A Cat Named Felicity

Prologue

Weed just makes me an all-around better person. It’s like money… but better. When I’m high, I’m easier to get along with; I have a tendency of being more generous, and I recognize the efforts of others. I feel love, even if I don’t always show it. When I know that I’m going to be able to get high, I’m simply a more pleasant person. When I’m sober, it seems like I’m always pissed off and angry at the world.

A Cat Named Felicity

Nathan Sharpe

1.

Well fuck – a new month starts in an hour and fifteen minutes and my fortunes haven’t improved much at all, with the exception of meeting Travis Breidenbach of course. He seems good-hearted, but I have seriously deeply-rooted trust issues. I’ve spent my whole life trying to work them out, and it’s not that I’m going to give up now. I continue trying my best each and every day to improve my live. I must say, it seems like Travis is at least willing to try anything to help me out, but how many times have I heard that before? Still, I’m trying to avoid becoming too skeptical of someone who actually wants to see my writing evolve into something greater. My entire life’s been one long mission to ‘reach the top,’ as they say, through my writing; to achieve success and international fame. And Travis seems to be the only one I’ve met who shares my same passion for creative works of genius. So far, he seems to be the only one who shares my vision of seeing The Psychedelic Vaults become the most prominent publishing firm and media conglomerate in the world. And as an entrepreneur of sorts himself, he might just be the one to help pull me out of this hell that my life has become. I feel certain I can feel a chemistry with this new potential business partnership, and now I feel like the pressure’s on me. I have to keep writing – if I give up on my responsibilities, the whole thing just falls apart, and I can’t let that happen. Not now. I wanted my life to be defined by my writing. I’m getting exactly what I asked for.

How did things end up this way? Where the fuck do I begin? I suppose the most logical place would be coming clean about the lies I’ve told my entire life. I’m still a virgin, and no matter what I achieve during my life, I can’t help worrying that’s what everyone else is going to use to define and measure it by. It’s killing me inside. I know I shouldn’t let it, but it really is. I feel like I’ve wasted my prime years, and I’ll never get that time back. I feel cursed. I hate the world. But I wasn’t always like this.

My name’s Nathan Alexander Sharpe, also known as Clyde Hightower, among other things. I was born on the ninth day of September 1992 in Belleville, Ontario and no matter how many times I’ve thought that I’ve escaped this god-forsaken town, I always end up right back here. I suppose that in order to understand who I am as a person, it would be important to understand who my parents were. Please understand that I’m simply going off of allegations from biased sources here, but that’s all I’ve ever known: one night in a drunken rage, my father kicked my mother and twenty three-month-old sister out of the house, mere weeks before my birth. Now that I think back on it, I remember my mother telling me that my father had stormed out of their house first, claiming that he told her that he wanted her gone by the time he returned. And my mother even admitted once that she didn’t think that he thought she would even listen to him (God what an awkward set of sentences to write). I suppose there’s always two sides to every story.

My parents lived in multiple different locations throughout southern Ontario during their time together, so I’m not one hundred percent sure about this, but I’m relatively certain that they were living in Kitchener-Waterloo at the time. According to my mother, she had to seek refuge (for lack of a better term) at a homeless shelter. I don’t know how she got back to Belleville in time for my birth, but it’s where her parents have been living out their retirement ever since, and I imagine that must have heavily influenced her decisions. Not to sound too egotistical here, but my mother always told me that she chose the name Nathan because of its meaning – gift of God, and all things considered, it may have been a miracle that I was ever even born at all.

My first memory was a cat named Felicity, our neighbors and my mother’s friends, Fran and Angie, and sitting in an infant-sized swing in the basement of our townhouse in the ghetto on Russell Street. It seemed like we were constantly moving from one to the next, as my mother worked tirelessly to try and improve our lives. Within the first nine years of my life we lived in five different locations, making it quite impossible for me or my sister to ever really make any close friends. I don’t want to sound angry at my mother for that; I know she was always trying to act in our best interests. She really did have the most relentless work ethic of anyone I had ever seen, and I realize now that, as her son, I was simply granted the privilege of watching all of the behind-the-scenes footage which no one else saw. My mother, sister, and I have lived in poverty our whole lives. I really can’t complain anymore – I’m a white twenty two year old male. All in all, I’m in a fairly advantageous position, yet to say that I’m well off would be a flat out lie. I’ve only managed to survive off of the sheer grace of the Universe, and by going into thousands of dollars’ worth of debt.

My mother’s parents have always helped me out immensely. Before I get too deep into the plotline here, I have to give credit where credit is due. They are the most patient and loving couple I ever could ever know. I really can’t say what I would do without them. There’s still several members of my family I haven’t made peace with, nor can I say for sure if I ever will, and I include my father in that list.

***

“So we’re here now,” Dwayne said as he drove me back home through the dark, deserted streets of Belleville. I couldn’t help but share a laugh with him in response to the sentiment. I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me. And even though I was still quite pissed off and bitter about the whole situation I had found myself in, I felt the slightest glimmer of hope – the first time I had in as long as I could remember.

I liked Dwayne. There was something about him that reminded me of my good friend from a past life, Chad Grixti, and I vowed that I wouldn’t fuck things up so majorly a second time. Perhaps it was the fact that he also smoked marijuana on a daily basis. Or maybe it was his philanthropy and love for humanity that made him seem like so much fun to be around. I had originally met Dwayne on the fourteenth day of April 2014, in a training class at a new job, working in sales and customer service for Rogers Communications. I met a lot of people there who I liked, but in the end, all but a handful of them seemed to lose interest in our friendship. And then they all did, but that happened later. In fact, I would say that there were only three people I worked with there who stood by me and offered me any sense of support whatsoever when I had needed it the most. I watched countless other so-called friends alienate me and discriminate against me; in some cases, friends I had known since my early childhood. This town really does feel cursed and impossible to escape.

It was near the end of August by the time I finally decided to come clean and tell the truth… again. I was beginning to accept that I couldn’t hide behind the lies forever… again. Every day at work was simply getting worse and worse. My drug addiction was spiralling out of control; it was the only thing that seemed to offer me any perceived relief whatsoever, even if it was only fake or temporary. I felt as if everyone I worked with was whispering and mocking me behind my back, and I felt like they knew I was a virgin simply by observing my actions and my mannerisms. I may have just been delusional… but I don’t think so. I saw and heard how the others started treating me and responding to my presence. No one else will ever understand all of the shit I’ve been put through.

Whether rumors and speculation of my non-existent sex life were indeed going around prior to my confession, I suppose I’ll never know for sure, and I can’t really say that I care one way or another. But my time at university had taught me that nothing was ever going to change in my life if I didn’t make the initial effort. It had taken me two years at the University of Ontario in Oshawa before I had managed to work up the courage to admit the truth to my friends, Peter Chalmers, Michael Zulian, and Andrew Ruda. And even though none of them had cared to help me, I didn’t want to be responsible for making the same mistakes over and over again. So on one night that August I decided to take action.

I had gradually developed close friendships with Wesley Kerns and Dwayne Bulpit over the course of the previous three and a half months, and we seemed to share a connection between ourselves that I really hadn’t felt with anyone else. Even so, we had become ‘divided,’ so to speak. Wes and his girlfriend, Christal White, as well as Dwayne had moved into a different line of business with the company, and so I was no longer working with them as closely as I had been. I hate to say it, but I started ignoring and neglecting them and I’m sure they had picked up on the shift in my personality. I didn’t believe that any of my coworkers would be willing to do anything to help me, and by that point, hating the world had just become a natural part of who I was.

That’s not to say that I was necessarily happy with who I was as a person, or happy with who I could see myself becoming, and so I set out to make things right that August night. If memory serves me correctly, it would have been the twenty eighth – the last Thursday of the month. We had gotten off work at ten o’clock that evening, and then the four of us had made the drive across town in Dwayne’s car to the apartment of Wesley Kerns and Christal White. They didn’t really have a lot, but they were willing to share what little they did have. Wes had even taken the liberty of introducing me to his drug dealer of sorts, who I’ll simply refer to as Joe from hereon. I wouldn’t realize it initially, but Joe would ultimately go on to become one of the most reliable and trustworthy people I had ever met in my life. I’d met my previous dealer and friend, David Lee, in my training class at Rogers as well. He had quit after two weeks, but had continued to keep selling me the drugs… at least for a little while.

However, midway through August he had decided that he was going to stop responding to my text messages. It probably wasn’t the smartest decision on his part. I knew where he lived, and could’ve shown up on his doorstep with a gun for all he knew, but I didn’t. As far as I was concerned, if he didn’t want my friendship and my money, then it was his loss; not mine. There were countless other sources where I could find my narcotics. With that said, I still spent two weeks clean and as sober as a judge before that night in August when I was finally introduced to Joe, and each day until then I had felt ready to fucking kill somebody. But I knew I had no one to blame but myself for the mess my life had ended up in.

After making an initial pickup, Wes, Christal, Dwayne, and I all sat around the apartment, passing a bong amongst ourselves and chatting idly while my friends waited patiently to hear the truth come from my own tongue. It took me an hour or two to muster up the courage, but at last I did what I felt needed to be done…again. God, you’d think I would have learned the first dozen fucking times.

“I’m probably going to smoke this and then go,” I had told them as I sat on the floor, holding the bong with a fully-packed bowl before uttering those fucking words I’ve repeated over and over everywhere I’ve ever gone. That godforsaken combination of four words which seem to hold so much fucking meaning: I’m…still…a…virgin. Of course the others had been expecting that; it’s all they had been waiting to hear all night. And of course as soon as I said that, all three of them interrupted me at once, speaking over each other while all attempting to offer me their own personal advice, as if I hadn’t heard it all countless times before.

Yet my friends were rather accepting, and I wanted to at least give them a chance before unfairly judging them, so I didn’t leave the apartment immediately as I had claimed I was going to. I stayed for maybe another hour, smoking more and trying my best to explain how such a fucked up life comes to be. However, somehow I knew that no matter what I said, no one would understand how I felt. Nevertheless, I tried telling myself that it was still better to try and talk this shit out like an adult, instead of keeping it all to myself while it slowly killed me.

Dwayne and I left the apartment sometime around one in the morning. “That was fun,” I remember him saying to Wes and Christal before leaving.

“Yeah, it was a ball,” I spoke up in a sarcastic tone. The others laughed and with that, Dwayne and I took our leave. I remained silent as Dwayne drove me back to my own apartment. I can’t remember exactly what he had said to me – I simply recall him trying to tell me that I shouldn’t worry about what anyone else thought of me, but such a feat was certainly much easier said than done. I really wasn’t looking forward to facing my coworkers the following day. When Dwayne and I arrived back out front of my apartment complex, I simply stepped out of his car and started walking inside without saying a word; no ‘thank you;’ no ‘goodbye;’ nothing. I was stoned out of my fucking mind and trying my best to process my own thoughts. At least I had more weed, and I suspected that would help me cope.

“Do you want me to come in for a minute?” I heard Dwayne’s voice call out from behind me as I slowly walked away from his car. I stopped and turned around.

I nodded. “If you want,” I replied, hoping I hadn’t been too rude; it certainly hadn’t been intentional. My friend parked his car and got out, following me inside where we continued to talk and smoke more for maybe thirty minutes. Once he left, I went to bed almost immediately. My thoughts were racing but I actually ended up getting a pretty decent sleep, all things considered. I couldn’t help but feel as if the universe might be starting to actually turn in my favor for a change.

I didn’t wake up until about ten the next morning. As usual, the first thing I did was check my phone, and upon doing so, I saw that I had an awaiting text message from Dwayne, asking me to reply when I awoke. I was actually quite surprised to see it, as no one ever usually contacted me. So I sent a response and a couple of hours later, he was back at my apartment once again. His shift was scheduled to start half an hour after my own, and so we each took a few more hits from my bong and then he drove me to the office.

I vividly recall the company was having a ‘corn roast’ that day – they were always hosting barbeques and the like in hopes of boosting employee morale. I suppose they had to do something since we were all stuck in dead end, minimum wage positions. As Dwayne pulled his vehicle into the parking lot, we started talking shit between ourselves about the company. “Fuck their corn roast,” my friend had mumbled as we drove past all the people gathered together outside. Dwayne wasn’t exactly one to respond well to authority either. In the course of our recent discussions, we had both been able to guarantee that neither of us would ever get promoted at Rogers, no matter how hard we worked. Dwayne maneuvered his vehicle through the lot and stopped in a vacant parking spot. He still had time to kill, but my shift would be starting momentarily, yet I didn’t move from the passenger seat. I was dreading the scene that would be awaiting me inside. The two of us sat in silence for a brief moment before I spoke up.

“Man… I fucking hate my life.”

Dwayne sort of laughed and sort of let out an empathetic sigh both at the same time. “I know,” he answered. “But it gets better. The fall’s a nice time of the year.” He had also mumbled something about how it sucks to live in any small town with a drug problem, where everybody knows one another. I still felt skeptical, but his words did offer me at least the slightest sense of renewed hope for the time being.

The ensuing eight hour shift felt like the longest workday of my entire life. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I was actually going through another training program at the time which revolved around the sales and activations of cell phones, and I had to attend meetings at the start of every shift with my coworkers, trainers, and bosses. On this particular day, the Friday, I sat there with everybody else, trying to remain inconspicuous, elevated to the heavens. Once our meeting was over, I immediately returned to my desk and a second or two later I saw Candice approaching me.

“DUDE?!” she practically yelled as she passed me, and in return I only gave an automatic, instinctive shrug. I knew Dwayne and Wes wouldn’t waste any time getting the word out to everyone else. Candice had been my first and favorite trainer, and she helped me out immensely that day whenever I got stuck on the phone with an impatient customer who I didn’t have answers for. I spent the day counting the minutes and the seconds, taking a cigarette break every two hours.

But time passed, just as it always has and always will, and at long fucking last I reached the end of my shift. Dwayne, Wes, and Christal were all off half an hour later, and so I stood outside, alone in the dark parking lot, chain smoking for the next thirty minutes, waiting for them just as I had the previous day.

The four of us took Dwayne’s car once again, and spent maybe an hour smoking weed back at Wesley’s and Christal’s apartment. I distinctly remember Dwayne talking about how he couldn’t understand how somebody could hate the world. And I can’t promise that the statement was directed at me, but to this day, I can’t help feeling as if it was. I didn’t respond to it though. I just kept smoking with my head down, eyes fixated on the ground. Dwayne and I took our leave much earlier than we had the previous day. He had been telling me all day that his younger cousin was in town for the weekend. She was visiting from Alberta, and this may have just been my own delusional thoughts, but at least to me, the timing seemed far too coincidental.

Of course I didn’t want to jump to conclusions either, and back outside in Dwayne’s car, my friend broached the subject as casually as he could. We both shared the briefest moment of silence before he spoke. “Well… did you want me to take you straight back to your place? I’ve got to go pick up my cousin if you want to come along for the drive –”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, cutting him off and nodding before he even had the chance to finish his sentence. We started on our way.

We drove a brief distance across the city before Dwayne withdrew his cell phone and made a call to the girl in question as he continued to drive through the darkened streets. They spoke and argued for a few moments before Dwayne hung up. He ended the call by telling his cousin that he would pick her up the next day instead. “That’s my cousin,” he said, nodding his head disappointingly after he had disconnected the call. I didn’t say anything.

Dwayne proceeded to turn around and drive back in the opposite direction, towards my apartment. I was lost deeply in my own thoughts. I still didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but I felt like I had been in the exact same position too many times before, and I refused to let it happen again. It made me feel like too much of a failure. In my mind, I had given Dwayne a chance to help me and he had squandered it. He wouldn’t be getting another.

As we drove, we came to an intersection where six different streets came to meet. The previous street we had turned onto led straight to a dead end in the opposite direction, and so we had been forced to face the nonsensical junction. I wasn’t even paying attention to where Dwayne was going. We were both too high for our own good and I remember thinking that perhaps it was for the best that we didn’t end up seeing his cousin that night. Certainly I wouldn’t have known what to do or say if we had.

Being from the county, Dwayne didn’t really know the side streets of Belleville that well (or maybe he did and was just playing with my mind). He took a turn, and then another, and soon we had turned right back onto the dead end street which would once again take us to the six-way intersection. “I think we’ve been here before,” I finally said.

“Oh I would never end up back in the same place twice,” my friend joked in a confident tone.

“Go this way!” I almost shouted, pointing to one of the alternate routes when we reached the intersection for a second time.

“I was going to go that way the last time,” Dwayne countered. He followed my directions and we were soon back out onto one of the main streets. “So we’re here now,” he said after a moment of silence, and we both laughed. In the days that followed, Dwayne would try to the disappointment I felt that night by telling me that his cousin was like a little sister to him. I didn’t care. I was done trying, and I knew that it would ultimately be only a matter of time before things between us fell apart after that.

2.

Marijuana had always been my drug of choice, but the first time I tried coke I knew I would be hooked for life. With the immense bouts of euphoria and energy it offered, it sort of reminded me of weed – only better, in the sense that I could use it productively and frequently throughout the course of any given day. And only God knows how much I fucking love snorting psychoactive, synthetic powders. The first time I ever used it had been a spur-of-the-moment decision… sort of. I had wanted to try cocaine for the better part of my life and fully expected to take advantage of the opportunity if it ever arose. I wouldn’t have expected it to happen the way it did though. I was actually looking for marijuana at the time, when I randomly encountered a young man about the same age as myself on the streets of that deranged, wretched city. The man was trying to unload the rest of his supply; apparently the Universe had heard my prayers. The drug peddler told me that he was going to jail, which is why he was trying to get rid of as much of his supply as possible. For a hundred and fifty dollars he ended up selling me sixteen grams of marijuana and about a third of a gram of what he claimed was the ‘purest blow in town.’ The whole deal was made in a real casual manner; I pretended like it was something I did all the time. “Do you smoke it?” the dealer asked. “I got crack too.”

“Nah,” I sort of shrugged, playing off the question as best as I could. “I like to snort it.” The drug dealer seemed indifferent to my preferences and immediately broke out the baggie with the small amount of white powder in it, which he presented to me. I took it and pocketed it right away, hoping I appeared more calm and cool and collected that I looked.

I was shaking when I got home and finally got to the privacy of my own room, ripping into the bag of narcotics, sticking my nose in and smelling deeply. Oh, so that’s what that smell is, I thought, recognizing it immediately. I started out with the smallest possible dose, while still actually ingesting the drug. I didn’t have a test kit, and I hadn’t exactly gotten the coke from a reliable source. And even though I had gotten a good vibe from the guy I had bought it from, I was smart enough to know that a good vibe didn’t necessarily count for shit when it came to the black market. In fact, the young man had also offered me magic mushrooms and Ritalin as well, and I had briefly considered buying some of both. However I concluded that my mind was in no shape for dealing with psychedelics, and I figured if I was going to use any stimulants, cocaine would be my first choice. In the end, I got quite lucky the blow wasn’t cut with something lethal. I had sort of been taking my chances to say the least, not that I really cared anymore.

I waited about an hour after my ‘trial dose,’ and when I was satisfied that it wasn’t going to kill me, I did a slightly larger line. I used about half of it that first night, forcing myself to save a little bit, no matter how badly I wanted to use it all. I didn’t know if I would ever be able to find more of the drug, and even if it wasn’t an enormous amount, I figured I’d save the rest for some sort of special occasion, just for the sake of being able to say that I still had cocaine. And it must have been pretty good shit like the dealer had promised – it was a very clean high with no paranoia and a relatively soft landing, all things considered. It made me feel like a god.

I had trouble getting any sleep that night. The anticipation of getting to use the drug again kept me awake, almost more effectively than the drug itself did. I didn’t save the rest of it for a special occasion like I promised I would. I finally drifted off to sleep for a couple of hours, and when I awoke around six o’clock, the only thought on my mind was to get high again. I stood from my bed and stretched and then crossed my room and sat down at my desk. I opened the bag that contained the coke and dumped the small amount that remained out onto the desk, using a pocket knife to cut it into two large, even lines. The small chunks were soft, and the blade of my knife cut through them fairly effortlessly. I logged into my laptop and put on Eric Clapton’s, Cocaine. Then I rolled up a one hundred dollar bill tightly into a straw and snorted both lines without thinking twice – that had always been a personal goal on my own private bucket list. Snort coke through a one hundred dollar bill; it made me feel like a rockstar.

But suddenly I was faced with another problem. The day had hardly even started yet and the coke was gone. The dealer I had encountered on the street had left me with his phone number so at least I had an idea where to get more of it. Unfortunately my cell phone was still out of service since I hadn’t paid my bill in months so I wanted to get to a payphone as quickly as I could. Thankfully there was one located about two minutes down the street out front of a convenience store. I got dressed, making sure I took enough change to make my phone call before slipping into my shoes and quietly letting myself out of the house. The snow may have melted but the early April morning still held a reminiscent winter chill. I took my pipe with me and smoked a bowl of cannabis on the way, hoping it may help calm my nerves.

Standing out front of the store, I deposited my fifty cent into the change-operated phone and heard the dial tone. I scrolled through the contacts in my cell phone until I found the dealer’s saved number, punching it into the keypad on the payphone. The line rang through and my call was answered almost instantly by the dealer who had apparently managed to evade his arrest so far. “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Nathan,” I said, hoping he remembered me, and trying to hide the nervousness in my voice. “I was just wondering if you were around again…?”

“Yeah,” the dealer answered, providing me a glimmer of hope. “What were you looking for? More blow?”

“Some more of that coke if you have any, yeah,” I answered. The drug peddler told me to meet him at his house, providing me with the address. I knew where it was – located on the other side of town, and since I was walking, I warned the dealer that I’d be about an hour, but he assured me that was alright. I ended the call and hung up the receiver before continuing down the street in the direction of the address I had been provided with. My heart raced as I walked, overcome with apprehension, unease, and nerves. I wondered what I had gotten myself into, and began thinking it may have been a mistake to smoke. I should be clear-headed, I thought to myself, but it was too late for that. I recalled a George Jung quote I had heard a couple of years earlier: “… They say that the marijuana business is done with a handshake and the cocaine business is done with a gun.” I really hoped I wasn’t setting myself up to get robbed, or worse, shot and killed. I stopped at a corner store on my way and bought a pack of cigarettes, promptly lighting one in hopes that it might help ease some of the nerves, but it didn’t help seem to help much.

As expected, I arrived at the address exactly two minutes after seven. It was your typical drug house – boarded up windows, an unkept lawn with pieces of wood and furniture leaning up against a rotting blue exterior. When I got there, the dealer seemed to be in a frenzy, racing around the house, looking for a phone, and after letting me in, my arrival appeared to be a long ways down on his list of priorities. He had invited me in and offered me a seat on a couch in his living room where two other girls sat waiting before he disappeared again. The girls asked me my name and how I had met Bronson, the dealer we were all waiting for. I gave them the honest answer to both questions, seeing no reason to lie.

The young drug peddler re-entered the room a couple of minutes later, apologizing for the distractions. “How much were you looking for?” he asked, his bloodshot eyes suggesting that he hadn’t slept in about a week.

I shrugged. “Really as much as I could get,” I answered. “Was sort of hoping to get an eight ball though, if that’s cool?”

Bronson nodded. “I don’t actually have any on me here right at the moment. I have to go see my buddy to pick up more, so would you mind giving me the money now?”

“Uh, sure,” I mumbled, still worried by the fear of getting ripped off. But Bronson had come through for me the last time, and I knew the risks involved with the actions I was taking. So I took my wallet from my back pocket and opened it. “How much?”

“A hundred and fifty for an eight ball,” the dealer answered. I nodded and paid him three fifty dollar bills from my wallet before putting it away again. Bronson immediately shoved the cash into one of his countless pockets. “Alright,” he continued, pulling his shoes on. “You can just wait here if you want. I’ll be back in like, twenty minutes.” And with that, he disappeared out the front door, leaving me alone in the living room with the two girls before I had a chance to reply. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, so I just sat there nervously, still feeling the lingering effects of the marijuana, thinking about the series of events which had all led up to this point of my life. Part of me wished I could take back the decisions I had made that morning; wished I could take back the past hour of my life and just be back in the comfort and security of my own room. But that was no longer an option so I just remained sitting in the living room, feeling on edge and wishing Bronson would just get back with the coke already. One of the girls had been arguing with the dealer before he had left. She went by the name Chelsea, and was apparently the young man’s fuck buddy; girlfriend; significant other; whatever you want to call her. She had gotten up and left the room, leaving me alone with the other skinny yet still attractive blonde cokehead who went by Rebecca, or Becky for short.

“Hey,” she spoke to me, almost in a whisper. “If Bronson can’t get the shit for you I have another guy.”

“I hope he’s able to get it since he has my money,” I answered automatically.

“Oh don’t worry about that,” Becky tried to vouch for our dealer. “You’ll either get the coke or your money back.” And even if I couldn’t help feeling a little skeptical still, the girl’s words offered me a certain sense of reassurance. I was just about to offer her a cigarette when a knock came at the door.

“Who’s that?” Chelsea asked no one in particular in a paranoid tone as she reappeared from one of the bedrooms, as if we were supposed to know. Without waiting for a response, she walked over to the front door and peered through the peephole. “It’s Jesse Reid,” she announced straightforwardly, but of course the name didn’t mean anything to me, and Becky appeared rather unfazed by it as well. Bronson’s girlfriend unlocked the door and let the most recent guest into the house, explaining to him that the dealer had gone to get more coke. She invited him in to wait with the rest of us until Bronson returned. He entered the living room and without saying a word, briskly took a seat on the floor with his head resting up against an empty reclining chair, eyes closed. He wore dirty, baggy clothes and a knit cap that he had pulled down to the very edges of his eyes.

“Is there a place I can smoke a cigarette?” I asked before Chelsea disappeared again. I wasn’t too sure who I should ask, so I just asked everyone. But I figured since it was Chelsea’s boyfriend’s house, after all, it would be wisest to get her response. “Out front? Or out back? Do you care?”

“Yeah, out back’s good,” she answered, pointing in the direction of the back door.

I nodded. “Alright. Thanks. Does anyone else want one?” Nobody answered. I really hadn’t expected Chelsea or Jesse to anyways, so I asked again, but this time, Rebecca only. “Did you want to come out for a cigarette with me?” Chelsea had already disappeared back into the bedroom and death metal music had started playing.

“Yeah, okay,” the girl answered, standing from the couch to join me. We walked together to the back of the house and exited through the door that the dealer’s girlfriend had directed us to. Outside there were a couple of white plastic lawn chairs pushed up against the house and Becky and I took a seat in them. I took the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and placed one in between my lips and handed one to the girl. She remained energetic, and I could only imagine the absurd amount of drugs she was on. She wanted to talk but I was distracted by my thoughts. I felt like my life was at a crossroads of sorts. An eight ball equals three and a half grams; the hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of coke would last me a few days, but I would need to find more cash during that time. Even though I had only used it a couple of times, I could already tell that I would easily be able to go through a gram or two in a single day – probably a lot more. It was just such an incredible drug. I couldn’t see any downside to it.

***

Hate me for every good deed I’ve ever tried to accomplish. I know in the eyes of everyone else, it all counts for nothing.

3.

We never had very much luck with pets. Let’s start with our dogs: we were forced to get rid of Arrow during one of our many moves; as was the case with Jersey; and Sprocket had seizures and had to be euthanized. As for our cats: China died suddenly one day from unknown causes; Oliver had to be given away during one of our moves; Merlin got sick and had to be put to sleep; same with Zephyr. And that first beloved pet of ours… Felicity? Well she actually gave birth to a litter of kittens while we lived in the ghetto on Russell Street. My mother found homes for all of them, but then Felicity got fleas which, in turn, almost infested our house entirely. So my mother had decided that she needed to go, and that was the end of Felicity’s stay with us. It seemed like we were cursed with every pet, and I can’t even imagine how difficult that must have been on my mother, who was simply trying to give my sister and I something to love and care for.

Not long after we had gotten rid of Felicity, we moved away from that townhouse and across the city into a second townhouse on Octavia Street. That’s where I learned to ride a bicycle (without training wheels, thank you very much), but the area of the city really wasn’t much better than the ghetto we had just escaped from. The first day we moved in, our neighbors accused my mother of stealing from them and called the police on her. My mother never wronged anybody, and that was just the beginning of a whole new hellish chapter in our lives. As we would soon learn, the police were getting called to Octavia Street by one person or another virtually every night, and on top of everything else, while we lived there my mother met a man who would start stalking her.

I can’t really remember a great deal from our time spent there. I must have only been about three or four years old at the time. I remember the first time I had seen my mother crying though. She had punished me and my sister for doing something – I can’t even remember what now, but she had sent us each to our bedrooms. I had snuck out of mine and tiptoed quietly down the hall to the living room. When I peered inside, I saw my mother kneeling on the floor in front of an old, green wicker rocking chair, crying to herself. I really wasn’t sure what to think. I had only ever known her as the strong one, in charge of keeping everything together. It never really occurred to me that she might not always be sure how to do that. And I couldn’t even contemplate the kind of pain she was going through; I still can’t. She was trying everything she could think of to make life better for us, and she must have felt as if all of her hardest efforts were in vain.

***

I feel so empty inside. I don’t know what more I can do to escape from this life. I’m trapped so all I do is write, but every time I write, I’m more trapped. I’ve been quite seriously contemplating learning meditation for a few years now. I feel it would do me some good to clear my mind for a few minutes every day and focus on the silence. In my mind though, that’s what I usually use marijuana for – just to help me drift away from reality for a few minutes at the end of the day. I’ve tried it once or twice, but quite frankly I’m not sure if I have the patience for meditation.

***

I guess my sister must have started school while we were still living on Octavia Street, but I didn’t. I would have been too young, and I simply passed the time by spending it at home with my mother, helping her out with chores around the house and watching videos of Rob Evans, who I simply remember as, ‘The Donut Man –’ an American Christian children’s songwriter.

After maybe a year or two spent on Octavia Street, my mother decided that she’d had enough of the shithole that was Belleville, Ontario. So with the help of my father, she packed up and moved us to a little town nearby known as Picton, where she had managed to find a little yellow two-bedroom house on the corner of Maitland Street and Philip Street for rent. I still distinctly remember the move, actually. My mother and sister made the drive in a car by themselves while I travelled with my father in the rented moving van while he spent the whole drive blowing cigarette smoke in my face.

Further evidence that my mother was the most generous person I had ever known: instead of making my sister and I share a bedroom, she let us each have our own while she spent each night sleeping on the couch in our living room. She also started homeschooling both my sister and I while we lived there, in our own private institution of sorts which we had self-dubbed The Golden Room.

I would’ve still been too young to retain a great deal of memories from our time spent there, but it was a simpler time in my life that I cherished, and there are certainly some things I will never forget, such as my sister’s paper route. Every Saturday I would help her and my mother deliver newspapers all over the small town. The task would take us the entire morning, and occasionally part of the afternoon as well. I remember most weeks, once the job was done, our mother would let us stop at the variety store to get ice cream on the way back home. I also remember letting our dog, Jersey, pull my sister and I in a sled during the winter, and in a wagon during the summer. And I remember a terrible rain and wind storm, which brought down a humungous tree in our lawn, right on top of the house, blocking the back door. We had been out when it had happened, and when we got back home to find it, my mother had to climb in through a window to unlock the front door. I remember a stray cat that used to hang around, which we often fed and even tried letting into the house once, and I recall bringing home our new cat, China, from the Humane Society. All three of us had grown worried when she had disappeared on the first night, only to discover that she had crawled up inside of the couch. We all camped out in the living room that night, trying to coax her out of the cushions with food.

I also still remember taking Jersey to run and play at Macaulay Mountain Conservation Area. We would let him off his leash and he’d race up the hill. Then we would hide behind a tree or a bush and call him and he’d come running back down the hill at full speed, frantically looking for us. It was just a fun little game that we played. But one day we hid and called Jersey, and he didn’t come running back the way he normally did. We called him for several minutes and eventually we saw him slowly making his way back down the hill towards us. Once he had met back up with us, we could see one of his paws had been cut and was bleeding quite severely. We took him home, tended to the wound, and he would be okay, but we were never quite sure what had happened to him alone on top of that hill. I remember me and my sister folding our comforters into pallets on the living room floor on the weekends, where we would get the privilege of watching television and movies until we fell asleep. And I remember our mother reading to us from The Book of Virtues by William J. Bennett.

Across the road from us lived a young man who was always working on cars in his garage. Many mornings the only thing I could hear was the roar of the unmuffled engines which made the entire street shake. I remember ‘Nana Lee,’ as she had asked us to call her, an elderly widow who lived up the street and was constantly bringing us treats. Then there was the drunk who lived next door. One evening my sister and I had been outside playing when he approached the fence dividing our two yards and yelled at us to shut up. We were both too stunned to respond, but my mother had been sitting on the porch, out of sight. And as soon as she heard what the alcoholic had said, she jumped into action, coming down to the lawn and getting right up in the bastard’s face, telling him off and we never had a problem with him again. Our other neighbor was an older man who lived on his own ever since his wife had died, and he was always helping us out, cutting our lawn in the summertime and shovelling our driveway in the winter. There was another man across the other street as well who would let us borrow movies anytime we wanted, and a teacher from the local public school lived a little further up on Philip Street. She had a pool and invited us over to swim whenever we felt like it. All in all, it was a pretty nice place and a very close community. I didn’t really appreciate the full extent of it at the time, but I’m glad that there were at least a few good people willing to help out my struggling mother.

I remember riding laps around our house on my bicycle, as we actually had a spacious lawn, and I remember occasionally camping out in a tent in our backyard as well. While we lived there I would often help out my mother who volunteered at the public school where she had sent my sister for a year before she started homeschooling us. One day when my sister was at school a sudden snowstorm blew in, and parents were notified that the school had been closed and all students were being sent home early. I had blisters on my feet and since my mother didn’t have a car, and I wasn’t old enough to stay home by myself, I had to walk with her across town, up an enormous hill (at least it seemed enormous to me at the time), and to the school where my sister sat in her classroom with the teacher and one other student, looking worried we weren’t going to show up. My mother had been telling me that I would have to start attending school for myself someday soon, and part of me was really looking forward to it, but at the same time another part of me didn’t want the simple days I was able to spend with her to come to an end.

I remember how worried I had made her one day when I took off on my bike. As the younger child, I always felt like my sister had more freedom than I did, and I suppose that may have been true, and I suppose it may have been justified, even if I didn’t understand that at the time. While we lived in Picton, our mother would permit my sister to ride her bike around the block, while I was only allowed to go as far as the end of our street and back, where I could still be seen from our house. Well one day my sister took her bike and went for a ride and for whatever reason, I decided that I didn’t care what my mother had told me, and I took off after my sister. Suffice it to say that my mother was waiting to scold me as soon as I got back home.

My mother slaved away, doing anything she could to provide for us on the pitiful allotted amount of social support that she received every month. Meanwhile my deadbeat of a father was supposed to be paying child support on the first of each month, but he made it clear that on his long list of priorities, we sat at the bottom. In my recollections, my mother was never able to count on him, and most months he wouldn’t even bother making the payment until my mother had taken the initiative to ask him about it, and then, if we were lucky, he might get us the money halfway through the month, though not always.

When I was on the verge of starting the first grade, we moved again, this time to an apartment in Kingston, Ontario – 298 Guthrie Drive, Unit 205. My mother had started looking for work but jobs in Picton were scarce to say the least, and even more scarce without the use of a vehicle. So we had made the move and our nightmare-lives continued on in Kingston. Our mother continued to homeschool me and my sister for a short while, but we were soon enrolled in a private school nearby known as Trinity Christian School. Don’t ask me how she was able to afford to send us to a private school; I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I never even really considered it at the time, but I’m sure she must have been offered some sort of subsidized rate.

It didn’t take long for my mother to find a part time job in Kingston at a popular retail store known as Fabricland. I remember how excited she had been when she first found out that she had secured the job. For the first time since my sister’s birth she would have a steady supply of her own income that she could count on (she’s never owned a credit card in her life, and is one of the few I’ve met who doesn’t believe in living beyond her means). She devised a strategy to save a fraction of every paycheque until she had enough to buy a used car. It only took her fifteen years, but with some help from a new significant other, she’s finally managed to recently get herself a car, but I’m jumping ahead of myself a little bit.

To be completely honest, I almost wish my mother never had started working again, because once she did, she refused to stop until it almost killed her. And even once she did start earning a steady income, she always made sure that my sister and I were looked after first and foremost, and she never was able to save anything like she had originally hoped. She had to hire a babysitter to watch us for a few hours after school on most days, and I almost couldn’t believe it when she told me that she was paying the sitter, Sarah, more than she even made herself – ten dollars an hour versus the seven dollars an hour that she earned at her minimum wage job. It was while she worked at Fabricland that she met a friend who would play a brief walk-on role in our lives, Penny McAllister.

Penny and her husband, Mickey lived with their two dogs on Wolfe Island where they also owned a bed and breakfast. And for at least a little while, I remember we all spent a significant amount of time together. My mother, sister, and I occasionally got to stay at the bed and breakfast when it was available, providing us all with a much-needed change of scenery from our ordinary, day to day lives. With Penny and Mickey I also remember building a fort out of stones on the edge of the water in the summertime, roasting hotdogs and marshmallows over campfires, boat rides, picking apples and making fresh cider in the autumn, harvesting pumpkins at Halloween, sharing cooked goose at Thanksgiving, and chopping down a pine tree at Christmas time. I can really only say good things about the couple; they always seemed to be willing to share what they had. But then oddly enough, one day they just sort of seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. Penny had planned to come for a visit after the three of us had moved back to Belleville in 2000, but she just never showed up and never phoned, which really wasn’t like her. My mother’s only guess was a possible acrimony that arose based of differing political views, but that was all only mere speculation and so I won’t go too deep into it here.

Trinity Christian School was where I met Laurie McLean. I was too young to have any really strong opinions one way or another, but I don’t think my mother or sister took very kindly to the McLean’s. Things started out innocently enough, as they always do. Laurie was in the same class as me and we often played together during recess with our other friends. She seemed easy enough to get along with, and was one of the first real friends I’d ever had. It didn’t take long for us to start spending time with each other outside of class and on the weekends.

Don’t take my word for it, because I really don’t recall to be honest, but according to my mother and my sister, Laurie’s parents often spoke of us getting married someday, and if that was indeed the case then I’m glad we hightailed it the fuck out of Kingston when we did. That whole fucking school was weird anyways. I think everyone in charge had a fucking screw loose. In some ways it was like a cult. One of the teachers left abruptly one day, and I never found out for sure, but there had been rumors circulating that she had actually gotten fired after hitting a student. I got in trouble from my mother one day when I was randomly sent to the principal’s office, even though I had done nothing wrong, but of course my mother wouldn’t listen to me when I pleaded my innocence. Strangely enough, that was the first, and only time I ever was sent to the office. Go figure. I fucking hated that place. I swear, they were trying to brainwash us. One day all of the toilets backed up and flooded the school – we should have taken that as a sign from God right then and there, but thankfully we didn’t end up staying too much longer after that anyways. Also, I remember now, one of the administrator’s, Mrs. Mcqueon as I knew her, took us all on a ‘fieldtrip’ one weekend to her bat and mouse-infested hunting lodge which had no indoor plumbing. I don’t particularly want to relive the experience and so I shall refrain from going into much detail. All I will say is that I was never happier to get back home or see signs of civilization again.

Naturally, with our new apartment in Kingston came new deranged neighbors. The lady who lived on her own in the apartment next to ours forgot to take her meds one night and started running up and down the halls, screaming that someone was chasing her with a chainsaw. She was the same neighbor who was always burning toast and setting off her smoke detector at two in the morning. Let’s see – our downstairs neighbors sent their eight-year old son up with a letter to complain about the noise we were making the day that we moved in… fucking assholes. Sarah, the girl who babysat my sister and I also had a brother, John, who violently attacked my sister one day out of the blue. They were a fucked up family anyways. They had been the previous tenants to live in our apartment before we had moved in, and my mother had always vowed that they had left some sort of dark presence behind them when they moved out. That’s where we lived when our dog, Sprocket started having seizures and throwing up blood.

Not everything was terrible though. Most of the things that befell my mother, sister, and I in Kingston were pretty fucking grim, but they weren’t all terrible. I have a few simple, pleasant memories, such as watching the animated series, Watership Down, and playing PlayStation with my sister at our landlady’s apartment occasionally in the evenings when our mother had to work late and Sarah wasn’t available to watch us. I remember on some weekends when my mom had to work and couldn’t afford to pay for a babysitter, my sister and I would actually have to accompany her to work and wait for her in the tiny, little lunchroom all day, but I didn’t ever mind. I think we recognized that she was working her ass off for us, and I can only speak for myself, but I certainly appreciated it.

I suppose the only other point worth mentioning would be the senior who lived down the hall from us, Eleanor. She always helped my mother out in whatever ways she could. She had two grandchildren about my age who were part Native and were named Sky and Raven, and for a while I had become fairly good friends with them. Eventually I lost contact with them, but the last I heard, their mother had given birth to one more child, River and they had moved to Manitoba. Apparently they had all been home one night when somebody broke in, stabbing and killing the mother in the process while all three children watched. I don’t know what ever happened to Eleanor’s grandchildren, but I hope they’re okay, wherever they ended up (or at least as okay as could be expected).

Oh yeah – there was also someone who lived in the apartment directly above us and owned a kitten, which they would leave out on their balcony for rather prolonged periods of time. The poor, little, helpless creature would peer and lean over the edge until it nearly fell. Finally it must have fallen one day, because it had somehow ended up on our balcony, miraculously. If it hadn’t landed there, the next stop was the concrete at the base of the building. Maybe the owner wanted it to die; I can’t really say. I don’t remember what we did with it, but I think my mother must have called the Humane Society. She loved animals, and I really can’t imagine that she would have returned to kitten to such a neglectful owner.

I also remember a small forested area around the back of the apartment complex where a family of stray cats were discovered. I guess my mother was the only one who lived in the apartments with any common sense or basic human decency. As I recall, she was the only person to try and save the cats, going out each night with a small, plastic pet carrier and a small tin of food, nearly getting scratched to hell on several occasions.

4.

“Mike, you fuckin’ idiot!” I shouted at the Chinese passenger beside me. He was a good friend of mine from Moira Secondary School, and a fellow teammate on the football and rugby field. Up front, Lorne McDougall sat directly ahead of me, and his dad sat off to the left, in the driver’s seat of the stretch SUV. Behind us in the backseats sat our mutual friend, Zach Ellis, and Lorne’s younger brother, Matt. We were making our way back to Belleville after spending the weekend at one of my favorite places in the whole world – the McDougall’s picturesque summer home on Hill Island, part of the Thousand Islands archipelago on the Saint Lawrence River near Rockport, Ontario. Lorne’s father was a millionaire who had made his fortune selling insurance. He had also spent some time as the mayor of Belleville, and was always willing to share what he had.

So it shouldn’t have surprised me that his cottage was one of the most extravagant dwellings I had ever seen in my life. Through the McDougall’s I got a glimpse of a drastically different lifestyle from that of my own, which I otherwise may have never gotten the chance to experience (certainly not as a child). We had spent this particular weekend celebrating Lorne’s birthday, just as we had done the year before. The year would have been 2008, Lorne would have just turned sixteen, and we would have been getting ready to enter the eleventh grade.

We had been eating peaches in the SUV as Lorne’s dad drove us away from the island, and without looking, Mike had rolled down his window and threw the pit, which just happened to strike the front windshield of a passing police cruiser headed in the opposite direction. Lorne, Mike, Matt, Zach, and I all turned our heads and watched as the cruiser pulled over and then turned around to follow us. The rest of us all started yelling at Mike, who was only worried about getting in trouble for littering, even though it had been organic, biodegradable matter. Fortunately Lorne’s father stayed composed and continued driving at his fixed speed, disregarding the incident entirely, and the officer refrained from turning on his lights. After a moment or two, the cruiser stopped following us and continued back in the other direction.

I have a lot of good memories from my time spent on Hill Island: swimming in the International Rift, and making obscene gestures towards America, just as an example. I also remember I was there with Lorne’s family in the spring one year. There was still snow on the ground and the NHL playoffs were well into their final stages. Lorne’s favorite team, the Ottawa Senators were playing the Buffalo Sabres in game seven of the semifinals. The nerve-wracking game went into overtime, and when the Ottawa captain, Daniel Alfredson scored the game-winning goal, the entire cottage erupted with excitement. Despite the frigid cold that lingered in the air, we stocked up on blankets and went for a boat ride, yelling, “Go Sens, go!” at all of the American boats we passed. With the win, Ottawa would be facing Anaheim in the Stanley Cup Finals.

***

Come to think of it, the very first time that I visited the cottage was for Lorne’s birthday during the summer of 2007. Zach Ellis had been there as well, as had Matt McDougall, and Matt’s good friend, Jordan. Mike Lu hadn’t been able to join us, as his family had temporarily moved to Indianapolis on business and another mutual friend, Robby O’Brien had come along instead. While we were there, Lorne’s father took us on a tour of the surrounding islands by boat, showing us a forty-million-dollar cottage owned by some big-shot car dealer from Texas. Docked near the estate was an entire fleet of boats, yachts, and personal watercraft. We also travelled past Heart Island and Boldt Castle, and Lorne’s father told us the story behind it as we did:

At the turn of the twentieth century, millionaire proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City and the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia set out to build an exquisite, six-story castle as a gift to his wife, Louise. As the story goes, he had hired hundreds of workers through G.W. & W.D. Hewitt architectural firm but construction of the castle was ceased immediately in 1904 following the tragic death of Louise Boldt.

That was before I had ever met Jade. Our other favorite pastimes at the McDougall estate consisted of swimming, tubing, canoeing, playing football, baseball, soccer, or paintball outside, playing billiards and table tennis inside, video games, and of course, campfires. I have many memories which I feel are better kept to myself as well; no matter what sort of context I place behind them, I can’t help but feel as if the humor would get lost in translation, so to speak. There is one last tale that I will share from one of my visits to Hill Island though.

I suspect it must have been during the summer of 2007, once my mother had already endured a significant degree of suffering from chemotherapy and radiation to fight the cancer which had attacked her body. By this point I would have been working at my first job too – a local, privately owned store known as Red Beard’s Sports, though I wouldn’t meet Travis, Chad, or Ryan until that upcoming September. That being the case, I seemed to have lots of disposable income, but virtually no time for leisure outside of academics, athletics, and work. My boss let me take Mondays and Tuesdays off that first summer I worked for him though, and I had seized the opportunity one week in order to join Lorne and his family at their cottage once again; Jordan may have come along with us again as well – I really don’t recall.

I think we left Sunday night as soon as I was done work, so that we would have the absolute maximum amount of time possible at the cottage. It rained all day on Monday, but stopped late in the afternoon. The skies cleared right at dusk, and it actually turned into quite a pleasant evening, and after being stuck inside all day, Lorne and I were desperate to get out. So we hopped on the two Jet Skis and went for a ride. The low, glowing golden sun was slowly sinking on the horizon, reflecting magnificently off the calm waters. I reached my hand into the river and it was warm; almost tropical. Combined with the cool evening air, it caused an eerie mist to rise slowly off the water. Just as we were nearing the end of our ride and returning to the cottage, I glanced up and noticed a hawk soaring majestically in the sky overhead. My mother had always said that she saw hawks as signs of good luck, and I would be prone to agree with her. A symbol of hope – she had claimed that she always saw a hawk on her way from Belleville to the radiation treatments in Kingston. And when I saw the hawk gliding effortlessly on the air currents with its outstretched wings that calming night at Hill Island, I couldn’t help but feel a sort of renewed sense of sanguinity.

***

“Is Bruce ordering anything for supper?” I asked as casually as I could, which was apparently a mistake.

“Is that all you ever think about?” Travis Grixti snapped at me as he wrestled with a heavy piece of slatwall in one hand and a drill in the other while attempting to maintain his balance on top of a step ladder. I was actually quite taken aback by the rudeness of his comment, and didn’t offer a reply. In my head I thought: No, you fucking asshole. Actually my mother’s struggling to feed us, and since Bruce said that we were going to have a meeting tonight, which he was going to order food for, I’ve already told my mother that she wouldn’t have to worry about me. Ryan Brown had been there as well, and just sort of tried to laugh and play off the tension.

“Nah, I think you missed it, dude,” he responded, at least giving an answer. “We already ate earlier.” I wasn’t the least bit happy with any of them. As it would turn out, I really hadn’t needed to be there at all. I didn’t have any scheduled shift that I was required to make it in for, and we never really ended up having much of a meeting. Bruce just talked shit like he always did for about twenty minutes, stroking his ego. There may have been some slight merit to what he was saying, as he had just recently expanded the store, hence why Travis was fighting with the slatwall in the first place, not that it would make a difference because the store would close down about three years after that anyways.

At six o’clock we called it a day and closed the store. I was still pissed at my coworkers for their snarky attitudes, and raced to get out of the place as fast as I possibly could. I crossed the parking lot to a McDonald’s and bought something to take home and eat. Travis and Ryan were just leaving the mall that Red Beard’s was situated in when I left the fast food joint. They spotted me, and although I never did receive an apology from Travis, I’m pretty sure that with the half-a-brain they shared amongst themselves, they were eventually able to put together the pieces. “You want a ride home?” Travis asked as I walked past his car.

“No,” I answered flatly, continuing on my way.

I hadn’t exactly been very keen on the thought of new coworkers when Bruce Sellers had told me that he was going to be hiring them at the end of August 2007, but I won’t keep you all in suspense – in the long run I suppose it probably did do me some good to get exposed to an alternate lifestyle and at least a taste of the real world, especially compared to the extremely sheltered childhood I had been brought up in. I’d like to be able to say that Travis, his brother, Chad, and Ryan all helped influence me in a positive manner, but that would be a lie. The only thing I ever gained from them was my undying fascination and intrigue towards marijuana.

***

I resented the way my mother raised me for a long time. I really did, and in some ways, I still do. But I suppose I just have to accept that she always tried her best, no matter how convinced I feel otherwise. I want to say that she always held the best intentions, but I don’t truthfully know if I can. It’s always seemed like she’s been constantly trying to deter me from living my own life: no drinking; no smoking; no swearing; no Grand Theft Auto; no partying; no drugs; no dating; and above all, definitely no sex. God forbid that her own son should experience the most pleasurable feeling in the world. That was the fatal flaw my mother made in my upbringing; she placed sex atop an unreachable pedestal, categorizing it as the most important thing in the world. And in my experience, if someone’s told something long enough, especially by their parents, it’s almost impossible to resist adapting the beliefs for themselves sooner or later. In my case – well, it’s been twenty two years and my mother still to this very day tries to make me feel like I’ll never be good enough for any girl. And it seems like every girl I’ve ever met has agreed with her. Sarah Main; Terry Lee McKenna; Alexis Lightfoot; Miriam Helstern-Layefsky; Kayla Harper; Jade Dayman; Kayla Jones; Melissa Lindsay; Brianna Appleby; Arryn Hill – I was never good enough for any of them.

While I’m on the topic of my mother’s unquenchable thirst for control and my search for potential fuck buddies anyways, let me take a brief timeout to share with you another part of my life. I was eleven years old, in grade five at Queen Elizabeth Public School. My mother had moved back to Belleville from Kingston nearly three years earlier. During the first year and a half or so back, we had lived at 23 First Street, just across from the general hospital where I had originally been brought into this world. Upon moving back to Belleville, my sister and I had attended Queen Elizabeth for a year, then Queen Victoria Public School across town the following year, before our mother insisted we return to the first of the two schools.

While at Queen Victoria, I met Roger Stewart who would go on to become one of my best friends in those years. He was a single year younger than myself, and just like me, he lived in a household with a single mother and a sister who was two years his elder. He was also a member of the local Big Brothers agency (which is a whole fucking other chapter of this life entirely that I may or may not get into; we’ll see how ambitious I feel). But getting back to the story at hand, one night while I was in the fifth grade, I had been over at Roger’s house. By this point my mother had moved again, though it hadn’t been her choice. The hospital had decided they needed to expand their parking lot, and on Christmas Eve of 2001 we received an eviction notice. I swear my mother must have looked at every available house and apartment in the city before she found one that she was happy with, located at 165 Pine Street. It was situated, ironically enough, just across the road from the Russell Street ghetto, where it had all began, and that’s where we would stay put until my sister and I moved away to college.

A few weeks before we had left our home on First Street, my sister and I were alone in the living room one night when we got into a fight. I was starting to grow up and get stronger, and I had been dealing with her fucking bullshit my whole life. I’d finally had enough, and snapped in a fit of rage, throwing her through the drywall. That stopped the fight in a hurry, and when our mother returned a moment or two later, she lost her fucking mind. I realize now how worried she must have been. She certainly couldn’t afford to have such extensive damage repaired, but I really was unable to relate at the time. All we knew was that we had made a mistake, and my sister and I even offered our mother what little savings we had to help pay for it. Our mother didn’t take the money and we never heard anything else about it once we had moved out in March of 2002. I suppose no one else probably cared very much since the house was being demolished to make room for a fancy new parking lot anyways.

But again, it seems I am getting sidetracked from my original train of thought, and I apologize for that. At the age of eleven, I had spent an evening at Roger Stewart’s house before returning to my own home on Pine Street. Roger had been ‘dating’ a girl named Misty for a little while and considered her a ‘girlfriend –’ I use both of those terms extremely loosely based on how young we still were. I had recently been introduced to Terry Lee through Roger, and I immediately thought that she was the cutest girl I had ever laid eyes upon. Roger, his sister, Sylvia, Misty, Terry Lee, her brother, Jordan, and I all started spending incrementally more and more time with each other. I really liked Terry Lee, and she knew it, and I know that she liked me in return. However, when I returned home on this particular night in question, my mother was waiting to give me the third degree. She had learned of Roger’s girlfriend, and couldn’t wait to start lecturing me. I distinctly remember her telling me how kids shouldn’t be dating before the age of eighteen, and she practically tried to forbid me from hanging out with Roger after that. And I listened to her – not because I wanted to, nor even because I thought she knew more about life than me; she certainly didn’t understand a thing about my life. But I simply wished to make her proud, and so I cut off all ties with Roger and the others.

Sylvia and Terry Lee actually both ended up attending Moira Secondary School with me briefly before both dropping out at the age of sixteen. When I saw Terry Lee again in the ninth grade, I didn’t even recognize her. She had gained a substantial amount of weight, and looked nothing like the cute little brunette with pigtails that I remembered her as. Please understand that this is all just mere speculation on my part, so take it with a grain of salt for what it’s worth, but Terry Lee could’ve gotten any guy she wanted. My theory is that she lost her virginity at an extremely young age, got her heart broken, and simply stopped caring about life. I still sometimes worry that when I stopped talking to her, it may have led her to feel inadequate or worthless. But now she’s married with a kid, and that seems to be the thing to do around this accursed city of lost souls: drop out of school, collect welfare, and get each other pregnant. Of course, then again, who am I to judge?

5.

As I continued to grow up, I tried to avoid letting my mother’s endless quest for control get the best of me, yet she seemed willing to stop at nothing to keep me from having sex. I made it through my childhood and adolescence by telling myself that I would be out in the real world soon enough, free to live my own life. And I vowed when that time came, I would do everything my mother had kept from me in excess to make up for all of the lost time. I vowed I would drink excessively; smoke excessively; fucking curse and swear excessively; gamble excessively; and go to strip clubs and fuck an excessive amount of girls. I planned to rebel until it killed me, and I suppose such an attitude should have acted as a warning sign to all of us right from the start.

***

I always used to keep a private journal as a child. Writing really has always just come naturally to me. It really is the only thing I know how to do. It was my passion as a child, remained my passion as a teenager, and simply adapted into a critical part of who I am as an adult. I found out at a very young age exactly what I could achieve through it. It acted as an outlet right from the start for all the bitterness and angst I felt. It was an escape from the dire reality of my real life, and through it I was able to create entirely new worlds of fiction which no one could ever take from me. I discovered masturbation at the age of twelve. That’s the same year my mother found my journal…

Up to that point she had never discouraged me from writing. It seemed like I always had some new idea for a story, and while we lived on First Street I had started writing multiple works of fiction that revolved around me, Roger, and our other friends. I was always quite open with my mother about what I was writing, and one of the greatest appeals I found in it was the fact that it could seemingly be done anywhere. As long as I could find myself a computer or, barring that, at least a blank page and a pen then I had the potential to create whatever I wanted. I really wish now that I had kept more of my writing from my childhood and younger years, just to be able to show the world how far I’ve come, how much I’ve improved, and how I’ve evolved as a writer over the years.

I was sitting downstairs on our computer in the living room, having just gotten home from delivering newspapers – my daily afterschool job. I was just trying to relax and unwind for a bit while I waited for supper to cook. My mother had disappeared upstairs but I hadn’t thought much of it until she re-entered the living room with an unusual look on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad or disappointed or hurt. I suppose she was feeling a combination of all those things. “You’ve got some serious explaining to do,” she said and I could feel my heart sink.

I fucking hated hearing those words, especially when they were spoken by my mother. As far as I can remember, I had only heard her say them once before, about a year earlier when she had found a pack of matches in the pocket of my pants while doing laundry. When she had asked me about them, I merely played innocent and acted like I had never seen them before, even though I’m sure she didn’t believe me for a second. I’m just realizing now that she probably thought I was using the matches to smoke, which I wasn’t. My friends and I were simply a bunch of little fuckin’ pyromaniacs, but I’m proud to say that phase didn’t last very long, and after her initial confrontation, my mother didn’t mention anything further regarding the matches.

On this specific night though I wasn’t able to escape quite so easily. I soon saw that my mother was holding my journal and I felt a great deal of unease in the pit of my stomach. I don’t remember everything that I had written in it now, but it most definitely wasn’t anything I had wanted my mother to read. I had written about all my rebellious plans and the resentment I felt towards the way I had been raised. There was one entry in particular which I can still remember even after all these years:

Being born and raised in poverty especially, my classmates always seemed to make fun of me and mock me in any way they could in order to feel better about themselves. I’ve been made to feel isolated and segregated from my peers my whole entire life. And this may sound foolish now, but please bear in mind that I was only a kid. This was what I was trying to live through, and it helped lay the foundation for who I am today. Something I got teased about quite often in school were my clothes. One evening at home, our mother called my sister and I into her room. She would frequently bring us home surprises, and this time she was holding a pair of blue jeans. I didn’t really get the chance to examine them closely, but I jumped to conclusions anyways, assuming that they were for me. When my sister entered the room a moment later, my mother handed them directly to her and then fetched an old vest out of a plastic bag, handing it to me. I thanked her and tried to hide my disappointment as I took the vest and left the room, but that night I wrote an entry in my journal, making sure I mentioned how “stupid” my mother was, and the animosity I felt towards living in perpetual poverty.

My mother confiscated the journal when she found it, and for a few years I felt like she did so to discourage me from writing, though I’ll admit now I can’t even begin to fathom how hurt and devastated she must have felt inside. In addition to everything else, the journal also contained my thoughts on contemplating suicide, and the way I was being treated poorly and bullied by the other kids at school.

***

I didn’t finish grade ten. At least not at the same time as the rest of my friends. In January or February of 2008, all three in my household caught a cold which passed relatively quickly. None of us thought much of it. But then, about two weeks later, a cough returned to me; a very persistent cough. For the next week or two, I still didn’t give it much thought or attention. After the first month, I still tried convincing myself that I was okay, and that my body would fight off the sickness on its own. After the second month, I was struggling to breathe. My friends and I would often play football in the schoolyard over our lunch hour, and I was struggling to keep up with them. But more importantly, our school rugby team was doing better than we had in years, and I refused to miss out on such an exciting season. We made it all the way to the regional finals, where we beat the top-ranked team, Adam Scott Secondary School. Through the third month, I started coughing up blood and black shit and each day it got harder and harder to tell myself that I was going to be able to beat the infection alone.

The twelfth day of June that year was a Thursday, and as usual I was scheduled to work for five hours after school. Most nights were slow as hell, and this Thursday was no exception. There were only two of us watching the store – myself and my manager, Judy Milligan. She had run off somewhere for a moment, and had caught me with my head down on a desk behind the register when she returned. She didn’t really trust any younger workers anyways, and I’m sure she must have just thought that I was slacking off, but I felt ready to die, and I just wasn’t one to complain.

I had to walk home following my shift, and I really didn’t think that I was going to make it. I must have had a guardian angel watching over me or something, because I did make it home, but just barely. I even forced myself to go to school the next day – we were having a party of sorts for the end of the year and I didn’t want to miss out on that either. Yet after three full months of trying to convince myself that I wasn’t really as sick as I felt and that my body would heal itself, I left at noon that day. The next day at work was our busiest day of the year – our annual ‘Father’s Day Sale,’ during which all of the merchandise went on sale for half price for one day only. And the following week was the week of final exams at school, but as soon as I got back home from school that day, my mother insisted that I go to the hospital, and I felt in no shape to argue with her.

When we made it to the emergency room and saw a doctor, he looked and sounded surprise that I was even still alive after reviewing an x-ray he had taken of my chest. They wasted no time getting me admitted into my own room and hooked up to an intravenous drip of antibiotics. I had to stay in the hospital for seven long days. My mother was the only one to come visit me every day. After a full week of rest and medicine, I felt significantly better. I was released from the hospital, but still had to remain hooked up to a portable intravenous machine for another week, which required daily house calls from a nurse. I also had several other appointments and checkups to attend during the course of the next week or two. Even after everything my mother and I endured, we never did get confirmation as to what the sickness actually was. One lung-specialist we went to used the term ‘pneumatocele,’ but he couldn’t even say for certain. I normally just tell people it was pneumonia or a lung infection. That was back before I smoked, drank, or did drugs of any kind. Of course, once I got out of the hospital I had to make up my high school exams during the first week of July.

***

I wish my grandparents would try smoking (or even vaporizing) marijuana while they still have the chance, but I don’t think that will ever happen, and maybe it’s not even fair for me to say that. I can’t even begin to comprehend the firmness with which they must hold onto their deeply-rooted Christian beliefs. I respect them immensely for it. They have much more faith than I, and hey, if it helps comfort them now in their later years, more power to them. My grandfather knows what’s up is up and down is down; black is black and white is white. He’s not delusional in any sense. Neither is my grandmother, but she says some things sometimes which just make me shake my head, like trying to refute hundreds of years of proven science. But be that as it may or be that as it not may, I can say without a doubt in my mind that everything they’ve ever done for me has been out of love. And if that’s not a prime example of true Christianity, then I don’t know what it.

***

Religion? Do I really want to get into that here? I was raised as a Protestant, in George Carlin’s words, at least until I reached the age of reason. But by that point I was pretty much already entirely brainwashed. My mother sent me to Christian summer camps most years, which I’m not trying to complain about. They were expensive, and I can only imagine what she must have gone without so that I could have some time away every summer. The camps were fun too; don’t get me wrong – more fires; more swimming; more tubing; good friends; good food. But they all revolved around religion and God – the Protestant version of God, if you will. That was before I entered high school though. Nowadays my views and beliefs have changed dramatically. I’ve been turned off of religion completely, and I can’t help but see it as anything other than a mere money-making scheme.

***

The first time the lung infection returned was in the spring of 2013, as I was nearing the end of my third year at the University of Ontario in Oshawa. Quite frankly, the whole year had felt like a complete write-off. I’d been trying to break this fucking curse with the help of my friends since the previous summer. After two long, drawn out years of trying and failing and struggling by myself, I finally swallowed my pride and admitted to everyone that I needed help. I didn’t care anymore. I hated my life. It was all only going to lead to suicide and death in the end anyways. So let everyone judge me however they want, I thought. But I won’t die with regrets, and so I set off on my quest to finally set things right.

One of my closest friends at the time, Peter Chalmers, still to this day remains the only one who ever really tried to help me – I mean, really tried. He was a real philanderer anyways, and once he heard the news, he showed up at my house the next night which was a Friday, as well as the last day of July 2012. He had already taken the liberty of making arrangements for the evening, and I wouldn’t have been one to oppose them. When he arrived at the house where I was staying on Niagara Drive for the summer at around five or six o’clock in the evening, we each smoked a bowl of only the highest-grade kush from his bong and chatted for a brief moment or two. Not much later, we were back in his car and back on the road.

When we had first stepped into the vehicle, I had simply bowed my head, lowering it in shame. “What?” Peter asked, trying to hold back a laugh. I just shook my head. I didn’t have an answer for him. “Let’s go,” he said, finally letting out his laugh. About ninety eight percent of the ensuing drive was made in silence. There was a job at hand. We could both feel it, and we wouldn’t rest until it had been taken care of. About twenty minutes later, we pulled to a stop in the driveway of the home of one entrancing, blonde Melissa Lindsay, a mutual friend of ours from school. She was dressed up and looked absolutely gorgeous as she stepped out her front door, made her way down the steps, and got into the car directly behind me. I still really didn’t feel like I had much to say, but I remember thinking that’s all I had needed – an attractive girl who was, above all else, single and actually willing to sleep with me. It seemed like every time I had ever asked a girl to go out with me, she had a boyfriend, and eventually I had simply given up trying.

After picking Melissa up, we made a quick stop at a local liquor store where I picked up some Budweisers and a fifth of Sailor Jerry spiced rum. Then it was back to my house in Oshawa. As we had walked across the parking lot, back to Peter’s car from the liquor store, Melissa had spoken up. “I want the front seat!” she shouted.

“Fuckin’ take it!” I answered, before turning to Peter. “…or I’ll drive.” He laughed and shook his head, no. He had his iPod plugged into the car’s stereo system, and as banal and trite as it may sound, as we drove back to my house, Eminem’s song, Lose Yourself started to play suddenly. “Ohhh!” I said upon recognizing the first few bars of the song.

Melissa looked unamused. “Really?” she said, turning around and making eye contact with me. “Really?”

“Hey, this song’s a classic,” I told her.

Peter nodded his head in agreement. “It really is.”

When we arrived back at my place, we ordered pizza for supper, Peter and I smoked some more weed, and I started drinking beer. We had plans to attend a party at a sorority house nearby. Actually, Melissa had arranged to move to the address the following day for the month of August, and this may just stem from my own overinflated ego, but I can’t help feeling as if she was doing that just so that she could be closer to me. I remember Peter didn’t want to go to the party, but Melissa insisted we had to at least make a brief appearance. I really felt indifferent to the idea either way, and so maybe around nine o’clock we left my place again and made the five minute walk to the party.

Once we arrived at the sorority house, I think we all actually ended up having a pretty good time. We settled into the vibe and spent the next couple of hours drinking and playing beer pong. I distinctly remember meeting back up with Melissa midway through the night, after getting separated from her briefly. She was talking to one of her friends about the move that would be taking place the next day, and was informing her friend that Peter and I had agreed to assist her. “The men are going to help us,” she had said, emphasizing the second word, and I certainly enjoyed the sound of that.

By the time we were ready to leave it was still relatively early in the night (maybe twelve o’clock, midnight), but Peter and I had finished off the entire bottle of rum and were drunk out of our minds. We were all eager to get back to my place, smoke more, and then get down to business. Melissa bid farewell to her friends and then we took our leave. All I had to do was make it back to my house without fucking up. That’s all I had to do. We made it to the end of the street and into a city park which was frequently used by students as a shortcut. As we walked, Melissa had established a lead, several paces up ahead of Peter and I who trailed along behind her, side by side.

I walked with my head down, trying desperately to process my thoughts but such an attempt proved futile. Out of nowhere, I felt a jolt and was snapped back to reality when Peter shoved me playfully from the side. I returned the gesture and that went back and forth between us a few times. Suddenly the full extent of the situation dawned on me, and in such a state of mind, it was far too overwhelming. In my drunken stupor, I remember I mumbled something along the lines of, “Well I guess we all need to be pushed once in a while.” And with that I increased my pace to a jog, catching up with Melissa after two or three steps. Everything happened so quickly. Something in my mind snapped, and all of the rejection and denial and isolation and seclusion that I had ever felt in my whole life all came racing back over me, all at once. Fooling myself into believing that I was free of this fucking curse once and for all prematurely, I drew my arms back and the next thing I knew, Melissa went to the concrete…hard.

Time stopped, I swear. I will always regret what happened that night; there’s really no excuse for my actions. And poor Melissa hadn’t done anything to deserve what she got. As she fell to the ground, Peter and I both froze and watched in horror. None of us moved for a moment. I had let out a laugh to myself, which I’m sure hadn’t helped my cause, and had probably only offended the girl even more, but I hadn’t meant anything by it. I had just realized the sheer stupidity of my life.

“You just pushed Melissa,” Peter said after a moment, simply trying to collect his own thoughts, in an equally as intoxicated state of mind.

“Yep!” I nodded in a tone which seemed to say, what did you fucking expect? Another moment of silence passed. I looked from the helpless girl lying on the ground, cut and bleeding, and up at Peter. He gave me a look of his own which seemed to tell me that I should at least try to offer Melissa help. Obviously I knew sex was out of the question, but I wasn’t sure if she knew that I knew that. I hurried over to her, offering her an apology and a hand up off of the ground.

She gave me a look as well, which seemed to say, what are you, fuckin’ retarded? “Fuck you,” she spat my apology back in my face. “I want Peter.”

“Well…” I gave her the middle finger with my outstretched arm. “Fuck you then.” I walked away and Peter moved in to help the girl up.

***

The rest of the year had gone downhill from there. I was able to recognize that it was only a matter of time before my irresponsibility and reckless drug use caught up with me. Of course that’s not what I wanted my life defined by either, but marijuana was the only thing I found that seemed to help me cope with the depression. I was skipping classes every day and staying home to get high. I was going tens of thousands of dollars into debt, and I really couldn’t find it within myself to care anymore. I felt like nobody else cared either. I felt like they were all just standing by, watching me suffer through my own personal hell. As the end of the academic year continued to approach, I accepted that my time in Oshawa was nearly at its end and I didn’t even try saving any money. Neither did I bother looking for a place to stay once the lease on my house expired at the end of April.

I had, however, already made the decision that I wouldn’t be attending my final exams. I wouldn’t have been able to anyways, as I ended up getting sick once again. I had chain-smoked an entire pack of cigarettes in a single day and woke up the next morning with the same, sick feeling in my lungs that I had felt five years earlier; I recognized it immediately. This time I didn’t wait three fucking months to do something about it – I went to the hospital that same day. And after spending the entire day waiting around, I was told that the results of the x-rays and CAT scans were inconclusive, and that I would have to come back the next day in order to have them taken again. At least I got a prescription for the antibiotics I needed, and had caught the infection in an early enough stage that I didn’t need to be put on an intravenous drip again.

The next day dragged, and back at the hospital, I was told for the second consecutive day that the results of the tests were inconclusive. That being the case, the doctors told me they wanted to schedule a follow-up appointment so that they could run a procedure known as a bronchoscopy, during which they would use a camera to examine the interior of my lungs. Since the procedure would require anesthetic, I was told that I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the hospital alone; somebody would have to accompany me. And since that wasn’t a possibility, I never even bothered with it. No one gave a shit about what happened to me anyways. To give you a better idea of the timing on all this, I’m just remembering now that during my second day at the hospital, the news broke of the Boston Marathon bombings.

I don’t spend my life living in fear, but after already being affected by the infection twice, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said that I’m not worried about it claiming me a third time. That’s just one of the many things which motivates me to keep writing, and to keep creating as much as I can while I still have the chance.

6.

Chad and I stood out front of the store, talking amongst ourselves. It had been a rather slow morning at Red Beard’s, and for the current moment there were no customers that we had to worry about. We had naturally gotten onto the topic of sex, as we did so frequently, and I forget what number Chad had spit out, but I do remember with striking clarity that he had told me real casually how many girls he had slept with, because he made sure to mention his overall goal was a hundred different girls. “You’re still counting?” I remember foolishly asking upon hearing the information.

“Of course…” he answered in a tone which made me immediately realize I had given myself away.

***

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first time Riley showed me Jade’s picture on his computer. It was the middle of the night and we had crept downstairs after his parents had gone to sleep. As soon as I saw the picture, I concluded that Jade was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life, and I felt sure she was the girl I wanted to spend my life with. I instantly decided, based on one picture alone, that I wanted her to be mine, and the only thing I could think was, I’m going to marry her someday. For all you critics out there, yes, I do realize how incredibly stupid that sounds, and part of me still feels guilty for being such a disloyal friend to Riley. But we were sixteen. We were just kids. He must have picked up on my sense of excitement right away, because I remember him telling me to, “Settle down.”

Jade lived in Oakville, on the other side of Toronto – a two and a half hour drive, so the amount of time her and Riley got to spend together was limited at best. The conversations between her and I started out with the best intentions; I’m sure of it. Riley had originally met her through some band or choir or something, and had already been seeing her for a while by this point. I had spoken to her once or twice via instant messenger back in the days when MSN had still existed, and I had never expected anything more to become of it – not until I commandeered her number from Riley’s phone and we started sending text messages back and forth on a daily basis. As if she wasn’t already perfect enough, Jade Dayman was also an actress. Amongst others, she had appeared in Danny DeVito’s and Robin William’s, Death to Smoochy and Mark Waters’ and Lindsay Lohan’s, Mean Girls.

Even though I felt very attracted to Jade, I knew it wasn’t right for me to pursue her; not if my best friend was interested in her. I was infatuated with Kayla Harper anyways – a girl I had been attending high school with ever since the start of grade nine, but we had always been in different classes, and I hadn’t noticed her until just recently. I still wish I had tried harder with her. I tried asking her out a few times, but could just never work up the courage. I felt like she was way too good for me. She was a cute little brunette with a quiet, shy, innocent demeanor, but something told me there was something wild hiding underneath all of that just waiting to be discovered.

Each year in high school, our first semester exams were held during the second half of January. Once they were finished, we always got a week off, and classes almost always resumed the day after Super Bowl Sunday. Every year Riley and I would spend that week off hanging out together, and that year of 2009 when we were in the eleventh grade was no exception. We saw each other every day and, based on a couple of movies we watched, we soon came up with the idea of a summer camping and canoe trip in the Kawartha region, aka. ‘cottage country –’ just Jade, Kayla, Riley, and myself. Unfortunately our plans would fall through and we never would follow through on them. It wouldn’t make much of a difference in the end anyways, considering I never ended up going out with Kayla, and Riley broke up with Jade a few weeks later.

I had woken up to a text message from him one morning, informing me of the news. Instead of being supportive like any real friend would have been, I replied with a message of my own, telling Riley that he was an idiot. Recently a new foreign exchange student from Russia had started attending Moira, and Riley had seemed to become quite obsessed with her rather quickly. I really don’t know what was going through his mind; I suppose I never did. But I felt like he was giving up his chance with the most beautiful girl in the world for a chance with some hot, new piece of tail, excuse my slang. My friend that I had grown up with since the third grade insisted that’s not the way things were at all, and that the long distance relationship was simply placing far too much strain on both himself and Jade. I should have listened to him, but I was too blinded by my own selfishness. I wouldn’t admit it to anybody, but on the inside I was feeling ecstatic. I felt like I was simply one step closer to making Jade all mine, and I started talking to her even more frequently.

I couldn’t explain why I was so fucking crazy about her. I still can’t. I’m sure her immaculate looks must have had something to do with it, but there was so much more beyond just her looks. She was the first and only girl I knew who made me feel special about myself; the first girl who seemed to love me for me. I wasn’t even entirely honest with her from the start either though. I hadn’t indulged too deeply in any drug prior to college, but I told her I often used a variety of substances, in hopes of impressing her, however ridiculous and immature that sounds. At least I did ultimately set things straight and tell her the truth.

***

I met Jade in person for the first time that summer, on the verge of my fourth and final year at high school. That had just seemed like the next natural step of progression in our budding relationship. Jade had grandparents who lived just outside of Belleville, and so while she was visiting them for a few days, we had made plans to get together. We weren’t quite sure what we were going to do. All we knew was that we wanted to see each other. We considered the most conservative option of dinner and a movie, but unfortunately the girl got tied up during the course of the day and wouldn’t be able to make it to Belleville until later on in the evening, leaving us only time to catch the movie, but that was still fine by me.

It was a Tuesday. The fourteenth day of July 2009. I had been riddled with nerves all day long; all week long. I had spent a large fraction of the day at the gym in order to try and exert as much energy as I possibly could, as well as ensure that I looked my absolute best for the girl of my dreams. I spent most days during the summers at the gym anyways, in hopes of gaining strength for the upcoming football seasons. I used to be quite the athlete in high school.

Shortly after supper, I suited up in my finest clothes – an eighty dollar pair of navy blue designer jeans and a black, sixty dollar t-shirt sponsored by legendary French-Canadian mixed martial artist, Georges Saint Pierre, and then I set out across town on foot. It took about an hour to walk from my house to the mall, but I didn’t mind making the effort… not to see Jade. In fact, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to clear my mind and gather my thoughts. I hadn’t told my mother where I was going. I lied and said that I was going to see one of my friends from school. I don’t think she would have really cared if I had told her the truth, but I didn’t want to take that chance, nor did I particularly feel like being forced to explain who Jade was or how I had met her; at least not yet.

It had been a picture-perfect summer night, as if especially reserved for Jade and I by God Himself. The sky was a wide-open sea of blue in every direction without a cloud in sight, and as the sun began to set, the temperature rested at the perfect degree. I was listening to my iPod as I made the walk, and I remember at one point the song In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins happened to come on. It seemed like the most fitting song for the occasion at hand, and matched my mood perfectly. I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life.

I arrived at the theatre early, a few minutes before Jade got there, so I took a seat off to the side of the front steps to wait for her. I had forgotten that it was ‘cheap night,’ and there were already crowds lined up out the doors and down the steps. I soon received a text message from my ‘date’ asking why there were so many people, making it evident that she had arrived. The real reason that there were so many people is because there’s nothing better to do in this godforsaken city that is Belleville, and I suspected that most of the people there didn’t have more than five dollars to their names anyways, but I didn’t tell Jade that.

I stood up and looked around. I hoped I would recognize the girl when I saw her. After all, I had still only seen her in pictures, including one she had sent me of herself wearing a bikini that she had bought while she was high. It was covered in martini glasses, and had the words “I like it dirty,” written on the top piece. Several yards away, I saw a black sedan come to a stop and a girl stepped out of the backseat. I recognized her right away and the pictures I had seen really didn’t do her any justice – she was so much more beautiful in person. I slowly approached her and she spotted me almost instantly as well. My heart had started to beat a little faster and I wasn’t sure what I was going to say to her. I just prayed the words would come to me naturally. We soon came face to face, meeting in the centre of the parking lot. “Hi,” I forced myself to say with as much confidence as I could manage.

“Hey…” she replied, probably just as nervous. We took our place at the back of the line beside each other, joking, making small talk, and settling into each other’s company. Up ahead of us in line, I saw a group of jocks I knew from school, some of whom I played football and rugby with. I had briefly considered asking if we could cut in line with them, in hopes of impressing Jade but I forgot about the notion just as quickly. Something tells me that my peers would have refused, simply causing me to feel embarrassed in front of the girl I was so obsessed with. I really didn’t see any need for concern at the immediate time. If anything, I felt proud to be seen with such an amazing girl. But for obvious reasons, I hadn’t exactly wanted Riley to find out what I was up to, and I thought that I was being so clever and guileful. But I’m sure some of our mutual friends recognized Jade that day at the theatre, and I’m sure word of her and I’s acquaintance made its way through the grapevine and around the school. And if it didn’t… well it sure fucking has now.

Jade had even been generous enough to bring me some vodka disguised in a water bottle. The movie in question was The Hangover. I kept the ticket stub from it for years, but sadly I think it’s now been lost to time. Once the movie finished, Jade and I remained sitting next to each other in the dark theatre for as long as we could, long after everybody else had left, until the usher finally had to ask us to leave. Fuck I loved her.

Back outside, the sun had set and the skies were dark yet still illuminated with stars and the moon. I waited with Jade on the front steps of the theatre until her grandmother came to pick her up. I was just planning to walk home, but the girl insisted that I take a ride with her, and so we both climbed into the backseat of her grandmother’s van when she arrived. As we made our way through the dark and rather abandoned city streets, I remember Jade took note of the distance. “You were going to walk all this way?” she asked, to which I simply replied with a nod. I still don’t know if she knows that I made the walk one way, not that I cared. I’m not trying to gloat or make myself out to look like some sort of wonderful person that I’m not. I’m merely relaying the facts as I remember them.

When we got back to my place, I thanked Jade’s grandmother for the ride, bid the girl a goodnight, and stepped out of the van. I hadn’t been expecting my date to get out of the vehicle as well, but she did. If I recall correctly, she gave me a hug and then got back in the front seat. I headed inside, slipped my shoes off, said hello to my mother, and headed directly upstairs to my bedroom. No sooner did I get inside then I received a text message from the girl, and while the ticket stub may be gone, I saved the original copy of that message, stamped with the date and time on my computer for all of these years:

Thanks for commin 2 the movies with me! 2009-07-14 21:41

***

Around the same time that I discovered masturbation, I also discovered another activity which would rapidly become one of my favorite pastimes: self-mutilation. I’ll keep this as concise as possible, because even I know how fucked up this shit is. Thankfully I can say that, for the most part, that was a relatively short-lived phase of my life which maybe lasted a few years before I grew out of it, but the damage had already been done. I try to take better care of myself now, but some lingering issues still persist. I have a bad habit of scratching at pimples or bug bites excessively, until they get infected and never really have a chance to heal properly. And I suppose one could argue that smoking could also been seen as a form of self-harm; specifically, smoking cigarettes, and especially with my known history of lung problems.

I was never one to slit my wrists or anything of that nature though. Most of the time I simply beat, punch, scratch, burn, and otherwise torture myself in places that no one will ever see. I’m not exactly hopeful of having children in this lifetime, and God knows that might be for the best.

***

As I continued to consume more and more beer, I grew proportionately more and more rowdy and obnoxious. I’m not entirely sure what was going through my head anymore, but at one point during the evening (after I had already puked in the bathroom sink and had returned to finish my dinner and keep drinking), I decided it would be a funny idea to pick up my steak knife and throw it down the length of the table at Nick’s girlfriend, Ashley. I intentionally aimed to miss her and made the toss perfectly – the knife land with a crash on top of the girl’s dishes, coming to a rest on the table, the blade mere inches away from Ashley’s body, causing her to let out a scream. At the same time, an outburst came from a group of students sitting at a table behind me and the bouncers at the bar and grill known as Saint Louis were distracted by them instead, telling the students to settle down, ignoring the action taking place at our table completely.

I laughed. “I throw a knife at her and they get in trouble.” I gestured with my head at the group of students located behind me. “… I should rape somebody tonight.” The others I was sitting with immediately began disagreeing with me, expressing their disapproval at my thought all at the same time. Perhaps there had been a hint of truth behind my statement, but I think I said it mainly just to see what sort of reaction I’d get from everyone. The girls – Ashley and Zulian’s girlfriend, Tina, seemed the most offended, which was what I had expected. Nick didn’t say much of anything as I recall. Mike had disagreed with a simple, “No.” And Ruda had just laughed with me. I looked directly at Michael, completely blocking out the others. We were all good friends, but I used to feel closer to Michael than the others. I spoke in a way that made it evident I knew the others could still hear me, but I simply didn’t care for their input. “First of all, I would never do that… clearly.”

“I know,” Mike responded.

We left the bar shortly thereafter. When it had come time to pay, the young, attractive waitress who had been serving us all night came to collect the debts at the table. Andrew, Nick, and I all paid with our debit cards while Michael fished the cash out of his wallet. “What’s the money for?” I arrogantly asked across the table. “Your drugs?”

The waitress laughed, I smiled a confident smile, and my friend sort of stuttered with his answer. “… No,” he finally said. It may not seem like much, but there was a certain hidden significance in the gesture, which would be tricky to explain but bear with me and I’ll try my best. I’m not sure if Nick, Ashley, or Tina were clever enough to pick up on it, but I think Mike and Andrew knew me well enough to understand the concealed meaning. There seemed to be this universal doubt that I even possessed the ability to talk to girls. The truth of the matter was that I just didn’t feel comfortable with many people around, or when certain people were around. As much as I liked Peter, I didn’t feel like I could completely be myself when I was with him. I felt like he was waiting to judge and criticise everything I did and said, so that he could force me to live my life on his terms. It’s difficult to explain, but it certainly ties back in with my deeply-rooted trust issues. As far as I can see, it seems like everyone only wants to maintain control over me, and that’s pretty much the same reason I don’t trust anyone from my past enough to get back in touch with them. It all comes full circle.

Anyways, after we left the bar, I followed Mike, Andrew, and Tina back to their home on Niagara Drive for a smoke session while my roommate, Nick, took Ashley straight back to our house on Dalhousie Crescent.

***

“Good fuckin’ year!” I yelled angrily as I left the house later on that same night, following several bong hits, slamming the door behind me.

“What was that about?” Andrew asked. I was so drunk and stoned that I had completely forgotten he was standing outside on the front step, waiting to have a cigarette with me. I just shrugged. By this time, I had already been in and out of the hospital for the second time, our third year at university had concluded, and I hadn’t informed my friends that I would be leaving Oshawa the next day. A few hours earlier, my landlord, Gino La Marca had kicked me out of my house, having not signed a lease for the summer months. It really hadn’t made a difference to me. I knew everything was going to come crashing down all around me sooner or later.

I had my cigarette with Andrew and then returned to my own house at 1855 Dalhousie Crescent, where I stayed awake all fucking night, cleaning the goddamn place from top to bottom, only to have that asshole Gino send me a message the next day, bitching about the awful shape I’d left the place in and how he would be sure that he never rented to me again. I haven’t spoken to him ever since.

***

Let me take the chance to tell you about one of my favorite memories with Peter Chalmers and Michael Zulian, which might help explain why men had shorter life expectancies than women. It would have been the summer of 2011 – the Summer of Shit. All of my friends had gone home for the summer yet I had made the unwise decision to remain in Oshawa, thinking more jobs would be available there than in Belleville. There weren’t. I spent almost every day walking for hours across town in the sweltering heat, handing out résumés. The whole fucking universe seemed to be conspiring against me. At the very least, I got to see Jade a couple more times, but I’ll save that for a little bit later.

It was probably the end of July or the beginning of August that my friends invited me to come visit them in their hometown of Newmarket, Ontario. I accepted the invite and jumped on a train one Friday afternoon, taking it through Toronto and arriving in Newmarket sometime around five o’clock, just as Peter was finishing up work for the week. He met me at a bus terminal across the street from the mall where he worked, and together we made the trip back across town to his house for supper. Most of the weekend consisted of booze, weed, video games, fighting, Pink Floyd, and my personal favorite part, climbing onto the roof of a local five-story community centre and smoking a joint at the top. From there, a ventilation chute of sorts rose up even further at a forty-five degree angle; on the top of it was a platform, no larger than a single square foot, located right at the edge of the building. I went last, but we each took a turn climbing to the top of it. I had been extremely hesitant to say the least; one accidental slip from any of us would have meant the end. But I felt convinced that even if I did slip, my friends would be right behind me, trying to save me and if they couldn’t… we would all die together. I’m not so certain of that anymore though.

After we’d all had our moment of excitement, the next challenge of climbing down from the roof was bestowed upon us. We were able to make it down as far as the second story, and we found that we could hang onto the ledge, lower ourselves, and then drop to the ground. I sliced my left hand open in doing so, and still have a scar to this day. One of our other mutual friends, Mike Pickett, didn’t seem too enthusiastic about making the drop from the roof, and stayed on it after the rest of us had already leapt off. We called for him, promising that it really wasn’t as far as it looked. “Just give me a moment,” he called down to us, backing away from the edge and out of sight.

The rest of us stood around waiting for him, but we were growing impatient. We tried calling for him a few more times, but no response came. Then, just as we were ready to leave, we saw the front door to the locked building open, and Pickett casually came strolling out of the darkness. He had broken in through an unlocked window on the second floor, he told us.

***

One thing I want to avoid doing with this story is rushing it to completion, like I have with so many of my previous works. I want to take my time with this, and perfect it so that I may finally create something everlasting to be remembered by long after I’m gone. That’s the problem with possessing my own website which I can self-publish on – it seems like I’m always tempted to hurry and pump out more and more writing so that I can watch the effect that it will have on this world, but I’m really trying hard to condition myself into avoiding that. It’s all about quality; not quantity. I’m starting to realize that the finished product of my work can have a much greater influence if I take my time to craft and polish it into the story I truly want. I’m excited to see the impact that this is going to have on the universe, and that’s motivating me to strive for perfection day in and day out. Writing truly is an art.

7.

I didn’t have my first taste of alcohol until I was sixteen, and it wasn’t very much at that – just a couple of beers. But it sparked the rebelliousness which had slowly been brewing inside of me over the course of my entire life, and it laid the groundwork and the foundation for my sickness and addiction. I hardly ever drink anymore, but I’ve often held the belief that if I had never discovered marijuana, I very well may have become an alcoholic. As a matter of fact, the first sip of beer I ever had was in the company of my first boss, Bruce, his wife, April, his daughter, Ivy, and her husband, Emile Nibourg. Also my other coworkers, Travis, Chad, and Ryan had all been there, stoned out of their minds during a real staff meeting at a local pub known as Heroes, which acted more as a family-style restaurant during the daytime hours.

God I can’t believe how fucking stupid and naïve I used to be. It had been a Saturday and, having no way to get to the pub, Travis had assured me that I could catch a ride with the rest of them, forewarning me that they wished to stop back at their apartment to hit the bong first. Knowing what I know now, if I was back in that same situation again I would absolutely take part with them, but back then I didn’t know any better. I had bought into all of the force-fed government hate-propaganda blindly my whole life; the drug was illegal, and therefore evil. But that was my very initial introduction, and my opinions gradually began to change slowly after that.

Bruce and his family left before the rest of us, who stayed behind to watch the end of a Toronto Maple Leafs game and indulge in a few more beers. Once we did eventually leave, I remember somehow the subject of my birthdate had risen as Travis drove us away from the bar. When they realized that I had been born the same year that the Blue Jays had won their first World Series, they lost their fucking minds. “You’re a fucking legend!” Travis shouted, turning around to face me.

I don’t think I said anything to him in response, but I wanted to yell back at him to watch the fucking road. Either way, they made sure I got back home safely that night and a few weeks later we were right back at it again. This time it was only the four of us, back at Heroes once again. Bruce and his family weren’t there because they had sponsored a UFC fighter, Cheick Kongo, and had been invited to watch the fight live in Las Vegas. The rest of us had gone back to the bar in order to watch the match on television, and to promote the company and our own exclusive line of Kongo merchandise. There had been a slight disturbance when I arrived alone at the pub around nine o’clock that night. I was almost denied admittance as I was still a minor, but thankfully my timing had been impeccable and my other coworkers had gotten there just before me, and were still in the vicinity of the lobby.

I called them over and Travis spoke briefly to the manager, explaining the situation. Fortunately, Bruce had also taken the liberty of calling ahead and reserving a table for us, and so the manager agreed to let me in under one condition. “Just do me a favor,” he had said before letting me pass. “Please no alcohol tonight. I really don’t need to be slapped with a ten thousand dollar fine.”

“Absolutely not,” I gave him my word. We proceeded inside and found our table. A waitress came by a moment or two later. The first words out of my mouth were, “Yeah, can I get a beer?”

It seems as if everyone in my life’s been an enabler of some sort. I can’t even count the number of times my coworkers bought liquor for me, but fuck I should have just been smoking weed that whole time instead. Who’s to say how different my life would have been? I guess we’ll never know.

***

I really don’t know how much detail I want to go into regarding my visits with Jade. Certainly I hold those memories closer to my heart than anything, but I can’t help but feel as if I may have already run those stories into the ground. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. Friday October the first, 2010 – that’s another date I’ll never forget; the first day I ever tried smoking weed. I was eighteen years old, and had finished my first month at university. As soon as I had first started using the drug, all I had wanted to do was get high and hold Jade in eternal darkness. One of the first times that I did try smoking, I had been in the presence of Peter, Michael, my roommate, Evan Blyth, and our mutual friends, Mike Kunanec and Nicholas Tam. Regardless of the unwanted attention that I knew I would draw to myself, I still felt compelled to retrieve my cell phone and call Jade. As soon as she picked up on the other end, I started laughing hysterically, unable to control myself before realizing how crazy I must sound, and hanging up without saying a word.

Over a year and a half passed between our first two visits, and it seems like Riley may have been right after all about the absurd amount of strain caused by long-distance relationships. It’s not something I expected. I was determined things would be different between Jade and I, but I’ve slowly been worn down to nothingness over the years. I’m so tired. But I digress…

During spring break, or ‘reading week’ of my freshman year in February of 2011, Jade made plans to come visit me at school in Oshawa. I was living on residence, and virtually everyone else had gone home for the week since there were no classes to attend. Even though it had been so long since we had seen one another, I tried to keep myself from getting too upset by it. I knew Jade was trying her best; I wasn’t the easiest person in the world to be friends with. And it’s not exactly like any other girls had been going out of their way to express any sort of interest in me. As we were planning our visit, I recall Jade told me one day that her mother had refused to grant her permission, apparently telling Jade that, “I was a guy, and only wanted to have sex with her.” I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. There was, after all, a partial truth to that.

But Jade was a feisty little shit disturber who refused to be denied what she wanted. As far as I know, she ended up lying to her mother, saying that she was going to Toronto to see one of her female friends from George Brown College instead. Naturally I wanted only the best for Jade and her family, and I wanted to make a positive impression, so I tried to stay mindful of the way all my actions would be interpreted in the long run. Not only that, but on the other end of the spectrum, I considered what my own mother would think if she knew what I was doing, but I really didn’t care. As far as I was concerned, I was finally away from her and free to live my own life, and she would just have to accept that. Of course, as always, all of these feelings and contemplations were only further emphasized once we had gotten high, but again I’m starting to jump ahead of myself a little bit.

My roommate, Evan, along with practically every other student had cleared out of the residence hall, known as Simcoe Village on the evening of the eleventh following their classes for the day. Left alone in my room and flooded with excitement and anticipation at the thought of finally seeing Jade again, I smoked a bowl from my pipe, turned on some music, and started cleaning. I cleaned more that night than I ever had before in my life, until every inch of the suite was spotless. I mean it when I say that I wanted to make the best impression possible, and I had remembered hearing somewhere that girls liked feeling comfortable; as if they were in their own homes, whatever that meant. I vacuumed, washed my bed sheets, emptied the garbage – everything to make the room look and smell its absolute best.

I finally drifted off to sleep at around five in the morning for an hour or two, after tossing and turning all night, overwhelmed with thoughts of the girl I would soon get the privilege of seeing again. Eventually I had just given up and got up to soak in a hot bath, and that had actually seemed to help calm my nerves, if only slightly.

The expedition across town the next day from Simcoe Village to the train station at the south end of Oshawa would take me close to an hour and a half. At the same time that I was leaving the residence hall to catch the first bus, Jade was catching a subway train in Toronto. Just before I boarded my bus, I received a message from her on my phone which simply read, “Fuck.” I immediately assumed the worst-case scenario, because that’s just how my mind works. I’ve simply become too accustomed to disappointment over the years. I responded, asking her what was wrong, and fully expecting to be informed that she would be unable to make it. She didn’t answer any of my messages right away, and I was becoming more and more frustrated. Already well on my way to the train station, I wondered if any of my efforts would even be worthwhile, or appreciated whatsoever.

I finally received an apologetic reply when I was about halfway to my destination. Much to my relief, Jade told me that she was indeed still on her way, and simply hadn’t replied sooner because she had been underground and couldn’t get reception with her cell phone. Fair enough.

***

“Can I ask you a question?” Dwayne probed as the two of us stood in the living room of my apartment, smoking more marijuana.

“What is it?” I asked indifferently. I wasn’t about to try keeping anymore secrets, and I sensed that Dwayne was able to recognize that.

“Have you ever been to a strip club?”

I shook my head, no. “…had lots of chances,” I thought out loud.

“You’ve had lots of chances and you’ve turned them down, you mean?” he clarified and I nodded in affirmation. “Looking at naked women just feels right to me,” he continued before asking a follow-up question. “Would you ever go to one?”

“Yeah…”

“Attah boy.” Over the course of the past week or so, he and I had been discussing plans to move out to Alberta, where there was apparently more money to be made. He had the vehicle and had told me that I was more than welcome to come along for the trip if I wanted to, and I was willing to do just about anything I could to get out of the hellhole that was Belleville, Ontario. “I’ll be stopping at a few on my way out west for sure, but we’ll go before I leave anyways. We won’t go around here though.”

I let out an automatic laugh. “Nah… I was gonna say, maybe somewhere a little bit classier,” I answered. “…not people we work with.”

Dwayne couldn’t help but laugh at the snide remark as well and quickly agreed. “Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the girls we work with,” he quickly added. Granted, a small fraction of the girls that we worked with at Rogers were attractive, but they were definitely the one percent.

***

In the end, Sarah Main wound up in pretty much the same situation as Terry Lee McKenna – a teenaged mother and a high school dropout. That’s just the thing to do around Belleville. Sarah was a single year younger than me, and we had originally met at Queen Elizabeth Public School in the autumn of 2000, once my mother, sister, and I had moved back to my hometown from Kingston. My mother didn’t want to come back. She had wanted to run away to the Yukon, and I remember the scene my father had made one night in the middle of Swiss Chalet when my mother had told him the plans. “You’re not taking my kids that far away!” he had insisted, before starting to curse and swear at his ex-wife in the middle of the crowded dining establishment. And so that’s why my mother had begrudgingly moved back to Belleville in the first place, where my father visited us once over the course of the next ten years.

I don’t want to sound like I’m spewing all of my hate at my father here, but we all really did give him countless chances to be a part of our lives and help us out, and he let us down again and again. I’ve known several other single-parent families in my lifetime, and in almost all cases it’s the mothers left on their own to raise the children, while the deadbeat fathers are never seen or heard from again. My mother had always said that she didn’t think that was fair, and that my sister and I should at least have the chance to meet our father for ourselves as children, so that we could have the opportunity to form our own opinions of him. Despite whatever animosity my mother and father held between themselves, they tried putting their differences aside on several occasions so that we could all share a visit. And whether my father tried his best or not, only he’ll ever know. But in my memory, every visit ended the same way, which involved him snapping at my mother in a fit of rage and then storming out of our house. It was always the same. One minute he would seem perfectly fine, Mister-Happy-Go-Lucky, buying us junk food and new computers and video games, and the next minute he’d be yelling and cursing again. He couldn’t keep his shit together for more than a night or two.

Now… it may or may not be worth mentioning that my perception has changed a little bit over the years with all of the friends I’ve known, many of whom have kids of their own now. Dwayne Bulpit, for example, has a couple of kids with a girl that he’s no longer with. He didn’t really talk about her much around me, but he wasn’t exactly singing her praises whenever he did. Nevertheless, it was obvious in the way he spoke and the way he acted that his children were the most important thing in his life. At one point he had been working four jobs at once or something ridiculous like that in order to provide for them. My friendship with him, no matter how short-lived, caused me to reflect on the dynamic of my own relationship with my father.

Still, it’s been everything but possible for me to convince myself that my father ever truly cared or acted in our best interest. I remember one night when I was eighteen and in my freshman year at university, my father and I had been out for supper at a restaurant when we got talking about girls and relationships, and he figured he would go ahead and give me some fatherly advice. “If a girl tells you that she’s pregnant, get the hell out of there!” he laughed.

I didn’t share in his laugh. I didn’t say anything actually. I had considered responding by saying, “I guess that’s what you must have done,” but I kept it to myself.

Anyways, getting back to Sarah Main, she was my first real friend once my mother, sister, and I moved back to Belleville in 2000. I hadn’t been too interested in sports yet like the rest of the guys in my class, and I much preferred simply spending my recesses and lunch breaks with the girl, talking about life. My mother had even seemed to take a liking to her, after meeting her at our local church one Sunday morning. If you want to know the truth, my personal belief’s always been that it was far easier talking to girls before I reached puberty and before all the pressures of sex obscured my vision of everything else.

I left ‘Queen E.’ (as we often called it) for the duration of the fourth grade and returned a year later, and when I did, Sarah and I seemed to be even closer than before, picking up our friendship right where it had left off. We argued and fought on occasion, sometimes holding grudges for weeks or months at a time. But sooner or later we would always make up and forgive each other, and it was evident that we were each trying our best to be good friends towards each other. We even shared a very brief stint together in high school before she had dropped out. Even once I moved away to university we had kept in touch over Facebook for a little while before we lost contact altogether.

***

I wonder if Mike Simic’s still around, and if he’s still dealing drugs. I should have bought more from him while I still had the chance. Last I heard, he had joined the army. He tried to make himself appear to be the toughest motherfucker around in high school. He wore a bullet around his neck on a silver chain and lifted weights every day, but in reality he was nowhere near as thick-skinned as he pretended to be. I remember during one particular football practice, the outer layer of flesh on part of his right index finger had gotten ripped back, losing blood and turning a pale white colour in the process, which Simic immediately concluded was a broken bone protruding through his skin. Still, at the age of fifteen, he was and still remains the only person that I’ve ever done cocaine with.

It was our fifth and final period of the day at Moira before rugby practice, and for Robby O’Brien, Mike Simic, and I it was time for an eleventh-grade course known as ‘media studies’ taught by a teacher fresh out of college, Dan Houston. He was one of my favorite teachers during my time at Moira. He helped coach football and, out of all the teachers at the school, he seemed to relate to the students the best. I swear the media studies course was the easiest A I’ve ever gotten in my life.

In our classroom, all of the desks were arranged to conjoin side by side in a semicircle. Robby and I had already arrived and sat next to each other, patiently waiting for class to start. Our regular teacher was out sick and so we had someone new filling in for him. A minute or two before the lesson commenced, we watched casually as Mike strolled into the room holding a can of Coke in his hand, pulled a resealable plastic bag stuffed with at least an ounce of pure white powder from his pants pocket, and dropped it under the desk into Robby’s lap. Robby just stared at it awe-struck.

Mike laughed at our mutual friend’s reaction and opened the can of soda before picking the bag of cocaine back up, carefully opening it, and then subtly transferring a couple of spoonfuls of the powder into the drink. He took several sips and then offered it to Robby, who politely declined. So he offered it to me next, and I accepted.

8.

• pessimism

noun | pessimism | \ˈpe-sə-ˌmi-zəm also ˈpe-zə-\

• 1.:a feeling or belief that bad things will happen in the future: a feeling or belief that what you hope for will not happen
• cynicism

noun | cynicism | \ˈsi-nə-ˌsi-zəm\

• 1.:cynical beliefs: beliefs that people are generally selfish and dishonest

I really can’t think of any better definitions to explain the way I feel anymore. I can’t find it within myself to trust anybody. No matter what anybody does, I’m always suspicious that they’re merely trying to conceal their own selfish motives, and no one’s ever proven me wrong or given me reason to believe otherwise. Everyone only ever thinks about their own personal gain and benefit, myself included – that’s how I know this. It’s not like I intentionally try to be this way. It’s just that any time that I’ve ever tried putting my trust in anyone, it’s backfired in my fucking face. Again, let me reiterate that I wasn’t always like this, but strange changes occur in the mind when one’s been deprived of the most basic of human desires their whole life.

When I was ten years old, having just made the move to Pine Street in Belleville, I met Ron Yome – a man who would go on to become a mentor of sorts to me over the course of the next seven or eight years. I’ll keep this relatively brief as well, because I would hate to speak ill of him. He was one of the most generous people I ever knew, and spent more money on me over the years than I can even imagine, but we sort of lost contact once I moved away to university. Ron had been a father, and a grandfather, a volunteer firefighter, a member of a motorcycle gang, a scuba diver, and in his mid-fifties, still worked full time. We saw each other nearly every week, and I still have no doubt that his actions stemmed from only the purest intentions.

Nevertheless, I have a tendency of overthinking everything, and once I stepped back and took a look at the world through an alternate perception, I couldn’t help but feel as if something was just ‘off’ with the dynamic of our relationship. I’m not quite sure how to explain it. I needed friends my own age. I didn’t need a ‘father figure;’ not unless they wanted to help me find a girl to fuck around with, and so far, none have. Maybe I was just being paranoid. With Ron and his wife, Debbie, I would spend many Saturday nights working with a local non-profit agency that hosted dances that other kids my age were attending; I don’t know… just strange shit like that has always made me feel out of place, and tends to fuck with my mind. Either way, I suppose that in the end, I received many opportunities to try new things through Ron which I would have never gotten without him.

***

During the summers of 2002, ’03, and ’04, at the ages of nine, ten, and eleven, I involved myself with sailing lessons at my town’s local yacht club. It rapidly became a sort of passion of mine, and I still sort of wish that I had continued with it longer than I had, but perhaps someday I will get the chance to acquire my own personal yacht again. For three consecutive years I spent two weeks there every summer, and I was just starting to really hit my stride by the end of the third year. The first year was all about discovery and the new experience of sailing. I can’t say what it was exactly, but something appealed to me about the sport right away. The second year was all about perfecting my skills, and the third year brought with it the taste of a whole new challenge: captaining the ship.

When that time came, I experienced quite the inauspicious start to say the least. There were easily twenty different boats in the water during any given lesson, and when the time came to dock, we would all circle around in an open bay of sorts just in front of the designated docks until our boats were called in one at a time. On one particular occasion, we were preparing to dock and one of the instructors called my number, waving our boat in. I began navigating towards the dock, but at the last second a gust of wind had caused us to pick up a significant amount of speed. The instructor waved me off just in the nick of time and I jammed the rudder from one side to the other. The boat started to turn, but it was too late. It crashed right into the side of another boat which was already docked, sending shards of fibreglass flying in every direction. I’ll be honest – I was a little surprised that they let me remain captain after that, but I was the most experienced member of my crew, so they didn’t have much of a choice.

I focused on improving every day for the next two weeks. On the last day of lessons each year, there was a final race amongst all of the boats, including the Lasers – very fast, very lightweight racing boats. Since I’ve gone ahead and introduced him into the story now anyways, I suppose it may be worth mentioning that Ron even made the effort to come watch the race; my mother hadn’t been able to attend as she had been working that day. With me at the helm, my crew beat all the other racers with an insurmountable lead…twice. Suffice it to say, I was feeling pretty proud of myself that day and with my accomplishment I would even go on to win a trophy for the ‘Most Improved Sailor’ that year.

Actually, come to think of it, I was also awarded a plaque for the ‘Most Improved Student’ when I finished the eighth grade, a little over two years later. I accepted the award in front of doctors and CEOs, much to my mother’s delight. Despite all of the hardships we had faced, I had still achieved something worth celebrating, and it seemed like I could accomplish anything when I really set my mind to it. But before I get too sidetracked here again, the point I’m simply trying to make of this story is that I’m glad that I was able to make the sailing lessons worth something to my mother who was paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to send me every summer.

I don’t remember the exact figures, but I had been with her one day when my mom sat down and calculated that she had worked twenty one different jobs in eighteen years, or something ludicrous like that in order to try and provide for us. If I remember correctly, I believe it was during my second summer at sailing camp that she had attained a job which she had been very excited about initially – working for the Canadian government directly under Member of Parliament, Lyle Vanclief. My mother approached every new job with only the best attitude. She was willing to try anything, and she never acted as if any job was beneath her.

I think that’s the reason she pushed both my sister and I to go to university. She had witnessed firsthand the struggles of finding consistent work with only a high school education, and I know that above all, she only wanted us to have the opportunity for higher education which she had never gotten. So obtaining a job of that magnitude had understandably been an achievement for her. I remember she’d always had dreams of living on a ranch in the country, and said if that dream ever came true then she’d buy a horse for my sister, and a dirt bike for me. Once she started at the job, she would even give us each fifty dollars every month to put towards our savings (though I think we probably just always ended up spending the money). God she tried so hard.

Then one evening she came home almost in tears and simply refused to go back in the next day or ever again. I know she dealt with all different kinds of shit on a daily basis at that job, the likes of which I can’t even begin to imagine. Vanclief was Canada’s Minister of Agriculture, and anyone off the streets of Fuckville could simply drop in and voice their concerns. My mother had left the details quite vague, but she said that her life had been threatened, and I remember she had even considered calling the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for protection. It wouldn’t really make a substantial difference in the end anyways, as Lyle Vanclief and the Liberal party would be voted out of power a few months later.

***

God it’s strange what we remember sometimes, isn’t it?

I sat in the front passenger seat, next to Dwayne as he drove us across town. As usual, the subject of drugs arose naturally. The two of us had just met recently, and he didn’t yet know of my dark little ‘secret.’

“I used to be really against pot for a long time,” he explained to me as he drove. “The first time I tried it was at a party in grade nine. It made me pass out on a couch and apparently some girl was…like, shaking me, trying to wake me up so we could have sex.” I really don’t know if he was telling me the truth or not. Dwayne often sounded like he was merely talking shit, but he always had the facts to back up his tales, and if he was holding back some of the truth then he certainly was one hell of a storyteller.

When I had finally confessed the truth about myself to him, Wesley, and Christal, he claimed that he had been the same age as me when he’d finally lost his own virginity, and that he was therefore able to relate to how I felt. I really didn’t believe him for a second, and I don’t think the other two had bought it either, but I had still appreciated the gesture at the time nonetheless.

***

The first time that I ever smoked with Jade will always remain one of my favorite memories, no matter where my life leads me from here. After picking her up from the train station shortly after four in the afternoon, we hopped on a city bus together and made the thirty minute ride back across town to the mall. From there we walked east across town for another fifteen minutes or so until we reached the downtown core of the city where we would finally catch a second bus which, in turn, would carry us north along Simcoe Street to the residence hall where I was staying. I remember that it had been a rather cold and windy Saturday in February, and as we had made the walk from the mall, I couldn’t help but feel as if I should have taken along a backpack so that I could help the girl carry her things. I had offered her assistance anyways, but she politely refused.

That whole weekend was nothing short of magical, I swear to fucking God. When we had arrived back at Simcoe Village, we had entered through the back doors, crossed the main lobby, and proceeded immediately upstairs to my dorm room on the third floor without officially signing Jade in as a guest like we were supposed to, and we’re actually quite lucky that didn’t come back to haunt us later. Alone in my room with her at last, I excused myself and entered the suite’s washroom. When I was finished a moment or two later, I stepped back out to the most perfect scene in the world – the girl stood with her back to me, staring out the window as the last few golden rays of sun lingered in the late afternoon atmosphere.

I made each of us a hot chocolate and ordered us pizza for supper. We watched television while we ate, gave ourselves ample time to digest the meal, and then got on with the main event of the evening. In the presence of such an angel, I really wasn’t very concerned with the time, but if I had to guess, I would say that it was around half past seven when I stood from my bed, where Jade and I had been sitting shoulder to shoulder with our legs outstretched. I proceeded across the room and dropped myself into the chair at my desk, opening a drawer and fetching a small, black, cardboard box. I opened it. Inside were pipes, bowls, screens, dime bags, rolling papers, and of course, the most crucial component of all, the psychoactive herb. I took my time crafting the most perfectly-cylindrical joint I had ever rolled in my life while the Kanye West song Dark Fantasy played over my laptop’s speakers in the background.

Pleased with my work, I showed the finished product to Jade. We bundled up in our coats, hats, gloves, and boots, and headed back downstairs and outside to the back of the residence hall where there was a lounge area of sorts with a picnic table, a couple of barbeques, and a couple pieces of lawn furniture. The sun had set but the night skies were illuminated with stars, and a fresh blanket of pure white virgin snow smoothly covered the land around us. I withdrew the joint which I had concealed in my pocket and tossed one end into my mouth, immediately lighting the other and taking several long, slow, deep hits off of it before passing it to the girl. I felt like I was at the very centre of the universe with the girl at my side; it had been all I had ever wanted.

The hand-rolled marijuana cigarette passed between our hands several times, burning very slowly, before I hoisted myself up onto the edge of a small wooden fence nearby. As the smoke from the joint slowly rose in front of my eyes, I watched the girl walk around, making the first set of footprints in the snow while I surveyed the land around us. I wish I could have stopped time right then and there. I’ve never been as happy as I was in the company of that girl. I can actually say with confidence that I was at peace with the universe around me that night.

Once the joint had burned down to its filter, I tossed it into a snowbank and then the two of us made our collective way back inside, heads down as we crossed the front lobby to the stairwell. Remember how I said we were lucky that our decision to refrain from signing the girl into the building as a guest didn’t come back to haunt us? The policy had been implemented for security measures, and staff members had been cracking down to really enforce it as of lately. I don’t think they really cared that week with the building so deserted though, thankfully for us because I don’t think either of us would have been up for the challenge of handling such a task in our altered states of mind. Hell – the ‘lobby walk’ made my friends and I paranoid enough on a normal day, and we had all sort of adapted our own unique style in dealing with it. I always just kept my head down and moved swiftly as the pungent smell of the drug wafted off my clothes and breath. I did the same thing on this particular day and Jade had remained half a step behind me until we had safely reached the stairwell, out of view of the reception area.

As soon as we were out of sight, Jade took off running playfully up the stairs, racing back to the security and comfort of my room. I took off after her and when we reached the top of the stairs a second or two later, we paused to catch our breaths, laughing hysterically.

It may or may not surprise you to hear that my favorite part of the opposite sex isn’t their legs; or their asses; or their breasts; or their long, flowing hair; or their delicate facial features; or their smoky, seductive and alluring voices, though I certainly do love all of those things – don’t get me wrong. But above all, my favorite feature of any girl remains her smile and her laugh, and Jade had the most attractive, contagious laugh I’d ever heard out of anyone in my whole life. I guess if there’s one thing that I could take away from that relationship, it’s the fact that at least I got to hear it for myself before we went our separate ways.

***

“Are you seeing anybody?” I didn’t want to ask the question and risk making Jade feel uncomfortable, but I also knew that I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity at hand. I had been going over every different possible scenario and outcome in my head for the last hour as a movie played on my laptop in the background. I was thinking of the best way to approach the question broadly, without sounding too obvious, yet I knew that no matter what combination of words I used, Jade would automatically know what I was really asking. The absolute last thing that I wanted was for her to think that I was trying to take advantage of her while she was intoxicated.

As soon as the words had left my mouth, Jade had started nodding her head. “Yeah, I am…” she answered almost reluctantly, and so I dropped the topic of conversation at that and didn’t pursue it any further for the rest of the weekend. Had her answer been different, I was prepared to confess the truth to her in person, but I had wanted to gauge the situation and the girl’s response, and given the answer she replied with, something inside of me told me that it was neither the time nor the place for that. It was, after all, only the second time that we had ever seen each other, and I was just thankful for the time that we had been granted to spend together, no matter how brief.

***

Peter Chalmers, Michael Zulian, and myself were sitting around the dining table at the house on Niagara Drive, stoned, bored, and just browsing the internet to mindlessly kill time when we stumbled upon a page of random facts, one of which stated that Isaac Newton had died a virgin. Peter gave a loud, purposefully cold laugh while Mike tried to offer some sort of pitiful rebuttal. “… still a badass,” he mumbled. I just sat there listening to them, without really any other option, wondering how long it would take them both to shut up.

9.

When I was in the eleventh grade and still trying to pursue Kayla Harper, all of us at Moira Secondary faced two tragic suicides within about three weeks of each other. The first one came on the Friday morning of the sixteenth of January 2009, near the end of our first semester. I was in my math class – the same one in which I had noticed Kayla initially at the beginning of the semester. Our regular teacher was gone for the day and the substitute had simply put on a movie to pass the time. With less than half the period remaining, a very unexpected announcement from our principal came over the public address system, advising that the school was in a ‘code red lockdown’ until further notice. Unless it was just a drill, that meant something was seriously wrong, and none of us were quite sure what that might be.

Following the official procedures emplaced by the school board and the local police department, the classroom doors were locked, the lights were shut off, the curtains were drawn, and we all had to line up and sit on the ground against the front wall, where we were a slightly more concealed than anywhere else in the room. I conveniently ended up next to Kayla, and nervously cracked bad jokes which she responded to with equally as nervous laughs. We weren’t sure if there was a gunman loose inside or what was going on. After five minutes, a teacher from the next room over informed us that there was no immediate, life-threatening danger, and although no one could still leave the room, we were at least permitted to return to our desks.

At eleven o’clock, an envelope was delivered to our teacher by another staff member, with strict instructions to keep it closed until a second official announcement had been made by our principal. The anticipated announcement came over the public address system only a few moments later, after we’d all been stuck in our respective classrooms for over three gruelling hours. This time our principal informed us that the status of the lockdown had been lifted to a ‘code yellow,’ which would remain in effect for the duration of the day. She then asked all teachers to open the envelopes and read the containing information to their classes. I remember we all listened in silence as our substitute teacher read to us about the death of one of our students, Tyler Little, whose body had been found at a popular hangout in a woods nearby. He had frozen to death at the age of fifteen. There are still several archived articles about it floating around the internet from multiple Canadian newspapers – The Globe and Mail; the Toronto Star; the Belleville Intelligencer. And to this day, over six years later, there remains a weathered shrine of sorts at the entrance to the woods where Tyler’s body was found, may he rest in peace. Lockdown be damned – when the status was lifted and we were finally able to move openly throughout the school again, I signed myself out immediately and went directly home for the remainder of the day. The administration was quite lenient about it.

Just a couple of point worth mentioning. Tyler Little’s family spoke out about the incident a few days later to clear up some of the misconceptions going around. They claimed that suicide had not been the boy’s intent, nor had he been living in a tent in the woods like so many of the rumors seemed to suggest. His grandfather, Terry Little was quoted as saying, “Tyler didn’t run away from home. It’s just a very tragic accident that’s happened… I can tell you he was a typical teenager and he was loved by all his family.” Tyler had apparently been involved in a fight with another student before he was left alone in the woods where he would ultimately freeze to death. I returned to the area recently in order to pay my respects, and the forested area is in the process of being cleared. The trees are being chopped down and the land’s being levelled, no doubt so that the city can build more piece-of-shit houses and make more money. I may not have spent as much time there as some other students in high school, but I’m still sad to see it go, really.

I swear that fucking school was cursed. We were rapidly nearing the completion of our first semester, and I specifically recall that I was still in that same math class again when Ben Blowes walked in one morning and mumbled to his friend, Ben Harvey, that he had just gotten kicked out of his home that morning. I didn’t think much of it to be completely honest. I had never been really close with him, but Ben was a rather popular student and we shared a lot of mutual friends. He had impacted a lot of lives, whereas I hadn’t known Tyler Little personally whatsoever. I sort of disregarded the news and returned my focus to my first semester exams before our standard week off.

Within the first week or two of the second semester, I received a text message from Riley, informing me that Ben had taken his own life. It was a Monday night this time – the sixteenth of February. I never even realized the influence he would have on my own life, or how much I would miss him. I really do wish he had stuck around longer, so that I could have gotten to know him better. Those are haunting memories to be sure, and those were some of the darkest days I can remember at Moira.

***

During the summer of 2012, I decided to stay in Oshawa just as I had the previous year, despite how miserable I had been. I really felt hopeful that the second time around would be better. I had confided in my good friend, Michael, telling him on several occasions how the four months between April and September of 2011 had changed something within me, and since returning for his second year, he had successfully secured a part time job of his own and had made arrangements to stay in Oshawa for the full year as well. I still feel like I went through a lot of significant changes that summer, but now I’ve simply learned to accept that we never really finish learning, growing up, or otherwise going through changes. I shared a house of Niagara Drive with Mike, his girlfriend, Tina, and two Russian exchange students – Uri and Andrei. And along with another mutual friend whom I had met through the rest of them – a one, Cody Barns, we actually shared several memorable moments that summer. However, my favorite memory wouldn’t come from my time spent in Oshawa at all, yet rather during a week near the end of July when I had returned to Belleville for a visit with my family.

It was during that week I saw Jade for the sixth and final time ever. She was actually living in Belleville by this point, after her mother had discussed the idea for years. It was a perfect summer day but then again, any time that I spent with Jade felt just absolutely perfect. The skies were an open blue and the warm summer sun shone over us, but it wasn’t unbearably hot; just comfortable. There was a slight breeze that rustled the leaves on the trees, and when I met Jade early in the afternoon, she was wearing a colourful, thin cotton summer dress following a conversation we’d had a few weeks earlier, during which I had told her how good I thought dresses looked, particularly on her. I suppose it’s probably worth noting that I had gone ahead and told the girl the truth about myself, and she tried to be as accepting as she could, but even that wasn’t enough to cease my haunting thoughts. The two of us walked side by side along my hometown’s waterfront trail, and stopped at a playground, where we sat beside each other on a set of swings for half an hour, then we went and got ice cream. Being with Jade always made me feel like I was a kid. The two of us sat together on a secluded bench outside while we ate, and once we were finished our treat, I escorted Jade part of the way home. When it was time for us to go opposite directions, we hugged and I made the walk the rest of the way back to my grandparents’ house where I was staying.

I returned to Oshawa a day or two later. Knowing what had to be done in order to set things right, I really wasn’t looking forward to the scene that would be awaiting me. In my mind, I still tried to justify all of the lies by telling myself that I simply didn’t think it was fair to put that sort of pressure on my friends – surely as soon as I told them that I was a virgin, everything I did and said would be interpreted differently; at least I thought it would be. Such is life, I suppose. And in the end, I was right. My so-called friends couldn’t wait for a chance to place a label on me, and pretty soon it felt like all of my actions revolved around one greater purpose, whether I wanted them to or not. So ultimately I said the hell with it, and decided to simply incorporate my new attitude into a permanent part of my lifestyle.

But let me take you back to that night in July of 2012 when I returned to Oshawa after visiting Belleville for a week. As I said, I really wasn’t looking forward to the scene that would be awaiting me when I got back, and I had sent Mike a couple of text messages on my way, at least opening the doors for the inevitable, upcoming conversation, hoping to gradually ease myself into it. I had snapped and trashed my bedroom the day before I had left, and I knew that my friends could tell I still had some issues that I was trying to work out. Mike was waiting for me, with our friend Peter on a Skype video call when I got back to the house. I said hello to them both, then excused myself, telling them that I was going to the store to get something to eat. But I wasn’t. I was pissed the fuck off at the situation that I felt I had been forced into, and I was going for a walk to blow off some steam. I planned to walk until I collapsed, and I almost did. I walked for three fucking hours – five miles out of town and then back.

But here’s the strange thing: standing on the back step of my house before initially embarking on my walk, I had sent Jade a text message, telling her that I wanted to shoot up the school and then kill myself (God I put her through a lot of shit). Of course I had been joking… of course I had been, but when I got back to my house, my legs crying in exhaustion, Mike was waiting for me with a small pile of weed. “Man, where have you been?” he asked. “Melissa and Justin were over here. They were asking about you.” I just sighed. Justin was a student from Jamaica and a good friend of ours. I had played rugby with him once or twice.

I sat down on a couch and loaded a hit into one of the bongs, promptly smoking it. Mike and I had our moment, smoking and talking for the next two hours. “Wanna watch TV?” he laughed.

I nodded. “Yeah…” My friend laughed some more and used the remote to turn on the television set. The news was playing, and just as we tuned in, a story came on about a college in the States where a student had opened fire on his classmates, before turning the gun on himself as the police arrived.

“Man…” Mike spoke up again. “What would push somebody to do that?” I turned and look him in the eyes, opening my mouth but no words came out. I thought back to the message that I had sent to Jade a few hours earlier. Surely I couldn’t have meant it, I thought to myself. No matter how obscured it had become, I still held a very deep love for humanity; I would never be able to harm somebody else. I slowly turned my head back to the TV.

***

It was Thanksgiving of 2010 when the idea of getting Jade a symbolic gift of our love and friendship came to me. I was staying at my father’s, and I still felt so much hope for the future. I had only smoked a handful of times, and felt as though I still had a moderately stable handle on my drug use. I was laying on the floor of the den in the basement after a couple of beers, drifting off to sleep and thinking about what I could get Jade as a memento of my feelings for her. I ultimately decided that I would get her something for Christmas, and one night at the start of November after I had finished classes for the day, I took the bus across town to the mall to look for ideas. I settled on a pink pen which had a USB drive built into the cap. On the metal clip I had gotten an engraving which read, “Merry Christmas, Jade.” When I got it back to my dorm room, I saved a picture of the jade plant, along with a paragraph explaining its figurative representation of friendship on the USB drive, so that it would be the first thing the girl saw when she used it for the first time. Then I wrapped it all up and packaged it as nicely as I could before shipping it a day or two later. I had made the decision to leave my return address off the parcel, as I wanted it to be a surprise for Jade, and I made sure that I mailed it several weeks early, to ensure that it arrived at its destination on time. We had also been fighting a lot more frequently, and I had this fear that she might even reject the gift if she saw it was from me.

I spent that Christmas at my grandparents’. As the day approached, I still hadn’t heard anything from Jade, and that really wasn’t like her. I started to worry that somebody else had taken credit for the gift, or worse, it had gotten lost in the mail and she hadn’t received it at all. So I reluctantly sent her a text message on the night of the twenty fourth, asking her about it. I hadn’t wanted to spoil the surprise, but as far as I knew, it might have already been spoiled. Jade had already informed me that she too would be spending Christmas at her grandparents’, meaning that if she hadn’t received the gift already, then she wouldn’t until she got back home after Christmas, despite all of the energy and planning ahead I had poured into getting it to her on time. She replied to my message right away, telling me that apparently her older sister had spotted the package at their house after Jade had already left. And her sister, Katie, hadn’t bothered bringing it with her when she had made the trip to their grandparents’ house on her own the next day. I didn’t get upset over that. I understood that it was out of Jade’s control. What I did get upset about was the girl’s indifferent attitude over the whole thing. It sounded as if she didn’t even care, or appreciate the efforts I had gone to, and I swore I wouldn’t be doing it again. For a week or two I didn’t even want to contact Jade at all. But as always, sooner or later I would forgive her and we’d start talking regularly again. I could never stay mad at her.

***

One of my favorite things in the world is listening to cigarette smokers and alcoholics talk about how bad marijuana use is for your health, and Brianna Appleby’s father was a prime example of that. I wouldn’t be one to judge, since I’ve been a frequent user of all three substances at times over the years.

The man pulled up beside me in his red pickup truck as I walked south along Simcoe Street. “Do you want a ride?” he asked, rolling down the passenger window.

“Nah, I’m just going for a walk, thanks,” I shouted back but I immediately knew that wouldn’t be a satisfactory answer for the man.

“Are you sure?” Brianna’s father asked, after I had already started making my way towards the passenger door. “I’d like to talk.”

“Yeah, alright,” I said, irritated as I tried lifting the handle only to find that the door was locked. I rolled my eyes in annoyance as the driver unlocked the door. I climbed into the vehicle and it slowly started to move forward once again. I waited quietly for the impending confrontation. I hadn’t been looking forward to it, but I knew it must be inevitable. I had made a scene in front of him at my house earlier that day, and just as Gino had demanded an explanation, I knew Brianna’s father would want me to answer for my actions, and I had to agree that was only fair.

“Are you doing alright, mentally?” he asked as he drove after a few seconds had passed.

“Yep,” I answered instantly, without time for a second thought. “Fine.” I’ve always held the philosophy that all problems are best kept concealed in the vast majority of circumstances. Everybody just wants to hear that each other is fine; God forbid that there be an actual problem that requires some dealing with. Furthermore, if you are facing any sort of problem, you’d better be damn careful of who you admit it to, because people will always just go ahead and assume that it’s still a part of you, even when it’s not. Drug addictions seem to work as the best examples, but the same goes for any problem.

My new roommate’s father didn’t appear pleased with my thoughtless answer. “We just want to make sure Brianna’s okay,” he continued, in a tone which sounded like he expected me to try and have sex with his daughter. “She’s had some problems too that she’s been working hard at trying to talk out.” I gave the man my word that I wouldn’t do anything that would harm the girl, I listened to him give me one last lecture on the many dangers of drugs, then I stepped out of the vehicle. I continued to think about what he had said as I walked. I may not have liked him much, but he made a point. Communication with me was impossible all along; I just never saw a point in trying to explain the way I felt or any bullshit like that. The only thing that mattered to the world was sex, and nothing that I said or did ever ended in that, so what was the point in even trying?

I would never openly admit it, but perhaps Brianna’s father and my other friends were right to be concerned about me. I had noticed a darker side of myself emerging which I tried to keep hidden from my friends, but that wasn’t always possible, and I found myself doing strange things more and more often, such as disappearing into the woods behind our campus by myself for hours on end and screaming at the skies as loud as I could, feeling forsaken by the universe. On one occasion during autumn of my sophomore year at the university, I had smoked a metric fuckton and went for a walk around the school, eventually reaching the park at the end of the street (the same one where the incident with Melissa Lindsay had occurred). I made my way to an open spot on the lush, thick grass and then let myself collapse, completely giving up on my life. A minute or two later I heard a vehicle pull into the parking lot and I looked to see a police car. Great, I thought, immediately sitting up and removing my sunglasses. The police were the absolute last people I felt like dealing with, but I suppose they just wanted to make sure that I hadn’t overdosed on something or anything like that. “You alright?” one of them called out to me through an opened window from the passenger seat.

“Yeah,” I answered immediately with a nod, not even fully believing myself.

“Alright…” the same officer said with a hesitant undertone in his voice, but without another word the squad car proceeded down the street, away from the park.

***

I don’t know about anything anymore. Do I still even want to release this, especially in the name and memory of Ben Blowes? Haven’t I done enough already to impact this world? I started writing as a way to help me vent my anger, and it has certainly helped with that, whether I release this or not. What do I fucking want out of this life? Where does this shit end? Where does it all originate? What cost am I willing to pay to fulfill my darkest fantasies? How much is too much? From here, we decide. Success is the best revenge, and I’ve said it before – writing seems to work in a perpetual motion for me. The more I make myself write, the more ideas come to me. Exercising the mind is brain strength training. But along with this comes a certain level of emotional conditioning as well. I’m sure you can all understand and appreciate that these tales aren’t the easiest to recollect; facing them all over again occasionally brings a significant degree of emotional distress to the surface – but maybe it’s good for me to live through this all again. Writing has always just been a way for me to organize my thoughts anyways. I can’t really explain it, but at least it seems to help me. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.

***

Yes – in all of her infinite wisdom at the age of eighteen, in her freshman year at university and away from home for the first time in her life, Brianna decided that she wanted to throw a fucking party for Halloween of 2012. Of the four of us in the house (five if you include Nick’s girlfriend, Ashley, which you might as well; she never paid any rent but she was fucking there all day and all night, every day and every night), I seemed to be the only one opposed to the idea. The thirty first fell on a Wednesday that year, so the party must have been the Saturday prior, and I had flat out refused to attend, regardless of the fact that it would be hosted in my own house. Fuck the world. I was just going to do what I did every night – lock myself in my room and smoke myself to sleep. A few days before the party, Brianna had tried convincing me to come by telling me that she would smoke with me if I did. I tried to play if off as casually as I could, telling her that I would think about it, but I really had no intention of changing my mind.

On the night of the party, I carried out my intended plans, isolating myself in my room and getting higher and higher while the party went on downstairs. At one point, my friends Peter, Michael, and Andrew had come upstairs to smoke with me and see if they could change my mind, but I was intentionally forcing myself to be impossible to get through to, and I’m not really sure why anymore. Peter stayed with me in my room for a couple of minutes after the others had left. He sat on the floor with his back propped up against a wall. “What’s going through your mind?” he asked, looking up.

“Nothing!” I answered abruptly.

A little later, once I had been left alone in my room again, I seemed to receive only further clarification that the entire fucking universe was conspiring against me. Unexpectedly, some barely-dressed drunk girl stumbled out of the upstairs bathroom and into my room. “Hey!” she greeted me enthusiastically.

“Hey…” I said hesitantly, undertones of doubt heavy in my voice.

“Someone told me that I should come up here,” she told me. Really? I thought to myself, and I never did find out who that was. Just as I opened my mouth to speak again, Peter burst through my bedroom door in one of his obnoxious, drunken hazes. The girl instinctively took off, running from the room. I felt hopelessly and utterly defeated. I would later ask Peter if he was the one who had sent the girl up to my room, and he said that he wasn’t. On top of that, he gloated about how he had fucked the same girl later on that night after the party.

Just when things felt like they couldn’t get any worse, the property was raided by cops. I fucking knew it was going to happen, and I really hadn’t cared either. The party was promptly shut down and even though I hadn’t even wanted to be a part of it in the first place, when the police made their way upstairs, they found my supply of drugs, letting me off with a warning after watching me flush the stash down the toilet. Needless to say, I really was never too happy with Brianna after that.

***

One thing I feel I can confidently say from my few short years of experience on this earth is that there are many friends who come and go in life, and a lot of people who only play walk-on roles. But we’re all given a lifetime to work with. How we choose to use that time is up to ourselves and ourselves alone. Tyler Biback was a roommate and one of my closest friends during my time at college, but sometimes I can’t help but think that we were two very different people who simply shared the same love for marijuana. But I know he tried his best to be a good friend, and that’s all I would ever ask of anybody.

I had originally met him through Evan, Mike Kunanec, and our other friends early on in the second half of our freshman year. The two of us quickly started spending time with each other right away. I’m not sure what it was now, but there was just something about Tyler that I liked. He seemed to have a good grasp on reality, and seemed to be quite in-tune with the world around him, if nothing else. During the spring break of our first year, while I was hanging out with Jade, he was in Jamaica with his family, where he had originally met Gino La Marca, laying the framework for our living arrangements the following year.

10.

Another cherished memory, or perhaps I should say set of memories that I hold onto from the second half of my freshman year are the bonfires. It had been a long, cold, dark winter. I had spent many nights with Tyler in his dorm room in a second residence hall on the other side of the campus, known as South Village. And every night the stoned walk through the frigid wind and snow back to my own room felt never-ending. But as the academic year slowly wound down to its conclusion and the weather started to warm up, my friends and I soon discovered a new favorite hobby. There was a large forested area located behind South Village. A small river ran through it, as did several hiking trails and it was a spot frequented by many students, but due to the vast size, the odds of ever running into anyone else were always virtually zero. By the end of March or the beginning of April, a group of us which almost always included Peter, Zulian, Mike Kunanec, Evan, Nicholas, and myself would load up on weed, bongs, pipes, joints, beers, and hard liquor and wander into the forest, getting ourselves lost and having bonfires which stretched into the early hours of the morning. Then we’d all try to find our way back to the school; I guess we always made it. I remember on one occasion we even found an anchored canoe which we hijacked and rode down the rapids in the dead of night. Good times.

***

In the wake of Ben Blowes’s suicide, Eric Miller and I nearly killed each other one day. I forget how the disagreement even began now, but tempers were just naturally running high, and the spat soon spilled from the cafeteria outside into the schoolyard. I knew it was a losing battle either way, and I simply refused to fight, unsurprisingly getting mocked a great deal for it. About a week or two later though, out of nowhere, I received a text message from Eric, apologizing for the way he had behaved and I have to say, I really hadn’t been expecting that. I had been teased, mocked, bullied, and discriminated against my whole life, and had never once received any sort of apology for it, so it should go without saying that I gained a certain respect for Eric that day. The two of us may have never been exceptionally close, but it was obvious that he tried his best to be a good person, even if he did have a short fuse sometimes. His outlet was always sports – hockey, football, rugby, baseball, soccer; I’m pretty sure he did everything.

***

It’s still a personal belief of mine that, as living creatures, we really are all one part of the same overall universal consciousness. Even if it doesn’t always seem like it, I sincerely believe that we are all functioning in perfect synchronization with each other. We just don’t always recognize it. But even if we can’t see it right away, I don’t know who would try to argue with this philosophy. It can be observed by anybody who’s willing to take a step back from the loud noises and chaos of their own lives, even just for a moment or two; by anybody willing to keep an open mind, and even admit once in a while that they might be wrong in their own beliefs. I still believe in ‘God,’ if that’s what you wish to call It. I believe there’s something greater out there than our own individual selves, and I genuinely believe that there is something keeping all of this in check. I just admit that nobody knows for sure what that is.

When I was younger, in the aftermath of my first experience with psilocybin, I briefly held onto the notion that the two concepts, God and Love, were one in the same. And although I’m not so sure that I necessarily agree with that anymore, it still seems to me that love is the absolute most powerful of all human emotions (along with hate), and goes hand in hand with most, if not all internationally-recognized religions. All the rest is all just a scam to guilt people into giving money.

The continued passage of time is the only thing that’s guaranteed for sure as we all make our ways through life, and the older we get, the faster time passes. It seems there’s never enough of it – so why do I continue to insist on wasting it? There are so many people out there that I’d love to reconnect with while I still have the chance, but in most cases, such desires will probably never be fulfilled. People get busy with their own lives and move on, and I am truly and deeply sorry for all of the countless friendships that I’ve let go of over the years. It seems like I just never learn.

But surely I can’t be the only one to blame. My hatred is only a resulting product of all the unrequited love I’ve faced in my lifetime. The only way I could feel this bitter and depressed and against the whole universe now would be if I had felt something really positive before. We all have to take the good with the bad, I guess. Still, I can almost promise that I wouldn’t be acting this way if I could just break this goddamn fucking curse once and for fucking all. The passing days are too dark, living in everyone else’s shadow; living in Death’s shadow. This is sheer hopelessness, in every meaning of the word. Every night I lay down, knowing that the next day will just bring the exact same old shit along with it again. I’m so tired.

There are so many people out there that I’d love to reconnect with, but I simply don’t for fear that they wouldn’t even care to see me again. Not only that, but I’d much rather be remembered as the young kid so full of life and promise that I was, instead of this deranged fucking suicidal monster that I’ve become, but I don’t know if any of us really get what we want out of life anymore. I’d much rather have my life defined by my writing as opposed to my virginity, but as long as I continue to live with this curse, I just don’t know if that’s possible. It really doesn’t matter what I want. You’ve all already gone ahead and made your opinions of me, and I really don’t see anything that I could do or say to get you all to change such opinions now. I’m just a worthless loser; a liar; a baby; an addict; an attention-seeker… so be fuckin’ it.

Speaking of reconnecting with people from my past, here’s some further insight as to why I hate my hometown of Belleville, Ontario. It’s a small town with a big drug problem, meaning that everyone really does fucking know each other. After dropping out of university and moving back during the first week of May 2013, I saw my old friend, Riley Calwell twice within about eight weeks. The first time I saw him was during one particularly warm and sunny spring afternoon. I was out for one of my daily walks, heading south along Bleecker Avenue when he raced past me on his bicycle in the opposite direction. We both turned and exchanged glances, but by the time I had processed the situation, my old friend was already well on his way past me, and I continued on my way. I wondered what he had thought at seeing me again, and it wasn’t until several moments later that I thought to myself: I should have called out after him, “I never did fuck Jade.”

In the days and weeks that followed, I couldn’t seem to shake the recollections of my time shared with Riley from my mind. The abrupt passing in the street had sparked something in my memory, and I only wanted to set things right. I mean, after all, we had grown up together since the age of eight, and in some ways he had been like a brother to me. So after I’d had a couple of weeks to mull things over, I decided to make an attempt to get back in touch by sending Riley an email, as I had lost his phone number long ago, and certainly didn’t feel like it was appropriate to just show up on his doorstep after so many years.

I never did receive a response from him, but then again I suppose he could have always changed his email address at some point over the years. Obviously I had other things on my mind, and eventually forgot about it. I had managed to secure my first full time job – working in customer service at the corporate head office for Sears Canada. Fuck that job; fuck every goddamn fucking thing about that job. But it was still a step up from Riley’s, who was serving me coffee the last time I ever saw him, as I passed the café where he had been employed during high school on my way to that hellhole. I mean… at least he was trying to work, and I would be in no position to criticise anybody for that. But in all honesty, Riley and the rest of his family had always seemed pretty closed-minded to me. It seemed like none of them had ever been able to see anything greater beyond their own meager existence; unable to imagine anything greater out there beyond the boundaries of the city. I vividly recall one afternoon when Riley and I were hanging out with each other after classes when we were in the seventh grade. We started talking about hopes and dreams for the future, and Riley told me how comfortable and secure he felt in Belleville, and how he thought he would be content living here forever. I didn’t really say much to him, but on the inside, the remark merely made me shake my head in disapproval. Oh well – to each your own.

Just as further evidence that the whole Calwell family viewed Belleville as the cat’s ass, when I started working at Rogers in April of 2014, I soon discovered that I would be working with Riley’s older brother, Chris. If I thought that my life was pathetic, I didn’t need to look much further than Chris to feel better. And I apologize if that makes me sound like an asshole, but it’s the truth. Karma’s a fucking bitch. Just like the rest of his parochial, narrow-minded family, Chris liked to act like some big fucking loudmouth yet when it came right down to things, he didn’t know how to really be tough if his life depended on it, nor would he recognize hard work if it crept up and bit him in the ass. Just like his brothers, he’d been born with a silver fucking spoon in his mouth. His parents doted on him and worshipped the ground he walked on.

As always, I tried to be as friendly and civilized as I could be towards Chris when I discovered I would be working with him, the same way I am to everybody. He seemed to treat me the same in return – with a certain level of indifferent respect. My standard shift in those days ran until two in the morning, and once things slowed down each day, the two of us would spend the nights talking between ourselves and getting caught up in doing so. I expressed an interest on several occasions in seeing his younger brother again, but to-date Riley still has yet to respond to any of my inquiries. I did manage to learn from Chris however that he and his brothers were right on track to becoming permanent, lifelong citizens of Belleville, just as their parents were. Chris had tried boasting to us about the size of his bank account – twenty grand in savings. And when my co-worker congratulated him and asked if he was saving up for anything in particular, Chris replied that he would probably use it for the down deposit on a house eventually… good for him. He was still living at home, hoarding all of his paycheques just like the greedy bastard that his parents had raised him to be. I guess you have that option when you come from a wealthy, two-parent household, I had thought. Meanwhile I had (and still have) my reasons to believe that I would be in debt forever from trying my best to attend university and better my own miserable fucking excuse for a life. Not to mention my sister who was going further and further into debt still as she continued with her Master’s degree, receiving ‘very great honors,’ with her grades. I’m really not trying to complain too much though. I’m so fucking glad my sister and I weren’t raised in a household like the Calwells’. Yes, there have been many unfair struggles in both my sister’s life, as well as my own, but that has shaped and is continuing to shape us into the people we’re ultimately going to become. My sister’s making plans right now to pursue her doctorate degree; I guess she got the brains in our family. I don’t know how she does it. I really don’t. But I hope she’s able to beat the adversity and make it through to the end – that should shut all the arrogant fucking assholes up for good.

***

“It’s always sort of been my dream to live in California,” I admitted to Dwayne as we stood together in the living room of my basement apartment.

My friend, co-worker, and mentor shrugged. “You might as well just move to Vancouver,” he suggested.

I was rather phlegmatic towards the idea. “I’ve always just felt like there’s more in the States.”

“More of what?” Dwayne pressed.

“Well… more of everything,” I answered. “More money; more people.”

Instead of a shrug, this time Dwayne gave a sort of reflective nod. “I’m not so sure about more money. Definitely more people. More crime. More garbage.”

“Yeah, I suppose so,” I thought out loud. Perhaps he was right; maybe the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. But I’ve wanted to run away to California for as long as I can remember, ever since I was a kid. I think I can quite confidently say that I could find enjoyment there: warm sunshine; girls in bikinis year-round; fresh air and open water; and some of the best fucking weed in the world, not to mention a chance to chill with all the famous rock stars and movie stars – sounds pretty fuckin’ good to me right about now. Of course, I could tell you another story about attempting to escape and run away.

If I recall correctly, either near the end of 2012 or into the early start of 2013, my mother boarded a Greyhound bus, headed for the Yukon. She had spoken of living there her whole life, and part of me wishes she had just done it if that’s what would make her happy, but who would I be to pressure anybody into making a life-altering decision prematurely? Maybe she hadn’t really thought her actions through. Maybe she thought no one would miss her. I’m not too sure, and quite frankly I don’t really care. I’ve driven myself to fucking madness, spending my entire life trying to analyze her thoughts and actions, and that’s a fight I just can’t win. So I don’t care anymore. I love her and I’m glad that she’s here, but she’ll always know what she’s done. I’m done trying to make sense of it all. It ends here.

If you want to know what happened though, my mother made it all the way out to Edmonton before she changed her mind, turned around, and came all the way back. In her defense, she told me that one of the things that had caused her the greatest deal of stress and anxiety was her lack of health insurance outside of Ontario, and I really can’t say that I can blame her for that, especially with her known record of sickness. She’s always been a fucking fighter; that’s probably why I am the way that I am. Upon returning from her failed expedition, my mother has since acquired her own residence, a vehicle for the first time in over fifteen years, and is in a relationship – the first since her and my father got divorced. And even if I can’t understand the reasoning and logic behind all of her decisions, I sincerely hope that she’s managed to find happiness here on Earth.

I really can’t say anything but good things about my mom. She gave my sister and I everything she could while we were growing up. She didn’t spend what little money she had on booze and cigarettes like so many parents do. She used the money instead for more food, clothes, and other various opportunities for us. I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to come to terms with the fact that I feel like she’s intentionally deprived me of the most basic of human desires, but maybe I should cut her some slack. I can’t possibly expect her to relate to what being a male is like, but still… I’m pissed off. Even so, I understand I must give credit where credit is due.

About a month or two before my mother’s getaway attempt, the two of us had attended a Neil Young concert in Kingston, a neighboring town of sorts to Belleville. My mom had won the tickets in a random draw through one of the local radio stations. Something inside of me told me that she would win; somehow I just knew. The first time that I was in the hospital for a week with the lung infection at the age of fifteen, she had asked me who I would choose to go see in concert if I had one choice, and (although my answer would probably be different now), I had responded with Young at the time. I had grown up listening to his music through my mother, and the setlist played on the night of the concert was one of the best possible: Love and Only Love, Walk Like a Giant, The Needle and the Damage Done, Hey, Hey, My, My, and amongst others, Like A Hurricane – the lyrics to which I sent to Jade via text message once the concert had finished. “I am just a dreamer; and you are just a dream.” As we had no vehicle of our own, my mother and I had taken a train to Kingston, and would have to wait until the next morning to catch the first train back to Belleville, and so after the concert we had spent the rest of the night walking the streets until the terminal opened again.

***

I didn’t trust Cody Barns as far as I could throw him. I was certain that behind the confident yet gentlemanly demeanor that he carried himself with, he was holding back his true ill intentions. I may have just been delusional, but part of me couldn’t help but feel as if he simply wanted to get Zulian’s girlfriend, Tina alone so that he could fuck her and I felt a certain obligation and a responsibility of sorts to protect the girl. So when my Russian roommate, Andrei, planned a day-trip to Toronto with Cody and Tina, I absolutely made sure that I tagged along with them, and I must say, I’m glad that I did. We spent the vast majority of the day at the beach, and it was a very much-needed break away from Oshawa. We stopped at some high-class Asian restaurant before we left, and then sat around smoking from a hookah for at least an hour once we had arrived back at my house.

My good friend, Michael Zulian had acquired a second job at a brewery back in his hometown, which he worked at on the weekends, hence the reason for his absence. That’s the same reason that he wasn’t around the night I spent drinking with Peter and Melissa. I can’t say for sure, but maybe things would have turned out a little differently if Michael had been with us. When he returned the night following our visit to Toronto, we shared a joint on the back step of the house on Niagara Drive, and I filled him in on what he had missed out on the previous day. “It’s nice,” I said, describing the beach on Toronto Island. “There’s a secluded spot a few minutes from the main beach where you can… ya know…” I trailed off.

“Smoke a joint?” Mike tried to guess my next thought.

I nodded, as if telling my friend that he was half right, but in truth that hadn’t been what I was thinking at all. “Yeah, well… smoke a joint and fuck Tina,” I answered, to which he simply replied with a laugh. We finished off the joint and then I tossed it away, into the lawn before speaking again. “Man… the fuck is wrong with me?”

Mike let out a sigh. I knew he wouldn’t want to say anything too critical. “Whatever you think’s wrong.” I just lowered my head and made my way inside. He followed quickly behind. This had still been a few weeks before I had confessed the truth to him and everybody else.

***

I simply can’t understand why no one cares to try and help me break this fucking curse. Does nobody understand what it would truly mean to me? Does no one wish to have a positive impact on my life? Does everyone really want to see me stay miserable forever? Of course they do. Because in order for me to lose my virginity, I’d have to have sex with someone while they weren’t. God fucking forbid. We wouldn’t want that. Why should I be allowed anything? Everyone just wants to break me. Let me tell you – if I was in a position to help out somebody who was struggling on their own, I’d do absolutely everything I possibly fucking could, but apparently I’m the only one.

Breidenbach has been keeping me motivated through all of this pain and misery. I honestly am excited about the release of this story. I haven’t felt this inspired for a long time and I can’t help but wonder if that was the critical piece of this proverbial puzzle that was missing all along. It feels like with his help, I have been able to recapture at least some of the fading magic that compelled me to really start pursuing my dreams as a writer in the first place. He seems like the only one I’ve ever met who, not only shares my vision of the world, but also wants to help me achieve it through my writing. Never doubt that a small group of people can change the world; indeed, belief in that is the only thing that ever has. I just hope this doesn’t all backfire on me in the long run, but I’m trying to avoid those torturous thoughts.

I’ve been trying to learn from my past mistakes all along. That’s the only thing that’s kept me going through some of the darkest days. Every day I see various examples and signs that I’m still learning, and isn’t that what life’s all about – the ongoing pursuit of knowledge? And so as long as I still feel like I’m learning something from this miserable fucking excuse for an existence, I’ll stick around. And after putting in so much time struggling and feeling like a failure over and over again, I finally feel like everything’s starting to come together for the first time ever, and it’s providing me with the strength to carry on. I was always told that I simply needed to ask the universe for whatever I wanted, and just when I had almost given up on that idea entirely, it seems to have proven itself true. And so now’s certainly not the time to have second thoughts. I’ll keep asking, and pray a little harder for what I want – the money, the women, the drugs, and the fame. It will never be enough, no matter how much success I attain.

I was just about to lose faith in myself when Travis Breidenbach messaged me. I had managed to convince myself that I would never get out of the dark pit I had found myself in; that I would never amount to anything, and that my writing would never be appreciated for the talent it held. I had just pulled down the website I had spent the years building, feeling as though nobody would ever even miss it. Less than five minutes later I received Travis’s message, asking me what had happened to it, and so we’re here now.

I’m not saying that cursed fucking combination of words again. I refuse to go through that anymore. I’ve done it so many times, and every time it’s the exact same bullshit; people can’t wait to mock me or lecture me, but no one actually wants to help me out. So the hell with it. I guess my life really will be defined by my writing, and so much for all my so-called friends: Travis Grixti, Chad, Ryan, Peter, Zulian, Nick, Ruda, Dwayne, Wesley… you fuckers were supposed to support me. Thanks a lot. All the fame and money in the world won’t mean shit without anyone to share it with, and I’m sorry that you didn’t want to come along for the ride.

***

Rockstar Fridays, as they become known, evolved into another tradition of our own at Red Beard’s, and I’ll never forget the smell of those god-awful drinks… if I ever stop consuming them, that is. They very well may end up killing me yet. Canada’s the only country in the world, as far as I know, that sells the fucking things already mixed with vodka, even though it says right on the original can to avoid doing so. I was constantly getting my coworkers to buy me alcohol, and I’d give them money to buy themselves something as well, as a way to thank them for their efforts. We were open late on Fridays and the store was always dead, so we’d stock up on the pre-mixed energy drinks, and start drinking early, usually about an hour or so before close.

I fucking loved that job. I haven’t had one nearly as fun ever since I quit. I remember one period of time where Travis developed an obsession of sorts over porn star, Tanner Mayes. One day when it was just the two of us in the store, he took the opportunity to show me some of her pictures on the computer. I remember joking with him about how awesome it was to have a manager that would buy me liquor and let me watch porn at work. He just laughed.

That job was also where I originally met Ashley Daynard… should’ve fuckin’ slept with her too. She worked at a clothing store at the same mall and visited Red Beard’s quite often. Needless to say that our boss, Bruce, saw her as nothing more than a distraction and didn’t like to see us wasting a lot of time with her. I was working with Travis, Ryan, and Chad one afternoon after school when Ashley stopped in briefly, handed me a sealed envelope, and darted back out of the store. Dumbfounded, I glanced down and turned the envelope over. On the backside the girl had written, “To my love, Nathan,” next to a heart. I really wasn’t sure what to think. Inside was a Pittsburgh Penguin’s postcard that she had bought from the store, and she had written a love note on it, asking me to marry her. I disregarded it rather quickly, thinking it must just be a joke, but I still held onto that card for about seven years.

Oddly enough, about half a year later, I was walking to rugby with a good friend, Ryan Hamilton, when we encountered Ashley coming along the street in the other direction. I was surprised to see that she and Ryan knew each other, and after talking between ourselves for a minute or two, we all continued on our ways. Once we were well past her and far out of earshot, Ryan proceeded to inform me that she was one of his cousins, suffice it to say I often joked with him after that about marrying her, but he never seemed to care much one way or the other.

***

God I used to be a good liar when I wanted to be… at least, I always thought I was. But in retrospect, I’m sure everyone was able to see clean through my falsifications. Hindsight’s always twenty-twenty. It was a standard Friday night at Red Beard’s with Ryan and Chad when Olivia Geen entered the store. I still maintain the notion that she was one of the most beautiful girls that I had attended high school with, and I’m sure my old coworkers would quickly agree. Yet on some days I felt certain she didn’t even know I existed. She came from a wealthy family, and she had the brains to go along with her magnificent looks – a deadly combination if I ever saw one.

On this night in question, she had come into the store looking for a Toronto Raptor’s jersey, and naturally I was more than happy to help fulfill her request. She didn’t really stay around to talk, taking her jersey and leaving the store as soon as she had made the purchase. I had expected my coworkers to ask me more about her the next morning, and they didn’t disappoint. I had already gone ahead and fabricated this great big, long story in my head about how I had contacted the girl after work and met her at a birthday party before going back to her mansion and sleeping with her half a dozen times.

I was a bit of a fucking idiot in those days.

11.

“How do you get it up?” Jade yelled out in frustration, too short to raise her designated corner of the tent up all the way until it clicked securely into position. I gave her an unamused look, but kept my mouth shut. It took the girl a moment to realize what she had said, but as soon as she did, she burst out laughing. I just sighed and walked over to help her, extending the steel leg to its full length, until I heard the familiar click. “That would’ve been funny if you were hard…” Jade mumbled so that only I could hear.

“What?” I asked her more out of surprise than anything. I had never heard her talk like that before. Either she was simply more comfortable since she was back in her hometown, around her own friends and family, or she was growing more comfortable around me. I would have liked to think that it was a combination of the two.

She quickly shook her head. “Nothing!” her voice chimed.

I couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “Yeah,” I nodded. “I heard you.” *1

***

The waitress went around the table, taking our drink orders, coming to me last. My friends, Ryan Hamilton, Matt Mulder, and Lorne McDougall had ordered a Coke, a Coke, and a 7 Up respectively. “And I’ll have a bottle of Bud Light,” I said without missing a beat.

“Of course,” our hostess replied with a smile and a nod before hurrying off to fulfill the request. They waited until she was gone and then the others broke out in laughter. I smiled, but couldn’t quite manage a laugh; I was feeling too high and mighty. I was starting to learn that confidence was nothing more than an illusion, and I had given up on worrying about what my peers thought of me. It had just been the four of us that night at the sports bar, watching the Pittsburgh Penguins’ playoff run of 2009.

***

*1 It was our fifth of six visits, our third having come only a few weeks earlier when the girl had decided to visit me in Oshawa again in the wake of one of our many arguments. It was at that time that she had asked me if I would be interested participating in a fundraiser with her known as Relay for Life, the proceeds from which would be donated to the Canadian Cancer Society. Considering the known history of the illness in my family, it was a cause that I certainly believed in, but more than that, I was willing to use any excuse I could find to see Jade again. Then after a couple of days spent alone in Oshawa together, smoking more obscene amounts of chronic, the two of us had happened to visit Belleville at the same time about a week later, and we seized the opportunity to see each other again for the fourth time.

The second-last visit of ours during the fundraiser in Oakville really did change something within me though; something about my opinion of the girl who I had tried so hard to give my heart to for so long. She was absolutely more bold back in her own hometown, and with one of her close friends from high school. The two girls spent the entire night droning on and on about their current boyfriends, as if I wanted to hear that shit. Let’s see… what else did they do? They had two complete strangers give them massages, and openly spoke of going to see male strippers for Jade’s birthday in front of me upon running into a larger group of their friends. Perhaps I am just a jealous guy, but it took every ounce of strength I could find to keep from fucking killing the girl. I remember, at one point as the three of us made our way around the track, I had grabbed Jade, ready to throw her to the ground, but managed to stop myself at the last second. What the fuck are you doing? a voice of reason called from the back of my consciousness just as I was about to drop her from my clutches. I froze immediately in position as Jade and her friend just remained motionless, watching and wondering what the hell was going through my mind. I composed my thoughts, still holding Jade at an angle before finally returning her to her feet. They didn’t seem to think much more of it.

By the time that the event ended at seven the following morning, twelve hours after it had begun, we were all feeling rather overtired and cranky and ready to kill somebody. We disassembled the tent which had acted as the team’s base point for the evening. Once we had gotten the tent taken down, Jade had dragged me off to a set of bleachers, well away from all the others. And regardless of whatever acrimony we had felt towards each other throughout the course of the night, we put it all behind us as we sat in each other’s arms, watching the sun rise over the horizon. After a moment or two, we rejoined the others and soon we were back on the road. Jade’s sister, Katie, dropped me off first, letting me out at the Oakville train station. I got out of the back of the vehicle and turned to leave without saying a word to Jade. I just wanted to get the hell away from her before I said or did anything that I would regret. I certainly wasn’t trying to be rude though, and I paused and turned back when I heard her call out after me.

“It was good to see you again!” she offered, and when I looked back at her, I saw her leaning out of the van for a hug.

“You too,” I mumbled, coldly giving her the desired embrace. Then, without another word I turned and proceeded on my way. Her sister had raced to get me to the station on time, yet I still had just missed my train and therefore I had to wait a full hour for the next one. Every passing second felt as though it were stretching into eternity. If I hadn’t felt so exhausted and ready to collapse, I may have taken the initiative to explore some of Jade’s hometown but as things were, the only thought on my mind was making it home to my bed.

***

Right – the night prior to the fundraiser, I had been with Tyler Biback and we had successfully managed to total his car. Tyler was one of the few who understood, at least to some degree, how obsessed I was with Jade, and he tried his best to help distract me from my own horrendous thoughts whenever he could. During this night we were back in his hometown of Thornhill, Ontario – a municipality of Toronto. I had spent the evening smoking weed with Tyler and his several various friends, and as the clock passed midnight and stretched into the next morning, our crew had dwindled down to just three of us who sat in Tyler’s car, stoned out of our minds, cruising down dark, deserted back roads and open highways.

Suddenly, the built-in GPS gave a series of beeps, flashed once, and then went black. At the same time, the paved asphalt gave out from underneath the car, unexpectedly turning to loose gravel which caused Tyler to lose control of the speeding vehicle. He instinctively hit the brakes, locking the tires and sending the car into a spin. We went off the road and through a ditch, taking out a mailbox and a fence in the process. As soon as the car came to a stop, I leapt from the front passenger seat and raced to the front to inspect the damage and Tyler followed suit. Our acquaintance gradually stumbled from the back seat. He wasn’t injured – just too high to process everything as quickly. Thankfully, somehow none of us had sustained any injuries and after making sure we were all okay, we piled back into the metal and plastic wreckage and hightailed it the fuck out of there. A light had come on in a house nearby, about half a mile off the road, and we didn’t exactly want to be around when they discovered the damage that we had done to their property.

***

This was all during the summer of 2011 – that first god-awful summer that I had spent on my own in Oshawa. And around the same time that all of this was going on, I had made the mistake of actually growing hopeful towards the idea that all my efforts may have finally paid off and that I may have finally acquired a job with an organization known as Habitat for Humanity – an organization dedicated to, “giving a hand up, not a handout,” as they had told me during the interview. And that’s all I had been looking for; all I needed was one person willing to give me a chance. I had walked an hour each way across Oshawa just to apply for that stupid fucking position and when I received a call back from them asking for an interview, I made another hour-long walk through the sweltering heat to a thrift store where I spent what little money I had on a new set of dress clothes in order to adequately prepare.

I had been notified during the phone call that the job was actually stationed in Ajax, a neighboring town (and Andrew Ruda’s hometown) where I would have to attend the interview. Fortunately there were cross-regional bus routes, so I had a way to get to the destination, but I still didn’t have the faintest idea of where I was going. The day before the interview, I took the time to print off a map with the directions, and I’m glad that I did because it would prove to be essential in helping me find my way. The next morning I left about two hours before the scheduled meeting, following along on the map as the bus carried me to the Ajax terminal. When it arrived half an hour later, I still had an hour’s walk across the city to the designated location, but I kept telling myself that it would all be worthwhile if it would land me a job with a steady income that I could actually count on.

God, I really have always done everything alone…

The interview actually seemed to go flawless, and I left with a very promising, confident intuition that I had secured the position. The woman conducting the interview had seemed extremely pleased with my tireless work ethic. She informed me that she only had one other person to meet with, and promised that I would hear back shortly. I left the office in high spirits, despite the agonizing blisters on my heels caused by the dress shoes that were too small for me, and as I made the long trek back to the bus terminal, I yanked them off of my bleeding feet and tossed them into a field.

That Friday night, while I was at the fundraiser with Jade, the call came which informed me that I hadn’t gotten the job after all. I was disappointed, but quickly forgot about it, my attention solely focused on the angelic girl I was with. Before the event had started, a free barbeque dinner had been served to the volunteers and participants, and after eating together, Jade and her friend raced over to a vacant playground and I followed. We climbed onto the top of the jungle gym before they spotted a tire swing. They each sat on it so that their weight was evenly distributed, and then I started pushing them – gently at first, but I gradually increased the speed and intensity until their combination of laughter and screams filled the air. I took my hands away and let the swing ease itself to a stop, before I got too carried away and actually did hurt one of them by accident.

***

I’m not entirely sure what the point of including this is, but as a child (probably up until the age of seven or eight) I had an imaginary friend named Kit. Only I could see and hear him, and I knew that, but obviously the depths of my subconsciousness were busy at work for some reason, feeding life to this invisible being. Through some moderate research I’ve discovered that this phenomenon isn’t actually as uncommon as one may think. Apparently a rather high percentage of younger children have some form of imaginary companion, and perhaps as part of a future project, I will conduct more extensive research on the topic. I merely mention it because it was part of my life and something which, in retrospect, I find interesting.

***

After swallowing my pride for the umpteenth time and admitting (for the goddamn last fucking time, I swear) to everybody at Rogers that I was a virgin, I witnessed one or two strange occurrences take place… clearly my presence was starting to cause quite the stir. I’ve never understood why everyone seems to place my virginity up on a pedestal. I try to do the exact fucking opposite, but it’s enticing to think about why everyone else seems to care about it so much. It makes me think that there may be more hiding behind all of this; behind all of this bullshit that’s led me to the place I’m at right now. And it gives me a justified sense that what I’m doing is right. I’m not quite sure how to explain it.

My first day back to work after my confession, Arryn Hill sat next to me and even though everyone knew that she already had a boyfriend, I have to say that I appreciated the deeper meaning behind the gesture. Everyone also knew how much I liked her, and I felt as if it was the world’s way of showing me that perhaps I still did have a chance to live a life of my own, and a life that I actually wanted. If even for only a day, it was much nicer to be next to Arryn than the annoying kid I usually got stuck sitting beside who didn’t know how to shut the fuck up. I can’t stand people who talk just for the sake of hearing their own voice. Go figure, I forget his name now. I’ll just call him ‘the chess kid,’ because he was always bugging me to play chess with him during our shifts. Scott. That was his name.

Anyways, Arryn quit the job a few days later, which I really don’t think came as a shock to any of us, nor did I really care because I planned on leaving right behind her. Also following my confession, I failed to see Dylan Van Kirk or Morley King at the office again, which I really can’t say was upsetting to me in the least. Along with Zach Ellis, they had come through the training class immediately subsequent to my own. And, whether I wanted to or not, I would end up getting reacquainted with them more than I would have liked, some of them more than others. Zach had quit the day that his training class had finished. His father was the mayor of Belleville at the time, as well as an entrepreneur and investor of sorts. One of these types that were really well-known around the city, and thought quite highly of himself because of it. I will never comprehend such a concept. Canada and specifically Belleville, Ontario will always be my home, but this town’s going nowhere, and I just can’t understand why anybody would limit themselves to this city when there’s so much more out there. In my opinion, those who consider achieving success in this town the same as achieving true success are those who just can’t imagine anything greater.

Actually, if you’ll let me jump back just a little ways, the first day that my trio of old high school friends had started working at Rogers was quite humorous, if I do say so myself. I had met each of them at different stages of my childhood. Dylan Van Kirk had been first, having attended elementary school with me since the age of nine. Next was Zach, who I had met at school three years later when I was twelve, and finally, I had met Morley King the year I entered high school. I had played football and rugby with all three of them during certain periods at Moira. Zach was the first of the three that I encountered at my place of business, and I had nothing against seeing him again. We hadn’t exactly been the closest of friends in high school, but he had never tried to deliberately hurt me either. It had been the first time that we had seen each other in about five years, and I followed him back to his training classroom where I would ultimately encounter Morley and Dylan, as well as Dan – his last name escapes me at the moment, but that may be for the best. Dan had been one of my bosses at Sears, and just like the rest of us, had lost his job when the company outsourced to the Philippines. After years of dedicated service and loyalty, he was suddenly right back to square one just like the rest of us.

“Hey, look who’s here!” Dylan laughed when he saw me.

“Who are you?” I asked callously. Reflecting back on that now, especially with the tone that I used, I think it sounded a lot ruder than I intended at the time.

For a moment, Dylan merely responded with a blank stare. “Are you serious?” He repeated himself. “A-are you serious?”

Meanwhile, in my head, I was asking myself why I should recognize him. He certainly hadn’t made any effort to be my friend when we were younger; obviously he hadn’t wanted to be my friend or part of my life, and I didn’t know why he thought I should remember him right away.

“Dylan…” Zach gave me a hint, trying to ease the situation.

“… Van Kirk,” I immediately filled in the blank. They both nodded.

“So you do remember me?!” Dylan said with a renewed sense of hope. “You just couldn’t think of my name.”

I decided to humor him and nodded. “Of course.” Zach had to remind me of Morley’s name as well, and after one final comment from Dylan about how I looked significantly different as well, I bid them a good afternoon and took my leave, returning to my own classroom further down the hall. Back to my point of all this, even though Zach hadn’t stuck around to hear the truth about myself, Dylan and Morley had, and walked out as soon as they heard the small tidbit of information. No love lost.

It seems like no matter where I go or who I meet, everyone treats me unfairly based on the sheer fact that I’m still a virgin and I’m fucking sick of it, so now I’ve simply learned to accept it and embrace the asshole that I’ve become. I’m nothing more than a resulting product of this universe.

***

It was about two weeks after my confession at Rogers that my mother tried to discourage me from my endeavors as a writer once again, this time by calling the fucking police on me. Just think about that for a moment. She called the fucking police, who interrupted me at work, and told me that I had to go with them to the hospital, or else they would be forced to apprehend me. So lo and behold, I was marched past all of my bosses and coworkers by those fucking pigs who locked me in the back of their squad car and took me to the hospital where I was forced to wait for my mother. The police had let me call her, and they had arranged to have her meet me there. While I waited, I waited I was forced to speak to a bitch of a nurse who was equally as stupid. She thought she had all the answers in the universe and when I told her that I was a virgin and experiencing chronic, suicidal thoughts because of it, her suggestion was to join the local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. God I fucking hate women. Yeah… I’m sure that would help a lot… yeah. Oddly, my mother and I have never really been on the greatest terms with each other since then.

12.

Well I know it’s incredibly foolish to do powdered drugs you buy off the street without a test kit, but I’m also not sure that I care anymore. If this is how the Nathan Sharpe saga was meant to end, then so be it. The guy I bought it from sounded like he expected to sell to me again, and I got a good vibe from him, but I know that really doesn’t count for shit on the black market. Still – I don’t know what would possess him to kill me when I bought a hundred and twenty dollars’ worth of weed from him and only thirty dollars’ worth of cocaine; doesn’t seem like it would be a great business model to me. He promised me it was the purest in town, and guaranteed that I’d be in touch with him to buy more, so I guess we’ll see. This is the game we play, and we all know the risks involved. I tried a tiny ‘trial’ dose about ten minutes ago – the smallest dose I could possibly manage while still actually ingesting the drug, and there doesn’t seem to be any adverse effects yet.

***

Yet again Dwayne and I stood in my apartment together, smoking pot. It really is the best bonding-tool I’ve ever discovered. “You know,” Dwayne began. “It seems to me that those who embrace their true selves do a lot better in life. And I’m not necessarily speaking from experience here, because I’ve never really been one to embrace who I am.”

In the days and weeks that followed, he and I discussed plans to move out to Alberta more and more seriously, but eventually, just like everybody else always does, he soon lost interest. I guess I really can’t blame him, as he does have a family here in Belleville that he was trying to look out for as well, but eventually I just lost faith in him. He was no different from anyone else, driven by his own selfish, evil motives.

***

On the night before my fourteenth birthday, my mother had her first chemotherapy treatment. Since then I’ve directly spoken with her about it, and while she claims that she doesn’t care or even remember, I will never forgive myself for my actions that night. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer several weeks earlier, just as her mother had been the previous year – clearly the illness ran in the family. It was a Friday night, and just as she had done the previous two years, my mom had scrimped and saved so that she could somehow afford tickets to a Toronto Argonauts football game, which I planned to attend with Lorne McDougall and Ron Yome. As usual, Lorne and I had football practice after school on Friday, and once we were finished for the day, my good friend and teammate asked if I wanted a ride home and I graciously accepted. We stood out front of the school together, waiting for his mother to arrive and once she did, she offered to take us out for dinner. I didn’t see a reason to turn down the invitation, so I didn’t. But I had wanted to stop in at my house first, simply to inform my own mother of my plans for the evening.

Lorne waited outside with his mom in their SUV while I quickly ran inside, promising I’d be back out in a moment or two. When I got inside however, I was met by an absolutely horrendous scene. My mother was lying on our couch in the living room, and she looked as though she was on death’s doorstep, after her first chemo session earlier that day. I had never seen her in such terrible shape. She was always a fighter and always so full of life. I tried waking her up so that I could tell her I would be going back out, but she just rolled over and went back to sleep. I felt conflicted. I didn’t want to go and leave her on her own, but my sister was home and I didn’t know what more I could do for her anyways. I would only be gone for a few hours, and so I reluctantly left once again and climbed back in the awaiting vehicle with my friend outside. Lorne’s mom took us to a steakhouse known as Montana’s for supper, telling me that it was a birthday gift to me from the McDougalls. When we were finished our meal, we headed back to their mansion where Lorne and I spent the rest of the night playing video games, swimming in his pool, and relaxing in his hot tub while we spoke of dreams and plans for the future. Most of the friends I associated with in high school held simple values. For the most part, we didn’t drink, we didn’t use drugs, and we most definitely weren’t out having sex. That might’ve set me back in the long run, but I just tried to avoid thinking about it at the time. As far as I was concerned, I had all the time in the world, with my whole life ahead of me.

And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you;

No one told you when to run; you missed the starting gun.

That song became an anthem of sorts to my friends and I during my freshman year at university, at least for the first few months. I remember sitting around with Peter and Michael nearly every night in their dorm room, getting high while listening to that. But I beg your pardon, as it seems I am getting sidetracked yet again.

When I returned home on that Friday night in September of 2006, my mother was gone. It was probably about ten o’clock ‘post meridiem,’ and when I inquired with my sister, she informed me that our mother had felt so awful that she had made the decision to go back to the hospital. The two of us stayed up, playing games on our computer together until our caregiver returned several hours later. We had both been worried, but neither of us were quite sure what else we could do, other than hope and pray for the best.

When our mother did finally stumble through the front door at around two o’clock the following morning, my sister and I were excited to see her back home safe and sound, but she obviously didn’t feel the same energy. She greeted us and, after slipping out of her shoes and jacket, immediately collapsed on her bed. The next eight months consisted of countless other chemotherapy and radiation treatments, causing her hair to fall out and her body to reject any food, though nothing seemed quite as bad as that initial session.

When it was all said and done, my mother gradually recovered and started to regain her strength but it’s become clear to me that she’ll never really be the same again. She’s more of a fighter than she’s ever been, but there’s no denying those treatments took their toll on her. She vows that if the sickness ever returns, she’s not going to endure that suffering again. I don’t know if she’s serious or not, but for her sake, I hope that’s a decision she never has to make. I must say, all in all, that was one hell of a year. All within eighteen months my grandmother became stricken with cancer and beat it, her mother died at the age of ninety eight (I believe), my mother fought off cancer, and I wound up in the hospital for the first time with the lung infection.

***

Two years later, in September of 2008, my mother celebrated her fiftieth birthday. I was working at Red Beard’s by that point, and had been racking my brains to think of something special that I could get her as a present. I was working with my manager, Judy one Sunday when she suggested I get something from Edible Arrangements – a business that specialized in preparing and delivering fruit baskets with floral-inspired designs. I jumped at the idea, bringing up the company’s website on our work computer right away and browsing through their selections. I placed an order that same day, using Judy’s credit card (with her consent, of course), as I didn’t have one of my own. I immediately withdrew the amount in cash from my own account at an automated banking machine right across from the store, paying Judy back about half an hour later.

Travis and Ryan had just recently started working at the sports store, and really weren’t aware of my past history at all yet. I wasn’t about to fill them in on any of the details either; it wasn’t exactly something that I wanted to advertise. But my manger wasted no time telling them about my thoughtful gesture for my cancer-surviving mother. In regards to the gift, I can clearly remember Judy telling my coworkers something along the lines of, “She [my mother] is going to cry when she receives it.”

As it would so happen, my mother was actually out of the house when the delivery was attempted, and so the basket was dropped off at our elderly neighbor’s home – a ninety seven year old woman who was constantly chain-smoking cigarettes and couldn’t have looked better for her age despite that. When I got back home in the afternoon on the day of the delivery, I had to go and pick it up from her, and part of me hoped that she hadn’t mistakenly thought it was intended for her. But she was on the ball and knew exactly what I was there for when I knocked on her door. She had kept the fruit basket well-guarded for my mother, and I scooped it up and hurried off with it, thanking my elderly neighbor profusely for her troubles. Naturally, my mother was surprised when I personally delivered the professionally-arranged assortment of fresh fruit to her.

I worked with Travis during my next scheduled shift, and he had asked if my mother had enjoyed her present. I told him that she had. “Did she cry?” he asked, recalling Judy’s prediction.

I shook my head. “No,” I answered truthfully. She had seemed thrilled to receive the fruit basket, and if it had made her cry, she did it on her own time, but I find it hard to believe that was the case.

***

Everyone thinks they’re a fucking expert when it comes to drugs. Depending on my mood at the given time, it makes me either just shake my head in disappointment or laugh in the faces of some of the people who tell me their beliefs about drugs. Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known believe some of the most ignorant statements and I don’t understand why or even how someone could draw conclusions about an experience they’ve never undergone firsthand. One thing you learn with age and wisdom is to accept the things you don’t know.

One of my favorite assumptions about drug use is that it causes the user to see and hear things that aren’t actually there. While visuals and inner dialogue may become more prevalent under the influence of some powerful psychedelics, I would argue that’s not the main desire or side effect of taking hallucinogens or any drug for that matter, though I suppose that’s simply a matter of who you ask. Everybody’s so different, but every fucking living creature experiences inner dialogue – we call it thinking, and the ‘traditional psychedelics’ (marijuana, psilocybin, acid, and mescaline, amongst others) have often been regarded as some of the safest substances available, in some cases for thousands of years. Many hold the notion that these drugs only emphasize the thoughts and feelings already held by the user, and after my own life experiences, I would openly agree with such a description.

Too many ignorant fools who’ve never even laid hands on a joint (but will drink a fifth of liquor and smoke a pack of cigarettes every day) interpret the classification of ‘hallucinogens’ far too literally. I call the effects ‘perceptual hallucinations;’ it’s not so much about seeing or hearing things that aren’t actually there as it is about perceiving the universe around oneself in a slightly different way, with a slightly altered perspective. And the colours. Oh God, the fucking colours. You don’t even know colours until you’ve tried psilocybin. I swear, it has to be the most natural-feeling high known to mankind.

My first experience with it came at the age of nineteen, in January of 2012. The whole situation came about as naturally as the ensuing high would, and everything had seemed to click perfectly into place. One of my favorite Hunter Thompson quotes: “Jesus man! You don’t look for acid! Acid finds you when it thinks you’re ready.” I had been openly talking about my wishes to try other psychedelics for quite a long while when Dwayne unexpectedly offered to sell me some dried Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms. Not Dwayne Bulpit – Lord knows I wouldn’t want to mistakenly accuse him of doing something he never did. Dwayne was also the name of one of my pot dealers at college and he became one of our closest mutual friends over the years.

It had started out as nothing more than a standard week night, and I found myself at Dwayne’s, making my usual, weekly pickup – a quarter once of only his most potent kush. I was just about to turn and leave when he asked the follow-up question. “Do you want to try shrooms?”

“Yes,” I replied without the slightest bit of hesitation. Dwayne smiled and reached back into his safe, fetching another bag filled with the drug. He explained to me how he had gotten them for a friend who had wanted them for New Year’s Eve, and now he was just trying to get rid of the leftovers. Understandably, he didn’t really want to have them around for very long. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I remember hearing once that being caught with over three grams of mushrooms held a criminal charge equivalent to that of a manslaughter charge. I told Dwayne that I’d be more than happy to take two grams off his hands, and that if I liked them then I would be back to buy more. I handed him another twenty dollar bill and he began to weigh out the requested portion of dried fungi. He placed them in a separate bag which I tucked inside my coat pocket along with the marijuana, and with that I thanked him and was on my way. I had no plans to take the mushrooms immediately; I felt like I would simply know when the time was right. At the same time (and this may have just been my young age and immaturity speaking), I wanted to be the first of my friends to experiment with the drug, even though I knew Andrew Ruda had already used them in the past. In my ego-driven mind I felt a certain sense of power in possessing such a mind-shattering chemical. For a few weeks, I debated the decision before finally reaching the conclusion that I’d probably regret it if I took them without my friends the first time, though I still felt an underlying desire to do so at some point. I felt there may be more to learn from taking them in complete seclusion. As it would turn out, I was wrong, but we’ll get to that soon enough.

***

“So Dwayne had shrooms,” I spoke insouciantly, bringing up the topic as nonchalantly as I could while Peter, Michael, and I sat in my bedroom, passing around a bong.

“I think he still has some,” Peter answered.

“Does he?” I played dumb. I rummaged through my box of drug paraphernalia until I found the sealed bag Dwayne had given me. I tossed it to Mike, who immediately ripped into it and smelled it, before handing it to Peter, who took a quick smell for himself, then tapped just under a gram of the mushrooms out onto the table we were sitting around. Mike had made it clear that he didn’t want to try any of them, at least not on this particular night, and even I wasn’t entirely sure. “We don’t have to do them right away,” I had tried telling Peter, but I knew he wasn’t the type to back down from a challenge.

He and I split the modest amount that he had taken from the bag. I remember him commenting on how repulsive he thought they tasted, but I just thought they tasted like any ordinary mushrooms. We each took a few more hits from the bong and then Peter stood from my couch. “Ready to go?” he asked, looking at Mike who gave a nod in response.

“Whoa, whoa,” I felt a jolt of panic quickly pass through me. “You can’t just put something like that on me and then leave!” My friends exchanged looks with each other. I may not have been thinking or expressing myself as clearly as I would’ve liked, and their looks seemed to indicate that my friends really didn’t wish to stay, but they agreed to nonetheless, and I was grateful to them for it. We had all previously spoken about doing the drug on multiple occasions, and one thing that we had all collectively agreed upon was that we wouldn’t want to do it alone the first time, as we accepted that had no clue what to expect.

As you may have guessed, we didn’t consume enough of the drug to exceed the threshold dose. Eventually Mike left and Peter crashed on my floor. It may have been a failed attempt, but it had seemingly removed any anxiety that either of us had felt and after buying more mushrooms from Dwayne, we were right back at it again a few days later.

On the evening of the twenty sixth day of January 2012, a band known as The Sheepdogs were playing at the college pub, E.P. Taylor’s, and the three of us had gone ahead and purchased tickets. Christ – it really doesn’t feel like it’s been over three years already. Time’s passing too fast. The only reason I can still remember the date is because I still have the ticket stub. Before leaving for the concert, we had pre-rolled a joint which we intended to sneak in, and Peter and I had shared another serving of the psychedelic mushrooms – this time about a gram each, just exceeding the threshold dose.

Once the three of us arrived at the pub, we had about a forty minute wait in line before we actually made it inside. We had to go through a security check of sorts, but nothing too serious which prevented us from smuggling the joint in. At the coat check, I was given a ticket and imitated Hunter Thompson’s line from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, when he arrives at the first hotel on acid and the valet takes his car. “I need this, right?” I asked as I took the ticket, thinking I sounded clever.

“If you want your coat back,” the girl replied, unimpressed. Inside, there was a bartender stationed at a table where he was handing out beers for free. Peter, Mike, and I each took one and then found an empty table. The Sheepdogs weren’t actually scheduled to start playing for about another hour, but local bands were entertaining the crowd in the meantime. After we had each finished our first beer, I went up to get us three more and Zulian excused himself to use the washroom. I returned to our booth with the beers and as Peter and I each continued to drink, he ripped a small, promotional poster off of the wall and pulled the adhesive putty off the back, squeezing it into a ball and throwing it at me.

“You’re high, bro!” I yelled at him and we each shared a laugh. I turned my head and caught a glimpse of the same poster in the occupied booth behind me. In one smooth, sudden motion, I reached my right arm back behind me over the bench, grabbed it, and tore it from the wall.

“You’re high too!” Peter laughed as I pulled the putty off the back of the second poster, throwing it at my friend, imitating him.

“Hey! That was our poster!” joked the couple from the booth behind me.

“Ah, we just wanted the putty anyways,” Peter countered, grabbing the poster away from me, crumpling it into a ball, and throwing it back into the neighboring booth. The two of us had both sworn we could feel a mild outside presence intertwining with the effects of the alcohol, but it felt impossible for either of us to place our fingers on what it was exactly. We practically chugged our second beers, and Peter had gone up to get us a couple more before Mike had even returned from the washroom, apparently being told by the server that maybe we should slow down.

We sipped on our beers a little slower, and when Michael did return, I began pressuring them both into smoking the joint. It was obvious that the others didn’t want to. They both agreed that they would rather save it until later when the outdoor smoking patio was busier. At the present moment, the area was completely vacant, and if we went to smoke the joint, we would be exposed immediately and my friends were quite excited about the concert; much more excited than myself and I’ve always sort of felt responsible for the fact that they missed it. I had remembered hearing somewhere that weed could greatly potentiate and intensify the effects of psilocybin, and I was growing impatient, continuing to put more and more pressure on my friends. Eventually they just gave up and agreed to smoke the joint with me before The Sheepdogs had even started to perform. So we all made our way outside to the designated smoking area which was still otherwise empty. We each got a couple of hits off the joint before we were approached by security, who promptly kicked us out of the venue. Peter had tried to protest, but wasn’t about to put up a fight when they insisted that we leave.

Peter and I apologized copiously to Mike as we walked from the bar back to my house where we planned to smoke more to try and make up for our disappointment. “Whoa…you were right,” I remember Peter saying as we walked. “The hit from the joint really did make me a lot higher.”

***

Fuck it. Why not sell my soul? We only get one life to live. I’ve always wanted to be rich and famous. Finishing this story’s the only thing that makes sense to me anymore…

***

“I fucking love shrooms!” Peter laughed as he tripped over his own feet and fell to the floor of the hallway outside my bedroom where we had smoked more weed, and I had eaten the few remaining mushrooms I had leftover, saying, “Yeah, it’s probably a waste… but I don’t give a fuck!” Our chance at seeing The Sheepdogs may have been dead and gone, but as far as we were concerned, the evening had just begun and we were just getting warmed up, maintaining high spirits despite the minor setback.

“I fuckin’ love shrooms!” I mimicked even louder, breaking out in uncontrollable laughter myself. Mike just looked at the two of us as if we were idiots. The rest of the night was rather unpretentious, and for the most part we just sat around, smoking more marijuana and watching cartoons on my computer. It was a fun night, don’t get the wrong idea, but it was a little underwhelming for my liking. It felt similar to the first few times that I had tried smoking marijuana. I wasn’t quite sure what I had expected, but it was more than that.

“Man…” I said, glancing over at Michael at one point during the night as the three of us sat in the darkness together on a couch in my room, watching psychotomimetic cartoons on my laptop. “…someday?”

“Someday,” he answered with a slight nod. Nothing more needed to be said.

When the end of the night rolled around and my friends were preparing to leave, I told them that I might go along with them. “I won’t stay at your place or anything… but just to come for a stoned, trippy walk.” Neither Mike nor Peter had any objections, so that was that. We passed Emil Litman on the way out of the house – one of our roommates and Tyler’s cousin who was strictly against smoking weed. We spoke to him for a brief moment or two before laughing to ourselves and taking our leave. Again, I’m sure that this was just my young immaturity speaking, but I had felt as if the three of us were part of some exalted club that Emil would never belong to. Maybe we just held different values; or maybe not. It had all seemed to make so much sense to me at the time at least.

Outside, rain fell from the skies quite heavily and the snow still on the ground was melting into large pools and puddles. “Man…” I said as we walked. “Evan… should do acid.” Peter and Michael laughed at the idea.

“Imagine.”

“He just becomes awesome,” I continued to joke.

Zulian finally spoke up on our mutual friend’s behalf. “He’s a good guy.”

“I know,” I said, calming down. “I fucking lived with him for a year.”

“Yeah. How was that?”

I shrugged. I’d never had any real problems with the kid who had been my roommate during freshman year. “I think he got worse,” I finally told them truthfully, by which I had meant Evan’s indifference towards the rest of us, his disparagement, his pessimism, his sarcasm, his contempt – we may not have realized it at the time, but he and I probably shared more common characteristics and personality traits than we would have ever thought.

The psychedelic walk didn’t let me down, and had been just as ‘trippy’ as I had hoped. After walking for a few minutes, we turned onto the sidewalk of Simcoe Street. As the cars raced past us, the lights left very, very mild tracers that faded after only a second or two. Nearing Mike’s house, he complained about the rain and I was quick to chide him for it. “You’re not enjoying this?” I joked. “We’re experiencing mother nature in her rawest form!”

“I guess,” he replied hesitantly. I stopped in briefly at his house when we arrived to get out of the rain for a couple minutes but as promised, I didn’t make myself too comfortable or stay at the address for very long. After a short rest, I said goodnight and left. On my way home, I passed a stranger on the street and considered offering him my cigarettes, thinking that perhaps it was time I quit but I ultimately decided against it, based on the grounds that I didn’t want to encourage such a filthy habit. I was glad that I changed my mind too, because when I got back to my house, I retrieved my laptop from my room and took it back outside. For one more time, I decided, I would listen to Pink Floyd’s, Time, the proper way. I lit one of my cigarettes as the chords played and I watched the embers intently as they slowly burned through the blackness of the night. The smoke seemed to dance off the end, morphing into the most abstract shapes and patterns that I had ever seen. And it seemed to last forever.

But when it did inevitably burn down to the filter, I tossed the cigarette into one of the rapidly-disappearing snowbanks and headed back inside where I encountered Emil again. I got caught up speaking with him for a moment before heading upstairs and making amends with my other roommate, Nick. I can’t even remember why anymore, but the two of us just always seemed to be at each other’s throats.

The real action came about a month later. Dwayne had gotten a different batch of mushrooms and so Peter and I had decided to buy more and try them yet again. I bought three grams this time, and when I had gone to pick them up, my dealer had told me how they were apparently part of a very powerful batch. After making the transaction, I stopped in at a local convenience store and picked up a pack of vanilla-flavored Bullseye cigars.

***

“Man… just take like, a few seconds to close your eyes and watch the colours,” I said to Peter.

“I know,” he nodded. “It’s too intense.”

***

Peter and I probably dosed at sometime around eight at night. Peter had brewed a gram and a half into a honey-and-lemon-shroom tea, while I ate my portion that I had picked up from Dwayne a couple hours earlier. I had told Peter that I was doing the same amount as him, but I actually took all three grams. That might have been a mistake. We sat in my room, smoking from a bong while we waited for the onset, which in my opinion, for whatever that’s worth anymore, felt very gradual and as natural as everything else. The first thing I noticed was the definition of the texture on my carpeted floor and popcorn ceiling.

I had one of those plastic Nerf guns in my room, which Peter had picked up and had started playing around with. He loaded the plastic-tipped styrofoam bullets, then unloaded them, and then reloaded them again. This went on for about half an hour before he realized what he was doing and looked back up. “Wow, I’m definitely high,” he thought out loud and we both laughed at the observation.

As the trip progressed towards its peak, Peter rolled a joint and we got Nick to join us before going for a walk near the woods behind my campus to smoke it. As I recall, it was quite a mild night for the end of February, albeit slightly windy. Near the woods there was a strange, stone structure which seemed to serve no real purpose other than decoration. It was a popular spot for stoners to hangout and smoke after classes. We were the only ones there when we arrived that night, and we had to stand in a small huddle of sorts to shield ourselves from the wind as Peter withdrew the joint from his coat pocket and lit it. “That was magical,” I laughed, and he nodded with a smile as he took several deep hits from it before handing it to me.

I was launched into a different world entirely. The magnitude of colours that I had seen behind my closed eyes came racing back over me, nearly manifesting themselves into their own abstract designs in front of my now-opened eyes. The forest seemed to thrive and dance with life. It would have been a different experience entirely to enter the woods, but the ground was too wet and too muddy, and the wind was still too cold. I still probably would have embarked on the mission had I been alone, but my friends wanted to get back inside, and the thought of exploring any further hadn’t even occurred to me at the time.

There was a small, tranquil pond on the edge of the woods, close to the stone structure where we had decided to smoke. “Do you guys think that ice would be thick enough to walk on?” Nick asked as we finished the joint, in a way which seemed to be testing us.

“No,” Peter had answered immediately, flipping the question on him. “You wouldn’t wanna try walking on that.”

“No, I know,” Nick replied in a tone which was suddenly a lot more defensive. “I was just wondering if you guys knew that.”

I just shook my head, still responding to his initial question. “Nah, we’re in control,” I assured him as we began making our collective way back to my house. I fell dead silent as we walked, and when we did get back inside, the mushrooms had seemed to have shifted gears, if you’ll pardon the cliché.

Peter and I sat down – on the staircase seemed to be as good a spot as any. “Man…” I began, processing my thoughts slowly. “It’s like weed… only better.” Peter nodded in agreement and I paused for a long moment before adding one last dreadful thought. “But… apart.” My friend immediately looked at me. We were both thinking the same thing. Eventually we moved from the stairs to the couches in the living room once Nick had come back downstairs from his bedroom. As we spoke amongst ourselves, I found myself overwhelmed by the sense of empathy and overall connection to the universe around me. “We need girls…” I thought out loud, trying to keep up my façade even while under the influence some of the most powerful conscious-altering drugs known to man. “…and then, everybody.” I felt like the drug was a gift and needed to be shared with the world. After another hour or so, finally Peter and I adjourned to my bedroom where we simply laid on the floor in the darkness and listened to the silence of the universe around us. Breathing is one of the most underrated sounds in the world. It really is. At one point we heard a group of students making a commotion outside, and I just inched a little closer to Peter with a laugh. Laugh. That had seemed to be the overall lesson that stood out above everything else that night. My thoughts still raced and I was still quite stoned as it prevented me from sleeping for what I imagine was a couple of hours, though my perception of time may not have been the most accurate. But eventually the high slowly started to fade and I felt relatively at peace with the universe. At the very least, I still felt a renewed sense of hope for the future.

I went through a lot of changes that night, but nothing that I can really put into words here. Three thousand years of known philosophy and proven physics means nothing after eight hours on psychedelics.

13.

I suppose if I’m going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth for once in my miserable life, then it’s worth describing my solo experience on mushrooms as well. I still wanted to see what I could learn from the drug by taking it in private, and so a few weeks after my infamous trip with Peter, I took them again alone one night after classes, trying them in a tea, which I didn’t like the feel of as much. I had used lemon, and the citric acid had helped facilitate the process. When eaten, the mushrooms are slowly broken down by the stomach acids, converting the psilocybin in the mushrooms into its active compound, psilocin. Brewing the dried mushrooms in lemon juice beforehand quickens this process, or allows the mushrooms to bypass it completely upon ingestion, resulting in a much faster onset, and a more condensed, more intense trip. It didn’t feel as natural to me as my previous experience.

I smoked a joint in my backyard as I waited to feel the peak effects set in and as soon as the joint was finished and I returned to my bedroom, I started tripping… hard. I tried to stay calm, and cut up some more weed as I turned on the song Pow R. Toc H. by Pink Floyd – I swear it was the most chilling melody I’ve ever heard in my life. I tried to relax, turning on some cartoons and smoking another hit from my bong, but I just couldn’t shake the overwhelming, haunting thoughts from my head. I closed my eyes and watched the dancing colours and shifting psychedelic designs. It felt like fifteen minutes had passed, but when I reopened my eyes and checked the clock, only two minutes had passed. Every second stretched into eternity, and for the first time in my life, I realized how truly alone I was.

I soon accepted that I wouldn’t be able to endure such torture, and I got up and proceeded across the hallway to Nick’s room, knocking on the door. “Can I chill in here with you for a little while,” I asked him hopefully.

“Sure,” he agreed, opening the door the full way and stepping aside in an inviting gesture.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m actually just going to grab my laptop first.” I ran back to my room and returned less than half a minute later. “That tea hit me a lot harder than I thought it would,” I told him as he offered me the use of an empty chair. He had seen me prepping the tea, but (for whatever reason) I had lied to him and told him that there was just weed in it; he didn’t know about the mushrooms. I ended up just watching Nick play a video game on his computer for a while, and when he’d had enough of that, he broke out his guitar. He practiced playing it avidly, and on multiple occasions, several of us had discussed the idea of forming a band together.

As I listened to him play while I continued tripping, the music took on a whole new meaning entirely. The notes he played seemed to speak to me and echo into eternity, and I realized just how much I really did love the sound of the instrument – the way it gently weeps. I had played the guitar my entire life. My mother had bought me my first one for my eighth birthday while we had been living in Kingston, and I had taken lessons on and off for several years, and so I had a pretty good background and a pretty solid foundation to build off of. Come to think about it, I’m not too sure how my mother afforded those lessons either; that shit was expensive. And it wasn’t like I was getting all the opportunities, even if that’s how I’m making it sound. My older sister got her fair share of art classes and horseback riding lessons. My mom really did go without everything so that we as her children could have opportunities to find our true callings in life; opportunities that she’d never gotten.

The next day I went out and bought a new six-string acoustic Epiphone so that I could start practicing again. As far as I know, Tyler Biback still has that guitar. I hadn’t been able to take it with me when Gino kicked me out of the house, but it really makes no difference to me now. Even on the occasions when we had briefly discussed thoughts of forming a band, I had always sort of seen myself as a Syd Barrett or Brian Wilson sort of figure, staying off the stage, out of the public eye, just writing new material that my friends could use if they wanted.

***

There are a lot of stupid people I know who I could call out in this story – people I still see around this cursed city quite often and, in some cases, every day. But quite frankly, most of them are morons who don’t deserve my time or attention, and I really don’t care. I know that I’m being judged constantly, but I’ve already achieved far more than most people in this fucked up city ever will. I’m used to fighting tooth and nail for every single little thing I want or need, and numerous people have told me on countless different occasions that they simply wouldn’t put the same efforts into life that I do, but I don’t let it bother me anymore. I can’t change who I am. It’s certainly a challenge to find so much inner strength on a daily basis, but if I can do it, so can anybody. There’s no excuse for laziness, and I just can’t manage to find any sympathy for those who complain about their lives yet refuse to put forth any hard work. And I know it seems like I am calling out a lot of old friends (and enemies) from my past, but trust me when I say that you should feel flattered if you happen to see your name mentioned. It means that you’ve actually made an impressionable, meaningful impact on my life, and the hell with everyone else.

***

All I ever wanted was a somewhat attractive girl to smoke weed and cuddle with. God, you’d think I was asking for the fucking universe. I’m liable to lose my goddamn mind if one more person tells me either:

One – how everybody has needs, and;

Two – how I just need to be patient.

In rebuttal: fuck off – I already know everybody has needs. I’m sick of pretending that I don’t have the same urges and desires as every other fucking creature, and; fuck off again – no one can tell me that I haven’t been fucking patient.

I don’t remember very much of what I learned in class during my time at university, but I was told one fact that I found particularly interesting by my psychology professor during my freshman year, which seems to stand out above all the rest. And further research indicates that scientists seem to collectively agree there’s irrefutable evidence to back up the claim. Are you ready for it? Because it’s a fucking good one…

Less than five percent of all male species are known to be monogamous. And I wouldn’t be one of them.

All I ever wanted was a girl to smoke weed and cuddle with…

***

For a very brief sliver of time, the drug did seem to remind me of the joy possible in life, but even that eventually faded as the cocaine fried my dopamine receptors. One of my favorite memories from those early days of use however remains playing football on the beach at two o’clock in the morning while high on “brown-brown.” For those of you who don’t know, brown-brown is a form of powdered cocaine mixed with smokeless gunpowder. The gunpowder contains nitroglycerin which causes vasodilation, resulting in a quicker onset and an overall more intense high.

Within a month of my first use, I had lost about twenty five pounds and was using cocaine all day, every day. I was lucky if I could force myself to eat a single meal each day, or if I could get four hours of sleep at night. Coke became what everything else in my life became about and revolved around.

14.

Shortly after I had started my freshman year at the University of Ontario in Oshawa in September of 2010, while my father and I were still on relatively good terms, he insisted that I get braces. I was quite upset by it at the time, and vowed that I would smoke marijuana every single day while I was forced to wear the stupid goddamn pieces of metal shit. When it was all said and done, the moron of a dentist cemented the retainers to the back of my teeth permanently instead of giving me the removable kind. Through a struggle of chipped teeth, saliva, and blood, I just managed to pry the fucking things off recently. My body really is in quite rough shape after all these years of reckless abuse. I really don’t know how much longer it’s going to last. At the time, my father maintained that he was doing everything for me – he hired a personally trainer for me at the school’s gym; he got me the most expensive set of Oakley sunglasses that I could find, free of charge through his employee benefit program. My mother had felt differently however. I remember when we had spoken to each other about it on one occasion, she claimed she felt as if my father was simply trying to give me everything that she hadn’t been able to. I don’t know what either of them were really thinking.

And it’s in the past now anyways. I’ve gotten over it and I certainly understand how immature the whole notion probably sounds. There’s not even really a reason for me to bother mentioning it here, except for the fact that, at the same time, Jade had just gotten braces as well, much to her displeasure. Again, the timing seemed just too coincidental, and the two of us had agreed to endure the treatment together.

For the two years or so that I was forced to wear the braces, I had to attend monthly checkups. Naturally I always went stoned, and as I sat in the waiting room each time, I couldn’t help feeling as if I was playing the role in some cut-rate Hollywood production. The plotline wrote itself – “schizophrenic drug addict, Nathan Sharpe, only manages to maintain his sanity through the consistency of routine dental checkups.” All this time later, it would be difficult for me to say that I ever believed there was any truth to that. What I can say though is that the dentists and the secretaries never seemed very pleased to see me, and I was certain that they were all conspiring with my father (as well as the rest of the universe) to make my life harder on me in whatever ways they could.

***

My only other solo-psychedelic experience aside from the one time I had attempted to trip on the mushrooms alone had been with salvia divinorum early in January of 2011. It had proven to be just as scary but much shorter-lived in comparison to the psilocybin. The salvia high is commonly accepted as terrifyingly overwhelming, but when smoked, the high recedes after about fifteen minutes, and leaves the user with a mellow, cannabis-like afterglow. The plant’s often been consumed in religious ceremonies to induce visionary states. For these purposes, the leaves are often brewed into a tea, allowing for a much longer experiences. And I can’t say for sure as I’ve never tried it, but as with any other drug, I would certainly expect the hallucinations to be much milder when prepared this way.

I had already tried smoking the drug once with Andrew Ruda, Nicholas Tam, and a few other acquaintances about three weeks earlier before we had all left for Christmas Break. Peter had been the first person that I ever learned about it from, after he had tried it and was eager to share his experience with the rest of us. Nick, Paul (Dwayne’s roommate), and I walked over to a nearby gas station that sold it one night when we were already stoned. “Let me do the talking,” Paul had said as we entered the store. He managed to get us a gram of ’10 x’ salvia extract – a relatively weak product on a scale that ran from ‘5-x’ all the way up to ‘160-x’ (representing the weakest to the strongest product, respectively). Of course the numbers didn’t really count for much anyways. One manufacturer’s 50-x could be the equivalent of a different manufacturer’s 20-x. At the time we were experimenting with it, salvia was legal to sell in Canada and was easy to find for those who knew where to look. These days, the drug’s becoming more difficult to obtain, but the laws are unenforced and it’s still possible to find. Just like legitimate LSD, those who truly want it will find a way to get it; there are still people out there exploring the cosmos. Officially, the law states that salvia’s unapproved for sale in Canada, unless first authorized by Health Canada as a natural health product.

Anyways, with our new acquisition, the three of us returned to Nick’s dorm room, excited and ready to try it. We loaded the dried plant matter (which had a smell faintly resembling that of sage) into the bowl of a bong and I quickly snatched it, declaring that I would get the first hit, leaving no room in my tone for argument. I exhaled, raised the mouthpiece to my lips, sparked the lighter, and then slowly moved the flame over the bowl as I started to inhale. As soon as the first trace of smoke met my lungs, it made me cough back into the bong, forcing the water out through the bowl, soaking the salvia. I don’t remember if we had packed the full gram into one single bowl with the intention of sharing it, or perhaps I had gotten the weed wet and we had no more for the night. Whatever the case may have been, we packed up for the night and chalked it up as a failed attempt.

It was only about a week later that we decided to try again, however. Paul and Dwayne had both advised me of a better brand of salvia, known as Laughing Buddha, which could be purchased from a local head shop. I had also been in touch again with my friend and ex-coworker, Chad Grixti. I figured he had lots of experience when it came to drugs, and therefore would be a good one to ask about it. He explained to me how he had fallen through a glass coffee table the only time he had tried it, and he also suggested that if I really wanted to try it, I might as well go all out and get the 40-x extract. And in my young, influential state, that was pretty much all the convincing that I needed. It was thirty dollars more for the 40-x extract, and Nick and Ruda had both agreed to split the costs with me, but I had politely declined, telling them to consider it an early Christmas gift from me to them. Nick and I had our classes downtown anyways, about a block away from the head shop known as Happy Dayz, and so we had gone together to make the purchase one Friday in December following our classes. The young gentleman who sold it to us really didn’t seem to care much about our intentions with it, openly sharing some of his previous psychedelic experiences with us. After we made the purchase, Nick and I bused back to our residence hall together and made supper while we waited for Andrew to finish his own classes and show up.

He arrived at around seven o’clock that night, and we wasted no time getting down to business. We found ourselves in a random dorm room washroom with a group of guys that we sort of knew only from smoking with a handful of times. Once again, the salvia was loaded into a bong and passed to me first. This time I made sure I didn’t cough. I inhaled deeply, held the smoke in, quickly handed off the bong (worried that I might suddenly drop it), and then exhaled a large cloud. I let out the slightest of laughs as I looked around at the large group, everyone’s eyes fixated on me, waiting for a reaction. On the inside I was feeling a certain sense of power and supremacy and authority. I felt like a god of sorts – a god of drugs, and here were all of my disciples, crowded around me, eager to interpret my actions.

My laugh had seemed to please them for the moment, and they reloaded the bowl, this time passing the smoking apparatus to Andrew who repeated my same process. Finally, one last bowl was packed for Nick, as Ruda and I were launched into the beginning phases of our own respective trips. I don’t know how I even remember this, but I clearly recall Nick didn’t finish the whole bowl when it was his turn, and I had motioned to have the bong passed back to me while the salvia was still burning. I began to take another long hit as the rest of the group chanted, “Go, go, go, go, go!” The bowl seemed to burn forever, but once it was finally gone, I handed off the expensive piece of glass and then we exited the bathroom. I don’t remember very much in regards to what I did; I think I must have just wandered around the room, carefully observing the others. Andrew appeared to be more than confused, and fascinated with the fridge. He would open the door, peer inside, close the door, and walk away before returning and doing the same thing again only moments later. Nick seemed to be having the most intense trip. He was sprawled out across the floor, moving about frantically. When he finally came to, he described how he had seen the equations of the universe appear in front of him, and that he had been trying to arrange them in their proper order… whatever the hell that was supposed to mean.

The peak effects faded just as quickly as they had come on. After the bizarre perplexity of the trip had worn off, we all laughed about it as we walked across campus to the school cafeteria where we would meet up with Peter and Michael. We had all agreed that, for the most part, the experience had been too prodigious – too much packed into a timeframe that was far too abrupt. We also collectively agreed that we didn’t much like the lack of control we felt while on the drug. The high felt like a dream and when we came back down, much of it faded immediately. It frightened us to think of what we might be capable of while under salvia’s influence, only to forget instantly in the aftermath. We agreed that we were glad to have gotten the chance to try the drug once, but we really felt no desire to do it again. Little did I know the experience had been nothing more than a sneak peak at what was about to come.

***

I was one of the first students back on campus following our winter holidays that year, long before Peter, Zulian, Evan, Mike Kunanec, Nick, or anybody else. Belleville was really starting to get to me – especially after the episode with Jade and her not-quite-successfully-delivered Christmas gift, and so I had taken the train back to Oshawa about a week before classes had resumed. I didn’t mind spending a week alone though, wasting away the time getting high by myself; at least I told myself that I didn’t. I had become so used to being alone over the years that it had just simply evolved into my element; my niche; the condition I worked best in and felt the most comfortable in. It must have been the second day of January 2011 that I returned to the school – the first Sunday of the year, as I distinctly recall phoning Happy Dayz to see if they were open, and until what time. And since they had confirmed that they were open until five that evening, I made a brief stop when I got back to the city in order to buy a small steel pipe and some other paraphernalia.

I spent most of the week exactly as I had intended – getting high by myself and then doing whatever happened to catch my attention at the time. My decision to smoke more salvia came on the spur of the moment, and I hadn’t planned it in the least. I had spent a large portion of the week under the influence of cannabis, watching movies like Trainspotting, Dazed and Confused, Alice in Wonderland, A Clockwork Orange, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And although I didn’t really feel a consuming need to use salvia again, I wanted something just… different than a weed high for a change, and something a little stronger than cigarettes or alcohol could deliver. And I still had some of the 40-x Laughing Buddha salvia extract stashed away, so it just made the most sense.

It was the middle of the day when I smoked a bowl of it from my new pipe, all alone in my dorm room, sitting on my bed. I thought I had it all planned out so perfectly. I figured I would turn on some trippy music, smoke the bowl, and then lay down in my bed with my eyes closed – I felt that would provide for the most ideal experience, but something went wrong. The song I had chosen to smoke the salvia to was the Beatles’ classic, I Am the Walrus. I turned on the song and smoked the extract before placing the lighter and pipe safely off to the side and then exhaling. As soon as I did, the world as I knew it disintegrated around me. The music in the background sounded like nothing more than scrambled gibberish, yet the rising tune seemed to strike the fear of God into my soul. I wanted to lie down, but could no longer figure out why or how. However, I continued to recognize that as the overall goal of my trip, and I tried my absolute hardest but it felt like the entire universe was pushing against me, keeping me in an upright, seated position. The room around me looked as if it was made from pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and I found myself totally incapacitated and unable to move at all, still just trying to force myself to lie down on my back. As the song neared its finale, my surrounding universe grew more and more menacing. But finally, at long last, the song ended and I fell backwards onto my bed.

As soon as I did, I seemed to be pulled out of the void I had found myself momentarily trapped in. The sheer absurdity of the situation dawned on me. I sat back up immediately, laughing it off as I found myself back in familiar territory. I shut off the music, which was starting to get on my nerves, and I quickly noticed that I was dripping sweat. I peeled my shirt off but still remained on the bed for a moment, trying to filter through all my thoughts. I wanted somebody to share the experience with once I had come back down, but for the most part I found that I was able to temporarily push those thoughts from my mind. One of the few enjoyable traits of salvia that I found was the short duration of its effects. It doesn’t really give the user the time for many deep thoughts while tripping – at least not consciously. God only knows the long term effects it’s had on my subconscious.

I’ve always spoken of respecting drugs, but maybe back then I didn’t fully understand or appreciate the importance of that. As adolescents it’s virtually impossible to foresee the consequences of our actions later on in life; to foresee the choices that we’ll ultimately have to live with forever. That being said, I offered Tyler Biback the drug within about a week or two of meeting him. I had told him of my own experiences with it and had aroused his curiosity. I told him that I still had some of the salvia leftover, and that he could have it if he wanted it, as I had no intentions of tripping again. He accepted my offer, so I got it from my dorm room, we met up with another mutual friend, and then we all returned to Tyler’s room. He was the only one trying the drug. Our other friend and I were on standby, filming the experience while making sure that Tyler didn’t hurt himself.

From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed like your pretty average trip, though Tyler did freakout for a second and we had to quickly talk him down. The effects wore off within about fifteen minutes and he started to laugh. “Okay, now I can trip out,” I remember him saying once he had finished peaking and we all shared a laugh. Above all, I just hope the experience didn’t have any long lasting adverse side effects for him. I mean, I lived with him for two years after that and didn’t notice any significant changes, but mental health isn’t something to play around with; I know that better than anybody. It still all comes down to respect, and when experimenting with any drug, I can’t stress the importance of that enough. Virtually any and all drugs carry the potential to be life-altering.

***

Everything that you fucking love will turn into everything you hate sooner or later.

***

“Have you ever heard of the six degrees of separation?” my mother asked me as we walked together down the sidewalk.

“No,” I shook my head. I wouldn’t have been any older than thirteen or fourteen at the time. She proceeded to explain the theory to me – that everyone and everything in the world is six or fewer steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person. That is to say, a chain of mutual friends can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps. I’ve always thought the idea made sense, but thinking about it more deeply now, it’s difficult for me to shake off the notion that’s exactly what brought Jade and I into each other’s lives in the first place. Yet another topic for future research.

***

Upon returning to my hometown from university for good, I finally obtained an apartment of my own in January of 2014 after staying with my family for nearly a full year. Of course I loved them and appreciated what they were doing to try and help me, but I had no freedom there, and as always, they weren’t prepared to help me find what I really needed, which was a bitch to fuck. When I did finally have the resources to move out on my own, I found a place on Benjamin Street where I lived all on my own for another full year. The apartment was located only one street over from Sinclair Street, where Jade had lived temporarily; and two streets over from Octavia Street, the second ghetto where my mother, sister, and I had lived after Russell Street. I know this is probably going to sound a little weird, but I’m going to tell it anyways. Many nights in my secluded, stoned state of mind, I would go for a walk along Sinclair Street, sort of hoping to run into the girl of my dreams, even though I had no idea what I would say to her if I did, nor did I even have any reason to believe that she was still living in Belleville. Spoiler alert: she wasn’t.

It’s been nearly three full years since I’ve seen Jade. That’s not fair of her, and I can’t take that sort of strain on my heart anymore. I want somebody to want me. I want to look forward to coming home at the end of the day, and to waking up the next morning. This life’s fucking bullshit. I hate this disgusting world.

***

Psychedelics help the user tune into life; opiates help the user drop out of life. That may be an extremely broad generalization. I understand that everybody’s different, but at least in my life that seems to have held true. After my attempted solo-experience with mushrooms, I figured I’d had my fair share of fun with them… at least for a little while. Not to mention the fact that Dwayne had gone dry and had quit the business. He wasn’t selling mushrooms; weed; nothing – but he was still a good friend and occasionally helped introduce us all to other connections. I would still love to enjoy mushrooms again someday, but only when the conditions are right. I would be a fool to tempt fate more than I already have.

But in the immediate wake of my final psilocybin-based trip, I gave up caring on my life completely, aside from the writing. My philosophy was simple: do what you love and love what you do. And nothing else seemed like it was worth the effort; at least not without someone in my life to help me. I started skipping more and more of my classes, started spending more and more of my money on weed, and started stealing prescription opiates from my roommate. And in some extreme cases, I began to crush the pills into a powder and snort them. Mostly OxyContin and Demerol. I know I was a fucking idiot. I’m quite certain my roommate knew, and just chose to preserve the friendship instead of saying anything. He mentioned to me on one occasion how he had tried to crush one of the pills and smoke the powder. The motherfucker was always one step ahead of me. Thankfully I was able to maintain my handle on my opiate usage as well, and I was able to escape from their grasp before I developed a full-fledged addiction. I haven’t used any in two years, though I must say – if the opportunity arose to try heroin or raw opium, I would most likely jump at the chance much quicker than if I was offered any sort of psychedelic.

***

Back when I was still in the tenth grade, my whole football team won a pizza party at a local radio station after the broadcasters, Sean Kelly and Ingrid Moore, had joked about hosting one for the first player on our team to score a touchdown. That week we beat our rivals, the Quinte Saints by a substantial margin. The next morning I received an anonymous text message, though if I had to guess, I would take a chance in saying that it was from my classmate, Miriam. The message informed me that our principal, ‘Miss Sampson,’ was live on the air, arguing with the broadcasters that the entire team should receive a reward for their efforts, and the radio station begrudgingly agreed. I’m not too sure what this really has to do with anything. It’s just an awesome memory of getting let out of class to go stuff our faces with pizza. I would have done a lot of things differently during high school if I knew then what I knew now. Goddamn, if only I had the chance to go back and do it all again.

No matter how she tried to hide it, I know my sister smoked weed in high school. That probably explains a lot, actually. It’s rather humorous in retrospect, but I remember one day my mother told me that she thought my sister was on drugs. “No!” I thought, completely appalled by the very notion. I had bought right into all of the ignorance and bullshit that I had been force-fed for the first seventeen years of my life. I expect some retribution from somebody someday for all that wasted time (of course I’m joking; I know no one else gives a shit).

***

After my sister moved away to university, I walked into our living room one day to see my mother recording a movie off the television. “What’s this?” I asked her.

“The Forty Year Old Virgin,” she answered casually. I didn’t say anything. I just gave her an evil glare, as if to say, are you fucking serious? “I thought it might be funny to send to [your sister],” she continued, trying to justify her actions. I walked away. I wasn’t in the mood to curse out my mother that day, and I could be mistaken here, but I believe that she stopped recording and turned the TV off a couple of minutes later.

15.

I’ve always been a proud supporter of the arts – the visual arts (drawings; paintings; sculptures; et cetera), the performing arts (music; dance; theatre), the media arts (photography and cinematography), literature, and hell, even the culinary arts (baking; winemaking; et cetera). As far as I can see, life’s an opportunity to create whatever we can with the time we’ve been provided with, while enjoying the creations given back to us by other artists, entrepreneurs, and visionaries with their own God-given talents. In my opinion, all art, no matter how modest, is simply a form of expression and that’s why I feel it’s important to support them. Fuck… do you really think I’d still be a virgin if I knew of any other way to express myself other than through my writing?

In May of 2014 I began experimenting with ethylphenidate for several weeks – a legal research chemical that’s very structurally similar to Ritalin, only more euphoric. In fact, the compound could theoretically be synthesized naturally within one’s liver if they were to consume large enough doses of Ritalin and alcohol. I soon found that ethylphenidate could be ordered online and shipped right to my front door within a week. I had been looking for a stimulant to help compliment my writing for a while. Ethylphenidate was fun and I’d use it again, but it’s nothing I’m too keen on. When I ordered it, it was dirt cheap and very little goes a long way, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on who you speak to. I felt like I came close to overdosing on it several times, but it was still something I could do repeatedly several times throughout the day, and God knows how much I love snorting psychoactive powders. The burn was something else entirely, but I figured it was a small price to pay. I almost enjoyed it in a way. I should urge caution though – certainly I don’t condone the use of any drug, but since I’m sure some people out there will still try it anyways, frequent ingestion of the drug via insufflation can cause the cartilage in the nose to wear away. All in all, the high was fun and uplifting, but nothing overwhelming. For the purpose of writing, I can’t help but feel as if coke, or speed, or possibly even MDMA would be better suited for me.

***

For any girls that have endured this piece of work and have actually read through this far, let me personally extend a thank you and please allow me to try and shed some light on the inner workings of the male mind and the way this world turns:

Everything that any male being of any sort has ever done has been with the overall goal of sex resting in the back of their subconsciousness. Procreation is the driving force behind everything – end of discussion.

***

I just wish I could find one person on this earth to accept me for who I am, but perhaps I have finally found that in Travis Breidenbach. I’ve been saying for as long as I can remember that I wish somebody would discover me and recognize my own talents and unending work ethic. And he seems like the only one thus far who’s been willing to offer me any help in my endeavors or stand by me even with the knowledge of all my past mistakes. I’m trying a new approach this time around; I’m trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But even my own family doesn’t understand. Perhaps this is once again just my delusional mind at work, but I feel like they show a hint of jealousy or envy that they’ll never understand what this life of mine’s all about. I may even be as pressed to say that they deserve to feel that way. If they really wanted to know what it was all about, all they need to do is ask. They just don’t understand. They view my drug use on par with practicing witchcraft. And some of them, I just know, will never try marijuana for themselves. That’s fine – it’s certainly not something that I can look down on them for. But don’t fucking try to change me. Marijuana’s the only thing helping me endure this fucking bullshit. It used to act as the only cure for my insomnia, but even it seems to be losing its effectiveness as I continue to age. I seem to be lucky if I can manage three or four hours’ worth of sleep per night anymore, suffice it to say that I don’t get any without help from the drug. But I digress. My grandparents really are the most loving couple I know, and they really do try their best. I suppose at their age, there would be no reason to disrupt that, but they’ll never be able to relate to how I feel. They think that smoking weed automatically made me hate the world. They don’t understand how it simply emphasizes the love (or hate) that the user already feels, and they don’t understand that the endless unrequited love has driven me to this black-heartedness.

***

“Are you all in the same family?”

“I’m not,” I spoke up.

“Do you happen to have a note from your parents with their permission?”

Dear God! I thought as the vehicle shared an uncomfortable moment of silence and a round of looks.

“No,” Lorne’s father spoke first, answering the question.

The Canadian border guard turned his attention back to me. “How old are you?”

“Seventeen,” I answered truthfully. There was no point in trying to lie – he had my fucking birth certificate in his hands.

“Do your parents know where you are?”

“Yes,” I said as straight-forward as possible before I even had time to consider the question. I hadn’t even realized it was a lie until it was too late. My dad had no clue where I was, but he never did, and I knew he wouldn’t have cared anyways. And my mother knew that I was with the McDougall’s, and I knew she trusted them, but she certainly didn’t know that we had left the country. Nevertheless, my quick response invoked a certain confidence in my voice and the border guard seemed pleased with it.

“Alright well, we’re obviously going to let you back into the country, but next time you really should have a note from your parents.”

“Okay,” I nodded compliantly as he returned our identification and then waved us on through. Lorne’s father pulled ahead slowly and we waited until we were out of sight before sharing a laugh amongst ourselves.

“You know what we should have said to them?” the driver of the SUV said. “We should have asked if a torn, forged note was better than no note at all.” The entire vehicle laughed again.

We had predicted the situation before leaving my friends’ cottage a few hours earlier. Lorne’s mother had been the first one to consider the possibility that the border guards might want proof of my parents’ permission in the form of a letter. “Why don’t we just write our own letter and sign it from his mom?” Lorne had suggested. “It’s not like they’re going to know what her signature looks like.”

“That’s true…” his mother reluctantly agreed. “… I suppose we could.” She fetched a pen and a scrap piece of paper and spent the next five minutes crafting the perfect forged letter, keeping it short and to the point.

On our way across the border into the States, the guard hadn’t asked us about it at all. We showed him our identification, he went through his standard spiel, and then had let us cross into America. As soon as we had, Lorne’s mother had ripped our faked document in half, figuring we wouldn’t need it anymore. I forget now what business the McDougall’s had to attend to in the States, but I do remember it only took them a few minutes, and Lorne, his brother, Mathew, and I talked football while we waited.

***

“Do you feel alone?” The doctor continued to press with the questions.

“Yes,” I answered honestly.

“Do you feel well-liked?”

“No.”

“Are you losing your sense of humor?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, I feel like everyone’s laughing at me; mocking me; talking about me behind my back,” I explained. The doctor nodded. He seemed to understand.

“Do you feel anxiety?” he asked. I gave him a questioning look. He quickly elaborated. “By which I mean, do you feel panic attacks; things like that?”

“Well there’s definitely some social anxiety there,” I thought out loud.

The doctor scribbled something else down in his notebook before asking me to help give him an idea of the severity. “If I told you to go into a Tim Hortons and buy a coffee and sit down and drink it there, would you be able to?”

“I would,” I told him. “I would rather just take it and go back home, but if I absolutely had to stay and drink it, I could… but, even in a case like that, we’re only talking about being out for maybe fifteen minutes or so. It gets a lot worse when I have to spend an eight hour shift at work or something like that.”

“I see,” he offered. I actually remember now, he had been introduced to me as Peter. I really hadn’t been looking forward to speaking with him – my bitch of a mother had locked me in her car and had told me that she’d call the police on me again if I didn’t obediently go with her. To say that she has always been and always will be a psychotic control freak would be a massive understatement. But the doctor was quite professional in his work, and didn’t make me feel too uncomfortable. He gave me the names of other doctors that he could refer me to if I wanted prescriptions for antidepressants or sleeping pills, but I had politely refused.

“I don’t like taking pharmaceuticals,” I told him. At least he was pitching ideas.

“You smoke weed,” he countered immediately. I fucking hate when people try to use that argument.

“Yeah…” I shrugged. “But it’s natural.” Hell, maybe I should’ve taken him up on the offer, now that I consider it further. If I really want my writing fuelled by drugs, I should be openly trying anything that’s offered to me, but all in good time, I suppose. I still have a long life to live and I’ve already done enough damage to my mind. These endless thoughts of suicide certainly can’t be healthy.

The doctor continued to play the role of devil’s advocate perfectly. “Some natural things can kill you. Some people go insane on it; I’m not saying that you do, but…” he slowly trailed off.

Nobody understands how I’ve ever felt, what I’ve been through, or what I’ve ever thought, and people who assume that they do drive me crazier than anything. My own fucking mother accepts no responsibility for the way she raised me. No – it mustn’t be her fault I turned out the way that I did, even though she spent the first eighteen years of my life brainwashing me, feeding me lies, and telling me I would never be good enough for anybody. She just tries to blame it on the drugs. “You must’ve gotten into some bad drugs when you were at college,” she likes to say in her annoying fucking voice that makes me want to just fucking tear my ears off. She doesn’t seem to realize that I was merely biding my time during my adolescence, until I could get the hell away from her, free to live a life of my own. And my father? He’s never given a fuck about any of us anyhow, so fuck him. No one understands how lonely I feel. Nobody else knows the shit I’ve been through, or how hard I’ve always tried. So I’m completely done trying to form any new friendships. It’s all fucking bullshit. It’s…all….fucking…bullshit. I’ve learned that my strongest efforts are best reserved for my writing, and fuck the rest. These days, my list of priorities goes something like this: writing, drugs, sex, food, music, and money. That’s it. Those are all the fucking things I care about, in order.

***

God, what can I say about Ivy Nibourg? I fucking loved working with her, even if my other coworkers never understood the moments that we shared together. It had all started on my very first night at work in March of 2008. Bruce, her father and my new boss, had asked us to drive around to the other side of the mall where our storage unit was located, and load his truck up with extra clothes hangers. We both got to work. I suppose it would only be a fair warning to mention that Ivy looked much younger than the twenty five years that she actually was.

“So how long have you been driving for?” I asked her as she navigated the pickup truck through the parking lot of the Bayview Mall. It was merely an alternative way of trying to find out how old she was, and she recognized it immediately. It had sounded so much less subtle than I had intended, and I was nowhere near as clever as I thought I was.

“A long time,” she answered, completely turned off. I knew the question had been a mistake. I’d had a statement prepared to fall back on; some excuse about how I was simply curious because my mother hadn’t bothered getting her license until she was well into her twenties, but I didn’t even bother with it. I knew that Ivy could see right through me. “I had to get my license pretty much as soon as I was able to,” she continued, making an effort to break the suddenly awkward silence. “So that I could help out my dad.”

After that I vowed I would just shut up, do my work, and show no further signs of interest in her. For Christ’s sake, she was married. Still, I liked her husband, Emile and I had no problem working with Ivy. She was attractive and smart, albeit spoiled. She had completed the kinesiology program at Queen’s University and was working to open her own rehabilitation clinic of sorts. Outside of work, I would obsess over her, talking to Riley about her constantly.

Life pro tip: All men worship pussy. Get over it.

And even if I didn’t proactively express any interest in my boss’s daughter after that very first night, it seemed to set the atmospheric tone that we would work together in for the next two years. When Christmas rolled around eight months later, the mall had hired someone to appear as Santa, as most malls do. “You should go sit on his lap,” I joked with Ivy one day as we stood together out front of the store, watching the lineup of kids waiting to see him.

“I think he’d probably get an erection,” she said to me quietly through a laugh.

“Wouldn’t any guy?” is what I wanted to say, but I decided it may be wiser to just keep my mouth shut.

On a separate occasion (it must have been a Thursday night in the autumn), her and I had found ourselves working alone and the store was dead, so we had sat behind Bruce’s desk, watching an NFL game on the computer. Ivy was dressed in a set of pajamas and looked her absolute best in them as they conformed perfectly to every curve of her perfect figure. It should go without saying that I would’ve liked more out of the evening than only sitting there, watching football with her, but at the time, I was willing to accept it and felt thankful for whatever affection I could get. I no longer feel that way about girls. I want sex. That’s it; that’s all. That’s what everything comes down to, and that’s probably part of the reason it never happens for me. It’s simply an endless, torturous cycle. Let’s face it – I can’t start a conversation with a girl by saying: “Nice to meet you. By the way, I’m a virgin, so sleep with me.” It just doesn’t work.

***

It’s a cold and heartless world. Find love; find peace; find happiness; and find a safe haven in this cruel world. No matter how much I smoke, I can’t even manage to crack a smile anymore.

***

For a few years, Bruce owned stores in Belleville, Barrie, and Kingston, but he had shut down the first two locations during my time in Oshawa, and had pooled his resources into his Kingston location. Shortly after I had dropped out of university and had returned to my hometown, I found myself with my mother and her parents in Kingston one day when my mother spotted Bruce and his family. For whatever reason, she thought that was hysterical and suggested that I go beg him for a job. “It looks like his daughter’s with him,” she said.

I scoffed. “Oh, that’d be great.”

***

I often feel like I’m only a step or two away from being homeless. Aside from writing, it seems like all I do is wander the streets of this goddamned city. I wish I was a bird, and could just fly away from here.

***

Sometimes I really do feel like I’m being accosted everywhere I go, especially around this depraved fucking city full of junkies. Some days it seems like everyone just wants to fight me for being me. One of the first specific instances I can recall comes from when I was sixteen years old. I was working at Red Beard’s and had gone to grab a coffee on my break one Saturday morning. On my way back, some idiot driver nearly hit me as he sped out of the parking lot, so I yelled at him. Wherever he was in such a rush to get to, apparently he wasn’t in so much of a rush that he couldn’t spare a couple of minutes to turn around and tell me how he was going to kill me from the comfort and security of his vehicle – some middle-aged asshole who got off on threatening people half his age. It wasn’t a phenomenon completely exclusive to Belleville though. On the night of the Neil Young concert in Kingston, my mother and I were sitting in some café after the show when some random guy, maybe a few years older than me, decided he wanted to pick a fight with me. I can’t even remember how it had started now… he thought I had said something to him when I hadn’t or something moronic like that, and before I knew what was even happening, I found myself in full-blown self defense mode again. I’ve always lived by the rule that I’ll never throw the first punch, because that only leaves me in a position to get arrested for assault. But if somebody decides that they want to take a swing at me, they’d better kill me with it, or at the very least knock me out. Because I’ll defend myself at all costs. I have a lot of pent up rage…

16.

I soon realized just how significantly set and setting could impact the intoxicating effects of hard drugs such as cocaine as well, in the way that the same concepts affect psychedelic experiences. Often when I was snorting coke with other users I felt good about myself and was extremely talkative. But when I did the drug in isolation, it often made me paranoid. I heard everything, and sometimes even the softest noise outside or the house creaking was enough to set me off. I would become paranoid and imagine outrageous possibilities, convinced sometimes that the police were watching or following me. It was a new sort of paranoia that I’ve never felt from just smoking weed. Actually, marijuana seemed to be just the thing I needed most of the time to help take the edge off and refocus on my writing.

After I had been run out of Rogers, I briefly obtained employment doing factory work. I was willing to try anything, even if it was killing me. It was in my blood from the way I had been raised. I didn’t feel as if any job was beneath me. The factory was four miles from my apartment. I would walk to work, be on my feet for a full eight hour shift, then walk home. I felt ready to collapse of sheer exhaustion constantly and the erratic rotating shifts made in nearly impossible for me to get any sleep at all. I was only there for about six weeks anyways before the temp agency that I’d been hired on through went under. The people in charge really didn’t know their asses from a hole in the ground anyways. Good riddance.

***

During one of my first weekends at university I got to see Kayla Jones topless, and then nearly gave her a concussion – unintentionally, of course. Let me explain. I had been drinking all night, and this was before I had even tried smoking weed. I was with my other friends and Peter had made a point of making sure that the rest of us were well-aware that he had already gone ahead and fucked Kayla in the dorm room before the rest of us had shown up. In our drunken obnoxiousness, we had got to talking about certain girls and how their appearances held up on a one-to-ten scale. “There’s no such thing as I perfect ten,” I had been insisting.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect ten,” Mike Kunanec had immediately agreed.

“Maybe I can change your mind?” Kayla spoke up hopefully. She led me into the washroom, locked the door behind us, and pulled off her shirt. “Will you still say I’m a ten if I leave my bra on?” she asked. “It’s new, and it’s pink, and really cute.”

“It is…” I agreed. “But no.”

She sighed. “Alright well, can you help me unhook it then at least?” Needless to say, I was happy to fulfill her request and did so flawlessly on the first try, much to my relief. Kayla slowly pulled it away from her breasts.

“Okay, ten,” I laughed as the girl and I stumbled from the bathroom once she had put her clothes back on. The others just laughed with me. A couple more hours passed and we continued to drink and play cards. On my way out of my friends’ room, once we had all decided that we should be on our ways, something about Kayla made me want to grab her, drag her into the bathroom once again, and viciously have sex with her. I lunged forward and scooped her into my arms, but when I turned for the bathroom, completely caught up in the moment, I guess my depth perception was off because there was a loud ‘thud’ as Kayla’s head made contact with the doorframe. I immediately dropped her (thankfully she was caught by Peter) and raised my hands in the air in a sort of, fuck it – I quit gesture.

Roughly a full year later, Kayla and I were drinking alone in my bedroom at my house on Dalhousie Crescent. It was her nineteenth birthday, and we were planning on going out to the bars with the rest of our friends later, but first Kayla had wanted to drink with me and only me, and her parents had willingly dropped her off at my house. She had also just recently started smoking weed, and I had plenty that I was happy to share with her. I couldn’t help feeling as if she wanted me to make a move, and I wanted to; God I wanted to. She had been wearing a completely see-through shirt. But I simply hadn’t been ready to admit that I was still a virgin, and I felt like that was neither the time nor the place, but fuck – I don’t really know what I was waiting for. Eventually she grew bored with me and we left my house to meet up with the rest of our friends before heading to the bars. When I returned home in the earliest hours of the following morning, I was all by myself once again, with no other option than to jerk off and go to sleep.

***

“Man, how long has it been since you last had sex?” Peter asked me as we finished up one of our smoke sessions with Zulian.

“Well, high school graduation…” I lied.

“Holy shit – so it’s been like, a full year for you?”

I nodded. “And this is where it’s supposed to happen,” the undertones of frustration heavy and clearly audible in my voice.

“Yeah,” Peter shrugged, trying to give any sense of justification. “Well… this isn’t the best school for girls.” He could say whatever he wanted; I had seen more than enough girls around the campus that I would’ve liked to have gotten to know better.

***

“Are you finding weed alright?” Chad asked me. It was the first time that I had seen him in over a year, and the two of us sat in my bedroom, trying to keep the marijuana smoke contained. Coincidentally enough, he had started working in Oshawa, and I had picked up some Purple Kush and had invited him over to smoke following one of his shifts during my third and final year in Oshawa, while I was in the midst of trying to set things right with all the friends from my past whom I had lied to for so many years.

“Yeah,” I answered his question. “I know one guy who just lives a couple houses down. And there’s a couple others around too… obviously.” I made a gesture with my arm, pointing out the window, as if saying, look at where the fuck we are.

“Obviously,” Chad repeated. That should have been my attitude towards the girls as well. There were so many of them, away from home for the first time and looking to experiment. I don’t know why the fuck I was letting Jade have so much control over my life. To some extent perhaps it was nothing more than a prime example of Pavlovian conditioning. I had been raised by a selfish matriarch who believed women had all the power and ruled the world, instead of simply shutting her mouth and accepting her place as any woman should.

“Alright…” I sighed, after we had each smoked a couple of hits from the bong. I paused for a second or two, giving Chad just enough time to interrupt me and stop me from doing what I was about to do. We each spoke again at the same time.

“What?” my old friend and co-worker asked.

I continued with my confession, and had to actively force the words from my tongue, one at a time. “Alright… alright. I’m…still…a…virgin.” We both sighed and I lowered my head and fell back into my chair, feeling defeated by the world.

“Well… don’t get upset about it,” Chad advised me. “Be proud of it.”

“I know. I know,” I said, otherwise at a loss for words. I wasn’t exactly sure if I would say that I was proud of my virginity, but I knew what my friend had meant. I was just trying my best to stay composed, and I kept my sentences clear and concise. Chad already knew everything there was to know; I really didn’t see a point in saying much. I had tried lying in order to make myself look good and it had completely ruined me. “I think I know what I wanna do,” I said, and then repeated the first two words with an added emphasis. “I think.”

“That’s all that matters,” Chad told me.

“I know,” I responded with a shrug. “Well… ya know – ‘Hey, what are you doing tonight?’” I proceeded, imitating a generic question I was often asked when working with Chad, his brother Travis, or their mutual friend, Ryan before imitating the generic answer I would so often give them. “‘Oh, ya know… going out and fucking like… five girls.’” We both forced a laugh at the absurdity of the statement.

“Don’t worry about that,” Chad tried to console me. “I think we’ve all done that.”

“I know, I know,” I repeated. It seemed to be the only two words my mind could process to keep itself in check.

“It’s good to get that closure though.”

I nodded and a moment or two passed in silence before I spoke again. “I did mushrooms too. I took about three grams. And smoking a joint on the peak was… pretty awesome. I was with a friend and we went for a walk near a pond and a forest behind the campus.” Even though I knew it would be, I hadn’t wanted our entire visit to revolve around my declaration of guilt, so I had intentionally saved the topic of discussion until after my confession. Thankfully Chad was willing to do along with it.

“That’s what I usually take – about three grams,” he acknowledged, with almost a hint of concern in his voice. “It’s fun to take them during the day too. Then you get all the colours.” Our drug-related conversation slowly shifted back towards the subject of marijuana.

“Well… you know,” I said, repeating myself again. “That’s what I’ve let define my life, at this point.” Chad just nodded. I knew he’d be able to relate to that, if nothing else.

“Yeah, I probably wouldn’t give a fuck either,” he slowly admitted. “But you’ll find your balance eventually.” He paused for another couple of seconds. “Fuck it – smoke another bowl.” I prepared the bong and took another hit, blowing the smoke out of my window which looked out at Simcoe Village, the residence hall where I had lived during my first year.

“Well,” I had said while I held the smoke in my lungs. “Nothing else seems to be working.” Chad couldn’t help but laugh at the sentiment as I gently placed the bong back down on my desk and returned to my chair. We spoke back and forth for a few more minutes before we were interrupted.

“It’s good to see that you’re doing alright anyways,” my friend said, even though I didn’t necessarily feel the same way.

“Well…” I started to contradict him. As if on cue, my bedroom door opened and my roommate, Tyler entered unexpectedly, asking if we wanted to smoke. “Yes!” I answered instinctively. I was willing to accept just about any excuse to get out of the situation I was in.

Chad didn’t stay around to join us. He had left, telling me, “Do something soon, huh?” to which I had merely replied to with a shrug. I received a text message from him a few moments later, thanking me for the smoke session. I replied immediately, apologizing that I didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye and telling him to stop by after work anytime to smoke. He told me that he would be sure to, but I haven’t seen him since. Actually, while I’m thinking about it – by this point in time, Chad and Ryan had already moved out to British Columbia once and had returned to Ontario. Chad had told me the story of how he had then gone back out west to Alberta so that he could live with some broad he had met.

“I sold all my stuff and spent all of my money to get back out there, then after two weeks she broke up with me,” he had told me. “Don’t do that.” As shitty as that was, at least he was getting the chance to live a life of his own.

***

I knew Reenie Brydon when she was still a virgin too. With all of this talk about sex and girls from my time at university, how the fuck could I leave Reenie out of this tale? She celebrated her eighteenth birthday within a week or two after I had met her, and as a large group of us sat around drinking, I made her a heart-shaped card out of construction paper, decorating it with ribbon, beer caps – anything I could find really. More importantly, not long after becoming acquainted with her, I distinctly remember having a wet dream which involved her one night, but I wouldn’t even try to pursue a relationship with her, no matter how badly I wanted to. No girl wants to sleep with a virgin. And so it would remain nothing more than a dream, I had decided. Reenie lost her virginity shortly thereafter, and since then has successfully graduated from the University of Ontario, and is currently enrolled at Durham College, trying to jump start her photography career.

Of the two of us, my roommate and first friend at university, Evan, had been the first to confess the truth about his virginity. I’ll never know what it must have been like for him, but I do know that he did spend a certain stretch of time in therapy or counselling or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Overall, it seemed to be affecting him adversely, but who could really blame him? I recall one night, I had found myself drinking at one of the sorority houses. One of Reenie’s friends had shown an interest in Evan and he had shot her down. She started crying about it as the alcohol took hold over her. I forget what I even said now; I had merely been trying to cheer the girl up. But I must have let on that I knew more than they did because a moment later they were all bombarding me with questions about Evan. I refused to answer any of them for as long as I could, telling them that I didn’t feel like it was my place to discuss Evan’s affairs, and that he could tell them himself if he wanted them to know. “Will you just tell me then?” Reenie had asked.

“Well…” I looked around before reluctantly agreeing. “… Alright.” I followed Reenie out of the house and we stood on her front lawn.

“So what is it?” she asked.

“Evan’s a virgin,” I said matter-of-factly.

“Oh. So?” Reenie played it off casually. I shrugged. Certainly I could relate to what Evan was going through better than anyone. “He’s nervous?” she guessed.

“I guess so,” I answered. I figured it was up to her to do as she saw fit with the information, but I fully knew she was going to head right back inside and share the details with the rest of her friends.

***

Along with Jade, I also lied to Ryan Hamilton, Matt Mulder, Tim Wright, Zach Ellis, Luke Tinknell, Danielle Haskin, Ryan Brown, and Bevan Matheison amongst others about smoking weed while I was still in high school. I was having quite the impact on the lives of those around me long before I ever even realized it. Some days in accounting class or phys ed, I felt like Tim was my only friend, even though I tried my best to get along with everybody. But back in those days, Tim seemed to be one of the few willing to listen to me glamorize weed long before I had even tried it. By the time I had reached university, I felt like I had to live up to the expectations I had already set for my life.

***

I reached the bottom of the stairs and took several steps across the back lawn of the McDougall’s cottage before I looked up and froze instantly. Maybe a hundred feet away was an enormous beast that looked exactly like a wolf, and I was worried that he was going to attack me.

“You met Wolf,” a voice laughed from behind me, startling me. I turned to look. It was Lorne’s brother, Mathew. “It’s our neighbor’s dog,” he proceeded to explain to me. “We call him Wolf, because that’s what he looks like.”

“Yeah…” I agreed cautiously. I watched Mathew approach the dog and start petting it, but I was still wary of getting too close. A moment or two later, it ran off, back to its owner.

***

I’m pretty sure there’s still a picture floating around somewhere out there from one of my first drunken weekends at university with Kayla Jones sitting on one side of me, Reenie Brydon on the other, and Shannon Castel lying stretched out across all three of us. I will never understand what I ever did to make Shannon act like such a bitch towards me. I guess, like my classmate from high school, Katelyn Bridge, some girls were just simply put on this earth to hate me.

My first time smoking weed with Chad Grixti and Ryan Brown had been at Simcoe Village. Andrew Ruda had invited us all to a keg party in his hometown of Ajax for the night, but for some reason I forget now, Chad, Ryan, and I hadn’t been able to go along – there wasn’t adequate space or some bullshit like that. Andrew would later apologize to me. He made it obvious that he felt bad about the whole ordeal, but I didn’t care by that point. I had at the time. I had promised my ex-coworkers a party, but they had brought along a generous supply of beer, liquor, and weed and we had ended up having a party of our own. We had been pre-drinking with the others before they had left for their precious keg party though. “I would fuck any of the girls here,” Chad had said to me at one point with an approving nod.

Probably sometime around midnight, once the alcohol was gone, the three of us made our way outside to Chad’s car where we smoked. “We just smoked weed,” I stated once we were back inside. “That’s a fucking milestone!”

17.

Nothing turns me on anymore. I’m not trying to be melodramatic; it’s the truth. All food tastes like shit, and it’s quite difficult just forcing myself out of bed every morning, other than to work on my writing. At one time, just the thought of seeing Jade again was enough to make me hard, not that she ever gave a shit. I was foolish enough to let myself believe that was all the evidence I needed that the two of us were meant to be together. But she just keeps playing with my emotions and my heart, and now I can’t say if I would even be able to get hard for her or anyone else. But why should that matter, right? It’s just my libido. I should just shut up and be happy, shouldn’t I? I know.

***

For a company owned and operated by a drug addict, we’re definitely in need of a better backbone and some more serious corporate structure for Hightower Productions. I really need to ask myself which way I want to go with this, but the overall premise is the same as it always has been – to build the world’s largest publishing firm and media outlet from the ground up, focused around my own writing, since I’ve found it impossible thus far to get my own work published by anyone else without an agent to represent me. Unfortunately I simply can’t afford to hire one at this time. Of course, for the most part, Vice President Breidenbach will be in charge of handling the business side of things, while I focus on writing full time. He still seems like the only one I’ve met who wants to help me achieve my vision… at least I hope he does. But we’re still going to need editors, programmers, and most importantly at this current stage, investors and financial backers. And I still need an office so that I can write in peace and quiet, out of the public spotlight, but hopefully that comes once we get our business licence. We will need a headquarters after all. I’m still thinking we should base out of Portland, Oregon and set up a Canadian office in Toronto. That may finally give me an excuse to attain my US citizenship and get the hell out of this shithole once and for all.

***

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot – to add to my repertoire of drugs, during my final year at school in Oshawa, Tyler Biback and I experimented with kratom one night, a morphine-like opiate substitute. It was a very pleasant, mellow, relaxing high, especially when combined with weed, and watching Space Jam while under the influence caused me to experience extreme bouts of nostalgia from my childhood.

***

My mother took my sister and I to a local toy store one day when the three of us still lived together on Octavia Street in Belleville. She told us that we could each pick out one toy to have. This would’ve been nearly twenty years ago, so you’ll have to forgive me if the finer details have faded from my memory now. My sister had already made her decision and I can’t even remember what she had decided on; I just remember thinking I wanted the same thing. But when I went to take one, they accused me of knocking some other toy off of the shelf and breaking it, so my mother got stuck paying for it and at the time I felt like I got stuck with a toy that I didn’t really want; a miniature ‘Pinscreen,’ as they’re called. Once we got home, my mother was able to fix it in about two minutes. So much for it being broken. It was made up of a crowded array of pins that could freely slide in and out of a screen to recreate three-dimensional shapes and images. Even though it hadn’t been what I originally wanted, we kept the toy and I think we all ended up getting our fair share of fun out of it, until I fell down the stairs with it one day and it really did break. For whatever reason, my mother and sister thought it was hilarious to hide on me, and I had forgotten about the toy in my hand while I searched for them. I had become worried and had started racing through the house to find them when I tripped over my own feet. They’re lucky the fucking thing didn’t kill me when I fell on it.

I was part of the first generation to grow up with the internet and a computer in the house since I was just a little kid, and there’s really no telling what long term effect that’s going to have on the young minds of the new generations, but it seems to have simply evolved into the new norm now. Actually, while I’m on the subject anyways, I suppose it may be worth mentioning that I sort of just adapted the internet and computers into my lifestyle naturally. I always thought it would be a wise idea for anybody to start their own website in order to promote their work. It’s just the way the world does things these days. And so it just became the most logical step for me to try and promote my writing once I started taking it seriously and pursing it as a career option. If I recall correctly, I believe my father got us our first computer when we lived in Picton, when I was about five years old, so this would have actually been prior to even owning a computer:

One night while living on Octavia Street I had a dream which led me to what I can only describe as a computer screen where I had an option to select ‘yes,’ or ‘no.’ I don’t really remember, but if I had to guess, I would say that I chose the button that read ‘yes.’ I immediately noticed a colourful array of pixels in the blackness – they seemed to have a life of their own as they danced, suspended in the air. Then they appeared to form a path in front of me, almost as if they were trying to guide me. Though I recognized I was awake in a semi-conscious state immediately, I had kept my eyes closed for a few moments, just watching the hundreds of coloured moving specks of light. Even when I did eventually open my eyes, I could still see them in the dark night sky which filled the room around me. It was another very odd phenomenon that’s tricky to accurately portray, but the most bizarre thing about it was that it wasn’t a one-time occurrence. I continued to see the living beings of light, almost every night during a certain stretch of time. I had been somewhat frightened of them at first to be completely honest, but once I realized that they weren’t going to hurt me, I actually grew to like them and looked forward to seeing them at night. Name one thing more powerful than a child’s imagination, huh? Obviously they were just manifestations of my subconscious mind, but I actually continued to see them for several years. I can’t even begin to explain how many times I wondered if I would have still seen them at all if I had just selected ‘no,’ on that computer screen I saw in my dream.

Do I sound crazy yet?

I also remember a babysitter named Tabitha. That’s literally all I remember about her, but I do remember her. She must have been my first babysitter, and we must have known her while we lived on Russell Street (or possibly Octavia Street), because I can decisively say that she wasn’t our sitter in Picton, Kingston, or at any point after we had returned to Belleville.

I also remember stealing and attempting to steal candy from our local convenience store during my time on Octavia Street. My mother gave me the benefit of the doubt when she caught me, but I was fully aware of what I was doing and knew it was wrong. The temptation had just gotten the best of me, as I suppose it has my entire life.

***

I can’t help feeling as if this is what my whole life has been leading up to, and from here, the possibilities truly are endless; the sky is the limit. Writing really is the only thing that has ever given me any sense of confidence whatsoever – if I can only hang onto my health until the official release date. Come on, Nathan. This is where all the training and conditioning pays off. Patience. You don’t want to hear it from anyone else, but you still have to remind yourself of it once in a while. Travis, my partner in crime, has agreed to post the story to the website, should anything happen to me. That takes a substantial amount of pressure off my shoulders when it comes to thoughts of finally telling the world my story, so that they may judge for themselves, though I still feel the continued pressure of getting it finished, and… yeah – just finishing the story. That’s the only pressure I feel…

***

I’ve probably come close to death more times than I’ll ever even realize, but one specific occurrence I recall comes from when I was living on Pine Street, several years before moving away for university. I might have been eleven years old at the time. I was outside by myself after school one afternoon and had found a wooden stake that was sharpened into a point at one end. I had been throwing it up into the air, trying to get it to stick into the ground when it came back down. On one particular throw, I launched the lethal stake straight up above me. It turned point-down, and started falling right towards my head. I managed to dive out of the way at the last second as it sliced through the sleeve of the loose-fitting nylon jacket I was wearing. I swear to God that’s a true story. For a long time I simply dismissed it as an act of divine intervention. I figured some sort of guardian angel pulled me out of the way just in the nick of time.

Another time, Riley and I had been at his house on our lunch break when we found a supply of small firecrackers that we proceeded to light off in his backyard. I dropped one and forgot about it until I heard a fuse burning and looked down to see it right beside my foot. I leapt backwards just as it exploded. I’m sure it wouldn’t have killed me, but I might have lost a toe or two, which would have been rather unfortunate.

***

Goddamn! I completely forgot about the codeine too. A prescription bottle containing about thirty pills was left behind in the house I moved into on Niagara Drive following my freshman year in the spring of 2011. I used them frequently over the course of the next four months. I never even really realized how many drugs I had done in my life; more than I ever intended when I had tried huffing Wite-Out in the sixth grade, to be sure. And yet, it still hasn’t been enough.

***

During my second year in Oshawa, while I was living back on Dalhousie with Tyler, Nick, and Emil, Nick and I got into a fight with a group of freshmen punks. Our backyard was located right beside the Simcoe Village parking lot and my bedroom window looked out over our backyard which, according to Gino, was the largest on the block but he was so full of shit, I’m reluctant to trust anything he ever told me. Anyways the kids we had gotten into an argument with had come back to the edge of the parking lot, and launched an egg over the fence and at my window, hitting their mark perfectly. I wasn’t in the mood for a fight at the time, but a few weeks later Nick and I took a couple cartons of eggs ourselves and got our revenge on the residence hall. And if there is such a thing as karma, at least one of those eggs would’ve hit the dorm room window of whatever little shits did it to us first.

By that Christmas, that stupid little Chinese fucker of a roommate of mine had decided that he’d had enough of me and started doing whatever he could to get Gino to evict me… and he was succeeding. Nicholas Tam turned out to be just an awful friend, as they all did – Peter Chalmers; Andrew Ruda; Michael Zulian… no one in a position to help me wanted to get involved. They can all burn in Hell as far as I’m concerned. I really don’t care one way of another – fuck them – but I sort of hope Nick ended up making his girlfriend, Ashley Baker pregnant. Since fucking her was all that he ever cared about, make him prove it, Lord. Make him prove that he would stay with Ashley until death even with a child (or two). How perfect would that be for karma?

The following year – my final year at university – I woke up sober and bored one morning, and decided to cause some shit; to do something destructive with my time. I grabbed a sharp knife from the kitchen and then headed out my front door to scout out my perfect victim. I wandered through the parking lot of the residence hall I had lived in two years earlier, looking intently at the vehicles but none felt right. I felt like I was being watched. So I casually kept on my way, proceeding across campus to the southwestern-most point near the woods by South Hall when I spotted the perfect piece-of-shit car with hockey equipment loaded in the back. I quickly looked around. There was no one else in sight and when I crouched down along the passenger side, I was out of view of the security cameras, and the other cars concealed me perfectly. I crouched by the rear wheel to start, raising the knife high above my head and bringing it down on the tire with as much force as I could possibly manage. It tore into the rubber and I could hear the air racing to escape through the microscopic opening I had made. I grinned an evil grin to myself and moved to the front tire, repeating the process. Finally, I returned to the Simcoe Village parking lot and found a second car, quickly crouching once more and slashing only the back passenger-side tire. Speaking of karma, I have faith that whoever did own those vehicles got what they deserved. That’s something I’ve kept to myself though; I’ve never shared that story with anybody until now. In my mind, it only acts as further evidence that if left alone long enough, anybody’s capable of deviant acts.

***

Christ, it really does seem like the more I write, the more that I’m reminded of. Another story for you all from my sophomore year at university:

Peter, his friend from Newmarket, Sam, and myself had spent the night at the home of our friends – Zulian, Mike Kunanec, Evan Blythe, and Dwayne’s friend, Paul. I was sleeping on their couch in the living room when I was awoken by a loud crash outside that shook the whole house. We all converged on the front step with the neighbors to watch the action unfolding right across the street. An ambulance had crashed into a telephone pole and was literally sitting in flames as police worked to keep spectators at a safe distance. Sam didn’t even smoke himself, but he had wanted the neighbors off the step, and had suggested the idea at one point. I was happy to oblige, running inside and grabbing a bong with a fully-packed bowl. I held it behind my back as I returned to the porch. As soon as I moved the bong around and placed it on my lap in full view of everyone, some of the neighbors left immediately, giving us a little bit of extra space while some others just laughed.

“What?” Peter played innocently. “It’s my tobacco-smoking water pipe.” I laughed and lit the bowl, taking the hit without even thinking twice about it. There’s always power in numbers, and I felt protected in the secure presence of my friends. It wasn’t until after I exhaled the smoke that I really began to consider the large police presence surrounding us. I mentioned it to Peter at one point, but he insisted they had bigger things to worry about.

“FYI, he doesn’t live here,” Mike Kunanec told his neighbors as the rest of them retreated back inside.

Sam laughed. “I just wanted them gone so that we’d have the extra space,” he said. As the intoxicating effects of the marijuana took hold over me, the whole scene started to feel so much more intense. After Peter had taken a hit from the bong for himself, Zulian and I followed him from the steps around the house to an area where we could get a better view of the action. We were only standing about thirty feet from the burning wreckage when we were ordered to move back by one of the police officers. A few seconds later the ambulance exploded completely (most likely due to the oxygen tanks on board), and a shower of sparks and embers rained down right where we had been standing less than a minute earlier. Some people refuse to believe me when I tell them the story, but I swear it’s the truth. Peter had actually recorded the whole thing on his iPhone and I’m sure there’s still probably a copy of it floating around somewhere out there as well.

***

I had the chance to fuck Nadia Cunha too, whoever the fuck she is, and whatever the fuck she’s aspiring to be. At least, I’m quite certain it was Nadia Cunha, based off pictures from fucking Facebook and Twitter. It was rather early into my third year at university – within the first month, for sure, during September 2012. “Hey,” Nick caught my attention one Friday evening as we passed each other in the hall. “Peter’s coming over. And he said that he’s bringing a friend of his from Newmarket.” I knew exactly what that meant right away, but clearly Nick didn’t. He seemed to remain completely oblivious until about two weeks later, when I specifically explained to him what was supposed to have happened during that night in question.

After Nick had informed me that Peter was on his way over, I returned to my bedroom where I took a hit from my bong in seclusion in an unsuccessful attempt to calm my nerves. Less than five minutes later my privacy was shattered as my room was occupied by all my friends – Nick, Peter, Zulian, Andrew, and of course, the guest of fucking honor, Nadia. She and Zulian had been the first two to enter my room, while Peter and Ruda quickly said hello to Tyler and Nick. I know I say this about a lot of different girls, but in that moment, I genuinely believed Nadia was the most attractive girl I had ever seen in my life. She had introduced herself to me, but I had misheard and thought she had said that her name was Natalie. Zulian, the great friend that he was, had teased and mocked me for it, but I simply tried to block him out. I figured he was just jealous, and I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I actually kind of wanted him to feel that way. The night was supposed to be about me and Nadia, and I had certainly experienced far more than my fair share of jealousy and envy and disappointment – more than anybody would ever know. Despite all of that however, I still didn’t really feel worthy of sleeping with Nadia. She was beautiful. And I? I was a worthless fucking virgin.

My friends stood around my bedroom, passing the bong around while we spoke amongst ourselves for a few minutes. It had already been established that I would be accompanying them all back to the house on Niagara Drive, and for some reason (which I will never understand), Michael thought it would be a wise idea to bring up the topic of sleeping arrangements. Peter had started to engage in the discussion, but quickly silenced himself. “Well Nathan’s going to be sleeping with –” I quickly glanced up and across the room, making direct eye contact with him. He immediately cut himself off midsentence. “We’re not talking about this here!” he promptly declared. We all stayed in my room, talking for another minute or two as the bong finished making its rounds.

Just before we had left, I had asked my friends for their advice. “Do you think I should change before we go or anything?”

Peter shook his head. “Nah, you look fine,” he reassured me.

“Oh yeah, no, I look great,” I responded immediately, as confidently as I could. “…I don’t know though.”

Nick didn’t come with us, which was fine by me. In fact, as far as I was concerned, the less people who were there watching me and critiquing me, the better. I distinctly recall standing outside with Peter and Nadia while Andrew Ruda said his goodbyes to my other roommates. “I fuckin’ love you!” Peter yelled, unable to restrain himself and throwing his arms around me in a hug. I remained silent and pushed him away. This was about a month after the incident with Melissa, and I gave him a look to remind him we shouldn’t celebrate prematurely. Meanwhile, Nadia had started evaluating her own looks and everything she disliked about herself. I remember her saying something or other about her nose being too pointed but I, for one, would have disagreed. I thought she looked absolutely fucking perfect, and I told her so.

I stayed relatively quiet during the walk back down the street to Niagara Drive. I certainly didn’t want a repeat of what had happened with Melissa, and at least this time we made it back to the address trouble-free. When we arrived, Zulian offered me a single beer to help with the nerves and I accepted it. I decided to exercise some display of moderation though, unlike I had during the summer. I thought one brew would allow me to stay coherent while still offering some mild form of relaxation and euphoria. Then we started rolling joints and headed out to their garage – the designated smoking area.

I fucking love stoner girls. I really fucking do. I always have, and I always will. My friends knew this, and Ruda had found it worth mentioning as we lit up the first joint with Nadia. She ran off to use the washroom after a few minutes, and I’m not quite certain where Zulian had disappeared to, but it was just Andrew, Peter, and I left alone, smoking in the garage. “Man, where have you been?” Peter spoke up. “I was over at your place on your birthday. Knocked on your door and waited… there was no answer; I tried calling your cell phone… you didn’t pick up…” I explained how I didn’t have call display on my phone, and therefore I was unlikely to answer any phone calls. Ironically, that holds true even today. I’ve always been too cheap to have the feature added, and so I continue to tell people that they have a much better chance of actually getting in touch with me by just sending a text message (though now that’s not even a possibility, as my phone service has been cut off entirely). My friends seemed to understand and agree with that train of thought. ‘But still…’ I could hear them saying.

“Yeah, where have you been?” Andrew asked, to which I only responded with a frustrated shrug, suddenly realizing what they were really asking. “It’s alright, we still love you,” Ruda continued. “Even if you hate us.” I let out a sigh. No matter how much I wanted to hate my friends, I really couldn’t. They hadn’t done anything; at least nothing I wouldn’t have done.

We all headed back inside a few minutes later and sat with each other in the living room. It was the ideal opportunity and yet I still didn’t feel comfortable. I wanted to just do it; to just hurry up and get on with my life, but I felt like there were still too many people watching, waiting to unfairly judge me, and still too much unwanted pressure. Just like when I had been drinking alone with Kayla Jones, eventually the girl grew bored of me.

“Well, I’m going to bed,” she said, standing from the couch as the hour grew late. Ruda had already gone to bed – I do remember that, meaning only Peter, Zulian, and I remained in the living room once Nadia had headed into Mike’s room. There had been this decisive overall feel that I wouldn’t be able to go through with the deed, and Peter and I had already started clearing spots on the couches where we could sleep. Still, when Michael stood up and proceeded to his room, something compelled me to follow him. The girl who was ready and willing to take my virginity had already made herself comfortable in my friend’s bed. I still considered trying to perform the act with her, but as soon as I got into the room and saw her in the bed, I knew there would be no way that I’d be able to. So I slowly walked back out of the bedroom, returning to the couch I’d made up in the living room.

“Enjoy!” I said loudly to Michael as I left him in the room with the girl, closing the door behind me.

“I don’t enjoy anything anymore,” he had tried to tell me, but I wasn’t listening. I knew he would never cheat of Tina (though quite honestly, I’m not sure why not), but remember, all I had ever wanted was a girl to smoke weed and cuddle with. And yet it was Zulian – the one in a steady relationship – who got that privilege on this particular night.

We all got up at the same time at some point through the middle of the night. Mike had stepped out of his room for a drink of water from the kitchen, Peter had joined him, and I had gotten up to use the washroom. “This party’s over,” I remember Mike saying as we all returned to our sleeping quarters.

I was the first one awake the next morning, and as such I got up right away, slipped my shoes on, and let myself out of the house, slamming the door behind me. I was sort of hoping to wake up the rest of the house with my expression of displeasure.

***

Exactly one month until the official launch of this story as of midnight tonight, and I still can’t seem to shake off this whispering voice in the back of my mind, asking if I’m sure that I really want to go through with it; if it’s really worth it; if this is actually the kind of effect that I want to have on this world. And my answer? A resounding, why the fuck not?

Travis Breidenbach tells me that maybe the universe is guiding me to my true calling, and I would like to believe that – I don’t know if I’ve ever put this much effort into anything before. But if everything is finally starting to come together (with a major emphasis on the word ‘if’), I just don’t understand why it’s starting to happen so suddenly now when it took so long to get here; not that I’m complaining. Now is the time to put the pedal to the metal – no letting up; no turning back. I’ve spent the past twenty two years building up the resources I’ll need to execute this stunt to perfection, and now is time for the show. If the Universe gets angry at me for what It has turned me into, then so be it. I just hope this turns out as exciting and monumental as I think it’s going to. Sometimes I feel like I’m really reaching for story-ideas from my past, but then I remember that no matter how small or insignificant they may seem to everyone else, they’ve all played a part in shaping me into the person I am today. And that’s who I’m doing all this for in the first place – me. No one else. Still, I’m a perfectionist of sorts, and so I strive to share my tales with the world the only way I know how.

I don’t really let myself get close to very many people anymore, but to those who do know me best (mainly my family), I’m worried that maybe I really do seem like the stereotypical stoner: unemployed, in debt, a virgin living in his grandparents’ basement, just wasting away all my time in a haze, but that’s not how I feel. The way I’ve always seen it, weed’s just always been my favorite tool to help cope with the endless bullshit of life while much greater plans are in the works. I’m really not a very patient person when it comes right down to it. And part of me feels that, as I age, memories from my past may return to me with more vividness if my drug use was sparser, but who’s to say really? I guess we really are who we are. It feels like it’s engrained within me just as deeply as my virginity. But please, just give me a little more time and hopefully you’ll all finally recognize the tireless efforts that I have been putting forth all these years; hopefully you’ll all finally realize that I haven’t just been wasting my life away this whole time. I feel so close.

***

I’m still hesitant to release this piece of writing to the world right at midnight on the twentieth of April. I know I have to remain firm on this, but part of me still feels it would be more fun to just let everyone wait and wonder for a while. He seems to have the best intentions, yet part of me also can’t help feeling as if Travis wants me to keep exploiting my past for his own personal gain. After all, that’s all anybody cares about, isn’t it? Their own well-being? Not that I’m judging anyone; I’m guilty of it myself. And Travis has never given me any reason to believe that about him – so far he’s only tried his best to help me. It’s just my own twisted perception of other people, I suppose. Perhaps I just don’t understand why Travis sees helping me as worth his while in the first place, though rest assured I’ll be more than happy to share the wealth if I ever become as successful as I dream to be. And to go along with that, I don’t quite understand how, of all the people I’ve met throughout the course of my lifetime, no one else has had the decency to truly help me with what I need. And therein lies the problem – I have a hell of a time trusting anybody because nobody, not even my own mother, has given me a reason to trust them in my past. I don’t know why I insist on feeling the need to test people, instead of simply accepting the friendship that I already know we share. But to some degree I’d still like to know if Travis would stick by my side, even if I did push back the release date at the last second. Because one thing I want established is that I don’t want my work rushed. I am an artiste, and any piece of great art takes time to perfect. I suppose we shall just see as my self-appointed deadline approaches. I’ll just wait to see what happens and wait to see how I feel and, above all, how the story turns out. And if it’s still ready to go by midnight of the twentieth and I still feel like I want the world to read it, then perhaps I will go ahead and publish it on my website.

18.

Danielle Kiers! I knew if I thought about it long enough, her name would come to me eventually. The sexy little blonde cokehead who lived across the hallway from me and Evan during our freshman year. I should’ve made a point in getting to know her better, but as I recall she always had a boyfriend. Ha – of course she did. If it’s a girl I’m interested in, she has a boyfriend. It’s elementary. Still, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if I could go back, I would do a lot of things differently, especially knowing what I do now.

***

“Do you think Robyn’s hot”? I asked Riley Calwell as the thirteen year old versions of ourselves walked through the darkened nighttime streets of Belleville, enjoying the warmth of the summer night.

“Not really,” my good friend answered somewhat hesitantly.

Excellent, I thought. Less competition for myself. I can’t believe that I’ve forgotten about her for this long. Robyn may have been, hands down, the single most attractive girl that I ever knew in my life. I mean, it’s not like it ever mattered. She was so far out of my league, we weren’t even playing the same sport. I didn’t have a fucking chance with her, despite the fact that she was a bit of a slut. The obsession surrounding her by every boy at Moira seemed relatively short-lived when it was all said and done anyways. Riley told me one night a few weeks later that one of our schoolmates, Matt Dunham, had fingered her under a desk during the middle of class, and she just sort of seemed to fall off the face of the earth after that. But her long, perfect brunette hair and young, firm, flawless body will always remain embedded in my thoughts and memories.

I really can’t believe that I’m still living with this curse that is my virginity. Just take a moment to seriously consider that. No girl has ever seen me and had the thought: he looks good enough to have sex with, and then have actually gone ahead and followed through on that thought. And it makes me feel awful about myself. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want. No one I ever meet actually wants to help me break this goddamn fucking curse. I can’t even look at a girl without being reminded of what it is I’ll never have. Hypothetically, even if I were to get some chance out of the blue to have a one night stand and lose my virginity, I don’t know if I’d be able to anymore, just because of how meaningless it would be. I really don’t feel close to anybody anymore. The nights are the fucking worst.

Madison Allen was another girl that I spent a brief period of time infatuated with when I was in the tenth grade. She was fifteen at the time, a year younger than me. Just like Olivia Geen and Kayla Harper, she carried herself with such an innocent demeanor – it always made me curious what she was hiding beneath it.

God, some days it feels impossible to focus on my writing. Sometimes I can’t even see the point. Fucking depression. I was all talk in high school. I’d like to say that I’ve changed over the years. These days I don’t really say much anymore. I don’t really see a point in it. I hate people; I have no real reason to speak very often, and I prefer it that way. Writing’s the only method I’ve discovered to even partially express myself. I’ve always found it funny how fucking sophisticated we as humans think we are merely because we’ve designed these organized patterns of sounds and verbal communications we refer to as language. And sure, it has allowed us to progress leaps and bounds as a society, but we’re nowhere near as advanced as we like to think. When you actually consider that we live in a universe with no beginning and no end, it would be beyond foolish to still have the audacity to believe that we’re the only planet throughout all time with intelligent lifeforms. I have no doubt that other races have come before us, and others still will come after our own existence here on Earth is long over – some less advanced; some more, having already mastered space exploration. Of course, when considering these topics, it’s important to remember that time isn’t real. Time is a manmade notion, created to help control and schedule our lives; to offer some basic sense of structure and consistency. And we’re all simply following predestined scripts.

***

I was approached by a young man who had been standing with a girl for a rather prolonged stretch of time as well in the waiting room of the ER at the general hospital in Oshawa. “Hey,” he greeted me, clearly looking to strike up a conversation. What the hell, I thought. I figured I’d humor him and bless him by sharing a portion of my time with him. It isn’t like I had anything better to do while I waited for the doctors.

“Hey,” I responded, waiting to see what he wanted. The man introduced himself and the girl he had been standing with as his wife, and told me that they were volunteers at one of the local churches. He asked if I was alright, on account of how long I’d been waiting, and after I assured him that I was, he asked my name. I told him honestly, seeing no reason to lie.

“I know what that name means because it’s actually my middle name,” he had answered. He asked casually about my religious beliefs, to which I simply told him that I had been raised as a Christian, but the tone in my voice suggested that I had given up on that lifestyle long ago. The man then proceeded to ask me if he could place a hand on my shoulder and pray for me. It seemed like a bit of an odd request, but he hadn’t come across as threatening or intruding or anything of that nature. He hadn’t been bothering me for money to help his church, and so given the circumstances at hand, I agreed and after a quick but comforting prayer, he seemed satisfied and left me alone. Maybe he was an angel sent to console me; maybe not. But if he was indeed working to spread the word of God, he certainly had a better attitude about it than most who I’ve encountered.

***

“Do you wanna run away together? Maybe get married?” The blonde girl sitting alone at the library was clearly in shock. She couldn’t have been any older than seventeen or eighteen, though the pile of textbooks stacked around her on the table gave me reason to believe that she was preparing for college, if she wasn’t already attending. She just naturally had the look of a rich, sophisticated, smart girl, and I seriously doubted that she would take my inquiry seriously. Surely she had her own grand plans for the future. Why would she abandon them just to run off with some junkie she didn’t even know? If I had given myself a chance to think twice about asking the set of questions, I probably never would have. But they had just come to me at the time, and I wasn’t able to stop myself. I knew I’d regret it if I let the opportunity go to waste. I fully expected the girl to shoot me down though, just like every other girl I had ever met.

“Sure,” she answered, and this time it was me who was taken by surprise.

That’s just an example of the start of one of the many fantasies that I have throughout the course of any given day.

***

By the time I had reached the eleventh grade, I had started to earn a comfy little savings for myself and had achieved a greater appreciation for the value of money. In addition to investing in a couple of bonds and guaranteed investment certificates (or GICs), I also used a portion of my savings to try and better myself in two different areas of my life – in the spring of 2009, I spent about six hundred dollars of my own money on driving lessons, and about another two or three hundred on a football camp.

Ryan Hamilton had been the only other person at Moira who had signed up to attend the football camp, which was held over the course of three days at the University of Western Ontario in London. A four-hour drive one way, I was lucky that Ryan’s father was generous enough to let me ride with them both to and from the camp. There’s not really a whole lot to tell about it. It was three days of football during the day and text messaging Kayla Harper during the nights. The camp was run by several professional football coaches and players that I had watched on TV while I was growing up. That’s also where we were acquainted with Spencer Steinberg, a fellow football enthusiast who had lots of stories to tell from his time at high school. One thing Spencer, Ryan, and I collectively agreed upon was that we should have tried smuggling in booze, because security was tight and none of us were allowed to leave the residence halls which acted as our accommodations after nine o’clock at night, obviously making for somewhat boring evenings. Still, as costly as the experience was, I felt it was very beneficial for me to get the hell away from my life in Belleville for a few days while I became completely immersed in the sport. The only other thing I remember from those three days are the wind – the goddamn fucking wind. The way in which the stadium had been built caused it to act as a wind tunnel of sorts, and the frigid air currents sent constant chills down my spine as we ran through our standard drills.

The driving lessons were something else entirely, consisting of a full week of in-class theory, followed by several one-on-one sessions with an instructor in the car. The week-long in-class sessions were scheduled to take place at different times. One option offered was to attend them during the course of March break, which made the most sense to Miriam Layefsky, Riley Calwell, and myself, as well as several others. And even though it consumed our entire week off, it was an ideal opportunity for us who otherwise didn’t have the time outside of work, school, or other extracurricular activities. And the course was important, I felt. It was by no means mandatory, but by taking it, we all had the opportunity to get our full, unrestricted licences sooner, as well as save money on our insurance costs once we did. In my eyes at the time, it was a short term sacrifice for a very long term gain. Just like everything else though, in the end it wouldn’t make a single difference. No matter how hard I tried, I was never able to find myself a vehicle and nobody ever wanted to fucking help me. So eventually my license expired. I’d have to start right over from scratch if I wanted to get it again, and that’s something that I’m simply not willing to go through again. Nobody’s ever wanted to help me before – for Christ’s sake, my own fucking father would tease me with the promise of helping me get a car which he never did follow through on. I also vividly recall Chad Grixti promising me to let me practice with his car once I passed my driving test. He never followed through on that either. So now, with all due respect – you can all go fuck yourselves. Nobody’s ever wanted to actually offer me any help while I did still have some fight left in me, so now I’ve given up completely. I’ll refuse any and all help from here on in, because I can see everyone’s true intentions, and anyone who offers help only does so in order to make themselves feel less guilty. I fucking despise the human race. But I digress.

I still remember March break of my eleventh academic year perfectly. On the Friday that classes finished, I had to work right after school until midnight. I was only scheduled to work until nine o’clock, but I had gotten caught up in helping Bruce load up his truck for a show he would be attending the next day, and he was my ride home so I got stuck staying with him until he was finished with his work for the night, despite the irritating phone calls that I was receiving every five minutes from my mother, insisting that she was going to walk down and meet me if I didn’t get home right away. Just thinking back to it now, I’m sure she must have assumed I was out partying somewhere, and this memory now just acts as yet another reminder of how controlling and protective and sheltering and selfish she’s always been, constantly interrupting me in the middle of work with my boss.

And as usual, I had to be back in to first thing the next morning to help open, and again on Sunday. I was so much more responsible than most kids my age. And Christ, this nine-to-five, minimum wage way of life has truly grown exhausting over the years. I don’t understand how people can do it their whole lives. I suppose they don’t have a choice… but I’ve tried so hard at every single job I’ve ever had and it’s killing me. Back in those days though I still felt motivation and hope for the future. My point being that the two days at work passed relatively quickly and early on Monday morning I was back at Moira Secondary with Miriam and Riley along with a few other students whom I recognized, as well as some that I didn’t. There really isn’t much from that week worth telling, other than how the three of us spent quite a substantial amount of time with each other. At one point, I even distinctively recall acting on my feelings for Miriam, asking her out on a date only to be shot down yet again.

We all need something to believe in, and as a bit of an egomaniac, I believe in my own work. I’ve always done my best to make amends and right my wrongs, but if no one from my past wants to forgive me then I can’t change that. I can only keep trying my best each and every day to be the best person that I can be, as I continue to grow stronger as a writer. Still… even I occasionally need new inspiration. I crave adventure, and I crave social interaction – two things I’ve been missing out on substantially as of lately. Whenever I take a chance to take a step back from my life and look at the bigger picture, I find myself wondering if I like the direction that my life’s headed, and in most ways, I do. I like the thought of spending an entire lifetime dedicated to creating as much as I can as a writer. I like the thoughts of the wealth and fame and the overall impact that I could ultimately have on this world, but it all comes with a cost that no one else will ever understand. I’ve lost more friends than I can count. I’m lonely beyond belief and that’s part of the reason that I don’t want to force Travis Breidenbach out of my life if he’s willing to try and help me, regardless of whatever underlying trust issues I may have. I don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. I’ve always boasted that I learn from all my mistakes, and perhaps now that claim’s finally being put to the test. People think that the term ‘selling your soul’ is just a meaningless expression. Nobody could even begin to fathom how much truth that particular combination of words holds for me.

***

Time for another story about how everything is only a matter of perception. Probably when I was about eleven or twelve years old, I was outside, shovelling our front steps and driveway on Pine Street one winter night when I randomly found a garbage tag on the ground. Without thinking, I picked it up, peeled the paper off of the adhesive backing, and then wrapped it around the metal décor encircling the top step. My mother stepped outside less than half an hour later and spotted it immediately, flying into a fit of rage before I even had a chance to explain what had happened, so I never did. Obviously my mother had no way of knowing that I was responsible for it. She automatically assumed that it had been one of the neighbors, using it as a gesture to tell us that our house was essentially a piece of junk, in so many words. And once I saw how angry it had made her, I simply couldn’t work up the courage to tell her that it had been me, even though I hadn’t meant anything by it, and even though it probably would have made my mother feel better to know the truth. I can certainly understand now why it had made her so upset at the time. She was killing herself to try and keep a roof over our heads – if I had been in her position at the time, I probably would have been as equally upset.

***

I don’t really have much, but I do have shelter, an internet connection, and my website, and that’s all I really need. It seems I’m still struggling to find my place in this world, and it certainly proves to be more difficult on some days than others. I feel like I just keep getting lectured by everyone on the importance of utilizing my available resources to their maximum potential, and I think that I’ve been doing that quite well, if I do say so myself. I’m the suicidal-virgin-writer better known by the pseudonym Clyde Hightower. I’m a junkie in some minds, and a creative genius in others. Actually, with my modest supply of drugs and the support I’m receiving from Travis in helping me with this project, I would argue that I’m in a better off, more powerful position than I’ve ever been in before – all of those who told me that I have to keep working to secure my place in history had better watch out. All of those same people who never bothered offering my any help before. I’ve never been good enough for any of them up to this point, and I simply won’t be good enough for any of them once I do achieve unprecedented success as a writer.

***

As cliché as it might sound, there’s a saying around this wretched drug-infested city of lost souls: “The good get out.” I still have a document saved on my computer from six years ago during my time at Moira Secondary School entitled, Making It Out Alive: Facing Poverty and Cancer; Surviving Against All Odds – sheer evidence that this project has been in the works for much longer than anyone’s ever suspected. On page two of that story I had copied the lyrics from the Three Days Grace song, Get Out Alive. That’s always been my only goal, and to this day I have failed at my every attempt to achieve it, but that doesn’t mean I’ll quit trying.

During my time spent at Red Beard’s, we had a few regular customers who weren’t all there mentally. I’m not trying to be rude, and I really probably shouldn’t go into great detail here – just that I still see them around the city all this time later. I even learned that my mother attended high school with one of the customers who was always around the store – ‘NASCAR Dave,’ as he was known by my coworkers and I. That would’ve been BCI he attended with my mother – the Belleville Collegiate Institute and Vocational School, closed the same year I was born and demolished in 2004. Now a field sits in its place. It’s just painful for me to see people get stuck in this town like that, and the last thing I want is to become one of them. ‘Slasher Pam’ is another one like that; a woman everyone knows who sits downtown out front of the Royal Bank of Canada, panhandling for money so that she can buy her methadone pills, or whatever the fuck she’s on. Rumors insist that her parents cover the cost of an apartment for her, but apparently she never stays there. Again, this is all just speculation that comes from doing a lot of drugs and living in a small town. I simply don’t want to be the next wretched victim this town claims.

***

“Argh!” I couldn’t keep from crying out in frustration through the silence of the night as I let myself fall back into Peter’s side. He quickly shoved me away.

“Don’t worry about it,” he tried to tell me optimistically as he turned his attention back to Melissa, helping her up off of the cold, hard concrete. “We’ll smoke some more weed when we get back to the house and she’ll forget about it.” I sincerely had my doubts about that, but I didn’t really have any other option at that moment besides placing my trust in my friend. Suffice it to say, the rest of the walk was made in silence.

“That’s all the weed we have left,” Peter said, handing me a bong with a fully packed bowl once we got back to the student house on Niagara Drive.

“That’s it?” I asked. Peter nodded. I sighed. “Well… I’m fuckin’ taking it,” I selfishly declared, taking a lighter and holding the flame to the dried plant matter, igniting it completely before the others had a chance to protest. The three of us spent the next fifteen minutes or so sitting around in the basement without saying a word. I desperately wanted to tell the girl that I was sorry, but I couldn’t help feeling as if it would seem like nothing more than a charade and an act to get her to have sex with me, even though that was the absolute last thing on my mind. Peter was the first one to break the silence.

“I think we’re going to head to bed,” he said as he stood from one of the couches, holding onto Melissa, who still refused to say anything.

“Yeah?” I asked, in a tone that really seemed to ask, are you sure that’s a good idea? After being depraved of such a natural gift of beauty for so long, I concluded that I would allow every friend I met (male or female) a single chance to help me. The way I saw it, that’s all anyone deserved as I struggled to find my place in this universe. With every girl that rejected me, I was one step closer to finding the one meant to be my first. It really was like searching for a needle in a haystack. But I had liked Peter and Melissa, and it was painful for me to watch our friendship just get washed down the drain over something so stupid. It wasn’t like it was a surprise to me though. I had been able to see it coming all along, the same way that every single one of my previous friendships had disintegrated before my very eyes.

“Yeah,” Peter nodded, leading Melissa out of the room and up the flight of stairs to one of the spare bedrooms.

“Alright…” I replied, standing from a separate couch. Fuck ya, then. I adjourned to my own bedroom alone, just like I did every night, and at that point I was actually glad to be as intoxicated as I was, because I’m sure it must have helped me fall asleep. I knew I would have the rest of my life to regret my actions; there was no need to dwell on them that night.

I was the first one to wake up the next morning. The drugs were all gone and I felt completely lost. I found my pipe and tried scraping the residue from the inside of it while Eminem’s, 3 a.m. blared over a set of speakers in the background, waking up the rest of the house.

“Well done,” Peter said flatly as he let himself into my room while the song continued to play. “We’re probably going to get on our way here shortly. Come help me clean up from last night.” I should have just told him to go fuck himself, but I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. To be frank, I felt as if my life was in complete shambles. So, unsure of what else to do, I followed Peter back out of my room and down the hall to the rec room where he handed me the empty pizza box from the night before and told me to take it upstairs to the recycling. As I did so, I spotted Melissa and Andrew Ruda gossiping with each other. They both saw me as well, but none of us had anything to say to the other, so I simply turned and headed back downstairs, leaving them on their own. I was left by myself shortly thereafter. “I probably won’t see you again until September now,” Peter had mentioned to me before he had left. Fuck you then. I know you’re not in any rush to see me break this goddamn fucking curse, but you’ve had your chance; don’t be expecting another.

I don’t know how I made it through the rest of that day; I really don’t. That whole fucking week was beyond excruciatingly painful, particularly without drugs. I spent many days in Oshawa that felt endless, but I swear time’s never moved slower than it did on that first day of August 2012, when Peter and Melissa left me all on my own. They felt like my only friends at the time, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do once they were gone. But at least once Sunday night rolled around, Michael Zulian was back in town to help keep me company and cope with the sheer, unrelenting agony.

I ended up ordering half an ounce of premium quality cannabis from a medical dispensary in British Columbia. I had to mail them my payment in cash, and it took over two weeks before I finally received my order in the mail, but I finally did and it was some of the best, most potent weed I’ve ever had in my life. I was somewhat surprised to have received it at all. I had half expected to be scammed out of my money, or have federal agents show up at my front door to raid my property, and so I was pleasantly surprised by the intended outcome.

A few nights after I had received the package in the mail, I was lying on the same couch in the basement, smoking and trying to relax. I had recently quit my fast food job at the mall after nearly a year of loyal service. It was by no means the greatest job, but it helped offset some of the costs of living. Basically it provided me with money for liquor and bud, and it was something to do with my time. I often joked that I would start using it as a cover to sell drugs. But hell, I got a free dinner out of it every night that I worked, and I got a chance to write on the bus to and from work. See? I do sometimes look for the good in things.

Back to my point, I had just smoked and was trying to relax when I saw Melissa reach the bottom of the staircase. “You’re back…?” I sort of half stated and half asked.

“Yeah – I just came to get my alcohol,” she answered, turning and making her way down the hall in the opposite direction to yet another spare room where a fridge was located. “Where is it?” she asked, returning a second later with a disappointed look on her face.

“Yeah, I drank that,” I told her directly. She cursed at me and then left. A moment or two later, Mike came downstairs to check on me. “At least we drank her fucking alcohol!” I said, punching the wall after bitching about how much I hated the girl, and most likely threatening to kill her if I ever saw her again. She was fucking long gone though.

A few days later, Mike said something to me in the morning before he left for work. I forget exactly what it was that he told me now; all I remember is that it resonated inside of me. Once I was left on my own, I got high and my friend’s words held an even deeper meaning still. That’s when I rolled a joint and took a walk over to the sorority house to see Melissa again.

19.

I often feel like people are trying to discourage me when they tell me that they’re not sure how it’s possible to make a living as a creative writer, but the God’s honest truth is that neither do I. All I know is that some people do it, and so it must be possible with the right attitude and work ethic. I like to believe that the money will come if I do what I love for long enough. It’s human nature to excel and be the best in everything we do. In my case, it’s all about making a name for myself; creating a legacy through my writing to be remembered by. There’s always some ways to make money through writing – contests (though most charge some sort of entry fee), and freelance work (in regards to this, I’ve been searching for years and still haven’t found anything I’d really be suited for; freelance writing may be easier said than done these days). Whatever the case, they say everything you do comes back to you ten-fold, and I’ve been counting on that my whole life.

I heard a saying recently that went something along the lines of: ‘if you take yourself too seriously, nobody else will.’ I try to remain laidback and enjoy life, but when there’s no end in sight to the misery that I feel day after day after day – it becomes impossible to ignore and it’s really starting to wear on me as of lately. Nevertheless, my morale must remain high as I keep fighting to pursue my dreams. Maybe someday all of this hard work and suffering will finally pay off and I’ll be able to let myself laugh again. Until then, I’ll just keep writing.

I’m sure that most of you out there are starting to understand where I’m coming from, but I really want to drive the point home, just in case there’s still any doubt in anybody’s mind. I’d absolutely be lying if I said I don’t worry that I’ll never understand what it means to be a man. I should have been a lot more aggressive sexually during my adolescence, I suppose.

***

I hate this town.

***

You should just give up. If you were meant to be rich and famous, don’t you think you would be by now? You’re just a stupid little virgin and your opinion isn’t worth shit.

***

I know the world might think otherwise from some of my writing, but I still do have love for it. And even though I do worry when I think about the long term repercussions of releasing a tale such as this, I have to hold onto faith that the positive impact will outweigh the negative impact. Either way, I suppose it’s my creation and will have whatever effect I desire most. I want to be able to give back to the world; one way or another. And for the current time, my writing is the only way I know of to do that. Hopefully, in time, it proves to be an outlet and profession which allows me to gain wealth and fame so that I can give more back to the world in other forms as well. I have nothing else to fall back on – day after day, I really can’t help feeling as if this is what my whole life’s been leading up to. I knew what I was doing when I dropped out of university. This is the life I had wanted. I know who I am as a person, and I knew that this would be the only way that I’d be able to hold onto the same determination to pursue my dreams as a writer.

My first official public post to my website, The Psychedelic Vaults, came back on the first day of March 2013, before it even had its own registered URL. Actually, even though I hadn’t been publishing anything on the site, my account had been active since May of 2010, when I had first considered the idea of starting an online journal – even more proof that this is what my entire life’s been leading up to. In the wake of my first true psychedelic experience, I realized how badly I truly wanted to make a living as a writer. I had been doing it my whole life. Like my virginity and my drug use, I had come to realize that writing was just in my blood. It was simply a part of who I am, and I was simply looking for ways to expand; ways to make a name for myself, and for several months I poured my energy into writing a fantasy-based depiction of my experience on magic mushrooms, which I called The Twisted Confines of the Mind of Doctor Strangelow. In fact, the story that The Twisted Confines is based on may be better than the story itself.

It must have been the spring of 2012. I was alone in the basement of the house at Niagara Drive watching television and bored out of my mind when I decided to get high. I fetched a bong and did my thing. As the initial effects of the marijuana began to take a hold of my mind, I shut off the disturbance coming from the TV set in the background and immediately fetched a pen and some blank paper, writing out my deepest fantasy at the time, which had involved camping alone with Jade, and waking up in the clearing of a forest, overtop a peaceful meadow after a night of making love to the girl. Handwritten, the original document ran about a page and a half, and was meant to be the origin of The Twisted Confines. I had intended to write the rest of the story around that lone excerpt.

Unfortunately, after a couple weeks of dedication to the project, I found I had lost the original passage that it was all to be based around, but by that point I had already written too much to just disregard it. So I continued with it, and for a long time, it became my goal; my mission; my purpose. When I reached the part that I had already written once and lost, I tried my best to recreate it several different times, in as many different settings as I could. In the end, I was quite content with how it turned out, though I don’t think any attempts held the same vividness or passion that the original, lost draft had. I also tried using the story as a way to depict my version of Heaven – everybody together in peace and harmony, drinking and dancing to music. Mushrooms had made me realize that’s all I really wanted – everybody to be at peace, though I’ve come to terms with the fact that there will never be room for that in this reality. The Twisted Confines of the Mind of Doctor Strangelow also acted as the proverbial birthplace of my author surrogate and antihero, Clyde Hightower. The name had just sort of come to me while I was writing the story, and once it was finished, the character continued to linger in the thoughts of my subconsciousness, looking forward to future adventures.

I kept the story to myself for a long time. I considered it one of my best pieces of work, and I didn’t want to use my ace in the hole prematurely, so to speak. Eventually I began sending it out to any publishers willing to accept manuscripts from authors without agents, but unfortunately it didn’t suit any of their needs. I have since determined that, even if no one else wants to help me out, the story is a piece of artwork that deserves to be seen by the world. That’s why I wrote it; I didn’t write it to keep to myself, and I have gone ahead and released in on The Psychedelic Vaults for the world to see.

***

There are distractions everywhere I turn now, trying to thwart me from releasing this tale to the world. Above all, I must remain focused on the goals at hand. 1. Finish writing A Cat Named Felicity; 2. Have a book published and reach the number one spot on the New York Times Best Sellers list; and 3. One hundred million views on ClydeHightower.com. Of course there are some other ‘sub-goals,’ if you will, such as registering The Psychedelic Vaults as an official Canadian and U.S. publishing company with a business licence. That would really open the doors to endless possibilities.

***

“Would you go out with Thanida if Zulian broke up with her?” Nick asked me one night when we were alone in the living room at our house on Dalhousie Crescent after I had already confessed the truth about myself to the world. That was Tina’s real name – Thanida Skye.

“No,” I said decisively, laughing to myself on the inside over how stupid the very notion was. I couldn’t help thinking back to Jade, and thinking about the mess I had let my life turn into by having already gone after one of my best friend’s ex-girlfriends.

“Why not?” Nick continued to press.

“I don’t think I could do that to Mike,” I said. I really wasn’t in the mood to go into all the details about Riley and Jade, but I still wanted to be able to say that I learned from my past mistakes.

“…But if he broke up with her…” Nick seemed confused.

“Yeah… I know.”

***

In my experience, it seems that you only start to become truly successful once you stop imitating the work of others and start to appreciate the sound of your own work.

“Is this the first time you’ve been back in Belleville since Christmas?” Chad asked as we sat in the living room of his apartment in the spring of 2011, talking and passing a bong back and forth.

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“I figured,” he said, satisfied. When we were both good and high, he called another one of his friends and then all three of us made the drive to a nearby soccer field where we proceeded to spend the next hour or two throwing a football back and forth. I had started emptying my pockets into the centre console just before stepping out of Chad’s car: my keys; my phone; my wallet. “Leave it all, if you want,” Chad laughed. “I just have to make sure that I have my keys so we can get back in.” We exited the vehicle, hopped the fence to the field, and then got down to action. Every pass of mine seemed to be the perfect spiral. I astounded even myself sometimes by how easy everything was when I was in my element, free of all external distractions and without the fears and pressures of day to day life bearing down upon me. I still remember seeing a group of older gentlemen standing around near an equipment shed at one point.

“Imagine they were scouts for like… the Toronto Argos or something,” I said with a laugh. “And they just saw us over here and decided to offer us contracts to play for them.”

Chad laughed with me. “Hey, those are the kinds of thoughts I have every day.”

Upon returning to Oshawa a couple of days later, I forced myself back into a habit of working out first thing every morning, not only to look my best for Jade, but also to feel better about myself. I hadn’t felt so motivated in a long time, but something about tossing the pigskin around with Chad had jogged my memory. I remembered how much I had loved the sport, and I realized how much I missed having a specified workout routine. So for the rest of the summer I forced myself to go to the gym at the school each morning, typically starting off on the treadmill for an hour and then lifting weights for another thirty to sixty minutes. I saw noticeable results after only a couple weeks, but once school started again I completely lost interest. It felt like no one else appreciated the hard work and dedication it took to keep my body in such pristine shape, and I slowly fell back out of the routine. But if nothing else, I thought it seemed like evidence that Chad did have the potential to influence my life for the better.

***

Dan Burly, Josh Cowan, and Luke Shillington. What can I say about them? They were selfish and cancerous to our sports teams. They were phenomenal players – there was never any denying that. But they took high school athletics way too seriously, putting their own personal stats over the well-being of the team. The evidence couldn’t be clearer; as soon as they graduated, the Moira Trojans started winning championships again. At least amongst themselves, they seemed to understand the importance of friendship. But we were in two completely different cliques, and for whatever reason, in their circle of disillusioned ‘elite friendship,’ myself, and the company I kept were simply seen as losers. Perhaps it was the fact that, in most cases, they were a year older than us, but there was definitely more to it than that. Those of us who were still virgins got treated like shit, but I suppose that’s just nature, and I should’ve expected as much. In the animal kingdom, he who mates the most is the dominant alpha male, so I never really stood a hope in hell of receiving anybody’s respect anywhere. Or… perhaps it was the fact that my friends and I were the quote-unquote, smart kids at the school; the nerds. Most of my friends and I were part of the International Baccalaureate Programme – an enrichment program recognized by universities worldwide.

I’m not trying to sound like a complete asshole or anything; I’m just telling the facts the way they are – Dan, Josh, and Luke were lucky that they were so athletically gifted, because they really didn’t have much else going for them. Josh Cowan, in my opinion, showed the most class out of the three of them. He had the fastest forty yard dash time of all the students at Moira, running it in well under five seconds. But despite his talents, he still had good character and was always quick to help others on the field (or on the ice, though I never got the chance to play hockey with him) whenever he could. I didn’t really have any strong feelings towards Dan Burly one way or another. With the way that he carried himself, it was obvious that he was just as egotistical as his friends, but he seemed to be the reserved, quieter one in class and I didn’t really know him outside of that. Even during most sports, it seemed he would rather keep his mouth shut and focus his energies on the game. Luke Shillington was, by far, the worst, and I mean that in the most respectful way possible. He was poor, ugly, stupid, and lazy, aside from athletics, yet he had the most confidence of anyone I knew. I don’t want to speak too ill-mannered of him because he never directly tried to hurt me, per se. He just sometimes said hurtful things to me, but he seemed to do that to everybody and I think it was just who he was.

I wonder what ever happened to them. They had stayed behind for their fifth year at high school; their ‘victory lap,’ and so we all ended up leaving Moira at the same time. I specifically remember Luke was going on to take the policing course at Loyalist College right here in Belleville. I don’t remember what Josh’s or Dan’s plans were, but they were probably pretty similar, knowing them: no ambitions; no greater visions. I just can’t help wondering if they were able to maintain their athletic prowess, given how much they enjoyed partying and drinking.

***

When I had first arrived at school in Oshawa, I only had one single goal – to get laid. Quite honestly, I was worried about being the last one amongst my new friends to lose their virginity. I had spent my entire life watching all of my closest friends undergo the milestone and I was getting quite fucking sick and tired of watching and hearing about all of the fun everyone else was having while I was consistently left out… and left out… and left out again. No matter how hard I worked; no matter how hard I tried, it was just never enough. At university, I was left standing on the sidelines as Nick Tam lost his virginity first, and then again when it came time for Evan Blythe to lose his. No one could be bothered with me. It was high school all over again. I was the outcast; the reject. And as such, it was my responsibility to be rejected and deprived of all the most basic human desires.

The worries and anxieties that I felt during the first several weeks in Oshawa never actually disappeared. Why should they? To this day, the root cause of it all still remains. Nobody wants to see what I would be capable of if I was only free of this fucking curse, and because of that, I have my sincerest doubts of ever reaching my fullest potential – all of my work will always be overshadowed by the fact that I’m still living with such a curse. However, my focus and energy gradually got diverted, to making sure that I kept all of my lies straight, which certainly attested to be quite the fucking challenge in and of itself. That’s all I could think about before I had confessed the truth to everyone. I was consumed by the lies. When I did finally tell the truth about myself, it felt as if this great weight had been lifted off my shoulders, yet another remained, as my virginity still continues to bear down on me, killing me on the inside a little more with each passing day.

***

I’ve been designing an escape plan for nearly two years now, ever since I was forced back to my hometown of Belleville. I have the step by step directions printed with accompanying road maps somewhere. The plan involves taking a train to Abbotsford, B.C., jumping the border, and then continuing south on foot until I reach California. I don’t know if I’d ever actually be able to go through with such a plan, but I’ve been considering it for a long time – I just need an excuse. That would certainly make for an exciting story, I’m sure and perhaps someday it will actually get written. Of course, then again, perhaps not. It’s certainly a final resort. Such a trip could kill me, but I can’t say that I would necessarily mind that. I’d be much happier knowing that I at least escaped this cesspool before my life was over. If I did make it across the border and got caught in the States though, that would completely ruin any future opportunities to legally move to the U.S. I merely find it somewhat humorous how close I’ve been to just fleeing so many countless times already, and nobody even realizes it, though I suppose that I could always say the same thing regarding suicide as well.

20.

It seems that my vision of a perfect world will never come to fruition. That’s not to say that I’ve forgotten about it or given up, but it’s slowly changing as I continue to age. I just wanted everybody to love one another, but I don’t feel that will ever be achieved on a universal scale. I keep trying to make a difference in my own world though, and I keep trying to influence those around me in a positive manner. It’s frustrating though. It’s fucking frustrating – no one will ever understand how much so. I feel like I just keep beating my head against a fucking stone wall. I hate the loud, noisy confusion of life. Any time I try to tell or show my love to anybody, it goes unreturned. Something within me still just refuses to give up trying though. I’ve always sincerely believed that if you can even influence just one person, then your life will have been worth something. And I know I sound like I’m really opposed to religion, but I’ve always held the notion that anything can be beneficial if it helps bring people together: religion, music, art, drugs, whatever. No drug is inherently evil – it’s the people who use them that are.

Tick tock, motherfucker. Nineteen days now until the publication deadline, and I really couldn’t be happier with how this tale’s turning out. I’ve already read over and edited the first eighteen chapters twice, and I hope the story looks as professional as I think it does – they say writers have a tendency to miss their own spelling mistakes. Fucking time. Part of me can’t help feeling like the story’s still a little rushed, but really… I’m just writing this to prove that I could write about anything and turn it into gold. I swear, for my next memoir, I’ll actually take my time on it and perfect it into a masterpiece. I’ll make a dedicated point of only using drugs a couple of times a year at the most, simply to help compliment it. If this is the literary equivalent of Eminem’s, Slim Shady LP, then my next tale will be the literary version of Doctor Dre’s, Detox.

God this town’s really starting to get to me. I understand why most people don’t go out unless they absolutely have to. Or maybe I’m just a hardcore introvert. I know that no one would be able to tell from the way I act, but I really don’t like being left alone. And I don’t intentionally try to force all of my friends out of my life. I’m just so afraid of rejection, and of unfair judgement. And I find it impossible to trust anybody. I’ve wasted so much of my life going after girls who want nothing to do with me, that I just can’t see a point in trying anymore.

***

The first time I asked my mother what sex was, I already would’ve been probably nine years old. We had moved back to Belleville from Kingston and were living on First Street. As I recall from my childhood, long before I ever knew what sexual intercourse was, I knew there were obvious differences between men and women; boys and girls, which played a part in drawing them towards each other. And, like most kids, I was curious. Reflecting back on it now, I’m not really sure that’s a discussion I would’ve wanted to have with my mother anyways, so I don’t really blame her for responding the way she did – by telling me that it was when two people lived together without being married. But I’m sure it probably set me back a step or two.

And now people feel the need to comment on how hard it must be on me to keep waiting and putting in time. Fucking that, bitches. Nothing’s going to be accomplished by sitting around, waiting. I’m going to just keep working and writing until I break this goddamn fucking curse once and for all. I know women don’t understand. They’re able to just sit back and wait with their legs spread until all the boys come crawling after them, begging to eat out their cunts.

Pussy, money, and the opium pipe – those are the things that rule this world.

***

Many people seem to feel the need to remind me that no one owes me anything. I wholeheartedly agree with that, but then how come I’m always the one left out? If we’re all equal, and no one else is owed anything either, how come they get all the sex; all the fun? I don’t owe anybody anything either, and so that’s exactly what they’re going to get. I’ll still share and give back to those who have shared with me if I ever do become a rich and famous writer. I’ll make sure that my business partner, Travis Breidenbach is heavily reimbursed for his time and efforts with interest, even though he’s never asked for anything and insists that he just likes to help people. I’ve always liked to share what I have, but these days I’m becoming more and more careful with who I share with. I let someone borrow my cell phone during my last day in Oshawa, and they stole it on me. I managed to recover it, but that’s just one small example – some (a lot (okay, most)) people don’t deserve my generosity.

***

Back when I was still in the eleventh grade, I had a dream one night that I fucked Rebecca Watson in a hot tub at some enormous party. I suppose it would be fair to say that I was besotted. I had attended school with the girl since the age of twelve. She was always one of the most attractive girls and one of the most popular girls, and I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned her up until now. When I was fourteen, I was with Riley one night when he told me that our mutual friend, Robby O’Brien (who was also very popular around Moira, and got along with almost everyone), had almost slept with the girl. Apparently they had been naked in bed with each other, but Robby had told Rebecca that he just couldn’t go through with it. Of course Rebecca knew that she had the body of a supermodel in high school, and she fully used it to her advantage whenever she could. Like most of the girls I attended the school with, she was a fucking slut and her body was practically all used up by the time she was nineteen.

Now I’m on a bit of a role and I’ve got this brainstorm of other girls I went to high school with – mainly Alexis Lightfoot and Alysha Barry. I met Alexis at the start of grade seven; the same time I met Rebecca and Miriam Helstern-Layefsky. I wouldn’t meet Alysha until two years later, when I entered high school.

“Have you ever gotten a BJ?” Peter had asked me as the two of us drove from Niagara Drive to pick up Melissa.

“No,” I shook my head. “… did get a handjob in grade seven though.” And there was a partial truth behind that. I had pushed her hand away immediately, but Alexis had started feeling me up under the desk right in the middle of class one day. In retrospect, I’m not too sure why I did stop her. God only knows how far she would’ve actually gone. She was always pushing the boundaries anyways, wearing low-cut tops that left her breasts exposed, dress code be damned.

Actually, I still remember with striking clarity playing the board game Monopoly in class one day with Alexis, Riley, Luke Tinknell, and a few other classmates. Alexis had purchased the ‘Virginia Avenue’ property, and as mature as we were with our whole twelve years of life experience, we had begun joking about how it sounded like Vagina Avenue. I stole the card away at one point, only to have Alexis yell at me at the top of her lungs. “Hey! Give me back my vagina!”

“Keep it pg-rated,” our teacher, Tamara Sayers-Pringle called to us from her desk across the room. There’s really no point to this story either – it was just something Riley and I laughed about for some time afterwards.

He and I kind of acted like idiots sometimes when we were with each other. Add our other mutual friend, Chris Bauer to the equation, and it quickly formed a recipe for disaster. One time we had decided to convince Chris to spend about thirty dollars (as Riley and I were both flat broke at the time) on the supplies needed to construct a makeshift beer bong, only instead of beer we used it with soda because we were just that rebellious. Or there was the time Chris and I closed Riley in a locker and then went for a walk around the school before returning to free him, only to face our teacher who was quite appalled by the fact that we would pull such an inconsiderate, not to mention dangerous prank.

On a separate occasion, still in grade seven, on the last day before Christmas holidays or March break or some extended stretch of time off, Riley and I had stayed behind at the school to use the gym once classes were done for the day. Lorne, Riley, and I had come up with the idea of forming a ‘basketball crew’ called The Flaming Demons, and we would practice whenever we had the chance. Once Riley and I were finished with our practice on this day, we got changed back into our street clothes and then returned to our lockers before leaving the building, which had become quite vacant quite quickly. However, as we were collecting the rest of our supplies and homework from our lockers, Alexis Lightfoot and her preppy, equally as attractive friend, Ashley McIntee appeared out of nowhere, passing us in the otherwise deserted hallway. As of lately, I had been calling them my sisters – as weird as that sounds now, it had just been my way of teasing them back then. Riley and I said goodbye and wished them a good week (or possibly two) off. They were already past us, down the hall and descending a staircase when Ashley called back at us. “Aw… don’t your sisters get a goodbye kiss?”

“Get back here!” I called after them without thinking, but I guess they figured they had already gone too far.

“Ugh, you were so close!” Riley would tell me so many times over the course of the next week or so, but I didn’t really feel quite as certain about that. I teased the girls, so they teased me back and it was all in good fun.

Alysha Barry was another of Moira’s whores, but I was crazy about her nonetheless. She had gone out with my good friend, Lorne during our final year of high school, but she had grown bored and broke up with him when he failed to make a move on her within the first two weeks. Much like Rebecca, she was well aware of her flawless looks and used them to get whatever she desired.

***

If you want to do something badly enough, you’ll find a way to do it, under any circumstances, by any necessary means. And it’s with a lingering doubt that I say this, but I think my family’s slowly starting to realize that they aren’t able to stop me from pursuing my dreams as a world-renowned writer.

***

I received a text message from Jade one night within the first couple of months of being at university. She wanted to know if she could ask me an awkward question and I agreed, curious as to what it might be. She didn’t ask it right away, and I didn’t do anything to rush her. She then forgot about it for several days, and it was nearly a week later before she remembered. Even when she was ready to ask me her question, it still took me an entire evening to coax it out of her. “Why are men so obsessed with oral sex?”

“… Giving it or getting it?” I replied, confused.

“Well… both. But I meant giving it. Every guy that I’ve ever been with – that’s like, the first thing they all wanna do.”

Because they’re hoping you’ll give them head in return, is what I thought but I think I just responded with some generic answer about how any thoughtful, caring gentleman wants to please his woman in the best ways possible.

“I’ve never done it,” she suddenly confessed to me.

Holy fucking shit! Really?! As difficult as I found that to believe, I trusted the girl when she told me something. She had once promised that she had never lied to me, and she never would, and something inside of me just knew that she was telling the truth. Considering that was about four or five years ago now though, I’m sure she’s gone ahead and gone down on just about every guy in whatever the fuck town she resides in now. Of course, she had also once told me while I was still in high school that she had a boyfriend and a fuck buddy at the same time. I didn’t judge her for it. Hell, I was still keeping the truth about myself concealed from her. But we accepted each other for who we were, with all our faults and mistakes.

***

As you may have gathered, I’m really not a very materialistic person. I remember reading online somewhere that the only ways money can enrich one’s life is through drugs and travel. For the most part, I would agree with that, though I would also add that it can almost elevate one’s self to a higher standard of living as well. I obviously can’t yet speak from firsthand experience, but I even feel more freedom when I only have a couple hundred dollars, compared to when I’m flat broke. I’m quite confident in saying that I can budget my money well. Just imagine what I could do with a couple hundred million dollars – choose any charity; give to the poor. Now that I’ve brought it up anyways, one thing I sincerely have always wanted to do is travel the world. I’ve been stuck in fucking southern Ontario for far too long.

***

In November of 2009, the owner of Red Beard’s hired a one Ryan Maguire, unannounced to the rest of us, causing us to walk out about two and a half months later. I found work again almost immediately at a hardware store across the street. One of my new part time coworkers was a cute little blonde girl that I had attended Sunday school with briefly about eight years earlier, and she had actually formed a friendship with my sister for a short period of time. Her name was Emily Wiles, and her father, Ken Wiles, had been the reverend at the local church. I could tell you some horror stories about him if I felt so inclined, but I don’t. Just take my word for it when I say that he was a bit of a hypocrite.

But his daughter… His daughter had always had an entrancing effect on me, and there was a certain energy in the room when the two of us got together. I still remember grabbing her and dancing in between the pews to a hymn with her in front of everybody on one particular Sunday, like one of those rambunctious church choirs where everybody sings along, clapping, dancing, and shouting “Hallelujah!” However, I hadn’t seen her at all in those eight years since we had stopped attending their church, and by the time I started working with her at the hardware store, my self-confidence was completely shot, and no matter how badly I would’ve liked to ask her out, I just simply couldn’t work up the courage. Nor did I feel like my mother would approve, and that seemed to mean something to me back then. So I kept my feelings to myself, just like I always did, and occupied my mind with work instead.

21.

My life is just a series of highs followed by congruent, proportional lows. They come on in waves – every hour, every day, every week, every month, and every year. Some days just seem so long and dull and meaningless, but somehow I’ve always managed to survive. Still, I have a bad tendency of worrying about the future.

And hell. This project has virtually taken on a life of its own. It’s keeping me awake at night and it’s all my whole life’s revolving around. I’m going to post it at midnight on the twentieth, regardless of what stage I’m at with it, then I’m going to crawl into bed and sleep for about a week.

Will anybody remember any of this a hundred years from now? Or will computers have just taken over by then? What about if we jump ahead five hundred years into the future? We can’t possibly imagine we’re going to make a difference on the overall grand scheme of things.

It may not be the wisest decision I’ve ever made to acknowledge all of these people from my past again. I may just be young and stupid. I might be opening some doors that I don’t necessarily want to open in pursuit of these ridiculous dreams. But fuck it. I’m twenty two years old – I feel like I could take on the world with all the time I have left in front of me. But nothing’s ever going to get better if I don’t let people into my life. I don’t know… I’ve always just felt like it’s me against the world.

I don’t know where to go or what to do. I feel like I’ve tried everything. I wish I could just go nowhere. I wonder how far I could get with six hundred dollars. The weather’s getting better now. I wouldn’t be so worried about freezing to death. And it would only improve still, the further west and then the further south I travelled.

***

My mother used to have a saying. “It’s not what you know; it’s who you know.” That would certainly hold true for her in life, and while I still somewhat agree with it, I also firmly believe that we shape our own destinies.

***

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

“On top of the world, are ya?” a stranger quipped as he walked past the stone I was standing atop of.

“Yeah,” I said automatically in response.

“Right on.” He seemed to approve as he continued on his way and soon disappeared out of sight. I stared out across Lake Ontario. I still had a long evening ahead of me, but I had arrived at least an hour early for a job interview and had plenty of time to kill. It was the last day of August 2011. It had been hell, but I had managed to survive the summer alone in Oshawa, broke and unemployed. Yet I had still refused to give up trying. I would be moving into my new house on Dalhousie Crescent with Tyler, Nick, and Emil the following day. I thought if I got back home early enough and still felt ambitious enough, then I might take a walk to the address and check it out, and maybe even start moving some of my belongings, since I would be moving them all by hand once again, by myself, and without the use of a vehicle.

The job interview wasn’t much of an interview at all. I only spoke to the boss for about two minutes. He needed a computer programmer or something, and had an application page of sorts that he had handed out to anyone interested in the job. He said to take it home, work through it, and basically the first person to return it with all of the instructions completed successfully would get the job. I took a copy of the sheet, thanked the man for his time, and left. Back outside, I took one look at the page before crumpling it up and throwing it to the ground. It all just looked like gibberish to me.

I stood at the bus stop for about another thirty minutes after that. I was so exhausted and just wanted to get back to my house. I didn’t even have any change to pay for the bus – that’s how down on my luck I was. All I had was a transfer pass, and as I waited, I started to worry that it might not be honored unless I was boarding at a terminal. When the bus finally arrived, I got on and handed the pass to the driver. “Can I use this?” I asked him, stumbling past him before he even answered.

“No,” he said, but I ignored him completely and took a seat at the very back. I was at the southernmost point of Oshawa, and there was no way in hell I was about to make the three hour walk all the way across town to my house. Back home, I showered, got something to eat, and relaxed for an hour before I convinced myself to head back out and take a walk down the street to see the new house I would be moving into the next day. It was a pleasant summer evening as the final few rays of sun still shone over the campus. I found myself in a very introspective state, thinking about what changes the summer had brought. I couldn’t be happier to see it go. All of my friends would be returning to town in the upcoming days, and the grounds would be flooded with drugs once again for another year.

When I arrived at the address on Dalhousie I decided to take my chances and knock on the front door. A student maybe a couple years older than myself answered. I explained the situation to him briefly and asked if he would mind if I started bringing a few things over. He said that he didn’t, and assured me that he would be waking up and leaving the address first thing the next morning, and that was good enough for me. I spent the ensuing hour or two carrying my possessions to my new dwelling. The only thing I kept with me for the night was my laptop.

I want to say it was Tyler’s parents, but I really don’t recall – I suppose it could have possibly been Emil’s parents who helped them move into the house the next day. Either way, I had woken up at the house on Niagara Drive and had headed straight over. And so as the first person at our new Dalhousie address, I had gladly offered assistance to my other friends when they were ready to move in.

Tyler and Emil were both moved in by suppertime, and whoever’s parents were helping us, took us all out and treated us to dinner afterwards – that much I do remember. Then they took us back to our new house and dropped us off. Nick showed up in a moving van about an hour later and spent the better part of the night moving all of his things in. I hadn’t expected everyone to be there right on the first of the month, but I was glad they were. I had missed them, and had been excited to see them again all summer. I mean, I had seen Nick once during the summer, and had visited with Tyler several times, but I think we all had high expectations for that year. On top of everything else, Nick had lost his virginity to Ashley earlier that summer, so that was something I had to put up with.

The school year had started off okay, and I still have a few cherished memories (like the mushrooms). But it seemed like for the most part I was just isolating myself in my room, doing drugs and drinking while I openly embraced the seclusion of my life, while always listening to Ashley and Nick fuck in the bedroom across the hall, trying to drown them out with Eminem.

***

“Tie [your genitals] up tightly,” ordered Sidonia von Bork as she watched me on webcam. I complied with her request. “…Good.” She seemed pleased. “Now… light the twine on fire.” I hesitated, but took a hold of my lighter. “Go on,” she coaxed me and I moved the flame to the dry rope which ignited immediately. The mistress told me to leave it until it burned off completely and I obeyed, forcing myself to keep my hands on top of my head. I was harder than I had been in a long time as the flamed burned along the twine, but the aftermath certainly wasn’t worth it. My skin blistered, making it incredibly painful to so much as walk for the next two weeks. Trust me when I say, that’s just one small example amongst many.

***

It’s tiring being this hate-filled. I wish I could just relax, but I can’t.

***

There was a loud, demonic-sounding laugh that came suddenly from the other side of the auditorium where a performance was being rehearsed. Justin Mariset jumped and screamed before breaking into a laugh. “You would’ve been fucking scared of that if you were high,” Tim Wright told me and I just nodded. “Justin’s probably high; he went pretty nuts.”

“Yeah…” Of course I had never smoked weed in my life, but Tim had believed me when I told him I did. He also believed me when I told him that I got a blowjob while working out, and I felt like the persona that my lies evolved into were much more impressive than the real me. It was my twelfth grade phys ed class, which I had first thing in the morning during the first half of the year. Trevor Dunham and Jordan Haggerty were also in that class.

“Do you have any idea where I could get any weed?” I had asked Trevor one morning in the change room, trying my best to make it sound like something I did all the time.

“Like… for recreational purposes?” Trevor asked.

“Just for recreational use, yeah.”

“Just for shits and giggles, huh? I could probably find you some,” Trevor answered. “But I would ask Jordan when he gets here too. You might have better luck.”

I nodded. Thankfully I only had to wait a couple of minutes until Jordan showed up. I took Trevor’s advice and asked Jordan the same question once he had arrived. He didn’t let me down and provided me with the phone number of someone he said could help me out. I thanked him and saved the number in my phone.

Weirdly enough, after school I walked downtown and caught a bus to the mall at the north end of the city. I hardly ever rode the bus, and at the back I saw Jordan sitting by himself. I took a seat next to him and we spoke a little more about his friend who was going to help me out, but I never would end up contacting the number I was given.

***

Fuck. Happy Easter I guess. Two weeks until the intended release of A Cat Named Felicity. Surely I can hold on that long. That’s my only goal at the moment. Here I sit, drunk and alone again. With almost no weed left. That will not do. I’ll have to find more somewhere… somehow. Drug addictions really aren’t fun. It seems I just can’t stop with the drugs or alcohol wherever I go. It disgusts me just to look in the mirror anymore. I can’t fucking stand the sight of myself. And still no one tries to offer me any real help. I hate people. I try my best not to, but everyone’s just so fucking stupid.

I can’t help feeling like I’ve been here before. Why is it so impossible to escape? I miss my sister. I miss Jade. I miss Peter, and Zulian, and Andrew. I miss Tyler. I miss Travis, and Chad, and Ryan. But it doesn’t matter. Won’t somebody get me out of here? Fucking anybody? I’m rotting away on my own and no one even cares. I’m so fucking bored, and so fucking depressed, and so fucking lonely.

Do I honestly expect my life to change drastically once I publish this story on my website? I should know by now that I can’t expect any real change to happen in this life if I don’t actually go out into the world and make it, but that’s exactly what I’m trying to do with this story. I’ve had enough of the dead end, minimum wage-paying jobs. I’m sick of being mocked and ridiculed everywhere I go. I think there should be at least some joy in life. What’s the point if it’s all just misery? Surely I can hold on thirteen more days. Surely I can! Embrace the anger. Accept it and pour it back into your writing. Call it the evil that men do.

More drugs or not, it feels liberating just being outside in the fresh air and sunshine after being trapped in a dark, cold basement for God only knows how long. I feel like a fucking prisoner in my own skin most days. Now I just need someone to share my time with. Because I am going absolutely insane on my fucking own day after day.

Everything I do feels like a mistake.

***

Ever since I started smoking weed during my freshman year of university, I’ve seemed to always find myself drawn to it whenever I’m in any social situation – parties, at school, at work, at clubs – really, everywhere. It’s just so universal. I have found drugs (well… weed) randomly on three different occasions so far during the course of my life. The first two times were at the college in Oshawa, when I found single joints on the ground near the pub twice. I would often get up early and go for walks, finding items that other students had dropped the night before. I’ve always enjoyed feeling like one of the first people out in the world when the sun rises. The third time I found weed was within a few weeks of dropping out of school and returning to my hometown of Belleville in May of 2013. It just happened to catch my eye one spring day once all of the snow had melted – about two grams wrapped up in paper just on the edge of a schoolyard. I immediately scooped it up and secured it in my backpack. I was tempted to go and buy myself a new pipe that same day, but somehow I managed to display some self-control and refrained from using the drug right away, keeping it safely tucked away for a future date and time. Then, a couple of weeks later, I was walking along Belleville’s waterfront trail when I passed two young men. “Hey,” one of them caught my attention. “Did you want a couple grams of green?”

“I… think I’m alright,” I sort of said hesitantly. The two didn’t push it and continued on their ways but returned a moment or two later.

“We’ll give ya two grams for fifteen, if you want,” one of them who was riding a bicycle offered. “My girlfriend just had a kid and we’re starving – just looking for enough cash to get a meal. And you seemed to answer a little slowly…” He trailed off, leaving the offer up in the air for me to consider.

“Yeah,” I nodded.” Okay. I can always use more anyways.” I had no problem with helping out others, even if I didn’t necessarily have any immediate need for the substance. I knew it would come in handy sooner or later. We collectively made our way to an automated banking machine at the city’s bus terminal, yet it wouldn’t let me withdraw the twenty dollars I needed. I assumed I just didn’t have enough money in my account, even though I had been sure I did. I apologized to the young men and they continued on their way, looking for someone else to sell the drugs to. When I checked my account balance a couple days later, it showed that I did have more than enough money, so obviously the bank machine had been broken. I took it as a sign that I wasn’t meant to buy the drugs. I also once found a dime bag with a small amount of white powder leftover in it once on the ground along Belleville’s waterfront trail. I had picked it up, examined it, and had briefly considered snorting whatever the powder was – most likely coke, or crystal meth, or possibly even MDMA. But I also realized how incredibly stupid that would be without a test kit. I didn’t feel like dying, so I quickly forgot about it, tossing the bag back to the ground and leaving it behind me.

I started smoking again about six months later, in November of that year. I was still staying in my grandparents’ basement, and I had respected them enough to give up the habit that they viewed as sinful while I was living under their roof. But I also missed the freedom that smoking weed provided me with, and eventually accepted that I couldn’t live without it permanently. When I did start smoking again, I had a steady income from my full time job at Sears and began to accept that I needed a place of my own, where I wouldn’t have to abide by anyone else’s rules. So I started looking and moved into my own apartment on Benjamin Street in January of 2014.

For a while I had to resort to ordering my drugs off the internet again, which I really wasn’t a big fan of. It was a very expensive, very slow way to get my hands on marijuana. I also wished to avoid raising the suspicions of the postal service, so I typically only ordered a half ounce at a time, which normally ran somewhere around a hundred and eighty dollars, and took upwards of three weeks to arrive. At least it was some of the best weed I had ever smoked in my life. Still, no matter how carefully I rationed my supply, I always seemed to run out before my next shipment arrived, meaning I would have to take breaks frequently. Quitting smoking’s easy – I’ve done it countless times. And no matter how much I like to portray myself as a junkie and a drug addict, I really don’t feel much sympathy for anyone who claims to be hooked on cannabis. As far as I’m concerned, they simply have no willpower of their own. It really isn’t that difficult to stop smoking weed. All you need is a distraction. To those who claim they have trouble quitting, my advice is to grow up and get a hobby. I know what it’s like to feel a constant desire for the substance; to hear the Devil whispering constant temptations into my ears. But it’s not impossible to rise above all that. As I enter adulthood, I’ve learned to accept that it’s not always possible to be high twenty-four seven. Sometimes other priorities just get in the way. Of course there’s not a great deal that I can bring myself to care much about anymore, and I still prefer to have access to weed whenever I want it.

When we were notified in January of 2014 that all of us at Sears would be losing our jobs, I held a record for perfect attendance and even though there was no hope for future opportunities, I still held onto that relentless work ethic for as long as I could. I believe our last scheduled day was the ninth of April, and I had secured an interview at Rogers for the very next day. The jobs were very similar, working in customer service, and so I felt quite confident in myself and wasn’t overly worried about acquiring a new job. As our last day at Sears approached though, I found that my motivation seemed to be lacking, even though I knew I could use the money. I stressed to my coworkers how I was trying to maintain my perfect attendance, because I felt if I took a single day off, I just wouldn’t be able to find the strength to make myself go back.

And as it would turn out, I was right. One morning near the end of March I woke up and decided, fuck it – I couldn’t bring myself to return to the job. No amount of money was worth my health, and part of me felt lazy, but no one would ever understand how miserable working at that place made me, and I figured I had earned a week or two off before I got started on the next chapter of my life.

22.

I still have a short story saved on my computer which was originally drafted exactly one year ago today – the seventh day of April 2014; a twelve page, seven thousand word journal entry of sorts that I originally wrote so that I would never forget about the young couple I had met three days earlier. It had already been about a week since I had last been to work at Sears. I was spending my time alone at home instead, doing drugs and writing as much as I could, trying my best to maintain some degree of respectable productivity. Running out of drugs was always the worst though – especially at night when the sun had set and I only had the impenetrable darkness to remind me how utterly alone I was in the universe. The nights have always been the hardest on me.

I had gone out for a walk on the Friday night – April the fourth. I was sober and bored and was simply looking for a way to kill some time and distract myself from all the torturous thoughts. As usual I began by walking down Sinclair Street, hoping to encounter Jade and when that proved to be futile I continued on my way to a convenience store where I bought a pack of cigarettes. I tore into the cardboard and lit one immediately as I continued to wander aimlessly. I always tend to smoke cigarettes far more frequently when I don’t have access to marijuana. I fetched my phone from my pocket as I walked and noted my thoughts:

“April 4th/2014

9:23 p.m.

Location: out walking the rainy streets

I thought Jade liked to take some of these long, reflective walks at night too. Well where is she now? Where are any of those fuckers who promised me they would care for me? God, I must really like being alone.”

Depressed and feeling certain that I was in for a long, boring weekend, I was just about to head back to my apartment when a young black man crossed the street and asked me for a cigarette. I gladly gave him one. He thanked me and I spoke up again just as he was about to walk away. “Say – you wouldn’t happen to know where I could find some chronic by chance, would ya?” The boy looked skeptical and asked if I was a cop, even going as far as making me unzip my coat to make sure I didn’t have a concealed badge or anything.

“I’m the biggest pusher in town!” he claimed enthusiastically once he was satisfied I wasn’t out to bust him and I felt a sense of relief come over me instantly. “How much were you looking for?”

I shrugged. “Maybe like, a half ounce, if that’s cool?” My new friend nodded. “I just have to stop at a bank machine first,” I told him. There was one in another convenience store less than half a block away, and within two minutes I had gotten the cash and we were walking back to his house together. We chatted back and forth between ourselves as we made the walk, and I learned his name was Brannon, and that he was seventeen years old. He also seemed a little narcissistic, but in a generous, friendly sort of way. He told me about how he kept his house rigged with surveillance cameras, and for a moment or two I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

But once we got to his house most of my anxieties were put to rest. As it would turn out, his claims had been true. Not only were there cameras set up all around the house, but there were also multiple different hidden passageways and escape routes. From the outside the house didn’t look like much. In fact it appeared to be pretty rundown and dilapidated but Brannon and his girlfriend lived upstairs and shared the house with a downstairs neighbor who they weren’t exactly fond of. And although the first floor of the house was a complete pigsty, the second story where Brannon and Kassidy lived was actually very clean.

They were honestly one of the most bizarre couples I’ve ever met in my life, but not in a negative way. They seemed happy with one another, and that was the main thing. Actually, at the age of seventeen, Kassidy was an absolute knockout. I mean, I can’t even begin to describe how stunning and beautiful she looked. She was a loaded gun, a loose cannon, and a fiery demon all rolled into one. And she was handy too – apparently she had lied down all new hardwood flooring on the second floor since she and Brannon had moved into the house a month earlier. Brannon offered me a hit from his bong and then asked if he could have the money so that he could run and pick up more product from his own guy. I was still a little nervous and a little hesitant, but agreed, handing over the cash. “Don’t worry,” Kassidy had told me as we all made our way outside for a cigarette. “It’s not like we’re going to rob you. You know where we live.” I nodded in agreement.

Back outside Kassidy and I stood on our own as Brannon left us to make the walk to his own supplier alone. They certainly seemed inviting and trusting (maybe a little too much), not like I was going to try anything. Still, I definitely didn’t mind spending some one on one time with the sexy young girl. “It totally looks like a drug house, doesn’t it?” Kassidy asked once we had finished our cigarettes and returned inside. Significantly buzzed, we wandered through all the clutter and garbage that littered the ground floor.

“Totally,” I agreed with a nod. We headed back upstairs where we played video games while we waited for Brannon to return. He had even left me a laptop as collateral until he got back. Kassidy began to cut up more weed while we waited.

“You can’t say ‘no,’ to another session, can you?” she asked me, to which I replied to with a shake of my head and a smile.

“Nice nails,” I complimented her dark red fingernails as she finished cutting up the bud. She looked confused for a second and I quickly elaborated. “Your nail polish.”

“Oh,” she smiled. “It’s made with blood.”

“Human blood?” I joked.

“Yep!” she replied with a completely straight face.

Brannon returned about half an hour later with the drugs and another friend. He dropped off the weed and we smoked, then he and his friend headed back out, apparently to pick up a motorcycle and I was left alone with Kassidy again for about two more hours. The longer the girl and I were left on our own, and the more we smoked, the more my mind started to wander to strange places. “Your boyfriend’s probably run off with your money,” I remember joking with her at one point but she immediately shook her head, no.

“No. He’s my boyfriend and he loves me,” she had responded confidently.

“I know, I know,” I said, making it clear that I wasn’t trying to take advantage of her in her intoxicated state of mind or anything like that. Brannon finally made it back home around one the next morning. We smoked and I left shortly thereafter. They had insisted that I didn’t have to leave if I didn’t want to, telling me how they usually stayed up all night anyways and how much they loved having people around. I didn’t necessarily want to leave, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome either.

“I can get you anything,” Brannon had boasted before I had left. “Drugs, guns, cars, bikes, dirt bikes, phones, computers – anything you need, for really cheap too, and not hot either.” Kassidy had also made sure to mention that she was training to become a tattoo artist on the side, and I assured them that I would be seeing them again soon. I had asked Brannon if I could get his phone number, but he told me that he didn’t have a cell phone, and that if I ever needed anything I should just come by the house. “We’re almost always here,” he had explained. “Except Thursday Kassidy works and I have class.” So when I did leave I took careful note of the address.

“Take her easy,” Kassidy had said, giving me a fist bump as I turned to leave. “And if she’s easy, you gotta take her twice.” She then recited a poem that was hanging on their wall. “Stoners live and stoners die, but in the end we all get high; so if in life you don’t succeed, fuck that shit and smoke some weed.”

I really was flabbergasted by the young couple’s love and generosity. I was no more than a stranger to them, yet they had still gone ahead and let me into their home, and had shared their food and drugs with me. They showed me the sort of kindness that I thought was dead and gone in this world, and I sure hope karma was good to them. I never did end up seeing them again, though I’ve often thought about them. I wonder if they’re still together, and I wonder if they still live in the same house. Somehow I doubt it. No matter how much love someone has, one thing I’ve found is that this world loves to destroy the hopes and dreams and ambitions of people. It’s tough to make it on one’s own, especially at such a young age.

***

“… Because people do it for different reasons,” the doctor sort of thought out loud as my mother and I sat in his room, talking to him. “Some people imagine what their funeral would be like. Do you think about that?”

“Not really,” I answered, shaking my head. “I really just don’t see a point in trying anymore.” The truth is, I really can’t foresee many people showing up at my funeral if I were to die today; maybe a couple of family members, and that would be about it. Hell, most of my old friends probably wouldn’t even ever realize that I was gone. That’s not how I want to live and die, but at the same time it seems like nobody wants my love or friendship, so fuck it then.

***

During my freshman year at university, Peter’s friend from Newmarket, Sam, wanted to get involved in the underground marijuana industry as an investor only. He didn’t even smoke the drug, and he didn’t want to be the one physically growing it, supplying it, or dealing it. He simply wanted to get a group together so that he would have reliable partners to invest with. Understandably, he didn’t want to get screwed out of his money. And back in those days, it still seemed quite possible that I could become a police officer someday, and I told Sam that if I did, I would help him out and we could just sell the drugs that I would confiscate.

***

A couple weeks before I had met Brannon and Kassidy, I had tried making DMT at home by myself, only I didn’t have lye or naphtha at the time, so after I had ordered a large amount of ground mimosa hostillis root bark off the internet, I tried using an alternate, slightly safer extraction method but ultimately it wouldn’t work. In the end it would all turn out to be nothing more than a waste of my time, energy, and money, but it was still fun to try and perhaps someday I will try it again the proper way.

***

When I was in the fourth grade my mother yanked me out of one classroom midway through the year and placed me in a different fourth grade class because she thought it would be a better learning environment for me. Actually that was during my time at Queen Victoria Public School, and that’s where I had originally met Dylan Van Kirk.

Anyways, I never really felt like I fit in anywhere, and after I had switched classes at my mother’s request, I was in my phys ed class one day when another classmate started making fun of me. Sick and tired of being bullied my whole life, I told him to stop or I’d wring his neck. He then decided to mock me for that, telling me that I wouldn’t be strong enough. I forgot about the incident virtually right away. As far as I was concerned most (if not all) of my classmates were assholes who tried to steal from me and harass me constantly, but I just felt used to the abuse, so it didn’t really faze me much – not until our teacher, Dianne Sedore-McCoy confronted me about it the next day in class. Apparently my bully hadn’t appreciated the fact that I had decided to stand up for myself and he had gone to the teacher with his side of the story, conveniently forgetting to mention that he had been the instigator. So naturally our teacher called my mother who also disciplined me without knowing the details of the incident. I fucking hated school as a child.

23.

For several years now I’ve been looking into practices of the Occult in hopes of possibly exploiting it to become a more prolific writer, but I’ve always found the thought of playing around with my eternal soul to be a little off-putting if you want to know the truth. Still, I suppose I could practice my art of automatic (or ‘spirit-guided’) writing. The method’s quite simple – the writer intentionally distracts themselves, commonly with television, music, conversation with another person, or otherwise ‘sets their mind to the side’ while writing without consciously thinking about the words. The words are claimed to arise from a spiritual or supernatural source. Advocates of this method believe that when read back, even a minor spelling mistake can hold a significant meaning. Works of automatic writing may often seem jumbled, complex, and have little attention paid to punctuation, resulting in run-on sentences. Skeptics maintain that automatic writing is nothing more than abstract thoughts surfacing from the writer’s own subconsciousness, and I could definitely relate to that.

***

Whether I’m high or sober, I always feel like something’s missing as I drift off to sleep at the end of each day…

In November of 2014 I started talking to a girl online for several weeks who went by the name Saria Pohl, and posed under the alias ‘The Walrus’ on an online community of sorts dedicated to drugs known as The Trees Network. I soon learned that Saria was about four years younger than myself, and had just started experimenting with marijuana and other psychedelic drugs (predominantly LSD) a few months earlier. She lived in Australia, at home with her mother, and had started abusing acid, taking it on a daily basis at one point. I tried pleading with her to stop, warning her that it would catch up to her eventually, but she always continued to insist that she was fine. I felt helpless but still spent many hours talking to her over the internet while she tripped alone. She didn’t seem to mind the seclusion, but I had been there before, and in my experience, there’s nothing worse than feeling all alone in the universe while peaking on psychedelic drugs. We both shared a passion for Pink Floyd, and Syd Barrett’s early work. I stopped visiting the website and gradually the two of us have lost contact, but I certainly haven’t forgotten about Saria and I sincerely hope that she’s doing alright.

***

Well the drugs are gone again, but that’s nothing that I haven’t faced in this life before, and I can’t allow that to deter me from finishing up this story; especially when it’s so close to completion. There’s always drugs somewhere, and there’s always a way to acquire them. I’m sure they’ll re-enter my life when I least expect it, and in the meantime, I’ll simply let the epic conclusion of this project consume me. There’s a certain twisted appeal in having something to look forward to that stems from my own creation and only comes from hundreds of hours of endless work. I genuinely believe that’s part of the problem with today’s society – we’re all so used to instant gratification. Christ – just look at the way the internet’s revolutionized the pornography industry. There’s no escaping it. The media bombards us with its constant glamorization of sex, and as humans we’ve gotten so used to getting everything we want right away.

Some days counting my blessings seems to be the only thing that keeps me from going completely off the deep end. I may not have much, but at least I have grandparents who care enough to offer me food and shelter. I have clothes on my back and at least I live in a free country where I don’t have to worry about famine or war tearing my family apart. I have my physical health, and I have my writing. What more could I possibly ask for? I even have Travis Breidenbach in my life now, helping me pursue my dreams. Even if the funds in my bank account are dwindling, I feel much richer soulfully and spiritually than most. And at least I have music to listen to.

I really can’t say enough for music. I don’t want to exaggerate, but I really might be dead right now if it wasn’t for music. Sometimes I swear it’s the only thing keeping me sane, needless to say my taste in music has changed monumentally over the years. When I was about twelve or thirteen years old, my favorite bands were Green Day and Blink-182, and prior to that I had listened to a lot of country and western music. Then through high school I started listening more to Three Days Grace and a lot of hip hop and rap – mainly Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Eminem. It wasn’t until I started smoking weed that I really started to expand my horizons in a musical sense, relistening to classic artists that my own parents would have listened to, such as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Tom Petty, The Police, and Pink Floyd just to name a few, as well as other alternative bands and artists – Rev Theory; A Day to Remember; Cypress Hill; Kid Cudi; Marilyn Manson; Immortal Technique; Nirvana. And Eminem’s raps seemed to be even more impressive and inspiring while under the influence. He was making music about growing up in poverty and in a broken family, and I felt like I could relate to his songs better than anybody.

I’ve also been obsessed with Pink Floyd for the majority of my life, long before I ever used any drugs. I bought the album The Wall at the age of twelve. We’d been presented with an assignment in school which called for us to create a dance to a song of our choice. My friends, Lorne McDougall, Riley Calwell, Zach Ellis, Luke Tinknell, and I all decided upon the song Another Brick in the Wall Part Two. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve drifted away from reality to the occasionally-soothing and occasionally-haunting melodies of that band. It’ll probably never happen, but I dearly wish I could meet Doug Gilmour in person someday while I still have the chance; possibly Roger Waters and Nick Mason too, but definitely Gilmour.

Peter Chalmers and Michael Zulian were really into heavy metal, but I could never get much into it during my time at school in Oshawa. I never quite understood it, but as of lately, with persistent thoughts of suicide bearing down on me more and more, listening to heavier music just sort of feels natural – bands like Cradle of Filth; Nightwish; Iron Maiden; Graveworm; Sleep; Cannabis Corpse; Electric Wizard; Saint Vitus; The Sword; Weedeater; Bongzilla; Bongripper; Kyuss; Subway to Sally; Skyclad; Moonsorrow; and Cruachan.

***

The first professional football game that I attended in person was on my thirteenth birthday, the first time my mother gifted me tickets to a Toronto Argonauts game. They played their rivals, the Hamilton Tiger Cats, and with Damon Allen quarterbacking the team, the Argos won the game by a decisive score of forty eight to zero. The atmosphere in the stadium had been electric, and I immediately fell in love with the game. For a while I decided that it was my dream to play football professionally someday, and that I wanted to be a future quarterback for Toronto, even meeting the coach, Michael ‘Pinball’ Clemons in person. I signed up to play on one of Belleville’s minor league teams that same spring.

When I informed Riley Calwell of my new dream, he suddenly decided that was his dream as well, and to be honest, I was a little intimidated by him. He had a better throwing arm than I did, and so when we reached high school and he tried out for the Moira Trojan’s football team, I did anything and everything I could to discourage him, and he ended up quitting after only a couple of practices. In retrospect, I feel like I should have been a much more supportive friend – God only knows what we might’ve been capable of on the field with the chemistry we shared as friends.

But we already had a quarterback that our coaches loved and adored – a one, Phil Willemson who was one hell of an athlete in his prime. In his final few months of high school though he threw it all away when he started heavily abusing drugs himself just like our mutual friend, Tim Wright. Perhaps it’s worth noting, I never have seen Tim again since I moved away to university in 2010. I know he was having some deep-rooted psychological issues of his own, but he was smarter than anyone gave him credit for, and I sure hope he’s managed to find his own way in life. I don’t know whatever happened to him, but I’m sure I played an influence on his decision to start using drugs in the first place, and it was all based on lies – I’ve always felt a certain sense of guilt in that. I have however seen Phil again once or twice extremely briefly, and although his physical appearance has changed substantially, he still seems to be enjoying life. Of course that’s just further speculation on my end. One would have to ask him personally, or at least one of his closer friends if they wanted to know for sure how he feels.

***

Along with Roger Stewart, Alex Stevenson was another close childhood friend of mine. For a couple of years back then I thought it would be my dream to open a restaurant, and when Alex moved away to Cold Lake, Alberta at the age of ten, I told him I would open a restaurant in his memory, thinking I would never get to see him again. I think that it was probably a cruel dose of reality that did us each good in the long run. After he had moved away we tried keeping in touch with each other for a while but eventually lost contact for several years. I did see him once however, randomly about three or four years after he had moved. I was delivering papers one night after school when a car pulled up along beside me and Alex stepped out of the passenger seat. He told me that he was back in Belleville to visit, and we exchanged email addresses and did actually get together for a prolonged visit, but then we lost all contact again while I was in high school. In September of 2010, just after I had moved away to Oshawa, we started text messaging each other again quite frequently. I don’t believe I ever lied to him, per se, but I sometimes think back and wonder if I might not have been completely honest with him. And then I find myself wondering if that’s just as bad as consciously lying.

Not to stroke my own ego here or anything, but back when I was in elementary school, before Alex moved away, I often felt like he would fight against our other mutual acquaintances, Roger Stewart and Colton Foy for my friendship. The three of them didn’t particularly seem to like each other very much, but they all wanted to spend time with me. Meanwhile I wanted to spend my time with all of them, and I didn’t know what I could do or say to make the rest of them put their differences aside, and it started to wear on me and made me feel bad about myself. I don’t want to make it sound like I expected our friendship to last forever, but it seems like I’ve just always had a way of bringing people together. Of course on the other end of the spectrum, there were those such as Kurtis Shaw, Jon McCormick, and Coady Bryans, who just wanted to bully me around.

Here’s another strange coincidence though. Amongst the initial group of friends I met when I first arrived at university – Peter Chalmers, Michael Zulian, Evan Blythe, Nicholas Tam, and Mike Kunanec – all of them except for Nick and I were from Newmarket, and had even gone to the same high school, Sacred Heart Catholic High School. They apparently had hung around with different cliques though, and hadn’t even known each other until we had all met up in Oshawa, with the exception of Peter and Michael Zulian, who had known each other almost their whole lives, suffice it to say that they often functioned on the same mental wavelength. The really strange thing that we soon discovered though, was that Peter and my own birthday were on back to back days in September, as were our roommates’, Evan’s and Michael’s in November. “It was like a lock coming together,” Zulian had said in regards to it after I had finally confessed the truth about myself. “… But then we all just sort of forgot about Evan.” And then there was a silence, as we both sort of had the awful realization that was exactly what would happen with me as well, and unlike Evan, I wouldn’t be returning from the darkness I had submitted to.

***

Lorne and I took a day trip to his cottage one cold, gloomy winter day in January of 2010. The cottage was ‘closed’ for the season, and we didn’t stay for very long – my friend just had to check something; I can’t even remember what it was now. Each of my previous visits had come during the summer months, and we had always been able to get directly to the cottage by boat, but since that wasn’t a possibility in the winter, a bridge had also been constructed to allow access to the island, and once we actually got to the island, the two of us had to hike for about thirty minutes through the knee-deep snow before we actually reached our intended destination. I remember I received text messages from my coworkers, forewarning me that our time at Red Beard’s might be coming to an end, and as it would turn out, they were right.

Anyways, after Lorne had tended to the affairs at the cottage, we made the half hour walk back to the car and then drove back across the bridge where we were forced to stop at a relatively deserted intersection. We just happened to glance over at the only other car on the road next to us, and immediately recognized the two girls sitting inside – Erin Holdbeck and Elizabeth ‘Libby’ Kaladeen, two of our classmates at Moira. With no other traffic around, we all decided to seize the opportunity and got out of our vehicles to chat with each other for a moment or two. The girls told us that they were heading across to the States for the day. We weren’t thousands of miles from home or anything, but it still seemed like a rather odd coincidence to help remind us that we live in a small world.

***

Oh, right – for a brief period of time Megan Lefave worked with us at Red Beard’s as well, better known by her nicknamed, Goalie. One of her hobbies included a weekly round of pickup hockey at the local arena where she often acted as the goaltender, hence the nickname. She was your typical broke college student, raised in a house with something like four brothers. After a few months though she stopped showing up for the vast majority of her shifts and I would often get called in to cover for her, until one day I just flat out refused. I had been expecting to have the weekend off, which was unheard of for me. She was canned shortly thereafter.

***

Push and peddle drugs all night; write all day; and stay high the whole time – that certainly sounds like an exuberant business model to me.

***

I’ve always maintained the notion that cigarettes should be illegal if anything is going to be, but that will never happen. There’s simply too much money to be made off of them. Between 2012 and 2013, the Canadian government made a total of over seven billion dollars in tax revenue from tobacco sales alone at provincial and federal levels. The first cigarette I ever smoked came when I was sixteen years old. I found a single cigarette in one of the computer labs at Moira. God only knows where it had been, but I was curious and, quite frankly, I didn’t care. My first thought was that it smelled like a freshly-opened box of raisins. I walked around the school with it hanging out of my mouth for the rest of the day, trying to appear tough in front of my friends, even telling a couple of my classmates that the cigarette contained marijuana.

When I got back home that afternoon following classes, my mother was still at work and I had the house to myself for a couple of hours, which was quite unusual indeed. Nearly as soon as I got home, I found myself a spot on the back porch where I was at least mostly concealed from my neighbor’s houses, sat down, and lit up the cigarette. I remember thinking that I felt the slightest buzz off of it, but I probably wasn’t even inhaling properly. It was about what I expected, and once it had burned down to the filter, I flicked it away and headed back inside, feeling not much different and feeling no desire to try another. However, in the months that followed, I found that contraband cigarettes were one of the easiest things in the world to get my hands on whenever I felt stressed out, and it eventually just developed into a bad habit. When I met Tyler Biback at the age of eighteen he was the first person to introduce me to the trick of mixing tobacco into bowls with weed, which provided an additional headrush when smoked. We called them ‘poppers,’ and for several months that’s all either of us smoked.

24.

The last time I saw Chad Grixti and Ryan Brown together was back in the summer of 2011, while I was staying at that damn house on Niagara Drive alone. They came to visit me a day or two before they moved out to B.C. – I think it might have been the Canada Day weekend. They spent the night, and I remember Ryan had asked if he could use a Toronto Maple Leafs blanket which I promptly gave him. I forget exactly what I said now, but I muttered something like, “Don’t even ask what I’ve been through with that blanket,” forcing a laugh.

“What, did you lose your virginity with it?” Ryan asked, trying to get me to open up. We just looked at each other for a moment, but I didn’t say anything.

“Hey, he said don’t ask,” Chad finally spoke up, breaking the silence as I still foolishly refused to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

***

“I need more money,” the words escaped my lips as Becky and I lit our cigarettes. I hadn’t really been intending to try and make conversation. The statement just came as a simple realization to myself. My weed habit had been expensive enough; I could only imagine the devastating effect a coke addiction would have on the financial aspect of my life.

Becky just laughed. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

I wasn’t so sure she did though. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions about her personally, nor did I want to judge her unjustly (God knows how much I know that can impact someone), but in my experience, a lot of guys will provide a lot of girls with ‘free’ drugs, given that they get sex in return. But whether Rebecca could actually relate to me on a personal level or not, it seemed like she genuinely wanted to help me.

“I can try to get you a job,” she suddenly offered.

“Huh?” I mumbled, obviously surprised.

“Yeah,” she continued. “Ya know how I said that if Bronson can’t get the shit, I know someone else we can go to?” I nodded. “Well I can ask him if he needs any help, if you want? I’m sure he would agree if I asked him, and he moves a lot of product.” Just the way she spoke, I could tell she had intimate feelings for whoever the hook-up was; or at least she had at one time. “I mean, he moves a lot of production,” she reiterated with a slightly added emphasis. “Normally at least two kilos a week. Do you have a vehicle?”

“No,” I shook my head. “No vehicle.”

“But you have a license though, right?”

I decided to lie. I didn’t want to miss out on any sort of potential opportunity for some stupid reason, and it wasn’t like the girl was going to run a background check on me. Besides, I knew how to drive. I had simply let my license expire because I had seen no use for it. “Yeah.”

“That’s fine then,” the girl decided. “I’m sure Scott would let you use one of his cars if he wanted you to make a pick up or a drop off.” I let out a quick laugh as I processed the thoughts. “I’m serious,” the girl continued. “If you want me to, I’ll ask him the next time I see him, which should be later today, I’m sure.”

“Alright,” I agreed, nodding again, excited about my introduction into this new world of hard drugs. “Yeah, that’d be awesome.”

Becky returned the nod and gave a smile. “We’ll just wait for a bit and see what happens once Bronson gets home.”

We waited at the house for four and a half hours, anxious for Bronson to get back. So much for twenty minutes, I thought to myself as the minutes ticked past. Unsure of what else to do, we continued to pass the time by chain-smoking at the back of the house. After the first hour, Becky and I had smoked through both of our packs, but Chelsea came out to join us, bringing more with her. And then after the second hour even Jessie came out to join us as well. He brought even more cigarettes which he shared with the rest of us, but he still hardly said two words. Occasionally the girls would send or receive phone calls and text messages on their cell phones, but I just sort of awkwardly sat there. Even if my phone had been in service, I wouldn’t have had anyone else to talk to anyways. In a way I felt right at home amongst the other lost souls and drug addicts.

It may have taken significantly longer than he had originally predicted, but at long last, after what felt like an eternity, Bronson returned. “Did you get it? Did ya get the shit?” Chelsea asked hyperactively the second that he walked through the door. The rest of us awaited his answer in suspense.

“Yeah, I got it,” he answered, much to our relief. “I had to wait on my guy.” We all returned to the living room and crowded around a coffee table while the dealer weighed and divided our respective portions. We all started cutting up lines and snorting them off the table right away, and after the rest of us had been taken care of, Bronson locked away at least another ten or twelve grams of the drug to sell later, and started preparing a hit for himself, using a syringe to inject it.

By the time I left the drug house with Rebecca at eight o’clock that night, I had already gone through a gram and a half of the eight ball I had just bought. I wanted to make sure that I saved some for the next day, and I just wanted to get back home and smoke some more weed, hoping it would help ease some of the discomfort that came with the ensuing crash. Becky had a car and had asked me if I had wanted a ride home, and I gladly accepted, wanting to spend more time with her. Naturally, the topic of drugs had come up previously while we had been waiting for Bronson, and the girl had already told me she smoked weed. “Did you wanna smoke a joint?” I asked her, as I directed her through the city streets to the house where I was staying. “I was probably gonna smoke one anyways.”

“Okay!” she answered, more enthusiastically than I had expected.

“Would you mind if we went somewhere else to smoke it though?” I asked her. “I don’t mean to sound rude – it’s just that I’m staying with some of my family at the moment who don’t approve of that kind of thing.”

“Oh,” the girl seemed to understand. “No, that’s fine.”

“Yeah, it sucks, but it’s only temporary.”

“Exactly,” Becky agreed. “And it’s better than living with strangers or something.”

“Yeah. For sure.”

We arrived out front of the house a couple of minutes later and the girl waited outside in her dark green, 1982 Honda Civic. I ran inside and grabbed my backpack which contained the rest of my marijuana and some rolling papers. “Where should we go?” Rebecca asked once I got back in the car. We thought for a moment and eventually decided to drive down by the lake. The warm sun was setting over the deep blue water, and the final rays of sun sparkled like gold off the surface of the water under clear, wide open skies. It was the perfect ending to a perfect spring day.

“So how should we do this?” I asked as we sat in Becky’s car, passing the joint back and forth. “Should I take your number and just call you to see if you need help? Or I can leave you my number, but it won’t do much good until I get my phone bill paid.”

“Well you’ll probably be back at Bronson’s in the next couple of days, won’t you?” the girl predicted.

I nodded. “Yeah, probably.”

“Because if I ask Scott and he says that he could use help, I’m sure he’ll want to meet you. So I’ll ask him tonight and I’m at Bronson’s everyday – like, literally I’m over there every single day. So I’ll just let you know what Scott says the next time I see you over there.” That sounded good enough to me. There was no sense in rushing fate.

I could feel the coke high fading fast, leaving some unpleasantness in its wake, but the weed certainly seemed to help a little and as the joint burned down to its filter, it dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten anything all day. The cocaine had supressed my appetite and I hadn’t even thought of it earlier, but now the hunger returned with the weed high. “I’m probably just gonna go home, get something to eat, and lay down,” I confessed and Becky gave a laugh at the sentiment. “Unless…” I continued slowly, almost scared to say my next thought. “Unless you want to go get supper together somewhere?”

“Oh, I would but I really should be getting back home for myself,” she answered empathetically. “Sorry.”

“That’s alright,” I told her, flashing a smile. “No pressure.” I had a feeling she already had enough drama and bullshit to deal with in her life, and the last thing I wanted was to be responsible for adding to it.

***

I really am looking forward to seeing Rebecca again. It would be ideal if I could find a way to make money from this shit. I don’t know if it will necessarily be a good thing in the long run though. I already know I have addiction issues – I’m not sure that trying to quit a severe cocaine addiction is something that I particularly want to deal with later on in life. You would think that I’d know better. You would probably think I had learned my lesson from all of my previous mistakes, but evidently not. And it wasn’t just the additional issues with addiction that I had to worry about. The whole lifestyle’s more dangerous. There’s certainly more money to be made from the illicit sale of coke compared to marijuana, and a lot of people are blinded by the thought of it. Couple that with the immense bouts of energy the drug provides, and there’s no telling what certain users may be capable of. I know I’ve written about it for a long time, but it all feels so different now that it’s actually becoming part of my reality. I’m really not sure how involved with it I want to get, if truth be told.

And so much for saving the rest of my stash for tomorrow. I should have known I’d still have the same reckless attitude as I do towards marijuana. Well fuck it then. I’m ready to crash and burn; I never learn. At least I didn’t use all of it. I’m forcing myself to save at least some of it for tomorrow, but it just compliments my life so goddamn perfectly. These things are impossible to explain to people who’ve never experienced them before. And I’m sure I’m going to be awake for a while now. Needless to say, I haven’t gotten any sleep yet. It’s a good thing that I have at least some weed left.

***

During the first summer that I lived on Niagara Drive in Oshawa, I used to have this personal ‘standard of happiness,’ if you will, that I measured my life by using a very simple method. Basically, each night before I went to sleep I would ask myself if I felt at peace with the universe. And I thought if I could answer “yes” to that question, then I figured my life was on the right track, more or less. If I recall correctly though, I believe I abandoned the notion relatively quickly because I found that I never was truly at peace with the universe, even if I wanted to pretend that I was.

***

I was already standing outside in the designated smoking section with my coworkers at Rogers when Dwayne appeared from around a corner to join us. I waited until the others had greeted him before I spoke up. “Hey… cat killer.” We shared a laugh at the remark. “Sorry,” I apologized right away. “I wasn’t even going to say anything, but… I just did.” I shrugged.

Dwayne just scoffed. “Oh I don’t care. I had forgotten about it already.” My friend had given me a ride home from work the previous evening, and we were speeding down one of the busiest highways in his car when a cat ran out in front of us. “Oh, you’re fucking dead, cat!” Dwayne had determined as the small creature disappeared under the front tires with a vicious thud. I glanced in the mirror as the car continued down the road and caught a glimpse of the seriously wounded pet hobbling off the road behind us, looking for a peaceful place to collapse and die. It made me consider the frailty of life and how suddenly it can all just end for any of us. Every living creature dies alone. “I feel bad I just did that,” Dwayne claimed as we continued to draw closer to my apartment. “I haven’t hit a cat in years. But I learned long ago it’s better to just hit them than to swerve and cause and even more serious accident.”

***

I remember when I was thirteen years old, my class took an overnight trip to Montreal, which ended up being more fun than one would ever expect. We visited Mount Royal and the Olympic Stadium amongst other various landmarks which I can’t even remember now. We were served dinner at some fancy French steakhouse and then stopped to play laser tag before checking into the hotel. When we did get to the hotel, I was placed in a room with my friends, Riley Calwell and Nicholas Simmons – a rather reserved, quiet British classmate of ours. We stayed up all night watching porn, except during one point when overtired me got pissed off at Riley and challenged him to a fight. Nick had to break it apart before the two of us killed each other, and the rest of the night remained quite subdued and toned-down. As far as our teachers were concerned, the real action was taking place in one of the rooms down the hall, where several girls, including Alexis Lightfoot, Rebecca Watson, Ashley McIntee, and Andrea Heuving had gotten together with alcohol. When we all checked out of the hotel the following day, we were asked to turn in the key cards for each of our rooms, but I held onto mine and kept it in my wallet for about the next three years, as a memento of sorts.

***

“I’m leaving.” The words cut through my heart like a knife. “I’m leaving,” Becky repeated again, as if there was a chance I hadn’t heard her the first time. Over the course of the past few weeks the two of us had gradually grown closer and closer to each other, so I guess it really shouldn’t have come as any sort of surprise to me that she was about to leave my life forever. That just seems to be what happens with every girl I fall for. I really liked the girl, and had been willing to do just about anything I could for her. She had stayed true to her word, and had introduced me to her personal connection, Scott who had paid my overdue phone bill and would often contact me to assist him with several random errands, paying me either in cash or product (both of which I was fine with). It turned out that his client list included a lot of big names, and while it may have only lasted a few weeks, I met a lot of new people during my time working with Scott. During those three weeks alone I saw a lot of shit that I may use for a whole new book at some point in the future. I was robbed and beat up; I had my life threatened; I saw people die of drug overdoses; I had a gun held to my head; a knife held to my throat. It absolutely changed the way I thought about the world.

As I had suspected, Scott was in a relationship with Rebecca. And she never directly said anything to me, nor did I feel like it was my place to ask, but I had my reasons to believe that Scott wasn’t treating the girl properly. I worried about her whenever we weren’t together, but the two of us saw each other every day, and the amount of time we shared only continued to increase with each passing day.

“I need to get as far away from Scott as I can,” she continued, tears starting to well in the corners of her eyes. It seemed my guess was right. I would never know what happened in private between Scott and Becky, but I felt sorry for the girl, and I vowed that if I was with her, I would treat her the way she deserved to be treated. “I’m taking the train to Toronto, and then I’m flying from Toronto to California.”

“Wow – California, huh? Well that should be far enough.”

The girl nodded, wiping away her tears with the sleeve of her sweater. “Yeah. Yeah, I know some friends there I can stay with.” Then she suddenly made me an offer that I really hadn’t been expecting. “Come with me!”

I took a heavy sigh and pondered the invitation. “… I can’t,” I finally answered with a hint of regret. “I want to… more than anything. But I just can’t. I still have business to attend to here.”

“Well…” the girl looked disappointed. “Maybe you’ll make it out to California for yourself someday and we’ll find each other again.”

I nodded. “I hope so.”

“Okay, well, I just wanted to say goodbye before I go. Did you wanna walk me to the train station?” I nodded and, taking her hand in my own, we started down the street together, walking side by side.

***

“Let’s go!” one of the train attendants barked at Becky as I stood on the loading platform with my arms wrapped tightly around her after the rest of the passengers had already boarded. I reluctantly let her free of my embrace. I really didn’t want to see her go, but I knew I couldn’t stop her. She was free to do as she wished. Part of me was still debating getting on the train with her, but I knew I couldn’t. I watched the girl as she slowly backed away from me and then turned and climbed the steps to board the locomotive herself. The attendant disappeared inside, then the steps retracted and the wheels slowly started to roll forward. I remained on the loading platform, watching the train pull out of the station and pick up speed. I stayed there, watching it grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared from my line of sight entirely.

***

Of course it makes me feel bad about myself that I was never good enough for Jade; I feel like my self-confidence is shot for life. But I hope that she was able to find someone to make her happy at the very least. I hold no grudges, and I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, even though this curse still continues to follow me everywhere I go.

I am pleased to say however that after having such horrid luck with all of our other pets for so long, my sister and I each got our own cats (Kuro and Slushi, respectively) several years ago before we left home for school, and not to jinx it or anything, but they seem like the first pets we’ve ever had that are on track to meet their full life expectancies and die peacefully and naturally of old age.

As for my persistent thoughts and concerns regarding my new business partner, Travis – well he’s remained as supportive as ever over the course of the past seven weeks, as we’ve worked together to promote the website and prepare this story for release, and as far as I’m concerned, this is only the beginning. The sky really is the limit, and working along with Travis’s brother, Spencer, and our mutual acquaintance, Ashley Graetz, I’m eager to see what more we’re capable of creating. Even if nothing greater becomes of any of this, they’ve still helped see me through this project and that’s something that can’t ever be taken away from any of us. And that’s why I’m going to keep writing, for as long as I can.

What more can I say? I’ve witnessed a lot happen in this world just in the time since I began writing this story, and it’s certainly been an interesting stretch of time in my life to say the least. I’ve had second thoughts about releasing this story every single day but like my typical attitude towards all of my writing, I simply can’t justify quitting something that I’ve set out to do – especially after I’ve poured so much of my time and energy into it; after I’ve poured my heart and soul into it. Even after all of this, I still feel like there’s a lot of memories and stories which I’ve kept to myself, but I accept I’ll never be able to share them all. Some experiences are for my senses only, and they would be truly impossible to try and replicate here in words. In any case, I thank everyone who’s taken the time to read this, and if anybody does have a problem with anything I’ve written here, feel free to confront me about it directly. All I ask is that my family gets left alone. To anyone who’s been willing to try and help me, thank you. And to those of you I forgot, you obviously weren’t on my mind and I really don’t feel like I have anything to apologize for.