by Jason Bryan
Removing people from my life has never been simpler. My Facebook went from 700 friends to 80 in about a half hour of furious clicking. Who are these people? Yeah that girl I fucked in 2002 against a cutlass supreme while camping. This guy here I worked with and haven’t talked to in four years. A distant cousin, we never talk. Delete buttons are used to cut ties with them all. These people might email me and ask me why I deleted them, assuming they’d notice.
Cellphones are even easier, as who actually remembers a phone number anymore?
Just delete the contact info and don’t answer strange numbers.
Delete the voicemail and you’ll never have to bother telling them why.
In this case, I need to seriously cut back on the number of people I know. The first step to avoid being trapped by wine, song, drugs and sluts is to stop going where they’re going to be. Drug dealers and skanks are obliterated from my phone, its contact list looking bare bones. Gone are the numbers such as ‘Blizzard’ and ‘Jenni nice mouth’, what’s left are ‘George H’ and ‘Julie from school.’ Sigh. I’m going to miss a few of these people, but sometimes without striking it out on your own and casting off from familiar ports, you’ll never discover who and what’s out there. Maybe I need to discover what I have inside me, if there’s anything left.
33 Church Rat
I hadn’t been in a church in 25 years. I remember it smelling the same, and these benches never ended up getting any more comfortable. The wood is smooth to the touch, polished by tens or hundreds of thousands of asses.
I almost forgot why I came here today, to sit alone and be with my thoughts. I cross one leg over the other and lean back with both of my arms outstretched over the back of the bench. My right index finger twirls in the air, and when I shut my eyes I can feel her curly blonde hair. I’m smiling and remembering her with such fondness I forget that twirling my finger and smiling like this in a church could look pretty strange. It’s strange just being here.
I remember falling in love like it was yesterday. She called me first thing in the morning to wish me a happy birthday. I remember the sun peeking through my window, being groggy as the phone rang. “Uhhnnff ... Hello?”
I knuckle my eye to remove some crunchy night goop from it.
“Hi!! Happy birthday!” she exclaimed with a smile I felt through the phone.
“Wha ... Yeah hey thanks,” was all I could muster.
“Ok! That’s all I wanted to say! I hope you have the BEST day today!” I smiled so much that morning. I hadn’t felt those muscles tire in ages.
I think we hung out off and on for a month, but I couldn’t really get close to her. There are things I just didn’t want to burden her with, and as strange as it sounds and feels to say, I’d feel guilty if she loved me. There was this perfect girl with all of her perfect family and so many accomplishments, and then there’s me. A janitor stabs a mop into a bucket and lifts it out, the splashes echo in the empty hall. I move around on the bench, one of my ass cheeks is completely asleep.
I started realizing that I loved her when I held back. I didn’t want her to be in my world because she’s better off without me. It was when I realized this that I had to come up with an idea for change, but into what? My nail finally finds a rough grain on the back of the bench and I pick at it gently. Soft lemon is such a pleasant scent. The janitor is old and looks so frail that a good sized fart might tear him in half.
I don’t really have a model for a man to emulate or admire. I know if I’m the type of man that women prefer, I’d be gay or a complete womanizer. Being gay would make your sexuality a complete non-threat in their eyes, being a womanizer also helps as your sex becomes utility to them. Just a dick attached to a non-threatening man that will leave or call them a cab.
I used to enjoy singing hymns in church. It seemed like a fun thing to do and to hear words of praise seemed to reinforce the beauty in life. As a child I was really happy until I began questioning if God was real. Santa was a lie, how do I know you’re not lying again? I never got an answer from my parents and soon after they divorced. Santa, God, and Love were never real. Until I met her.
Tall with a dancer’s body, a beaming smile, her real genuine sense of love for the world around her could bring the sense of being found to even the most lost. I could feel this deep well of energy in myself with her around. I can still draw on the power of that love to move me when I need to. I need to now.
The word love means nothing without action, same with God and Santa. Yes, Santa is a commercialized whore, but the smiles on the faces of children give him soul. I long for a Christmas like a Coke ad, a house covered in snow, soft lights twinkling on the roof. The children are asleep in their beds, while mom and dad are excited for the morning to come. I would hold my wife close to me, flannel PJs and her hair in my face. On the roof, that fat bastard pops the lid off a Coke and ho-ho-ho’s into the clear winter night.
The janitor has barely moved. I don’t think he’s cleaning, just enjoying the lemon scent like I am.
I can’t help but think God and Love are intricately linked. What I feel when I feel love is a great sense of responsibility and caring. What I think people typically hate God for is the perception that this benevolent force that created us, abandoned us. Music that curses God always ends up referencing all of the suffering and disease, war and pain. I’m slowly coming to terms with my agnosticism, that God is just interchangeable with a reverence for love. Wanting love, giving love, being in love. Love is the only way humans have of manifesting whatever God they have into reality. A life without love and there is no joy, alive without even love for yourself and you could end up drinking a cup of antifreeze.
I wanted to give her so much of my love, but at the time there was no possible way to explain how I felt about her. I hadn’t found the distinction between lust and love, instead being stuck in the uncomfortable space between. I’d grown up being told that any kind of sex was good, in the last decade of porn saturation I had lost all of the connection between sex and love. The very basis for sex is procreation, now it’s beautifully marketed to my generation to sell porn subscriptions, and penis enlargement pills. You can find webcam chat websites where you can spend 15 minutes watching a girl double penetrate her holes for you. Maybe sex is interrupting your playoff game with a raunchy car wash video, trying sell a hamburger.
Now I go around in circles, I’ve had sex with so many women and came inside so many vaginas without any thought. I sometimes ask myself if my brain is subconsciously suffering, thinking that I’m infertile. That craving for more than fluid swap fucking now drives me towards getting closer with love. The heights which I reached with her, holding her petite hand while she drove me home, drunk in my own car and in her care. I even taught her how to do a clutch drop. I grin when I remember her excitement over that.
I’ve been living without that reverence for love, instead choosing peak moments of physical stimulation. I now realize none of my fears would have come true, if she had loved me the way I loved her, she could have accepted me for who I am. Maybe if I had learned that lesson the first time, I wouldn’t have let Dark Heart slip away.
Both of my ass cheeks are completely numb. I stand up and talk the old man into taking a break. The rest of my afternoon is spent mopping the floor of a church. The old man sat on a bench, eyes closed, smiling.
34 Connection
It’s a big day.
A gorgeous yellow sun hangs high overhead, the sky a radiant blue canopy. Two rental bikes on deposit, and a pocket full of BC’s best electric lettuce, Natalee is meeting me there for a ride and toke. Yeah I’m excited, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before. Sure dating is fun, the chemicals from flirting, the conversation, the unknown. These things have grown numb over time. I sometimes wonder if it’s just me, as much as Dougie disagrees, but I have to say it’s my own personal problem. Dating gets repetitious, but just relaxing and getting to know her wouldn’t be. The pain of sitting through another conversation with a
bitch I don’t like by the second drink, and I’ll break a bottle and ram the shards into my own eyes before I say again the shit I need to in order to fuck her.
I hate thinking bad things.
When I confront myself with the reality of not being able to afford it here, I want to call the whole day off. Falling for a girl is the last thing I need, but it’s everything that I want.
Stop.
I close my eyes.
I need to remind myself that it’s one day at a time.
Deep breath.
Spring in Vancouver and the air can still bite, so I put a couple of sweaters in my backpack in case we get cold, tossing in a cable bike lock in case we stop somewhere. Natalee is a smart gal and I’m sure she’ll bring a coat, but I want her to know I thought of her. Wallet, check, keys, check, phone, check. Lights go off and I’m on my way.
The streets in Gastown are flooded with a different breed of people when the sun is out, making everything and everyone look pretty. The trees just start to green around the time bums dress a little nicer, spit a little less, smell a little more. I walk to Canada Place and find the little bike shop underneath it, right at the start of the seawall. Just as I finish paying for the rental, Natalee pokes her head in the door and says “Hey!” in her sing-songy voice. I smile from ear to stupid ear. I hug her and we go outside to grab our bikes, I steal a kiss just before we ride.
We make a couple of stops for photos, and once we reach the park we start smoking the joint I brought. Her kiss is playful and soft, arms around me squeezing me close. I lose my balance and end up in a pile of girl and bikes, Nat skinned her palm on the way down, but she’s so proud that she saved the joint from going out. If the Beetles had been formed in 2012 Vancouver, they’d probably write a song about seawall biking with beautiful, happy women. Natalee puts her arms out and flaps them like a bird. Not a dirty Gastown pigeon, but graceful as a crane on Xanax. We talk a little and laugh a lot, I’ve been smiling the whole time and I even got pooped on by a seagull with a bad diet. Natalee busted out her water bottle and some napkins to clean me up quick. She charges me two kisses, one paid up front, one for later on. So demanding.
We ride to the other end of the seawall and end up sitting in a little cafe on Denman Street. Two large hot chocolates and some small talk fill us with joy. Stories of her friends and family come out of her smiling face in just above a whispered tone, but shout to me her values and what matters to her. Photos of her nephews briefly remind me of a dark hearted girl I once loved, for all the same reasons. Natalee radiates femininity from every pore, and she’s doing a great job of speaking to my heart and mind. A few jokes and she’s laughing, my phone comes out and I show her the art I’m currently working on. Her eyes focus in and she asks 20 questions about it, and by the time we’re done our cocoas, the sun has set and we’re late taking back the bikes.
I tell her that I’ll walk them over in the morning, and we could use them to bike to get groceries. “I hope you like spicy!” I say, to which she replies that she makes a killer Pad Thai. She’s a little shy about the PDA, taking her hand and gently putting flirty lips to it. She blushes for a moment before grabbing me by my ears and giving me a kiss on the cheek before standing up.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Nat happily quips, “Shrimp and noodles don’t cook themselves!”
With that we’re out the door and on our bikes. She’s plenty fast on wheels and it almost takes effort to keep up, her shopping is a Tasmanian devil whirlwind of shopping, flirting, and noodle choosing. She hides something from me in the yellow basket under a package of salad. “Don’t look!” I love surprises so I don’t.
The girl at the checkout counter rings dinner supplies through and Natalee pays for it. The store is close to my house and she walks the bikes while I carry the food. She accidentally drives them over so many logs of shit on Cordova that the bikes drag heavy from all the extra rotational weight. We get to my place, wash the bikes off quick in the courtyard and Nat goes to lock them up. She bends over and I leer significantly less than normal, but I do check out her fine caboose.
Up the elevator and into my studio, the groceries go on the counter and we prep dinner. She demands that I sit down and relax while she cooks, and pours me a glass of wine from my fridge. She makes a salad with apple slices, dried cranberry, almond slivers and a little goat cheese. Yum. I flip through Netflix and find something to watch. The Leprechaun looks really ridiculous. Dinner comes to me on a steaming plate, the curry sauce looks and smells red hot spicy, just the way I like it. Nothing is said during dinner but I moan from flavour stimulation the whole time.
“Oh my god this is so good,” slips out three or four times, and I think I must have told her she is the best chef ever at least a half dozen times. We both finish the plates down to the last bite, and toast to a beautiful day. We kiss.
She takes the plates to the kitchen and comes back with two strawberry tarts as the surprise. We devour them and fall over together laughing at how good they taste. She’s held in my arms and we’re both so satisfied and tired, the kissing turning into a slow, hot make out. Our tongues crash together and her fingernails dig into my side, I bite her lip.
“So,” she whispers, “Where are the blankets in this place? I won’t let you walk those bikes there alone tomorrow.” She hops up to look behind the couch.
“Ah! Knew it!” she grabs a pillow and a big fuzzy blanket and wraps us in it. I put on The Leprechaun and she giggles.
“Oh this movie looks terrible!!” She says, turning her head to me, kissing my neck.
“I don’t think we’ll watch this movie much anyways...”
I feel her hot breath on my neck, and her hand slides down to my zipper.
I’m tired of doing the same thing over and over, I don’t have to fill the same mold, or ride the same rail. My dick is ready to roar like a lion, but my heart can wait. I reach down and move her hand away.
“I don’t do that right away,” I state.
She is in total shock.
I stay spooning with her and I hold her hand. Softly kissing her cheek, I whisper in her ear. “You made my day so wonderful.”
She smiles and gives my hand a little squeeze. I wait for her to fall asleep and turn off the world’s worst Jennifer Aniston movie. I slither out from behind her warm and welcoming body, with a face so peaceful, chest rising ever so slightly with each little breath she takes. My beard stubble gave her a little sandpapering. I walk to my kitchen to pour another glass of wine, and light a joint. I can’t help but think what I did seems like weakness, but for once I feel an honest strength.
I’m in control of what I want now.
Walking over to the window and I take a seat overlooking Burrard inlet; watching as lights from Vancouver’s north shore twinkle on the water. Warm port yellows blend fuzzy oranges, blue hues and ski hill whites. A bum scream echoes in my alley. Turning back to look at Natalee on the couch, a little disappointed she already tried to fuck me, but I couldn’t blame her for thinking that’s what I wanted right away. Maybe the tramp on my couch tonight will wake up the lady I’ve always wanted tomorrow.
Probably not.
Life imitates art, if you change art, you change the world.
Life imitates art, if you change art, you change the world.
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
&
nbsp; Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Postscript