They didn’t talk much, although the one with the small, white hospital towel draped over his knees, offered that, “heart disease might be involved, too.” He took a drag from his cigarette as he waited for a response. You could see the tattoos covering his hand, the IV piercing the skin just above the word HATE spelled out on his knuckles, the smoke being exhaled. The other guy nodded. He had nothing to say. And with that the conversation disintegrated. Just space between them now. An unbroachable distance. Grief-struck and lost, a million miles apart, they looked through all the people passing by on the sidewalk in front of them, and stared off into other worlds.

So far his short career has been pretty mediocre, indistinguishable from countless other players who quietly fell short of the expectations set before them. There’s an obvious poignancy to this, I think. The consensus was that Manaea was going to be a pretty great, and throughout his entire life he’d probably been even better than that. Every time he stepped on a field, all eyes would have fallen upon him. He was the single-combat hero of whatever school, town or city he came from. A transcendent athlete with limitless horizons unfurling before him, he’d likely never encountered an appetite his talent could not slake.

And then, once in the Big Leagues, he just wasn’t very good anymore. Other players were better. The axis of his life had shifted, and now he was the kid who couldn’t get anybody out, rather than the unblemished golden boy.

He’d fallen.

He was no longer the best.

He’d become like the rest of us.

Because of my involvement in Fantasy Baseball, I had watched a lot of his starts over the years. There’s something really intimate in that, to be so closely focused on another person. I saw parts of him he couldn’t keep hidden.  I saw how disappointment revealed itself on his face and then crept into his body and effected his game. I saw him battle that. I saw how he responded to incompetent teammates and punishing heat, I saw victories and uncertainties, and eventually I felt like I actually knew him, as if he had grown up just two doors over.

In spite of that, I fell out of the habit of watching his games, and then, about a month ago I happened upon one by chance late one night.  He was pitching against the Boston Red Sox, which is like saying he was pitching against a nightmare as their batters are so overwhelming  and intimidating.  It was maybe the 6^th inning, and Manaea looked good. Really good. In fact, he had not given up a single hit.

And from this point forward, as he pursued a no-hitter, the tension just ratcheted up. The camera was trained on him so tightly you could see beads of sweat forming and then rolling down his face. Everything became quiet and important, and each step closer to the no-hitter was a miracle in itself, and these miracles kept piling up until finally the game was over and the inconceivable had happened, not a single player had been able to get a hit off of Manaea.

His teammates, child-like and abundant, jumped all over him. Manaea, as happy as he was amazed, had a rollercoaster grin on his face. He was in paradise, everything bright and spinning and timeless. He had become the perfect version of himself.  And for those of us watching, it was as if something beautiful had been restored, and without even knowing it I had been pulled from the sofa, and alone and in the dark, I stood applauding something I had grown to care about becoming what it was always meant to be. 

Upstairs at the bar there’s an unrelenting press of people. So many of them. Jostling together excitedly, they’re all hopeful on this festive night out, each one wanting to feel special in some regard, each one waiting for their life to pivot. Unshaven Bros in sports toques and ball caps, beta predators who only move in packs of two and threes, are looking over at a cluster of Friday night women worrying their phones. Men are pushed up against the bar three deep, each one competing for something.

The bartender is at the centre of it all.

Although completely overwhelmed, she’s working calmly through the chaos. Surrounded on all sides by some sort of want, she makes a millions subtle calculations with each one of her actions. Each person is a problem that must be solved, a fire that must be extinguished. Her face determined, she moves fluidly and with purpose, and all the men encircling her at the bar with their steaks and Keg-sized glasses of red wine, are watching.

A man around 60 leans in. Everyone is leaning in, trying to flag her attention. This man, he’s lived his life handsome, and the confident residue of that lingers within him still, “Can I be next?” he asks in a salesman’s voice. The bartender forces a smile and takes his order, and all the other men waiting stiffen a little, jealous.

He is pleased with himself, this man. He feels special.

When she returns, he leans in yet further, “That tattoo on your right forearm, the roman numerals, are they from your favourite Shakespeare passage? Are you an actress?”

It is not clear that she is flattered by this attention, but she gives a partial, evasive answer.

“It’s a date,” she says, giving the man a polite, discouraging smile. Gesturing to how busy she is, she moves to disengage and tend to other preening, signalling men, but this man was not finished. “This is my favourite passage,” he began, and then in his best Shakespearian accent:

“If music be the food of love, play on.

Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die…”

And she is trapped, so trapped she is almost suspended in air.

Her eyes close for just a moment, as if it is all too much, and then she reanimates herself and begins to applaud robustly, cutting the man’s recitation short. It was as if a battle had been won, and she got to keep the secret of the tattoo– something so important, so crucial to who she wanted to be, that she had it written into her flesh–for herself.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Finally have the night to myself to work on my novel. The window’s open, I’m drinking Jack and Coke and the KKKat is purring on my lap. #LifeIsGoodButForTheBlacksRuiningAmerica

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Kolby, a sensitive, young White Supremacist and gifted tattoo artist is the main character.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Lost vision in his left eye due to a hunting accident and wears an eye patch. Some say this is when he got “the gift.”

@KuKluxKlanUSA: He goes into a trance whenever he’s inking, and the tattoo he creates foretells the future of the person who gets it. It dooms them to their fate!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Working title: White Tattoo Prophet.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Minorities are ruining America!!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Taco Tuesday’s at Pigglys!! $2 each!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Ate 19 of ‘em. No one else even close. #WhitePride!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Stained my hood a bit, but it was worth it.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Hood is very hot, especially when engaged in competitive eating.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Will take it up at next meeting, as I know I’m not alone in this observation.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Aryan Brotherhood will do anything to KKKeep America pure!!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Not afraid to stain our hoods for the cause! #AmeriKKAForever!!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Are you sure tacos are Mexican????

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Thought for sure they were American.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Really? Kind of like Mexican pizza pockets, I guess.

@KukluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA Well, shoot.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Illegal, lazy, dope dealing Mexicans trying to take over America with their sneaky and delicious food. FIGHT BACK AMERIKKKA!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Salma Hayek would make a good sex slave. #SubjugateTheirWomen!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA My cousin was a sex slave for two years. Said it wasn’t so bad.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: Said the food was pretty good and she had cable.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: No, I’m still single.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: Tried a few dating sites but nothing worked. Considering Tinder.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: “Looking for sweet girl who’s also not afraid to die for the cause!!” This is my profile pic.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: @KlansvilleVA: Yeah, thanks bud, I’m sure it’ll work out, too!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: The White Brotherhood will never die!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: I really do hate the black race, but I have to say, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one impressive man.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Kind of wish he was white and had an incoherent rage against all minorities. That would be cool.

@KuKluxKlanUSA: I mean, if he just applied his intellect to hate and violence instead of astrophysics, he could really make something of himself, you know?

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Also wish Will Smith was white! What an actor!!

@KuKluxKlanUSA: And Denzel. Denzel rules. (That stare. OMG!)

@KuKluxKlanUSA: Babe (White!) of the week:

@KuKluxKlanUSA: KKKristmas is coming up soon! Don’t forget to pick up your Ladies of the KKK Kalendar! All proceeds go to hate.

Dear Bitter Writer:

What are writers really like?

Ansell Pitt

Dear Mister Pitt:

Writers are the worst.

I’d be hard pressed to think of any single grouping of people, be they bound by profession, religion, ethnicity, sexual fetish or disease, that are worse than writers.

Writers are grubby, small, aspirational and hateful people.

The only thing that they loathe more than themselves are other writers. The success of other human beings, even in some cases animals, is toxic to the writer. If you happen to fall into conversation with one about something that is “good,” or something that you “like,” the writer will quickly, as if in a panic, change the topic to something that is “not good,” or something that they “don’t like.” They will do this in the way that a squirrel might scurry off up a tree when it gets startled. Writers feel diminished by light and joy, and will seek to suck as much of it as possible out of any given day. Never, ever ask a writer to make a speech at a wedding.

Think of this way:

If all the writers on the planet were jammed into one insufferable country, it would be torn apart by civil war and terrorism.

And then likely bombed by every other county in the world, too.

It would just be that bad a place.

Dear Bitter Writer:

Hello, love the very helpful blog! My question is book cover designs. What would go on it? Should the character be on the cover or should the cover relate to the content in the story? Thank you.

Samantha Bell

Dear Ms. Bell:

Are you some kind of a moron?

Look, if some other moron is willing to publish your stupid book, you should let them put whatever the fuck they want on the cover!! As a writer it is essential that you learn to be a sycophant. You must shamelessly align yourself with whatever the prevailing tribe is, and ceaselessly, but with as much elegance and perception as you can muster, lather all editors and associated “literati” (gag!) with compliments. Tell them how much you love the little, European scarves they’re always wearing and how cool their frames and tattoos are, and for God’s sake, if they want you nude and fully penetrated on the cover, you let them know how much you love their “edgy vision” and ask how many orifices they want penetrated, damn it!

A sprawling outpost on the edge of the city, the place has always reminded me of an airport. It’s insanely busy, there’s a multiplicity of languages and cultures streaming through the corridors, and the store, the things that they sell, are never truly what the consumer wants.Ikea is more of a way station, a place in your life where you pause, and finding an acceptable but temporary solution, move forward from who you are toward the glittering horizon of the person you’ll one day become, a person who will eventually be able to afford the sort of “adult” furniture you might one day pass down to your children. And so, when you find yourself at Ikea on a Sunday afternoon, you discover, in both a figurative and literal sense, that you are not where you want to be. Ikea, is not your beautiful house.

Perhaps as a result, most of the people there, like commuters, have a slightly dazed and unhappily obliged expression to their faces. However, one couple looked happy, like they were starring in their own movie and the rest of us were just extras there to lend contrast. Located somewhere in their beautiful twenties, they were animated, as if playing games in an amusement park or falling in love while ice skating.  Wearing a shiny, silver miniskirt that showed off a splashy array of tattoos, she was a platinum blonde with a kind of retro burlesque vibe, and he, well, he didn’t look quite as confident as he was dressed, but he was trying hard.

They were in Ikea as tourists, treating the place a bit like a museum where the exhibits weren’t the storage solutions and furnishings, but all the weary, humbled people shopping there. It was a cultural excursion for these two, an anthropological journey that was meant as symbol of the quirky, self-conscious lives they were trying to fashion for themselves. She, independent-minded and unpredictable, loved the carnival food on sale there, the secret passageways through the intricately designed shopping trails and the way that things were piled up like giant toys, and he was planning on getting a tattoo of the Ikea Monkey to commemorate the great day, both of them smiling secrets at one another, certain that they would never grow into the compromised, dream-beaten people they imagined blending into the background all around them.

The girl in front of me in the line-up was squarely built and dressed like a farmer. She had the red hair of an outsider and looked quiet, like she was still trying to decide who she was to become. On her right wrist there was a tattoo, a vividly green box with the word LIFE beneath it– a rebellion of optimism. You could see how the liberty of a new city and the excitement of an unwritten life, just now, finally developing, was animating her eyes, her eyes, which were so alert and watching everything,  just waiting for what was to happen next.

I think we only worked-out together three or four times, and in that time I discovered that Ronan was literally just off the boat from a small Irish town, lived in a rooming house where he refused to share the refrigerator with the rest of the men who lived there, and finally was making ends meet by working as a stripper in the Gay Village.

At any rate, when I signed-up with Ronan I got a deal if I paid for 8 sessions up front, but due to some embarrassing reason, I only had 4 before we parted ways. That was about two year ago, and just recently I decided that I needed a personal trainer again to help get me in shape, and realizing I had a few sessions already paid for with Ronan, decided to give him a call.

Me: Is this Ronan?

Ronan: Who be asking?

Me: It’s me, Michael Murray, remember? You used to train me on Queen Street!

Ronan: No, I don’t remember you.

Me: I wore glasses, only have one lung and lived in a creepy apartment.

Ronan: (inaudible yelling in the background, thought I might have heard the word bumbaclot.)

Me: Ronan?

Ronan: Are you the guy who couldn’t lift any weights, but only the bar that was supposed to hold the weights, so you just did curls with that?

Me: Yes! That’s me!!

Ronan: Yeah, I remember you. That was a creepy apartment, man! Cobwebs and taxidermy everywhere, Mother of Mary it used to give me the shivers.

Me: Yeah, well great! We’ve moved, you know, and now live in nice place with windows and stuff. You’d like it! Anyway, the reason I’m calling is that I need to get back in shape and when I was working with you I think I paid for 8 sessions in advance, but only actually took 4, and I was wondering if we might work-out some arrangement where you could start training me again and I could get credit for those four sessions?

Ronan: That can’t be done.

Me: Why?

Ronan: You already paid for those sessions.

Me: But that’s my point.

Ronan: They were only good for a year.

Me: That’s not true. We never said that.

Ronan: It was implied in our agreement.

Me: So was my fitness. You failed me Ronan.

Ronan: You failed yourself, mate.

Me: You always smelled of Chunky Beef Soup.

Ronan: Your teeth disgusted me.

Me: I know you’re here illegally, mate.

Ronan: You don’t know shit, ya jammy rag.

And then he hung up on me.

I’m a pretty busy guy so I don’t have an awful lot of time for reading, but I tell you, I wish I did. I love that feeling when you’re reading a good book, like one by Stephen King, and you just can’t stop turning the pages! It’s like a friggin’ addiction or something and you just have to know who’s gonna be the next to get killed, you know? So exciting. Reading, it’s a real passion, if I had the time.

So on my bookcases you can see all sorts of stuff. This is a football. I got it a Bill’s game. It’s signed by Jim Kelly, the best goddamn passer of his era. I tell you, he wasn’t afraid of taking a hit in order to make the pass. Class act, Jim Kelly, class act.

Over here we have my bobble-head doll. I look a little slimmer in it than real life, I guess, ha-ha! And this is a Toronto Argonaut football helmet radio. Had it since I was a kid.

This is the Bible, written by God, obviously. I take a lot of inspiration from it. Means a lot to me. Really, really would have liked to have to sat down and had a pint or two with Jesus. He was a real man of the people. This one is Chicken Soup for the Soul. It’s also inspirational, like a bible for people that haven’t yet had their Jesus moment. This is a book  about the cars from the Fast and the Furious movies. It’s pretty cool. By the way, I just want to say that it was really sad that the guy from those movies died, but at least it was a warrior’s death, so respect to him and his family.

Let’s see, I got some more stuff over here: some fantasy football magazines, Infinite Jest—never got through it—a Florida travel guide and Beloved by Toni Morrison. I wept like a baby when I read that book. Loved the line about being “full of a baby’s venom.” I tell you, if I were the type to get a tattoo, that’s the tattoo I would get. Toni Morrison rocks. Moving on, I got a puck here signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs, and oh, this is the Velveteen Rabbit. I’ve had it since I was a kid, it’s about a doll you can’t kill.

Like the restaurant itself, the waitress working when I was there was easy to overlook. She wore her generic black and white server’s attire as if camouflage. Bespectacled and with practical black hair that obscured her features, she moved quickly, whether she was approaching a task or finishing one.  She avoided eye contact and wore make-up in the fashion of somebody who wasn’t accustomed to wearing make-up, as if it, too, were part of the disguise she had to wear for work.  Perfunctory and with her head down, she was a delivery system who offered up no clues as to what her life exterior to the restaurant might be like.

The place wasn’t very busy and she was getting off early. She cashed out quickly, without hanging around to have a glass of wine or something to eat the way that restaurant staff often does. In her friendless manner she hurried out the door, stopping when a homeless woman sitting on a milk crate said something to her.  They spoke for a moment or two and then the waitress took out her purse, gave the woman some money and then hugged her right there on the sidewalk. For nearly a minute they must have embraced, and then after having wiped away a tear the waitress left, moving into the rest of her unseen life.