Performative Text Messages

When I was seventeen years old, I watched my grandmother pull apart two-ply Kleenex on her death bed. She would rip each half into four tiny squares, using each section to blow her nose. Though she was dying of pneumonia, not a fiber of tissue was to be wasted. As I watched her, I had the clear thought that somebody had to tell the story of these tiny pieces of Kleenex. Otherwise what was the point?

I feel the same way about pouring my heart into a riveting and inspired correspondence with the Married Man, a.k.a. the Elusive and Illicit Texting boyfriend. Without publishing my efforts on the Internet, what was the point?

Don’t worry, Married Man. I won’t give you away. Your side of the correspondence stays safe with me. I am the Queen of Confidentiality.

And anyways, I’m saving my Memoirs of a Brief Affair for a different day in June. Today I am way too busy.

One of the most important things about having a boyfriend is he is there to reassure you that the welt and/or welts on your groin are not herpes or cancer. Just like the doctor said all seventeen times you waited and paced around the ER or walk-in clinic waiting room.  Someday I plan to conquer and master Friction, Exfoliation and Pubic Hair Removal. That day was not last Friday.

Poor The Boatman. He had to stand in for the Married Man as the recipient of my Performative Text Messages. Just like the Married Man and just about everyone in the world, he is not as good a correspondent as me.

Performative Text Messages

Erica, Friday, 12:56 PM:

I am going to quit masturbating for one week to see if the problem with my sex drive is the Prozac or overthinking linked to typical erectile dysfunction.

No one writes back. I have a hard time focusing. It seems I need three coffees and one nap every day.

I bought several moisturizing and exfoliating products for the bumps on my crotch. I thought that was a nice sentence.

Erica, Saturday 8:39 AM

Two groin bump photos. (Should I post these photos on the Internet? Such choices are always a toss-up.)

I am concerned about my groin welt. It hurts. It is hard underneath. No pus. (Pus is a surprisingly difficult word to spell.)

No tingles.

Yesterday I googled sarcoma.

Erica, Saturday 9:01 AM

I am feeling ignored. And I’m worried I have cancer.

Erica, Saturday 9:39 AM

My phD friend does not think it is cancer or herpes. I showed him the photos this morning at Olimpico.

Erica, Saturday 11:29 AM

What are you doing? The thing about iPhones is that you can tell when people read your texts. If you are too busy, you can copy and paste the following. “There, there. Head pat. I’m sorry you’re having a hard day. It doesn’t look like herpes to me and I don’t think you have cancer. I’m busy doing blank but I hope we can talk soon. Maybe you can have a nice performative cry in a bus shelter.”

Erica has a nice performative cry in the bus shelter on the corner of Bernard and Clark.

The Boatman, Saturday 2:55 PM

Hi Erica. Yes sorry, I was a bit occupied. (Dot, dot, dot: Erica omits something personal.) I’m not always up for immediate text reply. I find my phone takes a lot of energy out of me these days. Sometimes I’ll read a text but get sidetracked and then respond later. It doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I do, very much! Good luck on your break from masturbation. It’s good to take breaks from things I think. I’m sure your welt is just fine. Did you get it from humping the bed too much? I’m off to trim the hedge and mow the lawn. I’m not happy about it.

Erica, Saturday, 2:59 PM

Okay thanks. I’m sorry about (dot dot dot) and that you have to do yard work. I am quite good at yard work and would have been happy to help you with it. I already failed at the masturbation break. I might go to a clinic tomorrow just in case but I am probably fine.

The Boatman, 3:07 PM

Sounds like a good plan. Thanks for the spiritual help with the yard work. I’ll send your crotch spiritual health through the ether.

End of Performative Text Messages.

My gift for yard worked emerged in the Performative Self-Love Letters. Once the Boatman took a photo of me holding the hedge clippers close to my crotch. The hedge is tall, the hedge clippers are orange, and I look so happy.

Yard work is one of my greatest gifts.

The End.

Post-Script: Performative Exfoliation with the Magic Eraser.

I do not recommend this, though recently one of my coolest friends gave it a go. She reported excellent and effective exfoliating properties.

“But it’s carcinogenic,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“It has to be. It’s Mr. Clean. And a graphic designer from Halifax who isn’t the Boatman told me.”

One of my coolest friends wondered if maybe the generic Magic Eraser brand was un-carcinogenic. I doubted it, and still do.

Mr. Clean Magic. Discover all the Cleaning Possibilities!

Post-Script Two
Groin Welt Update: Omitted until further notice.
Welcome to June’s exfoliating and explosive transformative creativity.
Transformative and Performative.
If you don’t know what performative is, ask.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt ($2.99)

Kleenex
Performative Crying in Alleys
Why I am Like Jane Fonda
Dear Internet, Please be my boyfriend for five minutes.

What a Beautiful Face

Three scars on my body are from dead people. The first one is on my left cheek, the cheek on my face, just outside my first dimple. The scar beside the dimple is a small thin line. It’s from D’Arcy. We were three and four years old, and my mother had let us play with adult sewing scissors. I had the yellow ones, and his were orange. I really wanted the orange scissors. When D’Arcy said no, I snipped the air in front of my face. D’Arcy took his orange scissors and snipped the skin on my face. The doctors taped it together. My mother once said that D’Arcy was a strange child, perhaps because he was a test tube baby. But I started the fight. In his early twenties, D’Arcy died suddenly and mysteriously in his sleep, lying in his girlfriend’s arms. They think he choked.

My second scar blends in almost perfectly with my forehead wrinkles. It’s above my left eyebrow. The dent runs seamlessly into my lines of premature ageing. This scar is from Yarrow Viets’s s goggles. A swimming collision. My fault. I was always so focussed and obsessive that I did a terrible job looking in front of me. We were doing a bunch of 300’s when we crashed. I remember Yarrow covering her eye and weeping so delicately. I have never been a delicate weeper. Yarrow Viets was very beautiful. For the rest of practice, she rested. I plowed through, logging in 5000 or 6000 meters. When I got home, my mother pointed out that my forehead was cracked open. This time, the doctors closed up the wreckage with glue. On June 18, Yarrow Viets died of stage 4 colon cancer.  She had young twin boys and hundreds of friends. It was unbelievably sad.

My last scar is from Simon. A vague, faded red blob on my left thigh. All of my dead people scars are on the left.  This one happened on a Saturday morning. My friends Bobbi and Fern were going to pick me up and drive me to an A.A. meeting. Fern says that all the addictions are kind of the same, and so you can go to A.A. even if you just only have an eating disorder. Well, I love A.A. meetings. And I have put in sincere time trying to be an alcoholic, with minimal success. So I was getting ready. I had just poured boiling water into the French press when someone unlocked my door. It was Simon. Without thinking, I pushed down the plunger. The spout was open and coffee spilled all over my left thigh. Simon gave me ice. He asked if he could come to the A.A. meeting. I said yes, but I was terrified he would say something obnoxious and embarrassing. He did say something, though it wasn’t obnoxious. It made me kind of proud.

“Hi, my name is Simon.”

“Hi Simon.”

Simon was nine hours sober. He told us a story about him and his pop. They’d been going through rough times, not really communicating. Then a couple of days earlier, they’d had a moment.

“We were together, and my pop said something touching. And I knew that I loved him. And I felt at peace. Or close to peace.  And… I’m just glad I was sober.” With that, Simon started sobbing. He went up to the front of the room and took a beginner’s A.A. chip. At the end of the meeting, there was coffee and doughnuts. Everyone went to shake Simon’s hand. His was the share of the meeting. Simon basked in the doughnuts and the handshakes, until Bobbi cut in. “Good share. Let’s go,” said Bobbi, always down to business. For months, Simon said this over and over again. “Good share. Let’s go.”

The burn on my leg looked horrible and purple. I was afraid it would lead to blood poisoning, and that this would lead to amputation. Bobbi and Fern dropped us off at my shitty downtown apartment on Overdale Street. Simon and I fucked on my disgusting futon, on my disgusting floor. It felt like the start of something redeeming.

That afternoon, Simon brought aloe vera to the swimming pool where I was a lifeguard. That evening, he got drunk again. Everyone knows that Simon jumped off his apartment building on January 4^th. Since he was a child, he always wanted to know what it was like to throw himself in the air from way up high. For three to seventeen seconds, I guess he got to know. His building is so high.  I brought daisies to the rooftop last Sunday. It was Simon’s 36^th birthday, so wet and dreary and cold. I couldn’t look over the edge.

Good share. Let’s go.

I once helped get Simon a job, working with a man with cerebral palsy at a day centre. The man’s name is Antoine. (I changed it for the blog) It is nice when men with disabilities get to have male caregivers. So many caregivers are female and they’re lovely, but when you’ve been surrounded by women for much of your life, maybe you appreciate a change. Simon didn’t view Antoine as someone he had to take care of. He wanted to be his friend.

“I feel so ready to give my inconditional love to someone like Antoine,” he wrote.

I just looked up these words in our old emails. In my head, I remember him saying: “I am ready to go crazy and open my heart and give Antoine all of my love.” He was so excited. Right before he got the job, he’d been kicked off welfare. Now he wouldn’t have to do so many drug studies for cash.

Together, Simon and Antoine had a wonderful blast. The teacher gave lessons on pictograms and phonograms. Simon made jokes the whole time, and Antoine burst into one fou rire after another. Fou Rire, crazy laugh. For an entire year, they worked on a text about hot dogs. I never got a chance to read it. Even after Simon left the job at the centre, he and Antoine used to go out for movies and hamburgers. Last fall they went to a safari park. There’s an amazing photo of them in the car. Simon’s feeding a camel a carrot. Antoine has this radiant and exquisite smile all over his face. One day after the movies, they went to McDonald’s. Together, they bought extra hamburgers. Simon led Antoine into the street where some kids were squeegeeing cars. Antoine gave the kids the bag of hamburgers. In this little moment, there must have been something for everyone.

*

On Sunday, June 28, I climbed the stairs of Simon’s apartment building. There were 23 floors, except the 12^th floor skips to the 14^th. Our world doesn’t believe in anything, and still, nobody wants to live on the 13^th floor. Simon’s stairwell was grey and stark, with no windows. Like a prison cell made out of stairs. Layered in heavy clothes, Simon used to climb up and down. He wanted to get sweaty and skinny, without having to see or talk to anyone. Fair enough, I suppose.

My arms full of daisies, I climbed up. I peaked at the eighth floor, where Simon used to live.  As though gazing down the carpeted hallway would bring some sort of closure or revelation. Not really. At the top of the 23^rd flight of stairs, the door was locked. It led to the pool. From there you could climb up onto the roof.  Some guy who was doing his laundry let me in.

“My ex-boyfriend jumped off this building in January.” Right away, the guy dropped his laundry hamper.

“Sorry about that,” he said. I stood on the lookout for a while, staring at Mont-Royal, the financial buildings, the wet streets. During my first year creative writing class, some girl wrote story about a woman with a dead boyfriend. It opened with the girlfriend standing in the rain carrying flowers.

"It is raining. I am wearing my shiny red dress. I am standing at your grave and watching the puddle form in front of it. My shoes are getting muddy."

Simon adored this beginning. Excellent, he called it. But my writing teacher said that its potential for narrative development was limited. “Her shoes can only get so muddy, and her dress can only get so wet.”

On top of Simon's building, there were stairs that led down from the lookout to the rest of the roof. It was covered in medium sized stones. I ducked under the yellow danger tape, and climbed down the stairs. Walking around the periphery, I remembered the rooftops in India. Under the moon or in the hot sun, I would sit there and think about the orphans. I could only stay for so long.

I had meant to throw the daisies off the building, but it was too high. Using a random cement block, I wedged them into the Northeast corner. That might have been where Simon jumped. I’m not sure. I picked one of the daisies off the bouquet, and let it go. I couldn’t see where it went. I was wearing my bright red raincoat. It was totally wet. So were my shoes and pants. I could only stay for so long. Before I left, I took another daisy. This one was for Simon’s front door. As I placed the daisy in the door frame, I listened for noises from inside his apartment. I heard nothing.

That day, I was out in the rain for so long that my teeth started to chatter and my hands went numb.

The End.



Simon Girard (1979-2015)

Title Inspired by all the beautiful faces, and by the Song, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." Neutral Milk Hotel. It is the new song of my life.

 "What a beautiful dream that could flash on a screen in a blink of an eye and be gone"

Simon Girard (1979-2015) 

Legs

In Niagara Falls, Ontario,  there is a museum full of wax statues of dead people.  My parents took me and my sister there during spring break when I was five.  Some of the dead people had suffered horrific and violent deaths which were depicted in elaborate dioramas:  prisoners of war with their heads at the guillotine, their captors holding axes, frozen in mid-air, right above their necks; tortured artists hanging by nooses; soon-to-be assassinated politicians at gunpoint.  My sister, nine years old at the time, was rightly terrified.  I however, remained stoic and brave.  Until we passed by the glass cage of a wax man named Terry Fox. 

Terry Fox at the Wax Museum, Niagara Falls, Ontario 

 

Terry Fox was a young man with brown curly hair, focused eyes and a mouth that gaped open.  He wore dark coloured shorts, and a white T.shirt, with a red jacket on top.  Behind him was a Canadian flag.  His face looked pale, stunned and half-dead, but at five years old, I didn't know what a dead person looked like so this didn't really concern me.  The Terrifying and Traumatic part was that in contrast to the rest of Terry’s wax skin-coloured body, his left leg, from the top of his thigh and down, was made out of wood. I froze and stared.
 
“What happened to his leg?” I asked. 
 
My parents told me the story all about the Canadian hero who had lost his leg due a disease called CANCER.  To try and raise money to find a cure for this disease, he’d decided to run 8000 km (5000 miles) across Canada, completing a whole marathon distance every single day.
 
I wasn’t very interested in Terry Fox’s Marathon of Hope.  I was consumed by the word CANCER.
 
“Canker?” I said, still staring at Terry’s leg.  I had cankers on the insides of my cheeks from biting down my skin to hard and drinking too much orange juice.  Maybe it was related, an early stage in the journey towards losing my leg.
 
“Can Sir,” my sister corrected me.  I did not feel consoled.
 
After the wax museum, we went to a film about the legend and mysteries of Niagara Falls.  For awhile, a number people had thought it would be a good idea to get in a barrel and roll down the Falls which were 173 feet high.  I hardly paid any attention.

 

 Niagara Falls, one of the world's great wonders. Some people roll down in barrels with their cats.

One woman went down in a barrel with her kittens.  When they opened the barrel, I’m pretty sure the woman was dead.  And her kittens had turned from black to white.  

I wasn’t scared or surprised.  I was thinking of Terry Fox’s wooden leg.  And cancer. 

When we got home, my sister wrote a speech about Niagara Falls, and the people who rolled down it in barrels and all the places there were to see around it.  I think she won second-place in a public speaking contest.

I made my mother take me to the library and find all the movies and books that there were about Terry Fox.  She called the Canadian Cancer Society who sent me a big package in the mail.  Now I had a big folder full of pamphlets and fact sheets all about cancer, and about Terry Fox.

I remember sitting on my couch watching the video from the library.  When Terry started his run across Canada, his cancer was gone, but so was his leg. He ran by placing his right artificial leg on the ground, drawing it back with what was left of his right thigh, and then crashing forwards on to his left leg which he hopped onto twice before landing again on his left.  Double-hop, step, double-hop, step.  It looked excruciating.  Terry started his run in Newfoundland. As he hobbled across the country, people met him at the sides of the road, handing him money. 

 

CBC radio archives: Interview with Terry Fox

 

Maybe this would be a happy story, I thought from my couch. Then I remembered Terry’s statue in the wax museum.  I looked down at my own five-year-old leg and imagined it disappearing, ending just below my hip and then attached to a long foreign contraption that ended with my running shoe.  I kept worrying about this for the rest of my life.

The film continued. Terry hobbled down to Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec.  Every single day, he covered a marathon distance-26 miles, or 42 km.  He arrived in Ottawa on Canada Day where there was a huge celebration in his honour.  His goal was to raise at least $1 for each of Canada’s 24 million people.  Big corporations started to sponsor him, and things were going very well.

Then Terry got tired.  Northern Ontario is lined with hills and rocks and trees, and a very cold lake called Lake Superior.  It’s pretty at first, but then the roads become monotonous and endless.  Watching Terry run past the trees on the tv screen, I could tell that he was wearing out.  His face was pale and he kept having coughing fits.  Just outside of a city called Thunder Bay, Terry had a long, drawn out coughing fit, and he bent over clenching his chest.  An ambulance came. 

Later they showed Terry on the road, still wearing his t. Shirt with the weird broken up Canadian flag on it.  A bunch of microphones were held up to Terry’s face.  Terry looked clammy, exhausted and sad.  After running 143 days and 5,373 kilometres (3,339 mi), and raising 1.7 million dollars for cancer research, he had to stop his marathon of hope.

“The cancer has spread to my lungs,” he said, his voice cracking.  I leaned forwards on the couch, clenched my jaw, and felt nauseous.

(CBC footage: the end of Terry's run. Not available on Youtube. Alas.)

“Are you okay sweetie?”  my mother asked.

 

“I think it’s the cancer,” I said to her.  Terry Fox died less than a year after he began his run across Canada.  He is one of those heroes you are not allowed to insult.  Saying that Terry Fox was a quitter is kind of like saying that Ghandi was an asshole. You should never say either of these things. Terry Fox and Ghandi were both great.

Since Terry Fox’s death, every year around this time in September, close to a million people all over the world participate in what’s called “The Terry Fox Run.”  They run or walk as far as they can with as many legs as they have, raising money for cancer research in honour of Terry.  I’ve participated in this run or walk several times, grateful for Terry’s inspiration and for the fact that I still possess both of my legs.  For now.

Our bodies are not like a worm’s.  Everyone knows this.  I often dream that my arms or my legs fall off.  Because I have the same cancer as Terry Fox, or because of diabetes, or because of some terrible accident.  In my dreams, I wish desperately that my arms and my legs will grow back, but I know that they won’t.  I also know that I won’t be able to be as brave and heroic as Terry Fox.  I will be scared, and sad and ashamed. 

Then I wake up, and none of this matters.  All of my arms and legs are there.  I poke around the edges of my knees, looking for bumps. 

“Is that a tumour?” I ask the Boatman.  The Boatman keeps sleeping.  I will have to figure out the answer for myself.  Probably the bump is just the end of my thigh bone.  Probably I am safe.

No one is going to build a wax statue of me.  Not anytime soon. I hope.

The End.

 



Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

Erin Ball, My Favourite Acrobat
Why I like to pee outside
Mother's Bunion