I recall the ducks of my youth. Big white things with yellow bills. These guys are small brown dirty-looking little faggots. They mock me. They're mock ducks. Anyway, I turn to go back to the house when it starts raining again. I love the rain. It's the middle of December and it's raining. I recall the precipitation of my youth. Snow and ice that soon turned black and crusty on the glacial pavement. Dangerous miserable hell. Once I slipped on a sliding ice patch on my way to school. You know those ice patches that would form on the sidewalk and kids would take a running start, slide from one end to the other. So I slid and fell over backwards and whacked my head down hard on solid ice. I got up and stood for a second. It was mid-day, bright, I was heading back to school after lunch my mom made me: meat loaf and french fries, my absolute favorite meal. Suddenly it got black as night with two streams of brightly coloured stars shooting outward from my eyes. I thought I'd died. It was a glorious sight but I knew I was one dead kid. But it passed. The day lit up, again, and I got along to school, believing in my heart that I'd certainly fucked up my brain for good. I was scared shitless. For days, weeks, months I waited to go berserk with a bashed brain. To disintegrate mentally and die a painful lunatic death. Eventually I forgot about it, I guess.

One day Sheldon Beckler and me were walking by the railroad tracks. We watched a train go by and as it passed us it emitted a blast of steam from under one of the cars. Sheldon told me that it was poison gas and that we were gonna die. I said I felt okay and he said it might take days or weeks but eventually it would kill us. I was nine or ten. It never occurred to me to wonder why trains would go around poisoning kids during peacetime. For days and weeks I was terrified, waiting to die a slow poison death.

He was a weird kid, anyway. His aim in life was to mug old ladies and just generally be a hooligan. Once we ran into his old man in an alley and he told him to fuck off and called him a jerk. I never heard anyone talk to a parent like that. I was completely impressed and disturbed. His dad looked pathetically at me, smiling this sick, lost, smile. I felt awful. I'd pay up to five bucks to find out where Sheldon Beckler is now.

I walk home, wet again. I go in the kitchen, stand by the red hot elements and pour more coffee. I stand in the kitchen all night long drinking cup after cup of black coffee. Really. My strength is as the strength of a hundred men. I never tire, I never sit. Caffeine for blood by now. By morning, despite no sleep and having stood in sopping clothes by a hot stove, all elements going redhot and even the oven on with open door, I feel like a million bucks, though I am very speedy and my mind is racing furiously. Barbara saunters in about eight, nightgowned and bleary-eyed and pours herself a cup. She says, "What happened to you last night and who're those guys in your room?" I'm so speedy her voice sounds like a 78 played at 16. Outside it's raining again, harder than ever. Sometimes, despite the fact that I like the winter rain, being far better than eastern weather, the relentless drizzle day after day can get on my nerves. But I love it when it pours like this. The roar of water everywhere, battering the roof, overflowing the gutters, biblical vengeance. One of my most memorable cinematic experiences was the part in The Illustrated Man that takes place entirely on the planet of constant, everlasting rain, two space travellers marooned there forever.

I look at Barbara standing there cute as a button in her paint splattered nightie. Paint on her arms, in her hair, on her face. For weeks now she's been painting everything in sight. Walls, furniture, old coffee tins. I'm afraid to move around in this place for fear of sticking to the walls. She waits for me to answer her query and I continue to stand there dumbstruck by lack of sleep and gallons of java. She shrugs and takes her cup to the living room where she puts on a Kate and Anna tape. This is not what I want to hear at this particular time so I go outside and lie down on the porch and once again surrender to the assaulting deluge, the earth beneath our house humming with nuclear decay.

I recall the nuclear nightmares of my youth. At the time I had no idea that that's what they were, but they were so vivid and frightening. The city's desolate and grey, no one in sight. There is a sickness in my brain as alone I wander. I go to the school, the yard is bleak and empty. No one's there but Witney Beamish. He appears calm, untroubled, as though he understands yet I am in an unknowing fog. The air is thick and grey, death is everywhere. I wake up, still sick in mind, alone at night in a dark room in a world I can't fathom. Not till many years later do I realize that I was just not getting enough to eat. I may be hypoglycemic or otherwise afflicted by some kind of blood-sugar disorder. I was a problem eater as a kid. I hated just about everything except meatloaf and fries. And sugar. I ate sweets constantly, even whole sugarcubes which we stocked for the grandparents tea. They'd suck a cube while sipping tea, that's how it worked. The sugar actually came in squares and my grandmother would sit there with an old sugarcube splitter that she brought from Russia, splitting each square into four cubes. And remember those erasers we had in school? Half pencil and half ink and neither worked? Or wooden Yo-yos? Bolo-bats? Anyway, for years I hardly ate and compounded my problems by addling my wits further with mega- doses of glucose. I'm lucky to be alive.

The rain keeps afalling. And now a howling wind adds to the mayhem. It's too much, even for me, so I go back inside to stand by the stove again. The McGariggle tape is over but I still hear singing, faintly, as if from a distant hotel for unwed mothers. I strain to hear. It's like the cry of snowbirds in a careless revery. It's like a dream of moondogs lost in time. It's like the cutting edge of being and nothingness. It's like wildebeest caught in a senseless trek 'cross the Serengeti with no money. Like ocelots dreaming of fireplaces on the Plains of Abraham. Like tenor saxes wailing on the frozen tundra in broad daylight. Like the angels of Russia weeping over innocent blood on a Saturday night. Like squares of sugar rolling off the assembly line in a factory in smokey Pointe St Charles. Like the luminous skin of Sylvia Gandy shining taut and naked in the rosy illumination of lights in a hallway in paradise. Like the sweet heavenly fragrance of Candy Lutz unclothed under covers in a bed in the basement maid's room with my hands on her perfect dainty breasts and crotch mystery while her mother broods and worries from the master bedroom upstairs and calls out, "Candy, Candy What're you doing?", and my cock fearful and won't rise and her eyes invisible behind the dark glasses.

I'm baffled. Am I crazy, finally? Hearing voices. Son of Sam. I go in the livingroom and they become less faint. I go to the window and look out at the appletree, bedecked now with inedible christmas lights where just weeks ago apples hung. No one's out there and even if there were they'd hardly be singing in this godawful theme park. Just a bleak wet vista brightened slightly by tiny coloured bulbs twinkling. I recall the yuletide ornaments of my youth. At home we could happily ignore the derangement of the christian citizens. But school was another matter altogether. No choice but to feign consent when sucked in to memorializing the birth of some kid who'd go on to inspire two thousand years of pogroms. We were aliens here, to be sure, but still had to kick in a couple of bucks for the class tree, though we were reviled by the uncircumcised ones who took our money. The fact that this upstart they were going apeshit over was one of us was beyond their grasp. That we had this holiday for three thousand yearsbefore the bastard's birth was likewise too deep to get. We not only paid for the tree, we each had to bring some cheap object to hang on it. I didn't mind that part. There was something pleasant about these shiny orbs, so light and delicate and perfect. I actually feel some slight nostalgia just thinking about them. The last day before xmas break we got to take them home. We delighted, walking home in gangs, in bashing each other skulls with them. It didn't hurt and the balls crumpled into puny fragments so easily.

The rain let up a while. Brightness grew in the southern sky. The sun wouldn't break through, I knew that, but for a while it was lookin' good. I stood my ground. Watched the lights. Listened to faint, distant voices singing. Where in goddam hell were they coming from? I had to have something to eat. Barbara's mixing paint somewhere. Newspapers are scattered all over the floor, protecting vinyl and carpeting from paint drops. I haven't looked at a newspaper for about six months. No radio or TV. I discuss current affairs with no one. At last I know what's going on. I'm still as ignorant as a piece of furniture but, somehow, my understanding of world events has never been clearer. And it's second to none. Basically, in my view, we're doomed.

We live in astounding technological times. I sit at my table in western Canada banging out nonsense on a hunk of plastic with buttons all over it while the rain falls outside in the dark and within seconds this garbage can infest your brain out there in Vermont, thousands of miles away. Yet the guy next door can't understand a word I say. For all he knows I might as well be a Turk strumming on a prairie dog.

I haven't seen those guys in a while. Price and Waterhouse or whatever. Probably upstairs stealing records, though they didn't strike me as the types to be much interested in music. Maybe looking for porno magazines or dope. I recall the sex and drugs of my youth. Ah, skip it. I go in the kitchen and fry up some buckwheat. I sit down with a comic book and eat the shit with tahini and soy sauce poured all over it, read the funnies. My mind wanders. Maybe I ought to go back to work, I think. My life's getting ridiculous. Strange thoughts weave through my daily speculations. Bizarre episodes and impossible ambitions deter clear reasoning. Since the rains came I never leave the house, except to go for more buckwheat or up to the drugstore for batteries. If I'm lucky Barbara will pick up my smokes on her way back from the paint store. I spent most of the summer in bars but now I'd rather lie face up on the porch getting pummeled by raindrops. Usually, when the rain stops I go up to my room and bang out letters on the computer. I'd write one now but those guys are up there, supposedly analyzing files, counting bytes, or whatever. No, I can't go back to work. As far as I'm concerned I've retired. I've been on sick leave almost six months now. My friend Terry says that as I'm fifty I may qualify for a disability pension. Wow! That's for Me! I got this nifty little computer program. You enter your exact date and time of birth, your sex, and whether you smoke or not. Then every time you call it up you get a picture of an hour glass displaying your time left, in seconds, as the sand trickles from top to bottom. Of course I've got way more sand at the bottom than at the top. There are about 640 million seconds left on top. That's about twenty years, which pretty well jibes with what I'd figured, anyway. So no more jobs. No more post office. No more dealing daily with lesser beings who mistakenly believe they exercise some sort of authority over me or that we're doing something important. Why should I waste my time performing senseless tasks when I could waste my time living a senseless life?

Maybe I should go to night school. The night school flyer showed up a few days ago and I've been reading it while eating buckwheat when I can't find a comic or old Down Beat. Barbara's talking about taking some housepainting course and it'd be nice to ride the bus to school with her one rainy night a week, like a couple of kids going steady...carry her books, feel her up. Don't know what to take, though. All previous night school tries were dismal failures. Silk screen, darkroom, fashion photo, ballroom dancing, figure drawing (felt like seeing nudes awhile). All arty deals. But I never lasted more than a couple of weeks. There I was, voluntarily...enthusiastic, even. Yet it felt like school. I couldn't shake that dread. I stared at the clock and waited for it to end. What was the point? I'd like to give it another shot, though. Nothing arty this time. Something practical. I see they now have topics like Self Esteem Workshop, Basic Communication Skills for Interpersonal Relationships ("It's not what you say, it's HOW you say it." "Fuck you thank you!"), Self Realization through Macrame, Identifying Voices in the Background, etc. Or one of these travel deals. Food Tour of Romania. I'd get to go somewhere. Let's face it, my hitch-hiking days are over. I've lost the nerve to just GO, anywhere anytime. Although it was a great satisfaction to learn that I'd hitch-hiked at least thirty times more than Kerouac by the time I was fifteen. He probably got laid more, though. Maybe I could be a Guide for one of those things. That would solve two problems. Work and night school. Combine them. Nation's Guided Tour of Hot Spots of the Beat Generation, bongos provided. Hang out in the Village, North Beach, the studios where Peter Gunn and Johnny Staccato were filmed, L'Enfer, Guilbault Street, etc. Of course I'd rather go to Paris.

I finish my groats and put the bowl in the freezer. I don't wash my bowls till the freezer's full. Germs don't grow there so it's better than leaving them lying around. For some reason, when Barbara found out she had a fit. I said, "Okay, I'll leave 'em lying around so you can paint them. That'd be just as good." She shut up after that. Now I pour myself another coffee to wash down my Paxil and vitamin C tablet. I should have a nap. Normally I sleep about ten hours a night and have four or five naps during the day. Of course last night I didn't sleep at all. I just stood in the kitchen trying to make sense of my life. So I may need more naps today. We'll see.

The maid, Germinal, enters the kitchen with my mail and the latest newspapers from Zagreb. Germinal is seventy-two and weighs close to six hundred pounds. No kidding. She was already here when Barbara moved in. It seems she worked for the previous occupants but, rather swiftly, gained about four hundred and fifty pounds within weeks before they moved out. They died, actually. Radiation poisoning. Anyway, Germinal got too big to get through the doorways, so she stayed on. We don't pay her anything since she can't leave in any case. She sleeps in the foyer as, of course, she won't fit into any bedroom. The only flaw in this setup is that she masturbates continually and is a junkie. I've never seen such a fat junkie. Also, Barbara and I have to go downtown regularly to score for her. But it's worth it as she does occasionally remove my bowls from the freezer and put them in an oven set at 800 degrees Fahrenheit to burn off any crud. She also brings my mail, etc. And she translates the newspapers since I don't speak whatever language it is they speak in Zagreb. Neither does Germinal but she makes it all up and has a very interesting imagination. Mostly she tells stories from her youth, when she was thin. Barbara usually waits impatiently by the doorway for Germinal to finish pretending she's reading the papers to me so she can start spreading them around to keep paint off our stuff.

Okay, okay, I'm making it up. There's no Germinal. I must be crazy. Why would I make up a fat seventy-two-year-old maid? Newspapers from Zagreb? I need help. No, I need sleep. That's it.

The truth is, we have a butler. Witney Beamish. We ran an ad one day and he showed up. Amazing, huh? Small world. I know you think I'm making this up but it's God's truth. Of course it's not the same Witney Beamish from Grade 9. Just another guy with the same name who looks exactly like the guy we knew but older. He's fifty, from Montreal, and went to West Hill. He showed up with his pal, David Saxe. Not you. Another David Saxe that looks like you and lives in Vermont. We only needed one butler so Saxe had to go. Lucky for him he got a job right next door to us at our neighbour John Nutt's. Helps him steal cars.

A fellow will remember things you wouldn't think he'd remember. One day I was on a bus going to Miami. Not the beach. Miami. I was eighteen. A girl got on and sat beside me. She was going to Daytona to visit her grandmother. It was nighttime so I could not see her so well but I could see enough to know she was very young and very beautiful. We spoke a while and fell asleep. I slept lightly for every time she moved she touched me slightly. Her arms were bare and were the softest, loveliest things I'd ever seen or touched. We were on that bus together less than a couple of hours - but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl. Just thought I'd mention it.