Group Work Honestly, all I called for was clarification on a homework assignment, so it was immensely surprising that after that, we were still talking. She was one of the few teachers that I respected at the time, since I was going through my own impression of the rebellious teenager phase. The subject of a girl in the class came up; one that I was hopelessly attracted to. My teacher asked me why I never talked to her, since it was obvious that I liked her. She said it was easy, which I now know is true but back then, it was a matter of perspective. She also said that waiting for the right moment can be good or bad; sometimes both.

After that conversation, my crush and I were placed together for group work more often. The gesture was innocent enough, but knowing that it wasn’t by chance was unnerving. It worked, though. The girl and I became friends. Never anything more. And once I knew her better, I realized I didn’t really want her. Sometimes both.  ¶ 7:10 AM

  Stranger In Shadow There is no great story behind how we met, even if I could remember it, so it should be enough to say that we met and that it wasn't in person.

I was going through a bohemian phase then; pretentiously artistic with self-delusions of grandeur. I tried to surround myself with people of similar delusion so that I could hide in their shadow. Something happened then that I won't get into now, and suddenly my ego was overinflated and invincible. I felt that every woman in the world desired me and it was expected that I indulge them. So I did. I flirted with her. I made her dream.

Then I made mistakes. Many. And I repeated them; not once, but some several times over. Suddenly I was once again human and able to feel emotion. Suddenly I realized that actions have consequences that resonate through other lives as well. I told her, I think, that I was not the person I claimed to be. Not in a sense of identity, but in a sense of purpose. She must have already known this, because she told me she wanted nothing to do with me.

Years later we met again, and still there is no great story to it, except to say that I fell into that old strange self. Once again I felt invincible, that I was desired and expected to indulge the world. That my actions would have no effect on anyone else. I thought that this time I could control it, but in the end, as in every end, I'm fallible and dissolute.

Looking into her eyes reminds me of this. That I'm an imposter.  ¶ 8:11 AM

  Rage My throat was sore, I couldn't talk. His life was derailing, he wanted to scream.

I picked him up from his house, where he was waiting outside on the porch. It was already late into the night and the city was quiet. I drove through the streets in no particular direction, going straight through green lights and turning when they were red. He said everything that was on his mind and raised his voice when the frustration was too overwhelming. Problems with work, problems with relationships, problems with living; all coming out with a volume some might find unnerving. I didn't mind. I knew then, just as I know now, that sometimes it's not what you're saying or how you're saying it, but that you're saying it at all.

I didn't offer him any advice because I had none to give. And even if I had, it wasn't what he wanted. All he needed was an audience, silent during the performance but present for the applause, because from time to time we all just need to scream.  ¶ 8:57 AM

  Dinner By Firelight I had vegetables boiling, gravy simmering, wine breathing, and was just about to carve the roast when she arrived at the door, dressed in her usual remarkable appeal. The table was set out in the living room, by the fireplace I had never used before, which I had just lit when we sat down to give us a nice romantic glow.

We toasted our glasses and began to eat, talking about this and that between bites and sips. There was a smell in the air that reminded me of something burning, so I got up to check if I had left the oven on. I hadn’t. And when I returned to the living room, there was a gray haze between her and I that I immediately realized was coming from the fireplace. In my haste to be romantic, I’d forgotten to make sure that the flue was open!

I wasn’t sure how to open it because it was old and stiff and the chimney was much too full of smoke to investigate. I ran around the house trying to find a flashlight. The smoke detector started to chirp wildly as the entire house filled thick and gray. I opened every window, replacing the smoke with a cold February chill.

Once we could breathe without coughing, we sat back down and ate the rest of the meal with our jackets on, laughing at the awkwardness of this incident and the fact that it was only our second date.  ¶ 8:27 AM

  Playboy Last night I went through boxes and boxes of Playboy magazine dating as far back as 1965. They were given to me by someone who no longer wanted them, and I've had them in storage gathering dust for about five years now. It’s interesting to see how much different the world was back then, from the technology to the music, from the advertising to the language. An entire generation captured in ink, with their own unique culture, style, and behaviour. It’s easy to look back at those times and laugh until you realize that in fifty years there will be people laughing at us. And while I was looking through all those magazines, it reminded me of something when I was young.

My friend and I walked to the local convenience store to get some candy, or so our excuse went, because really we were just going in hopes that we could catch a glimpse of one of the dirty magazines on the top shelf. Sometimes a copy would be left down at the bottom and it was easy enough to hide it within something else, that way you could look at the whole thing without anybody catching on. That day, some tall saint had left at least six different magazines of varying morality down within our reach. We stayed in the magazine section, burning the details of the female body into our innocent minds, until one of the employees asked us to leave.

When we arrived back at my house, my mother had made a big batch of pudding that was cooling on the kitchen counter. Without thinking and without knowing where my mother was, I asked, loudly, “Mom! Can I have some Playboy?”

Thankfully my mother was out of the house at the time and didn’t hear my Freudian slip, but if you would have told me then that one day I would have more Playboy magazines than I could ever possibly want, I might have believed you. I also might have asked who you were, how you knew this, and why you didn’t bring me a few issues as a sign of good faith.  ¶ 8:36 AM

  Closing The Gap She was a friend of a friend of a friend, and there were no loose ties anywhere between, and though that was the closest distance between us, in the end it didn’t matter. We closed the gap.

That night was a first for me. I had never stayed over at a woman’s home before; never held someone in that unfamiliar way in an unfamiliar room. Months later, the embrace was over. I took my arms from around her, pushed her away, and made the gap as wide as my arms could reach. It was the wrong thing to do, and I realized this long before the next time we spoke, years later. She came over one night and stayed much too late. We fell asleep, innocently, in my room. I remember the gap that was between us then and I wondered why I couldn’t bring myself to hold her when we’d been so close in the past. This thought lingered in my mind until finally I put my arm over hers and pulled us into a familiar embrace.

Since that night, we haven’t spoken more than to be polite. It bothers me that it ended this way, but I understand. Our lives were destined to run in other directions and cross only once, although we tried to sway them back towards each other. And that gap was always supposed to be there, wide enough only to fit the moments that have already passed by.  ¶ 8:13 AM

  Unidentified I had a recurring dream when I was younger that I still remember very well. In them, I meet a woman that turns out to be an alien and we fall in love. The dreams were never sexual and the closest that we ever were physically was a kiss that always woke me up.

I’ve always believed that the dream held some deeper significance in my life that one day I’d be able to apply it to. It made me think that one day I’d meet a woman that was from far away and that we were destined to be together. This belief has affected a few relationships with different women, the first being Mandy, a girl from Ohio that I met around 1996 in a chat room and continued corresponding with for years afterwards. Then the alien represented a woman I was dating who was from a town that had a giant UFO as a tourist attraction. Then it was a woman from Saskatchewan, then it was a woman from BC, and then briefly I thought it was a woman from Nova Scotia.

I had the dream again last night.

There I was, walking down the trail by the river in my home town, when I saw a flash of light in the sky and a space ship descend from it, landing right in front of me. Through a cloud of hot grey steam, a hatch opened, and out she came, the beautiful woman that I knew vividly from memory, even though her appearance has changed over time.

Usually we would walk along the trail hand in hand as I explained the human emotion of love. We’d stop and she’d tell me that she wanted to know what love was, and I’d look deep into her foreign eyes and we would be in love forever. Then we’d hold each other close and kiss until I woke up, except this time –

– she didn’t stay. She got back in her ship and left. I stood there by the river speechless. The dream was wrong. Unfamiliar. Broken.

Maybe now, subconsciously, I understand that love isn’t guaranteed for anyone. There will be no deus ex machina for me to fall for, and to fall for me. I woke up this morning, not because of a kiss that I’d dreamed, and I never felt more alone.  ¶ 10:37 AM

  The Odds Imagine this, if you care to.

In the summer of 1998, there was a music festival in my home town. The headlining band was The Odds, and I, like most of the other rednecks there, had no idea who they were. As far as I knew, they had one song. (“I’m a heterooooo! Sexualllll! Heterosexual man!”) Other than that, who knew The Odds? But, still, it’s a small town, and so The Odds were getting the best V.I.P. treatment we had, including free hamburgers from A&W, which is where I was working at the time.

Because the location of the concert was right outside the restaurant, we stayed open until midnight. I volunteered to close that night, mostly because there was a girl that I had a crush on who was also working late. Towards the end of the night, my boss came in to check on me, and I’m sure she must have been a little tipsy when she said that we could go backstage and have a cooler with The Odds when we were finished. I was thrilled at the idea, even despite not knowing the group, and was the only one who went. They were rock stars, after all; rock stars that, apparently, hadn’t been told about the arrangement my boss made with them, and were sitting in their trailer waiting to get out of town when I knocked on the door.

They must have known, or at least eventually realized, that I had no idea who they were, not really, but they were still very friendly to the wide-eyed seventeen-year old sitting in their trailer. Looking back, I probably should have been embarrassed for not knowing anything but their one breakthrough single, and even more embarrassed for telling them a story about how I was closing one night with a guy who was very likely gay when that particular song came on the radio. One of them - I’m not sure who – explained that the song was a parody of homophobia, heterosexuality, and basically everything I’d just said. I was just some naïve, conservative-raised kid; what did I know?

I left there late that night with a hat that I’d gotten them to sign for the girl I had a crush on. But that wasn’t the only thing I got that night. Ten years later I still remember thinking how much more profound music could be, how there was more within a song than just a catchy chorus. How all the music I was listening to from MuchMusic and DanceMix 98 was nothing more than superficial garbage. This was one of the moments that changed how I listened to music and helped turn me into the diverse and open-minded fan of music that I am today.

And, yes, now I'm an actual fan of The Odds. All it took was several years.  ¶ 11:01 AM