The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [14]
Oh, and she’d have to go to the gym, stop smoking and start eating food that doesn’t come in cans or boxes. And she’d have to meet people out in the real world doing real- world things like dog walking and swimming and line dancing. And in order to afford it, she’d have to sell or mortgage the condo, and I think she should. She needs escape velocity if she’s ever going to get out of her present life and into a new one.
But let’s talk about you. Maybe you’re not a total alkie, but booze does explain things about you. Let’s face it, Roger, you’re a disaster. I thank my biological father for teaching me all about that alkie shit before he flaked off with Cerise when I was a kid.
Maybe I should try being you on paper for a while. I’ll think about it. It’s actually a fucked-up thing to do, trying to stick yourself into somebody else’s head. I’ve never done it before, though I did this pathetic two-year stint at a local community college that shall go unnamed, and I had to take an English course in creative writing—it was hippie stuff like, “Pretend you’re a piece of toast being buttered. Write it from the toast’s point of view.” All I remember from the course is everybody almost going insane having to wait until it was their turn to read their stuff out loud. And when people started reading their stuff, it was like they were taking the class hostage. It didn’t matter what slop people wrote, everybody had to be nicey-nicey to them afterwards. I don’t think anybody learned a thing, and I don’t think you missed a thing by not finishing college.
You’re really good at pretending I don’t exist here in the store.
What happens next in Glove Pond?
PS: You nailed my feelings about having to say Did you find everything you were looking for? I have this fear of being seventy and having a stroke, and the only thing I’m able to say is, Did you find everything you were looking for? Shoot me if that happens.
Glove Pond
Steve sat in the living room, waiting for the doorbell to ring. Gloria was upstairs changing her lipstick colour. Steve stared at his five critically successful, financially disastrous leather-bound novels, third shelf up in his walnut bookshelves, a wedding present from Gloria’s family. Being head of an English department in a large university was no salve for the source of his pain: his lack of fame and the fact that he had to have a day job. He thought it odd to be so successful yet not successful at all.
He looked at the top of the piano, where a swath of polished wood shone through a cloak of dead skin cells and burrowing micro-organisms.
When will the doorbell ring?
Using the same part of the brain he used to try to make jets explode, Steve willed the doorbell to ring.
It didn’t ring.
Steve thought about how hard life was as director of the English department of a large, prestigious university. He was exhausted from being a pit bull, always protecting the English language within his faculty, guarding it from a never-ending onslaught of change. The English language was noble to Steve. It should never ever, ever, ever, ever change, no matter what. If Steve could have his way, English would have been frozen with Henry James. 1898? Somewhere near then. Steve rather daringly thought of Henry James as his favourite writer because James defined the cut-off point after which the English language was never to be permitted to shift. Steve wondered if his faculty members had ever trashed him behind his back for his daring taste. Maybe he should opt for Poe. Poe died in 1849, while James, dying in the twentieth century, had a taint of modernity about him.
Steve also felt sorry for Poe because of something