The Undergraduates Read online

  Sleep. I just want to wake.

  I want to wake.

  I slowly, slowly slowly, I shake… I consciously shake my head but only my eyes open. My body still frozen.

  I force my body, compel it. Compel it.

  Shawn!

  My body at the bottom of a deep lake and luggage floats above me to the surface.

  I begin to slowly shake my head.

  SHAWN.

  I consciously send a shake down my body. It feels as though it is a hundred thousand pounds.

  I wait for the release value to expulse the heavy air.

  Sssssssssss.

  I regain my body and feel my body and turn my head to look outside and watch the rain but it has stopped and I lie here waiting for my body to start.

  Shawn.

  I yawn, an exhausted body yawn and say to myself, I should do something. I stay here like this for a few more minutes thinking about that something.

  My eyes tear and I dry them on the back of my hand and slowly I stand and turn off the TV and cross my apartment. I grab my sweater from off the back of my chair, put on my shoes and exit and walk down the three flights of stairs. I’m outside and the clouds are stacked and some are brush strokes and there is blue. I continue down the sidewalk.

  I pass a man standing in a dumpster tossing items into his shopping cart rolled up against the bin. A pair of shoes, part of a shelving unit, a carryon size suitcase, a paperback novel.

  I cross the street. A couple speaking French, the woman wearing a pack; the man snaps photos of the skyline. The woman looking elsewhere.

  I button up my collar two more buttons. This sweater, this grey cable knit sweater Gabriella’s sister bought me for Christmas three or four Christmases ago. I bumped into her a few months back. It still felt like spring and she smiled and waved as she rode by on her bicycle. I nodded to her and she stopped and turned around and we went for tea. We mostly talked about her, and only briefly mentioned Gabriella. “Have you spoken with her recently?”

  “No,” I replied.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, I don’t know.” That’s all we said about that.

  Amber had just gotten out of a relationship. She talked poorly about her ex. She complained about his arrogance, his lack of interest in anything other than his job and motorcycle. I wasn’t really paying attention but I asked her why she was with him and she said she didn’t know. “Maybe I was just lonely,” she considered out loud. She said we should catch up again. I said okay. I walked her to her bike and we hugged goodbye. She texted me an hour or so later and said thanks and it was good to catch up and that we should go to a movie sometime. We haven’t spoken since.

  I go to a park. It’s a historic park that was recently torn apart and put back together to be returned to its historic self. There are two fountains and a war memorial with benches and geometrically congruent gravel pathways. I met Christine here. She was walking her dog. Her dog greeted me and I said something about dogs needing a male figure in their lives. I have no idea what I meant by that. I considered that it sounded like a dick comment but didn’t intend for it to be a dick comment.

  We dated for three weeks. After week two she turned over a postcard from Gabriella I had taped on my fridge. It’d been there for a couple of years. It had become part of my apartment, the stuff that surrounds me, less distinct than the three plants I water weekly. I was in the shower and Christine was making dinner. She must have noticed the postcard and picked it up and read it. She found it threatening. Those are my words, not hers. I got out of the shower and was toweling myself. She walked into my room holding the postcard and accused, “What’s this?” It took me a second to understand what she was referring too. I laughed and responded that it was nothing, trying to make nothing of it. There wasn’t anything to it. She asked me why I still had it taped to my fridge. She was making something of it. I shrugged and said I’d throw it out. She looked at me unimpressed. So I said I’d tear it up and throw it out. Then I said I’d throw out my couch the girl sat on and my knives and forks the girl ate with and my bathtub the girl showered in and my bed the girl slept in. She scoffed and told me to fuck off. I was laughing when she tried to slam the door exiting my apartment; it’s on an air mechanism. I tossed the card in a drawer after she left.

  In the park the fountain is empty. In it a sign held in place by a cinder block reads, “No Swimming”. In the summer water sprays ten feet into the air and holds eight inches of water.

  I continue through the park not knowing where I’m going because I don’t care where I’m going only moving. Five Police officers in cowboy hats pass me.

  I ask, “Life guard on duty?”

  None of them smile.

  I walk out of the park onto a sidewalk and down a street with million-dollar infill townhouses and 1920 era houses boarded up waiting to be torn down for million-dollar infill townhouses.

  I go into an art museum thinking that looking at something beautiful will trigger something.

  I’m standing ten feet from the ticket counter looking at the fee schedule. It’s $28. I leave the gallery.

  I walk. Houses, seven story office buildings, shops with old brick apartments above them. A boarded up construction site with a billboard showcasing new condominiums, “Your inner city home starting at $549,000.” I do the math and wonder how anyone could ever have a down payment for that.

  I loo at my shoes as I’m walking and Gabriella appears again. I think I miss her. I think about buying new shoes. I can’t afford new shoes. To avoid missing her I fill up this lonely time with others and yet think about her, even when I’m with someone else. We’ll be at dinner and this girl will move her hair some way or hold her glass some way or laugh some way and I’ll think about Gabriella, she’ll be there with me. Or I’ll hear a song or smell something or someone will say something and she’ll be there with me.

  This girl undresses differently than Gabriella, I’ll think.

  Her breasts look different.

  Her vagina tastes different.

  She orgasms differently.

  I’ll go down on this girl and think of Gabriella and all I want is to make her cum so I can go to sleep and picture us back in Spain or LA or Seattle, hugging and holding warm together no matter the weather.

  I’m with others but only with her.

  I walk home.

  I make dinner.

  I eat dinner.

  I watch the news.

  I check email.

  I shower.

  I go to sleep.

  I wake up, dress for work, go to work. I task: I fill out spreadsheets, send emails, go to a staff consistency meeting.

  I finish work.

  I take the train the four stations home.

  I nap.

  I wake.

  Karen comes over. Her husband is working late. We sleep together. She lies beside me for a few minutes. We say even less to each other than we normally do. I get out of bed. She leaves.

  Night passes. A day passes. Another one. I go to work. Leave work. I do errands: groceries, an inner-tube for my bike. I get home. I fall asleep but nothing deep, just in and out of consciousness. Nothing restful.

  Gabriella enters my mind again and I picture her in her life, going about her day, routines, the way she sleeps, the side of the bed she might be on, if she still sleeps on her side of the bed. I picture her at her job that I’ve never been to but have heard stories about. I barely know Seattle, just the airport, the drive to her parent’s house they left for her while seconded in Saudi Arabia. I’ve been to her favourite coffee shop, favourite local clothing store, best place for local music. I fill in the other parts lying here waiting to wake or find deeper sleep. Other parts of Gabriella.

  The images stop so I open my eyes.

  My head on my pillow I stare at the red bookshelf against my white wall, the motionless ceiling fan, the morning light through the venetian blinds picking out specks of dust suspended in the air. I take a long breath in imagining I
’m inhaling all this dust, the ocean, drinking up the sea to let some population cross it and I inhale more and more and hold my breath, my lungs at their fullest and I can’t hold my lungs any longer ten seconds twelve thirteen and it explodes out of me and I drown everyone, fuck everyone.

  People drowning, an entire civilization drowning.

  Fuck everybody.

  I don’t feel like anything, nothing. Just the weight of my body on my mattress and my blankets on my chest. I look at the clock on my bedside table, it’s 7:13 AM. Another day.

  I think about something, something to get pissed off at.

  The stress, ache in my stomach.

  My stiff neck. A sore throat.

  Something at work, an email, a task.

  The dust suspended in the morning light that cuts through open blinds.

  My bladder gets me up. I go to the washroom. I go to the kitchen and fill a mug with water and sit on the couch. The dolphin slaughter, the Roman numeral wall-mounted clock, the postcard, the mug, my watch, the book, candles on my mantel, things and things and things. I’m a parasite. I’m what surrounds me.

  That’s all I am. This is all I am. A parasite. Just a compilation of stories told, watched, overheard. I’m things learned, wished forgotten, said in secret. I’m only a story. I’ve been behind a locked door hiding from a screaming bipolar mother shedding tears into a pillow. I’ve been slapped followed by a sorry. I’ve been a missed period and hours late getting home from sleeping with my professor. I’ve been sequestered in a camp sheltered in UN-sanctioned housing. I’ve shivered away an eye of the storm under a bridge. I’ve shitted in a plastic bag to toss over a fence. I’ve been hooded and pissed on. I’ve had rectal searches and my sacred text flushed down a toilet. I’ve been circumcised to prevent the spread of AIDS and given the thumbs up from on an aircraft carrier. I’ve been an abortion, a speeding ticket, busted for shoplifting, a forgotten class valedictorian speech.

  Is that all I am? Just pieces of other people, people I’m with, beside me, under me? People I see on TV, read in the paper? Is that all I am? I’m just other people, the stories of other people.

  Before finding their voice to speak out at in the larger world, they tell me their struggles. I’m their backstage rehearsal, their costume fitting, their vocal coach, where they learn their lines and block their sequence. Through me they ready for the bright lights and journalist critiques. Obscenities mouthed into my ear during an evening in their bed, they prepare for their debut. I experience parts of the world while in them and they prepare for it moaning above me. This person, Shawn, clinging to exotic stories and exposed bodies. I don’t need to experience the world through the Discovery Channel. I watch a girl’s chest heave above me. They let go under me. They talk of travels and broken hearts and being whistled at on a sidewalk in Bogotá. They complain about work and boyfriends and girlfriends and bad haircuts and gaining weight and commuting and the city they live in wishing they were somewhere else, being someone else.

  That’s all I am. This is who I am. I had stopped being this person. Felt something towards another person. Together became one person, became Shawn and Gabriella. Then stopped being Shawn and Gabriella. I returned to this person. A diary, a voicemail, a recorder of musings over a coffee in a café at Pearson International Airport waiting out an ice storm in southern Ontario. This is what I am, other people.

  Me, I’m only stories, an account of others’ imaginations and past events and objects pulled from shelves and scraps from their hearts I receive and place on my walls and bookshelves and as many as I can meet an entire generation falling from its great height and one more story unfolding three-floors above the ground my eyes closed shut tight journeying in this place a place without connections and loss and suffering and servitude to past mistakes. Before light there is darkness. Squeeze the candle flame to the wick with your fingers.

  3.

  I wash my face.

  I brush my teeth. I spit and return the toothbrush to sit beside another in the cup on the shelf above the sink. I can’t remember who I got the second one out for. Who last stayed the night and wanted to brush the evening’s sleep out of her mouth.

  I step back and open the cupboard below the sink and take out my medication.

  I knock the pills around inside and then pop off the cap and spill them all out onto my palm. I count them. Seven left, seven days. Seven days left. I usually refill the prescription about now. I scoop the pills up and look at the little orange bundles of every morning daily routine. I’ve been taking the pills since first year university. They were supposed to moderate my anxiety. Make me less sad, make me less happy, take the bottom and top off the extremes. Every morning, day shift, afternoon shift, midterms, final exams, summer break, real job, vacations.

  But not today, maybe not again. I look at myself in the mirror. I’m not going to take them again.

  I finish getting ready for work.

  I take the train to work.

  It’s raining.

  I walk the few blocks to the office.

  I see Karen walking though the building’s main foyer. She’s holding a coffee with both hands walking with her colleagues. She’s wearing a black dress, ankle-cut black boots. Her hair is up, black. I’ve never seen her not look gorgeous. I stop and look into my bag making it look like I’m doing something, something so she doesn’t see me seeing her.

  I walk to the bank of elevators. I push the button. I exit on my floor and walk down the hallway and into my firm. I pass co-workers and exchange nods and sit down at my desk. I log on and start running through tickets that have been assigned to me. This is my job. I provide user support for a database that stores, manages and analyzes information that is geographically based; it turns space into a quantity. I know where trees and buildings and garbage bins are. I know how many there are, when they were put there, when they’ll likely need to be replaced. This is my first job since finishing university. It is my first real job. It provides me with a meaningful income. That is all it provides me.

  A wave of gentle nausea passes through me. I stop typing. I can feel my throat in the back of my mouth leading down to my stomach. Maybe it’s the lack of medication? My body anticipating something, reacting to a lack of something? I go to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

  I spend the rest of the morning not working, just drinking water and answering phone inquiries. Our calls, our answer rates are monitored. Today I’ll come up short miserably.

  I read webpages, general news, film reviews. I go to the science abstracts. The Tasmanian Devil’s genome sequenced. Planned exhumation of Shakespeare to determine death. Spike in childhood diabetes. I answer the phone. “Did you try (so and so)?” I ask. I type up a work ticket. My head isn’t feeling right. I type up another ticket.

  I go for a coffee across the street. I chat with the barista. She’s curvy and quick witted. Big eyes. She tends to look at me with her chin tilted down, over her glasses. She’s too young or I’m too old or I’m not her type or she’s not into me. I pour sugar into my coffee.

  “See you tomorrow,” I say.

  She smiles, “Have a good day.”

  I return to work and return to avoiding it.

  My throat feels heavy, like its weighing down on my stomach.

  The work day finishes.

  I leave passing by co-workers, nodding. I don’t believe in overtime.

  I take the train home.

  I exit and take a direct route home looking at not one person on the busy sidewalk for the less than ten-minute walk.

  I push open the front door. I see my neighbour walking down the stairs in our apartment building. It’s a converted historic hotel and has an open staircase to access each floor. It has an openness, a built-in socialness, no longer afforded to today’s apartment point towers focused around the elevator shaft.

  She beams and gives me a hug. “Hey Shawn.”

  “Hi Vanessa.”

  We separate.

  She tugs on my sw
eater. “Good day?”

  “Good enough.”

  “You okay?”

  I shrug. “Engh, just feeling a bit off.”

  “Oh, anything I can do?”

  “Fly me to someplace tropical.”

  “When I’m rich I promise to.”

  “Thank-you. … You look good. How’s your Mexican lover?”

  She blushes and laughs. “I’m not that loud am I?”

  I reply saying something about at least you’re both good looking to picture. We banter for another minute and then say goodbye and hug again and say see you soon.

  I enter my apartment, take off and toss my sweater on the back of the chair and drop my pack on its seat and step out of my sneakers. I get a glass of water and turn on my stereo and press Play. The song, it’s melodic drums, keyboards, minimal guitars and falsetto vocals.

  I sit down on the couch and look outside.

  An image of Vanessa having sex enters my mind. She’s been sleeping with George for a month or two. He’s an exchange student and she’s a tour guide whose legs are so perfect that she pays her rent modelling shoes and leggings. She’s described the work as “the jury is still out if it’s unsound for my ego.”

  I pick up my phone and think about messaging Laura to see if she wants to come over.

  I put my phone back down. I don’t know what I want.

  I go check my email.

  Daryl has sent me a message that reads, “Funniest video I’ve seen.” I click the link and window opens. The video starts, it finishes. I don’t laugh. I close the video and close my email and stand leaning against my desk.

  My phone rings. I go pick it up off the coffee table.

  “Hello.”

  It’s Alex. He says he wants to go skiing – do blow. I tell him I’m not in the mood. I’ve been in the past, not in the mood now.

  “You bore me!”

  “I know, major disappointment.”