Poles Apart (12 page)

Then, to spread the word further, I launched TweetDeck on my laptop and, before I could lose my nerve, opened an @EveofEquality Twitter account using the same phony email address I’d employed to create the blog. I made sure to list the blog’s
URL
in the new Twitter account profile so the curious could easily find it. Then I spent an hour or so following several dozen leading feminists, including celebrities, activists, writers, bloggers, and academics, as well as those who led the major feminist think-tanks and advocacy organizations. I spent some time retweeting all their tweets to try to kick-start my own following. It worked, a little. By the evening, I had managed to attract exactly fourteen Twitter followers. I still hadn’t issued a single tweet of my own. But the infrastructure was coming together.

I decided against creating an EofE Facebook page, LinkedIn profile, or Pinterest account. One step at a time. Besides, I thought Twitter would suffice for promoting the blog. I checked again. I was up to sixteen followers even though I still had yet to
hit the button to release my inaugural tweet. Clearly I was tearing up the social media space.

It was time. I toggled back to the EofE blog site. Rather than publishing all fourteen blog posts at once, and to try to drive a little more Google juice out of the exercise, I scheduled them to be published on the blog, one by one, every three hours until they were all up. This would herald a blog with lots of new and frequently refreshed content. That might help my search engine optimization and perhaps push traffic to the blog in, well, perhaps even in double digits, if I were lucky. My expectations were low.

The publishing order I’d determined for my fourteen missives would leave the Bennington essay as the last one to be posted. As a consequence, it was the newest, and therefore, most visible post. After I’d loaded and scheduled them all, my finger hovered over the Publish button. I thought of Beverley’s final words to me the day before. My stomach felt tight but I’m pretty sure it was excitement or anticipation, rather than constipation. There was no reason to hold off any longer. I hit the button and
Eve of Equality
went live – just another personal blog among millions on the Internet. But it somehow made me feel alive again.

A couple of days later, when I woke up, I grabbed my iPad from my nightstand and called up
Eve of Equality
. In the night, the last of the fourteen blog posts had been published. There it was, the Bennington post, leading the pack. I thought it looked pretty good. I’d added some photos, and even some charts and graphs, all just lifted from Google images, to illustrate the blog posts. I checked my analytics. Exactly no one had visited the blog yet. Not a single reader had stumbled upon it, beyond its author. My Twitter following had inched up to nineteen. Off to a great start. Gaining traction. Moving the needle. Making progress.

Not so much. Viral, it wasn’t. But it was early days. Eventually, the tagging I’d done on each post would attract at least a few readers. It was inevitable. The power of search engine optimization. But it would take some time. The more pressing question was when readers found my blog, would they stay? Would they
read my offerings? Would they point people toward it? Would they think differently about the issues? Would they wonder who actually wrote the pieces?

I used my newly minted EofE Twitter account to tweet links to a few of the EofE posts, including the Mason Bennington piece. It was time to start spreading the word.

As I walked downstairs to the street later that morning, what I didn’t hear was any construction noise. The din of power tools and generators and arguments had slackened in the previous few days and become more sporadic. Now it seemed to have stopped altogether. As I left the building, I noticed there still wasn’t a sign installed on the front of the building that might yield some idea of what would soon open. In fact, I saw no indication that a sign was even planned. The gleaming wooden doors, still accessorized by the green garbage bags covering the handles, gave the only suggestion that a business might soon be operating in that space. Strange.

“Hello, Everett,” Yolanda greeted me.

“Hi, Yolanda. How’s the patient this morning?” I asked.

“You’re just in time for the fun, honey. I looked in a minute ago and our star physios are about to tag-team your father. I don’t think he’s quite used to it yet. Come to think of it, I doubt Mike and Liz are used to your father, either.”

I seemed to have arrived in time to witness my father in physiotherapy. I kind of wished I’d arrived a little later. Mike and Liz,
the two young physios on duty that day, were working him over. And work it was. I watched from the doorway as they stretched out his left leg at various angles while Dad did his part by grimacing and groaning. Then Liz moved down to work on his lower leg, kneading his calf, ankle, and foot in what I would describe as a turbocharged massage. At the same time, Mike moved up to work Dad’s upper thigh, digging in deep on his quadriceps, glutes, and groin. I’m not sure whether the expression on Dad’s face reflected physical pain or the garden-variety homophobe’s discomfort at having another man’s hands anywhere near his groin.

“Hey, Mikey, great job there, but you did such nice work on my ankle yesterday, let’s not mess with success, eh?” said Dad. “Howzabout switching up with Liz?”

“My groin is just fine, Mr. Kane,” Liz cut in. “It’s your groin that needs the attention.”

“You’re a laugh riot, Liz, but you know that’s not what I meant by ‘switching up.’ ”

“Nice try, Mr. Kane, but your groin is all mine this morning,” Mike replied.

“Yeah, I can see that, and feel that.” Dad sighed. “Why don’t we let the beautiful and talented Liz decide what part of my body she’d like to be working on?”

Just then Dad yelped as Liz pushed his ankle in a direction ankles generally aren’t designed to go.

“Oh, gee, I’m so sorry, Mr. Kane,” Liz said in mock surprise. “Did you feel a little twinge there?”

“Okay, okay, you two. Have it your way. Just don’t enjoy yourself too much down there, eh Mike?”

“I won’t if you won’t,” he replied.

“I guess I could be
squeezing my balls
while you’re doing that,” Dad said straight-faced but carefully enunciating and emphasizing the wrong words in the sentence.

“Good idea, Mr. Kane,” Mike replied. “That’ll save you some time this afternoon. Physio multi-tasking. I like it.”

“All right, all right. But I’m so bored with
squeezing my balls
.” Dad reached with his right hand for the two black rubber balls resting on the tray mounted on the physio table. “But I know my day is not complete without spending at least a couple hours
squeezing my balls
.”

Thanks for that, Dad. Neither Mike nor Liz reacted in any way to my father’s juvenile comments. No eye-rolling, no looking at one another, no deep sighing. They just kept their magic hands working on his inert left leg. I guess context is everything.

It probably goes without saying that my father’s sense of humour stopped developing in adolescence. It was trapped in high school like an insect in amber. He pushed the two black balls into his compromised left hand and did a fair impersonation of the human squeezing action.

Only then did Dad look over and see me standing in the doorway.

“Ev! Hey son, thanks for coming.”

“Dad, I come every day. You don’t have to thank me. It’s what sons do when their fathers are in sick bay.”

“I know. But, well, thanks anyway,” he said before nodding to his two physios. “I get this every morning. I feel like a
NASCAR
stock car in for an hour-long pit stop.”

“Except in a
NASCAR
pit stop, there’s no flirting with the pit crew, or keeping up an endless stream of off-colour banter,” I replied.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that, you’ll have to excuse me, as I must
squeeze my balls
for a while longer.”

“On behalf of the patients, family, and staff of this hospital, that line is getting very tired, Dad.”

“Bullshit, it’s a classic. It never seems old to me.”

“Clearly.”

We’d just “enjoyed” lunch in Dad’s room when she arrived. I didn’t mind the food at the rehab hospital, but Dad was sick of it by then. He was propped up in his funky, multi-positional, Swiss Army knife of a bed that seemed to have a mind of its own. I’m no expert, but I suspect it could do everything from folding Dad in half to catapulting him across the room, depending on the mood – the bed’s mood, not Dad’s. Fortunately, at that moment, its mood was sedate.

“Hello, boys.”

We both looked up from our lime-green Jell-O to see her standing in the doorway. She looked amazing, dressed to the nines, not for a night on the town, but for an executive suite boardroom. Business chic all the way. Now I’m not sure about the terminology
here, but my mother was standing there wearing what I think is called a power suit, in a striking shade of blue. Her stiletto heels added another four inches of altitude to her already above-average height. She was accompanied by a young nervous-looking man in a business suit who carried what I assumed was my mother’s purse and a shiny metallic briefcase. She turned to him.

“Nathan, you can wait for me down the hall in the reception area.”

He nodded, turned on his heel, and headed back down the corridor.

Through all of this, my father was staring at her, slack-jawed. One of the black balls escaped his grip, hit the floor, and bounced over to Mom. She caught it on the second hop and handed it back to him.

“I think this belongs to you.”

“Christ, Evelyn, will you look at you!” Dad exclaimed. “It’s like you just stepped out of some magazine.”

“Hello, Billy,” she replied. “It’s just another day at the office. But it’s Florida, so I thought azure was the right shade.”

“You got that right! Zowie,” Dad said, still staring her up and down. “Did you drop a few pounds?”

“I might have lost a bit of weight. Who knows? I just don’t have time to check.”

“Well, maybe your little bag-carrier, Nathan, can schedule a weigh-in,” Dad replied.

She leaned down toward Dad and whispered. “I’m not sure he could handle that yet. I’m still working him in.”

For the first time, she turned to me.

“Ev dear. You look good.”

“Hi, Mom. You look great. When did you get in?” I stood up to hug her.

“I arrived a couple of days ago but have been locked in meetings till now. We’ve got a big sod-turning with the mayor and a bunch of other hotshots tomorrow at the building site, so it’s been a little crazy,” she explained. “You can’t imagine the petty politics wrapped up in a stupid little groundbreaking ceremony. They drive me insane. If everyone doesn’t get a goddamn shovel to hold while they preen for the photo op, their noses are out of joint. Well, I’ll friggin’ give them a shovel and put more than their noses out of joint. It’s so infuriating. I just can’t believe …”

“Helloooo!” Dad cut in. “It’s okay, honey, I’m fine here flat on my back in a rehab hospital, you know, major stroke and all. But don’t worry, I’m going to be okay …”

She stopped her tirade and reached for his hand.

“I’m sorry, Billy, I’ve just a few things going on right now. I’m a bit preoccupied.”

“Really! You don’t say,” he replied. “Well, I can sure see what is
not
preoccupying you.”

“Billy, don’t be like that. I’m here. And things should calm down a bit after tomorrow,” she soothed. “Hey, you look great. In fact, you look just the same.”

“Yeah, well, you haven’t seen me on the walking paths out back. I look like the goddamned elephant man.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” she said.

Dad just looked at me. Then Mom looked at me.

“Well, the elephant man is a little harsh. I’d say he gives off more of a Quasimodo vibe, but not as scary.”

“There, you see, Billy,” Mom chirped.

Surprisingly, we had quite a nice visit. It was strange seeing them together. They were civil to one another, and Dad was clearly pleased that she’d come. I suggested the three of us tackle a walk on the grounds, but Dad begged off saying he’d rather do it on his own later on. I think he just didn’t want to put his full disability on display in front his ex-wife. I understood. So we just talked for a while. After a few minutes, Mom seemed to stop obsessing about her job, at least for a while. But about an hour later, she suddenly turned antsy and started looking at her watch. She summoned Nathan the purse-bearer, and the two of them left shortly thereafter. He trailed a few steps behind her. She promised to come back.