That's Entertainment!

Christmas eve I drank 3$ pints of Keiths in a small bar called Coco Rico. I was the palest one in the room, the only one speaking english, and the only one sitting alone. At least until Allyn arrived and took a seat at the bar two hours after I made several desperate calls for her to join me, and not until I had been sitting there for two hours staring at my folded arms, methodically drinking. Finally she arrived, and with the glow of a projection style big screen tv casting a hockey game onto our faces, I put a small shiny gift into her reluctant hand, and by the end of the night she was in my bed.

Christmas day, I woke up alone, got stoned, and sat in the sill of my open window while I stared at the vacant offices across the alley. I played my guitar and watched the rain fall for an hour or so, ate a quiche tart, and went back to bed. I slept most of the day away, woke up, had a shower, put on a tie, and grabbed the #4 into the West. After riding the crest of a near empty eight lane bridge, I was deposited into the end of town with the beaches that stare into the twinkling lights of the city on the north shore. A city slowly crawling its way up an entire mountain range using capitalism and its spoils as fuel. Usually I hated walking in that place, but it was Christmas, and I couldn't help getting caught up in the beauty and the warmth of the evening. I was on my way to dinner at Frannie's, my hard heeled shoes clicking on the aging concrete with a little authority, a few presents in hand, my pants crisp and pressed, a 40$ bottle of tawny in my knapsack, and a nervous pitt in my stomach something awful.

I hardly spoke to Frannie anymore, not since she started seeing some architect with a nice car and a cabin in the woods which would impress any woman that is impressed by such things, and really, who wouldn't be. All my friends thought Frannie was crazy about me, and maybe she was, but I had nothing to offer her. I drank too much, didn't think about the future, and was too hung up on the past. I was good at getting crazy and running into the ocean full tilt with no clothes on at 2am, but that wasn't much for fodder the other times I didn't even have bus fare to get to her place to showcase my wild abandon. So it was inevitable that she would eventually meet someone that paid attention to these things, even if it was a tad dull. Thankfully though, Frannie's new boyfriend was unable to get out of Christmas dinner with his parents and the co-parent of his 2 year old daughter. So I set my mind at ease with the the assumption that things would be the way they normally were, and that we could just relax and act the way we normally did. How foolish of me to think so.

I couldn't help but think in the back of my mind that perhaps I was being offered up as a little bit of controversy and jealousy for an absent boyfriend to mull over as he had dinner with his ex, and his parents. I quickly found out though that this was not the case when Frannie asked me to move over and give her a little more room on the couch while we were sipping wine and watching a movie with her two other dinner guests that lived down the hall. I wasn't sitting that close, and was horribly embarrassed at this obvious declaration to the others in the room that I was evidently having trouble with Frannie's lack of availability. I buried my thoughts into the movie we were watching, the massive cheese plate, and the varietals of wine covering the table in front of me. The film was called Love Actually, a Christmas movie about relationships. People were falling in love all over the place in this movie, and I was draining glass after glass of whatever happened to be near the tapenade. Needless to say, by the time I sat at the head of the dinner table, I felt like a lecherous social reject. I was drunk and remember little. Except for a delight in the fact that I was eating an official turkey dinner for the first time in three years, mixed with the foggy details of an audible mental debate with little interest in any one else's opinion, over my confusion as to which Globe and Mail writer I lusted after more, Leah McLaren, or Lynn Crosbie. Without doubt my drunken banter was boring and indulgent, but it did produce one of the most insane pictures of myself ever taken. It looked like I was spinning like the slobbering Tasmanian Devil from the Warner cartoons, except for the fact that I was frozen in what looked like a moment of profound thought. After dinner we were on the Tawny when Frannie's boyfriend arrived. I was outnumbered and officially designated the fifth wheel, which was my cue to leave.

I arrived home shortly after midnight, Christmas was over, and I tried to remember every December 25 that I had been alive for. I began to have trouble remembering anything before 2003, when I spent the early beginnings of December 25th staring at the back of my soundly sleeping wife, crying over the realization that this would be our last Christmas together. Then my mind was on chapter skip, jumping all the way back to childhood memories of sleeping in the back of my parents car on our way home from Christmas dinner, and the sound snow makes when it's -40 and so crisp that you can hear someone approaching your front door from within the house. There was no chronology, no rational order to the memories that were presenting themselves. From stocked fridges full of pop and deli trays, to blasts of cold air around shaking hands in the shag carpeted foyer of my parents house, to my mom directing me not to pour grandma too much scotch, to introducing my first girlfriend to the family, to the smell of yorkshire pudding, and the dull sound of a console tv. It was a dizzying montage that ended with the realization that no one from my family had called me all day, the most current of December 25's.

I stripped down to my white briefs and black socks and hung my clothes neatly in the closest where they surely would be needed again without any time to wash them. I sat in the kitchen smoking, with my ass on the sink and my feet on the cement counter in front of me. As I went through the call display, listening to messages that were recorded earlier in the week, I had an overwhelming urge to gently allow myself to fall forward so that my face would smash into the concrete slab in front of me, but I was distracted by the thought of Allyn telling me at the bar the night before that she would feel a sense of release when her mother would beat her when she was a kid, and how she would often beg me to hit her harder and harder when we would be having sex. It all made sense as I sat there fantasizing about damaging the most visible part of my body. My mind turned to fucking Allyn in the shower on Christmas Eve, and the way her ankles looked, wrapped in my white shower curtain as I furiously pounded against her body with the sound of the water falling to the bottom of the tub in unison with our frantic movements. I jumped off the counter, picked up a black stool that was sitting on the floor in front of my computer and threw it across the room. Then I came back at the flimsy little thing again in a pathetic attempt at assertiveness over something inanimate and meaningless. This time I threw the stool clean out the large open window, into the empty alley below, and I had to stop myself short of destroying the whole place. Instead, I crashed into bed, in a final display of defeat, my mind slowly processing the events of the day into history for later consumption,

December 25th, 2006, I woke up alone, got stoned, and sat in the sill of my open window while I stared at the vacant offices across the alley.

Merry Christmas

Last Night... I found my mind curiously disturbed, and wandering away through so many years to such early times of my life I could not help considering what strange stuff all our little stories are made of.

- Charles Dickens, February 10th 1855

> zero

I walk with a family of deprived senses,
so I will fall into anything that might present itself valid
with emotion,
with feeling

love
and all that stuff

she sat beside me, and I felt it
but before I could turn to her smile
her boyfriend walked into the room
scraggly hair, ill fitted parka
miss held fork, pushing his glasses

staring into his chick peas

Glass Candy

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Love's eyes love to look on brightness;
Love loves what is gaily drest;
Sunday, Monday, all I care is
Thou shouldst see me in my best.
-- Antonio's Ballad

I live downtown, and this weekend it was overrun with people who normally don't leave their suburban havens for a place with such a small amount of available parking. Tis the holiday season though, and parking or no parking, they're all here, infecting my neighborhood with bad fashion and too much makeup. It was especially bright and sunny yesterday, and Christmas shoppers, doing their Christmas things, usually in couples, smiling, with a coffee from Starbucks in hand, was a vision that kept me from leaving the house. I was hungover, strungout, and without any food I couldn't put off venturing out any longer. I had spent most of the day in my underwear with my pot pipe on the coffee table, a guitar in my arms, and an empty fridge. But all too often I found myself pacing back and forth looking out the window, worrying about my behavior, and thinking about what I was going to do about all the hours ahead of me. I had to get out of the house so that the day wouldn't bleed seamlessly into the night. I needed to go somewhere and then come home to make things feel normal, but the excuses were plentiful and so was the agoraphobia. Finally around 4pm, after much wavering, I decided that the best place for me was the cinema, and King Kong, clocking in at three hours and five minutes would keep my mind occupied long enough to get my head into a place so that I could dine alone in a crowded room and finally get something to eat.

I walked slowly towards the huge multiplex cinema, it seemed to take forever just to reach the top of my block, my headphones flooded my ears with music, isolating my trip to a vision only experience. I kept my head down though, because I was convinced that I would run into someone from the party I was at the night before, where I was openly shoving cocaine into my face with Nymphalidae on a black leather couch in the living room. We were doing the Christmas party circuit together, Nymphalidae and I. We had been at three parties in total, but it was the last one of the night, in the west end, with a hired dj, catered food plates, and a fully stocked bar with three bartenders behind it that provided the most antics. Of all the women that I have written about in Big and Tall, Nymphalidae has been the most popular with readers. I often get inquiries from blog creeps asking me if we've had sex, or urging me to post a picture of her, and of course I forward them all to Nymphalidae, so she knows she has fans. I thought of this as I watched her throwing martini glasses off the 8th floor balcony, narrowly missing a cyclist on the street below. I found it immensely sexy, until I was tapped on the shoulder and scolded by a blind woman who could hear all the glass breaking despite the balcony being stuffed to its concrete barriers with other guests. I looked into the blind woman's vibrant, blue, vacant eyes, and told her that it was an accident, but she could hear us laughing like idiots, so I had to stop Nymphalidae in mid swing as she was about to toss a third glass over the rail.

Little snippets of the night came back to my memory as I made my way to the theatre for the 4:15 showing of King Kong. The way Nymphalidae held me all the way home in the cab assuring me that I would be alright, how I had to climb a nine foot fence to get back into the party after I had locked myself in the complex's courtyard while trying to get to a bank machine, and how I stood in the washroom with Nymphalidae and another woman as Nymphalidae took nude photographs of her. I just wanted to get to the theatre so I could hide away for a few hours until it was dark and the streets emptied a bit. I finally arrived in the lobby of the theatre, and it was packed. On the far wall I could see a sign saying that King Kong was sold out. This was not good, this would never happen if it wasn't for the shoppers I thought. They were inescapable! The restaurant's were full, and the bars had no available stools, which wouldn't normally be a bother, but something about the night before had left me completely disconnected from the world that I was seeing around me. I couldn't identify with any of these people, and I thought they were all looking at me, like I was ruining their happy vision of capitalist holiday revelry. As if they wanted to see evidence that people are actually miserable during this time of the year. I wound up aimlessly walking into a used dvd store, and spent an hour perusing their entire collection until I came upon a copy of the Woody Allen film, The Purple Rose of Cairo. It was all about a lonely and depressed woman, who finds solace in the moving shadows of the cinema. After leaving her abusive husband one afternoon, she sits in the theatre all day, weeping, and watches The Purple Rose of Cairo over and over again, until one of the lead characters in the movie turns to her, professes his love to her, and then climbs out of the picture to greet her. She is then invited into the show to live out her fantasies in a world of moving pictures, ultimately giving her the power to change her life when she returns back to the real world.

I took the dvd up to the clerk, paid for it, and took it home under the cover of darkness. I made some popcorn, and while it was playing, I tried to climb into my twenty inch Citizen TV, but it was too small, I was too big, and that damn glass was in the way.

Slip Not

I heard somebody whisper please adore me
And when I looked to the Moon it turned to gold

I woke up this morning and slipped on a small puddle of lube that Allyn had accidently spilled on the floor when she was on her way to my bed only a few hours before I found myself with my knees buckled amongst the sticky mess that my naked body was now sharing with the cold morning floor. I looked around to find Allyn so that she could share in this ridiculous comedy, but she was gone. Earlier in the evening I had met with her at a new, and very orange dinner and drink room at at the top of Mount Pleasant. The place had just been built, and the smell of fresh vinyl permeated the air, turning my appetite into a non issue. There was however my hangover to deal with from the previous night's debauchery which you have most certainly read about below. Never before have I received that much mail from a single post, the tally is at 16 emails now. Most were short blurbs from readers wishing me a happy birthday, 3 were from jealous little men calling me a loser, 2 were concerned inquiries into the state of my health, and one had several nude photos attached to the subject line of "I'm Yours." Thank you very much, nice tits, but no, I don't have a fucking myspace account, so please stop asking me that. Anyway, back to the task at hand.

I was drenched in a sea of orange, the smell of vinyl and the lack of food in my body was allowing me the unique experience of tasting my stomach, which was not at all a fitting appetizer. I had just gotten paid, and had 12 twenty dollar bills resting in my pocket, 4 of which I owed to Allyn, who was suspiciously late. When I have a hang over, I love to drink Caesars. Refreshing, salty, tangy, and spicy, the Caesar has it all. The only problem is that I can drink them like water, and I don't suspect that I am alone in this testament. I had three before Allyn arrived, and then ordered a bottle of pino grigio when she sat down. I love to while away the hours in a bar with a lady, and I can assure you at that point, I was feeling much better, quite smashing as a matter of fact. The emptiness of my stomach gave way to the fullness of my wallet, the orange hues mixed with the brown accents, and the white globe lights made everything amorous and heightened. I was having such a lovely time that I had to remind myself that the purpose of this visit was not a pleasant one. I was there to assure Allyn that after some time apart, I didn't want to continue seeing each other, and I had to pay her the money that I owed her. Things got tense, we drank the pinot, and told the concerned looking waitress that we were going to skip dinner and get the bill. It was hard, I could see Allyn's third floor flat windows from where we were sitting, but I new it was the right thing to do. To go home alone, eat some left overs, sit on the couch, and stare out the window.

Which is what I did, and that's where I awoke abruptly on the couch, when I thought I heard my alarm clock going off. It was still dark, and the city was quiet, except for some fucking maniac yelling far off in the distance. It was 2:45am, and it wasn't the alarm, it was Allyn phoning. I turned down the ringer and tucked it back under my pillow so I couldn't hear it. Over and over it rang, and between calls I listened to the mad man, somewhere outside, perhaps half way across the city, screaming into the night for anyone to hear. Just when I thought Allyn had given up, the phone would ring again, and I just couldn't ignore it anymore, she must be in some kind of trouble I thought. I answered the phone, and yes, of course, trouble. She was at a party, drunk, and had lost her keys. She wanted to come over, I knew what was happening but was too tired to fight it. Within minutes she was undressing beside my bed, the moon was full that night, and I could see her black thigh highs running up and down her perfect legs. She was drunk, I was tired, and both of us new it was the last time we would be together.

Hot and Cold

This city was never supposed to be as cold as it has been so far this winter. I've moved as far west as I possibly can, and it's not getting any warmer, and now the waters of the inlet lick the shores of the urban center, so there's no more land left to traverse, and I find myself stuck here in this frigid place. The only way to go now, is down.

Thank goodness for LeRoy and Nymphalidae who financed a small and private party last night to celebrate my birthday at a basement club on the south side of town. Remington and I have been perpetually broke for sometime now, but LeRoy supplied us with endless draft, and Nymphalidae drank gin, which used to be our choice of drink when we were lovers. Tony made a brief appearance, and everyone made fun of my attempts at trying to seduce a pregnant Wal-Mart cashier when I had to go there almost everyday for refills of spray paint and masking tape. My head sank closer to the table, and hearing the scenario described back to me in jest made me realize just how lost I truly am. I got up to piss, and noticed there was a tint of red to my urine, blood? I was so drunk by this point that it barely registered, so rather than fret over plans to see a doctor and imagined death scenarios, I went outside and had a smokie, and proceeded to stuff the whole mammoth mess into my face so quickly, and with such fervor, that by the time I had finished, I was covered in mustard. The owner/operator of the cart watched in silence, surely he had seen this disgusting display on numerous occasions.

I fell back into my orange vinyl seat inside, but before I could get some help at removing the mustard all over my face, everyone else was getting ready to leave so that we could go have some food, and some more beer. Tony had to leave though, he can barely hold his liquor and was obviously loaded when he got into his convertible roadster and smoked the tires into a screaming frenzy of spinning, burning rubber. When the tires finally caught traction he was unprepared for the jolt towards the front lawn of the poor souls that share the street with the club we were leaving. Our last vision of Toady was his little sports car rocking like a boat in water as he slowly set the tires back into the street because his display of man and machine put him into a blue box of discarded bottles on the boulevard. It was freezing, and I stumbled up the avenue covered in yellow condiment, shaking uncontrollably as I struggled to tie up the new scarf that I got for my birthday. I am so bad at tying things, all I could do was let it hang down each side of my chest. We were seated at a restaurant where they cook everything on a set of Moffatt stoves, we hovered around heated platters of nachos and pitchers of beer, surrounded by candlelight, with steamed windows so opaque that the street looked like an aquarium of trapped fish. It was hot, but then it was so cold, back and forth it went, each draft from the back door sent a shiver through my body, pushing me closer to Nymphalidae. LeRoy and Remington kept a close watch on the two of us though, making sure that my soft hand never reached the small of her back during our private celebration in the corner of the restaurant. We were really having a great time, it was select, and fucking cracking, but there is always an end to such loveliness, and watching Nymphalidae's hot breath disappear into the oncoming light of the No.3 approaching behind our backs after her and Leroy paid the bill, represented the end of our charade.

So it was only moments later then, when I said goodbye and got off the bus, to take a one stop train ride as close to home as I could get, which wasn't very close. I tucked my chin down, and fired my feet as fast as they would carry me towards my loft, where it's so hot that I have to leave at least one of the three 10 foot windows open all the time. The white wires of my iPod that led up to my ears were stiff from the elements, and as I walked along I stepped over a woman's glove lying in the middle of the sidewalk. I imagined who it belonged to, how she must have been at that spot only moments before me, and how her hand must be cold. I kept walking, not bothering to pick it up, hot on her trail.

Epic Penny

1970

Track 2 - xbxrx

Oh Sombra! - Electrelane

The days fill up with things to do, and I don't like it. I was content when there was nothing, but happiness just won't leave me alone. I just got back from the mirror and I can see the bruise above my collar bone, where Allyn sucked the blood clean to the surface of my skin with her swollen lips, and I seem resigned to letting it fade away. I remember when Nymphalidae used to cover my chest in hickies and then send me off into the blinding heat of the summer, through the dried fish smell of Chinatown, loaded on cheap whiskey, confident that I wanted to die. Now I am not so sure. I fell into my uncovered pillows tonight a year older than I was when I woke up this morning and said this to myself...

It's 48 minutes past the hour. The day is young my dear friend, but your
life is surely half over and the farthest east you've been is Thunder Bay.

Catcher

Pounding house red through a 16 course meal at the office Christmas dinner, I can't remember half the shit I ate tonight. I do however recall all the things that were said around me, making my heart wince, making me realize that there was nowhere to go when the red wine ran out, which was too fucking early. The couple across from me, they were in love. They talked about when they met, how chance and special it was. She wore a necklace on her naked neck that I couldn't take my eyes away from when I would tip my glass. It wasn't her, it was what she represented, a quiet ride home in a warm car, the glow of a TV, and the sound of a voice in the morning. I started home on foot, but stopped at a payphone to call Jacque, and before I knew it found myself smoking crack beside a blue dumpster in a dark alley. Jacque and I, we're trouble. I finally made the final leg of my journey home, the corners of the building streaked into the side of my eye right eye, the sound of my steps rang with too much treble.

I applied for a job in New York today. This is what I do now. I apply for jobs in rediculous and exotic locales, relying heavily on the fact that no one will call. I kissed a girl in Manhattan, she was a shoe designer at the same place I applied at today. I imagined passing her in the hallway if I got hired while I was eating my pastrami sandwich in the back of my office.

There's this revolving restaurant downtown. You can see it from almost anywhere in the city. I've booked a table there, on Christmas morning. I am going to have brunch, drink a bottle of something, and spin all over the town, revel in my loneliness, be happy on my holidays.

I went to my daughters dance recital tonight, I watched her smile proudly to me as I sat at the far end of her family. My eyes stung, and my nose burned, but still, everyone, including myself, seemed like they were in a big hurry to get out of there, to live our lives, to find what we were looking for. But really, we should have been tucking her into bed. A kiss on the forehead, and a door left slightly ajar.

Blow

Christmas Sexy

We all stood outside smoking, watching the bodies flip onto the pavement and up against the parallel parked cars. In groups of two they filed out, with heads tucked into bellies, and shirts pulled up onto the shoulders, and the sound of smashing glass not far behind. Later, as verbal reenactments took place, the flashing blue and red lights from the ambulance slapped up against the surrounding buildings as first aid was applied.

Allyn was inside, stumbling around with her boyfriend, and missed it all. I thought it was my ego that had me thinking she was flirting with me last Wednesday. It wasn't fantasy tonight though, it was booze, but it was good for two kisses.

Women seem to take on this nuturing look of love during the holiday season. There's nothing more lovely than seeing them approach as you're about to cross paths on the boulevard. Large paper shopping bags in tow, and usually wrapped around their man's pocketed arm, they look so happy. Dark woolen three quarter length coats with buttons wrapped in leather, smelling of perfume, a little red lipstick, a smile, Fly London shoes, and if there's a little snow falling, look the fuck out.

There was a keg tonight at the gallery that Chic runs, and she poured us beer all night, free of charge. It's my third night straight of this business. I must retire to the cinema tomorrow.

Fountain pop and broken hearts.