Boomerang
October 27, 2003
“Wine in the morning and some breakfast at night. Well, I'm beginning to see the light.”
I don't know if any of you reading this will think I'm crazy or not, but the guy at the border crossing sure did.
"What's your citizenship?"
"U.S."
"What are you doing in Canada?"
"Picking up a friend."
"Male or female?"
"Female."
"Is she your girlfriend or just a friend?"
"Just a friend."
"And what's her citizenship?”
“She's Canadian."
"How long will you be staying in Canada?"
"Just a day. We're driving back tomorrow."
"You drove all the way up from Brooklyn today?"
"Yes."
"And you're driving all the way back tomorrow?"
"Uh-huh."
"How long will she be staying with you in Brooklyn?"
"A week."
"And how is she getting back to Canada?"
"I'm gonna drive her."
He looked at me with that suspicious border patrol look, shook his head, and said, "Go ahead.”
The drive up was a breeze -- over the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, and under the falling orange leaves of western New York, marking the miles with the beautifully angled poses of dead deer. Deaths choreographed by Martha Graham and directed by Sam Peckinpah. I arrived around 9 p.m. with crooked eyeballs and twitching temples. "Are you hungry? Do you want to eat something?" Raymi asked.
My stomach felt like a crumpled-up brown paper bag from all the crap I ate on the ride up, but yeah, I was hungry. The bar/restaurant we went to was having an office Halloween party. About a dozen pharmaceutical company employees dressed in rented costumes and dancing like middle school kids under the spastic colored lights. I couldn't believe it when they actually had a "Best Costume" contest. I mean, does someone really deserve a prize for getting to the costume shop earlier than everyone else?
We sat drinking and watching until Raymi couldn't take it anymore. She requested the DJ play a Justin Timberlake song, ran into the middle of the dork parade, and danced like a motherfucker. She blew those clowns clear off the floor. And that's not just an expression. They really were clowns. One of them was anyway.
The border patrol on the ride back was equally suspicious of what we were up to. "How do you two know each other?"
"Uh. The internet."
Yes, ma'am, that's right, I met a girl on the computer, young enough to be my niece, and I'm bringing her across the border to stay at my swinging bachelor pad in Brooklyn. What's with the attitude?
"What's going on down in Brooklyn?" she asked.
"Nothing." Raymi told her, "I'm just going down for a visit.
"Nothing?" she asked, scanning our faces for clues. "You're sure there's nothing else going on down there?”
What the fuck kind of question is that? We're going to New York fucking City. Of course, there's shit going on. The fact that there's more shit going on in New York than in suburban Toronto is the whole point of the visit.
"Hmm—" she said as I braced for more questions. But no. "Okay, go ahead.” And she waved us on.
Off we went through the non-stop torrential downpour that hounded us the entire twelve-hour ride back.
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October 28, 2003
Sometimes it's all about the photos, and other times it's not. Raymi read my book yesterday. Well, what's written of it at least. She said, "It's like a real book. I can't believe it was written by you." Then she said, "That didn't come out the way I meant it."
I asked if she wanted to see pictures of the people that the characters are based on.
"Sure."
I pulled out a portfolio of photographs and pointed out this one and that -- first by their fictitious names, and then by their real ones. "It's strange to see them come to life like that," she said. "They seem like such characters ."
Funny to hear that coming from Raymi, the biggest character I know.
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October 30, 2003
Have you ever had a smell fling you slow-motion into the sheer netting of another day? Another night? A year ago -- a hundred years ago? It makes you walk a little slower, think a little deeper. I don't want to tell you what that smell was or where in the wind-torn fabric of time it put me, but as I saw myself from a distance, it hurt.
I guess they're called regrets. Some people like to brag about not having any. Don't believe them. When I think about mine, my life shatters into a million shards of what-ifs. A million scenarios branching out of the thick trunk of possibilities. "If only I'd turned left at that last bush, I might be out of this maze by now." It's how we learn. "Well, that didn't work out too well. Next time I'm gonna try this instead." But all that hard-won knowledge can calcify, waiting for circumstances to align in the same delicate balance as when the smell was brand new. And adapting whatever you might've learned to a new situation isn't easy. I mean, even if you don't repeat your mistakes, it doesn't mean you won't find new ways to screw up. But you do what you think is right at the time and move on. Right? What else is there to do?
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October 31, 2003
Raymi and I watched "Extreme Makeover" last night. I'd never seen it before. I don't watch much television, and I don't have any favorite shows. I do now. What a fucked up premise. I thought of my friend Bridgette and how she hates her nose. "If I can ever save up $2000, I'm gonna get a nose job." But with all that expensive weed she buys, plus her pill habit of six Percocets and four Xanax a day, there is no way she is ever going to save up that kind of cash. But I’m still worried that she’ll try to fix her nose.
"Bridgette, your nose is beautiful. Don't touch it," I tell her.
"You don't understand. It’s something that's bothered me my whole life. I would always get teased as a kid. I hate looking at it."
Those kids were dumb fucks. Most kids are. But I understood how she felt. I still have a fat lip from a bicycle accident as a kid. And despite some too-little-too-late dental work, my teeth are kind of fucked up too. I can still hear the shit kids used to say to me. Like that tubby kid I was fighting during recess. Who knows why we were fighting? I used to fight a lot when I was little. But anyway, I had him beat. My knees had his arms pinned as his legs flailed behind me. He was sweaty, his face was red, and he smelled like shit. He looked up at me and said, "Your teeth are ugly." I should've spit in his face, but instead I got up and walked away. He’d found my Achilles heel, and there was no beating it. "Yeah," I told Bridgette, "I do understand, actually." And I told her the story.
"I like your lip," she said. "I like how it's not perfect. Scars are sexy."
I didn't believe her, and she didn't believe me. All that schoolyard crap runs deep. And that's what I said to Raymi as we sat watching the show. "They can try to fix up their faces -- pin their ears and shave their noses, but what they really need help with is the shit you can't see."
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November 3, 2003
Another rainy round-trip push through the wet, pale-gray cotton of the New York State Thruway delivered Raymi safe and sound to the peace-loving country of Canada. It was a slow and lonely drive home. My Jeep doesn't go very fast, and it's so loud on the highway that sometimes you forget the radio is blaring at top volume until you pull in for gas and shut the engine off. When I finally stumbled through the door, my apartment was sad. "Where's Raymi?" it asked.
"Somewhere over the Rainbow Bridge."
