May 20, 2005

I got Dave’s message late in the afternoon. “Wanna go to Toronto tonight?” he asked. “There’s a book release party and Trevor should be there.” Half an hour later, we jammed ourselves in Bryn’s station wagon, six of us, and barrelled down the highway while blasting our CBC radio.

The ride trilled me and scared me shitless. I haven’t been back to Toronto in months, and everything I saw was filled with memories of wine and summer days. It’s strange how places become connected with people and emotions. The closer we got to the city, the more anxious and awkward I became. I remembered the city, the houses, the smell of the lake, my loves…

“I haven’t talked to Trevor since his sister broke up with me,” I told Dave when we got lost in Toronto. I didn’t know what to say to him … how to explain what was happening. In the months since then we drifted towards the edge of nothingness.

By the time Dave and I found our way again, it was dark and the book release party just begun. Shannon Gerard, who’s lovely and hyper and full of geeky knowledge, just finished another autobiographical and mythical graphic novel. She gave us buttons and hugs when she saw us and we sat in a dark room to read her work. Her words were full of meaning, her drawings lustful:

And I have been recalling since you left, those two weeks at the beginning of July when this whole neighbourhood smells of sweat and semen.

It was at that point, I think, that someone said, “Trevor is here,” and we went out of the room to meet him. He was still spastic and wearing his grey fedora and dark clothes. I leaned against a wall, and for a moment he didn’t seem to notice me. “This will be awkward as fuck,” I thought.

But he saw me, and I grabbed him in my arms, burying my head in his shoulder. He still smelled like women, never having stopped wearing lady’s perfume. The smell now became part of him and it was wonderful. We went back inside to drink wine and gesticulate wildly in the dark. I missed him like crazy all these months.

We ended up prowling the streets, our conversation jumping all over the place. Metal. Movies. Koreans. Audio-vibratory, physiomolecular transport devices. “I’m sorry I’ve been an asshole lately,” I said.

At the corner of Bloor and Spadina, I grabbed him once more into my arms as we said goodbye. The streets and houses around us were rich with memories; I was overwhelmed and my bladder was full as though I ingested too much goodness in one night. I walked back alone to meet Dave, and because we were both drunk and happy, we strolled down quiet streets and he told me about his heart.