It was your typical Annex event, and due to the inclement weather all of the attractions had been pushed inside the school. In the gym there were about five bouncy castles, and scattered throughout the rest of the buildings were face-painting stations, games, food and a book sale. It’s always so sweet being in a miniature place like that– children’s happy paintings stuck on the walls, little science experiments trying to grow on the window sill, tiny water fountains– all these things triggering simple, happy memories in those who pass by.

A couple who look like they’ve been together for a very long time sit in a waiting room at the Western Hospital. The man looks anxious and uncomfortable, maybe even angry, and his wife will not intrude upon that. Holding her purse primly– like she was in church– she sits with her knees together staring straight ahead. She will not say a word. She will not move a muscle. They don’t look at one another. The tension in their lives a living thing, a creature that travels great distances and will not go away.

And in the foyer there is a Book and Bake sale taking place. A very skinny woman in a motorized wheelchair is looking at the cupcakes. She’s wearing a pink kerchief on her head, in honour of Valentine’s Day, and she is thumbing through a book called Rogue Angel.

All the donated books there. Books thumbed through on beach vacations, books that changed lives or passed right through them. All these stories moving through time, intersecting, and ultimately reducing to the same story: How will I live, how will I die? And at the kiosk beside, there is a long lineup for the Lotto 6/49. Doctors and patients alike. Pretty nurses are scrolling their phones as they wait, men in hospital gowns clutching IV stands, people visiting loved ones. Each person having a plan for the money, each one hoping for something–a candy apple red Corvette, a promising drug, some safe horizon. Past them and outside, through slush and snow I step into a taxi. I am tired and my oxygen tubing has caught on the door, and as I am trying to disentangle it, the sudden astonishment of a female driver speaking to me. Her accented voice from far away, the subtle trace of her perfume, like light falling on water.

As many of you likely remember, Rob Ford, the late Mayor of Toronto, and I were enrolled at Carleton University in Ottawa at the same time back in the 1980’s.

We became drinking buddies then, and I got to know his family a little bit and have found myself in the entirely surprising position as being in a Book Club with Doug Ford, his older, angrier, more politically conservative brother, who was just elected Premier of Ontario.

Here is a partial transcript of the meeting of our last Book Club:

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

Doug Ford: Okay, okay, quieten down.

Lucy: Oh, I just watched the movie and it was SO scary.

Me: Was it the original or the remake?

Doug Ford: Jesus and goddamn, put a sock in it!

Me: Sorry.

Doug Ford: I’ll make you sorry Murray. You and I, shot put field after this. No excuses, and for Christ’s sake, use a coaster! This isn’t some chicken shack, here!

Lucy: I would love it if this was a chicken shack.

Doug Ford: Goddamn Lucy, you are on warning!

And if there is one more interruption from either of you, Sweet Jesus, you don’t even want to know. Just try me. ( Several seconds pass) Yeah, you just try me. Okay, that’s what I thought.

Okay then. The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.

Story of a businessman who saw a really, really sweet real estate deal. He takes advantage and moves his family into this great house and it turns out it’s haunted and everybody gets scared and they run away from the best investment they ever made. But why the haunting, what does that symbolize?

Lucy: It’s the story of Colonialsm. The house was built on an ancient Indian burial ground, and some white settlers arrived and did not honour this, so the haunting is symbolic of the suffering and fury and pain of our first peoples whom we’ve commodified and marginalized.

Doug Ford: I think I’m going puke.

I’ve never heard something so stupid in my entire life.

The ghosts are big government regulations that drove the businessman crazy. He made a good investment. Was doing some renos. Providing jobs for his community. But every time he goes to do something, say make a panic room or dungeon chamber, there’s some inspector pecking, pecking, pecking at him. Everywhere he turns: regulations, taxation, bureaucracy, protests, special interests. Even when he’s trying to have relations with his lady, regulations show up in the form of some spirit!

It’s exhausting. And you think it’s the ghosts who are the victims?? You got a screw loose, Lucy, a goddamn screw loose. The businessman is the victim here, harassed by the state to the point of madness, it’s a miracle that he was strong enough not to go on a mass killing spree!

Me: So you’re saying this book is a cautionary tale against big government?

Doug Ford: Slow clap for Einstein here. Yes, dammit, of course the book is a cautionary tale against government interference, and it’s as plain as this expensive gold chain around my neck.

And if you can’t see that, well, there’s nothing that can be done, you might as well move to Russia, comrade.

The only thing it said was, “Stop.”

Intrigued, I called the number to investigate and see who had left the mysterious message and what it might mean, but was immediately sent to a voicemail box that gave no indication of who, or what, might reside at the receiving end. Not wanting to give up on this communication, I texted back. These are the messages that ensued:

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

Unknown Texting Entity: Stop

Me: Stop??? Stop what???

(One day passes)

Me: Can’t stop.

Me: Won’t stop.

Me: Maybe in the name of love. Maybe I will stop in the name of love.

(Another day passes)

Me: No. Changed my mind. Will NOT stop in the name of love.

(Two days pass)

Me: Is this the Instant Pot?

Me: You can see into the future, can’t you, Instant Pot?

Me: Is it true? Is it death by water for me? The Tarot reader said it was, but I’m not sure I believe her. I think she might have been unreliable. She was weird,  smelled exactly like a Harveys. Very suspicious.

( One day passes)

Me: And I’m never even in the water.

( One day passes)

Me: My wife told me that the Instant Pot cannot send texts, so sorry. I guess you’re not the Instant Pot.

( One day passes)

Unknown texting entity: Just stop.

Me: STOP WHAT???? YOU’RE KILLING ME HERE!!! JUST KNOCK OFF THE MEAN GIRL BULLSHIT AND TELL ME WHAT IT IS I HAVE TO STOP DOING!!!

Me: Sorry. I don’t normally lose my temper like that.

Me: I haven’t been sleeping well.

Me: Lots on my mind.

( Two days pass)

Me: You’re a demon, aren’t you?

Me: I always knew a demon would pick me to seed.

Me: I knew this would happen. Ever since I read The Amityville Horror when I was eleven.

Me: That’s when I created a portal for you to enter into my life, wasn’t it?

Me: Fuck it!

( One day passes)

Me: Well demon, as you can see into my soul, you know that I’ve wanted to stop for a long time.

Me: The problem is I can’t stop.

Me: That’s why I haven’t been sleeping well.

Me: I. Just. Can’t. Stop.

Me: It’s all I fucking think about.

Unknown Texting Entity: Paske, gen anpil moun ki rebèl, plen diskou sans ak desepsyon, espesyalman sa yo ki nan gwoup la sikonskripsyon. Yo dwe bese, paske yo ap deranje tout kay ki nan kay yo lè yo anseye bagay yo pa ta dwe anseye-e ke pou dedomajman pou malonèt.

Me: Is this you, Jen?

Me: Are you fucking with me?

Me: If so, this is NOT funny.

Me: So not funny.

Me: I just had to take two Lorazepams, you fucker.

(One day passes)

Me: Okay, this is Michael’s wife Rachelle writing now. Listen, if you actually are a demon, why did you start off communicating in english and then switch to whatever you switched to, when you saw my husband start to panic? Why not just continue with english? Seems like a rookie mistake to me.

Me: I think you’re a false prophet!

Me: Demon! It’s Michael here again! The above, the blasphemy about you being a false prophet? That was written by my wife, not me! I would NEVER say that about you!!

Me: Rachelle here, demon. Could you make yourself useful and tell me where Jones put the car keys? And if you’re the reason why the remote is always disappearing, you’d better knock it off. Don’t think I won’t holy water the shit out of this whole place. I will. And I have a Bissel steam cleaner that can suck you right out of the sofa.

It’s a real ghostbuster, so just consider yourself on notice.

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

Me: Hey, it’s great to see you all again! Thanks for coming! As you can see there’s a bunch of food and wine…

Doug Ford*: I don’t drink.

Me: Oh, hey Doug!

Doug Ford: No alcohol at all. Not even a drop.

Me: Well, as I was saying, we have a bunch of food, wine and soft drinks on the dinning room table, and you should all feel free to help yourselves to whatever you want– and to avoid whatever you don’t! Anyway, the book we’re going to be discussing is the Hunter S. Thompson classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Thompson, as you know, pioneered Gonzo journalism, and I thought it might be worth having a look back at this book so that we might consider how the media covered politics in 1970 with how they cover it now. Would anyone like to get us started?

Anne: I don’t know, I think the book feels a little forced, a little dated now, but I really like the way that he portrays the American Dream as a kind of nightmarish hallucination.

Cormac: And the illustrations by Ralph Steadman are brilliant and terrifying, a perfect accompaniment.

Doug Ford: (Snort.)

Me: You didn’t like the illustrations, Doug?

Doug Ford: They look like chicken scratchings. Real garbage. Does smudging your work make it “artistic” or something? Let me tell you, the Ford family printing business never would have survived and been as successful as it was– and it’s been VERY successful– if we’d sent out smudgy work all the time.

It’s just unprofessional. Lazy. Makes me sick.

Me: Interesting point, Doug.

Anne: Did anybody see the movie version of Fear and Loathing, the one starring Johnny Depp?

Doug Ford: Luke Wilson.

Anne: Sorry?

Doug Ford: It starred Luke Wilson not Johnny Depp.

Anne: I just Googled it. Here, ( holding up phone) it says Johnny Depp.

Doug Ford: Nope. It was Luke Wilson. ( crosses arms)

Me: Well, ha-ha-ha, one things for certain, they’ve both been in an awful lot of movies!

Anne: ( In hushed voice) Michael, we talked about this. No more normalizing him, okay?

Me: ( In hushed voice) For the love of God, Anne, just be quiet!

Doug Ford: And let me tell you, I go to Vegas all the time, and wherever the hell those dirty maggot journalists in the book were, it sure as hell wasn’t Vegas!

Cormac: I wonder how Hunter S. Thompson would have covered the mass shooting in Vegas? I would love to have read a Fear and Loathing where they were driving to Vegas in order to cover the shooting instead of the motor cycle race!

Anne: Yeah, that would have been a really interesting twist, I think.

Doug Ford: Last time I was in Vegas was just six weeks ago. For a Neil Diamond concert.

Wife is a bit of a Diamond Head, so we do a lot of road trips through the States attending his concerts. I tell you, that is a man with real talent. We should be talking about him. Sweet Caroline? You name me a better song. Go on! I dare you!

( Uncomfortable silence in the room)

Doug Ford: That’s what I thought.

• Doug Ford is a well-known Toronto politician who was brother to mayor Rob Ford, and who is currently running to become the leader of the Conservative party of Ontario.

What stunned my class most about the book was the casual attitude the characters had toward slavery. I mean, how could they not know that slavery was an evil? Nothing could have been more clear to us, nothing. Slavery was pretty much the most evil thing we could think of, and it was mind-blowing to imagine that this wasn’t vividly reflected in the experience of our ancestors.

And so we figured that people back then must have been hateful and stupid monsters, willfully acting in their own best interests at the cost of others. And so we judged everybody in the book, imagining ourselves morally superior to the louts, trolls and insane people who populated the past.

But this didn’t make any sense.

There was absolutely no reason for me to think I had a more finely developed sense of morality than anybody who came before me. There must have been some decent people who participated in slavery and had no idea that what they were doing was wrong, no? They were simply living in the world into which they were born, and to them slavery, like the weather or landscape, was an unexamined fact of life rather than a conscious act of moral will.

This seemed clear to me. I was not unique. I was like everybody else, and that, of course, is a very scary thing to admit to oneself.

Technology has accelerated and amplified our culture in ways that are inconceivable.  Every year it seems that the world has changed more than in all the previous millennia stacked before it. It’s dislocating, and I often think of technology, in particular our online lives, as an emergent dimension we don’t yet understand or know how to interact with. Whenever we’re uncomfortable or bored with our physical lives, however briefly, a smart phone serves as a magic wand we can wave to take us to this other realm, and put in that context, none of us should be surprised to find discontent, even anger there.

Our desire for social justice has far outstripped our ability to deliver it, and in many ways I see ideological conflicts as dimensional clashes rather than moral ones. By the standards of today, so much of what we as a society did just ten years ago seems appalling, but as we judge it’s worth remembering that ten years ago we had no idea what we were doing was wrong or unfair. We were just operating within the framework of time and place. So how then to police this if every generation, indeed, every person, is going to be witlessly complicit in ghastly acts ?

Of course, revolution is not about justice, it’s about change.

And as the future and the past battle for supremacy in a ruined present, it seems that the only way it can end, the only way it has always ended, is like in a Shakespearean tragedy—everybody on stage dies, and then, the world purified and laid bare, is seized by those, now done with watching, who had been waiting in the wings.

Our son Jones is almost two and a half years old, and he is positively electrified by the creatures.

The idea of them are the current that runs through his body. His sun and moon. His east and west. They are spinning and shining and thumping and roaring through his days, they are everything he wants his universe to be. And so, on a cold morning in the disorienting limbo between Christmas and New Year’s, we took him to the Royal Ontario Museum.

Standing there as we entered, Jones twisting in his jacket to get free from my grip and and run to the “BIG DINOSAUR!”, I was hoping that my son might grow to love museums. I imagined him retreating into them over the course of his life the way he might a lake, emerging nourished and restored after each encounter. Sanctuaries of rich, wide spaces and cool tile. All the marvels of history respectfully arrayed before him, and always, he would have the sense of being somewhere else, a place just outside of time, and of being suspended right before a great mystery that was both his life and not his life.

And then he spun free and ran out into the great hall.

He was just so excited.

He tore from one wonder to the next, identifying each one as best he could. It was astounding to watch. He was a fever. A pinball. A waterfall. A million monkeys typing. I swear to you that he was glowing, he really was.

Watching, I wondered why our children, all so innocent and vulnerable, were attracted to the creatures we consider the most terrible and dangerous? Why run into the jaws of a dinosaur? Why the darkness? And all of the parents there, each one smiling through whatever weight it was their burden to carry, were likely pondering some variant of the same question as they watched their miracles of light streak so beautifully through the museum.

Well, the other day my mother actually received this letter from Margaret Atwood:

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

December, 6th, 2017

bärb/

noun

noun: barb; plural noun: barbs

1. 1. a sharp projection near the end of an arrow, fishhook, or similar item, angled away from themain point so as to make extraction difficult.

                  2. a cluster of spikes on barbed wire.

                  3. a deliberately hurtful remark.

Dear Barb:

Please forgive me for being so informal as to use your first name. I can see that you’re not just appropriately (refer to above prolegomenon) named, but that the Murray line carries very excitable genes, and I certainly don’t want to offend you or any of the other members in your easily inflamed tribe.

Let me first thank you for your apology concerning the alarming behaviour of your 50-something son, and the thoughtful inclusion of hand sanitizer with your letter. You are right, hand sanitizer does make for a nice, affordable stocking stuffer. Thank Heavens for Shoppers Optimum points, eh, Barb?

It’s interesting to note that the word “barb” is derived from Latin and Old French words for “beard.” The patriarchy has a deep reach, Mrs. Murray, a very deep reach. For instance, I wonder why your fully grown, almost elderly son, does not feel the need to apologize for himself to a respected woman he’s been publicly berating? Why would his mother have to do it?

Could it be that Michael, an archetypically mediocre white man,

was born into a world that was made for him, a world where women existed as bit players present only to serve his narrative? And then, with all competition smothered, with the entire force of a white, phallocentric history pushing him forward, Michael, armed with every conceivable advantage, became the author of one very unsuccessful vanity-published book.

That’s what he did.

He did not become an astronaut, he became a fantasy baseball enthusiast. And as he ascended to the status of fantasy baseball enthusiast and nothing else, he fully believed that all his “achievements” were due to his unique genius, and all failures a conspiracy of invisible, unknowable enemies.

Does that sound about right?

But it’s not your fault, Barb. It’s the world we were born into, and if you want to learn more about why your son is an asshole, you should tune in to Bravo on April 30th to watch the award-winning, crisply produced recreation of my uncannily predictive dystopian novel, A Handmaid’s Tale. It stars Elisabeth Moss, whom you might have seen on the cover of some of the magazines you buy at the mall.

Margaret Atwood

PS: Von all den Kreaturen, die auf der Erde atmen und sich bewegen, wird nichts gezüchtet, das schwächer ist als der Mensch.

Sadly, this state of affairs continued after she happened upon a garage sale ( http://michaelmurray.ca/garage-sale ) Rachelle and I were having, and then kind of exploded the other night on Twitter when I got involved in a debate about condos she was having with another Toronto writer. I interceded in the middle of the debate, and these are the tweets that passed between Atwood and I on that night:

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

@margaretatwood: The un-rich have owned their houses for decades. Why should a development go right up to their lot lines and kill their beloved trees?

@michaelmurrayca: Have you seen an un-rich!?!? I hear they have teeth where ears should be and can only be killed by Dragonglass or gentrification!

@margaretatwood: Oh. It’s you.

@michaelmurrayca: I am an un-rich, you know.

@margaretatwood: Yes, I was able to deduce that from that little garage sale you had.

@michaelmurrayca: Made almost $80 at that sale.

@margaretatwood: Why, that must be more than you made on your book!

@michaelmurrayca: Unlike some authors who quickly sell-out to tv, I have some integrity. It’s not all about the money, Margaret, some of us are artists.

@margaretatwood: There is no hyphen in sellout.

@michaelmurrayca: I hear that they’re making The Handmaid’s Tale into a reality tv show.

Kind of like The Bachelor. You must be very proud.

@margaretatwood: Yes, as proud as your wife and son must be of you and your ability to provide for them through your “art.”

@michaelmurrayca: You remind me of Cersei Lannister.

@margaretatwood: You hate powerful women, do you?

@michaelmurray: Yes, very, very much.

@margaretatwood: Do you also disapprove of civic mindedness?

@michaelmurrayca: I am for whatever position you are against.

@margaretatwood: So you are in favour of killing trees, then?

@michaelmurrayca: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

@margaretatwood: So the fact that you’re totally uninformed about this condo development and the devastation it will bring to the local environment, that doesn’t prevent you from jumping in with an “opinion?”

@michaelmurrayca: I’d say it’s more commentary than opinion.

@margaretatwood: Tu tetras, homo parum de moron.

@michaelmurrayca: Oh, la-di-da! The grand dame speaks French!

@margaretatwood: Yes, I do, but the Tweet you are referring to happened to be latin. Like they speak in Mexico.

@michaelmurrayca: Were you called Margaret Fatwood in high school?

@margaretatwood: Oh my, I had forgotten about your biting wit.

@michaelmurrayca: In high school I was called The Enforcer.

@margaretatwood: It was ironic, I take it?

@michaelmurrayca: I was practically a god in high school, you have no idea!!

@margaretatwood: You miss those days, don’t you?

@margaretatwood: In spite of all the sport’s teams you never made, the low C’s you struggled to achieve and all the pretty girls who wouldn’t even glance at you, those were still the best years of your life, weren’t they?

@margareatatwood: Yes, I thought so.

One of the components of this event was that I was signing copies of my bestselling book A Van Full of Girls. In case the book has somehow escaped your attention, here are a few press clippings:
“ I thought it was fine, but it could stand for less swearing. Swearing doesn’t prove what a big man you are.”
—Barb Murray, Canadian mother

“Although I could not invest in Michael’s book project, I was struck by how courageous he was to put his thoughts down like that and then, in spite of the risk of public embarrassment and the terribly long odds of any sort of success, seek publication. So brave. We need more people with Michael’s spirit in Canada.”
—Arlene Dickinson, star of the CBC hit TV show Dragon’s Den

“ It’s just lie after lie after lie.”
—Doug Ford, Canadian businessman and politician

I have to say, and I’m giving you the straight-up truth here, the book really is a fucking game-changer.

You should buy it.

At any rate, while we were selling off our things, Margaret Atwood, who lives in the same area, happened upon us. I conducted a somewhat adversarial interview with her a few months ago for a magazine called The Knuckler, ( http://michaelmurray.ca/atwood-interview ) and as this took place  via phone I was unsure if she knew who I was, but when she saw me at my little A Van Full of Girls kiosk, she approached.

Margaret Atwood: I’ve been surveying all your trinkets here, such a contrast amidst the grandeur of the neighbourhood. So sweet, so hopeful.

Me: Thanks.

Margaret Atwood: It’s like an archeological dig. Sifting through the debris you can see the arc of a life, the enthusiasm and ambition that inevitably crumbles into failure, and then finally the recognition of that failure and the selling off of all that had symbolized your hope.

Me: I’ll let you have the Six Million Dollar Man thermos for a buck.

Margaret Atwood: I don’t think so.

Me: Your loss.

Margaret Atwood: You seem to have an awful lot of unfinished self-help books for sale. Why is that?

Me: I don’t know, why is the Handmaiden’s Tale so much more popular as a TV show not written by you, than as a book written by you?

Margaret Atwood: Handmaid’s Tale, it’s Handmaid’s Tale.

Me: Oh. Sorry.

Margaret Atwood: This book, A Van Full of Girls? Are you the author?

Me: Yes. You should buy a copy. Support the arts.

Margaret Atwood: So tell me, how does self-publishing work these days?

Me: My book wasn’t self-published.

Margaret Atwood: Really!? How extraordinary. Typically you don’t seen an established author out on a front lawn selling his book from a knapsack. And look, you have so many copies! You must have at least 40!

Me: You know what? I also have an awful lot of Margaret Atwood books for sale over there, but people just don’t seem interested. One woman picked up a copy of Lady Oracle, showed it to her friend and said, “Barf.”

Margaret Atwood: (Gives withering look)

Me: (Imitates withering look)

Margaret Atwood left shortly after this exchange, but not before telling me that I should keep all the self-help books I was trying to sell, and buying, for reasons we can only imagine, a used The Very Best of Chris de Burgh LP.