Hunting Lost Causes

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck. I’m on my hands and knees, throwing dirty jeans and grey socks over my back, stopping only to paw at every sweater pocket I come across. Goddamn son of a bitch. I sit back on my heels, sigh and smack my thighs; it’s a lost cause and I know it. What is this, number fucking thirteen? This one cost me a fortune too; camera, mp3s and flat as a credit card. The first one, at least, had been just black and white.

****

We were on a mission and as wild as supervised, suburban fourteen-year-olds could want to be. No sprints, no push ups, no defensive drills; just dead balloons, yellow sunglasses and four and a half oranges. There I was, scavenging with the basketball girls, and my mom had let me borrow her cell phone. Jesus, was I ever freakin’ cool. I called the dollar store, touched base with the other girls and wouldn’t let the phone out of my hand. Coach wanted to find out where the rest of the team was? I was on it. We needed a twist tie? I’d call dad! I was in the zone and ready for anything.

Suddenly, a need to make dinner plans arose and my hand shot into my pocket, already imagining the smooth flick with which I would open my cellular device and the resulting marvel of my team mates. My hand hit cloth, and I panicked, scrambling to grasp at both empty pockets three or four times before I even got that the phone wasn’t there. Nor was it on the seat, on the floor, or in the snow bank under the back tire. Oh God. That piece of luxury had been entrusted to me by my very own mother and it was gone. I was going to be in a whole lot of shit.

I still remember the lecture I got once I dragged my feet through the front door, up one side and down the other, until my “lack of responsibility” sunk into my “thick skull.” She then shoved me into the car to take me wading through ankle-high snow at each one of the seventeen different locations me and my team mates had gone scavenging. It wasn’t anywhere to be found, of course, and I spent the next two weeks staring at the ceiling in my room, knowing I would never lose a phone again.

****

I get back to my feet and shuffle towards the bedroom door, kicking at my backpack one last time in a vain hope to see the little black thing come tumbling out of its pouches. Fuuuck; nothing. I’ve done this so many times now that I know the drill by heart. I lean into the hallway and ask loudly to borrow a phone from someone; I’ve got to make sure the local shop has my model – their cheapest – in stock so I can pick it up ASAP. Once I get it, I’ll call Mom and tell her I’ve been busy for the last couple of days.

Research

“Umm… What is a drinking game. Jeez, that’s a hard question. It’s where you play a game and, say, if you get something wrong you have to drink. And it’s kind of a social thing where everyone gets together and it makes it more interesting, I guess.”

“I probably have a lot more funny things to say when I’ve been drinking, ’cause now I’m sober.”

“A way to pass time while – well, it’s like a catalyst, enhancing the speed at which you consume liquids in good company.”

“They’re a lot of fun if people are not used to each other or it seems a little awkward. It’s something else to focus on, as opposed to staring awkwardly, sitting in a circle, slowly sipping on your drink.”

“Awkward situations: that’s the best time to drink. You walk in, you don’t know anyone, so you start one and suddenly you make friends. Woo!”

“I hate people. Which is why I dislike drinking games; I don’t like team things, group things. But I guess every once in a while if I’m with a group of people and I like them ... but I think they mostly happen ’cause you’re with people you don’t know and you don’t really want to talk to them, but you want to get drunk with them and then people get drunk and are like ‘you’re my best friend, this is awesome.’”

“Drinking and fun go hand in hand.”

“It’s also like stepping it up a notch. Like when we did [Egg]Nog-Pong; it wasn’t necessary but you know it was awesome.”

“Oh I really like Waterfall. Sociables. It’s got a load of different names, I think it’s pretty well known ’cause you get to watch other people do stupid shit. You have a bunch of different rules and you can be totally strategic. Like ‘Whenever Roxanne takes a drink, Abbey takes two!’ and shit.”

“You learn a lot; mostly super-weird secrets about people. Like, it only gets fun when you start asking awkward questions.”

“I like Three Man, ’cause it’s simple. Nobody has to pretend they’re mooses or anything, like Sociables. I don’t know why: ‘Do an accent, ladies drink or guys drink!’ I just don’t really like them in general, but if they’re simple I don’t have to do anything stupid.”

“How much do you love Flip Cup? And Beer Pong! I like the team thing. Those things are extra fun.”

“’Cause you get to do something physical. It’s like ping pong, and ping pong is played officially, in the Olympics. So, really, it’s like I’m drinking beer for the Olympics.”

“What else would I do, sit outside and have a smoke by myself? …I guess so. Well why don’t we play monopoly and I’ll just drink and we can call it a drinking game. I think every game is meant to be drunk with; everybody gets their competitive side out and then we find out who the competitive asshole is.”

“I play ‘cause I don’t like the taste of alcohol.”

“I think a lot of them are hype things. Apparently a lot of people play them ’cause it’s like ‘yah! Let’s drink, let’s do something stupid, let’s go out and drink!’ You wouldn’t necessarily if you’re with a couple of friends with a glass of wine. But I think it’s a hype thing mostly.”

“There’s a lot more peer pressure, so you get a lot more drunk.”

“By the time you get to the end of the game, you’re pretty messed. They usually end in somebody being ill or something like that. Then usually it’s like well “my friend” did this but, you know.”

“One time, my friend got naked and pole danced for us.”

“I’ll never do that ever again.”

“They’re not for kids or injured people. Ridiculously messed up? Once, this buddy face planted while trying to do the worm. He laid there on his face, moaning.”

“It’s fun, but it’s probably not very appropriate.”

“No, dude, definitely no. I’ve seen way too many games gone bad. Shit always hits the fan, things go down, people start crying. Do I not condone it? … I like seeing people cry.”

“I don’t see why they’re bad, it’s a social thing. It’s also sexual.”

“I never really liked it ’cause, ah… it was all about getting drunk, but I guess that’s the point, so I don’t really know what to say. I’m just a cynical bitch. I can admit that.”

“…yeah I like drinking games. It’s big, it’s universal – ’cept for people who don’t drink.”

“Well, exactly.”

Little Details

“I think it looks like a penis.”

“Really? I was thinking rocket ship.”

“No, definitely penis.”

Thirteen minutes of staring at the thing, and this was all we had managed to conclude. Not why it was there, what purpose it might serve, or who the hell had erected it. I took a sip of my coffee, handed it off to the roommate I’d dragged out for research purposes and straddled the cement construction.

“How ‘bout now?” I said, reaching over the top to get fingers under the edges of its cap. “Think I could ride it to the moon?”

“Your kind of ‘ride to the moon’?” she asked, swirling my coffee and smirking. “Definitely wouldn’t be the rocket ship.”

It had taken two and a half years for me to stop and examine the greyish lump I’d passed on my way to and from class – alright, fine, it’s hard for a gutter-brained girl not to notice a vaguely phallic statue side-lining her daily bike route, but this was the first time I’d gone out of my way to look.

“Man, I didn’t even know this thing was here,” she said, handing the coffee back as I slipped off of what could have been a wing or ball – depending – and took a step onto the patch of dust around it. We were smack-dab in the middle of campus, buildings in four directions and five steps from a coffee shop, examining a three-foot-high, concrete block. No wonder it got about as much attention as the gumball under the fridge.

We split up the structure; she looking for plaques on the flat, triangular outcrops, me kicking at the dust around the base, knocking over a metal box that revealed nothing but a ground tap. So I tried another method of inspection, leaned in – nose to the cement – and took a whiff.

“Maybe it’s a fire-hydrant. Like, for dogs or first-years.”

“What kind of fire-hydrant has wings?”

“Naw, you’re right,” I said, clambering back on top of the statue, thinking maybe I’d find an answer from atop the cap. From my square-foot perch I instead discovered that not only did it still look like a penis from above, but affirmed that it was about as useful as a seven-year-old’s Saturday afternoon Lego tower. The sloped cement pieces jutting out from each side could not possibly be sat on, be stepped on, hold coffee mugs or grow flowers. Not that the surface which I was standing on was good for much else, either.

I finished the dregs of my cold coffee and turned to further examine the surroundings of the cement lump. It was thrusting out from a tiny dirt patch set between a paved square and a field, home to two sixty-foot totem poles, complete with plaques and recognition.

“You know, it’s gotta be a penis. Like, a faculty joke.”

“So you’re, uh, coming to a conclusion, eh?”

“Ha-ha; funny joke,” I said, chucking my empty coffee mug at her. “But seriously, dude. What the fucking else would it be?”

I tried to ask a few questions later, maybe get a few answers, but nobody knew what I was even talking about. I campaigned the square around the statue, interrogating bewildered students – most of whom could hardly find it when I pointed to it with my notebook – and a few of the nearby coffee-shop staff.

“Oh, that grey-thingy? Yeah, that’s been there for a while, I guess,” offered one such employee, holding a stack of coffee filters. “So d’you want the African or Light Roast?”

I ended up camped out on top of the thing, waiting for a member of the grounds crew to come by and eating rice crackers until I saw one raking leaves between the totem poles. I ran up to him, introducing myself with cheese dust fingers, and asked him if he could tell me what exactly the statue was.

“I’m not actually sure,” he said slowly. “Why don’t you check the library?”

But even the librarians failed me. Cocking eyebrows and pointing me in the direction of university databases, not one of them knew about the little structure on the other side of the grounds. I found not a picture, article nor a mention of a small, concrete rocket ship anywhere on campus.

“It’s a bit too odd-shaped for a penis, anyways,” my roommate said, tilting her head to the side and eyeing the concrete chunk I was still on top of. “There is way too much ball for that length. Completely disproportionate.”

Spoken Sex

Earlier that evening I’d thought that straddling him would somehow quash his desire to speak with me in broken Spanish. But no, the fact that his English was better and my German outweighed both made no difference to him; by the time we got to my apartment he’d convinced himself that the best method of communication would be the language he was worst at. So he continued by yelling “si, guapa, si!” thinking that I’d either be unable to hear his thick accent or that I’d admire his drunken efforts to practice Spanish with an English speaker.

I let him get away with a couple kisses the next time I ran into him, but spent the better part of the evening introducing him as my perrito tonto (or stupid puppy) while he grinned and nodded, proving my point. I hadn’t even thought about his intellect or linguistic skills the first time around. He could have spoken Mandarin for all it mattered, and I still would have taken the idiot home. There had been something about the way he’d swaggered, the way he’d grabbed my waist that had me wanting to humour his Spanish all night long – at least, until I got bored of it. It’s not like it made a difference what language he had chosen to digress my love of mushrooms in, anyway.

Having spent most of my adult life hitting on English speakers, I never fully realized just how easy it is to get the message across; though, it’s not like a “come-hither” look can really get lost in translation. One evening I didn’t even speak to the guy until we’d stepped outside together after more than a few sideways glances and an over-the-crowd cheers.
“You don’t speak English. Español? Aucun français? Aber Deutsch?” Ja doch, but he knew just enough to get me bee-lining it past the last couple bars in the opposite direction.

A Moroccan boxer eventually talked me home, making me dry off after a shower before he threw me into bed and checking Africa off my To-Do list of continents. A couple weeks later, while I lay on his covers, drunk and pointing out that my Spanish was probably better than his, he grinned and told me he didn’t speak any anyways. Then, of course, he proceeded to admit that his favourite part of sleeping with me was the way I’d mumble in English, imitating what I presume was supposed to be my very own “Oh God.” And there I was thinking it was my dashing good looks that had gotten me laid.

I could have been saying “green country cheese!” for all it mattered; I was female, naked and lying in his bed. Not that sex was ever a conversation-based past-time anyhow; why should I care if I can’t discuss the possibility of the ice caps melting while humping in the back seat of a car? After all, it’s almost sexier when the only thing you understand is what you’re both after.

Ten Reasons to Date a Writer

Because this has been done for every sport known to man and I have a serious case of writer's block.

1. We’re always looking for ways to make things more interesting.
2. We can spend weeks figuring out the best way to get things started.
3. We know how to evoke a response.
4. We devote hours to working on just one piece.
5. Once we’re focused we won’t let something drop.
6. We always end things with a bang.
7. We will keep reworking things until we get them just right.
8. We always go at something from all angles.
9. We’re not afraid to try something new for a better reaction.
10. We’re not afraid to shock and appal

Pointless Ideas

I’m not sure exactly when, but at some point this spring I got the idea to write about packing. Yes, packing. In retrospect, that’s the most boring fucking thing I could have ever possibly conspired to put on paper. It might even be worse than the “piece” I wrote for a journalism class on the dangers of bunnies; that, at least, was mildly entertaining bullshit. Fortunately for you though, once I got around to writing it I realized a story about packing would likely rank last on my personal list of must-reads and that I would be embarrassing myself were I to actually post anything of the sort. It was also around then that I started to seriously question why anyone reads anything on this damnable “blog.” (Or why I even have one. Ew.)

Obviously, any sort of writer who doesn’t have his or her head shoved so far up their ass they can see their tonsils has to wonder what it is about their stories and their word choice that makes for good reading. It’s the sort of doubt that I can never really shake and tends to come out in full force whenever someone tells me they’ve read something I write. Did they like it? Did they look like smirking idiots at the café? Did they really, honestly, truthfully think my couple hundred words were something worth reading? Especially considering my propensity to write vague, rambling stories about my childhood love for Barbies; why for the love of God would someone waste ten minutes of their day reading that?

In all honesty I’m quite in love with the process of writing in itself. I love setting myself down with my laptop, I love trying to pull together a logical story and I absolutely adore playing with words to spell out exactly what I want to say. What escapes me, however, is what it is about the final product that gets people reading. On days when I’m desperately trying to avoid chores or homework, I get to looking through my notebook and rereading old, half-assed stories and I have to wonder how far up my ass those ideas came from. After all, I don’t see why anyone cares about what goes through my head when I lose a notebook or why I read Cosmo; I sure as fuck wouldn’t (if it weren’t my own).

The worst part, I think, about spending so much of my spare time rambling is that I’m actually trying to make a career out of it. Not only am I expecting people to take time out of their day for my stories, but I expect someone to pay me for it. Yeah fucking right. Who’s about to hand me money for opinions as irrelevant as the snail squashed to my front step? Sure, I get the cursory “I loved what you wrote, T!” from the people I manage to bully, staring them down while they look over a newspaper page I’ve handed them, but it’s impossible to be completely fearless when my future depends entirely upon luck and talent. After all, when was the last time you saw a recruitment agency looking specifically for a sarcastic, highly impatient and egotistical young writer lacking any sort of legitimate experience or professional recognition?

Sometimes, I wish I could just give my notebook away; let someone else run with my many, many, pointless ideas only to post them on the internet. I’ve thought about it. It’s not like I have anything pertinent to say, in any case – unless you define my personal vanity as pertinent. But then, I’d be giving the opportunity to question the very point of spending hours in pubs and hundreds on beer just to yadder on to no one in particular to some other, self obsessed writing student who’s post them on the internet. And I just couldn’t let that happen; not when I have a story-sphere to maintain.

Examining Online Literary Absences

Subject: Tanysia
Occupation: “Student” a.k.a. non-existant
Height: 179 cm
Weight: Female

19:09 – Subject enters seating area, carrying laptop by top of screen. Chooses deteriorated couch and places laptop on lap.
19:10 – Subject moves laptop to couch and leaves to kitchen area. Email visible on screen.
19:13 – Subject returns with assorted rice crackers and tomatoes. Replaces laptop on lap.
19:21 – Subject finishes rice crackers, removes laptop and returns to kitchen with dish. Blank text document visible on screen.
19: 23 – Subject returns with glass red wine. Replaces laptop on lap and begins typing. Subject pauses, stares out front window, takes a sip and continues typing; this time slower. This continues for 37 minutes.
20:00 – Subject’s glass is now empty. Subject places laptop on coffee table in center of seating area and leaves to kitchen area. 8 lines are visible on screen.
20:06 – Subject returns to laptop with glass in hand. Bends over to tap keyboard before leaving to stand next to front window. “Facebook” is visible on screen.
20:22 – Subject has now spent 16 minutes staring out window and glass is now empty. Subject leaves to kitchen area and returns with opened bottle of red wine. Fills glass, sits and replaces laptop on lap.
20:25 – Subject reads page aloud several times.
20:26 – Subject deletes several lines of text.
20:34 – Subject has now been staring at screen for 8 minutes and glass is now empty. Refills glass.
20:36 – Subject removes laptop to coffee table and leaves to kitchen area. Media player is now visible on screen.
20:39 – Subject returns with ham slices and lies on same couch. Program is now playing.
22:56 – Subject officially* concludes no more work will be done.

*Note: “officially” refers to the subject’s own verbal confirmation of the obvious.

Cleaning Tips for New Roomates

- it is possible to keep everyone from knowing your on the rag if you actually wipe the blood off the toilet seats

-you can avoid weeks of disgust by simply mopping the dog piss off the floor

-the fantastic colour of the marble floor really comes out if you ash cigarettes and joints not around the tray, but in it.

-if a rough schedule for taking out the garbage is hard to hammer out with the roommates, an excellent timing indicator is the rotting juice that eventually forms around the bottom of the garbage bag

-a good way to show your appreciation for a job well done is to avoid walking over a freshly mopped floor in sand caked shoes

-carrying that bucket of your overcooked, three week leftovers all the way to the door does not actually mean that it’s been taken care of

- while the effort to cook and actually make use of our minimal kitchen is appreciated, it would be better were you to actually eat what was cooked, as opposed to letting in biodegrade in a pot for a week

- you’ll feel much better the morning after if you actually empty the garbage bin you used to throw up in

- sweeping every four or five days is not actually considered “excessive” in most households.

Babi

“I probably shouldn’t say this to you,” my Czech grandmother tells me in the middle of Prague as we walk through a very busy park, “but I don’t like Czech people. They’re not very… intelligent.” She then goes on to explain, in the true style of a woman both in love with historical details and now slightly senile, how the invasions of the communists and the establishment of the Czech Republic as a worker state ran anyone with any degree of intellect out of the country. And it is exactly for that reason that she likes living in the middle of the old quarter with all the tourists. “At least they’re not Czech.”

This, of course, might be shocking coming from any other 82-year-old, chocolate-toting grandmother, but from my Babi? Never. Not after having received calls from her telling me that having many “friends” as opposed to “one friend” – by which she means boyfriends – is much better at my age (after all, I need to be “free”) and that stupid people are boring. Not when she tells me she would have gone to university earlier but was too proud to spend a year pulling potatoes as the communists dictated, or that she thinks lip rings would get in the way of kissing properly. Not when, at breakfast, she asks me how many bottles of wine we’ll need for the day.

Visiting with my Babi has always been a treat; especially as I got older. The more I grew into myself the clearer it became that my parents would never need a Maury Show DNA test and I was quite obviously my grandma’s own. We’ve always been the “soft science” outcasts of the family – discussing sociology, language, and wine– and neither of us seem to be capable of functioning on our own. During an evening out, one of my cousins told me that he and his parents often had to put my Babi directly into a cab otherwise she would neither leave nor find her way home. Ironically, that same evening I somehow made my way to her apartment only to find myself incapable of actually fitting the key in her door. The next morning, between a couple of Advil, a litre of water and after having declined the offer for more wine, Babi told me that it must have been very difficult to know which key was which at 4.30 in the morning; naturally, it had nothing to do with my blood alcohol percentage.

Living through the Russian occupation, Babi was never permitted to leave the country, let alone travel. My grandfather – an international marketer of communist goods – spent years bringing trinkets home from around the globe until the two of them made a break for Switzerland and travelling liberty. Since then, I doubt there’s a cruise ship they haven’t boarded, a flight they haven’t taken, or a restaurant yet to serve my Babi wine. When I was ten my grandfather passed away, leaving his poor wife to open her own cans, fry her own eggs, and call her own taxis. Since, with an empty house and places to see, none of the family could tell you exactly where at any given moment my Babi can be found – maybe Turkey, France perhaps, or the middle of the Mediterranean – or whether she’ll have time to talk were you to call.

The night before leaving her hundred-year old apartment, we finished one last bottle of wine and plotted our next rendezvous. Maybe La Palma, Paris, or somewhere in Melanesia. We’d have to find the perfect halfway point; somewhere with good restaurants and centuries of history where we can spend the day meandering from cafe to cafe and all night exchanging stories. Only next time, I’ll bring the wine.

Travelling Tips

Departure: Row 24 Seat D – Even though the people crawling outside look cold, it is pertinent to refrain yourself from suggesting that the flight attendant let them in and to remember that not everyone is taking the same sort of trip you are.

Stop 1: Calgary – Once the ugly lights come on, the loud banging noises you hear are no longer music and it is no longer an appropriate time to dance on the speakers.

Stop 2: Mississauga – Agreeing to see your 60 year-old aunt’s new dance moves means that you will actually be subjected to impromptu dance lessons and to reassurances that you’re a “natural” even if you’ve already stepped on her feet twice and only ever get the first step of the Cha-Cha right.

Stop 3: Amsterdam – Spending most of the day smoking up to recover from a hangover is in no way advantageous when a tour bus full of Slavs thinks it would be funny to take impromptu pictures with you at the ferry docks.

Stop 4: Prague – Spending $30 on beer is equivalent to paying to wander the streets alone and lost at about 4.30 in the morning on the way home from the pub two doors down. And then having to call your grandma to let you in when you realize you’re not physically capable of fitting a key in the lock.

Stop 5: Vienna – Being able to say “I can speak [language]” does not actually mean you will understand a word of it when someone questions you, gives you directions or asks how you’re doing in four different ones within ten minutes.

Stop 6: Neuchâtel – Fireman carrying the biggest guy you can find around the club does not, contrary popular belief, completely eliminate your chances of getting laid.

Stop 7: Lausanne – Teenaged exchange students still find incredibly creative ways to drink themselves into a stupor, and even more creative ways to stash it.

Stop 8: Montpellier – People inconsiderate enough to commit suicide on train tracks cause not only massive complications for railway customer service representatives, but massive – occasionally overnight – delays for anyone traveling those tracks.

Polish Nutrition

“Here, what would you like?” I say, brandishing a can of tuna and some crackers in a friend’s face as he sat patiently waving away my advances. “Popcorn. D’you want popcorn? I might have some. You sure you’re not hungry?” I continue pulling things out of my fridge and cupboards until he agrees to have some of my left over lasagne and I sit across from him, sipping on chocolate milk and completely self satisfied.

Visits with my mother’s (and polish) side of the family has always meant meeting relatives I never knew existed, struggling through conversations in broken English, cheek pinches, ass pats and being fed more than I could possibly have needed as a girl of any age. Wandering in and out of the kitchen, my Babcia would tsk at how “skinny” I was and my aunts were consistently disappointed when I declined a fourth helping of dinner. After all, I was their unfortunate guest and there to be fed, watered and pinched.

As I got older, though, it became clearer that it was not only some odd poor-country impulse but something that simply made them happy. I tried for years to turn down the generous, albeit constant offers for food or drink and my polish family were not only disappointed, but ridiculously persistent. At the very least I would need to eat some fruit and have a drink. It took a couple of years before I learned that I would have to pass from household to household tactfully eating only a small bowl of my Babcia’s homemade chicken soup so that I could manage to eat one of the sandwiches my aunt had made and later the cakes presented to me by a great aunt twice removed, each one of them carefully watching and beaming as I forced my way through the ninth meal of the day.

One family-filled month I spent a morning watching my grandmother butter half a loaf for breakfast and pondering how to subtly get rid of the pierogies she would feed me an hour later, directly before an aunt came to pick me up for lunch. My aunt in turn could not figure out why I didn’t finish the pot of rice that she had made alongside my tray of vegetable chicken only to ask “How about dessert, Nishy?” squeezing my face with her hands. Later that evening I would be treated to a reunion barbeque and half a bottle of Zubrowka vodka - to be chased with homemade cherry liqueur, of course. Despite being raised Canadian and lacking what I would see as an old country need to feed, my mother herself will sit me down the instant I get home from a flight, place a beer in front of me and then point inside her fridge asking what, exactly, I might like to eat. At least being Polish generally means I get a few beers or Vodka shots with my indigestion.

I believe my own symptoms surfaced around the time I was graduating high school and started taking on the sole responsibility of entertaining my friends. Before, I would have already microwaved myself a pizza pocket only asking “Oh, you want some too?” once I’d seen my friend eying my plate at the table. But gradually I got into the habit of sitting them down, grabbing them a glass and then running through the list of what was available in the cupboards. Having drinks at my house soon meant that everyone would be standing around the kitchen island while I chopped cheese and salami, occasionally interrupting the flow of conversation to squeal and run to the cupboards when I remembered the crackers.

On my way from the beach one day, leading a troop of drunk guys home for dinner before the bar and in the right frame of mind for some deep self contemplation, it hit me. “I’m fucking polish!” (while smacking my roommate for proper emphasis.) There I was, marching my friends to my kitchen so that I could dice carrots, boil pasta and watch to ensure that every one of them was properly fed and nurtured before a big night on the town. I was the very product of my genetics and bloody well incapable of denying it.

Some weeks later, sitting on a plane after a couple of days spent with my Babcia and doubting I could ever eat again, I found myself wondering if the guy beside me might like a few of the chips I had with me. He did, of course, look kind of undernourished.

Embellishing Barbie

When I was still young enough to appreciate the unquestionable coolness of a pink leopard print skirt and green high heels, I had a collection of Barbies more developed than that of my current liquor cabinet. It was one of those things that I would silently gloat over whenever school was out and my friends came over to play, snatching the prettiest doll and setting the scene before my friend would even have a chance to browse through the drawerfull. After all, they were my barbies and it was my house.

It was persistently the storyline, though, that was my favourite part. My Barbie, always exotically named and naturally fashionable, would be an actress on an outdoor set who went sky diving off mile high trees in her free time, she would attend her sister as she gave birth to a dead man’s son while trying to cure her friend’s fatal disease, or become enslaved on a distant planet by a treacherous king prone to fits of madness. And, of course, she would end up falling madly in love with a handsome, one armed ken-doll named Brett.

As I got older, my stories evolved from the dramas of your average fairy tale and became the stage to a burgeoning curiosity of the world outside my pink and yellow house. And, really, I blame Brett. By the time I was eleven, I don’t think I could make my way through a play date without somehow working in a nude scene – not that obscenity was actually a concept I grasped; nudity is just fun, you know?

There are only so many ways a prepubescent girl can think of to legitimately get Barbie naked though, and when I eventually figured I was mature enough to wear my own makeup, I figured I was of an age to start writing down my stories. Not to mention that working nudity into a game with my properly raised and god-fearing friends proved to be more difficult than it was worth. I would sit, in what I imagined was the brooding author pose, slouched over my crinkled papers, and stare at the streetlights down the road for inspiration. When I finally pieced together a two page story (and it was often about a girl, say, thirteen or fourteen years old who was rescued from chores, or homework or general tedium by the boy of her dreams), I would come downstairs for chocolate milk and accidentally tell my mom who would simply insist upon reading it, forcing me to hand it over.

Unfortunately, my ability to come up with the sort of stories worthy of a Passions or Lost episode died sometime as puberty was kicking in; I instead became woeful, bitter and, at one point, as deep as an “empty cavern” (whatever that means). Never mind Brett; I was a champion of my tumultuous emotions – the ones hidden by “smiles painted on my face” and unrequited by men who had “forgotten me” allowed me to consider myself truly artsy and brooding. I even carried a bloody book around. Though, looking through it now makes it painfully obvious that anyone with eyes and a passing knowledge of the English language should have told me that rants about immature high school kids do not make for good reading.

Long gone are the days of quadruplets, talking horses and witches in orange jumpsuits. My Barbies no longer play out odd fantasies, and Brett and the girls have made their way into the hands of the next little girl and the next set of adventures; it’s my creativity, though, that seems to have wandered off with them. No longer could I sit you down and tell you the story about the farm girl who fell through quicksand and, well… you can fill in the blanks. The point here is that I’ve come to resort to such bullshit as pretending that my own life is worthy writing material and have spent years trying to pass off my drinking stories as legitimate drama. But honestly, I’ve been wanting to meet a talking horse so bad.

Sleeping Naked

Reasons Not to Sleep Naked
1. Bugs may crawl up your cootch.
2. Fire has an extra 56 seconds to engulf you, effectively ending any further sleeping opportunities.
3. Your roommates likely do not appreciate your ass as much as your Puerto Rican co-worker.
4. Sleepovers could get awkward.
5. In the case of alien abductions, successful anal probing would be much too easy.

6. Getting dressed with a full bladder in the dark can result in some highly unfortunate accidents.

Reasons to Sleep Naked
1. You are ready for sex at all times.

Unshakable Schedules

When I was four years old, my parents caught me licking a handrail. And of course, being the rebel that I am, I wasn’t taste testing the sort of germs your average little girl is apt to lick; instead I had my tongue all over the banister of a busy downtown mall. In Kenya. Not only do I imagine I came out of that mall on my own two feet, but I’ve yet to test positive for either AIDS or malaria and I take that as my first introduction to invincibility.

Naturally, I’ve spent nearly every day since testing that theory. I’ve gotten lifts from the bar only to spend five hours in a buddy’s drug house prohibited from knowing the address to call a cab, I’ve hit the ground so hard I forgot where I was only to get back up and keep chasing down the ball, I’ve broken bones, bloodied knees, I’ve left home to live with foreign strangers at fifteen and I still refuse to wear a helmet when I bike. But Jesus, can time management really fuck me over.

As much as it wounds me to say it, I have to admit defeat. I am not superwoman. I am not invincible. Instead, a measly seven-day schedule can have me jittering like a twelve year old boy in a girl’s change room and I still have to somehow come off smooth enough to get laid over the weekend. By Tuesday evening, I’d be four wine bottles deep and praying that the three tests, two projects and twenty working hours I had yet to even start were behind me and that I might wake up next Monday afternoon with nothing to do.

Of course, it’s not as though I could simply stop trying to juggle everything at once. I’m young, robust and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give up on any of the one things I’ve committed myself to – sit around and study all day when I could be sprinting hills before lunch and after class, calling my mom at the grocery store, and chugging mickeys between work and the bar? As if that were even an option. So fine, I gave in to that motherfucker of a schedule I made for myself and dragged my way through weeks of organized exhaustion; I disappeared from my favourite pub, spent Saturday nights too drunk to remember seeing my friends and, worst of all, let my keyboard get dusty. I spent every waking moment wishing I was drunker, or at least bruising bitches on the field, and let myself give up the one of the few things I do alone (excluding the time spend getting myself off).

Now that class is over, though, I can safely say that I have not only restocked my kitchen for the first time in five weeks but I no longer feel the need to neck punch most of the people I am forced to talk to on a daily basis. That being said, having the time to comprehensively envision the painful, prolonged deaths of the customer’s that call in at work has certainly helped. Give me another week or two, some time with my laptop, a good lay and I won’t be able to recall why on earth I shouldn’t do this again next semester. Me, invincible? Obviously.

Not to mention that writing five paragraphs devoted solely to myself has never failed to make me feel better, so fuck you.

Goals

1. To have time enough to go through my day without having to schedule in fifteen minutes to take a dump. Although, adding another three hours to the clock would likely work.

2. To find an attractive man willing and able to do me properly, three or four times a day. Engaging personality and remote intelligence optional.

3. To conquer near every language known to man (five languages is hardly enough) exempting the made up ones, like Klingon or Chinese.

4. To fit rugby “enhanced” thighs into the jeans I wore last summer.

5. To have a housemaid willing to follow me around with a dustpan and excavate my bed from under my piles of clothes occasionally. A dishwasher would be nice too.

6. To be able to afford my own alcoholism and provide for that of my friends.

7. To purchase and wear shoes like normal women; although, I think that might require surgery to reduce not only my unfortunately elephantine feet but six-foot stature.

8. To make a living spending the most part of my day discussing myself (literally or otherwise) constantly. Hell, I’d settle for mild fame.

9. To achieve #8 by writing more interesting things than fucking lists.

Competing Cardiovascularly

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls; I have an announcement to make. I, yes I, have been going on runs – runs for Christ’s sake. Oh but Tanysia, you might say, that’s nothing new, you play rugby after all. Of course I do; what the hell does that have to do with it? I play a contact sport, willingly subject myself to hours in the weight room and the whims of a coach who is more competitive than I am with a few beers and a pong table, but I do not like running. In fact, I more or less detest it. Yet, here I am, voluntarily folding up my laptop every second or third day and putting down the rice crackers to tie up my running shoes.

I have never been much of a runner, failing out of beep tests in grade school before I even broke a sweat and secretly praying my strep throat tests would come back positive during the cross country unit, although I can admit to a history of jock-like tendencies. If there was a boy to wrestle, a girl to body check or point guard to stuff, I was there. Ask me to be there faster than at walking pace though, and you were to be sadly disappointed. I would get there when I got there, never mind that cardiovascular bullshit.

Falling in love with sports, though, did eventually force me to face the fact that running to the ball was not just something my coach was yelling at me to do, but actually benefited my desire to win. So fine, I gave in and began to run a little; I would grudgingly do sprints at practice, tag along at the back during team runs and maybe book it down the field once or twice a game when the adrenaline peaked.

But never have I ever taken the initiative to hit the trail outside my house to run for a couple of kilometres of my own volition.

Rugby season this year, however, placed a solid boot to my behind and has gotten my ass to move like it never has before. This being the result of many months worth of my very own sweat, I was naturally loathe to let my newly minted behind soften over the Christmas break and concluded that I would actually follow my coach’s ridiculous advice and go run. So, gathering my resolve, I laced up my runners and stepped out onto the porch; this was it. Surveying the paved battleground before me I tentatively took a couple of long strides and then a couple more. Okay, not so bad. Didn’t I do this at game pace with the team three times a week? Next thing I knew, I’d done the five kilometre loop around my neighbourhood and had actually made it back without collapsing in convulsions, fainting, or shrivelling due to the excess energy burn (this would be quite the feat considering my stature, but you never know, right?). For whatever reason, running had become not only easier but semi-enjoyable. That’s right, running.

It wasn’t until one sunny afternoon when spring fever had me jittering in lecture like a six year old in need of a pee break and I ditched out on class to go running that it actually dawned on me. I was enjoying the activity for the first time in my life and it felt good. Fuck, I might as well have discovered I was superwoman. Getting a call from my mother shortly after this revelation, I jumped on the chance to gloat and quickly regretted it when I heard my mother experience what I’m sure was a quasi-aneurism.

“You- you did what? You went running?” she gasped, before telling me that she’d call me back once she’d had a bit of port.

Sadly enough, anyone I’ve known for a good proportion of my life responded to the discovery of my newfound like – I still can’t bring myself to “love” such an uncompetitive past time – with much the same shock. I suppose I wasn’t the only one who noticed I’d rather walk and miss the bus than risk running. Well hell, this new voluntary exercise thing has me past that and my youthful aversion to anything cardiovascular, and man do I ever plan on running down the competition.

With Love

Dear Internet;

I understand I haven’t been so attentive lately, veering from my normal course of ramblings, curse words and stories I hope to God my parents will never, ever read only to abandon you for the cause of a published column – but, please, do me a favour and make me famous? After all, I can only rely on the outrage of bitter, old university directors for so long before I, too, get lost in a sea of nameless writing students. Hell, I’d settle for mild popularity at best and perhaps a couple hundred fans that haven’t directly met me – preferably some that don’t even live in the same geographical location as I do. That’d be cool.

You know what? For you, I might even divulge a few more stories detailing some of my recent less-moral indiscretions and risk the internet creeping skills my dad has seemed to develop of late. I do know just how much you enjoy my juvenile obnoxiousness! Besides, you know I love you so much more than any silly old newspaper – where else would I get to foster false hopes quite as fixedly as I do than with you?

Oh, and just for you this Valentine’s, I wrote a poem:

Roses are pretty, but Peonies cost more,
Thanks to you, though, I won’t forget Rule 34!

With love,
Tanysia

Do Me Financially

I had never really thought about it before. Money, that is. At least not until last Christmas, when I received what I tacked up to be a second rate gift from parents out of ideas. Unwrapping a thin, rectangular object that I was secretly hoping would turn into my own personal Cabana Boy (or other such entertainment), I pulled out a book entitled “Making More Dough”. Great. Thanks ‘rents. It’s not likely I would ever be raking in much cash at any rate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, so what was there to increase?

Still, curiosity finally pushed me to crack the book and suddenly I was nose deep in a chapter explaining how to cut bank fees and loving every word. Had I actually been spending at least three whole dollars every time I withdrew from a street corner ATM? Appalling! Could I really make ten bucks a month in interest on my savings account? Certainly! Revelling in what was sure to be new found affluence; I would walk into the mall, coffee shop, or the local grocery store with just that much more confidence. I would buy that half price tomato sauce and be able to afford it, goddamn it!

Turns out my new book was just as satisfying as the Cabana boy I had been dreaming of in the end (not that I’m about to let any willing candidates know that). Hell, I was even feeling hotter at the bar; money is sexy, after all. I could keep myself well hydrated without having to rely on the guys that sidle my way and offer to buy me whatever I was feeling that night — not that this was generally an issue, considering how long I’ve been perfecting my approach to pre-drinking and normally had a bottle of wine safely emptied at home. Being able to strut around in thriftily acquired designer jeans, brand new heels and picking up not the ten dollar, but the sixteen dollar wine left me feeling self-reliant, in control and with more assurance than is healthy for someone who already makes a career out of her confidence.

Nonetheless, when I accepted a tequila shot from a rather nondescript young man a few weeks into my new fiscal plan, I couldn’t help but wonder why there was something about his swank that had piqued my interest and had me suddenly giving him the once-over. I remembered, though, an encounter I’d had with a guy who I’d chalked up as my type only to have him spend three quarters of our (very brief) chat drunkenly boasting about how he had barely been able to afford cover that night, when it came to me that it was their show of financial security (or lack thereof) that had caught my attention.

Dad the ecologist would explain this away as my biological inclinations to find a well established man, but I’m sure it can be broken down to the simple fact that money is hot. Hell, if I feel like the meagre dollar or two I’ll be putting into my savings makes me powerful enough to control my fiscal future, what kind of statement are the shots bought for me and my four girlfriends making? After all, if he’s financially comfortable enough to drop some of his hard earned cash on me, instincts tell me he’s in control and has it together (no matter how disastrous he might turn out to be), and that’s fucking sexy – despite my book’s enthralling money saving tips.

Untamed Directions

The other day I discovered that my hair first thing in the morning vaguely reminds my roommate of how complicated travel plans can become. The mirror before my morning coffee regularly reflects a mess of different choices and different directions I could take. Would it be best to head east, like the strand at the very back of my scalp? Or perhaps a trip, imitating the curl above my left ear, to Costa Rica and back would be the best way to go? In the end, most people would just sigh, wash out the tangles and do their hair exactly as they would any other morning. I, on the other hand, am left to struggle with the sort hereditarily stubborn hair that refuses to settle into any sort of decent direction and accept that I simply have to go with it; I simply have to take the course plotted by the rooster’s crest I awake to.

My compulsion to get up and leave has proven itself to be, like my hair, something I find uniquely difficult to tame. The very idea that I am stuck in one town for the next three years to do something as inconsequential as “graduate” strikes me as the sort of tragedy books are written on; or rather aren’t, considering the lack of inspirational new terrains or languages left to conquer in Victoria. Instead, I’ve taken it upon myself to scrape my already liver-drained bank account empty and go anywhere at any time the student life will let me.

The itch to follow the kinks in my early morning tresses began to really bite early last year and I started soliciting friends to follow me to Mexico; mundane and touristy but something I had yet to get a taste of (besides, who wouldn’t love to spend a solid week tequila soaked on a beach?). And did I ever fucking solicit; you could have probably seen the knee high boots and neon belly tops on Google Earth. Of course, I got plenty of offers; a little nudge from one friend proclaiming how much they’ve always wanted to visit Mexico, another saying they’d long dreamed of spending spring break on a beach and yet one more who nearly drooled as much as I did at the idea of unlimited drinks. But, somehow, whenever it came time for me to walk into the travel agency’s office and take a stab at my credit, the friend mysteriously came down with an inability to pull their shit together.

So I sat myself in front of a pitcher. Hey, if I couldn’t drown myself in tequila for spring break, I planned on spending plenty of time with the Canadian alternative. Dejectedly sprawled in a booth at my local pub and drawing borders in the foam at the bottom of my pint, it came to me that this was not the first time I had been forced to curb my wanderlust after a partner in crime had come to their senses. Other people had incomes they couldn’t put on hold, a second half they couldn’t peel from their hips, or, you know, shit to get done.

And yet none of this seems to have even the slightest effect on how I wake up every day. I still can’t get that cowlick to sit smoothly on my neck, deny myself an opportunity to be anywhere unfamiliar, or come close to comprehending why so many people can’t push themselves outside of their home circle. Why bother with all the wistful sighs and talk of packing up your suitcase if you can’t even bring yourself to get a passport? Then again, that leaves the untold stories, untamed hair and uncharted men for me.

Tried, Tested and Truant

I still clearly remember the first time I skipped. My best friend of the week and I had ditched our eighth grade Health class to spend the 45 minutes rebelliously hiding out in the girls’ room, complaining about our monstrous parents and counting the paper towels stuck to the ceiling. It was glorious and it was the start of a long love affair with truancy.

At that age, though, just about everything I did was driven by a pubescent desire to stick it to the man; and, man, what was cooler than skipping? I could be both completely unproductive and have the time to be as catty as every fourteen year old girl needs to be. The basement bathroom became our lair; we would sit there for the period, trying to avoid both teachers and leaky toilets while discussing the more important things in life. Who had yet to develop a new set of womanly goods, who was slutty enough to French kiss a boy and how grossly inappropriate the Gym teacher was.

It wasn’t until I left for my exchange year in Switzerland that I discovered how much more of the world was open to me when I wasn’t confined to the classroom. I could easily spend my time visiting my friend the town over, on a shopping spree or, better yet, seeking out apples to hollow out for later use. By the end of the year, I decided to go back to a Français class I had been systematically avoiding, only to have the teacher exclaim that she had believed I had left the country a couple of months prior. Either way, it wasn’t like my time would have been better spent learning literature or chemistry in a language I barely understood.

Of course, I didn’t spend any of my time bothering to learn chemistry once I got back to my home soil anyway (after all, it’s not like knowing the melting temperature of iron is going to help me on my path to literary infamy), and my teachers quickly made a habit of congratulating me when I made it to class on time, if I managed at all. My homeroom teacher, however, had the misfortune of being both anally retentive and responsible for my attendance, and my love of truancy can be faulted for several of his panic attacks. At one point, my mother was called in to discuss my perpetual ditching, to which I kindly informed her that if I could maintain the sort of grades that would land me in any university I wanted, my attendance record could go stuff itself. What followed was the greatest maternal reprimand of my life.

“You are an asshole, Tanysia,” she told me over dinner that night, “and nobody is going to like you.” She was, of course, referring to the apparent lack of respect my absenteeism shows to both my teachers and classmates, but it was nonetheless one of the best and most inspiring quotes of all time. It was at that moment that I decided to prove my mother wrong. I would continue to spend as little time as possible in my classes, run in panting half way through a lecture and still somehow have friends.

So far, so good. As a matter of fact, I have yet to be called an asshole by any of my professors, nor by any of my friends; other than, perhaps, the time or two that I’ve directly insulted them (but that’s beside the point). The last couple of years at UVic have allowed me to determine I can avoid both class and being called an asshole. Take that, Mom.

Resolving What?

It wasn’t until several days into the New Year that I realized it had even happened. After all, I don’t quite remember getting past the Eight! I shouted around 11 or so and, as far as I’m concerned, a booming headache does not mean the rest of the countdown ever reached Zero. But the evidence was against me; the calendars have changed, I’ve been forced to date my many bills with an ’09 and, somehow, it’s January again. Alright universe, I’ll take that extra 365 days to prepare for my next New Year’s hangover.

The question I’m faced with now, though, is not whether or not I’ve managed to survive until 2009, but rather what creative set of resolutions I need to come up with for this year. Were I to ask my mother, I would certainly be sat down with a bottle of her favourite Port while she admonished my heavy drinking and advised that I start thinking of my liver. I would undoubtedly sip from my glass and sagely refer to the old adage that “it’s not alcoholism as long as you’re a student.” Which of course means that, despite my mother’s (and numerous acquaintances’ and colleagues’) advice, I could not possibly resolve to drink any less liquor, nor would it be humanly possible to consume any more. Besides, I’m fairly certain liver transplants are common practice these days.

I suppose I could always rely on the old favourites of many a Resolutionist and try quitting smoking, exercising more or perhaps losing weight; but those are the most ineffective (not to mention bloody boring) resolutions I’ve ever heard of. While each resolution has its own merits and may very well be effective for your average accountant, I might as well tell myself “be healthier” and hope for the best.

Faced with a dilemma like this, I turned to my favourite fallback for imaginative solutions; TV. Within moments, I stumbled upon the Friends episode revolving around Ross’ decision to try something new everyday; not bad, I thought, in the way of resolutions. Supposing I could give it a try, I mentioned this newest decision to a friend of mine, who nearly choked on her beer.

“Don’t be ridiculous, T. What is there left to try that won’t get you killed?” Valid point.

Having thoroughly exhausted my ideas and my will to bother, I determined that this would be the year of no resolutions; the year of doing exactly what I feel like and no more nor any less. I will refuse to follow through on anything for any longer than I feel like and to start afresh at any point, on any date, at any hour. I will be a liberated woman, free to do exactly as I please without thought of the consequences for this New Year.

Not that a resolution like that changes a thing anyway.

A New Year

Holy fucking shit.

Wait, what did I manage to do now? Did I leave my bra in my parents’ driveway again? Wake up three hours from home or accidentally end up with four guys snorting coke off of my naked ass? No, no, I can assure you that (unfortunately) I am actually quite put together and simply sitting in front of my little laptop as per usual. But… really? Jesus Christ.

It took a couple of minutes to register (alright, a couple beers and a drag or two) but I’ve actually been maintaining my own little corner of the internet for a solid year. A year, people. That’s more dedication to a self-motivated project than I ever would have thought possible of someone who can’t sit still for more than, give or take, five seconds at a time. And the fact that it’s not just a project but a bloody blog? That takes not only devotion, but an acquired ability to force myself to avoid gagging at the very thought that I have joined the hundreds of thousands who believe their mundane, laundry and traffic filled days are worthy of sharing. My ambitions are paired with those who feel it’s their duty to tell us their sister called them fat? Ugh.

I recently decided, though, that I would instead call it my “storysphere” and completely avoid the travesties of labelling my work and my glory as a “blog.” This way, I get to pretend that my eventual infamy is more of a reality than it would be were I just any other 19 year old woman sitting in a pub and publishing completely irrelevant material to the internet. This being obviously impossible, seeing as I really think of myself as more of a chick or broad- never mind woman.

The most fantastically bizarre thing about realizing that I’ve been supplying the internet with my nonsensical opinions and stories for over a year is realizing that there are actually saps out there who read it. Not only have I managed to convince the people who love me, but those who have only my stories to go on to applaud me for being a disaster. On top of it, there are still those who insist I work it like a real writer and try to market myself for my own benefit. Doing what; stripping with my web address written on my tits? Actually, now that I think about it, that just might be a fantastic idea- plus, it’s likely to draw in my target audience and make me all the more eligible to star on Jerry Springer.

It must be said that it is nonetheless more rewarding to know that there are people who appreciate my self-importance over that of the person who believes we care that they got dumped; especially since I never really liked that Humble Pie my mother was always talking about. The most satisfying part about managing to maintain my storysphere, however, is not the underground writer’s scene nor the obvious adulation I come across on a daily basis, but that I get to talk about myself for hours on end and call this “marketing.” So there, basement bloggers! Besides, who gets laid telling people they write a blog?