ON LOVE or BLAME THE FISH

From BLYTH, ONTARIO
August 5th, 2008

So, it's early August and I've completed my ex-lover tour of Ontario.

It all began at my pals Pete and Lisa's wedding reception, where I happened to be seated so that my heartbreaking former lover was DIRECTLY IN MY LINE OF VIEW to the microphone where everyone was giving their speeches, singing their songs, et cetera. I was moving around so much, trying to look on one side or the other instead of continually accidentally staring at his stupid head, that Bunker, who was my (utterly platonic) date, was trying to figure out what was wrong with me, did I have a yeast infection or something that was preventing me from sitting still. I dealt well though, I thought, until I went out on the sidewalk after dinner and passed out.

Yes, I literally fainted. For the record, I have low blood pressure and often do get dizzy. (Ask my college movement teacher, who attributed my dizzy spells to "Unresolved Emotional Issues", the crazy bitch.) For the record, I was dehydrated from the long drive from Blyth without drinking any water, and for the record it was thirty-some degrees and the air quality in Toronto was new and strange to a temporary country girl such as myself. Also for the record, I did smoke some of a joint, but believe it or not, Scandalized Reader, that's nothing entirely new. And for the record, this was before the dancing and the carrying on, and I'd only had two glasses of wine; this on a night when I'd planned to get so thoroughly in the bag that they'd have to dig me out from under coffee grounds and banana peels. Open bar. Goddammit. For the record, I ate the fish.

So I get dizzy, faint and hit the sidewalk, and Bunker and the Bundy-DeBeers, who are there, take fantastic care of me when I come to, and within minutes I feel fine but decide I should go home. Bunker drives me and helps me open all the windows in my apartment, which my subletter, who cleared out for the weekend, had earlier described to me as being "A really pleasant temperature; It reminds me of when I lived in Cambodia". Read: pretty much like hell.

Later, bored and feeling fine and watching Futurama, missing all the fun of the reception (the open bar! the Macarena!), I realize that there may be suspicions that I left early:
A) To avoid putting my envelope in the honeymoon donation box......or B) Because of The Boy.
So...Pete and Lisa: Your gift is in the mail! I swear! And Ass Head: I didn't leave early to avoid you! I would have danced you under the table! Well....not that way. I mean unless you really wanted to.... I mean....Up Yours, you no-good son of a whore!

Unresolved Emotional Issues indeed.

Stop number two consisted of actually AUDITIONING FOR a hot former lover, which is like one of those things actors have recurring nightmares about. And which turned out to be absolutely totally normal and fine, I mean as much as any audition can be normal and fine.....but do you think I slept at all the night before, sure that I would wake up fat or with a giant zit or something?

The whole ex-lover tour, though, centred on one trip to Stratford, where if you spit you'll hit someone who's fooled around with me. Really, I'm like some Stratford Festival wormhole - get in me, you'll be working there within a year. (Note to self: stop referring to vagina as "wormhole")...... But I digress.

Anyway, what with the wedding, and the audition and Stratford, I'm on this string of visitations with ex-lovers, some intentional, some surprising, and at the end of that week, what with the lack of sleep, and the booze and the pills and the fish, and oh, maybe it had something to do with the ex-lover sightings...... at the end of it all, I have a BIG REVELATION ABOUT LOVE. Do not, I repeat, do NOT cue strings; this ain't that type a' revelation.

I get to thinking about a recent encounter with a man I really like, who told me on discovering a film we'd both always wanted to see and missed, "I really want to watch that movie with you." Well, by God if that wasn't the most romantic thing I'd ever heard in my whole life. As if he'd written me a sonnet, sung me a song, dedicated the next inning to me on the Jumbotron....

"I really want to watch that movie with you." Sigh.

And WHY, why did this simple little phrase move me so? Wouldn't it be more exciting if he had said, Oh I don't know, I want to make love to you all night on the back of a dolphin swimming across the Pacific? No, actually, that would have just been weird. If he had said I want to take you on the top of a mountain and make you call out my name in ecstasy from the mountain tops? I would have told him, Sorry I have a matinee tomorrow. If he'd said, I want to spoon pudding all over your ass and slowly eat it off, flavour of your choice? Well....okay. Maybe. But, dear reader, appeals involving pudding and my butt are a dime a dozen (or at least they WERE, before I moved to Blyth).....while appeals to my mind are all too rare. I know, I know, my intellect is too vast and intimidating for most people. Then again, so is my ass, and men seem to get over that. Here was someone holding off the pudding and wanting to get to know me first. Or maybe he really did just want to watch the movie and nothing more. But I don't see how that's possible. I mean, really.

I don't blame men for the fact that EVERY ONE OF MY RELATIONSHIPS has been sex first, ask questions later. (Or sometimes just one question: "What are you still doing here?") I often orchestrated it that way. Partly I was just randy and impatient. Maybe, too, I didn't want to waste my time with someone who didn't know his way around, if you know what I mean. Trouble is, if he knew his way too well, I would manage to convince myself that he was Hugh Grant, Denzel Washington and Einstein all rolled into one. Except better. When he was actually more like Hitler, or Pauley Shore. So I ended up in some "relationships" that probably should have ended at how-do-you-do. And then, still reeling from the last ill-advised thing, I always intended that the next one wouldn't go anywhere and then whoops - there I was again. Going out with Hitler.

Would you believe that the Tourist, of all people, or at least her fully non-fictional alter-ego, Miss Norton, has spent a fair bit of time being walked all over by men? It's true. But I had a crick in my back, and they've got such pleasing, tiny feet, what can I say. Oh wait, that's geishas. Fuck men! Bring me twenty geishas!

Of course, I was cursed with ten years bad relationship karma because I was lousy, really lousy, to a good man when I was young. Occasionally I'll run into him on a streetcar or something and he's always so nice to me that I want to shake him, which doesn't help. And a couple of good, honest - if slightly homosexual - men along the way have provided parole breaks in my sentence here and there, giving me reprieves between the jerks....which means I'm still doing my time. Thanks a LOT, you no good, nice-guy motherfuckers.

I started to realize the other night, as I strolled the streets of Stratford trying to clear my head at three a.m. (eventually becoming so lost that I didn't make my way back to friend Kelli's house until five), that I've fallen into valuing myself based on my sexuality above all else. That I've used my wiles - and my pudding-bearing posterior - to get men interested, to keep them coming back. That I've underestimated my likeliness to attract love interests with my charm, my humour, and my big fat mutant brain.

And if I, a relatively well-raised, clever woman of thirty-two, have been treating myself as a sex object all these years - what does that mean for girls much younger than myself, girls raised in the light of billboards, girls coming of age sexually in a time when they get - and publicly reveal - their first thong at the age of nine? I'll tell you what it means, folks - we will never be at a loss for a neverending flow of prostitutes! And that's necessary to the North American economy. Also manufacturers of tube tops and eyeliner will continue to do well.

But I say NO! No, things must not continue this way!

Listen to me, Miley Ray!
Listen up, Shakira! (What's that you say?...Shakira's not a virgin? What - she's thirty-one? Research Department!!! I can't work like this.)
Listen to me, Virgins of the world!
Listen to me, Sluts!
Listen to me, Nice Girl Who's Confused About Love!
Women of Greece!

Start with dating first, Shania! Get to know him, Hillary MacDuff!

Join with me and let us take a VOW OF CELIBACY (until we change our minds or someone really hot convinces us otherwise. I know I know, I'm just getting the hang of this vow thing, give me a break).

Our only exceptions to this Vow will be as follows:
- One night stands with twenty-one year olds in Paris. No, Paris, Ontario doesn't count. Nor does Paris Hilton.
- "I was really, really wasted"
- "He's my dad. What can ya' do?"

Other from that, we shall live by the 3 Ates:
Wait, and Date, and Masturbate.

I will encounter criticism, I am sure, for taking this vow while living in Blyth, Ontario, after having famously and repeatedly complained about the town's lack of eligible cock. It will be easy for me, you will say, where there is a lack of temptation. The local tourist board, after all, has long advertised with brochures titled "Huron County: A Great Place to take your Vow of Chastity", and there's a monastery being built right next to the arena.

However, the opposite is true; I could not have chosen a more difficult time to take this vow. On arriving back in Blyth the other day, clutching my new-forged committment to celibacy, I immediately encountered a handsome, charming friend of a friend who danced the hours away with me at that night's opening party AND started dropping hints that he was neither gay nor had a girlfriend.

"No! Noooooo! Don't do it," cried the celibacy angel on my left shoulder, pulling up my bra strap while she was at it. "Besides, you haven't had a waxing recently! Do you have any idea how hairy you are down there?!"

"Yes! Yes! Oh God Yes," moaned the devil on my right. "You know you want it, you dirty little whore!" She pulled my strap back down, adding, "And hair is in right now."

Holding my dress and panties firmly on, I said goodnight and went home, but have since realized the extent of my quandary. I've returned to a place where I am now infamous for being the single horny girl who wants to get some. Where I can't compliment a young man on his show without it being assumed by the rumour mill (that's you, Eric) that I plan to compliment him with my vagina. Now they're knocking down my trailer door all night. (That's not a dirty euphemism by the way; I really do live in a trailer here. Ask anyone. Follow the crowd.) My last blague post, my earnest appeal for partners, was now paying off. Word has spread and single men and lipstick lesbians are flocking in from all over the world! Planes, trains and automobiles are in transit as we speak! Just as I have taken a firm and decisive (honest I swear) vow to forgo sex!

I'm aware that I asked for this. I'm aware that I begged. Petitions were signed, emails forwarded, travel agents got excitedly involved. But now that my very prayers have come true, all I can say is....

STOP THE TRAINS! I WANT TO GO TO THE MOVIES!
(And there's no cinema in Blyth.)