19

I’m on my sofa, unintentionally high. 45 mg of codeine, with muscle relaxants, and aspirin, on account of what the doctor deduced, in approximately 4 seconds, was a muscle strain in my back. That was yesterday and I’ve essentially been quasi-high ever since, and very, VERY relaxed in the muscle department. And, most importantly, not in excruciating pain.

Erin came home about 48 hours ago, to an expected amount of fanfare. It was wonderful and also vaguely anti-climactic. Two small things were unexpected: (1) she is somewhat less attractive than I remember, and (2) she did not bring me home anything. I keep telling myself that the latter is not really important, though I think such a self-statement is a bit of a lie, for lack of a better word.

Typing is very easy when your body feels like liquid.

I’m both content and sad right now.

Emptier than usual.

I found out some unpleasant things about Erin’s “boyfriend.” Like, he supposedly cheated on his wife, and that when she found out she kicked him out and filed for divorce (he told Erin they “grew apart”). And that he was sleeping with her as recently as 3 months ago, and may still be (though he and Erin have been, as per his terminology, “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” since the end of January). I find these things, particularly the former, morally repugnant. I can’t imagine liking this guy. I told Erin about these things, and though she’s not angry with me for researching/revealing, she’s decided to “ignore” the information, and try to forget about it. She’s adamant that “Nick’s not a cheater.” I had nothing to say to that.

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I’m telling myself that I’m not going to go to the mall tomorrow at lunch, to “run into” Mike. I’ve been thinking about him more than usual now that I have opiates in my bloodstream. It may be because he asked Monique for my phone number 3 days ago though, as you may remember, I already gave it to him via e-mail a couple of weeks ago. This sent me into a kind of frenzy that I know I’m still experiencing, but the codeine has numbed everything. Yesterday I was lying on my living room floor, and I had to keep repeating his phone number over and over in my head, like it was a song whose chorus I couldn't stop humming. I realised that the last two digits (19) were the same as the last two in my cell phone number, which struck me as symbolic and beautiful as I stared, entranced, at the paint dots on my ceiling. Now I recognise how pathetic such an idea is, but still

yeah. again, can’t finish this. too liquid. too high. computer screen moving away from my field of vision, though i don’t know where it goes. it's taken me, like, 50 minutes to get this far.

my mind, and hands, are water.

Mike is a Quarter Pounder w/ Cheese from McDonalds. I know I shouldn’t want it, it’s processed and unhealthy and awful, but I want want want it so bad. I want to want salad, I want to not want to be high. (Did I mention he smokes marijuana, like, daily? I HATE that), but I don’t want salad, I don’t want to not be high on prescription painkillers. The heart wants what it wants, right?

Erin (an introduction)

Why I haven’t mentioned Erin more than once, I do not know. That once, even, doesn’t really count: she was “Marie” there—I decided, for some reason, to keep the “real” first names of my friends and enemies secret, but now such things seem irrelevant. I mean, until we get into surname territory, it doesn’t really make much difference. So Velcroed is Shawna, Jeffrey is Jeffery (I just learned this last night), Jean is Stephane, Monique is Monique. And Marie is Erin.

Erin and I were acquaintance-friends at a summer job 2 years ago at a call center. Though she was (and is) 5 years younger than me, we bonded for reasons I never tried to understand. Erin, months later, told me that it was because we were, personality-wise, “quite similar”, which, as far as we both go, is highly rare. In spite of this similarity, and the mutual acknowledgement that we found each other hilarious and enjoyable to be around, after the summer ended our relationship shifted into highly sporadic e-mails and slightly less sporadic msn conversations.

When I had my breakdown-ish thing last May, I found myself drawn to Erin, half because she was one of the few people resembling a friend I had in my city, and half because I’d always wanted to get to know her better. So one day, in mid-to-late May, I went on msn with the hopes that she would be there, and she was, and we started talking, and then we very randomly went on a fairly long day trip somewhere in the province (funny, I have no idea where). Road trips became the staple of our friendship last spring and summer. Most were highly unmemorable, some weren’t, for whatever reason (St George really sticks out in my mind), others unforgettable (the 2-day trip to Mt Carleton, the 3-day trip to Montreal and, almost accidentally, Quebec City).

When I think of Erin, I think mostly of these two road trips. The former was unquestionably my favourite in-province trip, and the latter was a very odd adventure. It was my idea to kidnap Erin for her birthday last year. I wanted to take her to New York but Jeffery (my accomplice) thought it would get too complicated so we settled on Montreal.

That trip, in many ways, symbolises our entire friendship. Because Jeffery takes hours to pack for even the shortest trip, we didn’t leave until noon, though I figured I would be fine for driving straight to Montreal and having a late dinner there. By 8 pm, though, I was so hungry and tired I was ready to shoot someone, so we decided to stop for dinner in Quebec and possibly find somewhere to spend the night. This was, in every single way, a disaster. We got unbelievably lost trying to find Old Quebec, thinking we were on the right side of the St Lawrence, we were unable to find a restaurant we all agreed on, and then came the terrible, terrible, terrible experience of trying to find a hotel with vacancy and an affordable rate and reasonable proximity to where we were at 10:15 on an early fall Friday night. It was a disaster in almost every sense of the word, but it was terribly, terribly fun. At least in retrospect.

On the ferry, I remember looking across the river thinking that the city was unbelievably beautiful and strange, and that it would take me years of living in it to understand it, though that could have been the cold breeze blowing, or the way I could only half-understand the people next to me, or feeling depressed for no apparent reason (fatigue maybe, and/or hunger, and/or the ever-present homesickness I get even when travelling only 400 miles away, and/or loneliness).

Montreal was both better and less memorable, but I realise I’ve completely strayed off-topic, so I’ll save Montreal for another day.

So Erin and I realised, probably in early summer of last year, that we had become best friends. We were inseparable and in a kind of non-sexual love.

Something has happened since January, though. Erin has been in Sweden since then, at university. At first I missed her so much I wanted to vomit all the time, but eventually that waned. We still talked on the phone a lot, still e-mailed and chatted fairly frequently, but something has changed. It’s the distance, for sure—

I just can’t finish this. I feel sick now. Why, I don’t know. Erin is coming back on Friday. I have been so looking forward to this date, that at times I didn’t know what to do with myself.

The whole point of this post was to tell you about our strange falling-out, that was both brief and awful. We reconciled (of course) but the event, I think, forever changed the trajectory of our friendship. Or maybe Sweden did that. Or Jeffery. Or the St Lawrence River.

Or I’m crazy, and just can’t wait to see her.

Friday, coincidentally, is also the day I leave my students at the school, for new horizons.

And the day Monique leaves for Nunavut, for GodKnowsHowLong.

Friday.

random pics etc

Some random shots of myself, Mo, and Anderson Cooper.

The ones of Mo were used for the plain-face hot or not experiment, in which very few of my friends are willing to participate, for whatever reason. She, for the record, received an even 5 rating on the 1-10 scale. Eve closed at a 9.2 and yours truly raked in a 5.1.

We should subtract 1 from each rating to give us an out-of-9 rating, as the 1-10 scale is rather misleading. This puts the tally at:
Eve: 8.2
Mo: 4
Me: 4.1

Assuming that Eve is as a beautiful an un-made-up, unaccessorised, neutral expression face can get, that means that I actually have a natural facial beauty score of 4.1/8.2, or a convenient 50%. Monique is slightly lower, at 4/8.2, or approximately 49%.

As far as body-attractiveness goes, this is slightly more difficult to measure. The best and simplest I can come up with is--and I know how unscientific this is, but whatever--giving a 100% for anyone who has a "healthy" BMI, which is 18.5 - 24.9. As I am a 21.8 or so, and Monique is 21.7, let's just give us a 100% on the body thing.

I guess points should be deducted for any physical deformities, extreme shortness or tallness, and very small or very large breasts--let's say a green card goes to anyone with B or C cup breasts. But now, as you've probably noticed, my attempt at objectivity has become highly subjective guesswork, so maybe we'll just stick with BMI. For now. If we do that, that would give me a 150/200 score, and Mo a 149/200, which are 75% and 74.5% respectively. Solid B-s all around. I can live with that.

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In more subjectivity-laden news, Mike turned out to be a douchebag. Or at least too much of a douchebag for me to develop any long-lasting feelings of intimacy or eros. For one, he --and keep in mind he was sober the night we went out -- had no recollection of touching my buttocks. This came out in a not-quite-but-almost flirtatious e-mail correspondence that took place on Friday. Also in this correspondence, he half-heartedly asked what I was doing over the week-end, and gave me his number with instructions to call if I was "headed out or looking for something to do." Can you say "Cary Grant"?

I replied that I was very busy that week-end, but that he would be welcome to join myself and a few friends to see Knocked Up, and asked him if he would like to go. I closed with my phone number. He neither replied to my e-mail nor called.

Monique is "worried" about me, given that I have this pattern for becoming obsessed with emotionally stunted and generally immature men. I agree. I'm taking active steps to break this habit. Really.

there'll be a lot of this...

...now that I have a digital camera.

The man is Jeffrey, a mostly-gay man whom I love, you know, but not that way. Though I could, hypothetically, 'cause he's a good, good man. Wonderful, beautiful, in many ways beyond words. But, tragically, repulsed by womankind.