I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow (7 page)

MONDAY.

The local repertory house is playing
2001: A Space Odyssey
. While watching, I notice three things of interest:

1, while Hilton Hotels and Howard Johnsons are shown to survive forty years into the future, neckties don't;

2, there is precisely one joke in the entire movie. One of the characters, about to use a space toilet, is confronted by a placard containing complex Ikea-like instructions regarding its operation; and 3, the monolith looks an awful lot like an iPhone.

The person in the seat in front of me is eating McDonald's, and as a result I'm unconsciously experiencing outer space as a place that smells of Big Macs. This kind of thing has happened to me before. While watching
Das Boot
, the person beside me was wearing Polo cologne, which made the submarine smell like a sports bar.

When the movie is done, I find myself in the mood for something only slightly less sublime than outer space: a Big Mac. I will eat it with thoughts about space, the future of man, and the curative power of ground beef rattling around my head like empty soda cans on a late-night metro car.

THURSDAY.

Tucker and I are sitting on my couch, passing a container of Häagen-Dazs back and forth.

“Wouldn't it be great if the Canadian dollar and the Canadian calorie were somehow linked?” he asks.

“How do you mean?”

“Like when the American dollar is weak, American calories would also become weak. So when a hundred Canadian calories are the same as eighty-two American calories, the time would be right to go over the border, rent a motel room, and spend the weekend eating pizza and doughnuts.”

“And then the moment you cross back into Canada, you instantly get fatter?” I ask.

“Yes, but since we weigh ourselves in kilograms, we can still believe ourselves fit.”

Whatever happened to those 2001 moon colonies we were promised—a place where we could eat ice cream all day and still bounce around as light as lunar dust? Sometimes I just can't stand the unbearable fatness of being.

Real Tears, Finally

(36 weeks)

MONDAY, 7:00 A.M.

I've decided to spend Christmas vacation in New York City. During the course of the eleven-hour train ride, I pass the time eavesdropping. The best thing I overhear is a large man in a Miami Dolphins cap explain how, in the middle of writing a cheque for a Jacuzzi down payment, his pen ran out of ink. He saw it as a sign from God not to buy a Jacuzzi.

“When the Almighty raises a hand, I obey,” he said.

1:00 P.M.

As people on the train begin to doze, I throw
It's a Wonderful Life
into my laptop, and by the end of the movie there are tears streaming down my face. Success! With my cheeks
still wet, I run down the aisle to the washroom to see what I look like crying. Not bad.

I believe that the world breaks down into two groups: those who want to see what they look like crying and those who do not. For some reason, most of the people I befriend seem to fall into the former group—a group that never fully throw themselves into the moment, but always hold on to a little bit of narrative objectivity, even at their gloomiest.

7:00 P.M.

The train arrives in Penn Station, and I set off to meet Starlee, who I'll be staying with. When I get to the bistro, she is standing by the bar talking to a semi-well-known comic. Shortly after introducing us, the semi-well-known comic leaves and I take his seat. I order a scotch and water, and after several sips, notice the drink tastes rather watery. This is because it's the glass of water the semi-well-known comic has left behind. In a panic, I blot my tongue with cocktail napkins. While an entertaining bunch, comedians as a group do not impress me as adhering to the highest code of hygiene.

Starlee continues telling me a story, but I'm not able to pay much attention as I'm distracted by the thought that I may now have hepatitis—or at the very least a bad case of the cooties.

11:30 P.M.

I read the semi-well-known comic's Wikipedia entry and there is no mention of contagious diseases. I tell myself everything will be fine.

TUESDAY, 3:00 A.M.

I awake convinced that I'm in the throes of a fever sweat brought on by the onset of mononucleosis, an illness of which I have only the vaguest understanding. I turn on the lights, and look it up on Wikipedia.

9:00 A.M.

There's a knock at the door. I roll off the couch and answer it. It's Ruby, Starlee's fifteen-year-old intern.

“Why in God's name do you have an intern?” I ask when Ruby leaves the room to go sort Starlee's bookshelf.

“I have a lot to impart,” she says.

Starlee is working on a self-help book called
It
Is
Your Fault
, and Ruby has been booking appointments all week with psychics, behaviourists, and self-professed shamans for Starlee's research. Ruby carries around a dog-eared copy of
The Bell Jar
and a notebook she uses to write down the little bits of wisdom that Starlee imparts.

Ruby re-enters the room and Starlee begins to impart.

“Choose your college based on where the cutest boys are,” Starlee says, and Ruby takes furious notes.

I find myself struggling to come up with a couple wise things, in the hope of making it into the notebook.

“When buying cottage cheese,” I say, “always reach to the very back of the shelf.”

Ruby nods politely, the notebook closed on her lap.

We all sit around the kitchen table, surrounded by last night's beer bottles, eating pretzels for breakfast while Starlee dispenses life lessons: “Read Joan Didion. Don't let skinny girls depress you.”

Eventually Starlee's wisdoms will run dry and she will have Ruby walk her dog and defrost her freezer.

When Ruby leaves the room, I reach for her notebook. Flipping it open, I write: “The line between an internship and a kidnapping can often be blurry.”

SATURDAY.

I decide to fly back to Montreal, and on the plane I'm seated beside a little girl reading
Little House in the Big Woods
. This is the first book I ever read, and seeing it again, in this little girl's hands, makes me feel misty. This in spite of the fact I hated the book so much that it almost turned me off reading altogether.

There's just something about flying that always makes me a little emotional, makes me feel my own mortality in a
very particular way. Perhaps it's the way everything looks so small from up here. Or perhaps it's the way that turbulence makes me feel, in the pit of my stomach, the tenuousness of life. More than likely though, it's probably due to the double bourbon I always have when I fly. There should be a word for this feeling. Call it
bourboulent
.

New Year's

(35 weeks)

WEDNESDAY, 7:10 P.M.

Tucker calls to see what I'm doing for New Year's Eve.

“Catching up on my reading,” I say. “I'm going to be forty soon and I've only read one Tolstoy novel. No, New Year's is kid's stuff.”

“Come on. I'll make you a sash and you can pretend to be the baby new year,” he says. “It'll make you feel young.”

After putting down the phone, I can't bring myself to read Tolstoy. I instead reach for the Stephen King novel I keep on the TV for when the cable goes off. I begin with the dedication page and find myself wondering if, after so many dozens of books, Stephen King fears running out of family and friends to dedicate his work to. Perhaps he'll soon have to start making dedications to casual acquaintances, like the guy who holds the door open for him at his local convenience store. When he has to start dedicating
books to people he can't even stand, he may realize it's time to get out of the writing business.

8:30 P.M.

Marie-Claude phones to see if I want to come over and celebrate with her and the kids.

“Celebrate what?” I ask. “The march to the grave?”

“You know, you can afford to be a little more receptive to the world around you.”

“Next time I'm in a restroom I'll keep the stall door open to shake hands and pass out business cards.”

“Baby steps,” she says. “Next time you're in a restroom just try washing your hands.”

9:45 P.M.

My mother calls. When I tell her I'm not going out, she starts to worry.

“You're sick,” she says. “You sound nasal.”

“I was born nasal. I'm just not in the mood. It's not a big deal.”

“Even your father's having a party,” she says.

She explains that, as we speak, he's seated at the kitchen table, eating crackers and listening to the radio.

“And not talk radio, but the music kind,” she says. “Let him have his fun. It's New Year's, after all.”

10:30 P.M.

Tony phones from his future in-laws.

“I'm not doing anything,” I say, pre-emptively. “It's going to be a new year tomorrow whether Jonathan Goldstein dances on a coffee table with a lampshade on his head or not.”

“You remind me of a girl I once dated who always fastforwarded through the opening credits when we watched videos,” he says.

“She sounds like a keeper.”

“We broke up after two weeks,” he says. “It could have probably lasted at least a month or two, but she fastforwarded us. The point is, you can't rush to the end. Life shouldn't be about that.”

We get off the phone. I hit the metaphorical pause button and stare out the window.

11:15 P.M.

Characters in books and on TV shows often learn about what really matters in life through the guidance of helpful supernatural beings who know more than we mortals ever will.Take Scrooge in
A Christmas Carol
, for instance, or the family from
Alf
.

Staring out the window, I consider how in real life, all we've got are our hunches about what matters. And, of
course, we also have our family and friends to steer us a little when we've a hunch our hunches are wrong.

Marie-Claude's probably already put the kids to bed, so I call up Tucker to see if I can still come by, and he says sure.

“I'll bring some chips,” I say. “It's New Year's, after all.”

Judgment

(34 weeks)

WEDNESDAY.

I'm walking over to Howard's with my newly adopted toy poodle, Boosh. My father had to give her up after my mother developed an allergy
—
though less a reaction to dogs, it would seem, than to the loss of my father's attention. Boosh, she claimed, reminded her of another drain on my father's attention: Judge Judy.

“How can a dog remind you of Judge Judy?” I asked.

“She gives me a judgy look,” my mother said.

At a red light, one of those outlaw motorcycles pulls up alongside us. The rider revs his engine and I feel my testes inch their way into my throat. I'm sure the sound stirs something primordial, something akin to what our caveman ancestors must have felt while being chased by mastodons.

I flash the motorcyclist one of the most withering looks in my arsenal, the one I deploy only in extreme situations, like when confronting teenagers jumping the line.That he does not get off his hog and imprint the “Life Is a Gamble” belt buckle into the back of my calves attests to the power of walking around with a toy poodle. A toy poodle is like wearing spectacles in the 1940s, or being rolled through the city in an iron lung: it is a declaration of your powerlessness.Which can be powerful.

I arrive at Howard's.

“What's that thing around Boosh's neck?” he asks.

“A cape,” I say.

“Are you going to teach her how to bark in a Romanian accent?” he asks.

Howard is being sarcastic, though not as hurtfully so as Gregor, who yesterday suggested I get rid of the cape because it was making my poodle's ass look fat.

Howard pulls out his grocery bag of takeout menus. He decides on what we'll be having for lunch by sloshing his arm around in it and withdrawing a lucky winner.

“Looks like it's chops,” he says. “Lamb or pork?”

In my old high school, girls who were turning sixteen had a choice between two gifts for their “sweet”: a nose job or a trip to Europe. I find myself sympathetic to what those poor girls had to go through. There are certain things no person should ever have to choose between, and so I urge Howard to order both.

FRIDAY.

I'm out for dinner with my family. My father proposed the meal so that he could be updated on Boosh's doings. I fill him in on all the whitefish she's been eating and garbage she's been destroying, and when that's out of the way, we move on to my father's second favourite topic of conversation.

“Did you watch
Judge Judy
today?” he asks. “Boy, a mouth on her!”

“Here we go,” my mother says. “Judge Judy is his girlfriend.”

“She is not,” my father says, reddening.

“He's always had a crush on Judy,” my sister says. She is pregnant and her amusement makes her seem Buddha-like.

“I hope you know she's had a lot of work done,” my mother says. “If you think that's her real face, you're sadly mistaken.”

“The name of this restaurant sounds familiar,” I say, turning to my mother. “Is this the place where they called the police on you?”

“That was over a month ago,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “And they didn't call the police. They
threatened
to call the police. I refuse to pay for salmon steak when having distinctly ordered salmon fillet.”

“And you don't feel uncomfortable coming back?”

“They gave me a ten-dollar coupon for the confusion.

How else can I use it?”

In his sixteenth-century epic
Monkey
, Wu Ch'êng-ên writes, “He who fails to avenge the wrongs done to a parent is unworthy of the name of man.”

When my salmon fillet arrives I eat it, not feeling like a man so much as a giant salmon-eating porpoise. But then suddenly, the spirit of avenging justice descends. It is empowering and emphatic.