the way out, I didn’t look at Caleb. Then I watched my feet the whole way home. When she got back, my mom grounded me. She asked what on earth I’d been thinking. I said the guy had insulted me. She asked what his name was and I said it didn’t matter. My mom said she was worried about me and that she wanted me to start seeing the counselor again. I started screaming. I said, “Those people don’t know anything! It’s all brain chemicals this and genetic disposition that. What I need is someone to talk to! What I need are friends. And you and your Parents Matter More Than Peers, all you’re doing is making it worse. You couldn’t handle anything I have to say. You’d be all like, ‘that’s bad’ like the goddamn absent-minded adult you are. You’d lock me in my room and I’d have to kill myself I’d be so bored and lonely. And then it would be on your conscience, do you understand me?”
I ran downstairs and slammed the door and shook all over. And true to my word, I was so bored and lonely all I could do was sob and invent arguments against everyone I blamed my problems on. I compulsively scratched at my wrists like a stressed animal in a cage will gnaw on its own leg. I could hear my mom and my step-dad talking in the kitchen so I couldn’t go up and get a knife and cut myself for real. Plus kids who did that were “crying out for attention,” while I wanted the opposite independence. Plus, if I accidentally killed myself, or almost killed myself, Caleb would think I did it because of him, and I could not give him the satisfaction.
I didn’t want to drink either, for the same reasons of it being a cry for help, and because I knew in the long run it made depression worse and more obvious. So I endured. I was so used to the feeling, that oroboros of negativity, a howling sorrow whose every form of expression guaranteed humiliation. I hated on nature for being cruel and unconscious, or worse, cruel, conscious, and mocking me, its feeble creation. I was reminded of the Greek gods who created mortals as a kind of entertainment, and also of their redeeming humanness, their own frailty before jealousy and insult. Then my anger was nullified, not in a satisfying way, in a defeated way, because there was no one I could really be angry at. . I had never asked to be alive, never asked to be dropped into this massive, incomprehensible stew, the universe, and I resented whosever’s idea it had been. But it was no one’s idea. And if it was no one’s idea, I was left the emotion existentialists called angst. There was good and bad in all things and I was making myself the dogmatists I blamed for the failures of society if I claimed otherwise. Everything had its tenderness, even the universe, even Caleb.
I thought about going back to therapy, and then I thought, what would I say? I am in unrequited love, that is why I am so sad? Who would take me seriously? Who would not laugh and tell me to “get over myself,” like I already did every day?
So I lay in bed and cried and when that was done, I dreamed of how I wanted to go looking for a copy of Camus’s Sisyphus in the used book-store.
*
The next day, I felt, for the first time, in the insult, like I was over Caleb, a possibility so thoroughly exciting that I repeated it to myself. I am over Caleb. Who gives a fuck about Caleb? Caleb’s not so great. He is in fact rather ordinary. I even went so far as to suggest the accomplishment to Stacy. She congratulated me. Then she told me Caleb had also received an in school suspension, albeit for a week, so we’d be spending it together in the detention room. When I heard this, I was crazy with giddiness, and realized I’d been fooling myself. God I loved him. No matter, I’d put on my best face, my most charming disposition. I’d be the sweetest angel he ever met. Kill him with kindness. Maybe I should even make cookies for him, by way of apology. I spent Sunday making cookies. This made me look domestic and stable and satiated my parents, who were off to the ski trails and too busy to worry about me for long anyhow.
Caleb and I were seated across the room from one another, but at recess, when we are allowed to get up from our desks, but still not allowed to leave, I offered him the cookies. He looked at me like he thought they might be poisoned, but I was eating one, and, unable to convince himself I was a sociopath, he accepted. There was no bruise on his cheek. I’m brittle as a toothpick.
After that, whenever the teacher wasn’t looking, we passed a note back and forth. Together, we created and entire shitty cartoon story about a frog on mushrooms. We decided we should put it up on the wall at Toader’s.
We were given a little questionnaire about our misdemeanor to fill out. “Why do you think violence is not the way to solve our problems?”
I wrote to Caleb: Everyone thinks violence is the way to solve our problems. War in Iraq, anyone?
Caleb wrote: I think this was created for people who failed kindergarten.
I wrote: Probably. Those brain-dead kids who are always getting in shit. Problem is I can’t see this working for them either. Having someone talk to you like you’re blind, that’s not going to make you respect them. I think you need to impress people. Make them look up to you, and then they’ll mimic you. Cultivate a dazzling inapproachability. I think that’s how it works in the army and other hierarchies. Is it okay that I said something positive about the army? Are there solutions to these problems?
Caleb wrote: No.
I wrote: I feel like we should just leave people alone. Maybe we should let them drop out of school. Unless they’re sociopaths, they will try to do something positive with their lives. Sociopaths are a whole other problem.
Caleb wrote: They’d just steal shit.
I wrote: But what if we gave them enough money to eat for doing something they enjoyed? People only steal because they need to support themselves. What do they do in their spare time? What if we got them to test video games?
Caleb wrote: Might work. I think if they don’t wind up stealing or selling drugs, they end up in labor.
I wrote: True enough. Why don’t we just let them do that then? Why are we trying to keep young people sitting down for eight hours a day? No wonder they fuck around. Academics have nothing to do with the lives they’re going to live. We should just teach them to read and cast them free. Schools should be giant libraries or giant trade shops. Plus, separating us would keep the smart kids from having to go at the pace of the dumb ones, which makes us crazy and bored. I think that’s why we take so many drugs. We’re crazy with boredom.
Caleb wrote: I take drugs because they’re fun.
I wrote: Same coin, different side. Why can’t we build a social system that works? It seems like every issue in the world I can blame on people being stupid, or selfish. But that’s so vague. And not humble at all. I don’t like having a big head, thinking I know better than everyone all the time. But I can’t stand how they’ve made things, and sometimes the solution seems so obvious. This is like the only situation where Double Think is acceptable. People might be stupider than you, but you’re not allowed to act like they are.
Caleb wrote: I think we are much smarter than the general population.
I wrote: That depresses me. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling like nothing can fulfill me or meet my expectations. Imagine what it must be like to be Brian! No wonder he drinks so much! It’s like the only thing for us is to become the new leaders. What a huge responsibility! How much we would have to critically examine ourselves in order to make sure that we maintained an upstanding morality! I shudder at the thought of the work involved.
Caleb wrote: I don’t want to lead people. I just want to be able to snowboard and listen to music and get high. I don’t want anyone to know who I am. But I do want to help people. I’m going to get a degree so I can do non-profit work in Africa or South America.
I wrote: You’re a better person than I am. I can’t handle that shit. I’m all brain and no hugs. (I don’t hug.) I’ll write a book of political theory, but I can’t go near a sick person.
Caleb wrote: I think that’s bullshit. It’s the hands-on stuff that makes the difference.
I wrote: I think both are necessary. Look at Marx.
Caleb wrote: Communism killed millions of people.
I wrote: I don’t know what to say. Perhaps I have the capacity for evil in me. Theory is just the only thing I’m good at. I have to believe you can make it a force for good.
And so passed the week. People I met once I’d escaped room 104 said they thought it was hilarious I’d punched Caleb in the face. I said I felt bad about it. On Friday Caleb and I drove over to Mia’s. Brian showed up a few minutes later. The four of us hot boxed Caleb’s car and then drove to Tim Horton’s, which, considering the state we were in, became an act of the greatest delicacy. We kept bursting out laughing and forgetting our orders. Finally we sat down at a table by the window with the view of the parking lot and the highway.
I said, “Guys, check it out.”
Four blonde, blue-eyed kids had just walked in, each of them meticulously clean and dressed in pastels and khaki. Christian Highschoolers, Dutch, the local mafia. One had a mullet so well kept it made you want to cry.
“What do you suppose they think of us?” I asked.
“They think we’re going to Hell,” said Mia.
“I get to drive the bus!” said Caleb.
“We can all meet up in Hell and have a party,” I said.
“No, I’m serious,” said Mia. “When I was there, if you did anything wrong, they’d take you into the principal’s office and threaten you with Hell. They do this to little kids! They make themselves out as this force for good and love and yet they’re the most intolerant. If you don’t believe exactly what their Church says, they shut you out. You have no idea how many people in this town won’t talk to me or my family.”
Caleb said, “When you look at the Bible like any other book, it’s really informative and moving, but when you look at it like an inalterable set of rules brought down to humanity by a deity…”
“God is self-contradicting,” said Brian. “He’s supposed to be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient. Evil exists in the world, therefore God cannot be onmibenevolent. Omnipotence, you all know. If God is omnipotent, can he create a rock so big he can’t lift it? If he can, and he can’t lift the rock, so he’s not omnipotent. And if he can’t create the rock, he’s not omnipotent either. And the concept omniscience is incompatible with the belief that God has free will. A being who is omniscient knows all of his choices before hand and therefore cannot have free-will.”
I said, “Take that, bitches. I think people have abstracted so far from the original concept of God that the word no longer has any meaning. He can be ‘the force for good,’ or ‘everything that exists,’ or ‘the father figure who judges all at their time of death.’ He can be whatever you want Him to be. And if He can be whatever you want Him to be, He looses all credibility as something that exists outside of your own head.”
“A lot of people hold to the tenet that God exists inside of you,” said Caleb.
“So what’s the point of Bible then? And all this ‘if you don’t believe what I believe, you’re evil?’” I asked. “The God from the Bible was a real asshole. I can’t read it without wanting to punch Him in the face (saying that felt funny because of Caleb.) How can people worship someone so rotten and full of Himself? It also really bothers me that He’s always portrayed as a man.”
“That’s just a child’s concept of God,” said Caleb.
“What, are you supporting a kind spiritualism?” I asked.
“Spiritualism helps a lot of people get through their lives,” said Caleb.
“He gets it from his mom,” said Brian.
“Sure, but why does it have to be rooted in this violent, misogynistic tradition?” I asked. “Plus: prayer. Here’s an idea, kids! Instead of going out and working whenever something goes wrong, pray for God to fix it!”
“I guess a lot of people need a concept of God in order to feel like their lives have any meaning,” said Mia. “But pot has done me far more good than the church ever has.”
“To pot,” said Caleb and we all lifted our coffees.
“Why?” I asked. “When the world is empty, you, as a human being, are capable of inventing your own meaning. It’s far more empowering.”
“Existentialism,” Brian mumbled.
“I’m not saying I believe it, I just think that’s what it is,” said Mia.
“I agree,” said Caleb.
“God is the opiate of the masses,” said Brian.
“Was that Marx?” asked Caleb.
“And there’s a story by Hemmingway,” said Brian.
“Are you saying we need religion to keep the masses under control?” I asked. “That’s sounds like something Coleman would say.”
“Fuck Coleman,” said Brian.
“In the Christian school,” said Mia, “it’s definitely used as a method of control.”
“I always think you should play to your hopes for people, not to their bad side,” I said. “One of the things I hate most about religion is the idea that humans are inherently evil. It’s also what I hate about advertising. Appeals to the lowest common denominator. My mom is always like, ‘Those things are brain washing you!’ and I’m like, ‘No, really? Stop worrying. I hate ads so much I actively will NOT buy something because I saw its ad.’”
“I think you’re in the minority,” said Caleb.
“I know. I loose sleep over this stuff,” I said.
“I hate ads so much,” said Mia.
I said, “How bad do you think we’ve freaked out those Christian kids?”
“They’re dressed strange! The must be Satanists!” said Mia.
“I’ve definitely seem them staring over here,” said Caleb.
“In our way, we must be captivating,” I said.
We finished our coffees and then we went back to Mia’s place and watched cartoons, without the ads. We liked cartoons because of the way they presented serious criticism through a childish medium. We wanted our whole lives to be like that.
26.1.10
EX-TOWN- CHAPTER 5:
WHATEVER IS DONE FOR LOVE ALWAYS OCCURS BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL
I didn’t go and see the psychiatrist when she came to town. I told my parents the counselor had decided it was unnecessary. Why should I go? A psychiatrist was only a paid friend, and now I had real friends. She would only put me on drugs, and now I had other drugs. Drugs that made me funner, not drugs that made me duller. The key to illegal drugs was moderation. Case in point, Coleman had a client named Stan, a dumb, goofy guy. He came around with his equally dense, womanizing friend Carl. They’d buy ten tabs, disappear for a few hours and then call back for another ten. What on earth were they doing with all that E? Did they want to wind up brain dead? Permanently deplete their serotonin? Drain their spinal fluid? (Did that really happen?)
“They’re buying it to sell to their friends at parties,” said Stacy and the whole crew simultaneously imagined a group of mainstreamers fiending over Coleman’s E and laughed nervously.
Sometimes Stan and his friend would come over to Toader’s to buy the drugs, but Toader didn’t like it. He didn’t want his place turning into a drug den, or being overrun with vacuous people. It already was a drug den, of course, but it was our drug den, and we liked to think ourselves a refined breed. So Stace and I would go with Coleman in his big boat of a car—a real pimp-mobile—to whatever deserted parking lot he’d promised Stan, and Stan and Carl would show up in a colossal new pickup (bought with oil rig money) and we’d trade cash through the windows. It was mine and Stace's job to sit pretty and count the bills. Be Coleman’s hoes. It was a big laugh. An extended, ironic joke turning on society’s preconception of smart young people.
Coleman had another set of customers our age who were occasional cokeheads. The girls were too skinny and the guy had too much muscle on his neck. One day they bought some E and headed to a concert at the theater. A few hours later they called back and Coleman drove over to their place. He said they were squabbling and looking for cash. In the end, they went into a little hidden box and got out the bills.
“They spent their rent money on E,” said Coleman and we laughed and agreed, those were signs of dependence, and dependence must be avoided.
Sitting around our filthy little shack, we’d discuss the ways we could be functional consumers of illegal intoxicants.
Caleb said: “People take a tab of E and at the end of the trip they start to feel down. They want that high back so they take another. And another. It’s called Chasing the Dragon.”
“That must be so bad for you,” I said.
“Not to mention you spend all your cash,” said Toader.
I said: “I think this is one of the negative effects of the War on Drugs. These products exist, they always have, and they’re fun and mind-expanding so likely they’ll continue to exist, but adults take this stance of JUST SAY NO and end it there. You have to understand something, you have to know its positive aspects and its negative aspects if you’re going to handle it properly. Here we have a bunch of ignorant fucks downing the stuff like candy because they don’t know anything about it and it feels good and they’re not going to listen to what adults say because they don’t respect them. What does it say that here we are—high school students—trying to work out an ethics for drug consumption? Shouldn’t people be passing this down to us? They just try to sweep it under the carpet. It’s the exact same thing they do with sex and it doesn’t work.”
“Teenagers in the States where they don’t teach birth control are more likely to contract STDs,” said Coleman. “That’s the power of ignorance.”
“The States are so fucked,” I said.
“Don’t get me started,” said Brian.
“I like best that we’re all going to be okay,” said Coleman. “I think it’s hilarious that we’re all going to grow up and be constructive citizens.”
Caleb said: “We have to be crazy while we’re young because if we don’t we’re going regret it. We’re going to wake up and realize we never tried anything, and it’s going to be too late. This way, we have something to look back on.”
“And if you drink a bunch as a seventeen year-old you’re hardcore. Do the same at forty and you’re an alcoholic,” I said.
“And if we do run into drugs later, we’re not going to make fools out of ourselves,” said Toader.
We agreed there were two distinct classes of kids in our town: those who were going to get out, and those who weren’t. Lifers, and people with imaginations. Lifers would live out same dreary, working-class existence as their parents. They didn’t understand the potential detrimental effects of drugs. They had kids too young and they let themselves go to seed. With all the vehemence of youthful ignorance, we refused to turn out that way. Caleb, Brian, Stacy, Coleman, and Toader hated the little town for being such a dead end, a shithole full of rednecks, as they said. Everyday was one more breathless step towards graduation and, thereby, escape. But Toader, despite the resentment he felt towards his home, and the fact hat he had applied for school in the city, was thinking of staying at least another year.
“You have to leave, Toader, you have to,” we said. “You’re better than this place.”
That was the thing: no one could make anything of themselves in this town, and to make something of yourself was to redeem yourself of all your mistakes, of all the drugs you took, of the very meaninglessness of your rural youth. It was to prove that no matter how much you swore, or talked down morality, or talked up partying, you could succeed. And to succeed despite that was the greatest middle finger we could give to a culture that we sincerely believed to be corrupt and foolish. That, and in its way, to be a teenage delinquent and still accomplish something was our means of expressing our sympathy for the truly down and out. Caleb, Coleman, Brian, Stacy, and I came from the successful middle and upper-middle classes, but we wanted to prove that you could start out a weed in the eyes of society and still succeed. No fate was written! Democracy worked! We needed the truly down and outs, after all. They were our muses, the people whose anti-authoritarianism was no mere political affiliation, but the very stuff of survival. The ones we liked, the ones who showed a keen perception, we encouraged as best we could. Us middle-class kids agreed the middle-class world was as fucked as the dead-end world—it required the resignation of the human spirit, of ceasing to say what was true for what institutions wanted you to say, and damned if we were going to lie about life—but one would have no power to change things if one did not go to the city and get an education. Sitting around in Toader’s messy shack with Mia’s weed and Coleman’s E, we plotted how we’d infiltrate and then overthrow the mundane, moral, and power-based system. No matter how much Coleman played the devil’s advocate on capitalism, we wanted to be the people to bring about the final anarchist revolution. The revolution that had been brewing since industrialization, the one that would annihilate arbitrary authority and make every human being on the planet equal to every other. It never occurred to us that we could fail. Saying you would start the revolution was like saying you wanted to become a physiotherapist.
*
One night, after a debate at Toader’s (which had become our de facto hangout spot), I heard Caleb was off to meet Will at his trailer and I asked if he’d walk me home. It was on the way, and he couldn’t say no here in front of all our friends, so off we went. I twirled down the empty streets. But he was no fun to talk to at all! When we weren’t arguing the best form of political organization, he had this quiet and thoroughly infuriating passive acceptance towards everything I said, almost Buddhist in its tranquility. It was impressive, no doubt, but I wanted to get him worked up, in the very least about me. This was the boy I had fallen in love with? This peaceful, enigmatic giant? Maybe it was because he was so different from me: I was positively bursting with words, desperate to expel every last feeling, every last whim out of every limb that would obey. I swore, I ranted, I gesticulated, and I danced. And he would smile faintly and laugh like he understood everything already. Like I was not but the foolish student, which I had to admit was the role I had taken on in regards to him.
Still, “Don’t you have any feelings?” I demanded. “Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you care?” He shrugged and smiled, and provided some counter example, some ying to my yang, and I was defeated, proven no more than an idealist, and had to sigh in resignation.
I got him on to sex. He’d done it twice, with boring and unattractive chicks, he’d been drunk, and he didn’t want to talk about it. All those cute little fundraiser girls and he’d never made a one of them? He liked them and he was trying. “I’ve never done it,” I said. “But I am entirely free of expectations. The key to happiness: low expectations. All those girls, chirping away about how their first times are going to be ‘special’ and you’re like, what are you, living in a TV-show? It is going to hurt. It is going to hurt and it’s going to be uncomfortable, and you may not even like the guy and you’re definitely not going to stay with him forever. Just stop romanticizing and get it over with.”
“My life is a TV-show,” said Caleb.
“What’s it called? The Caleb Show?”
“Maybe.”
“Who’s watching?”
“Who knows. God?”
“God,” I sucked on the concept like it was a cough drop. “Am I in it? Am I like one of those really distinct characters who show up every couple of episodes?”
“Oh, you’re definitely in the show,” said Caleb.
I didn’t know what to say to that. He was so detached most of the time that any acknowledgement that I existed made me suspicious. Worst of all, it made me hope.
I changed the subject. When we got to my house, I lingered, hoping he might try to kiss me, but he didn’t. I didn’t have the guts to try myself, because he might push me away, and then how could I keep living in my own company? I slipped into the house, felt my way through the dark kitchen, and went to bed.
While I slept I had a dream that Caleb was the devil, or he was a doctor or a psychiatrist, and Stacy was his secretary, and he had a cure for all my troubles: I had to sell him my soul. I sold him my soul because was in a lot of pain and because I was attracted to him and then he owned me.
*
Meanwhile, my mom was getting anxious about my style.
“I wasn’t big on how much skin you were showing before but at least you had some color,” she said. “What’s with all this black make-up? And that white fur coat? What, are you trying to look like a street walker?”
“Yes.”
“What do the teachers at school say about that?”
“They don’t say anything and if they did, I would argue that clothing is a kind of artistic expression, and if they try to censor me, it’s a violation of freedom of my speech.”
“I think it’s degrading to women.”
“It’s the opposite of degrading to women, mom. What I’m trying to say is that a girl who dresses sexy doesn’t necessarily have to be stupid. Nor should a smart girl have to cover up her body like she’s ashamed of it. My body is a part of my power. Don’t you know anything about post-feminism?”
“Olivia, it looks trashy.”
“I think that robe looks trashy. How long have you had that? It’s starting to fray on the side.”
My mom glared. “Watch your mouth,” she said.
I pretended to zip my mouth closed with my fingers, got my back-pack and hopped out. It was cold and I had to bury my nose in my coat. Sometimes girls at school got all outraged about it, but it had to have been a fake. I bought it for $40 on the internet.
Walking, I imagined my mom and my dad having a conversation about whether or not I was on drugs. I chuckled to myself. That got me thinking about school. If I was going to prove that druggies weren’t bad people or stupid people, I was going to have to keep my marks up. This was difficult because school was starting to lose its relevance. Once, it had been the only option for a decent life. Now I figured I could just hang around and get stoned and draw pictures and read books and write philosophy and I would do fine. Still, I liked my parents and I didn’t want to disappoint them. The kids I knew who dropped out were the ones with the shitty homes. Mia and her Christian aunt. Dolly’s parents having unbearable new boyfriends and girlfriends, sometimes little older than she was. Stacy was thinking of moving out, even if she wasn’t going to drop out—hardly a day went by she didn’t have a story about a spat. Her mom was a bipolar flower shop manager. Her dad was a confused electrician who lost his temper. She was a genetic anomaly: smarter than the two of them combined. She’d go days without visiting home. She’d go days without going to class, which is why I didn’t think I’d ever seen her before. She knew when the exams where and she’d show up and ace them so no one could talk. Sucked that these were wonderful, brilliant people. They didn’t deserve their lots. Not that I wanted to sentimentalize families. More, leaving my family would be like betraying a friend. Also, I didn’t want to work.
My dad watched my transformation with a step-parent’s befuddled ineptitude. I called him my dad but he wasn’t really. I never met my real dad and my mom married him when I was two so there wasn’t much difference other than that he was Asian. He was a good guy. Quiet, fair, funny in that dorky way that Asians are. He was an anesthesiologist and my mom was a hospital administrator. When I was nine, they had twin boys. The twins were more fun than I was, considering I’d reached the apex of my teenage moodiness and they’d just moved from the tantrum phase into that doe-eyed, lispy, adulating phase that makes adults turn to pulp. The kids seemed wary of me, or unaware that I was anything but a strange giraffe that occasionally stalked across the living room. I wasn’t what anyone would call a “kid person,” which was, I’m sure, a great disappointment to my parents. I hadn’t changed the kids’ diapers and I didn’t “take them to the park all the time.” I didn’t dislike them, I just didn’t have anything to say to them that was “appropriate.” At one point, I had ambitions for them to be cool. I tried to tell them the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real so they would have clear minds and a firm grasp of reality to carry them into the world, but my mom would have none of it. She wanted her kids to be kids, she said, whereas I wanted the exact opposite, adult minds cunningly disguised in the unassuming bodies of small children. No such luck. They went on playing with their dinosaurs and reading their colorful math books, thrusting themselves unawares into futures of lop-sided smiles, squeaky-clean reputations, and academic trophies. People would be surprised to learn they had a “crazy blonde sister.” What was she doing now? A stripper? I wanted to be a stripper.
It was Halloween. It had snowed once, melted, and now there was a layer of snow on the ground like a sprinkle of icing sugar. Dolly and T.B. were throwing a party. At school, Stacy found me in the hallway and asked if I’d like to go costume shopping once we were out. I agreed. I hadn’t known when I met her, but Stacy was Stacy Roberts. A ghost that blew from locker to locker, a whisper on everyone's lips. A slut, a druggy, she’d let a horde of rednecks gang bang her, she’d crashed a car into a McDonald’s. When I first found out this Stacy was that Stacy, I’ been distressed. Stacy Roberts? I’m hanging out with Stacy Roberts? Has my life gone to the pits? Turns out she was wily and lucid. And who would I have been if I hadn’t accepted her for who she really was—a genuine, intelligent human—and rather for what people said about her?
Where Brian’s glowing intelligence was abstract and scholarly, Stacy’s was social. She was a master manipulator, a keen perceiver of human foible, and a silver tongue. In her, one could see the domination of multinational corporations. And if she didn’t rule them, she would be the call girl whose masterfully plotted vengeance cheated them of millions.
I wanted to ask her advice on the matter of Caleb’s insensitivity. She looked like the kind of spotless housewife who dished it out along with the potato salad, only if she were married to the devil.
“Caleb’s insecure,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that information, other than throw myself at him to let him know that he was loved, but men who hate themselves think that loving them makes you worth less than they are. One had to impress them with one’s aloofness and superiority, if one could muster the necessary discipline. Adoration is an impulsive while seduction is a game of the intellect, and sadly the emotional life of man runs by the same laws as an elementary school playground: muscle beats brains.
I was going to the party as a flower fairy and Stacy was going as a boy. We found me a green skirt, a green snake-skin tank top (fake), some plastic pearls, a pair of butterfly wings, and plastic flowers that I wanted to make into earrings. I was going to pair all this with my black and white striped stockings and little pink shoes. Stacy got trousers, a flowery dress shirt, suspenders, and brown loafers. We were going to draw a mustache on her lip with eyebrow pencil and do her hair in a low pony-tail like a dandy artist’s.
Stacy stole all her clothes. She stuck them into her shoulder bag with the placidity of a glacial lake. No matter how controversial I could have hoped to be, Stacy would have me beat. The people we admire most are the people who feel no shame, but we are too ashamed to be them.
With our bags of loot, we trotted off to Gale McDermott’s trailer. He said he was coming to Mia’s, but he didn’t plan to dress up. I chided him: he should at least wear a silly hat. We wanted beer, but I’m bad at asking people for things. I don’t know how I would have managed without Stace. She was seductive as paradise. We walked to the liquor store because Gale didn’t have a car. Stace and I pooled our money on a 26 of vodka to share. Then we went to the gas station and bought a container of cranberry juice for chase. We insisted Gale had to come to Dolly and T.B.’s, and he had to wear a hat, and then Stacy and I walked to my house to change, sucking vodka out of the paper bag (hobo-in’ it) as we went. By now, I was in love with her.
There was nobody at home so we stole a beer each out of the fridge. We did our makeup; we gossiped; we bemoaned the earth and the well-liked nincompoops that ran it; we created increasingly abstract and esoteric jokes. Heads full of water, we laughed and screamed our ways to Dolly and T.B.’s. We peed in people’s lawns.
Musing and leaning against a tree, I waited for Stace to emerge from a hedge. Once she was out, I said, “I want to lose my virginity.”
Stace said, “Haha, you’re a virgin.”
I said, “No, really.”
Stace said, “Do it tonight.”
I said, “It is Halloween.”
Stace said, “I dare you.”
“I can’t turn down a dare.”
Dolly and T.B. lived above a store that sold fireplaces. T.B. had his paintings up the walls. The cabinets were painted in psychedelic black and white designs. There was a great rug. Dolly had sewed pillows and monstrous stuffed toys. One of her proudest achievements (which she’d made with Mia) was a pornographic fridge magnet poetry set. They’d cut words out of tit mags, glued them to magnets, and added them to an ordinary poetry set. The dirty verses were up on the freezer.
Our gang was busy buying E off of Coleman. They had to do it now; rumor was word had spread about the party and Coleman wanted to keep his dealing on the down-low. I didn’t have any money left and I didn’t want to lose my virginity on ecstasy so I passed. I wanted to do it with Caleb, but I wasn’t going to beg, so if I had to, I’d settle for whoever was cool and available. Waiting, I fantasized about hot randoms.
Coleman was dressed up as the leader of the Christian Heritage party, some stony preacher named Mitch Tom. He’d put on a suit, cut a picture of Mitch Tom’s face out of a campaign sign, poked holes in the eyes and tied it around his head. He carried a bible and lurched around the party intoning, “If my people!”—Mitch Tom’s campaign slogan. If anyone asked he’d tell them why the power in this country needed to be returned to the able hands of Jesus Christ.
Caleb was dressed up as Hunter S. Thompson. He had the floppy fishing hat, the cigarette holder, the blinding short-shorts, the Hawaiian shit, and the aviators.
Mia was the Ganja Goddess, who wore a long green dress and distributed buds to her buds. T.B. and Dolly were rainbow pirates. Brian couldn’t be bothered, the cynical bastard.
People started showing up; first friends of friends, then peeps whose faces you’d seen around. A good mix of high school students and local trash. The apartment throbbed. The lights went out and colorful, swirling lights went on and T.B. DJed in the corner. But I didn’t see anyone I wanted to fuck and the drunker I got the less I could bear a circle if Caleb wasn’t in it. Here, there, he was gesticulating his invented misadventures. He had the gravity of a planet: everybody leaned in to hear more. It felt good knowing he was bullshitting when everyone else oohed and ahed, but any confidence I aggregated fell apart the minute he moved on without the least concern for my company. Embarrassing though it might have been, I followed him, because his heartlessness was still more satisfying than anyone else’s conversation.
Brian got way too drunk and he and Stacy started shouting at each other. They disappeared into the hallway and beyond.
The only other people who lived in Dolly and T.B.’s building—lucky for them—were their friends. The friends opened their doors and the party took over both apartments. Drama broiled in every corner. Then the dancing started. There’s this drunken tipping point for dancing. I danced and dudes came up and hit on me. I gave them some time, but they didn’t excite me. Some of them were hot and popular, but as enviable as I thought it would have made me to get with them, I couldn’t do someone who bored me. I wished I was a shallower person than I was. When I got a chance, I gave Caleb the eyes. At one point, I saw him sit down on the couch and I hopped off the dance floor and plopped down beside him.
“Hey Twinkie,” he said.
“How’ya doing?” I asked. “You look distracted.”
“There’s this chick I’m trying to decide if I should ask out,” he said.
My face got hot and prickly. But I was his friend, not his girlfriend, and showing jealousy would only compromise that. I said, “Who?”
Caleb pointed across the room at a little chick, a tree-hugger, common as chickadees in this part of the world.
“She’s cool,” I said.
“She’s really funny and down to earth. She also has a wild side. She told me once about how she did acid and had sex in a forest.”
“That’s cool. I think the best thing to do is get it over with. She’ll either say yes or no, and after you’ll be able to move on. As it is, you’re just torturing yourself.”
“I don’t know.”
“Just do it. It’s like Band-Aids.”
“I’ll look for an opportunity.”
“Look, she just stopped talking to that homeboy. She’s just standing there waiting for something to happen.”
Caleb looked at me and then stood up and swallowed his drink. I watched him walk away and drifted off into a nether-space of contemplation. If she said yes, I might be able to get over him. If she said no, I would still have a chance. I got up and wandered from group to group looking for a conversation that could stimulate me. Nothing. People are so ordinary. I went looking for the bottle of vodka. Stace and I had hidden it behind the stereo so on one would steal it. She was missing, so I thought I might drink it all. I could say I drank almost a whole 26 of vodka in one night. I felt sick.
In the kitchen, I started talking to Coleman. We decided we should wrestle. People saw and shouted in alarm. Half thought Coleman was abusing a woman; half thought I was a bitch picking fights. The two of us shook hands afterwards. What wonderful performance art. The squares couldn’t handle that shit. Sweating, I went outside. The smokers were huddled around the door. I borrowed two puffs. Whatever happened to Caleb and his lady love? I went back in. The stairs were so long. I zigzagged down the hallway.
I didn’t see Caleb in the main room. The strobe light was going. I wanted to check my makeup. The bathroom door wouldn’t open; there was something in the way. Caleb was sitting with his back against the sink and his feet pressed against the bathtub. I squeezed in and sat down beside him.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“She said no,” he said.
“What’d she say?” I asked.
“She likes us better as friends.”
“That’s cliché,” I said.
Caleb’s pupils were huge. He had a layer of sweat on his face like a layer of slime. I rubbed his hand. Someone was banging on the door.
“We’d better get out of here,” I said. I pulled him up and we toppled out. The guy waiting for the bathroom gave us a thumbs up.
Caleb wanted to leave the party. “Where will you go?” I asked. He was sleeping over at Will’s. I said I would walk with him. As we were putting on our shoes, I nearly fell into the doorknob. Then we were out in the hallway. Caleb took the door out onto the street to avoid the crowd at the back door.
We walked until we couldn’t hear the music any more. I said I missed my vodka. Caleb said he had a six-pack in his back pack. We shot-gunned a beer each behind a dumpster.
Caleb had taken E and I figured he’d want to talk. I asked him to tell me about his life. His dad ran a fishing lodge on the Babine. He worked there in the summers. It catered to rich Americans. His family had a big log house out by Driftwood. His mom was a house wife and cooked at the lodge over the summer. He had an older sister who was studying engineering at the University of Toronto. She was a genius. He had an older brother who did something. The older brother was a prankster and a drinker and a womanizer. Caleb swore, on his last birthday, his brother had paid one of his friends to call him in his place. He spoke of his brother with the sad, adulating tone of younger brothers.
I said I had two brothers in the first grade. Or half-brothers. They were in French Immersion, just like I had been. French Immersion was like private school for public schoolers. Back then, I was all joints. And we didn’t have a TV, so I talked like a book. Children are vicious: they’ll try to beat out any deviation they can find in a person. I always had crushes on kids no body else liked. I lied about them so no one would make fun of me.
Middle schools are hell. Trap two hundred hormonal typhoons in one building with no older kids to embarrass them and no younger kids to make them feel responsible and you get loud, steamy hell. People experimented with sex, but had the maturity of children. I was serious as an adult but asexual as a ten year old. I couldn’t stand being touched. I had crushes, but all my crushes had girlfriends. Middle school was when I realized I didn’t have friends like ordinary people—no conspirators or confidants. During those years, I caught sadness like a cold.
I remember the summer before I got to high school I was looking in a magazine. I looked in the magazine and then I looked in the mirror. And then I looked in the magazine and I looked in the mirror. That’s when I realized I was beautiful. It made me feel better. I could compensate for being sad by being beautiful. I started dressing like a slut.
Caleb had been friends with Will since elementary school. He used to be the fat kid. He started exercising like crazy when he got to high school and now he was just big. When he was fourteen, he tried pot for the first time. He liked how it made him feel. He liked how it made him creative and funny. He’d been using it ever since. Because he smoked a lot of pot and didn’t do a lot of homework, most of highschool, he had cheated to pass his tests.
A block later, Caleb puked behind somebody’s hedge. I said, “Ah, gross.” He drank another beer so he couldn’t taste the puke.
When we got to my house, I asked if he’d like to come in. He shrugged his shoulders and I took his hand. We tip toed across my lawn to the back yard where there was a little window you could push open, squeeze through, and hop down from onto the bed. I got Caleb to stay on the bed and went upstairs and opened and closed the door so my parents would know I was back by curfew. When I came downstairs, Caleb was in the exact same position as when I had left. I sat on the floor in front of him. I climbed into his lap. I felt like a little leaf. We made out for a really long time. We did some other things. Caleb asked if I had condoms. I said there were some in my purse. Things happened that I don’t care to describe. The sex lasted two minutes or less and it hurt. For a little while we fell asleep. At five in the morning we woke up and did it again. This time it lasted about ten minutes and was really good. Then Caleb left out the window. Watching him go was like having to out of bed on a cold day. I didn’t think about much and fell asleep. The next morning I felt nauseous and stiff but utterly thrilled.
I didn’t go and see the psychiatrist when she came to town. I told my parents the counselor had decided it was unnecessary. Why should I go? A psychiatrist was only a paid friend, and now I had real friends. She would only put me on drugs, and now I had other drugs. Drugs that made me funner, not drugs that made me duller. The key to illegal drugs was moderation. Case in point, Coleman had a client named Stan, a dumb, goofy guy. He came around with his equally dense, womanizing friend Carl. They’d buy ten tabs, disappear for a few hours and then call back for another ten. What on earth were they doing with all that E? Did they want to wind up brain dead? Permanently deplete their serotonin? Drain their spinal fluid? (Did that really happen?)
“They’re buying it to sell to their friends at parties,” said Stacy and the whole crew simultaneously imagined a group of mainstreamers fiending over Coleman’s E and laughed nervously.
Sometimes Stan and his friend would come over to Toader’s to buy the drugs, but Toader didn’t like it. He didn’t want his place turning into a drug den, or being overrun with vacuous people. It already was a drug den, of course, but it was our drug den, and we liked to think ourselves a refined breed. So Stace and I would go with Coleman in his big boat of a car—a real pimp-mobile—to whatever deserted parking lot he’d promised Stan, and Stan and Carl would show up in a colossal new pickup (bought with oil rig money) and we’d trade cash through the windows. It was mine and Stace's job to sit pretty and count the bills. Be Coleman’s hoes. It was a big laugh. An extended, ironic joke turning on society’s preconception of smart young people.
Coleman had another set of customers our age who were occasional cokeheads. The girls were too skinny and the guy had too much muscle on his neck. One day they bought some E and headed to a concert at the theater. A few hours later they called back and Coleman drove over to their place. He said they were squabbling and looking for cash. In the end, they went into a little hidden box and got out the bills.
“They spent their rent money on E,” said Coleman and we laughed and agreed, those were signs of dependence, and dependence must be avoided.
Sitting around our filthy little shack, we’d discuss the ways we could be functional consumers of illegal intoxicants.
Caleb said: “People take a tab of E and at the end of the trip they start to feel down. They want that high back so they take another. And another. It’s called Chasing the Dragon.”
“That must be so bad for you,” I said.
“Not to mention you spend all your cash,” said Toader.
I said: “I think this is one of the negative effects of the War on Drugs. These products exist, they always have, and they’re fun and mind-expanding so likely they’ll continue to exist, but adults take this stance of JUST SAY NO and end it there. You have to understand something, you have to know its positive aspects and its negative aspects if you’re going to handle it properly. Here we have a bunch of ignorant fucks downing the stuff like candy because they don’t know anything about it and it feels good and they’re not going to listen to what adults say because they don’t respect them. What does it say that here we are—high school students—trying to work out an ethics for drug consumption? Shouldn’t people be passing this down to us? They just try to sweep it under the carpet. It’s the exact same thing they do with sex and it doesn’t work.”
“Teenagers in the States where they don’t teach birth control are more likely to contract STDs,” said Coleman. “That’s the power of ignorance.”
“The States are so fucked,” I said.
“Don’t get me started,” said Brian.
“I like best that we’re all going to be okay,” said Coleman. “I think it’s hilarious that we’re all going to grow up and be constructive citizens.”
Caleb said: “We have to be crazy while we’re young because if we don’t we’re going regret it. We’re going to wake up and realize we never tried anything, and it’s going to be too late. This way, we have something to look back on.”
“And if you drink a bunch as a seventeen year-old you’re hardcore. Do the same at forty and you’re an alcoholic,” I said.
“And if we do run into drugs later, we’re not going to make fools out of ourselves,” said Toader.
We agreed there were two distinct classes of kids in our town: those who were going to get out, and those who weren’t. Lifers, and people with imaginations. Lifers would live out same dreary, working-class existence as their parents. They didn’t understand the potential detrimental effects of drugs. They had kids too young and they let themselves go to seed. With all the vehemence of youthful ignorance, we refused to turn out that way. Caleb, Brian, Stacy, Coleman, and Toader hated the little town for being such a dead end, a shithole full of rednecks, as they said. Everyday was one more breathless step towards graduation and, thereby, escape. But Toader, despite the resentment he felt towards his home, and the fact hat he had applied for school in the city, was thinking of staying at least another year.
“You have to leave, Toader, you have to,” we said. “You’re better than this place.”
That was the thing: no one could make anything of themselves in this town, and to make something of yourself was to redeem yourself of all your mistakes, of all the drugs you took, of the very meaninglessness of your rural youth. It was to prove that no matter how much you swore, or talked down morality, or talked up partying, you could succeed. And to succeed despite that was the greatest middle finger we could give to a culture that we sincerely believed to be corrupt and foolish. That, and in its way, to be a teenage delinquent and still accomplish something was our means of expressing our sympathy for the truly down and out. Caleb, Coleman, Brian, Stacy, and I came from the successful middle and upper-middle classes, but we wanted to prove that you could start out a weed in the eyes of society and still succeed. No fate was written! Democracy worked! We needed the truly down and outs, after all. They were our muses, the people whose anti-authoritarianism was no mere political affiliation, but the very stuff of survival. The ones we liked, the ones who showed a keen perception, we encouraged as best we could. Us middle-class kids agreed the middle-class world was as fucked as the dead-end world—it required the resignation of the human spirit, of ceasing to say what was true for what institutions wanted you to say, and damned if we were going to lie about life—but one would have no power to change things if one did not go to the city and get an education. Sitting around in Toader’s messy shack with Mia’s weed and Coleman’s E, we plotted how we’d infiltrate and then overthrow the mundane, moral, and power-based system. No matter how much Coleman played the devil’s advocate on capitalism, we wanted to be the people to bring about the final anarchist revolution. The revolution that had been brewing since industrialization, the one that would annihilate arbitrary authority and make every human being on the planet equal to every other. It never occurred to us that we could fail. Saying you would start the revolution was like saying you wanted to become a physiotherapist.
*
One night, after a debate at Toader’s (which had become our de facto hangout spot), I heard Caleb was off to meet Will at his trailer and I asked if he’d walk me home. It was on the way, and he couldn’t say no here in front of all our friends, so off we went. I twirled down the empty streets. But he was no fun to talk to at all! When we weren’t arguing the best form of political organization, he had this quiet and thoroughly infuriating passive acceptance towards everything I said, almost Buddhist in its tranquility. It was impressive, no doubt, but I wanted to get him worked up, in the very least about me. This was the boy I had fallen in love with? This peaceful, enigmatic giant? Maybe it was because he was so different from me: I was positively bursting with words, desperate to expel every last feeling, every last whim out of every limb that would obey. I swore, I ranted, I gesticulated, and I danced. And he would smile faintly and laugh like he understood everything already. Like I was not but the foolish student, which I had to admit was the role I had taken on in regards to him.
Still, “Don’t you have any feelings?” I demanded. “Doesn’t that bother you? Don’t you care?” He shrugged and smiled, and provided some counter example, some ying to my yang, and I was defeated, proven no more than an idealist, and had to sigh in resignation.
I got him on to sex. He’d done it twice, with boring and unattractive chicks, he’d been drunk, and he didn’t want to talk about it. All those cute little fundraiser girls and he’d never made a one of them? He liked them and he was trying. “I’ve never done it,” I said. “But I am entirely free of expectations. The key to happiness: low expectations. All those girls, chirping away about how their first times are going to be ‘special’ and you’re like, what are you, living in a TV-show? It is going to hurt. It is going to hurt and it’s going to be uncomfortable, and you may not even like the guy and you’re definitely not going to stay with him forever. Just stop romanticizing and get it over with.”
“My life is a TV-show,” said Caleb.
“What’s it called? The Caleb Show?”
“Maybe.”
“Who’s watching?”
“Who knows. God?”
“God,” I sucked on the concept like it was a cough drop. “Am I in it? Am I like one of those really distinct characters who show up every couple of episodes?”
“Oh, you’re definitely in the show,” said Caleb.
I didn’t know what to say to that. He was so detached most of the time that any acknowledgement that I existed made me suspicious. Worst of all, it made me hope.
I changed the subject. When we got to my house, I lingered, hoping he might try to kiss me, but he didn’t. I didn’t have the guts to try myself, because he might push me away, and then how could I keep living in my own company? I slipped into the house, felt my way through the dark kitchen, and went to bed.
While I slept I had a dream that Caleb was the devil, or he was a doctor or a psychiatrist, and Stacy was his secretary, and he had a cure for all my troubles: I had to sell him my soul. I sold him my soul because was in a lot of pain and because I was attracted to him and then he owned me.
*
Meanwhile, my mom was getting anxious about my style.
“I wasn’t big on how much skin you were showing before but at least you had some color,” she said. “What’s with all this black make-up? And that white fur coat? What, are you trying to look like a street walker?”
“Yes.”
“What do the teachers at school say about that?”
“They don’t say anything and if they did, I would argue that clothing is a kind of artistic expression, and if they try to censor me, it’s a violation of freedom of my speech.”
“I think it’s degrading to women.”
“It’s the opposite of degrading to women, mom. What I’m trying to say is that a girl who dresses sexy doesn’t necessarily have to be stupid. Nor should a smart girl have to cover up her body like she’s ashamed of it. My body is a part of my power. Don’t you know anything about post-feminism?”
“Olivia, it looks trashy.”
“I think that robe looks trashy. How long have you had that? It’s starting to fray on the side.”
My mom glared. “Watch your mouth,” she said.
I pretended to zip my mouth closed with my fingers, got my back-pack and hopped out. It was cold and I had to bury my nose in my coat. Sometimes girls at school got all outraged about it, but it had to have been a fake. I bought it for $40 on the internet.
Walking, I imagined my mom and my dad having a conversation about whether or not I was on drugs. I chuckled to myself. That got me thinking about school. If I was going to prove that druggies weren’t bad people or stupid people, I was going to have to keep my marks up. This was difficult because school was starting to lose its relevance. Once, it had been the only option for a decent life. Now I figured I could just hang around and get stoned and draw pictures and read books and write philosophy and I would do fine. Still, I liked my parents and I didn’t want to disappoint them. The kids I knew who dropped out were the ones with the shitty homes. Mia and her Christian aunt. Dolly’s parents having unbearable new boyfriends and girlfriends, sometimes little older than she was. Stacy was thinking of moving out, even if she wasn’t going to drop out—hardly a day went by she didn’t have a story about a spat. Her mom was a bipolar flower shop manager. Her dad was a confused electrician who lost his temper. She was a genetic anomaly: smarter than the two of them combined. She’d go days without visiting home. She’d go days without going to class, which is why I didn’t think I’d ever seen her before. She knew when the exams where and she’d show up and ace them so no one could talk. Sucked that these were wonderful, brilliant people. They didn’t deserve their lots. Not that I wanted to sentimentalize families. More, leaving my family would be like betraying a friend. Also, I didn’t want to work.
My dad watched my transformation with a step-parent’s befuddled ineptitude. I called him my dad but he wasn’t really. I never met my real dad and my mom married him when I was two so there wasn’t much difference other than that he was Asian. He was a good guy. Quiet, fair, funny in that dorky way that Asians are. He was an anesthesiologist and my mom was a hospital administrator. When I was nine, they had twin boys. The twins were more fun than I was, considering I’d reached the apex of my teenage moodiness and they’d just moved from the tantrum phase into that doe-eyed, lispy, adulating phase that makes adults turn to pulp. The kids seemed wary of me, or unaware that I was anything but a strange giraffe that occasionally stalked across the living room. I wasn’t what anyone would call a “kid person,” which was, I’m sure, a great disappointment to my parents. I hadn’t changed the kids’ diapers and I didn’t “take them to the park all the time.” I didn’t dislike them, I just didn’t have anything to say to them that was “appropriate.” At one point, I had ambitions for them to be cool. I tried to tell them the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real so they would have clear minds and a firm grasp of reality to carry them into the world, but my mom would have none of it. She wanted her kids to be kids, she said, whereas I wanted the exact opposite, adult minds cunningly disguised in the unassuming bodies of small children. No such luck. They went on playing with their dinosaurs and reading their colorful math books, thrusting themselves unawares into futures of lop-sided smiles, squeaky-clean reputations, and academic trophies. People would be surprised to learn they had a “crazy blonde sister.” What was she doing now? A stripper? I wanted to be a stripper.
It was Halloween. It had snowed once, melted, and now there was a layer of snow on the ground like a sprinkle of icing sugar. Dolly and T.B. were throwing a party. At school, Stacy found me in the hallway and asked if I’d like to go costume shopping once we were out. I agreed. I hadn’t known when I met her, but Stacy was Stacy Roberts. A ghost that blew from locker to locker, a whisper on everyone's lips. A slut, a druggy, she’d let a horde of rednecks gang bang her, she’d crashed a car into a McDonald’s. When I first found out this Stacy was that Stacy, I’ been distressed. Stacy Roberts? I’m hanging out with Stacy Roberts? Has my life gone to the pits? Turns out she was wily and lucid. And who would I have been if I hadn’t accepted her for who she really was—a genuine, intelligent human—and rather for what people said about her?
Where Brian’s glowing intelligence was abstract and scholarly, Stacy’s was social. She was a master manipulator, a keen perceiver of human foible, and a silver tongue. In her, one could see the domination of multinational corporations. And if she didn’t rule them, she would be the call girl whose masterfully plotted vengeance cheated them of millions.
I wanted to ask her advice on the matter of Caleb’s insensitivity. She looked like the kind of spotless housewife who dished it out along with the potato salad, only if she were married to the devil.
“Caleb’s insecure,” she said.
I wasn’t sure what to do with that information, other than throw myself at him to let him know that he was loved, but men who hate themselves think that loving them makes you worth less than they are. One had to impress them with one’s aloofness and superiority, if one could muster the necessary discipline. Adoration is an impulsive while seduction is a game of the intellect, and sadly the emotional life of man runs by the same laws as an elementary school playground: muscle beats brains.
I was going to the party as a flower fairy and Stacy was going as a boy. We found me a green skirt, a green snake-skin tank top (fake), some plastic pearls, a pair of butterfly wings, and plastic flowers that I wanted to make into earrings. I was going to pair all this with my black and white striped stockings and little pink shoes. Stacy got trousers, a flowery dress shirt, suspenders, and brown loafers. We were going to draw a mustache on her lip with eyebrow pencil and do her hair in a low pony-tail like a dandy artist’s.
Stacy stole all her clothes. She stuck them into her shoulder bag with the placidity of a glacial lake. No matter how controversial I could have hoped to be, Stacy would have me beat. The people we admire most are the people who feel no shame, but we are too ashamed to be them.
With our bags of loot, we trotted off to Gale McDermott’s trailer. He said he was coming to Mia’s, but he didn’t plan to dress up. I chided him: he should at least wear a silly hat. We wanted beer, but I’m bad at asking people for things. I don’t know how I would have managed without Stace. She was seductive as paradise. We walked to the liquor store because Gale didn’t have a car. Stace and I pooled our money on a 26 of vodka to share. Then we went to the gas station and bought a container of cranberry juice for chase. We insisted Gale had to come to Dolly and T.B.’s, and he had to wear a hat, and then Stacy and I walked to my house to change, sucking vodka out of the paper bag (hobo-in’ it) as we went. By now, I was in love with her.
There was nobody at home so we stole a beer each out of the fridge. We did our makeup; we gossiped; we bemoaned the earth and the well-liked nincompoops that ran it; we created increasingly abstract and esoteric jokes. Heads full of water, we laughed and screamed our ways to Dolly and T.B.’s. We peed in people’s lawns.
Musing and leaning against a tree, I waited for Stace to emerge from a hedge. Once she was out, I said, “I want to lose my virginity.”
Stace said, “Haha, you’re a virgin.”
I said, “No, really.”
Stace said, “Do it tonight.”
I said, “It is Halloween.”
Stace said, “I dare you.”
“I can’t turn down a dare.”
Dolly and T.B. lived above a store that sold fireplaces. T.B. had his paintings up the walls. The cabinets were painted in psychedelic black and white designs. There was a great rug. Dolly had sewed pillows and monstrous stuffed toys. One of her proudest achievements (which she’d made with Mia) was a pornographic fridge magnet poetry set. They’d cut words out of tit mags, glued them to magnets, and added them to an ordinary poetry set. The dirty verses were up on the freezer.
Our gang was busy buying E off of Coleman. They had to do it now; rumor was word had spread about the party and Coleman wanted to keep his dealing on the down-low. I didn’t have any money left and I didn’t want to lose my virginity on ecstasy so I passed. I wanted to do it with Caleb, but I wasn’t going to beg, so if I had to, I’d settle for whoever was cool and available. Waiting, I fantasized about hot randoms.
Coleman was dressed up as the leader of the Christian Heritage party, some stony preacher named Mitch Tom. He’d put on a suit, cut a picture of Mitch Tom’s face out of a campaign sign, poked holes in the eyes and tied it around his head. He carried a bible and lurched around the party intoning, “If my people!”—Mitch Tom’s campaign slogan. If anyone asked he’d tell them why the power in this country needed to be returned to the able hands of Jesus Christ.
Caleb was dressed up as Hunter S. Thompson. He had the floppy fishing hat, the cigarette holder, the blinding short-shorts, the Hawaiian shit, and the aviators.
Mia was the Ganja Goddess, who wore a long green dress and distributed buds to her buds. T.B. and Dolly were rainbow pirates. Brian couldn’t be bothered, the cynical bastard.
People started showing up; first friends of friends, then peeps whose faces you’d seen around. A good mix of high school students and local trash. The apartment throbbed. The lights went out and colorful, swirling lights went on and T.B. DJed in the corner. But I didn’t see anyone I wanted to fuck and the drunker I got the less I could bear a circle if Caleb wasn’t in it. Here, there, he was gesticulating his invented misadventures. He had the gravity of a planet: everybody leaned in to hear more. It felt good knowing he was bullshitting when everyone else oohed and ahed, but any confidence I aggregated fell apart the minute he moved on without the least concern for my company. Embarrassing though it might have been, I followed him, because his heartlessness was still more satisfying than anyone else’s conversation.
Brian got way too drunk and he and Stacy started shouting at each other. They disappeared into the hallway and beyond.
The only other people who lived in Dolly and T.B.’s building—lucky for them—were their friends. The friends opened their doors and the party took over both apartments. Drama broiled in every corner. Then the dancing started. There’s this drunken tipping point for dancing. I danced and dudes came up and hit on me. I gave them some time, but they didn’t excite me. Some of them were hot and popular, but as enviable as I thought it would have made me to get with them, I couldn’t do someone who bored me. I wished I was a shallower person than I was. When I got a chance, I gave Caleb the eyes. At one point, I saw him sit down on the couch and I hopped off the dance floor and plopped down beside him.
“Hey Twinkie,” he said.
“How’ya doing?” I asked. “You look distracted.”
“There’s this chick I’m trying to decide if I should ask out,” he said.
My face got hot and prickly. But I was his friend, not his girlfriend, and showing jealousy would only compromise that. I said, “Who?”
Caleb pointed across the room at a little chick, a tree-hugger, common as chickadees in this part of the world.
“She’s cool,” I said.
“She’s really funny and down to earth. She also has a wild side. She told me once about how she did acid and had sex in a forest.”
“That’s cool. I think the best thing to do is get it over with. She’ll either say yes or no, and after you’ll be able to move on. As it is, you’re just torturing yourself.”
“I don’t know.”
“Just do it. It’s like Band-Aids.”
“I’ll look for an opportunity.”
“Look, she just stopped talking to that homeboy. She’s just standing there waiting for something to happen.”
Caleb looked at me and then stood up and swallowed his drink. I watched him walk away and drifted off into a nether-space of contemplation. If she said yes, I might be able to get over him. If she said no, I would still have a chance. I got up and wandered from group to group looking for a conversation that could stimulate me. Nothing. People are so ordinary. I went looking for the bottle of vodka. Stace and I had hidden it behind the stereo so on one would steal it. She was missing, so I thought I might drink it all. I could say I drank almost a whole 26 of vodka in one night. I felt sick.
In the kitchen, I started talking to Coleman. We decided we should wrestle. People saw and shouted in alarm. Half thought Coleman was abusing a woman; half thought I was a bitch picking fights. The two of us shook hands afterwards. What wonderful performance art. The squares couldn’t handle that shit. Sweating, I went outside. The smokers were huddled around the door. I borrowed two puffs. Whatever happened to Caleb and his lady love? I went back in. The stairs were so long. I zigzagged down the hallway.
I didn’t see Caleb in the main room. The strobe light was going. I wanted to check my makeup. The bathroom door wouldn’t open; there was something in the way. Caleb was sitting with his back against the sink and his feet pressed against the bathtub. I squeezed in and sat down beside him.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“She said no,” he said.
“What’d she say?” I asked.
“She likes us better as friends.”
“That’s cliché,” I said.
Caleb’s pupils were huge. He had a layer of sweat on his face like a layer of slime. I rubbed his hand. Someone was banging on the door.
“We’d better get out of here,” I said. I pulled him up and we toppled out. The guy waiting for the bathroom gave us a thumbs up.
Caleb wanted to leave the party. “Where will you go?” I asked. He was sleeping over at Will’s. I said I would walk with him. As we were putting on our shoes, I nearly fell into the doorknob. Then we were out in the hallway. Caleb took the door out onto the street to avoid the crowd at the back door.
We walked until we couldn’t hear the music any more. I said I missed my vodka. Caleb said he had a six-pack in his back pack. We shot-gunned a beer each behind a dumpster.
Caleb had taken E and I figured he’d want to talk. I asked him to tell me about his life. His dad ran a fishing lodge on the Babine. He worked there in the summers. It catered to rich Americans. His family had a big log house out by Driftwood. His mom was a house wife and cooked at the lodge over the summer. He had an older sister who was studying engineering at the University of Toronto. She was a genius. He had an older brother who did something. The older brother was a prankster and a drinker and a womanizer. Caleb swore, on his last birthday, his brother had paid one of his friends to call him in his place. He spoke of his brother with the sad, adulating tone of younger brothers.
I said I had two brothers in the first grade. Or half-brothers. They were in French Immersion, just like I had been. French Immersion was like private school for public schoolers. Back then, I was all joints. And we didn’t have a TV, so I talked like a book. Children are vicious: they’ll try to beat out any deviation they can find in a person. I always had crushes on kids no body else liked. I lied about them so no one would make fun of me.
Middle schools are hell. Trap two hundred hormonal typhoons in one building with no older kids to embarrass them and no younger kids to make them feel responsible and you get loud, steamy hell. People experimented with sex, but had the maturity of children. I was serious as an adult but asexual as a ten year old. I couldn’t stand being touched. I had crushes, but all my crushes had girlfriends. Middle school was when I realized I didn’t have friends like ordinary people—no conspirators or confidants. During those years, I caught sadness like a cold.
I remember the summer before I got to high school I was looking in a magazine. I looked in the magazine and then I looked in the mirror. And then I looked in the magazine and I looked in the mirror. That’s when I realized I was beautiful. It made me feel better. I could compensate for being sad by being beautiful. I started dressing like a slut.
Caleb had been friends with Will since elementary school. He used to be the fat kid. He started exercising like crazy when he got to high school and now he was just big. When he was fourteen, he tried pot for the first time. He liked how it made him feel. He liked how it made him creative and funny. He’d been using it ever since. Because he smoked a lot of pot and didn’t do a lot of homework, most of highschool, he had cheated to pass his tests.
A block later, Caleb puked behind somebody’s hedge. I said, “Ah, gross.” He drank another beer so he couldn’t taste the puke.
When we got to my house, I asked if he’d like to come in. He shrugged his shoulders and I took his hand. We tip toed across my lawn to the back yard where there was a little window you could push open, squeeze through, and hop down from onto the bed. I got Caleb to stay on the bed and went upstairs and opened and closed the door so my parents would know I was back by curfew. When I came downstairs, Caleb was in the exact same position as when I had left. I sat on the floor in front of him. I climbed into his lap. I felt like a little leaf. We made out for a really long time. We did some other things. Caleb asked if I had condoms. I said there were some in my purse. Things happened that I don’t care to describe. The sex lasted two minutes or less and it hurt. For a little while we fell asleep. At five in the morning we woke up and did it again. This time it lasted about ten minutes and was really good. Then Caleb left out the window. Watching him go was like having to out of bed on a cold day. I didn’t think about much and fell asleep. The next morning I felt nauseous and stiff but utterly thrilled.
24.1.10
ADDICTION
Still, the gnawing!
Mice gnawing the electrical cords growing out of my heart.
Wont you save me, someone.
Someone unknown, faceless,
Like a specter
Of the Northwest Coast.
My chest is full of howling,
Sniveling
Wolves.
Need to be held,
But nothing will make me stiffen faster,
Nothing will make me leave faster,
Than the thought of someone thinking
I need them.
Then who’d respect me?
I need respect, absolutely.
I remember the friend who made much of vulnerability
And how it produced beauty.
And I remember how the thought made me want to vomit.
Is that vulnerable enough for you?
Is my vomit beautiful to you?
Maybe I am with the wrong people.
The right people bore me.
HOW TO RECONCILE YOURSELF WITH BAD LUCK
The world is more complicated than many people would like it to be.
Certainly my own world is,
And maybe it is my fault:
As a young girl I asked for a life
Beyond the treacle of the mass,
That had the depth of a trench,
And here,
By the power of nature
Or the power of will
I have been given that life.
For all my suffering,
And we all must suffer,
I would not ask that things be different:
How else would I acquire
A heart like a whirlpool?
ADVICE
Singularly,
The most important thing,
Is not to take what I say
Too seriously.
My mind is a hole
Of half-dead bodies.
What moans reach the surface
Are true
But meaningless
To a creature
Of the surface.
Remember them,
And analyze them,
But do not give them too much credit,
For I am mistress
Of this writhing pit
And I am still laughing.
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