On Running, Laughing and Porn.

I was so zoned out during my run this morning that it took a noise from a car to startle me into realizing – to my great horror – that I was smiling. What’s this, then? Could I possibly be feeling better?

Nothing in my life has materially changed. In fact, I made some decisions last week that are likely to make me materially poorer! So, what’s to be happy about?! As I frantically searched my trusty internal depression catalogue for a quick fix, I could have sworn I heard my grandma Rose’s voice say, “Enough with the depression already!” This, of course, is impossible, because Rose was always overweight and could never have kept up with me. Also, she’s dead. But even more accurately, my grandma Rose would never have used the word depression because on my father’s side of the family we didn’t use fancy words like that. She would have said, “here, eat more chicken, bubbula” which I would gladly have done then and there because her breaded chicken was so freaking good it made chickens want to eat it!

OK, that’s gross. And maybe even depressing – what will become of us when animals long to munch on their own flesh? – but before I can follow that trail towards my familiar dark woods of scary stories, a funny thought pushes its way into my consciousness the way only a Caspari thought can, its genetic force (from my mother’s side of the family) expressing itself like a well-worn battle cry: “Look at me! Look at me!”

When I lost my virginity, my grandpa Peter (Caspari) sent me a dozen red roses. How did he know I lost my virginity? Because I called him in Florida and told him. True to form, he responded by yelling at me (he was partially deaf), “It’s about bloody time!” This reaction might lead you to think I popped my cherry at some ripe old age like 39. Try subtracting 20 years from that, which gives you an age which, for a bourgeois, Bauhaus-trained architect who had reached his own sexual prime at 12 in 1930’s-uber-liberal Berlin, would have appeared uber late by his standards. Perhaps you’re curious as to why I told him at all. Well, not for the obvious reason that the Casparis don’t understand the concept of conversational taboo, so why not take advantage? Despite the fact that I have spent years on knees praying for a Catholic conversion to put an end to Caspari honesty practices so ill-conceived they have been known to devastate vital organs, like hearts and lungs; and despite the fact that my grandfather was not an easy man, not by a long shot; and despite the fact that his off-the-charts entitlement behaviours combined with a full complement of sexual proclivities that would make porn blush, I told him not because I could but because I’m a Caspari. I told him coz I needed to yell at someone who would get it, “Look at me! Look at me!!!”

My grandfather and I had a tempestuous relationship we both enjoyed immensely. I thought he was a bully and he thought I was a bitch. He was a misogynist who tried to “feminize” me, and I was a militant feminist who took aim at his ideological balls. And those were the salad days of our connection. My grandfather was a physically imposing man with hands the size of Yeti paws and a roar to knock you down from a hundred yards. After my grandma Erica died, though, grandpa Peter shrunk to half his size, losing his most worthy opponent, a woman with a primness so sharp she could pin you to the wall in a single pedantic stroke. To wit:

Erica: “Would you like more chicken, Liz?”

Liz: “No, thank you, grandma, I’m fine.”

Erica: “I didn’t ask you how you are feeling, I asked if you wanted more chicken.”

There’s no way I could be married to that. Yet her 60-odd year relationship with my grandfather thrived on exactly that kind of gauntlet throwing. Kindness would have killed their relationship faster than her bad cooking. So when Erica died, I could see Peter would need fresh blood. I decided that once a week I would gallantly park my crusty feminist and ride the silver bullet to his castle (read: I took public transit across hell’s half acre – High Park to Laurence Park -- then rode up a shiny elevator to his well-appointed penthouse door). In his larger-than-my-apartment kitchen, I prepared him a delectable and safe-to-eat meal (Erica did not cook so much as play salmonella roulette].

While my grandfather could still drive (100 in the city, 100 on the highway, stop sings = a suggestion only), he “drove” us to the movies after dinner. On one such occasion, we saw a film starring Helen Hunt and Jack Nicolson in which Jack plays a rich self-centred recluse who is also a colossal prick. An unexpected combo, I know, but he pulled it off convincingly. And I think my grandfather enjoyed him very much. Helen Hunt, on the other hand, played – surprise! – a smart single mother brimming with integrity and patience as she tries desperately to raise funds to pay her mounting medical bills thanks to her sickly son who, if memory serves, was on the death’s doorstep. At any rate, HH and JN clash at first, of course, but over time she humanizes him and, by way of returning the favour, he falls in love with her and foots her medical bills so that her son may live! I tried very hard not to imagine them having sex. HH and JN, that is.

In the parking lot after the movie, as my grandfather fumbled for his keys while each of us stood outside our respective car doors waiting for them to open, both of us lost in our private thoughts, or so I thought, Peter suddenly reared his head and sailed his this little nugget across the gleaming white rooftop of his Cadillac towards my unsuspecting ears: “that woman was a real BITCH!” He meant Helen Hunt, of course, whose character had been nothing short of spotless.

. . . .

And for one dangerously-close-to-postal moment, I fell for it . My heart rate skyrocketed, blood spilled out of my ears and every single invective I have ever suppressed tripped over every other invective in a race to be the first out of my mouth to bitch slap the man. But something in me quietly suggested I look up instead. So I did. And what I saw was a crumpled old man leaning on his cane, looking like a five-year-old boy drowning his grandfather’s suit, smugly eyeing me with an unmistakable look of victory. Like I said, I almost bought it. Except that for the first time in our relationship I saw something I had not previously noted. It was that the victory was not his, and it never had been. It was ours. Peter was baiting me, but he was baiting me for the same reason a fifth grader baits another fifth grader: because he liked me, and because he wanted me to like him back. “Look at me! Look at me!”

It’s been 40 minutes of running and I’ve reached High Park. My breath is coming fast now, like an anxiety attack, which makes me think of Costa Rica, where my family is going in January to attend a cousin’s wedding. And when I say my family I mean my entire extended family – one mother, two brothers, their two wives, two nephews, one aunt, one uncle, two cousins, the girlfriend of one cousin, and the fiancé of the other – i.e. the wedding party. OK, so “extended” is a tad hyperbolic, but believe me we make up for lack in numbers with largess of personality. It’s the Caspari side. Lest you think a personality fest sounds like good times, trust me when I say it’s not. As for Costa Rica, I love to sweat it out on a beach like I love to bathe in Epsom salts after an attack by a rogue band of quill-releasing porcupines. While its true that reading all day long is most definitely my bag, exposing my white, rash-prone skin to blistering, rash-inducing heat with the only options for relief being an overly chlorinated, peed-in pool filled with wealthy drunks, or a salty ocean naturally exfoliating my 3rd degree burns, is not my bag at all. It’s not even my change purse. And because I’m not a drinker (or, at least, not yet), planning for a week of obliterating intoxication would require planning, which just seems like too much work for a holiday. But when a close family member proposes to pay for this fun family fiesta, I am the first one to throw in the towel and call uncle.

When this same family member subsequently informed me, however, that I not only had to pay for my single supplement but for hers as well since my state of singledom combined with my refusal to share a room was the cause of increased costs, (I had no idea being single was now considered a fineable crime!), I shouted down the e-mail, “I don’t even want to be on this shitty planet, nevermind going to fucking Costa fucking Rica!” OK, I was in a suicidal depression at the time, which she could not have known. I mean, who can really decipher mixed messages such as “I’m suicidally depressed” and “the only reason I am not killing myself is because it would kill you.” To her credit, however, she did snap out of her single-supplement stupour long enough to write me an e-mail claiming that my life would surely improve (though she never explained how), lulling me into the false belief that she cared for my well being after all. In a reciprocal show of good faith, I told her I’d stay with her during my visit to Ottawa a few days later, believing, as I never give up believing, that if I did something nice it would transform our relationship into the loving connection I have always dreamed of.

Here’s what really happened: I travelled across the province (you try taking the train from Toronto to Ottawa), and arrived to inhospitality dressed up as two sleeping options – sharing a bed (um . . .NOT!) or, sleeping on the pull-out couch. The couch won. But just before bed I was told that the couch could not actually be pulled out into a bed because the feet of the couch would leave indents in the carpet, thus affecting the condo’s resale value down the road in, like, 10-15 years. A sane person would have booked into a hotel. Not I. Always the first to volunteer a liberal sprinkling of salt in my self-inflicted wounds, I slept on the couch – a full foot too short for me – and wallowed in my suffering until the next night when I was given a real bed at my brother’s house and had to surrender to comfort.

This story might sound depressing to some of you, but I swear to god it made me laugh on my run this morning. Time really is the great healer. That I laughed in order not cry is beside the point.

As I hit the home stretch of my run, the muscles in my legs begging for mercy, I thought about the time at grad school near the end of my degree when I was studiously avoiding my studio, and battling a bout of loneliness so destabilizing I had started talking to my feta cheese at mealtime, commending it on its dual achievement of pseudo-crunchy texture and sweet flavour while also yielding a soft-yet-salty presence that transformed my daily single supplements into 5-star events.

Just to mix things up a little, I decided to distract myself with a small side project: a wee photomontage featuring a day in the life of me and my vibrator. There was the picture of us relaxing with the Sunday papers after a delightful brunch. And the picture of us laughing in the living room at some witticism I had tossed out . And the picture of us spooning in bed before we fell into a blissful sleep . . . I’d show you these pictures except that I don’t want to expose myself. Because the truth is, I’m cheap: I own the world’s most bargain-basement sexual aid, after one’s own hand, that is, which I would gladly use to save a few pennies on batteries, but I can’t shake this feeling that relying on my own devices is tantamount becoming a fallen aristocrat forced into manual labour. The vibrator allows me to convince myself that someone else, like a stable boy, is attending to my needs. And I prefer the stable boy because despite his lowly social status, which makes him an impossible marriage prospect, he helps me forget that I’m servicing myself with a cheap, cold, hard plastic un-penis that has a pallor so beige that even beige would find it beige. No one needs to see that colour of beige. It’s obscene.

A friend of mine recently had the supremely brilliant idea of writing an investigative report about the range of vibrators on the market today, and, therefore, the supreme luck of being the recipient of a giant box of every imaginable vibrator being manufactured. And to my great good luck, she had the supreme generosity to send me the Cadillac of vibrators, The Rabbit – an object I never dreamed I could own because it’s way out of my snack bracket. (And because I believe that my hard-earned cash should only be spent on necessities, like boots.) My friend must have thought my old vibrator had bit the dust in my apartment fire. Selfishly, I did not disabuse her of this belief, even though I was out of the country when the fire broke and I had my crappy vibrator with me, because a) I wanted the rabbit, b) I wanted the rabbit, and c) I wanted the rabbit.

I am sad to report, however, that after taking the rabbit for a test drive, I had to admit defeat: in the end, the rabbit was too rich for my blood. I may come from privilege, but I have grown up with a poverty mentality that impedes my ability to enjoy what the privileged enjoy, i.e. all manner of too muchness. The vibration was too strong; the deep aubergine hue too purple; the width too girthy (I know, I know, a problem most of us would love to have!) So now the rabbit sits atop my bureau as a sculptural piece, which it is. Someone should give that industrial designer an award.

When my run was over, I was spent but happy. Kind of like how you feel after a good roll in the hay. Better, even, because I didn’t have to sooth anyone's ego afterward. And then I got to enjoy my stories again as I wrote and posted them on my blog, my favourite uni-directional form of Lizzing, a.k.a. Look at me! Look at me! While some would argue that a writer should keep her audience in mind at all times (“why are you subjecting me to your filthy porn?”), I would argue that I do just that. Writing is no different from self-pleasuring in this way: you must always imagine the perfect audience first; then you can expose yourself.