NINE
LA BARAQUE
Le misérable
Georgette’s pep talk didn’t really take. Not right away anyway. Milton spent the next week like a ghost in his room. Sneaking between the kitchen and the bathroom and his hovel.
Georgette ratted him out to Noddy though, and he knocked quietly on Milton’s door one night and made his case from the other side.
“Dude! It just happened.”
“…”
“Sorry, b’y. It meant nothing.”
“…”
“I didn’t know you were into her. I didn’t even know you knew her.”
“…”
“Bros before hoes, b’y.”
“…”
“She wasn’t that good.”
“…”
“I mean, she was fine, had these hot tattoos. But she was a bit of a dead lay, y’know?”
“…”
“B’y! Come back to work, would ya? Sam’s driving me crazy with all this bullshit about Sarah Palin.”
“…”
“I won’t fuck her again, I promise. She’s all yours, b’y.
“…”
Milton subsisted on as little as possible for as long as possible. He left the house only twice in a month-long stretch, and only then to restock his supply of half-rotten two-for-one pineapples and day-old St. Viateur bagels, which would both keep in the freezer forever.
No trips to the Greek stationery store for paper. When he ran out, he just fed the paper into his typewriter backwards, then upside-down, then backwards and upside-down to squeeze four poems on each sheet. When he ran out of edges and sides, he just stopped typing altogether.
No trips to see Guillaume et Gweltaz.
Milton was content to wallow in his misery and stench until a week after the rent was due and Georgette knocked on the door again.
“Go away!”
“Milton! Come now. You owe me money!”
Milton had forgotten about rent. He’d counted his greasy fifty-dollar bills and figured he could live out the rest of his days as he had been. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and screwed his face up into a grimace as tight as it would go. Rent would take all but one of his remaining fifties.
“Yeah, okay.”
Milton opened his door and handed Georgette a ball of rumpled bills. The smell of the bills and Milton’s room joined forces and slugged her right in the nose. She felt the urge to vomit but grabbed Milton’s arm instead, almost to steady herself.
“Milton! Quitte la maison, maintenant! Tu pues comme un cul pourri. Is this what you want? It’s just a girl. It’s just Nohdee. You come with me tonight, I take you outside.”
Georgette wouldn’t take no for an answer. She pestered Milton until he agreed to shower and come with her to the wrap party for the second run of Cromwell at a dive bar in their neighbourhood called La Baraque.
. . .
Les poupées
Milton had met some of Georgette’s puppet troupe before and found them to be insufferable and borderline dangerous.
They started off mostly sitting in a line at the bar like a bunch of pigeons and casting aspersions on everyone and everything that didn’t measure up to puppetry, which, according to puppeteers, was everyone and everything that wasn’t puppetry.
That was until they got drunk enough to dance, and then they’d all grind their fronts on one another and sloppily stick their tongues down one another’s throats until the bar closed. And then they’d all go out into an alley and smoke hard drugs together.
He wasn’t sure if it was crack or meth or heroin or what. Milton hadn’t seen any hard drugs before meeting the puppet troupe. He hadn’t seen much besides Old Style Pilsner, snus, cigarettes, and sometimes some weed in Saskatchewan.
But both times he’d bumped into Georgette out with her troupe they’d ended the night in an alley passing around a glass pipe and a bent-up spoon. Then several of them, high on whatever it was, would end up at Milton’s apartment smashing dishes on the floor, lighting cigarettes and their eyebrows on the stove burner, and doing all kinds of unimaginable sex acts in Georgette’s room until the next day when Milton would find them strewn about the apartment, passed out naked.
The previous times Milton had just bumped into the troupe and watched everything unfold in horror. He didn’t participate. He didn’t do drugs or drink that much, and he wasn’t really interested in becoming a crackhead, or a puppeteer. But when Georgette grabbed him by the ear and dragged him into the bathroom, dumped him in the tub, and turned the shower on, he didn’t really have much of a choice.
Milton had been to La Baraque a few times, but he tried his best to avoid it. It was the sort of place full of professional drinkers and rough-looking biker-types, and it probably sold the puppet troupe their hard drugs right at the bar.
When he and Georgette arrived—after she had to drag Milton out of the shower, berate him until he got dressed, and then drag him out of the house—the puppet pigeons were already lined up at the bar and were partway through a spirited slandering of the poor bastard who just finished a short open-mic stand-up set.
“Je suis un comédien. Je raconte des blagues sales dans les bars pour motards et personne ne rit,” one of them mocked.
They laughed at their own barbs more than anyone did for the comedian.
Milton moped in a dark corner for a while, nursing a plastic cup of watered-down beer Georgette put in his hand, watching amateur French comedians he didn’t understand bomb set after set.
For the first while Georgette had attempted to include him in the group, but before long she’d given up and joined in the shitting upon comedians:
“Tellement nul, ce comédien! Il devrait se tuer, pour épargner le public!”
Milton was having a fine time in his dark pit of despair until he had to use the bathroom.
He’d never used the bathroom in La Baraque before. He made his way towards the back of the small and cramped bar where he assumed it would be. In the back he found no bathroom, per se, just a toilet in the hallway. No door, no stall, no room. Just a toilet. He stood staring in disbelief for a few minutes until a giant mountain of a biker pushed passed him and started pissing in the hallway toilet.
“Aweille, botare! Tabarnak!”
Milton decided to hold it and made his way back towards the troupe.
On the way back he recognized a familiar face sitting alone at the end of the bar.
It was her.
. . .
“Les seins tombent”
Robin was stickhandling a drink back and forth between her hands. Staring at it blankly.
Milton stood and watched her for a long time. Long enough for her to be approached by three guys—two bikers and a puppeteer—offering to buy her drinks, to take her away from this life, to make all her dreams come true, to live happily ever after, to have dozens of hairy, bearded babies born with neck tattoos of snakes and dragons or dragon-snakes. She told them to “get bent,” “eat shit,” and “fuck off” respectively.
The entire time, watching all of this unfold, watching her sit there alone, watching her tell giant bikers to eat shit, Milton’s heart beat harder and harder as it climbed up into his throat.
Being frozen in daffy awkwardness and nervous nausea was nothing new. His first impulse was to spontaneously combust. But something was different. This time the anxiety and panic tasted a little different. Not as bad. The weeks of despair had watered it down. It wasn’t as bitter and overpowering. The edge was off. She’d slept with Noddy. If that doesn’t bring someone down off a pedestal, nothing will.
He approached the bar and stood beside her. And just stood there for a while. Not saying anything. At first, she didn’t even notice it was him.
“Qu’est-ce que tu bois?”
The bartender interrupted their silence.
“Two root beers, one for me and one for the young lady, here.”
She looked up, annoyed, then saw who it was and laughed. Finally.
“We don’t have root beer, asshole.”
“Just beer then.”
The bartender handed him two of the most expensive beers they had.
“Douze dollars. Twelve bucks.”
Milton dug his last crumpled $50 out of his pocket and rolled it across the bar.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m with those junkie puppeteers. My roommate is one of them. Did you meet her the other day? Georgette?”
“Junkie puppeteers?”
“Yeah, puppeteers who get drunk and smoke meth or something in an alley. They’re fun. Just watch.”
Right on cue two of the troupe climbed on the bar and started grinding on each other in tune to “Drain You” by Nirvana.
“Right.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Just having a drink.”
“Alone?”
“Yeah. Long day at work.”
“Right on.”
Between the pitiful comedians and the mimed bar-top sex acts, the painful small talk dragged on for what seemed like ever. They worked their way through all the hits: the weather, the US elections, the shows they were watching, the books they were reading, the likelihood of the two puppeteers currently dry-humping on the bar being shivved by any one of the dozens of bikers capable of it at any moment.
Milton was content to carry on like this until the end of time, but for Georgette.
Georgette, quickly rounding puppet-snark and heading for dance floor dry-hump, came over and grabbed Milton to defile him before the comedy started up again.
“C’mon, Milton! Dansons, joli garçon!”
Milton resisted long enough for Georgette to get a sense of what was going on.
“Putain, Milton, c’est la putain qui a brisé ton cœur? Is this her? Mon dieu, c’est elle!”
Milton went red with embarrassment. Georgette went on a rampage.
“Comment as-tu pu, salope?! Tu as baisé notre colocataire brutal, Nohdee! Tu devrais baiser ce gentil garçon ici! Nohdee est un humain dégoûtant! J’espère qu’il t’a donné une maladie et que tes seins tombent!”
“I beg your pardon?”
Robin turned towards Georgette.
“Did you just say you hope my tits fall off?”
“Mais oui! Tu devrais avoir honte! Ta mère devrait avoir honte!”
“Georgie! George! GEORGE! It’s okay. It’s fine. It’s okay.”
“Non! C’est pas okay! She break your ’eart and you
’aven’t left your room since she fuck with Nohdee. Putain!”
“Just go. We’re fine. Thanks. Go dance. I’ll see you in a bit.”
One of Georgette’s troupe grabbed her arm and dragged her onto the “dancefloor”—about five square feet between two tables of bikers—and they began rubbing their asses together.
“Jeez, what’s her deal?”
“Haha. Georgette? She just likes to dance.”
“No… That whole thing?”
“What?”
“All the stuff she said about breaking your heart?”
“Oh… Heh… It’s nothing.”
“Didn’t seem like nothing.”
“Well, I guess she just wanted to know why you slept with our roommate Noddy, but I dunno, my French is a little rusty.”
“Who?”
“Our roommate, Noddy. You slept with him a few weeks ago. The night I… um… walked in on you in the… uh… bathroom.”
“Oh, fuck. His name is Noddy? What a dumb name.”
“You didn’t even know his name?”
“Why would I? He’s clearly an idiot.”
“Then why did you sleep with him?”
“I didn’t sleep with him. I wanted to have sex, he was around and into it, we did it, it was disappointing like it usually is, I went home. Consenting adults and all that.”
“Right. All that.”
“I didn’t know he was your roommate. Your guys’ place is a bit of a dump.”
“Yeah.”
“What she just said, though. Are you…?”
“Huh?”
“Is your heart broken over it?”
“Hah, no. God no. Not at all. Are you kidding? Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Of course not. Hah. That’s ridiculous. Why would my heart ever be broken about such a thing?”
“Oh-kay…”
“No. Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. It’s fine. All fine. Fine.”
“Okay. Well, I hope you’re not upset. I didn’t know. I value our friendship.”
“Uhm… What? Our friendship?”
“Yeah. Well, we’re friends. Kind of. I thought.”
“Based on what?”
“We’re not like besties, or anything, but we’ve hung out. You read me a poem. It was good.”
“It was… Heh. Yeah. I guess we are.”
Milton’s heart began to sink back down into his chest, both in relief that she acknowledged he was a friend, and in disappointment that she didn’t want to be “consenting adults and all that” with him. But most of all a weight was lifted. A weight equivalent to Milton’s hopes, dreams, expectations, and his penis, which added up to about a million pounds and a few ounces.
He could breathe. They could have an actual conversation. He could actually see Robin, for the first time, as a human being. Not an unattainable object. A friend. Kind of. Milton ordered two more expensive beers.
“I can’t believe you slept with Noddy.”
“Yeah, not one of my finer moments. I can’t believe his name is Noddy.”
They shared a genuine laugh for the first time and clinked their beer bottles together.
“Is everything okay with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re sleeping with hairy morons and you’re in a place like this drinking alone on a school night. Those are some pretty big red flags.”
“I’m okay. I mean, I guess I’m just a little… I dunno. Bummed, I guess.”
She shared with him genuine feelings for the first time.
“Why?”
“I’m so broke. Birds nearly bankrupted me. And the BBC thing probably won’t happen.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yeah. And I’m cooking at the freegan place, which is fine, I guess, but I can’t do that forever. I applied for an Arts Council grant for my next film, but I’m feeling like I won’t get it.”
“Are you kidding? You’re a shoo-in.”
“I don’t know, I’m feeling just kind of lost, I guess.”
Milton rubbed her upper back awkwardly. She smiled at him with genuine gratitude.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How’s the writing?”
“Same. I dunno. I work all day and then come home and try to write. But it’s poetry. Not a lot of grants or BBC deals for poetry.”
“There’s some. You just have to get it out there.”
“Yeah, right. No one wants to read poetry.”
“Some people do.”
“And what if it sucks?”
“I made a movie about dump birds. C’mon now.”
They shared a laugh, again.
“And there are poets who make it. Leonard Cohen, for instance. I see him in here all the time. He acts like he owns the place. Surrounded by all the women. He doesn’t exactly look like much, but he’s a big deal.”
“No way! In here?”
“Yeah. Sometimes. You live near here. Haven’t you seen him around the ’hood?”
“God, I wish. He’s a genius.”
“Well, he plays a good poet, anyway.”
“That’s like saying Wayne Gretzky plays a good centre! Come on? Cohen is the shit! My god!”
“Okay, okay, calm down. Have you ever published or read your stuff in public?”
“Ha. No. What? No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… I don’t know… personal.”
“You should.”
“No way!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know how I became a filmmaker?”
“No. School? Won a contest? I don’t know.”
“Hah, no. I made a film. That’s it. I bought a camera and plane ticket and set up in an Indian dump for three years and figured it all out.”
“Yeah, well, that’s a little different.”
“How? Just do it.”
“Publishers might have a different idea.”
“Fuck that. Do you know how I ended up winning those festival awards?”
“Slept with the judges?”
“Har har. I sent Birds to a bunch of festivals, and they picked it.”
“Yeah, well you’re like a genius.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Like Leonard Cohen.”
“Ha. I was a nobody and then I made this thing and now BBC is sort of but not really interested in buying the rights. I just fuckin’ did it, man.”
“I don’t know if I’m quite ready.”
Robin flagged down the bartender.
“L’inscription pour le Open Mic, si vous plaît?”
The bartender handed her a clipboard with a list of handwritten names on a sheet of paper.
“Un stylo?”
She wrote Milton’s name at the bottom and handed it back to the bartender.
“There, now you can say you’ve performed poetry at one of the most exclusive venues in Mile End.”
“Wait. What? What was that? What did you just do? Noooo! No! N-n-n-no!”
“Yup.”
. . .
Tête carrée
Milton was horrified.
The three beers hit him all at once. The Limp Bizkit blasting through the bar, which caused the puppeteers to leave no doubt they were definitely doing it all for the nookie, was drowned out by the low buzzing in his head. He assumed he was having a stroke, which would have been welcome at that moment. His head throbbed, his knees and hands trembled, his palms and armpits flooded with sweat. He wasn’t having a stroke; he was just in hell.
“I can’t.”
“You will. Next round’s on me.”
Robin ordered two fancy shots.
“Except I don’t have any cash, so you have to pay. Heh.”
Milton, trembling, handed over his last $20 and got $5 after tip.
“I can’t.”
“It’ll be great. You have something to read, right?”
“Uh… No. Not here.”
“Just drink this, it’ll help.”
Milton was having a full-blown panic attack when the emcee called his name.
“Au suivant. S’il vous plaît, veuillez accueillir Milton… uh… de l’Ontario?”
Milton sat frozen for the longest time. Robin gave him a gentle shove from behind. Georgette, well into the dry-humping and approaching the meth-smoking-in-the-alley, heard Milton’s name and went bananas. She grabbed him by the ear and led him to the small stage at the front corner of the tiny bar.
On stage a single spotlight blinded and baked Milton. He squinted as the sweat poured down his face and stung his eyes. He couldn’t see, but he could feel hundreds, thousands, millions of eyes glaring at him. Judging him. Sizing him up to kick his ass later. The bar was totally silent for the first time the entire night.
Someone shouted: “Déguidine, mon chouchou!”
The bar filled with laughter. Milton didn’t move.
A half-full plastic beer cup tumbled end-over-end through the air towards him. Blinded by the light, he didn’t see it until it hit him square in the forehead. The howls of laughter from the sea of darkness on the other side of the light made Milton’s ears ring.
Someone, maybe a friend, probably a foe, started chanting: “Milto’! Milto’!” Soon the entire bar was chanting his name, with a French accent.
He wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
The chanting didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop.
Milton stepped to the microphone and attempted a meek “merci” but was deafened by piercing mic feedback. Everyone laughed again. Everything went quiet again.
“Merci. My name… My name is Milton… Ontario…”
The ‘Ontario’ got a better laugh than any of the previous comedians. Milton shook visibly as he dug around in his pocket and produced a sweaty, crumpled bundle of poems.
“I… I… Will… Um… I dedicate this to… Uh… This is called…”
He fumbled around unfolding the bundle and trying to find a poem, any poem.
“This is called ‘Rucksack of Nickelback Cracker Jacks’… I dedicate it to my friend, uh, Robin.”
He heard Georgette boo loudly and shout “Salope!”
He gulped hard and began to stammer out the first lines:
book jacket
leaking toilet
fake toy gun
gun shy trigger happy morphine addict with a
fat lip
on the subway
going to subway
for the croutons
curtains
As he rounded the first stanza, his confidence began to grow, ever so slightly, and he began to read faster and faster. He was transforming, on that tiny stage, in that tiny moment, into a tiny Charles Bukowski.
Someone from the audience yelled “tête carrée!” People jeered. Milton, not knowing that particular slur, and not knowing who was jeering for who, pressed on.
automatic typewriter
electronic typewriter
domestic partridge
pear trees
absolute predictability
predictable
mundane
monday
When he came to the end of the first page, he threw the sheet in the air with a great flourish, causing a whooping stir from the unseen audience. A mostly empty beer bottle exploded on the wall behind him. He picked up speed. He was little Alan Ginsberg.
nickelback
funny story one time somewhere while i was wishing i was anyplace else i heard one of the fine gents from nickelback explain how at one point in their oily existence they had worked at a starbucks and a grande latte blah blah blah cost something or another 95 so he found himself giving out a large quantity of nickels to which he would quip often nickel back
Sweat poured down his forehead and into his eyes, which burned in the bright lights. He could barely make out the words on the page, but pressed on, reading as fast as possible, not stopping for any mistakes or stumbles. More shouts of “tête carrée!” came from the darkness. More exploding beer bottles.
alexander graham cracker crunch
scooby doo got shot by jed clampet
driving range golf balls
range balls
proper names
pronouns
amateur nouns
could have been nouns
would have been nouns
should have been nouns
retired nouns
has been nouns
has beans
will travel
As Milton continued to gain speed, he began to sound like a maniacal cattle auctioneer, the din of conversation began to refill the bar and gradually drown out Milton’s ongoing rant, punctuated by exploding beer bottles. But that did not deter him. He was a mini John Milton.
beans
beans
the musical
never mind
krapp’s last tape.
was taped over.
He was sorta John Keats.
antihistamine
antihyperbole gun
hyper bowl xli
bears
bucs
broncos
bootineers
boot in ears
botanists
anthropologists
apologists
appalling
He was basically William Butler Yeats!
princess diana
plastic people of the universe
mao tsetung
mao zedong
rickety old men
alan rickman
bowling for vowels
spellbound back checking fact checkers
left wingers
caps lock
He was Snoop Motherfreakin’ Dogg!
refus global
excuse yourself after tea
fart if you have to
leave without being seen
silent but deadly
come here when you are free
we can write false proposals in the sky to
women named cindi with an i
for an eye
He was Jesus Christ himself, Leonard Cohen!
live by the bread knife
die by abject loneliness
the lioness
best in a long time
google it
find out what it is
find out if it is what they say it is
find out how you will live without it
find out later
The entire ordeal lasted not more than five minutes, but by the end maybe only Robin was paying attention. Maybe.
Milton, a.k.a Leonard Longfellow Whitman Ginsberg Dogg Bukowski Jr., tossed the last sheet of paper in the air and gasped for breath. He stood motionless squinting into the light. Triumphant. The bar conversation that had been drowning him almost entirely out stopped the moment he did.
“Merci beaucoup. Thank you.”
Someone yelled “tête carrée!” one more time as dozens of beer bottles rained down on him.
He left the stage and made his way back to Robin. He was grinning ear-to-ear as he heard the emcee behind him say something about “…toutes mes excuses pour cette poésie Anglophone misérable.”
The comparison to Les Misérables made him feel invincible. He was Victor Hugo!
Robin was grinning too. She put out her arms. They hugged, for the first time. Milton held her. He felt the best he had in weeks, in months, in years, probably ever.
He was William Fucking Shakespeare.
He kissed her hard on the lips.
She kissed him back, at first. But then stopped, then stopped hugging him, then started pushing him away. He took half a step back and blushed apologetically.
“That was… something!”
Milton assumed she meant the kiss.
“You’re a poet!”
She laughed and offered Milton a consolation high-five. He took it. He was invincible. He was Emily Dickinson. He was Flava Flav.
. . .
Bonne nuit
Milton was the last performer of the night, if you can call anything that happened on that tiny stage a performance. As he settled back in, just a little too close to Robin, the bartender hollered out for last call.
Georgette, before returning to twerking all up on a puppet-set carpenter, bought Milton a beer and sneered at Robin.
As the bar grew closer to closing, it began to fill with more and more bikers who made themselves very comfortable, helping themselves to drinks behind the bar.
Milton, emboldened by his new-found Jon Bon Jovi-ness, and the fact that Robin didn’t slap him when he tried to kiss her, made his move.
“Do you want to, uh, get out of here?”
He meant get out of there and go back to his place to make love, to fall in love, to live happily ever after.
“Yeah.”
Robin meant out of the bar that was over-filled with bikers who were splashing her with beer and B.O.
Outside they found Georgette and the troupe all smoking cigarettes in the cold, while the lead marionettiste prepared the hard drugs.
“Milton, putain! You make no sense, but that was très bien, mon petit prince!”
At least Georgette was impressed.
“It’s your big night! Come! Celebrate with us!”
“Heh. No thanks. I think we’re going to get out of here.”
Milton lived in hope as he nodded towards Robin.
“Avec la salope? Nooooo, Milton, quel dommage!”
Milton and Robin walked back in the general direction of avenue de l’Épée. They walked slowly, hands shoved deep in their pockets, shoulders up around their ears for warmth.
For the first block they walked in silence while Milton worked up the courage to do something courageous.
He dug deep and found some words. A lot of words. A lot of words that kind of just all fell out at once.
“That wasn’t my best work, I’d love to show you my best work sometime, I mean, it wasn’t my worst either, but like, there are parts that could have been better, I don’t know, I like, know I’m not like a great poet or whatever, like, I know I’m not Leonard Cohen, or whatever, but like, I just feel deep down that I’ve got something to say, but I just don’t know what yet, I guess, I don’t know, and like, I mean Leonard Cohen probably wasn’t always that great, like, he had to become a singer at some point for anyone to listen to him, right, like, maybe that’s what I should do, I can probably sing just as bad as he can, it’s just that, like, I want to give this a try right, just try and make a go of it as a poet, as an artist like you do, like, it just seems like something like that is possible here, I mean Leonard Cohen is out here like, walking around going to dive bars living his life breathing this air, that’s amazing to me, that’s, like, so inspiring, and I’m sorry I tried to kiss you just then, I just got carried away in the moment, with the lights and everything, I just, like, like you a lot, what’s he like in real life, Leonard Cohen, he seems very wise is he very—”
Robin pivoted around in front of Milton, took his head in her hands, and kissed him long and hard and deep on the lips.
The kiss took what little breath he had away, he gasped, held her around the waist, and kissed her back.
The kiss, if he had to guess, probably lasted seven or eight years. He couldn’t be sure, because time stopped. The earth stopped spinning, stopped orbiting the sun. The universe stopped expanding. The top of his head blew clear into the stratosphere. It was better than he ever dreamed, all those times he dreamed it. So much better.
“Isn’t this your street?”
“Ah, yeah. Want to come up for a nightcap?”
Robin laughed.
“To, like, smoke crack?”
“No, just hang out, or whatever?”
“Whatever like sex? I don’t know if your poem was that good.”
She was kidding, about some of that, he thought, he hoped.
“Uh, no. Just hanging out, or whatever.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that, well… I don’t know, Milton, you’re not a bad guy, it turns out.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean it. I don’t know…”
It was Robin’s turn to stumble over her feelings.
“I don’t know if a nightcap… If I can do a nightcap… If it’s a good idea. I mean…”
She kissed him again, slowly.
“I’d just… I’d hate for us to ruin this rushing into sex.”
“Okay.”
Milton wasn’t sure if it was okay. He wasn’t sure if it was great that her feelings of love and admiration for him were so much that she just couldn’t bear the thought of having sex with him. Or if he had breath so bad or his poem sucked so bad or his head was so awkwardly shaped that she just couldn’t bear the thought of having sex with him.
“It was good to see you, Milton. Really.”
She pulled him in for another long kiss. Her one hand wandered up through his hair, the other wandered down to his ass.
Maybe not all hope was lost.
“Good night.”
And with that she left, headed back into the night, headed home.
Milton strutted back up the street to Sept-Cent-Sept.
He was Good Will Hunting with “them apples.” He was Bitzy Federko scoring the game winner. He was John G. Diefenbaker striding across the floor of the House of Commons after feeding that weasel Lester B. Pearson his lunch.
He spent what was left of the night clanking away on his typewriter, composing syrupy love poems about making love to Leonard Cohen songs on the bar of La Baraque. It was some of his worst.
Bliss is a terrible state to create anything worthwhile in.
As daylight began to creep through the crack under his bedroom door, he typed one final thing for the night, on a scrap of paper and stuck it on Noddy’s door. He was Martin Luther. This was his Ninety-Five Theses. This was his protest. His vow of revenge. His declaration of war.
i quit
milton