Thirteen Crucifixions, 43

Three youths were hand drumming nearby.  Involuntarily Stefan swayed to their primal rhythms.  He vaguely knew the group of street punks on the other side lying on the grass smoking pot or playing with their two pit bulls.  One of them, Marvin, he did know from when they were both squeegying last year.  Marvin was still at it, sometimes Stefan did, but there seldom seemed much need to.  He preferred panhandling.  He lit a cigarette.  Marvin didn’t notice him and Stefan wasn’t about to go out of his way to be noticed by him.  He wasn’t in any kind of mood for seeing anyone. This much he knew—he had to find another place to live.  And fast.  He needed badly to get away—not from Melissa; she was the best girl he’d ever had—but …what did he need to escape from?  He had been depressed, he knew this. And last night, scamming five hundred bucks from that yuppie paedophile—of course he had the right guy, he had just not expected the whole thing to go so seamlessly.  The five hundred dollars was still securely strapped to his ankle, and deftly concealed by his combat boot.  He didn’t know what to do with it, though surely he’d think of something.  And he was nearly out of money again.  It wasn’t that he was feeling a little bit lost.  He WAS lost.  Or out of control, but for this unseen hand that seemed to be guiding him.  This was after all how he’d met Melissa, and how they’d afterward been befriended by Dirk and his band mates who invited them to live in their house.  Then meeting that asshole again last night, and ending up in the back yard of that waitress lady’s house and that conversation with that weird artist guy.  Surely there was a hand guiding him.

            But things had run their course with Melissa.  He was not boyfriend material, and surely she deserved better.  She was way out of his league.  She was so beautiful that he couldn’t make love to her without feeling that he was committing an act of sacrilege, that he was defiling something indescribably perfect.  Ed would be much better for her.  Good looking.  And decent.  He wanted his next girlfriend to be ugly—well, not ugly, but nothing great either.  A bitchy, whiney trailer trash princess who drank and smoked excessively, always bitching about her bad hair and constantly having to do her nails.  That would be his next pick. He could get it up for something pathetic.  The sex would be awesome.

            Marvin’s friends’ two pit bulls were wrestling and play fighting together. One was white, the other was tan.  He recognized among them Gretchen, this girl he’d nearly had sex with last year when they were sleeping in the same squat a couple nights.  Now that he’d shaved his head and removed his goatee she didn’t seem to know him. It was cold for late April and it looked like it would be raining soon.  He figured that he could just return to the house, get his stuff, and leave.  That’s what he’d do.  There seemed little point in his remaining.  But where would he go?  Tomorrow he would get a welfare cheque, giving him altogether one thousand dollars.  So he would stay until tomorrow.  Not that he had any idea of where to go.  He didn’t. All he knew was that he had to go.  Pack up and leave.

            There she was walking across the park with a shopping bag in her hand.  Her hair was still streaked, but much shorter now, and she was wearing a very expensive looking dark blue car coat.  He wondered if she’d know him.  Not at all bad looking for her age, really.  A bit of a cougar, and she certainly walked with that sort of predatory grace.  Last summer he’d had a brief fling with her daughter, then sixteen, and acting out her mandatory teenage rebellion before returning to the cushy refuge of her mommy’s condo.  He wondered if Juniper was still living with her mother, who was rather an older version of her. She was great in bed, and he couldn’t help wondering about the mother’s skills as well.  She was just three feet from him when he shouted out, “Hey!”

            The woman paused, turned around, and knew him.

            “Why, hello Stefan.”

            “Hi Persimmon.”

            “I haven’t seen you in ages.”  She was bending over him, hovering, her red lips pulled back in a toothy, predatory smile.  As far as Stefan could tell, she knew nothing about his tryst with her daughter.

            “Listen”, Persimmon Carlyle said.  “I would love to visit and catch up with you.  Actually, I would like to talk with you about doing another interview soon.  It has been a year now. And that was the idea.”

            “Sure.  Where can I get hold of you?”

            She gave him a card.

            “Call me tomorrow.  We’ll do lunch.”

            “I will”, he said as she walked away, flanked on her left by the three hand-drummers, and on her right by the two frolicking pit bulls.  The interview had been her daughter’s idea.  Persimmon, a free-lance journalist, had been so relieved to have Juniper off the street that she had to write an article, a whole series of articles about it.  So, she did interviews with street punks, with the idea of following up with as many as possible a year later.  For Stefan it was a lark.  The lunch was free and he could tell whatever lies he wanted to Juniper’s foxy mom.  Now he didn’t know whether to gloat or feel embarrassed about some of the howlers he’d told her.  His stepfather had never beaten him with a lead pipe, nor sexually abused him.  He’d hardly been hit in his life, he didn’t even have a stepfather, nor had his properly married professional parents ever spit up till just two years ago when he’d already been on his own for the past year.  There had been nothing unusual, or noticeably dysfunctional about Stefan’s upbringing.  He had not run away from home at fourteen, he left at seventeen, six months short of graduating from high school.  For a year he had a job slinging espresso at a Starbucks and his own apartment.  He also had a copious appetite for drugs, which cost him his job and, eventually his apartment.  Stefan had ended up on the street through no one’s fault but his own, and he was damned if he wasn’t going to give this Persimmon Carlyle something a little more interesting than just the boring facts.  So what was he going to tell her now?  He’d think of something—he usually did.  Maybe he could even angle his way into bed with her—find out if good sex ran in the family, since Juniper had been one hot, energetic and vocal little lay.  He wondered how she would look naked—it was rather hard to say, given how carefully she packaged herself.  She must be well over forty, and things were bound to be already slipping and sagging with her. What kind of butt did she have?  Did she have varicose veins?  This he would need to know before making any kind of move on her.  He was not going to make love to a woman with varicose veins—it would be almost like having sex with his grandmother.  Juniper had lovely nipples—just the right size, like perfect cherry coloured discs.  Too bad she got tired of him so quickly.  But she did whine a lot, and could be rather clingy at times.  He hated clingy girls.  Which maybe was part of the appeal of some of the men he’d got it on with?  Since Stefan did like having his bit of boy sometimes. They weren’t possessive, nor demanding.  And almost none of the guys he’d got it on with were gay.  Nor even particularly bisexual.  Often it had taken the right combination of drugs and alcohol, but there had to be a certain spark there, first.  Like there was with Marvin, though they’d never had sex together, and Stefan, for the life of him, hadn’t a clue whether he’d be remotely interested in him or not.

            But he really preferred women.  They summoned the very best in him.  Which was why he needed to get away from Melissa?  There was just nothing left in him to summon.  Stefan had become an empty shell.  He knew now that he must get away. If only he knew where he could go.

            He was feeling cold, and would have to get moving anyway.  He struggled to his feet. He felt heavy, tired, not properly rested.  Marvin looked over and said “Hey!” and Stefan said “Hey!” back as he stepped out of the park, taking the utmost care not to move to the rhythm of the drums.

            She couldn’t get it right no matter how hard she tried.  The love seat near the fireplace didn’t quite work, but neither did it quite work against the far wall.  Come to think of it, Persimmon was beginning to entertain serious doubts about the wisdom of getting this love seat, which really didn’t go with anything else in the living room.  There was empty space that needed filling.  Her reason for buying it.  She couldn’t bear living in a place that was under-furnished.  She liked space. What she wanted was a room that was not under-furnished where there was lots of space.  She could always see in her mind’s eye this perfect Zen balance which somehow always eluded her in reality.

           She went into the kitchen and began to unload the dishwasher, then remembered she was still wearing her coat. She let it slip from her shoulders onto the floor.  She thought of leaving it there, then hung it up in the closet.  If Juniper came in and saw the coat on the floor—it would have been bad role-modeling, and she would simply tell tales to her father when she saw him on the weekend about what a slob mother is.

           She returned to the dishwasher, dropped a wine-glass which smashed on the floor.  “Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck!” she muttered as she grabbed for the broom and dust-pan.  She gave the kitchen floor a thorough sweep, then sponge-mopped it.  She rinsed the mop in the sink when she saw there were dishes in it that she had overlooked.  She put them on the counter, since the dishwasher was still only half-empty with clean dishes.  She looked at the dirty dishes she’d just put on the counter, then at the clean ones in the dishwasher.  “Fuck it”, she said, pitching the mop across the room.  When it hit the table the squeegie came off and knocked over another glass, breaking it.  Persimmon removed her shoes, both of which she hurled against the table, poured herself a tumbler full of cabernet and went to the living room where she nursed it on the inappropriately positioned love seat.
           As soon as she reached for the remote she remembered that she had just sold the television.  “Why?” she said, then yelled it out. “Why!”  The condo was made of concrete, soundproof, and she could make all the noise that she wanted.  She was suddenly out of energy.  She spilt wine on the rug.  Looking at the shade of aging blood forming near her feet she snorted and said, “Have some more”, and dribbled a little more cabernet onto the stain.  “That’s all you’re getting.  The rest is mine.”
          She wasn’t usually a maladroit.  Only when she was highly stressed.  She couldn’t think of why she’d be feeling this way.  Her life was functioning, her daughter was at home again and doing reasonably well in school.  There was plenty of work coming in.  She had arisen out of her humiliation.  She had this new condo—not in the best of neighbourhoods maybe, but the East Side was rapidly gentrifying.  And she wasn’t having to work too hard.  Life for her was acquiring a pleasant, workable rhythm.  So why no sooner than coming in through the door was everything having a sudden hissy-fit in her face?  It must have been her running into Stefan, that bald-headed punk.  Not that she could count on someone like him having an impact on her—why would Stefan have on Persimmon such an effect?  Because he was so goddamn pathetic and there was absolutely nothing that she could do to remedy his situation for him.  One year ago, almost to the day, they’d done that interview.  Mostly lies on his part, and Juniper later confirmed that his family situation had been actually quite ordinary and in some ways enviable. Was it outrage for feeling taken in by him that was discombobulating her?   Persimmon did not wear treachery at all well.  She had after all Jake and his numerous adulteries and other causes for lying to her to thank for not only a long and bitter divorce, but also for her equally prolonged breakdown.  He had used this, of course, as evidence against her being a suitable mother, depriving her for almost five years of having any meaningful contact with Juniper.  Even when her daughter had broken the news that Stefan had told her mostly lies during the interview she could only cope by living the next ten days or so on copious doses of Valium.
          For now the wine was doing the job.  Now all she needed was for her daughter to come in and see mother getting plastered with broken glass in the kitchen and a big fat wine stain on the quality broadloom, and that would be it—she’d be hearing from Jake’s lawyer and Juniper would be gone again.  Three years it had taken mother and daughter to build themselves a decent relationship, punctuated by much mutual strain and nervousness.  Had Juniper not looked so much like her mother--for Persimmon this was like living with her junior doppelganger—things might be a little less intense between them. Persimmon had been surprised by the ferocity of the love that she was suddenly feeling for her daughter.  She had missed her, yes.  And seeing Juniper only once a month for a single day during the last two years in which she was deemed “well” enough to see her, she had still been able to build no more than an abstract of a relationship with her.  Their visits had always been polite and restrained, even when Persimmon was no longer heavily medicated.  It was during one session in particular, six months into their renewed relationship that she actually broke down and wept.  There had been nothing extraordinary about the visit.  They had gone shopping together, though nothing was bought.  They toured the mall and looked inside store after store after store at all the beautiful clothes Persimmon—who at the time was very poor—would have loved to have bought for her girl, just on the threshold of puberty, showing already the promise of turning into an extraordinarily beautiful young woman.  Together mother and daughter made out an inventory list of what her father should buy her, being then, as now, a highly paid executive with one of the major television corporations.

            In a café they had made out the list together.  When Juniper was in the washroom Persimmon reviewed the list.  It contained nothing extravagant or unreasonable.  They had in fact gone out of their way to make sure that Jake would be spared as much expense as possible.   He could easily afford ten times the amount, a hundred times the amount.  Their marriage had been for Persimmon a blur: media, parties, cocaine, and then they stopped making love, but it stopped happening fairly early in the marriage, not long after Juniper was conceived.  There were lots of people involved, none of whom she could say she ever really got to know.  They experimented for a while with having an “open marriage”, an arrangement that worked much better for Jake.  Persimmon had nearly gone to bed with one of the press consultants.  She hadn’t the stomach for it. Where marriage was concerned she was incurably conservative.  She repeatedly badgered her husband to stop having affairs.  Which he said he would try to do.

            He wasn’t present for Juniper’s birth.  It was later revealed that he was having a dirty holiday at Whistler at the time.  Persimmon sunk into post-natal depression, which Jake blamed for his serial infidelity that followed.

            She drove Juniper back to her father’s, then sped off to the basement apartment she called home at the time, where she locked herself in, drew all the curtains and cried herself to sleep.

            Persimmon had a dark secret known to almost no one—not Jake and certainly not to her daughter.  “Persimmon Carlyle” was an invention, her own personal creation.  She was twenty when her parents died together in a plane crash.  They were off to Israel to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.   Suspected Palestinian terrorists had likely planted a bomb on board.  Persimmon had no siblings, an aunt, her mother’s sister in Montreal, and two uncles—her father’s brothers (one of them was an orthodox rabbi) in New York.  No one knew that her name had once been Miriam Silverman.  She had changed her name, not to erase her Jewishness towards which she had always affected indifference, nor to spite the memory of her dear parents, who had both been completely loving and devoted to their daughter, who grieved long, hard and deeply for them.  Which she supposed might be her real reason for changing her name?  Perhaps self-promotion—she was already avidly pursuing a career in television.  And “Persimmon Carlyle” just seemed to cut more wax than such a blatantly Jewish monicker as “Miriam Silverman” that for her still summoned visions of yarmulkes, matzo balls and klezmer bands.  Not to mention all those idiots and morons in school who used to taunt her ruthlessly, where she was known commonly as “Silverfish”.  She had stood out, being somewhat overweight with a rather large nose.  She still had the nose, which she simultaneously grew into while shedding thirty pounds, just after graduation, which she had managed to keep off.  The classic ugly duckling growing into a swan.  And even with her rather big nose, Miriam was suddenly beautiful with a dramatic Mediterranean flourish.  The family had moved from Toronto to Vancouver, just before she had finished secondary school, leaving her no one to gloat in front of, no faces to rub in their own dirt.  She had no identity to pass on to her daughter, who didn’t even know she was Jewish.  Not even grandparents to give her some sense of history, since both her parents’ sets of parents had perished in Europe during the war.
            She didn’t need anyone telling her that this absence of roots was a major factor in her breakdown.  Along with the divorce.  Not to mention the huge scandal that backfired in her face when she tried to expose on the TV news the cult-like goings on in this quasi-religious community that occupied a Shaughnessy mansion.  Persimmon had tried to spearhead an investigation, after several residents in this mansion died, apparently prematurely from AIDS-related causes.  All the players were exonerated, and Persimmon had major egg on her face.  Which she could have endured had the media coverage not reached such international proportions. 

            Juniper might be home any minute.  But this cabernet was so nice and the deliciousness now inhabited every cell of Persimmon’s prone body.  She wished that she hadn’t sold the TV.  She could always buy a new one.  She had money now.  But Persimmon had dared herself.  She wanted time to read, to think, to begin work on her memoir in which a local publishing house was already indicating interest.  There would be no turning back.  Television had been her life.  She needed to completely disengage herself from the medium.  She set what remained of her wine on the table next to her.  Her eyes were beginning to close….

Who Owns The Rainbow?

I was having a conversation the other day with someone whom, shall we say? I know professionally.  This individual grew up in a small town and I was not surprised during the course of our conversation to find her a little bit homophobic.  There was nothing terribly alarming here, no "God hates fags" bullshit and certainly nothing that would prompt me to suggest that she immigrate to Russia or Nigeria or Uganda.  I actually suggested to her that the Canadian Flag might be more colourful than the boring red and white maple leaf, and for some reason she said that we wouldn't want it to turn into a rainbow flag for fear of alienating those who do not embrace its inclusive message.

I did not tell her she is homophobic, though it seems clear that she is.  Neither did I suggest that growing up in a small town has somehow stunted her intellectual development and hobbled her world view, though of course it has.  Instead, I subjected her to a polite lengthy lecture about why the LGBTQ community has embraced and claimed the rainbow.  That this is a symbol of diversity and inclusion, that all colours belong to the same spectrum.

I went on to say that the queer community has had to fight and labour hard and long against prejudice, hate, ignorance and persecution and that now we have full marriage equality and that my wish is that we will no longer anywhere in this land have to hear the ridiculous exclamation "You mean he's GAY???!!!" because hopefully we will have evolved to a place where we will neither notice or care about sexual orientation.  It will all be completely normalized.

I said something else.  I would love to see gay pride eventually evolve into something that is completely inclusive of every kind of diversity under the sun.  I want to see the gay pride parade become a diversity pride parade.  I say this for a reason.  About six years ago I was at a friend's birthday party.  It was a Saturday afternoon in April and I met a pleasant diversity of people in his living room.  I found myself approached by an elderly French lesbian who waxed on about how thrilled she was that the gay community has strode this far in gaining popular acceptance, equality and legitimacy.  And I was celebrating with her.

Our conversation however took rather an unfortunate turn.  I mentioned that I work in mental health services and that my dream was to see that all who have suffered from mental illness will also come into the sense of acceptance and full social equality that iss finally occurring for gay and lesbian people.  The woman's face turned suddenly very ugly and then she spat out the words "At least we're not sick!"  How's that for a conversation stopper?  Struggling to contain my rage I politely said, "I believe this conversation is over" and walked away.

We still have a long way to go towards full equality.  I am referring to everyone.  It is not enough for one minority much as I appreciate and respect and admire its adherents to claim the rainbow as their rallying symbol.  We are all colours in this broad and beautiful spectrum of life: gays and lesbians, poor people, mental illness survivors, visible minorities, people with physical and developmental disabilities, artists and eccentrics and original thinkers, idealists and religious and spiritual devotees and every one of us who walks on and inhabits God's green earth, and my dream is to see all of us unite and rise together as sisters and brothers in the radiant splendour of this rainbow.  To expect anything less than this is to be less.

Thirteen Crucifixions 42

There he lay, curled up on the couch in his dark clothes, curved rather like a gigantic turd.  The man I love is a shit today, Melissa thought on her way to the kitchen.  Her make-up still wasn’t right—she should not have partied with the staff after work.  “When you gonna learn girl?”, she muttered while looking for the coffee filters.  “When are you going to learn?”  The house was, as usual, worse than a pigsty—almost a week’s worth of dirty dishes were stacked and scattered and moldering and attracting new species of vermin—how could they live like this!  She was used to better—she was surely used to much better than this.  They had taken them in, her and Stefan, rent-free, though now, to satisfy the demands of Welfare, they were paying a token amount every month.  Of course the place was a mess—with three single male rock musicians, not to mention Stefan who probably had never cleaned a toilet or washed a plate in his life—what else could she expect?  And Melissa herself was far from being the happy homemaker, but at least she washed her own dishes and usually cleaned up her own spills and never left her personal detritus cluttering the communal areas of the house.  She might try to clean up after the others a little bit but she wasn’t prepared to play Wendy in a home for lost boys.  She was being ungrateful, she supposed.  Steve, Jason and Dirk had treated her and Stefan with extraordinary kindness.  It was Dirk they met one day when they were panhandling downtown.  She liked him right away, tall, gangly, like a tower of bones covered in skin and black clothing.  He gave them a big smile and sat down next to them on the pavement, told them how he’d just spent three months on the street himself, now he was in this house together with his band-mates and they were doing a gig tonight at the Steel Toe and if they mentioned his name at the door they could get in free.  Dirk, sexy in his bony, gangly way, apparently had no such agenda with either of them.  This was pure friendship, which was like a pure sweet air that Melissa and Stefan both had been longing to inhale.  Though they had each other.   They were lovers?  But what did that word mean?  That they had sex together and slept in the same bed as often as they could?  They did sleep in the same bed, but not always together.  They weren’t just friends.  Their lives were tied together.  She had been losing her physical appetite for sex with Stefan, but they were still indefatigably together.  Which made them married?  A Mom and Pop arrangement?  She’d wondered all night where the fuck he’d got to. Jen told her he was coming in to the Steel Toe, then he didn’t show.  Yes, she was worried, but assumed that he was all right.  Stefan almost always was.  Almost always.  She was in love with him?  She was certainly used to him.  And today anyway she was thoroughly disgusted with him for—not making love to her?  To be honest she had never been that interested in his body to begin with.  He was fairly adequate in bed and that was all.  He was devoted to her.  He expected her to take care of him?  Mommy’s always around for Sonny Boy to come home to.  Madame Mommy and Mister Sonny Boy.  She should have gone home with Ed last night.  He’d had his eye on her for some time and he was hot.   He moved like a panther and just the thought of his kind of energy being channelled into bed and love-making made her positively damp.  She chickened out.

            “Coffee’s made.”

            He wasn’t stirring.

            “Wake-up, buddy boy!” she chanted in a sing-song voice.  “Wake-up!  Wake-up!”  He hadn’t taken his boots off.  What was he doing last night?

            “Get up Stefan or I’m dumping a pot full of scalding hot coffee on you.  Right now.”

            He groaned and stirred.

            “Aaaa!  It’s alive!  It’s alive!”

            He muttered something incoherent, then sat up suddenly.  He looked around, his eyes wide and frightened.  “Oh… Melissa.”

            “You still know my name”, she said.  Standing in front of the couch, “Want some coffee?”

            “Yeah.”

            “Here.”  She had a mug in one hand, the pot of coffee in the other.  She poured him one and put it on the filthy cluttered coffee table next to him.  Then she sat beside him, less than an inch between them.

            “Where were you last night?”

            “On the street.”

            “Like, you don’t have a home to come to?”

            “I was stoned.”

            “Got any left?”

            “Ate them all.  Mushrooms.”

            “You could have saved me a few.”

            “Sorry, didn’t have that many.”

            “How’d you get them?

            “Scored them on Granville.”

            “You got some money?”

            “Had a good night panhandling.”

            “Taking me out for breakfast?”

            “Where do you want to go?”

            “That place with the art we ate in yesterday?”

            “Why there?”

            “I dunno—I like the atmosphere.  Food’s good.  I love the art.  The old lady who runs the place is kinda cool.”

            “She’s mean.”

            “Mean in a nice way.”

            “Let’s go somewhere else.”

            “I wanna go to the West Wind.”

            “Don’t let me stop you.”

            “I want us to go there together.  It’s no fun alone.”

            “I’m sure you’ll live.”

            “Where ya going?”

            “To take a shower.  I feel gross.”

            “You smell gross.  Why don’t you take off your boots?”

            “Then I’ll smell real gross.”

            “You should have gone with him.  Why didn’t you?”

            “I dunno.  It didn’t feel right.”

            “You don’t need my permission.  I’ve already told you this.”

            “I know—I know.  I didn’t feel ready.”

            “Ready for what?”

            “Ready to be claimed.”

            “What’re you talking about?”

            “If I were to go to bed with Ed, with someone like Ed, then that would be it.  I’d be his.  He would have taken possession of me.”

            “Only if you want him to.  Just enjoy the sex.  He doesn’t have to have your soul too.”

            “It isn’t that easy. I can’t really separate between the two.

            “It’s easy.”

            “For you maybe.  But you’re a male.  It’s different for girls.”

            “That’s what they keep telling me.”

            “I like it with you.”

            “Don’t start.”

            “But it’s true.  Doesn’t this mean anything to you?”

            “Melissa.”

            “I love you.”

            “It’s no good.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean I’m no good.”

            “What a stupid thing to say.”

            “But it’s true.”

            “Now you’re talking like a complete moron.”

            “Well, maybe I am a complete moron.  You should have gone with Ed.”

            “Stop saying that.  It’s like you don’t give a fuck.”

            “I do so give a fuck.”

            “You don’t have to shout.”  They were attracting attention.  Even Sheila, while serving another table turned around to monitor them.  After some coaxing, Stefan had agreed to join Melissa at the West Wind.  ”Where are you going?”

            “I just gotta get out.”

            “Stefan.”  He was leaving.

            “Don’t follow me.”

            “Are you coming home?”  He was gone.  Melissa sat down again, chewed a corner off her toast then washed it down with coffee.  With her forefinger she brushed away some crumbs.  Then she was crying.  She tried to bite her fist.  It didn’t work.  She broke down completely, weeping and sobbing.  Sheila sat down in Stefan’s chair.

            “There’s a couch in the back.  Would you like to lie down for a while?”

            “Yes.”  She was scarcely coherent.  She tried to steady herself.

            “Come”, Sheila said, and she followed her to a small room in the back.

            “Would you like me to bring you another coffee?” Sheila said.

            “Just a glass of water please.” Melissa sat down near the end of the couch.  Sheila brought over some water.

            “Just give yourself some time to rest.  I’ll be here all afternoon”, she said.  “Would you like me to shut the door?”

            “Could you please?”  Melissa curled up on the couch, facing the shut door of the little room.  Even now, this soon, she could tell that it wasn’t because of Stefan, nor even her period, that she was weeping.  She could see now this inevitable change that was again coming over her life, and that she had neither control nor any command over it.  She would have to content herself with simply being carried along this wave that had already taken her out to the open sea. She wondered about her mother, who she hadn’t heard from in nearly two months.  She closed her eyes, but knew already that she would not be falling asleep.

            “The Steel Toe.  Have you heard of it?”

            “It’s down at the other end of Commercial?”

            “Near Hastings.  This is my second day.  I start at five.  I don’t even feel like working now.”

            “Well, you have had a terrible upset.”

            “How could he do such a thing?”

            “There could be any number of reasons.  Best let it be.”

            “It’s hard.”

            “I know.”  Sheila refilled Melissa’s cup.

            “Just half, please.  I’ll be flying out of here if I have any more.”

            “Did you get any rest?" Sheila said sitting down with her.

            “Some.  I mostly just lay there and stared.  “Oh Gawd—I don’t want to go into work today.”

            “Then maybe you’d like to go home.”

            “It’s only my second day.  I don’t think it would look very good.”

            “You sound like a very responsible person.”

            “Well, I am really.  Don’t let the green hair fool you.  I have done some pretty stupid things but I’ve also tried to own up to them.”

            “That’s what makes life interesting.”

            “Don’t I know it.”

            “How did you meet?”

            “Stefan?  On the street.  We kinda rescued each other.”

            “Do you think he’ll come back?”

            “Probably.  He’s done this before.  Problem is he thinks he’s no good.  For anyone.  He really hates what he is?”

            “Then there isn’t much you can really do for him.”

            “No.  There’s not.  I try.  I try to assure him that he’s attractive, that he’s a good person.  That he’s worthwhile.  Only he just doesn’t seem to believe it.  And it’s not really my job anyway but I think it is because he’s been real good to me, and he’s just so pathetic and full of need—he needs a mom.  But I can’t be his mom.  I need mothering.”

            “We all do.  Even me.”

            “But you’re a mother yourself.”

            “Even mothers need mothering. And sometimes especially mothers.”

            “One day I want to have kids.  Not yet.  I’m nowhere near being ready yet.  I was  pregnant last winter.  I ended it.”

            “Stefan’s?”

.           “No, thank God.  This couple I was living with in West Van wanted me to be surrogate mother for them.  I refused.  They were keeping me as their slave, or trying to.  I escaped.  It was that night downtown that I met Stefan.  I had some money, so we got a room together.  The next day I went to the Every Woman Clinic.  Stefan came with me.  Like I just said, he doesn’t know how good he is.  But I also wish that it was a choice I didn’t have to make, and I think that’s why I’m so upset lately.”

            “I think a lot of women feel the way you do about abortion.

            “You’re not pro-life I hope.”

            “Pro-choice, actually.  But it still isn’t a perfect solution.  There are no perfect solutions.  To anything.  There’s always going to be consequences.  There will always be compromises to be made, there will always be a mess to clean up.  No matter how hard we try to avoid making one.”

            “Do you really believe that?”

            “I KNOW it.”

            “And it always has to be like that.”

            “I don’t know if it has to.  But that’s the way it is.”

            “But you say it doesn’t have to.”

            “All right—say it doesn’t.”

            “Then what do we do?”

            “I don’t know.  Keep trying I suppose.”

            “But what if we keep messing up?”

            “But isn’t that how we learn?  Through our mistakes?  By messing up?”

            “So what you’re saying then is we’re really here to learn. That it doesn’t matter if we fuck-up or not—excuse my language please.”

            “I wouldn’t say it doesn’t matter.  Of course it matters.  That’s why we have to try not to.”

            “But why does it matter?”

            “I suppose it comes back to being responsible.  To accepting responsibility.”

            “But why bother if we’re going to keep messing up anyway?”

            “Because this way we can say that at least we tried?”

            “I dunno—that sounds pretty lame, if you ask me.”

            “But does it?”  Sheila said.  “Because this way, by trying, by saying that we tried, it sets a whole different process in motion.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, okay, we try to do good.  But we mess up for having tried.  At least we’re more likely to see where we’ve messed up, and try to do something to rectify it, whereas, if we just don’t care anyway, we’re not going to recognize much of anything, and things will just keep getting worse before we all drown in the end results of our irresponsible behaviour.”

            “But even if we try to make our mistakes better, aren’t we still going to screw up some more?”

            “We likely will.  I mean, look at Germany after the war.  They were a nation destroyed by their own evil.  So along came the Americans, the well-intentioned conquerors with their Marshall Plan.  So they rebuilt Germany economically, politically.  But they were never able to conquer Nazism, which especially since reunification has become an increasing menace.  Things are still less than perfect, but what they have now is much better than nothing.”

            “So there will never be such a thing as a solution?”

            “There will never be such a thing as a perfect solution.”

            “So we’re cursed with being imperfect.”

            “No.  Not cursed. Blessed.”

            “Which makes imperfection our perfection.”

            “I’ve never thought of it that way”, Sheila said.  “You are a very wise young woman.”

            “I’d say the same about you.”

            “Well, I’d hardly call myself young.  As for being wise—”

            “Learning being wise?”

            “Well, I suppose we’re all getting wisdom.  Or we have that opportunity, that choice we can make.”

            “So it’s all about the getting of wisdom, this mess-making and bad choices”, Melissa said.

            “I suppose it is”, Sheila said, “I suppose that it is.”

Thirteen Crucifixions 41

2001

 

 

            Michael was wounded.  There was no doubt about it.  He had hoped to find in his mother’s house, his natal home, rest, solace and healing.  He wasn’t sleeping well.  He felt depressed, irritable.  Maybe it was sex that he was missing—but sex he had used as a drug.  And now he must face whatever it was he’d been eluding.  Sitting at the kitchen table alone brought him anything approaching comfort.  He wanted a cigarette, and had been craving one for quite a few days.  It wasn’t the nicotine that he missed so much as the ritual of smoking.  Being at his mother’s should make him feel grounded.  It usually did.  They were awfully close, Michael and his mother.  But instead he had just lost his moorings.  He felt like a hot air balloon ready for take-off.  And where was Glen?  His mother at least had an excuse for being away. She had to be at the café, though he really felt that she should retire soon.  She could afford it.  Where was Glen?  He wanted him here, he needed him here.  It’s like he was smitten, suddenly in love with Glen.  And it didn’t feel particularly sexual this time, though in a way it was.  This made it all the worse for him.  Michael was in love?  Michael did not fall in love.  Not easily, and certainly not often.  But Glen—what was it about Glen?  He was attractive.  Not studly—kind of like a washed out hippy, actually. But beautiful?   Was that it?  Glen was beautiful.  And Michael was in love with beauty?  Michael wanted another cup of coffee.  What had been left in the pot was now stale and bitter.  He looked up at the wall clock—the same clock that when he was little told him what time he must leave for kindergarten.  “When the little hand is pointing at the top—that’s twelve—and the big hand is pointed at the number four—which means twenty after. He had had a difficult time accepting that four could also be twenty.  And then off he’d walk to kindergarten at the Baptist church nearby.  Back in an age when it was still considered safe for a little boy in a city neighbourhood to walk alone for several blocks. It was just after ten.  He’d finally fallen asleep at around five.  But it had been a deep sleep. No dreams, and he almost felt rested.

            He couldn’t imagine where Matthew was.  It was hard for Michael, being a chronic worrier by nature, not to worry.  He always gauged the depth of his love for someone by the intensity of worry he might feel over them.  So then he wasn’t really in love with Glen, towards whom he felt not a tincture of worry?  How could he really tell, now at this time when his entire life was being turned inside out.  If not a cigarette, if not sex, then he at least should have another coffee.  Easy to make, and in a new mug.  Big dark blue.  He hadn’t seen this one before.  He reached to pet the white cat resting in another chair.  The cat purred, but did not stir.

            Pierre.  He had been trying not to think of him.  So Glen was a friend—obviously a long, close and trusted friend of Pierre?  All these years he had known them both, but only now had it occurred to him how well they might be known to each other.  He felt a little betrayed by them both.  Pierre, next to whom Glen could hardly rate in looks—not that he was ugly, but Pierre, stunningly gorgeous and aging beautifully did hardly anything for Michael, who regarded him as a masochistic pansy.  Not bad in bed, and Michael might have even found him quite enjoyable had it not been revenge sex.  He had never been pursued before.  Actually it was more like stalking—and men as good looking as Pierre being not accustomed to being turned down—had this been the turn-off for Michael, who would far sooner have jumped permanently into bed with Glen and stayed there with him till they were two interlocked skeletons than accept from Pierre so much as a token blow-job.  Is this what love is?

            But, Stephen?  Stephen he could have loved, had he not been so sick, broken down and worn away by illness by the time Michael had met him.  He had free-lanced for the Globe and Mail a series of interviews with exclusively gay men in the final stages of AIDS.  Stephen Bloom had been the most memorable.  His dark good looks had still been evident and the photos he had shown Michael revealed a human faun of remarkable beauty.  Rather like Pierre, he thought.  A very hard life—street prostitution from age fifteen, drag queen, he had been the product of a series of foster homes and a rather dysfunctional adoption.  But things had ended very strangely for him.  He discovered shortly before his condition had been diagnosed that his birth mother was actually an extremely wealthy Englishwoman, with whom he and Pierre had, through a bizarre set of circumstances , ended up living.  His father, who he met soon after, was an Anglican clergyman.  In less than three years, just days after concluding the interview, Stephen was dead.  The loss, to Michael’s surprise, was most bitter to him.  And Pierre who looked so much like Stephen was still unsuitable—a tawdry imitation.  And Michael had never been much available for love or sex on the rebound.

            He had nothing planned for this afternoon.  He could go to the library and check his e-mail on one of the computers.  His mother still stubbornly refused to acknowledge the new millenium.  She only used the cell phone he had given her last Christmas out of the most patronizing courtesy.  She was adamant about not getting a computer.  Maybe there’d be something from Matthew.  And he could stop at that café where he’d been going every morning for a while.  Maybe those two young waiters would be there.  Two flirty young men in their early twenties, not likely gay, but probably could still, under the correct circumstances and with the right sort of man, be “had”.  Was this it—Michael reduced to stalking coy young waiters?  But they were safe, nothing was going to happen—ever.  Because Michael didn’t want it to.  He felt like a john being serviced by two rent boys.  Yes, he did fantasize about them—constantly.  So, no, he was not going to that café today.  But he was going to check his e-mail.  But only after sitting here with the morning’s Globe and Mail for just a little bit longer.

 

            He could have guessed.  It was this room.  The three small stained glass windows were incandescent with the spring sunlight that made the rose motifs something dazzling, resplendent and ebullient.  Each window was approximately three feet square and they were positioned rather near the ceiling in an evenly spaced horizontal row.  Each bore the same Art-Nouveau serpentine grace—white and pale yellow with crimson roses on green s-curved stems.  Each window sagged just a little bit near its sill, rather like the barely discernible jowls of a well-preserved woman past fifty who is still considered beautiful.  This had been for Michael the single room in the house he had avoided, and on the terraced white mantle-piece stood the elegant and horrible reason why.  The urn that held his father’s ashes was a splendid cloisonne vase, Chinese and antique.  A gift from Matthew, as were the other contents of the room.  It wasn’t Michael’s idea: a Christmas present for his mother.  Everything from the Dunham lampshade to the plush crimson upholstered divan he was sitting on to the Faberge egg next to his father’s ashes were of the period, which this house was built in.  It had been Michael’s fatuous insistence and assumption that every old house should have one “period room.”  His mother had snarkily replied that she was finally past the age where on a monthly basis every room would serve her as a period room.  Matthew had laughed a little too boisterously and Michael as usual was battling to conceal his embarrassment, for Sheila could be extremely rude at times, but only in the presence of people she didn’t like.  She had never troubled to tell him just what it was about Matthew that she disliked, until one day when Michael cornered her about it.  “It has nothing to do with his being gay.  Don’t you know that already?”  Then what?  “I don’t have to like him, do I?”  No.  “And it’s not him and it’s not the relationship. It’s both of you.  It’s the way the two of you behave like such perfectly trained lap dogs whenever you’re both here.  It makes me uncomfortable.”  It’s because we’re both gay.  Right?  We’re both gay, we live together, we have sex together.  And he’s way older than me almost your age.  You don’t like that.  You can’t stand it.  Can you?  “Now you’re talking complete horse shit, Michael, and you know it.  Look at Harold, Suzanne’s husband.  He’s heterosexual and only thirty-two years old and I don’t like him either.”  Yeah, I’ve noticed.  What is it about you and your in-laws—can’t stand losing your kids or what?  “I can’t stand losing my kids to such insipid mediocre mates is all.  Harold’s a bore and Matthew’s a twit.  You both could have done a lot better.” Just like our mother.  “For God’s sake, Michael, must you kids go and repeat your mother’s mistakes?”  Why shouldn’t we—you haven’t learned from yours.  “Oh go to hell!”  Then you can have me with you for all eternity.

            These quarrels of course never got anywhere and Michael now tried his utmost not to start them with his mother, who otherwise wouldn’t tell him much of anything. Of course he had to pry, hit her with a battering ram, get her to detonate.  Not that he didn’t usually know where he stood with her, it was just a refreshing relief to hear it from her, in her own words and from her own lips, even if it took the heat of an argument to force it out of her.

            It was a beautiful urn, less than eighteen inches high, turquoise with a chromatic intensity of deep indigo in places, all heightened with gold filigree.  One day, just weeks after his father’s death, Michael had caught his mother trying to pitch it into the fireplace.  Being in the neighbourhood at the time he dropped in to visit.  He could hear his mother talking to someone.  She sounded curt, angry.  It was a tone that Michael knew, and feared.  Throughout his childhood, Sheila would only hit her children—which she very rarely did—if she had been worked into this calm, well-controlled wrath.  He had never known her to raise her voice.  Ever.  He came into the room.  She had the urn raised over her head, ready to hurl it into the fire.  “Mom”, he said.  She pretended not to hear.  “Mother”, he said calmly and authoritatively.  “Put the urn back on the mantel.  Now.”  She made as though to defy him.  “He is my father.  He had his faults, but he is my father.  Do not dishonour him.  Do not dishonour me.”  Slowly, without turning around to see her son, Sheila returned the cloisanne urn to its pedestal.  Then slowly she turned around and faced her son.  Her face wore a defeated despairing expression, a white mask-like effect that Michael found truly frightening.  Slowly, like she was in a drugged state, Sheila made her way to the divan, and sat down.  She was staring at the fire.  Then, out of her emitted a horrible sounding wail, deeper than a keening, but loud, ascending, as though all the years of grief she had held in her over this prolonged death of a marriage she had been hostage to were being forced out of her at once.  Michael, terrified, sat next to his mother while she wept.  Never had he seen her weep before, and never had he seen it since.  He had lost track of the time, but she had been weeping like this next to him for quite a while before she regained her composure.  They had a glass of scotch together at the kitchen table.  She went up to bed early and Michael stayed with his mother for the rest of the week.       

            It had all happened quickly and suddenly.  His father and mother had been mutually estranged since Michael was a teenager.  Being a sales representative for an international chemical firm he was all over the world cinching deals, spending perhaps six weeks out of as many months at home.  They had long stopped sleeping together, each having their own bedroom.  They were of course the last to know about their father’s medical condition.  Only when the first purple lesions of Kaposi’s Sarcoma appeared on his father’s forearms did Michael have an idea of what was going on.  He made an appointment to see him—an unheard of event since father and son had simply not bothered with or about each other for so many years.  Michael was nervous, they both sat in the kitchen.  No one else was in the house.   “When are you going to tell us that you have AIDS, Dad?”  He tried sheepishly, apologetically to deny it.  “I know the symptoms”, Michael said.  “I know what to look for.  I’ve been around it for years and I’m not going to bore you about how many friends I have lost to it.  No, I don’t have it myself—I get tested every three months, and I’m extremely careful, but Dad, please don’t lie to me anymore.  It makes no difference to me how you got it.  In fact, I don’t even want to know, okay?  It’s not an issue.  But please come clean with us.  Could you please?  It’ll be better for all of us in the long run.”  His father mumbled something about getting it from a tainted blood-transfusion after he’d been in a car accident three years before.  Then he excused himself.  Two weeks later he moved out of the house, into an apartment in the West End.  This lasted for about six months, when suddenly he became gravely ill.  He asked if he could move back home.  They took care of him.  He took Sheila and Michael aside to tell them “the truth.”  He had picked up the virus from a male prostitute, who he didn’t know, he’d been with so many.  There was no display of emotion. He apologized to Sheila and Michael, both of whom he felt he had particularly betrayed.  He was very weak now and died ten days later, at home, on Christmas Day, surrounded by his loving family.

            Michael held the urn in his lap.  He turned it over and over, caressing with his finger tips its smooth surface.  Almost he wanted to wet his forefinger with his tongue and dip it into his father’s ashes.  Then he would touch the ash to his forehead.  He held the urn arms-length and looked steadily at it in the light of the three rose windows.  He wondered if Stephen, who had died just a year before his father, might have been the one he had got it from.  Then he decided that it was something he would never want to know.  He kissed the urn once, twice, three times, then returned it to its pedestal, more convinced than ever that homosexuality must be hereditary.

 

The Root Of All Evil

I had an unusual Sunday yesterday.  I didn't go to church.  I read this lousy article last spring in the local Anglican tabloid that one of our local priests wrote in which, using all kinds of theological casuistry in which he tried to convince the reader that to not attend church every Sunday is a sin.  I was a bit flummoxed by this phariseeistic nonsense.  Still, I became a little bit fearful and apprehensive about my own church attendance, and actually allowed this article to bully and cow me into showing up for Sunday services regularly and faithfully.

In June, because of miscommunications and circumstances beyond my control, I missed two Sundays at church.  I was not struck by lightning, not even during the sudden downpour and electrical storm that drove me into the nearest Starbucks because I didn't have an umbrella.  Now I don't ordinarily patronize Starbucks, preferring to support local coffee shops, but here I was sheltering in a comfy chair at a comfy table while the rain poured down outside, sipping a coffee while knowing that I would not only be late for church, I was going to miss it.  I did some work on a drawing.  A co-worker came in to get take out coffee and snacks for her house guests nearby.  We had a brief but warm visit.  The second Sunday away from church I took a walk in the forest nearby, since the church was closed that Sunday.

Sunday yesterday I decided to stay home.  The priest who wrote the lousy article was guest preacher at my church last week and stayed behind to give us a workshop on how to fill up the churches with newcomers, or Bums In Pews.  His sermon was every bit as lame as his article as he bashed as heretics (yes he did use this word, so many times that I eventually lost count) people who call themselves religious but not spiritual, then afterward proceeded to lecture us as though we were slow students about why Anglicans should practice evangelism.  He displayed absolutely no interest in dialogue or any point of view that was not his own.  Neither could he accept that the whole process of getting people into church has a lot more to do with our love in action in concert with the love of God and the work of the Holy Spirit than with our relentless nagging.

I eventually got up and left, finding this priest to be not very bright, small minded, arrogant and disrespectful of others.  I am sure that in other circumstances he might be a quite decent chap and even a fun companion over a cup of coffee or a glass of beer.

I decided to stay away from church yesterday to liberate myself from the legalism of compulsory church attendance.  As well as enjoying the sound of the rain while sipping coffee in my apartment  I also did my laundry.  Because I stayed away from church yesterday I was able to help an emotionally fragile neighbour get into the building after she'd left her key in her apartment.  I was also able to accept a warm and sincere apology and offer complete forgiveness to another tenant regarding an unfortunate incident last week.  Equivalents, these, of exchanging the peace and receiving the sacrament at the altar. 
When my laundry was done, the rain had stopped, and the sun was out I took a long walk that led me into a legendarily wealthy neighbourhood of Vancouver.

On the sidewalk I came across a pile of money.  There was no indication that it belonged to someone.  I stuffed it in my pocket, took it home and counted more than $500.  Because the money was abandoned, perhaps carelessly in a wealthy neighbourhood and my hours at work are a bit down I am accepting this find as a gift from God.  Had there been any way of identifying the owner I would of course turned the money in.  I am also aware that some individuals of means have recently been leaving sums of over one hundred dollars on sidewalks and in parks for strangers to discover and I am under the impression that this is what may have happened.

I am just about over the shock of my find.   I am not going to spend it wrecklessly.  My needs are small and I will just defer from withdrawing anything from my chequing account for a few extra weeks.  I will sooner or later return to church, probably in a few weeks after Back to Church Sunday is over, once the good Anglicans are over their imposed zeal for proselytizing.  I personally don't care if more people become Anglicans or not since I do not have a vested interest in this church, which is to say that my spiritual fulfilment is not tied up with this or any denomination.  God is everywhere and he is not confined to the boxes that we build for her.  I am also not a priest so naturally I am not  worried about loosing a $96,000 a year salary.