writing

…from my novel, The Invention of Pleasure:

She is walking in the house at night. In a room, she finds someone in bed. The person in bed is lying there calmly, maybe even asleep. She can’t tell if it is a man or a woman. It could be herself. Or a mother or a father or a husband.
She can’t stop herself: every time she goes for that walk, she can not stay away from the room and she can not prevent herself from going up to the bed. She walks up to the bed in the dark bedroom. She is standing by the bed and she looks down at the familiar body covered only by a white sheet. She can see now that it is definitely a woman’s body. She turns to see who it is, to see the face – her body is shivering with the warning not to look!

She can’t stop herself from looking, looking down at the face.

She woke up with a brutal, snapping jolt. Her body was clenched with the tension of the nightmare and sweat was trickling down her side, making her itchy with fear. She got up and walked to the kitchen and took a drink of water, as she did every time. Holding the cold glass, she walked into the studio and looked in the mirror at her haggard face: a gray thing.

‘Another monster,’ she thought bitterly. To dismiss the vision, she said softly and aloud:

“Darkness was on the face of the deep,
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

God’s giant face moved over the waters; he was pleased with his work, pleased with the world: his world. And the waters reflected up into the heavens his face: giant, mysterious, truly wonderful. Far below, the ‘deep’ was no longer the domain of darkness and the demons were driven away.

Into dreams.

She looked at her painting tools. It was 3 in the morning. She took Kate down and found a fresh canvas and bolted it to the easel. She didn’t bother with her painting clothes; she simply took off her nightdress and pulled the paint table around. The ancient goose-necked lamp was made of iron and it threw a strong even light onto the canvas and the spread of tubes and pots. The day before she had scraped clean the board so it was smooth and hard and ready. She opened the can of oil and filled the cup; a smell like leather filled her nose. Her hand went to the paintbrush pot and she chose a square, medium sized brush that she knew as well as her own fingers. The canvas, so flat and white, was an odd partner to the brush. Every time, facing the canvas, there was this moment of tension; she thought tightrope walkers must feel the same way. Or sailors looking at the sea from the harbor. She crossed her arms and felt her muscles for the strength she would need. The brush was between the first and second fingers of her right hand, its fat stem rooted back into her ribs. Her body felt warm and pure. Human.

She started to paint.

The undertones were burnt sienna, shadowy, earthy but sublime. She touched up the color with alizarin crimson because she knew the flesh of the face would need to echo the energy of the sun. Lou drew the lines of the face in deep red brown; into the hollows, she put the deepest green of the poets.

‘Remember the face that kissed you,’ Lou told herself.

Her brush came slightly off the canvas and she stood rigid; she wanted to feel the desire pulling at her like some unruly animal on a leash. She reached for the slippery pot of oil and juiced the brush. Her eyes were like a hawk’s when she was painting. She could see the brush clearly, see the oil picking up the color of the paint from the board; see the fierce, perfect tone of the cadmium mixing with the yellow ochre, flawed and worldly. What color, the result? She didn’t know the name but her eyes knew! Her fingers were rooted through her hand and arm, rooted through her shoulders; her fingers belonged to her eyes and mind.

“Look,” she said, to the dark outline. It was a command and the unpainted eyes of the Postman tried to look. She would have to make him look! She could feel her heart pressing out and moving out to the edges of her flesh; feel her heart beating in her hands. Lou began to furiously paint and the Postman’s face began to appear on the canvas. The hours passed and dawn came; only when his face was there on the canvas, did Lou collapse onto the frayed sofa. The Postman’s face was the last thing she saw as her vision faded. Her heart, soothed and with an even beat, moved back from the edges of her skin, back into her chest, pulsing with a slow rhythm soft enough to let Lou drift away on her own breath.

The demons fled; banished back to the deepest water.

Share This

…from my novel, The Invention of Pleasure:

He sat down and she cut a piece of cake and put it on the best plate she could find. She gave him a silver fork and a soft linen napkin. She wished she had coffee but she poured him a cool glass of water in her last remaining unchipped glass.

“Sometimes water is best,” she said putting it all in front of him. He ignored the fork and devoured the piece of cake. He made an ‘umm’ sound that she liked. She didn’t know how to feel: young, old, smart, stupid, glad, sad. She would be happy to feed him the entire cake, piece by piece, until it was gone and something was magically resolved. After a second piece of cake and draining the tall glass of water, he sat back and touched the package, which had been resting on his lap since he sat down. With both hands, he raised it up.

“Can you hold this for me? Just for tonight?”

“Yes,” she said. He was looking into her eyes and waiting for more questions; but Lou knew she would hold the package for him, so why bother asking questions? He understood and nodded. He handed it to her and said, “It’s heavy.”

She took it and was proud of her strong tanned forearms. Her bedroom seemed the safest place. On the bedside table there was a lamp and a copy of Shakespeare. It was a beautiful version of all the plays and poems printed on thin onionskin paper, bound in blue leather and held in a strong slipcase. It was old and worn like a relic from a rich library and it looked too luxurious for Lou’s house; she slipped the book out of the case and was pleased when the package slipped in perfectly.

“Can’t beat Shakespeare,” Lou said, “for pretty well anything! Even a hiding place.”

The Postman was standing in the kitchen, near the sink; he was looking into her bedroom. He moved towards her but she walked out of the bedroom and he followed her into the living room, her studio.

“I’m not hiding it,” he said. “I’m just asking you to hold it for me.”

She reached back and took the tie out of her hair, letting it loose, turning around quickly. His eyes followed her hair sweeping by like a big wing.

“The truth?” she said. His eyes came back to hers: “Careful! I was taught by nuns.”

“You’re not Catholic, though,” he said quickly and confidently.

“No,” she said. “For some reason my stupid father thought I would get a better education in a Catholic school! I hated the nuns! English nuns were the meanest people on the planet!”

“No, no! French nuns are the worst! Québécois nuns: they’re small but very nasty! I know lots of dirty songs about nuns if you want to sing some day. French songs.”

She laughed and said, “I hear you’re a separatist.”

He shrugged, as she knew he would.

“That’s the same shrug Trudeau has.” He said something in French about Trudeau; she asked him what he said.

“I said, ‘Trudeau is a nun.’”

“I hope you’re not an FLQ,” Lou said. She knew he would say nothing and that’s what he did. “Maybe you’re like Robin Hood,” Lou said. “Do they have him in Québec?”

“On TV,” he replied and he sang a line from the show’s theme song.

“That makes Trudeau the Sheriff of Nottingham, I guess,” Lou said and the Postman laughed; any worry gone from his face.

“Every pauper is a prince,” he said, touching his chest. He was smiling and still playing along with her joke: “We must fight to save our kingdom from the…” – struggling to find the right word in English.

“Usurper,” Lou said. The Postman looked at her and shook his head to show that he didn’t know the word. She said: “The one who takes your land.” They silently watched each other for a long moment. Lou was remembering an angry young man and the way he had used that nasty word. “Usurper,” she said again, “the one who takes your home.”

They were in the studio near the kitchen and Lou pointed at the cake. “Why don’t you take the rest of the cake? Even if you are an FLQ!” He just looked at her for a while. Usually she could hear the clock and count the seconds but, now, the world was silent.

“I have to say something,” he said.

She was wide-eyed and waiting when he said, “I have to say that you are very beautiful.”

Did she know it was coming? No. Did she want it? Yes, of course, she wanted it. But she was stunned anyway. She looked down through her body; she wasn’t looking with her eyes but with some other vision and she could see her organs and her arms and hands and feet and her legs. He was saying something else; she didn’t hear because she was wandering around inside her head and body. Her body had turned away from him and now she heard his words coming from behind her.

“What?” she asked abruptly.

“I said: I have to go. Thank you for your help.”

Share This

…from my short story, Volunteer:

Before we get there, we can see the light!

“Christ!” we both squeal. And: “Look! Look!”

We are running toward the house and shaking with excitement. It is not yet a full fire but the basement windows are trembling with light and parts of the ground floor must be on fire because there’s a shimmering orange light somewhere behind the tall windows.

“We did it! We did it! We did it! We did it!” I say and say and say.

D’Arcy’s head is shaking and we are grabbing each other by the arm. I wish Sharon was here and we could all run naked into the house and fuck like wild ones in the upstairs bedrooms while the whole place blazes around us. Fuck right up into the big column of smoke rising over the town!

He grabs me, stops me and yells, “We gotta get outta here! Now, man!”

And we start to run in the opposite direction, toward town. As we go there’s a sense of the house really catching fire; we are headed away from the house but we can see the light from the fire in front of us! So we run like hell!

We’re running on the road, smooth and dark and smelling of oil to keep the dust down and we almost run right by her car in the ditch. Only the taillight on the driver side can be seen, with the long grass hiding the rest of the car. Without talking, we stop and wait a second and then we jump down in the ditch.

The car is empty.

Still no words from either of us until D’Arcy says, “Her car.”

There’s a faint car smell but mostly the ditch is full of the day’s heat, trapped in the grass and the smell is sweet like hay. We climb back up the small embankment to the road.

At the same instant, two things happen: we both have the same unnerving thought and we hear the faint sound of a siren coming from town.

“Christ!” D’Arcy says and he looks at me. He doesn’t say what we’re both thinking so I say it:
“If her car’s here, maybe she didn’t leave.”

The siren is getting louder and we know we have to move. We start running: up the road toward the siren, across a patch of forest and around the biggest corner tree just as the fire engine is swinging off the main road. Perfectly timed, we come out behind the truck. We’re running and shouting and one of the guys hanging on at the back sees us and yells and they slow down…and up we jump! With us gripping as tight as we can, the big truck lurches ahead.

Over the siren, the guy yells, “It’s the Bronson house!”

The house now looks like the sun itself has come down and taken up residence. We are the only ones looking at the big burning house who see three little candle flames. Behind the silhouette of walls, everything is burning! The roof is still dark and intact when we arrive but it takes only a few minutes for the upper floor to collapse and then the roof bursts into flame. The firemen can only wet down the nearby trees and in a short hour the house becomes a blackened ruin.

Share This

…from my short story, Spine:

The store is empty because it is four in the morning. Behind the deli-counter, the two-faced girl is working and watching.

“I’d like something cool and sweet,” I say, “North American sweet.”

She waves to the store: “It’s all sweet.”

I wander off, in and out of the aisles: candy cookies, candy apples, candy drinks, candy magazines.

She has moved out from behind the counter and is half-hidden by a carousel of women’s stockings. When I come back up the aisle, still empty-handed, she says, “Fruit is sweet.”

I give her a grimace: “Not really sweet. Not sweet enough. I’m celebrating!”

She almost smiles and fixes me with the one, visible eye: “People are talking about you being dangerous. Going crazy on the beggar!”

“He is nothing. I’m celebrating the victory of Music!”

“Over what?”

“Over the heat! Over the Devil!”

She laughs! It comes right out of the moment we’re in and her hair slides back off her face; the sudden exposure of scar and smile is something to see! Scary and wonderful. She lets it happen only for a moment and then she rocks her head forward, still smiling, and hides her face.

“Here,” she says, turning back to the deli-counter. “You want a Tibetan treat?”

“I don’t think so,” I say.

She ignores me: “It’s sweet! Leftover from sister’s lunch.”

She opens a small frig and takes out a Tupperware thing, pries off the top and holds it up on top of the counter. The glass case is between us and I watch her shirt lift up and expose a smooth belly the color of pale amber. She taps the container on the top of the case and says, “Take it!”

In the bottom of the jar, there are two dark red things, like plums, stewed or cooked in some way.

“Sweet and cool,” she says. I sniff and they smell vaguely of licorice and trees.

“Plums?”

“A genuine Tibetan treat!”

I want to eat one but something holds me back. She hands me a long, thin fork that is more like a skewer. I make my offer: “You have one and so will I!”

She scoffs and says she’s not hungry. And she’s not celebrating.

“Really?” I say, “If you’d heard the music I heard you’d be…dancing!”

Her eyes come up from her fake work and she looks at me. I can see that she thought dancing would never happen in her life. Especially with me!

“OK,” she says and she comes out from behind the counter, carrying her own skewer. She takes the jar from me. I think this is the closest we have been. She is still letting her hair hide her face; she’s good at it! But she’s not pulling it with her hand and as her hair moves, her face is occasionally revealed.

“You’re not scared?” I ask. She lets her face, her whole face, stare at me. Her mind is rolling out a long list of terrors so I interrupt: “Being here so late, alone at night in the store. You’re not scared of bad men?”

“I scare them!” is all she says. On her fork, there is something – it may be a plum - but it looks like something from inside a body; it is red and soft and slightly damp and almost alive. She hands me the jar and I find my own, take it out. Together we pop the plums, whole, in our mouths.

So sweet
And so cold

The plums put a poem in my head; one of those hip poems I used to read to lovers. It’s all gone now but the last stanza:

Forgive me
They were delicious
So sweet
And so cold

Share This

…from my novel, The Invention of Pleasure:

Summer, 1970

The cars looked like they were having a party of their own, nuzzled end to end along the street and up around the corner. It was a hot afternoon and the chrome sparkled; the windows were rolled down, the radios were on and kids were swinging on the doors, flirting if they were old enough. In the Desjardins’ backyard, there were two or three dozen people. Roger Desjardins was already shirtless, his dress pants slung low on his belly; he was a thin man with a collapsed chest and his hair was black, with gray at the sides. As he danced, his cross swung and flashed on a long chain. A Molson was in his right hand while the other hand stroked Danielle’s back; Mary was nowhere to be seen.

The music was country-and-western or French Canadian folk songs. The women would rise for the country-and-western and dance with each other, their faces serious. The men would get up and stomp their way through the folk songs. The crowd of drinkers and dancers circulated slowly around a kid’s pool in the middle of the yard; it was the inflatable three-ring kind and full of water. Every once in a while someone was playfully pushed in – usually a woman who would squeal and scream and then quietly disappear into the house to repair her hairdo. The great wheel of dancing and drinking would start to circle the pool again.

To show his good intentions, Roger had already tried to put Danielle in the pool. She pushed him away and, to the howls of the crowd, called him a ‘fucker’. Whenever there was bad language, the older women would block the ears of the teenage girls in the crowd. The girls were pretty and they rolled their eyes at each other and smirked at the thin young men who were watching them. Occasionally an older woman would catch sight of Lou and wave; she would wave back. A drunk man fell into the small hedge between the yards and his friends quickly rolled him off the little trees and tugged them back into shape. When they saw Lou looking, they hoisted up their brown bottles and the party folded over them.

To great commotion, a space was cleared and an amplifier was hauled out and plugged in. It gave a fierce electronic howl and a crowd gathered around a thin young man with a swirl of black shiny hair on top of his head. He was holding a red electric guitar. Roger took the microphone and, in a fast stream of slurred French, introduced the singer. Every time he said “Sunny Day”, the crowd cheered and each cheer brought out more people from the house.

The incongruously named Sunny was flicking his thumb on the strings of the guitar, moving Roger through his introduction. Someone hollered that no one in the back could see and Sunny was lifted up to the roof of the flat shed that ran along the south side of the yard. While this was being done, Lou ran in and got her sketchpad. By the time she got back out, Sunny was strutting like a rooster and the crowd was clapping in unison. He sang in French and in English; whenever he sang like Elvis, the women screamed; whenever he sang like the Beatles, the crowd of young girls screamed. When he sang Quand le Soleil Dit Bonjour, the entire audience sang along. After a dozen songs, Sunny started to sag; he was passed a cigarette, which he sucked to ash in several long pulls before drinking two beers, one after the other. He started to play a twangy instrumental and Danielle was lifted up onto to the roof by a couple of red-faced young guys. She was laughing and drunk and she pulled their fingers and slapped their hands away. Her sleeveless top was tight and covered in red sequins the same color as Sunny’s guitar; she wore a black mini skirt. Half the crowd disappeared into the house.

Sunny’s music bubbled like liquid and Danielle started to dance. She raised her arms to her shoulders and did a little strut back and forth; her hands moved behind her head and the men shouted. She twirled close to the edge. Dropping her hands to her thighs, she gave a little hop forward and the hem of her miniskirt went up and back down just as fast! The men roared their approval. With his pompadour collapsing in the sun and a cigarette pinned to his lips, Sunny slapped at his guitar and the music got faster. Cars began stopping on the back road and Danielle came close to falling off the shed. A police car arrived and, without getting out, the officer signaled for Danielle and Sunny to get down off the roof. When the men lifted her down, a scuffle started and ended just as quickly.

Lou noticed a red-faced, middle-aged man, at the back of the crowd waving for her to come over. He gestured that he wanted to see her sketches; he drew the attention of some others and they joined in. Lou waved them off in a friendly but determined way. One of the men said something, another guffawed. They looked at Lou and the smile fell off the man’s face hard and fast. Lou stopped smiling too. The man said something and lobbed his beer in Lou’s direction; the throw was not vigorous - the bottle was tossed away. It slowly twirled and left a loop of sudsy beer in the air before landing on Lou’s lawn with a dull thud. When she looked back at the man, he was being lifted up by the belt of his pants and his feet were running in mid-air; Roger and a friend dropped him facedown in the pool.

Share This

from my short story, The Cleanest Pig in China:

Anything I know about those times, I know because my father sent me a story for my birthday, last year, when his email was up and running. He can’t speak or write English, of course, so the standard international keyboard is useless. Typing in Chinese is possible but, for him, too complicated. Fortunately his computer has a very old pirate version of Photoshop and that software enables him to write his story on paper, in Chinese pictograms, and then scan the page as a picture. He can even add little doodles if he wishes. Then, he attaches these picture-pages to an empty email. This is how his ‘words’ tell it; the translation is, of course, mine:

When Huan Yue hanged herself, it was truly a shock to me and a devastation to your mother. We found her in a manner that I don’t need to describe but it is important to say to you that she remained an elegant woman even in death. She had placed her favorite silk scarf over her face and her agony remained hidden and there were no unseemly aspects to her body, as you sometimes hear rumored about hanging deaths. The gods of death were gentle with her and when we found her she was simply there, hanging and dead. I will never forget the weight of her body when I lifted her down: she was both light – for she was a thin and delicate woman – and immense, as though death had transformed her into iron. This was how the years of the Cultural Revolution began for me: with a death.

[Here my Father placed the small sketch of a laughing man, meaning: a joke.]

We – my fellow bourgeois designers – were very small fish. We were not the traitorous party members, not irritating teachers, not greedy show-offs, not nasty administrators refusing entry to schools and jobs. We were mostly guilty of once upon a time wearing fancy suits and silk ties. Perhaps I underestimate our crimes because it is true that our family had owned things. And I must admit that my time in re-education cured me of wanting to own things. Today, ownership has made a comeback, hasn’t it? But, for me, my angry young ‘teachers’ were correct: ownership is ill-advised.

[Here my Father placed the small sketch of a bird with a man’s head, meaning: a confession. It’s a clever image, is it not? To confess is to be able to fly, to be cleansed by air and magic. (That is why a false confession is such a desecration.) But I have no confession and the only magic left for me is passion. If passion is flying, it is the flight of a kite, held by a string. It is not the body of flesh that we want to fly. It is that other body, the one that flies out from our hearts in times of peril.]

Share This

…from my short story, Coconut Park:

Norma and Clarisse might have become my world; I would never have gone to Coconut Park. But, as the cool Canadian Spring turned to warm Summer, the world began to change. Early one evening, I attached my moustache and bought a ticket at the Français to see The Magician, a film by the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Set in the mid-1800s, it tells the story of the authorities’ investigation of Vogler, a hypnotist, and his traveling band of charlatans. Luminous in black-and-white, the film cast a chill over the theatre and I watched transfixed. (My only action was to reach up and remove my false moustache.) The magician’s magic is proven to be fake, of course, but, as the authorities learn, Vogler’s power is more than a match for their own. The magician’s face fills the screen, larger than any face I had ever seen; it haunts us with the idea that illusion is as necessary as reason.

As I stared up at the screen, my face must have caught the reflected light. The usher caught sight of me and his flashlight snapped on. His hand came down and pinched my shirt at the shoulder, tugging it and making me get up out of my seat. I helplessly whined, “Please let me stay…”

“It’s a Restricted movie!” he said firmly and he walked me back up the aisle.

We had not taken five steps when a cane swung out from the aisle seat and stopped us. Even in the dark, the person holding the cane was quite visible for he was a large man wearing a white suit. His hair was also white and he had a white goatee.

“Friend,” the man in white said to the usher.

“Yes, sir?”

“I know this gent. He’s eighteen if I’m a day!”

“He…” the usher began but he seemed to lose his verbal footing and went mute as the man in the immaculate suit rose up; he looked at the usher and said, “You’re off the hook. I’m responsible! And here’s a little something for helping us out.”

He produced a fistful of glossy papers and gave them to the usher. At the same time, he waved me into the seat beside him. “Watch my hat!” he said. I could see a glorious white Stetson sitting on the seat to which I had just been assigned. I carefully lifted it and sat down. The man sat as well. The usher – left standing alone – said nothing. He took a few steps up the aisle and flicked on his flashlight to see what precious papers he had been given.

“Good,” my new friend said and, without any further words between us, we finished watching The Magician. Even when the lights came up, we said nothing and we walked out. We were under the theatre’s blinking marquee when he put on his magnificent hat and lit a small cigar. He was Colonel Sanders! Standing beside me, puffing away to get his cigar lit and chuckling to himself. People stared at him and then at me; from inside the lobby, I could see the usher watching us.

“I see all the Bergman films,” he said. “They could save themselves the trouble of the subtitles.”

He smiled at me.

“But…” – and he raised a finger in the air – “…it doesn’t seem to matter because the damn guy knows how to put one picture together after the next, doesn’t he? So I’m…” – he searched for the right word –“… enthralled!”

He let the word roll and contentedly puffed his cigar. I remembered that I was only able to see the film because of the intervention of my new acquaintance.

“Thank you,” I said, “for…”

He waved my thanks away:  “A few simple words. A few pretty coupons!”

He laughed and took my elbow; we walked a bit in silence before he stopped and turned to me: “I wanted to get away from the Theatre before I introduced myself. Steam Sullivan is my name – not the one my Momma gave me but the one I picked up along the way.”

I said my name and we shook hands.

“An excellent name! Pepper it is! Pepper and Steam! A bit of heat for the cold, cold world!”

“I should be going home,” I said, like a good boy.

“And where in this delightful town do you call home, Pepper?” I told him.

“Livin’ with whom, if I may be so bold?” I told him.

“No Ma? No Pa?” I told him a brief version of my story.

“My God! You’re like some character out of a miraculous tale.”

He laughed; not the big barrelhouse hoot you might expect from such a man but a high, light laugh that faded into a fluty sigh.

“Well, why don’t we walk the few blocks to your home and get your benefactor and whoever else is hanging around and take the whole troupe out for a no-charge, finger-lickin’ dinner!”

As he spoke, he reached into his coat and pulled out more of the glossy little papers that I had seen him give the usher. They were coupons! Coupons to the Colonel Sanders Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant that had just opened on Sparks Street! I was wide-eyed because I could not, for the life of me, figure out how or why Colonel Sanders…

But the man in the white suit and hat gave me an indulgent smile and slowly shook a finger at me.

“No, no, no, Pepper, my boy! Don’t let your eyes fool you!”

“But you look…”

“I do indeed look like Colonel Harland Sanders, the founder of the restaurant chain. But it’s just a bit of blarney, Pepper! Because I look like the man, they pay me to appear when the real thing can’t or won’t!”

A smile widened on his face and he took my arm: “To be so easily identified is just my way of not really being seen, Pepper.” And as we started for home, he whispered, “Now we’re in it together!”

Share This

…from my short story, The Next Life:

Following two tire tracks, the car creeps along the grassy path; long stalks of grass drag against the car and we have to roll up the windows. Soon we find a circle of pressed-down grass that serves for parking. There are no cars so we stop and get out.

“You can smell the water!” I say. I smell my body too; he scared me with the night driving and my body smells frightened. I step into his arms and we hug and kiss. He says nothing and I press my face to his. I want to walk through him or into him but he takes my shoulders and turns me around and, for a few steps, we walk together like an animal with four legs, not two; he’s the same height as me so it’s easy to do and funny; it’s like he understands what I want. We walk like that down the trail but, when it comes to the steep path down to the pool, we separate. Huge rocks surround the water; there is no simple way down, it’s a jumble of boulders right to the stony edge. The pits were once gravel pits, long ago abandoned, and they filled with groundwater and rainwater. The water is motionless, untouched and absolutely flat: the deepest black.

My clothes come off in one gesture and I perch long enough on a large rock for Ray to see my long white body; then, with a powerful flex, I spring up and out over the water and drop fast, making a splash that is more a quick, choked gurgle, come and gone. The water smoothes flat except for a few low ripples moving away slowly across the pond.

I’m in a world of pure black silence, my skin still registering each inch of the cold rush along arms and torso and thighs. It is perfectly still and, yet, the sense of movement, of possibility, is continuous and vibrantly alive. My legs and arms open and I hold myself in place while the cold wraps around my thighs and loins and aches its way up my spine. I can feel my unused nerves: my fish meridians that reach out to detect movement. I hang there and sense the entire huge pit; it is filled with clear, dark water and it is empty, blissfully empty of any other life.

I surface. Above me, the sky is moonless blue-black and the air sucks itself down into my belly and lungs. I don’t disturb the water’s surface, which stretches out around me for a few hundred meters to the stony shore: a world pure enough to be the moon!

Ray is still standing on the rocks; he is in his underwear, glowing white. I swim over in three long strokes and my foot finds the flat, angled face of a large boulder.

“I’m a lifeguard,” I tell him. It seems a reassuring remark but, at the same time, ridiculous. Immediately I think of Danny being killed. I dunk my head and come back up but the question is still there: ‘Why should anyone die?’

The last thing I did with Taj was ask him, “Why did Danny die?”

He shrugged and said it was just damage. “Call it a mistake if it makes you feel better.” But I felt that it was more than a mistake; it was the old kind of death: real and lifeless. Death with no promise.

So I escaped, snuck away, went out to get shampoo and never came back. Ray hid me. It was only a week but it seemed a long, long time, hidden out in the sticks. The cabin was cold and I slept with a heater blowing hot air at my head. When Ray came with food, I was so glad to see another human that we immediately had sex. After, when we were eating, he told me Taj had been killed. I wasn’t surprised, wasn’t pleased, wasn’t even relieved. I knew already that I had to find a new life.

Ray slips out of his underwear and edges down so he is standing in the water; he’s shivering and hanging onto the edge of a large, protruding rock. He still has a cigarette going and he takes a last puff and flicks the cigarette away; it hisses out.

I’m at his knees now, like a kid playing. He sits down beside me in the water and I can hear his breathing increase to double time. Both of us have our feet angled on the rock face; all we have to do is lift our feet and we’ll slip into the water.

“I might drown,” he says.

“No one’s ever drowned with me.”

I can see him nod. He lifts his hands out of the water and rubs his face; he splashes his body.
“Fuck! It’s cold!”

I slip a hand between his legs and wrap my fingers around his cock.

“I’ll pull you across,” I say. “Ready?” His cock feels cold and fat in my hand.

Together, we slip in. I slide my body beneath his so that he can ride on my back.

“Christ,” he says breathless, “it’s so dark – the water!”

“Just ride on me,” I say. “Let go when you want and dog paddle. Roll on your back when you need air.”

I demonstrate: like an otter I roll over on my back; my breasts break the water surface, then, my belly and the small patch of hair glistens between my thighs. Ray is huffing and puffing and dog-paddling furiously. His hair is plastered to his face and he looks about thirteen. I move my body against his and turn and, as I turn, I smoothly roll him over on his back. I can hear his puffing breaths, coming fast but smoothing out a little and bringing him air.

“Yeah,” he says.

I’m right beneath him and I put my arm around him and across his chest, with my hand tucked in his armpit; I gave a few strong kicks and move him out flat on the top of the water and let him go. He makes a wonderful sound: a word, meaningless but full of relief, maybe even pleasure.

“Now kick,” I say, “not hard, just soft and lazy.” He follows my lead. “And keep breathing!”

We move out into the wide pool. The world around us is black, night, empty except for each other. Beneath me, I feel the water, unpoisoned and cool. There is nothing here, only one another. I am a lifeguard, saving him. And he is saving me.

Share This

…from my short story, A Mixture of Sun and Clouds:

He took the tent and I slept on the floor of the cabin because both bunks were too narrow for two. Joanie said that we should put a string on my toe so I couldn’t sneak off in the night. I’m sure David fell asleep to the sound of our giggling.

The next day there was news of a forest fire to the north, running south toward the town, out of control. Off he went to fight it and make a few dollars. As the news came about the fire getting closer and closer, we wondered if we should leave, take the train out to Ottawa, maybe go back down to Toronto. All we did in the end was to go into town, in order to be with everyone else and get the news. We could see the red glow getting closer and closer; the air was thick with smoke. And then the deer started to walk through the town, heading for the water, their faces, calm and beautiful. Smooth Rock Falls was not more than two streets crossing each other and the open fields gave the animals plenty of room. But it was hilarious to see them looking at us as if they were saying, ‘Come on! Get into the water! What are you waiting for?’

The people waited until the raging fire was at the very edge of the town; then we followed the animals into the river and stood watching and waiting to see if the entire town would burn. It was nightfall and the water was warm; people were worried about losing their houses but there was an air of excitement and anticipation.

“I wonder how David is doing?” Joanie asked. Lizzie looked at her and at me; we were standing in the water up to our knees and she was holding the camera, which was one of those old style little boxes that you look down into. She took our picture and, just at that moment, the first few drops of rain began to fall. The people were silent and you could hear the drops hitting the water with tiny ‘plipping’ sounds. The night sky above us was dark with smoke and we couldn’t tell if there were clouds, but there must have been because the rain began to fall hard and everyone rushed back to the shelter of the houses and stores.

By morning the men were coming straggling into town, all filthy with soot and wet with rain, tired and thankful for the downpour. Lizzie found David and made him wait for his picture to be taken before he ran off and jumped in the river with the other men and boys. The women retreated to big tables set up by the boat dock and food was laid out. By noon, all the men had eaten and were sleeping under the trees. David walked back with us to the cabin. He was falling asleep as he walked and Joan and I kept him standing up. He was mumbling and we were laughing; he had his arm draped over my shoulder and Joanie’s. She turned close to him, almost snuggled in and took a deep breath and said to me, “That’s what a man smells like, Dee, like a tree not like an onion!”

We laid him out in the tent and went to sleep in the cabin ourselves, exhausted with the worried night and the busy morning. All of us slept ‘til next morning and when I got up I wanted to see David. Joanie was up already and gone and Lizzie gave me my bathing suit and said, “Let’s go for a swim, Dee. I want to take some pictures of you.”

Share This

…from my short story, Volunteer:

“Not to be able to say it out loud is like having poison in you!”

The three of us are walking and she is holding my hand and D’Arcy’s hand. The forest is full of the sun’s heat and summer air. She lets go and stops so she can confront D’Arcy by placing her body in his path and taking hold of both his hands: “D’Arcy, if you don’t wanna say, then don’t! I know anyway cuz he told me!”

She nods to me and D’Arcy shrugs, no outrage.

“I don’t care anymore,” he says.

“You should care!” she says.

“Somebody should pay something,” I say.

When they look at me I say, “Not money! Just do something to balance it off.”

We set off walking again and, after a long stretch, D’Arcy says, “He’ll never pay.”

“Somebody should pay,” I repeat, “and there’s just three people who can pay: him, you and your mother.”

“My mother,” he says in a mild way that irritates me.

“His mother…” Sharon begins but she lets it drop. I think better of saying anything and I follow her example and let it drop. D’Arcy’s looking off into the woods as though the mystery of his mother and her lifelong troubles – meaning: his father – might materialize and come walking out between the big trees, waving hello and making everyone happy by telling us that he’s won the Lotto.

“You can always kill yourself,” I suggest. Sharon hits me.

“Maybe later,” D’Arcy says, smiling and she hits him.

“Don’t joke about that!” she says.

“Not you and not Mom: that leaves Patty!” I say.

“And he’ll never pay!” D’Arcy says, taking us back to the start.

A car turns onto the road and we all recognize Mrs. Bronson at the wheel. She pulls up and says hello to Sharon and “Hello, boys.”

“Can you come by soon?” she says to Sharon, who stays silent, hoping to deliver a negative answer without the cost of saying the word. There’s a long pause with only the car making noise.

“Just walk the dog,” Mrs. Bronson says. “We’re heading back tonight, to the city. He’s a problem…”

She fades as she is saying the words. She’s lost interest. She’s not even aware of us anymore; she’s gone somewhere, staring down the road toward her house. We take advantage of the situation and look in the car. We can see the paper bag with the bottle beside her on the seat. Hidden by her purse.

“Sure,” Sharon says, taking a quick look at me, then an equally quick kiss on the lips before she walks around to get in the car. Over the top of the car she looks at us both: “There’s a reward for you guys doing something about that problem.”

When the car is gone, I say to D’Arcy, “They’re going back to the city tonight. We could burn down their damn house!” That’s how we decide what to do.

By ten o’clock we feel it’s safe. We carefully check out the house: it’s big and dark and the dog is gone. No cars in the garage. D’Arcy’s elbow pops open a basement window and in we slide. I am carrying three candles.

“That won’t work,” D’Arcy has already said and he says it again as I place the candles on the large beams supporting the house floor. He whispers, “Look how damn small they are! This is a big fucking house!”

But I’m confident. I tell him there’s no need to whisper and I choose my locations for the candles. He supplies the matches and we light all three. We’re too excited to know what to do but we know we don’t want to be seen here!

Share This

…from my short story, Spine:

Without saying good-bye or have a nice day, God bless or God damn the Dalai Lama, I walk off across the plaza, passed the Jabba sculpture, toward the traffic light. I’ve got nowhere to go. When the light changes, I cross the street. The huge cars watch me. They want to crush me, to impale me on their hood ornaments – except they don’t have hood ornaments! Slowly I shamble across the hot pavement. On the other side of the street, I’ve got nowhere to go. The brown building turns out to be a Baha’i church! On the other corner, there’s a real church - some bizarre denomination like Korean Presbyterian. How the hell can that be? Buddhist stores and Baha’i meeting halls and crazy Korean churches! What the hell has happened to the world while my spine was leaking out my ass?

I can feel the sweat on my face. Sweat is supposed to cool you but this stuff is hot, making me cook. I remember that I have on a leather jacket and it stinks of dead animal! Fuck! I try to pull it off and, amazingly, I’ve forgotten the fact that I am standing up with the aid of crutches! The coat gets tangled in my sticks and down I go in a great twisting travesty of what it is to be able to stand on your own two feet!

My face scrapes the concrete and for a moment I am exactly where I belong: sucking up the filth of the sidewalk! The world, the real world, is not a shimmering vision, not sparkly, not misty in the morning and sequined with druggy trinkets. It is filth. It is grimy with dirt and each beautiful thing is truly, eventually dirt.

Someone is trying to unfold my albatross wings and they are asking how I got here?

“I live here!”

I want to scream it out but it comes out full of tears: “I…blub blub…live…boo hoo…here…”

I’m dripping sweat and they think I’m crazy but it’s just the awful pain raking through my stupid body. Miraculously, I manage a breath: pull it down directly from the blue sky hovering above the crowd. The people have formed a circle to help and watch and comment:

“He probably lives there.”

“Do they have help?”

“Can he stand up?”

My right hand has been freed from my jacket and I roll my fingers together. It looks like the money gesture and they may think I am trying to charge them for the show. They stiffen a little and wait for the next thing. Maybe this whole spastic tumble is just an elaborate begging scam! But the crowd withholds its unfriendly judgment and gels with the hope that I am not some miserable phony! I don’t look like a fake!

I rub my fingers and look at them. Slowly I separate out the dust and grime on my hands and I find a single grain of dirt; it is hardly visible but I urge them to look.

“Can you see this?” I ask. They see what they see and not what I want them to see.

A police car pulls up and the two cops inside slowly exit. One cop is a padded young woman with a thick blond twist of hair poking out from under her hat; the other cop, a big, silent guy. The crowd opens to let them in. The girl cop crouches and, as she does, all her gear pushes slightly away from her padded torso.

“Sir?” she says loudly, “Can you hear me?”

“This single piece of our planet – we call it dirt,” I answer. “Look and see the tiniest piece of us. Yes, it’s filth, but there’s strength in the smallest atom!”

The cop has gathered up my coat; she folds it nicely, hands it up to her buddy, who towers over us. She arranges my sticks and suggests to the crowd that they give us a little room, please folks!

“Took a tumble?” she suggests, offering me her arm. It is like steel: if only she were my crutch! She lifts me up by standing herself and letting me go along for the ride. The sweat is dripping off my nose.

“From across the street?” she asks and I nod, showing that I am not insane. The gawkers are smiling because, so far, everything has turned out better than on TV: Guy takes a fall! Poor guy! Cops come to help. Good cops! Tragedy and our tax dollars: all in one package!

“Wait,” I say, hoping to staunch the good news. I’m still gently, rubbing my two fingers: “This tiny atom of dirt is death. I could squeeze it and release its power!”

My finger tips go white squeezing the grain of dirt and they all wait. Across the street I can see the two Tibetan sisters watching: the pretty pregnant one is outside by the door; the broken-faced one is looking out through a dusty window cluttered with lottery signs.

“The energy would annihilate us in a blast of pure atomic light. Light and death!”

The big cop makes human enough to nod, the girl cop is without reaction, looking like, ‘OK, annihilation…but not this shift.”

The crowd laughs: perfect pay-off for their time.

“You’ll all die!” I say to them but they don’t stop laughing. “I’m only sorry for the Tibetan lady; the one who wants to live.”

Share This

My novel, The Invention of Pleasure, is as yet unpublished; it’s a story of a love affair between an artist and a terrorist. The artist is a middle-aged English-Canadian woman; the terrorist is a member of the FLQ so he is a Québécois man and younger. The time is 1970, when the Trudeau government cracked down on what they called an ‘apprehended insurrection’.

This is the third excerpt.

“The summer sun in Canada is very pleasant!” he said. “It’s mild compared to my home, which is very hot at times. I’m a bit more concerned about your winter!”

Everybody laughed; he was a veteran of the gathering on the church lawn. Kate touched the Bible and asked if he had been reading. Judith answered: “Yes! Duncan loves to read the Bible aloud and it’s wonderful to hear. The King James is like music!”

He stood by, silent and tall, holding the white casserole dish in his fine, thin hands; his skin was a shade lighter than his Bible’s black leather.

“I’m not quite a believer,” Lou said, looking at him, “but the words are wonderful poetry, aren’t they?”

Duncan’s eyes opened wide. Lou thought that it was possible that he had never met a white woman who was not a churchgoer or missionary of some type.

“Do you have a favorite passage, Mrs. Channon?” he asked tactfully. Lou was surprised and a bit flustered by the question.

“Oh, I love the very start of Genesis, of course. Everyone does!”

She paused, trying to remember something more unusual: “There’s another part I’ve always enjoyed. It captures a happiness that’s rare in the Bible. See if you can tell where it’s from!”

“Very well,” he said with a confident smile.

“And it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost.”

“Who is Elisabeth?” Kate asked with a frown.

Duncan was nodding: “Oh, Mrs. Channon has given me an easy one! It’s from the beginning of Luke’s gospel, first chapter, in which, as we all know, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to announce she is pregnant with the baby Jesus. But Gabriel goes first to announce that Mary’s cousin, Elisabeth, has also been made pregnant with a special child.”

“Oh, that’s very good, Duncan!” Judith said and she placed a hand on his shoulder. “Isn’t he amazing?”

“Do you have a soft spot in your heart for Elisabeth?” Duncan asked Lou.

“I love the idea of the baby in her womb leaping at the sound of Mary’s voice,” Lou said. “There’s something so happy about that! And the two pregnant women seem so normal and ordinary in a story that’s…extraordinary.”

She looked up at his shiny brown face, brimming with youthful curiosity and criticism. But Duncan held back any challenge and said politely that he wished there was more about Elisabeth in the Bible.

“Yes!” Lou said, “Elisabeth is one of those lovely women in the Bible who gets visited by an angel and has a baby even though she’s probably too old!”

“Who’s the lucky baby?” Kate asked.

“He’s John the Baptist,” Duncan answered, but he was still looking at Lou and his eyes were serious.

“My God,” Kate said, “I thought John the Baptist was some wild guy all covered with hair and eating grasshoppers! Is that Hollywood?”

They all laughed again and Kate apologized to Duncan and said, “I’m ignorant but I’m a believer! Lou is knowledgeable but a godless sinner!”

Judith invited Duncan to join them for tea but he asked if he could take the time to go for a run. They left him and walked up the broad steps into the lovely old house. The tall door off the porch entered directly into the kitchen; the room was large and there were three windows down the south side; each one was huge compared to the little windows in Lou’s house. The big farm kitchen was full of warm light and Judith began to get tea but Kate stopped her by asking, “Do you have coffee?”

“Yes, sure. Do we want a pot of coffee? That sounds nice. And there’s some cake left I think, if the girls haven’t devoured it all.”

Lou and Kate began to ask Judith about her daughters when Nora ran into the room. She was wide-eyed and didn’t even bother to say hello to the two guests; she held up her hands, making her announcement to the world.

“They’ve blown up the Post Office in Hull and Montréal!”

The three other women froze and said nothing; they just looked at Nora.

“The FLQ,” Nora said, pronouncing each letter slowly and clearly. She was flushed with excitement.

Share This

…from my short story, The Cleanest Pig in China:

There is a generous wall around the patio. It is designed to make you feel safe – richly safe, safely rich. But it has the opposite effect because it is just wide enough to stand on, and it invites me to climb up. I’m still naked but I’m unseen; there are no birds in the sky. I have my egg in hand and I carefully place it on the wall, like a tiny Humpty Dumpty. (Jing and I have sung our way through all the English rhymes and bedtime stories.) The egg is motionless; the smooth concrete of the wall has just enough texture to hold the hard curve of the shell.

I drag a wide patio chair over, step up on it, carefully place my hands on the wall and lift up my foot; I push with the second foot and my body goes up onto the wall, carefully balancing my weight back toward the safe side. I’m tense, crouching, and my hair catches the cold wind rising up the face of the building. It has a stronger smell; the whiff of something burnt and cooled and burnt again; burnt and cooled innumerable times until it smells of purified ash, a subtle scent, not strong, but bitter.

As I stand, I’m careful not to step on the egg, which now looks tiny, down at my feet. I’m naked, balancing myself carefully with Shanghai spread out far below. The hair on my head lifts and moves around me. Carefully I begin to look down; the camera of my eyes moves down from the rusting line of the horizon, through the hazy distance where the city stretches out…my vision blurs for a moment… and when I am next aware of what I am seeing it is my own breasts and, below my breasts, my pale feet nervously braced on the top of the wall. My feet press and widen in order to gain greater stability before I actually look over the edge.

Oh, the drop! When my eyes shift passed the edge of the wall, the drop is colossal! The canyon is deep, deep, deep and the street far below is like a small river, a dark trickle, unidentifiable as a human thing. The other buildings rise up, but not as high and they look both immense and small, like terrible toys. An ache seizes the back of my head, my thighs cramp with vertigo and a drop of sweat trickles from my armpit and immediately dries with a tiny, icy chill.

If I simply stepped out, my life would end.

Would it?

My body would begin to fall; there is nothing that could be done after taking that first step. The laws of all time, the physical laws by which the universe came into being 14 billion years ago, would continue to act on me or, at least, on my body. I would fall in an odd trajectory – if that is the appropriate word. A trajectory seems to suggest an arc, like a story with a beginning, middle and an end that delivers a conclusion. But this trajectory is straight down, astonishingly straight, and the conclusion is obvious. For this trajectory, for this story, the ending can only be in the origin: the step taken.

But is the decision life or death? Is it the difference of being here or not being here?

Standing on the wall, I try to sense the science of my suicide. As my body plummets down, my mind flies up; the faster my flesh descends, the faster my mind rises up. Isn’t this what Einstein was saying in his famous equation? That we are here in this place and that we are now in this moment but we are here and now only as creatures of energy; we are ‘composed’ of energy. We are power, Einstein tells us. And we cannot disappear. The awareness of this fact is so astonishing that it can only be measured by the largest number we know – the speed of light – and even that number must be made unthinkably greater by multiplying it by itself! This is the only true measure of how fast my mind would be going when my body hit the ground. My living energy would be rising like light at the speed of light, rising up as fast as Einstein’s idea.

My body: down and gone; my mind: up and gone; my spirit perched on the wall like a bird, with my egg, waiting.

Share This

…from my short story, Coconut Park:

The driver was now fiddling with the radio. Eleana was saying something in Bulgarian but I could recognize only her repeated phrase: “CBC…CBC” followed by more Bulgarian mixed with “FM…FM!” When classical music mellifluously poured forth into the big car, she waved him away and the door closed with a solid thunk that seemed to seal us off from the rest of the world.

In order to open the mysterious box, she turned her back to me and I could not see what she was doing. When she turned around, she was holding a delicate cream éclair. As I mentioned, Norma worked at the National Bakery, so I was familiar with pastries and I recognized that this was an éclair but more refined than the pastries from the National and without the familiar chocolate frosting.

Eleana laughed and moved her body close to mine. She held the éclair in a vertical position and licked its entire length, gathering a tongueful of rich cream. Slowly she moved her face to mine – I felt each second, each millimeter as she grew closer. Her full red lips pressed to mine and her tongue pushed into my mouth filling it with smooth sweet cream. Her tongue was powerful – I had, up until that moment, never thought of a tongue as ‘muscular’ but Eleana’s kiss changed all that! She pulled back and laughed and, without saying a word, she held the éclair out to me. I took it and wondered if I was now supposed to perform the same licking gesture. Eleana’s next action stopped my thoughts. She took hold of the luxurious silk coming around her neck and, scooping it up from both sides, pulled the cloth so that it came down between her breasts. As she laughed, her dark nipples danced in the dim light!

Eleana took the éclair from me and ran a finger deep into the pastry. Raising her arm, she smeared the cream in the dark hair of her armpit; the light from the street was enough to make the cream glow in the dark. She lay back on the black leather seat, said nothing, just waited. Slowly I moved into her embrace and, with the cautious sense of having a dream come true, I lowered my face to her armpit and tenderly nuzzled the cream. As I licked I could hear her deep moan and I could feel the little shifting strands of hair on my lips and tongue. Although we were pressed together, the world suddenly seemed enormous! It was as if the smell of her spicy body was carried to me by a hot wind coming up the alley from the market in Istanbul; as if the aroma of sweet milk came from mothers nursing their babies in the sunny jardins du Luxembourg in Paris. I had never seen Istanbul, never been to Paris even once! For a moment, however, my imagination was a vast expanse spreading over the map of the world.

When I raised my head, she held a fresh éclair full of white cream; I took it and ran my finger along the cleft; I touched the cream to her one of her dark nipples. As I was suckling there, I could hear the sonorous mumbling of the announcer coming from the car’s radio; I was, of course, paying little attention to him but, as the music began again, Eleana’s body stiffened and she moaned, “Mozart!”

The strains of classical music filled the car and Eleana pushed me back: “Just a moment, Pepper dear.”

She rolled forward and reached across the front seat to the radio dials and turned up the volume. A flight of violins whirled around us like birds in the night sky and then the flowing and pure tone of a clarinet filled the car. Eleana rolled back with a deep sigh and, as she did, she pulled her skirt with her. Perhaps it was not astonishing that she was without panties but what happened next was completely unexpected. She took the éclair from my fingers and delicately placed it so the creamy slit matched her own. For a brief moment, Norma’s words whispered in my mind – there is absolutely nothing about the human body that is shocking or unacceptable – and I slipped down off the leather seat and between her long legs. For the next nineteen minutes and fifty seconds of the first and second movements of Mozart’s famous Concerto in A, K622, I ate the éclair and Eleana.

(At the time, of course, I had no idea what music was playing in the dark Mercedes. My only clue was the whispered introduction given by Eleana: “Mozart!” It was later that I tracked down the piece in the Ottawa Public Library, identified it and noted the times of the various movements.)

When the sublime second movement finished and Eleana’s trembling stopped, she lifted me up and pressed my lips to her other lips. Her fingers were at my belt and zipper and I eagerly pushed down my jeans. As the third and final movement of the clarinet concerto began, I almost touched a warmth and a wetness that was as wonderful as it was unknown! I felt I was about to join Mozart and Fellini, to join the beautiful tall woman and the man with the long black hair, to know what Norma and Ev knew and, even, to share with my lost parents an understanding of my own mysterious conception! But a harsh whistle came from the street, pushed sourly into Mozart, and Eleana’s hand came between our bodies.

Share This

…from my short story, The Next Life:

“It’s good to move,” I say. I want to push the troubles out of my mind; roll down the window and let the breeze blow clean. He says, “I love these roads at night.”

We watch the fields and the trees rush up to the car, flare in the car light and disappear back into the dust and dark.

“You come out here and drive the night away?” I ask, with a smile. I’d joked with him earlier about being a loner, a driver. Now I want him to hear the laughter in my voice.

“You bring girls out here?”

He doesn’t answer; he says something else: “I know these roads. I can drive them lights off.”

He flicks the switch on the dash. The trees flying over the car go dark; the road disappears; only a thin layer of indigo light from the sky gives the countryside a shape, a changing contour that appears and disappears; more a vision in your mind than your eyes.

I take a cold pull of beer and blink into the darkness charging at us.

The car takes a long curve and I can feel my body pressing into the door. Then, like some heavy bird lifting up into the sky, the car slowly rises up and, when it plunges back down and around a stand of trees, I can smell the thick decay of the fallen leaves. I can hear the road and the rocks hitting the bottom of the car and the bottles buzzing together. Ray’s cigarette glows. I’m sweating; my body straining forward, trying to see. I close my eyes but that doesn’t work; it is double darkness.

I look over at Ray, hoping he’ll put the lights on.

“There’s paved road now,” he says and, right on cue, the car arrives at a crossroads on the top of a small rise. I take a deep breath and the cool air in my lungs reminds me of water.

“That’s fun,” I say, lying a little just to make him happy. I can see his smile in the dark car.

“You want to take the paved road?”

I shrug and lean over to kiss him; first I hit his cheek and, then, he turns and I kiss his lips, feel his tongue, cool with the night air and tasting of tobacco. I want him to grab my body; maybe we’ll fuck again out here in the middle of nowhere and the night. But he waits for me to move, to do something, and, when I sit back, he takes the turn and the car rolls up onto the pavement. Still no lights and we begin to move.

There’s no need to close your eyes and dream; this is a dream, a flying nightmare about to collide head-on. I sit back and watch the fragments of the world fly by: trees, signs, a barn standing back from the road, a house darkened for sleep, horses darker than night standing still in a field. The car is moving fast now, very fast on the smooth pavement and the tires screech into the coming corners. On a tight, fast turn, I’m thrown into Ray; I can feel his hard muscles holding the car, all of the parts - muscles and metal – all one machine. When I push myself up, I leave my hand pressed to his shoulder. I’m thinking that it is a wonderful world when he says, “My friend died on that corner.”

Those words make me want to live.

After the turn, Ray slows down. When he flicks the headlights on, the ordinary road returns: disappointment and relief. And again the strong feeling of wanting to live sweeps over me.

Share This

…from my short story, Spine:

What is wrong with Stalin?

First, he is short, like me, a short man. Second, he’s a Georgian. And, third, his father used him as a urinal on the mornings when it was too cold to go outside. So, in summary, nothing’s really wrong with Stalin that isn’t wrong with you and me! But remember: it’s 1927 and Lenin is dead, he’s gone. Stalin, seeing the possibilities, has positioned himself to rule the Politburo of the Communist Party and the Russian people and the whole fucking world if he can get away with it! He has already killed several million Russians. He’s invented ways of killing people!

Sometimes it’s a hands-off killing that seems almost ‘natural’: the Soviet army goes into a region and takes all the food and prevents any trains or trucks from going in. The people eat the dogs first, then any mice or cats they can catch; they knock the birds down from the sky and eat them, so the land is silent. In a few weeks, the living quietly eat the dead and, a few weeks later, silence consumes everything and everyone!

Somewhere else in the great sweep of Russia, Stalin might favor a more hands-on approach to killing. Strong Boy from Kiev puts some complainers in a corral. He asks them to stand back in one corner so he has some room to work and he takes off his shirt. He has a few hits of local vodka, picks up his crowbar and goes to work one-by-one bashing them to death while the others watch and wait their turn.

‘One-man show,’ Stalin clucks approvingly as he initials the report.

All the reports, all the ambition, all the inventive thinking: running Russia is a big job! Understandably, Stalin wants some support from Dr. B. and, when they are alone, he says, in Russian, “Doktor! Give me something to make me feel again like a happy Georgian boy!”

Dr. B. is tall, world-renowned and pure as the driven snow. He examines the monster and says to his face: “You are suffering from grave paranoia.”

This is an important moment in human history. It is taking place between two men in a small room just outside Moscow. The walls are beautifully paneled in cedar and there are guards outside the door. One of the men in the room is famous and, after that day, he will go on to kill maybe 50 million people and fuck up the minds of several billion others. The other man is almost unknown and he invented my disease. As mentioned, he’s a doctor and he could have reached into his doctor bag and pulled out a large syringe of poison and said, in Russian:

“Oh my Comrade Leader! You are a fine specimen of a man – a superman! But you need emergency shot of Vitamin G for Georgian boy!”

Then the good doctor could have hit up the monster, killed him and saved the world!

But, no! Dr. B., discoverer of Bekhterev’s Disease, was trying to save Stalin! To help Stalin by telling him that he was suffering from “grave paranoia”!

Stalin looked calmly at the famous expert, the doctor, and said: “If anybody in the world does not suffer from ‘grave paranoia,’ it is Stalin.”

I like to play movie director and have Stalin calmly picking up his shirt from the table where he had laid it down for the examination. The lighting is perfect for us to see the sheen of the fine cotton as Stalin’s short arm pushes through the sleeve. He takes his time. Dr. Bekhterev is unsure what to do, so he stands waiting, having done his work, given his diagnosis. Stalin is hardly aware of the Doctor because he is already preoccupied with larger concerns; the great Comrade Leader now realizes that he is doomed to a life of nightmares and fear; there will be no help aside from vodka. When he sent for Dr. Bekhterev, it was a rash thing to do. Now Stalin knows there will be no magic. Perhaps he pauses for a moment and wonders just how bad it will get. After tucking in his shirt, he looks up and he is surprised to find the doctor still in the room. Bekhterev is a good nine inches taller, and for some reason, Stalin wants to give him an explanation; of course, he doesn’t have to offer any reason for his actions but this tall, well-educated, brilliant man deserves a few words. So Stalin says in his Georgian-accented Russian:

“I am the Black Wind.”

And he has Bekhterev shot.

Share This

…from my short story, A Mixture of Sun and Clouds:

Camp was a cabin outside Smooth Rock Falls, a very small cabin a few miles out of town. It was used for trapping in winter, with only room enough for two really. But there was an old tent made of canvas as tough as hide and that’s where I slept.

“How is it?” Lizzie asked, after I’d poked my head inside.

“It smells like men,” I said and they laughed at me and asked what did I know about how men smelled!

“Like onions!” I said, as brave as could be and they howled. After that, every man was an onion!

Both Joanie and Lizzie had been born in England but they’d grown up in Cochrane not more than 30 miles away and they loved the trees and the water.

“Everything here is hard,” Lizzie said, “The trees are, the water is. You can smell the iron pushing up into everything; even the air feels like you could make it shine if you could only rub it!”

“Lizzie’s already lonesome for Jim,” Joanie said and she joked about rubbing the air. Lizzie was the poetic one and the leftie, all worried about the war in Europe, especially in Spain. Joanie had no time for the unions or all the left-wing speechmakers.

“Let them fight it out! What do we care? The Spaniards are a vicious bunch whether they’re waving the cross or a sickle. I can’t see that it matters, Lizzie!”

Lizzie was playing with the camera that Joanie’s husband Jack had bought her.

“Don’t take my picture when I’m ranting,” Joanie warned. Lizzie pretended to click the camera and Joanie ducked away.

“It’s the bloody Germans,” Lizzie said, “They are going to make Spain their practice run and then who knows? They’re already rounding up Jews and putting them in jail.”

“Now it’s the Jews!” Joanie said, pulling me in with a smile. “Can you believe that Lizzie is worried about everyone else? The Jews! They practically forced Jack’s company out of business in Montreal, Lizzie! I don’t think they need any protection. More like we need protection for them!”

Lizzie shook her head: “Dee? Don’t let your young mind be influenced by Joanie’s bullshit!”

We all laughed, including Joanie. That’s what it was like: Joanie on one side of any issue and Lizzie on the other. Joanie’s husband Jack was a manager for a company in Toronto and he was doing pretty well; he was all-business. Lizzie’s husband Jim was out west and, like most of the men, looking for work. Lizzie would read us Jim’s letters, which came often and were full of tales of men on the road, desperate for work, but trying to have some fun.

Men started to turn up in Smooth Rock Falls, ready to fight fires and some even drifted out to the camp looking for work or a hand-out. David surprised us all by tapping at the door one day when we were singing. Lizzie and Joanie were trying to remember one of the songs Hazel – my mother - brought over from London when they all emigrated.

“It was winter, our first winter,” Lizzie said, “and we had never seen snow so deep and so high and we hardly had a house to live in. We thought we were lost like Robinson Crusoe. We’d come out a year before Hazel because she had a job in London. But one frosty afternoon, we see two brave lads driving their sleigh up the hill, loaded down with luggage and boxes. Sitting atop the whole thing: our Hazel! She arrives dressed to the nines and singing the latest ditty from the London stage:

(Here Joanie joined in and they both sang…)

Money talks! Yes it does, my sweet,
But all it says to me is Goodbye-yee!
Money talks! Yes it does, my sweet,
But all it says to me is Goodbye-yee!

Share This

…from my short story, Volunteer:

It’s early daylight when someone takes us into the house. The kitchen is burnt black and in the middle of the mess, Chief Milliken is standing, drinking a coffee from a paper cup. He’s dried off and covered by fine black dust.
“Y’a get a pop or something?” he asks us; we shake no. He waves off a flunky to go and get something for us.
“So you guys saved the place, huh?”
We shrug.
“You didn’t set it, did’ja?”
We look at him silent and surprised and he laughs and tells us he’s kidding. The pops arrive – something we’d never drink but I can’t believe how thirsty I am. I empty my can in one long sucking gulp!
“Careful,” Milliken says, “Or you’ll chuck it all back up!”
Someone laughs but we’re just panting not barfing. D’Arcy burps.
“OK,” Milliken says. “We’ll give you boys some hats.”
He takes a filthy Volunteer Fire Department hat off the nearest guy and shows it to us.
“Like this but a new one.”
He awkwardly shakes my hand; I don’t think I’ve ever shaken a man’s hand before who was not an uncle. And we get to stand around in the mess, holding our empty pop cans.
Milliken reaches for a clipboard held by the guy whose hat got lifted; the Chief says, “Stove must’ve been on. They turned it on, forgot it and left.”
There’s no talk until I say, “No. Stove was off.”
The men turn and look at me, look at D’Arcy. Milliken steps over to the stove.
“How d’ja figure it was off?”
The stove is burnt black and the top part with the dials has melted so you can’t clearly tell anything. Milliken takes a big paw and drags it over the top but nothing changes except some soot is shifted.
“I saw the dials set at OFF when we were flingin’ water.”
I’m still holding the pop can and, without letting go, all I do is point with one finger toward the side of the stove.
“I think it was a cigarette in the garbage.”
The men look at the tangled piece of black metal that was once a garbage can. Somebody says something that I don’t understand about insurance and Milliken pokes the garbage can with his boot. His eyes come up and my first reaction is to look away or look down like it’s my fault. But his eyes hold mine and I look back into his big worn face with too many hours on it. It is the first time in my life a man has ever looked at me that way.

Share This

The short story, Siren:

The boy played along the road, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. In those days, the traffic was light and the stones that could be found just lying beside the road fascinated the boy. But those were times when municipal governments threw down any chemical and the boy must have picked up something more than interesting rocks. His fingertips suddenly ballooned up and were like swollen white pods.

It was the summer of 1958. The boy’s father had his first heart attack and had gone into the hospital. When the boy went to the hospital with his mother, people looked at his alien fingertips and stepped back, not in disgust but in respect, for the boy’s small hands had a clean, oddly fascinating attraction and it seemed obvious to the various men and women at the hospital that the boy was a brave little soldier and taking his aliment very well.

The fingertips were painless to the boy but their size and softness made it odd to do things. That didn’t bother the boy at all. He had little interest in doing anything other than talking to his mother, dreaming and occasionally reading. The pod-like fingertips enhanced his dreaming because they made him lift his small fingers into the air slightly which gave them the appearance of floating.

Both his parents loved to garden, which, as all gardeners know, is dirty work. His father, before the heart attack, was especially fond of the earth. He sank his entire forearm into the prepared soil and explained to the boy how the earth had to be ‘readied’ so that it would yield strong, straight carrots and big fat sweet strawberries. One Sunday morning as the boy was standing, watching from the edge of the grass and his father was lying in the garden bed weeding, Mrs. Kelso came walking along the back road, the same road where the boy had picked up the chemical. She was on her way to church and she called out hello. His father returned a cheery hello of his own while the boy gently tapped together his puffy, white fingertips. Mrs. Kelso had stopped and was asking his father if they were members of a local church; his father said no.

“Are you Catholic or Protestant?” she asked and even the boy could hear the blunt classifying demand in the question.

“I’m Buddhist,” the father said from his position among the flowers. Mrs. Kelso seemed to fade away and the boy would always remember and admire his father’s ability to get rid of irritating people.

With his mother’s hand on his shoulder, guiding him, the boy went to his father’s room in the hospital. Books on India were scattered over the bed. The boy knew his father had little to say about his earlier life in India; he said it was ‘beautiful’ in a way that seemed almost frightened, as though such beauty could be dangerous. The only other story his father told him about India was about the Buddha sitting under a tree when it was very, very hot. To cool the Buddha, the snails crawled up onto his head and formed a kind of wonderful cool cap. Sometimes when the boy’s fingers got hot, he wished a big snail would crawl onto each fingertip and cool them.

Without saying anything, his mother left the hospital room and the boy felt a shiver of panic. What if his father had another heart attack while she was away? What would happen? What would he do?

“Could you pass me the water?” his father asked. The boy held up his swollen fingers as if to warn his father, to explain his condition.

“It’s OK,” his father said.

The boy carefully reached for the glass and picked it up. It was perfectly clear and at room temp, like something already gone. Holding it in both hands, the boy gave the glass to his father. His big face looked drawn and tired but he smiled down at the boy, who had the thought that there was something better than being alone.

The father came home but he was not well, the boy could see that. He would watch him walk down the hall to the bathroom and the man’s bum looked frail and thin and old. Then he had a second attack and, in those days, that was enough. The ambulance came and they rushed in. The boy was standing in the kitchen doorway of the small house when the father was wheeled out on a low stretcher. His body was still, wound tightly in a sheet and his head was wrapped in a white cloth; only his face was showing and it was the color of the sheet except it was gray-white. There was no need to rush. They put him in the ambulance – a Cadillac similar to the hearses of those days except for the color, which was white of course. The boy’s mother climbed in the back, wearing a skirt and sweater and gloves because, in those days, women usually wore gloves when they went out.

The boy was alone in the house and he walked out back. From the back porch he could see the ambulance racing along the upper road and he could hear the siren wailing. Later, his puffy fingertips went down, back to normal, without anybody having an explanation but his father did not return.

Share This

My novel, The Invention of Pleasure, is as yet unpublished; it’s a story of a love affair between an artist and a terrorist. The artist is a middle-aged English-Canadian woman; the terrorist is a member of the FLQ so he is a Québécois man and younger. The time is 1970, when the Trudeau government cracked down on what they called an ‘apprehended insurrection’.

This is the second excerpt.

The sky had only the last trace of violet light and the three women could hardly see each other as they hugged and parted.

Lou walked over to the freshly turned vegetable patch. The evening grass felt cool to her bare feet and she stood beside the open earth, looking down; it was darker than the night sky and stepping off the lawn into the freshly turned soil was like walking into a black lake. Lou thought it might be possible to slip beneath the surface but, of course, the ground was solid and still warm from the day’s sun. The smell of life mixed with the smell of decay; it rose up and filled her nose. Lou closed her eyes. Saying a prayer to the earth for Gale’s safety made more sense than believing God was listening; that was a child’s dream.

When she opened her eyes, the neighboring houses were hidden by darkness. Lou imagined a time before the houses and the lawns and the little vegetable gardens, a vast time measured in hundreds of thousands of years when the tall forest had simply endured, changing only to stay unchanged. The animals were here and the people were among the animals, sharing the forest, the lakes and the rivers. They shared the hunger. And the people and the other animals obeyed the same cardinal command to breed; in the endless chain of dark nights, the authority of the strong over the weak.

“You were brave to mention ‘sex’, Mr. Darwin,” Lou said. “Even that tiny word shocked the world! But is sex taken? The ‘human’ is given or it is not human - is that not so? Do we come from rape?”

When Lou widened her eyes, the colors of night swarmed around: dark, lush purple, bottomless green and the softest black, ominous colors moving like currents. Questions rose up from the open earth:

What can I do to hold off the dark, to hold off the fear and the pain?
What can I make out of nothing? My skin is all I have.

Lou had an answer, a story:

In the ancient forest, a woman mated with a man. She did not do what he expected. She did not passively crouch and take his seed. Nor did she fight and scream as the females sometimes did. On this velvet night, the woman turned and embraced the man. At first, he was uncertain. There was an unfamiliar feeling in this female and he looked around. But the forest smelled safe so he moved inside her. And when he did, he saw the spark in her eyes; saw the sparks flying up from the fire in her body. What was this heat, this hidden power? He had never before felt heat like this from flesh – it was like fire from wood, the good fire in the forest. But what was this power in the flesh? It was mysterious. And when she looked up at him, the bright moonlight had changed her; it had given the woman a new face.

A car came up the street; it was without lights. Inside two cigarettes glowed and the car eased to a stop out in the street in front of Lou.

The world is a nasty place.

Share This

   still from La Dolce Vita Source: BFI

from my short story, Coconut Park:

We stepped out on the porch of the little row house in Lowertown, which was the poor part of Ottawa. It was a morning in October, fresh and cold with the sun still pretending it might warm the day. She smiled and turned to go down the short sidewalk. We both saw Ev’s car at the same moment; it was sitting where he always parked it, by the curb just to the right of the house.

“Ev,” Norma said, as she might if she just wanted to hear his name. She walked down the sidewalk and I followed along in my sock feet. There was a gate and she unlatched it and we both walked towards the car. I could see him sitting behind the wheel.

“Ev,” Norma said again but still not loud enough for him to hear. She was out on the street, beside the car on the driver’s side. I followed her and I watched her reach in and put her hand on his shoulder. She leaned in a bit and looked at his face and so did I.

“What…” Norma began and I was wondering the same thing: ‘What are you doing sitting there, Ev?’

I could see his strong face with his trim black moustache. He always seemed to have a tan and he said he could pass for an Arab or a Jew. (“Touch of the tar brush,” he would say.) He had a slight smile on his lips and his eyes were open. Norma made only one more gesture: she put the back of her hand to his cheek and said, “He’s dead,” and fainted.

With no shoes, the ground was cold but I managed to catch her and lower her gently against the car door. I was calling out for help and a man came and looked at me and at Norma, then at Ev in the car; he ran into our house and I hoped he was calling a doctor. I thought for a moment that Norma had died of shock but she was moaning and still breathing! I tucked her scarf under her chin and moved the hair back from her eyes. And waited. All I could do was to think that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, the human body can do that is shocking or unacceptable except to stop being alive.

…

I was sitting with Norma at Ev’s wake and, selfishly (as is my way) I thought the timing of the funeral was another example of my luck. Of course I wanted to be there for Norma; I was the one sitting beside her, holding her hand. There were plenty of relatives around and all Ev’s work mates and their wives but it was my hand she was clutching! My problem was that it was a once-in-a-lifetime night for the members of the Ottawa Film Society: opening night in Ottawa for Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. From childhood I had been a ‘film buff’ and I watched everything I was able to see. The list was unremarkable: cartoons, westerns on TV, Perry the Flying Squirrel, Lassie films and endless war movies at the Francis, our local movie theatre. I started to crave other movies: the films I was not allowed to see. Late at night, the French channel showed foreign films; I could not understand them because they were in French or some other language with French subtitles and the subtitles were blurry and too fast for me to read! It didn’t seem to matter; the films were oddly real: stories about people whose faces looked familiar, not foreign. Sometimes I imagined the men and women in the black-and-white films were my parents, still lost somehow in Europe.

Share This

from my short story, The Next Life:

I hear the roaring bubbles. My arms cut into the water; cut strong again. And again. The bubbles explode around my face and I pull in air. Each kick moves me closer. I take a look at the man flailing along, turn my face up to the air, suck in an extra breath and dive beneath him.

Granma called me a seal when I was still in the tiny pool in the backyard. I can perfectly recreate the scene: the small rubber pool, the hard yellow grass and the chain-link fence; all of it under the hot sun with not a tree in sight. Just little Silvi in her funny bathing suit with the frilly skirt and the old lady with her chihuahua tucked into her arm and her cigarette. From the very first I loved the water, the other world. Granma told me how dangerous it could be but I didn’t believe her because the water was so clear and bright in the sun. The water was sunshine’s little sister! But the next year, when we went to the big pool in Hull, I knew the old lady was right; a boy drowned and I saw how his body wouldn’t get up! So I learned to swim and after that I believed all the crazy things Granma said. I never listened to my mother again; when she told me her stories of teddy bears or Cinderellas, I stayed inside my head trying to solve the puzzle of the water. I knew the water was about a different life. I asked Granma who just looked back at me and smoked her cigarette; the dog’s eyes glistened, hard and black. Only the priests talked about another life, about eternal life. So I waited to see if first communion would give me the answers, the secrets. All it proved was that the priests knew nothing! I kept swimming and I kept letting the water tell me the truth.

I’m beneath the swimming man and before he can react, I slip close and circle his soft white torso, slip around him like a seal!
If I lived in California, I would have chased the big waves. I have a dream of being out in the deep water and seeing the dark shape coming for me. I start swimming hard – not trying to get away, just trying to get up into the rising swell so I can see! I’m working my arms and legs as hard as I can, pumping the water! I can feel the shape coming up fast beneath me, smooth through the water, as powerful as a god. Into the huge wave we rise together: the dark hungry shape and my white body, hungry in its own way.

I didn’t grow up in California; I lived in Québec, in Hull, and I spent as much time as I could in swimming pools. It was easy to get my lifeguard certificat