The church was hot and stunk like lilies and pomade. Usses on the Right Side and Thems on the Left, just like at school, just like the cafeteria before Theo crossed that line to talk to Dolores. 
That was the summer we swiped the rope and tied it to the big tree by the river so we could swing from the bank and into the water, tied a noose in the end as a joke.
I can usually determine how drunk I am with a simple trip to the toilet. The first indicator is based on how long I need to stand there and is pretty much a direct function of how much I’ve consumed. The second and more subtle measurement is how long I choose to stand there waiting for all that liquid to pass before my addled patience runs dry and I flush. Sober, I’ll wait till I’m done; drunk, I won’t, and so flush when I’m bored, quickly realize my mistake, and race to the finish, pissing in vain against the vortex.In kindergarten, he had a pal named Timmy. Timmy was crazy-feral in a Helen-Keller-eat-the scrambled-eggs-with-fingers sort of way. Sleepovers required three changes of bathwater before his little body stopped sticking to the sheets. He also had a peculiar habit: Bathroom door ajar he’d pee, then slowly walk backwards mid-stream. For a few nanoseconds his tiny bladder sustained enough pressure to actually hit the bowl then the sagging stream of urine would dribble across the floor and onto his running shoes. Now he’s a Winnipeg hearthrob with teenaged girls eating from his hands. Let’s hope he’s learned to wash them first.
Dr. Keshen advises that my Step 11 is to jettison personal baggage. And that’s you. You were an idiot even then. The line is “ . . . like the deserts miss the rain.” To think I wasted the ’eighties, my most loveliest time, on some Rick O’Casek also-ran. How’s life at Living Lighting been working out for you? I’ve burped the Tupperware marked “Jason” that’s been brooding under the futon for twenty-five years. Gone are the Carole Pope cassettes, your Valentine’s Kahlil Gibran, and the photos from your brother’s wedding. Here’s the last one, and such a shame, as my boobs look fantastic. Before there was Facebook, young lovers would treasure those few photos they had of each other and the good times they’d spent together, perhaps even splurge for an extra set of prints at the Fotomat so that, even while they still lived apart, they could always share the memories of that romantic week at the Holiday Inn in Montréal, or the New Year’s in Ottawa before they broke up.Like Pharaoh, she will rewrite history. Two years of it, anyway. She collects the evidence: her laptop, the big heavy album, his letters. She prepares her tools: her giraffe lighter, a pint of Dewars, a bucket of ice. 
My raisiny little grandfather was an ironworker. Although he mostly constructed bridges, he also built the tall smoke stacks at the Ford Foundry. My childish mind believed he did this singlehandedly. Just Pépé. On Sundays we’d wave to them on our way home from Holy Rosary. In university Vic and Sergio pointed out that the famous architect Albert Kahn designed the factory. A fact lost on Oscar. He just had to build them high enough so that the soot floated past the nice houses on Riverside Drive to settle instead on the battleship grey porches of Hickory Road. His street. 
Evita Peron’s downfall sounded the death knell for stylish dictators the world over. Witness the sartorial gaffes of the recently deceased North Korean despot. Although ’way down the list of What’s Wrong with Kim Jong Il, the dude really was a tacky little man. Couldn’t someone just have taken him aside, and kindly but firmly advised him to drop that Yoko Ono-does-Little Richard vibe without risking decapitation? Maybe not. Legend has it that his birth was foretold by a swallow. Pity it wasn’t forestalled by a swallow. Then maybe the party faithful might have rocked a little colour into their wardrobe. 
With cousin Lynn, Kenny the Mensch graced every Christmas, Chanukah, wedding and funeral of my childhood. In just three syllables LynnandKen promised an evening of glamour and bonhomerie, an anticipated exoticism far removed from my Everyday. When I learned Kenny had died I thought of a book Dad bought Dan at the very start of his life. It was a French telling of Hickory Dickory Dock. We read it daily, tracing the mouse’s journey up and down the clock. In this version, time passes and in its chaotic wake the little mouse’s beloved toy is broken. Funny how that happens.
Don’t think for a minute I’m fooled by the mouse. I know the rules. I’m hip to the deal. For two square a day, all I need do is look cute. It’s a good gig, although I was furious when she got rid of ma boys. (That fucking vet!) So now, I’m a wallflower at the nightly back-lane caterwauling session. Oh, I get her back, all the time – but in small ways. I pee on her rug and scratch holes in her drapes. I cough up hairballs on her bed. Now and then, I leave a doo-doo on her shoe.
Greg thought that her empathy, remarkable for a woman that stunning, bordered on the Pollyanna. His life experience taught him that beautiful girls were bitches. These were salad days, yet he’d convinced himself that she was inimitable. Until that evening at the restaurant. He, finishing his convoluted work story, looked up from his plate to catch her, her angelic face contorted by complete revulsion. She was transfixed, watching a woman who had just placed a forkful of cheesecake into her mouth. She felt his gaze and the Perfect Hot Saint returned. He’d found the thorn on his otherwise flawless rose. 
Escaping a mountain of midterm work, I bought my ticket, crested a dune, and found myself looking down this bright busy beach. It was still October back in the Hyland, but here it was hot, so I ditched the jacket, took a knife to my jeans—shorts and bare feet to blend in with the crowd.
With the exception of a new box of Crayolas, Judy thought nothing smelled better than a fresh tablet of construction paper. And she scored the good scissors, not the Lefties with the rounded blades and green handles, nor those made sticky by intemperate use of mucilage or the accumulated exhalations of those Jolly Rancher mouth-breathers seated across from her. She loved the scraping sound of the blades, the yielding crunch of the paper. Her desert-coloured animals leapt from the background, their matching auras so precise she had to paste them in as well. Giraffes entering the gates of Giraffe City. 
Dr. Keshen advises that my Step 11 is to jettison personal baggage. And that’s you. You were an idiot even then. The line is “ . . . like the deserts miss the rain.” To think I wasted the ’eighties, my most loveliest time, on some Rick O’Casek also-ran. How’s life at Living Lighting been working out for you? I’ve burped the Tupperware marked “Jason” that’s been brooding under the futon for twenty-five years. Gone are the Carole Pope cassettes, your Valentine’s Kahlil Gibran, and the photos from your brother’s wedding. Here’s the last one, and such a shame, as my boobs look fantastic. 
They have long memories on Coney Island—the people who live there, that is, not the rubes that come in from the city, not one of the more than one thousand people who came out to Luna Park that dreary January morning in 1903 to witness this rather inglorious affair.
