I sit close to the bobbing, chocolate landscape of the horses’ backs, their ears little tents way up ahead. Long tails dance to the roll of haunches, one swinging just a touch faster than the other, but there are magical moments of synchrony.

My parents are sitting somewhere at the back of the wagon. We are separated by a stack of fellow travellers—all refugees from city to country. From time to time I hear my parents’ voices calling and I yell back that I’m fine.

The horses’ tails salute, smartly heralding tumbles of steaming buns.

A broad spread of goose fat on bread—a salt and pepper garden—blooms, floats, spins in my mind. I am very hungry.

Our waggoner sports a double-barrelled shotgun of a nose plugged with a nasty cold. An impeccable marksman, his projectiles never fail to miss the people slogging beside us on the soggy, autumn fields. He is a marvel.

I look down at the pedestrians; even tall men in hats and boots are below me. Some of them have little kids attached to their shoulders. We leave them behind only to catch up with wobbly strings of others. And because the road is narrow and so crowded, the wagons following us don’t have a prayer to get ahead of us; we are number one! Trucks full of soldiers spray past us, forcing people further into the mud. But trucks don’t count (in the race) because wagons belong to the motorless category.

I am hungry and happy. After bunker-hunting for a while, my mother found me just outside of Budapest, and my dad had made it back from the labour-camp in Russia where he worked as a “neutralizer” of land mines that he said looked like stocky turtles. Here we are now, all three of us, behind the two best horses in the world, making our getaway from a city of rubble, rats, and corpses, to the countryside that everybody says is full of parsnips and tomatoes and cows, and we won’t have to skip celebrating yet another one of my birthdays. I’ll be six years old.

Listening to the Blues
(Budapest, 1945–1948)

My mother sits on the edge of her bed, trembling, her pale neck extended toward the green glow of the radio, toward the voice, her eyes imploring, conjuring. Each evening the voice reels off a long list of the names of returnees. Each day the list gets shorter. She addresses my father who is leaning against the door of her room.

“Gyuri, what is going to happen? If Dénes doesn’t come home, I’ll die too. I know.” My father’s knuckles crack, he groans.

“Oh, darling, I know you love him too. Don’t you? My only brother! I am going to kill myself.”

“Magda, if I managed to come home, he’s bound to come home too. He’ll appear at the door sooner than you think. Have faith. Have faith in…God.”

After there are no more names, my mother keeps listening. She bewails the authorities’ “conspiracy of silence,” negligence and heartlessness, their criminal attitude, their anti-Semitism. After a while, she stops complaining. She listens in silence. She switches the radio off a couple of minutes after the news, takes her sleeping pills, and sleeps. The big blue carpet breathes with her in the dark.

Cool Valley
(Budapest, 1952)

We are sitting on the crest of a limestone bluff high over Cool Valley, Budapest, taking in the toy-like streetcars, trucks, the rare car. Even the huge red star atop the spire of the old monastery is a distant dot. (The military moved into the building shortly after the war.) It is the season of clear light, swirling leaves, and the death of Stalin. Allegedly, our eyrie perches over a scattering of mines and grenades still waiting. But way up here, we are in control.

Gingerly, Józsi’s fingers peel the newspaper wrapping off a small bundle of real toilet paper. It takes courage to spirit the genuine article from under your family’s behinds chafed red by years of selections torn from the People’s Voice, the only newspaper in town. We collect some dead leaves, the crisper the better, pulverize them, summon some saliva, roll our cigarettes, and light up.

Every male smokes. My father, my favourite teacher, Soviet movie stars, the old janitor who taught me how to deal with a hammer and nails, and Zoltan, of course, our only school chum who’d gotten laid so far. Or so he says.

It feels like breathing needles. In convulsive gusts, my virgin lungs hack out the murderous alien.

The others study me, glance down at the brown lump in my lap, then look away. Down at Cool Valley. They’re smoking.

Stalin smoked. Cigars.

In the Old Winery
(Lake Balaton, Hungary, 1954)

Bold bush, breasts like deep pockets stuffed with soft things, Aunt Manyi stands by the wooden tub. She is having a sponge bath. Her meaty leg propped up on a stool is almost as pale as the soapsuds dripping from it onto the stone floor. The whitewashed wall behind her is a thought paler. The waist-ward rush of her black hair, which for me until now was a most intricate, immutable bun, is wonderful to behold. The morning light gilds the defiant tangle below her navel.

Owner of wet dreams, I am insulted. Does she think I am sexless? Asleep? That it makes no difference? Or that it does?

She straightens her torso, lifting her damp hair free of her back. There is a blurred scimitar poised over her shoulder on the wall, a rugged scar. It is an enormous centipede.

And suddenly Aunt Manyi is beyond my reach; she belongs to it. Stippled with soap bubbles, her naked shoulder is about to brush against its long, ridged back.

Parenting
(Budapest, 1954–1955)

“It’s a class project about dream interpretation, Mom.” Hopefully that would explain the mural to my mother, and I’d make sure that dreams, good or bad, invented whenever necessary, would serve as decoys.

I started inscribing the Xs and the skulls on the strip of wall next to my mattress three days after my fitfully alert mother spotted the stains on the sheets and asked my father to talk to me man to man.

For a moment my father cupped his head in his hands and a stern little smile passed over his face. “Masturbation hijacks your libido, son. You won’t do well with the girls. Don’t you want to do well? With the girls?” Thus he spoke before turning back to his texts of biochemistry.

Three nights in a row, and I was convinced that I was a helpless, hopeless outcast who would end up jumping—suicide was not unknown in the family. And that’s when I designed my undercover calendar: X—I didn’t, skull—I did.

Sweat in the moist dark. No. No! Sleep. Go to sleep. Now. Need the rest or you will flunk the science test tomorrow.

Oh, please! Oh, Agnes! Are you naked? A single ceiling separates our beds. Are you asleep? What are you wearing? Squeeze your breasts together for me, Agnes.

Oh, Emilia, tall and slender, the swirl of your hair above me. You’re a saint! Open… oh, oh.

Don’t you want to do well with the girls? Well with the girls? The girls. The skulls would nod me into midnight.

Rehearsal
(Budapest, 1956)

Wood bounces and rolls this way and that on the cellar floor of our apartment house. Our shovels scrape against concrete, plunge under coal, as my father and I manhandle the briquettes from the back wall out to the centre of our storage locker. We drop our shovels at last and stand up to stretch our backs. The black cone of coal breathes dust at us.

I stand against the sooty wall while my father stacks the wood. Sometimes he pushes the pieces too far, but I do not complain. This is too important. Sometimes he prods me on purpose.

“Now, son, move two steps to your right. Be careful, dammit! Small steps. Press your body into the wall, please. Don’t stick your chest out!”

Fitting, bracing, realigning, cursing, we create a slice of sequestered air, a crude little closet made of chopped firewood, backed by a concrete wall.

Finally, a “door” is devised; I should be able to remove and replace three un-split stumps, without chunks of wood raining down on me, making enough noise to wake the dead. Then, under my father’s relentless eye, I rehearse: open the “door”, crawl in, stand—and the reverse. He orders me to do it once more. Twice.

Other families shovel, heap, and stack until it is time for the teenagers to test their own improvised blinds. Rumour has it that the Russians are under orders to round up the young ones and take them away.

Moth-like, my mother flutters the length of the cellar. She presses her ear to the massive fire door at the other end, then wends her way back, shaking her head—No boots yet—at each open locker door she passes. Her gesture of reassurance grows more vehement the closer she gets to us. I am glad our finicky burrowing is nearly done. My mother’s head is practically spinning free of her shoulders.

A Chink in the Wall
(Vienna, 1957)

Only sideways traffic among the metal cots and starved mattresses. Bare bulbs over bare floors. Cobwebs have colonized the roof joists. Privacy only through the civility of eyes. Terrifying toilets. Elevators out of bounds for people in the attic, the ladder-like back stairs made for elite, adolescent legs like mine. This is improvised refugee land in the attic of an old hotel. Pigeons are outraged when we push the massive skylight open to let Vienna in.

Room F is for families—two to three generations. Such as my parents and me.

Room E is for single adults and couples.

Hip-hip-hurrah! I finally find a chink in the wall dividing the two rooms. But damn! It’s too late: the diaspora starts tomorrow—departure for territories far-and-wide, distant lands as ignorant of us as we are of them.

But the peephole informs my right eye that we are not too late. Behind a honeycomb of cots, the bather stands in a tiny bathtub, soaping her belly and her breasts. (The dark nipples still poke at me through half a century.) Pale suds travel down her thighs. Her flesh is light as rising air, her movements unhurried, self-indulgent, pensive, as if she were alone, not surrounded by displaced men. This is her last, her magic bath before entry into the unknown.

Is everyone else in Room E sleeping? Hell, I don’t think I would be. Wrapped in coarse, grey blankets, are they all asleep? An arm’s reach away from me a man’s strong, unshaven jaw dents his pillow. What he would see if he opened his eyes is the bald head of his next-bed neighbour.

Am I the only one looking?

The Net
(Toronto, 1958)

Hairnets are light, so light that the bar doesn’t budge when it’s dropped on the scale, so collapsible nobody notices it nestled in your shirt pocket over your heart. Gossamer, spider’s weave, miniature fishing net.

Hairnets cost a dime in the late fifties when I grunted and groaned under my adolescent years—years that heaved around me. Body-checking years.

My hair curled like crazy from the time my mother crooned Baby!—a baroque baby, I was, my very hair genes in whirls, blond ringlets singing like flowers.

“You were so gorgeous!” my mother assured me. No, not now, you poor thing, your hair as if scared straight by rulers, a few rebellious kinks giving this culture the finger. As if pimples weren’t enough.

Cowlicks were tragic. How could I tell my teachers the truth when I was late for school?

Brush cuts meant war, lice, and turpentine where I came from, so at Churchill High a net had to be called in because “DISPLACED PERSON, WE WASPS DO IT THIS WAY. Short. If long, nice and straight. Curls are taboo, stranger.”

Although they didn’t say it that way.

I loathed my DP wool as they did the weeds on their lawns. The net was my wet hair’s overnight love while I dreamt of a well-ironed day.

“My god, Yanosh! You look, my god, you look like, I don’t know—like somebody important.Distinguished is the word,” my mother said one evening after my freshly-washed hair, as it was drying, sprung free, a full uprising.

The tap and the net had to be called in. I lay in my bed, looking at the walls, the ceiling, the walls.

Apartment Hunting
(Welland, Ontario, 1978)

My wife and I split and I see myself plunge into loneliness and poverty.

And the kids?

Will they like my offerings—hikes through quiet pockets of woods, narrow stretches of beach, the little caves? Will they prefer them to hers: a rich clutch of relatives? Stability? Solid mothering?

My children pound on the doors of my heart. Hers is so much more normal, more spacious. And she still owns a key to mine.

Strategies of kidnapping tick in my brain.

On a day when the clouds look like weapons, I drag myself from house to house, tethered to gravity and a teetering resolve. If only I had the sang-froid to simply open gates, stride down dim hallways, and knock on the doors of strangers!

This apartment here. Even though right now it looks like a garage sale run amuck, it is bright and spacious. The old woman scatters monotone apologies. “Twenty-two years in this building. Can’t see much no more. My hands are a blur. Please don’t mind all the stuff around this place.” Behind her glasses, two enormous eyes. “Twenty-two years in this building. Nine of them alone. Ten? My husband… And Ronnie’s in Atlanta. I don’t know…”

The superintendent, standing behind me, snickers supportively.

I will buy a pullout couch and a grand futon for the kids. What a place! So I can still do things on my own. The windows face east, away from the road. Inspect the bathroom and I’m ready to close the deal.

Dark yellow piss grins at me from the toilet bowl. Blows me a kiss and winks.

The mad, muttering bitch! There’s the summary of her life—the hit and miss of liquids, the waste. And mine. This is a yield sign screaming STOP! Dori and Mike here? No way.

I know I can never flush this toilet. Mumbling excuses to the superintendent and the tenant, I back out through the narrow door.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
(Minden, Ontario, 1979)

From the quiet river, tall, thin poplars drift all the way up the slope to the flat, dirt driveway where my red Volkswagen is parked. Its clutch is in first and the hand brake is pulled tight. I wedged stones and pieces of firewood against the tires front and back, and rolled logs up against the wheels on the downhill side. Its right-side windows gaze down at the placid water—at least whatever they can see of it through the myriads of shuddering, achingly green poplar leaves.

I know that nothing short of an earthquake could dislodge my car, but yet, at the very core of my being, in my hammering heart, I feel that I must not turn my back, that I must keep concentrating on that vehicle squatting at the top of the hill, keep hypnotizing it, lest the car roll over sideways and come crashing, bouncing down the hill to burst into flames in the tent.

The trees, the topmost branches hanging from the twilit sky, are immensely interested in me; no matter where I plant myself, they lean my way. Their roots are flimsy and deceitful. How can I sleep in that tent, the epicentre of a lethal trap?

I retreat to my parents’ cabin, go to bed in the tiny room tucked farthest away from the outside door. If my wife and the children were up here now, she’d stay in the tent, keep the kids with her, and tell me to take extra medication. I look out the tiny window at rustling birch leaves and the black spire of a cedar tree. There is no way I would be able to get through that excuse for a window in case of an emergency.

My father—more and more forgetful—often toasts bread for his late night snacks. The toaster and the hot plate are almost as far away from me as the exit door. The other two windows between my wooden cage and the kitchen are also quite small, and high. There simply wouldn’t be enough time. Flames will roast me, starting at my feet, my shoulders wedged into the smashed window, my face inches away from a smouldering birch tree.

I dress, spray myself with Off, and despite my father’s alarmed protests, go out into the whip-poor-will dark and walk till dawn in a helmet of mosquitoes.

Sticks and Stones
(Fonthill, Ontario, 2007)

Three children confront me in that tight space between houses. “Leave our stuff alone!” they shout up at me, catapulting dirt into my face with sticks. They are trying to do me harm, me—their neighbour and friend—whom they happily ran up to only yesterday. I beat a retreat and rat on these kids, ages five to seven, to their parents who are chatting with friends, sipping wine on a multi-tiered deck.

A retired teacher, in my sixty-sixth year, I felt I did not deserve such ignominy and shame. I was stunned. Hadn’t I entertained them all summer long like they had never been entertained before? We fenced with ferns, wedged walnuts into our eye sockets, aimed all kinds of objects at all kinds of targets, except at each other. The trampoline erased all borders. They pounced upon and tumbled off the neighing horse (me) that pranced into their back yard. When a masked head broke into their backyard gingerbread home they screamed and ran, were ecstatic for minutes. Weren’t my antics, stiff salute-with-goose-step or doing a snow angel in the panting grass of July, better than just a hello? They welcomed me, these nomads, as they danced from the swing set to the trampoline to the flimsy rubber pool.

When that pool sprung leaks it was removed, leaving a bald patch, and that’s where the children dug, built, destroyed, built again, bringing rocks, bricks, branches, even bones. Warriors and dolls sat in a stone-and-can room. Flowerpots offered pebbles and tired clumps of clover to a Canada goose couple hulking in the company of foot-high castles and yurts made of twigs and rags.

After school started, I’d watch these little creators, in their land of short-lived oases, from behind our kitchen window. (My wife said I shouldn’t have retired.) Then, after a while, when they weren’t around, I’d venture out there and start shifting things—just a little, not much—just enough to snag their sprinting attention. The gander was no longer fully focused on guarding his munching mate; Barbie rode a rock instead of sprawling face down in the dirt. I’d smile to myself in anticipation; they would know who the modifier was, and soon I’d delight in their noisy, quizzical faces.

Then this. The angry dirt in my eyes. I’m not playing any more.

No reason to think otherwise; certainly this kid was no different than the twenty I’d passed earlier, or the hundreds I passed the week before. Thinking about it now, it’s clear that I was just overly sensitive because he didn’t appear to have any good reason to be out there, just standing in the middle of the desert.

I’m not sure I did either.

I held my breath as we passed. That seems like an odd thing to do, now that I’m home. Even us civilians – or civies as the military guys like to call us – know that holding your breath doesn’t prevent landmines from going off. I did it anyway.

We were making our way to a ribbon-cutting ceremony where international and Afghan journalists would pretend to be interested, even though everyone knew the event would be scripted from start to finish. Everyone also understood it was somehow important. It’s good to celebrate even the smallest successes during an insurgency. The opening of a regional outpost where security and development would be coordinated between the many actors in Kandahar would do.

It still didn’t seem reason enough to drive over a bomb but I’d been the one who’d insisted on going, despite the threat warnings and intelligence reports that advised against the idea.

The intelligence guys are always wrong anyway. Even though summer days in Kandahar are invariably hot and sunny, they rarely get the weather reports right. So, I figured, odds are if they tell you not to go, that’s the best day to go. We made it to the ribbon-cutting ceremony without incident. Actually, most of the human cargo fell asleep on the way. The seatbelts of the South African RG-31s that dig into your collar bone are strangely soothing after a while. They force your body to maintain a good posture and give you the (false) sense that nothing can push you around.

We arrived to the pounding sound of the M777s (M-triple-sevens) being fired off from the base, aimed at insurgent locations just ten kilometres away. The noise of these guns firing has a certain way of making you feel both secure and incredibly vulnerable at the same time. You feel safe because you know that big guys with big guns are fighting on the same side you’re on, which is comforting. Then you remember that the whole reason they’re shooting the damn things in the first place is because there are thousands of these “fucking guys with a hard-on for killing infidels” just outside the gates.

This is what we do when we don’t really understand what’s going on, whether we’re in L.A. or Kandahar: curse, shoot, and drive aggressively. At least then you’ll get to where you’re going more quickly. Or maybe you won’t get there at all, but you’ll be keeping busy, and that’s the easiest way to stay in control in a war-zone. Keep busy.

Using the bathroom at a military base is not generally a pleasant experience. The guys that are responsible for the cleaning do so with care and diligence, but that doesn’t change the facts: a few hundred men live on this base and, at any given time, probably a quarter of them have the runs. Needless to say, no one goes out of their way to spend quality time with a magazine on the toilet, the way your old uncle might do to escape his nagging wife.

On one of the hotter Fridays of the summer, I took 434 pictures of a strongman competition at Camp Nathan Smith. I sat down to edit that night, and rose from my chair two hours later, having learned a hard lesson about the dangers of a decent digital SLR camera with a rapid-fire function. I wandered into the bathroom to brush my teeth. It had cooled down outside, but the odour remained potent within. One of the younger privates I’d seen at the competition came into the bathroom and set his bath bag down at the sink beside mine. His eyes were bloodshot, his shoulders were slouched, and his right hand was in a cast.

“What happened?” I asked. “I just saw you today in that strongman competition – I was taking pictures of you carrying tractor tires around the helicopter pad.”

“I punched a hole in the wall beside the phones when my wife told me that she’d cheated on me with a guy back home.” I stared at him. What got me was not that he’d punched a hole in the wall, but that he was old enough to be married.

“That’s ok,” he continued. “I look at it as a good thing, ’cause now the guy’s friends will say that he was killed by a cripple.”

I hope that the guy who hooked up with his wife was smart enough to get out of whatever small town they lived in to avoid being badly beat up by the kid that nearly won the strongman competition. But I don’t know what came of it all back home. I know he was sent back to Canada eventually. I hope the military let him off the hook by saying that he accidentally broke his hand, rather than saying that he lost his mind because his wife cheated on him, and subsequently broke his hand.

The military is full of this problem, and evidently not dealing with it very well. Cases of assault spike in areas around military bases whenever men and women return from war, in spite of the fact that they usually spend a few days in Europe blowing off steam on their way home. It’s an issue that the civilians on the base empathise with: few have healthy love lives. Mostly because no one spends enough time in one place to develop a love life. Possibly also because we’re “emotionally removed from reality” (at least that’s what one woman I dated recently told me).

Kandahar nights can be lonely in this regard. It’s the one place that you don’t want to be when your wife tells you that the separation papers are in the mail. It leaves too much time to think about everything that you’ve ever done wrong. No matter how busy you are, at some point in the day, you’ve got to return to your bed and stare up at the bunk above you.

It’s inconvenient to be afraid of flying when you take more than seventy flights a year. I’ve tried a number of techniques to overcome it. Low-grade anti-anxiety drugs help, although they tend to leave one feeling a touch too carefree when landing at airports in the developing world and negotiating with taxi drivers who inevitably try to charge ten times the reasonable rate.

Knowing more about planes and how they work seems to help too. It’s reassuring to know when they will bank left and right, and when the wheels will come down. Some find it helpful to memorize routes, so they know when the turbulence will hit (the East Coast of Newfoundland when coming from Europe, for example). It’s also smart, I’ve learned, to look at the flight attendants’ faces for signs of panic. They never flinch. No doubt that’s part of the criteria for being hired. It always makes me feel much better.

If I’m really honest, I’d confess that it also helps to know a large number of Afghans who have no interest in being involved with suicide attacks on Western high-rise buildings. Now it’s only the Timothy McVeigh types that make me nervous. Trouble is, when you’re flying with the military, as I’ve become accustomed to, you’re generally in a tin can with very few windows. You have no sense of where you are or what lies ahead. There are no flight attendants. You can’t even pretend to be in control. As we come up to cruising altitude, and the engine slows to a speed that brings the plane out of the climb, I often wonder if we’re about to fall from the sky.

And then there’s the fact that military pilots evidently don’t get worked hard enough. The old joke, told by army types, goes something like, “Did you hear that the military was thinking of going to a four-day work week? Yeah, but the Air Force put up a fuss ’cause it would mean that they’d have to work an extra day.” This apparent restlessness seems to lead to unpredictability. More than once I’ve found myself asking the ground staff, “Why, in the middle of a desert, is a tactical landing required?”

“It wasn’t. They were just fuckin’ with you,” is the typical response.

I once flew from Kandahar to Canada’s “secret” base in the Middle East—Camp Mirage. The flight was unscheduled and, therefore, empty. It was the crew, myself, and a guy heading home on compassionate leave. No one asked what was wrong, but he seemed pretty sad until we were offered a seat up front. We smiled with boyish delight as we listened to the chatter on the radio and watched as drug runners cruised effortlessly through the Afghan desert.

As we began our descent somewhere above the Arabian Gulf, the pilot came over the main intercom, addressing those in charge below: “Tower, this is Charlie Foxtrot flight one-seven-three, requesting permission to adjust our current approach. Over.” I looked out the cockpit window, at the expansive sand ahead of us, at the runway that beckoned, at the simplicity of the landing that could have been.

“One-seven-three, this is Tower, you are cleared for tactical landing. Over,” came the response, as we banked right, then hard left, and dove to what felt like 300 feet above the desert. The plane continued to tilt left as we buzzed the tower and eventually completed the two-hundred and seventy degree turn just seconds before softly touching down.

I wasn’t at the helm of the bulky C-130 Hercules four-engine turboprop that day, but I smiled. I smiled like Maverick and Goose. Not because I was safely on the ground but because I’d just had so much fun. It’s impossible to be scared when you’re that happy.

On Friday the 13^th of June 2008, Kandahar City apparently secured a place for itself in theGuinness Book of World Records. At about 8:30 pm that day, armed militants drove a tanker truck full of explosives into the front gate of Sarpoza Prison. It didn’t blow up immediately. Neighbours, who were apparently warned of the imminent danger, suggest that the triggerman was actually about 50 metres away, with a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

Forty-five minutes later, over 800 prisoners had escaped into the surrounding communities. The front gate was a hundred metres from its original position.

A friend and colleague was there that night with the Canadian Quick Reaction Force that finally arrived on the scene two hours after the initial blast. He would later describe the area to me in graphic detail, complete with stories of body parts lining the crater that the tanker truck left behind.

For a few days we all had to wear our bullet-proof jackets at night, in case the base was attacked. I don’t think many of us really thought that the insurgents would be so stupid as to attack a Western military base directly, given that they would almost certainly be slaughtered a couple hundred metres before they arrived at the gates. But they were riding high on the success of The Great Sarpoza Escape, and spectacular approaches to nation building seemed to be catching on amongst the Taliban. So we all went to the bathroom and brushed our teeth wearing flak jackets. Special moments.

In the weeks and months that followed the attack, we moved throughout the city with an eye for further attacks. We watched kids walk along the road and merchants re-open their shops. It didn’t take long actually; Afghans are in some ways too resilient for their own good. They appear to recover from nearly anything. So much so that the international community sometimes behaves as if these people can handle anything.

I listened as patrol commanders discussed threat reports saying a second tanker truck may have been stolen in the city. “Everyone should be on the lookout for suspicious looking individuals driving these vehicles in the city,” they’d tell us. Trouble is, when you’re riding in a military vehicle frequently confused for a tank, everyone looks suspicious because they’re looking at you suspiciously – they’re worried you’re going to shoot them.

We never came across the second tanker truck. That is to say, we came across hundreds but none of them with recognizable terrorists inside. Or signs plastered on the outside that read “future bomb.”

Months later, in Australia, a tanker truck passed the café I was sitting in. Without thinking I dove behind an umbrella for cover. Sprawled out on the sidewalk, I stared as the driver looked at me confused from behind the wheel.

once
i had the non-privilege of hanging out with my old neighbour, annie steinberg, and
her boyfriend at the time who thought it was his business to question me as to why i was single
he then told me that i should try jdate
to which
i was like, “i already have”
to which he was like, “and?”
and i was like “i hated it”
and he was like, “that’s positive”
but it was said very obnoxiously
now
it would be one thing
for someone who knows me
who is actually my friend
to mock my negative thought patterns
but for a complete stranger
who i had just met that night
to be ridiculing me for not liking online dating
is like
well
i hated him

on this particular night

i was in a bad mood
i saw that i had “a new message!!!!!” from jdate member ben goldstein!!!!!!!!!
i did not know who he was
i went to read it
it made me laugh
not like fall-off-my-chair, oh-my-god, funniest-thing-i –have-ever-read-in-my-life laugh
not even laugh a little-out-loud laugh
not even giggle laugh
and not even ha! laugh

okay
maybe i laughed

looking back on it
i think if i laughed it was cause i was happy to get my mind taken off whatever it was
i was in a bad mood about
so anyway
i do not recall what he wrote
but it wasn’t bad
it seemed decent
and he seemed decent
so
i wrote back
then he wrote back
and i wrote back
and then he asked for my number
so
i gave it to him

the night he called, i should have known there was something wrong
cause he was like, “hiiiiiiiii!!!! this is BEN!!!!!! BEN GOLDSTEIN from JDATE!!!!!! how ARE youuuuuuu?????”
and i rationalized that he was nervous cause he was talking to a stranger

note to self
do not rationalize for strangers
ever

he then went on to talk about his love for reality tv
which i could not understand

he then told me a “funny” joke that he heard from woody allen
i did not get it
he told me some other “funny” jokes
none of which i found funny

for some reason
i thought that if i got to know him better i would find him funny

then
he was like
“what do you say, we set up a BLIND DATE!!!!”

which i found strange
forgive me
but isn’t a blind date like, i don’t know. isn’t it when you get fixed up by someone, and you don’t know the person you’re meeting?
i mean i don’t know

i never heard of anyone asking someone out on a “blind date”
so i thought that was weird
but
as i often do
i then thought that maybe i was weird for thinking it was weird and that i should stop being a jerk and give the stranger a chance
BIG MISTAKE

huge, furry mistake

furry mistake?
yeah
furry

so then
he had decided it would be fabulous were we to meet at MOMA on a saturday at like
one-ish
well no
i don’t remember exactly what he had said
but he asked me to pick the time
and he had some sort of problem with 1
i don’t remember what the problem was
but he was somehow offended at my choice
i don’t remember why

so i went to meet him
he did not look like his photo.
no
first of all he had massive receding hairline
we’re talking massive
there is nothing wrong with receding hairlines, baldness, or hair loss
but
in his photo he was wearing a hat
this was deceiving
and
he looked good with a hat
he did not look good without it

and in addition
the receding hairline in this case was unattractive
that would be because of his face

oh, that is so mean.
god help me
but anyway
in his online photo, the photo was taken from kind of a distance
and all one could really see, looking back on it, was his smile, which was actually his best feature
a very happy one
his actual face
it didn’t really show up in the photo
and in person
i kind of just
um
did not like looking at him

that is TERRIBLE!!!!!
but true

also
he wore his pants up to the top of his chest
you know, grandpa style?
and
he had a backpack
and not just any backpack
he had a backpack that looked like it was stuffed with his life

in short
he was an adult. i think.
but
he looked like he was a prematurely aging 9 year old

we entered
The Museum

disaster
i am not sure why he picked MOMA
since he clearly hated it
had no interest in the place or any of the art or anything inside it at all
i was confused by this
one might guess
that he was more interested in me
but no
he wasn’t
we had nothing to say
i think we talked about the weather six times
which is fascinating
since
we were indoors
fyi, it was a cold day

so
we breezed through the museum
and then
i thought it was over
and that i’d get to go home
but alas
i was mistaken
he was most eager
to get coffee
in the museum
i didn’t understand why
as museum cafes are usually like ten times more expensive than real food places
and aren’t really special anyway
but i was like
okay
i got hot chocolate
and listened to him tell me
that he did not have a job, nor did he want one
that’s right
he was sort of working as a substitute teacher in an elementary school
which to me was just screaming CHILD MOLESTER
but anyway
he was saying how he couldn’t find a full time teaching job and that even subbing was waning
and i was like, “oh, well, a teaching job will probably open up, you just have to keep looking”
and he was like, “no, i don’t want one”
and i was like
“you don’t want one?”
“no”
“but what are you going to do?”
“i don’t know, sub”
he did not seem upset or distraught or concerned
it was just like, yeah, whatever
he is probably secretly independently wealthy and perhaps i should have latched onto this
had i done that i would currently be on some cruise ship in the caribbean getting my nails done and planning an excursion to africa

i do not think he was independently wealthy
he was from new jersey
i forget what part
and he made up a story (i’m pretty sure he made it up)
about how he lived down the street from his parents
i am pretty sure he made this up since he went on to tell me about how he had to
“stop off” at his parents house to pick up all his ski equipment when he went on a ski trip
i mean
really?
down the street?
really?
and he has no job?
how does he pay rent?
HOW??????

now
at this moment
i was mostly convinced that i had not been wrong to think that he was odd when i had spoken to him on the phone
he then confessed that he hadn’t written his profile and his emails, and that, indeed,
his friend had written them for him, because, you see, he was dyslexic
this explained why i had not realized
why i couldn’t tell
he was a freak of nature

i drank my hot chocolate as fast as i could
and we left
and i was just about to say goodbye!
when he was like, “do you want to walk?”
and i was like
“walk?”
and he was like, “yeah, it’s early, let’s take a walk”
and i was like, “a walk?”
now we have established that he was odd
but
i think at the same time he was not a bad person
he was clearly socially inept and troubled
but he seemed to be trying
and
i had nothing else to do
so
i was like
“okay”

it was like – christmastime
so i suggested we go see the tree at rockefeller center
to which
he was like
“okay, great!”
and i was like, “okay!” and i started to walk along with my backpack-clad 9 year old,
high-waisted pants grandpa man to the tree when he slowed down and said this:
“Are there going to be a lot of lights there?”

i stopped
i just stopped
and i was like “well. um, yeah. i mean. it’s the christmas tree”

now
i get that ben goldstein was jewish
but
i mean
i don’t care what you are
if it is like, december
and you are going to see the rockefeller CHRISTMAS TREE in NEW YORK CITY
i mean
what do you THINK there is going to be??????
pumpkins?!!!??!?!?!?!?!!

so
after i said, “well. um. yeah, i mean, it’s the christmas tree.”
he was like, “so there will be a lot of lights”
and i was like “um, yeah”
and he was like, “ohhhh okay. this may be a problem”

at this point
i started to think that maybe his secret funny side was coming out
and that maybe
by chance
he was actually really funny

well
he was not joking

and i was like, “really?”
and he was like, “yeah”
and i was like, “really?”
and he was like, “yeah, i may freak out”
for some reason
maybe i’m dumb
i still kind of hoped he was trying to be funny
but after 2 milliseconds
i was like “wait. do you mean you are going to freak out like, for real? like, what do you mean by freak out?”
to which he was like, “yes, i may freak out”
and i was like, “like, be bothered or, really, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???”
to which he was like, “well, bright lights give me seizures”

oh

so
i was like
“well then we should not go there!”

and he was like, “oh really, is that okay with you, are you okay with that, if we don’t go?”
and i was like, “YES”

so
then
i was like, “how about we just go to fifth avenue”
and he was like, “okay”

so then
we started to walk
and
he was like, “do things bother you?”
and all i could think to say was, “fyeh?”
and he was like, “do things bother you, like, do you get seizures from bright lights?”
and i was like, “well, um, no”
and he was like, “does anything bother you?”

now
i can be overly sensitive
but the truth is i can handle stuff
i mean
even if i’m annoyed
it’s not like i’m going to have some kind of nervous breakdown or fit or stop
breathing or have a seizure or panic attack or whatever due to “stuff”
but i felt bad for him
so i figured i’d make something up just for the sake of camaraderie
i told him that i didn’t like crowds

anyway
we get to 5th avenue
and yes
it was christmas time
5th avenue
was packed
and really
i didn’t care
i was actually kind of relieved cause it made it impossible to talk to him
HOWEVER
HE
flipped out
he was like – “oh, this is bad”
and i was like, “huh?”
and he was like, “this is bad for you”
and i was like, “what?”
and he was like, “this crowd! i can’t do this to you! you shouldn’t have to deal with this!”
and i was like, “no, no it’s fine”
and he was like, “NO! i must get you out of here!!!”
and he was all chivalrous
sort of
in that super awkward sort of way
and i was like, “no, really, it’s fine”
and he was like, “no this is not okay, i am not putting you through this”
and i was like, “no really”
and he was like “NO!”
and i was like, “um, you know what, it’s okay – how about we just find a subway,
and you know, i’ll just go home. i had a nice time, but, you know”
and he was like, “WHAT?”
and i was like, “it was a nice day, but, you know, it’s, um, i mean, i can just go home now, okay?”
and he was like, “you do not want DINNER????”
i was like, “dinner?”
and he was like, “DINNER”
and i was like, “um, oh, i didn’t think about dinner”
(it was 5pm)
(i had been tortured since 1)
(technically, 1:15, since he was 15 minutes late. ahem.)
so he was like, “i have a place picked out”
he pulled out a card of some restaurant
and he was like, “it is TURKISH i
t is on the upper west side!
we were going to walk there!”
and i was like, “we were?”
and he was like, “YES! i planned it all out”

he was all upset and standing there. i just remember thinking he looked like an
angry and very hurt bird

so
i figured
really
he was harmless
and really
i had nothing else to do, nowhere i had to be
so
i was like
“okay”

that was like my 80th mistake of the day
cause then we walked, i think something like, 40 blocks
in DECEMBER
and yes
it was COLD

during this walk
we had nothing to talk about
and that was when
he said
“do you have any adult onset allergies?”
and i was like, “what?”
and he was like, “do you have any adult onset allergies?”
and i was like, “um, no?”
and he was like, “nothing? no allergies?”
and i was like, “well. i’m allergic to mango”
and he was like, “mango! wow. at what age did you realize you were allergic to mango???”
and i was like, “i think i was 12″
and he was like, “12! that’s not adult onset”
and i was like, “no”

then i counted the cracks in the sidewalk
i did this until we got to the restaurant
but really i lost count
okay
i did not count the cracks in the sidewalk
that is a lie
for effect

then we got to the restaurant
and the waitress put bread on the table
and ben pushed the basket to me
and i took a piece

i should note here
it really wasn’t that bad
i mean
i felt like i was babysitting
and once i rationalized it that way, it was okay
ish

so then
the bread was good
and i was like “oh, this is good bread! have some!”
and he was like, “no”
and i was like, “it’s REALLY good”
(it really was)
i kept trying to convince him to have some bread
finally
he told me
he couldn’t
and i was like, “you can’t”
and he was like “no”
and i was like, “oh. how come?”
and he goes, “allergic to yeast”
and i was like, “oh, yeast?”
and he was like, “yeah”
and i was like, “oh, that sucks”
and he was like, “yeah, i miss pizza”
and i was like, “you weren’t always allergic to yeast?”
and he was like “adult onset allergy”
and i was like “ohhhhhhhh”

so then he couldn’t eat anything
i mean
the waitress came over
and everything he was like, “does that have yeast in it?”
he ended up with some chicken kabobs
yeast free

and just to be polite
actually
out of curiosity
i was like, “so, what happens to you, if you eat yeast?”
and he was like, “oh, you don’t want to know”
so i accepted that

but then
he couldn’t resist
so he told me
and it was like this story he was telling that he was clearly very proud of
like he thought, “she’s gonna LOVE this one”
and he was like:

“okay. SO. i was in costa rica, on a “Jewish Singles Adventure”. and there were these
chips and i was like, you know, i’m on vacation, i should let loose. And. You see,
I KNOW, that if I give myself a certain amount of time to get from the eating process,
to the TOILET! i will be okay!!!! and so (insert ‘i’m such a wise-guy’ laugh) i ate the
chips. And then (wise-guy laugh) i went back to my room. Well. I couldn’t unlock
the door!!!! (wise-guy laugh, followed by, a, you’re really gonna love this next part
transitionary breath and hand gesture) (really) So there I am, struggling to get into
my room and my BOWELS are just, BOILING! and i’m DYING and i know that it’s all
just gonna come out at any second and there i am STRUGGLING with the key. So i
RAN to the front desk and i told them, I was like, ‘Listen, you have to help me get
into my room’ and they were like, ‘just a minute sir’ and i was like, ‘no, you don’t
understand, i have a serious bowel issue and if i don’t get into my room right now i
am just going to have an EXPLOSION OF FECES on the floor’ And they helped me
and I got to the toilet JUST in time.”

um, yeah

i sort of sat there
like
speechless
random people were looking at me like, “where’d you find this one?”
i know they were looking
i didn’t look back
i was too embarrassed
indeed
at THIS moment
i was strongly considering becoming either a lesbian or a nun
instead
i asked the only thing i could think to ask
which was
“why couldn’t you unlock your door?”
to which he had to tell me, “i didn’t know how to use the key card”

i ate as fast as i could
then
we left
he wanted to go to some jewish club after
and i was like, “no”
and then
he was like
“i have something for you”
and i was like “you do?”

and he pulls out of his mega backpack a box of chocolate

this is bad
cause i love chocolate
i mean
i love chocolate
and i was really happy about this
but i was really like, hi, i am never going to talk to you again for the rest of my life
and if i ever see you on the street i AM going to hide
but
i mean
how does one turn away a box of chocolates?
how????
so
i took it
and figured that i would make it less bad if i offered him some chocolate
he didn’t want to take it
but then he did
and he was happy about this
then i got on the subway
and went home
and ate the entire box
it was good

two days later
my phone rang
i did not answer it
the message
went like this
“hiiiiIIIIIIIIII it’s BEN GOLDSTEIN!!!! how ARE you? i had a GREAT time with you the
other night and i think we should go on a SECOND blind date”

(again – i don’t get these “blind date” references, but i digress. he went on to say:)

“You don’t have to call me BACK i will call you AGAIN in a few days!!!! byeeeeeee!!”

i was very happy that he told me i did not have to call him back
so
i did not call him back

a few days later
he called again
and i did not answer my phone
and the message went like this:

“hiiii Ben GOLDSTEIN again! i haven’t HEARD from youuuuu. i’m getting a little
concerned about this. not sure what this means! this could mean you do not LIKE
me!!! i hope that’s not the CASE????!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!? i really hope to HEAR
from you. okay? okay? okay bye? okay? okay, i’m hanging up now. okay bye okay.
talk to you soon. bye”

i did not call him back
i never heard from ben goldstein again
but
at least the chocolate was good
really
it was

But the Gazette was worried that the cheering might not be quite loud enough. “It is essential,” the paper wrote, in a stern front-page editorial, “that we become for this once a little more articulate than is our wont, somewhat more free in the expression of our feelings, a little less careful of our emotions.” IT would be the first time a reigning monarch had ever visited Canada, and as Montreal prepared and rehearsed, anxiety was everywhere. The Province of Quebec Safety League was worried that balconies might become overloaded with spectators. The League warned householders that they might have to face lawsuits in the event that their balconies collapsed, causing injury and/or death. The wives of dignitaries had other anxieties. When presented to the king and queen, should they perform an ordinary curtsey or a deep curtsey? When they asked Emile Vaillancourt, chief organizer of the festivities, he told them that he didn’t know.

Nobody was more worried than the mandarins of Ottawa, who were responsible for the overall organization of the Royal Tour, which was going to go all the way across the country. Their most vivid nightmares involved the possible behaviour of certain officials in Quebec. For instance, when Premier Maurice Duplessis was presented to Their Majesties, would he be drunk or sober? After all, it was only a year since he had ordered his car to stop in front of the Reform Club, had rushed in and, to the astonishment of the members – all political enemies – had unbuttoned his fly and urinated into the fireplace, extinguishing the Liberal flames. And what about the equally unpredictable Camillien Houde, mayor of Montreal? It was only three months since Houde had said during a speech that if England were to go to war with Italy, Quebec would side with Mussolini. Had the king of England heard about this declaration of disloyalty, made by the man who would be welcoming him to Montreal?

Perhaps the greatest concern of all in Ottawa was how the French Canadian populace of the city would greet the English king. In London, the British government would be watching carefully. The unstated purpose of the Royal Tour was to bolster the Dominion’s loyalty to the mother country. If war against Nazi Germany were to break out in Europe, as now seemed inevitable, could Britain count on Canada’s all-out support? There had been growing doubts about this, and especially about French Canada, which in the past had always felt that it had no stake in England’s foreign wars. If, during the Royal Tour, the crowds on St. Hubert Street or St. Denis Street were sparse, or tepid, or even hostile, it would be a bad omen indeed.

But now, just a few days before the arrival of Their Majesties, there were grounds for optimism. The whole city seemed to have broken out in red, white and blue. Houses, office buildings and stores were swathed in bunting and Union Jacks, and shields with the royal coat of arms hung precariously from apartment windows. On St. Catherine Street, huge portraits of George and Elizabeth looked out of the windows of department stores. And, as the Montreal Star noted with satisfaction, “Many of the very poorest in the city have somehow managed to provide themselves with small flags.” For the poor, the purchase of even the cheapest flag entailed a sacrifice, in a city that was in the grip of the Great Depression, where people were often hungry. At Eaton’s, a small Union Jack cost forty-five cents; for an unemployed man on the dole, forty-five cents represented more than two days of what the government gave him for food. In the newspapers, large advertisements welcomed the royal couple. As might be imagined, the ads were mainly from banks, insurance companies and department stores. But there were also a few smaller ads, affirming loyalty to the Crown, from enterprises like Tony Fuoco’s shoeshine parlour on Guy Street and the One Minute Lunch on St. Antoine.

For Montreal, the Royal Tour would be the outstanding event in a year that marked the beginning of a new era. Within four months, Canada would be at war with Germany. With the war would come an end to the Depression that had impoverished the city for almost ten years. The year 1939 would usher in two decades of prosperity, growth and a flowering of the arts. Montreal would begin to think of itself as a city unique in the world – bilingual, cosmopolitan, exceedingly handsome and wonderfully odd. At the same time, these would be decades darkened by the repressive Quebec government of Premier Duplessis. The authoritarian fog engendered by Duplessis would dissipate only after his death in 1959, the year that marked the end of this era.

The 1940s and 1950s were years of ferment. They saw the growth of a sophistication which, by 1959, made it hard for Montrealers to credit how innocent their city had seemed only twenty years earlier, how colonial its exaggerated reverence for a king from across the ocean.

The middle-aged man who was causing the disturbance was obviously drunk and, even more obviously, was an out-of-towner, probably from some strange foreign place like Toronto. The Montrealers in the room watched indulgently as he lurched toward the stage, where the chorus girls were doing one of their high-kick numbers. “Would you girls like a little drinkee?” he was calling out as the headwaiter took him firmly by the arm and led him back to his table, where his fellow businessman- bumpkins, all similarly sloshed, were applauding his wit.

It was almost always the out-of-towners who were the rowdy ones in nightclubs like the El Morocco. They were, Montrealers knew, simply busting loose after being confined to the parched prison that constituted the rest of the Dominion of Canada. In most provinces, in the 1940s, you couldn’t legally consume hard liquor in public, except in a few private clubs. There was no booze to be had in restaurants, no wine with meals. For a night out on the town, you would buy a twenty-six-ouncer of rye at the gloomy government liquor store (where the act of purchase was somehow made to feel sinful) and take it to the restaurant or the dance hall, where you’d keep it under the table, in its brown paper bag. Men and women could not be trusted to drink together, and so the drab, sour-smelling beer parlours were for men only, with separate “beverage rooms” for the ladies. And, needless to say, there was nothing vaguely resembling the elegant, glamorous nightclubs that Canadians saw in Hollywood movies.

But Montreal had nightclubs aplenty – fifteen of them in 1948, all with elaborate floor shows, plus about twenty-five smaller “lounges,” with more modest entertainment. These flourished despite ecclesiastical disapproval. “We are ashamed,” Cardinal Léger said, a few years later, “that our city has more nightclubs and drinking places than churches.” This in a Montreal that now had even more churches than it did in the 1880s, when Mark Twain said, “This is the first time I was ever in a city where you can’t throw a brick without breaking a church window.” But there had always been plenty to drink in Montreal. Back in 1720, there were nineteen taverns in the city, one for every 105 inhabitants, and this despite the bishop’s having ordered his priests to deny absolution to the operators of these Sodoms, where, he had heard, dancing was permitted and immorality was commonplace.