The Society of Experience

Chapter 3-1

I WAS IN TWO PLACES. Half of me sitting up in my bed in St. Mike’s Hospital, early March, waiting for something other than the certainty of my breath and the sound of footsteps outside my door to break the vacuum. Half of me was stuck in January.

The nurse was due; it was seven p.m. I tried to focus on whatever routines were available to me, whatever I could look forward to, as opposed to being whisked into the past. Her green eyes tracking me, wary when we exchanged glances. Being observed wasn’t comforting, especially when it was just the two of us. I remember her dark, short hair, and her tenuous manner, as if figuring out what it was she was supposed to being doing.

Anyone could see what I’d done to myself. It was naive to wish otherwise, though I continued to do so. She’d been pleasant and attended to me efficiently. Sometimes I’d think I was alone, but she would be in the room, snatching glances at me in the mirror.

I’d arrived on a stretcher smeared with blood, unconscious, oblivious to the voices of people shouting out the details of what I’d done. I couldn’t help thinking of the mess waiting for me when I’d get home, and I kicked myself for not being lucid through it all, as if I’d missed out on a good story to tell.

I couldn’t remember her name. Did she even wear a name tag? All I knew was that she never mentioned my suicide attempt when she was tending to me, inspecting the stitches, never poking her fingers into my shame. But I wanted to be punished. A part of me wanted someone to walk in, slam the door and yell at me — give me what I deserved. I didn’t feel like I merited the nurse’s attention. She caught me once, crying, my sewn-up forearm exposed. Nerves under sutures, under cotton bandages, on fire. She’d come from behind the dividing curtain. I’d assumed my sobbing was out of earshot. My face was flushed and covered in sweat.

I wish I could be one of those people who could do terrible things without regret, or at least do them well enough that I didn’t have the opportunity to look back and regret them.

“Are you okay, Mr. van der Lem?”

Her green eyes. I could barely look up.

I was under observation for obvious reasons. She stepped closer, tentatively, locking eyes with me, then she formed a word that never passed her lips. I couldn’t figure out what it was she tried to say — maybe she did say it and my body was too busy processing the remnants of the pills. I smiled politely and waved her off with my good arm: I wasn’t worth it. She hesitated, as if wanting to say more but unsure, glancing over her shoulder toward voices in the hallway. She left my room and I couldn’t remember her name or whether I ever knew it to begin with.

All of the things I didn’t want to think about worked themselves into my mind, crowding out the rest, past versus present. January versus March. Sometimes I sat up for hours, waiting for her — not the regular orderly, but her — to come and break the silence. And for the life of me I couldn’t remember her name, or even her voice.

“Derrick.”

I’m convinced it was a dream. I woke up on the second night and saw someone in the dark who I thought was her, leaning over, doing two things: sorting through my clothes and staring at me.

+ + +

I HAD ONE eye on the alley, the other minding the ice puddles dotting the asphalt. I sauntered along in the January chill, snapping photographs and collecting my thoughts. It was part of a network of tucked-away lanes stretching several blocks along the northern length of West Queen West. I was craving a cigarette, the little kick it used to give me. Nancy Sinatra’s Bond ballad, “You Only Live Twice,” played in my earbuds. I was scanning for new graffiti, new arrangements of debris casting shadows in the noon sun, away from the white noise of shoppers and brunchers. I was looking for answers. No matter that I came home with more questions. No matter that Karen kept asking for her Leica back.

I got a call on my cell. It was the daughter of the brother of my dad’s second wife. I called them step-somethings.

I lost track of what I was doing in that moment, straining to understand what I was being told. Someone I barely knew was telling me something profound that I couldn’t process. Her voice on the phone sounded pre-recorded. Then something inside me popped loose and all of my movements felt automatic.

A stranger turned the corner ahead, walking toward me, his dog on a lead. He was younger, maybe by five years, rimmed hat, unshaven. It was just the three of us and there was no way for me to turn around or look away without drawing more attention to myself. I would’ve preferred to be alone with my thoughts, whether or not I liked them, and not have people invade my space while I was on the goddamned phone, struggling to hear something I was trying very, very hard to both clarify and dismiss.

Tattoos. Tattoos on his neck. I bet if he took off his jacket his arms were inked like high school textbooks. We passed each other, inches from each other’s shoulders, his shepherd obediently minding its business. Ink was cheap and tattoos were permanent. Not even my most basic beliefs felt assured. I hated him. I hated the permanence of his commitment.

The phone call ended. It was a completely mundane, completely forgettable conversation.

My dad had died.

I lost my footing on a patch of ice and nearly fell on my a*s like Josée Chouinard. I recovered, knees awkwardly bent for balance, arms outstretched as if walking a circus tightrope. Karen’s camera dangled from its thin leather strap, the tip of the lens inches from hitting the asphalt. After a moment of deep breaths I turned around. The dog walker hadn’t paid attention. Nancy Sinatra was still singing in my ears.

Dad had died.

+ + +

INSTEAD OF CLARITY — or the nostalgic regret I assumed would organically materialize after he died — I felt a vacuum. The first thing I did was call the person who had hurt me second-most. We hadn’t spoken in months, but we settled into post-coital intimacy like snakes coiling.

“I read his book, Derrick.” Karen lying n***d, spooning. She meant the new one.

I couldn’t form words — my windpipe swollen. I’d called her as soon as I’d ambled home, and she invited me over too easily.

“Little essays,” she said. I hated the way she filled the silence. “Pieces about little . . . obscure locations in Europe and South-east Asia. He was so good at that.”

I preferred silence to her voice. I wanted to grab her copy of Rosado’s Atoll and tear it in half. I lay numb beside her, my erection subsiding like a tantrum. I didn’t have time to know what I was doing — good or bad — s*x with the ex, staring at her flame red hair in the tungsten bedroom light, hoping that she wouldn’t turn around, that I could leave her here whenever I wanted, encased in amber.

He travelled extensively. Had. Thirty-seven countries articulated in a*****e of notebooks and papers sought after by aficionados, and catalogued by York University and the National Archives. All said, they contained his musings on at least 138 cities, hamlets, counties and states across the world; places portrayed as alive, uneasily inhabited by less-alive people. Yet, over a forty-year career, Peter van der Lem rarely wrote about his hometown of Toronto, referring to it only as “the abandoned cathedral.” He refused to explain what that meant. In our sporadic conversations, which I kept brief for my own sake, he sometimes tried to instill a conspiratorial notion: the city’s shape and behaviour had been constructed by more than greed and circumstance, the same elements that underscored the creation of other major centres. He treated Toronto with suspicion, but was paradoxically unable to abandon it himself. He told me once there was a flow of power beyond city hall and the pink palace of the legislature at Queen’s Park. Something buried long ago in a drunken mistake, like Garrison Creek forced into a pipe, active underneath the soil of everyday life but invisible. There was a star chamber, a group who dealt with the real business of the city. He neglected to go into detail, and I always found the topic off-putting, so I never pushed him to elaborate. I figured he was making excuses for his lack of belonging, and creating straw men to do his bidding.

It was his heart. They found him in his car, parked outside a grocery store. His leg was locked in place, his foot pressed firmly on the brake pedal for the better part of an hour before someone discovered him and called an ambulance. People thought he’d fallen asleep, his white Audi TT idling restlessly.

I remember the sound of my voice when I called Karen, the distracted urgency of the shock setting in. “My dad’s died,” I said. You only get to say that once.

I couldn’t remember what we’d talked about when I got to her place. I had to keep checking that I was breathing. She had herbal tea and managed to remind me that I still had her camera. In a fit of desperation I reached for her, I held her. Without him around everything felt unformed. Past, present and future walk into a bar, stunned.

+ + +

“EXCUSE ME, SIR?”

I turned around and this older guy approached me, a weathered face wearing a blue denim jacket. His hair swept back in a wave of grey and nicotine gold. He was unshaven and his lips were cracked and swollen.

“Excuse me,” he said.

He’d caught me standing in the middle of a parking lot, on the outskirts of the Distillery District in the east end. I was holding two bags of office supplies. I can’t remember what I’d bought. Toner? Paper? I was rooted, gazing into the distance, and must have looked like a performance artist. I was staring at an old warehouse; its archways, which once framed busy carriage ports, were censored with brickwork. I’d walked aimlessly, crossing downtown as if waiting for someone to stop me. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have that sort of skill, the filters and instincts other people had.

“I’ve run out of gas,” he said, pointing uncertainly beyond the parking lot. “Was wondering if you knew where the nearest station was.”

He reeked of cigarettes and was holding a red plastic gasoline container. It looked like a child’s toy in his hand.

“I don’t know,” I said, pointing as precariously as he had. “Probably twenty minutes’ walk west?”

He followed the direction of my arm then turned back to me and smiled.

“That’s gonna be a hike, eh?”

I nodded and shrugged as honestly as I could. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to anyone.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve been on the road for the last fourteen hours — I’m goin’ to a job — and I only have enough for the gas, so . . . don’t suppose you have a dollar or so for a cab, so I could get to the station. It’s gonna be a while if I have to walk there an’ back and it’s gettin’ cold.”