leroBlog

the speech for my launch so far has four lines (one sentence). i know what i am going to say in the first 10 seconds. the rest is all a jumble of shitty archaeology metaphors.

i’m going to sift through them on this run i’m about to take.

there’s this, a song about love that i love. one that doesn’t fill me full of rage.

spill yer lungs

Shower head you are just like Bob Dole.

In the late 1990s, Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole did a series of PSAs on erectile dysfunction for Pfizer. I was visiting my grandparents in Florida one summer and as we were watching the evening news while eating shepherd’s pie, there was Bob Dole’s face, all earnest and empathetic, talking about his ED. The look on his face made me burst into tears. It was then I knew that I had too many feelings, and the majority of them were stupid.

When I lived in the Kensington Market and I was receiving packages on a more-than-regular basis from my Canadian and American publishers, I became familiar with the FedEx man who worked my route. One day he delivered a big box (which ended up being some small object and a mess of packing peanuts) and I looked hard at him… It had the same expression as Bob Dole’s from the ED ads. His eyebrows were knitted together in a manner that moaned, “I expected so much more from life — at this point — than this.” After I signed the electronic pad and closed the door, tears began streaming down my face.

This does not happen to me when I look at my shower head. My shower head’s flaccidity drives me fucking bonkers. Someone needs to come and fix it but I don’t want to annoy my landlady because she’s so awesome. I’m a pussy.

Today I did this. I suppose it went fine. The mic was not working during my reading and in the distance the theme to The Hills was blaring from what seemed like a Marshall stack. During the panel I blurted out something about the upcoming book launch being the closest thing to a wedding I’ll ever have and so I was thinking about freezing my eggs just in case and the audience laughed uncomfortably. All of them gasped when I told them I’d killed someone. That gets people EVERY TIME. One day I will no longer be able to dine out on that story and then I’ll be NOTHING.

Later I was told to proceed to the book signing tent. Four people bought my book. Next to me was Stuart McLean. He told me he’d received my book as a gift and was looking forward to reading it. I thanked him and watched him sign 347 books in a row while I sat there, pen in hand, vaguely humiliated. He leaned over and said, “This is humiliating, right? This waiting around?” And I said “Yes, but not for you. Not for you Stuart McLean.” He replied, “You’re right. I’m kicking your ass.” Before I could formulate some kind of riposte, he pointed at the sky. Flying overhead was a small plane with a large banner that said LISTEN TO THE VINYL CAFE WITH STUART MCLEAN.

After leaving the site I ate nonstop for eight hours.

My jacket’s zipper broke. Fall is here. This was a poor combination. So I bought a new jacket that I did not deserve. The message above the jacket is written on the back of an unopened envelope containing a credit card bill (delinquent credit card bill. Unopened, and delinquent. It causes me great stress to open envelopes… Not just bills, all envelopes. It’s the same when I receive phone calls from unknown numbers — I always believe I’ve done something terrible that I cannot remember and it’s the devil or an authority calling to remind me/find out a good time to serve me with papers.)

The jacket fits me like a glove of jackets.

The thing is, I’m nor sure where I stand on the idea of “deserving”. I would prefer it didn’t exist. There are too many contextual nuances and extenuating circumstances ALWAYS to quantitatively ascertain who deserves what.

Though I’m pretty sure my karmic account is in the red.

Even though I don’t believe in karma at all (unless I believe I’m about to be bitch-slapped by karmic retribution.)

On this night I ate at lot of horse drank a lot of booze biked without a helmet crashed my bike into a car lost my keys in a gutter leaned my unlocked bike against a post went into a club danced in the special area drank an actor’s booze left the party smashed took a cab home realized I had no keys begged my friend to let me crash woke up like I was in a movie nightmare went back to the scene of the crime MIRACULOUSLY found my unlocked bike untouched biked home ran into my neighbour asked for his ladder broke into my upstairs window went out for dinner saw some comedy lost my replacement set of keys for five minutes found them thanks to another friend stumbled home passed out woke up late went to work.

The jacket smells like baby cow and a new car.

I don’t miss being 26. But looking back, I like the contrast between the expression on my face and the happenings of my brain, which were essentially a CNN ticker of KATHRYN BE COOL YOU FUCKING IDIOT JUST ACT COOL BE COOL OKAY BREATHE AND SEEM AS THOUGH YOU’RE KEEPING IT ALL TOGETHER EVEN THOUGH YOU’RE NOT KEEPING IT TOGETHER AT ALL YOU KNOW THAT RIGHT YOU KNOW THAT EVERYTHING IS FALLING APART MAYBE YOU SHOULD STAY VERY STILL RIGHT NOW.

Outside the place where coq-au-vin was invented by accident.

There is a book called The Kingdom of Infinite Space by Rayond Tallis. It begins like this:

Look into a mirror. Nothing could be more routine. It is something we do without thinking, every morning, when we prepare our faces for the judgment of the great world. And yet it is an extraordinary thing to do. Nothing could be less straightforward than the relation between our head and its mirror image.

Raymond Tallis and the relationship between him and his lovely hat.

I love those tulips, even though they came before the slap.

When I was editing my book for the 34,500th time, my Canadian editor, a woman named Leah, said “when you don’t let the reader in completely, they think you are keeping secrets from them and begin to resent you.” It was one of the greatest pieces of advice she gave to me during the editorial process. But I can’t tell you who slapped me! Mainly because it was a joke. Kind of.

Don’t resent me I BESEECH YOU.

I swear, you should have seen how mad that ex-boyfriend was in 2004 when I blogged and blogged about him in my special secret blog and then he FOUND it and made me erase everything. I’d been out the night before and someone had fed me some Percocets. I was in psychic pain, so I took them (they’re only good for physical painkilling). Have you ever had a booze-Percocet hangover? They’re the goddamn worst. And then to be taken to a World of Warcraft internet cafe by your boyfriend who found your secret blog and doesn’t hate you but is giving you that “I am so hurt and disappointed in you” kind of face? INSIDES-KILLING.

So forget about the slap and focus on the good tulips, nnkay?

My first memory was being on the balcony of the hotel we lived in, in Toronto, and pretending to accidentally throw pine blocks from my block set down onto the street. I’d nudge them with my little elbow and then quickly press my face against the bars to see them drop. I don’t think I was trying to harm anyone — it was more of an exploration of gravity. I THINK.

I had a bad haircut. It’s the same bad haircut I have now. But now there are boobs underneath. That usually gives girls some license, I guess.

Lil Borel N'the Fam

The only reason I put on these socks was because my feet were dirty and I was too lazy to wash them in the bathtub or the sink.

That's my bed! Once I had sex on it. But it was a LONG time ago. I don't do that anymore.

Baby, who are you?

I was playing tennis with my friend Ibi last week. When I was a young tennis champion, under the tutelage of Randy Beaver (REAL NAME), I was a staunch baseline player. Lately though, as my service has been improving, I’ve been playing more of a net game, which is phenomenal for power, angles and accuracy. At the end of the first set, I lined up a nice overhead smash and the ball — after the impact on the court, the ball bounced up and over the fence. I went to collect it and there was a BABY just sitting there by a maple tree. THIS baby! He was smiling drunkenly the way he is in the photo and playing with an apple core that was all brown and chewed. I told Ibi I had to leave because I had found this baby. She said OK. I placed him in the container on the back of my bicycle. When we arrived home, I shrank a bunch of shirts in the dryer so he’d have somethings to wear. He cries sometimes, but I just put him in the vegetable crisper to make him quiet again. He’s no good at backgammon and will not eat any of the nice steaks I make for him every night. He’s so fussy, the baby!

I named him “Valerie Bertinelli.”

I don’t know what happens next.