Happy New Year

 

Happy New Year. Be warm and tender in a world that is often cold and jagged. You're always stronger by taking the high road. Make 2022 the best year you can make it. Lead with love.

She was an American girl: notes towards an elegy for a murdered friend

I’ve just come in from my evening walk with my twelve-year old Labrador, who loves winter more than any other season. 

The snow is everywhere tonight: soft, heavy flakes, the kind that stay on the ground for at least a few days. Drifting, it shimmers like a necklace of luminous cultured pearls around the brilliant jewel-toned holiday lights, frosting the silent streets of the neighbourhood with a caul of pure white. 

It’s still falling outside the windows of my study as I write this. The room is dark except for the flickering blue firelight of my laptop—an oblique invitation to any ghost that might choose to visit me as I type. 

 

Especially her ghost. Especially hers.  

 

It’s five days before Christmas, and I miss her with a sharpness I haven’t felt since the night in January when a friend called to tell me that she was gone. 

 

One of the functions of almost two years of COVID has been the compression and distortion of time itself.  Events that feel like they happened yesterday actually happened a year ago. Memories that seem years old are in fact from this past previous spring or summer. 

 

There’s an anesthetic quality to that warping of the continuum, but it also lays traps for the heart and mind. Thankfully then, we have newspapers to help us keep track. They preserve timelines unsentimentally, unsparingly.

 

For instance: this headline in the Desert Sun newspaper on February 9^th, 2021, reads:“Palm Springs woman’s death in January ruled a homicide.” 

 

It’s the sort of headline most of us, me included, have seen a thousand times over our lives. We usually scroll past them with barely a thought other than the occasional how sad for her family and friends.

 

The article itself contains standard observations about the body being found in the woman’s home, how it was initially “considered suspicious” before “further investigation determined it was the result of a homicide.” 

 

Further along, the article details how loved she was by her friends and how generous a contributor to her community she was. Even her name, “Jennifer Dillon,” was unremarkable in its all-American spareness. 

 

Still, I can’t imagine any stranger reading it failing to be struck by the accompanying photograph—a snapshot of a woman of fifty-nine with soft, short hair touched with silver, and a kind, joyful smile that explodes from the frame like sunlight after a rainstorm.

 

I met Jenny in Palm Springs, on Christmas night, 2010, at a dinner party at the home of my best friend, film director Ron Oliver and his then-partner (now husband) Eric Bowes, whose close friend she was. 

 

Ron and I have been friends since 1987, when a well-meaning friend thought I should meet a screenwriter acquaintance of his whose film Prom Night 2: Hello Mary Lou had just been released. 

 

As it happened, Ron and I hated each other on sight, for reasons we rarely divulge outside our circle of friends. We gritted our teeth through the dinner, and only just before dessert was offered did we start talking about our high school years. Both of us had disliked those years intensely, and we suddenly had something in common. We spent three more hours talking and left the restaurant that night with the seeds of a solid friendship planted.

 

Writing in Logical Family: A Memoir, the novelist Armistead Maupin addressed the time-honoured tradition of LGBTQ+ folks leaving the occasionally oppressive circle of their origins and making chosen families of their own. “Sooner or later,” Maupin writes, “though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us.” 

 

Over the past thirty-odd Christmases together, Ron and I have put together a family. It’s a small circle that has included our respective spouses, Ron’s mother and sisters, and a small handful of loved ones who’ve likewise gathered in California with us at Christmas in a decades-long cycle of familiarity and ritual repetition. The word “friends” simply doesn’t do it justice; words matter, and “family” is truly the only word. 

 

And into my corner of that world of our chosen family that night came Jenny. 

 

As clichéd as it sounds, our eyes did meet across Ron’s crowded living room. It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was mutual fascination at first sight. I don’t even remember who introduced us, only that we were laughing within minutes, and after an hour we felt as though we’d known each other for years. 

 

At some point we reached out and touched each other’s hands. I don’t remember what we were discussing, but I remember perfectly the instinctive click of perfect mutual comprehension and connection that led to it. 

 

Gins and tonic make me loquacious, and I must have forgotten her name. When it came to say goodbye at the end of the night, I gushed “Dear, dear Karen. How wonderful to have met you tonight. I so enjoyed our talk. I hope we see each other again soon.”

 

There was an epic moment of silence, then she deadpanned, “My name is Jenny.” 

 

Everyone burst out laughing, including she and I. She acquired a new nickname: Dear, Dear Karen, abbreviated over time to DDK, and both nicknames, and their origins, became part of our Christmas family lore. 

 

From the first, DDK fascinated me. I adored her. She reminded me of something that felt very much like home. 

 

Our Palm Springs “set” is heavy on creative folks—writers, actors, film directors, musicians. Jenny and I both have activist histories—hers in community organization, mine in journalism, which established a welcome commonality of language between us. 

 

Jenny was a fourth generation San Franciscan, who had marched for gay rights when it mattered most. By the time I met her, she couldn’t have been more of a part of her Palm Springs community, but I loved that ever-so-slight Northern California edge and directness that occasionally made me think about transplanted east coasters.  

 

At some point every Christmas, Jenny and I would move off to one side of Ron’s patio and engage in an intense political discussion. Since we were generally of one mind, the discussions were always enriching, never combative. Jenny had an astute, incisive political mind, and she was nobody’s parrot, but we were so perfectly politically aligned that it often seemed as though we could sort out America’s problems in an afternoon.

 

The rituals of the holiday were a sort of ballast, including those that were hers and mine alone. She had a full life of her own, and was beloved by many other friends, all of whom have their own stories of her, but some routines were inviolate.

 

Jenny would stop by the house with her dogs on the first morning after we arrived. Ron and Eric would be at the gym, and my husband Brian would be out exploring Palm Springs. I love those silent desert winter mornings on the patio, with mountains in the distance. Jenny and I would drink our coffee and have lovely long conversations that were often remarkably deep considering the compression of time. 

 

She cooked and baked like a professional, and I always budgeted a minimum five-pound weight gain from a combination of her homemade treats and those of Ron’s sister, Jane. There was a lovely delicacy about her cooking that somehow perfectly complemented her otherwise outdoorsy, practical mien.

 

Jenny was passionately committed to animal welfare, particularly dogs. She had a Dr. Doolittle touch with them that almost miraculous to witness: an open-hearted kindness and stillness of presence to which they responded in kind. 

 

One year, a last-minute dog adoption was arranged by a mutual friend. The evening I went in to meet the new addition, Jenny was protectively positioned over the puppy’s bed, hovering like a godmother, while the puppy closed his eyes in rapture under her soft touch. 

 

For several years, as a group, we’d drive into L.A. on the 23^rd of December to do some Christmas shopping, all of us wedged into a rented SVU of one sort or another. I loved sitting near her, or next to her on those trips. 

 

We had by then developed an entire wardrobe of facial expression that could launch a conversation between us without either of us ever saying a word. Whether it was the gaucherie of a visiting guest, or a family member repeating a story he’d told many times over the years, or something that moved us, or something that made us laugh, we got it. 

 

Christmas Eve was spent at the home of a legendary film star who is loving to, and beloved by, his friends, and generous to newcomers. We spent Christmas morning opening gifts on Ron’s patio. Jenny’s wife, Athena, would join us later in the afternoon, and everyone was gone by 3:00 p.m. 

On Christmas night, we all dressed to the nines—Jenny, always smart and vaguely handsome in velvet smoking jacket and tuxedo trousers, with a natty bow tie—and trooped off to dinner at a historic Palm Springs restaurant. 

 

The year my widowed father came to Palm Springs to spend Christmas with us—the one where he and I managed to say the wrong things to each other with a deftness that shocked and horrified me—she commiserated with me after he’d left. 

 

“He means well,” she said. “I can tell. He’s proud of you, but he doesn’t know how to talk to you about it. It’s hard but try to be patient. He loves you.” When I told her I doubted it, she patted my hand and said, “Trust me.”

 

The Christmas after he died, Jenny held my hands in hers. She understood the complexity of love and loss, and the variegated shades of mourning, better than most. She gave me a bracelet that year: a circle of miniature baubles in the bright metallic shades of our mutual, halcyon suburban 70s childhood Christmases.

 

For a decade, friends, new and old, came to Palm Springs and shared in our holiday. Some came back, others disappeared into the vortex of years. They circled around our unchanging core chosen family like planets. They left, but we remained. We, all of us, lived an entire year’s worth of memories during that week. 

 

On the last morning, she always stopped by Ron’s house to say goodbye to us before we left for the airport. Mixed in with the exhaustion of a 25 hour a day week and our eagerness to get home, there was always the sureness of it all happening again after another full year of life. 

 

Our last Christmas together, 2019, was no different. Kiss, hug, Travel safe, see you next year! And, from me, I love you, DDK. Be well.

 

The police arrested a man on August 25^th of this year. They charged him with Jenny’s murder, and with second one. The police believe that the murders occurred during foiled robbery attempts. 

 

As ghastly as that would be in its cruel, criminal banality, I hope it was that random. 

 

Selfishly, I can’t bear the thought of any hate, or rage, or malevolence being directed at her in her final moments. Since I first heard, I’ve been haunted by a nightmare loop of repeating mental images: Jenny trying to summon the gentleness and kindness that was her baseline, despite her terror. Jenny trying to calm the monster in her house, trying to reason with him. Jenny’s last thoughts being about who would look after her dogs. 

 

I know nothing of what happened except what I’ve been told; but, like everyone who loved her I feel, endlessly.

 

One of the greater brutalities of COVID-19 is that it's even rendered grieving virtual. Three of my dearest friends lost their fathers in the first six months of the lockdowns. In one of those cases, the loss was devastating enough, and personal enough, to normally have warranted getting on a plane and offering love and comfort in person. 

 

Collective grief is most naturally expressed—and expiated—by gathering to mourn the loss together. It's a ritual as old as human history. It’s how it’s meant to be.  Cruelly, the circumstances concomitant to COVID-19 have made it impossible for us to gather properly for Jenny. 

 

Tonight, as the snow falls outside, I need to hear her name spoken aloud in the darkness of this room, even if I must speak it myself. I’m desperate to read her name on paper, even if I must type it out myself: Jenny. 

 

An elegy is like writing a loved one's name in sand, on the waves; but it's no less important for its impermanence. We write so there’s a record, so people know our loved one was here. In time, the pain of loss recedes, but we have their names, their faces, and the memories. 

 

Decades after my own eventual death, someone might find a photograph of Jenny in Palm Springs in December among my papers. 

 

They'd see a see a tanned, soft-butch California girl with a radiant smile and eyes the rich, warm hue of the best Quinta de Ventozelo port. She might possibly be wearing a hat. There would likely be an adoring, adorable, awkward-looking yellow dog or two hovering nearby. 

 

They might even find DDK scrawled on the back, with the date, and briefly wonder what the initials stood for. I'm confident they'd never guess. 

 

What they won't know is this: they’ll never know how I came to measure the years by the incremental advance of the silver in her thick hair on those "first mornings" of years of Christmases, when she dropped by the house for coffee with me, or the way the morning sun glanced off the surface of Ron's pool on those mornings and lit her like a black and white Herb Ritts portrait.  

 

They won't know that in the early years of our friendship, even in private, our greetings were boisterous; in later years, they were softer and more tender because we knew those mornings were inevitable, and we just melted into each other's presence as though the previous Christmas was yesterday and not twelve months in the past. 

 

They won't know that by the time she was murdered, she had become such a part of my world—especially my Christmas world—that the thought of it not including her had literally never occurred to me. 

 

Jenny's last Facebook DM to me was on the evening of January 10^th, 2020. 

 

We’d been discussing Christmas 2020, our first lockdown Christmas, and how much we missed each other, and what a disruption in the natural flow it had been. We were still feeling the sting of each other’s absence that night almost two weeks after Christmas. 

 

Yes, lots of sadness this year! she typed. We will gather again. It's just hard not knowing when? She added a "crying" emoji, and a heart. 

 

I replied with a heart, because we both knew what we were saying, and even those silly generic symbols were weighted with the ballast of our conjoined history in that moment. 

 

A few weeks later DDK was gone, ripped away from us by someone monstrous, someone cowardly, someone terrible; someone who punched a hole into our lives and left the light to bleed out on the floor. 

 

Jenny was right, though—it was very, very hard not knowing when we’d gather again. The only mercy is that neither of us knew the answer to her question on that snowy night in January when reunions still seemed to be an endlessly renewable resource and growing old together as chosen family was the only plan we had.

 

 

Originally published on The Good Men Project, December 23rd, 2021 

Blessings

There's something about the first snowfall close to Christmas that carries its own magic with it. There's nothing like a snowy night in December, and a photo album, to remind us of how lucky we actually are to love and be loved by the people we hold dear, especially the ones whose absence we feel, due to geographic or other distance. The older I get, the more grateful I am that that awareness has come to me at an age where it's still useful, and where it has pracitcal, tangible, real applicability. I used to think "the Christmas spirit" was getting excited by lights, snow, buying gifts, and remembering childhood. Now I think it really is about the luxury of having blessings to count, and no blessing is sweeter to count than decades-long friends, and those memories

The Christmas Labrador

 

Not going there, thanks

I've noticed a trend in my social media feed, of people slipping back down into a spiral of sadness and depression because of the turn the virus has taken this holiday season. I am going to resist the suck of that particular undertow with every fibre of my being. This is not 2020. This is not the winter of desolation. This is a winter of vaccines, and a new strain that is not the Delta variant. This is a winter of memories of reunions this summer and fall, and how good they felt, and planning new ones. This is a winter of masks, and respect for each other's space and safety. This is a winter of not only seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but also of realizing that the distance is really just a short jaunt. This is a winter of life, not death. This is not a winter of fearing that the world is ending and that there's no point of any of it. Anyone who knows me knows that I am the least negativist of all the creatures in Christendom. In my last life, I was a stout, no-nonsense Maritime fishwife living on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic with my ten children, and a husband who was always away on the boats, and with no time for codswallop and jackanapes. So yeah, no. Fuck you, Omicron. And fuck you, anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers. We've got your number. What I'm sad about this Christmas is missing my Palm Springs family, period, but also knowing (not hoping) that next year we'll be together again. The only thing that's going to kill me this holiday season is too much eggnog. 

TBT: Signing some copies, 2013

TBT: Signing some copies of Wild Fell at Chapters, in St. Boniface, Manitoba, December, 2013. 

The previous evening, we'd had a launch an a reading at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg. That afternoon, I'd done a Q&A at a beautiful Native centre. It was an absolutely wonderful couple of days full of old friends, and new friends of the work. One of the hosts of the Q&A made a comment about how cold it must be for me, "being from Toronto." 

I told him I'd spent four years at boarding school in Manitoba in the 1970s, when the average daily temperature was -40. I told him I found the temperature that day brisk and pleasant, which, I think, impressed him.

My father in winter, with Sarah

 

I took this picture of my father and my stepmother, Sarah Doughty, in September of 2016, on my last visit with my father in Victoria, B.C. I treasure it: you can see the love and caring in her face, and the utter trust in his. The sun had just come out from behind the low clouds and filled his room with radiance. 

So much of his memory had been erased by then—in some moments, he was still the diplomat who spoke of behalf of Canada at the United Nations. In other moments, he was my father. In yet other moments, he was a frightened, confused child-man whom I longed to gather in my arms and protect. 

The cruelty of his illness notwithstanding, it had also given each of us the gift his forgetting anything about our occasionally strained father and son relationship except the literal present, the here and now. All that was left was love and wonder. 

My father died the following summer, in 2017. We lost Sarah last week. 

So many of my friends have had disappointing evil stepmother stories—I have none. This elegant, gracious, intelligent, stoic Englishwoman gave my father his life back after the loss of my mother. Sarah never tried to replace my mother; she treated my brother and I with respect from the start, and with love right up to the end.  

While he was alive, Sarah frequently acted as a buffer between my father and I when either of us became abrasive to the other. In his last years, she smoothed a path so that my last memories of him are profoundly sweet ones. 

I will miss her humour and her kindness, and I'm grateful to have had the privilege of her presence in my life. She taught me a great deal without ever intending to. 

She's free of pain now, and that alone is a reason for joy, not tears. The heart however is illogical that way. The tears come and go of their own volition. But they're for my loss, not her free flight. 

Rest well, beauty. And thank you for staying here on earth with us awhile.  

Tasting a gust of wind

Without undue judgement, I admit that I'm baffled by folks who walk their dogs while wearing earbuds or headphones. When Beckett and I walk, it's a communion. I live for the way he smells everything, for the little grunts he sometimes makes, for the moments when he stops and throws his head back to taste a gust of wind with his eyes closed. We feel each other on our respective ends of the leash. There's literally nowhere else I'd want to be during that hour, and nothing I want to listen to but Beckett experiencing another day.

First publication, December 1977

 

TBT: My first national publication was this poem in 'TEEN magazine, in December 1977, when I was fifteen. I'd written it the previous summer. Like so many other "firsts" at that age, you never, ever forget the first time. On a Sunday night in early November I was at the bus terminal waiting for the chartered bus to take us back to school. The December issue of 'TEEN was there on the rack, like this was just any other day. The title was in bright pink letters. The model was Lindsey Erwin. I reached for it. My hands were shaking. I opened it to the page indicated on the table of contents. In spite of the acceptance letter that had arrived in October—on mint-green paper with the 'TEEN logo in darker green letters at the top, all the way from Los Angeles—right up until the moment I found my poem in the magazine, with my picture and my name, I was 100% sure it wasn't going to be there. It was too much to be true, even at the point. But it was, and it's one of the happiest memories of my adolescence, that "first." There have been others over the years since then—first magazine article, first cover story, first book, first award, first actual fan letter—but that moment at the magazine stand, on that dark December Sunday night, was holy.

George

I remember so vividly when John Kennedy, Jr.'s George magazine launched in the fall of 1995. There was still a sense of optimism in politics, with none of the scorched-earth nihilism we take for granted as a daily reality today. The notion of engaging everyday people in the political culture was a positive thing—pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter—and Tucker Carlson was still a cute, non-toxic libertarian media star in khakis and a bow tie; more like George Will's son than Hitler's grandson. While there's no point in crying over the very dark path popular culture has taken, and while there's no way to rekindle that specific spark of pre-9/11 optimism, it's maybe worth looking back and trying to remember what it felt like, so we can watch for it, and fan it, if it ever comes around again.
 

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. In the summer of 1992, when I was doing a summer writing workshop in Cambridge, MA, I met John Preston, an acclaimed journalist, author, anthologist, and tireless activist for LGBT rights, when I interviewed him at home Portland, Maine. We became friends. He formally named me and two other writers as literary protégés that December, forcing me to legitimize my identity as a writer in my own mind, which is where such legitimacy always has to start. He published my early essays in handsome hardcover anthologies, and impressed upon me the responsibility to someday nurture and mentor young writers in my turn. I took this picture of him with Joan Nestle in Boston in October, 1993 for the dustjacket of Sister and Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men Write About Their Lives Together (HarperCollins, 1994) which also included my essay "Alex." He died in April 1994 of complications relating to AIDS. I remember John Preston every December 1st, and I speak his name aloud—with gratitude, inspiration, joy, sorrow, and with love. Speak all their names.

American Thanksgiving memory: Paris, 1981

 

One of the happiest American Thanksgivings I ever spent was in 1981. The exquisite American Church in Paris has an annual Thanksgiving dinner—I was 19, and it was my first year out of high school. I was thrilled to be in Paris, participating in that magical era, but also homesick. The church, with its glorious Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass windows became a regular haunt of mine. It served as a bridge connecting various nexuses of my childhood and my future, and the expats there were kind and welcoming. When I left Paris and returned to Ottawa, I arranged for a hymnal to be placed in the nave in memory of a classmate who'd drowned in the Red River at the end of our senior year. My profound love for, and identification with, Americans has deep, deep roots, starting with my American-born mother and our American family on her side; the years I spent going to school side-by-side with American kids; and, of course, later years writing for American political publications as a journalist. But even with all of that, 40 years later, what I can still remember, aside from the familiarity of it all, is the warmth of the welcome I received that Thanksgiving day in Paris, in such sharp contrast to the cold November rain outside on the Quai d'Orsay.

Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2021

This Transgender Day of Remembrance, I'm struck by two cruel realities—not only that this has been the deadliest year on record for murdered transgender or gender-variant individuals, but that the phrase "deadliest year," in this context, has been used with such chilling regularity, year after year. I'm immensely fortunate to have a blog that is read by so many compassionate, intelligent, forward thinking people. In a very real sense, I'm preaching to the choir here. That said, I beg every person reading this post tonight to reach inside and bring forth an extra measure of that compassion, intelligence, and forward thought, and re-commit to changing the world for our transgender brothers, sisters, and non-binary family. We don't need to "understand" transgender issues in order to put ourselves between a vulnerable trans or non-binary person and hostility or violence. All we need is empathy. We don't need to "accept" or be completely "comfortable" with gender variance to speak up when a trans person is used as the punchline for an obscenely unfunny "joke," or as offal "humour" fed to raucous crowds by millionaire comedians out of a payday. All we need is baseline human love, and an awareness of how poisoning the social climate in order to "other" certain groups has led to violence, murder, even genocide, throughout human history. Be kind, even when it might be more fun to be cruel. Just because we can get away with it doesn't mean it's right, or that someone else won't pay a terrible price in the long run. Don't roll your eyes at days like Transgender Day of Remembrance. All over the world tonight, and most nights, people are reliving the loss of beautiful souls they've known and loved—souls whose only reason for extinction was being born different, and being unable, or unwilling, to be something they aren't. Peace to all those who suffer tonight, and comfort to all the bereaved and the mourning.

Dad and Princey

 

Dad and Princey, 1971. I saw a Norwegian Elkhound in the park today, and I was unaccountably moved. They're rare in the city, and Prince was my first dog, and the first dog I ever loved. It sent my mind down a wandering path this evening. There comes a point in all our lives when we can touch memories of loss that used to cause us sadness, but now just give us a sense of gratitude to have been allowed us to experience them; and a sort of gentle, if wistful, transcendent peace.

Ruby Bridges

 

On this day in 1960, six-year old Ruby Bridges desegregated her school in the company of armed federal marshals, and faced a ravening mob of white adults, as well as children, calling her unspeakable names no six-year old should have to hear, and waving unspeakable signs no six-year old should ever have to see. I know sixty-year olds that don't have the grace and dignity she had on the first day of first grade.

Forthcoming publication news: Nate Gowdy's Insurrection

I'm thrilled to share the news of the forthcoming December publication of Insurrection by the brilliant young Seattle-based photojournalist Nate Gowdy, with an Introduction by yours truly. The book is a powerful photo essay of what he saw on January 6th, 2021 while shooting the riot for Rolling Stone. Gowdy's work has appeared in numerous international venues including CNN, Die Zeit, Fisheye, Al-Jazeera, The Huffington Post, Mashable, Mother Jones, Vice, and the cover of TIME. Earlier this fall I was invited to write an introductory essay for the book. I readily agreed. Given my longstanding admiration for his work, I would be tempted to call it a "dream collaboration," except it isn't really a collaboration at all: like the best photojournalism, Gowdy's work has always told a resonant, sometimes frightening American story without the benefit of any words. I was honoured to be asked to contribute mine. That said, after a decade of focusing primarily on fiction, I confess I enjoyed returning to my professional roots as a journalist, essayist, and political culture critic in the service of this beautiful visual record of one of the darkest days in recent American history.

Ten-year anniversary of Enter, Night

A cherished memory from 10 years ago tonight—signing Enter, Night, my just-published first novel, at McNally-Robinson in Winnipeg on the night of November 11th, 2011. Having gone to school outside Winnipeg, it was very nearly a homecoming, and it was absolutely a reunion with many loved ones.

Viola Desmond arrest anniversary

 

On this day in 1946, beautician and entrepreneur Viola Desmond was arrested for refusing to leave the whites-only section of the Roseland movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 2018, Ms. Desmond's fight for her civil rights was celebrated on the Canadian $10 bill, the face of which she remains today.

Indigenous Veterans Day, 2021

In advance of Remembrance Day, which is Thursday, today is Indigenous Veterans Day. Naturally, on social media, the question "Why do we need a separate Remembrance Day for Natives?" has already been passive-aggressively asked more than once already. I suspect one answer might be that it's not "separate," it's complementary. And it seems particularly worthwhile to set aside a day to honour veterans whom many non-Native Canadians, with no discernible irony, thought of as something less than "Canadian," but who still courageously, and with valour, fought, bled, and died for Canada, in war upon war, anyway.

Throwback Thursday: Beckett, 2014

"One evening when he’d been living with us for six weeks or so, we went to the hill brow above the park. It was a perfect late-summer pre-twilight: the light on the grass was of the gilded variety unique to that particular time of year. The air was warm, but cooling, with the barest hint of autumn carried on the breeze like an afterthought. 

"I sat down cross-legged on the grass. Beckett lay down beside me, and we both watched the dogs and their owners gamboling in the distance with tennis balls and sticks. Further afield, a rugby team practiced passing drills. As I caressed Beckett’s head, my thoughts wandered back to Harper and Simba, as they did several times a day in those weeks following Simba’s death. They played down there too, I thought. Harper and Simba used to be part of that pack. The three of us used to own that park—it was part of our world. 

"Suddenly I felt Beckett’s soft pink tongue on my hand, smooth as the inside of a rose petal. I looked down. He was still stretched out beside me, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was focused on licking my hand. He licked and licked, with increasing urgency now, almost as though he could read my thoughts, almost as though he were trying to say, in his turn, Please don’t be sad. I’m here. I will always protect you and keep you from harm and pain, whatever the cost. You’ll never be alone, and I will love you forever. And by the way, please forgive yourself."

—From "Life, Measured Out in Labradors," first published on Salt Water New England, 2017

 

Re-reading Jonathan Aycliffe's The Lost as the cold sets in

In the spirit of November's cold, I recently took a deep dive back into Jonathan Aycliffe's 1996 novel, The Lost. I read it when it came out, and certain images from it have haunted me for a quarter of a century the way traces of a particularly bad nightmare do—and I mean that in the best possible sense.

An Englishman of Romanian descent, Michael Feraru, travels to Bucharest to reclaim some family property lost in the communist takeover of 1947. In the process, he learns that he is a titled hereditary aristocrat with a dark, centuries-long family history, and a vast castle in the Carpathians to which he is the rightful heir.

The novel is set in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Ceaușescu regime, and the cruelty and tragedy of that era mirrors the cruelty, tragedy, and horror of The Lost. The epistolary style owes a structural debt to Stoker's Dracula, but Aycliffe, like Susan Hill, is in line of literary descent to the mantle of M.R. James, and the beautiful writing and storytelling is 100% his own.

The voyages described in the novel notwithstanding, reading The Lost is a voyage in its own right—even as Michael Feraru travels to Castel Vlaicu and the inherited horrors awaiting him there, the reader travels from the relative safety of the protagonist's soul shores to the dark and terrible place where he eventually makes his physical and spiritual home. It's not a vampire novel in the accepted sense of the term, but it expands the theme of the undead in ways that surprised, delighted, and deeply satisfied me.

Aycliffe has flawlessly rendered a country in pain following the depredations, physical and moral, of a despotic dictator. Re-reading it, I was reminded of sitting in the back of a cab in Bucharest, in 2004, with a monolingual American colleague, while a cab driver with bright, cold eyes, speaking French to me, offered to set us up with underage girls for the night, for a fair price. I can still hear the horrible eagerness in his voice and his utter conviction that anything could—and should—be had for the right price.

Likewise for Michael Feraru, even as he lays claim to his birthright, it lays claim to him. Aycliffe, like the best horror writers, makes his geography and morality as much characters in his novels as any of the human ones. 

Long out of print, The Lost is now available on Kindle. You could do much, much worse for a classic horror novel as the days grow shorter and shorter and the cold sets in.

My funny Valentine

 

A sweet memory floated up this morning. Valentine was my first dog as an adult, and the first dog with which the Hero MD™ and I made a pack. We always called him "the Red Dog," as though it were a royal title. He came to live with us on Valentine's Day, 1986. This photograph by Lindsay Lozon was taken in spring, 1987 at our house on Winchester, before we moved to Milton. Valentine spent our Milton years with us, and left us a couple of years after we'd returned to Toronto. The first dog is always special, and I rarely hear "My Funny Valentine" without my eyes misting over, even after all these years.

Halloween afternoon, 2021

Just in from a long walk with Beckett through the boneyard and back. Since he's been a bit under the weather this past week, we took it very slowly, but he paid his usual assiduous attention to every leaf, blade of grass, tree, curb, gate, wall, and gravestone. So it took a bit of time. It's an exquisite Halloween afternoon—I'm not sure if it's the fact that the rain finally stopped, or just the joy of the day, but families were out together glorying in the perfect autumnal weather. I was unaccountably moved by the number of children in Halloween costumes, obviously going to or from Halloween parties just for them. I was likewise moved by the number of parents who were throwing mini-Halloween parties in the park for their kids, obviously determined to give them Halloween memories of childhood that will hopefully last at least as long as mine have. There is likewise a truly lovely post-pandemic sense of the world returning to normal. It was very different last year, as I noted in my journal on that day. But the best part of it is the absence of tense defiance of the virus that was present earlier this year—shrill and sharp as a dentist drill. No, today it was all smooth and warm and genuinely joyful, with the light as orange and yellow as candy corn, and the anticipation of Halloween night growing by the second.

"Ghosts" by Michael Rowe: October short-short fiction

I saw you standing just inside the wrought-iron fence around the graveyard at the corner of Winchester and Sumach this evening when I was out with the dogs, right around sundown.

I waved, but you didn’t wave back.

Two fourteen-year old boys went right by you on skateboards through a cloud of dead autumn leaves. I didn’t see their faces under their helmets and untidy dark hair as they flew past through the lengthening shadows.

Remember in the 70s when we were kids and no one ever wore a helmet for anything? We used to make retard jokes about kids whose parents made them wear helmets, even for skating. Isn’t it odd how something that sounds so cruel today seemed so funny back then? I never wore a helmet for hockey. You never played hockey.

Remember that time I teased you about how you should be wearing white skates with black heels and done figure skating with the girls? Dad always told me to shut up when I teased you. Once he even slapped the back of my head, hard. I pretended that it didn’t hurt, but it did. I hated you when he did that.

But he was right. It was a mean thing to say. You couldn’t help the way you were, but I could probably have helped being an asshole about it.

You didn’t even look at the boys on the skateboard. I figured they reminded you of the guys we grew up with in Auburn — guys like I was: guys who played hockey, who chased girls, who weren’t afraid to get into fights.

I wonder if they even saw you? I wonder if they might have felt a sudden cold as they thundered past the cemetery. What would they have seen if they’d looked up?

But still, I wish you’d waved.

💀

This week, I drove west on the 401 to Auburn, like I always do at the end of October, to see Dad. We don’t talk much anymore, but he likes it when I check in. Since Mom died, he doesn’t do a lot around the house. There’s a widow lady from church, Mrs. Normoyle, who has a thing for him. She’s always bringing him food and tidying up. He tells me she’s annoying, but I think he’s a lot happier she’s there than he likes to let on. It’s lonely up in that big house on the Milton Escarpment with nothing but memories, especially in October.

It’s the month of ghosts, especially family ghosts.

The rooms seem darker now that Mom is gone. Maybe Dad turns the lights on less, or maybe he keeps the blinds drawn more than he used to. Dad always says Mom took the light with her after when she died, after forty years. Even though he didn’t mean it literally, the other day I remembered that another word for ghost is “shade,” which made me smile. It also made me switch on a couple of lamps in the living room next to Dad’s chair.

In the lamplight, pictures everywhere. On the walls. On the tables.

Mom and Dad’s wedding. Mom holding me in her arms when they brought me home from the hospital. Me, at five, reaching up to touch you when they brought you home from the hospital. Birthdays. Disneyland. Hockey pictures — me, not you. You, at your modern dance class recital. You, gently holding Maven when she was a puppy. Maven licks your face with her pink tongue. The colours have faded, but Maven still looks like a small bundle of soft black mink. Your smile is beautiful in that picture. You’re cradling her in your arms like she was your baby.

“I know,” Dad says. I didn’t hear him come up behind me. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Never a day goes by. A handsome boy.” His voice sounds unbearably old all of a sudden. “It was easier when your mother was alive. It’s against nature. It should have been she and I. You two boys should have outlived us both.”

“I’m still here, Dad.”

“I know,” he says. “I know you are. I wish you had…” His voice trails off. The bitterness has mellowed over the years like old brass. It’s still there, but it gleams dully.

“Dad, stop it. Not now. It’s not fair. Not after all this time.”

“I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t mean it that way.”

When I look at him, there are tears in his eyes. Old-man tears. I touch his shoulder. I want to hug him, but I know he’d rather not have the human contact right now. So I squeeze his shoulder, the way real men do. Real men. Jesus.

“Yes, you did, Dad,” I whisper. “You did mean it that way. But it’s OK. I agree with you. I wish I’d been there that night with Scotty too.”

💀

Brothers. Loaded term. Born of the same parents, raised in the same house. One normal, one — well, different. We knew you were different, but we never talked about it as such. Mom called you “sensitive.” When you were little, you’d follow me around everywhere. You drove me crazy with your love. Later, you embarrassed me with your mincing and prancing. My friends laughed at you. I joined in their laughter. My girlfriend, the incredibly hot born-again Christian to whom I lost my virginity, asked me if you were an actual fag, or if you just acted like one.

Dad was angry with me when you came home with your latest black eye.

“Why can’t you look after him? He’s your brother. He’s the only brother you’ll ever have. You’re stronger than him. You need to protect him.”

I said I’d rather have no brother at all than an embarrassing queer one.

Dad slapped me across the face. “Be a man, Robert. It’s time for you to grow up and act like a man.”

I told him that I hated him, and I hated you more. I stormed out of the living room. When I saw you crying in the doorway to the kitchen, I passed you without a word. You held out your hand. You touched my elbow as I went by.

“Robbie, I’m sorry. I — ”

“Fuck you, Scott. I hate you. I wish you were dead.”

Three years later, when I was home from university, you told us you were moving to Alberta with some guy you were “in love with.” Mom cried. Dad went to his workshop and locked the door. I told Mom and Dad that I was done pretending.

I drove back to school. In my dorm, I threw the only framed family photo across the room. It shattered against the wall, spraying shards of broken glass across the floor.

Dad called me from the hospital in Calgary. My girlfriend woke me up and passed me the phone. It was three a.m. At first, I didn’t recognize his voice at all. It was the voice of a man nailed to a cross.

“Your brother’s been hurt,” he said.  “We’re in Calgary. Mom and I. Can you come right away? We’re at the hospital.”

“Dad? What happened to Scott?”

“They hurt him,” he said. “They beat him up. He’s in intensive care.”

“Who?” I asked stupidly. “Who hurt him?”

“Who else? The same ones that always hurt him.” Dad was crying now. “Damn them.” He was silent for a few moments, trying to compose himself. “Your brother needs his family with him now. You have to come.”

“Dad — ”

“You come now, Robert. I mean it. It’s time for you to be his brother again. It’s past time.”

Then he told me what they’d done to you in that alleyway outside the bar.

💀

Three hours later on the plane to Calgary, I dreamed horrible, unformed, crimson-tinted dreams. I heard the terrible crunch of bones cracking beneath the weight of fists and boots. I saw the puddles of congealing blood. I must have cried out because the flight attendant asked me if I was all right. I told her I was. She handed me a napkin. I reached for it, suddenly embarrassed to have allowed this woman see me cry, even in my sleep.

I landed in Calgary on the bluest October morning. The houses across the street from the hospital had carved pumpkins by the front door. Of course, I thought. It’s Halloween morning.

“We did everything we could,” the doctor had said, holding a clipboard under the fluorescent light. “I’m so sorry.”

Perhaps his clinical choice of words had been intended to be anesthetic — blunt force trauma, massive head injuries, persistent vegetative.

As the machine measured out your remaining heartbeats in flattening spikes of green light, I touched your broken fingers and promised myself — and you — that I would be strong for Mom and Dad.

When it was over, we stepped out of the hospital into the sunlight. Across the street from the hospital, two little boys displaying the effortless familiarity of brothers raced along the sidewalk to school, laughing. One was draped in a bed sheet, a ghost. His brother wore a pirate costume. The older of the two, the pirate, reached out and took his younger brother’s hand, pulling him joyously along the sidewalk towards school.

It had taken me exactly seventeen minutes to break my promise not to cry.

💀

These days, I can quantify my remaining decades. I can measure them out in life-events. I can gauge my value as a man by who I’ve loved, who has loved me, and by the ones I didn’t love nearly enough. My marriage didn’t last, of course. No one was surprised.

But our son, Scott — named after you — is the one thing we did right. He’s away at Western this fall. He’s your age. The age you were when…well, when whatever.

I believe in ghosts. And I see you everywhere.

The first time was just before I turned on the soft nursery light, the night we brought Scott home. You were standing over his crib, a familiar shape in the dimness.

Scotty, I whispered. Then I turned on the light.

The room was empty except for my sleeping son. I felt no fear, just the gentle spectral aspect of something peaceful and benevolent.

But you were there. I know what I saw.

💀

I’ve seen you many other times over the years, sometimes more clearly than others. I’ve seen you in my son’s handsome sensitive face as he’s grown. I’ve felt your spirit in his sweetness, his trusting nature. I’ve heard your voice beneath his.

I feel your spirit moving in me when I react with patience and kindness to the fact that he’s not like me, and in fact couldn’t be more like you in many, many ways.

And in loving that in him, in knowing that he might someday tell Susan and I what you told Mom and Dad that terrible afternoon thirty years ago, I’m granted some sort of absolution, a redemption I don’t deserve, in knowing I’ll know how to love him at the moment he’ll need my love the most.

In my dreams I see you rising out of that bloody alleyway on a fountain of radiance like some sort of immortal angel full of fire, full of power, full of light.

But other times, like tonight, by the graveyard in late October when the daylight is short and the night chill settles in early, I see you very, very clearly.

I wave.  And I wish you’d wave back. Just once.

Publication history: Autumnplay! (2009), The Good Men Project (2012), Postscripts to Darkness  (2014.)  Copyright 2021 by Michael Rowe. All rights reserved.