The Slow Fix

by Ivan Coyote

  A couple of weeks ago, I was standing in line at the Home Depot when I realized that I was kind of alarmingly excited about the brand new weed whacker and 5.5 cubic foot deep-freeze I was about to purchase. And I wasn’t the only one. The thirtysomething couple behind me caught sight of the shiny black mini-freezer on my cart, and the woman elbowed her mate.

  “Look, honey. Maybe if you got rid of some of your boxes from the back porch and organized your golf clubs better, we could make room for one of those.”

  He shook his head. “They draw too much power. It would probably constantly kick the breaker.”

  “Actually, this baby only draws about point two amps, continuous service,” I said, surprised at how proud I sounded. “I’ve done all the research already. You don’t even need a dedicated circuit, provided you locate the unit close enough to an outlet so an extension cord is not required,” I continued, assuming they were just as fascinated as I was.

  She was, he wasn’t.

  “Voltage drop,” I explained.

  She nodded, he didn’t.

  The freezer was actually a birthday present for my girlfriend who is a Cancer, and thus appreciates all things domestic. Not everyone can recognize the inherent romance of having frozen bacon-wrapped scallops on hand anytime, or the sexiness of saving money by buying in bulk, but she does. My mother was horrified to hear that I was getting my sweetheart a deep freeze for her birthday, but my mom doesn’t truly understand how important ice cream is to my girl’s general outlook. Not to mention her love of homemade soup. I knew that a deep freeze would revolutionize my household’s access to quality late-night snacks, and for a Cancer, that is romantic. My mom is a Virgo, and therefore is more turned on by cleaning products or a well-designed closet organizer.

  Each to their own, I say. One man’s assless chaps are another man’s self-feeding weed whacker with ergonomic handgrips and a built-in lock to keep the extension cord from coming unplugged. I could hardly wait to get home and slip into my matching eye protection.

  Like I said, I can’t pinpoint exactly where it all changed, but somewhere in the last couple of years things shifted and now I would rather plant perennials than party, and thumbing through the Restoration Hardware catalogue has become my new pornography. Egyptian cotton sheets are, well ... hot.

  Before my house fire, I wasn’t bothered by my mismatched dishes, or the fact that most of my cutlery had the Air Canada logo engraved on the handles. But there was something different about rebuilding the contents of a kitchen in my late thirties instead of my late teens. For a while there I even worried that I was slowly turning into an insufferable yuppie, that I was more concerned with making sure my tea towels matched the countertops than I was with making the world a better place. Until my friend reminded me that if I were truly a yuppie, then I would have sought out a more lucrative occupation than being a queer Canadian writer, and that investing in quality cookware was actually an environmentally responsible life choice. He went on to add that landfills all over the continent were full of broken low-quality consumer goods, and that saving up for the copper-bottomed pots and pans didn’t necessarily mean I had become an unrepentant capitalist.

  “It’s easier to fight for gay rights and social change if you’re not dying from cancer caused by cooking in a pan treated with a substandard spray-on non-stick coating,” he reassured me. “You’re just thinking of the big picture, here. Besides, you can write more if you treat yourself to the really fluffy bath towels. They’re more absorbent. It’s a time-saver.”

  A shallow justification, maybe, but it worked. Our towels now highlight the stripes in the shower curtain, and the little scented soaps that we keep on top of the toilet tank, the ones we don’t use, because they are matching. And I refuse to be ashamed that I like it that way.

  I am an unapologetic butch who refuses to conform to anyone’s definition of what gender I am, and I write decidedly queer stories about people who dare to be proud of who and what we are, even in a world that still for the most part despises or denies that we exist. And that means I am still a warrior, even though the blinds in my bedroom window are the exact same shade of brown as the bedspread. It’s more of a cinnamon colour than a chocolate, and it really picks up the secondary tones in the area rug. And I like it that way.

  Like I said, one man’s pornography is another man’s brass reading lamp with the articulated adjustable arm and three-way light bulb.

  Whatever turns you on.

  Judging a Book

  There’s an old cliché, something about how you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. I travel a lot, and I’d like to add a line, or at least a footnote, about how you also can’t choose who you sit next to on an airplane ride, especially if you’re flying in economy class.

  I am a collector of stories, and a connoisseur of characters, so for the most part I love the random way that travelling strangers enter and exit each other’s lives. I relish the chance to spend a few hours listening to the life story of a little old lady who usually only talks to her cat or the postman, or the girl that her family hired to come and clean the house once a week, ever since her daughter got too busy with the twins and the promotion. I notice how thin her skin seems, stretched like tracing paper over the blue veins that map the backs of her hands. How they shake just a little when she holds up a photo for me to see, how she spills a little bit of sugar when she pours it from the tiny packet and has to hold her paper cup with both hands. I savour all these details, and save them as souvenirs. Some people take pictures or buy postcards to remember where they have been. I collect people, and conversations.

  One time I spent three hours waiting for the fog to lift in San Francisco with a guy who told me that he spends so much time on the road he never fully unpacks his suitcase, and that he has missed nine of his son’s twelve birthday parties. He was a salesman who had single-handedly cornered the North American market for snow globes. His chest swelled proudly when he passed me his business card and announced that if I ever bought a quality snow globe anywhere on the continent, chances were it was one of his. Not the cheap ones, mind you, but the good kind, where the snow floats around for a while before it falls and collects on the bottom.

  When he found out I was a writer, he told me he had spent the last ten years working on a novel, mostly at night in hotel rooms, and that when he finally retired, he was going to take a screenwriting class.

  “Maybe I’m a writer too,” he told me. “You never know. Stranger things have happened.”

  I told him I thought everyone had at least 1,000 great stories to tell, but we have been taught to believe that only heroes or serial killers or rich people or crime scene investigators live lives worth writing down. He rubbed his bald spot with one hand for a bit, like he was thinking about something he forgot to do, and took a deep breath.

  That’s when he blurted out that he hated his job, but the only thing he’d ever been better than everyone else at was selling snow globes, and that his wife hadn’t touched him in three years, ever since he put on forty pounds after his back surgery, and he was pretty much convinced that she was banging his son’s soccer coach and how the worst part was that he didn’t even care anymore, but he didn’t want to leave her because she would get the house, and he loved that house, and his dog, who had lived to be almost fifteen year old, was buried in the backyard right next to the apple tree, and what if his wife sold the house and bought a condo when the kids moved out so she wouldn’t have to mow the lawn, and maybe a dead dog was a terrible reason to stay married to someone who won’t look at you without a shirt on, but he was hardly ever home anyways, except for long weekends like this, and if the weather didn’t get better he wouldn’t make it home at all. Then he apologized and said he didn’t know why he was telling me all this, that he hadn’t even talked to his best friend about any of it, on account of how they worked for the same company, and getting too personal might put a strain on their business relationship. I hugged a perfect
stranger that night because I knew his wife wouldn’t, and I think of him now whenever I see snow that falls slowly.

  Today I sat next to a man who immediately informed me that he was on his way to Europe to work with the Christian Embassy, spreading the good word of the Lord. Before the plane was off the ground, he asked me if I had a girlfriend. I took this line of inquiry to mean that he thought I was a clean-cut young man, and therefore possessed a soul worth saving. I told him the truth; I did have a girlfriend, and no, we were not married yet, and yes, we were indeed living together, and yes, I was aware that we were living in sin. I smiled inside at just how much sin he didn’t realize we were actually living in, and pondered telling him I was not as nice, young, or male as he appeared to think I was. Then I realized how fun it was to listen to a fundamentalist Christian lecture me on how God wanted me to marry my girlfriend, how the family unit in this country was depending on me, and how not fun it might immediately become if he were to find out he was brushing thighs with a full-blown sodomite disguised as a harmless wayward Catholic boy in a crisp shirt and a tie. I knew there was as much chance of me changing his mind about anything as there was that he would ever lead me back to the path of righteousness, so I told him he was right, and that I was going to propose to my girlfriend as soon as I had enough money saved up to buy her a decent conflict-free diamond ring. He took this to mean that he had helped me see the light, and continued the Lord’s work all the way to Toronto. When the plane finally landed, he shook my hand and told me that I seemed like a good person, and that if I were ever in Guelph, I should look up his son, who had strayed from God’s path a little and had pierced his eyebrow and was pursuing an arts degree.

  “I’d like him to meet some friends with ambition. People who realize that appearances matter. I pray that he grows up to be just like you.”

  “I hope God answers that prayer,” I told him. “I really do.”

  How I Knew

  Looking back, I’d have to say I knew right away that she was something special. I can’t remember the exact series of events that resulted in our first date consisting of shooting beer cans with a pellet gun in the garage with my friends, but I will never forget that she wore a pink turtleneck sweater. I was also impressed that her high-heeled boots didn’t seem to impair her ability to handle a gun at all.

  Most surprising, of course, was that she agreed to go out with me a second time. I was recently single and therefore skeptical, and reluctant to waste time dating anyone who might not appreciate my new hobbies, which were classic rock, cooking steaks, and chain smoking. I told her that I would love to have her over for dinner, as long as she wasn’t a vegan. She laughed on the other end of the phone and I heard her light up a cigarette.

  “Vegan? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’m Danish. Our national dish is, like, two kinds of meat, wrapped in meat.”

  Later that night she ran her fingers lazily through my hair, our four legs a naked tangle, lipstick on my pillow, sheets in a twist on the floor. She whispered into the dark.

  “I’m not looking to get involved with anyone, really. My theory is that most of the magic happens in the first three months. I plan to have as much fun with you as I can for the next ninety days or so, and then get out while the getting is good. Before we have to process anything, or talk about house keys, or monogamy. Before you meet my mother.”

  At the time, and given my circumstances, this seemed impossibly romantic.

  Six weeks later, my house burned down.

  Maybe she thought it would be cruel to dump someone who had no furniture or dishes and only three pairs of socks; I’ve never asked. But my ninety days came and then went, and she didn’t. By that time, I had taken to smelling the clothes she left at my new house when she wasn’t around and playing the same song twenty times in a row and buying three giant bottles of that raspberry lemonade she seemed to like.

  Her mother loved me, even though I was ripped on muscle relaxants the first time I met her. I lied and said I threw my back out moving a couch because the truth involved her daughter, a pair of pantyhose, and vanilla-scented massage oil.

  The night I introduced her to my family, my mother said that she had never seen me happier, and my uncle grabbed me by the elbow and dragged me into his guest room and closed the door.

  “Don’t you fuck this one up,” he warned me. “She’s the one, I can feel it. The whole family loves her. She’s gorgeous, and she can cook. She even likes fishing. Don’t be an idiot. Marry her already.”

  It was true. Not only did she like road trips and divey motels and beef dips and drip coffee and smalltown AM radio, she also loved to fish. One time, my uncle took us out on the lake in his boat, and I saw the way her eyes lit up when she landed her first lake trout. He noticed it too, and raised both eyebrows in a meaningful fashion at me and nodded his approval when she wasn’t looking.

  This is one quality babe, his eyebrows had said. Don’t play catch and release with this one.

  By the time we moved in together last fall, I was well and truly smitten. Love songs and long-distance commercials could bring me to tears, and I would willingly give her the last doughnut, the last of the hot water, the last word. For the first time in my life, I was actually paying attention to the latest developments in the gay marriage debate.

  She makes me want to stand up in front of all my friends and relatives and say, “I pick her, and she picks me. She likes fishing and Air Supply, and I love the smell of her neck. I want to buy her a house with enough closet space, and have dinner ready when she gets home from work. I want to mow the lawn and fold her socks, amen.”

  We haven’t set an actual date. We’re still trying to decide whether we want a circus theme or a sports day-inspired wedding. I maintain there is no real reason that we can’t have stilt-walkers and three-legged races at the same event. I mean, it is a gay wedding, who needs to stand on ceremony? My uncle Dave the renegade Catholic priest said he would do the honours, and all my best men will be women. I figure the beauty of gay marriage is that we get to choose which traditions we want to honour, and then make the rest up as we go along. We’re definitely serving Danish meatballs at the reception. We’re registering at Lee Valley Tools and Home Depot. No one is giving either of us away, and all of our ex-lovers are invited. I’m buying her a diamond engagement ring, but we’re going to exchange filet knives instead of wedding bands. Formal dress is requested, and all guests will be encouraged to bring their own sleeping bags, swimwear, and bug repellent. There will be a live band, a complimentary bar, and waterskiing. It will be the dream wedding that neither of us ever dreamed we’d dream of having. Afterwards, we’re going to honeymoon in either Cache Creek or Costa Rica, depending on the weather, and the fishing.

  Just In Case

  The first time I really knew for sure was the summer I turned six. If you were to ask either of my parents, both of them would probably blame the other, each of them for entirely different reasons, but I like to think I was just born this way.

  Looking back it is obvious that I had shown signs much earlier, subtle symptoms and certain tendencies that had gone unnoticed. But somewhere in the summer that stretched between being five and turning six, I grew up enough to realize that I wasn’t like the other kids. It all started with my dad’s new truck, a second-hand Chevy. Robin’s egg blue, with navy and cream vinyl interior, and an 8-track bolted under the dashboard. Chrome bumpers that flashed silver in the sun, winking diamonds of light when the truck swung around the corner. You could see your face in the chrome; it bent and stretched reflections like a circus mirror. But what I remember most was the winch, and how it changed everything.

  If you look up the word winch in the dictionary, it will tell you it is a hauling or lifting device consisting of a rope or chain winding around a horizontal rotating drum, turned typically by a crank or motor. My dad’s new pick-up had a winch mounted right on the front grill, just above the bumper. It was made of steel and smelled like oil and rust.

&
nbsp; You could do a lot with a winch, he told me. You could tie it to a tree and pull yourself out of a ditch. Drag heavy objects. Rescue people who got their car stuck in mud, sand, or snow. A guy could maybe even save somebody’s life one day, you never knew, just because he happened to come upon a drastic situation where somebody was in dire need of a winch. The thought of helping my father save the day with a winch both thrilled and terrified me.

  One thing that nobody knew about me was that I spent a great deal of time thinking about disasters. This usually occurred at night just before sleep took over, at which time I would dream of calamities. My grandmother had unknowingly planted the seed of potential danger in my imagination when she taught me the common bedtime prayer recited by generations of Catholic children: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Then she would turn the light off and leave us in the dark. Of course, this prayer begged the question of just how death might sneak up on a sleeping child, so I would lay there, sweat sticking my skin to my pajamas, waiting for a plane to crash through the roof, wondering if bears could open doors, or if there was something under the bed. Worrying about lightning, tornadoes, or sometimes poisoned apples. In the early days of kindergarten, a fireman came to our school and taught us to stop, drop and roll if we ever caught on fire, and hide under our desks in case of an earthquake. I didn’t have a desk at home, and so I barely slept for the next three nights, until I discovered I was still small enough to fit inside my bedside table, if I moved the humidifier and took the little drawer all the way out. For Christmas that year, I asked Santa for my very own fire extinguisher and a first aid kit. I had realized something about myself. I wasn’t really afraid of the dark or the sight of my own blood. What terrified me were flashlights with dead batteries, or when someone used the last band-aid and put the empty box back into the drawer without telling anyone. It wasn’t what might happen that scared me. It was not being ready for it that kept me up at night. Knowing I had access to a winch if I needed one brought me great comfort. So did swimming lessons, where we learned to tread water and give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.