Same Old (edit 1, erotic memoir)

Vertical rows of green and red numbers flash from the screen.
“Whatever you do, don’t leave this chair,” he says, sliding his desk chair back so he has enough room between the chair and desk to raise his frame.
“What if I need to go to the bathroom?”
“Call me,” he says. He says there’s a casino on Steeles West where patrons stay glued to their seats, day and night, opening to closing time. I ask “so what do they do when they need to take a piss?” “Wear diapers,” he says and I say, “Yeah right, well, no way am I wearing Depends.” Of course he thinks everyone a price and he’s right.

Garth has figured out this scheme; if the trade goes seven points above or seven points below, we cash out. Whether we go long or short, that’s the rule. Lately he has this thing for currencies. We’re paper trading, playing the Canadian dollar which is at sixty-five cents. We watch the trades real time on the Bridge Information System. Garth says just about everyone has a platform going, but this one, this Bridge one is the best going. I want to know what happens if our computer crashes or if the broker has too many lines going. And also, what about sex? “Money is better than sex,” he says, so I lay out this picture of fucking in front of the green and red lights and coming on the green. “Could work,” he says, so I crawl under the desk, slide up his old gray shorts that need a wash only I don’t care since I’m crazy about the smell of his cock, and nuzzle my way in.

The truth is I’m growing kind of partial to this trading shit, peering intently at the screen and like a sportscaster calling out the plays to Garth, who decides to take out three contracts on the Deutch mark. I’m watching the screen and yelling out on those seven points, and it’s really cool. And then the world stops. Well, it doesn’t stop but it’s moving so slowly that Garth is getting restless. The market’s got her legs crossed and won’t give him one more point. When he asks me what he should do, should he stay or get out, I say, “I don’t know, it’s your thing.” I look around the room, at this Gossamer house I never liked all that much, it being so close to the house on Bluffwood Drive, and this address, this drafty four-bedroom place in the suburbs, suddenly becomes dear to me.

And then the market collapses. I know this because Garth’s one seeing eye grows big, he gasps, once, his mouth opens, and he freezes. He’s like a third-rate actor registering shock. The market has walked out on him and he doesn’t know why. He closes the account, the door of this office room, walks downstairs, out the front door, and drives off into the night.

All I know is Garth’s scam-stash was one-hundred thousand, the rent is three-thousand two hundred even though we sneered at Stephen with his three-thousand seven hundred chunk for his Teddington house, our year is almost up, and we have enough for two more months—rent, food, first and last. I circle ads, create one- to five-star lists, call, cross out, the cover of one notebook ripping from its coiled spine, replaced by a yellow steno pad. When I hooked up with Garth, I took the deepest breath I could and dove underwater into an artist’s heaven. At first I was astonished, but now with water pressing in, I gulp for air and breathe in water instead.


I can’t breathe. Although she says she’ll see me. Today she sits in a loose brown checked flannel dress, the chapel window’s cerulean blue washing her face and folded hands. Fresh-faced missionaries standing in small quiet groups outside the chapel doors hand out glossy Missionaries for Africa pamphlets.

Caroline hooks her arm through mine. “My foster mother is visiting me today,” she tells the nurse who smiles and raises her eyebrows at me. We communicate in small gestures, pleased one-syllable sounds, and tentative phrases.
“Where shall we go today?” I ask. She likes the shimmering red jello in the cafeteria, also the sealed ribbed plastic cups of apple juice. Cheesies thrill her. We walk along arm-in-arm down one hallway, up an escalator, and down another hallway with gleaming floors. I nod and smile at nurses and patients and occasionally return a wave. A stray sob escapes my lips.

In the foyer of the main building, we pass an oversize portrait of the Whitby Health Centre. Below a primary-blue sky sits a modern glass and beige brick facility centered in a horizontal span of spring grass and flanked by a ridge of evergreens. In the background lies a varnished motionless lake. Caroline and I tour the span of grass above the shoreline. We are surrounded by Canada geese. I guide her past old and fresh bird droppings. There are rocks at the cliff edge and I worry about letting go of her hand. We stop and look out at the water. “Look at the horizon, honey,” I say, passing my hand through her hair which the wind has caught and blown across her eyes. I rotate my body in the direction of that line separating water and sky so she will turn with me and I think maybe she hears me, maybe she is watching that space Lisa defined for me when she was four, possibly five. We were in a car, the red firebird after the Caravan had been repossessed, the sun glowing low in the sky and talk turned to horizons and country.

“I miss the country,” I said.
“All you have to do is look at the horizon.”
I think I was quiet, then. “The country,” she said, “is where the horizon and the sky touch.”

That day Caroline and I breathed in Lisa’s country as we did many times over the next twenty-one months, together and solo. Of course, I’m not sure whether her eyes stayed still and sharp enough to see a country where she might breathe and fill herself with clean air, but I’m hoping she caught a glance.

Sometimes I wonder what I learned in those trying times. I learned about freedom, I guess—that I was and she wasn’t, and that when she was and if, I would never forget the time she wasn’t. I would never forget, Jew that I am. I used to closet myself in the bathroom when she stood spewing words. “I need some time,” I’d say. And she’d vomit incomplete sentences outside the door as she rattled the handle. I should have been better I say out loud and cloak myself with warm phrases. I pile them on, but I’m never warm.