#he had a full blown joint in his inventory!

[shecantsim]

IT’S YOUR FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL AND YOUR ALREADY MESSING UP! WHAT FRIEND??? I NEED TO SPEAK THEM AND THEIR PARENT(S).

[kootenaygoon]

So,

I didn’t have to drive anymore. 

With my clammy forehead pressed to the moist glass of my RAV’s passenger window, I felt like a dying star sucking back black energy in preparation for going supernova. As Mika motored along the undulating lakeshore across the Big Orange Bridge, worriedly drumming her elaborately painted nails on the steering wheel, I compiled a mental inventory of everyone I’d alienated, everyone I’d hurt and embarrassed and infuriated, all the names of people who I’d lost because of my berserk antics and toxic personality. 

It wasn’t just the staff of the Star, Ed and Kai and all the rest of them. There was Blayne, and Becca, then Chelsea and now Natalya — plus Snapper and Niles, and a bunch of my co-workers at Tony’s. The list continued. Last of all I thought of Paisley, nearly two years gone now, along with our canine progeny and our dreams of a future together. I’d moved to Nelson with Muppet in my passenger seat four years earlier, and now I was leaving town completely alone.

It was around lunch-time and we were on our way to the Cranbrook Airport, which meant taking a ferry in Balfour. My parents had forwarded some money for gas and an overnight hotel stay for Mika and her two friends, who were chattering in the backseat. I wondered if she’d brought them because she was scared to be alone with me, if they were supposed to act as a social buffer so I didn’t overwhelm her with my manic ramblings. The last few days had been a torrent — I’d lost so many people already, was I going to lose Mika too?

I thought about the final montage of Six Feet Under, with all the different characters experiencing their ultimate fates while Sia sings. I wondered if I fast-forwarded to my death, would it actually be that far away? Would my departure be as incendiary as Ryan Tapp’s, as soul-shredding as Kessa’s, as Shakespearean as Bodie’s? I was 33, like Jesus when he was crucified, so any extra time was gravy. Right? I pulled out my phone and scrolled through Twitter, where opposing factions of the UBC Accountable conversation were flaming each other over new Galloway news. I continued to retweet and comment indiscriminately, relieved to have CanLit drama to think about rather than spectral Kessa and her dancing army of roller-skating women. 

I could hear them singing.

 “Oh-oh, I’m a rebel just for kicks now,” Laela sang in my brainspace, as a dude in white overalls danced through Sofiella Watt’s junkyard out in Blewett. “Let me kick it like it’s 1986, now.”

“Might be over now, but I feel it still,” I whispered under my breath, pulling up the YouTube video on my phone. 

Then there was that scene in Mad Men where Don Draper fires Lane Pryce, who proceeds to commit suicide in his office. This was an experience plenty of other people had gone through, right? Losing your job, social exile. This shit was temporary. My mind was a hellscape at the moment, but that didn’t mean it would be forever. I watched the clouds dance above the surface of Kootenay Lake through the trees, replaying the events of the past few weeks like a newsreel. I thought of Face Tatooo in the rain, about my multiple visits to the hospital, the two police officers who showed up at my door after some of my more alarming social media posts. One of them was mohawked and heavily tattooed, named Armstrong.

“I’m just trying to find the truth,” I told him. “The real truth.”

“There’s not a whole lot of truth in this world,” he said, grim, sitting backwards on a fold-out chair in the middle of my living room. I’d just taken him on a tour around my house to look at all my latest paintings. One of them was for my CrossFit gym, and showed me overwhelmed in glittery rainbow paint drooling down the canvas like blood. I asked him whether we could take a selfie together, just to show everyone I was safe.

“I don’t see why not,” he said. 

With my black toque pulled low over my eyes, I had posed with my arm around Armstrong’s back in solidarity. I could imagine the conversations on the other side of the screen: Why was there a cop in Will’s living room? And what’s all this nonsense about having a list of names, about fighting a kamikaze war against rape culture? I had thoroughly and completely lost track of reality, I understood that and I wasn’t shy about letting people know. But would they reject me now, exile me, ridicule me? Now that I’d been thrown from my journalistic plinth, did I even matter? I was just some dude playing at being a reporter. I could be replaced, forgotten about, made irrelevant. 

“I did that job better than it’s even meant to be done,” I said, more to myself than anything else. “I gave that newspaper my soul.”

Mika nodded. “I think everybody knows that. It was obvious you were so into it. But you gotta think ‘it’s just a job’ too, you know? You’re going to have lots of jobs.”

“How does it make sense that I have to leave town and fucking assholes like Snapper and Cam Carpenter and John fucking Dooley get to just continue on with their lives like nothing happened. I mean, I’m the good guy here. How the fuck does this make any sense? It’s not fair.”

Mika sighed. “It doesn’t need to make sense. You just need to get back to your family and get some sleep. This is all going to get sorted.”

I blinked back some more tears, fiddled with the radio some more, then took careful long inhales through my nose as I starred out at the frosted white tips of looming evergreens. We were almost at the terminal now. This is all a moment, I told myself, and moments end. 

“Hey, what’s with all the police cars?”

*

There was no way to escape the moment. Every thought was uncomfortable, my body clenched and sweaty. Had that just happened, or was I just being dramatic? Had I really considered throwing myself off the back of the ferry? What the fuck was wrong with me?

After we reached the opposite shore, Mika pulled over to share a joint with me at a quiet boat launch alongside the road. We were shivering in the wind off the lake. Everything else seemed drained of colour, but her hair was a bombastic fire engine red. It reminded me of Mharianne’s pink hair, and Sierra’s hair as well. All these signs led back to Me Too, back to UBC Accountable and Steven Galloway and even my pastor Trent. I thought of my time in the subterranean tunnels below Nelson with Gordo, of the crypts waiting there. The whole town was built on a graveyard, the lake full of drowned souls, and ghosts swirled through the alleyways. Looming above it all was Elephant Mountain, rumbling to life like a buried diety returning to the light, throbbing with purple energy and ready for resurrection. His followers danced shoulder-to-shoulder on Baker Street in flamboyant Shambhala outfits, totems held aloft, while zig-zagging lights pulsed in time with their ecstatic ululations. Were they worshipping? Or praying? Or what?

“Can I have a hug?” I asked her.

She hesitated for a moment. Shrugged. “Yeah, sure.”

It was a weak hug, without any warmth. I felt pathetic and needy as I sucked back the last few hoots on the joint. I owed this girl a lot, but I couldn’t expect our friendship to survive long past this. She was just my latest casualty.

“I really appreciate you driving me, and everything. You didn’t ask to be a crazy person’s roommate.”

She grimaced, shrugged against the wind. “You’re not crazy. But you should’ve worn a condom, and you shouldn’t have taken those fucking pills while you were at work. I know you’re going through a lot, but these were bad choices. Do you understand that?”

I blinked for a long moment, surprised. It was like being lectured by a younger sibling. “I hate myself every day. I’m doing this whole mental inventory thing and I know I’m an asshole, okay? I really fucked up, I get that.”

She squinted suspiciously. “Do you?”

A while later, as the evening sky turned the colour of milky coffee, we pulled into the airport parking lot. I’d already left my cell phone and computer behind, and just had a simple carry-on. I tightened my tie and checked my reflection in the glass, jutting out my chin dramatically. I’m dressing up for my breakdown. I didn’t know what was going to happen on the other side of this flight, but I was going to face it in bouncer black. I pushed my pink anti-bullying glasses into place, the last piece of my uniform. I thought of that elementary school flash mob, of the pink shirt I’d worn for years. Bully Free Zone. I thought of my Power by You canvas, about doing hand-stand push-ups and burpees until I left a sweat angel on the ground. I was an intelligent, passionate and talented motherfucker and this wasn’t the end of me. No way.

“Your plane’s not for a few hours, are you sure you’ll be okay?” Mika asked, pulling her coat tight against the wind. It was starting to rain a bit. 

“You should go ahead and get checked into your hotel. I’ll get a magazine or something. And I’ll let you know when I get to Vancouver. You don’t have to worry about me, okay? You did what you had to do.”

She bit her lip. “I want you to be okay.”

“I will be.”

This time we didn’t bother with a hug. She climbed back into the driver’s seat and pulled away, illuminating red rain puddles all around the RAV. She was safe now, and so was I. Lugging my bag over one shoulder, I headed to the ticket booth to arrange my way home. The Cranbrook landscape was strangely flat and barren, stretching out on all sides around me. There was a plane taxiing down the runway, its engine roar filling my ears. I squeezed my eyes shut against the rain, which was beginning to spray, and suddenly I was the narrator from Fight Club on the day his condominium was blown up by Tyler Durden. Staring at the smoking wreckage of my refrigerator, sifting through the blackened detritus of my life, his words echoed back to me: It’s only when we lose everything that we’re free to do anything. 

Right during that moment, as I contemplated the fact that Brad Pitt plays both Tyler Durden and Lt. Aldo Raine from Inglourious Basterds, a cherry red convertible pulled up to the curb. Andrew Stevenson was sprawled across the backseat with his shotgun, smoking a cigarette, Ryan Tapp dangled his arm from the passenger side window and Kessa was driving in her bare feet. She had the radio on high, playing Tove Lo.

“Imaginary friend, stay with me to the end now,” she sang, but it was Laela’s voice I heard. “Keeping me dreaming.”

I opened the passenger door for Ryan, and he bounded out of the seat with a theatrical flourish. He threw open his arms crucifixion-style, rolled his head around a few times, then took a long drag from his vape. Andrew passed him his bag, and he hooked it over his arm.

“I’m a rebel just for kicks now. I don’t know if you heard,” I said.

“Man, I’ve been following it all. You’re a fucking legend, man. Fuck that town, right? You went out Cobain-style, with a shotgun, you burned that shit down. You’re a magical soul. You’re a light.”

I blushed. “I didn’t get any of the answers, though.”

He pondered this for a moment, while Andrew climbed into the passenger seat behind him and pulled the door closed. Kessa put on her blinker and began to pull away, leaving me, just like Paisley and Blayne and Chelsea and every other fucking woman in my life. How many divorces did I have to go through? How many times would my heart be broken? I didn’t know how much more pain I could take, all my empathy for strangers.

“Look at you, giving a fuck when it’s not your turn to give a fuck,” Ryan said, doing his best impression of Bunk from The Wire.

I channeled McNulty. “What the fuck did I do?”

If on some level I was aware that I was standing in public, talking to myself, then this other part of me didn’t care anymore. I was like a character from a Denis Johnson short story, like a drug-addled Hunter S. Thompson mixed with Chuck Klosterman, maybe. I was capable of so much. I could make all of these inner minions dance on cue; my life was performance art. Nobody understood me, really, or what I was trying to accomplish. Not Spencer, not my parents, not Brendan or anyone. The only one who understood was Ryan Tapp. His bum-chin wagging joyously, I admired his close-fitting blue suit and his skinny tie. He was dressed like he was attending the opening night of some film festival, like he was ready to hit the red carpet. He took a lengthy, mischievous pull on his vape and smiled seductively.

“Where we headed next, Goon?”

The Kootenay Goon