9.30.2003  
I missed the hurricane. I was in St. Jean visiting Alex’s mother. We were up until 3 in the morning reading some of his stuff. There’s a lot of writing about me. I took his housecoat, I used to wear it.

I’m going to post some of the stuff he wrote. Maybe it’s a bit narcissistic of me, but I truly don’t give a fuck. We loved each other. And that’s not something I want to forget. A lot of the stuff came from his black book, which he had when we were going out. I used to read it when he was at work. It’s all duct taped and there’s a sticker on front which says ‘Don’t fuck with da faggots.” And a cartoon of a dog licking himself. There used to be a picture of two blow up dolls in the bathtub, the man blow-up doll is fingering the girl blow up doll. I bought it for him, cause we liked to take baths together. I’ve edited parts of the writing that I choose. Not all of it, but bits and pieces.

Alex’s body was found in the parking garage of Brunswick Square in St. Jean, New Brunswick, on Saturday, August 2 at around 5:30 pm. He’d been missing for three days, although making phone calls to friends and leaving messages on people’s phones. He spent Thursday night talking with a reclusive New Brunswick artist whose name I can’t remember. Two boys found him. His shoes and his gym sneakers were missing.


I pick up my eyes
One from the table
And one off the floor
I put one back in my head
And the other in your sock
And you’re gone for good
I still have the satisfaction
of seeing your foot
when you think I am not
Looking.
__________

I thought you could never
drive the love from
wet grass on a July morning.
Rubber ball, bicycle wheel.
__________

I think of you often, Claudette
There is poetry in the air around you
A clinical desperation
Shit, it disarms, disinfects.

Go out and have a few vodka and peach snapps and pick one of my friends and fucking go! Show me that you can get even.
I have prospered from anonymity. But no, you sit beside me, your glass tipped and almost raised to your lips. You’re staring at refracting light through the ice in your drink. And the picture of you doing this beside me is beautifully naïve and fragile.
___________

Stopped in the street he is laughing at all the cars passin’, and he says “All the things I do, I ain’t gonna do no more, cuz all the girls on the side, it gets too hard to hide.”

___________

I lay face down in this bed, that is no longer ours without moving. I laid there for hours and the only reason I got up was because I didn’t want to have to lie in piss. I got up. But I did not prosper. I’m not getting better. And I am afraid. I want to say that my unquenchable lust remains unquenched, that your body in another man’s arms says nothing, means nothing, except for festering jealousy and sleepless nights.

___________

Take it with a smile. She did it and did it again.

___________

You attack me with your perception of my ammunition, and you shot me, a walking dead. I am no longer objective.
__________

I wanted to give you a gift of my love. I was shy and I was afraid that it had been darkened through years of self-loathing. Not quite a gift, not quite harm, just a bitter young man, wanting to give you a gift.

__________

I had a reoccurring dream last night. I dreamt that I was waking up from a dream and as I got out of bed I started to age ten, fifteen, twenty years. I quickly got dressed and started walking into the kitchen. I paced and tried to decide what to do. I had to stop, cause I got a limp and it hurt to walk. I was around sixty-five when I realized I was going to die.
___________

I sit down and take the spoon out of my coffee. I hold it four inches above my cup. I shake the spoon and stare at the drop of coffee caught on the tip of the spoon. A song comes on and I remember last fall. I think of you, Claudette. If you’re still listening.
I would wait for you to get off work. You’d walk outside and we’d kiss, the wind blowing your hair in our faces. We’d walk arm in arm, for twenty minutes back to my place, and you would tell me all the little things that happened to you that day.

We’d get to my apartment on Creighton Street. Claudette said it’s scary, but she loves ugly things. We’d make sure there were no cockroaches in the mattress on the floor before falling down and making love.

We’d usually sit next to each other at a small table for two, and I would stroke her thigh as we ordered. Once I remember that my hand found her knee and I slid it up her skirt. She smiled and squeezed her legs together, trapping my hand. The food came and I was forced to eat with the wrong hand.

When Claudette would lie down on her side her breasts would gently turn in opposite directions…

All the crack dealers were out in my neighborhood. We could hear traffic from the street. Cars stopped for crack and dogs fought loudly, and we woke each other up through the night to have sex.
I was happy last fall and I still think of you often Claudette. I wonder if the other side of the world has changed you. I still picture you talking with a cigarette hanging from your hand, and acting as if the world never affects you. I sometimes wonder if you miss me. Are you still in Korea? Claudette, please come back. I’m lonely and kinda scared without you.
___________

I feel I am living in a re-run. I am rotting in another boring city. …It’s hard to remember how I confessed when I was tortured. You systematically destroyed every defense because time was on your side. You worked me against my friends, and now I have enemies, and now I sometimes feel cold.
___________

I walk into the bathroom and put shaving cream on my face and pick up my razor. I stare at my Santa-Clause beard, and I hack and slash every bit of my blue-black sundial until it is fully reset to zero. I pick up my toothbrush and pack it with sanitizing agents and perform genocide in my mouth. In the shower I scrub off skin. I get out and towel myself off, and start to wander around the house, naked. I suddenly start running around. I throw the newspaper up in the air. I eat half a banana with the peel still on. I run to my room and rifle through my bookshelf, with the occasional book going across the room. I put a pair of boxers on my head and jump on my bed for a while. The shelves in my dresser get turned over. I will not give anyone the satisfaction of knowing exactly how much they’ve ruined this for me.

___________

“I look like hell,” she says. Fuck I am in hell. At least I haven’t thrown up in 4 months. At least I don’t want to blow my brains out lately. At least I have fooled my family. When you were holding on so tight, you forgot to swim for yourself.

___________

She used to say to me
I forced myself to forget
The things I don’t remember
I’m happy, so it’s not as bad as it sounds
And she used to say to me
I want you to hold me tonight
I don’t dream,
But please wake me when I scream.

___________

Skip boring school years. Cut to the Chase. I went to University of King’s College for almost two years. I left thinking that institutionalized higher learning in Arts was bunk. My last night at University was the grandest farewell.
Adrian and I shared our birthdays only two days apart. I bought a ½ ounce and invited about 12 people to my dorm room in Radical Bay. Well, after 4 or 5 joints and a few beer everyone was tight. The only problem was that so many people were coming in and out of my room that the sweet smell of pot was in the hall, which alerted the campus police…

__________

I feel everyone’s silent prejudice in the corner.

__________

Come around. Take it with a smile. She did it. And did it again. Things come slipping off towards the middle. Time gets sucked into the sphere and a bead of sweat that fell from your forehead awaits suspended just inches from the ground. Time stood still for a moment giving you a chance to see everything clearly. Slowly you got up from your chair and walked to the window, where drops of rains and condensation covered the pane. Wiping the window clear again you are nonplussed at the view you’ve grown accustomed to; but your conscience reaches for the tree outside, skims the puddles, and kisses the grass for a new perspective.
___________

Make Christmas Card for Lori McCurdy
Show family where I did play/Doing new stuff.
Start writing/listening/buying music
Work Out**
No more empty promises
Grab life
Listen to Beck/buy all things Beck
Begin my life again
Experience your experiences
Love life
Choose something
Write, write, write
Find the beautiful
Stop selling out
Where is selling out
It is here around you.
Apathy, apathy, apathy
here comes your chance,
dance, dance, dance
___________

She said take me home. Well maybe I was wrong. Yeah maybe I was wrong to force myself to forget the things I can’t remember.
You said I took too long
Yeah, well. I still remember you.
___________

A silence on the telephone last night.
“hello? Are you still there?” I ask and think the same.
Baby, if I’m still quiet
Like last tuesday when we made love
And only the light screamed at the shadows from the candle, I’m not trying
to shut you out, but cold and callouses, baby,
And I can’t speak for us.
Time, time and time, time, time
Your soft brown eyes wash my thoughts liquid, and
It scares me baby, because I know you and you know me and I know you.
When I am lying flaccid beside your beautiful body, not able to fuck you
At all---I can see your tragic resolve and that delicate skin.
I hope I never break your soul, heart or mind
Because I have massaged your subconscience
As you’ve unfolded layers of pain to see mine.
And all I really want to ask you---
Is if you can see the symbolism?
___________

My name is Alex Mollins and I love myself. Today is a Great Day, and I will try to become a better person.
___________

I just don’t give a damn
Who the hell you think you are
With all the lines posing
My love for you is morphine
My love for you is heroin
I remember the pact we made,
but it’s not your present anymore.
You’ll confuse
Anguish for anger,
Apathy for sanity,
Silence for defiance.

My love for you is morphine.
____________

I saw my friends laughing and smiling. I thought it was a beautiful sight.
____________
What makes my girl
So sick and meaningful
Beauty and sarcasm
I thought I got it all
So tired I couldn’t sleep
When I look in your eyes
And OH—that great big smile.
I had some whiskey baby
Push, pull, fall, control
Are you here to hurt me
I’m sitting by myself, but that’s okay
If you don’t want to call---honey.
____________

Claudette, I saw a spider today and fell in love with it for you. Let’s go out dancing, but don’t forget to wear your hat because it’s going to be a little bit cold. Warm smiles beautiful with your black hair.
___________

I was about to say that it was all in fun. I turned around and saw that you took a bite from my cheeseburger.
___________

I want to start in the middle, something like; As he rode on the hood of the car in the dead of winter wearing nothing but boxer shorts, he fully realized the toll from the night of flaming zambucas. He was high as a kite and didn’t care if he walked the next 20 miles. But that should mean nothing to the reader. There are interesting middles, but they lack context. I need to tell you that one day when he was five he went into a field in the middle of tall grass and in the middle of what he saw as vibrantly beautiful, he cried for the pain of his mother and his brother. But even that is only a start.
___________
Sitting quietly in the lazyboy in my living room, I think of fucking my girl, she’s so beautiful. I stop to find I’m drunk as hell, I’m twenty-three, I’m absent minded. I even forgot the look you gave me two nights ago.
___________

I write my name on a piece of gum, stuck on a bus shelter.














4:54 PM  



9.27.2003  
We woke up around 11:00. First of all I no longer have a big queen sized bed.
He turned to me and said, “Could you turn down the heat?”
“The heat’s not on.”
“Oh.”

Then he laid down on the cushions in the living room. I was applying eye liner in the bathroom.
What’s good for a hangover? “Sherri!! Do we have any vitamin C?”
“No, but’s there’s cod liver oil!”
“Jason!!! Do you want some cod liver oil?!”
“Sure.”

He needed to get in the bathroom instead. And he brought up the lunch he didn’t eat.
Loudly. Sherri thought he was sneezing. When he came out, he was sweating a lot.

I applied ointment to his tattoo. And we got a drive to Cole Harbour to hang out at his parent’s place. Which… is heaven.

His father bought a pinball machine off e-bay for $750. Want one. While I was flipping the ball and picking up Santa, I imagined getting the pinball machine out of Dartmouth and into the Vimy Legion for the burlesque show. I could play a few pinball games in my lingerie. We took a nap on the L-shaped leather couch and watched ‘Beat the Geeks’ and ‘Best Couples in Rock.’ We played pinball for another two hours. Then we ate dinner. Smoked a joint and took another nap on the couch.

“It’d be nice if someone could hand back all the time we spend watching commercials.”
“Yah. That’d be a lot of time.”
“Yah, it would.”

10:14 PM  



9.26.2003  
Lately I have felt pretty uncomfortable around people. I just don’t feel like talking. I need a break. I mean a really, really long break. I would like to go to Cape Breton and write a book.

We have a cabin in Margaree. My grandfather built it in the 60s. There are linoleum floors and musty curtains and a picture of dogs playing poker. There’s a shed full of coal because he was a coal miner. My mom told me my grandfather liked playing tricks on people. Stuff, like dead rats in their lunch pails. And my grandmother always knew when he'd been at the pub because she'd hear him singing ‘All around the Mulberry Bush' from way down the road.

I learned how to paint at the cabin one summer. My grandfather sawed off pieces of plywood for me and went to the shed and found 4 different colors of house paint; rusty red, black, white, and yellow. I mixed them up and made brown, pink, blue and gray. I painted pictures of the barn cats his war friend Sam had on the hill. There were about 8 of them. And I painted them like they were in a family portrait. Sam would go out on his step and yell “Heeeeeere!!!! Kitty, kitty, kitty, kitty!!!!” And cats would come out of the woods, the cellar and the barn. Sam had one leg. We used to go there at night. They would play cards and I would drink tea with extra sugar. He had a bed in his kitchen. That’s where I sat.

I once caught my grandfather necking with his dead brother’s wife in the kitchen.

4:59 PM  



9.25.2003  

11:21 PM  



9.21.2003  
I came out of Hell's Kitchen and hopped on my bike. There was some activity going on. Didn't pay much attention, I was just hoping I wouldn't crash into the side door of a car like I did the last time I rode 'er drunk.

"Show me your helmet, " a pudgy, young cop says as I ride by.

I slowed down, flashed him a big smile and kinda shrugged my shoulders. Then I kept going.

I heard a squeaky voice. "She ignored me."




I have crushes on about 7 men right now. Something has got to give. I'm very horny. But lately I have a strong aversion to making the first move. I can do mild flirting, like skin brushing skin, knees touching, breathing. I also like it when things happen naturally. I can quite easily push it to make it happen, I just don't want to. But still. I'm very horny.



5:19 PM  



9.17.2003  

6:23 PM  

 
That mangy, mite-infested, crusty, fucking trailer park trash cat BROKE through the kitchen window screen this morning and ATTACKED. There was a bloody bitch fight on the tiles. I left my already slightly psychologically disturbed cat crouching in the corner hissing and growling at everything that moved, including my plants and the shoe.

NOTE TO TRASHY NEIGHBOURS (re: your NEGLECTED CAT): First of all, where the fuck is his tail? And what the fuck is growing on his neck. And WHY do both sides of his flanks meet in the middle. I am no longer going to feed your fucking cat. And I am so fucking tired of putting up with your family fucking smoke and scream parties on the front stoop. Please, move BACK TO THE TRAILER PARK. How many god-damn babies do you have anyway? Your brother is disgusting. Tell him to wipe the drool off his lung transplant and put on a shirt. Stop wearing spandex. Cut your hair. I can hear your mother hocking through the drain pipes. And when a baby is screaming its fucking head off you DO NOT TAKE IT OUTSIDE AND WALK UP AND DOWN THE FUCKING STREET AND YELL “DANIELLE!! DANIELLE WHAT’S THE MATTER DANIELLE!!!!!!!!!!!!” AND, when you’re holding a baby on your knee, put OUT YOUR FUCKING SMOKE, YOU MORON!!!!

To top it all off I totally fucking forgot that Buck 65 played last night. For some reason I ended up somewhere with a bunch of HIPPIES.

12:31 PM  

 
My friend Dash says when an ant crawls into your ear it feels like demolition showed up to knock out your house. BOOM! BOOM! The best way to get rid of an ant in your ear is to shine a flashlight on your face and it crawls out. Same with earwigs.

1:30 AM  



9.16.2003  
On the day of Alex’s funeral I saved a wasp from drowning in red wine. I scooped him out and flicked him to the ground. He buzzed in a slop of wet.
“Put him out of his misery!” they yelled.
Put him out of his misery. Instead, I clipped the tip of his wing with my finger and my thumb and lifted him out. He flew away.

* * * *

Alex’s PIN number was ‘lust.’ On the day of his funeral I found out Alex had kept the same PIN number for years and years and years.

* * * *

So, the priest says suicides go to hell. So, then I says, “Why don’t you go to hell?” Ba-doom boom.

3:06 PM  



9.15.2003  
It is difficult to lean over a box. A box with stationed flowers on top. It is difficult to lean over a gray room with a corner and a box. To imagine this body you know is there. And a white bristol board with sticky tacked photos. Three of which, you took, with your second camara. It is difficult to lean over a box. A small, small box. For 6 foot one. It is difficult to hear words from the gray corner. "You are beautiful. You are more beautiful than I." To see you naked. Cross-legged on my futon. With my words spread over your feet.

Leaning over this box. It is difficult to whisper a promise to a box. To lean over a box and make a promise, and see a daisy, over there, to the right. It is difficult to stack a promise on top of a box. To lean over a harsh chair for two hours. And watch a small box.

9:10 PM  



9.12.2003  
Dear Friend and Lover,

There’s lots I could do.

I could bike over to your place and beat the shit out of you. You might win. But I’d at least make something bleed, like your elbow or your lip. What? Are you, like, MAD at me? Or. I could bike over to your place in the middle of the afternoon. We could take a nap together. Have the same dream.

But it’s not like you give me anything to go on. You have your litter of kittens and you pull one out every couple of months when that’s what you feel like doing. Fine. I understand you better than you know.

I have no idea what my reaction should be. You see, my radar doesn’t work anymore. But so what? I don’t deny myself the emotion, just the reason behind it. Because I’ve always had a hard time deciphering people who passively try to tell me something without really telling me.

Love,
Me

3:44 PM  



9.09.2003  
Spear 'em

The Bondage Ball. Lee made a quickie costume, he cut out the nipples in his shirt and wrapped duct tape around his body.

I stood naked in the music room for 5 hours while Robin mummified me with cheese cloth. That place stinks. Punks rehearse in there. Sex happens. And beer bottle storage. It was a steam room. Baby powder, hatchets, strange men. And then I downed some mushrooms. After a while I felt really faint and I kept whispering "Can you bring me some water?" I wasn't allowed to leave until my place in the fashion show. It looked pretty at the end. I had those bull horns on and cheese cloth streaming off one arm and just in time we looped a piece over my face.

I almost fell when I got up on stage. I was supposed to walk out to a Skinny Puppy tune. I have no idea what was playing. I walked to the end of the stage and saw two really fat men leering at me. Fun. I had a pair of scissors and I cut the cheese cloth from my face. Then I turned around and went down on my knees. Lee came up and wrapped a thick chain around my wrists and I crawled off stage.

It took 30 seconds.

God I have hot tits.


6:26 PM  

 
Shakin' that ass

Partly---I whined. I forgot to do something important for work and tried to pass it off late on a Sunday. Really, it's just a sheet of paper. People get upset, I feel bad. My mother called me at work to talk about shelves, I started crying.
-Are you taking your pills?
-No.
-I thought you were taking your pills, considering what's been going on lately.
-But when I take them, I can't be creative. I see roadkill and I don't care. I read the newspaper and I don't care.
-But you're stressed.
-I don't want to.
-You should really take your pills. They work for you. You need them.

My mother is a pusher.

Is it better to cry everyday? or never at all?

Two nice things happened. I cried on my co-worker's shoulder and when I got back, there was a colorful 'Picasso on Acid' mini-kleenex on my desk with a note---"To make your boo-hoo days happier." And then Dave, my friend who owns Ideal Bikes on Agricola (where I got my bike), gave me a red bmx, until I got mine back or even if I didn't. Plus he smoked me up. I'm happy I have a ride, but I let her know it was only temporary. As in, I'm using you.

12:19 AM  



9.07.2003  
Ummm, my bike was stolen last night outside the old AND cafe by the Grainery. It's a bmx, painted flat black, with the paint chipping underneath (silver). There's clean, barely used pegs in the front and back, the seat is cushiony, the frame is thick, it's heavy. Anyway if you see anyone riding it, tell them it's your friends bike and they better watch out cause we're coming to get it. Anyway the word is out with the hood kids and the bike guys. I miss my bike.


9:49 PM