Sweet Affliction (12 page)

We are working now to expel a memory. Time is short. We thought we had all the time in the world, but now we see that time is almost up. There has been so much waiting, so much killing of time, we have become experts at killing time, but now we see we have moved through time like a cigarette's cherry, blasting matter into energy, and there's no going back. So we must hurry to expel the memory, to blow it out through the mouth and nose and pussy and asshole, all the points of exit of the body.

The last memory, the one that will accompany us as we make our peace with the needle, or the current, or just the eternity of the rooms, the jumpsuits, the ever-loving bus, is the memory of the dark moment when we made our little slip. Anyone could do it, and anyone did do it at least once or maybe even more. And what ultimately turns out to matter, against what we thought we may have believed, what in the end influences everything we will become, is what we were holding when that moment came. Was it someone's hand or a sandwich or a paintbrush or a gun? Where we were standing, what we were holding—these are the important things. More important, as it turns out, than life.

We must turn inward to that memory, the one of the bank manager, who may not in fact have been a manager, he may have been a janitor or a truck driver or nothing at all, just a man, but he would do. He did. And we realize, those petals of blood we plucked from him, those are our roses.

We will soon have to leave the bus. We take one last look in the window's reflection, a pale simulacrum our face, with some blowy trees behind. How becoming we look, how precious. Orange may be our colour after all.

Now we are ready. No one, not one of you, will ever be this elegant.

We hold tight. And then we let go.

Glory Days

Things are different now that you're in Grade 5. In Grade 4 everything was simpler, and brighter, and you had a crush on Optimus Prime. You drew hearts and kisses all over the Transformers colouring book, the ridge of your drawing hand stained ballpoint blue. If anyone came into the room you would slam the book shut, quickly but not too quickly, because the important thing about crushes is that someone knows you have one, but not that you want them to know.

Optimus Prime: sort of a man, sort of a truck, but neither one exactly, which made it okay. You knew what they meant when they said
more than meets the eye
. It meant he would know when to hold your hand, when to admire your drawings of him, when to make Brian Freeholt, that snot-nosed little bully, explode in a violet spray of gore during recess after he pantsed you and called you king of the gaylords. Which you knew was a pathetic insult because gay means happy and what's the difference between a king and a lord? Nothing. But that was Grade 4, and now it's Grade 5, and Grade 5 means
Bridge to Terabithia
and owl pellets and Western dancing and a new kind of geometry—the geometry of Bruce.

You could see it: Bruce coming home all sweaty and tired, an argument over who was going to make dinner, hurt feelings, and then maybe a make-up hug, and after that you weren't sure what would happen but just thinking about it would make you squeeze your thighs together until a strange feeling rushed up your spine.

During the height of your Optimus Prime obsession, your mom asked you one day if you wanted to see a Transformer in real life. You nodded, wondering if she could see your heart speeding up right through your shirt. She took you into the basement and showed you your grandmother's ancient sewing machine, which was bolted to a dark wooden stand. “Look,” she said, lifting a flap and dropping the black iron machine into the centre of the stand, “it transforms… into a table. Pretty cool, huh?” You stared at her, considering that maybe your brother was right and she really did hate you for coming out her butthole and not her belly button the way he did.

Now you remembered that moment with affection and regret. You wished you had taken her hand and said, “Gee Mom, that is neat. We should spend some more time together.” After all, you understood her better now—you too knew something of the desire for men.

Your newfound relationship with Bruce wasn't something you felt you could share, with your mother or any of the various men she brought home to meet you, or with your brother and his banger friends. Especially not them. They considered Bruce old-fashioned and kind of wimpy, preferring instead the strutting attitude and choir-girl-on-drugs shrieking of long-haired bands like KISS and Alice Cooper. The one time you tried to impress them by casually dropping the needle onto
Darkness on the Edge of Town
while they sat around the kitchen table, they snorted like pit bulls and poked fun at the album cover.

“Did this guy just fall off the back of the ugly truck? He looks like a short-order cook.” Your brother snatched the needle off the turntable, tossed the record onto a bar stool, and hastily fumbled
Master of Reality
out of its sleeve. “Sorry guys, next time I'll keep the door closed.”

You didn't understand what the metalheads saw in these guys—they seemed like girls dressed up for Halloween. And they weren't even pretty girls. And even if they were, what was so manly about that? Bruce wasn't pretty either, but he was something more than pretty. He reminded you of a sip of wine you had tasted from the dregs of a glass your mother left out after one of her dates. At first it made your tongue curdle in its pink bed, and you nearly spat it onto the kitchen floor, but then abruptly it changed in your mouth, ripening and spreading, until it was almost unbearably rich and full. It was nothing like the sweet, syrupy fruit drink its colour had led you to expect. It was better.

You listened to Bruce and wondered how it was possible to have already made enough mistakes to set your life growing slowly but unavoidably off-kilter, a tree planted too close to a fence, bark oozing inch by painful inch through the painted slats. That Saturday you lay on the cool floor of the basement, telephone pressed to your ear, when one of your brother's friends, a lanky kid named Aaron, passed by on his way to the downstairs bathroom. A year older than your brother, Aaron was practically an adult—he had just started Grade 9 at the school where kids smoked on the lawn, flicking ashes at cars through the wire fence. You liked the way he always wore a different brand-new Maiden shirt, as though he had an endless supply of them in the back of a truck somewhere. And maybe he did. He came from that kind of family.

You dialled the number on the back of the Smarties box, underneath where it said
Call for more information
, while listening to the water running in the bathroom and Bruce hollering about the highway and where it was going to take him.

“Nestlé Corporation,” said a voice with a southern drawl.

“Hi,” you said. “I'm calling for more information.”

“I'm sorry?”

“Well, I'd like to get some more information. It said I could call for some on the box.”

“Huh. Well is there a product you're especially interested in?”

You blanked as Aaron came out of the bathroom, drying his hands on his jeans, and saw you lying on the floor, carrying on a senseless conversation with a call centre in Arkansas or Bangalore. Aaron winked at you, then flicked some loose drops of water from his hand onto your face. “Hey fag,” he said, not in a mean way.
Get a life
, you mouthed, and he smiled and blew you a kiss.

“Hello?” said the receiver, as Aaron's acid-washed-
denim butt disappeared up the stairs. “Is there something in particular you're interested in?” You thought about that question until the line went dead, and after the record had spun itself out you were still there on the cool cement floor, the phone resting on your crotch and the small windows darkening.

A few weeks later you were walking down Ethelbert toward the river when you saw Aaron sitting on a bench by a bus stop. Next to him was a man about the same age as your father was the last time you saw him. He had smooth grey hair and a square, bristly chin—what your mother would call a silver fox. You lowered your eyes and kept walking, but Aaron called out to you.

“What's up?”

“Nothing.”

“Just walking around?”

“Yeah,” you said. The truth was you were going to look for buried treasure in the thick sticky mud-carpet the river had left after the spring flood, but somehow that wasn't something you wanted to share with Aaron.

“Cool. I like walking around too. You meet all sorts of people.”

“Yeah.” You looked at the toes of your sneakers, wondering when it would be okay to leave.

“Like me,” said the strange man. You looked up. “That's how you met me,” said the man, and Aaron rolled his eyes.

“Aren't you his dad?” you said. For the first time you noticed how much your voice sounded like Mickey Mouse's.

The man laughed. He laughed and laughed, way more laughter than necessary. Aaron didn't laugh. He smiled at you, the kind of smile that's about your mouth, not about your eyes. Then he said, “Hey, I have something for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Jerry, give the kid that thing you got at the garage sale.”

“What?”

“Give it to him. He loves Springsteen.”

“Well, I happen to love Springsteen too.”

Aaron rolled his eyes again. “You love the idea of
Springsteen. That's not the same.”

“Huh,” the man said. He looked cranky, but he reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and brought out a tape.
Born in the USA.

“Thanks,” you said, even though you already had it on vinyl.

For a reply the man lifted his hands and shoulders in a shrug, like he was saying
No big deal
but also
What else can I do?
“Enjoy,” he said.

“See ya,” said Aaron, and that meant you were done.

It turns out a cassette tape is even better for skipping than a flat rock. You gave it a few practice flings, warming up your arm, and then sent it out over the river's glimmering surface. You counted the skips. Seven.

The Shirt

I went to the party at Marty's insistence, and maybe because I had an inkling that something was going to happen. One of those psychic tingles that foreshadows a life-changing event, though generally I'm wrong about these things. When I was fifteen I had a panic attack that lasted three days—at the end of it OJ Simpson was found not guilty. I've learned to listen to the feeling in a muted way, like listening to the radio while you're doing something else, with the back of your brain. You pay attention or you don't; either way the radio is on.

“We'll make an appearance,” Marty said, like we were celebrities. Marty wanted a wingman, and I was happy to oblige. The alternative was
The Wire
and two fingers of scotch. I'm not saying this in a self-pitying way. At a certain age a man gets comfortable with the alternatives he sets out for himself. But I felt like I owed Marty something, and a party—strangers, sociability, a little of the old palaver—seemed a reasonable payback.

This party seemed to have not yet gotten its sea legs. Rafts of people drifted here and here, flotsam and jetsam, drifters holding bottles by the neck. I knew fewer people than I didn't. That was becoming normal.

I noticed the shirt before I noticed who was wearing it. It was Dior, a striped button-down, aristocratic in its bold colours. Blue and gold, royal shades. I knew it was Dior because I had the same one. Not everyone can pull off a Dior shirt, and I include myself in that category. I bought it because my girlfriend at the time liked excess, in fashion at least, and I was experimenting. With what I'm not sure. Experimenting with experimenting. She and I split up and the shirt went from heavy to medium rotation. I wore it more the closer I got to laundry day. Eventually it ended up at the back of my closet, jammed in with some parkas and a Hawaiian shirt I'd thought better of. There was a cigarette burn between the third and fourth button, from when Marty tried to hug me and missed.

The guy in the shirt flitted in and out of my peripheral vision for a while. I passed him coming out of the bathroom, then he was standing in the hallway with three other guys. They seemed to be talking about a movie, but then I heard one of them say “PvP or PvE”
and I realized it was a video game. Later, when I went to get another beer from the fridge, I saw him on the balcony, having a lonely cigarette. He wore no jacket, which is how I knew it was the same guy. An old girlfriend told me I was face-blind, but I'm really more man-blind. I can tell women apart easily; men, only by their hair and what they're wearing. In movies from the fifties and before I'm completely at sea—all those matching crewcuts and shirt-tie combos.

“Andrew,” Marty said, appearing next to me with a girl in tow, “this is Selena. She just moved here from Beijing. Selena, Andrew used to live in China.”

“Taiwan,” I said.

“Exactly,” Marty said.

“Where in Taiwan?” Selena asked.

“Taipei.”

“For how long?”

“Two years,” I said. “I was an English teacher.”

“I spent some time there too, as a student,” Selena said.

“Perfect!” Marty said. He scuttled off, and Selena and I got to talking about Taipei. I told her about how I taught the kids in my class to sing Johnny Cash's “
Ring of Fire”
more or less phonetically, and how I expected to feel awkward being over six feet tall, and never did, and how there were certain foods I still missed and couldn't find anywhere here.

“This one kind of green vegetable,” I said. “I've never seen it before or since, but it was in everything. At first I hated it, but now I crave it all the time. It's been bothering me for years.” I don't know why I said this, since it was something I barely thought about anymore. But talking to Selena I suddenly felt it was very important, like she was going to be the key to my gaining some kind of understanding of myself. “Do you know what I mean?” I said.