I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow

by Jonathan Goldstein

  MONDAY.

  I’ve again awoken from an early evening nap and again, I set out for coffee. I am queasy with dread and my cheek bears the imprint of the bedspread. I cannot bring myself to enter Eugene’s, so I head to the other coffee shop next to it.

  The man in line in front of me is wearing one of those leopard-skin do-rags. He has a dagger earring hanging from his ear and pleather pants. Despite all this outlaw stuff, he asks the woman at the counter if he can have a “mocha jazz” flavoured coffee.

  I figure that for Do-rag, everything must be flavoured. Never the regular kind of anything. Never plain potato chips—always barbecue or salt and vinegar. I envy how everything for him is a showcasing of the brightly burning soul within himself.

  When it’s my turn, I ask what mocha jazz is.

  “The ‘mocha’ part I get,” I say to the woman behind the counter, “but what’s the ‘jazz’?”

  “It’s just a name,” she says. She seems sort of annoyed.

  She hands me my coffee and I say, “Merci, Madame.”

  I’ve been trying to wean myself from the word “Madame” lately, but it’s not easy. Josh says that calling a woman “Madame” is like saying “m’lady.”

  I wonder if she thinks I’m a sarcastic creep.

  WEDNESDAY.

  I’ve been dreading this day for years.The time has come to renew my passport. I study my new passport photo. A sadlooking bearded man in front of a white backdrop. Maybe letting my beard grow back wasn’t such a great idea. What is it about beards and sadness that they go so well together? It’s like the tears flowing down your cheeks make the beard grow especially lush.

  There’s comfort in a sad beard, too. It’s like you’re expressing something. Resignation, perhaps. Plus, it makes you feel like part of an illustrious tradition of sad, bearded men who have come before.The older, fatter Jim Morrison, the bedridden Brian Wilson, and the spider-holed Saddam Hussein.

  I phone Marie-Claude.

  “Men have beards,” I say. “What do women have for their sadness?

  “Much of our sadness is caused by men’s beards,” she says.

  After a brief conversation, I put the phone down and go shave. After all, there’s already enough sadness in the world.

  In the bathroom, I look at myself in the mirror. What would my life become if I stopped in mid-shave, with a moustache, and walked off into the world? Is this how you become a certain kind of person? You start off just wanting to check something out for a moment, but then you keep stretching that odd, moustachioed moment out longer and longer, until one day, you look in the mirror and a moustache isn’t so odd anymore—it’s simply a part of your life. Maybe that’s all a life is—an accumulation of things that are initially weird and that, over time, become less so. A moustache. A tattoo. A leopard-print do-rag. You bundle all these weird things together to form this even weirder thing: who you are.

  I shave off the moustache, feeling good about who I am not, which is close enough to feeling good about who I am.

  The Great Rabbi

  (7 weeks)

  THURSDAY.

  In the dream, Boosh has announced she is the reincarnation of the Great Rabbi’s beard.

  “The Great Rabbi himself ?” I ask.

  “Just his beard,” she says.“That is how a great holy man is dealt with by The Almighty. Each part of him is reincarnated. His nose, each of his fingers—even his fingernails.”

  “And you are his beard?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says.

  In the dream, this admission is even odder than the fact she is speaking English.

  “And on the day of reckoning,” she continues, “when the Great Rabbi returns from the grave, he will come place me in my rightful spot—as the snow-white beard of a wise and holy man.”

  “And are you wise?” I ask.

  “Not really,” she says. “Remember how I once asked you why you were collecting my waste in bags?”

  “Yes,” I say, for in the dream, there is this dream memory. “You didn’t realize I was throwing them out.”

  “I thought you were preserving them in plastic,” she says, “like first edition comics. I thought you had hundreds of pounds somewhere, warehoused.”

  “So, not so wise,” I say. “But what can you expect as a beard? A little soup falling your way once in a while? And yet you look forward to this day of reckoning?”

  “I think so,” she says.

  “But won’t you miss me?” I ask. “Don’t you like living with me?”

  “Yes,” she says. “And even as a beard, I will think of you often.”

  In the dream, after hearing this, I scoop her up and hug her to my face. I press my face right into her fur, feeling what it would be like to have a beard so lush, and be a wise and holy man.

  I awake to find Boosh asleep on my face.

  City Folk

  (6 weeks)

  SUNDAY.

  In the café, the waiter brings me a chicken sandwich on sourdough bread with mayonnaise. I’d ordered a turkey sandwich with mustard on whole wheat. When was it that carrying a notepad to write down orders became archaic?

  I think that until waiters start writing things down again, I’m going to start giving my orders in rhyme—as a memory aid.

  “Please don’t think my rhyming quirky—

  Bring me wheat and mustard, betwixt it, turkey.”

  This is how one becomes what is commonly known as “a character.”

  TUESDAY.

  Tony calls up sounding refreshed after his week-long honeymoon in the country.

  “Nature has a way of grabbing you in a headlock and bullying you into a state of bliss,” he says.

  “Spoken like a modern-day Thoreau,” I say. “Did you stay in a cottage? Because, you know, that’s where cottage cheese comes from.”

  “Yes,” he says, “and I spent much of the week scraping it off the cottage walls with Melba toast, the way our forefathers did. I’ve even brought some back to sell.”

  “A cottage industry!”

  Tony tells me he needs to get off the phone. He’s just not ready for the sassy, ironic bantering of city folk.

  FRIDAY.

  I’m engaged in what’s become my generation’s solving of the Rubik’s cube—untangling an earbud cord from my keys—when the phone rings. It’s Tucker calling to commiserate about his love life.

  “I’ve begun finding washing dishes sensual,” he says.

  “I find it titillating when the sleeve on my take-out coffee slips down, revealing the hot, naked paper cup.”

  “For an added touch of eros, you should start referring to the sleeve as a ‘coffee skirt.’”

  “I wonder how those sleeves caught on.”

  “So many imbecilic things capture the public imagination,” he says. “Sex, for example.”

  Once our ironic city bantering is done, I get off the phone and continue untangling my earbud cord, sensually undoing each sensuous knot.

  A Final Toast

  (5 weeks)

  MONDAY.

  As of today, the cafeteria at work has started charging twenty-five cents for a packet of Melba toast. This spells the end of Melba toast and me.

  And I have loved everything about Melba toast: the scraping sound it makes when spread with butter; how sobering the crunch can be. I even loved tearing open the plastic and producing two unbroken, pristine tablets (sometimes I’m tempted to place a little breadstick Moses between them). But above all things, I loved that they were free.

  Paying wouldn’t be the same. It’d be like paying for flowers instead of picking them from a highway meridian— buying napkins instead of just grabbing a bunch from McDonald’s.

  Ah, Melba toast! The way you pandered to my cheapness was your secret ingredient.

  And also your dextrose.

  WEDNESDAY.

  Breakfasting on the last of my stored Melba toast over the wastepaper basket in my office, I find myself hearkening back to a time when I thought
that wherever I was was where “it was at.” As an adult, I’ve come to see that where I am is where it is not, will never be, and perhaps, never was.

  THURSDAY.

  I’m shopping for new eyeglasses. Short of surgery, a new pair of glasses is the closest a person ever gets to trying on a new face and starting over. When I’ve finally found a flattering pair, the saleswoman tells me they are ladies’ frames. That they are called “Alex Nicole Pretty Woman Eyeglasses” should have been the tipoff. My next favourite pair are athletic goggles. They make me look so good I consider taking up jai alai as an excuse to wear them.

  But as usual, unable to make up my mind, I leave with nothing.

  On the bus ride home, I am struck with an idea: car windshields that come in prescription glass. You wouldn’t ever have to wear glasses while driving, and thieves couldn’t steal your car. Unless they’re near-sighted, but I’m reasonably certain most car thieves are not.

  FRIDAY.

  I’m studying my face in the mirror, and considering contacts.The good thing about glasses, though, is that they cover the bags under your eyes.They say that at forty, a man has earned his face. At thirty-nine, I hope my fate hasn’t yet been sealed, that I can still slip a few changes in under the wire. Maybe it’s not too late to spend a few weeks grinning like an idiot to ensure a few laugh lines. Or at the very least, a relaxing stay in a sanatorium.

  Musical Chairs

  (4 weeks)

  THURSDAY.

  Before exercising at the Y, I usually stretch by a window while making excruciating eye contact with the old man who lives across the street. He keeps a pillow on the windowsill of his third-floor apartment so that he can get some good leaning, spitting, and staring done. But today, rather than endure what I can’t help but feel to be his silent judgment, I watch the five-year-old campers play musical chairs in the centre of the gym.

  The plight of the odd man out—running around looking for a seat and then slowly realizing there is none, that it’s all too horribly late—is heartbreaking to watch. It’s as though, through play, the children are being prepared for the cruelty of life and career to come. All to the strains of Nicki Minaj.

  FRIDAY.

  I can’t get the sight of those kids from the Y out of my head. I share my melancholy with Gregor when he stops by my office to discuss “opportunities.”

  “I was excellent at musical chairs,” he says. “I was a precocious kid. At my age now, being precocious would mean lying down in a coffin and awaiting interment.”

  In recompense, Gregor offers to take us for hot dogs, but I decline.

  “I’ve been feeling a little heart-attacky lately,” I say.

  “If your life was ever made into a police drama, it’d be called Scaredy Cop.”

  “Fine,” I say. “I’ll go.”

  When we get to the snack bar, there’s only one open stool at the counter. Gregor takes it, leaving me to stand. In life you may not always get a seat, but often there are hot dogs to make your stand more bearable.

  Social Studies

  (3 weeks)

  SUNDAY.

  While visiting my father in the suburbs, I tag along for his daily walk.

  “A little exercise will do you good,” he says while stretching. It’s a procedure that involves bending his knees, cracking his knuckles, and making faces.

  The walk, which he’s been doing for years, consists of laps around the perimeter of the park across from his house. As we promenade, we keep passing the same fanny-packwearing senior citizens over and over. Every time we pass them, they nod to my father and he nods back.

  “Everyone’s going in the opposite direction,” I point out.

  “I like to go clockwise,” he says. “It’s the right way.”

  “But we’re going counter-clockwise.”

  My father disagrees and we argue the point over the course of two full counter-clockwise laps. Finally, he stops and closes his eyes. He imagines he is above us, floating in the clouds, looking down on the earth and trying to read a park-sized wristwatch.Then he concedes.

  “All this time I’ve been going the wrong way,” he says dejectedly. “What these people must think of me!”

  “They probably just think you’re a free spirit,” I say. “A rebel forcing society to confront its buttoned-down, clockwise ways. Anyway, if you want, let’s just switch.”

  “I can’t switch now,” he says, shaking his head resolutely. “I’m the kind of guy who stays the course.”

  And I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t really care one way or the other, so together we walk on, against the clock, nodding to the neighbours, feeling our muscles, as well as our character, grow bigger and stronger with each lap.

  WEDNESDAY.

  Tucker shows up at my office because he “needed a reason to put on pants.”

  “Why’s there a sheet of fabric softener in your garbage?” he asks.

  It had been stuck to the back of my sweater all day. When I finally discovered it, I felt like I hadn’t a true friend in the office.

  “I brought it from home,” I say, not entirely lying. “It’s like potpourri. A sheet of Bounce and some orange peels in the trash really sweetens up an office.”

  “Then why’s the place still smelling like boiled eggs?” he asks.

  “I had eggs for lunch.”

  Studied or ignored. Each can be painful in its own way.

  THURSDAY.

  While riding home on the bus, I pull off the headphones I’ve recently bought to readjust them. In so doing I discover that, due to their open design, the backs of the ear cups have been acting as speakers.What this means is that, unbeknownst to me, I’ve been sharing my music with everyone.

  The idea that a busload of strangers has been able to judge me for my musical taste—examine me as I listen to “Dancing Queen” in the supposed privacy of my headphones—is mortifying. I review a long list of the public humiliations I’ve endured since the purchase, and stop myself after yesterday’s crowded elevator ride while listening to “Eye of the Tiger” for fear of inducing an anxiety attack.

  Private music made public, walking against the foot traffic—this is what makes living among humans such a challenge. Society is a bunch of people who can perceive you in a way that you cannot perceive yourself.

  I put the headphones back on and press play. I meet the gaze of the teenagers sitting opposite me. I tell myself that my new headphones are character-building as I lower the volume.

  Another Lap Around

  (2 weeks)

  MONDAY.

  I’ve flown to New York for the week, and the hotel I’m staying at has a scale in the bathroom called the “Health o Meter.”

  When the Health o Meter goes full circle, after it reaches 280 pounds, it still offers little numbers for the second lap around. So underneath the 10, 20, 30, and onward, in finer print, it offers the numbers 290, 300, etc.

  What I like about this is that if you weigh 280, you don’t have to feel like the heaviest man the Health o Meter serves.You can look at those numbers that come afterwards and think, “I may be heavy—but there are some really heavy guys out there.” For this reason, I feel that scales should go all the way into the thousands.Why not? To some extent, life is all about looking for whatever you can to make you feel like you’re not the last stop—not the heaviest, not the worst, not the oldest—that there is always “some guy” out there. This might account for the popularity of reality television.

  TUESDAY.

  While browsing in a bookstore, I discover a book about learned optimism and decide to take the test inside. It’s composed of forty-eight questions designed to show where one falls on the optimism–pessimism spectrum.

  I spend the better part of an hour thoughtfully answering questions like: “You fall down while skiing; a) Skiing is difficult, or b) The trails were icy.” Having never been skiing, I answer a). (It turns out that the right answer is b).) When I’m finished I consult the scoring key, and after much calculation an
d recalculation, I finally accept the book’s final assessment. I am what it terms “moderately hopeless.”

  At first I am saddened, but later I come to a happier conclusion: moderate hopelessness can’t really be that different from moderate hopefulness. Is the man half-filled with hope or hopelessness? I’d like to think hope, and in this way I believe myself to be making progress: I am becoming more optimistic about my pessimism.

  WEDNESDAY.

  In line for a hamburger, I eavesdrop on the teenager ordering in front of me.

  “A hamburger,” he says. “No onions.”

  His order captures the heartbreaking optimism of youth. “Maybe I’ll meet someone tonight. Maybe we’ll get close enough for my onionless breath to matter. Maybe I will perfectly execute some high-kicking, fresh-breathed dance and make all those around me gasp.”

  “One hamburger,” I say when it’s my turn.“All dressed. To go.”

  Conversely, my order conveys the heartbreaking pessimism of adulthood. I don’t even ask for napkins. Why bother? I’ve got sleeves.

  THURSDAY.

  At a café, I order a chocolate chip cookie.

  “One cookie is sixty-nine cents,” says the woman at the cash. “But three cookies are ninety-nine cents.”

  “That’s okay,” I say.