Tag: dates

My boss just walked by, talking into his cellphone, “They got the flu, hey? How many deaths?”

“Sex. All those complications, all that messiness. It’s like watching a group of enthusiasts really get into a hobby that you don’t share.”
from Sex with Ghosts, by Sarah Kanning

Last weekend I was in Seattle, Tony and I came to a silent understanding that the next time I was to go down there, it would be for A Visit, the capital letter sort, where we spend time holding hands, memorizing the sassy curve of dancing cheek to cheek, tangling our feet under tables, and generally acting like a pair of besotted fools. When I mention this to absolutely anyone who knows him, it’s like I’ve announced that we are getting married, running away to the garden of Eden, and intend to spend the rest of our days enmeshed in each other in paradise. Though I appreciate the encouragement, intimidating though it is, honestly, really very, I can’t help but notice it’s bloody well off the scale. The uncanny levels of jubilation present, a sort of incredible, “WHY DIDN’T WE THINK OF THAT BEFORE??!” eureka-congratulations, is bizarre, as if we’ve gone off and invented a new kind of light bulb that runs on wishes. I have no idea what to do with it.

That said, I am thrilled with the shape and depth of our upcoming weekend. Sleeping in and circuses, bruised lips and breakfast. It’s been confirmed, Tony and I are going to Teatro ZinZanni on Saturday, a fabulous blend of European cabaret, circus arts, restaurant, and vaudeville performed in an actual honest-to-mercy Belgian spiegeltent, (a word meaning mirror tent that amuses Tony endlessly to hear me say), and the Portage Bay Cafe for breakfast on Sunday. I’m beyond thrilled, given my relationship with such creations, and delighted and overwhelmed and all flavours of nice things. I have started counting out until I get on a bus, thinking, “less than a day away, remember your birth certificate, his smile, your house-coat, a towel, remember your book, your extra underwear, your toothbrush, hair-brush, pens, paper, and name, exchange your currency, check your camera battery, replace the missing lens cap, pick up a memory card, Robin’s music box, a back-pack, the books that need to return, a ring.” A litany of prepare, of hoping I am ready, of trying too hard not to be nervous as I sit back in the hours and wait.

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free

On the heels of my time in Seattle, then my time in Whistler, my lover came through town for a weekend. And broke up with me. But it was lovely. My blood is still gently humming contentment from the weekend with the same satisfaction found in tying a good knot. Mike and I had the nicest, kindest, most genial, and convivial split-up I have ever encountered, then spent all of Sunday on The Best Date We Never Had. Seriously. I feel all warm and fuzzy and completely and utterly loved, all the way from the roots of my multi-dyed hair to the very tips of my bare little toes.

Saturday started out badly, we had a worrisome phone-call notable only for the gulf of heart-bruising silence that ran underneath everything we said, but it brightened immeasurably as soon as we met at the club. There’s something baked into his smile which unfailingly cheers me up, like an open door with sunshine on the other side.

The gig was marvelous, everyone had a fantastic time. The albums don’t do him justice, they’re great music, but seeing him live.. it’s an extraordinary, inspiring experience. He twists, dances, and contorts around his instrument, setting a mad pace thick joyful exuberance. I’ve been to his concerts more than anyone else’s and yet I still don’t think I quite have the words to describe what it’s like. There was one boy dancing along at the front so enthusiastically a wind came off his limbs.

Thankfully, it was an early night, with another band playing after, so we got to pack up and go for dinner at a half-way reasonable hour, something which doesn’t happen very often. We went to the best Korean Tapas Fusion place, over on Robson, with James, Lung, Claire, her boyfriend, and my mother, Vicki. Delicious, nutritious, and tremendous fun. We toasted unlikely things, celebrated, and ate the perfect amount of far too much. On the ride back to my place, when it was just the two of us again, we went over the conversation we had neglected before, fitting our words together like the devout gears of a crystal mechanism, casual and insistent, gently examining our language to see where we’d gone and what would happen next. When we got to my place, it was somehow finally okay to go in and sleep alone.

Then all of Sunday, as if to make up for lost potential time, we spent on The Best Date We Never Had. He called when he woke up, drove straight over, graciously crammed into my windowsill with me so Lung could take our portrait, then brought me out to Pnohm Pehn, one of my favourite restaurants, for a few hours of religious experience late afternoon breakfast, then to La Casa Gelati, home to 208 flavours, for double-scoop ice-cream cones. When it was time to scoot over to the gig, we had elbow room enough to sit in the car and talk music before going in and facing set-up, and when it was time to vanish before the show, we settled into a coffee-shop with delicious tea to talk politics and the state of our worlds. (The Cold war, Rush, growing up believing in The Nuke, where we were when the Berlin Wall went down, the natural disasters created by man.)

I took video, That 1 Guy playing the Railway Club, April 5th & 6th: Forgotten Whales, How’s ‘Bout Those Holes in the Moon, Buttmachine, Somewhere Over the Rainbow (on the magic saw), Dig (on the magic boot), Solea (w. a bit of Iron man), The Moon is Disgusting (It’s Made of Cheese), Cameo’s Word Up finale, and one just for me, as I threw panties at the stage in Seattle.

After that we went for late night burger and shakes and the waiter thought we were so cute drinking two strawed from the milkshake that he took our picture. I even got a kiss goodnight at the door. It’s like we should break-up all the time, “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, where should we go for dinner?” So though I’m suddenly single, it was done with such grace that I feel completely undamaged. He figured out the magic combination, like how to kiss angels without being scalded.

This will not happen again until 2106.

alone in my room but for you

In retrospect, the resonant frequency between my voice and yours, (between 300 Hz to 3400 Hz), is too many decibels for the tongue to remember. Instead I want to offer you a hand-woven microcircuit, a dark map of my hair from when your fingers were caught in the grain, pulling just enough to make me catch my breath. I want to give you a pattern of wires that precisely describes the dark streets that shudder in the corner of my mind as a memory in minature of when we were lovers. Because it’s enough to shut out the world, that hand-span recollection caught behind my eyes, trapped fluttering and warm. You mean Prometheus, a back-seat wedding of mythology and fact. It’s enough to separate me from my actions, from my current behaviour, and set my record function to pause, rewind, play back, play.

On Wednesday, tomorrow at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.

I catch myself dwelling on your skin, a shade pale like porcelain, on the colour of your absent eyes, how they crack my indifferent sky. The sparks of impressions you left, I wrap them around me to keep warm in the rain. They are blurring, becoming one thing. A cloak of constellations to quietly change my point of view into something fierce and gentle and forgiving. I feel honoured and privileged, a mirror lens of potential, young and unshaped. Lacking focus, but learning.