DAVID LESTER ART

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

I was thinking about the pool hall, the reddish light in the western sky, those old guys fighting. I liked watching you. It seems to me that enjoying liking you requires that I give up a bit of who I am, who I think I am. I disappear a little bit, into the process of enjoying you. That’s a good thing. For me, anyway. But it also causes a feeling of overwhelm in the returning to the self departed from—maybe that frayed and slightly fractured sense of wanting to put it all back the way it was is called processing. Either a re-scrambling or a re-unscrambling. Process or processing?

I liked the pool hall. I’d like to do that again. The whole thing. So far, everything we’ve done, I’d like to do again, but since everything is good, good enough to do again, I wouldn’t want to stop the flow of good—like your sauce over chicken, filling the building of what it is we’re doing, which is good. Maybe even really good. Like your sauce, your chicken—finding out that you hack up dark chocolate with a machete and from somewhere in your cantilevered kitchen, nice little figs arrive with chunks of ginger for me. Finding out you got the ginger for me felt good. I liked that.

I was riding my bike home last night, covering the same ground we drove during my disconnect, before I gave you directions to the main street. It was really warm out, very dark and raining. I’d been to the store on my way home and I saw Carmen—the clerk who knows hundreds of customers’ names—but I don’t think she recognized me. I was wearing the helmet and I had my glasses on: slightly foggy and rain-splattered. After the strange day at work, I didn’t really like it that Carmen didn’t say, “Hi Jean.” Like usual. Like normal. Maybe she decided not to. Sometimes it’s just too much to only say hello to each other, the function of proving, over and over, that we know each others’ names, as if that is some sort of fucking miracle in today’s world.

Riding through the Church’s Chicken parking lot and out onto Garden Drive—into the dark—I felt detached from the road. More air in the tires may reduce this sensation. I was already pretty wet, blue jeans tight on my thighs as I pedaled up the slight incline. I’m re-thinking riding the bike in the rain, in the dark. It’s dangerous. Maybe I should run to and from work instead.

I got to the flat section and maybe because it was dark and the road was both wet and shiny and my glasses were blurring things, it was difficult to place myself on solid ground—plus I was off-balance after my four-hour shift; I felt kind of doomed, thinking what-will-become-of-me? thoughts. I wanted to return to you, being with you. That seemed like the solution. I wanted to tell you about my day, about what had happened, what was bugging me. You would be that entity. I wanted to be hugged and held and kissed. By you. And I would feel better. I suppose it’s worth isolating, setting it up to examine, to wonder how it is that we carry human patterns with us, to collide with the variables others represent. Our species—profoundly unintelligible, mysterious to ourselves—we heartily expect new entities to comply, to know what it is we want. And, weirdly, sometimes we do. I almost hope there is someone watching our humantics. Blind acrobats on unicycles careening into each other in Petri dishes labeled according to whatever it is we are being tested for. Case studies on a long counter below the high windows of a basement lab. “Inability to learn from repeat exposure to pain-inducing stimuli” is hand-written in purple ink on the clipboard next to the unicyclists who don’t seem to realize that they could just get off and walk the rest of the way, feeling their way around the glass wall of the Petri dish.

I was on the darkest part of the ride, next to the elementary school where, day after day in the summer, I checked to see if they’d removed the completely flattened rat from the side of the road. And, day after day, it was still there, and I wondered about this, in a big-picture kind of way. An elementary school with a dead rat on its quietest perimeter, between the carefully formed and yellow-arrowed speed bumps. A dried-out rat. Splayed. If you were a kid and you decided to kick it, you’d discover the skittery sound a dry flat rat on pavement makes.

Maybe that sense of not understanding why no one had disposed of the rat was what freed me from my job concerns, allowing me to be part of the warm, rainy darkness and because you were in my thoughts and I wanted a return to the night before, at the pool hall, by the window, watching you enjoy Dino and company, their passionate accusations of cheating. “You just want to be right, that’s your problem.” Hey, do you think they, like us, emailed each other later to remark on any possible clumsiness in how they handled things?

The warm air, the rain, the darkness. You. The moment I was in. These were not problems to be solved. They were all one thing: my thinking. Just my thoughts. Just thoughts that resulted in emotions. Constructions I make, and unless I understand things differently, maybe I will keep making the same thoughts about different things.

1. Reacts differently to similar stimuli
2. Reacts similarly to different stimuli
3. Reacts similarly to similar stimuli
4. Reacts differently to different stimuli

Why don’t I know the answer? Or is it the question that eludes me? Maybe there is no question and, therefore, logically speaking, no answer.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Last night I went to the 7-Eleven™ for candy and to check the postage on a form I’m mailing to WFMU, a radio station in the New York City listening area. The form gives them permission to archive a live 2 Foot Flame performance, making it available for download. I found a stamp in the drawer at work, and I stuck it on. I thought it was one of those universal non-denominational stamps, but there was a “1″ worked into the design, so I thought it may also be a $1 stamp. I presented my envelope (a cheap-o variety that requires two chunks of Scotch Tape® to close it because the glue doesn’t stick and so, I’m left wondering about the economy of having to buy Scotch Tape® to seal it; what does that equation look like?) to the Filipina postal clerk, and I asked her if that was enough to get the letter to its destination: the USA.

She said, “No, that’s a one-cent stamp.”

I laughed, because I hadn’t thought of that and so I asked how much the letter would be to mail and she weighed it and punched some keys on the computer and said, “12 cents.”

I stood there thinking for a second. I was tired. Even if she meant 12 cents more, it didn’t make sense. I said something like, “It can’t be 12 cents.”

She looked at the screen and said, “Yes, 12 cents.”

I had to dredge up some sort of memory about the last time I mailed anything, and I thought back to the several Christmas cards I send—the idea of postage. I was thinking, “Did I miss something? Something on the news? Twelve cents?”

“It can’t be 12 cents,” I said very nicely, because hey, these moments happen, and we just have to get through them, but this went on longer than seemed plausible.

She looked at the screen again and assertively said, “You don’t believe me?”

And I said, “No, I don’t believe you.”

The envelope was between us. I circled the stamp and much of the blank space around it with my fingertip and said, “How much more do I need to mail this letter to the USA?”

“Eleven cents,” she said and dropped two stamps, a one and a 10, into the blank space next to the existing stamp—to make 12. She was convinced. Certain. She was waiting for me to accept this fact.

I said something like, “OK, that’s 12 cents, but it isn’t 12 cents to mail a letter to the USA.”

Finally, she got it. She put her face in her hands and squealed. I said it was fine and I know what that’s like to have that happen. She said it was $1.12. She got out four 25-cent stamps and because she was in this strange state (no line-up, me not in a hurry, just being patient) now couldn’t figure out how much I owed her.

“I owe you $1.11 plus tax,” I said. She stared at the computer screen. Anyway, this portion of interaction went on quite a while too; she was just temporarily all screwed up. I asked her how long she’d been at work that day. “Maybe it’s time for you to go home,” I said, you know, making a joke out of it.

I got my 10 candies out of the Plexiglas® bins and my bag of Smart Food™. I am known for this combination of items. (You’ll see why.) I took them to the front counter, but the cashier was busy making food for a guy with long neon-green dreadlocks (such a bad look) who was on a cell phone. I stood there a long time. The guy with green hair told the clerk he was supposed to be wearing gloves to prepare the food, but he didn’t seem bugged. There was a cop getting a Slurpee© and he must have heard the guy with the green hair say the thing about the gloves, but he ignored it. In my fatigued state, I looked at the cop’s gun as he walked through the store with his Slurpee© and thought it would be unlikely that he’d draw his weapon and arrest the clerk for not using gloves. That wasn’t going to happen, but it arrived in my mind, over-tired as I was.

Because the main cashier was making a sandwich, or whatever, the Filipina from the post office came to do the cash.

“How many candies?” she asked abruptly, lifting the tiny bag and dropping it onto the Arborite™ counter. It was as if the previous transaction hadn’t happened. She was all business. Confident. I was a new customer.

“Ten,” I said.

She punched in 10 times five cents and scanned my Smart Food™.

“$2 even,” she said happily. Cashiers seem to like this a lot. I gave her a five and said, “Just keeping it nice and simple over here. No complications.” She laughed.

Sometimes, on non-work days, my store interactions constitute my social life. Quality interactions can occur here and there, quickly. To suffice.

During the summer, I made a point of dressing up to go across the street to the 7-Eleven™. I wasn’t going out much—or “dating”—but I wanted to wear my summer frocks. It was fun. My kind of fun. Simple. Sometimes I went and picked blackberries next door to the store, behind a long wooden building called a church. The blackberry bush is in the yard next to the church, pushing into the laneway through a chain-link fence. Deep red roses mixed in with the brambles. Prickles and thorns to navigate; my fingers reaching in to test for ripeness before removing the berry from its node.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

A couple of weeks ago, I was riding my bike toward the back-door entrance of my regular pizza joint. The usually friendly, but now scowling, owner suddenly appeared in the doorway and threw something in my general direction. It landed 10 feet in front of me in parking-lot gravel. When the owner saw me—I’m one of his regular customers; he usually has my slice on the paper plate before I even know what I want; we’re tight, man—his scowl quickly turned to mortification, and he ducked back inside. I proceeded toward the back door to see what he’d angrily flung out of his pizza parlour. A mouse! Lying peacefully on its side, its eye clenched closed. Perhaps it is well known in urban mouselore that when the landlord catches you by your tail and flings you at a customer it is best to play dead—eyes closed, body limp—until this confusing time of danger has passed.

I got off my bike, flipped out the kickstand, thinking, “What am I gonna say to pizza guy?” Holy cow, awkward. Yet, in a way, I was delighted and thrilled at the potential. I could say, “You missed.” I mean, it’s not every day a pizza vendor hurls vermin at a regular customer.

He’s a shy guy and until he recently started guessing what I wanted, he really only said “$1.50″ and “thank you.” Now our thing—our burgeoning comedy of commerce and selection—was in jeopardy.

I was semi-dreading our interaction and yet gleefully assessing how this could play out: What funny thing might I say? He didn’t see me look at the mouse. He was already inside.

I walked up the wooden stairs, down the hallway past the kitchen. He was at the sink, washing his hands furiously, looking over his shoulder, waiting for me to arrive, so that I would see him washing his hands. If he’d started washing his hands immediately after the mouse-chucking, he’d have been washing longer than anyone actually would. I had to put the lock on the bike, stuff the empty Tupperware from the back basket into my packsack and then walk the length of the building before seeing him at the sink.

This was a logical response to the problem. To have me see him washing his hands. Fair enough. I proceeded to the front window, where the slices are displayed in a case visible from the sidewalk. Nothing with olives, so I had to make a choice. I hoped we could resume our pizza guessing game—basically I act amazed and take whatever he gives me—but not today. I forget what I asked for, but he was all-business, grabbing my slice with the tongs, getting it onto the paper plate, sliding the glass case closed. Pro-fucking-ficient.

“$1.50,” he said, without looking at me.

Damn. Rapport reduction implementation. This was not good. He didn’t know I’d seen the mouse, but smart remarks by me would not be funny, so I made my decision.

“Thank you,” I said and took the slice of pizza as if I hadn’t seen him throw a mouse out the back door of his restaurant—a visible proclamation that this was not the first mouse he’d ever seen in his pizza establishment. Really, by the time a pizza man is flinging mice out the door by the tail, you get the idea that there is a war going on in there.

I hope it was a trapped mouse and not a poisoned mouse to be picked up by the scruffy gang of ne’ er-do-well crows that hang out on that block: mouse-eaters, no doubt.

I remember ordering a bowl of something a guidebook recommended while trying to get the gist of how to feed myself in Bangkok. Rice and something under florescent lights, everything awkward in that first week of travelling two months alone in Southeast Asia. Eating the vegetables off the top, wondering what the black specks in the rice were—maybe sesame seeds? Leaning down to look closer. Bugs.

I’d dyed my short hair back to brown, obliterating the blonde sections I twisted into three or four spikes—I didn’t want to attract attention, although being a white woman alone in India attracts attention regardless. By the time I got to Jaipur, maybe a month later, the sun had faded the brown dye, revealing the lighter sections, which, in 1985 were associated with punk. I was very surprised when a young guy approached me in the street asking if I was a punk and if I was, what was I doing there, in Jaipur, the Pink City, wandering around without answers, it would seem.

“Punk? Why do you ask that?”

“Because of your hair.”

I didn’t know what it meant to him to be a punk in India. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to be whatever he thought a punk was. I knew I didn’t want to be what men thought a Western woman was. I forget what happened. I probably got rid of him, but there was a guy in Jaipur who had lived in Europe and he wanted to buy me a new suit of clothes and take me on his motorcycle to visit a palace. I agreed; I forget why. He took me to a tailor who measured me and the next day, at the beginning of our adventure, we returned to the tailor to get my new outfit: cotton shirt and baggy pants. A typical Indian outfit, maybe more for a man than a woman, and this was to be in navy blue cotton that we had selected from bolts of fabric leaning against the wall.

The tailor handed me the outfit and I was shown to the back of the shop to change behind a curtain. While in India, one is always considering potential scams and dangerous situations. This was one of the very few times I entered into associations where I was putting myself in possible danger. Who was the guy? Why did he bring me to this particular shop—what was really going on? Questions that are not part of life in Vancouver. I could hear the two men talking while I put on the new clothes which were clearly not made for me. The sleeves were very long and the pant legs dragged on the floor. I came out from behind the curtain to show them—but motorcycle guy was satisfied and the tailor was happy. I was encouraged to put my Western clothing into my bag so we could set off to the palace to participate in a sort of Alice In Wonderland meets The Emperor Has On Really Big Clothes mind warp. I rolled up the sleeves and pant legs and got on the back of the motorcycle. After a month of travel by train and bicycle rickshaw in cities, the winding road through the jungle, strange colourful birds screeching, monkeys howling, cool breeze, no helmet, going christ knows where with god knows who … or whom … wearing satan knows what—a man’s suit of clothes?—was somehow OK. I forget why—I was 25 at the time. I wanted to know the story behind the clothes, the measuring episode, the falsified exchange—what did it mean? What had I entered into? Who was I to them?

The palace was deserted except for an extremely old attendant wearing a brilliant pink turban. Motorcycle guy told me the pink meant the man was from the lowest caste. To this day, 25 years later, when I see the old guy standing outside the bank—in the same block as the pizza joint and the scruffy crows—wearing bright yellow security company garb plastered with logos and a brilliant pink turban, I think of the palace in the jungle, my ill-fitting navy blue outfit, the fading hair dye revealing something I felt I should hide—my urge to know how I was seen so that I could intervene and represent—to explain the nuances of who I am and now, how vastly impossible that endeavour seems as I am further stereotexted—regarded as woman-of-a-demographic-that-clearly-doesn’t-matter-much to those who think they already know.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

FADE IN:

EXT. OUTSIDE ON VERONICA’S PENTHOUSE APARTMENT PATIO—DAY
VERONICA is snapping dead stems off the potted geraniums on her balcony. MUSIC is coming from inside—BRIAN ENO “BABY’S ON FIRE.” The phone rings. VERONICA puts the small pile of geranium flowers on the patio table and steps inside through the open sliding door.

INT. VERONICA’S PENTHOUSE APARTMENT—DAY
VERONICA’S POV (point of view) from the DOORWAY—TELEPHONE AND MUSIC SOURCE—STUDIO SPEAKER—ON DESK

CUT TO CLOSE UP OF VERONICA’S HAND TWISTING the VOL. KNOB on the SPEAKER—MUSIC STOPS—PICKING UP THE RECEIVER

CLOSE UP OF VERONICA’S FACE, TELEPHONE RECEIVER PRESSED TO HER EAR

VERONICA
(impatient, inquisitively into the receiver)
Hello?

VOICE OVER—MALE (OS—off screen)

GUY ONE/MARCUS
(very formal sounding, slow and round, caustic, taunting, direct)
Hello, Veronica

CLOSE UP OF VERONICA’S FACE. Eyes widen in surprise, lips purse defensively (one beat) a frown—anger.

CUT TO INT. LOUNGE AREA OF PSYCH WARD (1978) SIX PATIENTS STANDING SEPARATELY FROM EACH OTHER—CATATONIC—WEARING BLUE HOSPITAL GOWNS. VERONICA ENTERS THE WARD STOPS AND LOOKS AROUND
VERONICA is 19 years old. Long hair. No make-up. Wearing her brother’s hand-me-down brown Levi’s cords, plaid button-down shirt, jean jacket and clunky orthopedic looking shoes.

VERONICA’S POV OF MARCUS FROM BEHIND, ACROSS THE ROOM
Unkempt, MARCUS is sitting apart from the other patients reading a section of newspaper.

BACK TO SHOT OF PSYCH WARD. VERONICA having spotted MARCUS on the other side of the room, inhales deeply and starts walking timidly toward MARCUS

VERONICA’S POV OF MARCUS
MARCUS wearing a robe and pajamas, legs crossed, bouncing a dangling leather slipper on the raised foot. His hair is disheveled (two beats)—he sees VERONICA.

BACK TO THE SHOT OF THE INT. WARD—LIGHT FADES TO BLACK THEATRICALLY, LEAVING VERONICA and MARCUS UNDER A SPOTLIGHT ON A LARGE THEATER STAGE. MARCUS crumples up the newspaper noisily (the sound is unnaturally amplified through speakers in the theater)—he drops the crumpled paper from arm’s length (sounds like pots and pans crashing when it hits the floor, not a newspaper)—and folds his arms across his chest.

STUDIO AUDIENCE (OS) MURMURS DISAPPROVINGLY

MARCUS
(very formal sounding, slow and round, caustic, taunting, direct)
Hello, Veronica. My psychiatrist says it’s your fault that I’m in here.

MARCUS’ POV CLOSE UP OF VERONICA’S FACE. Eyes widen, lips part in surprise (two beats) lips close and purse defensively (one beat) a frown—pain, fear.

VOICE OVER WITH ECHO

MARCUS (OS)
… your fault … your fault … your fault that I’m in here … in here … in here…

VOICE OVER (OS) WITH ECHO IMITATING THE ENGLISH GUY ORIGINALLY FROM HOGAN’S HEROES WHO MODERATED THE TV SHOW FAMILY FEUD—HIS BIG LINE WAS “SURVEY SAYS … ” SPINNING AROUND POINTING WITH THE QUESTION CARD AT THE SURVEY BOARD. BELL RINGS. ANSWER LIGHTS UP. “SURVEY SAYS… “

MODERATOR
psychiatrist says (two beats) psychiatrist says … (two beats) … your fault Veronica … don’t you remember? … it’s your fault … it’s your fault that Marcus is here, that Marcus is not well … Marcus is not a well man … psychiatrist says (two beats) psychiatrist says…

VERONICA’S POV—MARCUS SMILING, SINISTER, SATISFIED AT VERONICA’S REACTION. SLIPPER-CLAD FOOT BOUNCING FASTER and FASTER.

MARCUS’ POV—CLOSE UP OF VERONICA’S FACE FILMED in BLACK & WHITE –harsh geisha make-up very white face, black lips, hair crudely formed into geishas style, eyes made like ALICE COOPER circa mid-’70s—BLACK WET SMUDGES AROUND EACH EYE.

CUT BACK TO SHOT OF VERONICA and MARCUS STANDING ON THE THEATER STAGE

SOUND of VERONICA’S heart beat increasing, heart racing, AMPLIFIED through THEATER SPEAKERS. VERONICA, distracted by the sound, looks around her.

VERONICA places her right hand over her heart and the heart beat SOUND is muffled, someone putting their hand over a microphone. The microphone begins to feedback. VERONICA takes her hand off her heart quickly.

CUT TO CLOSE UP TATTERED LEATHER SLIPPER DANGLING, BOUNCING UP AND DOWN ON MARCUS’ LEFT FOOT

VOICE OVER STUDIO AUDIENCE (OS) LAUGHING (two beats) SAME SOUND (two beats of silence between) LOOP

CUT TO SHOT OF VERONICA’S FACE FILMED in COLOR—harsh geisha make-up, very white face, bright red lips, eyes made up like ALICE COOPER circa mid-70s cover of SCHOOL’S OUT (google this image—album title)—BLACK TEARS RUNNING DOWN BOTH CHEEKS, DRIPPING OFF THE FACE TO FORM LARGE BLACK POOLS AROUND BOTH OF VERONICA’S ORTHOPEDIC SHOES

CUT TO CLOSE UP OF VERONICA’S FEET in ORTHOPEDIC SHOES, TOES POINTED slightly INWARD, STANDING in a LARGE POOL of BLACK GOO that is expanding outward from an unseen source, covering an ever-increasing amount of the theater stage floor. Wooden floor.

FADE TO BLUE. DARK MIDNIGHT BLUE. BLACK BLUE. DEEP BLUE

MUSIC COMES UP IN THE THEATER—CHET BAKER “ALMOST BLUE”

SOUND OF A NEEDLE BEING RIPPED ACROSS AN LP. THE MUSIC STOPS. STUDIO AUDIENCE GRUMBLES (OS). MUSIC COMES UP IN THE THEATER—EURYTHMICS “HERE COMES THE RAIN AGAIN”

SOUND OF A NEEDLE BEING RIPPED ACROSS VINYL. MUSIC STOPS. MUSIC COMES UP IN THE THEATER—EURYTHMICS “WOULD I LIE TO YOU?” add the great guitar freak out in the middle of that NEIL YOUNG SONG on … what’s the name of that album? … with “DON’T CRY” on it?

“WOULD I LIE TO YOU?” SPEEDS UP, REPEATING THAT ONE LIE. LINE. “WOULD I LIE TO YOU?” “WOULD I LIE TO YOU?” intercut (between two beats) with NEIL YOUNG’S GUITAR FREAK OUT (google album title and song)

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

David’s illustration (July 2010) is of Mecca Normal’s first performance (July 1984). The text is an excerpt from Love Wants You.

Sex with Ryan feels stale, like reviewing the minutes of a meeting that adjourned after agreeing—on paper—how to have sex. This is how we do it.

Lying beside him, my hand on his chest, Ryan says, “I have boundaries and I need space. I’m not into drama.”

Slowly, recalling that some people don’t like to be touched after sex, I take my hand off his chest. I assess where else my body is touching his. At the hip. My left foot. The hair is still swinging on the TV. He’s playing a shampoo commercial over and over.

“Women tend to see me as a palette cleaner,” says Ryan.

“What does that mean?” I ask, turning onto my side to look at his face, elbow propping up my head.

“When their main squeeze splits,” Ryan says, staring at the ceiling. “They come to me for sex until they find another lover.”

“And that’s OK with you?” I say, a set of nuances—physical and emotional—drop into my mind. Plump women with belly-button rings, Asian-themed tattoos and Bettie Page bangs—naked save for black garter belt and fishnet stockings with holes—are on top of Ryan who is flat on his back, a mere palette cleaner of a man.

“In a way,” says Ryan. “Hey, I need a smoke. Let’s get up.”

We sit at the top of the stairs, above the alley. Ryan picks the other half of his cigarette out of the ashtray and stiffly strikes a wooden match. Sunlight illuminates the unfurling lines of blue-grey smoke as it pushes back into the apartment. Ryan inhales deeply. I turn the other way—embarrassed by his need to suckle the nipple-filter for toxic nourishment. He exhales an internal venom that mixes with acrid poisons off the tip—the slow ejaculation of excess in his self-gratification process. A garbage pail holds open the door—non-productive popcorn kernels, squeezed-out tea bags and coffee grounds give off a withering scent of lethargy. Small flies, too young to buzz, swivel, blue-winged in the sunlight. Ryan talks about his temper and his financial problems. “I don’t stay in jobs long because I don’t handle authority well.”

I look down into the alley, thinking about Ryan losing his temper on the job. Fingers pointing, raised voices, doors slamming. I can see this scene from above—Ryan is a Playdough figurine in a shoebox diorama. His Gumby-Pokey feet stuck to the floor.

I get up and look around the kitchen. Counter-space covered in chipped thrift-store dishes, rusty cutlery, a badly-dented aluminum pot with a loose plastic handle. Guys I’ve chatted with online tell me I need to accept things for what they are—”Don’t keep trying to figure out what it means, or what it might mean. Accept it for what it is in the moment.” Guys instruct me to think this way because it suits their purposes. They assume that I’m thinking in some way that might impede their progress. I am in the moment more than I probably should be.

In crisp white printing on Ryan’s chalkboard: “2005 is the year to take care of myself.” I open the fridge. A waft of sour milk from a crusty-spout of two-percent next to the Creamo. On the rack below, two scallop-shaped moulds of red Jell-O setting. Crimson dribblings splattered across the bottom shelf—otherwise empty. I close the fridge and go back to the sunny corner to find my packsack.

“I think I’ll go to the gym now,” I say, swinging on my completely full packsack. Ryan looks out the window—a confused twitching between his eyebrows prompts me to ask, “What?” He doesn’t say anything. I ask again. It’s too early for either of us to be acting like this. Way too soon for me to be asking what.

“I’m not sure what this is,” Ryan says.

“Well, there isn’t much to go on.”

“I suppose not,” he says.

“Do you want to sit down again and talk?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, all serious.

“May I have another cup of tea?” I say.

“Do you mean now or some other time?”

“Both,” I answer.

Ryan smiles and goes to the kitchen. In the draggy slouch of his shoulders I think I see regret—for what? The sex? Or instigating this process. I don’t have anything I need or want to say. I take off my packsack and sit down. Ryan puts the badly dented pot on the stove—no lid—he waits for it to boil.

“Do you take milk in your tea?” he asks.

“I do, but your milk is off,” I say.

“Had a look in my fridge, eh?” Ryan says.

“Just doing a bit of research,” I say.

“How about Creamo?”

“Sure,” I say. “Creamo works.” The fridge opens with the plastic against metal sucking sound we hear and ignore dozens of times a day. My mind creates the acrid smell of sour milk—I’m too far from the fridge to smell it, but there it is—perched like a hungry hawk at dawn in my short term memory. Waiting for light to hunt by.

Ryan shuffles back with two very full mugs. “I was with someone earlier this week,” he says, setting my mug down on a CD coaster. I pick up the mug and hold it with both hands. Ryan sips his tea noisily and says, “If you’d asked, I would have told you.”

In the sunlight, steam particles look like cubes of rainbow prismatics. I’m wondering what band I’m using for a coaster. Local? Major label?

“What else should I have asked?”

“I’m not going deny myself pleasure,” he says. “In the ’80s, we had sex with our friends, then we returned to being friends.”

“We’re not friends, Ryan,” I say, thinking, “I didn’t have sex with my friends in the ’80s. I had drunken one-night stands with guys who didn’t speak English. I had inappropriate half-baked romances with lunatics. I had sex with guys I never wanted to see again.”

Ryan gets poetic, “I’m like a new shoot, growing. I’m on an upswing.”

I am being warned. I might thwart his upswing. Ryan is 37, tall, skinny, weird skin. I leave the tea, stand up and put my packsack on again.

“You know a lot about my psycho-sexual background,” he says. “So play nice.”

He is talking to me as if I’m someone else—someone he knows, understands—as if I’m part of the group that he represents. Didn’t he notice that I don’t have piercings and tattoos—that I’m not imitating a 1950s pin-up girl who’s using him as palette cleaner?

Going down the narrow backstairs and into the alley, all familiar territory, temporarily skewered by this re-shuffling. My hair is a mess.

At the gym, I drop things on the locker room floor. My shampoo has leaked onto my towel. I can’t do my full workout. Distracted. This disruption. I will return to what I need and utilize all new experiences. I am okay. He has not altered me.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

This week The Black Dot Museum of Political Art is asking performers at the inaugural Portland Folk Festival two questions:
1. Do you consider your lyrics to be part of a folk tradition of political songwriting?
2. Do you have other creative projects that you describe as political?

Jim Page is the Seattle-based writer of the hit song “Hiroshima Nagasaki Russian Roulette,” a cautionary tilt-a-whirl of a tale (power, militarism and glory) made famous by the Moving Hearts. Page’s lyrics, written in 1974, talk about the future, and that future is now:
“Our statesmen and leaders and politicians pay
Quick to heed the hand that feeds
They’re careful what they say
They call out experts to assure us
To wave their magic wands
This is the power of the future
And the future marches on
And they call in their favors
All their political gains
While the spills fill the rivers and settle in the plains.”

Jim Page answers the Black Dot Museum’s questions:
“Yes I do. I define ‘folk music’ as that music that comes from the community and returns to it. It doesn’t have to be played on guitars, fiddles and banjos. It doesn’t even have to be acoustic. But it needs to serve the community at the risk of falling out of favor with the main stream. Rap—back in the days when it passed from hand to hand through cassettes and ghetto blasters—was certainly folk music. As was punk. And I think that all folk music is inherently political. You can’t sing the beauties of the people without chafing against power, can you? Life is an act of rebellion.”

What’s my role in this? I’m going down a list of performers I’ve never heard of, sending out questions, after considering how to support a new folk festival. I’m not a folk-music fan, no one asked me to do this, and I’m not getting paid. This is actually my idea of fun! What I did instead of a summer vacation. I’m also not a fan of political art—or political music—per se. What I am a big fan of is coming up with ways to promote the activities of artists and musicians whose intention it is to instigate progressive social change. Magic markers, banjos—the tools aren’t as important as their intention to inspire.

Brian Cutean‘s email arrived next, at the end of a long day at work. He remembers Mecca Normal as a band from long ago. Fair enough.

Brian Cutean answers the Black Dot Museum’s questions:
“Music and lyrics have always been a part of the dialogue and necessarily includes poetry, literature, satire and folk songs (including rap, spoken word, etc.). Since I write in response to the world around me and came out of the culture of what Utah Phillips called ‘the Great Folk Scare,’ my work is part of the folk tradition even when it is stream of consciousness or oblique. The world’s ‘second oldest occupation’ is that of the bard, the troubadour and too, the storyteller standing in front of the cave fire passing on how public affairs of every time affect us all. I believe it was Brecht who said ‘art is not a mirror to reflect reality but a hammer with which to shape it.’ As an extension of that, expression itself affects other expressions as we inspire, confound and perplex each other.”

Brian signs-off saying, “I hope this helps, Jean. If there is anything else I can do, please let me know.” My god, who says stuff like that?

As old as the hills, folk music and the responses I am getting are sounding as weirdly fresh as hot lava busting out of a Hawaiian volcano. And what is folk music if not molten rock rolling over the countryside to form new land—yet again—tenaciously pushing out into the sea of possibility?

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Love Wants You
Celia, a 45-year-old singer in a punk band, is uncomfortable making the transition from starving artist to working poor. With less frequent record releases and tours, Celia funnels her creativity into writing.

Using dating websites to find a man for an ongoing, monogamous relationship, Celia encounters deception, disrespect and manipulation. Her escalating frustration is reflected in updated versions of her online dating profile.

Celia gets a job as a fitness technician at a gym for women, who are always interested to hear about her dating adventures. Celia is writing a screenplay about her dating adventures. Her main character, Veronica, appears to be having similar experiences, but Veronica is much bolder and tends to get what both she and Celia want. Celia talks about her screenplay at the gym, and the women give their opinions about the men Celia is meeting. Celia ventures over to the Intimate Encounters section of the dating website and creates a profile using sexy self-portrait photos. Selecting male attributes from a drop-down menu—aggressive, will take control, knows what he wants—she is immediately swamped with messages from Doms assuming she’s submissive. Celia is drawn into the intensity of communication with these men, who are talking about “24/7″ and “the lifestyle”: a subculture made visible through internet anonymity. Through chat, email and online research, Celia is compelled to delve deeper—she wants to understand her responses to questionable stimuli. Celia writes a new synopsis for her screenplay and posts it as her online dating profile.

***

Intimate Encounters
Sexullectual
Synopsis-in-progress

Veronica, a 45-year-old artist who frequently identifies herself as a feminist, is exploring a strong desire to be controlled within a sexual relationship with a dominant partner.
Finding the realm of bdsm well-documented online, Veronica recoils at the highly codified activities and conventional nature of the lingo. The costumes and repertoire of activities don’t appeal to her aesthetically. She doesn’t want to dress up as a Catholic school girl or re-enact a Patty Hearst kidnapping scene, as one of her potential suitors suggests. Veronica’s interest is hinged to exploring how and why her physical and psychological responses are different from what she believes intellectually about power, injustice and feminist concerns.
Exhibiting high levels of responsibility in her daily life, Veronica may be typical of people who seek to lose control in the psycho-sexual terrain of power exchange. Conversely, people who feel powerless may want a partner who needs to be controlled. Through Veronica’s online research, she learns that the dynamic she seeks is based on trusting that the dominant partner will respect and adhere to the specifics they have negotiated. While the dominant partner has the power, it is ultimately the submissive who controls what happens, how power is exhibited. The activities engaged in aim to satisfy the complementary needs of both people.

In setting out to learn where fantasy meets reality, Veronica posts a profile on a bdsm website:
I’m inexperienced within the dimension I want to explore. I don’t respond well to deception. I am responsive to a romantic and intellectual pairing as part of a sexual bdsm relationship. I’m interested in a highly communicative relationship based in honesty and respect. These aren’t essentially moral concerns, but they are the areas that I’m interested in. Trust and respect.

While finding the wide variety of information available online helpful, it is deeper analysis that resonates, drawing me towards the idea of a mutually agreed upon, ongoing exploration. An experienced partner would suit me, as I have found trying to educate both participants while in motion is rather frustrating and counter-productive. It is my intention to understand my responsive nature as opposed to engage in “fun” and “play” and vapid one-night stands with liars who need to rush home to their wives and then tell me more lies about why they cannot see me again. I find this upsetting and damaging and somewhat soul-destroying, except that I don’t believe in souls—or god, for that matter. I’m not compelled to replicate lingo and practices in any area of culture and society, and while I see conformity has a useful function in language-based and responsible interaction, I would prefer to find idiosyncratic forms of expression.

It is essential to communicate a groundwork of limits and preferences in advance. There is a very big chance that I will become attached, fall in love or otherwise be emotionally involved with the man I engage in sex with. This is desirable to me. The elements of bdsm that interest me—vulnerability, trust and respect—seem to bring an intensity of emotions and that is where I want to be, but not by way of deception. It is the intensity that I crave, not the hollow re-writing of a shared history after learning that so much of what happened wasn’t real when a man decides that I am not allowed to see reality because he wants to use me for self-gratification.

It is, of course, the person in the submissive position who dictates the range of experience and it is the dominant partner who adheres to those parameters. Those who maintain that submissives must do whatever the dominant says are unaware of the entire dynamic in terms of its reciprocal nature. If you feel the urge to insult me, you only serve to advance the negative stereotypes of Doms being a bunch of losers who have no other way to deal with women than boss them around. Oh, and to the Doms who like to write long pompous essays informing where I have gone wrong—skip it. Not interested.

To be continued next week.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Characters In This Story Are Closer Than They Appear
“Why don’t you stop thinking about it?” her father says on the other end of the phone.

“Thinking is kinda what I do, Dad,” says Celia, thinking about why her father might want her to stop thinking.

“Dwelling on it isn’t going to change anything,” he says, trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about. Fatherly advice. Celia isn’t actually asking him for advice—she never has. She has another reason for talking to him about these things, these situations, at this time. She is assessing his reaction; he would prefer she wasn’t thinking or talking about mental illness and personality disorders.

***

Celia needs an ending and she’s averse to endings—she doesn’t like goodbyes, doesn’t see why things have to end. Endings are consumer-based constructions; that’s what she wants to say to the women at the gym when they tell her she needs to figure out the ending of the screenplay, but now they’ve stopped calling it a screenplay. They’ve started calling it a film—a movie—to indicate to Celia that it does need to end. And they are pushing and pulling on the equipment with more vigor—frustration really—because it does seem that Celia is digressing, finding men worse than the previous one.

“Have you figured out the ending yet, Celia?”

“I might just be getting started,” Celia says, dancing to ABBA in the middle of the circuit. “Things are starting to get interesting.”

“You could have multiple endings and let the audience decide. You could have happily-ever-after or happy-on-her-own,” says Vivian. “Or maybe she’s just going to continue looking for Mr. Right.”

Endings are for Hollywood movies. One can only sit in a velvet chair in the dark for so long before one needs to go home and go to sleep. Satiation arrives by way of distraction from real life—the purpose of most movies. So long, daily concerns: I’ve gone trout fishing in an American movie theater.

Celia has been telling the women about her dates and short romances for years, episode by episode—they sweat, working out, ABBA plays. When the women arrive, Celia finishes what she’s doing on the computer, looking for possible ways to sell her screenplay. The women talk about the weather, and if Celia’s busy, she might just let them get started on their workout, but before long they try to draw her out from behind the desk, calling out from the chest-back machine: “Anything new Celia? Been on any dates?” They remember where a story ended and ask about a specific guy. “What happened with the professor?” And Celia might say, for fun, “Which one?” as she turns down ABBA, spins out of the swivel chair and saunters out to tell them a story.

***

“I think about these things because I’m trying to understand people, Dad.”

“People are difficult to understand, Celia. Why they do what they do is often beyond comprehension regardless of how long you think about it.”

“It isn’t one thing, one thought, going around and around in my head all day,” says Celia, wishing she’d been able to resist defending herself, thinking about how her father distances himself from the word “people”: they do what they do. “I make progress in understanding what happened by thinking about it,” she says, sounding wikipediatric. Limp. Celia wonders if he gets it, gets it—got it—if he’s ever gonna get it at all. What she does. She wonders if he gets it on a subconscious level. What is she afraid would happen if she asked—would they stop talking again? For three years, Christmas cards arrived with only her mother’s name on it. Love, Mom. It was as if he’d died. Celia woke up most mornings and slowly worked her way to this one thought: Her father hated her that much. She wasn’t worth knowing. How would she feel if one of her parents died during the time of no communication? No communication. No communication.

She’d been trying—awkwardly—to show him that she was responsible. She’d quit drinking. She wanted him to know she was concerned—she wanted to help make a plan for them in their old age. She’d simply asked him where they were going to live when they could no longer live where they were. He blew up. He took it personally.

“Do you know how many pills I take, Celia?” She didn’t answer. He asked it over and over : “Do you know? Do you know? Do you know?”

Celia didn’t answer.

“I take one tiny pill,” he finally said. “That’s it.”

It was fear, she realized years later. When he was afraid, he got angry and yelled at everyone. That was what fear looked like. He was very frequently afraid, fearful, frightened. He yelled a lot.

Celia still had the tape recorder attached to phone after interviewing Godspeed You Black Emperor! for Your Flesh. She’d been staring at it—the tape recorder—while he yelled. He was telling her if she was so bloody concerned about old people’s homes, she could bloody well get herself on a list. She flipped on the tape recorder and watched the cassette fill with vitriolic bile—evidence! Eureka. Finally.

“I wouldn’t have your life for a million bucks,” he said over and over, and Celia kept thinking that the statement defied logic. If he was given a million bucks to have her life, then her life wouldn’t be her life. She was poor. End of story. How could he have her life and a million bucks? It didn’t make sense, but he kept saying it.

She doesn’t want to defend herself. She forgets why she isn’t supposed to defend herself. She wonders if not defending herself while not knowing why she shouldn’t defend herself has the same result as not defending herself and knowing why she isn’t. Doesn’t.

Celia wants to say something more substantial about all this thinking. To convince her father. She knows she shouldn’t try to impress him, to try to get him to understand her. Seeking male validation. This is the story that will not end unless she behaves differently. “By understanding what happened, I’m less likely to have the same thing happen again.” This too sounds insubstantial without an example. Evidence is required.

***

Celia writes in boxes on the screen, looking for boxes that feel good to her. She likes to write in email boxes—it starts out being to a specific someone. That’s one way to get started; then she carefully highlights the recipient’s name and deletes it, but it is during this process that the program has started crashing. Celia joins Facebook. She reads comments, but doesn’t feel compelled to add anything. Yesterday, Rhonda took a poll: spiders—catch and release or kill? Approaching 24 hours later, 40 people have responded: “I’m the catch-and-release type.” “I agree with James.” “Ditto, Patty.” Celia thinks about saying “Ditto the guy who said ditto Patty,” but she wonders what that will say about her. She isn’t part of their group. She isn’t part of any group. In an email box she writes, “I can hurt a fly, but not the tenacious spider, creator of web across my open doorway. The web traps the inbound fly that I then don’t have to kill—leaving me, yet again, happily on the outside of another equation in nature.” She pastes it into the comment box, but she can’t post it. She’ll look like a pretentious something-or-other.

***

“Men don’t arrive in front of you blaring out all their flaws and misfortune,” says Celia to the three women working out. “They don’t just tell you what’s wrong with them. It takes time to get to know them, to watch them in action.”

“I thought he did tell you there was something wrong with him. Isn’t this the one who told you he had some problems on the first date?” asks Cynthia.

“Well, at least I know you’re paying attention,” Celia says, laughing. “Yes he did, and I should have heeded those warnings.”

“Why didn’t you?” asks Cynthia, from the leg-press machine.

“This is where it starts to get complicated. Do you mean why doesn’t Victoria heed the warnings or why didn’t I heed the warnings?”

“To tell you the truth Celia, I’m not sure which is which. You go out with these guys and then you write about what happened using the name Victoria as a character in a screenplay, but the screenplay seems autobiographical to me.”

***

“They’re just stories, Celia,” Darren says after Celia has interrupted to ask him why he’s telling her about horrible people in his past—awful men without morals, reverse-Mohawk-mullets, a bunch of drug addicts living in a basement with rats-the-size-of-cats gnawing in the ceiling, having sex with underage girls, out of their minds on drugs, trying to flush stolen property down the toilet when the cops come knocking. Celia is trying to get to know Darren and she wonders why he’s telling her these things, so she asks. “Why are you telling me these stock stories about crappy things? Is it because you didn’t get enough sleep last night?”

“They’re just stories, Celia.”

“Stories are usually told for a reason. They have a purpose,” says Celia, and Darren doesn’t like this too much. She watches him go dim and empty inside, as he explained that he would if he felt hurt. Celia thinks it is very odd that she needs to tell an English professor that stories are told for a reason and she’s trying to remember what he told her she’d need to do to bring him back. Leave him alone? Ask him a question? Do a little dance? Get down tonight?

This is when he changes course and starts informing Celia that she needs to forget about screenplays and music to concentrate on painting, but not the paintings she’s been doing recently. “You need to do murals. Really big murals. You need to do hundreds of sketches for many months, and the mural will tell a story.”

Celia puts ramen in her mouth, uneasy, not wanting to defend herself, trying not to say who she is. Who she was. She allows Darren to show how he gets when he’s been offended. Hurt. She has hurt him. And now it’s time to pay. Not for the ramen. The ramen she heaps between splintery chopsticks, shoving it in her mouth, biting off a clump, letting the rest fall back into the bowl of over overly salty broth and fatty chicken.

“You need to get on with your career. Make a name for yourself. Re-invent yourself as a painter.”

“People know who Celia Sonar is,” Celia says feeling idiotic, knowing it isn’t really true—but enough people know. Enough for her.

“Do you ever feel like you’re waiting for something?” asks Darren, leaning toward her. “Waiting for the next thing to happen?”

As if by asserting this construct—this question—across the ramen-splattered table he has introduced validity to his next statement. Celia looks at the ramen hieroglyphs strewn on the arborite surface. A fossilized seahorse. The profile of a Toulouse-Lautrec courtesan—the hair, the forehead, eyes downward.

“What do you want most out of life right now?” Darren asks, intending to imply that he has the answer. The answer is forthcoming. He’s asking if Celia has ever entered the state of mind of wondering what is going to be the next thing, who will be the next person, to arrive and change everything, to start the next phase. Celia’s thoughts on this are complex. Not overly complicated, but unusual, and they are revealed when she answers, although she understands that Darren won’t get it. He’s not gonna get it, get it, get it—ever at all. Even with a Ph.D. and possibly because of his Ph.D. in English literature.

Celia sees him as a guy on a TV infomercial or an evangelist, setting her up to see things his way. She wonders what he thinks she’s going to say—sell my screenplay, get on Oprah, find a better job, be successful. Fall in love. Something superficial like that. And then he can correct her wayward thinking, her flawed goals and offer her direction in her rag-tag life of unfocused professional failures, not to mention her inability to find a man.

“To feel content,” Celia says, having made a decision to say feel it rather than be it. She decided to say to feel content instead of to be content. “To be” implies too much about time, amounts of time being replaced with other amounts of time, which is more what she was thinking, but for now, for the purpose of this interaction over bowls of ramen at a high-end Japanese restaurant in the middle of the day, “to feel content” is enough. For now.

Darren’s elbow slides out sideways on the table. He props his head up with his hand, eyes opening and closing separately from each other.

“Is there anything else going on with you other than a lack of sleep, Darren?”

“Nope.”

“No?” Celia asks, her heart-pounding in a most uncomfortable way. She wants to run away, but she needs to know. “There’s nothing else going on with you?”

“OK. I took two clonazepam because I was nervous about seeing you.”

***

Celia plays the tape for both her best friends. They stand and listen.

“You see what I mean?” Celia says, arms crossed over her chest. The two friends look at each other, understanding that Celia must hear something else, something other than what they hear.

“Celia, it just isn’t as bad as you think it is.”

“Listen. He’s screaming at me,” Celia says. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Celia, you hear it based on your childhood experience—you were afraid of him. That’s what you hear now.”

***

Cynthia wipes her face with a white towel and tosses it in the hamper on her way into the changing room. She stops in the doorway. Turns and asks, “Are you going to see him again?”

“The professor? No,” Celia says emphatically, standing near the computer with her arms folded over her chest, thinking about the spider and the fly. “Are you kidding?”

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Hello T,

David and I want to include you in The Black Dot Political Museum of Political Art.

Inclusion, along with all other aspects of the project at this point, is being invented as it occurs.

Right now, our home base is Facebook, where I would add a photo album: a selection of your work with captions and links back to your site. I would write a feature on you to post with a bio and artist photo.

If you accept our invitation, I want you to like what we create so that you want to use it as an external reference point. As visual artists, it seems that we are frequently on our own sites, without a third party site to reference—one that presents an up-to-date, comprehensive, useful and objective overview.

Kill Rock Stars founder Slim Moon is the manager of The Black Dot Political Museum of Political Art. He’s really keen.

Events so far:
May 1 – 28, 2010
Political Artists From Vancouver: a four-person exhibit at Northern in Olympia. A printmaking teacher at Evergreen State College invited us to curate the show—to expose students to artwork from beyond their region.

As part of the museum’s gallery outreach program, Mecca Normal played in Portland at Sarah Utter’s art opening at Land—and Land sounds keen to have The Black Dot Museum of Political Art exhibit there, maybe this time next year.

Gallery outreach program: Basically anything we choose to say is an extension of the museum, whether it is officially sanctioned by the third-party gallery or not. For instance, Mecca Normal’s appearance at Land was sponsored by the BDM, but I’m not sure anyone noticed.

As far as “political” art goes, obviously David’s work is very direct, whereas my work stretches towards a notion that everything is political.

As things progress and we move to our own domain, I will create an online archive by theme where those looking for political art can search by artist or theme. Searchable archival themes might be Labor, Racism, Animal Rights, Housing, Poverty, Feminism, Pro Choice, Environmental—with artists updating us on topical concerns (responses to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico). We aim to make ourselves known as a resource for various purposes.

The bigger picture includes securing both academic and museum interest in the project. Ideally we would be represented on the websites of these institutions in the from of an ongoing podcast series, as part of their endeavor to host, sponsor, monitor and participate in the project. Videos of our “How Art & Music Can Change the World” lecture, art openings and artist portfolios would be archived on these external sites. I’m thinking big.

What sets us apart from other online galleries and museums, besides our focus on political art as it is selected and promoted by the entity known as Mecca Normal, is that we are out there in the tactile world, too. We intend to navigate without renting space, by insisting that the organization of the project is the project, that it is reciprocal and visionary with Utopian sensibilities that challenge what is and isn’t possible. It is our ambition to be useful to individual artists who have a history of being able to participate within communities, and by providing services and creating associations, I believe we can each benefit in many ways. I won’t elaborate here on the importance and usefulness of political art in general.

I feel like I am still thinking and formulating, and at every point of articulating what else we can do, there is a new thrill: to consider some new way to go further, using what we already have by applying it differently.

Exhibitions:
The idea for the touring exhibits is to find an artist in, for instance, L.A., and that person would assist in securing a gallery, promote, advise and contribute to the exhibit of maybe four or five artists, one of whom would be an artist from the next exhibition city—Chicago, for instance. The L.A. artist is then part of the Chicago exhibit and having done the work on the L.A. event now benefits from the association with the Chicago artist. Then it’s on to Berlin, etc. This is my vision for creating a reciprocal touring experience for political artists—a replica of how indie touring bands originally functioned, finding allies in other cities and naturally tending towards reciprocal collaboration.

It would be great if the L.A. artist could make it to the Chicago show; if not, they are represented by the Chicago artist. Mecca Normal would be the art-opening performance unit, using our resources to bring people out to events. Ideally, art would be shipped from L.A. to Chicago or stored until it is required; again, part of the L.A. artist’s responsibility.

The online project is currently across several web formats: Facebook, WordPress and FreeWebs. Each has its own attributes for social networking, promo, image gallery, ease of posting, etc. We will get a permanent domain at some point, but I sort of like it that we are a nebulous, non-rent-paying entity.

I don’t expect you to follow along with every twist and turn of our doings. You know us. We have a shared history. Let us put our philosophical extensions—our work and alliances—together in one place and consider this an identifiable unification, loosely speaking, in a way that doesn’t put pressure on our friendship, but gives us a purpose, if and when we decide to rally around a possible project. It will be there when we need it. Infrastructure in place. That’s what I meant to say!!

I really enjoyed the interview you did with A Fog Of Ideas!!

Yours,
Jean

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

In the kitchen I ask, “Can I help with dinner?”

Rueben plunks two tomatoes on the butcher block and says, “We’re having an Italian salad with the salmon.”

I’m trying not to drive my high heels into his hardwood floors. God only knows how many pounds of pressure per square inch there is on each of the heels. Rueben hasn’t said anything about the dress I’m wearing, which I sense is how he has decided to let me know that it is not a “decent dress for dinner.”

“Fuck. I forgot to get lemons,” Rueben says, looking as though he’d like it to be my fault that he didn’t get lemons, but it isn’t. I move toward the cutlery drawer on my tiptoes to get a knife. I bring out a sharpening steel with the knife.

“Oh, so my knives aren’t good enough for the starving artist?” Rueben mocks.

“I take that as a challenge,” I say playfully, taking off my high heels and tossing them onto a chair. The dress without the heels is probably even less what Rueben had in mind, but I think I’ve already failed the can-Celia-dress-decently-for-dinner test. I cut the tomatoes into wedges and Rueben freaks out. “It’s an Italian salad, Celia. Have you ever seen an Italian salad with tomato wedges? God. They’re supposed to be sliced. Here, give me the knife, I’ll do it.”

“No problem boss,” I say, putting down the knife and stepping away from the butcher block to let Rueben take over.

“My goodness, woman,” he teases. “One would hardly guess that you lived in Little Italy.” Before he finishes slicing, he remembers the salmon on the grill outside. “Damn it all anyway—the salmon!” He rushes out the back door. I follow, grabbing the flashlight.

“Hold the light over the grill,” he says. “Grab the platter.”

“OK, just let me get in beside you here,” I say, tripping over the propane tank.

Rueben scrapes the salmon off the grill and onto the platter. “Some places charge extra for crispy skin,” he giggles. His mood seems to lighten when we work together. I hold the flashlight and he carries the platter, laughing along the pathway to the house, reminding me of the first day we met for a picnic in the woods—how he dealt with the wasps and somehow that bit of adversity brought us closer. We eat dinner on stools at the counter facing the kitchen. I am wondering why we aren’t eating in the dining room at a proper table, on comfortable chairs.

“The salmon is excellent, Rueben,” I say.

“I let it cook too long. I ruined it,” Rueben says.

“Come on—it’s perfect,” I say, risking being a woman who can’t tell perfect salmon from ruined salmon. The barefoot woman in a lousy dress who doesn’t know a good fish from a bad one. I watch Rueben fretting over his dinner, enduring one of my tomato wedges, regretting the lack of lemon, and I wonder if he is ever completely happy with anything, with anyone. We talk about board games, tennis and going for a bike ride. “I have a helmet for you. Tomorrow, after lunch, we’ll ride over to the tennis courts,” he says stabbing an olive. He knows I don’t play tennis or ride a bike.

“I see how you manipulate things,” I say, and he gives me a can’t-talk-mouth-full-gesture in response.

“You know what might be helpful to you?” Rueben says. “Getting your Executive MBA. Basically it’s a two-year part-time program. You write a thesis, and then you get an MBA.”

“I’ll look into it, but I don’t think I need an MBA to be successful at what I’m doing. It’s not actually my intention to create products that will appeal to a great many people and I think I’ve done OK doing what I want to do.”

“Yes, but one can’t always just go along doing what they want to do, Celia.”

“Interesting philosophy, Rueben.”

“Granted, you seem to have caught the ear of a few people, but if you want to be in business, you need to use connections as they appear. Then again, maybe you already do that. Maybe this whole trip is research for your writing.”

I laugh and consider how my sudden arrival and willingness to stay a few days might strike Rueben as research.

“I do tend to write about my experiences,” I say. “You might see something you said in a story, but you’d be more likely to feel misrepresented than accurately portrayed, which is what fiction is, isn’t it?”

“So, to you fiction is the inaccurate portrayal of experiences and the misrepresentation of real people?”

“At least I know you’re listening,” I say, setting my knife and fork correctly across the plate in a five-minutes-to-five position.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

Held
you’d be surprised alright
where you could be held
there
pinned in an up-draft
back against the clouds

holding siren’s rage
on a tangle-pain
you didn’t know was there
you didn’t know it was there

grid-work set up
for your wing-on rise
to a place
where you will be
held
back against the light
hammer on
hammer on
towards
never getting back
hammer on
hammer on
hammer on

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

We are working on our Curves Newsletter. I must not gossip about Curves members or complain.

Jean’s Corner
At the start of the Saturday morning shift, I decided to empty the vacuum cleaner. I got the very clearly marked dirt box out and released the yellow latch to dump its contents into a garbage bag. Easy. In a separate plastic box: the filter. It looked pretty bad. More simple directions, another yellow latch, and the filter was exposed. I removed the tangle of material from around the cylinder and tapped the unit against the side of the wastepaper basket, as per the instructions. But not much of the dirt came out. It was pounded deep into the filter crevices. I looked in the cupboard for a stiff brush: nothing. Meghan—the manager—may not like what happened next. I needed to clean the filter. I craved the surge of suction I knew I’d feel at the end of the hose pipe after de-clogging the accordion-style folds. I grabbed one of the cheap-o paint brushes that Meghan uses to make her very cheerful signs, and I started to dredge out rather a lot of debris. By 10 a.m., there were several members on the circuit, and I was attracting a certain amount of interest—fervent cleaning session with paintbrush. Man, that dirt was really packed in there tight.

I put the vacuum back together and joined the ladies on the circuit. One lady said, “You’re a painter, aren’t you?” This was strange to me, because I am a painter and I was, on that day, rather frustrated with the painting I had been working on at home. I told the lady she was very observant. I started thinking about my painting and wondered if I was taking out my frustration on the vacuum-cleaner filter. Interesting. I have since finished the painting, and it turned out better than it looked at work. It’s called Discovering Utopia, and it will be part of an art exhibit called The Black Dot Museum: Political Artists From Vancouver.

I was looking forward to a break in the action so I could see the result of my cleaning, but there was a constant stream of enthusiastic gym members coming and going. Soon it was 1 p.m.: closing time. I locked the door and switched on the vacuum cleaner. The change was noticeable immediately. The part that slides across the floor was actually more difficult to move; suction had been increased immensely. And now, at 4 p.m. Monday, the club is quiet, save for my tippity-tapping on these keys. Jollies. Thrills. Whatever you want to call it. I’m going to vacuum.

Edited out: On her way out the door, Tina makes a snide comment about me being OCD for cleaning the filter. I don’t take it personally, but various ladies on the circuit are outraged. “Don’t listen to her!”

“I wasn’t. I didn’t,” I say.

“She’s struggling,” says Sue.

“You mean with her weight or life in general?”

“Both.”

I represent something to Tina: the mythical being who can eat anything, not exercise and never gain weight. I am simply lucky. That I have been weight-lifting 30 years and that I eat carefully is not the story she applies to me. Tina is unlucky. Being unlucky makes life so much simpler.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

“I’m going to put on something warmer,” I say, sliding off a tall chair in the kitchen. “I’ll take my bag upstairs.”

It is strange to be back here. I’m about to change into a sweater and jeans when Rueben walks in. I don’t really feel like having sex, but that doesn’t seem to be why he’s here. He goes into the bathroom. “Come in here for a minute.”

I go into the bathroom, and he’s standing beside the scale. “Take off your clothes and step on. I want to see how much you weigh.”

I lay my tweed skirt, brown lace shirt, bra and panties over the edge of the Jacuzzi and step on the scale.

“One hundred and 10 pounds,” Rueben says. “I’m going to fatten you up this weekend and weigh you again before you go home.”

“I can’t afford cheese and olives,” I laugh. “I intend to take full advantage of their availability.”

I put on my bra and panties and go back into the bedroom to finish dressing. Rueben bounds downstairs to check the pizza.

“It’s ready,” he calls up.

“Coming right down,” I reply, thinking that this is an awfully strange way to date someone.

“What do you want to do today?” Rueben asks, serving me a huge breakfast.

“I’d like to go to a beach.”

“A beach. OK, I’ll try to think of some place we could go.”

“It’s an island. Aren’t beaches one of the main things about being on an island?”

“This island doesn’t have a lot of beaches, but I have a couple of ideas.”

We drive for about 20 minutes, park and take a trail into the woods.

“How far is the beach?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe 15 minutes.”

“OK, so this is more of a hike,” I say. “Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of a beach down here.”

“But you don’t really know?”

“I’m allergic to trees, so I don’t spend a lot of time in the woods.”

We walk through a spooky forest of dead trees covered in hanging moss. Rueben is sniffling, blowing his nose. The trail takes us up and over a hill and eventually out to the water and a small rocky beach. I inspect a log with billions of wormholes in it while Rueben skips stones. Once. Twice. They sink.

“We should head back soon,” he says. “I have plans for lunch.”

“Plans?” I ask, thinking he means he has an appointment.

“Yes, we’re having lamb with fresh oregano and roasted potatoes. I need to marinate the lamb for about an hour before grilling it.”

“Sounds great. Well, thank you for the beach experience,” I say. We head back into the forest. Rueben leads the way.

“I hate to tell you this Rueben, but it looks like you’ve stepped in dog shit.”

“Oh my god,” Rueben squeals, hopping around, scraping his shoe on tree roots and moss. Back at the car, he takes off the shoe and dips it in a stream at the side of the road—cursing, wiping it with a paper towel—making a really big deal out of the dog shit. He puts the shoe in a plastic bag in the trunk. I try to start a conversation with him, but the dog-shit thing is really bugging him. He’s clenching the steering wheel with both hands, taking corners a bit faster than I am comfortable with. He backs the car into the garage, gets the bag with the shoe in it out of the trunk, takes off the other shoe and puts them both in the garbage can. He walks quickly to the house in his socks. I sit on the deck, giving him some time to cool down. Inside, I hear him shrieking, “A mouse! A mouse!” The door flies opens, and he stomps back to the garage in bedroom slippers to crash around, cursing. He returns to the house wearing a beekeeper’s mask, holding long metal tongs and several plastic bags.

“There’s a mouse in the trap,” Rueben says, sniffling. I close my eyes and think about olives, fancy cheese and lamb with fresh oregano.

A raven lands on a cedar bough, making an almost human sound. Something like laughter.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

1989. Mecca Normal’s second album, Calico Kills The Cat, was due out any day. I was the driver of the 1972 Impala on a cross-country U.S. tour of K Records bands—Some Velvet Sidewalk (Robert Christie, Al Larsen, Jenny), Go Team (Calvin Johnson, Tobi Vail, Billy Karren) and Mecca Normal. We left Olympia and didn’t actually play a show until Minneapolis. This gave us a chance to get to know each other. Dave and I had never met Billy, and I’m not so sure we knew Robert or Al yet, either. They were all in our car—Dave and me, Al, Robert and Billy. It was early spring, and there was still snow on the road in the mountains. Round about Pittsburgh, I started hearing a rolling around sound in the back end. We got to the Masonic Temple, where no doubt Manny had booked us—he’s done almost all of our Pittsburgh shows. I remember that we spent some time looking for Al’s contact lens during the Some Velvet Sidewalk set and that Robert walked around the room banging a drum. Dave has a photo of us looking for Al’s contact lens, but I don’t recall a photo of Robert with the drum. Actually, I see Al is wearing glasses in the photo, so I’ve remembered something wrong. A photo of Robert would be good to have. He was killed in 2001 in a car accident on a road between their small town in northern Oregon and Astoria, out on the coast. He and Denise and their two kids were driving to Robert’s parents’ for dinner. Dave and I had visited them not too long before that, a number of months. I remember standing with Robert in one of the kid’s rooms. I was transfixed by a book that I’d had as kid: A Child’s Garden Of Verses. The same edition. I wanted to pick it up and dive into it, to look at the illustrations I’d looked at when home from school with some minor ailment. The words “The Land of Counterpane” came into my head, and I was thinking about that word—counterpane—and how, as a kid, I didn’t really know what that meant. I don’t remember what Robert was saying, something philosophical about children, I think. Robert made us an excellent dinner: fresh tuna with a bit of teriyaki sauce. I kept saying how great it was, how the teriyaki was the X factor, on and on about how good the tuna was.

Rich phoned to tell me. I found something online: “The crash occurred when the Christies’ car made a sudden turn across the highway and was struck on the passenger side by a pickup, whose driver suffered minor injuries, authorities say.” I started thinking, “Maybe he was trying to turn around on that stupid road, the road we’d just driven several months earlier, turning around to get the teriyaki sauce.”

Denise came with me, and Dave went with Robert. I forget why we had two cars, but we’d gone to Robert’s parents’ place and we were offered cookies and I think I probably wanted to say, “Mr. Christie, you make good cookies.” Maybe I did, but I probably didn’t. We bought the tuna for dinner and drove back to Robert and Denise’s. I remember worrying about the road, the drive, and how weird it was to not have Dave in the car. When it started to sink in, that they were all dead—Robert, Denise, sweet little Ted and the baby—weird things started going through my head, like, “If I hadn’t kept saying how great the teriyaki sauce was, maybe they would have skipped going back for it.” I was nearly certain that, knowing Robert’s parents didn’t have teriyaki sauce, they’d turned around when they realized they’d forgotten it. I imagined the conversation in the car. “Jean said it was essential. We must go back for it.” … Sound of tires screeching … crash …

In Pittsburgh, while everyone else was doing soundcheck, I was dealing with the car in the parking lot, in the dark. I jacked up each end of the car, put on a different tire and drove the car around trying to figure out where the noise was coming from. Not the tires. The next day I phoned a friend back in Vancouver and described the sound. He said it sounded like the CV joint: constant velocity joint. I’d never heard of it and therefore figured it couldn’t be too important, maybe like the appendix, one of those take it or leave it parts, but he made a comment about the axel dropping and us pogo-ing across the highway to land upside down in a ditch. That image, those words, stuck with me. The next day it was snowing and I phoned around to find a garage and then I had to find the garage and I think I took a cab back to where we were staying and luckily it was with people who allowed us to stay an extra day—all eight of us. We had to cancel the show in Portland, Maine. I think that’s where the next show was; with those people that did a song about a lawn dart in someone’s head. Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. It turned out that we could do the show the next night, so it wasn’t a total disaster, but I recall people on the tour not liking it very much that I made the decision to fix the car. I recall someone suggested we just turn the music up louder.

I think it was the following year, or maybe later that year, that Dave and I organized the cross-Canada—well, as far as Montreal, anyway; we call that cross-Canada—Black Wedge Tour on the D.O.A. bus with Nelly Bolt driving, Bryan James, Rhythm Activism, Mourning Sickness, Peter Plate and Mecca Normal.

We were in Winnipeg after a show and Sylvain ordered pizza for everyone, but when the pizzas arrived, they cost basically what we had just earned that night. It was a sad moment, an error. We sat and ate over-priced pizza in the room we had just played to a decent-sized audience, now gone home. I thought we slept in the venue after sweeping the crap off the floor, I thought this was where I recall sleeping on the stage, but I have another memory of Winnipeg. I thought it was our host in Winnipeg who was driving past striking workers—she’d honked and waved at the folks on the picket line and managed to ram into the car in front of her. She was upset and we’d arrived and things were not good, but she wasn’t hurt.

Once, just when we arrived in NYC, Dave slipped on some stairs—I think we were going to Vickie and Dan’s—Autotonic—which is where I first saw the idea of freezing stinky garbage until it can be thrown out—I still do this. I think we met Dame Darcy there, too. Dave slipped, his glasses went flying and broke. Dave is not an opt-out-of-glasses-kind-of-guy. He needs his glasses to see. Anything. I guided him to a glasses store and we got the lenses replaced in a very reasonable amount of time. This has always been a triumphant Mecca Normal success story. Some bands may boast of metallic interpretations of their albums worth—gold, platinum, sliver—or of sell out crowds and famous people attending their shows. We can say that certain famous people were at our shows, but I’ve never been very clear about why, so it isn’t worth mentioning. And there’s a very good chance that they came out of curiosity, were appalled and left. Like, I think the Smashing Pumpkins guy came to our show in Berlin. But I feel idiotic saying that, and he probably hated it. Us.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

I get to the Vietnamese restaurant first, wearing a black lace dress, high heels and stockings. Sterling arrives in jeans and a sweatshirt. This is the second time we’ve met and our first real date.

“You are very unique,” Sterling says while we wait for menus. “You must know that.”

“And here I thought I was doing a good job at being normal,” I say, joking, but feeling weird.

Sterling has a union job that he will stay in until retirement. He doesn’t do anything creative.

“I’m envious of your life,” he says. “I feel inferior to you.”

I have a sinking feeling, wondering what sort of consequences his feelings of inferiority will produce.

“I respect you, your intellect,” he says, as the waitress hands us menus. “I could learn a lot from you. You make me realize that my thoughts are mundane and that life is short. I don’t want to have regrets.”

“You said something in email about wanting to talk about your situation in person,” I say, changing the subject away from how crappy I am going to make him feel about himself.

“Yes, I wanted to tell you about it in person because it’s a bit unusual.”

“How so?”

“I live with a woman that I’m not involved with. She’s the co-owner of my house,” he says, licking his lips, looking into his empty water glass.

“You mean she’s your ex?” I ask.

“No, we’re friends.” Sterling puts his hands over his mouth, elbows resting on the table. “We bought the house together after we’d both ended long relationships. Neither of us thought we’d meet anyone again and we both wanted to own a house, so we bought it together when the market was in our favour.”

“So it’s a mortgage-sharing arrangement,” I say, wanting to see this as progressive.

“Right. I haven’t dated anyone since we bought the house, but we’ve both agreed to see other people.”

At my place, waiting for the water to boil for tea, Sterling says, “I told myself I wouldn’t let anything happen between us tonight.”

“Really?” I say, wanting to ask why, wishing he had let me know about this. I would have appreciated not putting myself in this position: all dressed up, very unique, intellectual, available and everything.

“It’s getting late,” he says. We’re both standing. He awkwardly pats my arm. A hug. Another pat on the arm. A tiny kiss. Another hug, his hands move down my back. A longer kiss. “I really have to go,” he says. Me thinking, “OK, so go.” He puts on his coat, reaches into a pocket and pulls out a chocolate bar. “Here,” he says. “Have this.” I take it, glance at the ingredients and put it down on my drawing table.

“Thanks,” I say, looking up to see that he’s crossed the room. He’s at the sliding door, ready to pull it open. Was the chocolate supposed to distracted me, to facilitate his escape? Did I make him feel inferior? Does him thinking I’m smart make him feel stupid? Should I have arrived at the Vietnamese place in T-shirt and jeans? Is the woman he lives with seeing other people?

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith. In celebration of the 50th volume of Normal History, instead this week here’s a special video from Smith.

Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.

I have watched Seth laugh and flirt at literary events for years. Women gravitate to him—I gravitate to him, and when I’m laughing and flirting with him I don’t feel like I’m those other women, but I do wonder if somewhere in the room other women are watching me laughing and flirting with Seth thinking the same thing. Seth laughs at what women say, and women get funnier when men laugh. Seth, a publisher of ribald male-generated literature, is attending in a professional capacity. One of his authors is reading tonight. He’s standing under a spotlight, holding a book, talking with three women wearing sundresses. I’m leaning on the bar—one foot on the brass foot rail—sipping tap water. I’m sure the conversation is very funny and witty. Seth is charming. I wait until one of the women drifts away and the other two are talking to each other. I walk over to Seth and set my glass on his table.

“Jean, thank god you’re here. How do you handle these things without a drink?”

“It gets easier. I’ve been watching you. You’re doing great.”

“I’m sweating like a wiener, and I’m having heart palpitations. I’m not doing great. I’m having a conniption fit.”

“Conniption fit—I haven’t heard that expression for years,” I say, giggling.

“It’s much like having a bird or a big hairy,” Seth says. He is sexy in a weird way—very deep voice for a short guy.

“Here,” I say, sliding my water glass across the table. “Have some water.”

“Things have gone from bad to worse since I last saw you. I’m not allowed to drink on doctor’s orders, and my wife has left me.”

“A single and sober Seth,” I say. “How very interesting.”

“God Jean, sometimes you can be so … ”

“So what?” I ask, laughing.

“Yes, you’re right—so what indeed. It doesn’t matter.” Seth takes a swig of water. “Actually, maybe you’re just the person.”

“Maybe I am. Maybe you’re right about that,” I say, in a flirty way.

“Let’s hang out sometime. Catch a movie or something. Do something non-drinkers do. What do non-drinkers do anyway?”

“We sit alone in our rooms and write novels.”

“And where are you at with it?”

“Basically it’s finished.”

“Are you going to show me?”

“If you want to see it—sure.”

“Do you have a publisher?”

“No.”

“You should submit it to us to publish,” he says. “Let’s meet tomorrow after work. Can you bring the manuscript?”

Seth is already at the coffee shop on Main Street. He looks unhappier than the night before, and smaller. He has a fancy bottle of fizzy fruit drink and a half-eaten bran muffin in front of him—lots of crumbs. An inordinate amount of bran muffin crumbs—on the plate and all over the table.

“The doctor says I have to get more fibre,” he says.

“Are you basically OK, Seth?” I ask, sitting down and hanging my bag with the manuscript over the back of my chair. I brush away some of the crumbs.

“Basically no. Basically I’m all fucked-up. This is a nightmare. Basically.”

“This being what? The not drinking or your wife leaving?”

Seth takes off his glasses, sets them gently on the table and rubs his eyes. He looks up and says, “Can we start again? I promised myself I wasn’t going to whine to you.”

“Sure,” I say laughing. “Shall I go back out and come back in?”

“You know I think you’re swell Jean. I don’t want to blow this by suggesting anything before I’m ready, but I’ve always really liked you—you know that, right?”

“Yes and you’ve always been extremely married and now you’re extremely fucked up and you’re right, now isn’t the time to be thinking about starting anything with anyone.”

Seth reaches across the table and takes both my hands in his. “Gosh you’re good looking.”

“Thanks, but maybe you should have your glasses on when you deliver that line.”

Seth laughs and lets go of my hands. He rubs his eyes again. “OK, you’re right. I have to slow down. Let’s change the subject—tell me about the novel.”

“It’s about my experiences online dating,” I say, reaching behind me to pull out the manuscript.

“Great, so I’m going to have to read about you having sex with a million guys when you won’t go out with me?”

“Yes, I’m afraid you are. More like two million guys, but who’s counting?”

*       *       *

I’ve suggested, somewhat timidly over the two months we’ve been seeing each other, that things escalate sexually. I’m attempting to be sensitive to his anxious nature. It feels like we’ve been a couple for years—not in a good way. He acts as though we are together—involved. I’m wondering if we really should be planning to go away together for the weekend. I keep feeling like I should break up with him.

Seth phones from his car to ask, “Do you have anything other than water to drink?”

“No.”

“OK. I’ll pick something up. Something fizzy.”

“Great. See you soon.”

He arrives an hour later. The sun is down. I have changed out of the black dress with the plunging neckline into jeans and a T-shirt. I open the door and ask, “Did you walk from downtown?”

“Oh. Did I take a long time?”

“You phoned from your car an hour ago. It’s a 15-minute drive.”

“I had to go to Safeway and I phoned my daughter. Sorry.”

Sitting on the deck after the sun has gone down, a seagull flies over us. “Strange to see a bird flying at night,” Seth says.

“Do you like birds?” I ask.

“I do. Before I was separated, we used to watch a lot of documentaries on the nature channel. My favourite bird is the sparrow. We used to climb trees and look in their nests. Unfortunately, I had to kill a few of the babies to see how they worked.”

“My mother inadvertently taught me the names of all the local plants and birds,” I say. The night air is cool on my bare arms. The mountains are purplish-black silhouettes like half a Rorschach ink blot. “Did you just say separated? Are going get back together?” I say, sitting up in my chair.

“I don’t foresee getting back together with her,” Seth says calmly, savouring my agitation. “There haven’t been any moves toward reconciliation, but I still have a place in my heart for her.”

In bed, after a long bath and no sex, I close my eyes, ready for sleep.

Seth says, “You look like a baby sparrow.”

My mind returns from pre-sleep drifting to Seth’s comment about sparrows. Sparrow, baby sparrow, kill it to see how it works.