Darcy88
06-02-2012, 01:47 AM
Avid: A Tale of Love and Growing Up.
My name is Joshua Stanton. I am a young man twenty-five years old. I call the Cowichan Valley, on Vancouver Island, my home. And what a beautiful home it is
Alana was a young woman pure and passionate. Hair tinted lusty red; eyes colored rich brown; body buxom; nails delicately sharp; but for her very human fragility Id have called her a goddess and meant it most literally. To say her name now puts on me a lightness and a weight, a regret and satisfaction, a loss and a joy. I miss her but I miss also those who came after. The sweet time we shared was just that a time, a unit bounded, not forever, something fated to be born and destined to die. And it did. Gone but for these few paltry droplets I lick now from the bottom of memorys deep well. I loved her. I loved them all but each was special and thus was she. Those eyes, that hair, like a bonfire on the bank of a river of liquid chocolate. Saccharine memory!
..
Fred sat on the bench outside the Greyhound station. He rolled a cigarette meditatively with his dark-stained carpenters hands. His eyes were full of calm intensity. Lividly low, subtly strong, his thin frame a mellow wire seated in the dim evening light.
Brent was a bright-faced young man conservative in speech, outlook and dress. Sure of himself, peninsular, of the herd but at its head. Pious, happy, set smooth and strong upon his path. He did not smoke. A Baptist. Judged, but like a good Christian kept his judgments to himself. He was righteous in the realistic sense of the word. The true sense. He looked at me like I was some dangerous novelty, a big wave threatening to send his way a little salty spray.
The bus was empty but for us three. A cavern black except for the lights, the lamps and neons and moonbeams, the yellows and reds and jades and whites all flickering and flashing organic electric.
We talked. On the bus, at the ferry station, on the boat, afterwards back on the bus, all the way to my destination the glorious and grisly down-town of Vancouver. Sitting on the blue ferry seats, not like the strangers we were but instead like best friends. Myself dipping plain whole wheat bread into a jar of peanut butter, Fred eating his grandmothers homemade rooster stew, and Brent chowing down on a chicken burger and fries from the onboard White Spot. His burger looked so good I went and got one for myself once the jar of peanut butter had been reduced to the point where each dip I made resulted with my fingers surfacing mucky with the brown stuff.
Corrines black hair was a flag raised to alert my passion and desire, my masculine inner fire. Just recalling her, thinking of her, dreaming of her now as I write this brings bad vividly that startlingly dark-braided mass of subtle beauty. I love all womens hair but hers was special, more special than most. When I asked her to let it down it was a curtain opening unto a tenebrous vision both resplendent and terrifying. Her hair terrified me for it had such power. She let it down and I was owned. Utterly owned. Still am. Owned by all of them but by her a great deal. Corrine the jazzy babe.
Her and I walking down 9th street during rush hour. A pink lily lying lonely on the wet grey concrete. It was out of place amidst the general minutiae of ground litter, the butts and wrappers and the rest. I picked it up, got down on one knee and offered it to her. She blushed. What are you doing? She said angrily, embarrassed a great deal by the scene I had just stuck her in. A young man on one knee on the towns main street offering a pink flower to a beautiful young woman. I thought nothing was wrong with it. I see now how crazy it was. But, you know what? Id do it again. The exact same way.
Afterwards we stuck that lily in a hedge and took a picture. I still have it. I look at it from time to time and remember Corrine. Corrine who I love and miss.
.
Alana again. I cant stop the freight-train that is my memory of her from smashing apart the veil of indifference Ive feebly crafted and drawn up to protect myself from the black hole of hurt that our relationship became. The mere memory of it plays with my tear ducts and shivers my bones. The good times and the bad. Making love to Alana was exhilarating as free-fall and gentle as putting on wool gloves. Our two bodies melted into one during the act, like rivulets of flesh pairing, pooling, sweetly commingling. Eyes captivated, held in place by something stronger than concrete. Her milky freckly body was all mine and I played upon it as a child plays upon a green field. Baseball. Bubble-gum kisses; fingers clasped, deep-fried in sweat; and burgers, two round beefy patties juicy and big as wet inflated inner tubes. Salt. Fat. Sex. Sex. Sex. Human smells invigoratingly fresh and potent. Bathing together in molten gold. Heat and hot heat and hotter heat and hottest heat. Concentrated in crying chaos. Mmmmm. Mmmm. Pressure, such pressure on the cork. Fizzz like a team of horses behind a gate. Waiting. Holding back. Struggling. Grrrrrrr. Mmmmm. Oh. From a whales blowhole rockets up into the open air a siren singing an aria for the listening pleasure of all across the world, pole to pole, end to end. I die. I collapse. Lungs, limbs, hands, all. She becomes my coffin. On her and in her I lie, like a hard diamond in its soft case. I belong. Nowhere else. Nowhere. Only here. Only her. Alana.
Alana could cook. I mean she could really cook. Almost as good as my grandmother and that is saying a lot. The lasagna she made put any lasagna Id ever had to shame. The spices she used. Secret recipe. Man oh man how I miss the lasagna she made.
She wasnt a cook, she was an alchemist. A magician. You can tell how much I loved her. I did not love her for her cooking. I loved her cooking because it was fantastic. I loved her cooking because I loved her.
Drinking straight Weisers Deluxe by firelight on the beach. Arm wrapped around Ashley, a girl visiting from Vancouver. My buddy Andy set us up. She was staying with her family in a cabin barely a stones throw from this spot, this sizzling spot all dripping with whiskey and simmering with hotly expected sex. Drink, drink she orders, reaching with her small white hand to tilt the bottle into my salivating open mouth. Arm, strong arm, weightlifting arm around her. You lift weights she purrs. Oh so you noticed I reply cockily. Mmmm. Yeah. Her eyes encase me. My jeans become tight, uncomfortable. I want her. Every part of me spun by the magnetic pull of her sexy young body. Lust. I drink more. Im awkward, shy. Allured and afraid, running at full stop with the finish line a step in front of me. We both take a pinch of skoll and I boldly rest my hand on her thigh. I want to take her then and there, by the firelight, on the beach, parents only a stones throw away asleep. Or perhaps not asleep. Instead I wake up the next morning, pants still on, beside the fire. My arms is discomfited. I pull off it a blob of what seems like gum but is actually my skin. I blacked out next to the fire and at some point was actually in it. I am burnt. She is gone. I call out her name. Ashley! Ashley! I am still drunk. I pass out again. I awaken a time later and wander over to her cabin. It looks deserted though I know theyre inside. I say to hell with it and walk home. Go to the walk in clinic later on, get bandaged up. For a week I am known at school by the noble epithet burn-victim.
Beatrice was another. My love for her came like lightning and hung around like cancer. I wrote her a love letter. Learned calligraphy for the occasion. And this after wed had but a few short and trivial conversations. I saw her as an orchid in a bed of ash, a lovely fragile little thing beset by howling dark. I wanted to save her and thought that by saving her I could save myself. Charity with a selfish tint. And lust. Of course lust. Have I ever loved without lusting? I dont know. I hope so. Hope that if I have not yet that I someday can. Someday. Now. Please God. Please. Im tired of being lonely. Tired of taking sharks for dolphins, poisons for nutrients, dangers for salves. My love of Alice became a tumor which resisted all attempts to cure. Even distance, even time. For a time, a short time, in my mind, we were king and queen, our whispers amounting to edicts, our embraces conquests. I thought she was with me but I was alone. In the heraldic universe I was a faint star crying out to others just as faint and alone, stymied by the depth and the dark and the indifference of my own pitifully self-centered and illusory sufferings.
. Love and loss, wind and fire, silence and song. Young but growing up. Life a circle going around and expanding out. Books. Books. History. Antony, Leonidas, Darius, Rhamses, the whole glory-sodden host of great men doing great things before a great audience which included, thousands of years after, myself. Fiction. R.L Stine. John Grisham. Arthur C Clarke. Kipling. Ursula K Le Guin. Running through worlds vast and unreal, the authors imaginations melting into mine, combining to form a jungle gym boundless both in terms of fun and of breadth.
.
Grunge. I was three years old when Nevermind came out, six when Cobain flew to heaven, escaping this terrestrial hell, but that didnt matter. Nirvana was in concert wherever I went and happened to be. And metal. Slayer cranked on my headphones, spinning in my disc-man as I slouched dazed and confused through my middle school, an oddly twisted log adrift in that twitching sea of peers, godless among the godless in those godless unhallowed halls. Listening to Megadeth, Pantera, Metallica. My eyes teary with blood. Pretending to be high during the infrequent times when I was not, that being easier than explaining the truth of my condition, my depression. Was the black cloud above my head really not visible to them? They couldnt see my suffering. I couldnt see theirs. And so we suffered on and on and on, the continent of humanity blown by the atomic blast of overactive unstable ego into infinite individual pieces, fragments, smithereens.
My bed-room at that time. Christmas lights, album art, my own wild pastel creations, a black light, all comprising a blinking collage of a room with an atmosphere piquant to the bone and to the roof, all up and all down, with cool. A jazzy room. A fine place to smoke weed and watch movies and play Sega Genesis.
Out at Wolf Lake drinking Lucky Lager, smoking Captain Black cigars, firing my buddy Keiths homemade pistol across the murky water and into the line of thin dead firs which ringed that desolate place. The leavings left by the loggers, by Keiths dad and the dads of half the guys I knew. Keiths dad was off slaying cedars and pines and firs while Keith was busy at work in his workshop, welding and cranking and polishing, making a gun. The whistle and crack of that crude armament reverberated through the air, affrighting birds, perplexing bears, thrilling Keith and I. He guffawed like a god nonchalantly smiting one petty and unrighteous. Play. A toy. A decade younger and wed have been having a blast with a cap gun instead.
The lake water was undrinkable and wed not brought any clean stuff with us. Only beer and cigars and a pistol and ourselves, two buds standing side by side before those dead firs and that noxious lake. Two teens at play in the ruins of a gone world. Wreckage all around, lit up unbecomingly by the bright light of early afternoon. And by the light within. Through settings ugly, moods dark, times tortuous . through depression, through being depraved and deprived, through wanting death as one wants a sweet ripe apple through it all there is a light, often behind a black veil, seemingly extinguished but still there, always there, no matter what. A light of full spectrum. A light of hope, of strength, of fortitude, of change. A light of life.
My dog Roadie. Bears the weight of my loneliness. My best friend. Black, specked with brown. Half lab, other half unknown. Possibly greyhound. Fast as a bus. A little skittish at times but overall a damn fine pet. I sleep with him at night. In my bed. The first few nights he was shy since he is used to sleeping with my mother. But I brought him into my apartment and petted him and spoke to him and made him feel at home in there. He used to hate the apartment. Id call him in and hed run in the opposite direction. Now he is comfortable in there. Roadie and I, a couple hairy males, one a little harrier than the other, enjoying the Cowichan nights, the moon and the wind and the shadows. Take him to the lake, watch him play with the water in the sunlight among the bleached driftwood and multifariously colored pebbles. A child. My child. My dog. My best friend.
.
Fall and Winter of 2010 spent five straight months on my mothers property. I mean I did not leave. Did not even walk to the end of the driveway. I was a monk grappling with manhood and suicide. A black cloud was overhead and in my head. On my mothers elliptical machine sweating and panting to broadcasts of the Olympics. Online chat rooms. Happy moods. Twilight all four books. Life and death like moon and sun both so brightly dark, so angrily awful, in my internal sky. Cigarettes. A pouch of rolling tobacco every couple days. Dad dropping by once a week to give me money and express his concern, show his terror at his sons severely odd and worrisome state. Rolling my butts and smoking them and considering it no less a smoke. My mother so worried and so supportive. Suicidal ideation never reaching the stage of gesture. Dreams of being an actor. Moving to Vancouver. Working a day job and taking classes at night. Stand up comedy perhaps too. Dreams, dreams, dreams. Stars guiding me. A little light in the distance. Lanterns. Phaeton. Bipolar. Adhd. Canada wins gold! And again, and again, and again! Domination. My heart touched, my pride fanned. Patriotic moods. The beauty of my province, my country. My monk-like acuity lending greater intensity to all things brought to my attention. A smoke. A couple fried eggs. Rice and veggies. A gorgeous Columbian girl met online. She banished most of the shadow. She pierced my heart and I fell in love with her. I love her still, two years later. I see her face and it owns entirely my heart, my body and my soul. Angela. A pious beauty who loved and feared God and who brightened the circle around her by the luminosity of her strong faith and tender ways. She helped bring me to God. It was not easy, for her or for myself. Superficially she was a marvel. Long black hair, big eyes and a body so small it seemed ill-equipped to bear the load of her prodigious heart. I loved her. I love her still. She is amazing. She is the best. Better than the best and all the rest. Angela. My Columbian sweetheart who I regretfully lost because I did not man up.
.
Happy go lucky in a pit of despair. Suicide a pendulum making its terribly threatening sweep. Negative thoughts like rats nibbling at me, their feast. A rope. My mothers shed. Its strong rafters built by my master craftsman dad. Strong enough. Definitely.
Retardation and genius co-existent in my personality. Saying and doing such paradoxically smart and stupid ****. Corrine. A beautiful half Japanese who worked at the cafι where I and my friends would hang out, talk music and movies and books. I told her to let her hair down and she did and that was it. She was well- rounded, into art, music, hard work, literature. Loved John Lennon to bits. I learned much from her. My understanding of life and love was by my experience with her greatly furthered along.
At this time I began training kickboxing. A driver called me an *******, like a coward from behind the safety of his glass and metal shield. Went that very day and signed up. Kicking became another of my obsessions. Low kicks, high kicks, kicks to shins and heads. The knee is vulnerable. As are the eyes, the groin, the neck. I am not a tough guy but I would not want to mess with me. Just saying.
As has already been said, I have had several loves, deep passionate affairs of the heart, all of which Ill live and feel and hurt over forever. But none so encompass me in terms of time and feeling as that which I had with Miranda. From childhood to manhood I had and continue to have strong feelings for her. She should have been the one, was the one, is the one, though, and it pains me to say it, fate has intervened. Dastardly fate has put wedge after wedge of thwarting circumstance after thwarting circumstance between us. I have cast away all hope. I beat off any descending hope for her and I, for us, with a stick of stubborn frustration. Her blondness, her small stature, her sheer physical perfection combined with a mind both inquisitive and adventurous. She should be mine. Shes not. She wont be. Its over. Was it ever on? Yes, there was a time But now with sad indifference I no longer care. Fate plundered us of us, took her from my life and my arms. And I am happy for her. Living in a small town at the Islands Western extremity, working, adventuring, loving a man who stands as my equal if not my better, a photographer, a woodsman, a man, a real hot-blooded robust young man with more to offer her than I. My hands are off. I leave her in his hands. Her choice, not mine. And I respect it. I respect her, him, and, above all, I respect myself. Besides, theres always the rope.
There are things we have to do. Like rusty hooked nails they stick out from ourselves, our lives, and must be pulled out with a crowbar and much pain, much grief. Breaking up with someone is one such thing. I did not have to do it for much of my life. A hermits grace. But I have had to do it recently and let me tell you, as you already know, it stings. Ouch, to me and to her, to them. Its like taking a suffering pet to the vet for their last ever visit. You have to say goodbye. You have to look them in the eye, say the words to them. Sometimes you have to cry. Often I have to cry. A part of you and them dies and yet lives on, turns from shadow to light, day to night.
Lost in the flushing folds of Alanas flaring red hair. Lost in it like a kid in a fort. Our bed, the pillows and blankets, matching burgundy down quilt. Red candle on the bedside table adding the features of flame and scent. Her strident moans and serene screams rippling the orange striped wall-paper of our inferno. My pleasure corked, contained, silent vibrant as jellybeans in a jar. Books lying plenteously around. Books propped up, half open, dog eared, flung. Ovid. Virgil. Nora Roberts. Stephenie Meyer. Thucydides. Books of art, of El Greco and Caravaggio and Raphael. Donne. Auden. Intensity of word and sense. We two poems cut and pasted into one. Our two love-maddened selves frothing in that rockin washing machine of a room. Sex sounds our soundtrack. Stimulation. She my heroin and I hers. Our love a virus we gladly caught and shared. My hypodermic appendage. Her typically bourgeois home turned by our tempest of passion into a seedy vice-strewn alley way littered with used condoms and empty cans. Passion harsher than rape and murder. Frenzy. Cyclone without and within. And then after. After . a calm respite. The field tilled, the orchard picked, the panting sweating workers reclining in the low light of late day to smoke and stare and bull****. Recovery. Pick up the pieces theyd just picked. That wed just picked. Oh I loved Alana. And that was us. That passion, that crazed disorder of fermented feeling. That affair which was a piggy back ride on the tip of a sword. It was all ours. Us. All us. No regrets. At least not on my part.
.
Doing a little boxing outside the ferry station. I am handsome. So Im told. I have a way with people. A way to and away from them. So when I box randomly in plain view and incorrect context jabbing, ducking, weaving all fast as a scurrying goat people stare but do not let me catch them, comment but do not let me hear them. They dance around it. Joshua Stanton, man of insanity, of intensity, of mystery. Eyes like oil wells. In public I act like Im a matador minus my bull. Or maybe not minus him. Perhaps in my quixotic imagination one stands and stomps by my side. One I fight or ride. Playfully or dangerously nonchalantly or to the death. You cant really know, can you? My thoughts are mine. I decide which is and which isnt revealed from behind the theatre curtain which hangs dark and mysterious before me like a fog at times thick and others thin.
Fighting and writing. Socializing too. Monking it up as well. The manic deranged character of myself. Soul of shattering dynamite but partaking also of the nature of incense. Mercurial. The chemistry lab that is my brain with its wowing display of Chinese fireworks and trite fourth grade baking soda volcano. Up and down, then each way there and back around. A paper airplane. Each thought a marathon runner individually adding up to a street-swamping throng.
..
I broke Alanas heart. And she broke mine. That night when I proposed could not have been more ideal. A camera ought to have been running. Its a gross injustice to all future generations that it remains in its entirety alive only in her memory and in mine, aside from a few partial snippets caught by the odd passerby. That night. Her approaching me from the west, her majestic red hair visible from way off. Meeting on a bench next a riverbank. She had no idea. No idea Id manically run around town borrowing money, visiting pawn shops and jewelers and big box stores until I found a ring that cost the exact contents of my bank account and all I could raise in those three prior hours. No idea that stuck in my pocket in a little white box was the diamond which was to mean so much to her and I. For that night and a few more after. Wed known each other only a month. I was in right and wrong mind. I knew then that she was the one. I know now she wasnt. But she was the one. Then. For that night, that month. I hugged her, kissed her, embraced her so we were like two irons melting together in a forge of love. Both of us swept up in raging romance by the river in the descending twilight. Her red hair lit a fire in me and about me as it always did. I was not nervous. I was in a state of grace. I was certain. More certain than Id ever been of anything and ever will be of anything again. I joked cruelly before doing the deed. Steered the conversation to marriage. As much as we knew, and we knew a lot, we still barely knew each other. What do you think of marriage? I coyly asked. Silent eyes of fiery passion reigned on her side. Well I Interruption. I dont believe in it I said with straight face and strongly unmoving stare. The hot air balloon shed been riding high through the sky burst that moment and she plummeted down through earth and into her own hell of despondent shock. All in an instant. Then I got down on one knee. Like a firefighter I bent low in an attempt to put out the blaze, to tame the fire in her, have her be mine, all mine. Steam, sauna-like rather than an uncontrolled blaze. Greater shock. Down past hell through to some otherworldly place of light and dark and mystery where resides the essence of the human heart. The ring shot point blank from my colt 45 hand into her vulnerably tender heart. Two minutes which felt like two hours passed by before she could breathe. Five before she could speak. Meanwhile I remained still, knee on ground, manning my dark eyes like two cannon aimed direct at her romantic core. Yes! she finally screamed, enthusiastic and sweet. We embraced. Two weeks later it was over and we have not spoken since.
..
Im a hot-blooded hillbilly who walks into a dusky smelly bar like the Thorogood or Wait or Stones blasting on the big speakers is my very own theme song. I fill the place charismatically expansive. I own every woman and anger every guy. I dance like I fight and do both quite well. And people know. They can tell, they can see me. Every feature, every gesture, every glance ..all bright-beaming neons reading look at me, love me, fear me. I am it. Im why youre here. Its not the alcohol. Its me. My glorious shadowy shine. Hairy chest flaring like a cobra-hood from out of my half-unbuttoned blue plaid shirt. Beer by the bottle. A dozen and no noticeable effect. Enter sober, exit smashed, at both ends feeling exactly the same. A rollercoaster ride is nothing if its your life.
.
Staring into a mirror for twenty straight minutes hating my body, despising my face. Anorexic dysmorphic. Weighing one hundred forty pounds, standing nearly six foot and still feeling big and bloated, looking to myself repulsively fat.
Old brown cushion tied with a frayed yellow rope to an old cherry tree out back. Basket ball punctured, run through with a telephone cord and tied to a branched. A hockey bag crammed full of blankets and clothes. A poor starving boxers training equipment. Neighbors weirded out and afraid. Whats the crazy bastard up to now? Shirtless in my flashy red and yellow and blue shorts hitting my half-deflated branch-bound basketball, my hockey bag and my couch cushion. The neighbors children never come out to play when Im out there.
..
A kick is an elegant thing. A good kick cuts through the air razor-like as a falcons wing. Streamlined. I weigh 165 pounds and have almost no body-fact. Fitness-obsessed to the point of anorexia. My shins are sharply defined. Butchers knives. The coordinated action of each individual muscle and tendon in my body is like a large group of synchronized swimmers inside an Olympic pool. Elegant and coordinated, like I said. Leg swung like a baseball bat or an axe. Fast. The steel grill of a rushing train. Ive never had to use my martial arts skills on anyone. Fortunately.
.
Discursive inner dialogue black and unending. Anxiety. Depression. Wondering why and why and forever why?
.. .
Miranda and me at Miracle Beach. Grade six. Her in a white one piece, body just developing. Blonde hair in the wind a blustering cascade of sensual wonder. Me bony in my red swim trunks. Nervous. In love. Butterflies, a whole cloud in our stomachs. Another girl came up to me, a beautiful brunette a year older named Loren. Miranda gave her dagger-eyes and said nothing. I will never forget the look in her eyes. She and I never even kissed. Ever.
Had a full container of fried rice chucked at me from the window of a big moving black Chevy truck when I was walking home from work one day. Embarrassment. Anger. Wounded pride. I wanted to stomp their faces but instead I just kept walking. Hurt. I wanted to cry but would not allow myself. I used to be a redneck, a hillbilly. Incidents like that make me ashamed of who I once was.
.
Miranda again. Miranda endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. Running around the elementary school chasing each other playfully. Like Spartan youth panting, smiling, delighting in the rush of being young and in love. It wasnt a crush. It was love. Love deep and lasting. Meaningful. Look at me now. Ten years later still remembering with spikes of joy and pangs of regret. I cry often over her. Sometimes months go by and she exists only subliminally. But she is always there. Every window is draped with her blonde hair. Hung up almost hallucinatory. What a girl. The girl. The one. Brought home a class photo, grade five. My father seized it, looked it over, stuck his thumb on her and said the future mother of my grandchildren.
.. ..
Corrine was the kind of girl you could just talk to. On and on and on and never get bored or skip a beat. Wise, a trove and fount and bomb-burst of interesting snippets and sayings and soliloquies. Loved to read, not just a love professed but one expressed. A shelf at her house adorned with classics. With Nietzsche and Homer and Whitman to name a few. A jazzy damsel who I loved and still do.
Walking around Vancouver. Walked from down-town to UBC to Richmond all in under 24 hours. I had only been to Vancouver a few times before. Never alone. This was the first time Id been there by myself, or any large city for that matter. A child. A 25 year old child alone in the big city for the first time. My shoes could not take it. Left my hiking boots at my aunts place in Nanaimo. Walking around Van manically in broken-soled old shoes, blown away by the sights and sounds, by the teeming chaos of rich and poor, up and down, sky-scrapers and alley-ways. People pissing in the street. Pizza. Such contrast of profligacy with poverty. An experience. My experience in Vancouver.
Under a street light on a deserted stretch of mountain highway at 145 AM surrounded by four black bears. Terrified. Hollering for help, help, help. Crying out to God, to my mother, to anyone within range. Not knowing where I am. Out of food, water, cigarettes. Knifeless. Only my wallet and a lighter. Pockets packed full of branches and straw to temper the horrid shivers. There was snow on the ground and lots of it. Tried to start a fire an hour earlier but to no avail. Ground too wet, everything soaked in condensation. A bitter wind blowing hard at me.
Bears and wind and hunger and thirst. A caveman, a savage, beast. That was me on the highway, beneath that street-light in the middle of that awful lonely night.
On the ferry, nervous, shy, on it at the busiest time. People, people, people. Phones, cameras, so much. Me running around panicking like an idiot, like one by a continuous stream of thunderbolts struck. I didnt want to be there but had to be in order to get where I was going, which was, anywhere. That impulse a young man gets to discover and explore, see lands hes never before seen. That overwhelming desire for novelty, for new people, places, things. What man has not felt it? I have yet to meet one. I think it is something common to all us men. Its part of our nature, its in our blood. Its the magnetism which pulls us practically against our wills from one pole, one job, one hobby, one passion to another and then another after that. Thus rolls the stone of manhood, thus ticks the clock of youth.
..
Migraine. Head hurting so bad it feels like its a melon being smashed and then reformed and then smashed again repeatedly by the hammer of Thor. My eyes two pain-pulsating orbs being hit by lights that impact like bolts of lightning and twenty-two caliber shells. I go to the bathroom, turn out the lights, submerge my head and pray for the agony to just go away. Eventually it does. Usually. After a few hours of torment, ones so bad theyre like taking a time-out seated on a chair in hell. Neurons rending, axons splitting, entire brain a battlefield bestrewn with dead and dying. That is what a migraine feels like.
Fred and I freaking Brent out. Hey lets take him up to the outer deck and toss him over. Yeah, he looks rich. Maybe we could ransom him. Im packing. Are you? Yeah man, always. Whispers we knew Brent could hear. Then we chuckled but in a deranged upsetting way which left the matter of whether it was a joke or not rather open. Brent laughed too. His lips lifted, his lungs emitted a sound. But for a split second I saw fear in his eyes. Fear of us, fear of the unknown. He was a good guy Brent. I hope I see him again.
Hitch-hiking on a winding mountain pass. Yeah, for real. Nowhere for the cars to stop but still I stuck out my thumb like I was stabbing at them, trying to impel myself through the windshield and take hold of the wheel myself. Grunting, trying desperately to make it to the next town. Road signs sparse and I was without a map. Thought for a few hours I was North when really I had headed East. Had gotten on a bus and for five hours straight deeply slept. Woke up to the bus driver alerting me to that fact that wed reached my stop. It wasnt as Id imagined it at the bus station a few hundred kilometers back. Eleven oclock at night in a place which wasnt a town but instead a mere grouping of houses centered around a single gas station which was at that time closed. I prowled around the dark for a while before finding a place in the bush just off the highway suitable enough to crash. I had lost my luggage on the ferry. All I had was half a packet of cigarettes, my wallet and the clothes on my back.
..
Alana was a sweety. She cared about me and promised shed never hurt and never forget about me. I believe her. As much as we went through, as much pain as we caused each other, as many tears and words as fell sadly and angrily between us, I believe her. And I will do the same. Ill never hurt her. Ill never forget.
Im scared of the dark. Really, it rattles me, inside and out. Not knowing whats down the alley, whats in those bushes, whats that sound, that moving thing going that way or coming this. Wind shaking street signs, creatures crawling, leaves falling, such things, so beautiful when visible in the light of day prove terrifying when noticed at night.
A traveler most stupid am I. Taking money out of atms like Im picking apples out of a tree. Buying tickets to places I never heard of let alone been. Not following procedure, walking around like a child without his parents, callow, foolish, looking and acting like a stray. Radiohead cranked on my headphones while stomping down dark-lit alleyways in the middle of the night. Skipping along train-tracks never checking over my shoulder. Bolting across busy highways, angering and affrighting motorists. An adrenaline junkie everywhere and every way getting my fix.
-
I tell Roadie to lie down on a mat at the foot of my bed but he just puts his head down on the edge of the bed and looks at me with eyes so softly imploring I melt and invite him in. He does not smell, he does not shed. Hes a good dog. I trust him. He is my best friend. At the beach he will charge the waters, bolt at them, but the curl of a big wave always sends him scurrying back. He is a little timid. A leave falling out of nowhere can give him a scare. Hes domesticated, civilized. Still has sharp teeth but no use for them. His life is easy, a breeze. And I like that. I like looking at him and partaking of his sense of ease. Letting it wash over me like a smooth cool mist making me less knotted and tense. Its like adding a splash of white to a painting, a calming milky dab here and there, bringing the lines together, adding an aura of peace, inner peace.
.
All I want is to say sorry to them. To Alana and Corrrine and Beatrice and Miranda. Say sorry to them all from the bottom of my heart. Get down on my knees and pour tears upon the hard ground at their feet. Sorry for what? For everything, everything, everything. Every mean expression verbal or facial. Every promise made and then broken. I want to apologize but I wont because its best that I just leave them alone. Let them be. By leaving them be I let myself be and that is best. For me, for them.
Peace.
My name is Joshua Stanton. I am a young man twenty-five years old. I call the Cowichan Valley, on Vancouver Island, my home. And what a beautiful home it is
Alana was a young woman pure and passionate. Hair tinted lusty red; eyes colored rich brown; body buxom; nails delicately sharp; but for her very human fragility Id have called her a goddess and meant it most literally. To say her name now puts on me a lightness and a weight, a regret and satisfaction, a loss and a joy. I miss her but I miss also those who came after. The sweet time we shared was just that a time, a unit bounded, not forever, something fated to be born and destined to die. And it did. Gone but for these few paltry droplets I lick now from the bottom of memorys deep well. I loved her. I loved them all but each was special and thus was she. Those eyes, that hair, like a bonfire on the bank of a river of liquid chocolate. Saccharine memory!
..
Fred sat on the bench outside the Greyhound station. He rolled a cigarette meditatively with his dark-stained carpenters hands. His eyes were full of calm intensity. Lividly low, subtly strong, his thin frame a mellow wire seated in the dim evening light.
Brent was a bright-faced young man conservative in speech, outlook and dress. Sure of himself, peninsular, of the herd but at its head. Pious, happy, set smooth and strong upon his path. He did not smoke. A Baptist. Judged, but like a good Christian kept his judgments to himself. He was righteous in the realistic sense of the word. The true sense. He looked at me like I was some dangerous novelty, a big wave threatening to send his way a little salty spray.
The bus was empty but for us three. A cavern black except for the lights, the lamps and neons and moonbeams, the yellows and reds and jades and whites all flickering and flashing organic electric.
We talked. On the bus, at the ferry station, on the boat, afterwards back on the bus, all the way to my destination the glorious and grisly down-town of Vancouver. Sitting on the blue ferry seats, not like the strangers we were but instead like best friends. Myself dipping plain whole wheat bread into a jar of peanut butter, Fred eating his grandmothers homemade rooster stew, and Brent chowing down on a chicken burger and fries from the onboard White Spot. His burger looked so good I went and got one for myself once the jar of peanut butter had been reduced to the point where each dip I made resulted with my fingers surfacing mucky with the brown stuff.
Corrines black hair was a flag raised to alert my passion and desire, my masculine inner fire. Just recalling her, thinking of her, dreaming of her now as I write this brings bad vividly that startlingly dark-braided mass of subtle beauty. I love all womens hair but hers was special, more special than most. When I asked her to let it down it was a curtain opening unto a tenebrous vision both resplendent and terrifying. Her hair terrified me for it had such power. She let it down and I was owned. Utterly owned. Still am. Owned by all of them but by her a great deal. Corrine the jazzy babe.
Her and I walking down 9th street during rush hour. A pink lily lying lonely on the wet grey concrete. It was out of place amidst the general minutiae of ground litter, the butts and wrappers and the rest. I picked it up, got down on one knee and offered it to her. She blushed. What are you doing? She said angrily, embarrassed a great deal by the scene I had just stuck her in. A young man on one knee on the towns main street offering a pink flower to a beautiful young woman. I thought nothing was wrong with it. I see now how crazy it was. But, you know what? Id do it again. The exact same way.
Afterwards we stuck that lily in a hedge and took a picture. I still have it. I look at it from time to time and remember Corrine. Corrine who I love and miss.
.
Alana again. I cant stop the freight-train that is my memory of her from smashing apart the veil of indifference Ive feebly crafted and drawn up to protect myself from the black hole of hurt that our relationship became. The mere memory of it plays with my tear ducts and shivers my bones. The good times and the bad. Making love to Alana was exhilarating as free-fall and gentle as putting on wool gloves. Our two bodies melted into one during the act, like rivulets of flesh pairing, pooling, sweetly commingling. Eyes captivated, held in place by something stronger than concrete. Her milky freckly body was all mine and I played upon it as a child plays upon a green field. Baseball. Bubble-gum kisses; fingers clasped, deep-fried in sweat; and burgers, two round beefy patties juicy and big as wet inflated inner tubes. Salt. Fat. Sex. Sex. Sex. Human smells invigoratingly fresh and potent. Bathing together in molten gold. Heat and hot heat and hotter heat and hottest heat. Concentrated in crying chaos. Mmmmm. Mmmm. Pressure, such pressure on the cork. Fizzz like a team of horses behind a gate. Waiting. Holding back. Struggling. Grrrrrrr. Mmmmm. Oh. From a whales blowhole rockets up into the open air a siren singing an aria for the listening pleasure of all across the world, pole to pole, end to end. I die. I collapse. Lungs, limbs, hands, all. She becomes my coffin. On her and in her I lie, like a hard diamond in its soft case. I belong. Nowhere else. Nowhere. Only here. Only her. Alana.
Alana could cook. I mean she could really cook. Almost as good as my grandmother and that is saying a lot. The lasagna she made put any lasagna Id ever had to shame. The spices she used. Secret recipe. Man oh man how I miss the lasagna she made.
She wasnt a cook, she was an alchemist. A magician. You can tell how much I loved her. I did not love her for her cooking. I loved her cooking because it was fantastic. I loved her cooking because I loved her.
Drinking straight Weisers Deluxe by firelight on the beach. Arm wrapped around Ashley, a girl visiting from Vancouver. My buddy Andy set us up. She was staying with her family in a cabin barely a stones throw from this spot, this sizzling spot all dripping with whiskey and simmering with hotly expected sex. Drink, drink she orders, reaching with her small white hand to tilt the bottle into my salivating open mouth. Arm, strong arm, weightlifting arm around her. You lift weights she purrs. Oh so you noticed I reply cockily. Mmmm. Yeah. Her eyes encase me. My jeans become tight, uncomfortable. I want her. Every part of me spun by the magnetic pull of her sexy young body. Lust. I drink more. Im awkward, shy. Allured and afraid, running at full stop with the finish line a step in front of me. We both take a pinch of skoll and I boldly rest my hand on her thigh. I want to take her then and there, by the firelight, on the beach, parents only a stones throw away asleep. Or perhaps not asleep. Instead I wake up the next morning, pants still on, beside the fire. My arms is discomfited. I pull off it a blob of what seems like gum but is actually my skin. I blacked out next to the fire and at some point was actually in it. I am burnt. She is gone. I call out her name. Ashley! Ashley! I am still drunk. I pass out again. I awaken a time later and wander over to her cabin. It looks deserted though I know theyre inside. I say to hell with it and walk home. Go to the walk in clinic later on, get bandaged up. For a week I am known at school by the noble epithet burn-victim.
Beatrice was another. My love for her came like lightning and hung around like cancer. I wrote her a love letter. Learned calligraphy for the occasion. And this after wed had but a few short and trivial conversations. I saw her as an orchid in a bed of ash, a lovely fragile little thing beset by howling dark. I wanted to save her and thought that by saving her I could save myself. Charity with a selfish tint. And lust. Of course lust. Have I ever loved without lusting? I dont know. I hope so. Hope that if I have not yet that I someday can. Someday. Now. Please God. Please. Im tired of being lonely. Tired of taking sharks for dolphins, poisons for nutrients, dangers for salves. My love of Alice became a tumor which resisted all attempts to cure. Even distance, even time. For a time, a short time, in my mind, we were king and queen, our whispers amounting to edicts, our embraces conquests. I thought she was with me but I was alone. In the heraldic universe I was a faint star crying out to others just as faint and alone, stymied by the depth and the dark and the indifference of my own pitifully self-centered and illusory sufferings.
. Love and loss, wind and fire, silence and song. Young but growing up. Life a circle going around and expanding out. Books. Books. History. Antony, Leonidas, Darius, Rhamses, the whole glory-sodden host of great men doing great things before a great audience which included, thousands of years after, myself. Fiction. R.L Stine. John Grisham. Arthur C Clarke. Kipling. Ursula K Le Guin. Running through worlds vast and unreal, the authors imaginations melting into mine, combining to form a jungle gym boundless both in terms of fun and of breadth.
.
Grunge. I was three years old when Nevermind came out, six when Cobain flew to heaven, escaping this terrestrial hell, but that didnt matter. Nirvana was in concert wherever I went and happened to be. And metal. Slayer cranked on my headphones, spinning in my disc-man as I slouched dazed and confused through my middle school, an oddly twisted log adrift in that twitching sea of peers, godless among the godless in those godless unhallowed halls. Listening to Megadeth, Pantera, Metallica. My eyes teary with blood. Pretending to be high during the infrequent times when I was not, that being easier than explaining the truth of my condition, my depression. Was the black cloud above my head really not visible to them? They couldnt see my suffering. I couldnt see theirs. And so we suffered on and on and on, the continent of humanity blown by the atomic blast of overactive unstable ego into infinite individual pieces, fragments, smithereens.
My bed-room at that time. Christmas lights, album art, my own wild pastel creations, a black light, all comprising a blinking collage of a room with an atmosphere piquant to the bone and to the roof, all up and all down, with cool. A jazzy room. A fine place to smoke weed and watch movies and play Sega Genesis.
Out at Wolf Lake drinking Lucky Lager, smoking Captain Black cigars, firing my buddy Keiths homemade pistol across the murky water and into the line of thin dead firs which ringed that desolate place. The leavings left by the loggers, by Keiths dad and the dads of half the guys I knew. Keiths dad was off slaying cedars and pines and firs while Keith was busy at work in his workshop, welding and cranking and polishing, making a gun. The whistle and crack of that crude armament reverberated through the air, affrighting birds, perplexing bears, thrilling Keith and I. He guffawed like a god nonchalantly smiting one petty and unrighteous. Play. A toy. A decade younger and wed have been having a blast with a cap gun instead.
The lake water was undrinkable and wed not brought any clean stuff with us. Only beer and cigars and a pistol and ourselves, two buds standing side by side before those dead firs and that noxious lake. Two teens at play in the ruins of a gone world. Wreckage all around, lit up unbecomingly by the bright light of early afternoon. And by the light within. Through settings ugly, moods dark, times tortuous . through depression, through being depraved and deprived, through wanting death as one wants a sweet ripe apple through it all there is a light, often behind a black veil, seemingly extinguished but still there, always there, no matter what. A light of full spectrum. A light of hope, of strength, of fortitude, of change. A light of life.
My dog Roadie. Bears the weight of my loneliness. My best friend. Black, specked with brown. Half lab, other half unknown. Possibly greyhound. Fast as a bus. A little skittish at times but overall a damn fine pet. I sleep with him at night. In my bed. The first few nights he was shy since he is used to sleeping with my mother. But I brought him into my apartment and petted him and spoke to him and made him feel at home in there. He used to hate the apartment. Id call him in and hed run in the opposite direction. Now he is comfortable in there. Roadie and I, a couple hairy males, one a little harrier than the other, enjoying the Cowichan nights, the moon and the wind and the shadows. Take him to the lake, watch him play with the water in the sunlight among the bleached driftwood and multifariously colored pebbles. A child. My child. My dog. My best friend.
.
Fall and Winter of 2010 spent five straight months on my mothers property. I mean I did not leave. Did not even walk to the end of the driveway. I was a monk grappling with manhood and suicide. A black cloud was overhead and in my head. On my mothers elliptical machine sweating and panting to broadcasts of the Olympics. Online chat rooms. Happy moods. Twilight all four books. Life and death like moon and sun both so brightly dark, so angrily awful, in my internal sky. Cigarettes. A pouch of rolling tobacco every couple days. Dad dropping by once a week to give me money and express his concern, show his terror at his sons severely odd and worrisome state. Rolling my butts and smoking them and considering it no less a smoke. My mother so worried and so supportive. Suicidal ideation never reaching the stage of gesture. Dreams of being an actor. Moving to Vancouver. Working a day job and taking classes at night. Stand up comedy perhaps too. Dreams, dreams, dreams. Stars guiding me. A little light in the distance. Lanterns. Phaeton. Bipolar. Adhd. Canada wins gold! And again, and again, and again! Domination. My heart touched, my pride fanned. Patriotic moods. The beauty of my province, my country. My monk-like acuity lending greater intensity to all things brought to my attention. A smoke. A couple fried eggs. Rice and veggies. A gorgeous Columbian girl met online. She banished most of the shadow. She pierced my heart and I fell in love with her. I love her still, two years later. I see her face and it owns entirely my heart, my body and my soul. Angela. A pious beauty who loved and feared God and who brightened the circle around her by the luminosity of her strong faith and tender ways. She helped bring me to God. It was not easy, for her or for myself. Superficially she was a marvel. Long black hair, big eyes and a body so small it seemed ill-equipped to bear the load of her prodigious heart. I loved her. I love her still. She is amazing. She is the best. Better than the best and all the rest. Angela. My Columbian sweetheart who I regretfully lost because I did not man up.
.
Happy go lucky in a pit of despair. Suicide a pendulum making its terribly threatening sweep. Negative thoughts like rats nibbling at me, their feast. A rope. My mothers shed. Its strong rafters built by my master craftsman dad. Strong enough. Definitely.
Retardation and genius co-existent in my personality. Saying and doing such paradoxically smart and stupid ****. Corrine. A beautiful half Japanese who worked at the cafι where I and my friends would hang out, talk music and movies and books. I told her to let her hair down and she did and that was it. She was well- rounded, into art, music, hard work, literature. Loved John Lennon to bits. I learned much from her. My understanding of life and love was by my experience with her greatly furthered along.
At this time I began training kickboxing. A driver called me an *******, like a coward from behind the safety of his glass and metal shield. Went that very day and signed up. Kicking became another of my obsessions. Low kicks, high kicks, kicks to shins and heads. The knee is vulnerable. As are the eyes, the groin, the neck. I am not a tough guy but I would not want to mess with me. Just saying.
As has already been said, I have had several loves, deep passionate affairs of the heart, all of which Ill live and feel and hurt over forever. But none so encompass me in terms of time and feeling as that which I had with Miranda. From childhood to manhood I had and continue to have strong feelings for her. She should have been the one, was the one, is the one, though, and it pains me to say it, fate has intervened. Dastardly fate has put wedge after wedge of thwarting circumstance after thwarting circumstance between us. I have cast away all hope. I beat off any descending hope for her and I, for us, with a stick of stubborn frustration. Her blondness, her small stature, her sheer physical perfection combined with a mind both inquisitive and adventurous. She should be mine. Shes not. She wont be. Its over. Was it ever on? Yes, there was a time But now with sad indifference I no longer care. Fate plundered us of us, took her from my life and my arms. And I am happy for her. Living in a small town at the Islands Western extremity, working, adventuring, loving a man who stands as my equal if not my better, a photographer, a woodsman, a man, a real hot-blooded robust young man with more to offer her than I. My hands are off. I leave her in his hands. Her choice, not mine. And I respect it. I respect her, him, and, above all, I respect myself. Besides, theres always the rope.
There are things we have to do. Like rusty hooked nails they stick out from ourselves, our lives, and must be pulled out with a crowbar and much pain, much grief. Breaking up with someone is one such thing. I did not have to do it for much of my life. A hermits grace. But I have had to do it recently and let me tell you, as you already know, it stings. Ouch, to me and to her, to them. Its like taking a suffering pet to the vet for their last ever visit. You have to say goodbye. You have to look them in the eye, say the words to them. Sometimes you have to cry. Often I have to cry. A part of you and them dies and yet lives on, turns from shadow to light, day to night.
Lost in the flushing folds of Alanas flaring red hair. Lost in it like a kid in a fort. Our bed, the pillows and blankets, matching burgundy down quilt. Red candle on the bedside table adding the features of flame and scent. Her strident moans and serene screams rippling the orange striped wall-paper of our inferno. My pleasure corked, contained, silent vibrant as jellybeans in a jar. Books lying plenteously around. Books propped up, half open, dog eared, flung. Ovid. Virgil. Nora Roberts. Stephenie Meyer. Thucydides. Books of art, of El Greco and Caravaggio and Raphael. Donne. Auden. Intensity of word and sense. We two poems cut and pasted into one. Our two love-maddened selves frothing in that rockin washing machine of a room. Sex sounds our soundtrack. Stimulation. She my heroin and I hers. Our love a virus we gladly caught and shared. My hypodermic appendage. Her typically bourgeois home turned by our tempest of passion into a seedy vice-strewn alley way littered with used condoms and empty cans. Passion harsher than rape and murder. Frenzy. Cyclone without and within. And then after. After . a calm respite. The field tilled, the orchard picked, the panting sweating workers reclining in the low light of late day to smoke and stare and bull****. Recovery. Pick up the pieces theyd just picked. That wed just picked. Oh I loved Alana. And that was us. That passion, that crazed disorder of fermented feeling. That affair which was a piggy back ride on the tip of a sword. It was all ours. Us. All us. No regrets. At least not on my part.
.
Doing a little boxing outside the ferry station. I am handsome. So Im told. I have a way with people. A way to and away from them. So when I box randomly in plain view and incorrect context jabbing, ducking, weaving all fast as a scurrying goat people stare but do not let me catch them, comment but do not let me hear them. They dance around it. Joshua Stanton, man of insanity, of intensity, of mystery. Eyes like oil wells. In public I act like Im a matador minus my bull. Or maybe not minus him. Perhaps in my quixotic imagination one stands and stomps by my side. One I fight or ride. Playfully or dangerously nonchalantly or to the death. You cant really know, can you? My thoughts are mine. I decide which is and which isnt revealed from behind the theatre curtain which hangs dark and mysterious before me like a fog at times thick and others thin.
Fighting and writing. Socializing too. Monking it up as well. The manic deranged character of myself. Soul of shattering dynamite but partaking also of the nature of incense. Mercurial. The chemistry lab that is my brain with its wowing display of Chinese fireworks and trite fourth grade baking soda volcano. Up and down, then each way there and back around. A paper airplane. Each thought a marathon runner individually adding up to a street-swamping throng.
..
I broke Alanas heart. And she broke mine. That night when I proposed could not have been more ideal. A camera ought to have been running. Its a gross injustice to all future generations that it remains in its entirety alive only in her memory and in mine, aside from a few partial snippets caught by the odd passerby. That night. Her approaching me from the west, her majestic red hair visible from way off. Meeting on a bench next a riverbank. She had no idea. No idea Id manically run around town borrowing money, visiting pawn shops and jewelers and big box stores until I found a ring that cost the exact contents of my bank account and all I could raise in those three prior hours. No idea that stuck in my pocket in a little white box was the diamond which was to mean so much to her and I. For that night and a few more after. Wed known each other only a month. I was in right and wrong mind. I knew then that she was the one. I know now she wasnt. But she was the one. Then. For that night, that month. I hugged her, kissed her, embraced her so we were like two irons melting together in a forge of love. Both of us swept up in raging romance by the river in the descending twilight. Her red hair lit a fire in me and about me as it always did. I was not nervous. I was in a state of grace. I was certain. More certain than Id ever been of anything and ever will be of anything again. I joked cruelly before doing the deed. Steered the conversation to marriage. As much as we knew, and we knew a lot, we still barely knew each other. What do you think of marriage? I coyly asked. Silent eyes of fiery passion reigned on her side. Well I Interruption. I dont believe in it I said with straight face and strongly unmoving stare. The hot air balloon shed been riding high through the sky burst that moment and she plummeted down through earth and into her own hell of despondent shock. All in an instant. Then I got down on one knee. Like a firefighter I bent low in an attempt to put out the blaze, to tame the fire in her, have her be mine, all mine. Steam, sauna-like rather than an uncontrolled blaze. Greater shock. Down past hell through to some otherworldly place of light and dark and mystery where resides the essence of the human heart. The ring shot point blank from my colt 45 hand into her vulnerably tender heart. Two minutes which felt like two hours passed by before she could breathe. Five before she could speak. Meanwhile I remained still, knee on ground, manning my dark eyes like two cannon aimed direct at her romantic core. Yes! she finally screamed, enthusiastic and sweet. We embraced. Two weeks later it was over and we have not spoken since.
..
Im a hot-blooded hillbilly who walks into a dusky smelly bar like the Thorogood or Wait or Stones blasting on the big speakers is my very own theme song. I fill the place charismatically expansive. I own every woman and anger every guy. I dance like I fight and do both quite well. And people know. They can tell, they can see me. Every feature, every gesture, every glance ..all bright-beaming neons reading look at me, love me, fear me. I am it. Im why youre here. Its not the alcohol. Its me. My glorious shadowy shine. Hairy chest flaring like a cobra-hood from out of my half-unbuttoned blue plaid shirt. Beer by the bottle. A dozen and no noticeable effect. Enter sober, exit smashed, at both ends feeling exactly the same. A rollercoaster ride is nothing if its your life.
.
Staring into a mirror for twenty straight minutes hating my body, despising my face. Anorexic dysmorphic. Weighing one hundred forty pounds, standing nearly six foot and still feeling big and bloated, looking to myself repulsively fat.
Old brown cushion tied with a frayed yellow rope to an old cherry tree out back. Basket ball punctured, run through with a telephone cord and tied to a branched. A hockey bag crammed full of blankets and clothes. A poor starving boxers training equipment. Neighbors weirded out and afraid. Whats the crazy bastard up to now? Shirtless in my flashy red and yellow and blue shorts hitting my half-deflated branch-bound basketball, my hockey bag and my couch cushion. The neighbors children never come out to play when Im out there.
..
A kick is an elegant thing. A good kick cuts through the air razor-like as a falcons wing. Streamlined. I weigh 165 pounds and have almost no body-fact. Fitness-obsessed to the point of anorexia. My shins are sharply defined. Butchers knives. The coordinated action of each individual muscle and tendon in my body is like a large group of synchronized swimmers inside an Olympic pool. Elegant and coordinated, like I said. Leg swung like a baseball bat or an axe. Fast. The steel grill of a rushing train. Ive never had to use my martial arts skills on anyone. Fortunately.
.
Discursive inner dialogue black and unending. Anxiety. Depression. Wondering why and why and forever why?
.. .
Miranda and me at Miracle Beach. Grade six. Her in a white one piece, body just developing. Blonde hair in the wind a blustering cascade of sensual wonder. Me bony in my red swim trunks. Nervous. In love. Butterflies, a whole cloud in our stomachs. Another girl came up to me, a beautiful brunette a year older named Loren. Miranda gave her dagger-eyes and said nothing. I will never forget the look in her eyes. She and I never even kissed. Ever.
Had a full container of fried rice chucked at me from the window of a big moving black Chevy truck when I was walking home from work one day. Embarrassment. Anger. Wounded pride. I wanted to stomp their faces but instead I just kept walking. Hurt. I wanted to cry but would not allow myself. I used to be a redneck, a hillbilly. Incidents like that make me ashamed of who I once was.
.
Miranda again. Miranda endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. Running around the elementary school chasing each other playfully. Like Spartan youth panting, smiling, delighting in the rush of being young and in love. It wasnt a crush. It was love. Love deep and lasting. Meaningful. Look at me now. Ten years later still remembering with spikes of joy and pangs of regret. I cry often over her. Sometimes months go by and she exists only subliminally. But she is always there. Every window is draped with her blonde hair. Hung up almost hallucinatory. What a girl. The girl. The one. Brought home a class photo, grade five. My father seized it, looked it over, stuck his thumb on her and said the future mother of my grandchildren.
.. ..
Corrine was the kind of girl you could just talk to. On and on and on and never get bored or skip a beat. Wise, a trove and fount and bomb-burst of interesting snippets and sayings and soliloquies. Loved to read, not just a love professed but one expressed. A shelf at her house adorned with classics. With Nietzsche and Homer and Whitman to name a few. A jazzy damsel who I loved and still do.
Walking around Vancouver. Walked from down-town to UBC to Richmond all in under 24 hours. I had only been to Vancouver a few times before. Never alone. This was the first time Id been there by myself, or any large city for that matter. A child. A 25 year old child alone in the big city for the first time. My shoes could not take it. Left my hiking boots at my aunts place in Nanaimo. Walking around Van manically in broken-soled old shoes, blown away by the sights and sounds, by the teeming chaos of rich and poor, up and down, sky-scrapers and alley-ways. People pissing in the street. Pizza. Such contrast of profligacy with poverty. An experience. My experience in Vancouver.
Under a street light on a deserted stretch of mountain highway at 145 AM surrounded by four black bears. Terrified. Hollering for help, help, help. Crying out to God, to my mother, to anyone within range. Not knowing where I am. Out of food, water, cigarettes. Knifeless. Only my wallet and a lighter. Pockets packed full of branches and straw to temper the horrid shivers. There was snow on the ground and lots of it. Tried to start a fire an hour earlier but to no avail. Ground too wet, everything soaked in condensation. A bitter wind blowing hard at me.
Bears and wind and hunger and thirst. A caveman, a savage, beast. That was me on the highway, beneath that street-light in the middle of that awful lonely night.
On the ferry, nervous, shy, on it at the busiest time. People, people, people. Phones, cameras, so much. Me running around panicking like an idiot, like one by a continuous stream of thunderbolts struck. I didnt want to be there but had to be in order to get where I was going, which was, anywhere. That impulse a young man gets to discover and explore, see lands hes never before seen. That overwhelming desire for novelty, for new people, places, things. What man has not felt it? I have yet to meet one. I think it is something common to all us men. Its part of our nature, its in our blood. Its the magnetism which pulls us practically against our wills from one pole, one job, one hobby, one passion to another and then another after that. Thus rolls the stone of manhood, thus ticks the clock of youth.
..
Migraine. Head hurting so bad it feels like its a melon being smashed and then reformed and then smashed again repeatedly by the hammer of Thor. My eyes two pain-pulsating orbs being hit by lights that impact like bolts of lightning and twenty-two caliber shells. I go to the bathroom, turn out the lights, submerge my head and pray for the agony to just go away. Eventually it does. Usually. After a few hours of torment, ones so bad theyre like taking a time-out seated on a chair in hell. Neurons rending, axons splitting, entire brain a battlefield bestrewn with dead and dying. That is what a migraine feels like.
Fred and I freaking Brent out. Hey lets take him up to the outer deck and toss him over. Yeah, he looks rich. Maybe we could ransom him. Im packing. Are you? Yeah man, always. Whispers we knew Brent could hear. Then we chuckled but in a deranged upsetting way which left the matter of whether it was a joke or not rather open. Brent laughed too. His lips lifted, his lungs emitted a sound. But for a split second I saw fear in his eyes. Fear of us, fear of the unknown. He was a good guy Brent. I hope I see him again.
Hitch-hiking on a winding mountain pass. Yeah, for real. Nowhere for the cars to stop but still I stuck out my thumb like I was stabbing at them, trying to impel myself through the windshield and take hold of the wheel myself. Grunting, trying desperately to make it to the next town. Road signs sparse and I was without a map. Thought for a few hours I was North when really I had headed East. Had gotten on a bus and for five hours straight deeply slept. Woke up to the bus driver alerting me to that fact that wed reached my stop. It wasnt as Id imagined it at the bus station a few hundred kilometers back. Eleven oclock at night in a place which wasnt a town but instead a mere grouping of houses centered around a single gas station which was at that time closed. I prowled around the dark for a while before finding a place in the bush just off the highway suitable enough to crash. I had lost my luggage on the ferry. All I had was half a packet of cigarettes, my wallet and the clothes on my back.
..
Alana was a sweety. She cared about me and promised shed never hurt and never forget about me. I believe her. As much as we went through, as much pain as we caused each other, as many tears and words as fell sadly and angrily between us, I believe her. And I will do the same. Ill never hurt her. Ill never forget.
Im scared of the dark. Really, it rattles me, inside and out. Not knowing whats down the alley, whats in those bushes, whats that sound, that moving thing going that way or coming this. Wind shaking street signs, creatures crawling, leaves falling, such things, so beautiful when visible in the light of day prove terrifying when noticed at night.
A traveler most stupid am I. Taking money out of atms like Im picking apples out of a tree. Buying tickets to places I never heard of let alone been. Not following procedure, walking around like a child without his parents, callow, foolish, looking and acting like a stray. Radiohead cranked on my headphones while stomping down dark-lit alleyways in the middle of the night. Skipping along train-tracks never checking over my shoulder. Bolting across busy highways, angering and affrighting motorists. An adrenaline junkie everywhere and every way getting my fix.
-
I tell Roadie to lie down on a mat at the foot of my bed but he just puts his head down on the edge of the bed and looks at me with eyes so softly imploring I melt and invite him in. He does not smell, he does not shed. Hes a good dog. I trust him. He is my best friend. At the beach he will charge the waters, bolt at them, but the curl of a big wave always sends him scurrying back. He is a little timid. A leave falling out of nowhere can give him a scare. Hes domesticated, civilized. Still has sharp teeth but no use for them. His life is easy, a breeze. And I like that. I like looking at him and partaking of his sense of ease. Letting it wash over me like a smooth cool mist making me less knotted and tense. Its like adding a splash of white to a painting, a calming milky dab here and there, bringing the lines together, adding an aura of peace, inner peace.
.
All I want is to say sorry to them. To Alana and Corrrine and Beatrice and Miranda. Say sorry to them all from the bottom of my heart. Get down on my knees and pour tears upon the hard ground at their feet. Sorry for what? For everything, everything, everything. Every mean expression verbal or facial. Every promise made and then broken. I want to apologize but I wont because its best that I just leave them alone. Let them be. By leaving them be I let myself be and that is best. For me, for them.
Peace.