Curiosity

Every day growing up, I would hear the same thing yelled at me over and over again. “Stop asking so many damn questions!” Honestly. You think I don’t shut up now? Imagine me six-years-old. I wanted to know everything, understand everything, touch everything, smell everything, try everything, hell I even wanted to taste everything. Building with a second door? “Mom, why does that building have a second door?” Man with a muzzled dog? “Dad, why does that dog have a cage on his mouth?” And when he sighed and told me something about keeping its mouth shut (and then going on to mutter something about buying one), I’d look back at the dog with a small “oh”.

“Do all people have dogs with muzzles? Can I have a dog? How old do dogs get? How many kinds of dogs are there? Can I touch that dog? Have you ever eaten a dog? Can I eat a dog?”

The problem is, not a damned thing has changed since I hit puberty and moved out of the house. I swear to god, were you to give me the option of a million dollars or a shoebox with mysterious contents (What could be in it? Flight tickets? A lease to a house in the Caribbean? Oh! A lizard? What about a billion dollars?), I’d be hard pressed to choose the million. And I’m not exactly rolling in dough.

The other day I stumbled upon a tray sitting on a pillar outside covered in mysterious potato-like lumps (Why were they outside? Why were there so many? And on a tray? Were they edible? Who would have put them outside, were that the case?). Naturally, I stopped dead and side tracked to go pick one up. I poked it and squished it and smelled it a little, but just as I was breaking it in half, a man stepped out of the building beside me.

“Put that down! What – did you just fucking think you’d go help yourself to something to eat! Throw that out! I can’t use it!”

Flabbergasted, I backed away from the plastic tray, potato-hunk in hand and told him that I had no idea it was his and had no intentions of eating it. “But… what is it?” The man, however, had huffed his way back through the door without even the courtesy of telling me and I spent the rest of the day wondering what on earth I had just picked up. And the worst part is that I still don’t know what the fuck the thing was.

All that being said, I got a message the other day from a guy I haven’t talked to in two years (I had to ask myself, what’s he doing now? Is he still in Calgary? What does he do with his spare time? How old is he, again? I wonder if he still goes out for drinks.). It was a short, sweet, simple little note telling me he enjoyed my writing. Dope. No, really – it totally made my day. But it made me wonder (apart from what pieces he’s read, whether he usually reads, if he’s been creeping on my facebook statuses, etc.), how many people actually read these things? Honestly. I get so many completely random, unexpected people tell me that they have, in fact, read some of the shit I post online that I really, really, really wonder who reads this. Am I imagining all of this? Am I posting stories to the vast, electronic emptiness that is my future career? Are these people even real?

So, please. Let me know? Because it is driving me up the motherfucking wall.

Viceps

The instant I see his wiry frame turn the corner, a smile splits my face and I launch myself in his direction, hurtling into a bear hug.

“Codyyyy!” It’s been way too long. He drops his arms around my waist and asks, grinning, if I’m ready for a beer or seven.

“Yeah, dude. How was your summer? Any crazy stories? How were the chicks? Oh man, I have so many stories!”

Cody opens the door and I follow him under the red neon signs and into the Thursday evening crowd. This pub has never failed us; we’ve been getting drunk together here since we turned legal three years ago and it’s the first place I go every time I’m back in Calgary. He swings his jacket onto the wooden back of one of the small chairs to the side of the room. Jesus, his shoulders are benefiting from all that fight training. I follow suit and sit across from him, smacking my palm on the solid table and demanding he begin at the start.

“Of my trip? Or of my women?” he asks, raising a slim eyebrow and I smile; he knows me disgustingly well. I can’t help but think like the men I’m so in love with. I’ll clink beer glasses to a well-executed tackle and take a punch in the shoulder for making a crack at the size of a buddy’s manhood. I’ll weasel out weekend blow job stories and throw darts with the best of the boys; hell, I might even be the fucking champ when it comes to being goddamn vulgar. But I love good gossip.

Cody’s chosen a great spot; the guy facing me from the table behind him is rocking a faux-hawk and a wicked jaw-line – almost like Mike’s, actually. Cody leans in, head narrowly missing the low, dusty lamp, and tells me about this one time at a beach in Puerto Vallarta and this other, after a bad case of food poisoning.

“So there I was, making out with this hot Australian at four or five in the morning and she’s got one hand down my pants when suddenly I realized, ‘Shit! Gotta go!’” he laughs. “Hah, yes, I know: terrible pun. I knew you’d like it. I tried to make it happen after that, but every few minutes I had to run, and there was no way I could explain that gracefully.”

The waiter butts in and I order a jug of honey brown, tilting my head slightly in his direction and sliding a hand up my neck. If only every man I knew could fill a shirt that admirably, thought I’m pretty sure I would get a lot less done were that the case.

“Did I ever tell you about my boss in Spain?” I ask after the waiter‘s left with our request, and Cody shakes his head, leaning back like he’s apt to, waiting for me to rattle off another story.

“Well, Paco – how typically Spanish is that? – Paco just loved women. He was the kind of guy that would forget we were talking the instant one walked by our bar. Granted, I learned a lot of different ways to say ‘tits’ in Spanish.”

Naturally, this provokes a brief vocabulary lesson and we sit there throwing dirty foreign words at each other loud enough to hear an offended gasp come from the couple in a booth across the room. Sneaking a look, I wonder what kind of tablette de chocolat the jaw-line guy one table over might be sporting. Last time we got together, Mike wasted no time throwing his shirt down to show his own off.

“Anyway, Paco. He was so bad that whenever I bent over to pick something up he would stop to watch and then ask me whether I‘d be inclined to help him do inventory later.”

“Did you?” Cody asks; the sort of question implying he’d already assumed so.

“Nah, too old. He was pretty good looking, though. And Spanish, awesomely Spanish.”

Cody smirks, hand waiting on top of the empty green coaster.

“Did I mention I love Hispanic women? They made me want to stay in Ecuador forever. Maybe I can find one to polish my door knobs and handle my broom stick, if you know what I mean. Anyone else in Spain?”

“A couple - oh, thanks.” The waiter’s back with our beer and filling glasses. He has the most steely pipes I’ve seen in a long time; I can just imagine his phonebook-ripping skills.

“Did you just lick your lips?” Cody asks once our server is gone.

“Pff, no.” Yes, definitely. “But there was this one guy… Crazy motherfucker knew a girl he wanted to marry. At 21. Marry. How ridiculous is that?”

“Ridiculous. I can’t even find a woman I don’t want to strangle after hearing her babble for two hours.”

“Hey! Some of us know how to converse!”

“You’re not a woman, you don’t count,” Cody tells me, placing a hand on mine and attempting to rub in some sort of comfort. “No one interesting on your end? It must be hard for you, considering your ineptitude as a woman.”

It really is. I get bored of men faster than a sugar-hyped six-year-old in a university lecture hall, and it doesn’t help that I spend more time hanging with my guy friends than I do painting my nails. Finding someone that is both man enough to carry me home when I’ve pulled a muscle and keep my sexual attention past Tuesday is really fucking difficult. Although, Mike did do a bang up job of squashing that spider for me last week.

“Asshole.”

His eyes crinkle and he raises a glass. The pub has become a clinking whirl of pre-weekend celebrations and we’re no longer the only ones that are catching up at the top of our voices. People have started to crowd around the table behind Cody and it’s a shame, since I no longer have a clear view of any of the god-like examples I saw milling the pub before. I look around for the waiter; the jug’s empty and I wouldn’t mind a reason to bring him around again.

“What ever happened to that tall guy?” Cody asks, remarkably focused for someone who just helped me finish a jug.

“Which one?” I say, scanning the crowd for scruffy faces and broad shoulders; maybe he’s here.

“The one who took you out?”

Oh, Mike. His eyes do the cutest little scrunch when he laughs.

“Eh. I don’t know. I mean, he’s kind of funny. And he’s sort of interesting, I suppose.” And I guess I really like him. I swig the dregs of my beer and shrug. Like hell it‘s ever going to work out; I’ll probably be unable to let him hold my hand on the couch and he’ll likely find a petite blonde to bake him cookies. “But I don’t know if he’s anyone I want to see with clothes on.”

Snorting, Cody picks the jug up and waves it at the waiter from across the room, who nods and hurries towards the bar.

“You’re just afraid of commitment. You can‘t even say the word ‘boyfriend.’”

“No!” It‘s a problem. I’d rather be single than bend to any sort of restrictions, regardless of how much I might like the reason behind them. “You know I’m just fucking picky. Besides, variety is the spice of life. Why would I settle for one ride when I have so many different models to choose from?”

Cody laughs and I smile. This is exactly what guy friends are for – never mind boyfriends and cuddling. The waiter works his way through the crowd and, smiling, stops by to switch the empty jug for a gloriously full one. His smile doesn’t have a thing on Mike’s. Cody refills both of our glasses.

“Here’s to you,” he says, raising his beer to meet mine above our wooden table. “May you be awesome forever.”

I down glass. I can really only be awesome on my own.