CHAPTER TWO—MATCHSTICK POETRY HOTEL
Home, however, is not an easy place
to be for two compelling reasons. First, my lover of seven years left me in
late spring, early summer. He fell in love with one of his students. She is 37;
I am 53. I cannot compete even though measure by measure I am slimmer,
prettier, smarter, more charming, and probably a lot nicer. And then there is
the matter of my imminent and premature retirement. My elderly, crippled
directress, who drags her right leg, and implements capricious policies
regularly has, at long-length, defeated me. I perceive Alya as a crow, a spine-broken raven umbrella.
She is as vain as any wicked queen in any fairy tale, and her alleged beauty
is all smoke and mirrors: hair extensions, Botox injections, tooth veneers. At
any rate, her rule of terror drove me to tender an early retirement, the notion
of which both exhilarates and alarms me.
Home is a shabby-chic duplex on Royal Avenue with good bones but in
a state of perturbing disrepair. (Like Charlotte? Like myself?) My advance inheritance. The first three years that Ralph lived here with me , I felt so lovely
and light. Every moment was an intake of breath, a ribbon of adventure until his
moodiness and ambivalence toward me divided us.
I lived beside myself in a bubble of enchantment. Strange that we should have met online even
though we were residents of the same seductive city: Montreal. Ralph moved out five months ago, and I’ve
done very little cooking and cleaning since then. Just enough to get by. Things
fell apart between us and my delusions collapsed
overnight. He became smitten with a younger woman, a Bulgarian student of his,
and disenchanted with me. Suddenly I was too thin, my hair too messy. My
lipstick was too thick and bright, my clothes too costumey. In contrast, I was still enraptured by all of
his flaws: slight stutter, round hips, shortish legs, putty nose, chipped
teeth, flamboyant apparel, velvet and amber voice.
We met on an online Poetry
Community Website: MatchStick Poetry Hotel. My moniker was Dancing Bandit; his—Rasputin11. His poetry was old-school, brooding,
Heathcliff pacing the moors, Sweeney Todd hurling shabby women into the
dragon-furnace. Mine was much terser.
We were instantly attracted to each
other’s words and began to message each other privately. It was confounding to discover that he also lived in
anglo-Montreal and was an adult educator.
It took us months of phone calls
before we met in person. The photos I had sent to him were retouched by
Portrait Professional. My skin was perfectly smooth, my lips more plumply
curved, my eyes deep-sea green. More distressing, however; he was five years
younger. Whenever I’m out with a younger man, I believe he’s going to realize
he’s made a mistake. He’s going to realize that my skin won’t do at all—too
used, too loose. I postponed meeting him
for as long as possible; our Internet
romance was fierce and dramatic. I am so low-tech that Internet is like a
magical kingdom to me; all the characters are larger-than-life. The electronic
curtain is spun from such bewitching cloth. I remain transfixed by all that is
not revealed.
When we met for the first time, I
was weak with fear. We chose Downstairs, a jazz club that was situated downtown but upstairs in a two-storey building . It was stony and dark, and I’m quite certain
that the floor tilted. He was sitting all the way against the back brick wall.
I had foolishly chosen to wear stilettos with pointe-shoe ankle ribbons, and
walking was quite a chore. My steps sounded clumpy, as though I were wearing
clogs. My dress was a witchy black swan number, and I had lightened my hair to
two tones shy of platinum. He stood up.
A short, stocky man with moist chocolate eyes. A deep cleft in his chin, big, shapely hands,
long, strong fingers.
“Gloria, you are glorious.” He
kissed my hand.
“I can’t believe we’re here. We
must be crazy or brave. Either way, it’s so exciting to meet you.”
My voice was shaky, but at least I
could still string words. What would my teenaged son think of me? Would he be
amused or appalled? And what about my father, who still hoped that I would one
day show reasonable judgement?
We complimented each other, picked
at our seafood, drank a couple of bottles of house white, asked and answered a
posy of questions, listened to each other with apparent respect and delight.
“You are so unusually beautiful, so
pale. I love watching you. You move your
arms and hands and precise neck like a dancer.”
I believed him. It was a hot, white June night, and I felt
like a woman of mystery, a platinum poet. We were both divorced teachers who
lived in Montreal and were addicted to writing poetry. Though the evening was
almost perfect, there were red flags, even as he was trying to fall in love. He
flirted with the leggy young waitress, and he asked me if we could begin living
together.
“Let’s not waste time. Let’s
experience this adventure and turn our lives inside-out and upside-down. Let’s
live together. What do you say, Gloria? Are you going to stay or run away?”
I was infatuated, drunk and lonely
and so I said, “Agreed. When would you like to move in with me? There has to be
one condition, though. No sexual duress. No erotic blueprint. We’ll make up the
rules as we go along. Can you, will you, agree to that?” How peculiar that as I
spoke these words, I wanted to be with my father, in either of our gardens,
speculating, planting, but mostly just being close to his handsome, honourable,
seasoned silence.
I suppose that because Ralph was a
native Montrealer, I didn’t consider him to be potentially dangerous. Even
though he had flirted quite piercingly with a few female members at MatchStick, he was here with me, and he
claimed to find me alluring.
We didn’t go home together that
night. Instead, we agreed to meet at an NDG sushi bar in precisely one week to
either seal or break the deal. I was
wondering whether he felt more or less real to me now that we had actually met. He walked me to the metro station, and drew me
close when we said good night. He held me tight, and I was proud that my
stomach was flat and that my thighs felt hard. In contrast, he was a little
soft, but his skin was aromatic and warm.
He was his poetry, and nothing was going to contradict that for a good
long while. I didn’t know whether I felt
ugly or beautiful, old or ageless, but I certainly felt alive.
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