home, drank one of the bottles of wine—a very tasty Pinot Noir—slept it off, got up, and even though it seems like about an hour and a half’s worth of activity, it’s taken me until now… two o’clock in the morning.
So where was I, right, talking about truth-telling. What I’m getting at is that it is sometimes easy to tell the truth, as long as you are operating within a certain circle of humanity. Of humanness. Here’s mymetaphor. The truth, the ugly truth, I represent as a hammertoe. Know what one is? John Hooper has one, his little toe seems to come from someone else’s body, it is tiny and lacks a nail of any significance and plays no part in the day-to-day operation of Hooper’s foot. When he removes his right shoe and sock, this little appendage waves happily, hovering almost a full inch from the floor. And sometimes, at parties, Hooper will denude his foot and demonstrate his odd toe, and everyone is vaguely repulsed for a moment, and then someone, usually a woman, will want to touch the thing, and Hooper will end up in bed with yet another beauty. I’ve mentioned that I hate the man, correct? He slept with Veronica, you know that, despite which, his novel
Baxter
is receiving excellent reviews. Soon they are going to announce the short list for the Giller book prize, and I’ll be surprised if
Baxter
isn’t there. I’ll be surprised if it isn’t there and I’ll kill myself if it is—anyway, the truth is like Hooper’s hammertoe, and it is easy enough to reveal. But me, you know, I have no little hammertoe of a deformity, instead I am like the Elephant Man, shrouded from top to bottom with filthy rags. Any small parting of the cloth and people bolt, howling with fear.
I am not an animal
, I shriek at their disappearing backsides, although as the sound of the footsteps fades away, I fall silent and think,
Oh, who am I trying to kid?
But Rainie van der Glick was with me as I donned the rags, wasn’t she? As blemishes, boils and deformities manifested themselves, there was always a bit of time before I covered them up, a few days when they were exposed. There is no mirror for the soul, after all, one can only judge by the look of revulsion in the eyes of the citizenry. My belaboured point is, Rainie knew all about my failings. And didn’t really seem to mind, kept nodding and shovelling pasta into her mouth, pausing three times during the meal to light cigarettes, smearing the filter-ends with bright red lipstick.
“Phil, Phil, Phil,” she said, “what a mess you’ve made.” She touched my hand, not especially tenderly—she prodded it almost as though testing for life, pressing down and releasing, seeing if blood would return to the clammy flesh.
“We’re out of wine,” I pointed out.
“I have some, um …” Rainie moved her mouth to one side to aid in taking mental inventory, but she quickly released it. “I got booze.”
“Good.”
“Don’t drink too much, though,” she said, rising from the table. “Don’t forget, I am Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Fucks.”
I bet you want to know what happened, don’t you? Not with Rainie van der Glick, although you no doubt want to know what happened on that front, too, but I bet you want to know what, precisely, my confession entailed, what I did to end up where I am today.
Seven years ago, I created a television series called
Padre.
You may very well have seen it, especially if you’re Canadian, because the series was on the air for a grand total of one hundred and fifty-six hours. You may also have seen the show if you live in either Germany or Japan, where it is something of a hit. It has always struck me as odd that the show is appreciated in those countries, because, as a postwar baby, I tend to view those nations as the Enemy. I have attended a fan-fest in Japan (they hold them annually) where I was confronted by an auditorium full of people, most of them men, most of them dressed in clerical garb and wearing white ten-gallon
So where was I, right, talking about truth-telling. What I’m getting at is that it is sometimes easy to tell the truth, as long as you are operating within a certain circle of humanity. Of humanness. Here’s mymetaphor. The truth, the ugly truth, I represent as a hammertoe. Know what one is? John Hooper has one, his little toe seems to come from someone else’s body, it is tiny and lacks a nail of any significance and plays no part in the day-to-day operation of Hooper’s foot. When he removes his right shoe and sock, this little appendage waves happily, hovering almost a full inch from the floor. And sometimes, at parties, Hooper will denude his foot and demonstrate his odd toe, and everyone is vaguely repulsed for a moment, and then someone, usually a woman, will want to touch the thing, and Hooper will end up in bed with yet another beauty. I’ve mentioned that I hate the man, correct? He slept with Veronica, you know that, despite which, his novel
Baxter
is receiving excellent reviews. Soon they are going to announce the short list for the Giller book prize, and I’ll be surprised if
Baxter
isn’t there. I’ll be surprised if it isn’t there and I’ll kill myself if it is—anyway, the truth is like Hooper’s hammertoe, and it is easy enough to reveal. But me, you know, I have no little hammertoe of a deformity, instead I am like the Elephant Man, shrouded from top to bottom with filthy rags. Any small parting of the cloth and people bolt, howling with fear.
I am not an animal
, I shriek at their disappearing backsides, although as the sound of the footsteps fades away, I fall silent and think,
Oh, who am I trying to kid?
But Rainie van der Glick was with me as I donned the rags, wasn’t she? As blemishes, boils and deformities manifested themselves, there was always a bit of time before I covered them up, a few days when they were exposed. There is no mirror for the soul, after all, one can only judge by the look of revulsion in the eyes of the citizenry. My belaboured point is, Rainie knew all about my failings. And didn’t really seem to mind, kept nodding and shovelling pasta into her mouth, pausing three times during the meal to light cigarettes, smearing the filter-ends with bright red lipstick.
“Phil, Phil, Phil,” she said, “what a mess you’ve made.” She touched my hand, not especially tenderly—she prodded it almost as though testing for life, pressing down and releasing, seeing if blood would return to the clammy flesh.
“We’re out of wine,” I pointed out.
“I have some, um …” Rainie moved her mouth to one side to aid in taking mental inventory, but she quickly released it. “I got booze.”
“Good.”
“Don’t drink too much, though,” she said, rising from the table. “Don’t forget, I am Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Fucks.”
I bet you want to know what happened, don’t you? Not with Rainie van der Glick, although you no doubt want to know what happened on that front, too, but I bet you want to know what, precisely, my confession entailed, what I did to end up where I am today.
Seven years ago, I created a television series called
Padre.
You may very well have seen it, especially if you’re Canadian, because the series was on the air for a grand total of one hundred and fifty-six hours. You may also have seen the show if you live in either Germany or Japan, where it is something of a hit. It has always struck me as odd that the show is appreciated in those countries, because, as a postwar baby, I tend to view those nations as the Enemy. I have attended a fan-fest in Japan (they hold them annually) where I was confronted by an auditorium full of people, most of them men, most of them dressed in clerical garb and wearing white ten-gallon
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