Computer Hope cont.

A short note about politics. Don't trust anything (including supposedly accurate polls) about who will or won't be the Democratic or Republican candidates for President until the first Iowa caucuses are done (January 14, 2008). And even then, it's a tossup till New Hampshire (January 22) and at least some of the big states are done and through with (Super Tuesday, February 5).

Two or three stories you ought to be following instead are the entire "Lal Masjid" or Red Mosque fiasco in Islamabad, Pakistan, the Dubai-based airline Emirates planning on opening a "world hub" airport and the rise of Mexico's Carlos Slim Helu as the world's richest man. That last story, if properly researched, can lead you to understand the world-changing economics of globalization and emerging third-world industrialization. And in terms of the Middle East, well guess what folks, it's F.U.C.K.E.D. But you already knew that.

Back to shitty banal short stories for your personal entertainment.
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Part IV - In the Aisles

I was in the back of a cab racing towards Concordia downtown at 9 in the morning. I was feeling some angst, as I usually do when aroused in the morning. I couldn't remember the last time I had been up this early; it may easily have been a year. Probably the same amount of time since taking a cab. I had received a call on my mobile from Faye about 15 minutes earlier, stating that she had forgotten her term paper or something on the computer. I told her I could e-mail it to her if she could get to a computer, but she countered that such a move would require her to divulge her password. Which of course, she wouldn't. I protested, saying that I didn't care about her stuff, she could change the password and other valid reasons, but well, she insisted. Finally, she offered to pay for the cab and hung up with a curt "Just get down here."

Bitches.

Sure enough, after dropping 25$ (23.50 plus a lousy tip) to the Iranian cabbie and racing to catch the elevator, I arrived on the 8th floor of the Library building. I looked around, and noticing the old-maid secrataries and stern, glasses-sporting men, quickly realized I had made a mistake. Back down the elevators, floor by floor, I ran out of the front doors, dodging a Chrysler 300 on de Maisonneuve and into the Hall building, where after battling those goddawful escalators indeed, I saw her. Without too much conversation, I handed her the laptop bag and she gave me the money. I was thinking of going back home to sleep when I realized it could easily have been another week before I saw this laptop again.

I asked her "How long was it going to be?"
She waited a minute, ignoring my question, then said, "All done, I e-mailed it to myself."
"Okay, can I have the laptop back?"
"Actually, could you stick around for a little while? I wanted to do some other stuff on it."
"Like what?"
"Nothing, nothing. Come downstairs, it'll only be a few minutes."
"Whatever."

I went with her downstairs to Java U, of all places. I refuse to describe such establishments in any detail.

We sat and before I could even adjust myself, she asked me.

"So why do you drugs?"

I could sense that she had been waiting for an opportunity to drop this one. I began to reply and the conversation unfolded rather similar to an instant message convo.

Me: Why?
Faye: Yea, I wanna know. What makes people do drugs.
Me: Cuz it's cool.
Faye: Shut up, don't be crass.
Me: Crass! A good word and a good band.
Faye: Dodging the question.
Me: Well this is a big question. First of all, I have my own theories as to why people do drugs. One thing that I've noticed in my dealings with friends and people is that there seems to exist two different strata in society.
One, is the regular 9 to 5ers, 2.3 kids sort of people. These people are the kind who have never taken drugs and study hard and work for their paycheques and watch TV, listen to the radio etc. Their idea of recreation is going to see a movie, going on a road trip to Toronto or taking a flight to Cuba. They are, on the surface, happy and content and normal but most of them deep down have extreme psychological distress and unhappiness and manifest these problems through depression and other symptoms.
The other class of people are the drug-users who immerse themselves in being high and experiment with reality-distortion.
Faye: What does this have to do with you?
Me: I'm getting to it. This 2nd group see the world through drug-tinted glasses and experience life in an almost completely different way. Either because they too are discontened with life and society or because they are hedonistic and want more sensory pleasure to make up for emotional or spiritual dissatisfaction, they'd rather be high than deal with regular life. Why be a peon for the economy when you can just chill and enjoy the simple pleasures of sensory enhancement? I subscribe to this 2nd group.
Faye: What do you mean reality distortion?
Me: I mean like, you, saying that most of the time you're not high, you sit on the bus and look out the window, and are bored. You look at a weirdo on the street and you are sort of disgusted. You watch a movie and laugh at the parts you're supposed to etc. Me, I sit on the bus and am looking at the other people, wondering if they know I'm high or not. I see the weirdo and I laugh at how such a person could exist in this society and where he or she came from. I watch a movie and laugh at things that are absolutely absurd or unrealistic in real life, but in the context of the movie are supposed to be normal. I mean, take Star Wars. Fuck the Ewoks, I laugh at the angry British men who run the Empire and am astounded at how grave and serious their speeches are.

Admiral Piett: Lord Vader, our ships have completed their scan of the area and found nothing. If the Millennium Falcon went into light-speed, it'll be on the other side of the galaxy by now.
"Darth Vader: Alert all commands. Calculate every possible destination along their last known trajectory. "

That shit is amazing.

Faye: Okay...but doesn't it cost a lot of money and time to be involved in this lifestyle?
Me: Sure, and that's a downside, but it beats having to be bored and useless. And there's also the benefit of breaking the law. Living a criminal lifestyle, even as lowly as a petty weed-smoker has its visceral thrills.
Faye: I see. So you smoke weed because it makes you feel like a criminal?
Me: No, you miss the point. I do it because I like to do it. That's what it all comes down to. It's a conscious choice.
Faye: What about your health?
Me: Marijuana has never killed a single person. More people die from meteor strikes than marijuana.
Faye: Whatever... you have a girlfriend?
Me: ...No.
Faye: Why not?
Me: This probably goes back to me being high all the time. But in any case, getting a girlfriend in this city means most likely meeting her through normal regular friends who have a normal social life. Friend of a friend, etc. Blind dates all that shit. Or, the more likely option for people, is to pick up girls. Where do we do that?
Faye: Bars and clubs I guess.
Me: Fuck that. Find me a bar and I'll show you a bunch of horribly ugly, boring people with nothing to say and no positive attributes. Guys who like soccer or girls who like Rihanna, sti. What else? School or work?
Faye: No, I know from experience those never really work. School is hard to meet up with people because A. there's so much work to do nowadays in college and no-one has anytime or B. there's no opportunity anyway. I mean, in class, we have to sit and be quiet. Outside class, everyone goes their seperate ways. Like, if a guy came up to me while I'm in the library, even if he was in my class and I knew his face, I wouldn't even begin to go down that road. I'd just brush him off.
Me: Yeah, the cold pick-up is rough.
Faye: Yeah, it's weird and awkward.
Me: Then again, all you people in college thinking you're going to make it in regular society are snob assholes anyway.
Faye: What the hell?
Me: It's true, come on.
Faye: No, I have lots of chill friends in class.
Me: Maybe, but from what I've seen, as soon as a girl goes to college, she immediately thinks she's something special and all it does is amplify the inherent feelings of girls to be arrogant princesses.
Faye: That's a horrible thing to say.
Me: Whatever, that's what I think.
Faye: We're not all arrogant princesses.
Me: Fine.
Faye: Oh come on, why don't we talk about guys? I could say you're all a bunch of losers who don't take showers and have no jobs or get paid minimum wage and smoke weed.
Me: And?
Faye: And that's as true as what you're saying. Most guys I see are exactly like that, and they have nothing to say and they just stare at my ass or don't have the balls to come up and say anything to me. And when they do, they get shy or they just want to have sex. Not once have I met a guy who talked to me out of common interests or genuine respect. It's all sex sex sex.
Me: Yea, well we're horny.
Faye: You can say that again.

There was one of those lulls.

Faye: So uh, look, I have to go to the library.
Me: Okay.
Faye: I have to go get some sources for an essay.
Me: Okay. Go then.

She got up and began to leave.

Faye: Look, if you're not busy, there's this book I want you to read, maybe then you won't feel like the way you do.
Me: I'm happy the way I am. Fuck, always women are trying to change guys.
Faye: Jesus, just come.
Me: For fuck's sake.

I got up and went with her.

After a maze of escalators, elevators, steps and discontented-looking men and women behind glasses and help desks, we found ourselves amongst the stacks in the Webster Library.

Faye seemed to know where she was going. I straggled behind until she reached a spot and stopped. She scanned the titles and picked one out and gave it to me.

"The Vagina Monologues," Eve Ensler.

"You've got to be shitting me."
She replied "Nono, just read it."
"I think I'll pass."
"Come on, it's sooo good. It has lots of stuff about vaginas."
"Fuuuuck that. Next book."

She moved on and we came to some of the older novels. She took out another book and showed me.

"Jane Eyre", Charlotte Bronte.

"Why do chicks always read these depressing sentimental shits?"
"It's not sentimental! It's a classic and you'll learn something about women."
"Do you really expect me to read this?"
"Look, if you read that, I'll read something you tell me to."

I grumbled and went to one of the abandoned computers on the floor and ran a search. After scribbling the call number, I found what I was looking for.

She looked at the cover with a confused, skeptical look.

"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?"
"By Mr. Hunter S. Thompson. You wanna learn about drugs? This is a good a place to start."
"I don't care about drugs. Show me something I'll like."

I re-did the process until we came to something else. The floor was virtually empty seeing as only the summer class kids were there, a mix of Asians reading about math, kids with their laptops open and MSNs on and a hawkish-looking WASPs with glasses reading accounting texts.

I showed her 1984.

"Read it."
"Really? And?"
"Pretty good, but I don't really remember it."
"Okay..."
"Is this the one about the babies in test tubes and stuff?"
"No, that was the Huxley book "Brave New World." This is something else. About the future and Big Brother and government."
"Okay, I'll check it out if you promise to read Jane Eyre."
"Yea sure."
"Now wait, I wanna get something else for myself since we're here."

She vanished down one of the aisles. I slouched after her and found her in another part of the fiction section. I watched her from a distance, loosely gripping the book she had given me.

She leaned forward, her eyes squinting slightly as she focused them. The tip of her index finger grazing along the spines of the books, stopping on one. There, she began to tap...tap...tap until she made the choice to pick up a book. A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway. She glanced at the cover, then the back. She set it back on the shelf and moved on.

Henry, Hoffman, Hubbard... she stopped and made a swift aboutface and headed back, back along the narrow passage towards the 'G' section. Eventually, she stopped and her face lit up just a little, as if it had caught a trace of ambient light. She reached and removed a novel with precision and determination, and finally, returned her attention to me.

"Have you read this?"she handed it to me. "The Diary of a Nobody." George & Weedon Grossmith. "It's sort of obscure, but fuck, it's funny and like, about a guy who's just this middle-class loser with a son who's trying to be hip in society and the guy's wife and they all want to move up in society. It's soo English and sad and funny at the same time."

I looked up at her from the old worn-out book and saw her face for what seemed like the first time. I had read this one a while back, and was sort of struck that she too had read it. I handed the book back to her, and she turned to look for other ones. I watched her as she leaned forward on her toes to the top shelf and stole a good look at the rest of her, from her calves and thighs covered in tights up to her hair which lay long enough to rest between her shoulder blades.

"Could you help me with this?," she whined as she struggled to return a book. I leaned forward behind her and placed it back on the shelf for her. We were a couple inches apart, her scent in my nose, invisible pheromones seeping into the pores on my face.

I went for it, without even knowing why or how.

Holding her by the side of her abdomen, above the hip bone but below the rib, I kissed her neck. Looking back, it was an absurd thing to do, risky, dangerous and in public nonetheless. She had never mentioned anything specifically or made any overt openings or invitations. I was flirting with the thin line between consent and non-consent. But in the moment, as we moved on each other, I had no thoughts. In the pulse, there's only pure sensory experience. Life breaks down to sights, smells, images, responses and instinct.

I remember old tomes falling off the shelves, pages fluttering in slow-motion around us. Dead authours' recorded thoughts. Unintended squeaks and moans. Sharp inhalations of breath.

We blacked out.

* * *

Next part. Politics & World History. Indifference. Bad sex.

=//Turnquest