Sun Worship

Hundreds of kilometres of roadside trees, black against the land, naked in the winter – all of them reaching up to a slow-motion caress. The setting sun is a smashed pomegranate; its juice is running down the mauve sky-table. I start thinking about the ecstasy of colour; how do the senses wrap into a shared delight of a certain gorgeous shade or some pretty thing? This sun is of juice and of jewels; the entire busload of people’s eyes follow it across the terrain, watching it duck behind hills with the turn of the bus, waiting for it to reappear around the next curve. All eyes fixed and mesmerized. For twenty minutes I forget about anxiety and about fleeing; the lively red has plucked me from my seat and dropped me onto the place above the sun.

A Hasidic Jew beside me pulls out a pocket sized book filled with Hebrew – I assume it’s scripture but that could be my prejudice – and after reading some of it he starts to sing, low and deep, wordless songs to himself. I’ve had many bus mates, and this one is a good one. He hasn’t as much as said a word to me or looked at me, but I’m glad I’m beside him and not the yappy bitch in the back that’s complaining about the meagre six hour trip between Montreal and Toronto (do you know when we’ll get there? we’ve been on this bus for ev-er).

As to avoid defining him by what he’s not, he’s a comforting presence: something both wise and dignified resides between those two wisps of hair. Maybe he’s not comforting in the sense of kind-hearted or warm (although I can imagine the warmth from his song trickle down his throat, loosening the vocal cords like a sip of whiskey warms the throat and the belly on its way down), but I feel like he doesn’t want to be bothered, and neither do I, so we sit in our seats perfectly content – me, comparing the tree branches to nervous dendrils receiving earth-bound information in the form of electrical currents, and him, singing his pious songs of his spiritual order.

***

The apartment I left behind in the morning was a mess. I didn’t do my dishes and left them in the sink. All of my furniture remains. Every important possession either found home at Wynd’s place or with the Old Man That Lives Alone – the rest came West with me. My backpack, computer bag, and an extra large plaid bag they sell at Dollarama, filled with everything from my boots to my Playstation to every other scrap of clothing or history I decided was worth saving from reckless abandon – my total luggage weighed over one hundred pounds, without any doubt. I hobbled around, propping my foot underneath the large back and using both my arm and my leg to carry it along, keeping balance with my Persian sword-cane. At the Toronto bus terminal a worker inquired about how much my luggage weighed, and if I had paid the additional tariffs for overweight luggage. I shot him the don’t-fuck-with-me glance, politely said I didn’t know there were such fees and continued limping past onto to the bus before he had a chance to answer.

Midnight Flights (In the morning I’ll be gone)

Like Kenny Rogers says, it’s about knowing when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em. The gambler’s mathematics, seeing what’s in your hand, what’s been played, and using that to figure what’s out there and what’s still in the deck.

My hand:

8♠ an overflowing kitchen sink filled with every dish I own, ashtrays that haven’t been emptied in weeks, a broken towel rack, a burnt out bathroom light bulb, old razors too dull to shave, letters I haven’t gotten around to delivering, ten different books I haven’t read more than the first three chapters of, pants shirts underwear from the last week that litter my floor

2♣ over stimulation of adrenaline, causing the perception of motion in my peripheral vision to be constant – this stems from the knowledge that there may be man eating bugs on me

6♥ brushing my teeth is a chore I can hardly bring myself to do, isolation’s heavy presence surrounds me and no one else, no job, no prospect of work, no money, a fear of Quebecois bureaucracy (Naked Lunch creased open at Talking Asshole) and thus no prospect of income

4♦ a metaphor I thought of one the way home from Wynd’s place that I don’t know where to use: I am the last light, years from my dead sun

This is when I fold because nothing good will come up on the flop.

My keys are on the floor, a note is stuck to the front door with double-sided mounting tape. It says, “In the morning I’ll be gone.”

Exterminator!

There are brown spots on my sheets. I sleep naked, so it could be one of two things. I’m pretty clean, so it has to be the number two that isn’t number two. Those spots, my friends, are blood. My blood. Sucked through a proboscis – maybe not a proboscis, I imagine bed bugs have little use for the proboscis’ tactical precision, instead using their teeth like a dog (I know surprisingly little of my infestation aside from they lay eggs and bite, and when I move I’ll likely have to throw out most of my shit). My blood would have arrived on my sheets in a cycle much like this:

Bug sucks blood—>
Bug tries to get away—>
Bug is crushed by my gargantuan, clumsy body wrestling with the sheets—>
Bug releases it’s hard-won nectar all over my bed through gaping wounds in its carapace—>
Repeat cycle.

Upon the discovery of the bugs I got excited. I watched episodes of Naruto to study Shino’s bug control abilities, cross-referencing that one episode of Smallville and another X-Files several times to corroborate the bug-control idea. I am willing to share some of my blood for a mutually beneficial engagement: all I wanted was the bugs to take care of some things for me, things I couldn’t do myself, if you catch me. I tried a peace offering, meditating to a similar plane, dancing naked with some witches, blowing smoke in the style of a South American Ayahuascero, but nothing worked.

Bugs are assholes. They didn’t want to cooperate, and in a clear declaration of their intentions they bit Wynd and I several times. Bugs aren’t intersted in symbiosis. Bugs are like the Borg collective, American Capitalism, and cancer: unrelenting in their desire to occupy and convert.

…

They probably told me sometime last week, but my brain’s like a seive. My all-night video game marathon left me vulnerable to sleeping late. There’s a knock on the door, and my superintendent is standing with a spray bottle and rubber gloves. “Ceis time for bug inspection”, he says, and “Tabernac!” when he sees my heavy furniture. “Help me move”, he says pointing at my chair while I rub my sleepy eyes. I grunt affirmatively. Why didn’t they tell me about this? If they did, why didn’t I remember? What time is it? I sluggishly move things on command. I’m heavy and numb. The stuff he’s spraying around has a thick chemical smell, a really heavy burning plastic that can choke you. Once he’s finished he says, “You ‘ave 15 minute to leave, and don’t come back, uh, 5 hours. You can not come back ‘ere for 5 hours.” I stare at the clock, my glasses aren’t on, it looks like 2:45, or 9:10. I hurredly put a sweater on, then my jacket and a hat and walk outside.

5 hours, I think, sharp cold hitting my face. And what am I to do for five hours? I reach into my pocket and assess my funds: two quarters, three dimes, and a nickle. I decide to call F.

“Hey, wassup?”

“How are you?”

“Good, good. And you?”

“I’m, they’re fumigating my apartment and I can’t go home for 5 hours.”

“Shit son, fumigating? What for?

“Bed bugs.”

“Oh shit. Where are you now?”

“My doorstep.”

“Well, I’m at the library- I’ve got to study for an exam – but I think my roommate’s at home. Tell him I said to let you in, and if you’re still there when I get home we’ll hang out or something.”

“Sounds good. Thanks.”
We exchange salutations and hang up. His roommate wasn’t home, or wasn’t answering the door. I stand on his front step for shelter from the wind and think What am I going to do now? I try another friend, hang up at her machine. I have no metro fare to get to some family (all of whom live outside of the inner-city). Well, I’m only short one dollar for coffee – people are nice right?

Wrong. People are assholes, like bugs, and it takes a man two hours to get a single dollar being friendly in Montreal.