Peninsula Sinking

  We are finally sitting down and Theo is talking ocean acidification and river diversion and apparently human activity has transformed half the land mass of the planet and according to stratigraphers the changes taking place right now—radical carbon buildup and sudden polar melt—will be visible in the geological record a hundred million years into the future. It is this, Theo is saying as I order eggs Florentine, it is not music and pyramids and spaceships but pollution and massive scale destruction that will be humanity’s real legacy.

  I say that sounds kind of nice. There is a beauty about the idea. I like to think of the remnants, the traces of us meandering through the rock long after the species is gone. Our existence written into the skeleton of the planet, an arabesque signature on the scroll of deep time. A colossal, life-affirming gesture. A lost species shouting “We were here!” into unseen catacombs of the future.

  “But what about short term?” I ask. “What about Nova Scotia?”

  He says that by 2100 the sea level may rise six feet, which would be enough to basically drown Halifax. The good news is that with violent, unpredictable new storm systems moving north and rivers flooding all over, the oil economy may not even make it to 2100. “But basically,” he says, “Halifax is a sinking peninsula.” I am thinking that even this, in its way, is beautiful. My eggs Florentine arrives and it looks weary, the hollandaise suspiciously yellow. Maybe it was a mistake, learning to make my own hollandaise. Learning that it takes less than half an hour to turn toxic. I’m staring at an eggs Florentine, last night’s IPA swirling in my guts, and I’m thinking about water, thinking about water and storms and sinking buildings. I’m thinking Venice, thinking Manhattan, thinking Halifax, imagining all these coastal cities a century from now—concrete pillars sprouting out of water, hives of algae and barnacles, the salt gnawing their walls and the current buckling their foundations. I see the tide creeping up over Citadel Hill, swallowing the old town clock and the ceremonial cannons. I picture the cobblestone walkway of Lower Water Street, entirely subsumed. What would it be like to swim my old neighbourhood, to dive down and see the underwater mailboxes and hydrants and parking lots, knowing each curve and corner of the ocean floor?

  Theo and Corrine are getting married and I am thinking about hummus. Half-drunk, cogitating on hummus. How I’ve started to make my own hummus at home but I can never get it smooth enough. There are worse things to think about. I was thinking about Coeur de Pirate and the crone who breathes down my neck while I try to pour pints at the bar on Gottingen and now hummus. Hopefully there’s hummus during cocktail hour. Fuck I love cocktail hour. And hummus. Theo’s older cousin Rob the mediocre career musician is strumming shitty soft chords and I’m thinking about hummus. “Hummus,” a waiter with braces once told me, is the Arabic word for chickpea but I always thought the word, in English, was strangely close to the word “human.” Would it not be cute to name a child Hummus? Theo said the wedding food was going to be “gestacular,” which he never would have said back in the when. Corrine, cool as she is, has somehow made Theo less cool, although I suppose he always was a bit of a granola-muncher at heart. Maybe there’s only so much coolness, a quota available for any given couple. Otherwise they self-destruct, like Kurt and Courtney or Antony and Cleopatra. Or maybe I just haven’t caught up with coolness as it aged. Maybe I need a recalibration. Are Theo and Corrine burgeoning yuppies or am I a burnout pushing thirty, recycling the same deadbeat charm that once made me semi-likeable? Oh, this ravage of perspectives.

  Nancy smiles at me and I wave while trying not to acknowledge Cliff or look at Nancy’s chest and I am thinking about the strippers from two nights ago. Thinking about that one with the double-string thong and the dimples on her back and the little silver balls pierced into those dimples. Thinking about her tenacious breasts. Small and sassy. An impertinent rack. She definitely had a thing for me. Body types: über compatible. My old best pal is getting married and I am thinking about stripper-patron body type compatibility. The sun is thumping as Theo stands at the head of the aisle and I am thinking about what STIs Miss Impertinent might be carrying and whether that is an unfair stereotype about strippers. Rob is picking up the volume as if to suggest Corrine is going to appear any moment and I am thinking I should probably drop the word “stripper” from my vocabulary and start calling them dancers. They are human beings after all. But could I still enjoy a wild night full of pulled pork sliders and Consensual Rufies among dancers?

  A hush. Everyone stands. Enter bridesmaids.

  “Hey, you’re that guy, right?”

  This from a cherub-faced redhead who’s at least six four and I’m sure I knew back in the when though I can’t remember where from. I have just decided that I loathe cocktail hour and I need another Tequila Mockingbird or whatever that grenadine-pink signature cocktail is called.

  “You’re going to have to specify.”

  “The guy who climbed that electrical tower. Gavin Something. That’s you, right?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “Woah. That was a big deal. Huge deal.”

  “Hot day huh?”

  He looks confused. “Yeah.” He chews his cocktail straw. “Beautiful.”

  A short girl who is far too attractive for Cherub Face shows up and suggests via arm language that she’s Cherub Face’s girlfriend. Just in case I’m about to scheme a move.

  “Hey Babe,” Cherub Face says. “Shazia, meet Gavin. He’s the dude who got electrocuted in Halifax when I was in grade eleven. Climbed all the way to the top of a radio tower. He was a Chronicle Herald legend.”

  “Yep, that’s me. Comical Harold.”

  The lanky cherub extends his freakishly large hand and decides to finally introduce himself as Rick Dingle and I’m remembering Ricky Dingle, Theo’s gangly cousin who never took off his high-school basketball jacket and earned widespread acclaim for apparently copulating with three girls in one night at the “Safegrad” party at Harnish Farms. The last of these conquests on the roof of a barn in semi-full view of a gathering crowd of twenty plus.

  “I was there that night at the tower,” Dingle is saying. “I saw it all go down.” Dingle sets his hands like he’s holding a basketball and I know he’s about to tell the story so I figure it’s a good time to walk away. I grab two more Grenadine Dreams and head up to the treehouse. That’s right, the venue has a treehouse which is far too huge and luxurious to be called a treehouse but is a mixture of tree and house no less. Although it’s probably supposed to be for the kids Theo managed to reserve it for the groom’s party and there are a few guitars up there and hopefully a stash of whiskey and as I climb the stairs I can see that it’s enticingly desolate.

  I open the door onto fake hunting gear and fake fireplace and ersatz bearskin. The room is ringed with sauna-style wooden benches and on one of them, all alone, sits Corrine, nursing a Nuclear Sunbeam, shoes kicked onto the floor.

  “Shit. Hey Corrine. I thought this was, like, the man cave.”

  She shrugs. “The woman cave is full of mothers going menopausal.”

  “What? But you’re married now. I thought that ended when you said ‘till death rend us asunder.’”

  “Yeah no. Menopause still happens.”

  “Bummer,” I say, laughing and thinking this is why I am still fond of Corrine in spite of all the history, thinking that if Dante’s Brunch Vestibule represents everything that is loathsome about Toronto then Corrine is everything exciting and genuine about this place.

  We remain silent for a while, her sitting, me standing, both sipping rosy-hued consolation. The treehouse smells like cheap scotch and rented suits.

  “The other night was fun, huh?”

  “Possibly too fun?” I sit down beside her.

  “That one stripper, Sandy? Total smokeshow. Blond streaks in her jet-black hair?”

  “You mean Bambi? She was into me.”

  Corrine eyes me over
her Saccharine Sunset.

  “I’m talking contact. Serious contact.”

  “Reluctant eye contact? What’d she charge for that?”

  We laugh. When our voices peter we can hear the babble of pleasantries below.

  “So. Congratulations.” I am serious and yet it is hard not to roll my eyes. I offer my glass and clink, then sip. “Beautiful ceremony and all that.”

  “Yes,” she stiffens her back, voice going suburban. “Lovely. Such a beautiful bride.”

  We laugh together again. “Not bad,” I admit. “Theo’s a lucky dude.”

  She keeps her body still, eyes on the floor. Her shoulders say don’t go there. Her mouth says, “How’s the poetry going?”

  I gulp the rest of my Wet Dreamsicle.

  “Good, I’m thinking of putting a manuscript together.”

  “Published anything lately?”

  “Yeah, here and there.”

  “Email me. I’d love to see some new work.”

  I watch the ice melt in my empty glass and hope that Corrine is not going to ask me again about the thing with her friend Lara and then she asks me again about the thing with her friend Lara. Cute Lara with the bust of Shelly tattooed on her shoulder above Plath’s yew tree. Lara who couldn’t make it tonight because her second book is launching in Vancouver. Corrine is saying once again about Lara’s new online literary journal, as if I didn’t already know all about Lara Barryman’s found poetry and Samizdat’s mandate to publish mixed media and digital poetry projects. Corrine is saying Lara recently got some huge amount of funding and she’s looking for people, saying nothing too lucrative, saying foot in the door, saying crash on her and Theo’s couch for a month or two. I am thinking no and thinking why do you want to help me and saying sounds cool, saying I’ll think about it. Corrine says please do and then stays quiet for a while. Finally she blurts out that Theo really admires and envies me and there is an eerily timed cheer from below and I ask what for and she says for staying in Halifax. “He’s always respected you,” she says. “He misses you and wishes he could’ve stayed there too. It’s hard for him you know?” I’m thinking bullshit and thinking why are you trying to get me to move here but also thinking maybe if I came Theo and I could really reconnect. Maybe I could date Lara or one of her friends and become Samizdat’s associate editor and get a nepotistic but who cares if its nepotistic book deal.

  I hear a glass smashing somewhere outside and look up to see Drew and Theo swaggering up to the treehouse. Drew looks to be prematurely hammed, finishing a cigarette and talking loudly with an arm around Theo.

  Corrine stands up. “Well, I guess I should show my face down below.”

  I nod. “Gobble ’em up, Bridezilla.”

  She pauses, stepping into a shoe. “What do you think of Theo’s aunt Vanessa?”

  Vanessa? As in Nancy’s little sister. As in coolest aunt ever. As in married to a pro snowboarder for fifteen years and said marriage recently ended, possibly because Vanessa put on weight though still looks great. As in used to do liquor runs when we were fifteen as long as we’d share the beer with her and tell her about the cool new music even though we didn’t know shit about the cool new music and just listened to the same DayGlo CDs over and over. As in rockabilly-red hair and full sleeves of pin-up girls and skeletons and generally rad tattoos. As in basically the reason I took up snowboarding at fourteen was to one day go pro and pull a corked ten-eighty while stealing her from her balding mediocre pro husband. As in many many indecent nights with the duvet fluttering as my breathing increased.

  “She’s cool. Why?”

  Corrine shrugs. “Says you turned suddenly handsome at twenty-five and now you’re fully bangable.” Does Corrine really think it’s funny or cool to say something like this as she’s walking away?

  Drew stumbles into the treehouse as Corrine and Theo pause to kiss. “Bra!” Drew high-fives me. “What are you doing up here, composing some poetry?” Drew does ghouly fingers every time he says the word “poetry.” Chuckling, he reaches into the faux-fireplace and finds his stash of Johnny black. He takes a swill from the bottle and holds it up with two hands like some tiny rectangular Stanley Cup. And then he is humping treehouse air and slurring, “Good to know you’re still pounding like Ezra.” As he hands me the bottle of JWB I am thinking of Vanessa. I am swilling whiskey and thinking of Vanessa, thinking of Vanessa, thinking of Lara and Samizdat, thinking of Corrine thinking of Nancy.

  Is there history with Corrine? When is there not history? We all met Corrine back in the when. She’d moved to Halifax because her father had a visiting professorship at Dalhousie. She showed up at the Bowl with some streetpunks she’d met on Spring Garden, wearing a plaid skirt with torn fishnets and looking for pot. All of us middle class white boys in studded leather jackets were racing to roll up and give her supers. We were sixteen, all virgins, and thought people from Moncton were exotic. She was eighteen from a land of streetcars and Sky Domes, all tattoos and GG Allin raunch, her body a swirling fantasia. She was reading Marx’s notebooks and when I said I was an anarchist she asked “collectivist or individualist?,” which left me stammering and smitten.

  Drew, Theo, and I were all besotted and I’m still baffled that I got to be the first to date her. Six atomic months and then intensities faded. Lethargy happened. Too much pot happened. A twenty-five-year-old metal drummer with a three-foot beard happened. Promising we’d always be friends and meaning I would secretly always want to get back together happened. Then university and a few sporadic girlfriends happened and some version of the question “what are you doing with your life?” or the word “career” happened and always wondering what could have happened with Corrine happened. And that is basically my entire romantic history. Do I care much now? Of course not. Have I forgotten utterly and forgiven entirely? Of course I have. Am I finally able at this point to appreciate her company as a friend, sans jealousy? Naturally. Do I sometimes fondly recall the tattoos that only myself and a select ten or fifteen others have ever witnessed? Very rarely. Do I periodically indulge in recollections of the time I emailed her my experiments with imagism and she wrote back that she liked the way the language sounded like a bright and tortured music? Never. Did the thing that she said next—there is a real voice in you, struggling to break through—become an anthem for all my deepest hopes and desolations? Categorically not.

  Break, voice. Dissolve these paltry surfaces.

  Unfurl exalted, devastate the vast.

  Vanessa’s tossing me shameless eyeballs but I keep glancing at Nancy’s legs, having, as I happen to have, a clear view of Nancy’s mumazing thighs which she seems to think are concealed by the table cloth. Several times throughout dinner Cliff has reached down for a healthy inner thigh rub which makes me feel kind of hot and also pervier than usual. The couple next to me at the table—one of Theo’s friends from environmental studs with a white girl wearing a sari—keep kissing and talking about how much better than this their wedding is going to be. Corrine’s father Anthony the classics professor is monotoning away, saying how marriage is a contract, saying Hegel this and Rousseau that and I’m seriously considering a nap if I don’t get another non-red-wine beverage in me ASAP and then I get some mating season eye contact from Vanessa and I’m thinking why not as the server puts crème brûlée down in front of me. I’m taking a spoonful of crème brûlée and thinking where the hell is my coffee and if I ever get married I will serve Irish coffee for dessert and why not move to Toronto and get a part-time job copy-editing for Samizdat? Why not make a run for Vanessa? Why the shit not?

  Our births, our deaths, our dearest traumas. What important events of our lives do not take place in the hospital? It was in the hospital that I returned to quasi-life a few days after I got drunk, climbed an electrical tower, and peeled through the night sky into the tree that saved me. Theo came to the hospital one of the first days I was well enough to accept visitor
s. He said he was sorry he let me do it and I said he should be sorry. I said he should go back and climb the tower himself. I lifted the blanket to show him the bandages—all the way up my left side. “Talk to me when you’ve got a set to match,” I said, turning to face the wall. But he didn’t leave. He took my hand and squeezed it, forgetting all the panicked fears of a fourteen-year-old boy and just holding me. We didn’t cry or say anything but at that moment he was my brother and my father and my mother and my child.

  Gavin is standing in the single-person unisex washroom at his best friend’s wedding and the toilet won’t flush. He is idiotically pressing the lever a second time and of course the water only rises higher, spins its lethargic indolent spin. The water seems, almost, to snarl. Little blobs of shame swirling in the strange current of that lazy but unstoppable cyclone. Someone—presumably a delicate beauty in a brilliant velour dress—gently knuckles the door. Gavin tries to bark but instead begs “just a minute,” hyper-aware of the five or six people standing in line, including Corrine’s Estonian cousin, the one he’d lamely flirted with until they ran out of shared language. Gavin is looking for a plunger, desperate for a plunger and finding none and the water is rising, the water is not going down even as he waits and waits and resists the urge to flush again. A sleek sheet of water sluices over the porcelain coping and slicks down onto the tile and Gavin knows that flushing again is the absolute wrong thing to do but here he is with the mire of him, the very filth of him cresting the toilet’s lip. Does he coat his palms in paper towel and grab that raw human waste and fling it into the trash before washing his hands manically in the small beaded-glass sink with the stone garden about the lovely drain? Or does he walk out barking outrage and saying sorry folks, crafting a makeshift “Out of Order” sign from an old pack of cigarettes before stomping off to inform management? Or does he stand there indefinitely with his finger hovering on the lever, his mind hissing alternately push push don’t you fucking dare push and the beautiful Estonian with her lovely tanned plenty whispering through the door that it is getting urgent? Does he stand there motionless with his finger on the lever and all that rank waste rising unstoppable, rising slow?