It's 1 AM and no one else is awake except for this dude Iain, who I barely know. I'm not going to text him. I'm not going to text anyone. I'm just going to type at this until I fall asleep.
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I wake up every morning having slept the night before on the right side of my head, pressing my earlobe up and clogging my ear with wax. I can't hear out of it until I get up to walk around a little bit.
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Summer has crashed and is burning slowly and quietly like a campfire on its last log about to wrap up. I'm sitting here in the growing dark as if I can still see.
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In October 2019, Jake's step-brother - who everyone in town unanimously understood as a douchebag - got shitfaced in his backyard while I sat beside him sober(1) as everyone else went in for more beer or Smash Bros. He'd down some cooler as quickly as the night snuck in and loosen up on his red lawn chair by the hot tub, blabbering and sputtering about the depression he felt and didn't understand. His drunken eyes wandered, got tired, and camped out somewhere in the evening sky just as the suburban rooftops pointed him to do. I don't remember him looking at me at all. I sat next to him trying to be supportive, but I don't remember anything I said to him. I remember towards the end of the night us standing up with our arms on each other's shoulders and shouting against something we both held in contempt, which I also don't remember. Jake's step-dad - who everyone in town unanimously understood as a douchebag - smirked from the balcony, rolling a cigarette. At some point I remember him going to someone, probably Jake's mom, and saying "Oh, they're drunk." That pisses me off to this day.
(1) Believe it or not, there were a few years where I was the straight edge guy. I might have been the last of my friends to smoke or drink or do anything. Shocking now, I know.
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German immigrants to Canada immediately following the end of the Second War World; smoking weed to Animal Collective; Generalized Anxiety Disorder; the esophagus; drunk driving; psychosis; the Freedom Convoy; putting together cosplay with your mom; the furry fandom; food posioning; Kenny vs. Spenny; junior high; Never Squeal by Ween; breaking into an AirBnB and trashing it; John Maus; YouTube Poop; MineCon; montage parodies; selling crack; legal debt; Sam Hyde; "Shroomer Joe"; loneliness; self-hatred; beauty as finitude; My Bloody Valentine; Keemstar; the Russian invasion of Ukraine; indie kids; nostalgia; the mass stabbing in Weldon, Saskatchewan; southern vs. northern Alberta; codependence in subcultures; nice guys; weirdos; you.
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Every day I act as if I have nothing to want or do. But that's probably a bit of an exaggeration. I don't reallt act that like I have nothing. I put in some amount of work, but that doesn't change how I've been feeling. I've given myself back to bad, gross habits, which is a shame. This is a remarkably cool time to waste. I ought to be hungrier.
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Last couple months have been nuts, as you already know. More on that later.
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The middle age I always imagine for myself goes like this: I'm living in southwestern BC for some reason, either Vancouver Island or somewhere around the Lower Mainland. I really don't know why. This fantasy has decided for itself that's where it wants to be. Anyway, I'm living there and I'm teaching at a small university. I've long leaned into the button-ups and now have a beard and prescription glasses (nearsighted from years of terrible digital hygiene) to go with it. Somehow, BC has remained a progressive stronghold well into the 2050s, so the classes I teach - creative writing, English, music history, new media, etc. - haven't be cut in the wake of a lack of funding to the humanities department, so I make a pretty decent living charging thousands of dollars talking about Kafka and GG Allin to nerds and hipsters with overly supportive parents. This has helped buy me an acreage, which in some renditions of this fantasy is also a ranch that doubles as a second source of income for my family. They're always made up of a wife and two teenage daughters. I hardly ever imagine my wife(1), but I imagine my daughters as being similarly despondent to me at their age, but simultaneously far more ambitious than I was. My life at this point has totally slowed down. I've decided that everything remarkable I will ever do is behind me, and I'm thrilled about it. I've mostly forgotten my young adult doubt of ever getting to where I am now, looking back more on what immediately came after that. In my 20s, I have a long bout of bohemianism. I live in warehouses, make noise music, sleep under desks, squeeze my through bizarre and seductive nightlife, befriend a cast of full-hearted eccentrics, live in Berlin and Beijing, fall stupidly in love, and write long, fucked up, polemic, sentimental, and dauntingly complicated totems of linguistic innovation, doomed to an unintended second life of cult stardom. This turns the pseudonym I write these under into a minor myth, which 50-year-old me is really amused by. He thinks all the controversy surrounding the body of work of a middle-aged teacher to be really funny, especially as it isn't wildly known that this is who they're talking about. He knows 17-year-old me would be proud.
(1) What I do imagine about her is that I meet her not too long from right now. I don't know how. I don't know if meeting her means we start seeing each other right away. It could be years before that happens, and I think it is. Maybe I meet her through my globetrotting. I sometimes imagine her being French-Canadian, with a big stereotypical French-Canadian family and a unmistakable Quebecois accent. I imagine her resenting Quebec as much as I can resent Alberta, and us finding our relationship to be hilarious in light of a century of provincial stereotypes. She joins me in my globetrotting, only for us to quickly decide we're done with it for good and move back to Western Canada, where I begin my tenure at Whatever University of The Arts. The Smog song Let's Move to The Country reminds me of this fantasy.
