June 22, 2004

To wake me up from a night of uneasy dreams, Zorianna made eggs and pink coffee Thursday morning. I dreamt that my best friend eloped with her, leaving me lonesome and deeply unimpressed. She too had an uneasy night filled with echoes of her past, so we shared secrets over coffee.

“I’ll tell you all about neurosis,” she said, as we walked out into the rain to meet her mother.

On the bus there was silence bitten off with smiles and glimpses into armpits. The world was moist and sleepy that morning, and her grandfather’s house was full of smells and memories. We got there as her parents took a break from unpacking the past to grab some food. Lunch with them in a quiet cafe was delicious.

For dessert, Zorianna and I walked into a sex store to play with plastic cocks while her parents drank coffee across the street. The cocks felt pleasantly rigid in my hand, and I tried to make them all wabble by touching their tips, clumsily knocking some on the floor.

Across the street, her parents were still drinking their coffee when we came out of the store; we could see them watching us through the cafe windows. Zorianna bit into words and I felt strangely melancholic as I walked down the street besides her, as though some huge barrier was jammed between us. Besides, I really had to pee.

“Ignore this horrible yearning,” I told myself, “and it will go away.”

But it didn’t. With all our words echoing in my head, and all our craziness, I felt impossibly close to her and yet painfully far. I was silent and understood nothing.

“Proximity effect,” I finally muttered. She wanted to know what I meant. “I’m trying to reduce you to effect,” I said.

She stopped suddenly and drew her coat over her head refusing to move. I felt impossibly tender seeing her hiding under her red coat, so I pulled my head inside her coat to whisper an explanation.

“Spending enough time in someone’s close proximity will make you crazy about them.”

“Not just anyone,” she said. She was right, and because we both had to pee we ran down Spadina Avenue and straight into Trevor.

I jumped on him ferociously and nearly got us both killed by the streetcar. It was fantastic seeing him again — he rubbed my torso joyfully making my muscles tingle, and we wound up in the Red Room with a pitcher of sangria and pockets emptied on the table.

“All is right with the world,” he said, and we felt wonderful, orgasmic. He gave us cigarettes in the street and we walked back to his purple room to make opium songs, collapse on wooden floors, bite ankles and hands, and exhaust ourselves with photographic anomalies.

Armed with a stick and sunglasses, we went into the city at midnight searching for birthday parties. We found music, noise, and I danced on sidewalks with Zorianna until the night spun around us. It wasn’t just proximity but the Zorianna effect that made me feel utterly dizzy and lovely.

At two in the morning the dancing stopped, and we found pink paint on the sidewalk. On the way to Trevor’s purple room, Zorianna and I disappeared into the darkness to paint the city pink. Afterwards, flushed with excitement and shame, we found our way to Trevor’s room again to sleep and dream once more.

And that was the second day, and it was good.