This Other Time (Part 2 of at least 2)

It was four a.m. and your stomach was cramping from eating a bag of pita and a container of hummus. Well, it was cramping because in the tiny editing suite where you and Alice were editing your video, you were trying desperately not to release any of the gas troubling your lower intestine. “I’m going to step out for a minute,” you told her as she sought a seamless transition between a shot of a bathroom door closing and a close up of a beautiful troublemaker leaning in to kiss your main character against the sink. “Excuse me.”

You went outside. It was balmy and windless. The street was empty. Almost empty. There was someone standing under a streetlight smoking and reading a book. You thought maybe you recognized them so you were staring when they lifted their head, took a drag and turned towards you. Their nose was the first thing you recognized. You’d never been attracted to a nose before, but this person, this gorgeous boy or girl—you honestly didn’t know—this handsome androgyne had a sexy nose. The bridge bulged subtly just below their deep-set eyes and announced the presence of a bone, or cartilage that had bone-like distinction, that defined the shape of the nose as it descended to a narrow, gentle upturn. There was something equine about it, something muscular.

But wait, they were nodding at you.

You nodded back, worried, though, that at this distance your nod could be interpreted any number of ways, interpreted as cold even. You lifted your left hand and held it there while you nodded towards it as if to say, This is what I meant when I nodded a second ago, Hello.

The person with the gorgeous nose smiled, laughingly, but didn’t laugh. Harmony was their name, you thought. You tried to remember back to the Politics and Sexuality course you’d both taken in the spring semester last year. Harmony.

You were smiling now, too.

Harmony dropped the smoking cigarette to the sidewalk and stomped it out with a slender leather boot.

As Harmony walked towards you, you became aware of the bad smell hanging around your person, part flatulence, part sweaty sleeplessness. You wished for a gust of wind to whistle across the campus from Yonge Street and disperse your aura of bad air.

“Hi,” Harmony said.

“Hi,” you said.

Harmony held arms wide, welcoming you in for a hug. You grimaced a bit. “Never mind,” Harmony said.

“It’s not that.” You took a step back. “I’m just a bit gross. I’ve been up all night editing.”

“I’m here editing, too.”

“Oh, really? Are you in film or television?”

“Theatre. But I’m a dancer, too. Do you know Carson?”

“No.”

“Carson Martin?”

You shook your head.

“Carson made a video of me dancing.”

“Cool.”

“I’m pretty excited about it.”

You smiled. “I’d love to see it.”

“Okay,” Harmony smiled.

Then you both said, “What—?” at the same time.

“Sorry,” you said.

“No, I’ve been talking a lot.”

“I just was going to ask what you were reading.”

The book was deep in the pocket of Harmony’s long, broad-collared coat. Harmony handed you the book. There was a picture of a pitcher following through after a pitch, one leg planted, the other pointing to the gap to the third base side of the set short stop, his eyes towards the batter whose bat seemed about to make contact with the tiny white ball streaking towards him. Overwhelmingly, though, the photograph on the cover of The Summer Game by Roger Angell, showed the dry, mown grass and carefully groomed dirt and all the open space of a ball diamond. “He’s like, the poet-laureate of baseball.”

“Literally?”

“I don’t think literally. Does baseball have a poet-laureate?”

“That would be surprising.”

“Yeah.” Harmony laughed. “My point is, it’s beautiful writing. Really.”

“Cool,” you handed the book back.

“I was going to ask what you are editing.”

“A project for my production class.”

“What’s it about?”

The précis, the pitch version was something you were working on. It was a struggle, though. Your stories, the way you told them, tended to be about minutiae and moments, not big, sweeping changes in the lives of your characters, so, I mean, how? How sum it up in a few words? “My main character falls for this troublemaker, who is played by this tall woman with muddy eyes, and the two of them make trouble together.” You smiled, proud of your description.

“Sounds like a lot of fun. Mind if I peak my head in and take a look?”

You weren’t sure what Alice would think about that, but you couldn’t resist Harmony’s eager face. “Sure. Maybe closer to seven?” Seven was when they would kick you out of the editing suite.

“Alright.”

“And maybe I can come see yours?”

“I’d love that.”

The first thing you noticed when you returned to the tiny room where Alice was patiently assembling your video was that the staleness that had emanated from your body outside permeated the air here. Alice had a long list of questions for you. In your excitement about Harmony, you were able to ignore her irritation. Honestly, you even started feeling a little bad about abandoning her and not apologizing for it but by the time you were thinking that way it was too late to say sorry because Alice would be all like, Sorry for what? She seemed to have been lifted up a bit by your positive energy, though, so there was that.

Alice was fine-cutting the bike scene, where the troublemaker and the main character double to the ravine to carve their initials into trees and make out under the moon. The footage was grainy and making you feel a little shitty for not listening to your camera operator or for not changing your script, but it was what it was now, so you told yourself that maybe the story was beautiful enough to excuse the shoddy shooting and the fact that you chose poetic logic over the limitations that camera and budget placed on your project. 

You told Alice you’d be back and she asked if you could please be quicker this time.

You found Harmony and Carson in a room off the hall opposite the hall you and Alice were working down. On the screen was an image of Harmony suspended in mid-air above a field of tall grass you guessed was wheat. Muscles bulged here and there despite the tensor bandage binding Harmony’s torso. You were reminded of Kurt Vonnegut’s story, “Harrison Bergeron.” “Hi,” Harmony said. You introduced yourself to Carson.

At Harmony’s urging, Carson showed you what they had cut so far, “Even though there’s no music yet and some of the cuts need fine tuning.”

“Where’d you shoot this?” You watched the screen carefully, waiting for the leap or bend that would press Harmony’s baggy pants against whatever was inside them.

“My family’s farm,” Carson said.

“In Saskatchewan,” Harmony said. “We stayed with Carson’s family for a week. It was so lovely.” Harmony smiled at Carson and your heart was set on breaking a little until you saw the way Carson turned back to the screen.

Harmony came back with you to your editing suite and watched what you and Alice had done. You felt gratified when Harmony laughed at the scene of the troublemaker arriving at the main character’s family’s home for dinner, especially when she hopped off her bike and let it glide into the carefully maintained garden beside the front walk.

“What a great actor that woman is,” Harmony said. “She’s— Oh, she’s just so perfect. And I love the story.”

You said, Thanks.

Harmony asked you to go to breakfast and you hesitated for just a second because you never stayed up this late and you were exhausted, but Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, you would love to. “You know what,” Harmony said, “I think you should go home and get some sleep, but,” Harmony looked around for you didn’t know what, “let me give you my number.”

Alice, long suffering and patient and so generous to you always, tore a sheet out of her notebook and, without turning from her work editing your video, she held up that sheet of paper and a BIC ballpoint and you watched as Harmony wrote out the area code and seven digits and said, “I might be meeting some friends later, but I might not, too, so I don’t know, I mean you could join us or maybe the two of us could go eat somewhere or go sit in a park, I don’t know.”

“Sure,” you said. Then you nodded and repeated yourself a few times before you said, “Okay, I’ll call you.”

You thanked Alice as the two of you parted ways out front of the Television and Radio Arts building. She told you to get some rest before your big date. You sputtered out what might have been an attempted laugh.

It was hard to get to sleep, of course, with the excitement piled on top of the over-exhaustion. The last you remembered looking at the clock it was after nine.

When the phone rang, it was just after two. Your best friend was going tobogganing with Pat. You were confused. How long did you sleep? Giant flakes of snow were piling up in front of your basement window. “No,” you said. “Thanks.” When your best friend asked if something was wrong you explained that you’d been editing through the night. You didn’t say anything about Harmony, but you were so distracted that you didn’t hear what hill your best friend and Pat were going to. 

You scrubbed the tub, then had a bath. You tried to read. You made your bed and tidied your room. You picked small but visible chunks of what?—socks, snacks, dead hair—off the carpet, because the vacuum had broken a few weeks ago and you and your roommates couldn’t agree on who should take it to the repair place.

You called Harmony. It was 4:02 p.m. “I thought you’d forgotten about me,” Harmony said. “That thing with my other friends fell through.” The two of you agreed to meet at Buddha’s on Dundas between Spadina and Bathurst.

When you arrived, Harmony waved to you from a chair by the window. Harmony hugged you and smiled and listened to you talk about the stress your latest video was causing you. Harmony ordered for you both—spring rolls, imitation duck, Singapore-style noodles, mixed-vegetables with cashew nuts and steamed rice. You talked more about your video before discussing baseball, dancing, T-shirts, blue jeans, snow, hometowns, the suburbs, favourite bands and ice-skating on frozen ponds. It was way too much food, a surprising amount of food, and you over ate even though told yourself you wouldn’t. You and Harmony agreed that the server should pack up what you hadn’t eaten, but when she arrived with the food packed up in Styrofoam and a white plastic bag, you discovered that neither of you actually wanted it.

The two of you stood outside the restaurant awkwardly. “Have anywhere you need to be?” Harmony asked.

“Nope.”

“Want to walk with me? I love this weather.”

“Yeah.”

In Kensington, there was a cluster of street punks with two beautiful brindle-coated dogs. They thanked you when you offered them the leftovers and Harmony even went into a Jamaican food place and got napkins and plastic forks for them. You and Harmony sat on a bench in the Market parkette, and an older guy in really bad shape offered to sell you pot. Your feet were cold and wet in your Chuck Taylors. You went into Last Temptation just to be somewhere warm. Neither of you wanted a drink. You each ordered tea and got one plate of French fries between you, just so the waiter wouldn’t think you were cheap. Eventually you ate the French fries anyway. Conversation turned to roommates and apartments and after you’d each finished your tea Harmony invited you home.

 Snow drifted lazy past the streetcar’s windows and the city seemed to have had its volume turned down. As the Dundas car rattled over Bay Street, Harmony reached out and held your hand. You looked out the window and involuntarily inhaled through your nostrils, your chest ballooning with happy air.

The apartment was up a narrow flight of stairs in a tall row house just past Filmore’s. Harmony’s roommate, Max, had a thin, scruffy beard and beautiful, feminine features. He took his guitar, ashtray, cigarettes and John Ralston Saul book to his bedroom after Harmony introduced you.

Harmony got you a glass of water and you sat facing each other on the futon with your legs crossed. You looked up at the clock. It was one a.m. Max was playing guitar somewhere in the apartment. Harmony reached out and held your right hand, opening it and closing it, tickling the palm and gently pressing your fingers. Once you were kissing, Harmony moved forward and you lay back, stretched out and cozy in the futon’s fold, Harmony playing with your belt.

You reached for Harmony’s top button, but Harmony gripped your wrist and moved your hand away before working on your buckle again.

Harmony reached down your pants and got you off. The familiarity, the certainty of Harmony’s hands, made you suspect that maybe whatever was between Harmony’s legs was the same thing you had. Have.

You reached for Harmony’s waist again, but Harmony said, “It’s okay.”

You were thinking about reciprocity more than curiosity when you persisted.

“I said, No.”

Max emerged from wherever he’d been, holding his guitar by the neck.

“I didn’t mean . . . ”

Harmony sat up and looked away. “You can sleep here, on the couch, if you need to.”

“Uh. I’ll go home, maybe.”

Max was nodding like you’d made the right choice. He turned and disappeared again.

You cleaned yourself up in the bathroom. Or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you got yourself back together right there in the living room, the whole time Harmony watching you without looking at you. You drank the last of your water. “Okay,” Harmony said.

“Maybe I’ll call you?”

“I’m sorry.”

The snow outside was melting, even though it felt like the air had gotten colder. On the streetcar, you sat by the heater, but your feet wouldn’t warm up. A black man with cotton-candy-pink hair got on at Yonge and sang silently, beautifully to himself all the way to Dufferin. The fact that you couldn’t make out the lyrics powerfully drove home your loneliness and regret.

When you took your pants off to crawl into bed, you still smelled of sex.

Even under the comforter, your feet were freezing cold.

Toronto, November 2015

Emoji sequence: Rhya Tamasauskas, co-founder of Monster Factory, writer and artist.

Story: Lee Sheppard

Note: This is part two of at least two stories. The first part is "This One Time". 

This One Time (Part 1 of at least 2)

 You put the camera beside the wooden stand with the heart motif your mom gave you, which you used as a bedside table, and you lay down holding the Betamax cassette with most of your footage, holding it over your chest. The phone rang. You let it ring a few times before you decided to pick it up. “Yeah. Hello.”

It was your best friend asking you if you got your day, trying to persuade you to take some time for yourself, to meet up and go swimming. You covered your eyes with your hand and projected a picture of that onto your shadow-blackened palm. Swimming? Yes. Sure. Good idea.

The fruit bowl on the counter was also from your mother. It had a pregnant woman with full breasts and a hairy vulva scratched into the ceramic inner surface. The pear you lifted from the woman’s belly was ripe and juicy. You wiped your mouth on the sleeve of your second favourite hoodie. You’d given your favourite hoodie to your ex- —your again ex- —who was studying music in Montreal, who had read the script for the video you were now shooting and criticized it and planted some snaking, invasive vine in your gut that was choking your confidence.

Your bike’s back tire was flat so you fished four dollars worth of dimes from your change pile, two for your left pocket and the ride there, two for your right and the ride back, then walked to the station, your pockets heavy and jingling. The sound when you put your left pocket’s worth into the fare box was a chinkling cacophony.

On the subway train, you sat down beside a sleeping black man with a shining navy-blue jacket and a black hat with the Trinidad and Tobago flag embroidered into the brim. Under the seat across from you was an envelope sealed with a heart sticker. You got up, took a step across the rocking car, put your hands on the seat and got down on your knees. It was a smaller than average envelope and it was addressed to ♥David♥. You sat back down and held the note for a while. You wouldn’t open it, though, in part out of respect for whatever intimate confessions it contained, but also because your grandparents, maybe—or maybe your parents—always impressed upon you that it was a federal offence to open someone else’s mail. There was a booth that the conductor—or were they called engineers?—sat in at one end of your car. You approached it to knock and to hand him or her the envelope, but the door was open and the small room was empty. You left the envelope on the seat. Later, you imagined that the driver’s name might be David and that made you smile.

The Athletic Centre was closing as you walked up to the glass façade. Somebody your age, some trainer in training wearing white shorts, a blue golf shirt and a whistle on an orange lanyard mouthed the word, Sorry, to you as they locked the door, then stood off to the side and waited for the people who were finishing up their workouts to come to be let out. You could see the pool where the director of your program was doing laps in a bathing cap, his remarkably abundant body hair flattened against his back and forearm skin like careless shading from the pencil of a high school art student drawing Bigfoot.

Your best friend arrived and apologized for being late. You explained the situation.

Giant rocks had been installed around the shallow decorative pool at the centre of the campus. You and your best friend changed into your bathing suits behind one of these rocks. Your friend wasn’t worried that the only things that ever swam in this pool were seagulls up from the lake, wasn’t at all worried about being caught. Your hands were shaking.

The water was cold. Your friend stepped in with mock seriousness, exaggerated movements, tight lips, wide-open eyes and raised eyebrows. You laughed. When your best friend put their hands together and dove in, skimming the bottom of the shallow pool before starting a lap of front crawl, you joined out of solidarity and out of joy. 

Once around the pool was enough, though. You both got out, cold and laughing, and hurried back behind the rocks where you had left your clothes. You got dressed, your right pocket jingling.

You decided to get a drink at a karaoke bar just west of Bathurst Station. Pat’s house was nearby, so you and your best friend agreed to knock on Pat’s door. Pat answered holding a putter and wearing yellow and black plaid plus fours. The pants had been Pat’s grandfather’s, Pat explained, and the putter had been Pat’s aunt’s. You could see golf balls on the carpet between Pat’s couch, a hand-me-down from Pat’s mom or dad, and Pat’s TV, which had been given to him by a neighbour who was upgrading.

“I’m teeing off tomorrow at eleven sixteen,” Pat explained.

“You’ll need to practice more than putting,” your best friend said.

You abandoned the karaoke plan. Your best friend knew a golf course in a valley just north of Pat’s place, so you all got into Pat’s Lincoln Continental, which had been Pat’s Uncle Henry’s.

You lay your head over the top of the back seat and watched out the rear window as streetlights streaked past.

Pat parked on a residential street and your best friend led you through someone’s backyard. Their porch light came on and you flinched. Your best friend reassured you that whoever was inside would just think it was a raccoon passing by. The three of you hopped the short fence then navigated down the treed slope of the ravine, Pat’s golf clubs rattling together as you descended.

There was a creek at the bottom of the hill and you all had to take off your shoes and socks to cross the stream. You and your best friend had to roll up your pants, but Pat’s plus fours were the perfect height. On the other side, once you got up the bank and crossed the path, the grass was so nice on your feet that you didn’t bother putting your shoes back on. Your best friend stayed in the creek as Pat put down the clubs near the tee box and you walked around the fairway.

Your best friend came out of the tiny river with two handfuls of balls. One was cracked and covered in algae. You grabbed it, but it slipped easily out of your hand and made you laugh. Your best friend dropped the rest onto the tee box and grabbed a club—a seven iron—out of Pat’s bag. Pat was getting a tee for your best friend when your best friend brought the club back and swung it at the ball. A large piece of sod drifted up then dropped over the edge of the raised tee box. You got the divot and put it back where your best friend’s club had torn through the surface. As you were using your foot to flatten the grass, Pat was trying to explain to your best friend about using a tee. Your best friend saw you nodding and said, “Of course you know about golf too.” Class could be a sensitive topic for your best friend.

You smiled. “My Mom was very good.” And you used to caddy for your grandfather. And you went to golf camp. And you were on your high school team for a season.

You grabbed the one iron out of Pat’s bag. Pat grabbed a driver and handed you some tees. The three of you all set up shots and drove balls down the dark fairway. When you were done the pile from the river, Pat pulled out some extra balls and you hit them into the dark, too.

The three of you were out collecting the balls when a golf cart rounded a bend by the green and its headlights swept past you. You ran for your shoes by the tee box, the cart gaining on you. You saw Pat gather the clubs into the golf bag then run towards the stream.

It felt like the golf cart was right behind you as you ran up the hill towards the tee box, grabbed your shoes and headed down the hill, across the path and down the bank of the little river. You didn’t have time to roll them up, so your pant legs got wet and this was maybe what distracted you, prevented you from noticing that you were headed towards the outside curve of a bend in the stream where the water was deeper and the bank was a steep, eroded five feet tall and obscured by hanging, delicate tree roots. When you noticed, you panicked and turned around to see the golf cart on the path beside the river. You noticed that one of people in the cart had a flashlight that they were using to sweep the river so you took off your glasses and held them above your head with one hand and held your shoes above your head with the other hand and you submerged yourself in the water. At first you left your glasses and your shoes above the water, but you realized that if the people in the golf cart saw your shoes and your glasses they would see you, so you pulled them under too.

You counted to twenty before you cautiously emerged, nose and mouth first. Without your glasses, the moon was a bright blur. Your ears drained of water as you allowed your head upright. The golf cart’s engine, distant now, buzzed more quietly than the sound of the water running its gentle course. You put your glasses on and looked for the cart in the distance, but saw no one, not even your friends.

Your shirt was heavy. Water drained from the toe of your shoe. You slipped as you climbed the muddy bank and you went back into the water to clean your pants.

You put your wet shoes on because you didn’t want to hurt your feet on your climb out of the ravine. Each step landed with a squelching squish and your pants’ wet denim was rubbing you uncomfortably.

The fence you had hopped to get into the ravine seemed higher from this side, so you walked along it, hoping to find some easier way over when you discovered a gate. It opened with a squeak and you flinched. You were careful to close and latch the gate before you walked through the back yard. This time when the motion-sensor light went on, you scurried to the edge of the yard and rushed along the perimeter. 

Your best friend and Pat were waiting by Pat’s car. You were soaked. Your best friend laughed. Pat seemed more sympathetic. You explained what happened.

Because your bathing suit was still wet, you sat in the back seat naked and shivering under your towel as Pat drove you home. 

You carried your wet pile of clothes through your front door and into the apartment. Your roommates were asleep, most likely, or maybe still out. You hung your pants and shirt over the curtain rod and by the time you were finished brushing your teeth, small, brownish pools were forming on the edge of the tub below the lowest points of fabric.

That night you dreamed you were in some finished basement using twenty homemade mallets to euthanize twenty golden retrievers with the help of a person you knew you were married to. The process was easier than you imagined, easier than it should have been. When you woke you felt sad. Who was this dream person? Then you were upset, mostly because you realized you should be.

Not that you had long to be upset. You were meeting people at ten at another friend’s parents’ place and you had to get your gear and yourself there. That shooting day you drank too much coffee and you felt more behind than usual, which maybe wasn’t annoying anybody, but you felt like it was, so when you lost the tiny change purse you used as a wallet for everything but your change, you didn’t even bother looking for it and you tried not to think about it, but when Tiffany, this girl in your class who was your producer on this project, came up to you with this pink and worn thing and was like, “Chad found this in the bathroom,” you took it and you barely choked out, “That’s mine,” and had to forget about saying, Thank you, because you would have started to cry.

Still, that night before you collapsed into bed, you called your best friend and told them, “Thank you for last night.” And when your best friend tried to brush off the compliment and started telling you about Pat’s day of golf, you said, “No, seriously, I appreciate it. That was just what I needed.”

Toronto, ON, October 2015

Emoji sequence: Rhya Tamasauskas, co-founder of Monster Factory, writer and artist.

Story: Lee Sheppard

Note: This is part one of at least two stories. Couldn't get all of Rhya's emojis into this one story.