Self (15 page)

I quickly lost interest in anthropology. I found pre-Columbian New Mexican pueblos magic in my imagination but dull in reality. Their study was like a reverse form of undertaking, where the bliss of death is shattered by a reanimation leading to a paltry, diminished life. Civilizations were reduced to monographs with precise drawings of floor plans and cross-sections of pits indicating where each artifact, each pot shard, each bone was found, with dry academic paragraphs surmising the tribe, the linguistic grouping, the level of artistic achievement. Like saying “My grandmother — she was an extraordinary woman,” and pointing for proof to a tattered dress and shoes of a long-ago style. I suppose these tatters are better than nothing, but they were not for me. (Though later, in Turkey, in Mexico, in Peru, I would stand in
the troglodyte churches of Cappadocia, climb the pyramid of Uxmal, run along the lines of Nazca, and I would feel the magic again.)

I became interested in philosophy. In fact, were it not for the study of wisdom I doubt I would have lasted more than a year at university. I found philosophy genuinely stimulating. I still remember the trepidation I felt upon entering Plato’s
Republic
. Even more astonishing to me was Descartes’s radical doubt and Berkeley’s
esse est percipi
. I readily admit that Plato’s
Republic
is hopelessly hierarchical and undemocratic, that Descartes’s starting-point of we-are-perhaps-but-puppets-in-the-hands-of-a-mean-puppeteer is the very definition of paranoia, and that closing one’s eyes and refusing to perceive has never saved anyone from an oncoming truck — but it was not the products of these ruminations that struck me so much as the process. I was taken by the careful, open think-through of things that characterizes the philosophical method. It was both simple and very difficult. I rose to the challenge. I too would be reasonable, I said to myself.

It was several months before I had my first period. The exalted view I held of the menstrual cycle dimmed considerably the morning I awoke in bloody sheets after a night disturbed by fever, headache and nausea — I thought I was coming down with the flu. My reaction was horror and shock. I jumped out of bed. There was blood on the sheets, on the mattress, it was trickling down my legs, now there were several drops on the carpet. And the pain — this was serious, I felt awful, down there and in my head. So this was what Sonya was talking about! This ache, like having a rubber band wrapped around your testicles. I could nearly vomit for it.

I knew that it was coming, that it had to come, but to me it was like death: the oldest story in the world, yet still a surprise. You will tell me, “Oh, that’s nothing. You were eighteen. An adult. Intelligent and resilient. Imagine having it when you’re
twelve
. A child. I remember I was at my friend Stephanie’s …” and you will tell me your story. Perhaps. No doubt. Thank you. But that’s no help to me. I whispered to myself whatever a person can come up with to make the unbelievable believable: that it was normal, that I should be proud for I was now a woman, that it was only once a month and all I needed was (and I reviewed all the pharmacies I had visited with Sonya), and things like that. But at the same time I was thinking, “This messiness, this filth, this stench, this pain — once every month! THIS IS UNFAIR, COSMICALLY UNFAIR! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO! I want out. I want to be sterile. To hell with reproduction. I want to be reincarnated as a mule, the last of my line.”

I tried to get my act together. I believe I was whimpering. I opened the door to my room, bloodied sheets in hand, off to attempt cleaning them in the sink — and who should be in the hallway at that moment but Mrs. Pokrovski. Who always greeted us with a smile. Who treated us as her own children, perhaps missing hers, but without judgement or intrusion. Who had the warmest hands I have ever touched.

She turned. I didn’t move. That day was not the day for clean sheets.

“Is something wrong, dear?”

Some words you can only say looking away into mid-air, and you’re conscious of every hollow syllable. “I—just—got—my—period—and—I—made—a—mess.” I could feel my face going red. The awareness only increased the rush of blood. I was this close to bursting into tears.

“Oh, that’s no problem.” She came up to me. “Here, give them to me.” I let her take the bedding, though I hardly unclenched my hands. I was mortified at the thought that she might see the blood, which I had buried at the centre of the ball of sheets. “Come along, I’ll give you some clean ones.”

I was wearing my bathrobe and in my underwear I had stuffed about sixty-five tissues, but still I walked gingerly, as if I were the last brick securing the Aswan Dam.

She unlocked the closet. It had a full-size door but it wasn’t a walk-in, though the shelves were cut away just enough to allow someone to step in and close the door. Which is exactly what I felt like doing. There was something about that closet, so cosy, so orderly, that I found comforting. One shelf was stacked with perfectly folded bed-sheets and pillowcases; another was the domain of toilet-paper rolls; a third sheltered cleaning products, each for a precise purpose; and on the floor lived a sturdy vacuum cleaner with its long nostril and attendant parts. From a clothes hook at the back of the door hung Mrs. Pokrovski’s street coat. And lastly — what drew my attention most — there was a shelf of odds and ends.

A bottle of Aspirin.

Alka-Seltzer.

A thermometer.

Batteries (AA and 9-volt).

Two boxes of Bic pens, blue and black.

Disposable razors, blue and pink.

A can of shaving cream.

Needles, threads and other notions.

Laundry detergent in small sandwich bags.

Bars of Ivory soap.

Snickers chocolate bars.

Lined writing paper, for notes and for letters.

Envelopes.

Stamps.

A bottle of White-Out.

Scotch tape.

A stapler.

A box of paperclips.

A big box of tampons.

A big box of sanitary napkins.

Everything in a perfect little order. It was like looking at a city from high above, with its buildings and streets.

None of it for sale. All for giving.

She gave me two sheets and one sanitary napkin, which she neatly laid on the sheets. I looked at it blankly.

“Um, thank you very much, Mrs. Pokrovski. Um, how much do I owe you?”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” With a smile.

She closed and locked the closet.

On her part-time salary as a housekeeper she stocked things to handle student emergencies. Or so-called emergencies. For example, this immature eighteen-year-old who was overwhelmed by her first period.

Except for a quick trip to the drugstore, I spent the rest of that day in bed.

When I got tired of feeling that I was wearing diapers, and wet and mobile ones at that, and my mind had worked itself up to confronting the logistics of menses, I took to using tampons.

That Christmas I went around the house and had everyone sign a big card for Mrs. Pokrovski.

I imagine this is atypical, but in time I came to enjoy my periods. No singing and dancing about them — but quiet
satisfaction, yes. It’s not that I felt linked to my body because of this blood. I didn’t. Sex linked me to my body; exercise; extremes of temperature; hunger; sun in my face. My menstrual cycle had the opposite effect. I felt it happened
to
me, not with me. It emphasized to me how foreign and separate my body and I could be.

But what it did make me feel was linked to other people. Every month this non-arrival of future humanity reminded me that I was part of a
species
, of something larger than just myself, whether I liked it or not. It was as if I lived in complete isolation in the country, never seeing a soul, except once every twenty-eight days, when on the road not far from my house a bus full of noisy people roared by. My period was like that bus — baffling, interesting, annoying, marvellous.

When a friend pointed out to me that the lunar month and the menstrual cycle are of the same length, I thought it was astronomy’s gift to flaky women. Then I remembered the charismatic role the moon plays in ocean tides; how the earth is round, but its waters are oval. Now when I see a full moon I imagine that it too has tides that ripple across its surface. I can nearly see them. They are red.

Back on earth, the tantrums of this small wilful being called the uterus can be a real burden. The bloody mess I produced on a night bus in Turkey — I still can’t believe I didn’t wake up — comes to mind as a perfect example of this, the unmitigated hassle of it, the maddening exasperation (and of course my backpack, with its salvation of tampons, clothes and towel, was deep within the bowels of the bus, and I was wearing pale-coloured pants). Mercifully, my cramps were never so bad that I couldn’t go about my normal day (though I certainly didn’t forget about them; my uterus made damn
sure of that), and my cycle was as regular as Kant on his walks in Königsberg, and my flow manageable and of predictable duration — but I had friends who were nearly incapacitated by their periods. Cramps that made them wince. A touch of fever. A day or two at home in bed. A seemingly endless blood flow. This preluded by PMS so bad they circled at least one day a month when they would “disconnect from reality”. This is an arduous feminine normality. It would push anyone to worship the goddess Anaprox. But even in these cases, I feel that the burden remains a meaningful burden. It’s like a large suitcase you have to carry on a long trip. You hate it, it slows you down, but at the end of the trip you open it and it’s full of things, some of which glitter. Or imagine hearing a sound only through its echo, how you would turn your head, searching for its source. Or imagine having a small oboe within you that once a month begins to play, but only a few notes, never giving you the full melody. Oh, I don’t know, something like that.

(Another reason I came to like my periods was that I grew tired of
dis
liking them. I was pulling a tampon out, glancing at it to check how much I had been bleeding, about to toss it into watery oblivion, when this distaste wearied me. I decided to make my periods beautiful. “This dull ache, it’s a sign of good health.” I looked at the red tampon again. “My system works.
I
work. Good.” My cycle was like the German language. When you travel you meet Germans, countless Germans; the Americans export their culture but not their tourists; the Germans, the contrary. In the depths of West Sepik, Papua New Guinea, you will meet Germans. Behind their backs — and sometimes not — in a conversation among non-Germanophones, will come the almost universal conviction that “German is an ugly
language,” as harsh as sandpaper and mostly barked (the usual winner in this Miss Universe beauty pageant of the languages, tears streaking down her face for joy, waving her white handkerchief at her adoring fans, is Italian). Well, I heard this dumb drivel once too often. With a will, I decided the opposite. With its words as long as novellas, its syntax like a medieval cathedral and its grammar like Einstein’s science, German became my favourite foreign language. In Montreal I took a series of Goethe Institute courses and for years my bedside book was Heinrich Heine. Every night I read a few pearly pages. I’ve also read some Nietzsche in the original, stuff of incendiary lightness and wit.)

I met Elena on my first day at Ellis. She was American, one of a number who came to study in Canada because university was cheaper here than in the States. We were both at Strathcona-Milne. I can’t remember who introduced us. My memory starts when I am already in front of her. The weather was warm and she was wearing a new dress, a light summery thing. She was standing barefoot in the grass of the Quad, the communal area between the college townhouses, feeling the fabric and appraising the pattern and lifting the dress and letting it fall. I noticed her tanned legs with their few shiny blonde hairs. She looked right at me. “Hi, I’m Elena,” she said. The words went straight to my heart. She was not very tall, her voice was slightly raspy, she often wore her sandy blonde hair in French braids and she was a true beauty. She was very young — I don’t think she was eighteen yet — but she had an intelligent self-possession, I might even say a dignity, that made her seem much older. We fell into easy conversation. We were friends right away. And right away I was in
love with her. I spent the better part of two years studying wisdom while my heart thumped with pain. To maximize my misery, I used to go swimming with her, beholding a body that I could love only in dreams, and I stayed in Roetown with her the summer between my first and second year. I took a course in ancient philosophy (Parmenides and the Eleatics, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato, Aristotle) while Elena took one on medieval romance (she did her major essay on courtly love. It was a painful irony: she told me all about the subject while I, her courtly lover, listened attentively).

She lived at S-M in a townhouse with five other students, a heterogeneous group thrown together by the college office. One of her housemates was a Hong Kong Chinese named George. He always wore a cap. For some reason — a free act of generosity — he took it upon himself to be my romantic manager. Over the course of two years I spent hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours with Elena; we saw movies, plays and lectures together, we went on long walks, we took a few weekend trips to Toronto, yet I don’t think she ever realized that I loved her, and how much it consumed me. (It’s true that I hid my love well, followed a practised pattern.) Within two weeks, however, George was greeting me at the door of their townhouse with “Hi. You are looking very nice. That dress suits you. Elena will like it,” in his clipped, smiley, Hong Kong Chinese English voice, and at the end of visits, when I was feeling hurt and lonely and hungry, he would walk out with me and encourage me, or try to, with “Don’t give up. Give her time.” He was sweet.

But Elena was soon in love with Jonathan, who was nice, I had to admit, who was a struggling actor, who was older, who played the saxophone. My love was something useless.