we left the empties near the chimney 8:37 p.m.

i will list the rules:

1-no dice
2-snake eyes (battle)
3-three man -- gotta wear the hat, drink everytime three comes up, shows up...
4-pass
5-drink to the left
6-pass
7-drink to the right
8-pass
9-bathroom break
10-pass
11-new rule
12-new area

the beer store closes at eleven on saturdays, that's why we like saturdays. rooftopdebauchery.

p.s. bark expletive deleted meow!

half-assed attempt at lesbian fiction 9:33 p.m.

she was thin, short. skin the colour of french pastry, as though she'd brushed with a thin coat of egg whites, milk, and had been left to bake in a warm oven. she was golden. her eyes were dark, glistening. her hair was darker, pinned half-up with short tendrils flirting with her forehead. she paced nervously, had great bones. katherine.

brett was taller, heavier. greasy hair brushed back into a lazy braid. she glowed, floated through the room, gave out smiles like business cards. smelled of beer and french perfume. smoked incessantly. chewed on her cuticles. they met in the bathroom.

katherine emerged from the bathroom stall to find brett bent over the bathroom counter. they shared a brief, nervous conversation, a few lines. spent an hour apart and reconvened. katherine sat on the counter swinging her legs. brett stepped up to her, smiled. katherine lowered her eyes, blushed. they struck up a conversation.

after several minutes and a few smiles brett nudged her way a little closer, leaning in to whisper, pretending the music to be too loud. hello, she said, barely audible, breathing on her neck. katherine sat up. louder this time, she asked, are you here alone? katherine, who'd been nursing a plastic cup of draught stopped and stared...tbc

let's dance 8:11 p.m.

your naked body lanky limbs tangled
with mine in a song of sweat humming
the melody soundtrack of a hundred nights
soothing your fingers wet your breath
heavy your penis erect and quiet always
quiet my boy the runoff from my dreams
reduced to puddles on a pillowcase sprawled
across the sheets the two of us ensconced in
some nocturnal waltz and on that starlit
stage accompanied by the sound of sirens
and the crinkling of a certain plastic bag
you forgave me my faults loved them even
i have not forgotten

excavations 11:43 a.m.

the three hundred yard walk to the subway in silence highlighted in pink our patterns of restraint, tight-lipped and stubborn we marched and i would normally have expected a toothpaste flavoured meeting of lips as we turned the corner to greet hayden street, his eyes wide and mine lowered. but not today. we marched on, instead, toward the mouth of a crowded cave guarding our words like unspeakable secrets, waiting to be swallowed.

the three hundred yard walk to the subway in silence weighed heavily on my heart as i travelled through the tunnels alone, forbidding anyone to share my bench. having made of my briefcase a wall i huddled, pretending to read, but truthfully watching the lights, from the corner of my eye, speed by in a frenzy of distance. i wondered if we would emerge, and when.

the three hundred yard walk to the subway in silence offered me a few solid breaths of reflection in exchange for the pained sigh of my conclusion: it would have been best if we had loved only in the echoes of sex. we are young, i thought, knowing us to be too deeply involved for such deus ex machina statements. too deep and still digging.

j'ai trouvé benjamin rodger - en cachette! 10:40 a.m.

ce matin, in our mailbox. stuffed into a standard number ten wearing gaudy white glasses and a button-down print shirt. he didn't smile, hasn't been sleeping well. neither have i. tells me things have been hard at work. gossip. i can relate. this side of the atlantic, his letter finds me sick with anger, nails bitten to the quick, wondering what i could've done differently. envisioning, the gavel having silenced the whispering room, a procession of preachy syllables emerging from the judge's mouth: "tem-pest-u-ous, but not en-ti-re-ly un-sym-pa-the-tic, en-ig-ma-tic some might say... ." i resist a full accounting of our crooked days and ways, remembering instead the hours we painted, cried, were naked, broken, beautiful, reckless, drunk. details enough, i say. details enough. what's that i hear? you'd like something more? a confession, so as to properly condemn me before my peers? have it, then: i am unabashedly promiscuous, incorrigibly filthy, an unapologetic lush. i dominate conversations, leave dishes unwashed, fall asleep without undressing. i am fat, unworthy of sympathy, arrogant but easily wounded. more? i am incapable of frugality, essentially unreachable by phone, prone to rants and sudden changes in mood. i am not and have never been an honest vegetarian. or an honest socialist. i am weak-willed and easily flustered. i am completely out of touch with popular culture. i have yet to recover from childhood. satisfied? shall i go on?

montreal smoked meat and prepared mustard... 6:20 p.m.

a few kosher pickles, quartered lengthwise, a small brick of aged cheddar. two bottles of beer, three cigarettes, a trashy paperback thriller, an overstuffed pillow in a stained case. a laura secord cream egg, uneaten, a thirty-five minute bubblebath, three scented candles spilling wax, a clean aids test. two unreturned long distance phone calls, a dirty daydream between dirty sheets, a birthday. greenlseeves, a half-quarter lost. a hell of a lot of rain. monday.

ou est benjamin rodger? 6:54 p.m.

::: perhaps he has been swallowed by the azur tides of the mediterranean, clinging a blank canvas, images of a canadian capital city in chartreuse swimming between strokes ivory-capped waves and a vengeful european sun his companions ::: perhaps he is painting with violet mittens, in the cold closets of a french art school looking to his well-bred compatriots in red woolen scarves for inspiration ::: perhaps he is collapsed grey drunk on the blonde floorboards of a month-to-month rental waiting for a dark-orange dawn to disturb his deep sleep ::: perhaps he is tired of correpsondence in blue ink with this black disaster and prefers the salmon smiles of more functional versions of the female form ::: perhaps he's given up on this dark-orchid life and has left us for olive dead instead :::

ativan period space 4:01 p.m.

i am too depressed to bother with punctuation which is a rare occurance commas were my first love each word now a burden my fingers slow and shaky i fail to produce a better adjective and i am ashamed i would like very much to bury myself in a steaming pile of my lover's laundry a womb to heal this heartbeat which continues to race to burn to lament those hideous perfections to which i remain unentitled say the cosmos CEASE! the rogue syllable echoes between barren walls tumbling about the room taunting the pleasures of this sequence crumbling more rapidly with every passing beat say the cosmos CEASE! and with that a string of expletives angry beads of acid rain heaped upon the cambrian shield in both languages don't ever dare to ask me which and at last ellipsis the ativan has found me ellipsis wading through my own words young ideas like thick mud binding me to my position comma lest i leave my shoes behind period the ativan has found me like a drunk mother or a fat dog failing to love me with the life-changing passion of smack but quieting the cosmos ellipsis moderating the beat nonetheless

clumsy man, you've grown 3:15 p.m.

since that young summer. across the table, taller,
in your collared shirt. and you remembered! the evening
we spent drunk, collapsed and flirtatious on a patch of grass.
what self-assured little soldiers we were in those bright
and blue-skied days ... i miss our uniforms, sunday soccer
(although i never played) and that subsidized salad bar
in the basement cafeteria. as we walked, yesterday, having
not seen eachother for years, i was concerned.
i'd forgotten how you gesture when you speak,
had forgotten your smile and many of the warm faces of those
fateful months. i'd forgotten that first of many days when we spoke,
nervously, about western alienation. do you remember, graeme,
i thought it had something to do with hemispheres! what
a silly girl i was then. what a happy girl. it was wonderful to see you.

after shower scribbles 8:50 p.m.

the room is laden with flame-retardant jumpsuits,
ribbons, coloured paper in crumpled piles and the child
is swimming in her cervix as we speak, its candied
feet pressing against her ribs in invitation: one she is
anxious to accept surrounded, though she is, by
unassembled furniture, the estrogen-filled laughs
of mothers and childhood friends attempting to soothe
the last of many uncertainties...we talk, as me are meant
to, about the incompetence of men, the wonders of
obstetrics and the inevitability of epidurals. the wine
remains undrunk, a few good bottles sacrificed
on the altar of sisterhood and solidarity. sandwiches
are devoured by anxious mouths as lists are compiled
and what an apt prelude this affair seems to be as we
wait all too impatiently for the sound of the tympany,
the applause, and at long last the announcement...

congratulations, evie!

alternate telecommunications acronyms 3:13 p.m.

CRTC

Can't Relax 'Till Cumming
Call Roy To Cancel
Cats Rest Too Calmly
Clearly Romans Terrified Children
Clinton (Rarely) Talked Crap

iLEC

i Left Eerily Careful
interesting Lectures Extend Conversation
international Law Excited Churchill
interest Likes Expended Cash

SSRI

Sad Sarah Requires Intravenous
Sorry Still Remains Inadequate
Sunshine Sometimes Runs the Intrigue

aa, my twenty-first century child 2:57 p.m.

i've got the aids anxiety and it doesn't suit me much
lung cancer concern or a liver disease distraction
would be much more appropriate, i think but i've got
the aids anxiety nonetheless have had it since i was six
dreaming of world churches and an aunt i hadn't seen
in years, damp bed beneath me, doctor peering down
with t-minus two minutes wet on his lips and what
a deep-seated dysfunction i must have to worry
this way about my partners and the embarassment
i've got the aids anxiety, child, and don't i feel ever so
twenty-first century? tired, scared, spending, waiting...

french social philosopher (5 letters) 10:54 a.m.

we stumble can't seem to remember despite our rhinestone educations (or at least his, mine he would say) when we finally throw our hands up in defeat google offers sorel and we snicker, coyly between kisses, making jokes about the boots we'd worn in those pink years before puberty. played in seperate cities, different snow. what terrible boots and how heavy! but warm, he offers, and canadian.