Posts – Craig Spence

Impessions

I took this photo from our upstairs bedroom window. The single line of footsteps evoked questions for me about who might have made them. It occurred to me that even if I knew that person’s name and destination most of my questions would remain unanswered!

Lucinda

Lucinda MacDonald

Lucinda MacDonald is a fictional character in my work-in-progress Entrapment. As a prelude to writing the novel, I am writing ‘journals,’ which timeline the life stories, thoughts, and actions of its main characters from their points of view. I am looking for commentators* and enactors* to gain a deeper appreciation and representation of Lucinda.

CAUTIONARY NOTE: This story will include depictions of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, violence and murder …

Craig Spence

Parts: 1-Meet Lucinda | 2-Tsunami | 3-Meant to Be

My name is Lucinda MacDonald.

I was born December 31, 1955, the first child of Carl and Miriam MacDonald. Father, whose only act deserving of that title was to fertilize Mother’s egg with his sperm, did not honour my birth with his presence. He was on a bender with some workmates that night and remained too hungover New Year’s Day to greet his newborn daughter until the afternoon of that momentous dawn.

He would remind me of that dereliction frequently once I was old enough to understand his course pronouncements and their full implications. If you didn’t know better, you might think he was trying to be funny, bringing up that embarrassing snippet of family lore…like, ‘Ha, ha, ha, only got to know you as afterbirth!’ Really, though, his words stung like a sandstorm, blinding me with impotent rage. My father liked being thought of that way. As a bastard. Me and my sisters and brother—Loretta, Louise, and Larry—learned to fear him before we learned to speak.

Children respond differently to intense, unremitting physical and mental abuse. From an early age, I presented as quick to anger and tough. By school age, I had endured five years of Father’s neglect, spiked with vitriol and abuse. I would instinctively shoot down anyone who earned the praise of our teachers, a reaction that narrowed the scope of my friendships. From kindergarten on I was seen as a sullen, snarly loner who attracted others with a gang mentality into her narrow circle of misfits—in short, a real bitch. I still struggle with that persona. It’s like an endless wrestling match inside the transparent womb of consciousness where the Lucinda I was brought up to be and the Lucinda I want to become do battle. Some days I’m better than others; then there are those days I’d rather poke you in the eye with a fork than listen to your inane blathering over breakfast. I can’t blame that contentious, cantankerous nature on Father alone; it’s embedded in my DNA.

Our middle sister, Loretta, turned out to be a fretting, nervous child, always ready to cringe at the approach of a stranger. Lucky for her, she was adorably cute and matured into a modest-verging-on-shy beauty. Any surviving seeds of decency that had not been exterminated in the contaminated soil of my father’s brain were activated by Loretta. There were actually moments when he forgave her and displayed symptoms of caring and affection. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he loved her. The man was incapable of loving; his starting point was hatred of everyone and everything, including himself. All I can say is he would have preferred Loretta for a wife than my poor, downtrodden mother—a fact that scared the crap out of me. It also spelled ‘DANGER’ for any would-be boyfriends prowling around, ‘wanting to piss on our gatepost.’ I can’t say I wasn’t jealous of Loretta’s looks and ‘sweet nature.’ I am proud that I overcame that nasty note in our relationship and loved her unconditionally… with the occasional lapse into snippiness.

Louise was the ‘smartypants’ of the family—the one who got told to shut up by everyone because she had to natter on and follow every tendril of evidence to its logical origins and inevitable conclusions. Father moderated his abuse when it was Louise’s turn because she amused him and he wanted to best her on her own turf. To resort to the belt or the back of a hand would have been tantamount to an admission of frustrated defeat he figured in his perverse calculous of family relations. He was often defeated. And despite her pain, outrage, and fear on those occasions, Louise was smug about it. There was also a hue of self-interest in his kid-glove treatment of Louise. Hitting her would be like smashing a valuable watch because it always insisted on telling not only the exact time but also how that minute, that very second fitted into the context of your universe. She was his ‘brain in a box,’ the one who might someday make our family fortune.

Then came Larry: Father’s greatest hope, and his most infuriating disappointment. I think Larry was nervous and wary by nature, but this tendency became more and more pronounced because he was constantly under Father’s malevolent eye. Larry was an artistic spirit and I’m pretty sure he’s gay—both capital crimes as far as Father was concerned. He also stuttered, which angered Father. He suspected ‘something was wrong with that boy,’ but couldn’t quite figure out what. Or perhaps he just couldn’t admit that any sperm spit out of his loins would turn out to be what Larry so obviously was: a sensitive child. Father wanted to hammer and twist him into shape—into what I can best describe as an entrepreneurial thug, a fascist, an oligarch. But you can’t build a phallic tower out of wood, canvas, and acrylic paint. You need steel, and concrete, and rivets, and an unyielding passion to crush anyone who gets in your way—above all else you need that… an inbred, ghoulish pleasure derived from pulverizing your ‘enemies.’

Larry could never turn out to be what Father wanted; Father could never let him become anything else—especially not the type of boyish man infused in Larry’s DNA. The outcome was predictable: Larry was damaged beyond repair, and Father suffered an embittering defeat at the hands of an ‘incurable wimp.’ Theirs was a tortuous evolution, painful to watch. Larry wanted desperately to please Father, but the gifts he had to offer were angrily, often violently, spurned. Of all us kids, Larry was Father’s only loyalist.

That he wasn’t the type of loyalist Father appreciated was all Mother’s fault. She ‘mollycoddled the boy’ and Father heaped more and more abuse on her because of Larry’s obvious failings. Mother was to blame—her, and the fact that Larry was in a nest with three ‘crinoline girls.’ We sisters were ruining Father’s one-and-only son. He hated us for that, and we hated him right back. He became especially enraged if Mother dared defend Larry.

I’ve left Mother till last. In a sense, she was always ‘last,’ hovering in the background of all our lives like a ghost—a vagrant spirit trapped inside the walls of our dysfunctional home. Father derided and punished her mercilessly, blaming her for everything: for his shitty job down at the docks; for having three girls in a row, then birthing a ‘nervous nelly of a son’; for his ‘crappy dinners’ and ‘dirty floors’; for the cost of living and all the ‘feminist bullshit’ he had to put up with… Each insult and slap added to the unsupportable burden that transformed her spirit into a lead ball where her heart should have been. She sagged, and staggered, and cowered, and finally became what his enraged torrents accused her of… a ‘deadweight, deadbeat burden,’ responsive as a punching bag to his taunts and torments.

He utterly destroyed her, which meant Mother no longer whetted his anger in any satisfying way; I was old enough to take her place. At 16, it became my job to clean house, cook dinners, do dishes, make sure my siblings were presentable and well-behaved, and so on. At first, he approached me with a faux display of sincerity and respect, as if I had graduated from childhood with honours. These counterfeit blandishments didn’t fool me or lessen my hatred; they only intensified my distrust. I knew what he was up to, but feared if I didn’t accept the responsibilities he was ‘offering’ life would become even more hellish for us all. So, angrily, I forced myself into my mother’s apron.

At first, Father continued his displays of gratitude and encouragement. I knew it was all for show—could almost hear the workings of his authoritarian brain clanking and grinding into place behind his leering mask. But I was shocked and surprised nonetheless when the fakery began to waver and fade, and the true nature of my surrogate motherhood role began to reveal itself. The demeaning perverseness of his malignant logic terrified me.

Not only was I expected to perform the household chores of a dutiful wife, I was also going to be forced to perform the filial nocturnal duties of a married woman. Honestly, it’s too sick to recount, but unless I describe this sordid passage, you won’t be able to fully appreciate the rest of my story.

“You are a woman now, Lucinda, and you shouldn’t be sleeping in a children’s room,” he pronounced one day. Until then we three girls had slept in one room, Larry had a room of his own. Now that I was ‘the mother of the house’ I took up lodgings in Larry’s room and he was shifted into the upper bunk that had been mine in the girls’ room. No one was happy with the arrangement. My sisters saw Larry as an intruder; Larry felt like one; I felt marked and vulnerable, and torn from my role as older, protective sister.

But it wasn’t until Father’s visitations began that I fully grasped the nature of my situation. Again, these unannounced intrusions were initiated as fraudulent pep talks and consolations. I can read faces as readily as a fortune teller can read your portended future in a hand of tarot cards and knew from the outset where his ministrations were heading. He would perch on the edge of my mattress, offering gruff but supposedly cheering assessments of the ‘little lady of the house.’ Inch by inch, he closed in. A squeeze of my shoulder, pat on my hip, peck of my cheek—I cringed and stiffened at the predatory insinuations of these gestures, not only because I knew what he was up to, but because I hated him irrevocably and fiercely and couldn’t stand the sight of him, let alone his touch. It was only a matter of time before these preliminaries would give way, and gentle coercion would morph into outright rape. I had no doubt my fate would be similar to my mother’s once that barrier had been crashed.

I should have slipped away while I had the chance, but couldn’t abandon my sisters and brother to the kind of vengeful retribution he would exact. Oh, I teetered on the edge. I knew what was coming. Should I cut and run? Endure his incremental degradations? Murder the lascivious bastard in his sleep? I had to come up with some kind of plan: I bought a switchblade and a can of bear spray, which I concealed under my pillow; and I stowed a backpack, stuffed with everything I’d need to survive on the streets for a while, under the back steps. My kit even included a bankroll, money I’d earned ‘borrowing twenties’ from ‘male members’ of the high school species for various sorts of ‘extracurricular’ activities…

Oh, I had a reputation at school. Was already known for what I would eventually become: Ms. Tough & Ready. I didn’t take shit from anyone—was force-fed enough of that at home—but I’d do favours. For cash. Up front. The boys love-hated me; I made sure they were afraid of me, too. I’d ‘borrow’ their money, then say, “You’ve already been paid,” if anyone dared ask for a refund. It was better than schlepping away at McDonald’s, I figured. Besides, I didn’t have time for an after-school job—unless I was giving a quickie hand job or blow job. There was Mom to be checked up on; chores to be done, and dinner to get on the stove before the old man clumped through the front door and flopped his weary carcass into his ‘favourite chair’ in front of the TV; then a sullen dinner to masticate before Father grabbed a beer and returned to his throne to watch more TV, or clomped out of the house to join his drinking buddies down at the neighbourhood tavern.

No matter what the hour, the denouement to every day was a bleary-eyed visitation. He’d slink into my room, and, as he shambled across the floor, I would do imaginary practice runs of my escape plan. I went over and over it, convincing myself it could work, and preparing for the worst if it didn’t. Either way, I wanted to confront him—have it out on my own terms, not his.

Top of Lucinda’s story

Miriam MacDonald
January 13, 1924 – November 10, 1976;
Beloved Mother & Wife

Father actually shed a tear at Mother’s funeral—the fucking crocodile. He moped and got drunker than usual for a few days after, but was back to his old self before the grass needed mowing over her grave. I was the one who found her, slumped sideways in his throne, mouth gaping, eyes clenched shut, as if she’d just witnessed something she couldn’t bear to look at, something particularly horrible in the waking nightmare that was her life. She died en route to hospital. ‘Beloved Mother & Wife.’ I could barely keep from yelling “Murderer!” at the snivelling prick, who had ordered that lie etched as a footnote onto the sparse declaration of her tombstone. My sisters, brother, and I mourned in sad silence; none of us could see her dying as anything but a release—her final breath collapsing her soul and her body like a squeezed accordion, the last moan wheezed out of her when no one was around to hear it. We wanted to love her, but there was nothing left of her to love by the time she passed; she had become a ghost, trapped inside a broken-down body

I didn’t suspect it at the time, but now believe Mother’s death set in motion the fateful train of events that were about to obliterate life as miserable and disgusting as we had known it. The tsunami didn’t reach our dilapidated front porch for some time. Father became terse and morose as if he no longer knew how to direct his chronic rage. I couldn’t figure what he was going through—what kind of metamorphosis was liquifying the guts inside his douchebag skin. Until he said to me, “How could she do this to me, the bitch? How could she?” He was tearing up, not with condolences for his dearly departed wife—that phase of his mourning was done with—but with rage. He glared at me, his reptilian eyes looking for something to focus on as if he was trying to catch sight of my very soul. And I knew in that moment my turn had come—that all his pent-up vengefulness was about to be unleashed, and that I would be the new live-in victim of his tortures.

When you’re confronted with a mad dog, the last thing you want to do is show your fear. I glared right back at him with unmasked hatred, and said out loud, “I’m not like her,” then stared him down, let him know I knew what he was thinking, and wouldn’t submit without a fight. I swear, his head expanded like a red balloon, his bulging eyes almost popped. I thought he was going to attack me then and there. But he looked away, banged the table with his fist, and growled, “Not like her? You’re all alike, you bitches!” Then he stumped out of the kitchen.

I had to get out of there. But when I passed by him on my way up the stairs to my room, he was scowling on his throne, boiling inside like a pot left on the stove with the element turned up high. His chair was strategically placed next to the front door and had a clear view down the hall that led to the dining room, kitchen, and back door. I thought of climbing out my bedroom window, but it was a sheer drop from the sill to a concrete sidewalk that ran down the side of the house. Shelter in place. It was my only option. I wedged a chair under the door handle. He’ll go ballistic, I thought. Good. I wanted to enrage him, for him to smash his way into my room and attack in a blind fury. I had my bear spray at the ready in one hand, my switchblade in the other, I’d either get out of there alive or go down screaming and slashing. I sat on the edge of my bed, at the ready

The dull thump of his footsteps coming up the stairs echoed my terrified heartbeat. My whole body clenched tight as a fist. I quelled the urge to rush across the room, remove the chair before he was checked by its resistance—an obstacle that would surely rile him. He’ll kill me, I thought. Bear spray and a switchblade? Really? I trembled. Had to force myself to sit up straight and look tough. Dangerous! You are dangerous. I pleaded, the silent despairing mantra of a prisoner doomed and damned. He paused at the door, I could sense his hand reaching for the knob, feel the heat of his anger. He was cocked like a hairtrigger gun. The knob twisted, the door rattled…

“Lucinda?” He sounded puzzled.

“Lucinda?” he repeated.

“Lucinda, open this door!” he demanded angry and afraid.

The door rattled again, more emphatically. Then he paused, just a second before crashing into it with his shoulder once, twice, a third time, which dislodged the chair, finging the door open, the hall light silhouetting him with its palid glare as he stood there, peering into the darkness.

“What are you doing,” he asked, unnerved by the scene his eyes were adjusting to. Trying to make sense of it.

That moment of uncertainty changed everything—unplugged the stopper of my rage and set a match to the incendiary bile gushing into me. Any sense of duty, fear, social obligation, or self-preservation shrivelled like ancient parchment in the inferno of my hatred and loathing. I wanted to kill him, lunge while he teetered on the threshold confused, and stab, stab, stab him.

But I checked the impetuous surge. He had to be the one who charged blindly into the vortex; I, the one who would stop him in his tracks, or die hissing, yowling, and clawing like a frenzied cat…

“What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled, then attacked.

Three paces, less than half-a-half-a-second, that was the space between us. He made for me, his arms reaching out to grab me by the hair, hands curled like the talons of an infuriated bird of prey. I held my ground, fixing him with a calculating stare, then, at the last milisecond, whipped out the bear spray and and hit him with a blinding shot of stinging acid. I ducked at the same time, rolling onto the floor as he toppled onto the bed bellowing like a mortally wounded dog. Scrambling to my feet, I turned to face him, knife raised, ready to strike.

Roaring and wailing, he flailed about trying to get a hold of me. I hit him with another shot of bear spray, just be sure, then backed away. He sensed my direction from the angle of the chemical stream hitting his face and the sound it made coming out of the cannister. “Fucking bitch! I’ll kill you!” He staggered toward me, arms waving, in front of him searching me out like the tentacles of a carnivorous insect. I slashed his hands; he howled again, shrinking from the lethal blade. Then, savagely, I plunged the knife into his side, yanked it out with a twist, then turned and fled.

Top of Lucinda’s Story

Meant to Be

I’m going to fast forward a bit, because the day-to-day of becoming a successful sex trade entrepreneur isn’t the part of my story I want to dwell on here—maybe I’ll write a book about it someday, a deep throat, how-to edition about making money on a matress. But all you need to know for now is my bare bones backstory.

After a very precarious beginning on the streets, I developed a set of principles that have seen me through ever since. I’m pushing retirement age now, and I still have a date list of loyal clients who want to spend time with me. Shelve your puritanical notions about what it is to be a ‘sex trade worker’ (AKA, prostitute) before you draw your conclusions about me or anyone else in the biz. I don’t need your judgements or condolences! I run a practice that’s as useful and proper as any marriage counsellor’s. The fundamentals of success for me are simple. Number one: Avoid drugs, alcohol and the bar scene. I’ve seen too much to ever want to topple into that pit. Two: Run your practice as a business. Lucinda MacDonald Unlimited is my own business in every sense of the word. I’ll never be anyone’s ‘girl’ again, not even their call girl. Three: Work your way upscale. Setting out with a can of bear spray and my trusty switchblade in my purse, I moved off the streets, through agency and porn-poser jobs, into my own home business. I don’t need the implements or institutions of my trade anymore, but the blade I’ve kept as a momento—a horrific portent, as it turned out… But that’s a yet-to-come part of my tale in the telling.

My autobio would have had a very different middle and ending if it weren’t for the two most important people in my adult life: Josh Cruz, the recruiter and photographer who enticed me into The Muscle’s establishment; and our son—I use the adjective loosly—Manny.

I’d characterize Josh as a nice guy but, like a coat, he had to be either on someone’s back or a hanger to stand up straight. In other words, he had no spine. If he had of stood up to The Muscle when the time came, he’d still be alive. But he didn’t so he isn’t… end of story. He was a photographer and videographer, specializing in porn; a sometime recruiter for The Muscle, which was the calling card he used to draw me into the trade; and a common-law husband and father to me and Manny. Josh was a pretty apt choice of name by his deadbeat parents because joshing around was his stock in trade—his technique for sliding into and skating out of awkward situations and saving face when he had to surrender to other people’s will. He was funny, an attribute that made me and Manny happy most of the time, but pissed me off at crucial moments, when a live-in yuk, yuk comedian didn’t fit the bill. He was a good partner and father under the circumstances. I miss him, even though I’ll never forgive his fatal lapse.

Manny? Words can’t describe how beautiful he was—how prefect. Close your eyes and imagine an angel—as corny as that sounds. What do you see? Perfection, especially in human incarnations, is one of those words we can define but never comprehend. When I want to conjure up a perfect vision of him, I see Manny, smiling, laughing, teasing, dancing. I see his black, flowing hair; his intense blue eyes, reflecting me in him; his delicate hands, describing the shape of joy and philosophy in the space between us, or rhapsodizing on his keyboard or guitar in our cramped living space. But, like I said, perfection can only be defined—as soon as I try capturing his essence in words it eludes me, a ghostly image projected into mist. Our clumsy descriptions embarrass us. They expose our own inadequacy. Perfection, I’ve come to realize, is a state of mind. The only description of Manny’s perfection that works for me is ‘Love’—what it feels like to be utterly enthralled… Very few of us are capable of experiencing perfection.

Knowing that you will perhaps appreciate how my spirit writhed when Manny was taken away from me—how voraciously and insatiably I craved revenge! We bandy the word ‘hatred’ about: I hate spinnach, I hate this dress, I hate my ex and the bitch who stole him away from me, etc. But, like love, real hatred infuses every cell in your body. Except it’s a visceral rage. Disgust. And you can’t escape it. Even if you destroy the object of your hate, you will continue to hate its memory, and to wish it back into life so you can destroy it again, and again. It’s a poison that ignites your very soul and consumes you utterly. In its throes you are beyond the soothing and admonishing voices of reason. You come to hate anyone who counsels you to ‘calm down.’

Josh spotted me about six months after I took to the streets and

To be continued

Top of Lucinda’s Story

*Notes

Lucinda ‘retired’ as a prostitute after she intentionally became pregnant with Manny. She moved to a penthouse apartment suite in James Bay and took up a job as a waitress in a local cafe. She’d put aside enough money to supplement her income with investment earnings, and eventually started taking on select clients, usually older gentlemen who were lonely and craved companionship as much as sex. For this she charged flexible and modest rates, accompanying them to dinners, plays, movies and so on, then spending evenings with them at her apartment. Some of her clients were also frequenters of the restaurant where she worked—an arrangement condoned by her ‘boss. Manny spent nights with Josh when Lucinda had an evening or overnight client.

Commentator – A person with knowlege, especially direct experience, who can comment on the plausibity of characterizations and suggest possibilities I haven’t considered.

Enactor – Someone who would agree to pose or participate in photo enactments of scenes in the story, which could be used for design and pomotional purposes in the novel, publications, and social media.

Look for perfection in everything!

Perfection is sullied by mean spirits.

Perfecton is destroyed by greed and possessiveness.

Can I be a romantic, an idealist, and a realist at the same time?

We must constantly seek forgiveness for the necessities of living.

Cuts

So what’s the equation between ‘Nice Guy’ and ‘Perfect Son?’ Well, to start with, I have to refer to them both in the past tense. What do you do with a bookmark when you’ve read through to ‘The End?’ That’s become the torturing dilemma of my life.

Feet First in Love

Parts: One | Two | Three |Four…

Part 1 – The forensics of love

Nice sandals!

I didn’t say it out loud, of course—not right away—and can’t determine to this day if the thought was true. I mean sincere in all its dimensions, down to the place where sole smacks concrete reality. But it was the best I could come up with on the spot, and even though I didn’t voice the sentiment, she heard me. That’s the trick I believe: Think things before speaking. Sometimes keep them as thoughts forever because you’re bashful, perhaps. Or maybe because the person you’re interested in is perfect and you could only detract from that by wheedle-wording your way into her affections.

I had instinctively done an up and down of the sandals’ occupant—that checkout scan we males of the species do when attracted by something potentially sexual in our peripheral vision. But it was her footwear—and I must confess, her feet—my roving eye locked onto. Her toes were painted pink!

Not gaudily, in that slapdash way you sometimes see and feel embarrassed about—usually for bubblegum teens. The polish had been applied with artistry. Details like that say something, don’t they? She had a conception of self that was bold and subtle, I figured.

So maybe I was indulging just a little. But it’s okay to try and fathom why someone’s special, isn’t it? And at first, we have to draw assumptions from observations as seemingly insignificant as pedicure, don’t we? You’re a liar if you say no. The forensics of love are based upon minute chips of evidence, hinting at theories made up as we go.

To me, the convex surfaces of her nails were intriguing as conch shells turned inside out. Can you imagine such a thing? My eyes stuck on the tops of her toes for a breath or two, then—without my thinking, without conscious intent—zoomed in on her sandals, recording every facet of those elegant slippers.

Even as my eyes went about their rogue’s work, though, part of me realized there was nothing so very remarkable about Gloria’s sandals… aside from the fact that she was in them. I can think of a thousand movie stars and a thousand more princesses who would have turned up their noses if asked to wriggle their dainty nether digits into such a pair of Walmart flip-flops. But on Gloria’s feet! Oh my!

Part 2 – The ‘Oh My’ of it
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“Oh my!” as grandmother would cry when occasion warranted. Of course, her delight was usually over events as homey as cherry pie coming out of the oven or particularly brilliant works of crayon art, not over anything so exotic as the footgear of a complete stranger. For grandmother, agape wasn’t so much about miracles as discovering the miraculous in everyday things—about seeing through the veil of ordinary and triggering suspirations as emphatic as a last gasp.

By the way, mentioning Gloria’s name right now makes everything from here on in non-sequitur. I didn’t know her name at this point in our story. True, I was cultivating an intimate relationship with the bone structure and musculature of her feet, the same way Toto might have got to know Dorothy before they ventured into Oz. But that’s not the same as knowing a body’s name, is it? Love works backwards. We fall into it, then double back, tracking down the meanings and consequences of ’til death do us part.

I’ve broken sequence because I can’t bear talking about Gloria as ‘her’ or ‘she’ without giving name to those theoretical references. I have christened her even though a name at that point would have been as naively symbolic as graffiti sprayed anonymously on whitewashed stucco, or rote declarations carved into the trunks of trees or the planks of park benches. At that point in our relationship, her name would have been a catch-all of fantasies. A concatenation of dark eyes, long black hair… an aura you could best see through eyes half-closed.

In truth, if Gloria had dematerialized before I got a chance to talk to her—whisked out of her sandals by powers unknown into some sci-fi Nirvana beyond the frequencies of daytime TV—nothing would have seemed remarkable about her footwear left on the corner of Quadra and Hillside. Other than the fact that the sandals were there, placed carefully on the cracked concrete as if the intersection were a portico into some alternative dimension and she had been called away suddenly. Barefoot.

Part 3 – Shoes neatly placed
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The thing about Gloria is she even stands with her shoes neatly placed, and she never just kicks her footgear off. She’s neat that way. Fastidious. It makes me laugh. And because of her, I place my work boots carefully on the mat inside the vestibule door too—toes pointing toward the wall, heels knocked together. She’s aware of details like that so it pains me to bring disorder into our lives, especially when it’s so easy to do things right.

There’s meaning to the precise placement of feet on a sidewalk. Someone needs to see that. Imagine yourself in the presence of a goddess. You’ve been schlepping your way through life down at the pit, a latter-day Sisyphus crunching stones into various grades of gravel, then suddenly she’s there, and you know she is a goddess, that she already knows everything she needs to. What do you say to her? What’s your conversation starter?

In a way, Gloria was aware of every rhinestone glued to those bargain basement sandals of hers. Not individually, of course, but as elements of a sensory field, if you will. I wondered which tiny mirror I might have been reflected in, standing beside her, my bike held between us like a barrier. What did she think of this guy? Of his long hair and never-quite-matured beard, his knobby tired bike? She hadn’t even glanced my way—a sensible rebuke. But I did want her to appreciate the nobility of my feelings… that if the sun could be positioned just so behind me, I too would glow with my own halo effect.

I glimpsed her profile, then surveyed the intersection for clues. Perhaps there were points of convergence, shards of data that proved we dwelt in overlapping dimensions. Which of the drab architectural features could I point to and say, There, that’s us. The San Remo Market Deli & Café? The Salvation Army Community & Family Centre, across Hillside? The Money Mart (real people fast cash) diagonally opposite? The Sally Ann thrift store on the west side of Quadra? The garbage receptacles and bike racks at every corner to dispose of stuff we no longer valued and lock up the things we did?

We were none of that, and perhaps—without knowing it—denial was the point of convergence I had in mind, the notion that we were something other… or could be.

Part 4 – Nice Sandals
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“Nice sandals!” I said.

No kidding! I said it out loud. Breathlessly. Disguised as a brash joke, because any second now the light on Quadra would wink green and the little silhouette that says walk would let her get away, and I couldn’t let that happen without at least a memory of me—strange and deformed as it might seem—hankering after her. Things had spiralled into a place where an inkling of madness is the only reasonable state of mind, not stark raving lunacy, but a sort of emotional Pi, never quite defined, always panicked by another increment of yearning.

If only we had it in us to feel that way about every living thing, we would truly be incarnations of our imagined gods.

The light changed. Gloria stepped off the sidewalk into the intersection. I walked beside her, thinking: This is it. It’s finished. She still hadn’t glanced at me. I studied her profile for signs. She wasn’t ready to offer any, and how could I blame her? But I took comfort in the fact that we were walking in the same direction, that the inaudible pat of her sandals on the pavement didn’t seem hurried or doubtful. She was willing to abide my company at least.

Gloria strode on like the dancer she is, back straight, black pantaloons fluttering in the breeze, pleated jacket conforming precisely to her slight, angular build. Did I imagine it, the faintest hint of a smile turning up her lips? I’m not sure, but the words rushed out of me anyway, when I saw what I took to be a cue, as if I’d been waiting to blurt my intentions for just-about-ever. “Maybe you won’t take it wrong if I walk with you a-ways?”

Creep! Is that what she was thinking? She stopped, looked straight at me, her head swivelling round like a security camera on a pole, eyes locking on. This is it, I thought for the umpteenth time. It’s finished.

Then she smiled and laughed out loud, and… Oh my God! Oh my!

Lucinda’s Lucid Moments

Manny, a youth who has been abused and betrayed, ends his life by overdosing in a squalid back alley. This reading is excerpted from his mother, Lucinda’s, journal. She did everything in her power to sheild him from the undermining, demeaning influences of their world. In this reading she recollects her own earliest memory of a man she would learn to fear, then hate, and utterly distrust—her father.

Bird of Paradise

The bird of paradise does not live
in lush green tropic forests,
doesn't stroke with flashing wings
a Caribbean sky.

But she might.

This species does not trill
her heartfelt, joyous anthems
from a leafy, palm-treed hillside
under a dazzling, foreign sun.

But she could.

This mystic creature you will find
in the shimmering, shushing fabric
in the irridescent patterns,
in the brilliant woven mists
of an imaginative mind...

Just waiting to be...
Freed.

                           For Diana

A Kik addict’s choice

Note: Beta edtions of Mural Gazer stories at MuralGazer.ca

…when he saw his mother’s purse, sitting on the kitchen counter that day of his downfall, he froze, a tightrope walker quavering, struggling to regain his balance. The moral math was simple: He craved his cola; his mother had deprived him of the sugary libations that made life oh so sweet; tit-for-tat, he would deprive her of enough grocery money to buy himself a pleasure-sustaining supply of Kik. Still, he wavered. Get a Kik out of life, his jingoistic nature crooned; get a kick in the arse with a pointy shoe, a fatherly voice from up on high threatened. He teetered on the edge for a moment, then…

Harry glanced through the window, out into the garden, where his mother was busy weeding and pruning. Opportunity had presented itself, the thirst was upon him, he could either take his chance or leave it, and not expect another any time soon.

Still, he resisted the gravity of his yearning, aghast. How could he even think something so dastardly, so cunning, as to steal from his own mother… As he excoriated, himself his body slipped into an altered state, beyond the pale of ordinary consciousness. He witnessed sadly, as if in a dream, his hand reach out, fingers scrabbling like spider’s legs, prying open her purse’s lips, rummaging its contents for her wallet. He pulled it out. His breathing quickened and eyes widened as he riffled through the week’s house money, a sheaf of bills neatly sorted into their coloured denominations…

What’s in a digital frame for writers?

Every time I walk through our dining room into the kitchen, my eye is drawn to the Aura Frame, strategically placed on the countertop between the two rooms—our son Ian gave it to me as a Father’s Day present. Most of the images that scroll through the screen are family shots—my sister’s birthday, me and my brothers getting together for the first time in years, a deer caught munching our garden flowers.

The screen and the online cloud it’s connected to are becoming a repository of photo-memories—images that remind me and others on our family network how lucky we are and the wonderful lives we lead. But it didn’t take long for me to perceive literary possibilities for the technology, and the more I consider its potential, the more excited I become about digital frames for creating and promoting my books.

Before I get into that, though, I need to give you a thumbnail of my status as an author. I’ve had a couple of books published by Thistldown Press—since gone out of print—and remain an unknown outside a small circle of readers and fellow writers. I’ve based my creative and promotional strategies on that reality, which means: I’ll continue to submit some manuscripts to established publishers; at the same time, I will self-publish most of my books; my promotional strategy in either case will rely heavily on direct, face-to-face sales to readers, as well as producing, promoing, and selling my work on Amazon through Kindle Direct Publishing.

How does a digital frame fit into that picture?

I’ll zoom in on a scenario that clicks for me. Imagine yourself at a book fair. You’re engaged in conversation about your recently released thriller with one person, but others are scanning your selection of titles. What if you had a digital screen set up at one end of the table, cycling through images of your books, including back-cover descriptions of the stories and testimonials? What if those browsing readers could tap the frame and launch a video reading from a book they’re interested in?

Does frame-tech have a creative slant? I think so. A book I am planning, under the working title Realta Road, will be set in a Rialta RV, whose owner—a bereaved husband—is driving across Canada. He and his wife had planned the trip for years as a retirement gift to themselves, but she succumbs to a sudden cancer just before they are scheduled to leave. The structure of the story will be the husband’s ‘journal letters’ to his wife, describing in increasingly fraught detail the misadventures he’s getting himself into between Chemainus, on Vancouver Island, and St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Next summer, or the summer after, my wife and I will embark on our own cross-Canada journey—the second time we’ve done it. I’ll be taking pictures and videoing as we go, collecting images that will help me describe Realta Road settings and characters. Would a scrolling frame on my desk populated with those images help keep me on track once we’re back home and I’m immersed in writing?

If you’re interested in digital frames as a promotional and creative tool and would like to join in an exploratory workshop, let me know.

The Cat’s Ass Trophy

“Help! I can’t move my legs!”

Taken out of context, I can understand how that plea might trigger thoughts of collapsed mines, bombed out apartment buildings, avalanches or any number of natural and man… er, human made catastrophes. You could add car crashes to the list, strokes, falls off ladders, the tally goes on.

That’s not what I intended, though, lounging in one of the blue plastic Cape Cod chairs out on our back deck, watching the progress of another home run for God arcing through the infinity of blue sky over Mount Brenton.

“You weren’t thinking at all!” was how Ashley put it. “You scared the crap out of me!”

Actually, I’d been thinking about a lot of things, before Plato came along and jumped onto my lap. Good thoughts, mostly, about how lucky I am to be living my retirement era in Chemainus. As suburbs go, Cook street rates pretty good. It’s got a crime rate that flat lines somewhere near zero, there’s not a single traffic light in town, strangers wave and say hello on the street and in the aisles of the Country Grocer store, and it’s located in the mild temperate zone of Southeast Vancouver Island—accurately fabled as a bit of paradise afloat on the Salish Sea.

There’s some irredeemably grouchy types who grumble in their coffee mugs down at Nic’s Café that the best thing about Muraltown is it’s within easy driving distance of Nanaimo in one direction, Victoria in the other. I say to them: If you can afford a patch of turf in either of those two places bigger than a dish cloth, go for it. I’m happy where I am.

I was especially happy to be out on the back deck that day.

Not that I don’t like company. I do. And I really like Serena, even if she is smarter than me and can’t help delving excitedly into the details about her research into ‘mitochondrial DNA and the role it plays in aging and degenerative diseases’. She’s ‘good people’, our niece. And my wife’s good people too. But put them in the same room, and you might as well stick your head inside a beehive, the way they natter. A quiet guy like me can’t get a word—or even a thought—in edgewise.

That’s why I retreated out onto the back deck. Once they’d talked their ways through the agony of childbirth, how to get your lemon poppyseed muffins out of the tray, the best deals to be had at the hospital auxiliary thrift shop, and so on, I decided it was time to take out the recycling and stop off on the way back for a snooze in the waning light of a balmy spring afternoon, while they continued with the task of sorting through the family photo albums.

“Oh look, there’s you uncle Martin, fifty pound lighter, with hair and no wrinkles!” “Aw! There’s Panda. Remember the time he ate your socks and we had to watch like expectant parents for him to poop them out.” “Auntie Ash, you were such a hippie. I love that dress, and the army boots are ever so chic! Ha, ha, ha!” “The Half-Lemon! Oh My God, we actually drove around in a yellow VW beetle? Look at the price of gas… 48 cents a gallon! Christ, they don’t even mint pennies anymore, and gas is measured out by the litre.”

Even though I was happy for them, I have to admit to being pinpricked by envy, watching Ash and Serena babble on like partners at a quilting bee. I’m not a feminist or anything, but I was thinking, if more men could get themselves into that head space, there’d be fewer Putins in the world, and the people of Ukraine might not be suffering through a senseless armageddon, watching their cities getting pummelled into dust like 21st Century Sodoms and Gomorrahs. I’m ashamed of my male gender sometimes. Wish I could have a bit less Y in my jeans and a bit more ‘Why?’ in my brain.

We have strange thoughts in that fantastical zone between awake and asleep. There I was, reclining in the Cape Cod chair out on the back deck, the brilliant sunshine lighting up the inside of my eyelids like lava lamps when, plop, Plato landed on my lap.

Cat’s paws are the closest thing I can imagine to an angel alighting… until they begin kneading that is, their claws tugging at your clothing and pricking your skin. Plato circled round for a couple of laps, like he was tamping down the grass under a tree on his vast savanna, then settled in and started purring. I sat perfectly still, trying to make my bony thighs soft as down filled cushions. The rumble of his contentment echoed through me. You have to feel a cat’s purr to really appreciate it, let it permeate consciousness.

Please understand, Plato is not a lap cat. He’s aloof, a strutter through our lives, more likely to show you the pink petunia when you make a move to pat him than to rub up against your leg. Usually he stumps off like you’re beneath his dignity. Ash and I are lap-cat-people, though, yearning for that mystical connection between cat’s fur and human skin, and that reassuring deep vibrato of feline contentment. He was deigning to settle onto my lap for a snooze that afternoon. But lap time with Plato? It’s like cuddling a land mine. Don’t touch, don’t move, don’t even breathe, or he’ll be off.

Ash and I share the joys of those moments as if we’d experienced a second coming. I often wonder what it is we’re missing in our lives, that we hanker so desperately after our cat’s erratic affection? We have each other, isn’t that enough? Our death-defying circle of friends? Our kids, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, our dog Sophie, neighbours who wave hello wherever we go in Muraltown? Isn’t that enough?

Not unless Plato loves us back, I guess.

How could I be so selfish as to not share that glorious interlude with Ash? So, risking all, I slipped my fingers like a bomb disposal expert into the hip pocket of my ever tightening jeans, pinched the top of my mobile and slid it ever so gingerly out from under Plato. He was still purring when the phone came to life and I pointed it at him in camera mode. His enlarged rump filled the bottom of my frame; my hiking boots—propped on the deck table—the top.

‘Click’ went the camera. Plato purred on. I dared not breathe a sigh of relief.

Kids can thumb in a text quicker than ‘u or i’ can let go a fart. I punched my mobile’s runes the same way you’d poke at an elevator button, my pudgy index finger hitting the wrong key half the time, so that I’d have to go back and try again, and again, hissing like a kettle too long on the hob. But eventually I got the message into the allotted space beneath the distorted image of Plato on my lap, then zip, off it went.

‘Help! I can’t move my legs!’ it said.

Panic is instantaneous contagion. It zaps the collective consciousness of a room like the sudden glare of a flood light. It’s another sort of bomb, its shockwaves radiating out into the neural network, forcing adrenaline to squirt like juice from a squeeze bottle into the guts of its infected tribe. On the one hand, panic gets us moving before the bus runs us over; on the other, it doesn’t give us time to think. The autonomic nervous system kicks in and we get jerked around like puppets. If we’re lucky enough to survive, we analyze ‘the event’ after the fact, picking apart the threads of mayhem.

My theory is we’re predisposed to panic. The Doomsday Clock is always ticking closer and closer to midnight, shaving off half the remaining time, then half again, until the calculus of destruction tells us there’s nothing, no measurable allotment of milliseconds left between us and…

Duck, cover and hold! We don’t want to hear that bomb go off!

Ash, for example, is predisposed by images of me snacking on potato chips and sneaking chocolate bars, munching toward the imminent possibility of a heart attack; she has witnessed my shuffle-footed stumbling often enough to anticipate my tumbling down any convenient flight of stairs; tick, tick, tick, the clock keeps blinking, until…

‘Bing!’ The text message slid into the corner of her screen, minus the cute, explanatory photo of Plato snuggled in my lap. It shouted: “Help! I can’t move my legs!”

So there I sat, swaddled in the joy of Plato’s fidgety affection, while Ash and Serena dashed about the house looking for the corner I had collapsed into, or the staircase I’d toppled down, expecting to find me dead, my finger still touching the screen after I’d shot off my desperate expiring plea for assistance…

“You scared the crap out of me!” Ash shouted without preamble once they’d zeroed in on the back deck. She slapped me on the shoulder hard enough to bruise, maybe even trigger some kind of cardiac event. “Serena was about to dial 911!”

“It was an accident!” I protested. “There was supposed to be a picture…”

“You’re the accident,” she shook her head. Case closed; sentencing to be announced over dinner and executed over some indeterminate length of future time.

Thoroughly harangued, I was left standing on the deck by my two saviours, who marched back into the house through the sliding door, shaking their heads, words like ‘inconsiderate’ and ‘stupid’ reverberating in their wake. I turned round, and looked wistfully at Plato, inscrutable as ever, purring away on the Cape Cod chair.

“You little shit,” I said. “I really do love you.”

~ The End ~