thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen

thirteen...

Beep...
"You said you were going to start going to church. Man, that slipped right by me. I suppose I was far more interested in the whole two girl thing than the church thing. Now I'm wondering what was meant to shock me more. The lesbian viewing session or the fact that you're going to start going to church and meeting whoever you'll meet there. I suppose if that's how you're going to get material. But I want to come with you. Can we go to some crazy new age place or do you want to go more traditional. Maybe you don't want anyone along. I don't really know what you want. Call me. I'm not at home right now but I will be later. Call me. I'm calling Jamie to see if he wants to go out and get something to eat. Eleven thirty now. See ya."
I thought I had passed the church thing by her but she was far too quick. Sure I was going to start going to different churches and hanging around prayer meetings. The downtown core has at least ten different religious institutions that I can exploit. Why not? It's an entirely untapped area of life I need to explore, maybe even fall into for a while. My sister fell into it for a while a few years back and used it as a crutch for a while I sat back and tried the best I could to survey the situation. Turned out she just had an allergy to certain foods that made her a little wacky in regards to her sanity and as soon as she got her diet sorted out she ditched the church. Rightly so. As much as I enjoyed her insanity at times it did begin to grate on me when she'd start to preach to me at the dinner table. For a while though it was a good source of entertainment and one I found intriguing as she set up camp on my mother's couch and didn't work for six months.
I was asked, for better or for worse, to not argue with her and to let her have her way until things sorted themselves out. I must admit though I would bring it on a little telling her about my life and all the evils I was committing daily, sins of the flesh and such, even though I was basically lying to her. And while I found my life boring and mundane, she found even the smallest of details regarding such things as dating or sex I had so incredibly sinful that I found it hard not to tell her more and more. But alas, they found out about her food allergies that were fucking with her head, she had a full recovery and I had to go back to storing up my life's experiences for use at a later date. Maybe I could start confessing to all sorts of things at the church of my choice. Have to see how this all goes.
Beep...
"I just spoke to Fawn. How come I didn't know about the carpet munchers who were at your place? The rug doctors. Ok. Don't worry. I'm sure I'll find out eventually. Call me. I've got to work later today but if you want to have dinner I'm in for later. But a late dinner. Where did you end up last night? This book thing really has you out and about doesn't it? Someone told me they saw you at some bar over on the West Side chatting up some woman who could have been your grandmother. Getting that experience are ya? You rule pal. Talk to you later."
Dinner with Jamie. I feel bad now that told Fawn about the lesbian floor show and not Jamie, but it only happened the other night so it's not really like he's totally out of the loop or something. Guy works too much really, and is always taking on more and more work. He may even move to Seattle and as much as we'd all miss him it may be good for him. I'll call him later and tell him about the blow job girl from Regina then he'll be one up on Fawn, but not for long. He does, however seem to know about me hanging out at some bar on the West Side chatting up older women. They're just friends of friends, for now anyway. I'm just getting material, a guy's gotta do what a guys gotta do.
Beep...
"Hi. Got your number from a mutual friend. She said you lived downtown. I live downtown as well. Maybe we could have a drink sometime. Oh. Our mutual friend is Wendy. Anyway. My number is 684.5563. I'll be home until seven then I'm going out. I'll be back around midnight, maybe a late drink then or.... Call me or I'll page you later. By the way my name's Corrie. See ya."
I can't believe Wendy gave out my number to one of her friends. I said, jokingly that she could give it out to her friends if they needed a little action but I was joking. Oh well, I suppose I could give this woman a call and see what her story is. Maybe I can take Jamie with me. I'm getting myself in deeper and deeper. It's better than getting a job right now and I still have money in the bank.
Beep...
"Hey champ. And you are the champ. Of what I'm not sure but you have apparently been turning it on lately and I just wanted to say I'm proud of ya. Johnny signing off."
Johnny’s proud of me. That's nice. I never hear from that guy anymore. He and Lori are so much in love that I dare not interrupt them. I actually ran into her the other day as I was walking along Pender Street and we walked together to the West End. Half way I asked her if I could buy her an ice cream cone at the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. After we had made our ice cream choices and were back out on Robson Street I was glad I had run into her, it was sort of like seeing John as well, in some respects they have become one. He's a lucky man, he knows it too.
Beep...
"Dave here. How about some waffles? Brent wants waffles and so doI. Hey. Hear you turned down a blow job last night. Don't ask how I know... Ok. I know that girl. I mean, I know that girl. Weird. I'll talk to you later. Tomato pie."
Long time no hear from that guy but I guess since he's always out of town I can't fault him on it. The three of us, Dave, Brent and I used to live together and used to eat cereal almost exclusively. In fact we all loved and lived by the breakfast anytime adage. In fact, at one point we had over sixteen different types of cereal in our house and people would come over and just dig in. Waffles would be good today. Shit. The girl in the after hours place. Did she know me all along? Maybe the good idea, bad idea scale worked better than I thought.
Beep...
"Hey buddy can you get me tickets to u2? Hope so. I'll try you later."
U2 tickets? Fuck that. I could get them for that loser but really, the only reason he ever call me is to get something. Fuck him. Fuck Bono.
Beep...
"What's the deal? I saw you on the bus yesterday. You hate the bus. We all hate the bus. Where the fuck were you going? Nice hat by the way. Check ya later pal. Get off the bus."
It's no secret. I hate the bus more than just about anything. I argue with bus drivers I know about how much I hate the service they provide. How you never get anywhere close to where you actually want to be. Ok, but I had to take it the other day to the baseball game because I was late getting going. It was thirty blocks coming home but I decided to walk anyway, I beat the bus.
Reaching for a fresh smoke I decide to give Dave a call and see if he still wants waffles even though it's long after noon now.
"Dave, hey what's up."
"Not much just looking for you."
"Waffles?" I ask as if it's a one word invitation
"Right now?"
"Iron's just heating up"
"I'll be right over. I'll pick up Brent on the way."
"Right."
There are something's you can always count on. Breakfast anytime is one of them.

fourteen...

Storybook romance
(to be added somehow to 'night's end')
Thematically similar...


The things others seem to find hard have come to me with seemingly great ease. I find no solace in this except that it allows me to continue a lifestyle to which I have become accustomed. I have had success at things I had never even set out to accomplish, yet, it all comes my way, and I hide it all. The raises I never tell my co-workers about, the jumps up the corporate ladder I have never told my parents about, the things I have seen and done late in the night when everyone else is asleep. I have become ashamed of my success, of my luck.
Lately, I have become obsessed with women and the thrill that comes with the chase. I often find myself out trying to find just the right one, sometimes any one, to try and take home and maybe, if I'm lucky, or she's not, have my way with. There's no money in it for me, no prestige, no badge afterwards to pin on my chest but somehow it works for me on some level. And often, and of this I am not proud, as if I should be of any of it, I seem to prey on those who seem defenseless. The ones alone at the bar as if they're waiting for someone like me to come along. Someone to buy them a drink or someone to suggest that they, I, know what they're going through and that I care.
Tonight's no different. At home earlier I had decided that I would stay home and watch a movie and just relax. That I wouldn't let my boredom set in motion a chain of events that I couldn't stop once it got going. But, as the hours wore on, shortly after the movie ended I found myself putting on my shoes and going to the hook where I hang my keys and heading out the door.
As my car warmed up I checked my pockets to make sure I had cigarettes and just for fun swung open my Zippo and struck it just to see the flame fill the inside of my car. The dye was cast and once again I was heading downtown to find that special someone who needed a little company.
Turning onto Broadway I saw a woman hitch hiking and thought better of picking her up. Why I'm not really sure but, somehow, I knew that she wasn't the one I was looking for, not tonight. Coursing down Broadway I decided to stop in at the Seven-Eleven and kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. A woman I had met at a bar worked the late shift there and maybe, just maybe she'd be working and I could see her and touch base and maybe set something up for another day. I needed gas as well so it wouldn't be a fruitless task if she wasn't there, besides she had a boyfriend and I was sort of shooting in the dark with this idea but you never know. In fact, it may work out better for me if she still, indeed had her current beau. Boredom works wonders sometimes, when the time is right.
Pulling in I see her behind the counter and tap my dash as if knocking on wood and pull up to the closest pump so she'll see my car as I stop.
Outside, as I'm pumping my gas, I notice that it seems hot under the lights, and wonder if what I'm doing is right. As if of a sudden, I'm having a moment of clarity. A moral flash that usually only comes late at night as I lay in bed with a woman I had just met hours before. I do have them, moments of clarity, or moral minutes or even seconds. I have become somewhat of a predator as of late and for whatever reason seek out those in trouble and somehow find comfort in my triumphs.The notches in my bedpost signify some sort of right of passage, although I have really have no idea where it is I am trying get with all of this bullshit, but something drives me to this excess. And, while I must admit that, the pain sometimes, in the middle of the night, drives me to sitting in the living room at five in the morning listening to my c.d.player repeat the same songs over and over, I find some sort of perverse pleasure in it all. And, as a friend said to me recently, as we spoke of sick and unnatural sex acts performed by others onto others, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with feelin' good." I couldn't agree more. Maybe one day when the pain starts to outweigh the feeling good I'll straighten up, and maybe in a way I wish that day were closer, but for now, I'm all for feeling good and I'll take the pain in the middle of the night. Because sometimes, it's okay to listen to the same song over and over and over again.
Inside, as I get set to pay the clerk behind the counter, I notice that she has moved to the back of the store and is looking at me. I wave and as I do she waves and calls me to come over after I've paid.
"Hi"
"Hi. I haven't seen you around for a while," she says as she slaps price tags on the top of pop tart boxes. " I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see or hear from you again."
"I've been keeping a bit of a low profile lately."
"Why's that? Too much pressure from the ladies?"
"Never too much pressure."
"Right." She says throwing a box of blueberry flavored pop tarts up on the shelf.
"Anyway, I was just on my way downtown and thought I'd drop in and say hi. So, hi. "
Looking at her I realized I had done the wrong thing and decided I had better get the hell out of there, and fast.
"So, I should get going, downtown."
"Meeting someone?"
"Don't think so."
"Don't think so? What the hell does that mean?"
"Well, I may run into someone but..."
"I'm sure you will."
"I'll see ya."
Leaving it felt as if her eyes were burning a hole in the back of my head and, for a second, thought about turning around and looking at her but decided to just let it be. But then as I grabbed the handle of the door and started to push on it I thought I heard the word 'prick' come from the back of the store and looked back to where she was but she was gone. Glancing over at the cash counter I noticed one of the cashiers looking back to where she was standing as well, as if he had heard it as well. Then as if on cue he turned to me and shrugged, I decided then that it was better that I get my gas from another station from now on.


fifteen...

Maybe I'm only good at keeping ideas together for short periods of time. Somewhat like my short attention span in high school. Maybe not even as long as that. This whole novel thing seems to be a little out of my league, it seems out of my hands, as if it's getting away on me. I have friends who write novels, not me. What an insult to them, calling myself a writer, not that I have actually told anyone that I am one. Nope, I have never really called myself a writer, at least not to their collective faces. Michael and Dave they're writers. With actual books published. Shit, Michael had a movie made out of one of his books. I just document what I see, theirs is or are much more based on fictional accounts, I know that or that's how it seems. God, I gotta keep all this straight. While I started out getting all this life experience in order to write this book I have now begun to obsess about it and am living, to a certain extent what I'm writing about. But I suppose that's the point, but will I throw away all of these things I have acquired for the story once it's all done or will they all stay with me? Time is flying along and what started out as a work of fiction, loosely based on real events has become a lifestyle unto itself. And I know some people are worried. Maybe not terribly worried but enough that they call me and ask a few questions and then seem to leave satisfied with the answers I give them about what I’m doing.
Shit, I've got to get it together. Weeks are turning into months and thousands of dollars in the bank turning into less and less day by day. I, also, haven't been to bed before four in the morning for what seems like a lifetime. Okay a few weeks at the very least. And as much as I love late night T.V. it seems that the whole joy of late night viewing has been erased by the infomercial. No more Hawaii Five-0, Waltons, Nothing. And when I come home at night all jacked up the last thing I want is an hour of Thighmaster info.
Time will tell if all of this is alright and whether or not it's all for the better, or worse yet, for the worse. I am keeping track though, I've got it all down, somewhere. I'm finding it easiest to write when I come home, before I go to sleep, when I'm slightly stoned or drunk or both. I'm not used to it yet, the drunkenness, what certain things will do to me, how I'll feel later. I haven’t acquired an internal yardstick yet as to what some of these things will do to me. I don't want to lose any of this, even if some of it's a blur to me. Maybe that's better in the long run, that I don't really remember it with exact clarity, the haze could work to my advantage, in making fiction of reality, or fiction a reality. Shit, I've got to get it together. Time will tell, time will tell. I know it.

sixteen.....

Storybook romance part two...

The a.m. Radio in my car fades in and out at the best of times and tonight is no different. As I turn left off of Broadway and head towards the Granville Street Bridge I punch in a station and listen as it begins to come in with more strength as I hit the bridge. A.M. means I only get the so-called hits teenage oriented stations, if it's music that I want. The names mean nothing to me, but I've heard many of the songs before, it's sort of like listening to the music video channels at home but without all the visuals. Every once in a while I hear something that reminds me of high school, when they dip into their oldies file, the gold, so to speak. I remember, once, calling into request a song before I went out so that I may hear it on the radio as I was driving around aimlessly but they told me they'd have to go and look for it down where they kept the ‘gold’. The song was only a few years old but this statement made me feel older than I could ever really be. The music tonight made me feel like an old man looking through the fence at a school yard at the young schoolgirls as they played kickball and hopscotch. I had no idea why I kept listening to it, or feeling the way I did about it, but I knew that I liked it. And that it was somehow wrong.
As I exited the bridge the station faded off as well and I felt something pit itself against my insides. A feeling that made me think I should just head home, as if another moment of clarity was driving me backward. Down Seymour street I went, past Luv-a-Fair and it's line-up of suburban ninety's new wavers', onto Seymour Billiards and it's drug dealing back end and the men playing pool but calling it golf. At the light at Robson and Seymour couples pass in front of my car and as they pass I can't help but think of them having sex and how they may look naked. And what goes on when they're alone with each other and how they treat each other when they're together. And the backstabbing when they're not together, the cheating, the infidelity, the lying and deceit. It's never perfect, can't be, even when you think it is. Imperfection makes me think of Lisa. She held my hand more times than I can ever remember and told me that she loved me and that she'd never ever go away. That I was the only one when I really wasn’t. It's okay though. Just know that's where you stand. You can only ever do the best you can do. In the end you're the only one you'll ever have to answer to. No one breaks your heart, no one steals your girlfriend or boyfriend, somehow you do it to yourself. I did it to myself, she didn't do it to me.
Just as the light changes a young woman runs up to my car and taps on my window asking me to open it. She's lost, just got in from Montreal and someone stole all her money and now she's just trying to get back to Montreal so she needs some money to help her out. Without a word I hand her a smoke and roll up my window and head down towards the Railway Club at Dunsmiur Street.
Pulling into the alley behind the Railway Club I wonder if I should even go in. If maybe, for once I should trust my gut and just go home, or maybe just somewhere else. Nights like these should be left alone, another night maybe, but tonight something's bound to go wrong. Out of the alley I pull onto Dunsmiur Street and park directly across from the bar and turn off the engine.
The inside of my car smells of something I can't quite place but know it must have something to do with the road trip I just took down to Washington state. Something that I ate that slipped up under the seat and was now taking on a life of it's own. Leaning across my seat I look up to the windows of the bar and notice a beautiful woman sitting in the window along with some friends. Harder to get to or at when they're with friends, but not impossible. From my vantage point I can also see the bartender working tonight, a young woman with striking features and red hair down to her shoulders. I know her, rather, I knew her. Years ago. We still say hi and exchange pleasantries but that's about it. She knows me. Knows my charm, my style. If any.