A Chance Encounter

Would you like to smoke some pot, Berserker
My love for you is ticking clock, Berserker
Would you like to suck my cock, Berserker
Would you like some making fuck, Berserker

-- Love Among Freaks, Beserker.

"Did someone say luvah?" whispered Low, the buttons of his cardigan dragging through the smut laden bottom half of the local entertainment weekly, as he bent forward to get a better look at his horoscope. Yes, a chance encounter with a potential lover this evening. Glancing up to face the empty room, he announced that, "the cognac was lovely!" and drew another whiff from his Christmas pipe. Then he proceeded to pace the floor, in his underwear and slippers.

But who? Low laid out a timeline, deciding that anything that happened between 3 to 9pm could easily count as evening. He replayed the hours in his mind. Was it the older woman in the park, shortly after dinner, watching her kids from a far enough distance so they wouldn't see her chain smoking herself to death on the wooden bench while they played. She eyed him as he strolled through the park, impeccable slacks, last weeks newspaper under his arm. She wanted him, he could tell, as he looked at her six hole Wal-Mart lace ups. Perhaps it was the email he received at 6:46pm from a woman who played polka on her accordion and collected the hearts of many on a thin red string. Pondering his next move, like that of a chess player about to be mated, Low decided to do nothing. Then there was the woman who emailed him, just before leaving work, Low hadn't heard from her since she left for Seattle 14 days ago. He had a collection of pictures of her in various states of undress to tide him over until she got back. But she said she would only be gone three days. And Low, knowing he was the underdog in the whole affair, realized that he would have to cut her loose, for he swore that he would never be hurt again. But here was an email, well within his definition of evening, pleading his whereabouts. His brow began to sweat as he imagined himself fucking her. Was he doing the right thing?

Unfashionably, Low refilled his glass with cognac to the rim, as he realized he lacked the panache to deal with any of this. Each sip from the white mug with the fading Dunkin Donuts script, yielded a burning sensation as the heavy vapours were exhaled through the nose. Low began to drink quicker, inhaling, sipping, exhaling, and then sipping again. By the time the glass was finished, he had begun to hyperventilate. Arching his back and ripping the Christmas pipe from his mouth he gripped the edges of the newspaper in a panic. He threw the empty mug down, grabbed the bottle, and began to pour it down his throat. Overflowing his mouth, the cognac spilled down his cheeks, onto his cardigan, and all over the transvestites featured in the back pages of the newspaper he had just been reading. Pulling the cardigan from his shoulders, like it was restraining him in some way, Low announced once again, this time in a drunken mumble, that the cognac was lovely, and crashed to the floor. It was 8:59pm.

Dearest

upon beeps and panic
I lay your body upon hospital linens

but smiles and longing
send you to seven

In My Place

Where it all began, the Foothills Hospital watches over the neighborhood of Kensington, in Calgary.

In my place, in my place
Were lines that I couldn't change
And I was lost, oh yeah, oh yeah

-- Coldplay

Well now, history certainly has a way of biting me in the ass, now doesn't it. Seven years ago, to the day, I sat in a bar, just like I did tonight. Like some kind of vicious reminder of the stupid things I did in my past, I sat, alone as usual, the two after work drinkers who always take my seat whenever they are there, arguing over a last drink, just like they always do. I couldn't help but overhear their philosophy, "If Crown was a Buick, then Jack is a Vette. I don't know how you can drink that shit." They argued, swaying over their cell phones placed on the bar, finishing their third double whiskey and soda's, each round announced as the last. They had women at home to get to, of which they probably resented. I stared at my bottle.

Nice Guys Finish Last

A little ignorance can go a long way, John Barrymore as Mr. Hyde

I am tired. The days are shortening, the air turns snappy, and the sun no longer has the power it commanded through the summer months. I am blanketed in perpetual shade. The week moves quickly through a new, but very familiar sequence. I often see cars approaching, and I challenge them, no, I invite them to run me over. That, or I want to perform vehicular manslaughter myself. Except I don't drive. So silly things like someone ignorantly taking up two seats on a busy bus, will set off fantastic violent visions. I imagine myself repeatedly smashing the offender in the face with my bloody fist, over and over again. It feels reckless to think these thoughts, it feels good. I am angry, but I am weak.


Every night this week, it's the same. Get home, make dinner, wash dishes, pour a drink, and watch Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The John Barrymore classic. I often fall asleep at different parts, but tonight, the fourth viewing, it's beginning to resonate. Henry Jekyll is ashamed of his goodness, and at one point, is ridiculed by his peers for it. Being a medicinal chemist, he devises a way to allow himself to succumb to the darkest corners of his mind. As the gruesome Mr. Hyde, with the egg shaped head, the scraggly hair, the abnormally long, vein covered hands, and the hunched over walk of the slighted, Jekyll is allowed to live out the ugliest features of mankind. He rents a shit hole apartment in London's Soho district. He immediately procures the services of a slut named Gina, although she is quickly discarded in the pursuit of more women and good times. Drinking and carousing around London, Henry Jekyll's personality fades, and the evil Mr. Hyde eventually takes over and begins to protect his longevity. He throws a fit and beats a young boy in the street, and tries to pay his way out of the mess, but once Mr. Hyde murders Jekyll's future father in-law, suicide becomes the only apparent escape.


Night falls by 6pm, and so does the rain. The image of Mr. Hyde shuffling through the dark London streets comes to me often as I stroll the arcades. To live out ones evil nature, to care for no nothing, except for your own selfish needs, or to have little respect for life, so as to risk it wholeheartedly. These are the characteristics I crave right now. To be a mother fucking asshole.

At 1am

My hair might suck, but at least I listen to good fuckin music.

Muse

sweet dreams?

oh yes, we are on the beach
I crinkle my toes through the sand
exfoliating away 1.5 years of pain
replacing it with the view of your naked ass
as you lie on your side, reading me the dailies
from a far away land

I am a lover
I am a romantic
my kind get hurt, so very often
we do not think in realistic terms
instead we play,
in the recess of the mind

so very late at night...

Gay Boys Smell Nice

I can't see you every night free
I do, I do, I do

-- Nirvana About A Girl

It's Thursday, oh, no, actually it's Friday, the weekend has begun, it will escalate, our drugs have been ordered. It won't live up to expectation, but it will be wild all the same. Now I will dance, to my favourite Band.

Might is Well

Owwww!
I get up, and nothin' gets me down
You got it tough, I've seen the toughest around
And I know, baby, just how you feel
You got to roll with the punches and get to what's real.

-- Van Halen, Jump.

My life has been void of gifts for quite some time now. So when I was handed a very smart looking Murakami novel last night, it was appreciated in a manic sense. Perfect timing too, I sobbed through the last chapter of the epic Tale of Two Cities, hungover this morning in the bath.
Charles Darney, one of the central characters in the Dickens classic, faces the guillotine in the morning. He finally falls asleep, he dreams, he is with his wife, his wife tells him he was only dreaming. He believes the dream, thinking his scheduled execution in the morning, only a nightmare. The crushing reality of his situation overtook me with emotion. Damn! That Dickens is good.
As the summer closes, so too does my cirillian blue dickens novel, which has so defined the dead heat I have been subjected to over the past 3 months. Now, as the air turns crisp, and the leaves fall ever so softly to their graves. I shall read my new gift, and remember a summer like no other. One that took a heavy toll, yet gave in return, for its passage into memory. It was the best of times.

The Safe Wave

there has been a wave, creeping up the beach
its wide froth spilling up the head
it travels slowly, so slowly
thinking that no one will notice it
overtaking the scraps thrown back by the salty drink

we all await its arrival, to wash over the castle
and render it final, pushing it back into the earth
so it can start all over, leaving the wave to
crash, break, and dissolve

Come Into My Office

James Spader helps his secretary learn the pleasures of
good grammar, in The Secretary

Now don't mind me, it's just that,
vipers define me and I never thought
it'd be this way.

-- Certain things you ought to know, Destroyer

I stepped onto the oversized vinyl matt , activating the doors to the emergency ward, and finally took a breath of air untainted by the stink of disease. It was 430 in the morning, I looked over at the two patients smoking in half tied gowns, navigating their cigarettes through an intricate network of plastic tubing. I tore of my id bracelet, ripped the tape from my hand, removed the two bandages at the joint of my arm, and bought a Frutopia from the vending machine. I am strong. I am healthy. I am alive.

I awoke three hours later to the sound of children being murdered in Russia on my radio. Innocent children, if not murdered then certainly terrorized. I got up, pulled on my pants, surveyed the damage that my arm had suffered from a night of poking and prodding with several needles, and ordered a Chai Latte from the coffee shop downstairs. Watching people hurry to work, I thought about whether or not I could go through with my plans for the evening.

Sipping my paper cup, in the hazy air of a morning in between seasons, I had a flashback from hours earlier. I was in the hospital, the pain in my gut so bad, and unable to bare it any longer, I lay on the extra wide floor of the hallway adjacent to the waiting room, the cool, clean floor, soothing my cheek. Gurneys rolled by, one after the other, I passed out. I felt someone kick my arm with their foot, "hey, are you low?" I was finally put in a bed, given some morphine, had some x-ray's taken, and some blood drawn, yet I still remain a mystery.

I ate soup all day and thought about the week that had unfolded. Evening approaching, I looked at restaurant listings on the bus. At home I looked at concert listings while I was on the toilet checking my messages. Nothing seemed right, it can wait another day. I rode my bike around the water, and bought another can of consomme soup. Cycling through the floating wafts of perfume from the diners rushing to their tables, I arrived home. It felt cozy, and I found what I was looking for. Then I watched a movie about the benefits of pain and suffering. It was called, The Secretary.