“Oh, yeah. The important thing here is simple. Simple. Just listen to your feelings, Warren. What are they telling you?”
“Uh… I don’t know.”
“They’re telling you not to do it again.”
“I won’t. I won’t. I promise. I won’t.”
“There you go. No harm done, right Warren?”
“No?”
“No. You have just become a little boy who thinks sex with animals is wrong.”
“I have?”
“Do you think it’s OK to drag the family dog down into the basement and give it a poke?”
“No.”
“Me neither, Warren. And that makes us both pretty decent guys, dontcha think?”
“I guess so.”
Grant smiles and tilts the ashtray again. He applies a tricky pressure with his finger, rotating the ashtray on its edge.
“Everything else OK, Warren?”
“I guess so.”
“OK, buddy. I’m gonna go now. You call anytime, OK?”
“OK.”
“Goodbye.”
Grant pulls his hair back and stands up from the couch. He spins two invisible pistols off his hips and says, “Fuck the dog.”
By the time he makes his way across the carpet to the refrigerator a charge of electricity has built up and it snaps between his finger and the handle. He jerks his hand up and blows on the finger, then shakes it out and returns it to the invisible holster.
Behind him the phone rings. An angelfish in a clear bowl sitting beside the couch turns away to face the dark hallway. It raises its hind end slightly and fans its tail, catching the pink glow of choral in the transparent ray of its anal fin. A thin beige spiral swings in the water and the angelfish shudders it free. Grant trips against the coffee table as he grabs the phone. He picks up the receiver and places the phone on the table, careful not to touch anything metal.
“Hello, you’ve reached the Parkdale Crisis Hotline. Who am I speaking to?”
“Hello. My name is Greg.”
“Hi Greg. My name is Grant. What’s on your mind, buddy?”
The Future Bakery at the corner of Tecumseth and Queen is the beehive, the recovering addict’s caffeine spunk house. Men who have spread their knuckles up to their elbows hitting women sip Turkish coffee and design their Higher Powers, informing each other about how to surrender, sharing affirmations in their collective exile. None of them will ever be what is commonly called a good person, but now that they have stopped being so actively bad, they chart together a course to the hereafter. Chosen and marked for this, they hug each other lustily.
When women venture near, sit at an adjacent table or assess them from the line-up, the New Men close off distrustfully. They welcome the amend-making process. They would love to say “I’m sorry” and stand in that unforgiving flak, in the pain of being wrong. But those days are gone. Feeling useless to either gender makes them merely pray. And prayer has made them different, gentler, sure. They really don’t beat women any longer. In each of their imaginations a new place has evolved, a place that loops off the side of their personalities.
Here they picture God.
In between Greg’s pierced ears, and under his pretty curls, lurks a Higher Power. The Higher Power stands near Greg while he jerks off, waiting patiently. He’s a Higher Power who doesn’t look away, but furrows his brow, knowing that sex is when you’re waiting for better behaviour, not guilty, not shameful, just not quite holy. As Greg wipes his semen from his palm, the Higher Power points at the cuff of his pants:
Greg already knows this, and his Higher Power never seems to tire of saying it; however, it’s supposed to mean something slightly different each time. Greg pinches his moist pant cuff and wonders what exactly it means this time.
Finally Greg says, “Are you saying I should accept that Jojo never liked Hogg?” Hogg is Greg’s recently deceased rat, and Jojo is his recently estranged girlfriend. In truth, the Higher Power thinks it’s a bit amusing that a dead rat and a relationship well-lost are persisting as “issues” in Greg’s recovery. The Higher Power is very aware that his own sense of humour is always inappropriate. He looks across at Greg, straining to keep his poker face, while he nods in a way that looks important. Greg suspects for a second that his Higher Power is mocking him. But he also knows how inappropriate his suspicions are, so he pretends they are not true.
Greg’s Higher Power cannot look him in the eye right now, so he lowers his gaze and spots another dollop of semen on the young man’s socks.
When Jimmy was very young — not that he isn’t now, but a few years ago, when he was seven — an event occurred that would predispose him to silence.
