Route 86

This is my story.

The reason I am telling you the truth is because I don’t know who you are and you don’t

know who I am. We will never meet, you will never know what colour my eyes are, what shape

my nose is, or what kind of perfume I wear. I like it that way.

Nobody ever told you life was going to be this way. They threw some glossy brochure at

you when you turned seventeen about the benefits of being a functional adult and promised you

that everything will work out. Go to school like a good little boy and don’t question the system.

Follow the dotted line and everything is going to be peachy fucking keen.

Literally the biggest load of crap that was ever fed to me by a grown up. And I believed

that turkey legs came from dinosaurs until I was thirteen. True story.

Nobody told you about drugs. Or cancer. Or losing a baby. Or abuse, anger, anxiety,

love, or how to do your taxes or what the fuck a T4 is.

I have no Idea how I ended up this way. And this is my way of piecing whatever is left

of my life back together and trying to understand where exactly things went horribly, horribly

wrong.

My sister always told me that sometimes bad things happen for a reason, and the reason

is you’re stupid and you make bad decisions. At some point you just stop giving a shit. You just

slide down the Slippery Slope, pitch yourself face first, hardy Boys style, through the Broken

Window and follow the Yellow Brick Road all the fuckng way down the Rabbit Hole.

The first thing to remember is where you left your keys, maybe your wallet. Unless

you’re like me and you keep your money in your bra for safekeeping. The bills always come out

stuck together and sticky but I’ve never yet had a convenience shop clerk complain about it. a drug dealer for that matter. They’re pretty much the same thing anyway. Just different species

of hustler. Open 24 hours a day, street level, cash in hand. No fucks given. Thank you, come

again.

Remember that time you, me and Robbie went to buy smokes at like five am at Queens

Mart and your hands were shaking so bad you could barely unroll that tenner? It wasn’t one of

the new ones so I’ll give you credit. The creases were all caked with leftovers.

This is it. This is the moment. This “right now” is when you reach singularity. ,Monks

study for years to raise their body temperature just enough to dry the wet cloths on their backs,

blood orange fading to pale saffron. But everyone who has swallowed a tab of acid knows that

once the paper trail dissolves off your tongue it’s all One. We are all One. Pale blue strings of

light connecting you to every single blade of grass across eternity. I saw it man! I saw the way

it’s “supposed to be”! We’re all fucked, you know that? What you see is the chemtrail of your

dendrites burning away like a cheap light bulb. Doesn’t mean you’re not right though, why

make an effort when ten bucks buys you an all expenses paid trip to your cerebral cortex. I

swear to God I will turn this Uber around.

I haven’t slept in three days. My new best friend is lying beside me in my shoebox, our

brains fizzling slowly, as if they’re dying to the same rhythm. I can hear his thoughts, pale

moths, half formed and twisted, dead before he opens his lips. We’re both lost. This is it. This

is the time. This is the place. There is no yesterday, no tomorrow. You have to remind yourself

that the sun will rise again, then forget it ever existed. They say that Things always fall into

place, but don’t they have to Fall first?

Self induced nirvanic state, the absence of thought, pure reflex. This is what we are. We

are the kids who fell through the cracks. We can not blame the World for Us, our past is nolonger our keeper. We are the beaten and the bruised. At one point it’s just too late. We will

not walk through endless Pea-Soup coloured corridors projectile vomiting our life story to

faceless white robes. We will not stuff out pie holes with candy coloured, double ended lozenges

filled with FDA approved clinical grade white powder. We chose to medicate ourselves. This is

it. This is our story.

This is my story

Part One

Where nothing makes sense and the points don’t count.

I’m not writing this to complain about how hard my life is. I’m writing this to try and

understand how it got this way. I assume if you’re still reading this your dad was an asshole too.

Or maybe your mom ran off and left you for adoption. Or died. Maybe you miss having all your

limbs, your sight, your hearing. Maybe that glass eye or prosthetic is simply not made in the

colour that matches you. If you’re here with me let us put all that behind us. At least for now.

Because this is my story. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned is that life's a bitch, and nobody

gives a fuck about how you feel. But maybe I don’t want to feel alone either.

I started writing this book on random scraps of paper, on napkins, in my phone, on

people’s walls, carpets, skin, whatever was there when I needed to say something. Today was

the first time I had read some of this to another human being. She barely knew me. And she told

me to sit the fuck down and write a book. So I did. I intend to write this in one go, no edits, no

fucks, no do overs. This is not your practice life. I intend to send this to a publisher as soon as

my fingers start hurting and maybe I come to some sort of epiphany. But most likely nothingwill happen. Nobody will read this and the intern who scans these sheets will wad it up and

throw it away. At this point all I don’t care. Take it or leave it.

It’s that time again when you think the fish is turning different colours/ And everyone is

talking at each other, with no regard for the actual thread of the conversation. But all I

can focus on is her Red gills, flapping open. Teasing me with glimpses of the raw shiny

meat inside her. Every breath opens that fleshy cavern. I want to throw up but I can’t

stop staring into it. It looks like fins are bleeding again. We’re watching a cartoon.. I

can smell my own stale sweat and wishing my teeth weren’t wearing sweaters.

My knees are covered in paint. A thin blue acrylic vein lacing down my left knee

below the tattoo. I could have washed that off too but somehow whatever is left of my

brain needs to keep this. To justify my addiction. As if wiping off ninety percent of the

paint gives me the right to be completely fcked up right now. As if that synthetic drip is

proof that I am something more than just another junkie. As if I’m somehow better than

everyone else because I can use my high to make pictures.

I started painting again a couple of years ago. The meds weren’t working, in

fact they were making things worse.

I tried to get therapy but CAMH has stringent rules and deadlines and waiting

lists. They also couldn’t help me pay for my medication. So I spent a Christmas Eve in

the ER after being handcuffed, thrown in the back of a cop car and paraded through the

hospital for trying to commit suicide. The snow was so fluffy that day. I remember

crying quietly in the back of the cop car with my hands behind my back wishing I was

with my family. Wishing I wasn’t alone and scared. Wishing I was dead.My friend picked me up off the floor, wrapped me in a blanket. He asked no

questions. Took one look at my face and walked out the door without a word. All I

could feel was emptiness. Even tears didn’t come. I just felt hollow. There was no

yesterday and no tomorrow. There was no sun and no moon. There was nothing but me.

Trapped in this meat bag. Wanting so badly to get the fuck out, to fly, to be free, to

dissolve into nothing.

He came back almost an hour later, quietly, and silently handed me a shoe box

filled with art supplies. It was around three am at this point, I don’t know how he

managed it; but the red and beige Nike box was filled to the brim with half dead sharpies,

some glitter glue, pens (both gel and ballpoint), pencils of various deteriorated states,

some dried acrylic paints, an identified chunk of rubbery glue which may or may not

have been an eraser…..

Since then his apartment is almost fully covered in layers upon layers of paint,

glue, wheatpaste, old book pages ripped up and folded into paper cranes, spit, hair gel

and even human blood. I even made tiny human skulls out of toilet paper and dish soap.

There are chunks of drywall painted with my fingers entirely out of cigarette ashes and

cayenne pepper. Mandalas and dream catchers crafter out of electrical wire and coat

hangers. Beer bottle dolls of all of our friends.

This friend gave me a way out. A way to feel safe. He never asked questions. I

could come any time of the day or night, in any shape, several times I came covered in

blood, some of it mine, most of the times not. I cried on the couch so much the salt must

have eaten away at the fabric.He also happened to be a cocaine dealer. The drugs helped me stabilize my

emotions, stop crying. And more often than not I was heavily sauced by the time I came

to him in “crisis”. The emotions were an excuse to do alcohol. The alcohol was an

excuse to do cocaine. The cocaine was an excuse to do art. …. elipsis…. !:56 pm April

11. 2017

This is it. This is the time.

Part Three

Flotsam and Jetsam

Drug addicts were some of the best people I have ever met and some of the worst people

I have ever met were drug addicts. Little lost Indigo children running around in perfect circles

trying to find a way out. Or in.

Look through the mirror glass. The first time I took mushrooms I made the mistake of

looking myself in the eyes after vomiting rainbows. Have you ever looked into your own eyes?

TRULY looked into your own eyes? Stared down the glossy charcoal corridor of your own

pupils the way you would stare into the eyes of a new lover? Unsure of their trust but unable to

stay away. The feeling of a new tongue in your mouth; hot and slippery, slowly licking theinside of your retina, the foreign slightly invasive feeling of a new perception. You should try it

some time. Psilocybin optional.

We find each other somehow. We just do. We cling together for some semblance of

balance, some hint or order. Wasting away in the creeping dawn. I don’t think I will ever get

the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat and lingering shame off my skin. But I come back.

Every night or almost and without fail. We all do.

Misery has it’s own gravitational pull. Once you’re broken beyond repair you find

yourself locked into pointless conversations with the others ghosts. Busted, rusting and in

disrepair. If we could only figure out which part of our own selves is missing maybe we will

stop hurling our ragged wounds at theirs. The pieces will not fit. Don’t you see? Each cut is

different, unique, no matter how many times you pick that scab and let the blood flow hot and

thick her jagged bone will never fill your void.

It started in a different place for everyone. But we all ended up here. Somehow. We

hold on, bobbing in the waves. A friend of mine once referred to drug use as a path down the

slope of a steep mountain: some people walk slowly into the abyss, some slip and stumble down

blindly, some take a base jump off the edge and plummet down flipping the World off. I am the

of the latter breed. I never did drugs until I was out of high school, and even then two tokes off a

joint made me paranoid. One weekend in late July in the back woods of Northern Ontario, to the

sound of a silver banjo, this little law abiding Christian ballet dancer took a nose dive into the

Void and never looked back.

My boyfriends parents set up a massive teepee, the floors were meticulously lined with

pine boughs and firelight licked Platonic shadows off the walls. Several hundred people were

rustling in every direction, their hair long gone grey. A “No Judgement” zone was picketed offon one side, and a group of small children sprawled beneath it trying to coax unwilling lightning

bugs into empty jars.

When you’re eighteen the World is full of promise. Oh Lord I wish I knew. He was close

to seventy, all care and kindness, and smiled like the Buddah as he placed the tiny shred of paper

on the tip of my tongue with revenant benevolence. There was no taste, no smell, I felt nothing.

So he offered me some mushroom powder, just a taste, he said. Just take a pinch and sprinkle it

on the tab. You’ll see Little One…..just take a deep breath and open your inner eye…..

I woke up lying sprawled out under a tree, luxurious, like a cat in sunlight. And Saw. I

Saw the World. Everything working like clockwork, as if we are all part of some cosmic

machine that runs on borrowed time. Everything is not perfect or equal but everything is exactly

where is it SUPPOSED to be. Don’t worry, nobody hurt me, I was safe. Just overwhelmed with

the perception of an entirely alien membrane. An Event Horizon that bulged with an oily

meniscus. The Soul was not contained in one meat puppet, but stretched like precious gossamer

in every direction, We are One.