Dear Vincent, How is your headstand going?

Dear Vincent,

How is your headstand going? Nice to run into you on the corner of Beaubien and St-Vallier, on Monday, July 31st, around 5:47 P.M. In fact, seeing you made my legs start to wobble, and my body proceeded to twitch for five and a half blocks before I began to sob in the company of my friend Caroline, as we stood beneath the glass of Plaza St. Hubert and in front of an unapologetic candy store where diabetics could easily eat their way into oblivion and/or death.

Yes, I would like to continue therapy with you. Even though I thought you ghosted me due to the fact that I confessed to writing you daily imaginary emails which might have made me seem to intense and crazy and attached to you. By the way, lots of people get too attached to their therapists. In case you weren’t aware. Though the whole world doesn’t know it, most of the world does know that I do not excel at professional boundaries. Perhaps we can discuss this in therapy. I’d also like to work on dissolving my Ego Project. My friend Caroline would recommend throwing this sort of thing into the Lachine Canal. That’s where I threw all my character defects in March of 2011. My ego likes the sound of the sentence, “The Lachine canal must be inundated with all sorts of thrown out dreams and deadened aspirations.” Inundated, deadened, and obscene. I enjoy all of these words.

Do you have an ego project? Maybe that’s the headstand. I tend to stand on my head between three and five times per week. These days my neck and shoulders are a little stiff. I’ve given up trying to sleep on the floor.

It was nice to run into you on the corner of Beaubien and St-Vallier Street on Monday, July 31st around 5:47 P.M. At least that’s the socially reasonable thing to say. Otherwise I’ll leave the professional boundaries up to you.

Love, Erica.

 The End.

Vincent was my therapist from October of 2016, and May 2017. After we ran out of subsidized sessions, I began to write him daily imaginary emails. I called the project, "Mondays without Vincent," and it turned out to be quite healing. You too can write imaginary emails to Vincent. In fact, if you'd like, you can send them to me, on any day of the week.

My secret address is: ericaschmidt85(at)gmail.com.

Let me know if you’d like a response. The correspondence can remain between us, or else we can share it here with others and maybe it could be healing for everyone. My ego project would love for this to be a success, but I'm trying to let that dissolve, so no pressure. Love, Erica. 

Most Ego Project photos have already ended up on the Interwebs.

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God Box
The Permafrost is melting in Siberia
Lizzie

Mythological Unconditional Love

Some people say that happy romantic relationships depend on the beautiful lies couples say to each other.

“You are unbelievably perfect for me.”

“No one could ever be as wonderful as you.”
“I was miserable before I met you. I’m so glad the moon told me to kiss you. You’re the best kisser of life.”
Etc.

Yesterday, I felt deprived of such beautiful lies. And I wrote this Haiku:

Haiku: M.U.L.

 

Mythological

Unconditional Love is
Something I’m missing.

Some of the 12-step people invented something called Sexual Addiction. S.A. I did not feel like researching all that much about this condition, but my understanding is that Sex Addicts (also referred to as S.A.’s) seek out sex and love to remedy their low self-esteem. Or maybe they are lonely.

 

I did the twelve steps a couple of times for my eating disorder. For step three or four or five, I had to compile all of my character defects. I wrote each character defect on a little slip of paper. The first time I compiled my character defects, I threw them all into the Lachine Canal, near Griffintown. That was in 2009. I imagine that the Lachine Canal must be full of character defects. In 2011, I wrote out my character defects again. This time, I put them in my homemade God Box. Before I moved to Halifax, I gave the God Box to Simon, my ex-ex boyfriend who I wrote a mediocre epistolary novel with. The novel was called, The Little Savage and the Hermit. Simon was the Hermit. I am trying to refrain from referring to Simon as my ex-ex boyfriend who jumped off a building on January 4, 2015, and this is going not that well.   

 

I don’t know what happened to the God Box. It was covered with splatters of paint. I used to be quite artistic.

 

Beautiful lies are the best cure for character defects.

 

“I love you even though you get peanut butter all over the walls.”

“I love you more than spelt bread.”
“Your vagina makes up for your obnoxious meltdowns, even though you have questionable groin welts from misguided attempts at pubic hair removal.”

As I mentioned, I am missing the Beautiful Lies. Perhaps I am an S.A.

 

R.S.A. equals Recovering Sex Addicts and such people do not seek out sex and love as remedies for low self-esteem and loneliness. I wonder what they do instead.

 

I think it is a bit dumb to pathologize loneliness into a vague disease or unflattering label. Probably the S.A.’s and R.S.A.’s are the same as everyone else. They’re just bad liars. I can relate:

 

“Everyone wishes they were my duvet.”

“My crooked do-it-yourself haircut is spectacular.”
“I am the funniest writer in the world.”

The End.

 
Selfies are the ultimate beautiful lie.

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Why I am like Jane Fonda
God Box

Memoirs of a Brief Affair
Performative Crying in Alleys
Performative Text Messages

Still Me

Guillaume, Part One: Too Ugly For Prostitution

Maybe you have seen this man. He sits on St-Catherine Street in front of Pharma-Prix, close to the Guy-Concordia metro. In front of him there’s a baseball cap where you can leave some money. In his hand he holds a cardboard sign. “Too ugly for prostitution,” it says. As far as ugliness goes, I would say he is not quite the champion. Though undergroomed, he has bleached blonde hair, bright eyes, and conventionally attractive facial features. Of course, my facial differentiation skills are terrible and so I am not an excellent judge. Still, walking down St. Catherine Street, I appreciated the relatively original humour on the cardboard.

“You never know,” I’d say to him, dropping a quarter or two into his hat.

The summer I moved to Halifax, I had to empty my shitty downtown apartment and put a bunch of my stuff in storage. My very tiny mother was coming to help me.

“Erica,” she said to me on the phone. “If you have any guy friends who could help, that would be great. I’ll pay them.” As it turned out, my ex-boyfriend Simon was working on a movie and I couldn’t really think of anyone else. I figured my mom and I were on our own. The morning I was supposed to move, I biked to the storage locker to get the keys. On the corner of Lucien L’Allier and Overdale, I ran into the guy with the cardboard sign.

“Hey,” I said. “You’re the guy with the sign. Too ugly for prostitution. I know you.” As though simply recognizing his sign and his face suddenly made us wonderful friends.

“That’s me,” he replied, looking behind me at the parking lot. I asked him if he was strong and if he wanted a job.

“My mom will pay you,” I promised.

“Yah, maybe,” he said. We introduced ourselves formally and I learned that his name was John. I led him down the street to my shitty apartment. When we got there, I think I offered John a shower. I can’t remember whether or not he took me up on this. I do remember that one of the first things he did was sit on the front porch. With a white out pen and black and red markers, he started to etch a design onto our steps.

“So like, can you help me take this stuff out on the curb?” John required a great deal of direction, but he did help me haul my mildewed fouton, mediocre dresser and a bunch of garbage out to the street. Unless I told him exactly what to do, he would go back to his white-out drawing. My mom arrived from Ontario. Although she was somewhat surprised at my choice of hired help, she was grateful to have some extra hands. With her car, John and I made a couple of trips to the storage place. At one point, after closing up the locker, I got back to the car, and John was gone.

“John?” I called. I wandered around looking for him and calling his name for a couple of minutes. Finally he reappeared.

“Where did you go?” I asked.

“Are you mad?” asked John. Well, I was a bit frazzled and irritated. In my opinion, he was supposed to help. Later on, my boyfriend the Boatman laughed at the fact that I’d been surprised at John’s struggle to remain on task. I guess I just thought he'd be happy to get a job. At the time, I was 25. Four years later, I feel much older than I felt back then. On the way back to my apartment, John told me about panhandling on St. Catherine’s Street. He said that sometimes he made 300 bucks a day. I didn’t think that my mother was going to pay that much. She was thinking fifteen or twenty dollars an hour. We got back to the apartment and John went back to his white-out sketch. There were still piles of stuff to throw out. I got him to help me with a couple more boxes. Then I went to the bathroom. When I returned, John had disappeared again. This time, he didn’t come back. We never paid him. I don't know if John is still around. I don't walk by that Pharmaprix very often.

It has been some time since I thought about John. I was reminded of the story a couple of weeks ago, when I met Guillaume. Guillaume and I met at a barbecue where we were the ninth and tenth wheels. It was a rather grown up barbecue, and almost all of the guests in attendance lived in their own condos. One of the couples was even involved in selling life insurance. Not the kind our friend Patrick bought, but a similar type for which you don’t require a medical exam. When I arrived at the barbecue, everyone was huddled in couples. Nobody seemed to be eating or talking. Immediately, I dove into the vegetable platter, filling ones of my hands with carrots and cauliflower, and slothering the vegetables in hummus. The other hand was filled with cheese curds. Then I took it upon myself to ask people about their lives. Guillaume took it upon himself to make mojitos.

By the time the mojitos were ready, I had learned a great deal about life insurance, and consumed a large quantity of cheese curds. Now I wanted to ask about Guillaume’s life.

When Guillaume was barely eighteen, he got a job working at a men’s homeless shelter in Longueil. Now Guillaume is 31. With minimal breaks, he has spent almost fourteen years working with people who struggle with homelessness and drug addictions. Listening to him, I felt like I’d rarely heard anyone speak of these populations with such wholeheartedness and respect.

In the end, there was so much to say that we met on the Lachine Canal the following day. Everyone who knows me would be amazed at how little I spoke throughout the entire thing. It can be a relief not to talk so much. And I heard a lot of captivating things.

 

To Be Continued

Guillaume had so much to say, that I'm breaking the interview up into various parts. You can read a bunch more on Monday.

I Can't Wait To Send This Email, A Drawing by the Boatman

Follow The Boatman on Tumblr at http://verysatisfied.tumblr.com/

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook and/or Follow Me On Twitter: @mypelvicfloor

If you know someone who you’d like to see interviewed, or if you think you might be a good candidate, do get in touch with me.  Also, I am still waiting for my very first Internet Diagnosis of Every Three to Six Weeks.

Cardboard Box
My Name is Erica. I love coffee
Asking Matt Wiviott About His Life