CONVERSATIONS WITH HONEY RIDER

My friend Tom and I stood outside of the Queen’s Theatre in the West End of London.  Tom and I had met on the street in Toronto in 2008.  Him and his friends complimented my outfit.  No one had ever complimented me before.  Especially my clothes.  They worked at a really trendy store and were heading to the same show I was going to.  Ladytron.  They were playing a free show on the Waterfront.

I went to England a couple years later, and Tom and I met up.  I stayed at his house for about a week.  He worked at another really cool store in London.  One time, Bon Jovi’s wife came in and asked for 50 leather jackets.  She said “My husband is a big rock star.”  I hated Bon Jovi’s wife ever since.

My sister really wanted me to meet Nick Jonas so she could live vicariously through me.  She loved the Jonas Brothers.  She took me to one of their shows in Toronto once.  It was really weird.  I felt bad, like she was genuinely having a good time and I put a damper on her enjoyment.  I should have danced more. 

Nick Jonas was in London because he was playing Marius in Les Misérables.  All these teenage girls were hanging about, waiting to catch a glimpse of the youngest Jonas, clutching their cameras so hard their hands were white.

I told a young English girl from Leeds that my little sister in Canada really wanted to meet Nick Jonas and that I was only there for that.  I asked if when he came by, after this girl shook his hand or dick or whatever, if she could give me some room to get a picture with him.

This would NEVER happen in any other country but England, because they’re so goddamned polite.  “Yes, of course!” the girl replied.  The hell?” 

When Jonas came out, he wasn’t a trembling little goon.  He was a man. 

While Tom and I waited, a PhD student studying at University College London, but originally from upstate New York, was conducting a survey.  He was doing research.  He only told us because we talked with him for a while.  He said the survey questions were quite personal, and that we didn’t have to do the survey if we didn’t want to.  It asked us about sexually transmitted infections and unprotected sex for the most part.  It made me uncomfortable, but it also put my mind in the gutter.

Then I met Nick Jonas. 

All the screaming little girls were reaching out and clawing the air.  I was behind the two Leeds girls.

“Mr. Jonas?” I said.  He immediately turned towards me.  My loins ached, I was hot for Nick Jonas.  What was happening?

I lost my charisma, and I lost my cool.  Tom was standing with me, watching.

“I-is it okay if I get a picture with you for my sister in Canada?”

Jonas, like a modern day James Dean, says to Leeds girls, “Can you let her through?” 

His intonation and speech delivery was smooth.  It wasn’t rushed, it wasn’t slow. 

I finally understood his appeal.  But it was different from the goofy persona he constructed for his virginal fans.

Tom took a picture of Jonas and I on his flip phone, and I was so excited.  I tried to maintain my cool because it’s not very en vogue to be losing your marbles over a teenage icon.  I was 20.  I was supposed to be hip and into bands like Hot Chip and The Smiths.

I said “Let’s go” to Tom.  I was shaking.  I was in some kind of mode that is passed down from our ape ancestors.  Spotting your prospective mate mode?

“Can I see the picture?” I said to Tom.

Tom brought up the picture.

“I look like shit.  Why do I look like shit in this picture?” I said.

“Your face looks really round.”

Tom was right, I was in an awkward position and Jonas had his angelic face beside mine.  I looked like a heathen.  A fallible mortal beside an Olympian god.

Tom and I went to this place called Punk in Soho that night.  I lost Tom, and some Russians were pouring Belvedere in my mouth in the VIP area.  I don’t know. 

I left, because drinks are never free and I didn’t want to get skullfucked behind a dumpster by these idiots.

I ended up at Tom’s the next day at 6AM.  The final destination had been a   a suburb of London at 5AM after falling asleep on a double decker, and a kind Congolese man drove me back to Tom’s while he delivered papers.  We spoke French and listened to Congolese music. 

I walked up the steps of Tom’s house in Stratford, a borough in East London.  

“What happened?” he asked.  I filled him in.

“I lost my phone,” he said.

“So you lost the picture of me and Nick Jonas?!” 

“Yeah.  But we can go back today.  He’ll be there.”

We went back to the Queen’s Theatre.  Nick Jonas was there, but the kind Leeds girls weren’t there to ease my path through the crowd to the metal gate.  The gate of heaven that led me to His Holiness. 

For all you know, I could have made this entire story up.  And someone has a flip phone with a picture of a girl with a round face and Nick Jonas on it.

I’ve always liked people who were older than me.  This writer used to come into a coffee shop I worked at in high school and we would talk about everything.  He thought I had a good work ethic, because I wouldn’t clean the store but instead I would read my biology textbook.  He gave me one of his books of French poetry, and he even signed it.  He woke up late and stayed up late.  He was interviewed by Radio-Canada. 

One of my favourite friends when I worked in a hotel in Florida one summer was this older Puerto Rican man.  He had seen some shit.  An honest person.  He had my back, and knew when I was laughing too loudly at the front desk.  “Hey!” he would whisper-yell to me when I was getting too goofy, “people are looking!” 

The best thing about people who have more years on you is that they have experienced more things than the idiots you talk to at your university or at your job.  I always reach out to the older people, because I’m less disappointed in humanity.  These people have lived. 

My older Puerto Rican friend was a party animal.  But he was also like a cool uncle.  Calm, relaxed, and well-liked by everybody.  When he was at work, he worked.  A few times a night he drove downtown and went to all the bars.

We would share stories about things that happened to us at night.  The one that really busted my gut was this story he told me.

It began with him driving home, and home was an hour away.  “I was really tired,” he said.  “I kept falling asleep and going off the road.”

“I tried everything,” he said, “I turned the radio up, I put the window down, nothing could keep me awake.  Every time I went off the road I woke up again, but I would fall back asleep.” 

“Then,” he said in a slow, deeper voice, making the story more dramatic, “I woke up with my car on the left side of the road about to hit a car.  I saw the lights, and I screamed.”

“The scream was what scared me the most and kept me awake.  So I knew this was it.  I had to scream every time I felt tired.”

“I screamed the whole way home.”

I used to lurk celebrities on MySpace, then on Facebook.  But with MySpace first, because when I started, Facebook didn’t exist.  I got so good at roaming the realm of MySpace that I began to recognize real accounts versus the ones that were fake.  You could usually find them in the Top 8 of an obscure socialite or Friend of a Celebrity.  The latter is the kind of person who wants everyone to know they have a friend who is a celebrity.  My dad read science books and my mom had a subscription to People Magazine.  I read People Magazine voraciously.  I wanted to know the people in People Magazine. 

Our tabloid magazine reading got really bad when I was about 13.  That was right before the MySpace explosion.  We would go grocery shopping and buy them all.  People Magazine, Us Weekly, Life & Style, sometimes even Star if we wanted that extra, unconfirmed fake news, because it was so juicy.

Our magazine purchases got so bad that my dad would have to say “NO MAGAZINES” before we would be in a venue that sold them.  But we would secretly buy the magazines.  We were entrenched in the narratives of their lives, my mom and I. 

When we got home from grocery shopping, I would sit in my mom’s car, in the passenger seat, reading.  Sometimes I would sit in there for an hour.  It was my refuge from the dullness of my high school experience.  The world of Los Angeles and New York seemed like a place of grandeur.  Especially Los Angeles.  The warm weather, the perfect outfits.  Even when the celebrities were going out to Starbucks.  You don’t realize the shit they have to deal with, every day.  People molesting them physically and verbally.  How do they do it?  I would punch a photographer by the end of my first day as a famous person.  But we feed the cycle.  Because people like thirteen year old me got their mom to buy magazines.

When MySpace came around, I couldn’t believe it.  I could talk to my friends, we could construct images of who we wanted to be.  We could find others through our own interests.  We could find out how hardcore someone was by the box that said “Smoke/Drink?” and you had to answer “Y” or “N.” 

I remember coming home and feeling so good when I saw “new message!”  If you’re messaging someone, they’re important.  And if they’re important, their messages make you feel good.

Then I found out that famous people did the same thing.  I found Kelly Osbourne.  Her name on MySpace was “Dottie.”  She always had a cool picture.  I messaged her.  I was mean.  I don’t know why.  I guess I didn’t understand that famous people had feelings too.  I used to love Kelly Osbourne.  I bought both her CDs after they came out.  I memorized the lyrics to her songs.  I thought her cover of Papa Don’t Preach was better than Madonna’s.  The blasphemy.  I thought her hair was soo cool and I wanted purple hair too.  I used to cut out pictures of her from magazines and tape them to the agenda the school gave us.  I watched the Osbournes and fell in love.  I fell in love with their life.  It was like my own family to a lesser degree.  Because we didn’t swear like that.  But we had fun and could talk about crazy things.  I realized my family was different when I went to a friend’s house for dinner and told their parents how my parents had taken me to Provincetown, Cape Cod.  The Ibiza for the gays.  It was incredible.  I told my friend’s parents about the drag queen shows.  The guy at the door looked and talked like the bearded brother in Mrs. Doubtfire.  The one who says “Ya look like Ma.”  My friend’s parents went pale and looked like they were choking on their lasagna.  Why were they so scandalized? 

Kelly Osbourne replied.  Her first response was short and to the point.  I couldn’t believe it.  I had an adrenaline rush that made me send more.  Although I was in high school and stupid, I knew how to construct a proper sentence.  My jabs were rude and cold. 

Then Kelly Osbourne sent a long one.  It was a big paragraph in three run on sentences.  She lectured me, and the words that stung and never made me forget:

I know you were brought up better than that.

Kelly Osbourne was right.  Why did I say those things? 

I stopped messaging Kelly Osbourne.  But I decided that instead of getting their attention with directly unkind messages, I would do something else.  I had to be indirect, and bring up some shady gossip.  The kind of gossip that Star or the National Enquirer wrote up.  I had to fabricate something.

I found Lindsay Lohan.  I knew it was her because I knew the names of her friends.  They were famous by proxy.  They all had her in their Top 8.  She didn’t have her face in the picture, and her name was something about Marilyn Monroe.  I knew that Lindsay Lohan loved Marilyn Monroe.  This was when Lindsay Lohan started doing weird things with her life.  Or wasn’t good at hiding the weird things she did with her life. 

“Hey,” I said, “are you sleeping with Brandon Davis?”

Brandon Davis is that sweaty heir of an oil baron.  He was a big deal at one point because he hung out with Paris Hilton.  I heard of his name again recently but I can’t remember where.

“Oh yeah,” Lindsay replied, “Definitely.  Did you know he’s uncut too?  I like to suck on the excess skin.  Slurp slurp.” 

I was disturbed, intrigued, and into this.  Lindsay Lohan is crazy.

I continued messaging her.  I had a Marilyn Monroe quote as the quote that accompanied your picture.  She insulted me and called me the equivalent of a loser, or a very sad person.  I immediately removed the quote. 

Then when Facebook came around, I found it easier to lurk.  You could find anyone by a network.

I found one of Bob Marley’s sons.  Then I found one of his grandsons.  His grandson would just reply with typical bro parlance. 

“Hey”

“Ok”

“Lol”

He was boring.

His dad was cooler. 

The best way to make someone reply is to send cryptic messages.  I talked to a guy in a famous indie band on Facebook chat because I would say things like “I’m making mdma muffins.”  Obviously, I wasn’t making mdma muffins.  Surprisingly, he would reply, and add some “hahaha”s.  It was validating.

With Bob Marley’s son, the one with the boring kid, I had to lose the cryptic utterances.  They would probably confuse him.  So I would just say “I love you.”

“IRIE” was his reply.  In upper case letters.

Then I gave him another compliment.

“ONE LOVE,” was his response.

I continued doing this for a week when he was online.  I would write “IRIE.”

“IRIE,” he would write back.

I eventually stopped.  I Googled what IRIE meant.  It means love or something. 

I sent my friend a message from Black Berry Messenger today.  I said “I used to bug one of Bob Marley’s kids on Facebook chat.  He would only reply with IRIE.” 

“What does irie mean?”

“It means love or something,” I said.

“Maybe it means fuck off.”

“Hehehe.”

At last, we part ways.  The Carleton email told me so.  You were the icon for my transition from one university to another.  A better relationship.  You told me I received As instead of Bs.  The courses were better.  You even look better, in a vintage-as-cool kinda aesthetic.  Like a significant other who emulates a past celebrity.  Like those guys who slick their hair back and walk down Bank Street in Centretown, and walk into Bridgehead and not Starbucks because of course they would be ethically opposed to drinking the tears of Guatemalan children.  That’s what they say.

Web CT, I don’t like your replacement.  It looks like those shitty buildings they added to Centretown, to replace the old ones.  The old ones that replaced heritage buildings where lives were lived without corporate interference.  Web CT, I liked your font and colours.  It looked like the final product of the first graphic design course I took.  I cried because it was so ugly.  But with you, I loved it.

Goodbye, Web CT, and hello to your new replacement.  A younger woman with adopts a minimalist style.  Like a Parisian with perfectly tailored, plaited pants walking down the Boulevard Saint-Michel, with her hair in a softly tousled bun.  Your obsolescence will remain part of my past identity, appreciated yet not forgotten.

A roadtrip with crying kids.

Press snooze for the fifth time and take a valium. 

Eating pasta and ketchup because funds are low.

Having breakup sex.

Sobbing on the shower floor in the fetal position.

Music played at your forced visit to your grandparents’ house.

Awkward bookstore music when you’re checking out a hot guy. 

Arguing with your roommate.

80s guitar riffs for humping the air alone in your apartment. 

Smoking salvia.

Easing the tension of embracing a crying man.

Hooking up with your best friend.

R&B for inspecting your boobs for cancerous lumps.

Elevator music for standing beside your weird apartment neighbour.

Classical for concentrating on your university readings on Hegel.

White girls pretending to be gangster in Mom’s Impala.

Walking in a sketchy neighbourhood.

Plucking hairs off your chin.

Ballads to hold your friend’s hair back while she spews in the toilet or bathtub.

Gorging on ice cream at 2am.

Adult contemporary for pleasuring yourself.

No Wave for menstruating.

Babysitting while nursing a hangover.

Hating your family.

Bleaching your upper lip.

Feeling like a feminist.

Swag rap for driving to your mediocre retail job.

Girl-hating. 

Having a manic episode. 

Easing into a food coma.

Music to cry to whilst reading Ryan O’Connell.