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.)

this stop, romance. next stop, regina

From TORONTO,
August 14th, 2007

THE LEAN MEAN BLOGGING MACHINE

So I have a perfectly adequate excuse for having not blagued in so long. My entire family was eaten by wolves a couple of weeks ago, so I've been in mourning. But now I'm okay, so here we go!

Seriously.....I ran into master playwright Michael Healey recently, and he was on me about how seldom I post and wondering what was taking me so long this time. First of all, I was very flattered that he gave a damn, because not only is Michael one of my writing idols, but he also has very soft-looking hair.

And then it got me thinking: why haven't I written in a month and a half? Is my life really so boring that I can find absolutely nothing to say? I mean, I've written to you, Poor Put-Upon Reader, about my bowel movements and toenail clippings, so that would have to be pretty dull indeed. And then it hit me: I've been seeing somebody. Like, you know, for real. For the first time in a long time (not counting my well-documented and long-standing affairs with Beyonce, Jude and Justin). And I have made a concerted effort to not be one of those I-can't-call-my-friends-I-need-to-sit-here-staring-at-the-side-of-this-guy's-head kind of people. I hate those people and I wish they were dead. But was my new relationship affecting my correspondence with you, Stunningly Beautiful Reader? Perhaps I'm not lonely enough to write, I thought. I need to be lean and hungry and mean. I should be in the woods somewhere running through snow and punching sides of beef. Then not only would I be inspired to write, but I'd beat Dolph Lundgren in that big fight I've got coming up.

Eventually, I came to this. Life has been not entirely newsworthy this last little while. Auditions continue and go well and lead to nothing. I did shoot a commercial for IKEA, but I'm sleeping in it. I haven't been run down by any more cars. My new kitchen looks good; come over and see. My rowing classes were fun, we were the best crew ever, boring, boring, boring. My hair looks great, I've got a gorgeous tan, my brain continues to grow at an alarming rate. But you know all that. A month 'til I leave for Saskatchewan....and God knows there have been no travels to relate. Except for this one; this trip into RELATIONSHIPLAND. Why, I thought (tentatively at first) not write about that? I mean, it's been so long since I've been in a proper relationship (you know, one person at a time, calling each other, remembering one another's names and the whole bit) that it's as exotic and novel a place as I've visited in a long time. Maybe it's the weirdest place I'll ever go. Except for Winnipeg.

So yes, The Tourist is breaking her long silence on ALL THINGS PERSONAL. Because:
A) It's more interesting than me telling you what cereal I ate this morning (organic berry granola, if you must know - pretty exciting as far as cereal goes) and
B) We've all been to Relationshipland, but it's always a little different.....and usually scaaaary. Or is that just me?


I'M JUST A GIRL!

Funny about dating somebody. I keep wondering whether I'm doing it right. Should I be like, flipping my hair and giggling more? Wait, fuck, I am giggling more! But that's okay, right? I mean, I'm giggling in a smart, self-sufficient way, aren't I? AREN'T I?!

We're so hyper-aware, us kids of the modern age, of not losing our identities when we're with someone. For every day I spend with the new squeeze, I need three at home to touch my stuff and look at myself in the mirror. Sit on every piece of furniture. Run my hands along my DVD's. Play with myself, just to show that I still can. And I can. Oh, how I can.


LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

So The Squeeze and I are in the Let's Introduce Each Other To People period. That fun and nerve-wracking testing-ground time, when you see what everyone else thinks. Does this guy fit in? ("They love him! I knew I was right about this one!") Or do they think he's a big loser? ("I knew it! Nobody cool would ever want to go out with me!") Anyway, I'm winning 13-9. Not that anyone's counting. His friends really like me. And not just because I gave them all head. I've been basing my whole first impression on wardrobe: you wanna be just on that line where everyone is impressed by the hot new girl, but not amazed at what a big ol' tramp she is. Show a little skin, but not more than, say, two thirds of your ass. Like a job interview.

Learn from me, though, Impressionable Reader, as I negotiate these unsure waters. For instance: perhaps your best impression is not put forth when you're acting like an idiot, having just smoked a lot of weed at the Daft Punk concert. You will have a shitload of fun with your new guy and his bunch of friends, but the next morning you may wake up with the distinct feeling that people all over the city are at that very moment saying "What was with her? She was fuckin' nuts." If you're someone like me, who never shuts up to begin with and went on a veritable talking rampage the night before, your fears may be more than just unfounded paranoia. I am fuckin' nuts. And they may as well know that right now.


ROAD TRIP!

We had a huge coming out party the other day when we went up to Stratford, where the squeeze and I hit a party that his pal was throwing. We spent the previous two days lying around on a beach in Grand Bend. The plan had been to camp a couple of nights, but as the squeeze was coming down with a bad chest cold and is leaving for a big trip to Africa in a few days, we ditched the camping after just one night in favour of a roadside motel (The Whispering Pines, very David Lynch) so that he wouldn't get damp tent-induced pneumonia and die. Having so recently lost my entire family to wolves, that would really suck for me. But I felt like, by abandoning the camping, I was betraying my father. I had asked him if I could borrow a camp stove and next thing you know he had outfitted me with everything from mosquito coils to lawn chairs to firestarters. Hardly any of which we used.

Hitting the road from T.O. to Grand Bend, we had our almost first fight. As navigator, I had asked him to print me (my printer's busted) a good ol' fashioned Google map. I mean that's not too old school, right? Just a bit of paper that you can highlight and doodle on and make decisions based on. But what was I tossed as I got in the car? The dreaded BlackBerry. Now the BlackBerry is a fun toy, with lots of useful things on it. (Though personally I'd rather have a real blackberry. Which I could eat.) And no doubt its Google Maps function is a wonderful thing to use if you're into that kind of thing.

Now the way it works is this: the screen shows you one step at a time, one little corner of map at a time and you get no overview, no street names except the ones you're driving on, so you have no general sense of where you are, where you've been, how close to your destination etc. You miss a turn or stray from the route and you're screwed. Or you have to punch in a new search. It's an entirely uncreative experience, especially for someone like me (who admittedly must sound increasingly like a stubborn middle-aged man who hates being told what to do or asking for directions). I have always prided myself on my navigational abilities, and I felt like I was being phased out. By evil robots.

So I generally resented having this newfangled technology foisted (foisted?!) upon me, with no backup paper thingy whatsoever. In fact, I resented and resisted it so much that I refused to look at it and immediately caused us to miss the exit for the 427. I was, however, later vindicated (I think), when the BlackBerry took us straight to a road closure and I negotiated our way around it through sheer instinct and physical sense of direction, all while the BlackBerry cried and emitted smoke. Humans 1! Robots....1. Dammit. And the BlackBerry didn't act like a know-it-all bitch. On the other hand, if he'd been travelling with just it and not me, he mightn't have had quite so much fun in that roadside motel. Though there is the vibrate function.


I CONFESS:

A couple of days later (post Grand Bend, a paradise of bars and bikini shops) we've arrived at Michelle's place in Stratford and I'm taking a nap, while the man is upstairs chatting. He leaves me the BlackBerry with its alarm on to wake me up. When it does, I think I'll make my peace with it and make a call home to check my messages. I haven't got the hang of its scroll, however, and I accidentally click on the phone book instead of the phone. I'm trying to get out of the damn phone book, and, well........one thing leads to another and I end up erasing one of his contacts.

It's a number I'm thinking he won't need again. And if he does I'm sure he can get it. But still, I'm panicked. What if he notices? You're dating somebody new, you don't just go into their phone book and start erasing people! What if he thinks I'm jealous of this person? That I've gone nuts and want to sabotage him? That I subconsciously resent his BlackBerry so much that now I'm just fucking with it for fun? Actually there may be some truth to that one. I guess I'll find out soon enough what he thinks: he's finding out about it right now, along with you, Sweet Reader.


DAVINCI, CARLIN AND ME

I'd forgotten what hell it is sleeping with someone who is sick. Not only because he keeps you up with all his damn coughing and tossing and turning, the bastard, but on account of you being so worried about him. And no one wants to be the idiot who can't stop saying "Awww" every time somebody coughs. I ended up totally paralyzed, not wanting to move and keep the sick guy awake when he needed a good night's sleep.

And then of course, just at that moment, one is bound to start giggling to one's self over all the funny things one is going to say about this in one's blog....and that wakes him up. And then one thinks, Maybe I should just get up and let him sleep while I go scribble this stuff down somewhere....and getting up wakes him up. And then you go through your entire backpack looking for pants because it's cold in this house....and he wakes up. And you think, What am I doing, I'm just really high after that party, none of this will be funny in the morning, so you get back in bed - and wake him up. And as he falls back asleep you're thinking, What if George Carlin hadn't written things down when he was high? Or Leonardo DaVinci? Or Leonardo DiCaprio for that matter? Then where would we be? Some of us actually are struck with genius when we're high! My friend Josh and I are two of them!

.....So you get up again (trying not to wake him up) and next thing you know you're snooping through Michelle's desk at four in the morning looking for something to write on, hoping she doesn't choose this exact moment to come home from the still-going party. You rip some pages out of a notebook, find a pen and a copy of "Will and Me: How Shakespeare Changed my Life" to rest the pages on, and now you're hunched over on the stairs under the light, freezing from the air conditioning that's blasting down at you, scribbling away, when the squeeze wanders out of the bedroom and catches you like Cindy Loo Who confronting the Grinch. You clutch your papers to your chest, mutter something about having remembered something important that you needed to write down, and you pat his head, you give him a drink and you send him to bed....

Mere minutes later, of course, your hostess does come home and there you still are, writing down all your high bullshit (which makes up the bulk of this post, mind you)....and you realize what you are. A thought junky. A joke addict. A LEAN MEAN WRITING MACHINE! I haven't lost it, Faithful Reader! Love is not muddying my gifts! I don't need to run in the snow! (Fun as that would be!) I just need what I've always needed: time and drugs and my own twisted little mind! And I don't even need the drugs - I'm addicted to myself! Hooray, Happy Reader, Hooray!


So now I'm off to meet the squeeze for The Bourne Ultimatum. We rented Identity and Supremacy last week and meant to hit the third that night for a true Bourne-a-Thon but didn't make it. (How nice, to be dating a man who will indulge my action movie-watching, instead of just wanting to rent A Room With a View or Legally Blonde all the time like most guys.) I'm also about to find out what he thinks of my having just written an entire Tourist issue about him, the intimacies of our relationship and all my doubts and fears about the whole affair. Wish me luck!

Hey, if he don't like it, he can lump it. My loyalty lies with you, Dear Reader. We've known each other longer.

Yours and mean and lean,

The Tourist