A Winter’s Tale
It began on the first snowfall of grade eight. The school accepted her late entry because, quite frankly, they’d accept anyone. As with most latecomers, the rumor was that she’d been expelled from some other school. An all girl private school up in Westmount where they were forced to wear short skirts, high socks and turtlenecks. Sacred Heart, or something. I’d see them in the morning sometimes through the bus window, crammed and carpooled in their father’s silver minivans. Shiny Doc Martins stepping in. I’d beg the wind to pick up, for the plaid to flutter.
Her name was Cynthia. She sat in front of me in English class and every day, almost mechanically, she’d tie her hair into a ponytail. A simple act, maybe, but Cynthia’s morning routine began the self-induced torture of my own. She’d begin by flinging her hair back, a purple elastic around her thin, tan wrists. Peachy arms would stretch out, bicep muscle expanding as she’d smoothly glide it around the wad of glowing blonde-streaked hair. Holding it tight in the palm of her fist behind her head, she’d slide the elastic down. Slowly. Then she flipped up her hair before finishing off.
I remember other times when she leaned forward on her seat if she’d accidentally drop a pen or rest her head on her desk – I’d catch a glimpse of her lower back. On a lucky day, I’d see the hot pink thong sticking out of her skinny blue jeans. The lace whale tail. The bulge in my sweatpants impossible to hide by tucking into my boxers, the heat rising to my ears. After a few weeks, I was able to construct a rainbow of lace in my mind.
Snowflakes tumbling down desolate Montreal skies latched onto my overcoat, hiding the blackness of it with melting clumps of ice. An old coat, passed down from a cousin – the material frayed, the mismatched buttons roughly sewed on by my nonna as if done in a rush. Some were more oblong than others and one of them even purple. Piled deep within my closet that morning, I had wrestled it out for the first snowfall. The first fall which continued to howl gusts of wind past my ears, spitting specks of snow, blinding me. A perfect juxtaposition to its scorching summer. Montreal, paradise.
I don’t remember how it happened. Nervous and cold. Cynthia’s body crushed into mine, my armpit over her left shoulder. I wondered if I put deodorant on that morning, but figured that the smell couldn’t perspire through the layers. We sat on a park bench. Her nose red and runny, the tip bright from the reflection of the glowing snow, though the sun hid behind the grey. Her bony fingers reached for mine; numb extremities intertwining. Her hair glowing. Her low-top, grey Vans sole-less.
“Fucking socks are wet again.”
“How about you get some new shoes?”
“How about you suck my dick, Adam?”
“Lovely, Cyn.”
She looked into my eyes and I didn’t know where to look back.
“It’s chill if I call you that… right? If I call you Cyn?”
She looked past me. Devin running after his bus in the distance.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
The wind rattled the basement window in my mother’s duplex; the humidifier I forgot to turn off let out a low and persistent hum. Cynthia’s mouth formed the shape of an O around the tip of my cock, having trouble pushing her throat any further down without gagging. I felt bad, embarrassed. I concentrated. Tightened my jaw – my body straightened out on the bed, head resting uncomfortably on a hard, old pillow. I tried not to think about it, I didn’t want to come too soon like a fucking loser. Chewing on the inside of my cheek. Biting off minuscule particles of dead skin that latched onto the tongue like leftover bread. But I couldn’t turn away from the blonde locks on the back of her head, the low light dancing as she bobbed gently, up and down, like hypnosis. And then I lost it. Too far gone to hold, sounds too distracting. Swallowing and gagging and humming and cracking. I finish in her mouth. Pathetic. I lie down, too much of a pussy to say anything. Finally,
“Sorry. Umm.”
The sound of her throat swallowing.
“Um, do you need a kleenex?”
“No... that’s okay.”
The next day, a packed city bus shook and slid on icy streets, but I barely even noticed before it reached the school. I couldn’t get my mind off of it – the day before, the first. Cynthia, too. Her hair.
I ran off to class and sat next to my friend Devin who had a shitface grin on.
“Hey Adam, I totally just took a piss while drinking from a bottle of water. Isn’t that fucking... what’s the word... fucking... fucking like paradoxical?”
“You’re a douchebag, Devin. That’s weird.”
“No it’s totally legit! It’s like messing with bodily functions.”
“That’s like taking a shit while eating supper.”
“Don’t pretend like you haven’t tried that, bro!”
I was anxious for Cynthia to come into class. For her to act like she barely knew me, as usual.
“Hey Adam, did you try that password I gave you for Wildlatinagirls? It totally works.”
“Shut the fuck up, Devin.”
I clicked my mechanical pencil.
“Hey Adam, my cousin Mike asked if we wanted to smoke with him later. Are you down?”
“Only fucking losers and blacks smoke.”
“It’s supposed to be so chill, though. They call the stuff kush, bro.”
“Can you stop saying bro, you fag.”
“Shut the fuck up you pussy, don’t tell me what–”
His voice carried on as Cynthia entered the class, walking past poems written by the class and hung up on the wall by the over-eager temp. Ms. Rachel. I barely passed the assignment because I didn’t use enough metaphors or some garbage like that. I avoided eye contact with Cynthia and kept my head down looking at my desk. Pathetic. She came right up to me and kissed me on the cheek in front of everyone. She bent over to place her school bag on the ground showing off the lace. Devin stared incredulously.
The next few weeks with Cynthia became a blur. She really cared, because she’d tell me she loved me, and she’d tell it a lot. Perfect sense. She’d kiss me everywhere, even at Angrignon mall. At first I felt shy when everyone stared but they stopped to matter. Everything stopped to matter. She was the first person to ever give me the attention I craved, the attention I gave myself. She even had a pet-snake, rattling. Jumping at the clear glass cage, synthetic wood and leaves under its belly. I didn't really know what breed it was, but it was black and with subtle red stripes.
I remember a week later, getting drunk off of forty’s of 8% “rat-piss” in back of the Place La Salle with a couple older, fuck-ups from the neighbourhood. Cynthia and I had gotten into an argument – I don’t remember why, anymore. I stumbled, avoiding cracks and potholes in the parking lot.
And I saw her, the streaked blonde locks on the back of her head. Knees on cold concrete. Head bobbing up and down, sucking off Devin, his back resting against the maroon bricks of the wall. And he saw me and his body jerked and she turned her head – cat eyes, incandescent in the moonlight.
I remember sprinting home. Shrieking into my pillow. I remember ripping apart the sodden bed sheets. My mother trying to hold me down as I punched a hole into the wall, blood dripping down my knuckle.
That was then and now is now.
Run-down motels spread across the ironically named Canada Street like a decaying, coffee stained carpet. Old Orchard Beach, Maine – the prime vacation destination for the not-too-rich-but-just-comfortable-enough-to-max-out-their-credit-cards-on-a-cheap-holiday Québecois.
And now I’m walking under sweltering mid-afternoon sun on a black street barefoot, rushing to get from the motel room to the dark wet dark sand. The salt-drenched air digs into my lungs, clearing out residue of leftover cigarettes. A loose Led Zeppelin t-shirt bought from the local Target flutters underneath my armpits. I don’t like being topless. Probably due to the insults thrown at me as a child for being a chubster. It doesn’t matter now. In a world that has no need for me, or anyone for that matter, the thoughts tend to dwell on the past. But past is still dead, I am told. “Live in the now” is what all the self-help books say. Eckhart Tolle and Chopra and all that new-age crap. Bullshit. Live in the now, only to repeat yesterday’s mistakes, I suppose, is the generation’s tagline.
My mother and aunts and uncles are at the motel pool, glowing like Christmas ornaments, lathered in tanning lotion. I move in the opposite direction, taking the scenic route. Anything is better than confrontation. Perfume lingers in the air as a group of seniors walk by, making my stomach churn. Past the bakery where the chronically obese gather for fried dough, my feet still toast, like walking on burning coals. It’s a sad thing to think about. That every lived experience before this moment is now dying, only to be remembered temporarily, until forgotten and then death. These thoughts stray back and forth as a senile couple gobble down on some fried dough with Nutella spread. “Bein Tabarnak c’est bon!”
I make it to the beach and I don’t feel any better about it. Bulbous males fish on the beach, baited hooks in the ocean while young children with floaties wade through the waves. Safety precautions are merely suggestions, after all. I zone in and out of consciousness on a sandy towel. I dream of an elephant parade on an intersecting diner road in a desert. Then I have a dream where I fall backwards off a 20-foot diving board head first, but never hit the water. It’s recurring. I always wake up right before landing.
It is not hot anymore, the weather bipolar. A lack of Ritalin. I pop one down. I look through the sand speckled duffel bag and pull out a cracked-leather jacket, a hand-me-down from my cousin, stitches sewn up by my nonna.
Now is now and I am on the beach and I am alone and I am lost within my mind while the sun sets, dies, a symbol of something-or-other in most classic literature. I have been reading too much Camus. An appropriate choice to read on a beach. But do I even understand what any of it means, or do I read it only because Wikipedia tells me that it’s considered his “classic”? Sometimes I wonder why people even bother with the classics. Does it make them feel good about themselves? Accomplished? Does it make me feel important?
Whatever. Everything ends up meaningless.
I walk back to the stuffy motel room I share with my mother who coerced me here for a family trip over the summer. One more year until I’m eighteen and I can do whatever I want, or so I am told.
With the sun down, the “nightlife” begins. A rusted old ferris wheel twirls at the pathetic excuse for a fair in the heart of downtown. Downtown consists of a single, potholed street. The rides, arcades and game booths with buck-toothed carnies are dilapidated. The prize is a giant polar bear. Everywhere. No matter the game, the only thing worth playing for is not so endangered in Maine. An old club, the only one, called The Caribbean Padise blasts out shitty wedding music, like The Macarenna and YMCA. My drunken mother, aunts and uncles spend their nights there chugging margaritas. I have come to accept the fact that Old Orchard Beach is the poor man’s Cuba.
Tall street lamps attract a myriad of shad-flies and I envy them for their life-span of a single day. I see them attracted to the brightness of light and I can’t help but think of Plato’s cave. In fact, all this rumination has gotten to me. At the end of the day, I still am alone for another three weeks, slowly dragging myself towards monotony. I pray for China’s industrial revolution to speed up a bit.
I spend quarters at the claw-machines and have managed to collect over twenty-six stuffed animals, including the entire South Park and Spongebob Squarepants cast in doll form. Christ, I even won a Gameboy. I play the third one to the left side of the arcade, a big mother called Grab-O-Mania and in my mind, I constantly refer to it as Grab-Cock-O-Mania. I imagine Spongebob being fucked in the ass by Squidward as I play and drain the machine, collecting doll after doll, piling them on the floor next to me to maintain this I don’t give a fuck attitude to the other tourists. Secretly, I gloat in my prowess. The average modern man undermines the extreme skill and precision it takes in mastering the art of hand-eye coordination for a grabbing machine. Add in all the bells and whistles – the 30 second timer, the mirror reflections in the back of the machine, the constantly repeating jingle, the fact that the “claw” rarely closes more than a couple of centimetres (2.5 is my guess) – and “clawing” becomes quite serious.
Tonight, people seem to have noticed my meandering clawing skills. It makes me feel both pathetic and accomplished, probably like someone who masters Dance Dance Revolution and hangs out by the machine all day, with a water bottle and a towel to wipe away the sweat. Or like someone who manages to self-serve fellatio.
I see in the reflection of the back mirror, while dropping my 89th quarter into the slot, a group of young people behind me – people my age. They’re dressed like locals. An uncommon occurrence. And I notice enticing dark eyes staring into my own... well, the reflection of my own. The light bulbs flashing red, white and blue in the grabbing machine change the tone of her skin in the reflection. Considering my 90th quarter, I tell myself, if I fail this round, I will turn around and introduce myself to her. I will buck up. Grow up. Become a man.
Her name is Angela. And her real-life face is even prettier than her reflection. Her dark eyes, her long brown hair. She dresses like all the other kids who try not to dress like everybody else: a plaid shirt, skinny jeans, low top single coloured shoes, ray bans and a tweed hat. And I fucking dig it like all the other fools. Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.
“Where you from, Adam?”
“Montreal.”
“Should I even be surprised? Wait, isn’t the legal drinking age there, like, nineteen?”
“Eighteen, actually.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing in this shithole?”
“I manage to ask myself that exact same question every day. Where you from?”
“That’s for you to find out. Hey, what are you reading over there?”
She motions toward my pocket. I reach at it, surprised. I forgot the book was there all along.
“Camus, right? The Outsider?” She’s right.
“Yeah.”
“He’s alright, I guess. I’m not really a big fan of the existentialists. Too morbid for my liking. And self-indulgent, too, you know? All that mental masturbation – in-itself, of-itself, for-itself. It can go fuck itself.”
For the first time in about two weeks, I legitimately laugh. It’s not even because it was that funny – it’s just that it’s a joke.
Under the rickety wooden pier, with a few more of her friends, I look for a flat surface to roll a joint; I take The Outsider from my pocket. Angela and her friends stare, impressed with my rolling skills and with the calibre of the pot I smuggled across the border. I’m just happy that I’m not smoking alone tonight.
“You Americans gotta’ step up your game, bro. Getting out-rolled by a Canadian fucker! Aren’t we supposed to be the nice ones?”
“Hey, shut your mouth, you... you existentialist! HA!”
Angela snorts mid-laugh and covers her mouth in embarrassment and then laughs some more. Then everybody laughs, looking dazed. Her pothead mannerisms are authentic – they are innocent. Then we get tired and plan on meeting up on the beach tomorrow, and I walk home with a jump in my step.
The next day, she wears a yellow polka-dot bikini, her breasts squeezed in tight towards the centre of her chest.
“You have to be kidding me. She wore an itsy bitsy teeny weeny...”
“Shut up! I find it cute. And trust me, I’m sure you don’t mind that it’s itsy bitsy...”
American girls.
I chase her into the ocean. Everything I say is perfect. She is into me. She wants me. Angela wants me.
Getting out of the ocean, I follow behind her as she leads the way, sand sticking to our feet. Rivulets of salt water drip from the lower half of her bikini, tight against the crevice of her ass. The lower side of her buttocks bounce with each step, sneaking out of the lower corners of her suit.
Walking in front of me, she lifts her arms. A purple elastic is tight around her wrist. She grabs back all of her wet, brown hair tightly into the palm of her closed-fist and gently slides the elastic down to tie her hair into a ponytail. Slowly. Drops of water leaking with the squeezing of her wad of hair.
My chest suddenly feels hollow – the feeling that everything is dead. A stone in the pit of my stomach.
She flips up her hair and turns back to look at me, looks into my eyes. I don’t know where to look back. I turn and I walk away. I walk, without an explanation, without a look back, without a goodbye. Heart pounding. I wonder if she follows, though I speed up. I think of the reaction on her face. The thought that I was surely joking until it went too far – too late to be a joke.
I continue down the beach until the winds begin to pick up. Black clouds envelop the sun and I am the only one left on the shore, waves crashing harder and harder. Gusts of wind start to throw sand up in the air, creating a dust storm with specks of salt flying and whipping hard against my legs. Wind hits my face and the sand blinds me. Plato’s cave. I can’t see a thing, I rub hard until I manage, through the tears, to see a blur of sand whipping in front of me, everywhere, like a snowstorm.
