Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks

"I can see you're a very happy girl!', Chimi exclaimed as she kneeled before me, rolling up the legs of my sweatpants and applying industrial strength paste to my skin. It took about forty minutes to get the barrage of wires and corresponding electrodes attached to my head, chest, ears, eyes and nose at the Sleep & Alertness Clinic (750 Dundas Street West, Suite 2-221, Toronto, Ontario).

As my Night Nurse shimmied from my left side to my right, lacing up wires in denominations of red, yellow and blue the 'Mission Impossible' theme inevitably ran through my head as I felt like a hostage situation gone wrong. Despite this being Chimi's full-time gig, she was not the slightest bit graceful or gentle as she swung the cords fastened to my body around like a rhythmic gymnast doing a floor routine on too many steroids, repeatedly knocking them off her desk and onto the ground.

Having spent most of my third year at the University of Toronto unconscious in redundant lectures on the intersection of race, class and gender or hopped up on prescription stimulants, my psychiatrist, exasperated after four years of trying to help me out of my permanent, low-functioning state, thought it would be in our best interest that I undergo a two day and two night all expenses paid trip to the Sleep & Alertness Clinic. My next-door neighbor on Night One was an obese woman ranging anywhere from 45-60 years of age, with scraggly grey hair. Before she fell asleep at 9 pm she kept moaning, 'Oh my God, I'm so tired' from her bedroom, less than 1 foot away from where I was quarantined. She would later awake me from my slumber some hours later by running out of her room and screaming 'I'm bleeding!', though it was never confirmed or denied if this was in fact a true statement or the consequence of a night terror as she was quickly ushered out of the clinic at the ass crack of dawn.

The only set of instructions I was given before I was put to bed at 10:30 pm like a colicky baby was not to get my wires wet under any circumstances or they would no longer be able to conduct the study. Thankfully, to prevent this sort of mishap, Chimi hastily scrunched up the 30+ mini wires and shoved them into my own personal pencil case that I got to wear strapped around my neck at all times. Chimi says it's better to be happy than 'seri', her abbreviation of the word serious, though it is hard to remain happy at the Sleep & Alertness Clinic for a solid 48 hours.

My parents had offered to drive me across town for my 8:30 pm check-in time at the clinic but a pay phone call an hour before our scheduled departure time, Mother alerted me that this would not be feasible. My parents were detained at the racetrack by a drunk driving accident, caused by my father.

Seemingly, Dave had too much to drink as per usual and collided into a bus full of veterans out on a day trip from Sunnybrook Hospital before my parents even made it out of the parking lot. After blaming my Mother for this misstep and allegedly mumbling 'if I had a noose right now, I would strangle you' in her direction, the nurse on duty emerged from the banged up bus and announced 'do you realize you just hit a bus full of veterans?' to which my father shouted back, 'I don't fucking care about that! I have to drive my daughter to a sleep study!'

After processing this information, direct quotes and all whilst last-minute packing my toothbrush and back issues of Rolling Stone from 1998 for my getaway, I was stunned to see my parents with shit eating grins plastered across their faces waiting for me by reception when I arrived at the clinic after my hour long Sunday commute.

My father greeted me with 'Hi, Sweets', a term of endearment that I asked him to refrain from calling me at the age of nine and I responded with 'you disgust me'. His eyes glazed over and I couldn't tell if that was from his high blood/alcohol level or if I had actually hurt him. In my lifetime, my father has only cried in front of me once, when he found out that Michael Hutchence of INXS had been found dead in a hotel room in 1997. I remember eating my cereal in the kitchen that morning while my father, completely choked up, attempted to read the news from The Toronto Sun, the local tabloid style paper that only requires a fourth grade education to understand. From that point on, any time 'Never Tear Us Apart' would play on the radio, my father would announce it was 'the greatest song ever written' and consequently, I want it to set the backdrop for the traditional father/daughter dance at my future wedding if he's still alive or fortunate enough to even be invited to this enchanted event.

Dave graciously handed me a crisp $20 bill out of his pre-accident winnings from the Queen's Plate and announced it was 'Tim Hortons money' for the coffee I wouldn't be allowed to drink for two days. Thankfully, I wasn't allotted enough time to be upset over the fact that my father had narrowly escaped jail time for the third time in his life for driving under the influence because Chimi whisked me away to my new bedroom and attached something to my thumb, my biggest finger, before forcing me to lie down.

She ran into the control center and through the PA system instructed me to blink my eyes, grind my teeth, snore, kick my legs and 'move my belly'. My belly-moving abilities were not up to her standards and so she demanded 'BIGGER! FASTER!' through the crackly speakers. I laughed so hard at this request that I shook with laughter and began tearing. My tears soaked through the pieces of tape underneath my eyes, holding a set of electrodes in place.

I was awoken the following day to 'Good morning, you dreamed!' in Chimi's cheeriest 8 year old girl voice before she yanked the tube out of my nose and ripped the thick strips of masking tape away with reckless abandon, like a painful wax job. At that point we realized I was either allergic to tape, paste, copious amounts of rubbing alcohol or a combo platter of all three and so my dressings had to be modified to not irritate the red, blotchy patches of skin that remained until my stint at the clinic was over.

It was outlined on the set of preparatory instructions for life at the Sleep & Alertness Clinic that you are encouraged to walk around outside and interact with the other patients. The first part is a lie, I was denied access to the outside world during the entirety of my stay. And the only opportunity I had to 'interact' with another patient was when a deaf man and his interpreter barged into my TV lounge during the last leg of the all-day Intervention marathon on A&E I had been diligently watching all day. The deaf guy and his interpreter sat on either side of me on the couch and proceeded to smack their gums as they mouthed words to each other in an over exaggerated fashion accompanied by what resembled instinctual ape-like beating of their chests, which I know is actually excerpts from the American Sign Language. The minute I left the room to be suited up for round II of torture in my hyperbolic sleeping chamber, the deafie or his helper changed the channel to Treehouse, the only type of programming the hearing impaired can understand without closed captions, apparently.

Six weeks later I was summoned back to the Clinic in order to receive my results and I learned that I wake up approximately 11 times per hour, whatever that actually means. To rectify this issue I have been prescribed the same brand of sleeping pills that my mother is too afraid to self-administer in the off chance she overdoses and never wakes up.

A Beary Good Story

The year was 1991. I was four years old, 'Trompe le Monde', the Pixies last (but certainly not least) studio album was released that September and by the end of the year, my maternal grandmother, St. Monica, would be dead. My mother would pick me up from afternoon kindergarten every day in our red, 1987 Pontiac Tempest, and we would ride over to the oncology wing at Princess Margaret hospital, only stopping to pick up one large coffee and one 'Hawaiian' donut from Country Style along the way.

At age four I would pen my first short story, 'A Beary Good Story', transcribed by my interpreter/kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Childs, as my printing skills never properly developed. I can't say for sure whether or not this children's tale was written before or after The Change (Life After Monica: 12/12/91), but regardless, I seemed to already be a morbid child and it is still To Be Determined whether spending hours of my young life in hospital, running ragged down the corridors, fishing for treats out of vending machines, consoling my mother as she wept, pre-heating the in-car lighter for her round the clock chain smoking, hassling nurses or attending my first funeral with Baby Blanket in hand had any impact on my personality development.

While my classmates probably wrote about a quaint teddy bear picnic, I chose to exercise my flair for the dramatic and craft a vignette about a teddy bear jewel heist.

The Cardigans' Gran Turismo: Revisited

As a bit of a reclusive tween, Tuesdays were always the most important day of my week as they were denoted 'New Release Days' in North America. Since I was born an Only Child to an Only Child, I was treated many of these Tuesdays to a new album or two without much arm twisting on my part. However, on one very important album release day of my youth, (11/03/98), I was stuck in a log cabin in an isolated part of rural Ontario, in a week long Wilderness Education program with my sixth grade class.

When you're first starting to learn the intricate details of human reproduction from a thirty minute a week Sex Education class with your giggly peers, it's important to take the opportunity to spread your wings and get your first real taste of 'independence' by 'experiencing nature' and playing Predator/Prey somewhere on the outskirts of city life. For my classmates and I, this happened at Lake St. George, not to be confused with Camp Kearney, where every other school went. As I imagine my elementary school must still be paying out of their ass for the drastic demolition and re-building that occurred when I was exiting first grade, as a result, everything we did as a school was both low budget and low culture, which was conveniently, the sort of lifestyle I became accustomed to growing up with my parents. There are exactly two pivotal moments that occurred within the last ten years wherein everyone remembers exactly what they were doing when the news broke, 9/11 (Never Forget) and Michael Jackson's untimely demise (Too Soon). While I was sitting in 9th grade 'enriched' geography class during the former, both of my parents decided it was in their best interest to ditch work that day to hit up the slot machines at Casino Rama. While they were being enthralled by the neon glow of the 'Blazing 7s', New York City was incendiary.

Gran Turismo, the Cardigans follow-up LP to the very poppy and accessible First Band on the Moon proudly holds a permanent spot on my Most Underrated Albums Ever shelf. While nearly everyone from my generation can at least hum along to 'Lovefool', I am often hard-pressed to find someone who appreciates the first single, 'My Favourite Game', from their most acclaimed album, to the same degree. This is probably the case because the leading track is quite a bit darker in comparison to past releases/the booty shaking beats were probably a little too 'fresh' for a year dominated by boy bands and I can say with confidence that the Thelma & Louise inspired music video was played less than five times on Canadian and American Music Television, combined.

Before departing for my first ever overnight stay away from my parents, I gave Mother explicit instructions as she was packing my oversized duffel bag with extra pairs of underwear and prescription nasal spray to pick up a copy of the album on its official release day, a promise she made good on. Unfortunately, not only was my Outdoor Education excursion overshadowed by Gran Turismo's release, it was also spoiled by puberty.

I opted not to shower at all during my entire five day stay at Lake St. George, which was a slightly bold, out of character move for me as I had begun slathering Lady Speed Stick under my pits in the third grade. That same year I also noticed coarse pubic hair growing in sparsely as I sat in my family's decrepit bathtub one evening. The amount of time I spent soaking in my own filth rapidly decreased after that moment, not because of my sudden growth spurt, but because the bathroom was nearly 40 years old at the time and slabs of the pale green tile wall would come loose and plunk into the water, startlingly me every time I was beginning to work up a good lather with unscented bar soap (I have sensitive skin).

I couldn't bring myself to enter the communal shower with the girls I had grown up with since kindergarten. I felt like it would be towing the line of a potential security breach if I hopped in there with them, so instead, I resigned myself to sweating/stinking the Wilderness Week out, thinking it would always be Better To Be Safe Than Sorry.

The members of my class were asked to acquire a one subject, spiral notebook in preparation for the trip so we would have ample space to record our observations as we became One With Nature. I'm not sure if my peers were utilizing their notebooks to describe the foliage or express their homesickness (2 of the boys on the trip bailed early on account of missing their mothers too much), but I only wrote one line during my confinement up North.

It was just before lights out one evening and one of my 'roommates' for the week had just come back from hitting the showers and was only sporting a beach towel around her budding, pubescent body. At the time, I thought this spectacle before me was absolutely breathtaking and so I scrawled with my HB pencil, 'if I were a boy, I would have a boner right now'.

It wasn't enough that I had to scathe a brand new notebook with this closeted tween lesbian sentiment, but I had to leave my mark on the very first page. Eager to get home and crank Gran Turismo on my portable CD player, I absentmindedly neglected to rip out and dispose of that torrid diary entry before my mother unpacked my bag and read it.

This wasn't the easiest subject to broach at 11 years old. "What do you mean, 'you'd have a boner'?" she asked me from across our kitchen table. I tried to hide from her gaze by sinking down in my seat and attempting to obscure my face behind the garish centerpiece comprised of artificial flowers. If memory serves, I started tearing to avoid delving any deeper into that mortifying unchartered territory. Mother relented but still acted totally shocked when I officially came out to her at the age of seventeen.

We were sitting in our dank basement with the 11 o'clock news on only to fill the silence in between my heaving sobs. At this point, I had recently dropped out of high school (for the second time), and I was wearing the same oversized, oatmeal colored men's long sleeve, waffle knit t-shirt day in and day out, going on two weeks. The anchor announced while I was in mid-sob that Hunter S. Thompson had been found dead in his home, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This type of 'breaking news' made me wail even more violently and it was this most opportune moment I chose to tell my mother her only daughter was a lesbian.

In retrospect I'm not sure why Thompson's suicide upset me to that magnitude. I had read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas the previous summer but it had failed to leave any sort of profound impact on me. Mother very calmly and kindly tried to explain to me that I was not gay, just confused, and no wonder - I had a pretty major, debilitating chemical imbalance going on upstairs and already, more than two antidepressants hadn't worked their healing magic on me. I believed her at the time but her reassurance still didn't prevent me from my introduction to religious fanaticism: repetitively praying in the shower every morning to be straight like everyone else.

At eighteen, I met my first girlfriend and promptly stopped praying. I would come out to Mother again, this time with more certainty. The only difference being that on this occasion, it was her who sobbed all night alone in her bed.

IDWYL is the new FML

The first time I kissed a man and admittedly, liked it, I was nineteen, manic and dressed like a low-grade Annie Lennox impersonator at an 80s themed college party. After I got my fix of table dancing for the evening, I exited to the backyard for some fresh air and that was the moment I first saw him.

He had artful stubble and was wearing a snug, novelty 'Free Winona' t-shirt. In my haze I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was about him that was so compelling but there was an unmistakable churning in my gut that said '[he] feels like home to me', to quote Canadian hero, Chantal Kreviazuk.

After a few minutes of conversing and juggling my 40 of 7.1% alc/vol. beer from hand to hand before the python girth of the bottle would slip out of my baby sized fists, I learned that he felt so safe and familiar because his mother was also bipolar.

He began recounting to me one of his mother's episodes in which she was having repetitive, intrusive thoughts that spores were growing inside of her face. Eventually this paranoia became so all-encompassing that she took a knife to her own flesh and 'removed' them herself. This was truly one of the only instances I've ever had the license to say to anyone, I Don't Want Your Life, so I said it the only way I knew how at the time: with my mouth on his in a sloppy, maniacal kiss.

For a few years after this encounter I regretted not going home with him that night, either out of curiosity or because I felt a little inaccessible the time I was referred to as a 'gold star lesbian'. It's probably fair to assume that the only time it would have been feasible for me to engage in the thrills/agony of PIV would be while undergoing a debilitating chemical imbalance. In my 'right mind', whatever that means, I would never have allowed myself to 'go there' with a man. My vaginal canal is so tiny the only thing I can safely fit up there is a gummy bear.

What was your definitive IDWYL moment? Knowing me personally or reading this blog doesn't count, sorry.

'I boo-booed. Everybody makes mistakes. Nobody's perfect... except Mom'

Sometimes when my father speaks to me I feel like I'm in Angela's Ashes. And I do mean the film adaptation because God knows the Irish aren't a literate people. My father immigrated to Canada well over 35 years ago but his brogue remains incredibly bawdy and potent and consequently, he cannot pronounce anything with a soft 'th' sound (i.e. Nathan Lane), the words 'feces', 'prostate' or the name of his wife of 32 years.

A few winters ago I was sporting my father's Celtic Football Club scarf that he picked up for free as some sort of pity prize as a runner-up in a Win a Trip for 2 to Dublin! contest. Every time I would wrap it around my neck before leaving the house he would stop me at the door to give the same incoherent lecture: 'you have to be careful wearing that in certain parts of the city because if a Protestant saw that and didn't like it, he could beat you up'. Thanks for your concern, Dad, but in reality, I am more often persecuted for being read as 'visibly queer' rather than for my Irish heritage.

Due to the unfortunate combo platter comprised of my genetic makeup, short stature, baby face and the fact that I have grown from a tomboy into a lesbian, I never had a chance, basically. I understand I have agency in how I choose to manage my appearance but, let's face it: I'm An Ugly Girl. By some lesbian beauty standards, I guess I would weigh-in as average, but I've never been Top 5 material. I have the neck of a football player on steroids, a ladystache that still persists after seven rounds of laser hair removal at $200 a pop and residual acne scars caused from four years of Lithium treatment. The times that I have worn makeup in my life have always been met with the same response: 'you look like a drag queen'.

It's because of how I look that makes it okay that I've been gay bashed on more than a few occasions. I must have deserved to have pieces of trash picked up off the floor of that subway car and hurled at the back of my head to a raucous chorus of 'faggot'. I know I deserved my mother's initial reaction when I told her as soon as I made it home, 'maybe that wouldn't happen to you if you would shave your legs'. And it would be inevitable that my father would call up the employees only Toronto Transit Commission phone number to report that six men in their early twenties had encircled his only child and thrown garbage at her. Only he would omit the key element - the hate speech, because he was 'embarrassed' to tell his former co-workers that his daughter is gay.

Despite having enough seniority to refuse shifts, my father deliberately chose to work Christmas morning year after year with the TTC to escape from my mother's marathon crying sessions. Instead of listening to traditional Christmas carols, like 'Silent Night' or even 'Jingle Bell Rock', we listened to 'Unforgettable', a duet between Nat King Cole and his daughter Natalie on repeat for hours after I finished opening up my presents from Santa. It was understood that this song represented paying our respects to her late mother, my late grandmother. This ritual was repeated back-to-back for so many years that eventually the vinyl not only warped but our Zenith stereo cabinet from the 1970s also deteriorated from frequent use. To this day I can't listen to that song without crying as I was socialized to believe that was the only acceptable response.

I wasn't dating Nick Rhodes, I wasn't dating Roger Taylor, I wasn't dating John Taylor, I wasn't dating Andy Taylor, I wasn't dating Simon Le Bon

One of the most eerie songs composed in the last century is Duran Duran's 'The Chauffeur'. When I caught their Toronto performance in December 2008 at the Air Canada Centre, they neglected to play it, much to my chagrin. Instead, they opted for for more upbeat, accessible, radio-friendly tunes that have brought them moderate success over the duration of their career such as 'Rio', 'Girls on Film', and of course, 'Hungry like the Wolf'. I suspect this is the case because 'the Chauffeur' is so creepy it probably gives Simon Le Bon night terrors.

The Air Canada Centre is Toronto's largest venue and is most often reserved for professional sporting events. I don't particularly like sporting events. Not because I lack a 'feel for the game' but because they bring back jarring memories of the time my father won a purple 1998 Ford Windstar minivan on live television at a Toronto Raptors game. I sat court side, watching this spectacle unfold and desperately wishing to be pummeled to death by the entourage of security guards belonging to Corey Hart of 'Sunglasses at Night' fame, who were sitting directly in the row in front of me.

Duran Duran could not even sell out half of the stadium. Make no mistake, I did not purchase my pair of tickets either. Though I'm only 22, I grew up listening to local radio 24/7, due to my father's rampant OCD and one of my favorite programs was always 'the lost 80s lunch', an all request hour, which was where I was inundated with my own personal Ongoing History of New Music [to me].

It was my father, resident contest champion, swindler, con man and the one who truly brings new meaning to the expression, 'bullshit baffles brains', who won these tickets and happily passed them along to me, on the condition that I would print off some contest release forms for him as he is 'not a techie person'.

Le Bon and the unrelated trio of Taylors were promoting their most recent release, 2007's Red Carpet Massacre which bears close resemblance to the title of Perez Hilton's first publication, Red Carpet Suicide. Duran Duran, however, have not been 'relevant' in years and probably haven't stepped foot on a red carpet in just as long so I really doubt that at this point in their washed up career they still have the ability to 'tear it up' to massacre-like proportions.

The highlight of that evening was the security guard who performed my regulatory bag check upon entering the building. I had my overpriced headphones slung around my neck and he asked me if I was a DJ. Flattered as I was, I have no DJ experience, save my exemplary tendencies to properly 'rock' an iTunes playlist.

Back in fall 2006, when I was briefly living in Montreal and manic, I was having delusions of grandeur and believed I had legitimate DJ skills. I pursued this endeavor feverishly until I landed two gigs, despite not even having 'a pot to piss in', let alone equipment of any kind. Fortunately, my mother retrieved me from MTL before my tragic debut and promptly introduced me to her Alma Mater, Lithium Carbonate. My moniker would have been DJ Manic! at the Disco.

I'm not drinking any more, but I'm not drinking any less

There are two conversations held every day in my home on a loop. The first is regarding the degree of freshness of two barbeque chickens, simultaneously on-the-go, sitting in the refrigerator. 'Is this the New Chicken or the Old Chicken?', my mother will ask before she prepares a sandwich, or what my father will grunt at me after he returns home from the night shift at his 'concierge' job. The second running dialogue involves my father's drinking habit. After he cracks open his third beer before four P.M., my mother will say, 'you're not drinking any more are you?' To which he will perennially respond, 'I'm not drinking any more, [pregnant pause] but I'm not drinking any less' and crack up laughing as if we haven't heard that line uttered repeatedly since he sprung for an early retirement three years ago.

Maybe it's because my teenage years were so disrupted by patches of illness that I tend to valorize any film or television depiction of what it's 'really' like to be a high school student. When I was a teenager I had to drop out of high school twice, spend forty days in an outpatient program for severely 'mentally ill youth' and two painstakingly long hours locked down in inpatient, before signing myself out 'against medical advice' out of complete and utter fear of my flat-mates in the youth psychiatry wing.

Many speak fondly of their first time experimenting with alcohol as an adolescent, even if it resulted in bed spins and projectile vomiting with their friends. My First Time involved consuming multiple coolers my father purchased for me, his daughter (a minor), and watching the first twenty minutes of the movie Mad Love on the bastardized, Canadian version of the Disney Channel, better known as Family Channel. I would not make it through the rest of the movie, which was a fairly unrepresentative depiction of bipolar disorder, because I felt compelled to run from the basement, to the second storey of the house, screaming. My bipolar mother, who averages 1-3 hours of sleep per night, was predictably, already awake and leapt out of her bed, completely naked except for a pair of ladies Jockey briefs, snug across her FUPA. I can't recall much from the events that transpired afterward, but I will never forget the sight of my mother's breasts, swinging with abandon as she shot out of her bedroom to wrap her arms around me.

A true Irishman, my father saw nothing wrong with aiding and abetting his teenage daughter in her quest to shave a few years off her miserable life by plying her with kiwi-mango flavored alcohol. Compared to family drinking standards, I was already behind the learning curve. My father had his first taste of liquor at the age of five. He had been living with his aunt at the time because his mother was in hospital with 'tuberculosis' (read: receiving multiple rounds of electroshock therapy) when he happened to stumble upon a tiny bottle of whiskey, which he nursed until he fell asleep.

My parents thought that by chance, alcohol consumption could help to offset my out of whack brain chemistry, even though it serves primarily as a depressant. When our family physician prescribed me drugs earlier that year and told me he expected a recovery within eight weeks, I believed him. So, it was as much of a surprise to my parents once it really sunk in that there would be no 'recovery' period and they would spend the rest of their days caring for a dependent with career mental illness and 'hoping for the best'. I don't think it was poor parenting that lead to the serial purchases of cigarettes and booze or forbidding me to get my driver's license, thinking I was on 'too much medication' to get behind the wheel. It was some convoluted form of love.

Later, my father would earn the nickname 'whiskey nose' from his two best childhood friends. I would only come to learn of this moniker myself as for a moment in time, it was the password for his EZ Rock 97.3 FM online account and one morning, as I was answering the 'Daily Trivia' questions on his behalf, I made him explain the symbolism. While my father's old pals became architects and share a firm together in Dublin, my father is a glorified, part-time security guard, semi-functional alcoholic who resides with two generations of bipolar women. As much as I resent his daily intake of liquid hubris, the hundreds of times he's driven drunk and the equally as many times he has been banned from an establishment or shamed me publicly, I guess I can't really blame him. If your family winced when you opened your mouth to speak and you are still deluded enough to continue to ask your only child year after year if she will write an essay for a certain holiday themed contest entitled 'Why My Dad is the Greatest' and when she refuses, you write it yourself and forge her signature, your drinking problem is the least of your worries.