Chapter 9

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Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

“So how are you?” Terrified.
“I read a poem.”
“What was the poem?”
“You want me to recite it?”
“Sure. If you can.” Of course I can. I couldn’t forget it now if I wanted to.
“My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”
“I’m impressed you can recite Keats.” I’m impressed you’re impressed, but you missed the point. “It’s a good sign you’re memory is improving.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“What wasn’t easy?”
“To remember. It was a lot of effort.”
“Memory is like a muscle, it has to be worked out in order for it to get stronger. When it becomes asthenic, you have to start working it out with small exercises, so as not to cause injury, like with reciting short poems. Gradually, as it becomes stronger, you can add on more and more weight, until before you know it, you’re lifting cars.” Asthe-what? I used to know these things, definitions of words, and I know they’re still in my brain somewhere because every once in a while they slip out when I’m talking. I don’t know if I’m using them correctly. I’m not entirely confident they’re real words. But nonetheless, there they are. I have no idea what that word you just said means, but your use of it excites me, in a less than appropriate way. I could listen to you talk incomprehensibly all day and not at all care about my ignorance. But I would rather impress you.
“I was reading about some research that was recently done, about how speaking the name of an emotion lessens the impact of the emotional response of the amygdala to the stimulus.”
“I saw that,” you reply on top of the end of my sentence. I like that you’re eager to share something in common with me. I like that I’ve become a little bit like you without trying.
“I’ve always sort of known that. That’s why I don’t talk about the things that are most important to me.”
“You’re afraid your feelings will be lessened?” I am seeing everything in clarifying detail today. Orange-red triangles outlined by dirtied white lines tracing the edge of your deep yellow rug. The red second hand on the clock tracing out endless circles. The ink spot on your finger. The brown of your eyes. The way the hum from the computer fills this tiny room without being intrusive. The black lines of the digital numbers on the other clock. Quiet. The smell of something unpleasant. Colours of books on shelves and the irregular pattern of the angle of their leaning. Motion constant or stalled. The length of a week and the shortness of an hour. Distractions.
“I’m afraid I will lose them. It’s why I don’t like saying ‘I love you’ to anyone. It’s not the sort of thing should be said everyday.” It’s like that in therapy too. I’m afraid you will take my words, and with them my feelings and when you’ve taken everything, you will send me away. And then I will have nothing. “I don’t like hearing it either. It makes me suspicious of the person saying it, like they’re trying to hide something.”
“Were there people who told you they loved you everyday?”
“Just my ex-boyfriend.” A guy I had met during my first semester at university. He wasn’t anything special, but he was one of those distractions I was looking for. So I let him love me. “I hated it. He would say it and then look at me expectantly, waiting for me to return the gesture. He would get angry at me when I didn’t.” And sometimes hit me. “Of course, in that case, I didn’t really love him.” I’ve never really loved anyone. But I want to.
“I think it’s just the opposite, that declaring your feelings directly and repeatedly can have the effect of building stronger emotion. Certainly, if the feeling is unwanted or not reciprocated, I imagine it could be a burden.” I wonder how often you tell your wife you love her.
“It will be an interesting experience if someone I love ever tells me they love me. I’m not holding out for it though.”
“I think it’s highly likely you will encounter that situation. You are creative, intelligent, resourceful.” I’m not beautiful anymore? Or was that a lie? “There are plenty of reasons for someone to fall in love with you.”
“I’m also prone to frequent, unpredictable, and dramatic mood swings. I cut myself. I’m obsessed with death. And I am incapable of discerning reality from fantasy.”
“Those could all be viewed as aspects which augment your other traits in order to create a comprehensive personality.”
“Your optimism is incredibly imaginative.” Your friendly laughter betrays you as one who knows he has been caught trying to catch a fish with a lure too colourful to be trusted. “It’s the same with compliments.”
“What’s the same?”
“Feelings being lessened with declaration. Compliments shouldn’t be given frequently. It makes the person giving them look insecure.” There was a girl in one of my classes who was always telling me what nice hair I had, what great shoes I had, how pretty my shirt was. Every time she complimented me, she was actually telling me what she hated about herself. She had nothing to gain from me, so her behaviour was obviously selfishly motivated. What she wanted was to be complimented in return. It wasn’t a game I was going to play, so I said my polite, disinterested thank-you and went on to ignore her.
“Can you give a specific example?”
“I was talking to a man and he complimented me a few times throughout the conversation. Our previous discussions had been more relaxed, but then it was like he was trying to trick me into liking him. It made me distrustful.”
“I could see how a possible ulterior motive would be unsatisfying.”
“It’s just not necessary. He didn’t have to compliment me to get me to sleep with him.” If people would just say what they mean it would make the world a lot less confusing place.
“You believe his motivation for complimenting you was in order to lure you into bed with him?”
“What other reason would he have?”
“Maybe he was being genuine.”
“He didn’t even know me.”
“So?”
“So how can I accept any of his compliments as sincere when he has no basis on which to be making compliments in the first place?”
“Maybe he was just trying to be nice.”
“I know you know that’s not true. Why are you trying to brainwash me into believing a lie? People use people. They manipulate each other for personal gain.”
“You don’t think people can genuinely care for each other?”
“Of course they can. But it’s secondary.”
“That’s awfully cynical.”
“It’s the truth. And it sure as hell beats setting yourself up for disappointment by ignoring the truth to believe a lie just because the lie is prettier.”
“I think you’ve had more than your share of disappointments in your relationships, but that doesn’t mean you have to use your past experiences as a template for all future encounters.” Instinct is built on experience. You can’t change instinct.
“I am making an educated prediction based on previous evidence and have concluded with ninety-nine percent certainty that I will always be alone. Plus or minus one percent to account for errors.” You didn’t think that last bit was as funny as I did, apparently, by your continued seriousness.
“How can you be so sure? What instrument are you using to verify your hypothesis?”
“I’m already dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“People see me and move on. I’m a ghost – invisible to most and to the others, frightening, disgusting, and unwanted.”
“Some spirits are viewed as comforting presences.”
“I can be a comforting presence. I’ve been told as much. But the dead are easily disposed of. There’s no guilt associated with forgetting the deceased.”
“Except you’re not dead.”
“No.” Not yet.
“Anyway, time is up for today. I hope you have a good week. Enjoy the sun.”
“Thanks.”

……….


Motivated by hunger and the desire to keep a roof over my head, I began the agonising search for employment. In recent weeks, I had single-handedly provided conclusive evidence that it was possible to survive on caffeine and potatoes. And peanut butter. However, after substituting peanut-butter for butter-butter on my potatoes, the cuisine had become unfavourable.

No longer capable of working in academics, mathematics, research, or any other area to which my long-sought after degree was supposed to entitle me, I was subjugated to minimum wage, minimum challenge, and minimum stimulation labour. However, this neatly coincided with my progressive dispassion and laziness. It was because of these two ill effects that my search for occupation was limited to a five-block radius from my apartment, wherein I encountered a pessimistically high number of businesses employing the more desperate of the population willing to work for anything.

My resume needed to be modified though. It wouldn’t do to go around touting proficient skills in Mathematica and fluency in both C++ and Java. Nor would my abilities to reduce complicated proofs into more eloquent and concise arguments warrant employment in an establishment where having a high school diploma guarantees you a managerial position.

I was lacking real world experience, but a quick internet search for sample resumes with a few address and name changes quickly provided me with an extensive resume in customer service, cash handling, and beverage preparation. At the bottom of the page listing my falsified work experiences, I noted ‘References Available Upon Request.’ I made sure to fill the page with plenty of skills in the fields of accurately counting change and pushing buttons with pictures of burgers on them, so that this missing criteria could easily be justified as a lack of space rather than a lack of truth. With all my ‘experience’, it didn’t seem likely they would need to check references, but should the occasion arise, I could provide them with a couple of my email addresses (not under my name, of course) and offer assurance, from myself, that I was an outstanding employee more than happy to darn a purple uniform and hairnet.

Two days later, I a received a phone call from a well known coffee shop asking if I would be available for an interview the next day. They wanted me to be there for nine AM and, even though the store was only a three block walk, it would mean I would have to be out of bed by eight-thirty at the latest, earlier if I wanted to groom myself first. I didn’t much like the idea of getting out of bed at all, but realising without this job, I wouldn’t have a bed to sleep in much longer, I was able to fandangle a comprise for later in the afternoon by stating I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning.

It was raining, again, the next day. Even after years of living in this city, I had refused to purchase an umbrella. I rarely went outdoors anyway. And all those people carrying all those black umbrellas (seriously, in Vancouver?), annoyed me to the point that I would rather be soaking wet than associate myself with the new yuppie-goth clique.

But the rain had let up early enough that the sidewalks were nearly dried by the time I left for my interview. It was a good sign, I thought.

It was in this interval between wet and dry when worms splayed themselves about the pavement in a desperate attempt to avoid drowning in their underground holes. This was my favourite time. It was easy to distinguish the live worms which were attempting to wriggle their way back towards the safety of soil, from the dead ones which were either bloated and sallow or crusty and black. The weather often changed so quickly that any worm that didn’t drown in a down pour found itself stuck and drying to the pavement.

It had always been a habit of mine to pick up those worms drying on the sidewalk after a rain and put them in the grass where they could find the moisture they needed for survival. This morning, I saw a worm struggling. He had already begun to turn brown and one end of his body was stuck to the sidewalk while the remainder pathetically wriggled in attempt to loosen himself from the cement, the grass, and relief, only inches away.

I stepped over him, my foot casting a shadow or his dying body, an appropriate darkness for the humiliation the worm was experiencing. Three steps further down the sidewalk, I stopped, feeling a sudden empathy for the androgynous annelid. A worm and a woman. The two of us there on the sidewalk, dying and dismissed. If ignorance and neglect were the price of normality, I would rather be thought crazy for handling worms typically regarded as litter. So, in an act of contrition to prevent my identity from amalgamating with a generic population, I picked up the worm by his tail and placed him among the shade of moist, grass blades where he would at least have a fighting chance at survival.

I had been cutting on myself only an hour previous to the interview. The sting of the wound still lingered on my arm. I enjoyed that part of cutting. A secret written in flesh. A secret so easily discovered if anyone bothered to look.
I thought I was sorry, about what I had done, but I wasn’t. In order for me to be apologetic there would have had to have been a caring recipient to the atonement, but there was no one around, no one who knew what I’d done, no one who could understand it in a way would make them capable of accepting the apology at all. Besides, I was damaged anyways, so there could be no consequence in adding one more fault to the ever expanding list.

I was right. Nothing changed. Nobody loved me any more or less than before I maimed my body. But I felt better. This must be how addicts feel, achieving pleasure and relief through self-destruction. Waiting, waiting, waiting, wanting. It was the deepest cut I had made to date. Drops of haunting red liquid released from the veins defined my actuality. I tasted it to be sure I wasn’t imaging the whole thing, but I couldn’t detect any flavour. It was pretty though. My favourite shade of red. Now I know why.

The manager who was to interview me offered me a coffee. I should have declined. I was still shaking from the despairing languish that preceded and the intoxicating high that followed any episode of cutting. But I didn’t. My concentration wavered as a result and my shaking hands become impossible to still.

The interview was a difficult event despite the fact that the questions were anticipated and should have been easy to answer (‘What makes you a team player?’ To which the truth, ‘I don’t really like people so I keep my mouth shut and do as I’m told,’ didn’t seem an appropriate answer). It required forced concentration to remember even what the question was that had just been posed to me. More than once, I was afraid I was answering a question that hadn’t been asked and quickly had to resort to a generic statement that could have answered any question he was likely to ask me.

It was an effort to talk to someone in such plain terms. The conversation didn’t make any sense to me. I was led to believe there was truth in sanity. But there we were, two people claiming normalcy as our default personality, having a conversation where neither of us said what we really meant.

The manager repeated throughout the interview how overwhelming the work would be. I restrained my laughter. People don’t take too kindly to you demeaning the position they have built up for themselves. But it was only coffee. He told me a story about a girl who had worked there and been robbed at gunpoint. So the worst that could happen to me had already happened. But I didn’t tell him that. Instead, I just pretended to look scared.