living just to watch it all go by

 or, "A Brief History of My Time, So Far".
 
                It seems too lofty an undertaking for me to write an Artist’s Statement, but perhaps my left hand is up to the job.  After all, it was my left hand that set me apart from the first day of kindergarten, and later distinguished my supreme reign year after year as the class Artist.  A “good drawer” was one thing, but a Left-Handed Artist?  Those were words you could repeat to yourself in the mirror.

                The onset of puberty and a stint in the psych ward complicated things.  “Crazy Artist”, the mirror amended, and my left hand surged with the anarchic landscape of suicide.  It was satisfying.  More than that it was a reason to stay alive; I could destroy every part of myself, but never my left hand.  It had value incongruous with what the mirror told me.

               At the age of 17 I moved from my hometown of Kitimat, B.C., to attend the Art Institute of Vancouver.  Propelled by my parents’ money and years of affirmation from teachers and peers, I left with my high school art award and every intention of being a Real Artist, a Digital Animator, a creator of imaginary worlds.  I was shipped home ten months later, crippled by a second nervous breakdown.

                “Mentally Ill Adult”, was the merciless report of the mirror.

                Everything stopped except my left hand.  I picked up addictions but never set down the pencil.  Worthless, Failure, Drop-out, Stoner – these words the mirror spat in my face could not coexist with the woman who compulsively created and drew.  Like the old jokes, my left hand really did feel like another person.

                Without my mom I’m sure I would have ended up like any of the hometown heroes I wasted time with.  But she had a ferocious love in her, and an “art room” packed full enough of every kind of paper, brush, canvas and pigment to render it a tiny labyrinth.  I spent a lot of time in there, painting, penning and colouring images she would mount, frame, and hang in the local museum alongside her still lifes and landscapes.  We presented lessons in watercolour, pencil, and pastel to every class in every elementary school in town.  We orchestrated two school-wide murals involving all the kids.  We designed and painted every set and backdrop for the high school theatre, semester after semester.  I even had the opportunity to instruct my former teachers in the local Art Club, and they began to mistake my work in the museum for my mom’s.  This was high praise, because to my mind, my mom – “Mrs. Hutson” to the kids – had always been primarily an Artist, as sure as the ocean was the ocean and a raven was a raven.

                But the mirror still called me Unemployed.  So in 2007 I risked a move to Calgary, where I would replace the label with more respectable ones like Janitor, Night Stocker, Cashier, and finally, Disabilities Worker.  My left hand never stopped.  Every spare moment, I drew on paper towels and unwanted receipts.  (This made me more proficient in Bic pen than almost any other medium.)  I’d draw remembered glimpses of the forest I’d left behind and abandon them to be found by coworkers – waiting, hoping, for them to call me that ethereal word I wouldn’t call myself – Artist.
               
                Other times I just got in trouble for “doodling”.

                It’s hard to see an artist in a face that’s been spattered with so much toilet water over the years.  But there must be one in there, above the eyes and a little ways back, because every day it sends its signals like Morse code down the dendrites of my arm to my unstoppable, unappeasable, undeniable left hand.  As a lifelong mental patient, it’s a daunting thought to look in the mirror and say, “Student”.  I hope I’m ready to take on this new challenge.  Because by now, I know there’s only one word to describe what I’ve always been, and what I want to be.

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JULY13
Adam --------

hey how is it going. I have not been able to get ahold of you by phone. Here is my cell number text me ---------- love yah hun...


JULY 13
Adam --------

sitting here in life skills grad...Will i make it through my trials and tribulations. Am i saved or am i am damned. I have a higher power that i give my will over. Hope for me that my will will`nt be victourious in the war i call recovery. My commitie of asswholes in my head can wisper quite loud. Just need to call on a holy sound. So i pray that i don`t have to cut my ears out... In other news i miss you. My life was at a halt. It is about to start up again. My prayres are with you. Miss you so much. Love yah... 


JULY 14
Adam --------

My nest that i hide in. Hideing from the world cause i can`nt take the shame. I rember that it only will take one hit of NOW to revrt me back to the mr.hyde. I have been keeping him at bay for so long now that i fear his return. The demon wants out..The poitions seem so tempting....More test are to come my way all that there is left to do is pray. Pray that this monster dos`nt take my salvation jeckl away..... In other news lost calling card. Don`t have money till wensday. You are in my prayers. Love yah hun...


JULY 15
Adam --------

Waiting is a game that i am used to. In my past life i would wait for a change of reality. Now i wait for a feeling of surrender. My mind still wanders, as i wait for the doors of my sanctuary to open. I crave acceptence. In the rooms i seek out i get high off of the drug knowen as faith. As i wait for my next fix i see other addicts who wait at the door. One hit of faith compared to NOW can keep my sense of altered state more high. .... Miss you kido. Love yah..


JULY 16
Adam --------

right now my mind is some where else. I sit down in a house of god, my mind wanders to another plane. Hopeing that my life will not disapoint. Hopeing that i can get my fix of God and hopeing that it will satusfy my need. My earthly body craves a fix. A fix of renewing. Hope is my new addiction. Hopefully that is enough to satisfy. My prayers go out to the one who reads these rambiling thoughts. Roads are long and there is always a road that will turn on to sainity. Lets pray toghther and find our lost road...


JULY 17    (SUNDAY)
Adam --------

the church of cigarets is about to start. My faithful smokes all gather to hear the word of god. All the good cigarets talk about unity with all of the people. Hear them talking about unity of all who are`nt of britsh decent. Us fags puff puff and wait for the word to start. My prayers go to all who do not know him. Hopefully me abd the cigarets are`t the only accepting ones.


JULY 17
Adam --------

my testamony on a sheet of cardboard. A couple words discribing my fight through life. The camera rolls our stories. Addicts linded up for our confessions. Waiting for seasion 2. We became a show. Lets hold on and see what the world has instore...

is a bit like the lonely sound of echoing laughter as you walk home from work at night, accompanied by the even lonelier feeling that somehow, it's at you.

It's a longing for the days of high school, or the jungle, or the precambrian ocean, where your survival was dependent on a status structure that was mathematical in its purity.

You see a praying mantis fighting as it's overtaken by a legion of army ants, and you ARE the praying mantis, dying despite its piercing, descending limbs and gnashing carnivorous jaws, the same way you ARE every ant disappearing into them until the assault is complete.

It's when your fellow employees learn to coddle you with a sort of gentle condescension, and it makes you feel so grateful.

It's the understanding that cloaked lepers who rang bells as they walked down the streets calling "unclean" did so not out of concession to the law, but as an apology.

It's the feeling that a dead body has risen bloated from deep water, and now you've awoken inside it.

It's the dream where you find yourself at school, naked. It's that dream and worse; it's the ones that follow you into the day like grinning specters, disfiguring the real world into something cold and cavernous. And you shudder to rid yourself of them, and once they're gone you deny that they were ever there; and if the memory ever returns you flinch away from it, like some unseeable thing that licks against your leg in the shallows of a murky lake.

You know your outsides are just as ugly as your insides, and neither can ever be sufficiently hidden. When the alarm clock screams just like you want to, you know that you are going to have to face these people anyway.

It's a feeling that can only be quelled by reassuring yourself that ultimately, you WILL be forgotten. It does not occur to you that the way to make the feeling go away completely is to forget, because that is impossible. So you remember the ones who love you, who came to admire you when they looked on you and somehow saw beauty.

But even more importantly, you remember the freaks, the nerds, the lepers, the stillborn and surviving cripples. You remember them and love them fiercely, and you tell yourself that this feeling is as beautiful as they are, because IT is what allows you to be called one of THEM.

It's like when Van Gogh said, "The ugly may be beautiful- the pretty, never."

are crooked and sort of jumbled in there; I remember them gradually coming in that way when I was a kid. Distraught, I asked my mom about it, and she explained that they were probably too big for my jaw. That was the future of my mouth forming in there, bits of bone protruding in slow motion, each on a collision course for its neighbour.

The strangest collision happened right up front on my bottom jaw, where the front two teeth overlap like tectonic plates. The left one is shoved up on top of the right one at almost a forty-five-degree angle. When I bite into an apple, you can see the incision of it, jumping ahead of the others like an eager blade. My dad said it gave me an "interesting smile".

In December of 1992, when I was 7 years old, I lost all four of my front teeth. Clenching my jaws together, I could still push the tip of my tongue out well past my lips. This was at an age where we still sang Christmas carols in school, and just for me, our teacher resurrected the golden oldie "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth".

You know the feel of them completely, but only with your tongue. A finger gives a very blind and clumsy interpretation of the landscape there. Maybe you have a plaster cast of them, or your mom does. She probably still has a few of your baby teeth stashed away in some rattly keepsake box, just like you probably have memories of some stupid or ugly thing you did as a child to get that last wiggly tooth out of your face.

Dreams where your teeth are missing or shatter into your mouth are supposed to be "stress dreams". That makes sense to me given the panic of waking up, followed by the flood of reassurance when your tongue runs along the slick, familiar back of each one of them, and you know that for now, they are all still here.

If all the rest of you burns, they can identify you by your teeth. Like the chimney left standing after a house fire. It's the only part of your body where your skeleton comes out to say hello.

...and you too, Adam.

I don't know if what I was fighting for all those years was worth it. But I have it now, and I'm glad. The word I attached to my pursuit was "independence". Now, looking at Stitchface here, the little blind-deaf-mute who finally scratched his way out of that box, I have the balls to call it something even loftier: FREEDOM.

I'm sitting in my uncle's basement much like I have for the past three years, and once again I don't know what I'll be doing for money in the new year. I never understood all those people who just survived by hanging out; sometimes they have a job, sometimes they don't, but they never seem too worried and they never end up homeless. I know I could never end up homeless either. It's been the greatest achievement of my mom's life (anyone's life, in my opinion) that I'm still here, and I've never spent a night on the street. It always seemed so wrong to me, being alive and cared for.

Reminds me of a phone call I had with the Great Poet. She was talking about "the abuse", and how she wished she could stab it. She said she wondered what her kids would be like if none of all the abuse had ever happened to her. And there I was practically apologizing that none of it had happened to me, wishing I had that in common with her, because if I was ever raped even once I know that a part of me would breathe a sigh of relief and say, "finally." I told her how strange it felt, that nothing like that had ever happened to me. She laughed her bright, musical laugh and said, "No, you just did it all to yourself!"

I picture Adam, shirtless like Bukowski and smoking on his hostel bed, drinking coffee all day, smirking guiltily as a toothless old woman with a soft spot for him "tsks" and empties his ashtrays. A joint here and there through the day, a walk down to the train tracks... I hope he's like that now. That life comes with such a heavy toll, when the crackheads come around and the knives come out and even your best friend lies and steals your liquor. Middle-class white kids like me and Adam shouldn't know the first thing about that, but it could easily have been my life. The life I have instead, thanks to the whip at my back and my parents' money, is good too.

So it's snowing outside. Maybe there will be work for me in January, maybe not. I could sleep all day if I wanted to, but I'd rather file my EI claim and piece together that unassembled treadmill I bought yesterday. Maybe I'll draw, too. Could I really do that? Could I just relax and waste my time drawing all day? What a retarded thing to do. I'll give it a try, though. I can just grab a coffee and smoke, set down the whip and pick up a pencil. Imagine that.

I'm not like them
but I can pretend
The sun is gone
But I have a light
The day is done
But I'm having fun
I think I'm dumb
Or maybe just happy


11 years this has been going on, and I never even met the guy. No one can blame Courtney for what she became.
They don't understand, they don't even have the first clue.
The moment you kill yourself, you're Jesus.



(This has been a drunk post.)

...not in words, but in time.


I walk through the snow towards the C train with one hand in my purse, fingering a dog collar and a DVD of "The Story Of O". After only four days of training, I'm turning them in.



Just picture a couple of 60-something pensioners sitting in the living room on a November evening with their TV trays of spaghetti and meat sauce, flipping between the weather channel and the hockey game.

In her armchair, the old woman takes a fork full of spaghetti and says, "I haven't made this in a long time."

In his favorite spot on the couch, the old man says, "Ask me if I miss it."

Between them on the floor, a naked 25 year old rises from the dog dish she's kneeling over with her arms behind her back, smirks sympathetically at the old woman and says, "It's really good."

The old man scoffs, "Oh, shush!" and the old woman laughs.

If it all could have stayed like that, I would've stuck around. But these things have a way of getting complicated.



Downstairs in front of his computer, the old man tells me, "When I'm not using you, you kneel in front of me with your hands behind your back."

I suppress a smile and say "yes sir." I've never called anyone "sir" in my life. It's ridiculous, but I play along. There are rules to learn and that's an important one in this game.

The old man says, "When I send you for something - coffee, a riding crop, something like that - you crawl. If it's the crop or a cane, bring it back in your teeth."

I laugh out loud. "Awesome."

Ever since I met him at the Taboo Sex Show at the Stampede grounds, I've gotten along with this guy. He's too old to be threatening and we laugh a lot. It doesn't matter that he could be my grandfather. This isn't about him.



The first time we meet up one-on-one is at a Subway restaurant by Chinook station. A few hours later we're both in his van, parked outside a private BDSM club in some industrial part of town. It occurs to me that it's a miracle I've survived this long with the brilliant judgement I display, but I feel resplendant in a high ponytail, nipple clamps and a heavy duty bondage collar.

The moment we walk in, a woman charges up to me, telling me I need to fill out some paperwork immediately. There are cages and restraints everywhere. One wall bears a massive projection of naked people in ball gags being whipped, caned and fucked.

I should mention that one of the first things I told the old man about was my decision to stay a virgin until I'm married. Like most men, he told me he respected that. But in his case I felt like it was true. This isn't about sex for him either.

As I fill out the forms given to me by the imposing mistress, my writing is not as legible as it could be. I misspell my address.

There are five or six people in the club. The old man introduces me as Chatterbox. I smile and say nothing. It's a relief when he straps on my ball gag.

A bubbly dominatrix gestures to the BDSM porn projected on the wall and remarks, "I always have to laugh when I see these things because they have no idea what they're doing. It's just 'look how good our bodies are!'"

The night is boring for a while. We sit over Doritos Munchies while a computer programmer who specializes in kinbaku talks computer programmy stuff with an asian MTF tranny. The bubbly domme disappears upstairs with a thin grey-haired man who looks like a relic from the Village People. A while later we hear screaming.

My little vest is open across my naked tits to take the pressure off the nipple clamps. The chain between them rests cooly on my stomach. Aside from the usual jitters from meeting new people, I am now completely comfortable.

The kinbaku guy and the tranny retire upstairs too. When the old man finally asks me if I'd like to see what's going on up there, I nod eagerly.

We walk into the first room, where the Village People guy is naked on his back with his wrists and ankles suspended from the ceiling. His shaved balls are blood red, bursting out of rope bondage that looks designed to gradually nip them off his body like a schnauzer's tail.

The bubbly dominatrix circles him, snapping at his swollen balls with a cane. You can hear it slice through the air on its way to his skin.

"Why do you keep saying STOP?" she asks him. "Stop doesn't mean 'red', y'know!"

The old man leaves me there for a while, returns with a key. He opens the cushioned lid to a small, circular cage.

"In", he tells me. I slip into the tiny space as readily as any cat.

Once the lid is locked over me, the old man kicks back at a table with the imposing domme who greeted me at the door. She looks like she works at a bank except for her slick, black, spiked heels, which she kicks off exhaustedly near my face. I stare and stare at them.

Marilyn Manson's "the Love Song" blasts over the speakers as the old man and the old domme sit and chat. I watch the beautiful shoes and the spit pooling under my ball gag. I am in heaven.

The bubbly domme takes a break from her slave and sits on my cage. Her spiked heels kick back and forth, dangling to my left.

Some time later, she looks down at her seat and squeals, "Oh, is there a PERSON in there?!" She laughs. "Can I touch you, sweety?"

I nod with big, deliberate, innocent eyes. She pets my bangs.

"I had no idea! I could've got my boots cleaned!"

Through the ball gag, for only myself to hear, I tell her, "Yes you could..."



The old man drives me home, but on the way there we stop at Shopper's Drug Mart so I can go in to buy a razor. I do so wearing nothing but my coat and a collar with a metal leash. The slush is slippery. I feel like I'm in the Legend of Zelda, being sent on arbitrary quests to retrieve magical items.

Outside my house the old man tells me to be at his house the next morning at 10am. Inside his house at 10, because I'll be punished for every minute I'm late. I grin big and thank him for the ride, thank him for a wonderful evening. He looks so happy to have found me.

I stagger into my house with my clothes in my purse, completely sober but flying. I collapse in the bathroom and have my first smoke of the day. There just wasn't any time before. I crawl into bed, head spinning, and try to sleep.



Short hours later I'm on the number 3 bus to the old man's house in the Northeast. I'm wearing my collar from the night before. Unless I'm at work, he tells me, I need to wear the collar at all times.

I make it to his house at 10:10 and strip at the door. This is part of the game. He also requested I bring two changes of clothes. Every morning I go to his house, he tells me, I have to shave, wear the collar, and go commando.

Kneeling by the computer desk, I am so happy to be here. I've wanted to play this game since I was born. It's like the Dark Games we played at church camp; running, being chased through the woods at night, forgetting almost that it wasn't real.

The old man teases me for being late but really he's just happy I made it. He asks me how my head is today. I tell him great, because as far as I can tell, it is.

At first he gives me tasks. Move these boxes upstairs. Get my diet Pepsi from the bedside table. Clean up that corner of the basement. I start to wonder when the bullwhip is going to come into this, but he tells me he wants to ease into it. Because I'm new.

"Okay, take a break," the old man tells me. I kneel at attention, but don't bother saying "yes sir".

"Are you scared of me?" asks the old man.

I smirk and say "No," almost apologetically.

"You should be!" He laughs his big, jolly, grandpa laugh.

"Okay, sure," I oblige coyly. "I'm terrified. I just peed on your carpet a little bit."

It's lesson time. We're going to watch an old movie from the '70s. It's called "The Story of O".

It helps that I love '70s movies, but it's very, very hard not to laugh. He clearly takes it seriously and I don't want to hurt his feelings. But soon I'm throwing in comments, snickering at the oh-I-do-declare antics of O, giving this 64 year old dom my observations on what was probably racy for the era and what's tame by today's standards.

Sometimes he goes at me with the leather paddle or the riding crop. I dance back and forth on my heels and smile big as he does it. He grins back, but there's an edge behind it. He goes a little harder.

"How does that feel?" the old man asks me.

"Awesome," I tell him.

"Awesome," he repeats. It's not a word his generation says.

I get bored. I want him to step it up already. When he finally gives me a good, solid, welt-rising hit, I laugh like they do in Jackass and yell "Ah, FUCK!!" Suddenly serious, he tells me, "You don't say that."

"What, fuck?"

"Yes. Not unless you want me to fuck you."

I shrug without agreeing or disagreeing. "Fuck" is not a word that can be extracted from my vocabulary, and I'm far too polite to call him on his bullshit bravado.

We watch a little more of O's story. It's painful. The men and women are equally impossible to take seriously. O gets branded in order to belong to a certain guy and they treat the pain like it's such a big deal. I show the old man my branding scars and he grunts.

We watch O get raped. Not caring one way or the other, I ask, "Who's that guy?"

The old man says nothing.

"What'd that guy say when I said who's that guy?"



I call him from work the next day. He wants me to call "just to check in" every morning. He asks me if I went to bed right away the night before. I tell him pretty much. "Then why did I get a message from you on collarme.com at 11:45?" he asks. "How are you feeling today? How's your ass? Did you do any cleaning in your bathroom like I told you?"

But work that day is fantastic. I am glowing with the thrill of knowing that a strange, fetal part of me which had only gestated in my brain for 25 years is now born into the world, alive. I wear the collar under a scarf and go to mass with the house. I'm falling asleep over the hymnal, but that's normal.

We relax with coffee and doughnuts after the service. Father James kneels between me and one of the core members. We talk about the weather until he tells me "I have to get up now or my knees are going to stay in this position!"

At the house where I work, I cook dinner and talk with everyone like I haven't seen them in years. I think about the cage, the ball gag, the riding crop, and slick black heels. I feel the collar under my scarf. It has nothing to do with who gave it to me. It's mine.



At five, the old man picks me up from work. We settle into our fabulous chemistry, talking and laughing like equals. He lays out what's going to happen for the night. We'll just be watching the grey cup game, so eat dinner at the table, keep your underwear on, relax. His newfie friend is coming over, I met him at the Kink Society Munch I went to.

We all gather in the living room. The newfie is friendly and vibrant and hard to understand. He offers me coupons for the Christmas show at Heritage Park, shows me pictures of the miniature reindeer. We all make plans to go some weekend - me, the newfie, the old man, and his wife. With the grey cup game on TV and the smell of ham and scalloped potatoes in the air, I feel like a part of the family.

"Take off your bra," the old man says to me. Then he offers me a drink.

I sit there like a guest, but the old man starts ordering me around in a way only equalled by my dad when I was 10 years old. He demands his glasses. His dinner. His cutlery. His TV tray. The remote. He is alternately saying "please" and "now".

Uncomfortably trying to lighten the mood, the newfie jokes, "Boy, he's got you well-trained!"

We are not slave and master, boyfriend and girlfriend, or grandfather and granddaughter. We're not friends. We are not in any kind of relationship I can define; all I know now is that I'm in his house and he feels I owe him something. Maybe everything.

He demands the salt and pepper. Not knowing how else to act or what role to play, I get them. I go from the kitchen to the bathroom, dropping the salt and pepper on his TV tray as I walk by.

I know that if I was naked on a leash, being pursued with leather instruments of torture, eating out of a dog dish, we could have a lovely evening. But this isn't kinky. This isn't training. After only three days, this is just a bad marriage.

When I return, the old man smiles at me. "Are you deaf?" he inquires. "I asked for the ketchup too."

I stare at him evenly. The sweet newfie sits awkwardly, looking at the grey cup game.

The old man points to the ketchup. "You see it?"

I make him wait a while for a reply. "Yep," I say. Then I turn back to the TV. The old woman, calm and unflappable, gets the ketchup.

The old man looks confused, needy. He asks me if I want anything. I tell him no.

He sits silently for a while and pretends to watch the game. He turns to the newfie. "So we went to fetish night on friday! Dave couldn't believe I was still there at midnight. Normally you'll never see me in there past 11, but she was having such a good time, I stuck around."

That doesn't earn a remark from anyone. The old woman calls teasingly from the kitchen, "Would the old pervert like some apple cider?"

I know the expression the old man's face is trying to hide. It's the same one I've seen on so many men his age: helpless, angry, at a loss as to why the world he gives so much to has ungratefully turned on him again.

This ancient dom, founder of the Kink Society, "in the lifestyle" for 40 years, sits like a sulking child, alienated and anguished with selfish need. How dare I. He jingles the nipple clamps in his pocket.

Through his increasing fear, he forces a laugh. "Our old sub spoiled us y'know, she used to do everything for us. I just like being waited on. She would do all our cleaning for us and sleep at the end of our bed. I'd step on her a little when I got up in the morning, ha ha. And you know I really hurt my back today and it's not asking too much to expect you to help out when we have you over for dinner..."



I've heard a lot about this other sub. According to the old man, she could take anything. She lived with them for nine months, sleeping on the floor in their bedroom, eating only out of her dog dish, going to work with her ass so bruised she could hardly sit at her desk. He would call her there every day to see if she was having trouble sitting down, ha ha ha, and tell her to go take a break.

I don't know this girl but I know she loved it, living out this movie life they'd orchestrated together; the comfort of belonging to the old man and the old woman, and her private drama of playing the slave game so continuously she could really think it was real. But she left when she wanted to leave. The old man, the big powerful dom, he can only take exactly what you decide to give him. He knows that. And now he's trying to talk his way into getting more, like a kid begging for seconds at dessert.



"You have to be committed to this lifestyle," he tells me later. "I'm an easy-going guy. But you're still very new, and if you don't come over four or five days a week, we're going to lose all the progress we've made. It takes a while to get into 'sub' space. You're going to have time to get groceries and go to work and do whatever you need to do, but this is going to be much better for you than just sitting at home by yourself all the time."

He says, "I can tell you're always thinking. You're always imagining how things are going to be. But you need to just relax for a while, don't take things so seriously. We're gonna get through this together. Y'know, I'm full of surprises! Ha ha ha."

The old man tells me, "I don't kiss. I don't even kiss my wife. And I hate hair." He has pictures on his computer of naked women with their heads shaved. "Would you ever do that?" he asks.

"So far," he says, "we've only done things you want to do."



I get back to my house and it looks exactly the same way it did four days ago; nothing cleaned, nothing added to the familiar squalor. It looks like a nest, abandoned in early winter.

My interest in this whole experiment fades faster than any bruise ever could. I haven't seen the riding crop in two days; just a desperate old man trying to grapple for control over my entire life without ever touching it skin-to-skin.



Walking through the snow toward the C train, I picture his bags of canes and crops and whips and taws and floggers, his ball gags and hoods and spreaders and collars. I hear his wife yelling at him from her realm on the main floor to his realm in the basement. I feel the collar and the Story of O inside my purse, and I am all too ready to return them to their home, back to a dusty pile of abandoned toys gathered with hope and patience over 64 long years of servitude.

After only four days of slave training, I know how it feels to truly be in control.

To be continued...

So, about that Barry guy.

For the most part now I just see him in my dreams. Once it was to make peace. I thought that might mean things would be different the next time I saw him at work. If only.

It starts when I hear his voice behind me. Panic. I feel the rising fear and face it, contain it, squeeze it down to a concealable size. I tell myself to relax. Act normal. But then he appears, in BODILY FORM, and my heart takes off like NASCAR. My vision goes flat and shiny in that way you forget a moment later, when you come back to yourself, like you've just taken a big hit of helium. I feel like I'm smuggling guns through airport security. I feel like I'm way, way too stoned.

And then: small talk. I look right at him, right into the face of this almost-stranger, and make words. Every social skill I've ever acquired stands fierce and pitiful as a spider under the sole of a shoe. And yet I want to make friends with the shoe. Even as my insides run screaming, I'm convinced this could all end if I simply became like the shoe.

And for reals, I do not have the hots for Barry. I do not know Barry. I don't like him and I don't dislike him. For all I can tell he's an absolutely stand-up guy. He has only ever tried to be nice to me, to make things not-awkward. I can console myself after he leaves that while he may do anything to avoid staying in a room with me, he at least seems to feel sorry for me. Because when he's around and we're both doing our best to act normal (HE doing a way better job than ME), the one question burning in both our minds is what in hell is wrong with Erin Hutson?

When he came by the house for 15 minutes today, I experienced the Fear. Then the Panic. Then nausea, followed by giddy relief as he left, like I'd gotten away with something terrible. All of that was followed by exhaustion, a two hour headache, and a need clawing at the walls of my stomach to call somebody, to talk to anyone who'd stop me from quitting my job and starting fresh somewhere new. Somewhere no one would know me.

No wonder I can't hold down a freaking job. Even when everything's going perfect, I'll attach a random coworker's face to some nameless horror buried so deep in my guts it makes me dream. And why? Why?! Because of the way he looked at me once or twice. Like he thought I was weird.

Well, I proved him!

Did I mention I now have a bedroom? Did I mention I didn't have a bedroom, and for a good four months was sleeping in the kitchen? I made a fort. It wasn't age-appropriate at all. I probably shouldn't have told people at work about it. But I gotta say, now that I'm once again sleeping like a big girl, four walls and a door have never felt more like a palace.

I came into the fort situation thanks to my early return to Calgary in February. All the bedrooms were taken. But the times, they are a-changin'; my sister will be moved in with her boyfriend by the first of july, and my brother's heading out soon after, leaving me a big empty two-bedroom bachelorette pad to call my own. And I shall fill it with BEDS, for every room shall be my bedroom! That'll show 'em. Actually, I'm more likely to have my friend Brittany move in, since she got kicked out of her house by her evil, wealthy, Mennonite parents. Also she's the only non-relative in this city whom I see with any regularity, and the only person in the WORLD I can make zombie barbies with while watching Gumby on VHS.

Since I haven't commented on work since I was in Day Program, I must ammend that I'm in one of the homes now, and it's like a gift from Jesus Christ himself, wrapped with a bow and waiting for me anew on my back step every morning. Not to be superlative about it or anything. Because it's not like I never have a shitty day, never have to unclog a toilet, or don't continually have to listen to an obese woman with downs syndrome bark "go get me some chips, bitch" in english so garbled our house leader has to translate so I don't miss out on the message. But the point is, I get paid to hang out with handicapped people. I eat with them, I pray with them, I learn from them, I get them their smokes, I help them shower and brush their teeth.

And I'm good at it. I think I may have found the only setting in the working world where my years of being treated like a retard are actually an asset. Never in my life did I think I'd have a job that involved administering meds I'm on. My doctor back home would accuse me of mania for saying this, but it's the truth: every day I wake up and think I'm dreaming. I'm just gonna enjoy this while it lasts, and avoid Barry from payroll as much as I can.

Oh, and I discovered a swell new band. Enjoy.

well. been a while.

it occurs to me (as i commence blogging) that it's such a chick thing to blog your feelings, and such a guy thing to blog your opinions. likewise, it occurs to me that most people don't give a crap about either, ie., what you think or how you feel. hell, any guy i've met in real life who feels the need to tell me about his blog is clearly a self-important little twat, and if i'm anything to go by, female bloggers must be a bunch of whiny cinderellas trying to justify their existance by showing the world how pretty and sad they are. (excluding my mom, of course, she writes about awesome small town things and the weather.)

so this whole endeavour is either a testament to the self-stroking nature of the human ego, or the more sympathetic need in every heart and mind to reach out and connect. i guess it depends who you're writing for. me, i'm more like one of those blinky signal lights on an emergency airstrip in the mountains. nobody's looking but i'll just keep blinking anyway.

hi... hi... hi... hi... hi... hi... hi...

this is why it's safe to assume bloggers either have a napoleon complex or not enough friends. either way, your emotional needs just aren't being met. there has to be something more to you than who you are around other people. i mean you can't quantify that. it's just way too ephemeral.

i've kept this sonofabitch going for like 10 years now. why would i do that? what is WRONG with me? is this how i stay an artist and not just a person? is this just the saddest little way to have a story instead of a life?

stories are great aren't they, they're just fucking little miracles. you can gather up all the trauma and pain and humiliation and loss of real life and condense it, pack it down tight enough into a single ball until it explodes. it'll shine for anyone who cares enough to see it, hanging there in oneness and beauty, blinking away. you can just stand back and watch it burn.

if you can't do that, it's just dust. and the kind of shit stories are made of really doesn't fly in real life. at work, story drama just makes you a liability. there is no sympathy from the audience when you have a panic attack in a boston pizza. and that intimate scene in the movie where the hero breaks off from the crowd to collapse sobbing in a bathroom, well, it's not very intimate when you're alone. you don't even get to be the hero. but maybe in my little blog i do.

what we want in an artist is not what we want in a human being. in fact it's kind of the opposite. hopefully i can succeed as one where i fail as the other. which reminds me, i'm going to see everclear tomorrow night at the back alley. what a band. they're like if nirvana stayed alive only to turn into nickelback. happiness and stability turned out to be art alexakis' spectacular fall from grace as an artist. hell, i'm not even the artist i used to be since i stopped wanting to die. all i draw now are trees and rabbits. if things go really well, i'll turn right into thomas kincaid.