Category: City Stories

Astigmatism

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Everyone you love will leave you.  Your bicycle will ride away outside a bar in a neighbourhood you thought was safe.
You will spontaneously spurt blood from your hands and feet and your hairline will leak red liquid into your eyes.
Your cornea will warp to oval shaped and everything will be blurry both close and far away.
You will try not to love your new bike as much as you loved your old one, but your new bike will have five gears and a basket for your groceries.
You will need to wear glasses for both reading and working on the computer, and you will constantly be soaking the blood out of your clothes.
You will occasionally be worshiped as though you were born in a manger and rose from the dead on the third day.
You will lock your new bike outside of a man’s house one night, and in the morning, both the bicycle and the man will have gone away.
Your boss will still except that report on his desk by five, even though everyone in your office will have nick-named you the new messiah.
You will have a hard time recognizing people’s faces from far away.
They will ask for answers anyway, and you will only be able to tell them that when your palms bleed it’s difficult for you to use your breaks.
Your glasses will fog in the winter, and your friends will go on adventures without you.
You’ll be asked to leave restaurants where health codes don’t permit blood being splattered into the cordon blue.
But eventually, none of this will matter to you.  You know your bike will be stolen but that the road will remain the same.
At night you will take off your glasses and bike downhill.  And from somewhere far away, someone will call your name.
You’ll hold bloody palms to the sky, hear the wind shoot through the holes, and for a brief moment you will be lifted.  It will feel as though time has started to fold.
You may not be able to see, but you are here to bleed, and with your blood pooling in the pools of streetlight behind you, you will have earned your eternity.

All Men Are Roads

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You remember it as dream
Sleep drunk hallucination
When actually, it happened.
Walking home with your
Shoes off, dead centre
Of the street, pavement
held the daytime
heat, and it felt like warm
Skin beneath your feet.
The road rolled out before you in a line
And when it reared up towards you
You weren’t surprised.
“What are you doing
Walking on my spine?” asked the road.
“What are you doing
Being a road?” you wanted to know.
Because the road was a man
A gigantic man with flat arms
And flat legs laid out
In every direction.
“You think you know
Things but you don’t.
Every man is a road.”
“And every road
Is a man?” you asked.
“Or a woman,” said the
Road.  “I am many roads
And I am both.”
“Ok,” you said.  “Good
To know.”  You tried
To keep walking but the road
Turned to waves before you.
There were sharks
And a dolphin diving
Across a concrete sunset.
“I can show you things
You’ve never known,”
Said the road.  “I can show you
A horse with no legs sitting
In a terrarium made
From an apple core.”
“Is that a metaphor?” you asked.
“Am I not literally a road?”
“Yes, but you’re also a man,” you said.
“All roads are men.”
“Or women,” you corrected.
“Exactly,” said the road.
And then you walked home

Midnight on a Tuesday

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My grandma had just died.  Did I tell you that already?  That may be something you would want to know.  My grandma had just died and I had been feeling quiet lately.  Some days, you want to drink vodka and meet everyone in the bar, and other days, you want to drink tea and listen to Leonard Cohen sing.  So I left the bar early and walked home even though it was snowing.  It was snowing even though it was the end of March.  I felt cheated by that.  I was having one of those days when you feel like you deserve something really good.  Every ATM I passed I imagined might spontaneously spit twenties if I looked at it right.
I kept looking across the street, expecting to see someone I knew walking in the same direction as me.  It was Bloor Street, in between Lansdowne and Dundas West, and I imagined calling out to the person I knew on the other side of the street.  It was midnight on a Tuesday, and it would just be us and the snow coming down between us.
“Where are you going?” I would ask.
“I’m going home.”
“Me too.”
Neither of us would cross the street.  We would have our conversation double volume over cars and under bridges
“Where did you come from?”
“I had to work late.”
“Oh, I was at a bar.  I needed to leave though.”
I was a little drunk, but only because I hadn’t had dinner.
“I can feel myself dissolving.”
It would matter what we said.  It would be the saying it that mattered.  At Dundas, I would go south and my friend across the street would keep going straight.  We probably wouldn’t even say goodbye, just drift apart to be absorbed by the night.

Manufactured Miracles

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At night, the novelty clothing store owner puts on a cow suit and stands in the window beside the mannequins.  She’s tried to be a chicken a few times, and once she put on a mask and wore nothing but a gold bikini with light-up breasts, but a cow is how she feels most comfortable, the dark streets, the soft light in the store window.  No one suspects there is breath and a beating heart beneath the black and white splotched fabric sewn together by someone in Taiwan.
She watches for patterns in the street.  Once watched a man get robbed by two kids under sixteen and a letter opener.  Sex workers working late and looking weary, the 2:15 rush when the paper bag people stumble from bars.
She waves to one man sometimes, only every third or fourth the week with no one else around.  He’s special because he’s shorter than anyone she knows, and he walks like it doesn’t matter at all.  Once when she waved, the man pressed his face against the glass.  She stood like she was invisible, the man looking into her cow eyes like he was looking for God’s eyes.  She wants him to want to believe in miracles as badly as she wants to believe in miracles.  She wants what they were promised as children if only for him, moving mannequins, talking cows, true love and a happily ever after, ever after, ever after, the end.

Dancer

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To Amber and Corey

He said the guys he danced with were nice.
He said the guys he danced for thought he was nice.
He told me all this over the telephone while I ate
pancakes and played Jenga.
He didn’t even have to dance.  He could take drugs
or jerk off or whatever, as long as the guys
he danced for wanted to watch.
I’d met him the night before.
My friend had picked him up while we were being escorted out of a club.
The most glamorous way to leave a club is to be dragged out by bouncers.
The most glamorous way to enter a club is with a pyrotechnics display.
They paid a lot of money, those guys he danced for,
watching through computers in New York or Madrid,
and he said that made him feel good,
that they would pay a lot of money to watch him dance
or take drugs or jerk off or whatever,
and I think it was fine.
I didn’t know why he was calling me anyway.
It hadn’t been me he’d been making out with
in the Pizza Pizza across the street from the club, but maybe
I had been the one to invite him to eat pancakes and play
Jenga with us the next day. 
He said he would have come only his train into the city was delayed
so I spoke to him while he waited,
and I think it was fine,
I mean he wasn’t unhappy,
at least any more unhappy
than anyone else in their twenties in a city is.
He said his clothes made him happy.
He had nicer clothes than anyone I know.

I Was Sure We’d All Be Famous By Now

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This city has too many angels, wandering around with their wings chopped off, missions written by drunks in crayon on the backs of receipts because God thought it would be funnier that way.  They remember the warm day in January when the snow melted away.  They wore shorts and plunged into the icy lake because they wanted to remember and they wanted it to count.  One of them almost drowned, and they all have too many regrets and not enough money, and sometimes, they are more beautiful than anyone could ever imagine, and sometimes, they remember they don’t have wings, and then their feet ache at just the thought of walking around, forehead to the ground, like everyone else, forever.

Today You Are Waiting

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Today you are eating cold pizza out of a grocery bag.  Not a Zip Lock bag, a grocery bag that you had to pay five cents for because you forgot your re-useable bags at home last week.  You also forgot to shower last night, but you put on extra deodorant this morning, and you’re hoping no one will notice, or was that yesterday morning?  Has it been two days without showering and did you even put on deodorant this morning?
The woman beside you on the streetcar has lobsters instead of hands, and each lobster has its own aquarium.  The sound of the water bubbling makes you have to pee and you’re wondering if she’s judging you for eating cold pizza out of a grocery bag at eight in the morning.  She must have her own problems though, so you think you’re probably safe.
It’s days like this that remind you of that day in grade eleven.  You were sixteen, and you started crying for no reason, and you couldn’t stop.  It was early.  You had gotten ready for school.  You were waiting for your dad to drive you, and then you were crying.  You cried so hard you almost threw up, and you didn’t have to go to school.  Sometimes, you’re sure that that day you stayed home was the day all the other kids were told what it would be like and what to do.  You’ve lived on your own for seven years now, and you still feel shockingly unprepared like one day you will be caught in the rain and simply dissolve.
The woman with the lobster hands is half asleep beside you and her lobsters bob in their aquariums as the streetcar stops at the next set of lights.
You wonder what you’re doing here, not here as in the streetcar, but the existential here, as in why? And you wonder if you’ll start spontaneously bleeding from your neck.  Last week on the streetcar, a man shot blood across half the passengers.  Is it bad you were a little jealous of all the attention he got?  He was at the front of the streetcar and you were at the back.  You didn’t even get hit, and now you’re here again today, eating cold pizza out of a grocery bag and waiting.

So Much Happiness

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Nora got off the subway at Spadina.  The train pulled away and the passengers swarmed the doors.  Nora liked Toronto.  She didn’t like crowds.

At the top of the stairs, Nora heard the woman playing guitar.  She was playing guitar and singing in the long underground pedestrian tunnel.  Her guitar playing wasn’t perfect, but it was special, and her singing wasn’t perfect, but it went with the guitar.  The sound filled the whole tunnel.  It filled Nora, too.

Nora felt excited walking towards the woman playing guitar.  Nora felt like there was a greatness to what was happening.  A few subway passengers rushed past Nora.  She slowed her steps.

The woman playing guitar and singing had her eyes closed.  She was singing and smiling at the same time.  The woman looked happier than Nora knew a person could be.  There was something perfect about her.  There was something about her voice and her closed eyes that made Nora feel so good.  Nora felt safe in that underground tunnel with the smiling woman and the perfect music.

Every day, Nora spent at least five hours working on her own music, but she never felt like that.  She had good days sometimes, but never felt the kind of happiness the woman was showing.  The woman was inventing music right in front of Nora.

Nora leaned against the wall.  She was directly across from the woman playing guitar.  Passengers walked through the tunnel between them.

Nora had spent that last three years dedicating herself to making music.  All along, she had been trying for greatness, and this woman was making greatness.  Nora was always concentrating too hard to feel that happy when she played.

The woman opened her eyes.  She looked at Nora.  She continued singing and playing and smiling.  Pedestrians walked between them.  Neither Nora nor the woman broke eye contact.  The music filled the space between them.  Nora had the strange urge to touch the woman’s face.  A part of Nora already knew what the woman’s face would feel like.

A subway underneath them stopped.  A crowd of passengers filed through the tunnel.  The woman continued playing.  Nora held her gaze.

Nora wanted to bottle the feeling she had.  She took a deep breath and tried to hold it in her lungs.  She wanted to put the feeling in a jar.  She would carry the jar with her everywhere.  Nora would take out the jar and show it to people.  This is when I was so happy, she would tell them.  This is when the perfect thing happened.

The tunnel was empty again now.  It was just Nora and the woman and the music.  Nora and the woman were still staring at each other.  Nora didn’t think she would ever be able to leave.  She studied the woman’s face.  She wanted to see how the woman could be so happy.  There were wrinkles beside the woman’s grey-green eyes.  The woman had eyes as deep as the ocean.  Her skin looked soft and worn.  The woman lips were huge.  The woman’s lips seemed to move around the whole bottom half of her face while she sang.

Nora saw the shadow of something under the woman’s nose.  Slowly, a drip of blood slid out.  The blood dripped over the woman’s smiling, singing lips and into her mouth.  Then there was another drip, then another.  The woman continued staring straight at Nora.  She sang and smiled and played guitar.

A red line of blood and drool escaped from the side of the woman’s lips as her mouth filled up with blood.

There was no one else in the tunnel.  It was just Nora and the woman and the music still playing.  The woman’s right nostril continued slowly seeping blood.  The inside of the woman’s body was becoming the outside.

Drips of drool and blood fell from the woman’s chin and landed on her guitar and on the tiles at her feet.  She was still looking at Nora.  She was still playing guitar and singing.  She still looked so happy.  She looked happier than Nora knew a person could be.

Nora felt frozen there as the blood became a pool at the woman’s feet.  She wondered if she had a tissue for the woman.  She wondered if this was even real.  She wondered how and why the woman was still playing that perfect song.  Even with the liquid seeping out of the woman’s mouth, her voice remained the same.

Another subway stopped beneath Nora and the woman’s feet.  The tunnel filled with people again.  Some of the people stopped to watch the woman bleed.  The woman continued smiling and playing.  She was still looking at Nora, and Nora was still looking at her.  The woman still looked so happy.

The tunnel started to empty.  The woman closed her eyes.  She was still bleeding and still singing.  The song still sounded so perfect.  It was made even more perfect by the blood and the woman’s closed eyes.

Nora had thought she would stay in that tunnel forever, but she found herself walking.  She walked with the rest of the subway passengers, turned to the side so that she could still watch the woman.   When Nora got to the end of the tunnel, the woman was still bleeding and still singing.  She still had her eyes closed and looked happier than Nora knew anyone could ever be.

Nora felt like she had been underground for a long time.  She took the escalator to the street and sat on a bench.  The skin above Nora’s lips felt wet.  She drew the back of her hand under her nose and pulled it away.  A part of her was expecting to see blood, but there was nothing there.

Cheap Rent

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The guy that tried to steal my bike, I recognize him because his face is all melted like it used to be a candle. I see him all the time because his drug dealer lives on my street.

This neighbourhood gets you so sad sometimes. It’s like when you leave a few pennies in the pockets of your jeans, and you hear them going around in the washing machine, and there’s nothing you can do but listen.

I went on my balcony to run down the fire escape to see how much the pay parking on my street was, only there were these three guys, two of them sitting in my chairs, and the third bent over my bike, right in the middle of a Saturday.

What are you doing?
Nothing, Nothing.
Well, it looks like you’re trying to steal my bike.

That’s when the guy that was leaned over my biked turned to show his face, only it wasn’t a face, just an eyeball peeping from skin like it was looking thorough a crack in a wall.

I scared them off somehow. I’m not very tough, but they were on a lot of drugs, and I started phoning the police.

This neighbourhood gets you so down sometimes.

Every time I see that guy with the burnt off face, I want to tell him: Get the fuck out, I don’t want to see you around here no more, just like that, only I’m afraid he might kill me. He looks like the type of guy that would actually kill you if you said a thing like that.

Sometimes We Try

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Sometimes we try not to think
about how scared we are of ourselves,
how our rooms smell
after a night out and the taste
of the bean burrito we had for breakfast.

We try to be nice to each other
and buy each other americanos
and listen.  We are trying to remember
what it was like to hold hands and kiss
like we did before this mania overtook us.

We try to say the things
that seem true to us and to listen.
We try to listen.  We are trying
to be sincere and have feelings
and say things and buy each other
americanos.  We are trying to listen.