It’s an honour to become a part of this esteemed franchise, and although I may be a little bit older than some of my teammates, Magic Mike expects to make an impact with his hustle, grit and smarts. And if I need to be a father figure to some of the team’s emerging, young organizational depth, so be it. Magic Mike is a born leader. I know where all the good steak houses are. I know where to get a safe tattoo at 4:00 am. And, goddam it, I know what a fair price for a prostitute– regardless of where the sex worker might be on the gender spectrum– is. Magic Mike can help this team grow up, and Magic Mike can help this team win. I will be making no further statements today so that I can best concentrate on preparing myself, Magic Mike, for the big game tonight. Oh, and please visit my website to purchase merchandise:

One in red scrubs, the other in black.

These women, they are attractive. Around thirty, they look like they’re used to getting hit on in bars, to knowing what it feels like to have a man watching carefully as she leans over the pool table to take a shot. Neither woman makes eye contact or acknowledges anyone else in the elevator. There is an unspoken hierarchy. We all know it.

A crowded patio at night.

The man has sturdy legs and broad shoulders. He’s handsome and looks comfortable in his own skin, like he’s very good at whatever it is he does for a living and is used to moving fluidly through the world. Behind him, holding his one hand with her two, is a blind woman. She is stunning in her beauty, radiant, even. Looking at her it feels possible that a mountain stream had assumed the form and flesh of a woman and appeared amidst us like a miracle. Those of us who are watching her have no conscious choice in the matter. There is something that pure and commanding about her beauty.

She’s blinking awkwardly into the lights above the bar as the man explains the topography of the patio she is trying to navigate through.

“There’s some uneven ground here, and then a slight step up. You okay?”

She nods wordlessly.

As they pass through the thicket of tables and chairs and people, every set of eyes are upon her. Conversations are falling silent, heads are turning and imaginations are sparking. Everybody is watching, trying to enter into the mystery of her life, trying to understand the uncanny sense of relief– of hope, even– we all felt in seeing a person so unable to apprehend her own powerful beauty, a person so unsullied. She moves through us like a saint through fire, and maybe she feels our eyes upon her, feels the hunger and predation that haunt a bar like this, but maybe, perfect in her own wilderness, she feels nothing. She moves closer to the man as the level of spatial complexity increases, dropping one hand from his and letting it idle in the back pocket of his jeans.

And just beyond them a red traffic light sways above the intersection while a bat swoops down through the night and across the clear, crisp moon. Each person there wanting to tell her about the moon, the beautiful moon, and how hopefully we’d throw ourselves into that unknowable night, just to touch it’s face.

The couple near the window are speaking slowly.

He has thick fingers and puffy eyes, stubble on his face. A tattoo of an evil leprechaun on his drinking hand and a sadness deeply embedded within. She’s as thin as a knife and has very long, very straight black hair that does not shine. Her eyes are wary, churning. There is something dreamlike about two of them, something beyond their control. He sips his drink through a short straw and says to her, “There is something about you I have been missing so much.”

I used to spend an awful lot of time in taverns.

Typically, I’d take my place amidst a stretch of solitary men drinking at a long bar. The conversation was a slow background rumbling, almost like distant thunder, and it lasted all night.

Sports.

The weather.

Women.

TV.

The past.

Strangers who had no expectation of seeing one another again, with little in common beyond the drink in front of them, making a conscious effort not to be alone, to try in some way, to connect. These conversations were beautiful to me, and I’ve come to miss them.

As a substitute, I’ve taken to listening to Sports Talk radio at night. The other day was a call-in show out of Toronto. Lacey from Oshawa had a few things to say about the Blue Jays. She was stubbornly defending third baseman Josh Donaldson:

“ Josh is far and away the greatest Blue Jay, and just because he’s injured the team shouldn’t quit on him! He’s given them everything, and now they just want to abandon him? That’s just so crappy. You can’t treat people like that. It’s wrong.”

The voice was familiar, and as I listened I realized that I knew her. Lacey from Oshawa was part of a group of patients I did pulmonary reahb with at a facility in Toronto. She was so thin then, and so angry, and every single day she wore a Blue Jays jersey with Josh Donaldson’s name on the back.

Her path had been difficult, and the heavy veil of sadness and pain that shrouded her was rarely lifted. Maybe at Bingo, if she got a line, she might allow herself a thin, bitter smile, but that was about it. She simply could not bring herself to socialize, and what we found out about her was through observation and hearsay, all of which reduced to this: when she fell ill and became incapacitated her husband left with their young son. That was how her life had worked out.

As I listened to her on the radio, hearing her speak more than I had in the two months we shared at rehab, I heard a stronger, braver voice. She was– with this phone call decrying a lack of loyalty to somebody doing their best in the face of physical limitations– making a conscious effort not to be alone. She was reaching out, and it felt like a miracle that I got to witness this, that I got to imagine her recovered and at home, fully herself now, and fighting for somebody she loved.

*******************************

It was almost three in the morning when she walked home after her shift at the bar.

This time, this twenty minutes, was a pause in her life that was always her favourite part of her day. It was like a clearing in the woods, an opportunity to slow things down and start the process of cleansing herself of all the want that filled the pub each night, clinging like smoke in her hair.  All the solitary men who needed drinks, who needed her to pay attention and make them feel valued as they sat there at the bar, searching each night for some unlikely route to love. And there were the needs of her coworkers, always wanting her to cover shifts so that they could either go to a party or recover from one, always needing her encouragement or complicity, and then simply the need to have a job, to get somewhere on time and serve the needs of others, always dressed in a prescribed, deadening uniform that made her feel like a stranger in her own life. All of this, all of this started to fall away when she walked toward home.

And one night she came upon a pigeon lying on the sidewalk.

She barely saw it, but she did, and as she leaned in toward it, the bird spasmed and flapped about in useless, frenzied circles. And then exhausted, collapsed and looked up at her, it’s chest heaving. She did not know exactly what she saw in those eyes, but she could not deny whatever it was that was calling her. It was her burning bush.

She picked the bird up, held it tight to her chest, and took it home. And as she delicately cleaned it in her kitchen sink, it struck her that she had never before felt so whole. Over weeks she nurtured this bird, restoring it to health and flight– and then other birds followed, and then others, and without any conscious intent her life began to organize and cohere around these lost and wounded creatures, and the person who inhabited the body she had travelled within for 37 years was finally discovered.

When the waitress brings me the bill she sucks in her cheeks like a super-model and shakes her shoulders from side to side, “Good music tonight”, she says.

George Michael is playing.

Freedom.

I like her, although I am not entirely sure why. Maybe it’s because she’s wearing a grey t-shirt just like the one you had. Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe I like her because the grey t-shirt she’s wearing connects me to you, helps me to draw a line back to your body.

At the table next to me sits a couple. The man has thick fingers and puffy eyes, and the woman is skinny and looks reflexively defensive, like she’s used to evading attack. They are speaking slowly, as if English were their second language, but it’s not. They’re just drunk and concentrating, trying to summon something true from their well of hurt. He looks into his glass and then up into her wary eyes, “There is something about you I have been missing so much,” he says.

And the waitress, looking from side to side at the nearly empty pub, sighs as I dig out my credit card to pay the bill. I ask her why the heavy sigh. She tells me that it’s been a long day.

And then there is a pause, and in that moment the space between us fills with something.

It’s sadness.

It’s desire.

And we look at one another, our invisible lives inching closer now, everything closer.

As many of you know, I’ve been engaged in a running feud with Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood for quite some time now.

Typically, the landscape for this war has been social media and chance encounters in our shared neighbourhood of Toronto, but about a month or so ago my mother

turned up the weird by writing Atwood a letter of apology on behalf of my family (  http://michaelmurray.ca/my-mothers-letter-to-margaret-atwood ), as I had refused to so so myself. After a few weeks had passed without my mother getting a response, she wrote to Atwood again:

*****************************************

Nov, 9, 2017

Dear Ms. Atwood:

Hi, how are you?

I am fine, but oh, my sinuses were just awful last week! I don’t know what it was, maybe a change in the barometric pressure or the wind, but honest to Betsy, I just wanted to climb under a rock and die! Even chewing gum was excruciating! It’s at such times when you really need a friend– just so you know that people care and that they’re grateful for all the little things you do for them, like sending hand-sanitizer because you don’t want them to pick up a nasty sinus bug like you did. By the way, did you get the hand-sanitizer I sent to you? I hope so, but you never know with the post office!

Have you got all your Christmas shopping done? I don’t even know where to begin, I’m still trying to catch up on all my cards from last year!

Oh, I think I hear Frito meowing!

That can only mean one thing—he wants his dinner, so I better go!

Yours sincerely,

Barb Murray

PS: In case you did’t know, you can now get a flu shot at Shopper’s so you don’t have to go through all the bother of going to a doctor’s office!

Nov, 13, 2017

Dear Ms. Atwood:

I know that you are a very important person and are probably very busy with your various hobbies and commitments, but that’s still no excuse for being rude! I don’t know how you were raised or what sort of morals you Hollywood types have, but where I come from you write a thank-you note if somebody sends you some hand-sanitizer. It’s just common decency.

I hope you remembered to buy a poppy this Remembrance Day. My father fought in WW II.

In the trenches. There was no hand-sanitizer there. Just death and foot disease. But my father endured all that hardship to help make the world safe for people like you, so I hope you always keep in mind the sacrifices he made for you.

I have been thinking a little more about my son’s behaviour toward you. It’s true that Michael has his issues, but I always taught him to be considerate. If you drop him off at a bar,  he will thank you, and if he gets a present, you can be sure he will send a thank-you note to the person who sent him the hand-sanitizer. Sometimes when he’s tired or anxious or hasn’t been attending his low carb support group meetings, he can get very crabby, so it’s crucial for him, and all of us, to maintain our routines (especially regular BM’s!) and get plenty of sleep.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Barb Murray

PS: I have included an article that I clipped from the paper that I thought you might be interested in on Vitamin D. It’s very important that we get enough of it, especially in winter. Osteoporosis is a silent killer. I was a nurse, so I know.

PPS: Did you get many trick-or-treaters for Halloween? We only got two, and they were both teenage girls! And the way they were dressed, my Lord! I thought I should be handing out clothes instead of candy!

PPS: Do you have any children or were you barren?

Last night was Pub Night at the rehab centre.

It took place in the same generic, over-lit space that all our social events take place, and the “bar” itself was a few cafeteria tables that had been pushed together, upon which was a scattering of paper plates with a few potato chips and cheesies on them. If you had gotten a note from the doctor you were allowed to get half a glass of wine or beer, but most of us had forgotten to do so, and settled for a ginger ale.

More cafeteria tables, also pushed together, formed a U in front of a small stage upon which a band was playing. Many of the men watching, arms crossed as if judging the music, perhaps even their circumstance, sat as far away as possible. It was as if their bodies were clenched, resisting both the music and all that lay before them. Meanwhile, the women seemed entirely receptive and accepting. Happily fanned out to the side tables, closer to the band, they sat swaying to the music and singing along together. It was beautiful to see, and it was hard not to imagine them all fifty years earlier out on a Saturday night in some smokey dance hall, each one of them a vibrant and glowing presence, each one desired– their entire lives still waiting to unfold mysteriously before them.

They all appear so wealthy and beautiful. Dressed crisply in black and plugged into their iPhones, they move swiftly and with such confident purpose that they seem visitors to this world—weightless, as if they might flicker in the dusk and then simply vanish. But the men who carried all of their possessions in hockey bags on their backs, who had decades of anger and disappointment burned into their features, they seemed weighted and permanent, and they stared like fires at these people streaming by.

Rocks left on the banks of a great river.

**************************

To get around the city I now need to use supplemental oxygen, which means I always have a tank on my back with tubing that leads to my nasal passages. In the stores, some people give me tight, warm smiles, the sort of smiles you see more in the eyes than on the lips. “There but for the grace of God, go I,” these smiles say. And of course, other people notice nothing at all, seeing just a form amongst other forms.

A couple, the only customers at La Hacienda, sat at a big, glowing window table.

She looked wary, as if a naturally defensive manner was built into her character. On the TV show of her life she would have been the sarcastic one, the one who always lived on love’s periphery. He was leaning in toward her, having made his body expansive and noticeable in effort to conceal his verbal insecurity, his fear that he was actually boring. And she was leaning away, as if she couldn’t believe she’d ben trapped by Jerome and his stupid man bun, and while he was talking she was actually composing the story she would tell her friends about this encounter later on, but still, there they were. Just the two of them glowing in their youth, glowing in the dark, glowing like a Christmas display in a window, and I wanted to yell at them, to shake them, “Damn it, fall in love, create a story that will last generations!” 

On the street I was trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab. After about 15 minutes a young, college kid in a hoodie showed up beside me. He was so fresh-faced. His smile a simple, uncomplicated thing, his eyes clear. He wanted to get a cab for me. He wanted to run blocks to find one. He wanted to kick through the slush and snow and bring this good deed home to me. He wanted to find the lost dog, he wanted to clear a path for everybody in need, to be that light in the dark, that thing you remember when you think of Christmas.