The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [7]
The year was 2007. Steve’s head felt like crumpled paper after six hours of departmental meetings. Gloria’s blood chemicals were shooting in all directions after an unexpectedly cancelled tryst with Leonard, the director of the local dinner theatre. She would be appearing in three weeks as the lead in the local dinner theatre production of Lady Windermere’s Fan, and she was insecure about her adequacy for the role.
Steve barked, “More Scotch. I don’t feel drunk enough.” He filled his glass and added one ice cube as an afterthought.
“Are you sure you want an ice cube in there? It might dilute your buzz.”
“Why is it that all we do is battle?” He sighed, rattled his ice cube and coughed.
Back in her thirties, one by one, all of Gloria’s other powerful emotions had gone out to get a pack of cigarettes and had never returned. Only anger remained. “We don’t battle. We drink. It’s different with us.”
Steve looked at his watch. “The guests will be here in a half-hour. What are we having?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
“We have guests coming over and you haven’t figured it out yet?”
“No.”
Roger
It’s amazing how you can be a total shithead, and yet your soul still wants to hang out with you. Souls ought to have the legal right to bail once you cross certain behaviour thresholds: I draw the line at cheating at golf; I draw the line at theft over $100,000; I draw the line at bestiality. Imagine all the souls of the world, out on the sides of highways, all of them hitchhiking to try to find new places to live, all of them holding signs designed to lure you into selecting them as a passenger:
. . . I sing!
. . . I tell jokes.
. . . I know shiatsu.
. . . I know Katharine Hepburn.
I don’t deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.
However, earlier today at the Oasis Car Wash I bumped into an old friend from high school, Teddy, who had become a psychiatrist. While ex-cons buffed our rear-view mirrors and stole sunglasses and pocket change, I asked him if he’d reached any broad conclusions about humanity.
He asked me, “What kind of conclusions?”
“You know, that everybody on earth—not merely your patients—that everybody’s a mess.”
He perked up. “Oh, good God, man, get real. Everybody’s a disaster.”
His Chrysler 300 popped out of the buffing bay, and we said goodbye. I felt a thousand percent good for the first time in months. Having the same illness as everybody else truly is the definition of health.
Why, you may ask, do I spend the peanuts I make at work on a car wash? Because it makes me feel good. Because it was payday. Because my car is the one thing in my life that’s working. It’s a Hyundai Sonata, and nothing ever goes wrong with it. It’s drop-dead boring but it works. I identify with it.
I just looked up and out the staff room door to see that Shawn is dressed as Wonder Woman. She’s tit-proud, and she works it. I think if human beings had genuine courage, they’d wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn’t life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don’t they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you’d meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to—like talking to dogs. Hey, cool costume! I dig vampires too. Let’s go out for a beer. Halloween costumes are another disinhibiting device, like fortune-telling and talking to dogs that belong to strangers.
Me? I’d dress like a matador.