I am dizzy from the smell,
Spinning disconsolate, you mustn’t tell,
Because I’m out of toilet paper,
And there’s no one around to help.
A hair rises from the drain
To say hello,
I don’t know what to say,
It’s not alive,
So I turn on the faucet and strain.
There it goes, back from whence it came.
Music was my third professional pursuit behind point guard and businessman, if you don’t count my toddler yearnings to be a cabbie to handle bulging wads of cash. I dreamt of shredding like Kirk Hammett and what colour of M&Ms I’d ask my rider to remove from my gigantic bowl of them before I showed up to my dressing room. I practised head-banging like Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell (may he rest in peace) in front of countless bathroom mirrors and rocked the panties off my all-boys high school three times2 in four years, my young nerves oblivious to the 500+ capacity auditorium.
In ninth grade, I wanted a life built on the holy trinity of showmanship, an audience, and me being there. I removed my physical presence from said trinity after publishing a poem (I’m sure I ripped off William Blake in some fashion) called “Innocence” and decided to be an author.
Oubliette
There was nothing special about the poem besides that I thought it was good. What fucked me up and hooked me was the validation from this website3 which, as a 14-year-old, I wasn’t able to identify as a vanity publication. “Innocence” had a holiday sparkler’s worth of promise and didn’t deserve to be displayed anywhere; I might have known this, but my first byline-boner had left me with an unfamiliar hunger. Quicker than a mistyped Internet bank transaction, I lost neurons, previously busied by my prolific musicopoetical creativity, to the pursuit of authorial ego. I stopped caring about the words for the next nine (fucking) years and submitted poetry and short fiction to hundreds of journals to see my name on the page or, more frequently, glowing on a laptop screen, and quiver at the ensuing rush of pride. The acceptance emails, to my fault, read like proof of my writing prowess.
From: (publication name removed), April 11, 2005.
Dear (Name Withdrawn)
We have accepted your poem, “April the Tendentious Termagan,” for the first issue of Sage of Consciousness.
If you would like a signed copy of the formal acceptance letter, please email us your postal address, and we will send your letter immediately.
Once we have designed the pages for your biography and story, you will have an opportunity to proof each for any errors or changes that you would like to make.
Thank you for submitting to Sage of Consciousness Ezine.
Michelle Williams
Paul Douglas
Jason Cline
Marie Poulos
Jennifer Calderon
John Craig
Editors of (publication name removed)
After reading something like this my head would get cloudy. What do I have to write about to get through to this editor? What kind of writer do I have to act like to get the next ‘yes’? Suddenly there was this gargantuan horde of literati I thought I had to please to succeed. Try chiselling out a singular, intimate style without allowing yourself to write freely, conforming to themed issues, overwrought submission guidelines, to what is asked for and not what you can give. I could not see I’d become that American Idol contestant that had ears for no one but himself, a dilettante masquerading as a professional.
Until graduating at 23, I’d lived bliss-ridden in a fantasy of occasional composition, practicing exclusively when I wanted to, thinking that appearances in a dozen no-name magazines would be all the extra currency I needed when I presented my English and philosophy diploma to the writing world. My greatest shame is being able to ask what I could have done with those formative years when good habits stick like Minute Maid fruit punch on your digestive tract.
I enrolled in Humber College’s postgraduate creative writing program too soon. I had to pen a first draft of an 80,000-word novel over eight months under Susan Swan’s guidance and I knew I could have a manuscript in publishable condition no sweat, first try. Depression moved in after two months. I had—maybe—10,000 words, more than my hand had birthed in the preceding six months. As homework and a daily grind, staring at a story until more words were there lost its shimmer. I got to know my local LCBOs and rotated to avoid being labelled as a drunk by the cashiers. The process was gradual. It began with what I saw as a rite of passage into adulthood, my first purchase of a fifth of Jack Daniels as an adult. That night I propped up a pillow to watch Letterman and sipped away, the bottle leaning against my thigh and making a cold spot. I used a long and tall glass because I’d heard on some show on the BBC that you drink less out of them compared to short and wide glasses and I’ve always been the kind of person that wants to make things last. By “Stupid Animal Tricks,” I was buzzing, and it was clear to me that I’d found a solution to my dread of having to wake up the next day and write. When my liver demanded a 3 a.m. piss and I keyed into this becoming a daily occurrence; my frustration wasn’t anything another swig couldn’t take care of. I got used to spending the middles of my nights chugging blue Gatorade to look less dehydrated when I went out for cigarettes after breakfast and considered changing careers for the first time since I stopped thinking I was still young enough to.
I was knocking out at most 500 words a day thanks to the brightly coloured bottles in the isles, and the systematic try-anything-once attitude with which I ran my way through them is testament to my openmindedness but also to the holes in liberal politics. I tried gin like Fitzgerald and Anne Sexton, rum like Hemingway, beer like Stephen King, tequila like Kerouac, vodka like Capote, Southern Comfort like Janis Joplin, E&J like Mobb Deep, Limoncello like Avril Lavigne, Harvey’s Bristol Cream like the pirate radio personalities in Rushdie’s The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Soju like the boozy dad in Choi’s A Person of Interest, Coke and red wine like Bourdain on No Reservations: Argentina, and I sought out the cheapest Riesling I could find to get sloshed like Bukowski. My dirty little hole was at the time my life’s greatest source of fascination. I drank everything straight, no ice or sugar or water. No mixers. I drew motivation to continue from my lack of hangovers. I’d heard of Christopher Hitchens years before and we became best of friends. His daily diet of a bottle of red wine and half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black was a challenge that gave me weeks of entertainment; I tried smoking his blue Rothmans to complete the picture but they weren’t strong enough. After three or four months, anything less than 80 proof was water to me. There were nights when I got bored of Jim Beam and brought a six-pack of Old Milwaukee or a vintage Francis Ford Coppola home instead. Next hour, the last drop was gone and I felt sober and my apartment was dry. I had to chain-smoke myself to sleep, but that doesn’t really work—your mouth cakes up with a layer of chemicals that interfere with the pleasure of the chemicals you’re inhaling at the given moment—so it’s more accurate to say I’d fidget to sleep doing the mental gymnastics necessary to convince myself that if I walked to the LCBO after noon the next day instead of taking the subway, that was decent enough to call myself a decent and relatively health-conscious person who didn’t have a problem at all.
When Swan passed me, life had sunk to two bottles of whiskey4 a week and half-hourly king-sized Canadian Classics. A fifth wrapped in clothes accompanied me when visiting relatives. During one week-long trip to northern Ontario to see my mom’s family, my aunt’s house, where I was to sleep, had another eight visitors in it. That meant 1) my parents and I had to share a room and 2) my younger cousins would be up at 6 a.m. It’s very hard to get drunk in the same room as your sleeping parents and get enough sleep to not show it on your face even in the absence of shrill cries for breakfast, mommy, breakfast. By the third day I was taking my spiked coffee outside with a book, smoking four cigarettes and taking my chances holding my breath and rushing back inside, straight into the shower, to have
an excuse for my red eyes. At brunch my dentist cousin from Richmond Hill mentioned she had to return to Toronto for work. I tagged along and cited the failsafe need for solitude to catch up on my writing that is every writer’s way out of uncomfortable situations. I am positive my aunts, uncles, and adult cousins figured I was bored by their company when I was just nauseous with withdrawal. During the ten-hour car ride home I popped Gravol, chugged Sprite, and lied about having my fingers down my pants to lessen the pressure of the elastic in my shorts on my stomach on account of the extra servings of meat pie I had for dinner the previous evening. Once inside and alone, I binged-watched Q.I. and destroyed a bottle of Bushmills Black Bush by dawn.
At my lowest, a second draft abandoned, I’d walk down the street and realize, sober, that I had difficulty keeping my balance. If I had to go meet a friend downtown, I did it self-consciously, convinced people were staring when I turned away. Nearly, not quite every day, I made the effort to get errands done by 4 p.m. to be utterly sauced by 4:30 p.m.
For a brief period, the effects of my liquid diet, lack of exercise, and the fact that I hadn’t cried in years convinced me I had bipolar disorder like my mother. I’d be watching Let’s Make a Deal or The Price Is Right with her, and the audience’s unfettered joy turned me jittery and urged me to a quieter place. Ditto with the continuous clanking of dishes and the pleas of my then-girlfriend to be let in to the shittiest part of my life. I harboured a festering hope to get caught in a fight, no matter how petty, so I could punch someone and sleep through the night. I secretly applied the said hope to most everyone I knew in episodes of traumatic repetition that lent my face a zombie’s glare of inhibitionless exhaustion. Some days I felt better than I believed I deserved. Dad told me I was tricking myself into a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-diagnosis and I still hate him for saying it. A therapist recommended by my family doctor said I didn’t exhibit enough symptoms to warrant medical weed.
For another stretch, I steamed hotdogs and made fries and chili in a restaurant in Little Italy where I learned customer service sans training, chucked behind a service station, shattered by fake cheeriness and shaking with anxiety that never left until I quit. I was proud of having the strength necessary to move the drinking around according to my shifts, but the work was too degrading for me to keep at it. I hadn’t graduated in the top two percent of my class to have to deal with fat Italian bitches giving me shit about being out of Brio soda.
Through the muck and the grime, the nonsensical vein of my spirited stupor smacked me roughly in October 2012. I took one whimpering leap for the hairy back of sobriety and have been firmly bear-hugging the gentle beast, my fingers curled in thick, luscious locks going on one year. From that decision up to now (hello) I’ve pushed to be the best literary late bloomer I can be. As you are reading, I am still writing.
Green Shirt
(Name Withdrawn)
Two hours until my shift is over.
I am surrounded by the jumbled sounds of Starsky. The piercing beeps of the cash registers blur into the low murmur of the radio playing overhead and the rumbles of conversations in Polish all around me.
I shouldn’t have worn my street clothes under my uniform. I can feel sweat forming beneath the three layers. The white undershirt alone would have been fine, but the green top is pushing it and the red fleece uniform sweater is complete over-kill. Why did I think it would be a good idea to layer in the middle of summer?
I don’t even have another break to use before my shift ends. If I sweat through this shirt then I’m going to have to go home before going to the movies and get a new top, which will, of course, make me late for the movie. Especially if I miss the bus again. I can’t believe how ridiculously long the light is to cross the street. I’ve timed it before— three minutes. That is more than enough time to see the 1W bus pass me by as I wait for the walk signal that will never come. I suppose I could always jaywalk across the street, but it would be against traffic on Dundas, and I like not dying.
Why did we have to make plans right after work? Stupid Rida and her stupid plans. She always does this to me, and now I have to take two of the most crowded buses possible, and on a day so humid that the thought of leaving the air conditioned store has me mentally sobbing.
Okay, this is really bad. I cannot sweat through this shirt when I am going to be on a bus with people staring at me.
I look up at the line of people in front of my cash register. There are too many for management to let me go to the bathroom. The customers in my line are all European families who speak to me in Polish, even though I do not speak Polish, which is clearly indicated on name tag, which reads “My name is Catherine. I speak English and Ukrainian.” They all assume I am Polish. Even the people who don’t speak Polish think I do. They bring their children, who begin to scream and cry because of the long wait at the deli line and the cramped space. Sometimes, there are so many people it feels like I can barely breathe. Sometimes I am sure that some kind of fire-code is being broken when the store is as packed as it is now.
I’ll have to do something drastic. I glance up at the man standing before me, watching as I move his purchases over the scanner. The rhythmic beeps of my machine blend with the other twelve registers to make a sad symphony of bleeps.
The man in front of me is cute. He looks well groomed, dressed casually and definitely older than me. His light brown hair is spiked up, in that popular attempt to make it look like you just got out of bed, but with gel added. 5-o’clock shadow on his face, intentionally shaved that way, probably. Scruff fits his whole trying-to-look-like-I’m-not-trying-but-am-totally-trying style. Mid thirties, definitely. Taller than me, although it isn’t hard to be with my 5’ 4”. His hands are in his pockets, and he shifts his weight from foot to foot. His green eyes are intensely on the register screen, making sure that I don’t make a mistake. I rarely do, but saying that would make me sound like an asshole. His yellow polo-shirt contrasts against his dark, faded jean shorts. A pair of Marc Jacobs’s sun glasses hangs from his open shirt collar and I can see a bit of chest hair poking out. I can’t see what type of shoe’s he wears, probably sandals or flip flops in this weather.
I look to my left and see Mark diligently packing the groceries I pass to him, double bagging the heavy things and categorizing the purchases in the bags by aisle. He makes gooey eyes at Basia, another bagger standing two registers over from us. They’ve been dating for months and are predisposed to public displays of affection. It would be cute, if they didn’t insist on doing it so often. I lean against the pillar at my back. Cash 6 and 7 are the only two connected Registers, facing away from one another, separated by a column pillar. It’s a tight squeeze, but Jessie is working 7 and she’s the only cashier I would even consider spending time with outside of work. She told me that layering would be a bad idea today.
Okay, if I close my register now, I will have six people to check out, then I can quickly duck down beneath the counter and no one will be able to see me as I take my green top off. I mean, it’s not like I’m stripping, I’m only taking off one layer and putting it on at the theatre. I can use the column behind me for more cover. I will be practically invisible. I check that my bag is still underneath the conveyor belt. It is. I reach down to grab it, but stop. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just do this one step at a time. Just get rid of the man in front of me and the other six individuals and then I can stop worrying about my stupid shirt and put my worrying where it belongs: catching the ridiculously illusive bus.
I scan his last few items; a box of tea biscuits, some deli meats and a bottle of raspberry syrup. His total comes to $96.78.
“Do you guys take Interac?”
Does anyone not take debit? I ponder to myself.
“Yes, we do. Is that how you will be paying?”
“Yup, do I just insert it at the bottom?” He looks up at me from the card reader.
“Yes.”
As my customer goes through his pants to
get his wallet and finds his card, I shift my body towards the register behind me.
“Hey, Jess,” I whisper.
She is also in between transactions luckily enough.
“Yeah, what’s up?” She whispers back, eyeing around to make sure no managers are around.
“When you get a sec, but like a second soon, look over at the guy leaving my register. He’s super cute.” I confide.
Just then a manager walks by. She sees me talking to Jessie.
“Do you have the flyer, Jessie? I need to check what’s on sale,” I ask loudly enough that the manager can hear me, but she pays no attention and walks by without comment, one eye on the customers and one eye on Nashir, the produce manager who she’s been secretly dating and thinks no one is privy to, and yet everyone knows.
I turn back to the customer and wait for him to finish punching in the relevant information and then for the receipt to print. I have it down to muscle memory. The machine will tell the customer to take their card out and when they do not, and they never do, it will give off a loud, annoying beep. Then wait three seconds and the receipt will shoot out like it wants the customer as gone as I do.
Oh God, I really need to take my shirt off, I think.
Okay, now I need to remind him to take his card out of the machine before the beep.
“Can you please take your shirt off?” I ask the customer.
It takes me a moment to realize what I just said. I hear Mark gasp before I see the shock on the customer’s face.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Oh no. Oh dear Lord. No, please, no. Why did I just say that? Why? Why did those words come out of my mouth? That was not what I was supposed to say. Can you please take your card out? That’s not difficult, why didn’t I say that? Why did those specific words not leave my mouth? This is so humiliating, I need to explain myself.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“No, I am so sorry, I didn’t mean that, I was just thinking that I need to take off one of the shirts I have layered on under my uniform because it’s warm, I don’t want you to take your shirt off, I swear. I just had it on my mind— my shirt, not yours...”