that's life

by Melissa Catcher

The dangerous sounds of the men on Yorkville's patio bars laughing hard enough to ward off demons. Or summon them. I sat on the bench outside my apartment drinking warm sherry out of a water bottle beside the hissing fountain on the first night of the spring when it is warm enough to wear a tank top and not get goose pimples on my upper arms. The inane music coming from the bars with the insistent beat marching the drinkers to oblivion. An older blonde woman in a ridiculous sundress skipping ahead of her partner down Cumberland Ave in this agonizing display of rehearsed flippancy or audacity.

Only a few hours ago, I parked my bike, sweaty and slightly out of breath, and sat on the bench outside the apartment in the near dark. A young man and his father strolled past me, singing a Sinatra song I remember no words to and I remembered that today Sinatra died, and I smiled. The twosome, noting I'd caught wind of their perversity, smiled back, the father said: You like my singing? I replied: I like the duet.

I have exercised today till my body felt taut and lean and kissed the object of my affection in the park. "Call me if you get off work early," and he nods enthusiastically, having only moments ago summed up our relationship as two friends who can't get enough of each others' bodies. I like that he called me up five minutes after ending a long conversation with me to tell me that Sinatra died. I want to have more of his body. I call him up at work and ask him if he will be done early, but he, with a little too much dramatic conviction, says no, he still has a large table on the patio and they have many bottles of wine. I tremulously offer to meet him at his apartment later and he says that he feels like being alone and brooding after a terrible night at work which is always terrible. His decision not to be with me tonight is terrible, and I realise that I have done nothing of value this Friday night in anticipation of that great physical surrender which is all I look forward to these days. My day has turned sour.

You see, we are both in a terrible situation in life, having graduated at the same time from university in Montreal and reached a simultaneous sense of deadness here in Toronto, the capital of our nation's wealth. Not that I am not employed in several part-time jobs that I would have killed for while I was a university student, but that I sense, secretly, that our inability to find gainful employment is a sort of folie au deux. The first one to be successful will leave the other behind in the dust. We must find employment simultaneously for our relationship to survive.

If right now, he were to stop seeing me, it would be devastating. I don't mean seeing me in the conventional relationship sense, but literally seeing me. I have grown so used to sharing my day and of being seen through his eyes, I cannot imagine that gaze redirected. It has been this way for two years.

Are all relationships this way? This sharing drowns out the voices of all my devils and angels. I feel that it is only through him that I can be damned or redeemed. I am changing, and I don't like what I have lost. I don't like that my writing always contains him, and we refuse to acknowledge this mutual consumption. But here's the thing. His writing is rarely about me.

What am I saying? Since our return to Toronto, we have barely written at all. I am not certain what this means to him, but I have my suspicions. As for me, I have lost that sanest of sane voices that bubbles up in me every time I sit down to write. I have dissolved into this ranting girl obsessed with my boyfriend. I am starting to give myself the creeps. My life is pure stagnation. Reading Alice Munroe brings me to my knees. Her stories saved my soul last year. I must write more. How else am I to find my voice again? And another upsurge of the workforce bellows up from below as they blow of their weeklong steam with a determination which I have already mentioned feels dangerous.

An overheard conversation in the park:

"...yeah, and she had a body to kill."
"Are you sure we're talking about the same girl, here?"
"Uh...I think so."

At this point they enter the parking lot. One guy takes out his keychain and aims it authoritavely at a silver Saab which honks at its master and lights up red eyes.

"that's life
and as funny as it may seem
some people get their kicks
stomping on a dream
but i don't let it
let it get me down
cuz this fine old world
keeps spinnin around

i've been a piper a pauper
a pirate a poet
a pawn and a king
i've been up and down
and over and out
but i know one thing
each time I find myself lyin
flat on my face
I pick myself up and get
back in the race

that's life
and i can't deny it
i thought of quittin baby
but my heart just ain't gonna buy it
but if i didn't think it was worth one single try
i'd roll myself up
in a big ball
and die"

15/5/98