kagablog

Today I actually remember being in school. So many days have been a blur lately, but this afternoon stood out. We were learning about the body in biology. When the teacher asked about the kidneys and their function, I actually put up my hand. Finally something I knew.

I said that they’re bean shaped organs the size of my fist. There are two of them, that they’re reddish brown and they’re located in my upper abdomen. Their function is to filter waste, fluids and extra salt out of my blood. My teacher was impressed with me, for once.
Then she asked me, and the class, what happens when kidney’s fail.
I stared at her blankly, like I didn’t know, except that I guess I did.
You die, she said, harshly, then moved on to the pancreas.
I guess it’s hearing it from someone completely objective, someone who’s just stating the facts.
Someone who doesn’t know it’s you.
It was like a reminder, a loud alarm clock that my organs are rotting. My kidneys are failing.
It feels like I’m being kicked hard and fast by someone wearing soccer cleats.
It makes me feel like I’m not in control of my own body. I have to watch as it ejects food and swells up like a balloon. My eyes get puffy and I feel my body temperature drop by like a million degrees. Everyone I know is worried about me which just makes me feel guilty. They keep telling me I’m going to dehydrate, which would be crazy because it’s the middle of winter.
It’s been raining a lot, and sometimes I wish I could lie down outside, on the pavement, with my mouth open, drinking it all. I wish getting better were that easy.
The doctors have made it clear to my mom that I need more dialysis. I’ve had this condition since I was eight but it got a lot more serious this year. The thing I know for sure is, we can’t afford it, even as my mom denies it. She shouldn’t, I’m too old, I know the truth. I got no more ubuqwebe, my mother yelled at no one in particular this morning. She had no more jewelry left to hawk. We’re officially skepselas, the poor folk.
Not that we were ever exactly fat cats, but we managed, before. My mom made more money, she had a boyfriend who lived with us who helped out. My half brother, who’s older, helped. Now it’s just the two of us. Now we have to do embarrassing things, like show up at the hospital and beg . Half the hospitals around here won’t even look at you if you don’t have a gun shot wound, if you’re not dying on the spot. “You should jola one of the doctors, mom”, I joke as we sit in the taxi on our way to the hospital. You’re still good looking, you could make it happen. Uyabeda, she spat at me, disgusted. You’re talking garbage. What, you think I’m a magosha now? It’s the first time I’ve seen her look really angry in months. It kind of felt good, almost normal.
It’s raining as we get out of the two Rand taxi, a Zola Budd, as they say around here, a Toyota, which is missing its windows and its license plate.
It was a four -four, where you sit with 4 people next to you on each side, and the kid sitting next to me, who was probably five with sticky hands kept grabbing at my hair. I had to control the urge to bite her. It’s 9:30 at night, 45 minutes after my mom got off work, at the nearest one fifteen minutes from our flat. It’s Hillbrow Hospital, the H Hosi, as they call it around here. We walk past a park and a school, plus a bunch of day care centers. I guess all the teenage mothers and gang members have to put their kids somewhere. My mom thinks this side of Hillbrow is a lot safer than where we live but I’m not so sure. I was kicking one of those small coke cans as we were walked in and I nearly stepped on a syringe. It could’ve gone right through my shoe so I kept my mouth shut. She’s got enough shit to worry about as it is.
We live in Highpoint, which actually is a physically high point, on a hill, right in the middle. If the Tsotsis that hang out outside our building smoking all the time are right, our area is the number one place for drug deals in the country. They call it Heroin Heights, but what I’ve seen a lot of is crack and coke.
The streets are lined with one star hotels, street meat vendors and real magoshas getting ready to hlahla any guy stupid enough to pay them. Our apartment is on Claim st, near Kotze, across the road from the infamous Protea Hotel. It’s legendary for the amount of jijis, underage girls, that are there all the time. I can see them without squinting from my window. Sometimes there are moms, like in their forties even. I can see it in the lines in their faces, that dead look in their eyes. They wish they were dead, I can tell. They stand outside, smoking dagga, staring vacantly into the street. At night they’re way younger. Some of them look my age. They all wear the same gold or purple eye shadow, red lipstick and black fishnets, or torn tights. When their legs are bare you can see bruises and sometimes scratches. When they bend over, you can see everything. No underwear, nothing. Every night when I go to bed my room is bathed in orange and green neon from the hotel sign. One of my mom’s friends once offered to make me some curtains, my mom keeps saying I should put up some towels, but I always say no. Orange and green are my favorite colors.
My mom is taking control of the situation now. My legs feel like they’re going to buckle at any second. She’s got this hard look in her eyes, this street look I’ve seen her use with the guy who drives the banana- kaar through our street. He comes by once a week, exchanging our used bottles for bags of popcorn and chips. We spend hours scrounging for stuff, swiping liquor bottles from our neighbors garbage. Then he tries to stiff us, tries to give us half or less of the amount he owes us. Then my mom goes from being friendly and polite, a mam’gobozi, who gossips with them, to
their worst enemy. There’s this moment of disbelief, this palpable look of shock on their faces, before they just give up and give her what she wants. My ouledi is badass.
My eyes begin to well up and I wonder if she notices. A while ago I learned how to cry in public without anyone noticing. I don’t change my facial expression and I let the tears fall individually. I think being quiet is the best way to get away with anything. A couple years ago, at school, I got bullied by some other kids. I once got pushed in front of a door and everyone laughed as it slammed in my face. My lip was swollen and the skin above my nose and under my eyes bulged into hard red bumps. I sat crouching behind it, bleary eyed and blubbering in pain. No one came near me. Guys walked right past me, and this girl that I thought was cool and wanted to be friends with saw me, laughed and kept walking. No one said a word to me. I haven’t
been able to cry in public since.
My mom knows me better than anyone. I cry in front of her all the time. She’s knows I’m about to break down, she can tell, so she steers past the front desk in the emergency room. She finds a single empty chair and I sink into it. It’s made of worn blue leather, and has stuffing coming out of its right arm. There’s a table full of dog eared magazines beside me. I leaf through an old issue of Time, feel disgusted, put it down. They never write about us. They never talk about the people who really struggle, the people in the townships. She leans up against the side of my chair. There’s nowhere for her to sit.
My mom works harder than anyone I know. The best word for it is phithezela-hectic. She cleans houses six days a week. When I get up in the morning she’s already gone, and when I get home she’s still not back yet. She’s hardly ever around, so she can’t take of me when I’m sick. She strokes my hair now. I used to wear it in tight thin braids to make it feel like I had extensions. I felt so weird about having hair that was red and soft to the touch that grows at such a tremendous rate. I thought about cutting it all off at one point and wearing hats and berets like my mom. She never had extensions. I guess I’ve gotten used to it now.
I don’t want her to feel bad about anything. I understand that she needs to work. It could be a lot worse, I say. We could be out on the street. She shakes her head and looks away. Aiiii, she mutters shaking her head. We nearly there, hey. We haven’t had any electricity for three days now. It’s fine during the day, but at night I have to use a torch just to get to the bathroom. I can’t see to do my homework or read, I can’t listen to music and I have a boyfriend and he can’t even call me. She starts filling out the hospital forms for me. She writes out my date of birth and then my age. I’m going to be seventeen next week. It’ll be at least a couple of hours before anyone can see us. I close my eyes. I wish I had something to knock me out. I open my eyes and find my mom filling out her section. Occupation: housekeeper. Nanny. Professional taker of other people’s shit. She gets down on her hands and knees and scrubs their floors for less than a thousand Rand a month. She makes them huge meals with fancy food, and we’re subsisting on fruit loops with milk that’s past its expiry date. Their food would probably make me sick, but the whole thing makes me sick to be honest. They treat her like a sbotho, like a worthless person that they can replace at any time. Which I guess they can. My mom has a grade five education. When I graduate from high school, it’ll be a big deal to her. When I look around me sometimes, at the neighborhood, when I think about my chances, my chances of making anything of my life, I get incredibly depressed. I don’t know what I want to be, or what I want to do except make a lot of money. Enough to buy us a house. Enough to get my mom some nice new things.
Enough for decent food, no more of this township crap. I keep telling my mom that if I eat any more achaar, which is township salad, oily, made of mangoes, that I’ll be sika for the rest of my life. I keep telling her my kidney problems come from eating too much achaar, or chicken dust which is meat, any meat, it could be pigeon for all we know, sold to us by street vendors. Sometimes she laughs, but usually she snaps and tells me I’m being a chizzboy, a spoiled brat.
I like to fantasize about dropping out of school and being a singer or a rapper.
I love kwaito, township hip hop, and African singers. My mom has all the albums, from Miriam Makeba to Brenda Fassie to Bongo Maffin and Mandoza. Kwaito adds color when everything is grey and white- the buildings, the crap burger joints, the wet laundry that hangs out of people’s windows, showing off our underwear, reminding the world that we’re working class, the gun shots at night. It’s too bad that my father was white. I’m a Dushi, a mixed race kid. I’d never be accepted if I wanted to make music like that. As it is, the kids I know from around here call me Coconut- a person who’s brown, kind of black on the outside but totally white on the inside. They hate that I don’t go with them to one of the shit schools in town. I go to an almost all white school in Edenvale that takes me forever to get to. My name is real name is Colleen, which they call me at school, but in Hillbrow everybody calls me Coco. It’s ok. It doesn’t bother me anymore.
A nurse comes to call into another waiting area. She and mom chat. She asks my mom if I have Magama Amathathu, if I have AIDS. She says it because I’m thin, because I haven’t been keeping anything down. I’m about to snap, I’m about to say no lady, not AIDS, just HIV.
It’s the kind of joke my mom wouldn’t find funny. She doesn’t want a phalafala, she tells me, sharply poking me in the leg. It’s true, I know. The last thing we need is a fiasco.
Sometimes when I think about being sika, I think about how many years I’ve had these health problems, I think about how little we have money wise, how my mom has to phanda, to make ends meet, I get so angry. I understand why people deal drugs, why people rob houses, why stupid people get shot. Everyone just wants to get out. Everyone is desperate to get out of this place as soon as they can. And there are so many of us.
My boyfriend is from Zimbabwe. His name is Munya. He’s one of the refugees who hopped the fence, walked and crawled and climbed and possibly killed to get into this country.
He’s eight years older than me. He’s six feet tall, and thin. I can feel his hip bones and his rib bones when I touch him. He’s gentle all the time, at least with me. He’s different than most of the guys I’ve ever met.
If my mom thinks anything bad about him, she doesn’t say it. She knows he’s older, but she thinks he’s twenty five, not twenty eight. She was happy when he got a job in computers, and when he got fired last month, I didn’t tell her. She doesn’t need more to worry about; when he takes me out, she doesn’t need to know where he gets his money. It’s hard to meet a guy around here who doesn’t deal drugs. Munya doesn’t gufa- he doesn’t smoke crack or do coke.
He just deals it, because it moves a lot faster than weed and he makes so much money that if he gets caught he’ll be able to pay his bail. It’s not so bad when you think about it. He doesn’t see Magoshas or have phamakote, which is what they also call AIDS. We have sex, and most of the time we use condoms. It’s hard to remember all the time. When passion grabs you, it grabs you, it’s something intangible, a force that you can’t control. It’s a feeling I’ve always wanted to feel, so if it seizes me I try not to say no. Sometimes when I remember it’s too late. We’re nowhere near a place where we can get some. It would kill the moment, the feeling, the urgency. Sex helps the world goes black, it makes me forget that I’m sick, that I could die, that we have no money, that I might make nothing of my life. There’s a gnawing fear in me that I’m not as good as my classmates; that I can try and struggle and still not end up like them; with two parents, in a nice house, with a nice husband and family, with money, with security.
I can’t tell my mom that I’m having sex. She’ll think that I malunde- that I sleep around. She’ll be scared of me getting pregnant, even though we’re careful most of the time. Most of all, she’ll be scared I’ll never be a makoti, a bride. She’s scared I’ll end up tainted, used and thrown away like her. My mom has never been married. She wants everything to be better for me that it was for her. Sometimes it feels like too much to promise her. Sometimes it feels like too much pressure.
When we get called to the doctor’s rooms, finally, we’re told that we have to pay. The doctor explains to my mom that we have to, that not treating it can be fatal. We panic and talk, pace the passageway, and think. I suggest calling Munya for the money and my mom relents.
She still thinks he’s a stand up guy with a real job, instead of a lova, an unemployed guy who deals drugs and knows all the lyrics on Brenda Fassie’s Memeza album.
Sometimes when Munya is high, and bored, he sculpts things. He sculpts faces from pieces of wood, whole bodies from sticks that are lying around. He has an artist’s soul. Maybe that’s why my mom doesn’t fear him.
She sees his good side too.
It’s his drug money that pays for the dialysis. When he doesn’t have enough he and his friends break into houses. They say they never hurt anyone, just scare them until the job is done.
There’s something exciting about it, about taking life into your own hands, but there’s something scary about it too. When I think about my mom, going to work in a five year old uniform missing its middle button, with a rag tied around her head, stealing sugar from their pantry because she’s afraid to ask for some for tea, going without a lunch so I can eat one- I feel so sad and angry and guilty, guilty for not doing more.
Tomorrow night when he asks me to go with him and his friends to housebreak I think I’ll go with. I want to see what it’s like.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem like I have a choice, or much of a chance anyway of doing anything else. I mean, there’s the future that everyone’s always talking about for me, and then there’s the truth, the one I see everyday. The buildings, the drugs, the pocket knife I wear in the sock of my school shoes. I might do my best and never get out of here, or get away from it anyway.
I have to see what it’s like. I have to try it once, just to know.
I have to figure out if something, anything, makes me feel less angry.

.

when i saw you on the street the other day
i saw the way you tried to avoid my gaze
you ducked you moved you manouvered
you did everything to avoid
looking me in the eye
i’m not sure what it is about me
that makes it so hard for you to face me
but i would guess that
i forced you to confront things that made you uncomfortable
but were true nonetheless
and that seeing me reminds you of all the things in your life that haven’t changed
you can fool other people but you can’t fool me
(i really knew you then and i tried to connect again when i thought the time was right, my heart was in the right place even if you couldn’t see it)
i don’t feel bad about anything

When I was a kid, like ten or eleven or something, I won a contest in a pizzeria for a drawing I did of the Simpsons. It was this cheesy Italian restaurant in a mall, that had melting red wax candles at every table, and baskets of bread sticks on red and white checked table clothes. They were trying to pull in families with kids, so every month they had a new one. I had to draw my favorite tv show. I won a lifesize version of Maggie Simpson, and my family kept telling me how lucky I was.

I never got in trouble once, even when I did things that I shouldn’t have.

I cheated on a lot of tests, starting in the third grade. I didn’t always do my homework, and I did lots of things I shouldn’t have done, on purpose. It’s not that I wanted to be bad, per se, it’s just that I knew I wouldn’t get in trouble. I guess I wanted to test the limits.

In a way, that’s what I always do, all the time. I always want to

When I was in high school I always got the latest date for presentations, when the teachers picked our names randomly. Names could be pulled out of a hat, chosen randomly from a list, with a rolled dice, or a flipped coin, and I always went last, year after year. People hated me. My teacher in grade nine used to tell people to go up to me and touch my hands, then ask their parents to buy them lottery tickets.

I bought a couple of scratch and win cards last year, when I was sixteen, and one time I won $5000. I spent it so fast it’s not even funny. The women at the store couldn’t believe how much I was buying. They were falling all over themselves to help me, and it was a great feeling. I felt powerful, like a rich Hollywood star, like I should’ve been on the cover of Teen People, or Teen Vogue, showing off my closets while they took glamorous pictures of me. That’s all I wanted I guess, to feel special and unique, and I guess admired like that. Apparently that’s normal. Apparently lots of girls do.

I grew up thinking I was lucky, that I could get away with anything. In a way, I blame my parents. I grew up thinking I could have or do or get away with anything.

I grew up thinking that everything I did was right, or ok, no matter what.

I was fifteen when I met him. Actually, technically, I was sixteen when we met, but fifteen when we first started talking. We met online. I said on my page that I was single, and I guess he liked the photo of me. My hair was in a pony tail, and I was wearing my brother’s baseball hat backwards. I thought it looked cool, but I was being kind of ironic.

I was making a face, sticking my tongue out, and my eyes looked kind of small because

I was laughing, even though I was trying to look cool. He told me he liked it right away.

There was another one, of me blowing a huge bubble of Bubblicious grape, and it exploding all over my face. He told me the second time we talked that it was his favorite.

I looked like I was having a good time, he said, going wild and looking scared and kind of vulnerable at the same time. That’s when I decided I kind of liked him too. He seemed smart, like a good observer. Plus he was hot, and the guys at my school were really boring. I didn’t want to date any of them. I turned two down, and the rest stopped asking. Which was ok, because I wasn’t interested anyway. Whatever, internet dating was the thing, everyone knew, and my town had three other high schools anyway.

He told me his real name right away. I mean everyone called him Spence, or Spenny, but that made him cringe and I could understand why. He wanted me to call him Spencer, which I did. We got to talking, first over myspace, then messenger. He called me a week later, and we talked for like four hours, non stop. It was awesome. We figured out that we both love South Park and the Simpsons, and the same music and everything. He went to the high school, really near to where I lived. I wanted to go there too, but my parents said it was shitty there. The thing is, it was in our neighborhood, which is really safe, so it didn’t make sense. He came over, and we played Game Cube, and hung out in the backyard and he pushed me on the swing, which was super romantic and cute.

My family was having a barbeque that night, and they invited him to stay. He’d only kissed me once, before anyone else had gotten home, but after my dad invited him he groped me on the staircase when no one else was watching. It was awesome, he put his one hand on the railing, and his other like he was going to reach over me, but then he put his hand down my shirt instead. You have to understand, my parents were Christians.

I wasn’t allowed to date, or fool around with guys and I promised my parents more than once that I would wait til I was married to fuck someone. It would be all about the wedding night, blah blah blah. Procreation, god’s gift, etc. My older brother wasn’t even allowed to jack off. Apparently, wasting sperm is a sin. What a goddamn stupid idea, if you ask me. It’s all so freaking unnatural. But I also suck at self control. I’m really glad I’m naturally thin, cause I could never diet. I could never bring myself to go to the gym, or not cheat on tests. I’m lucky I always get away with stuff. I’m lucky, I have to keep telling myself I’m so goddamn lucky.

Spencer was the first person to ever agree with me that my parents were fucking nuts.

They made me go to church ever single Sunday of my life, wear stupid white dresses, sit with my legs crossed, all that crap. I went to bible camp, know all the hymns by heart, always had to say grace before meals, the whole motherfucking nine yards.

At first my parents liked Spencer. He was polite, and he knew how to work adults, like me. He was two years older, so he had more experience. He was eighteen, and almost done high school. He knew how to bs them about what he planned to do with his life, how he planned to become rich and successful and wonderful and charitable, and all that.

At first, everything was great. He even came with us to church once, and lied about how the minister’s sermon had moved him, while I tried to sleep through it with my eyes wide open. I still lied to my parents though, cause they couldn’t know I was going to his house at night, or sleeping over. His mom was a single mom and didn’t give a shit. I think she liked me, actually. She seemed like she did. We smoked cigarettes together and she made me my first Irish coffee one morning. She was awesome, now that I think about it.

Everything turned to shit the first time my parents caught me lying. They called my friend Yvette, wanting to know where I was, and she was too scared to lie for me and nearly shat her pants or something, apparently, and told them. Just like that she sold me out. Some friend, I’ve known her since like kindergarten. Apparently she told my parents that Spencer was a bad influence on me, and didn’t they know that he went to Grove Heights, which was full of gangs and juvenile thugs? It turns out they didn’t.

From then on my parents forbade me to see him. I wasn’t allowed to spend any time with him, which was fine, cause I kept lying to them anyway. Then they overheard me talking to him on my cellphone in the bathroom one night. I thought I was hiding it so well.

My mom slapped me across the face. My dad left highlighted articles about teenage crime waves and gangs on the desk where I did my homework. They started questioning me before I did anything. I had to tell them before I went anywhere, including to the bathroom during dinner. My life started feeling like a prison. It was around that time that Spencer first told me that he loved me. I used to ditch third and fourth period, and see him until after lunch. Sometimes I ditched the whole day, but I was so good at forging notes that no one ever caught me. Why are your parents so stupid, he asked me when day, after they’d spent two hours yelling at me about my grades on a history final. When the fuck would you ever need this shit, he said about the dumb American history I’d failed to memorize. He was so supportive and so nice. Let’s run away together, he said, and at first I laughed, but then he told me he was serious. That summer we were going to Canada. We were going to cross the border in British Columbia and live out in the forest, in nature. We had it all planned. It was going to be perfect. I wouldn’t need to finish high school. We’d have each other. We’d make love and be in love. Then he showed me the gun. It was small, metal and grey, shiny, with a brown handle. It was surprisingly heavy.

I’d never handled one before. I was surprised at how cool I felt, how amazingly in control. I guess I was angrier than I realized.

That night when parents asked me where I was going, and I told them to Spencer’s all hell broke loose. You’d think I just told them I joined a cult. They went fucking nuts.

My dad threw the book he was reading at me, and it hit me in the head. I got a bump almost instantly. That’s the thing. People thought my dad was this great, soft, gentle respectable guy, but he was an asshole. No one had any idea.

When I got to Spencer’s I was so angry and upset. He gave some beer, and we did a little acid, but that was all. When I told him the story, he got so mad. We drove over to my parents so he could confront them.

He yelled at my dad, and then he shot him in the head. He got him right in the bullseye, in the temple I think. He dropped right away. My mom stood there, shaking and frozen and then she screamed. Her eyes rolled back in her head like ping pong balls. It was scary, like she looking at nothing. He shot her in the chest.

Gun shots sound like fireworks, a little. There’s this little surge of adrenaline, like the shot before a race starts. You feel like you can run and run, you want to jump up and down, but just as you do, something stops you from looking like an ass. I just stood there and stared for a long time. I couldn’t believe they were dead.

I guess I was free. It was some kind of relief, euphoric and then fear. Hard, cold fucking fear. Getting caught. What the hell would our story be?

I felt vomit at the back of my throat. I think Spencer caught me right before I fainted.

His fingerprints were all over the place. He voluntarily confessed, while I cried and held onto him, and begged them to take them me with him.

At first no one blamed me, and because I was under eighteen, I was protected by the Young Offender’s Act. The general public doesn’t know my name, and I won’t have a criminal record. Just lucky, I guess. I’m still going to have to leave this town, cause it’s small, and I still sometimes think that I love Spencer, sometimes I think I love him more than ever. The thing is, he’s in jail now, awaiting trial. He stirred up all these feelings in me, all this confusion, and sometimes I really don’t know what I feel.

Would I have shot one of them if he hadn’t? Sometimes I really don’t know. But sometimes if I try hard enough, and I think about his reasons, none of it seems that crazy to me. Sometimes life is unfair, and people get angry.

I only get away with things because I’m lucky.

It was becoming one of those things. In her mind it was over.

She had run away, gone across the world to Australia to be in a band, it was a huge opportunity blah blah blah. They always knew it was coming, he supposed, it was one of those unspoken things that they both knew was there. He secretly hoped that since she never brought it up, she would change her mind. She avoided it for only one reason; she didn’t want to disappoint him and break his heart, but she knew she would.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love him; for the better part of three years she was more than positive that she did. There were times when she was sure she loved him so much that it would physically hurt her. On those nights, when she lay in her single bed waiting for him, wondering if he was with someone else, wondering what would happen to them, if he really loved her, she was convinced her heart would literally burst. He’d put her through a lot at first, but she’d stayed with him. She was convinced they were right for each other. She was convinced she could help him.

He knew he’d made her wait a long time. He remembered the first time she told him she loved him, they were drunk. She had a dark red ring of red around her mouth. She touched his hair around his ear. She made eye contact then stared out the window.

He thought she was just saying it, had only been a few months. Afterwards he wondered if she knew him well enough to mean it. He suspected that she didn’t. Maybe she wanted it to be true. Maybe on some level, so did he.

She felt that, she knew he wasn’t ready, knew that one day he would be, so she waited.

She cried a lot. She got drunk with her friends and made out with random boys in clubs.

Her friends took pictures of it, and bragged to him. She was trying to hurt him, but he never showed her how felt. He’d shrug his shoulders. He’d tell her they weren’t committed to each other, that she was free. She didn’t feel free. She felt anchored down, tied and bound to feelings that felt entirely involuntary. She tried to take space. She took holidays with friends. She tried not talking to him for weeks. She went on real dates with guys who had real jobs, guys who offered to buy her dinner and presents. Her mom met and liked a couple of them. She thought it would be so much easier to have feelings for them, and she tried to, but she couldn’t make herself.

He spent a lot of time alone. He read a whole collection of plays. He drew. Sometimes he got drunk with his friends, and other times he hung out with his female friends, the ones she was jealous of. Sometimes they hung out one on one, other times in groups of three or four or five. He continued calling them honey and darling. It was easier because they didn’t mean anything to him. When he spoke to her, he just called her by her name.

Petra. His tongue popped over the p. She liked the sound of it, the way he said it. Somehow, he made it sound beautiful, exotic even.

She was jealous of all of them, he was right. She spent hours dissecting the conversations she overhead him having on his cell phone. It ate her alive, made her feel less special, not just to him, but as a person. It made her wonder who she was, what the point of her life was. It made her hate them, and hate herself for feeling that way.

She wondered if he’d slept with them, or made out with them or fooled around with any of them. She wondered if it mattered. She wondered if any of them were in love with him too, if they’d told him and he pretended he hadn’t heard them either. She wondered if any of them would continue to pursue it, pursue him, sit waiting, even as they pretended they didn’t. They were all intelligent, like her. She knew because she knew them all.

It took him a while but he woke up. She dated other people, one a little more seriously than the others, and it hit him. If he didn’t get over his crap, his fears, his bullshit, his past, he would lose her. I mean, enough with the self pity, he told himself. Get ahold of yourself man. Go get the girl. So he did. It took some work, some winning over. They were deliriously happy for a while. They told everyone how much they loved each other.

He felt the need to shout it out, tell everyone, call her his girlfriend, his love. It was like that then. He needed to make up for lost time. He had to make it up to her. They both felt it, even though she never said it, she never admitted it. But it was there. He had been selfish once, so she reserved the right to walk away anytime. She didn’t think she would, didn’t think she could, hoped that he would take it better, hoped and prayed that he would come with her. Deep down she knew he couldn’t. She pretended that it hurt less than it did because it was easier. The truth is, it was the only thing she could do. She was seeing the world. She was living her dream. She was experiencing all the things she’d read about, visualized, all the things she’d always wanted to do. It was just the beginning, she knew. Just the start of the life she wanted. The thing is, she’d always imagined that she’d have the life she wanted with him. She always imagined that they’d get married, have a nice house by the beach, raise kids who were artsy like them, but more practical.

He used to picture it with her too, they used to talk about it all the time. It embarrassed him, so he didn’t admit, but he liked that picture a whole lot. Loved it even. Maybe more than she did. Maybe he needed it more.

They talk sometimes now. He still pines, sometimes in public, and sometimes she tells people, mentions it here and there, but she tries not to. It was her decision, even though it didn’t feel like one to her at the time. It felt like what she had to do. It felt like the inevitable. They still send each text messages sometimes. They talk on facebook and on myspace. When people ask, they say there are no hard feelings. When it hurts to talk about it, one or both of them change the subject. They always tell people that they’re still friends. It’s easier that way.

There is dirt on the bottom of my heels. The skin is cracked and when I wear sandals, like to pad around my apartment, more dirt slides in. I’ve always wanted to be tough, to have a body that reflects resilience and strength, but instead mine just shows off my flaws.

I am unable to deal with any pressure. I crack at the first sign of stress.

Being pregnant is nothing like I thought it would be. I expected it to be moving, life affirming. I knew that my hormones would go up and down, that it would be an emotional time. I read all those books, the classics, What to Expect When you’re Expecting, The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy, all that stuff.

We have friends, friends from all walks of life. I’d read it all, from the mainstream stuff to the Gay/Queer friendly stuff. I knew all about nausea and morning sickness and loss of appetite, and strange cravings and strange looks and unwanted attention.

I knew I’d get fat, that my body would change, that my ankles and wrists would swell.

I knew I’d sometimes look at myself in the mirror and not recognize myself.

I knew it all, but still. It was harder than I thought it would be.

I met her when I was twenty seven, which is old when you think about it. I think a lot of people meet the loves of their lives in their earlier twenties. I’d been out since I was in high school, at least to my friends and everyone at school knew. When I was sixteen I shaved my head and dyed it orange. I wore ripped jeans that were at least two sizes too big, which stood out at my school since all the girls were wearing skinny, fitted jeans. They used safety pins to make them more tapered and tight, and I just wanted to cover up. I guess I was about 14 or so when I first realized these things. It wasn’t overnight. Things dawned on me slowly, tiny realizations that finally lead to a conclusion that was so simple, it was painful. I was gay. Whatever, I thought. I was kind of glad to have it figured out. No denial, or dating guys or self delusion. That was that.

I was a tomboyish kid who always played sports and hated dresses, but lots of straight girls are like that too, it doesn’t mean anything. I liked guys, but as buddies, confidantes, players on a team. I just wasn’t attracted to them. I fantasized about girls when I was fifteen. I bought dirty girlie magazines and hid them under the bed. I had sticky finger tips from thinking about hot brunettes. When I saw a girl I found attractive in school, because she was smart, because she was hot, because she was kind, my legs would shake. When I eyed the guys in my school, when I scoped them out with other girls because I was trying to fit in, I couldn’t even fake it. I felt nothing, nothing in my heart, in my head, below my waist. After gym class, girls would gossip, walking around in their panties and bras, gossiping to me, treating me like one of them, and I was racked with guilt. If only they knew what I was thinking. If only they knew I was wishing I had a camera with me just then. If only they knew that I was taking them in angle by soft angle, part by part. If only they knew I’d be thinking about them all night. I didn’t find teenage boys disgusting or gross because I was one of them. I listened to them talk about wanting to bang girls with envy. I wanted to do that too, I wanted to do it and then talk and swagger like they did. I didn’t want to be a bad person, I didn’t want to lead anyone on, or use anyone, but I did want gratification in the same way. I wanted to get laid, and I wanted that to be ok.

I wanted to want things and get them and get the same shrug of the shoulders as they did.

When I was sixteen my parents moved and I got transferred to another school.

The summer before I discovered punk rock, I listened non stop to the Clash and the Ramones and Black Flag. I felt like less of an outsider. My favorite Clash song was Lost in the Supermarket. I went to a punk club downtown, and saw lots of chicks that looked the way I wanted to: dyed chop cuts, torn clothes, androgynous. I also saw lots of hot girls in short red kilts and baby tube tops and I knew it was my scene. The thing is, that finding other people made it easier. Just knowing they existed. I chopped my hair off with a razor I found in my parent’s bathroom that belonged to my dad. I got a friend, this girl Cleo to help me to dye it, first with Tie Dye then with Kool Aid, then finally with Manic Panic, which was expensive and had to keep being redone. I made out with Cleo two weeks after that and dated her on and off for a year. She was a high school drop out, but one of the smartest people I’d ever met. We’d skip class and walk around downtown and smoke weed and get into bars, and sit there in the middle of the day, nursing beers, trying to look adult. She’d always tell me how guy like I was, how I’d swagger like a guy, how I had a gut and no hips like a guy. She liked my broad shoulders. She always teased me, told me I’d be the football star in my school, if I’d just been born with a dick.

She always called me her quarterback. Whenever she talked like that, I’d laugh, but it would hurt, and I’d pretend it wouldn’t. I was angry all the time, like a teenage guy, I guess. I body slammed myself into walls, punched my locker in when I was having a bad day. It just seemed so unfair to me, like why the hell was I made a made a woman when I was clearly a man? I couldn’t figure it out. The thing is, even though I had a girlfriend, and parents who pretended or didn’t actually know or care what I was doing, I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the stigmas attached to being gay. I knew how I’d be treated by teachers, the principal, the stupid close minded community I lived in if I actually came out with it.

And yet I was what I was. There was nothing I could do. I was attracted to and wanted to be with woman. But I felt like and wanted to be a man.

When I was in college I met a girl. Her name was Barbara and she was three years older than me. She was delicate and feminine and beautiful. When we made love, which we did, which I did for the first time, I was always scared she’d break. I controlled the urge to hold her like she was a piece of glass. Whenever she left my room she left a trail of perfume lingering, Gaultier, or sometimes Elizabeth Arden. I wrote her love letters.

She was an English Literature major, a well read, intelligent classy woman. I never understood what she was doing with me. When she left me after a year and a half, she told me what I’d always known, what I always knew. That I was a college experiment to her. She wanted to be with a man, she said, who was both as sensitive and as masculine as me. I hope she’s found him.

I didn’t date for a long time after that, aside from an occasional one night stand here or there, at a pub night or at a late night study session. I have never to this day, been with a guy. I’ve never wanted to. I’ve always known I wouldn’t be missing anything.

I met her a few years later, when I was twenty seven and she was twenty five. I met her at work, through one of my colleagues. It was pretty mundane and unromantic actually, a classic set up story. She has shoulder length brown hair and blue eyes. She’s beautiful and smart and funny. We moved in together after three months.

She supported me when I started taking hormone treatments. When I grew hair on my chest, she played with it, stroked it, said she loved it. When my breasts disappeared,

When I grew a mustache, then a beard, and went up two clothing sizes, she just said there was more of me to love, and I could tell she meant it. I always knew she was it for me, I just knew it, just like anybody straight. I just knew. When I changed my name from Antonia to Anthony, which basically meant that I was still Toni, just spelled with a Y now, she just laughed. I didn’t go all the way with my surgery though. I kept my vagina in fairness to her. She was grateful I could tell. But I felt like a man, and I still do.

We got married after a year, and I’d never been happier. We bought a dog and then our condo. My life felt perfect.

Then two years ago, she told me that she wanted to have a kid. We talked about donors, then ended up at a clinic, choosing from lists of men who sounded perfect.

We spent a fortune, giving it shot after shot at different clinics, trying different kinds of fertility treatments, until an expert told us it was no use. Aimee couldn’t have a baby.

We racked our brains thinking of what to do. The doctor suggested adoption, and we looked into seriously. Then Aimee explained to him about me. She explained to him that I was still technically a woman. That in theory, it might be possible for me to conceive.

We were elated and terrified. We didn’t sleep for weeks. We were up all night, talking or arguing or pacing. We took turns sleeping on the couch, crying to our friends, thinking about breaking up or going straight. I thought about getting a full blown sex change and making all of this impossible. We spent a lot of money. Thousands in retrospect. Tens of thousands even. I miscarried three times, went on and off my hormones.

In the end, I was able to get pregnant healthily. Sometimes I feel so grateful I want to cry, and other times I just feel like an ass. I have a hairy chest and back pain and stomach aches and nausea, and cravings for sour food. I look like a man, but I’m clearly pregnant. On the street I’m torn between wearing extra large clothes to cover up, acting like a couch potato chip eating oaf who just got fat, and being proud of the freak show I’ve become. Sometimes I’m so embarrassed I cry. Other times I feel overwhelmingly proud and compassionate towards all woman in general who have to go through this. It’s a minor miracle for us, but it’s a regular rite of passage in every country in the world. It’s nothing, just carrying a living being. Giving birth, giving life. Sometimes I can’t stand or believe the wave of emotions I feel. It’s too much for me sometimes. There are days when I can’t leave the house.

When we give birth to our miracle, we want to name her Mirari, which means miracle in Portuguese, which is Aimee’s background. She will be our miracle, and we will be her family, no matter what anyone thinks. After she’s born, I’ll get that sex change. I’ll finally be a man. And when she’s old enough to know, I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her that her dad, her old man, was the world’s first pregnant man. I hope she won’t think it’s a punch line. I hope she’ll be able to love me and accept me no matter what. I already know now without any doubt how much I’ll love her.

Ever since I woke up I’ve had a splitting headache. I can’t say that until now I’ve ever really understood what a splitting headache is like. It really feels like someone hammered a nail into the centre of my head- I feel like any second my head might separate and bleed, ooze blood and puss and scabs all over my sheets. It’s only 5:30 am.

It’s dead quiet. The sun isn’t out yet. I look out the window and notice that even the homeless people aren’t even out yet. I wonder where they go.

I used to love being sick as a kid. When I was ten, I had my tonsils pulled out. The doctors were nice and friendly, let me ask them lots of annoying questions. I really wanted to know what was going to happen to me, and how much it would hurt. They were patient with me, even kind. I got to eat ice cream and jello for a week and a half, which I loved, and I got to be treated delicately, like I could break at any second if I was pushed too hard. I didn’t have to do my homework or think about going to school, and people brought me movies and puzzles and things to do while I was in there. My whole class came to visit me one day, and they all seemed so relieved and happy that I was okay.

Not everyone can say exactly what they miss the most about their childhoods, but for me that was it. For me, the thing I miss the most is the lack of expectation. The patience and the kindness. The thing I miss the most is people allowing you to take care of yourself or occasionally screw up.

When I was a kid my childhood was the kind you read about in magazines, or see on tv shows and if you’re cynical, or smart, some would argue, you don’t believe really exists.

The thing is, it did. It was pretty close to perfect. I had two parents, a younger sister and a dog. My dad was great, but my mom was my best friend. She talked to me everyday for hours about school and my day and she read to me every night, or made up stories about whatever I wanted her to. All I had to do was give her the topic. She could come up with anything, and I could really see it, the way she described it. My dad used to drive me across town if I needed anything, and talk to me like I was an adult even when I was a kid. He always took me seriously. My sister was younger than me by three years, so it took awhile until we were friends. She used to copy me, which annoyed me when I was six. She’d follow me around, mimicking my hand gestures, my expressions. She’d borrow my clothes without asking, even though they were too big for her and stare at herself in my mirror and smile. My mom said she wanted to be like me, that all younger sisters did, but I thought it was weird. She grew out of it, I guess, or I grew more tolerant and flattered, I guess. Anyway, she her own person, a soccer star on our school team, a better student than me, so she must have figured being like me wasn’t really worth all the trouble anyway. I mean, I could have told her that myself, but still. I guess she needed to grow up a little. I guess she needed to figure it out herself.

My dad was supposed to take me somewhere when I was sixteen, to a mall on the other side of town, so I could get the right shoes for gym class. I was superficial as hell back then, and my parents were happy to indulge me, to some degree. My dad was happy to buy Air Nikes, as long as he could get them at the discount outlet 45 minutes away.

My mom said she wanted to go too, she needed stuff for the house, and there was a bed and bathroom store just next door. The outlet was part of a strip plaza in a small town. It’s not that my parents were cheap, they just couldn’t understand spending more than $100 on a pair of shoes I’d probably only wear for a year. I think if I had been older, my dad would’ve started talking to me about sweatshops. As it was, he didn’t, and I didn’t know any better. I just wanted what my friends had. My sister, Emma, who never wanted to be left out, ever, decided to go with too. She was thirteen and bitched at me non stop about how I stole all of our mom’s attention, and how she was her mom too and how I was the crappiest sister alive, which may have been true. Everyday I got home from school, went straight to my room, put my headphones on and listened to music. I locked the door, and only emerged at exactly six, for dinner, or at 9:30 to say good night to, or talk to my mom. My mom said it was teenage angst, and it would pass, and my dad said that as long as my room was reasonably clean, and I got good grades, (at least the second of the two was kind of true) it was all ok. Emma felt otherwise, but I tried to ignore it.

She kind of talked me out of going with, but I let her. She’d been making me feel really guilty then, like I’d been monopolizing too much of their time. She was always trying to get better grades than me, or do super well in sports just to get their attention. I don’t know why I got more than she did, but I was never as impressive as her, that’s for sure.

Anyway, they took her to the outlet that weekend, and I went to my friend Amber’s house. They left Saturday morning and I slept over. I didn’t hear until Sunday, until my friend’s mom came into the den where we were sleeping, pancake foundation and eye shadow running all over the place, nightgown slipping open, to tell us.

They hadn’t made it there. The car had skidded on the ice and slipped, gone straight into a telephone poll. They were front page news on Monday. My sister would have loved all the attention. My mom was the only one who survived, but barely. She was in a coma for a long time, and now she’s a vegetable. She lives in a home and can barely function.

I visit her three times a week. Sometimes I have no idea if she hears or understands anything I’m saying to her. My dad died instantly, and my sister a few hours later. He wore a seatbelt, but she didn’t. It’s weird to think that it’s possible that she’d still be alive if she had been wearing one. I wonder how she would have felt about everything.

After it happened, I moved from one relative to another’s, and eventually to friend’s houses. I graduated high school, but just barely. I’m nineteen now, going on twenty.

I work as a customer service rep in an alarm company. It’s not fun or great, but it pays my bills. I have basic cable for my tv and my phone and electricity to pay for. Plus my rent. I live in a huge high rise downtown. My parents house is still standing where it was four years ago, and it legally belongs to me, and the bond is all paid off, but I can’t live there. It’s too hard. I haven’t even gone back to visit it. For all I know, it’s covered in graffiti and overgrown grass and vines. I have no idea. I can’t even bring myself to look.

Lately my uncle has been calling to bug me to sell the house. The market is good, he said. Interest rates are low, and people are looking to buy, because they’re idiots.

Think of what you could do with all that money, he says. You could buy your apartment, or go to college or both. You could travel. He doesn’t understand.

I’m doing nothing with my life and I’m comfortable with that. He doesn’t understand how much wanting to do things and then actually doing them terrifies me. I don’t have the nerves to buy a house, to go to school, to interact regularly with other people my age. I feel like a freak, like a forty year old trapped in the body of a person who really wants to be fourteen, who’d do anything to go back to a time when things were simple, when things were easier. I’d give anything to be ten again, to be in the hospital having my tonsils pulled, waiting to see my mom again, talking to me as I opened my eyes.

Every time my uncle calls I get a headache and feel like I’m going to die.

I know I can’t go on like this but I don’t know what to do.

I keep fantasizing that I’ll go to a hospital, or a doctor and meet some kindly nurse or female doctor who’ll hear my life story and adopt me. I wish someone could take care of me someday. I wish someday I wouldn’t feel so alone. I wish I had my old mom back, but more than anything, I wish the one who remained could show me once in a while that she was there for me. I wish she could talk, just to tell me once that she loved me.

I wish I could hear it just once. I’m starting to forget what her voice sounded like.

You have eyes like a cow

They bulge out of your head like someone with a thyroid condition

In photos

Scary

But you never look that way in person

They make your soft angles look harder

Now that you’re thinner

Everyone says you’re beautiful

It’s not just your confidence that makes people notice you

It’s not your clothes

It’s the light the shadows the way he captures you on film I think

It makes you look like the It girl you are

Like the It girl you’ve always wanted to be

You don’t seem happier

I think it but I don’t say it

I want you to be happy so much I pretend to believe you

And I try to cheer you on

Which I realize now may have put more pressure on you

I was trying to do the right thing

Could you see that I wonder

It’s been too long now

Your avoiding me has turned into our not speaking

It makes me sad

I’ve watch you not eat

Move food around your plate

I’ve watched you live with a scale at your front door

To greet the guests you don’t have over enough

I knew you when you were heavier in raver jeans

Clips in your hair

You dyed it a different color every week

Sometimes I didn’t recognize you when I saw you on the street

You always looked so different but you wore it so well

Chinese fabric tattoos a star on your hip that made a girl we didn’t know hit on you

You were beautiful then I thought maybe I didn’t say it enough

Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered

I heard that you guys broke up and I’m sorry

Sorry that you’re hurt now sorry that you ever were

Sorry for all the stress and change and real life that came

And most of all sorry for not trying to help you

( if you ever want to, find me, I’ll always be here to talk or hang out to talk about anything)

I am a normal twenty eight year old woman. I’m of average height, 5″4 and average weight. I have an average job that pays an average salary. I am neither below the poverty line or well above it. Everything about my life screams standard; I went to university and did a standard degree in psychology, which pleased my parents and sounded good when it told it to guys on dates. It made me sound interesting to people who went to college instead of university, or to people who were studying business or accounting. It sounded less dry but it wasn’t. I had to take a lot of statistics classes, had very few electives, and had to spend the better part of four years studying. Even up until the year I graduated, I attended classes with as many as five hundred people. When you’re in first year they teach to you to memorize your student number, and while other programs are small, and you never really need it, in my program you do. In my program, what you need to understand is that you’re one of many. Apparently a lot of people, especially girls all over the country major in psych because they’re not sure what else to do with their lives.

I’d heard stories of taxi drivers who had psych degrees and still it wasn’t enough to deter me. I started out idealistic; I wanted to help people, I wanted to change the world.

I’d been depressed as a teenager, writing on my basement walls and listening to dark music, crying as I sat on plastic blow up furniture next to beaded curtains, wondering why the guy I liked didn’t love me. Slowly, over the years there I lost my idealism.

I lost my desire to do anything but get through it. I stopped thinking I could change anything, change the system. I stopped believing in internal subversion and started believing in the need for my own survival. A lot of people call that growing up but to me it was just sad. I felt like I’d lost the best parts of myself and I never figured out, to this day, how to get it back.

When I was in high school I had fantasies about being a rock star, being a celebrity, being important. I thought about being a journalist, being a voice that everyone listened to and took seriously would make me feel good enough, make me feel important enough, fill the void inside that was endlessly starving for attention and love.

I tried it for a little while, on the side in university and this is what I found; most rock stars are assholes, and the ones that aren’t are so fucked up you wonder why it is that people idolize them in the first place. Their secrets aren’t amazing, they’re sad; you see the people everyone looks up to and love, and you think what the fuck? Why doesn’t everyone know what kind of people they really are? And why does none of it matter?

Here’s the thing; lately I’ve been going to work, I work as a receptionist at a hotel downtown, and I keep thinking, what’s the point? A monkey could do this job.

Being a receptionist means being friendly, being nice to people even as they yell at you.

I know why I got the job, I know I have a good smile, a nice attitude, I treat the people I work with and for like I’d eat their shit for breakfast an be happy about it, but I don’t know why I stay. I know that people assume that because I’m a receptionist I don’t have a university degree and that I’m dumb. My parents are always telling me that I can do better, but the thing is, you need a graduate degree. You need a Masters or a PHD to practice as a psychologist and after studying it and volunteering at a hotline from 12 am to 6 am one night a week for a year as part of my program, I realized that it wasn’t for me. You go into it all idealistic, thinking you’ll help change lives or save lives or make a real difference. In training they tell you all about suicides, and how people call you right before they’re about to jump, from cell phones on a bridge and how what you say to them is so important because it can help to save their lives. They mislead you in training. They make you think the people you talk to can be helped. They don’t tell you how to handle people with severe emotional disorders, schizophrenics who call in at 3 am talking to the walls because they forgot to talk their medications. They don’t tell you they have and make files on everyone, cause everyone who calls in is a regular caller.

These people are lonely, and what you give them is friendship, not help or a cure cause even though you’re intuitive, you’re not qualified to help them, and never in your life will you ever go into anything so important again, not knowing how to handle it.

The thing I like about reception work most of all is how there’s a formula, there’s a method written on a notepad for everything.

Here’s the truth- I am a highly anxious, not overly smart woman with few discernible talents. I am organized and friendly. I am overweight but cheerful. I’m not good enough to be a professional at anything. I wouldn’t know what kind of professional I want to be.

I hate the days at work but I hate all the hours I have to spend by myself like a hamster in a cage, pacing in circles, wondering what I should be doing instead. For a year or so, I tried to fill the void of wanting to be special with food. I tried to stuff the hole so full it wouldn’t bother me, but that didn’t work and now I’m fat. On top of everything else.

I wish I was unique- I wish I had good friends to remind me of my good qualities, the things about me that only people who’ve known me for years can observe.

I wish I had talents, I wish I could tie my tongue in knots, or paint pictures or write books that everyone wanted to read, or write plays. I wish I had an amazing singing voice- hell sometimes I wish I was the star of a reality tv show. Celebrities always complain about the annoyance of cameras following them around, but at least they know that people are watching and interested. At least they know they exist. At least they have confirmation of the belief that people find them interesting and unique.

I guess what I suffer from most of all is low self esteem, anxiety and boredom.

I want to make a difference in the world but I don’t know how. I want to have a life that I find rich and fascinating and stimulating, a life that I’m proud of.

I don’t want to cross the street when I see people from my old school because I know that they’ve done better than me. I know how the world sees my current job, and I don’t blame them. The thing is, I’m paralyzed. I just don’t know what to do.

I know that there is nothing unique about any of it, in fact my greatest fear is that there is nothing unique about me at all. Sometimes, I just wish someone would remind me of the things about me that are just mine, that would give me potential or hope or possibility. I’m not asking for a solution, just a small reminder to give me hope. In the face of all the real problems in the world, I don’t know if it’s asking for too much. I think horoscopes are stupid, and I don’t believe in psychics but I can understand now why people do.

It gives them something to cling to, a tangible thing to grab when they need it the most. That’s what I need right now, a thread that’s real. I don’t know where to look but I’m going to keep my eyes open. I’m waiting for the universe to respond. I’m waiting for a sign, for the answers to fall into my lap or suddenly become clear.

I’m waiting to be reminded that I deserve better than this job, this purpose in life and to be given a clue about what to do.

I saw the body when I walked in the door. It glinted white off the tiles in the bathroom, through the tiny crack of light that came through the window over the sink. I saw the body, on its back, arms outstretched. Your face was half covered by a towel. I could see your lips, and they were purpleish blue. I peeled the towel off your cheeks, it was damp and stuck. You eyes were squeezed shut. I pressed the backs of my thumbs into them, and you moved a little. Your long eyelashes flattered, and your blue green eyes stared at me and then the ceiling until they closed again.

Until I saw them, I didn’t connect the body with you.

When I called the cops and 911 the neighbours came outside to see what was going on.

That kid from three houses down was peering at us through her mom’s legs, and when the ambulance started moving her dad lifted her up onto his shoulders so she could have a full view. I wonder what that conversation was like. I wonder how they explained that to her. I felt like an animal in a circus though, I was angry. I remember thinking, we are not on display here. Get on with your fucking day. But I didn’t say anything. I smiled tightly and when the paramedic asked me questions I tried to answer them as best I could.

I hadn’t seen you all day, or spoken to you the day before. I had no idea how long you’d been like this. I had no idea what caused it.

When we got to the hospital I had to answer questions about your medical history.

He’s a former drug addict, I told them, trying not to cringe when I saw the nurses face. She was so obviously trying to be professional but she seemed young and new. She was a little too thorough when she asked the questions. I could see the horror in her eyes though. He doesn’t have HIV I wanted to scream. He’s been clean for seven and a half years. Looking at him in the bed, still outstretched, I wondered if that was actually true.

Had he been lying to me lately? He’d been acting weird. I didn’t know anymore.

I told her to the best of my knowledge that he had been clean for years.

I wasn’t considered family, so it took me ages to get to go inside the room.

He has a daughter, I told them. She’s thirteen but she lives in South Africa.

He never married her mother. He’s never been married. He’s thirty five years old. I’m his ex girlfriend. We went out two years ago. We’re still friends. I have no idea who else to call. His father lives in South Africa and his mother is dead.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if was on any medication.

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know. Really.

I read dog eared magazines and pretended to sleep and pretended not to listen to other people’s conversations. I thought about my grandfather who was sick, which was the only other reason to have spent any time in a hospital. They would both be ok, I thought.

They had to be.

I drank twenty five cent coffee and paced the dusty floors, and traced designs with my shoes. I made small talk with nurses and doctors. I watched old ladies being pushed around in wheelchairs, catheters sticking out, grey hair looking greasy, flying out in certain places. The view out the window was of the parking lot.

My chair wasn’t comfortable enough to sleep in. I pretended I was on a plane, needing to sleep so I wouldn’t be jetlagged.

It was 27 hours before they let me see him. Longer than a flight to Australia. Not that I was counting.

You seemed ok. You didn’t look ok, but they said you were, so who was I to argue?

Your face was grey. You had tubes in your arms to feed you and hydrate you.

They didn’t know what caused you to pass out, lose consciousness suddenly.

One minute you were washing your hands, drying them, and then you weren’t. So simple.

It’s a good thing I came by when I did, everyone kept saying.

Otherwise, who knows?

They didn’t know what had caused it. They ran some tests, and had to run some more.

They told you you could leave that afternoon.

I said I would help you to get home. I’d take a cab with you, I’d call the company right then. While they ran your tests, I went back to your house, cleaned it a little.

I put things away, if I knew where they went. I opened windows, let the air in.

I hung and folded clothes. I put your records in piles. Tried to alphabetize a little, or whatever you latest system was.

I checked your messages, wrote things down on paper for you. Bought more paper towels and toilet paper. I tried to help. It seemed easier. Like you’d be healthier if you came back to a nicer place. Like everything could be easily solved with basic organization.

When we got back we sat in the living room, on the floor, at eye level with the coffee table. I sat cross logged, your long thin legs looked lean. You looked flexible, like a yoga teacher. It made me laugh, to see you so sick, looking like the picture of health and alternative medicine. Life is fucked up man.

I ordered Chinese. You ate egg rolls while I poked holes with my plastic fork in the Styrofoam take out container. I didn’t eat, and you pretended not to notice, which was nice of you. It was not the time to fight about anything.

I was resigned to my eating disorder. I did not want to go to hospital. It was not something I felt like discussing then or over.

You told me you were going to London. England, obviously, you said sharply when I asked. What the hell kind of music would I make in London Ontario?

I sighed. I wasn’t a worldly music producer who got to make cool pop records and meet crazy celebrities who’d had all the plastic surgery and did all the drugs and cheated on each other more than even the tabloids could imagine. I wasn’t living a fabulous jet setting life. I was a fourth year university student studying art and creative writing.

I was becoming less and less impressive by the minute.

You put the leftovers in the fridge and said you needed to go to bed. It was 7:45.

I said it was ok, I had to go anyway. You had told me about London before, the pop music capital of Europe, blah blah blah. I don’t know why, but until that night I guess I never really believed you were serious. I mean, you say a lot of things, don’t you?

I guess I didn’t believe you’d really leave. Sell your house and everything. I didn’t know you could do it so easily.

I didn’t know you’d want to.

Part of me thought it was better, healthier. Our friendship is weird, I always thought that.

Maybe it’s holding me back from moving on, from being in other serious relationships? Maybe it was holding you back too. Maybe this would be better. You’d move to London and your career would flourish. You’d work on multi million dollar projects all the time.

You’d go to award shows and be creative. I’d stay here and live a different life.

Maybe that was how it was always meant to be.

You left two months later. I surprised myself by being shocked and then angry.

I’d make up excuses not to talk. I’d say I was studying and busy. I’d tell you I had friends over even though I knew you were calling from long distance.

You always sounded injured and it made me happy. It made me happy to know you still cared, which made me feel terrible.

I was the worst person ever. I still couldn’t really talk to you for longer than ten minutes at a time. You did all the talking, which was strange.

I had nothing to say.

One day you called in March. I was home, even though it was 2:30 in the afternoon.

You were at a clinic there. You said you’d been feeling sick. They’d taken tests. They’d figured it out. It was Hepatitis. They knew for sure.

It may have been acquired in your time as an addict. It may have been dormant for that long, they couldn’t be sure. They didn’t know, no one knew there was no cure.

Don’t know don’t know don’t know. No one knew anything about anything.

I tried to listen. I tried to focus and picture it. Again, it did not compute.

We talked for over an hour. I said I’d come visit next month.

God you said, trying to make a joke. If I had known I was going to get sick and die anyway, I could’ve been doing heroin all these years.

I said I had to go then. I got off the phone and vomited. I vomited until I felt better. It took about half an hour. I thought about it. Thought about what to say to you.

Thought about how much you hated yourself to put yourself through it in the first place.

Thought about how hard it was for you to recover. We’d been friends for so long before.

Years. It took you years.

You always wore long sleeved shirts even in summer.

You woke up at night, shaking, years later.

You sweated in winter.

You overdosed when you were young and stupid. Drugs were the thing to do, you said, you just went too far. You always sensed the way people felt when you showed them your track marks, or when you told them you used to be an addict. They looked at you like, thank god I never went that far. Thank god I knew when to say when. Thank god I’m not like you. And you were right, I could see it too. They were thinking they were better than you. They weren’t you know. I didn’t say that enough at the time. They weren’t better, they just took less risks.

You lived life to the fullest my friend. You really did.

You were braver than me. You experienced, you got out there and tried. You lived it all.

You died a month later, two weeks before my plane ticket was booked for.

I knew it was coming but I couldn’t believe it. Nothing helped to prepare me. I’d walk down the street and it would hit me, these were things you might never see again. Light hitting the trees, squirrels, kids in coats running out of school. I cried all the time.

I never knew I’d never get to see you again.

You had friends, I’m not sure you knew it, but you had a lot of friends.

You had a great kid, that you know, but you had a lot of friends who loved you.

Friends like me, who were sorry they didn’t try hard enough to understand, who didn’t take you seriously enough, who didn’t do everything they could when they had a chance.

I think about it all the time.

I don’t know how much else I can promise, but I promise you I’ll never forget.

I’ll never ever forget.