Monday’s Child Is Full of Rage

Monday's Child

Author: Unknown

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child must work for a living,

But the child that's born on the Sabbath day,

Is fair and wise and good and gay.

I don’t mind Monday as I know others do. Maybe that’s because I was born on a Monday. Swimming lessons used to be on Monday evenings and I used to love going. Dad and I would get home around 6pm which would leave us just enough time to have Lipton’s Alligator chicken noodle soup and bus up to the community centre. Because I loved school so much, Monday was a return to the passion and stimulation I couldn’t extract from the movies that baby-sat me on weekends.

According to the poem, Monday’s child is fair of face. While that may be true, if I could rewrite the poem to reflect my personality, I would start it Monday’s child is full of rage. I am. The smallest things set me off: they run the gamut from the irregularity of public transit to crowds, Facebook, negligent motorists and cyclists, people who don’t tip and s-l-o-w walkers.

I do a good job of keeping my rage under wraps most of the time but there are days when I just want to unleash the beast. I am not violent: my words are my weapons but on days the rage bubbles to the surface, I thank the stars I live alone with no one and nothing to kick or punch. However, I don’t think letting the rage simmer is healthy. I recently watched The Brood, a classic tale about psychological experimentation and the manifestation of rage. In this film, an angry woman, Nola, spawns featureless albino rage babies to wreak havoc on those people who have wronged her at some point. Included on Nola’s hit list are her mother, her estranged husband and her daughter. I identify with the distressed woman and would, if I could, spawn my own loving brood I could then lick clean of amniotic fluid (see film’s climax) and release into the world. Unfortunately, this is too fantastical to accomplish. Alas, I need an outlet.

The universe has recently sent a few options my way. Several of my new cyberpals, submissive men who want to be dominated, have messaged me on a dating website asking to be punished and humiliated. This outlet for my rage, though expertly timed and painfully convenient, seems a bit like a monkey’s paw. My fear is that once roused, my Ms. Hyde will then take over my consciousness and I will be doomed to skulk the earth as a whip-wielding thrasher hell bent on punishing these soft, psychologically damaged puppy dog men.

My compassion for the meek and my disdain for the arrogant and insufferable have prevented me from taking anyone up on their generous offers thus far. I’m not sure how long I can hold out. I do so love the look, feel and smell of leather and it, in turn, becomes me.

The Iceperson Cometh

This is my favourite time of year. I love the smell of late October, of leaves decaying and the promise, even though I am no longer a child, that soon my sweet tooth will be sated with an abundance of candy from friendly strangers. To me, Halloween is more than just a wanton display of slutdom in a Sexy (insert noun here) costume or the drunken and unapologetic pursuit of sexual gratification. It is my Christmas and I am not alone in feeling this way. But like the child who is surrounded by the carnage of unwrapped landfill on Christmas afternoon, I dread the monotony and malaise that accompanies the rest of winter.

As I watch nature blaze around me in a polychromatic blend of redorangeyellow, I can’t help but think of the entreaty of Mr. Dylan Thomas: Do not go gentle into that good night. As 2009 enters the mid-autumn of her existence, the time has come for her to burn and rave at close of day. In reverence of her, I intend to rock Halloween like a hurricane. Meanwhile, the impending winter nips at my heel like an untrained bourgeois house pet, taunting me about the fact that I don’t have anyone to hibernate with.

I appreciate that I am not the friendliest person. With limited cultivated interests and hobbies, it is difficult for me to meet people I have much in common with. I am severely lacking in cyberskill and the thought of online dating conjures images of lovelorn media geeks frittering their lives away on avatars, alternate universes and Trekathons. I should just get over myself. My friend Tracy assures me online dating is a numbers game. However, given her track record and the record of so many before her, a parade of unsuitable, unstable and emotionally irresponsible Messrs. Right Now sounds about as appealing as a bus tour through Western Canada with a cannibalistic seatmate.

I suppose that I have kept my wants and needs hidden from myself for a long time. What better place is there, I ask you, dear friends, but the public domain to expose a little bit of my soul? You can’t reap what you don’t sow, right Universe? So here it is, stripped bare, my shortlist. I am looking for someone who is active and does not tire easily. He must be possessed of a sharp wit, a refined sense of gallows humour and an appreciation for the macabre. He should be spicy and sweet (like me) and doting without being overbearing. Above all, he should be forthcoming and never keep me guessing about his motives or intentions. In return, he can expect loyalty, warmth, sparkling conversation and tons of affection. While I may be a battering ram of outspokenness to the thin-skinned, I am refreshingly candid to those who don’t care to have their words minced. And of course, I am frickin’ hi-LAR-ious.

So hopefully the Universe, a trickster of epic proportions who loves testing my reserve, will respond to this post by sending me a cosmic sign and soon. It gets dark outside too early these days and my hands are so cold. Have I mentioned that I make a mean fried chicken dinner?

Living Aboveground Is Extremely Underrated

Tonight marks the end of my third month in this apartment. I’d call it a monthiversary even though I know that’s an invented word blend. I hate douche bags that call things an n-month anniversary. A year has to pass for an event to qualify for an anniversary. Anni. From the Latin, annus, meaning, year. Buy a dictionary!

I digress.

Tonight feels like someone else lives here. It’s weird to feel like you’re subletting your own apartment. Living aboveground is extremely underrated and when I first moved in, I had difficulty adjusting to what most superterranean folks might take for granted (windows, daylight, hope). Comfort was foreign to me; I’d never felt comfortable in any place I’d ever lived before, including my childhood homes, due to the following shortlist of problems: mold, odorous roommates, a sinking power-of-sale house, an avian invasion, daily overhead circling of the wagons, and a stout little despot of a superintendant eager to take me to Fallsview Casino for “some fun.”

A garbage strike quickly robbed me of any comfort I may have felt. I had a fly problem that not even the encroaching spiders’ webs could solve. My living room doubled as the recycling holding area; there was a pile of cardboard that stacked up to two-thirds my height. The end of the month-plus-long strike met with a new inconvenience: physical evidence of loathsome mice that awakened the OCD sadist in me. I purged and bleached the kitchen and every morning since, I take the flashlight to inspect the countertop border that serves as the murine thoroughfare to god-knows-what, to see if there have been any midnight travelers on what Al McKinley would call the “Ventura Highway”. So far, I have found nothing, but there is no rest for the weary, friends. I have won the most recent battle of attrition but the war wages on.

Another hindrance to my happiness is the fact that I haven’t unpacked everything yet. Surprise, surprise. I always leave something in a box. I think it’s my inner nomad telling me not to get too comfortable in one place. I still have a moving box marked 2005 that hasn’t been opened since I moved into Zelda’s basement four years ago tomorrow. My inner nomad is a fierce See You Next Tuesday but I have faith that I’m slowly vanquishing my vagrant nature. While it’s true that my CDs haven’t seen the light of day in three months, I am perfectly comfortable basking in the setting sun atop my chaise. In fact, the piece of furniture I refer to as the European Vacation has done great work to make me and others feel welcome and at home. I have embraced the ideals of hospitality and I take great pride in hosting intimate cocktail and dinner parties. Ultimately, I’ve grown quite fond of the local colour that skulks by my window at any and all hours and there’s no end to my love for the ‘hood, which I refer to endearingly as Skagsville.

Perhaps I have finally made it home and should accept my discomfort with comfort as the last discomforting thing I have to overcome. Perhaps there’s hope at last for this restless wanderer.

Handbrakes For Life

I couldn’t bring myself to sell my bicycle. I smashed it up and decided to buy myself another one for my birthday. I took it up the street to sell to the repair shop but one look at the sad bikes for sale out front changed my mind. The thought of some local skid riding my bike of eight years made me cringe. “I can’t quit you now, bicycle,” I declared.  “We’ve had some tough times, and we’ve hurt each other really bad, and you’re really not worth it, but it’s not over between us yet.” Damn this sentimentalist gene of mine.

How did I smash it up, you may ask yourself? Fool that I am, I decided to take a shortcut. There I was, riding downhill eastbound on the Sterling Road bridge where College and Dundas diverge and there was nary a car in sight. The voice in my head piped up: Turn left. I should have heeded the advice of my best friend, Buck Stiles*, who once told me the only shortcut was failure. No, turn left, the voice repeated. So I did.

The road was bumpy, friends. My inner voice kept rooting for me: You can do it! You’re doing it! You’re … Streetcar tracks. Watch out. Oh my … GOD! Moments later, I found myself splayed grotesquely across the divergence like some Grade 10 Biology fetal pig. A do-gooder on a bicycle behind me asked me if I was okay. “I’m fine, thanks,” I sang in the cheeriest Sally Sunshine voice I could muster as I picked myself up and hobbled over to my bicycle. I set it aright and pushed but it wouldn’t move. A car approached and I scuttled to safety, endowed with the onerous tasks of carrying my bike while ensuring blood from my wounded elbow didn’t stain my sooty shirt.

I was more embarrassed than anything. I have no mechanical-savvy whatsoever and I was dismayed to discover that human touch does nothing to repair busted front brakes. I was angry and decided my vehicle needed to be punished. I locked it to the nearest post—that’ll learn ya—and continued on my way bruised, battered and filthy. I willed someone to steal it. No one did.  When I went back for my bicycle days later, I found it waiting ever faithfully in the rain. Brenda Lee sang on a loop in my head as I treated us to a cab ride home.

A sensible person would have gone home the night of the accident but I had a party to go to.  A gal committed is not a gal easily deterred.

So what did I learn from this experience other than that I have the stamina of a goat? Did the universe succeed in teaching me that risks only half-taken are self-destructive? Did my accident teach me humility and force me to realize I am vulnerable after all? In the words of Al McKinley, “The person who will get hurt the most should take the most care,” and I’m going to stay the eff off those g--d--streetcar tracks if it’s the last thing I do.

*Buck Stiles = alias