She wants to be in Broken Social Scene, I told her she’s living the Canadian dream.

I Never Understood Why They Call it Breaking the Ice

     I fantasize about meeting men. Guys my age. In a romantic way.

     She moves to sit cross-legged on the couch.

     I don’t mean sexual fantasies, not really. Sex is such a mechanical act that you need the other person there to really make it interesting. Without someone else there to explore things with, to get a feel for and to participate in a give-and-take, there’s no fun. Sex fantasies are boring.
     What really interests me is meeting people. I don’t really do that, I don’t know how to go out and meet people. I know everyone I want to know. Other people seem so awful that I can’t bother to put myself out there. That’s why I fantasize about meeting them. Well, meeting guys. And I imagine they like me, like, as much as I like them. In my head the guy is so good-looking and so similar to me – on the surface – that I care to introduce myself. And he smiles and introduces himself like he was waiting to do the same all along. And we hit it off. See, that’s exciting.

     She smiles and looks down at her hands as she drums her fingers on her knees. Then, her smile wavers and suddenly it’s a concerned frown.

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College Try

     Neither of you have had much luck with relationships. For years she’s been on-again, off-again with the same shitbag, the same abusive scum. You would kill just to be “on” with anybody at all. That’s why, when she says that it’s off (again) with him, you decide to ask her out.

     You’re nowhere near her type of guy, but she says yes. You try not to overthink it, though for the three days until Saturday it’s all you can think about. She agreed to meet you at that hole-in-the-wall place you’ve always wanted to try. It’s cheap – which you like – and cozy – which you hope she likes. You show up five minutes late because you always underestimate travel time in this city. Halfway there you get a text from her saying she’ll be fifteen minutes late. “No worries”, you text back.

     When she shows up, you exchange half-hearted apologies and casual how-are-yous. You can tell she didn’t mean to be late, and in her hurry she worked up an appetite. You flag down a waiter (a gesture you inexplicably always found to be rude), and order. You take the second-least-expensive pasta. She orders a threatening-sounding soup, with a Caesar salad. The waiter tells her it’s an excellent choice, and gives her a smile that you think is too forwardly flirtatious. You’re sure she gets that all the time, so it doesn’t register with her - a smile is harmless, really. You can’t justify the feeling of trespass you have.

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cacophonila:

famouslastwordsinmexico replied to your post: ugh I’ve been drawing products for the past 10…

The last picture should’ve been you. As a lamp.

Coolest lamp ever.

Recently, I went out to celebrate the birthday of a very good friend of mine, someone I’ve known for nine years now. As the night progressed, he lost touch with sobriety in a big way, which happens when you’re celebrating with a big group of friends. He was, however, visibly uncomfortable. So, to help, another good friend of ours offered to let him crash at her place and to have me join, to save him the trouble of the long trek home.

He sobered up for the most part on the walk to her place, but decided to stick with his decision to sleep over. We ended up talking a little bit around her dining room table. It was the three of us, her boyfriend, and the sounds of texting coming from the stranger in the living room who we could only assume was her roommate’s boyfriend’s friend. After a few minutes of not really talking about anything, we called it a night.

The next morning, on the bus ride home, my friend recalled the details from the night before. What struck me was what he thought of our time around the dining room table.

“After a … I guess a brief moment of clarity,” he said, “I looked around and realized that everyone was lonely.”

I had no response, and he had nothing more to say on the subject.

Really, everyone was lonely. We are, and that’s fine. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t seek out each other’s’ company. It’s worth it for the nights out in which we talk and laugh and maybe get a little too drunk or stoned. Sure, the trade-off is that when you’re walking home alone at night the only thought in your head is the hope that a familiar face or a perfect stranger is sitting on your doorstep, but that’s okay. I’ll take that.

Like Columbia, Only Darker

     We would drive for hours in that car of ours. It would be just the two of us as we passed by our old schools and old bars. We’d park by the lake and sit on the hood of that car. We used to laugh and joke that its colour was a social media blue.

     One day you threw your phone out the window. Tears were streaming down your face, and I knew better than to say anything. Later I got up the courage to ask you what was wrong. You sleepily joked that you were just feeling social media blue.

The Key to _____

     As I walk down the block to start my day my mind starts to finally wake up as the haze of sleep fades away completely, and I find myself thinking. I think of the same thing I always think of: that missed connection. As much as I try not to, my mind comes back to it. I don’t know why I think about it when it brings me so much distress, but I do.

     I think about it as I take notes and crunch numbers. The more I think about it, the more I want to go back. Part of me feels I should go back. The rest of me knows, however, that it’s too late. If I made a mistake, I’ll just have to wait to see if everything is fine, or if it’s all ruined forever. And, what if I do go back and I find out it was a waste of time and a waste of effort? I’d only hate myself.

     Even at the end of the day, when I’m on the subway train headed home, I cannot stop thinking about it. Though I know the answer, I still ask myself the same question:

     Fuck, did I remember to lock the front door?

You can make a connection with mutual knowledge of rap lyrics

And I know I’m wrong

But starting any sentence with the phrase “Can I”

Feels like a betrayal

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On Being 20

I turned twenty years old on Tuesday. Here are some musings on that.

-     If I committed a crime when I was nineteen, the news report would describe the suspect as being a “Young man”. Now if I were to commit a crime, I would be described as a “young Man.” It’s a change of emphasis.

-     The notion of committing crime, to a nineteen year old, is still fuelled with teenage restlessness. So, the crime would be redundantly spray-painting “Fuck the establishment” on the side of a bank and then throwing a Molotov-cocktail through the window, even though that’s going to char your graffiti, but it’s okay because the grenade doesn’t do much damage since the bottle of Jack Daniels you used for the Molotov-cocktail is actually half empty because you drank the other half and that’s how you ended up in this mess in the first place. A crime to a twenty year old would be fucking up your taxes because you’re still not used to having to do them. And then you cry in the shower over the fine you’ve received.

-     I’m not a werewolf. I would have found out by now if I was, but sadly there’s no Michael J. Fox film titled, “I Was an Early-20s Werewolf”.

-     For someone who’s actually cried in the shower before, I joke about it a lot. I should stop doing that. ‘That’ being the crying thing, it’s going to run up the utilities bill.

-     I should do my taxes.