Of Friendship and Funerals (a sort of eulogy)

Some days, you feel the shadow of death everywhere. It lingers in the exhausted eyes of the coffee shop girl who was out too late last night and in too early this morning. It crouches on the stoop of an old man’s shoulders as he loiters at a bus stop. In swirls over the bleary grey-blue clouds that roll across the sky. I’ve been feeling like that a lot over the past few days. Ever since last weekend, when my phone rang at half past midnight and a piece of my world ended forever.

A Dangerous Business

Once upon a time I ran a weekly student newspaper. Long story. Suffice to say it was the best of times, the worst of times, and all sorts of strange in-between times that no amount of whiskey or therapy will ever enable me to forget. When I think back now though, few moments seem as surreal as the day a posse of bouncers rolled into my office and threatened to beat the shit out of me.

Lonely Eyes

So here’s something weird. A little while back I was typing on my laptop in a coffee shop near my place (yes yes, I know, writing in a coffee shop: I’m that big of a cliché), when this woman came up to me and, with a curiously endearing shyness, said “Hey you.”

I looked up and gave her the once over. Sheepish smile, inviting green eyes, thumbs hooked casually into the back pockets of her skinny black jeans. I had absolutely no idea who she was.

So Then I Bought A Dresser

A few years ago I lived with a woman who I thought was the love of my life. Our breakup—which was sad, protracted, eviscerating, humiliating, terrifying, shocking to anyone who knew us—was one of the worst moments of my life, and left me reeling and confused in ways I couldn’t understand. There was a gaping hole in my universe where our relationship used to be, and I had no idea how to assess that damage let alone repair it. So I skipped town, rented a new place, and set about putting my life back together.

The Day I Met Charlie Sheen

Back in high school I dated a girl whose father didn’t like me very much. After a while he even stopped using my name and started calling me, with a sneering disdain he didn’t bother to hide, “Mister Jovial.” I had earned this dubious moniker through a series of unwitting mistakes, including a rare moment of muted enthusiasm when I came to fetch his daughter one evening for a date. Apparently I had failed to express appropriate glee over something that had excited him—I can’t remember what. But from that moment on the name, and his dislike of me, stuck.

An Unpromising Beginning

Want to know a bad thing? I’ve slept with women who had boyfriends. Apologies if one of them was supposed to be “yours.” Not that it makes much difference, but at least half the time I didn’t know she was off the market until long after that particular detail should have been proactively divulged. Maybe I should have just asked.

Sleeping with a woman who had a boyfriend was never something I planned, but rather one of those bad things that seemed like a good idea at the time. I won’t trouble you now (though I will later) with the nuances of those encounters, nor why I have now adamantly, irrefutably, unwaveringly (or, you know, at least temporarily) sworn off gals with boyfriends. For me, the odd thing wasn’t so much that it happened, but that for a while there it wouldn’t stop happening.

Open to Suggestion

The terrifying rumours are true. Very soon, I will be unleashing an annoyingly (in)frequent torrent of rambling rants, ruminations, and reports from the reckless and improbable adventures that consume my life. Not just because some of you asked for it, but because I’ve got to have something to do with all these stories I’ve been collecting.

The first actual post will be up soon, but in the meantime why not subscribe so I can let you know by email when I’ve added new content?

It won’t be long now. Until then I remain,

(in)conveniently yours.