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. 

Tubular balls

In 1842, St. Paul's Cathedral in Liège commissioned a marble statue of Satan, the Fallen Angel, as part of a religious installation, from sculptor Joseph Geefs. The resulting statue—a pouty, sexy, androgynous, chocolate-box Satan with slightly parted knees, a demure downward-cast glance, and a plump serpent coiled a his feet—raised eyebrows. Though admired at the highest levels of society, the sculpture was also controversial and attracted criticism for being too seductive and "sublime." In 1848, it is believed that Joseph's brother, Guillaume Geefs, decided to tackle the criticism of his brother's voluptuous rendering by sculpting his own version of Satan. Guillaume's idea of desexualizing Satan was to make him more muscular, athletic, and classically masculine and imperious, complete with BDSM-worthy manacles and chains. Whereas Joseph's Satan's legs were slightly parted, Guillaume's Satan's knees were pressed together, either protectively or defiantly. Trying to remove the homoeroticism from a nude statue of the most beautiful angel in heaven by making him more dominant, rugged, and athletic is one of the reasons 19th century Belgian sculptors might have needed a few more gay friends, if only to advise them on how that business actually works.

Where the witches gather in October

"Autumn Sunrise" by John Ryan. 

This past Sunday, the Hero MD and I took a drive west through the countryside outside of Toronto for the day. In the past few years I have found the city occasionally oppressive, and being indoors reminds me too much of lockdown. We drove through the outskirts of Milton, Ontario were we used to live. The autumn foliage glowed in the late-afternoon sun. We took the country roads along the escarpment region, which was the setting for my third novel, October. I was reminded of the exurban legends I'd heard in the 80s from local teenagers about a coven of witches that met up there—stories which I filed away for later use in the novel. It's absolutely beautiful countryside, and I admit to feeling the pang of loss I always feel when I'm back "home" there. It was a pretty halcyon time, those years in Milton. It was still a small town then instead of the commuter bedroom community it is now. Some of the friendships I made in those years still remain. While probably the most difficult stories I've ever written, October is really a love letter to the town and the surrounding countryside. Writers have the great privilege of being able to immortalize time and place and people in a way that sometimes even cameras miss This photo, "Autumn Sunrise," by John Ryan is the exact vista Mikey in the novel would have had during his hours of biking the escarpment country outside the fictional town of Auburn, and what he would have remembered as the site of the coven gathering upon which he stumbled, setting the entire tragedy of the novel into motion. I didn't refer to this photo while I was writing the book—I found it later—but it brings it all back now.