Alone with my Mother-in-Law

 2017

I masturbate when I’m sad. And since Susan buys the Kleenex, I had to hide the evidence. I thought she might grow suspicious if the Kleenex box next to my bed vanished every week, even though I never sneezed or had a runny nose. Sure, I could have used toilet paper, but then I’d need to dispose of it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to fill up the garbage bin; I can’t be relied on to always take out the trash. Maybe I could flush it down the toilet, but that would mean the toilet was flushing more than usual. This left me with the teenage boy go-to — the sock. I stored my sausage tear collector in the drawer next to my bed. The same drawer where Siena and I kept our sex toys. We weren’t into anything that involved a safe word, a first-aid kit, or the ability to contort your body into fascinating positions — neither of us was flexible enough for that.

The most private possession we had in that drawer was the WeVibe, a vibrator that’s great for those who want to achieve simultaneous orgasms during a commercial break. We rarely used it. We also didn’t watch commercials. And, of course, there’s an app for it. If the person leaves on a trip without their lover, the lover can control the various vibration and pulsation modes from their phone — which was perfect because, in the early fall of 2017, Siena announced that she would be moving to Europe for six months.

“I landed the Puma internship in Germany,” she said as she walked into our room, which I still referred to as her room. It’s not that I have anything against fluffy white decorative pillows or a collection of stuffed animals — I’d gladly purchase those things myself. It’s just difficult to refer to something as your own unless you buy it or steal it in a challenging manner, neither of which I did.

“That’s fucking awesome!” I said, pouncing out of the fresh bedsheets that Susan just put on — she always referred to it as your guys’ room.

“I don’t know, Nol. I don’t think I can live without you. You’re everything to me.”

It would be her first time living away from her parents and Vancouver, and I knew the only thing I could do to ease her fear was give her my full support. Maybe it meant I’m a supportive boyfriend, or perhaps it meant I wanted to sleep at night without Siena poking me every few seconds. When Siena couldn’t sleep, it meant I couldn’t sleep. “Why should you be able to sleep? That’s not fair,” she would say every time her anxiety got the best of her.

Sleep wasn’t on my mind yet when I held her hand and said, “Of course you got the internship, Siena! You fucking deserve it.”

“I don’t even know if I can do it, Nol. Living without you for six months will be hell.”

Siena dropped onto the old white leather couch in the room.

“Are you kidding me! Six months will be nothing compared to the life we’ll be spending together.” It was a phrase I ended up using much more than I expected.

“I applied for the job wanting it, but now that it’s actually happening, the reality is starting to set in.”

I sat down next to her and said, “The reality is that you’re going to experience a new culture while working an internship others dream of. All this can do is make you a stronger person. There’s nothing better than travel to help you learn more about yourself.”

“I love you, Nol.”

“I love you more than anything,” I gave her a kiss and asked, “Where will you be living, by the way?”

“I don’t know yet.”

A month later, she found out and said, “I’ll have two roommates in Erlangen. It’s a forty-minute bus ride from the Puma headquarters, but it’s where most of the employees live.”

“Who are your roommates?” I asked as we walked under Ontario Street’s comforting canopy of trees on our way to the farmer’s market.

“I’ll be living with another guy who works at Puma.”

“And the other roommate?”

“Another guy.”

“Oh, do they seem nice?”

“Yeah, I think so. It’s always hard to tell via the Internet, but they were willing to talk on FaceTime and everything.”

“Where are they from?”

“One’s from Sweden, and the guy I’m working with is from Italy.”

Even the chirping birds and golden light shining through the leaves couldn’t distract me from the image of an Antonio Banderas-like dude and a blond Daniel Sedin[1] eating dinner with Siena. And yes, I know Antonio Banderas isn’t Italian, but I’m sure he could pull it off — well, if he were being directed by Pedro Almodóvar.[2]

“So you’re living with an Italian guy and a Swedish guy? A tall blond and dark olive-toned guy, I presume.”

“Yeah,” she said as though there was nothing for me to be worried about. And there wasn’t, but still…

“Can you imagine if the tables were turned?”

“Yeah, I can, and you wouldn’t be going.”

“I wouldn’t be going?” I said, stopping in the middle of the road because I’m one of those entitled pedestrians who doesn’t care about cars unless I’m in one.

“No, you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be able to handle it.”

“Do you realize the double standard here?”

“It’s different. You can handle it,” Siena said, ignoring the fact that I had stopped walking.

“That is so hypocritical.”

“So, if you could have an Italian girl and Swedish girl as a roommate, you’d do it?”

“Well, if you can do it, I should be able to it.”

Once the words left my mouth, I was happy Siena was a few paces ahead of me.

“So you would actually live with two other girls if I had to stay here alone?”

“Well, that’s what you’re doing.”

“No, I’m living with guys.”

“And I’d be living with girls.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

At this point, Siena had stopped walking, and we stood in the middle of the road like one of those couples oblivious to others. Fortunately, there weren’t other people on the street… I think.

“What?”

“Living with two sluts.”

“Excuse me?”

“’Cause that’s what it sounds like.”

“No, I just want you to realize the double standard. I mean, I’m supposed to give you full support when you give me nothing but trust issues.”

“I didn’t have the same past you did.”

“I slept with just as many people as you did at your age. Multiply that by three more years, and you would have been where I am.”

“Wow.”

“You know it’s true.”

“No, I wouldn’t have let my number get that high.”

“I just want you to trust me like I trust you.”

“I want that, too,” she said, and we hugged. There could have been five cars honking at us, and we wouldn’t have known. That’s love.

“I would never cheat on you, Siena. I can’t imagine another woman like you.”

And that was true, but one day, I betrayed her. It was an ominous lonely night with nobody in the house but me. The douchebaggy sayings were yelling at me in that insouciant yet emphatic voice of all fuck boys, “Dude, if she’s in a different city, it doesn’t count.” Then came the next fuck boy, who I imagined wore a polo and a backward baseball cap. “Man, if she’s in a different timezone than you, just gotta go rally.” And no, the douchebags in my head did not mean to gather a group of like-minded activists to hold up signs and squake about the ocean or marginalized groups or bees or marijuana or aliens.

In this case, rally meant to get drunk and have sex. But even the thought of sex with another woman left me with the bitter taste of self-reproach. “Dude, you’re such a pussy,” said one of the fuck boys in my head — at this point, it didn’t matter which one. They’re all the same anyway, those fuck boys.

“Why don’t you go watch another art movie?” said the fuck boy, to which I responded, “That’s a great idea,” and so I put on the movie Youth by Paolo Sorrentino, but then came the scene with Madalina Ghenea (Miss Universe).

The first time I had seen this movie was with Siena, and that meant that my eyes were covered as soon as Madalina walked into frame, but today there was no Siena, just Madalina. How mad would Siena be if she knew I was watching this scene, I thought? Why am I even asking myself this? She would have already slapped the laptop closed onto my penis (I always lie in bed naked, and this is also where I watch Netflix). But Siena was living with two other men for two months by this point. Didn’t I deserve to keep on watching Madalina’s naked backside as she lowered herself into the pool water? I told myself that I did, but as I watched her enter the pool, I thought about the Swiss Alps, because that’s where the movie was based. Then I thought about the Alps in proximity to Germany. By the time Madalina emerged entirely in water, I was already thinking about Siena, and at that moment, she called.

“Wow, you’re up late,” I said.

“Wha–at are you up to?” she said with a drunken slur.

“Oh, nothing,” I said and turned off the movie. Should I have been using private browsing? Maybe she’ll know I rewatched Youth. Oh, fuck, I should. I fast-forward the film to the very end so it didn’t look like I watched it just for the nude scene.

“Can I hear the birds?” she asked.

“I don’t know, can you?”

“Oops,” she said and laughed. “I meant, can you hear the birds?”

“No.”

“They’re the morning birds, Nol! They always sing at five in the morning.”

“So they always sing when you come home from the club?”

“Yes. It was so fun tonight. We made vegan tacos and then drank some bottles of wine.”

“And then went out.”

“Yeah, and then went out.”

“I haven’t been out in a while.”

“That’s good! Study, study.”

“Did you dance a lot?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I see.”

“Don’t sound so worried. I danced with the girls.”

“I’m not worried, love.”

“I miss you,” she said, extending the “i” sound for a few extra beats.

“I miss you too, love.”

There was a moment of silence, and I could vaguely hear the birds in the background.

“Guess what I’m doing now?”

“Peeing on the street.”

“No, well, I might, but no. I’m eating currywurst.”

“I haven’t had one of those in ages,” I said as the image of a Belgian frituur (a fry house with deep-fried mystery meats) popped into my head.

“You need to come here and eat some!”

“I wish.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too, but I should probably get going,” I said, annoyed by this drunken phone call.

“Why? What could be more important?”

“Nothing, but I have school tomorrow.”

“School, shmool.”

“I’m going to go now, Siena,” I said, physically distancing the phone from ear.

“Fine, leave me.”

“Babe, come on. You know I miss you.”

“You don’t even love me.”

“I love you.”

“Fine, leave me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, bye.”

“I love you so much.”

“Love you, bye.”

I hung up, and the relief of no longer dealing with a drunken conversation was drowned by the sense of missing her. My body began to ache in the way people without depression problems feel when they have the flu. But instead of a virus, I blamed it on the lack of oxytocin in my body. Sure, the ancient Greeks might have believed that we were all half a soul until we find our soul mate, but I was too caught up in empirical research to believe such things. Now, I still don’t believe in one soul mate. We become soul mates through that art of commitment (Criss Jami said that). But I didn’t want to think about the metaphysical aspects of love, because I didn’t have time to write a fucking poem to feel better. I wanted to feel better now, and the only way I knew how to release oxytocin on my own was to hug myself, think about Siena in the nude, and bring out my trusty sock. The more I missed her, the more the sock came out to play, and no matter how stiff it became, I would always put it back into our sex toy cupboard, because then it didn’t just feel like my crusty old sock, but rather our crusty old sock.

                                                                                    ***

Winter had come full-force as it discharged its perpetual pissing rain that turned Vancouverites into soggy hermits. Yes, the days had become dark, and even though my girlfriend’s bedroom was adjacent to an Italian man’s and across the hall from a Swede, I came home skipping on this special day.

Today, I didn’t need to rid my sorrows and ignore my IBS by gorging nachos with ass-burning salsa — that was my usual remedy for the winter blues. Today, all I had to do was read my professor’s comments. Her Ph.D. thesis was on feminist allusions present in fairy tales, and she preferred that we addressed her as a doctor or Sarah. If we called her Mrs. (I won’t specify her last name for privacy reasons), she said we were giving in to the patriarchal hegemony of our university. If we called her “Doctor,” then she received the same respect as a man. And if we called her Sarah, then she felt as though we saw her as a human being. So, I called her Doctor Sarah.

At first, I struggled in her class. It was my second year in university, and I had yet to learn all the academic language, allusions, paragraphing, and, more importantly, dogmatic leftist ideologies. But by this point, I was on my third paper. I had found a way to argue that the female writers we had been reading used language to fuck up the patriarchy, but of course they didn’t. Only elitist university students read their work, but I didn’t need to mention that. The opening paragraph went like this:

The plethora of highbrow and lowbrow references in Lyn Hejinian’s My Life creates the necessary context for the new sentence. Some of the more esoteric references include statements about the avant-garde, realism, philosophical allusions, Marxist statements, and literary allusions. The commonplace references include examples of pastoral writing and political revolutions. Some critics may choose to focus on romance and erotics found in Hejinian’s work (Myrick 68); however, when interpreting My Life through the understanding of the new sentence, one must understand it through the sociological sphere of reference. Hejinian, along with other language writers, wrote in sentences as a way of bringing practice, politics, and daily life closer together (Perelman 315). Perelman goes on to say that “sentences per se were not the answer, as they were also being written by other writers who had quite different political and aesthetic beliefs.” (315). However, I argue that if a language writer uses the new sentence, their political or aesthetic views have to be progressive and subversive because the new sentence is inherently insurrectionary.

This goes on for another two thousand words, and I received my first A in that class. I had no reason to lock myself in the office (the den as we called it) or my room to study for fear of small talk. Even though my day was pretty much the same as always, Susan never refrained from asking how it was, and even though I always had the same answer, she never knew what my courses were — probably because she had lucrative things to think about, like real estate, and the allusions present in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland didn’t quite help her in that regard.

“What did you to today, Susan?” I asked, beating her to a nicety. The question usually made me cringe; either it felt mundane and useless or it made my studious lifestyle feel mundane and useless.

“It was a busy day, hon. I had a lot of showings.”

It was the same answer I had heard over a thousand times, but today I wasn’t going to show it.

“You want a beer?” I asked, knowing the answer would be no, but then —

“I’ll split one with you.”

It took me a moment to realize what she had said. I couldn’t hide my excitement when I poured Susan a glass.

Susan served me dinner — two and half organic duck and blueberry sausages, potatoes, and the required bucket-sized bowl of salad — and then sat at the table. She had made me many meals since Siena left for Germany, but this was one of the first ones we ate together. She had already eaten her salad bowl while standing in the kitchen, but she picked at her potatoes and sausage as I sat across from her.

“Would you like another beer, honey?”

I wasn’t sure if she was asking me this because she wanted to share one, or if she needed an excuse to stand up and walk — aside from Thanksgiving dinners, I’d never seen her sit down for longer than ten consecutive minutes. Either way, my answer was obvious: “Yes.”

“You just made a Siena noise,” she said.

“What?”

“Yeah, the khee thing she does.”

“I miss that sound.”

“Her weirdness is rubbing off on you, Nol. You better be careful.”

“I’m in love with her weirdness.”

“You do the head nod thing, too.”

“The side-to-side happy nod?”

“Sure.”

“I think that’s an East Indian thing.”

“Neither of you are Indian.”

“This is true, but Shantaram is one of my favourite books, and Gregory David Roberts describes — ”

“Just face it. You and Siena are starting to rub off on one another. Come to think of it, you’re starting to resemble Buddy, too. You’re both straggly blondes.”

I looked down at Buddy, who had been staring up at me with his frog-like eyes for the last thirty minutes. He hadn’t moved an inch, hoping to get some food (not that he was very good at moving anyways). He had learned that nobody else in the house would give him food because it would later be sprayed all over the carpet in the form of dog shit, but he still had faith in me. Even though I had already lived there for two years and stopped giving him food, he still came to my side of the table because he probably thought we were brothers and that I’d cave in. Our casual hairstyles might have been similar, but he was a Porky, and if I were a dog, I’d be a Golden fucking Retriever.

“Yeah, scary thought, isn’t it; you turning into Buddy?” Susan said. “But maybe not as scary as turning into Siena.”

“She’s not that scary.”

“She’s a bitch, just like her aunt. Powerhouse women.”

I tried to get used to the impervious and frequent use of the word “bitch.” I would call someone from the Sinaloa Cartel[3] a bitch or puta before saying it to my mother. However, Siena and Susan called each other bitches at least once a week. And I’m not talking about the endearing yet pathetic way some North American women say, “Love ya, bitch,” but the unambiguous use of the word as in, “She’s a bitch.” Both Siena and Susan used the word matter-of-factly, as though what they had said was an objective truth; however, Susan usually laughed and smiled after she said it, whereas Siena had often awakened her demon child[4] when she used the term.

“Yes, a powerhouse. A buddy of mine tried to get the same Puma internship but in Portland. He was a straight-A student, and he didn’t even get in.”

“You know, they’re the type of women that get things done and make millions of dollars. They don’t let people walk all over them.”

“Sometimes I feel like I let her walk over me. Imagine if I partied as much as she did in Germany and lived with two girls?”

“Oh, hon, you can trust her. She doesn’t love anyone on this earth as much as you.”

“Well, maybe this little guy,” I said as I petted Buddy.

“That’s true.”

“He’s getting so old. I hope he doesn’t die while Siena is gone.”

“Oh my god, Nol. Don’t even.”

“Do you think she would fly home?”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Well, it’s a possibility.”

“You’re awful.”

“I know.”

After a moment of speculation, Susan said, “He is old, though.”

“I think he misses Stuart,” I said.

“Stuart loved Buddy.”

“I think it’s hard for Stuart to come into the house now that you’re separated. Whenever he comes in here, it’s like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Well, aside from when he fixes the toilet and such. I haven’t seen him this hurt.”

Susan squeezed the pressure point between her thumb and index finger before saying, “I’m hurt too, dear. We were married for a long time.”

“You were never married…”

“We had a kid and house together. We were married.”

“You mean the M-word.”

“Yes, the M-word. You learn fast.”

”It’s hard to imagine you two in love. I don’t mean that disrespectfully or anything, but were you in love?”

“Oh yeah, I mean, it was purely sexual at first.”

“What?”

“Our relationship, it was really sexual.”

So I did hear you correctly. I laughed, not because it was awkward, but because it felt as though I had broken a barrier. I wasn’t just living with my mother-in-law, but with a friend.

“You know, I left the house when I was fourteen. I worked at the clubs and restaurants, and things were really swinging. Before Stuart, one of my boyfriends was twice my age. He was the type of guy many people knew because, well, he had what a lot of people liked to do back then. I moved into his apartment, and then we ended up travelling around South America, mostly Columbia.”

“Colombia… What did you do?” I said, pretending she hadn’t brought him up a few months before. Maybe I’d get the details this time.

“Oh, you know, hon. We travelled.”

“You must have done a lot of blow.”

“Me? Yeah, right. People did cocaine back then while playing backgammon. Cocktail bars with backgammon and cocaine. That was a thing people loved. It was so in.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Right? But things were different back then. Compared with you and Siena making something of yourself by going to university, all that partying feels like wasted years.”

“You make three times the amount of an average university graduate, and you have stories to tell.”

Susan’s wrinkle-free cheek twitched before saying, “My best friend, Sarah, had stories to tell. She was a real wildcat. The best. Another powerhouse woman that started businesses wherever she went. When I was eighteen, I ran a nightclub in Nelson, of all places. You know, the little hippy town.”

“Of course I know it.”

“Well, she ran the coat check at the club, bought her own cartons of cigarettes, and then sold them for four times the price. After that, she opened up a chain of taco restaurants all over Alberta. God, those were good times, and it was thanks to her. She had this energy that sucked people right in… Fuck, I loved her,” she said, and her eyes turned wet. “Her death and my mother’s were the hardest for me. I was called when Sarah was dying. I sat with her throughout the whole night. And after she passed away, I had to cover her up with make-up just so that her son wouldn’t walk in on something that could scar him for life.”

As she continued reminiscing about her past, the word “bitch” softened in context. She graduated from the school of hard knocks, as she said. Who was I to judge someone with an education like that? I was a university art student — I had a snowflake education (according to those influenced by right-wing rhetoric).

When I left the table, I had a newfound respect for Susan. She might not have understood what “the new sentence” was or picked up on allusions in The Wasteland, but she knew about the things that really mattered, like friendship, betrayal, death, and taxes. Unlike the feminists with family money that allowed them to obtain a Ph.D. in complaining about the patriarchy, here was a woman who had dealt with a biological dad she had never met, an abusive alcoholic that raised her, the types of men that frequented cocktail bars, and still tackled the world with a smile on her face. That’s a woman you don’t fuck with. That’s taking back your power. These thoughts, accurate or not, were running through my head as I went upstairs to sleep. I wanted to tell Siena how proud I was to be part of her family, so I picked up my phone and —

Facebook had sent me a notification that someone in Germany logged into my account. Instead of telling Siena about the pivotal night, I texted her: Did you log into my Facebook account?

Siena: I’m sorry, Nol. I just had a bad feeling and needed to see who you were talking to.

Really, you don’t trust me? Okay, fine, I’ll give you something to not trust me about! And I Google-imaged Madalina Ghenea. My erection still wobbled, but my anger had me in a rush, so I reached for my sock and —

The sock wasn’t there. And then I noticed the folded laundry on the island drawer in the middle of the bedroom. As always, my clothes were immaculately folded and ready for me to put away in my cupboard. Did she wash my sock? The wobble fell into a sad shrivel as I approached the clothes — there was no sock. Maybe she didn’t wash the sock after all! But then where would it have gone? Did the dead sperm cells resurrect and carry the sock to a more fertile land? No, that would be impossible. But sometimes it’s better to believe in the impossible, because then you’ll be prepared for it.

[1] Daniel Sedin plays hockey for the Vancouver Canucks, I think. For some reason, “Swedish” and the name “Daniel Sedin” always come to mind simultaneously. Maybe it’s a sign of becoming a Vancouverite.

[2] Pedro Almodóvar directed incredible Spanish actors such as Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas before they became shitty Hollywood actors.

[3] If anyone from the Sinaloa Cartel is reading this, please know that this reference was meant for frivolous emphasis. Please, don’t skin me.

[4] In this case, one can use “demon child” synonymously with “only child.”

You can find the full book here.