The best thing about being a writer is you get to carry the extra bag. The same goes for any artistic endeavour- people wonder, “What is that piece of luggage you’re carrying? What’s in the bag?”

Writers love to carry the extra bag. It’s our work. We have work to do. I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I’m going to be working. I serve a purpose. That’s the real reason for carrying the bag- it makes us seem legitimate, worthy.

Where is all this leading, you may wonder? Good question. It all has something to do with the party. The party, as I have deemed it, is the time when all these thoughts began to circle in my head, mimicking the party guests themselves who circle- from the bar to the buffet to the kitchen and to the washroom for a pee or a little grope and lipstick touch up job. Maybe both at the same time. Who knows what people really do at these things.

Is there such a thing as a party anymore? Or is it just sharks getting together to circle?

I deviate. These thoughts of mine. Circling. The party is in a friend’s backyard, a good friend mind you, so I don’t toss the invitation and fabricate an excuse not to go. It’s her birthday and she’s promised to set me up with a big breasted golfer. I figure this can’t be half bad. Right off the bat, we have two things in common- I like golf, I like big breasts.

It’s seven. The sun is surrendering to that blood orange hue it can reach in the early summer. It’s hot, but not too hot, which is good because I sweat like a stuck pig in heat and that flattens my hair. Flat hair, flat beer, flat mood, you might as well stay at home.

I don some good slacks and a golf shirt. I mull over some other shirts in the apartment before I leave, but nothing’s suitable. I’ve known about this party for some time now and when the big breasted golfing girl idea came up, I started doing some fashion shows in my head, watching myself walk the runway in a number of different wardrobe combinations until something fit. Nothing ever did. By party night, I was working a pair of slacks and a button down shirt that looked better on the imaginary runway than it did in the mirror. I went with a golf shirt instead. Surely, big breasts would read the clues.

The party’s motive is two fold: a birthday celebration and an open house for the host’s new pad. With the grimy windows of my own apartment cranked open to catch the faint breeze and a stunning view of the neighbour’s red brick wall, I consider hosting my own open house. The 6:10 bus shoots past with a low roar, rush hour making the most of things. Fuck you. If the phone was to ring and someone wanted to talk with me, they’d hear the bus in the background. “You live in a bus terminal?” they’d want to know. Something is terminal, my friend. Something is terminal.

Back to the house. I’m thinking about the house, this party, this circling as I shut the large window by the fire escape, bolt it, grab my watch and keys. I break the cycle momentarily and consider calling for a cab, but being it’s rush hour, something will be on the street. You might walk for a bit, but you can always flag a Royal taxi. They have no morals. Royals will drive the first paying fare they see.

But, it’s not a Royal taxi I hail. It’s a Diamond. They have air conditioning and morals. At first, the cabbie doesn’t want to drive me because I’m going into the Annex and he has no fares there. I tell him a Royal will happily take me and for less. He curses and tells me to get in. “You go to the Annex.... you make me take you,” he mutters.

I tell him, and I tell him softly because the windows are up and he can hear me. I tell him, “No one can make you do anything, my friend.” He barks and drives, exiling me to the back seat. The cab is a meat locker of cold air and fake leather. If the Annex were any farther away, the sweat on my back might form an ice rink. I go back to circling.

Let me tell you where this circle begins and ends. It’s about the extra writer’s bag, the one I spoke about at the beginning. This is indeed the beginning. And the end. I always come back to the bag.

“What’s in the bag, son?”

“Oh, I’m a writer.” As if that answers the question. A writer doesn’t need an extra bag. All he or she needs is a pen and some paper. Hell, they don’t even need that. I’ve known plenty of writers who never seem to write a thing.

I can be guilty of this now and then.

The extra bag holds the laptop. Whenever I pack for a trip, there is always the computer bag, which incidentally, never gets used, which never even gets opened a great deal of the time. But it is there for all to see. Here comes the writer. He’s got the bag. He’s going to work magic.

I’m in on a nice, juicy joke.

I’m riding in the Diamond pleasure car with fake leather and icicles on the dash. I’m going to a party, a birthday/house warming party and there is the possibility that I’ll get set up with a big titted golfing girl. I got slacks on and a golf shirt to play the part. I’m circling.... circling... here come the sharks...

Sharks. That’s the next turn in the ring. I get this feeling now and then that everyone I run into is a shark and I’m a drowning sailor with a blood seeping limb. Even the cabbie, driving into the Annex against his own good judgment and lack of will, looks as if he’d whirl and crunch down on a finger if I were to fall asleep in the backseat.

This is not a new feeling, this fear of sharks. I’ve had it for some time. What I can’t explain is whether everyone around me suddenly became man eaters or if it was I who became the bait. Again with the meat references, but when you’re in an chilled bubble, what can you do?

I’m cool. The car is frosty and approaching its destination.

“Don’t forget the artery is a one way,” I say. The cabbie knows the artery but he’s forgotten it’s a one way. He cranks the wheel and takes a back laneway over to a roundabout. We circle and then slip into the artery. Shooting and weaving with one hand on the horn, the driver is pissing mad. He has a screen on the dash (very modern these Diamonds) and it flashes requests. “Can you take a fare at Danforth and 32nd? How about Mt. Pleasant and Lawrence?” The answer is no. No. No. The cabbie keeps rejecting each request with a stamp on the accelerator. I think he’s rejecting me. Another shark. They’re everywhere.

Imagine going to a party feeling like bait. Not a good way to begin the evening. Nonetheless, I persevere.

The circle. I’ve mentioned the writer’s bag, the sharks and the bait. Next comes the nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something. I forget stuff all the time these days, annoying things like the word that means to get off track or what ingredients I put in a macaroni-cheese. If I was older, I’d be having a hissy fit at my doctor’s office, begging for every test there is to determine Alzheimers. That’s not what it is. It is just the circle. And I forget what it is I’m circling.

The dreams. They come next. Nothing fucked like eating cow paddies in a strawberry milk pond or taking it up the ass from a high school teacher with a strap on dildo. I have those all the time and think nothing of them. It’s the real normal ones I worry about, like when I walk down a bank of wet grass and slip out of the dream, losing my breath as I fall. I’m not slipping. I’m lying down.

I’m carrying a bag, yes the bag again, and I’m in Lester B. Airport, Terminal Five. There is no Terminal Five at Lester B. so I make do with a stretch of runway and some old circus tents. I got the bag. I put it through the X-ray. I can see what the guards see and there’s nothing in the bag. Zilch. And then it explodes. It’s a white cream bomb. Tasty.

Dreams. I’m circling.

The party. We arrive in the Annex. I give the cabbie a ten and a grunt; he offers no change. Stepping out of the refrigerator car, the street feels like the Sahara. Not that I’ve ever been there. In my dreams, this is how hot it is.

Flat hair. Fuck.

The Annex is full of people who work for a living, whether they carry bags or lunch boxes, they work and they live in homes that are long and narrow, the same as their days. I’m generalizing, but then I can say what I damn well please about the sharks. They are going to eat me, after all.

It smells like a barbecue. Every man eater in the Annex is out with a beer and a steak, flipping and yakking. This is what happens on a Friday night. The workers come home and drop their bags, open the fridge, fire up the barbecue, sit on the porch and forget that they work, that they, like the cabbie, have very little choice. You go to the Annex. That’s where this fare goes.

The party house is a few blocks over and I figure the walk won’t kill me. Strolling, I watch the sharks, watch them flip and grill. Swig. Flip and grill. Porch. Some have blossoming gardens of Eden, proudly displayed like the gates to heaven.

I figure I just need to get to the party and then something will begin to happen. This is what you worry about as a writer. When is something going to happen in the story? This is also what you worry about in life. When is something going to happen? Maybe if I go to that bar mitzvah. something will happen. I’ll meet some muscular weightlifter with pinkie rings who backs into my car and doesn’t give a shit. What do you say to a guy that big and drunk?

See. We’re all writers in our heads. Why all the bags, sir?

Therein’ lies the rub. This is a line I must hang on to, even if I am having a tough time remembering things lately. Do not forget this one, for it seems to provide a great deal of peace and contentment when I speak it. To myself mostly, for I think I’m one of the few who truly understands the significance of the statement. Therein’ lies the rub. It is a satisfactory answer for any good philosophical question.

Therein’ lies the rub.

I first heard this answer from one of the many ladies in my short life. Some were girlfriends. Most weren’t. Therein’ lies the rub comes from the mouth of one of my wives, my twenty-two wives, all of which I worked with during my twenties. I worked in a small bank, one of two men who worked there, a third being the janitor but no one ever counted him. Janitors rarely get counted, I’m afraid.

It became clear to me by the fifth year in the bank that although I was famously single and even rumoured to be notoriously gay, I was not at all single and unlike the opportunities of most men who face life with one wife at home and no wife at work, I was facing a work day with twenty-two wives and an evening all alone. Who has the better chance of survival? That’s like asking, which shark will bite me first, mommy?

I am not gay, for the record. If any of my wives are reading this now, and I can’t fathom why at all they would be except that perhaps I am destined to become famous beyond my wildest dreams and any scrap of my mind is now worth a pot of gold, published for all to read. On the Internet no doubt. Nothing is more tawdry than ones work sitting on a server on the Internet. It seems so naked and cold, like being in the back of a Diamond taxi.

We’ll get back to that. This story needs to go somewhere and as the walk through the Annex is non-eventful, the journey within the flat-haired head bobbing to the party is long and spiritual. More should be written about these moments. Not the actual event, but before the event, what we imagine the event to be. The event is almost always a let down, as it can never reach the level of pleasure and simplicity one imagines life to be. In our heads and minds, we are all kings and queens, the centre of the universe. At a party we are all pawns, circling, jockeying for a spot near the food table and the coldest beer in the cooler.

Therein’ lies the rub. My, my, that says it all.

I am not gay. I just don’t have very many girlfriends. I am not the nicest pumpkin in the patch, though I do have one good, clean side which would be suitable for a jack-o-lantern. A few women see this, but they also remember their childhoods, when pumpkins they chose were supposed to be big and ripe, the best in the neighbourhood. I’m more like a pumpkin smashed on the sidewalk by hooligans, the stringy mess you step over on your way to the door to collect your candy treat.

I’ve had two or three long relationships, none of which lasted more than a few years. Like all things, they circle. Out they go on a thick limb, a new adventure, only to turn back when they hit a carry-on piece of baggage that both she and I had seen from the beginning and naively assumed we could just ignore. Bumper cars. Hit the side, bounce back into the ring.

I have a tough time speaking to women. I find them intimidating. I’d rather just look at them, which I’m quite good at and have developed into a casual sport. I figure one day, I’ll catch the eye of one particular specimen and she will know what to say. That is my qualifications for a potential mate: she’ll know what to say.

The girls I have dated and lived with before all fell under my spell the usual way. Seduction. For years I seduce them as a friend, each of them unaware I’m doing so. Even I am unaware. I’m only aware of these things after the fact, as I walk the streets of the Annex towards a garden party. This is when I do my best thinking.

Time will go by and my women friends will take glances at me from different angles. They will read something that I have written, as this is one of the few things I can do when I do it, and it is the rule of advertising that one should highlight their product’s best assets. They might witness me playing with a child and see that I am a sensitive madcap. They may get into a car with me and feel assured that I’m in control and I know where I’m going. If only I could write as well as I drive. I learned to drive so well by doing so much of it when I was younger. I was a delivery driver. You learn by doing. Therein’ lies the rub.

My girls may experience some of my vision, that I have a smattering of taste and style. I know what I like and how to get it. This trait is few and far between these days, so be thankful if you find someone who has it. As stubborn and bitter as they are sure to be, it’s worth the fight in the end.

Eventually, my women will begin to let go of their childhood lessons. She is not Cinderella nor is every man a prince, and pumpkins do not have to be the fanciest in the patch. Pumpkins can please in all sorts of ways.

This is how I seduce my women. By being just a plain old pumpkin, but one your eyes keeping drifting back to, and you haven’t a clue why.

Of course, in a world that is proliferated with ads, where the ad rules and subtlety drools, in many people’s minds my approach to picking up chicks calls into question (still remembering their childhood lessons) the state of my sexual preference. It also leaves me dateless for a garden party in the Annex and the prime candidate to be set up with a big breasted golfer. Who has time to be seduced anymore? It takes so damn long. Months. Years. I could be married, a father and divorced by then.

The other thing that women never see about me but would quickly learn after we had spent some time together is that I can be quite funny. I inherited this from my father, who has kept my mother by his side for years with his sense of humour and honesty. I don’t know how honest I am (I keep debating this on a regular basis) but I can make people laugh. That is invaluable at any time in one’s life, if not all the time. How can you live in this world of such shit when it wants to be and not share a laugh with a loved one after you’ve tripped on your own underwear, rushing out of the bathroom to get the phone? It keeps you sane, good stuff like that.

I was indeed married to twenty-two women, all of which over time, amongst NSF cheques and crashed computers saw these things about me, wished their pumpkins at home would learn some new tricks or at least wished to be young again and wander the pumpkin patch with a whole new set of criteria. I’m not saying I was the perfect man when I came to work. I was the perfect man when I left.

The circle. I have no girlfriend. There is no time for seduction anymore. Pumpkins.

I see the house. There is a note on the front door that informs all guests arriving that the front door is locked, but please come around to the side of the house and into the backyard. This is where the party begins. This is where the circling begins. Feast.

Flat hair and feast.

I am alone. That is the next spoke in the wheel. Because there is no time for seduction anymore, I am alone. How do I feel about this? Mixed. Like a strong rum and Coke- sharp on the tongue, dry in the throat, soft in the heart.

I’m trying to believe (trying being the operative word) that we are all where we need to be. If you are an alcoholic lying in a ditch, well, you need to be there. You need to wake up with grit on your face and vomit on your clothes and realize the struggle to find truth is getting the best of you and it’s time to try another approach. AA is a good place to go. Most people would call Alcoholics Anonymous good old fashioned community. There, people are not sharks. They listen. They know what it is like to struggle for enlightenment.

People are where they are meant to be. If you’re a janitor, maybe you need to clean up your life. If your a ditch digger, maybe you need to find truth in the monotony of doing something simple repeatedly and very well. And if you’re alone, well maybe you need to practice being alone, so it doesn’t seem so bad. Because, at times it can feel really bad. You almost wish a shark would come along and circle you, just to keep you company.

Apparently, this is a Buddhist concept I was informed by one woman in my life who didn’t need any seducing. She is still around, not seduced, just around because she wants to be and also because she struggles with truth and being alone and when you don’t like the feeling of being alone in the world, you forgo seduction and look for anything that lives and breathes and occasionally says, “Thank you.”

It’s a Buddhist concept that only when you can confront the thing that most scares you, do you become free. Being alone scares me and yet I have chosen to live my life this way, going to garden parties alone, taking taxis alone, sleeping alone, writing alone. It is my perverted way of confronting what I fear most, in hope that one day I will be free of it, and actually be able to share my life with someone else. I will accept that they may one day leave and I will be alone again. Perhaps it is this that drives so many married couples apart. So afraid are they to be alone, they can’t lose themselves in their spouse, in case that wife or husband abandons them somewhere down the road. Then they’d have no one.
A moment of Zen thought- we stay alone because we are afraid to be alone.

I open the gate and step into an Annex garden party about to blast off. The sharks are out and hungry. Here comes dinner.

My hostess. She greets me with a cocktail dress far too short and a greeting far too long. The gown is black with red trim, a poor choice for lady in her forties who has fangs and a big butt.

Her words, not mine. “It’s Guff! Look, everyone, it’s Guff! Put your hand in the ice bucket and get yourself a cold drink, darling. We’ve bought plenty for tonight and I had you in mind when I bought the extra case. Premium stuff. That’s how you like your beer. Things are going wonderfully. No one has really arrived yet, but it’s been a write up since we opened the floodgates. How did you come?”

The beer is indeed cold. I think about putting my face in the ice trough and blowing bubbles. Surely, that would draw some of the attention off me. I could feel thirty pairs of eyes belonging to people who presumably hadn’t really arrived, pressing into my back for answers. Who’s this clown and why all the fuss?

Therein’ lies the rub.

“I took a cab.”

“Along the artery? Good God, you could have died! The cabs are like pez dispensers, popping out of every laneway all along. You buckle up in those things, don’t you?”

“Like I have cramps.” This analogy is lost on my hostess and somewhat on me, but at that very moment I decide to say whatever comes into my head for the rest of the evening. No questions. A steady stream of nonsense with hidden messages beneath might just keep the sharks at bay. It occurs to me that one buckles over when they have cramps, not buckles up. Nice going, slick.

“Start that beer,” she instructs me with a peck on the cheek. She smells like gasoline and lavender. I figure she pumped the tank before dropping the car for the evening.

The party is indeed full of nobodies. These folks are merely the warmup act and I’m left to decide if I’m the denouement to the warm up act or the prologue to the arrival of the real guests. In the middle. No man’s land. That’s just perfect. It’s exactly where I feel I’m positioned these days. Smack dab in the middle.

The next spoke on the wheel- my high expectations. Having high expectations is a curse. It is also the only way one can get anything done with an element of grace and creativity. High expectations reflect a desire to push for something greater, above the norm. It means to push, push beyond the limits of what is expected, and I’m a great pusher. I push my friends, my family, my colleagues, myself. I don’t tolerate mediocrity and thus many don’t tolerate me.

Therein lies the rub. From now on I shall simply refer to this expression which answers so much as the rub. It’s the rub, baby. Right there, that’s the rub.

I expect anyone I come into contact with to be pure and simple, articulate and creative, loving and peaceful. It’s not too much to ask, is it? Of course, I’m none of these things when others meet me, but that’s okay. I’m working on it.

I’m at a party and I’m going to have to engage in conversation with other human beings. And I know exactly what they’re going to say and what my response will be. It’s all conditioned. It would be much more interesting if people began their conversations with what they were working on in life. Face it, we all speak as if we’ve got it all together. Show no weakness. I’m holding it together. I’m firm. I’m tight. How about you? What vulnerabilities can I see? I am a shark after all. I need an opening to attack.

Just as it is every good advertisers rule to highlight the strengths of their product, it is the job of all critics to seek out the weaknesses and strike and strike again. We’re all advertisers. We’re all critics. What a fucked up struggle that exists in us all.

Just once I’d like to meet someone who shook my hand, maybe a tall man with a thin mustache and yellow eyes or a flight attendant who’s renewed her membership in the mile high club so many times that her uniform is permanently out to be dry cleaned. I’d like to shake their hand and hear them say, “Hi, I don’t know why I’m here. I should be at home working on my poor posture and the fact that I shoplift the damnedest things from drugstores even though I could buy them ten times over.” Now that would be something. That would really be something. That would get my attention like sour spit in the face. I’d stop thinking about the circling sharks and drop my lines.

“Oh, hey, don’t sweat it,” I’d offer. “It’s okay, really. I’ve caused so many women to hate themselves after being with me, they could form a support group in my honour. I have a golf swing that goes from inside out and ends with me wobbling on my left foot. I once stole money from the petty cash at work and bought vodka with it. Sometimes I pick my nose, especially if I know someone is watching me. And I have high expectations. The expectations I have for myself are so great I’ve driven myself into depression because there is no way I could possibly achieve them in the short time I’ve given myself. Also, I don’t really want to do the work, even though I know that the only artists worth considering worked their asses off, went mad and never received an ounce of due respect in their lifetimes. But, I figure I’ll be different. I’ll work at a comfortable pace, not push too hard and be wildly famous. It’s bound to happen.”

The response to this answer? It would be pure and inspired, a joy to hear. I have no doubts.

Instead, the evening continued with this introduction, “Hey, Guff! Remember me? You should remember an old high school pal.”

I look at the jerk approaching me, bumping elbows and spilling wine on his unironed Old Navy shirt. I know him, know the face not the name. I consider telling him that I’m having a real problem remembering small details, like my bank balance and people from my past. The small stuff. But I don’t dare tell him anything about myself. I’d leave myself vulnerable. The sharks, remember. I’m in the pool now.

I pretend to know who he is. I smile. Hey, you old fuck. What’re you doing here? This was supposed to be a party where I could be free of the past, but now you’re here and going to mess it all up. I have to relive my childhood with you and remember the things I did to define myself to you and everyone we hung out with, eventually pushing me down a road that lead to adulthood and Friday night garden parties where I have to revisit my childhood all over again.

Circles. Getting dizzy.

From the whirlpool of colours emerges a name.

“Todd,” I say.

He grins at my ability to pull things together in a pinch. “You remember?”

I tell him I do. We shake and he clinks my beer with his fruit wine. I don’t like the looks of him already. I wait for, pray for something vulnerable to pour from his lips. It’s our only chance.

Why don’t I offer up a vulnerability first, you wonder? Put others at ease and thus begin on my own terms?

Are you crazy? It’s a vicious ocean out there.

“What are you doing here?”

Here I stop. I just stop being dizzy and angry and flat haired. I stop my expectations, my cruel observations, my inane ramblings in my head about how miserable it is to be circling, be circled all the time. I stop seeing sharks and speed driven cabbies who know nothing about the artery and stupid garden parties held for no other reason than to show off a new dress and house that no one really cares about except the contractor who’s already drunk by the bar and telling anyone who’ll listen a suspicious tale about retractable skylights.

I’m stopping. I’m stopping right now. Stop breathing. Stop thinking. Stop the expectations.
Stillness. Night in the very, very north.

I hear the question one more time, “What are you doing here?” Growing up, I knew Todd pretty well. He stole my girlfriend in high school and I hated him for it. Months later, I could care less and she fucked him over twice as bad as she did me. Live by the sword, die by the sword, I say. He was good looking, slender, a sailor. He hung with the sailing crowd, the few that there were. Always tanned and with wind blown hair that somehow didn’t look too bad at all. Rich parents, as all the sailing kids had. You got to have money to be in the sailing crowd.

Gay? We considered it at times. Probably no more than people look me over and picture me in a Gay Pride parade with a diaper on, tossing out free condoms.

Not gay. That was the final consensus.

He was all of those things to me and the conversation could have gone down the track on that information alone, baggage being exchanged without us even knowing. “You stole my girlfriend, asshole. Why are we talking like civilized men?”

“You were the guy who hung out in the music room all the time. What do you know?”

All this is true. But, I stopped. I stopped and began anew. Todd was not a sailor, not a friend from high school, not a rich kid or the guy who stole my ex-girlfriend. None of that. He was another human being. He had potential. I just had to get at it.

“Todd,” I said. “This conversation could go two ways. I really don’t want it to go the one way, so I’m going to force things down the other road. You asked me what I’m doing here? I’m here because initially I didn’t want to come but my good upbringing reminded me that we all have to do things we don’t want to do and so I put on these faded slacks and shirt, took a cab down the artery and did the same thing you did, read the note on the front door, came around to the side gate, took a deep breath and stepped into the shark tank.”

He looked at me as if I’d lost my mind and happily I had. I was beginning to work loose. “I’m a bit of a fuck up, Todd. I went to some low grade schools after high school, even though I was accepted to a stack of top end universities and probably would have graduated with a nice fat degree and be making a ton more dough than I do now and be twice as miserable. Instead, I went to a community college for two years, screwed around and did such juvenile work that was praised as being wonderful, even I was embarrassed and would dream at night I was applying to Kindergarten as a grown man and didn’t have the skills. Now, if an admission like that about the dreams I have doesn’t tell you anything about how open I want this conversation to be, then try this.”

The sailor boy with the ruffled hair, Todd, looks for a way out. But the real guests have begun to arrive, filling the tank one by one through the garden gate. They carry gifts and big bellies, every woman it appears, wearing a black maternity dress. I make a mental note- the baby era has begun, take note of what babies are wearing in the city. You’ll be giving a lot of gifts.

I flick back to Todd. Even though there is a look of real fear on his face, trapped with the insane and delusional, I sense he wants to hear more. He wants nothing but to hear more. How low can you go, he wants to know? How wretched will you get in front of me? I haven’t seen you in years and you just want to lay your head on my lap and have me stroke it. Have you no self respect?

Tonight, none.

“I began to feel ashamed of myself, Todd, after the first year of college, banging the goat while all my friends were living in residence, working hard and taking exams. I think we had a test at my little school once. I studied for about ten minutes, did some hot knives with a pal and pulled off a ninety-four the next day. I may have still been stoned during the test, which added some challenge and no doubt resulted in the loss of six marks somewhere along the line. I really should have done better, but hey, no point in beating yourself up over it. It was a hell of a buzz.
In the second year of my community college vacation I lived in this big, yellow, Victorian house with three other guys who had no clue either what they wanted to do with their lives except play music and write songs and we did a fair amount of that. None of us could agree on a taste in music which caused some friction, but it was also one of the most educational experiences of my life. I could go in any room in that house and hear music I’d never heard before, tune into a whole new genre and sink right into it for days or weeks at a time. That was an education, Todd. Paid thousands of dollars to live in a music library. I’m eternally grateful. I’m getting into the song writing by this point, you see, banging out a few new tunes every week. That’s what we did at this school, write songs, record them, go to classes aimed at the intellectually challenged and smoke black hash. You were probably working your ass off. Good for you. Not me.”

“I partied a lot in school.” Todd offers this tidbit with some trepidation. He’s not sure if it has anything to do with what I’m talking about. I figure when he lets go of this need to match his sentences with my train of thought, then we’ll have something.

Still, I praise him. “That’s good, man. That’s a good place to start. Hold that while I stretch this a little longer. You may want to change your point of entry into this little kettle of truth we’re boiling.”

He looks at me puzzled. He looks to get away. I think he’s seeing gnashing teeth everywhere.

“This old house I’m living in with the boys, well, it has a porch and from the window of my bedroom, I can step out onto the roof of the porch and watch the street come alive and go to sleep. I remember this as clear as the day it happened, and that is something for me to be saying, Todd, as lately I’ve been losing all sorts of shit out of my head and I’m a little troubled. There might be lead in the pipes where I live.
It was the first real day of spring and it was warm enough to go outside in a T-shirt and sit in the park with a deck of cigarettes and your local dog walkers. I sat up on my little roost, all alone, and I’m thinking to myself, Jeez, I have to get out of this shit hole and do something else. You know, I’ve always figured I’ve gone to school to learn what I don’t want to do. For most people, it’s the other way around. I didn’t want to go into the music business, Todd. I was too young to begin with and I was too scared. It didn’t come easy enough to me. If you wanted to be a rock star, you have to get out there, shake hands, work hard and pay your dues playing yeast infected bars where drunk folk talk throughout your whole set. I mean, let’s cut to the chase- that’s all we wanted to be. It was rock star school. Lame-os like myself who sat in their beds and dreamed of playing to thousands of people while their girlfriends performed just about any act of sex they demanded. It was all guys at the rock star school, by the way. Only guys are egotistical enough to think this way.”

“I’m just going to get myself another drink. I’ll be back.” Todd finds an opening in the circle and begins to move away. He would never return if I let him go. I dump some of my beer into his glass.

“Instant bar, man. Now, listen to this. We’re almost there.” I place a hand on his shoulder and speak directly to him, no looking away, no glancing around to see who my next victim would be. I was right there, cold talking.

“I’m up on the porch roof and I have this brochure from another school, a polytechnical college and there’s this program they offer that lets you be a TV star. It’s TV star school, Todd. Radio and Television they called it, but it was just like the community college, filled with lazy losers who thought a piece of paper from school would be their ticket to stardom. All of these people I’ve gone to school with, including myself of course, all we wanted was to be recognized. We wanted to be up on a stage or in front of the camera and have people recognize us. “Hey, look that’s Todd Lounsberry. He’s on TV. He made it. He really did something with his life.”

Todd snaps to attention, perhaps because I’ve used his last name in our conversation, my conversation. I dawns on me that I’ve recalled his last name. I’ll bet he doesn’t know mine.
“I’m sorry, but I forget your last name,” he says to me. He grimaces and cracks his plastic wine glass.

I smile. I like Todd, after all. “It’s Henry,” I say. “I like your style, man.”

He rolls up his eyes and relaxes. “Henry, that’s it. Guff Henry. You can never forget the Guff.”

I had him now and I didn’t want to lose him. “You see, Todd. That afternoon on the roof porch was the beginning of the end for me. It was the root that held the Guff tree. I made the decision then to go from rock star school to TV star school and give up another three years of my life, waiting, waiting for the one day when poof!, it would all happen and I’d be everything I wanted to be. A rock star, a TV star, a movie star. Basically, a star. And I’m not one, Todd. I’m just a guy who works at a bank and talks about writing but never really writes and never really does any work at all. I dabble. I’m a dabbler, Todd. Shit, thank God you’re here to witness this. I’m telling you right now, I’ve been a dabbler all my life and it hasn’t changed yet and I don’t know when it will. I dabble in this, dabble in that, a little music, a little film. But I don’t work at it, Todd. Therein lies the rub. I’ve been using that expression all day and it just seems to get better and better. You agree?”

Todd nods and mulls over its meaning or maybe it is the crab cakes he mulls. He’s mulling.

“I’m a workaholic, always have to be doing something. I can’t sleep at night unless I feel I’ve done something productive. I need to produce. I’m like a stuffed bowel- I need to get this shit out of me!”

I say this loudly and a few heads turn. My hostess hears me swear and looks at the drink trough. “Have another beer, honey. It’s far too early for that kind of language.”

“I like to sketch a bit when I get some free time,” confesses Todd, inching towards the ice bucket and grabbing a beer for himself. I figure he needs to be inebriated to bare this.

“That’s fab, man. We’ll get to you in a minute.” I crack open a second beer, rip the label off the wet bottle and chug. “This is what the real circle of my life is. I have this overwhelming need to produce. I feel like I don’t even deserve air to breathe unless I do my part for the human race and produce something of value on a regular basis. These are the high expectations I was telling you about. I think everyone should be like this and if they’re not, I have no time for you. I’m a produce slut. Constantly, I’m thinking about what I want to be working on, protecting my time so that I can work on it and then I never work on it! Because I’m a dabbler, and dabblers don’t do any work, they dabble, Todd. They just fucking dabble!”

A guest turns to me and tells me to modify my language. These are the words he uses. His date for the evening, a long faced brunette, stands next to him. She looks aroused by the word fuck mentioned so close to her ears.

“I dabbled in rock star school, I dabbled in TV star school, I dabbled in music and film, I dabbled at the bank I worked at and I dabble in front of my computer, dabbling with words, pretending to be a writer. I’m a despicable dabbler.”

“Have you thought about seeing someone?” Todd glances around the garden. Dusk has set in and it’s tough seeing farther than ten feet. “Arman is here somewhere, I think he takes cases like you.”

“I’m seeing you, right now. Jesus, if we all just spoke honestly like we are right now, there would be a lot less counselors and shrinks to screw up everyone’s lives. Look man, you’re going to see other people from high school, days, weeks, months from now and you’ll undoubtedly tell them you ran into me at some haughty garden party where the sushi was dry and the sharks swam all night.

“Huh?”

“Forget it. You’ll understand later.” I push on towards some unknown conclusion. “Tell everyone you see I say hi, tell them I’m a pretender in the big city. Tell them I’ve dabbled all my life and the results are typical of all dabblers- lots of promise, lots of let downs. But tell them... well, tell them I’m working on it.” For a brief moment, I choke up. Getting out the rest of my thoughts is a battle. “I’m working on it. And I’m not dabbling this time. It’s a real effort.”

Todd looks at me with a bemused expression. “You want me to tell them that?”

“Tell it to the world, baby. I’m through.” I clink my bottle with his to seal the confession and slap him on the butt like a first base coach. I wait for Todd to say something more but he doesn’t. He smiles.

“I’ll see you around, Guff.”

“Sure.”

He pauses for a moment, searching for something more to say and then heads inside the house.

I stand in the middle of the garden, surveying the party which has swollen to forty or more. No one approaches me. The sharks are gone. It is just people now, people like me and Todd, struggling to hold it all in, desperate to get it all out. We are all in the same ocean, just fish. All fish.

I wrestle a wedge of poached salmon off a soggy platter and head towards home, walking, chewing carefully.

Without the extra bag.