Illustration by Jeff Kulak

1.
What on earth did she want from him? From them? Approval? She
was embarrassed by how little she knew, or would own, of her own
motivations.

She was also too hot in her heavy wool coat, and damp, wet really,
hair like feathers stuck to her brow. Add frustrated to the list. After a
decade of intense discipline she found herself suddenly wanting to
smoke, to have random sex, or at least to have distracting fantasies
about these things: she had drifted off into trysts on the airplane, at
the hotel, in the rental car below deck.

The ferry entered Active Pass, a moment of transition she always
loved, and she stepped out onto the deck. Turbulent water churned
cutlery, dinner plates, champagne glasses and bottles tossed off of
boats, tumbling and softening them so they foamed up decades later
on beaches, common as periwinkle and sand dollars.

Shorelines sliced through the fog like cream. She scratched notes in a
hand-sized journal. Tiny illuminations like the lit cabins on the treed
shores where some old part of her still longed to live.

2.
Harlequin ducks carved in Thailand or Bangladesh lined the gift
shop shelves. Local books in racks. The clink of teapots, a cash register.
Horn blast. All the old comforts laced with their irritations. She
recalled hearing Aritha Van Herk read a story set on a ferry years ago
when she was a creative writing student at the university. The local. It
was crass in fiction. Stories were supposed to be set in New York, or
London, or at the very least, in a suspended non-descript place that
resembled the interior of an Alice Munro character.

That week someone had stolen her backpack and she found it hours
later stuffed in a garbage bin on campus with nothing but a personal
letter, her diary, and a packet of photographs taken.

That was the sort of thing that happened in Victoria.

3.
There had been a pod of whales on the previous crossing. People
stared out hopefully even after they left the strait. She stood next to
a Kurt Cobain look-a-like on his way to Botanical Beach. He was a
baker he said, lighting a cigarette for her, he liked to bake scones, she
inhaled deeply, but she did not smoke and quickly felt light-headed.

She left the baker to a rack of younger lambs and sunk into a deep
blue chair, thinking of her stolen diary. How numb she had been. Later,
when he chastised her for being so elusive, so withholding in class,
she knew he had taken it.

As painful as it had been, that loss had been a blessing. She had not yet
understood that she had been lying to herself, even in her own diary.

4.
Gulls hung ghost-like in the air. Another horn blasted. The fog refused
to lift. A woman, tall and sweet as meringue, moved past her, so slow
and heavy that she followed her up to the observation deck. Safe up
here, she thought, six stories off the water, but the plywood-covered
window reminded what a rogue wave could do. She considered pushing
the woman against the door and biting the back of her neck, but
her cell phone rang and she was momentarily jolted back to Toronto.

5.
When she lived in Victoria those many years ago, she lived in a house
on Meares. Her flat was on the second floor, a corner unit with a
large south-facing window. She used to listen to soundtracks—The
Mission, Room With a View—far too loud, and Ellen Smythe, author of
several unpublished Harlequins that needed proofreading, was often
up to complain. She was big bosomed, sixtyish (though it occurred to
her that she was probably only 40), short, hair dyed blond, face like
powdered linen, and very, very hungry. She had been there that first,
exhilarating, day, knocking quickly.

A laugh, unexpected, set off car alarms three blocks down. Her landlady
blushed at her standing in a T-shirt and turned without asking
whatever it was she wanted to ask. She went back to her bedroom and
there they were, like hungry, doting parents, urging her back to bed.

6.
He suggests they walk to Cadboro Bay, and so they do. The air was
warm, but it was windy and they were almost sideways, against it.
Everyone talked about the weather in Victoria, but no one mentioned
the persistent wind. He loped ahead of her like a much younger man,
slipping down a trail with too many logs, round and slippery as oil
drums. She was wearing the wrong coat. The wrong shoes. Staying
upright demanded all of her attention. They had two children, he said,
rolling his eyes, and yes, he had published several books since. She
had noticed, she said, waiting for a comment on her own work. He
took his binoculars out from under his jacket.

You see, he said, the Harlequins are there. And they were, chestnut
and slate, the male a slightly off Tao. They roiled in the rockiest point
in the bay; tumbling where the waves crashed and currents shifted
quickly. They mate high in swift mountain streams, he said. They nest
in crevices. From where they stood they could not hear the squeaks
and whistles of joy as they wrenched mussels and barnacles, crabs
and crustaceans.

7.
It would have been better to meet indoors, she thought. Here it was
though he was made of rubber and feathers, drifting on stilts, absolutely
free of any memory of her body, any obligation of mind. And
yet he was the one that started it with her. He, who on one of their
post workshop outings, had slipped his hand between her legs under
the table as he regaled the class with having met Carver. She found
his audacity, his control, thrilling. You have to meet my wife, he said,
brushing her breast with his arm, she will love you.

8.
He asked how she was, and he listened and nodded. He kept his body
at an angle, an elbow between them.

She knew by then that she had been one of many. Everyone knew:
each year a new affair proceeded in a startlingly similar fashion. She
had merely been a sheet of excitement, a shimmer of lubricant they
penetrated each other through. That’s what mentorship looks like for
women, someone said.

The day, drawing to a close around them, felt as turbulent as it was
the day she left well over a decade ago. She had not told anyone she
was applying to another program and this turned out to be a great
convenience.

9.
And how is Di, she asked finally. He pointed to another cluster of
ducks as if he couldn’t quite hear her, and it occurred to her that he
hadn’t told Di that she had contacted him. Triumph is overrated, she
thought. That she had moved so far along in her career, that she had a
partner, that she was happy, successful, none of this shielded her from
the stab of this omission.

He stopped suddenly, facing her directly. Were you always a lesbian,
or did you just not know at the time?

Why, she said, would that be breaking the rules? She stopped herself
from saying something cruel about how she had never cared what he
thought of her. That it had always been about his wife. That Di was
delicious, like trying to find a single strawberry in a bowl of whipped
cream. Surely he must know that.

There will be a small gathering after the reading, he said. Come. He
walked on, binoculars at the ready, sure and quiet, as if he was leaving
a trail of crumbs.

SINA QUEYRAS is the author of MxT and Autobiography of Childhood,
both from Coach House.

I’m having a sarcastic moment with a tin, the colour of robin’s egg blue. I’m enamoured with this rectangular container, its edges rounded, its paint worn and its body slightly dented. I clutch the tin and feel something unexplainable. Under its smooth folk art exterior, outside of its practicality, and under its lid, lives a dirty history. “Minöséget a dolgozóknak. Yeah, right,” I’m still talking to myself. “Füszerétékesitő Nemzeti Vállalat.”

“Are you going to share the joke?” my husband asks.

“Look at this!” I shove the tin in his face. “Do you see what this says?”

“No!” he says jerking his head back. “I can’t read it if you hold it an inch from my face.”

“Sorry,” I answer. “I just get so pissed off sometimes.”

“I didn’t notice,” he says. “That’s a nice tin. What does it say?” Ken grabs the tin and tries to pronounce what I had just read. “Foozere-”

“Don’t even try.” I snatch it back. The word has fifteen letters in it and even I can’t say it easily.

“Look at this lovely red paprika. It looks hand-painted.” I turn the tin in my hand. “And there’s one on the other side, too. And look! A pot of chicken paprikás with noodles.

There’s even a drumstick!” I’m beside myself.

The drawings on the tin are simple in their execution and yet charming. Even more charming, is the pretty young woman dressed in traditional Hungarian attire. She wears a full pleated skirt, a hand-embroidered apron, a kerchief on her head and red slippers on her feet. This pretty woman lovingly tends a large caldron of red broth suspended by a stick over an open fire.

Budapest. We’re in a small, crammed antique shop with a spiral staircase leading up to an overflowing second floor, its wares spilling down to ground level.

“Feel free to go up,” says the middle-aged owner. He’s friendly, unlike the sullen, rude shop attendants I’m used to from my visits to Hungary in the seventies as a child.

“I will.” I smile shyly as I search for the price on the tin.

“It’s from the late nineteen forties,” says the owner offhandedly from under his glasses.
4,800 forints. I’m astonished. Almost twenty-five dollars and not a speck of paprika in it. The average Hungarian worker today earns only five dollars an hour. I remember as a child how cheap everything seemed to my mother and I when we converted our Canadian dollars for forints and headed out shopping to stock up on everything from leather gloves to aluminum pressure cookers, our relatives painfully aware of their meager currency and our ability to buy all we needed.

My mother alone packed our suitcases full for the return trip to Canada. Each day, stuffing one more item into suitcases already bursting at the seams. Another bag of Szegedi paprika, another 50 decagrams of ground poppy seeds, five more wooden spoons, the almost forgotten noodle cutters and another length of spicy sausage. Nervously, the entire family–my mother, my aunts, my cousins and I balanced our suitcases on the bathroom scale. And once we took our hands off the handle in order to get an accurate reading, the suitcase would at first quiver, then wobble like a watermelon and then quickly fall off making it nearly impossible to read the needle on the scale in time.

“Did you see what it said?”

“Twenty-six kilos.”

“It looked like twenty-seven.”

“Twenty-six and a half.”

“Take something out.”

“I’m not taking anything out!” my mother insisted, while the rest of us stressed over airline regulations. Everything in the socialist world was stringently controlled and transgressions readily punished. But for my mother everything in the suitcase was precious. These things were bits and pieces of a life she had left behind.

Still clutching the tin, I inspect old Soviet memorabilia and whisper to Ken, “These are western prices. What is he thinking?” I feel ashamed of my remark. As though ‘he’, meaning the shop owner, should be keeping the prices low for my sake. I had hoped to snag some great deals, to fill my suitcase full again but at these prices I have to choose carefully. Why do I think that Hungarians in this new economy are not entitled to eke out a living from my desire to pillage their past?

On the lid is the evidence of the crimes of Communism. A clue to the changes my mother described that took place after the Soviets secured post-war Hungary. There is a drawing of three men, lined up perfectly, their bodies in slight profile. They look in the same direction. Presumably to the future. One is a worker, with the famous Soviet hammer flung over his right shoulder. The middle man, in all probability, is the foreman. And I’m guessing the man on the right, wearing a suit and spectacles with a folder tucked under his arm, handles the accounts. Collectively, they hold the Hungarian coat of arms. In the background are factories with smoldering smoke stacks. Underneath is the caption that halted me when I first picked up the tin.

“Minöséget a dolgozóknak.”

“So … are you going to tell me what it means?” asks Ken.

“Quality for the workers. State inspected paprika. To Make Valuable Spices National Company.” My initial tone of sarcasm is sparked by my mother’s insistence that the quality of everything deteriorated with the installation of a Soviet satellite government. Quality of life eluded all but official party members who drove sleek, black luxury vehicles, the interiors of which where upholstered floor-to-ceiling with crushed red velvet. The state meticulously inspected everything, from a person’s thoughts, to their mail. So why would anyone be relieved to know that even their paprika was state inspected?

Shepherds and horsemen had been using the pungent plant to spice their stews since the invasion of the Turks in the 1600s. By the 19th century paprika was a symbol of national pride. In 1937, Szent-Györgyi Albert won a Nobel Prize for his discovery that paprika was unusually rich in vitamin C. So for what reason, I ask, would the Soviets need to establish a state-run company ‘To Make Valuable Spices National’? Did no one know how to inspect, let alone grow paprika in this country before the arrival of the Soviets?

Whenever I discover examples of Communist domination I become my mother: bitter, belligerent and bound. My mind becomes obsessive and I see an ugly past when I look in the mirror. I wince at my down-turned mouth and re-live the sensations she experienced. I wonder just how much disdain for the Soviets I inherited by consuming vast amounts of state inspected paprika?

I want to put the tin back on the shelf. I feel as though I would betray my mother by buying it. But the paprikas are alluring on the blue background. A simple, simple paprika tin, exploited and manipulated to infiltrate the kitchens of the population. Each day, people were force-fed a new identity. They swallowed the lies by the spoonful, their guts bloated. The paprika that once nourished them, was now poisoned. Poisoned by a regime that intended to destroy their psyches slowly over time. It hails from the time before the red star began appearing on the Hungarian coat of arms, when the Soviets were just learning how to brainwash the population. This tin is a relic, a testament to the moment before everything turned really ugly in Hungary.

This tin was just the beginning.

But worse was still to come.

I want this dented, blue tin because it substantiates my mother’s stories of how wretched life was under Communism. If I can learn, then I can mitigate my guilt for having been blessed with a life of opportunity and abundance. And when she says to me, “They were trying to turn us into them. But we would never be them.” I can answer, “I understand mother. I wish you’d never had to live through that.”

I take the tin to the counter and start to bargain and when I shave off a few hundred forints, I hand over my money.

“How’s business?” I ask in Hungarian.

“You are not from here,” says the owner.

“No, I was born in Canada,” I answer apologetically.

“You have opportunities in Canada,” he says.

“It’s a good country. But Hungary’s great, too.”

“I’ll tell you,” he says. “Before we could eat, but we couldn’t talk. Now we can talk, but we can’t eat.”

My childhood memories are in grey tones, like a black-and-white from the early 1960s. The people, the buildings, the sky, the entire landscape. The only colour I remember is the bright yellow of the number two tram, that still hugs the Danube today. In those days, the tram was appointed with sullen ticket inspectors wearing dull, spiritless uniforms, working dull, spiritless jobs and going home to dull, spiritless concrete apartments.

Now, instead of grey crumbling buildings wounded by bullet holes, I see colour for the first time in Budapest. I hear people talking freely on the streets, in their homes and in the shops. But I realize now that even Hungarians are paying western prices while earning Eastern Bloc wages.

“We still don’t know what we’re doing.” The owner wraps my tin in newspaper.

“This has to be better than what you had before,” I say gently.

“It’ll never be better in my time.” He hands me my parcel. “Thank you for visiting my shop. Please come again.”

I take the parcel and tuck it in my bag. It finds its way into my suitcase. Protectively wrapped in a towel, the tin comes home to Canada. It finds a resting place on the kitchen counter where, like in a museum, it’s admired by visitors.

I call my mother for what must be the tenth time in the past five years to ask for her gulyás recipe. I could have written it down by now, but I want her to tell me again from the beginning. “How many tablespoons of paprika?” I ask.

I want her to know how much it means to me to get it just right. I get it right for her. At eighty-one her fingers are gnarled and her heart squeezes her chest. But she’s still beautiful. And battered. Like the blue tin.

Rita Bozi has publications in WritingRaw.com, Pages of Stories, FFWD Weekly and has contributed to CBC Radio. She is writing Uprising, a memoir and Hungry, High and Hammered, a short story collection. This past summer she attended The Humber School for Writers. Her co-written play 52 Pick Up, was recently translated into Icelandic.

It was all glances and smiles, cocking her head at an almost imperceptible angle through the half-opened door. The man in blue was already blushing and they hadn’t exchanged a word. He stood before her with a brown cardboard box the size of a Kindergarten boy.

“This parcel is for Les Montague.” The letter carrier read from a yellow paper affixed to the metal clipboard in his left hand. He was sweating. From his exertion and the summer heat rather than Kate’s magnetic lure, she surmised. An industrial-grade metal dolly wedged under the box.

“Our downstairs neighbour.” Les was Kate and Sean’s tenant. Sean thought him bizarre but Kate knew Les was just misunderstood. He rarely left his room. Les worked from home like Kate. She was an accountant; she didn’t know exactly what Les did. “I think he’s home right now. If not, can I sign for it?”

He looked down at the mustard form to verify the status of a particular checkbox. “I can actually leave it on the porch. No signature required.” He looked up, adjusted his cap and made eye contact with Kate for the first time. Brown eyes. “It’s pretty heavy.” He handed her a few smaller envelopes from his sack.

“Do you think you could bring it inside? I have no idea what’s in there, and it’s supposed to get pretty muggy today.” The only time Kate had been successful with her mailman machinations, the letter carrier was a woman. Her name was Verlia and they had a three-month affair last summer.

He put down his mailbag, stood behind the brown box, held it in place with his left hand and tilted the dolly back with his right. “Can you hold the door, ma’am?” Behind him, a little boy in green shorts straddled a tricycle, and sped across the sidewalk past the Canada Post truck. Two older girls with meticulous braids loped behind him chatting. Kate stepped past the brown wooden door and onto the grey-painted slats of the empty porch. She held the screen door open and the man pushed the box into her foyer. She liked his smell.

“Take it right to the door halfway down the hall, past the living room.” She followed him inside, dropping the letters on the hall bureau as she passed. They stood together at the top of the stairs. Kate put her hand on his shoulder.

“I know this is asking a lot, but would you mind taking it down the stairs and leaving it in front of that door?” There were only a dozen steps, but he did say it was heavy. And Kate had felt a lot more tired than usual lately.

Without a word, he leaned back and rolled the dolly downward, bending at his knees and moving slow. She could see the package was weighty from the way it rocked a bit on each step. The mail carrier had a patch of wetness on his sweaty lower back. Kate gazed as if it were a Rorschach inkblot, but couldn’t decide what it resembled to her. At the bottom, he yanked the dolly out and pulled it back up the stairs. He stopped at the top.

“What’s your name?”

“Rish, ma’am.”

“Thanks a ton, Rish. I’m Kate.”

The box sat below them at the entrance to Les’s basement apartment.

The intermittent thunks from downstairs were annoying the piss out of Sean. Les must’ve been to IKEA. Sean decided to check the garbage later for boxes. There was no point in asking the weirdo, who kept to himself to the point of hermitage. Sean couldn’t picture Les shopping; he’d rarely even seen him leave the basement. They had inherited Les two years ago when Kate’s dad moved to New Zealand to be a fag, and gave them the house.

“He won’t give you any trouble,” Mr Verdure had said when made the offer to them. Sean doubted his words, though. The gift house felt like a subtle indictment of Sean’s own abilities to provide for Kate, or his failure to sire him a grandchild. As long as Les the basement gnome wasn’t engaged in some kind of major construction, he thought.

Sean stripped down in the bathroom upstairs and turned on the hot and cold taps. He pulled the shower curtain across and soaped himself up, paying attention to his thick blond hair and his rank underarms and dirty ass. Fencing practice made him sweat and stink, but he preferred to shower at home, even though the clawfoot tub was small and he always got water on the floor. Sean was built tall and wide like a refrigerator. Negotiating the bathroom of this place made him feel like a gorilla accessing the driver’s seat of a Cooper Mini. But something about the shower room at the Salle D’Armes unnerved him too. The men’s changing facilities were so spare, the tiled floors so cold and ancient and cracked. Each shower head a mere nozzle jutting from a connected section of metal piping, as a dozen guys scrubbed down a few feet apart, fully exposed. The water was always too hot. Something of the room made Sean think of a gas chamber, though he had never seen one.

The woman at the front desk knew not to give him a towel when he came. He thought he noticed her staring on a few occasions.

“She wants your piggy in her blanket,” said his brother Daniel, who was also Sean’s fencing buddy. Danny sometimes talked bitchy like one of those drag queens. RuPaul—only short, freckled, skinny and white. Daniel and Sean looked nothing alike.

“Bro, didn’t she see my ring?” Sean thought chicks who went after married men were scummy. He wasn’t interested.

He poured a capful of Head and Shoulders and massaged his scalp. The banging started up again. It persisted for a minute, then stopped, then picked back up again. Jackass. Sean felt the urge to go downstairs and build the Bennø CD rack or Bërgsbo bookcase for Les himself. Then instruct him to load it up quietly. Sean got a feeling Les was intimidated by his build and demeanor, or at least he hoped so. Clearly not enough to fear his wrath for making a racket so late though. This guy’s got no respect.

“God damn fuck. Jesus fuck. What the fuck. Fuck.”

Sean muttered as he rinsed his hair then turned off the water. He grabbed a towel and pawed at himself with it. He pulled on a pair of grey gym shorts and a red tanktop, stepped on a pile of Kate’s bras and panties on the floor, left the room, grabbed the wooden banister and pulled himself downward two steps at a time. The phone rang and he ignored it, reaching the bottom of the stairs and rapping three times on Les’s basement door.

I’ve got my adult Nuk from Pacifiers Я Us in my mouth, but I’d so much rather be suckling a woman’s breast. Especially if she’s lactating.

My former therapist, Dr Zirknitz, says I like to dress like a baby at 33 because I abandoned my girlfriend and newborn son when I was 18. I think that’s simplistic and predictable. I believe you can like something for no reason, or at least no significant reason. Milly and the boy still live in Hull. I send cheques every month.

I’ve got my favourite xl onesie on. It’s black with yellow rings around the collar and arm- and legholes. It has a picture of a giraffe on it and I bought it on eBay for twenty-five dollars. The reason I picked it is that it reminds me of the home uniform of the Pittsburgh Penguins. I like dark colours. Nothing too flashy.

There are forty-six baby outfits in my closet. You can afford to indulge a little bit when you’re a highly paid human-rights consultant. I help people challenge mistreatment at the hands of the municipal, provincial and federal governments. Right now I’m working on the case of a refugee who’s a part-time postal worker. She was sexually harassed—a pair of managers ganged up on her in the postal-sortation plant at the end of the night shift. I hate this kind of unspeakable bullshit and I am very good at avenging it. We are going to win this case.

I’m moving out of this dungeon in a month; I just gave Kate my notice this morning. But some things can’t wait. My adult-sized crib was delivered this morning. I didn’t see it till after dinner time because I was meeting the lawyers in Avizeh’s case. It took me two hours to put the gorgeous contraption together, including an interruption from that meathead Sean. But I followed the instructions, and it holds my weight. I’m laying in it right now. I’ve got two rooms down here, in addition to my own bathroom. The living room looks like any seventies rec room, but the bedroom is my baby haven. I’ve managed to keep that obnoxious goon from stepping too far onto my turf. Kate’s father used to leave me alone. He was a very polite man.

I used to think I took a basement apartment because of shame or guilt about my adult-baby lifestyle. I started to see Zirknitz in an effort to sort through those feelings. What a waste of time. The old fool thinks everything in my life—my relationship to my mother, my choice of employment, my thoughts on my own penis size—ties into my life as an ab. I think it’s all bullshit. I’m moving into an expensive condo; I can afford it. So what if the movers balk at moving a crib that holds a man who’s five-nine and weighs 205? I don’t need to hide. I do, however, need my diaper changed.

A trio of firm knocks on the door. Perfect timing.

Kate had missed her period for the first time in a long, long time. Nineteen days late. She was usually like clockwork.

“How was the flight, Dad?” Auckland to Sydney. For a funeral.

“Long, Kat. The movie made me cry. I’m not up for this.” Over Skype from his hotel room, Kate’s father’s voice had a computerized texture to it, like the chorus of Styx’s “Mr Roboto.” He had dated a man from Sydney for a year but it didn’t work out. David was a very large man and one day he just didn’t wake up. This would be the first time her father had seen him since the breakup. She didn’t know whether to pray for a closed casket or an open one. At very least, a sturdy one.

“I’m sorry.” Kate was organizing a pile of financial ledgers while she talked. As she put the top half of the stack down, the phone cord strummed against her left nipple. It felt sore.

“I could use some good news for a change, that’s for sure.”

She took this as her prompt. “I think I might be pregnant.”

His voice sped up, rattling off questions without waiting for reply. “Are you sure? How do you feel? Do you want to keep it? I didn’t think Sean had it in him. Always figured that dick was shooting blanks.”

“I’m not sure.” Kate fanned herself with a balance sheet off her desk. The central air was on the fritz again. She had asked Sean to take a look, but she would just call the repair guys herself later today.

Her father’s voice cracked. “I love you, Katty. Whatever you want to do, I support you. I love you so much…” The impending funeral, she thought. That’s why he’s over-emotional. She decided to pick up a pregnancy test. And make a doctor’s appointment.

“Feel better, Dad. Call me again after the service, okay?”

Kate traced in her mind the times she’d messed around recently. Sean’s brother Danny had put it in for a few strokes before she’d got a condom on him. Kate put the phone down and sat her client’s financial papers back on the desk. She needed to get outside. A walk to the bank. Get the rent cheque and deposit it. She walked down stairs and knocked three times on Les Montague’s door.

Sean’s last client was a plump lady named Mitsuyo who worked for the government. She came to Modern Fitness on her flex hours and Sean put Mitsuyo through her paces. The elliptical machine, an increasing number of push-ups. She would never be a supermodel, but he watched as a seed of new confidence germinated within her. That’s what made Sean feel good.

He wore his gym shorts and tank home. Christ was it humid. The front door was cracked when he got there. Got to deal with that busted central air, Sean thought. He wondered if Kate could take a break. For the first time in ages, he felt horny. Maybe it was the heat. He was developing a visible, potent chub.

Sean picked up the handful of letters on the hallway table. Three for them and two for Les. He went downstairs to slide them under the door, but found it ajar. Sean poked his head inside, and was startled to hear the sound of a crying infant. “What the…”

The noise came from the corner bedroom. Not bothering to knock, Sean shoved the door and strode through the basement ducking his head for the low ceiling. Something was wrong. If Les is hurting a kid, I’ll strangle him. Sean’s rod stopped its earlier throb and his balls moved protectively upward. He knew something was sick about that guy. He pushed the bedroom door wide open.

The room smelled vaguely of fresh piss. Pastel blue walls festooned with a cartoon border: A recurring image of Spongebob Squarepants chased by an electric eel wearing a lime-coloured baseball cap. The balding freak knelt inside a gargantuan wooden bedstead, balancing himself on the frame atop the vertical slats, wearing an enormous black terrycloth jumper. Kate stood shirtless next to the Brobdingnagian crib with one breast cupped in her hand. Les Montague slowly lapped at her tender aureole with a long flat tongue. He paused mid-lick, and offered Sean an infantile simper.

Sean’s remnant semi-erection turned to sand in his shorts. Kate stood still, swiveling her neck at an acute angle to face him.

“I’m having a baby,” she said. “I don’t think it’s yours.”

Shawn Syms has completed a short-fiction collection and is currently at work on a novel. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, and his writing has appeared in nearly fifty publications including the Globe and Mail, National Post, Joyland, The Rumpus, PRISM international and the Winnipeg Review.

Leslie Vryenhoek is a writer, poet and communication consultant based out of Newfoundland. Her work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications. Leslie has received numerous awards for her poetry, fiction and memoirs including the Winston-Collins Descant Best Canadian Poem 2010 prize, two provincial Arts and Letters Awards, the Eden Mills Festival Literary Competition and the Dalton Camp Award. Her two books Scrabble Lessons (fiction) and Gulf (poetry), both published by Oolichan Books, received a great deal of praise from the literary community. We recently spoke with Leslie about her work, literary contests, and the idea of plot versus character.

This Magazine: You took second place in our Great Canadian Literary Hunt back in 2009 as well as third in 2006, how has that helped your career?

Leslie Vryenhoek: The 2006 showing was one of my first published poems, so it was a real shot in the arm. Both poems—Stuck and My Parents’ Past—were published last year in a collection called Gulf (Oolichan Books).

LV: Since Gulf was published, I’ve been working on finishing and revising a novel—my first attempt at the interminable form—but I keep getting distracted by ideas for screenplays that keep appearing out of nowhere. So a lot of sketching out ideas, and then wading back in to wrestle the beast I’ve tentatively titled Doubtful Accounts.

LV: At the very least, they usually come with a subscription to a good publication, which it is important to read. And maybe if you win, a few bucks. But most importantly, literary contests have deadlines—they make you finish something. Also, they help up and coming writers get used to soul-crushing disappointment. It’s never too soon to start on those callouses.

LV: Write the best thing you can write, not what you think the judges might want. That said, read the damn rules and follow them.

LV: Whoa, that’s like asking What’s more important: arms or legs, love or sex, coffee or vodka … Character is essential for driving a plot, but the things that happen, plotwise. necessarily develop the character. They are equally crucial.

Worry no more!

This Magazine has enlisted Natalie Zina Walschots (Thumbscrews and DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains), and Dani Couture, (Algoma, Sweet, and Good Meat). Together, they’ll walk you through a 101-style workshop on the craft of writing and the business of writing. You’ll hear tips and walk away with tools for finding ideas, dealing with the ubiquitous writer’s block, making writing routine, and pushing creative boundaries. You’ll also find out how to get an agent, whether you even need one, how to promote yourself, plus how today’s top Canadian writers got their start. We’ll also give you the chance to ask those burning questions and make sure you leave with a head full of resources.

The workshop fee is $25.00 and space is limited so register today! You must register to attend. To register please visit http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3868031386

The workshop will be held Wednesday July 11, 2012 from 6:00-9:00 pm at #408-401 Richmond St W, Toronto, ON.

For more information please contact publisher@thismagazine.ca or 416-979-9429.

Jennifer and her bird Antonia

Jennifer Lovegrove is the author of two collections of poetry, I Should Have Never Fired the Sentinel (2005) and The Dagger Between Her Teeth (2002). Her work has been featured in a number of Canadian publications including Taddle Creek, The Fiddlehead, Sub-Terrain and This Magazine. We recently sat down with the former Great Canadian Literary Hunt judge to discuss her work, writing contest and workshops.

This Magazine: You recently had a couple poems published in This Magazine (Jan/Feb 2012), what else have you been working on lately?

Jennifer Lovegrove: Yes, This Magazine recently published my poems “Squall” and “Stove,” which was an honour; This is my favourite magazine and has been for a long time. Those two are from a batch of poems that I’ve been working on for the last year or so. It didn’t start out as a series or anything, but I see some thematic and aesthetic links in the poems now, and now I’d say they’re part of a manuscript in progress. My novel – Watch How We Walk – is coming out next year, and I’m on the verge of another rewrite – the last one before I hand it over to my editor. I promise! There are a few other bits and pieces of projects that may or may not evolve into other forms; too soon to say. Also, I am resurrecting my lit-zine dig. – 2013 will see its thirteenth issue, so writers, send me your poems and stories.

JL: Well, it was a few years ago, so I don’t remember all the details, but yes, it was tough, but an enjoyable challenge. My fellow judges (David O’Meara and Mark Truscott) and I narrowed it down to a shortlist we agreed upon and then via email, we discussed and debated the top few and eventually settled on winners. We had great discussions about our poetic values and priorities and preoccupations and how these fit into the process.

Terence Young in Ciutadella

Terence Young was the poetry winner in our first ever Great Canadian Literary Hunt back in 1996. Since then, he has gone on to publish a number of boo,ks and poetry including The Island in Winter which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in 1999. Currently living in Victoria B.C., Young teaches English and creative writing at St. Michaels University School. He is also the co-founder of the Clearmont Review, an international literary journal for young writers. We recently spoke with Terence about literary contests, teaching and the Canadian literary scene.

This Magazine: It has been awhile since you were featured in This Magazine, so could you let us know what you’ve been up to recently?

Terence Young:It’s only natural to look at the fate of the music industry (why would anyone ever put those two words together?) and apply it to issues current in publishing. Books are going the way of the CD, some say. There are ongoing cuts to periodicals – witness the changes to the Canadian Magazine Fund – and, while e-books are really handy, their links to large corporate distributors also represent a threat to independent book stores and, consequently, to small presses whose works probably don’t appear as e-books.  Recently, author Seth Godin advised new writers not to expect to make a living as a writer, that they had no right to, not unless they were prepared to market themselves and their books seriously in a variety of social media, even to the point of giving their books away for free. So, we’re in for some interestingly rough weather, I think, in the coming decade, in Canada and elsewhere, while we all try to sort these things out. That doesn’t mean there aren’t talented, ambitious Canadian writers, dedicated to their craft and eager to find readers. I’d name a few, but I just know I would neglect some people in my list, and I would hate them to think I didn’t consider them among the vanguard of new voices. That said, the real test of most committed writers is whether they allow all the gloom and doom to discourage them, or learn to ignore it and just get about doing the business they love, which is to write. In that regard, the Canadian literary scene is doing fine, in BC, the prairies and in the East. Just pick up a copy of The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review Event, The New Quarterly, Grain, Prism, This Magazine, or any of a dozen other journals to see how vibrant and vital Canadian writing is.

This: You were the winner of the first annual Great Canadian Literary Hunt for poetry in 1996, what did that do for your career?

TY: I don’t really have a “career,” or at least not one as a writer who supports himself from his work. But winning the contest for poetry certainly inspired me to continue assembling my first collection of poems, which I submitted the following year to Signal Editions in Montreal. I was happy to see it nominated for the Governor General’s award in 1999, but it’s always nice to remember that This Magazine saw merit in my writing a few years before. This Magazine’s enthusiasm for the poem I submitted, and later for my fiction, is a strong contributing factor to my confidence as a writer and my faith that, every once in a while, I can get it right.

This: I understand you teach English and creative writing, what advice do you give to students trying to find their way onto the literary scene?

TY: Times are changing for young writers these days. Now, there are many good online literary magazines like Dragnetmag.net, to which they can send there work, as well as to the veterans of the publishing scene like This Magazine and even my own periodical, The Claremont Review, now in its 21^st year. These venues are vital to cultivating the “farm league” of writers, who will become Canada’s literary establishment in the years to come. So, my best piece of advice to young writers is to study the periodicals to which they want to send their work and to read widely and voraciously as well. The only really consistently strong writing teacher is the literature itself, and any aspiring writer who isn’t interested in reading other writers is probably not going to be successful.

This: What’s your take on the current literary scene in Canada?

TY: It’s only natural to look at the fate of the music industry (why would anyone ever put those two words together?) and apply it to issues current in publishing. Books are going the way of the CD, some say. There are ongoing cuts to periodicals—witness the changes to the Canadian Magazine Fund—and, while e-books are really handy, their links to large corporate distributors also represent a threat to independent book stores and, consequently, to small presses whose works probably don’t appear as e-books.

Recently, author Seth Godin advised new writers not to expect to make a living as a writer, that they had no right to, not unless they were prepared to market themselves and their books seriously in a variety of social media, even to the point of giving their books away for free. So, we’re in for some interestingly rough weather, I think, in the coming decade, in Canada and elsewhere, while we all try to sort these things out.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t talented, ambitious Canadian writers, dedicated to their craft and eager to find readers. I’d name a few, but I just know I would neglect some people in my list, and I would hate them to think I didn’t consider them among the vanguard of new voices. That said, the real test of most committed writers is whether they allow all the gloom and doom to discourage them, or learn to ignore it and just get about doing the business they love, which is to write. In that regard, the Canadian literary scene is doing fine, in B.C., the prairies and in the East. Just pick up a copy of The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review Event, The New Quarterly, Grain, Prism, This Magazine, or any of a dozen other journals to see how vibrant and vital Canadian writing is.

This: What value do you put on literary contest for young writers?

TY: I’m all for contests, especially now that the revenues generated from many contests help to support our community of small magazines. I know from my own experience with The Claremont Review that a contest is indispensable with regard to our survival. Contests also generate a buzz about writing, and, especially if the contest is genuinely “blind,” they can bring to light new voices. Every contest is a kind of yardstick, one that conforms to the tastes and aesthetic preferences of the judges, but it is my experience from having judged a few contests, myself, that serious consideration is always given to the quality of the writing, no matter what style it is written in.

Photo credit: Chris Buck

Sheila Heti currently has five books to her name. Most recently, she released How Should A Person Be?: A Novel from Life in 2012. Last year, her novel  The Chairs Are Where the People Go, was selected by The New Yorker as one of its Best Books of 2011. Aside from writing novels, Heti works as the interviews editor with the Believer and has had her work featured in a number of publications including, The New York Times, n+1 and Mcsweeney’s. We recently caught up with Sheila Heti to talk about her work and get some insight into what it takes to be a writer.

This Magazine: It’s been a while since you were featured in This Magazine, could you let our readers know what you’ve been up to lately?

Sheila Heti: I’ve been writing and living in Toronto. Over the past seven years I worked on three books, one with my friend Misha Glouberman—sort of spoken essays— and a novel, and a children’s book. These past two years much my time was taken up with publishing them—publishing takes up a lot of time. I’ve also been working at The Believer as its interviews editor, and conducting interviews with writers and artists.

This: You’ve had your work featured in some amazing publications such as McSweeney’s, Geist, Maisonneuve and The New York Times—just to name a few. What’s the secret to getting published?

SH: I don’t think there’s a secret. But I think it’s useful to keep in mind what people who get what they want look like. For instance, think about people who want to get married. Those who approach it with a kind of all-or-nothing desperation, tend to not end up married, or if they do, it doesn’t look quite right. But those who know what they want but are preoccupied with other things—who want what they want but are also able to leave it alone—those end up being the people to whom desired things come. Nothing and no one likes being hunted. At the same time, don’t be shy. I accept pitches from unpublished or unknown writers all the time at The Believer. And don’t get bitter about rejections, ever. Transform whatever bad feelings you might have into useful feelings; you should never feel ashamed about a rejection.

This: What is your take on the current literary scene here in Canada?

SH: I have no answer. I haven’t been paying that much attention. My reading is all over the place, not centered on contemporary Canadian writing, and I don’t follow what’s happening with the book prizes or book gossip.

This: What advice would you give to the young writers out there trying to make it in such a tough industry?

First of all, the industry is none of your business. If someone starts talking about the book business, walk away. Focus your attention on reading and writing. And be serious about it. It’s not such a tough industry that no books are being published.

Also, a writer doesn’t need fifty editors to like their stuff—so don’t go around frantically collecting supporters. It’s almost better if you can find one or two or three editors who are genuinely passionate about you and your work. Then, if you find those people, hang on to those relationships. Even if it’s the editor of a tiny magazine that no one really reads, if that’s an intelligent person, either one day people will read that magazine, or that person will end up working somewhere where they can publish your work to a bigger audience. Take care of these relationships—don’t always be looking over their shoulder like you’re at a party. If a few times a year, these people tell you that your work is meaningful and good, that can go a long way, and these people can push you to write better. It’s beneficial for them, too, to be able to feel like they nurtured you. That’s something editors want to do.

This: We are currently running our 16^th annual Great Canadian Literary Contest. What value would you put on literary contests for a young writer?

SH: Probably it doesn’t hurt and may bring you money and some attention. But it’s much more important to cultivate relationships with a few people who are really smart, who can be honest and kind and critical of your work.

To learn more about Sheila Heti and her work you can check out her website at www.sheilaheti.net.

So I thought about making a visit to Lester’s place. I hadn’t seen him for about two years or so, and there was a possibility I might be persona non grata with him. But I decided I would give it a try. How bad could it be?

When I called, trying to sound casual and jovial, I identified myself and asked if I could come by at 6:30. The conversation was strictly codified, as was required, and he answered loudly, with a nervous energy I remembered all too well.

“JEEZ MAN I THOUGHT YOU DIED!”

Because it had been a while, I worried for a moment that I wouldn’t remember how to get there. But, as I walked up the modest North End street, memories of previous visits started to float into my head, and, when I walked in, greeted by his big, affable white pointer dog, Smiley, I had my own so-called Proustian rush.

“GET IN GET IN GET IN!”

He quickly ushered me into his living room, looking over my shoulder, wild-eyed. I experienced his handsomeness, his charisma all over again, and considered that most visits to his place were memorable in one way or another.

In his characteristically breathless fashion, he told me a story of woe. Just last week, he said, two rookie teenagers broke into his place and a neighbour had noticed and called the cops.

“IT’S THAT FUCKING LITTLE BROWN BUGGER ACROSS THE STREET ALWAYS WATCHING ME!”

It turned out that two huge cops had rushed into Lester’s place, complete with an aggressive German shepherd that terrified Smiley, and nabbed the horrified teenage boys on the spot. But the interior of Lester’s place, of course, left an indelible impression on the cops: weigh scales, bags of processed marijuana, spectacular adult plants under expensive electric lighting, and Lester’s real signature touch, dozens of rifles lined up against the wood-panelled walls in almost every room.

The prospect of returning to jail again, maybe soon, was giving Lester an extra shading of anxious energy and a keen appreciation of the luxurious freedom of the present moment.

I was seated by the front window at a big table piled high with an archive of videotapes on war and warfare, when we received a surprise visitor. Fred exploded through the doorway from the front porch; he was an old comrade, it seemed. I’d never met him before.

Fred was really gigantic. I guess maybe he weighed about 350 pounds—not exactly fit but certainly robust—and he was outfitted for effect, in cowboy boots, ancient jeans, and an inadequate black T-shirt with a flashy picture of a vintage car on the front.

He locked eyes on me with an unfathomable kind of enthusiasm, and I recalled the comments of an unknown narrator from some TV nature program, musing on outmoded concepts of dominance and submission. He kept his eyes on me while he wheezingly announced the generous purpose of his visit. He had delivered a gift to Lester’s porch, a deluxe car-stereo system he’d miraculously acquired only moments before. Hence the breathlessness.

Lester yelled out, “HAVE A BEER! YOU TOO—HAVE A BEER!”

Normally, I don’t drink at all, because I risk suffering punishing migraines as a result, but some primal instinct suggested it would be wiser to agree with pretty much anything in this unfolding ritual of male bonding.

So I had a beer. And another. And another.

Soon I was trying to navigate the suddenly tricky route to Lester’s toilet, at the back of his small house. When I returned, staggering a bit, I found Lester and Fred laughing extravagantly while they discussed different strategies, almost like conducting a workshop, on How To Strangle People.

Fred, nodding enthusiastically, wiping tears of mirth from his red and bleary eyes as Lester pantomimed, holding his own throat in his two hands and flailing around.

“YOU KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE, WHEN THEIR EYES ARE SO FAR BACK IN THEIR SKULLS, AND YOU CAN SEE EVERY FILLING IN THEIR MOUTHS, THEY’RE COUGHING AND COUGHING…”

Me, nodding numbly, trying to pretend I know what it’s like (“Isn’t that the way!”).

Me, trying to figure out how to desperately slip out, hopefully with my herbal quarry, at the moment when Fred took his turn, moving like Godzilla toward the Little Boys’ Room, where I think he just peed in the general direction, from the hallway.

When he returned, Fred opted to sit right next to me. He started in on another workshop effort—How To Break Doorknobs—that became unnecessarily performative, involving him leaning his T-shirted bulk in my face and cracking his well-used knuckles over my head, his T-shirt lifting to reveal an expansive and hairy torso.

At this point, Lester generously suggested we switch from beer to whiskey and, with a dramatic flourish, produced three big tumblers that he filled (four fingers?) with a golden whiskey of some sort. I realized that the current drinking ritual required a kind of staring contest between me and Fred—who had locked eyes on me again, without blinking—while I obediently swallowed the evil quantity in one big gulp, following my example, staring unblinkingly at Fred.

For me, things sort of went dark at this moment. I remember attempting again to find the increasingly elusive toilet.

When I returned, I noticed that Fred’s mood had taken a surly turn, and he was confiding ominously to Lester about his problems with his girlfriend.

“That fucking bitch is going to pay BUT GOOD…”

Again, I didn’t have anything useful to offer to the conversation, and from my foggy perception of things, I became somehow aware that Fred had drifted out of the front room and out of the house like an angry thundercloud, while he muttered to remind Lester about the windfall of the car-stereo system waiting on the porch.

Lester took his turn, then, to visit the toilet, and even he had difficulty locating it. While he did this, I nervously phoned home, asking my boyfriend if he could pay for it if I arrived home in a taxi.

“Sorry,” he said lackadaisically, “I don’t really have any cash on me. I’d have to go out to a bank machine.”

I felt nonplussed by this, and then Lester yelled in my ear:

“DON’T WORRY, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE, I’LL DRIVE YOU!”

Soon we were in Lester’s pickup truck, with Smiley sitting happily between us in the cab, me holding both Lester’s open bottle of beer and also my own, while we moved swiftly down McPhillips. We swerved into a gas bar complete with convenience store, where a young boy was having difficulty dealing with four vehicles at the same time, and a number of irate customers.

Suddenly I noticed that Lester was inside the convenience store, raging up and down the aisles, gesturing dramatically with his arms in the air, yelling at somebody for some reason.

I remember that I spoke aloud to myself at that moment.

“Lester, what the fuck are you doing?”

And I saw that the overwhelmed gas jockey was staring candidly at me then, talking to myself in the truck’s cab and holding two open beers.

Then we were on the road again, loaded up with chips and chocolate bars on the seat between us, where Smiley sat, panting. Lester started on an angry tirade a
t this point, complaining about many specific things and then life’s injustice in general. I listened, somewhat numbly, to his rant, until I noticed that we seemed to be headed for the outskirts of the city, instead of Fort Rouge—and my apartment.

I mumbled something to Lester, in sympathy with his rantings, and he turned sharply away from the road, studying me. He did a classic double take and his features registered genuine surprise.

“IT’S YOU!”

For a moment, it seemed, he had completely forgotten who was in the truck with him, and in his mind’s eye he figured he was driving home with some other friend, some other customer.

It appeared it was my task to make him remember who I was. And also, I suppose, to convince him that I was the type who deserved a ride home.

Doug Melnyk is the author of two provocative books of fiction, Naked Croquet and Doctor Meist, and his video art is included in the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other public collections. His recent visual art projects Moving (aceartinc, Winnipeg) and Adam & Steve (Forest City Gallery, London, Ontario, and AKA Gallery, Saskatoon), influenced by Bruce Bagemihl’s book Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, attempt to situate queer sexuality in the context of popular ideas of nature. This Magazine literary editor Stuart Ross flung some questions to Doug at his home in Winnipeg.

You draw, write, make audio and video art, and do performance pieces. What unifies your work in all these disciplines?

What unifies the work is storytelling. The story is the heart of the thing for me, even if the narrative is a non-linear one, like most of my writing in Naked Croquet. In visual art projects, like the installation Adam & Steve, in which the gallery is covered with a procession of tiny animal drawings, the two men meet under palm trees for a kiss. There’s a certain sense of a story—like, what happened before the kiss? And what will happen afterward?

Smiley may be the hero of “My Last Visit to Lester’s,” and animals figure in much of your other work. Plus, you’ve got a dog, a rat, a couple of cats at home—what’s the deal?

I am obsessed with the life stories of the many creatures I live with. In the case of rats, who have a ridiculously short lifespan, the whole story plays itself out within 18 months or two years. Sad—and also humbling.

Has Lester ever shot a man in Reno just to watch him die?

Lester is actually my Siamese cat, who does enjoy Johnny Cash music, but he’s really a pacifist who lives only for love.

Does Winnipeg as a city influence your art?

Winnipeg has always influenced me as an artist because the community is so supportive and diverse. Many artists move from one discipline to another, finding loyal audiences will follow them, and mixed-media collaborations occur all the time. Because we are so isolated, we feel we have to make it all happen by ourselves.

What do you do when you’re not making art?

My boyfriend and I like to stay up all night long watching TV. Sometimes he will bake a pie in the middle of the night, and we will eat the whole thing at 3 a.m.