"Did you know the placenta is essentially a parasite?" she said, tapping my paper with her index finger.

I looked up at her, raised my eyebrow and instantly regretted not plucking its middle section that morning, or putting on some makeup at least. She had high Polynesian cheekbones under spiked brown hair, wore pink lip gloss and a North Face fleecy.

"Its effect on a woman’s body is similar to that of cancer," she added.

"Really," I said, but the word got caught in the phlegm of my throat and I coughed it at her.

She squinted and pursed her lips. "Totally," she said.

We’d been sitting side by side in silence since our plane took off two hours earlier. I didn’t even look at her before she spoke. "The Kaili of Central Sulawesi believe the placenta is the elder brother of the child," I said, pointing at the paper I’d been reading on the very subject. "They preserve it in a pot wrapped in white cotton, and hide it under the mother’s sarong. She buries it and the spot is marked with palm trees."

"Well," she said, "Thank God I don’t work with the Kaili of Central Sulawesi. I’d never get the chance to study a placenta if everybody buried them."

I smiled and nodded, wondered if she was perhaps a bit crazy. I hoped so. Crazy women liked me.

"I’m a placental scientist," she said.

I nodded, as if that was only natural, but the revelation shocked me. "Small world," I said. "I study ethnographic interpretations of the placenta."

"Excuse me?"

"Um, I study various indigenous cultures and their treatments of the placenta. What it means to them and what they do with it."

"Fascinating," she said.

I smiled.

"Are any of them aware of its cancerous properties?"

I frowned. "I’ve never encountered any such interpretation."

"Well, it’s the scientific one," she said.

I ran a finger over my lips, trying to look pensive, but it reminded me that they were pale and plain compared to hers.

"The fetus too can be seen as parasitic. And the placenta is the intermediary between woman and fetus, you see? Half her DNA and half its DNA. And together the fetus and placenta live off their host until it finally rejects them, forcing them out."

I considered her argument and slipped into a six-month flashback to Chiapas Mexico, where I shadowed a partera, a traditional Mayan midwife. She was a stout woman but strong and blessed with the confidence of one who has never had to wonder what her life was about or where she belonged.

The community had become somewhat used to white people hanging around asking questions in broken Spanish. She was willing to let me attend births with her as long as I stayed out of her way and kept my mouth shut. But first I had to wrap my head around the complicated spiritual dance of birth, as explained by the partera.

"The biggest problem is when the younger siblings are born and the spirit of the first born tries to eat the spirit of the younger one," she said. "That involves a lot of praying and sometimes we need to sacrifice a chicken and pray with the older child to prevent that from happening. And with all those spirits running around it’s hard on a woman’s body, and it’s a hard change in life for her anyway. The father is happy but for the mother it’s the end of her carefree days.

"But if I do all the right ceremonies and pay attention to the signs and pray before I enter the house and before I touch the woman and pray to every corner and all the guardians, and if I bathe the baby properly and pray before the crib and make sure the children eat properly, and wash their hair properly and sweep and clean the room before I leave and pray again, then it comes out OK."

I shared this story with the placental scientist sitting next to me. She frowned at me, the downward movement of her lips shining in the fluorescent lights. "You know a very small percentage of fetuses are actually born. Most women have miscarriages early in pregnancy without even knowing it."

I smiled. "Maybe we aren’t praying enough anymore."

"Right," she said. "Try telling that to my sister. She’s had three miscarriages, that she knows of, and is about ready to kill herself because she wants to be a mom so bad. She prays for it every ten minutes."

I turned away from her, looked out the window at the clouds. "I guess your sister’s not a partera," I said. When I turned back she had put her headphones on and closed her eyes. I ran a finger across my unibrow, relieved I hadn’t bothered to pluck it.

Labels: 2011, Fiction, short story

Then UGH! - UGH! - UGH! from the bathroom. And I’d stare at my father waiting for him to solve the problem somehow. The man solved problems for a living. He was some kind of PR monkey with the government. I was sure his chewing routine was just a delay tactic, or a meditative thing that would help him find a solution.

But it was Mother who found the solution. I really don’t know how - maybe Jesus found her - but one day I got sent home from my private junior high school early for beating both Sissy Jannah’s eyes black and saw a two-foot Jesus-on-crucifix on the piano. Above it was Jesus in profile, turning the other cheek I presume and looking serene.

Mother ran from the kitchen in a flour-covered apron and hugged me. I stiffened my body and hung my arms straight at my sides. "Whatever it is I forgive you," she said.

Since then she’s been on a mission, volunteering at the food bank, raising money for the church, even letting Christian refugees stay in our basement. She doesn’t cry anymore.

So, I’d love to find that Jesus of hers, or have him find me. And I look too. I spend 23 hours a day in this cell and all I do is look for Jesus. I've looked at every brick. I’ve looked under my bed and under my mattress, and under my roomie’s mattress and bed when she was getting her hour in the yard. All I do is sleep and look for Jesus. Before I sleep I pray he’ll come find me, because I don’t see him anywhere, and I don’t dream anymore either.

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

But the whole world’s a heartache and most people seem to have smiles chiseled into their faces, so none of that, nor all those UN statistics or crime-page newspapers explain my anger, do they?

It just feels good to let it out sometimes, and when I was little I guess it got me what I wanted. It was easier to give the kid a treat than hear her scream. Mother couldn't stand to see me suffer even a little bit. She still can't, and that’s why she won't visit. She sends me letters that read like Jehovah's Witness pamphlets. The word 'Jesus' appears so frequently I started counting. Her last letter, a four-pager, had 46 'Jesus'es, and 16 'pray's.

And I try. I’m not just humouring her either. I remember how she was before Jesus. She cried all the time. Never in front of people. She'd excuse herself from the dinner table and go to the bathroom and let rip these heaving, gutteral sobs in stucatto bursts. It sounded kind of like Eddie Murphy's laugh.

Father completely ignored it. He'd cut into his steak or pork or whatever and pop a little piece into his mouth and chew like his teeth were on fire. He probably counted his chews - 50 or a hundred times or whatever. He'd swallow with an exaggerated gulp and yell, "Honey! This is delicious. Truly extraordinary!"

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

Something very new I'm working on:

I thought my anger would place me well in this angry world. But like two magnetic norths the world and I could never quite come together. I swung at it and swung at it and never caught anything but air, landed on my face as often as kept my feet.

Dr. Hattie is always at me about where the anger comes from, and I just tell her, "Inside." She calls bullshit and I know it is, but it feels that way at the time, like a car wreck inside of me, an exploding Hollywood car wreck only you never see it coming from the outside. Inside there’s a buildup, two different drivers at a party having a few too many. But fuck me if I know how it all got started. Dr. Hattie might as well ask me how the big bang got started.

"Inside," I say again, and she calls bullshit again. "Outside then," I say, but she just frowns at me. I frown back. Outside is the God’s honest truth. I don’t want to giver her my sob story. It's a cop out isn’t it? Or maybe that’s what she wants. I can tell her about Dad’s drinking, Mum’s born again high-handed bullshit preaching after years of openly cheating on her husband and letting daycares and schools raise me. Would I be this angry if children's aid social workers had taken me away?

Labels: 2010, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

It was the first draught year Ashfad had known in 20 years, since he was a little boy. Hoofed urus were hard to find, and they were all bones poking through fur that looked draped on as an afterthought. Vegetables scarcely blinked through the dry earth before retreating, as if scared of the sun’s intense heat.

Ashfad surveyed the land. It looked as if the earth had been roasted over a fire and broken into little pieces of dried clay. "Imagine," he said to Sulwood, his hunting partner, "if we never had to hunt again, if the animals would stop running from us. If they would lay down before us so we could take our pick for the slaughter."

Ashfad returned to his wife, Mersk, empty-handed. His empty hands entwined with hers, and they swayed together in slow motion. They settled for a watery rye soup and laid themselves to rest with their daughter snoring rapidly a few feet away. Ashfad was amazed with the big noises that came from such a girthless little girl.

When he finally joined his family in the somnambulant dreamscape he couldn’t quite place his family among the animals there. The urus were plentiful, fat, and prepared to absorb his spear that he might live another day. Strangest of all, they were tame like dogs. They had no fear of Ashfad, just as he had imagined it with Sulwood.

Labels: 2009, Fiction, philosophy, short story

Nurse Anna was beautiful in more than just a fuck-me kind of way. She introduced herself that way, "Hi, I’m Nurse Anna." The mix of formal and informal turned me on too much to make my usual sponge bath joke, which I even made for the bull-dyke who looked ready to tear my hands off and use them to punch me in my dirty balls.

"Nurse Anna," was all I could think to say. I swallowed my 'you're pretty' follow-up.

"Hi Steve," she said. "I was told to watch out for you and your sweet-talk. So what, I’m not sweet-talk worthy?"

I shook my head so hard something cracked. I winced back tears. Vehemence and whiplash don’t mix. Nurse Anna steadied my head and dabbed my eyes. "It's okay," she said. "Maybe you're not up to flirting today."

"But I have an erection," I blurted.

She hit me with a pained smiled. I couldn’t tell if she was stifling laughter or vomit.

"Sorry," I said. "That came out wrong."

She smiled again. "I hope so," she laughed. She looked down at her clipboard and her smile flattened. "I think I see what your problem is," she said.

"Whiplash?" I ventured.

"Cars," she said.

"Oh, like the root of my problem," I said.

"No, that would be your whole lifestyle," she said.

My erection was getting worse.

I finally screwed up the courage to ask her out when I was discharged a few days later. "I don’t think I can," she said.

"But I'm not your patient anymore."

"You will be," she said.

I don’t know why I loved this kind of treatment. Masochism I guess. "You gonna sick Nurse Miller on me?" I asked.

"You’re awful," she said. "I can’t date someone who says things like that about Nurse Miller - she’s an inspiring woman. And I definitely can’t date someone who lives like you."

"How do I live?"

Here’s how she said I lived: on a diet of drugs and fat, in a hyper-sedentary high-stress environment, on too little sleep, surrounded by resource-devouring consumer products designed to make bearable my otherwise mechanized, suicidal existence. I couldn’t deny it.

"Who doesn’t live that way?" I asked.

"I don’t," she said.

Here’s how she said she lived: on a chemical-free, mostly local vegan homemade diet, balancing a challenging job she loved with active modes of transportation and regular yoga, ample sleep, in a communal housing arrangement, with minimal possessions.

"I can live like that," I said.

"You can?"

"You'll see."

Labels: 2009, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

Eco-Rehab - an opening excerpt

The median over-compensated for my lack of judgement, and the BMW curbed the median’s enthusiasm. My crumpled Tercel found itself staring down oncoming superior models, smoke rising from its 300,000 kilometre engine, me half-conscious at its wheel, my power bill glued by my blood to its windshield.

Of all the ways I’ve ever abused my body, trying to read my power bill while driving was the stupidest. I was in an ongoing struggle with Nova Scotia Power at the time. After I moved to Creighton Street they kept sending my bills to my old student address on University. Somehow, when the bills went unpaid, they managed to send their threat to disconnect to my new address. It arrived about a half-hour after my power went out.

I controlled my January shivers long enough to open their nasty letter and pick up the phone. When a pubescent customer service drone picked up I had to force the words through my chattering teeth. "You in-comp-et-ant f-f-fucks!" I shouted, my rage compounded by the ten minutes of elevatorized Coldplay jammed into my ears while I was on hold.

The customer service drone hung up and I looked down at the letter of threat again. A thousand-and-twenty bucks they wanted. "F-fuck!" I shouted to the dark, crumpling the notice, trying not to wonder how I didn’t notice that I’d gone half a year with no power bills, trying not to remember all the drugs I’d been doing since I got my own apartment.

I worked out a payment plan. Two weeks later my power was cut again, without even a note this time. My first online payment somehow went to someone else’s account, and I had to talk them into restoring my power again. I couldn’t wait to get the next bill, just to see that little dent I’d made in what I owed. It was the same with my student loans and my credit cards. Nobody liked getting bills as much as I did.

I grabbed them all from the mail-woman on my way back to the office after a quick supper and a toke to get me through what promised to be another long night. My real-world job as an investment banker was harder than I’d expected, as hard as my old man had predicted. "You have no fucking idea what you’re in for, sonny," he used to tell me, back in high school when I was voted most likely to be a welfare bum and love it.

I wanted to prove my classmates wrong - didn’t know I’d prove Dad right in the process. He was a grade-school teacher so I don’t know how he got so clairvoyant about banking. It was on his advice I bought my 15-year-old Tercel, the one I was rushing back to the office in, those bills staring up at me from the passenger seat. I was chugging at an extra-large Timmy’s triple-triple, trying to balance out the joint I’d smoked with my two-whopper dinner.

I geared down to accelerate onto the 102, whipped by a boomer driving a BMW and cut him off with a wave of my hand. Everything in that moment was too fast - I’d gone home specifically to take in some online porn and masturbate, and didn’t even have time for that. It came down to food and marijuana, or sex and marijuana. No time for both, and my tummy growled harder than my balls ached. I wouldn’t even have time for my purest pleasure: peaking at those ever-so-slightly decreased numbers.

Finally I buckled, made my greatest mistake, grabbed the phone bill and ripped it open, two-handed, and took a peak. Then a stare. Fuckers! My payment was barely more than the interest they were charging me for their mistake. That’s when I hit the median.

Labels: 2009, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

"Like a personal trainer with a penchant for fat women, I got secrets," he said. "I hold them for the protection of those around me."

I looked straight into his pale eyes, smirked, and challenged him to reveal some shade of truth.

He looked back at me. His face revealed nothing in those lingering seconds until he said:

"You don't wanna know the depths of my shoes, and that mirror you're holding so over-confidently is one place you don't want me to look.

"You think you can warm this statue, wash it clean of centuries of bird-shit and lovingly peel away the thousand layers of cold hard stone, reveal a lederhosen-clad rich boy smiling at the rain, who will hug you, relieved to have found a safe new home.

"You can scrub all you want. You can cut and slice but you underestimate the skill and the bitter obsessive determination of this stone mason self-sculptor."

I reached for him and then stopped short. He was long gone.

Labels: 2008, love junk, nova scotia, short story

“I’m a good driver,” he said. “Been drivin professionally for 15 years never had one single accident.”

As he switched lanes the Tercel in the other lane quickly veered off the road into a telephone pole. With a quick glance over the shoulder he sneered, “Idiot! Probably drunk.”

Back to the passing lane he switched, forcing a black pick-up truck into the median, off of which it smashed-steel bounced into a swerving Mercedes, and together they careened into the ditch. Hearing the crash he exclaimed, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Well, that’s a Chinaman for ya. I’m not racist but those fuckers can’t drive worth shit!”

Looking back to the road he swerved to avoid a pedestrian and ran a red light in the wrong lane. Two cars driving perpendicular to us through the green were forced to swerve into cars stopped for the red, causing all four vehicles to explode.

“By Christ that was close!” he hollered. “Fuckin pedestrians!”

It was as he cut off a caravan and it swerved and flipped end over end six times in mid air that I turned on the television over his bunk in the back. The President was addressing the press, and through them, the nation.

“I, am a good pres-i-daant,” he drawled. “During my time in office I worked hard to build our great nation’s economy and protect our security, and nothing could affect my resolve!”

Just then a homeless man’s frozen body dropped dead. “What was that thud?” the President asked, scanning the assembled press corps for answers.

A giant drill broke sacred ground, the caribou starved and thundered into a pit of oil, and the locals joined the welfare line at the back. The President didn’t seem to notice. A two-tonne bomb landed in a remote southern village taking many lives and leaving many widowed wives hungry and wondering if there is something wrong with their country’s economic resolve.

“Today, thanks to me, we are a stronger, richer nation,” the President replied distractedly.

Then a transport truck ran him over, and I was distracted from that television when I heard the trucker say, “What was that thud?”

Secret service bullets came smashing through the windshield.

Labels: 2003, Fiction, short story, Toronto

“She said she was working for the ABC news
it was as much of the alphabet
as she knew how to use.”
--Elvis Costello

Labels: 1995, Fiction, nova scotia, Poetry, short story

Labels: 1995, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

Labels: 1995, Fiction, nova scotia, short story

Labels: 2007, Fiction, short story, Toronto

I've been enjoying going through a bunch of old papers as I move into the new place. Here's one gem I had forgetten about. I wrote it as a short screenplay in 2003 but it was never made:



EXT – Day, Deep Woods

[A couple sits under the canopy of some trees gnawing on big hunks of raw meat, chewing and chewing slowly and disgustedly. They are both dressed in tattered business suits.]

JANE

Ten years of vegetarianism gone down the drain.

ADAM

Mmmm.

JANE

This is truly disgusting.

ADAM

(beat) I wonder how Jesus is doing without me running Hostile Takeovers.

JANE

I wonder how Tarik is doing without me to get his reapplication in order. He’ll never get his Thesta-Distatica patented without me to look out for him. He’ll probably be another victim of DigestCom in fact.

ADAM

Would you shut up?

JANE

Ooooh, do I detect a little lingering loyalty to the assimilation machine?

ADAM (moping)

No. I left for a reason you know. As much as I could go for some bruschetta and a café latte right now, I’d rather be here gnawing on this half burnt half bloody deer meat than carving up the corpses of small businesses to keep Jesus and the shareholders secure in the knowledge that anything innovative will soon be theirs. I’m just sick of talking about the city. We’re better off out here.

JANE

We’re miserable out here, Adam. This isn’t food, this is a dead animal. It’s not meat it’s flesh! And this isn’t living. God I have the shakes.

ADAM

Caffeine withdrawal?

JANE

I haven’t slept more than four hours a single night since we got here.

ADAM

You haven’t slept more than four hours a single night since university.

JANE

Yes but we’re supposed to be getting past that. What’s the point of caffeine withdrawal if you still can’t sleep at night? And what’s the point of sleep deprivation if you don’t have to work tomorrow-

ADAM (interrupting)

Oh we have to work tomorrow, girl-

JANE (interrupting)

Have to but can’t. How are we supposed to work when we’re shaking like this.

[Jane holds up her left hand to demonstrate. It’s shaking heavily and she has trouble even holding it up. It’s caked in dark deer blood.]

ADAM

Yeah, I know, I know. (beat) Not to mention our eyes.

[Camera shows close-up of a bloodshot red watery eye.]

JANE

Don’t remind me, please.

[Adam holds his lids open and leans in close to show Jane.]

JANE (ctd)

What I just say?

[She grabs Adam by the face and shoves his head away.]

ADAM

Seriously Jane what do you think is causing this eye thing?

INT. Adam at a computer, typing a financial report, with his eyes mere inches from the screen.

EXT. Back under the canopy

JANE (shrugs)

I dunno. My eyes are fine.

ADAM

Yeah but your ear looks like a head of cauliflower – mmm, cauliflower.

INT. Jane on the phone arguing about a rejected patent claim.

EXT. Back under the canopy. Jane gives Adam another face shove as he leans toward her ear with his mouth open and watering.

EXT – In an open field now, Adam and Jane are hovering over a fire upon which rests a boiling Teflon pot of dark green liquid

ADAM (shaking all over as if feverishly sick)

This better work, Jane.

JANE (very defensively)

Or what, Adam?

[Adam looks at her blankly but if looks could kill…]

JANE (ctd)

Whose dumbass idea was it to come out here again? Was it, hmm, maybe, I think, yes, was it – YOUR idea, Adam!

[Jane switches to a deep, goofy voice.]

JANE (ctd)

Oh, Jane, we’re stuck in a trap here. We’re working so hard we never have time for each other, and when we do I’m so stressed I can’t even get it up anymore. Oh Jane this life is too much work for too little reward – what’s the point of all our possessions if we can’t even enjoy them together, Jane? Oh Jane, let’s move out somewhere wild, build a lean-to and live like hunter-gatherers – we can be naked all the time. It’ll be our own Garden of Eden – except we can even eat the apples, oh Jane let’s do it.

[Jane switches back to her own voice, except angrier than we’ve yet seen her, she’s yelling at the top of her lungs now.]

JANE (ctd)

Well you know what? You may be Adam, but I ain’t no Eve, and there ain’t no apples on this godforsaken island!

[Jane storms out of sight. Adam stares deep into the brewing cauldron, pulls some small berries out of his breast pocket and squeezes a milky substance from them into the pot, and stirs with a stick.]

ADAM (calling over his shoulder)

Jane, I think it’s ready.

EXT. Back under the canopy. Jane and Adam sit sipping from two Second Cup stainless steel traveler mugs, making contorted disgusted faces with each sip. Jane occasionally looks like she’s going to wretch. They sit sipping for about 15 seconds, eyeing each other suspiciously, saying nothing.

EXT. Back to the wide open field. Adam is chasing Jane. She lets him catch her, hugs him, squirms loose, runs, lets him catch her again.

ADAM

Feeling better?

JANE

Oh Adam! What did you put in that tea?

ADAM

That was no tea Jane, it was espresso, espresso au natural.

JANE

Adam, some espresso, it was disgusting.

ADAM

I think it has potential. It must be healthy, look how much better we feel. I haven’t eaten for hours and I’m not even hungry. And I’ve stopped shaking. And so have you! And I don’t feel thirsty either, it’s a wonder drink. We just have to figure out how to make it taste good and we could make millions.

JANE

I thought you weren’t interested in making millions anymore.

ADAM

Well, I’m not, but, you know. (beat) I thought you were.

JANE

I just want to get out of the jungle.

ADAM

And go back to our miserable lives working non-stop, never seeing each other or our friends, consuming unstoppably, glued to our desks, stressed, sleepless?

JANE

Let’s work on this natural espresso. Show me what you put in it.

EXT. Over the fire and boiling pot again. Through the magic of time lapse photography we see Jane and Adam trying batch after batch, making a vast diversity of contorted faces until, eureka! They make a delicious batch.

EXT. Adam and Jane selling ‘Natural Espresso’ on the side of the road to Galiano tourists, thus curing the tourists’ caffeine withdrawal. They’re talking up the customers about city life, the beauty of nature but also how one misses the finer, higher culture things in life: the theatre, the ballet, the symphony, espresso.

JANE

Oh you can’t beat Karen Kain, Minigawa’s beautiful but she doesn’t have as much grace – that’s just how it is. I wish Karen Kain would perform again, even if she’s past her prime, she’ll always have that graceful beauty.

CAFFEINE CUSTOMER

Heather Ogden is something to watch. She’s very self-assured.

ADAM

Yes, she certainly is (beat) something to watch.

[Jane elbows Adam playfully. The customer thanks them, returns to her Prius with a travel mug full of a dark green brew, and drives away.]

JANE

We’ll be rich!

ADAM

Yes, rich because we’ll be in the city we love, with a job we actually believe in – bringing this great energy drink to our fellow yuppies, actually having conversations with people. And we can grow a rooftop garden that will supply us with all our raw materials. Rich indeed, a kind of wealth too few people know.

JANE

Whatever.


THE END.

Labels: 2003, Fiction, short story, Toronto