All Hallow's Eve--Or, The Night I Threw-Down With Michael Jackson's Ghost

Looking back on the evening that unites the living and the dead—beat it grandma—there were a few “red flags” shall we say. It was an evening full of ghouls, sharks and a dead 1980s pop star and it goes a little something like this:

To begin with, I had prepared for this night by purchasing several bags of 99 cent candies back in the south before I moved my fat ass three thousand miles up to the Arctic Circle to become a replacement art professor in the one community college where igloo construction is not only an elective, it’s a major. Unfortunately, lost in the trauma of our rickety plane-ride up to the land of unending darkness, my cat, Ms. Richard Hatch, needed the sugary-goodness to recover from her post-traumatic-fat-disorder. A skinny bitch she is not.

This left me with a freezer full of tuna and no Halloween candy. Not wanting to pay fifty dollars for the same candy I had already bought for a total of $6.99 in the south, I chose to go la-cheapo and serve popcorn.

“Popcorn?!” hollers Sherman over the phone. Sherman, the polar bear I bed-down with, is spending Halloween two villages over. He is not a fan of All Hallo’s Eve. This isn’t particularly original on his part. I doubt Frankenstein’s Monster was a fan either. They are of a similar stature. However, I was lonely and scared of the trick-or-treaters, and so I had demanded that Sherman spend the evening on the phone with me anyway.

"You are ridiculous," Sherman continues, rather judgementally.

"Tell me something I don't know," I snicker into the phone. I fully own my ridiculous nature. This is a good thing, as it rears its head at least once every four hours. For instance, I had also demanded that they play The Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready to Make Nice on the local FM radio even though they normally don’t take requests.

Needless to say, I was fucked, and not in the good way, when I realized I had consumed what had been just enough popcorn to feed the pack of Michael Jackson impersonators who were moon-walking by my window with real tricks up their sleeves.

“Shit! I’m going to have to resort to my stash!” I lament to Sherman.

“Not the fudge-os,” he moans in a smug manner. I may be a bleach-blonde but no one can pull off smug subtly. Not even over the phone. “Keep track!” he chuckles.

"Keep track of what?"

 "All the children who refuse your bullshit candy," he laughs. "As long as they don't light our igloo on fire, I support them." Sherman has a helluva better rapport with these kids than I do, but then, he doesn't have to teach them to mix oil-based paints. Trust me, it's tough. "Refusing!" he continues, "Like you are trying to get them to take a test or something."

“How do I score the kid who grabs six fudge-os, screams at me in Inuktitut and runs off,” I bitch.

“Let’s be honest, you had that coming,” Sherman chuckles. “Fudgeo’s! Pull your shit together!”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I’d have bitched-me out in Inuktitut too. Well, if I knew Inuktitut. Fuck it. I would have learned Inuktitut just to bitch-me out for that.”

“No, you’re really not that motivated,” Sherman replies. He’s right, but there is no reason to state the obvious. “By the way, did you know they caught a shark here?”

“What do you mean they caught a shark?” I scream. “It’s not Hawaii. You aren’t playing Survivor. Now, that’s ridiculous! Plus, I think I went in that Bay.”

“You were swimming in the Bay?” Giselle, my former babysitter-slash-street hustler, asks. I had been so worried after the Michael Jackson incident that I Skyped her into the evening’s events. “Isn’t it kind of cold?”

“Keep up G-bird. I didn’t say I went swimming. I went wading. I was looking for lichen.”

“Okay. That makes more sense,” she laughs. “You are a fat ass.”

“True story,” I agree.

“This conversation is getting taxing,” yawns Sherman. “Tell me about your day.”

“Welllllllll,” I begin obnoxiously. I, like most people, feel I have something of great value to say when, most of the time, I definitely do not. But today I actually do. “I walked outside for recess duty. As has been previously discussed, recess duty is not my favourite time of the week. PS-that kid urinated again.”

“Wait a second,” Giselle interrupts. “Why do you have recess duty at a community college?”

Sherman is right, this is a taxing conversation. I choose to ignore her in the hopes she will go away, just like I had done with Michael earlier in the evening. He had moon-walked off into the night. Giselle probably won’t get the hint though. She has only rarely been confused for being smarter than a fourth grader; although, she does have a medal to substantiate this claim.

“Whatever," I continue. "So, Brenda, the secretary office administrator, walks out behind me and goes, Scott, you look like a girl as she whips out a cigarette from the secret compartment in her parka.”

“What a slut,” says Giselle. “And I should know.” Damn, I knew I kept her around for a reason. But Brenda isn’t a slut. She’s a covert anorexic. I only learned what a covert anorexic is when my aunt informed me that she is also one. “We’re anorexics who don’t pull it off very well,” Dallas told me. “The intention’s there. We just can’t pull the trigger.”

Kind of like the Barak Obama of the eating world.

To Brenda’s credit though, she had definitely pulled a few triggers in her day. She is not the kind of woman you would want to row-sham-bow with, is what I’m getting at. She’ll kick you in the balls, and then she’ll do it again, just because she can. Basically, she is my god. Not wanting to confront her now, I conceded graciously.

"Thanks Brenda," I chose to reply instead. "I really needed that right now."

This was followed by an awkward silence during which Brenda probably thought about resorting to her finishing move several times, but ultimately did not.

"I was only joking," she says, confused by this, probably new, sensation of regret that has swept across her like a twenty-four-hour flu you want to dine-and-ditch as soon as possible.

"You should do stand-up," I respond. "I think I should go deal with that kid who's peeing over there. Later, B."

"You're a cold mess," laughs Sherman. "I'm going to bed. Good luck."

And that’s about the point in the night that Michael Jackson moon-walked back across the tundra and cut the power-line to my igloo for not getting a god damned Fudge-o cookie.

Seeing Michael Jackson in the most unlikely of places got me thinking about belief. It is kind of astounding what we choose to believe in, what we reject and how critical we are of everybody else's choices.

Joseph Smith created Mormonism in the 19^th century, and Ron Hubbard created Scientology in the 20^th century, but somebody created everything else too. We just don’t keep good enough records to remember that. Some equally creative buddy thought up Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism and even my personal favourite, Jainism. Not to mention the three thousand other options. Whether any one is better, or worse, depends entirely on the point in history you are looking at and the personal-lens with which you are looking. Each one yields corruption. Each one spites the others. Each one allows for the mistreatment and discrimination of its non-followers (the non-believers).

So, no matter what you believe in—god; gods; witches; my mother’s cooking; nothing at all—I don’t think that says much about you. No merits are won, or lost, with what you believe. The telling truth of who you are and what you represent is in what you allow to exist in other people. To not just tolerate a different point of view, but to actually believe that it holds as much potential for truth and connection and hope as anything that resonates your own spiritual truth.

That would be noble. That would make you something—someone—worth believing in. Regardless of the mask that you wear on your own face.

The revelation was kind of like a Halloween miracle. Plus, I really enjoy Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

Oh, and by “something like this” I mean that is exactly how Halloween went down this year.

How to Move Mountains--Snow Tires Pending (The Year That Was)

“Honey, I’m home!” I holler as I prance through the door to my igloo. “Today was the shit!”

The day was really just as banal as any other but without cable you have to turn it up a notch. There was the ordinary shit. I usually have to yell at one of the local wolves who wants to eat me alive. Probably because I’ve put on a few pounds, or, as my mother describes it, “Holy shit Scott! What the fuck happened to you!” And then, there’s the Yeti who lives down the ice sheet people refer to as a road here. Try making daily conversation with a Yeti. It’s tough.

But today there was something rather exceptional as well. All day I was aware that I would be coming home to a house an igloo full of puppies. Or, as I like to think of them, little people with lots of back fuzz.

“Puppies!” I roar, as I grasp them all up into my arms like someone who wasn’t hugged enough as a child and will forever over-compensate with his own children. Part of my joy in these little minions is that I have great visions of starting my own dog-sled business. However, I am also well aware that I don’t have the motivation to turn this idea into a reality. Instead, I’ll probably train them to boil rice (my staple food) as I become yet another parent who is satisfied with the mediocrity of his offspring. I mean, it clearly worked for my parents.

“How do your parents feel about their new grandchildren?” I ask Sherman. “Are they thrilled, Angelina?”

“I’m not Angelina Jolie. Stop calling me that!” Sherman barks. “And you’re no Brad Pitt either!”

“Well, I’m not Angelina Jolie. I don’t have her bone-structure. You do. We have seven children. Ergo,” I say, bobbing my head. “Deal with it Angie.”

“At best you’re Roseanne Barr,” Sherman rationalizes.

“I guess that makes you John Goodman,” I counter. Joke’s on Sherman. I actually find John Goodman oddly alluring. Especially up here in the Arctic. Body heat, check.

 “Whatever,” he huffs. “And no, I have not told my parents about the puppies.”

“Well, get on it,” I suggest. “We’re going to have to bring them with us when we go back down south for the holidays.”

“We’re not going down south for the holidays,” he snarls.

“Fucking right we are,” I proclaim like a politician talking about cleaning up city streets or lowering taxes. “There is no way I am staying here with nothing to do.”

“This place isn’t so bad,” Sherman says, defensively. “With global warming, it isn’t even that cold.”

 “The cold is to here like Susan Boyle is to singing,” I gripe. “Extreme.” This is kind of like complaining about Andre the Giant’s height or Michael Phelps’s ability to swim, in that you don't really notice how much more extreme an outlier is after a certain point, but in retrospect, you long for the days when they were just a little ahead of the pack.

Trying to change the subject, I pick up the runt of the litter of rabid dogs I have brought home and stare at him. “I think we’ll call you Yuri, after the guy from Dr. Zhivago.” Then I hand him to Miss Richard Hatch, the cat I have brought up here from civilization. “Here Miss Richard—Happy Holidays!”

“Your cat doesn’t want a rabid dog!” Sherman howls. "Plus, that dog is a female. Get your eyes checked."

“Sure she does,” I protest, petting Ms Richard's mangy coat. “She is lonely. Look, she is shedding from stress.”

“She is shedding because of her Jenny Craig weight loss program,” Sherman rebuttals.

“Who comes to the arctic to lose weight? Miss Richard, go out and find that back-fat. It keeps me warm at night.”

“Why did you name her after a moderate celebrity from a game show again?” Sherman asks. He already knows the answer though.

“Because she is large and in charge!” I howl. This seems to excited Ms. Yuri, who then bites me.

“Have you never regretted that decision?” Sherman asks, choosing to ignore the fiasco going on around him.

“Neverrr,” I say, parroting my collegiate art students.

I know it’s kind of a douchey stunt to name your pet after a super-star, and I don’t usually like to name-drop unless we are talking about Roseanne Barr, or, as I like to think of her, the place heaven hid happiness. However, it really does work for Miss Richard.

Come to think of it, the one thing more ridiculous than naming your pets after celebrities is quoting them. Celebrities. Not pets. I am all for quoting pets.

I snuggle into Sherman’s big, hairy, lap and cradle Miss Richard Hatch in one arm and Miss Yuri Zhivago in the other. “The point isn’t to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves for having them…We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly. It reminds us that we can do better,” I whisper. “That’s Kathryn Schulz,” I blabber on, as though I am ahead of Sherman on some cutting-edge intellectual race. This is obviously ridiculous, as he then proceeds to point out.

“I know who said it, fat ass. You aren’t the only one who YouTubes TedTalks, you know. Besides, you totally butchered that quote, considering you call yourself a journalist.”

“A yellow journalist,” I say in my defence.

But then Sherman ponders that flawed, imperfect, quote for a second. He holds it up against the year that has been and the future that still awaits us. In the short span of six months, he met me in the woods, we visited his parents at the zoo, we’ve moved to the Arctic Circle together, I went from being unemployable to being a fourth-tier college art professor stand-in, and we just adopted a rabid puppy to keep Ms. Richard Hatch warm at night.

“Besides the fact that Ms. Richard Hatch is not a lesbian, and therefore has no interest in a rabid female dog named Yuri, I don’t regret a single thing that’s happened this year,” he says, embracing me further and kissing me on my third eye. “You know…we have been engaged for a month and a half now. What do you say we take the Air Otter over to Alaska and try to get a Sarah Palin look-a-like to officiate for us?”

“Un-fucking-believable,” I mutter to myself.

“I thought you’d like that,” Sherman says, a little bewildered.

“Oh, I do!” I exclaim, jumping up to grab my parka before this silly polar bear changes his mind. “It’s my dream come true. Right down to the Sarah Palin look-a-like. It’s just so unbelievable that you would think so too.” It is unbelievable, and yet, here it is. “Now let’s go. I want to be legal before Yuri starts foaming at the mouth.”

As I close the door to our conjugal igloo—the one with the sun roof in a land that only has three hours of daylight—I think about the other great writer who I’ve chanced upon this year. David Foster Wallace once told a school of new graduates that real freedom “involves attention and awareness and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad, petty, little, unsexy ways, everyday” whether we see them or not.

 I thought it sounded nice at the time. Quaint even. The way a person does when they call something a mantra or post it to their Facebook page but never get around to living it. But now, as I look around at this land, I think I get at least a hint of what Wallace really meant.

When we love people we move mountains for them. Not real mountains. Not metaphorical ones either. When we really love the people around us we care about who they are in the banal, imperfect moments of their everyday lives. We move mountains within ourselves to make space for them. We climb over our stereotypes and detonate our long-held perceptions of how we saw the world before they entered our field of vision. We change the landscape of our hearts because they become a part of how we see the one thing we always thought was unchangeable—ourselves.

Or, maybe it is they who move the mountains inside of us. Because it is their presence within us that changes us in ways our eyes and minds have yet to understand. They become a part of us and we are forever different in subtle, grafted, foundational ways that defy the logic of our misbegotten world.

Sometimes it just takes a little time and the application of a few snow tires to get over those mountains, especially when they first appear so daunting. Often those are the mountains most worth excavating though.

As I close the frosty door to this cavern in the tundra, I don’t know what comes next. What I do know is that the me that will find out is part polar bear, part rabid dog and a little bit Ms. Richard Hatch, because those are the people that moved the mountains inside of me this year. They changed my world and became a part of my soul. The world might not be able to see that, but the track-marks exist in parts of me I never understood before, in a land covered in frozen water: a land where all the mountains of my former self have dissolved.

We All Have Rabies! We're All Going to Die!

“Well, I’m sure glad I don’t have to get a rabies shot in my ass today,” I yawn as I stretch my arms up into the air and try to wake up. Unlike my fiancée—a polar bear named Sherman for whom I moved to the Arctic Circle—I have to work for a living. “Shit! It’s cold!”

“That’s probably good news for the rabies too,” groans Sherman, as he rolls over in bed. I think he is having second thoughts about inviting me and my delightfully obese cat, Miss Richard Hatch, to join him for the winter. Actually, he quite enjoys Miss Richard’s company. It’s me he ought to have doubts about.

“Oh, where are your rose coloured glasses?” I prod, like the bitch that I am. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to wait for his response. I have to get to class.

I have taken a job as an art teacher at the local community college for something to do for the two point two hours the sun is halls its ass into the sky this far north. I would say the term art teacher is a stretch though. My students are far more competent than I am at art, as well as social skills in general. I am not great at handling a classroom either. For instance, one of my students threatened to burn my house down one day.

“Go the fuck ahead,” I said, without skipping a beat. “But make room, because I’ll be moving in with you.” That’s inappropriate, I know, but what do you expect from someone who lives in an igloo with a polar bear and a fat cat who was named after someone who has done hard time for tax evasion?

At the end of yet another doozy of a class--this one dedicated to ice sculptures--my students revolted against my ineptitude by walking out of my class. “Prepare for some Socratic method tomorrow!” I screamed to their backsides.

“Never!” they hollered back in unison.

I should probably become more hopping mad at this kind of insolence than I do. I should probably want to throw their shoes out into the snow like my crazy aunt Dallas used to when I didn’t put my toys away when I was a kid. But, I don’t care. Either that or those court-ordered anger management courses have really paid off. Instead, I go for a walk into the tundra.

I used to do this without a gun, but then realized the ‘dog’ I had been petting was actually a wolf. Now I carry a knife, some spam and a rape-whistle—just in case. You never know what is going to happen out here in the desert of ice. For instance, today I have stumbled upon a litter of abandoned puppies. Well, I shouldn’t assume these are puppies. The last time I made such a rash assessment I thought what I was caring for were premature kittens. They turned out to be pre-mie raccoons. Fortunately, the raccoons, who now vacation in Palm Springs, lived, and I learned my lesson about double-checking facts.

Assuming makes an ass out of you and me, but mostly me.

But, fuck it. We only live once. So I stuff the puppies into the extra compartment in my parka and head home.

“What’s in the bag?” Sherman asks, half-heartedly when I get home. He is becoming complacent in that way people do when they are in a comfortable environment. Since there is nothing comforting in this harsh climate, in my opinion, I am operating on more of a fight-or-flight level. I would be leaning more toward the flight side of things, but there are no roads, let alone planes, for several kilometers. Sherman calls me “wiry” but Miss Richard Hatch and I think of ourselves as having adopted a survivalist-approach to life. Like the monks of Tibet, only without Brad Pitt.

“Puppies!” I squeal, with a twinkle in my eye. “Part wolf. Part huskie. All rabid!”

That’s not really true. Their mother, who was a wolf, went on vacation in Cairo. She would have chosen Thailand, but I had a nightmare the other night in which she moved to Egypt and became a queen—revered by all, while I was left to raise her cubs. Since everyone from the north thinks I am a complete idiot, the second she heard that this was a nightmare, she thought a normal person would have seen this as a premonition from Delphi and booked her way to the desert.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sherman asks. "That's not appropriate at all."

“No,” I say, gritting my teeth and suppressing what I really want to say. “Of course not, Asshole!” Why will no one take me seriously in the Arctic Circle? Just because I look ridiculous doesn’t mean I am ridiculous. The truth is, I am ridiculous, but no one knows that. “Besides, just because it is, doesn’t mean it should be,” I respond.

“You ripped that shit from the movie Australia,” Sherman replies, not missing a beat. “If you are going to pilfer quotes, at least adjust your standards so you aren’t quibbing crack-whores like Nicole Kidman.”

“Nicole Kidman isn’t a crack whore,” I stammer, trying to maintain my dignity, but failing to come up with a decent retort. “She’s a lady of the night, and it’s a taxable profession in Australia—complete with dental.”

“Let’s hope so, for her sake,” Sherman shudders, as he takes a big bite of his country food. Country food is the gold standard up here in the north. It includes caribou, seal and beluga whale. I have yet to try it, but Sherman loves it; because, as I may have mentioned, he is a polar bear. It also has a surprisingly good effect on his breath, so I try not to complain.

Instead, I decide to go and write to my friend from the south. By ‘friend’ I mean the woman who used to moon-light as a prostitute in between the occasional stint babysitting my fat-ass. We’ve kept in touch ever since we were reunited at a Herpies Anonymous Meeting held in my high school gymnasium.

Madame Giselle. I may have adopted a puppy from the tundra. And, by puppy, I mean part huskie and part wolf. Oh, and the mother died of eclampsia, but no one else would touch the babies because they all think she was rabid.

I felt like it was as unfairly judged as I am, so I took it in and named it Seizure Willie. I hope this made your day. See you in a few weeks (I hope the cream I sent you helped with your “itch”).

PS Seizure Willie pissed all over me three minutes ago. What a bitch!

               Miss you Clap-Clap! Love you more!

As I finish and hit the send button on my computer, I hear Sherman blowing a gasket in the next room. He is yelling something about the puppies, but seriously, he is a fucking polar bear, he can deal with a few rabid puppies for a couple of weeks.

“They’re so genteel,” I holler back. “Just like me!”

This is followed by a moment of silence. Finally, Sherman breaks up.

“That’s rich,” he says, doubling over in laughter. “You—genteel!”

It’s true. Since Sherman has met me I have gotten in a fight with a family of blue jays, almost been murdered by his own sister, become reunited with my retired prostitute-babysitter and passed out in a pool of my own vomit while next to a mullet-yielding professional harmonica player. In other words, I am what Chelsea Handler would describe as a hot mess.

Fortunately, Sherman is not Chelsea. Not even close. In fact, the joke is squarely on him. Sherman loves me. No one made him fall in love with the disaster that is me either. There was neither trickery nor alcohol involved. Just me, my ridiculousness and a cat named Miss Richard Hatch.

Turns out that was enough. I thank him too. Every night. Just low enough so he can’t hear me underneath the sound of his own, rhythmic snoring.

“I think I’ll name the dog Willie,” I suggest.

“Which one?” Sherman groans. “There are six of them.”

“All of them,” I wink. “Duh.”

Sherman just shakes his head. "I guess that's the thing though. Any of our beliefs and causes can be explored in ways that are more self-contained, only affecting the believers themselves, or in ways that more aggressively impact those around us, but how there is no clear line where the one approach becomes the other. I guess whether it is beliefs, or causes, or even opinions, that's one of the big issues with any belief and with how any of us live the ones we hold."

"You handle that really well here," I responded in a moment of heart-felt admiration. My cheeks rosing slightly with pride.  "Well played."
"I know," Sherman replied. "But that’s just me."

You So Boring!

“Oh, I miss you Margaret Cho!” I scream into my laptop like the lunatic that I am. I have always been a little unhinged, and life in the Arctic Circle has done nothing to rectify this. Nor would I want it to. I consider this to be my finest quality. Well, after my love handles.

There is something about moving up to a land withoutcellphones, or toothpaste, to follow the polar bear of your dreams that throws everything out of orbit. I haven’t yet put my finger on what it is, but it might be the raw caribou meat. Regardless, the -45 degree weather and lack of Thai food has started to get to me.

Plus, there’s the language barrier.

For instance, yesterday I walked into the all-purpose cooperative shop to buy some supplies for my course—I took a job teaching art at the community college to support my albino boyfriend—and was apparently turned down for a date by a man not only smelling of gin but also sporting four black teeth (and no white ones). The conversation went something like this:

“Hello Christopher,” I smiled, more because I noticed fresh limes over his shoulder and I had never seen fresh produce north of the 55 before. “How is your week going?” Then I grabbed the bag of limes before a woman named Fernandez snatched them up.

“My weekend?” he asked, furrowing his brow. Admittedly, I can be all-over-the-map at times and mildly confusing the rest of the time. However, you either understand a question like how is your week going? or you don’t. It’s not a quadratic equation. You don’t get lost along the way.

“No, Christopher,” I chuckled, covering my mouth. I was not trying to play coy here, I do have a polar bear boyfriend, but Christopher had really gotten into the gin that morning and the smell of his breath made me want to vomit. “How is y-o-u-r w-e-e-k s-o f-a-r,” I over-enunciated in that way that is not helpful for anyone and makes the speaker appear as though they have recently survived a stroke.

At this, he looked as startled as I often am. I filled this lull in our thought-provoking conversation by beating off Fernandez, who had realized I was cradling the only limes in the co-op. I would have shared, but Fernandez doesn’t even know what limes are. She just hates me and wanted to take them away from me. I don’t blame her. I syphon her cable.

After a minute or two of me performing Let's Do The Time-Warp Again! in my head, Christopher responded. “No thank you. I work all day and then I will be tired.”

Then he walked off.

That pissed me off too. I wasn't fishing for anything here. I have a boyfriend waiting for me in my igloo thirty feet away—an endangered species, and not just because he’s a polar bear or has decent dental hygene. I was just trying to have a fucking conversation. At least I got the limes though. I may have picked up some of Fernandez’s scabies in the process, too. Not wanting to have won a battle with my nemesis without rubbing it in, especially during this festive season, I threw a lime at the back of her head.

As the green amulet of health and happiness cascaded across the shimmering sky and seemed to dance, momentarily suspended in the Northern Lights, I really hoped I would connect. In spite of the fact that Fernandez is a big old bitch, I think she would be proud of my challenge.

“Sweet!” I hollered with the girth of one of the wild amaruq (wolves) that live outside my igloo when the lime nailed her just above her orbital frontal cortex. "Cha-ching!"

When Fernandez rose up from the tundra, not unlike Sissy Spacek in Stephen King’s Carrie, only without the pigs' blood, she looked over at me with a face that only a mother could love, but the expression that anyone would bet on to win in a fight.

In a moment terse with a bastardizing revelry and fear I make what is only the first invitation to my igloo with the hopes of not coming away with my second rejection. “Hey, Mona Lisa, do you want to come over for supper?”

“What are you making Bitch Face?" Fernandez roared back. "It better not be any of that veggie crap you and the bear eat."

“Sushi,” I screamed. “Vegetarian sushi. With lime zest. You’ll love it!”

“I better,” she snarled, as though she just realized she had only come in second in a pie-eating contest, having to resignedly hand-over her title belt. “I could stop at the community freezer on my way.”

“Don’t stop at the community freezer,” I said, with a dead-pan glaze over my face. “I do not want to come down with scurvy. I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Sounds good,” Fernandez laughed, and ambled off into the tundra to tell her husband, Yeti, that they don’t have to kill a local tonight. If only these people knew the efforts I go to just to save a life.

When I get into the igloo we pay way too much for considering it is colder inside here than outside, I tell Sherman about how he almost lost me. “Yah, first to a French seal who is drunker than Danny DeVito and then to a fictional monster of the tundra,” Sherman laughs. “Go right ahead.”

I suppose the big lug has a right to be comfortable. I did move three thousand miles to a land where I don’t speak the language, eat the food or understand the storied traditions. I did it all for him. He should be comfortable. He should also cook me meals, which he does. And, he will be more than happy to cook a meal for Fernandez and her knatt-encrusted lover.

 “Delightful!” he gushes when I tell him the news. “I love having company over!”

Sherman is a far more gracious host than I am. This is because he has what some would call social skills. So did Monica Lewinsky. That’s all I’m saying. Sometimes it pays-off to be social, but sometimes you just end up on your knees pleasuring an over-zealous southerner who doesn’t even cover the dry-cleaning and goes home to sleep with Hilary Clinton. For better or for worse, this approach to life has won Sherman my hand—for now.

Fernandez and her lover, Craig, waltz in about an hour and a half after I pelted her with a lime. They smell funky. But then, they think the same about me. Who’s right? Probably no one.

After dinner Fernandez suggests that we play a game that requires us to write down the names of celebrities, crumple them up, and then concoct some kind of ghetto-charades with partners to guess whose name is on the paper. “That’s so stupid,” I begin to say, but Sherman elbows me knowingly.

“Best behaviour,” he groans out of the corner of his mouth.

“Right,” I lament. “That sounds really clever Fernandez. You should try and patent it!”

Three hours later we are still playing and have yet to change the names. “You know, we should have all really memorized the names by now,” I suggest in exasperation. “You aren’t exactly a genius because you guessed Sarah Palin again!”

What Fernandez didn’t exactly like was that comment. “Fine, we can play Ass-Hole,” she offers. “I bet you’re good at that game.”

“You have no idea,” I smirk, with a twinkle in my eye.

“Hmm,” she laughs, smacking me on the back with her over-sized paw. “You aren’t so boring after all. A little stupid, but better than advertised for sure.”

Perspective is an interesting thing, because the very fact that we have our own precludes us from ever fully appreciating anyone else’s. We can try. We should try. I think we need to try. However, we need to try with an understanding that success doesn’t mean accomplishing perfection. As much as you believe you love another person; as much as you think you respect them; as much as you think your world rises on their chest and falls on their breath, it’s all subterfuge if you don’t appreciate that the place they come from considers and values things you will never know about. 

The hope that we can reach that, even with one other person, for even a finite amount of time--perhaps no longer than a single moment--inspires me to try new things and explore this world.  

“Thanks stinky!” I holler in reply. “I think we could be great friends.”

“Epic,” she trills, as he voice reverberates into the northern-lit night.

Did Someone Call for Boring Dr. Bubbles?

Admittedly there isn’t a great deal to do up here in the arctic. Especially when you bed-down with a polar bear, since the obvious activities are hunting polar bear and eating polar bear. Not wanting to kill one of Sherman’s relatives—not yet anyway—we stay in and watch a lot of movies. The fail there is that we don’t get Netflix in the land that never learned what grass is.

“You really remind me of Cameron Diaz,” Sherman chuckles one evening after watching a bootlegged version of Bad Teacher that ended up being dubbed in Korean. I had been losing a little weight around my mid-section, but that is no reason for him to compare me to the most ridiculous star in America.

“You mean because I am looking svelte these days?”

“No, because I think you are probably about as good of a teacher as she is,” he bursts out laughing. “Plus, you have a bit of a drinking problem.”

It’s true, but it’s not what you think either.

I don’t have a drinking problem when it comes to alcohol. Alcohol and I have a stable relationship. The kind most people inappropriately associate with lesbians. You know, where two people have found that magical place where they complement one and other without causing a hangover in the morning.

My problematic relationship is with Dr. Pepper. I love that shit so much that if it were legal, I would marry it, divorce it and take it for all it is worth.

This isn’t really an issue up here in the land that time forgot, since we rarely have access to anything containing sugar, let alone pop. However, when I took my daily stroll to the Co-operative to harass my students to come back to class my jaw dropped and the fat kid inside of Scott came running out. There, on the counter, was a box of Dr. Pepper. A box! Beside this was my other addiction—limes.

After the fat kid inside of Scott took a moment to rub the hamstring he pulled running the three feet over to the Dr. Pepper, I read the label accompanying  my elixir of life: Dr. Pepper ONLY 3.50$ a can!!!

“What the ba-hiffy!” I scream/swallow. I can’t believe they are trying to charge three dollars and fifty cents for a can of the greatest thing ever made. I have to keep myself in check though. I remember the last incident involving me appearing to scream at the frozen pizza that is only fifteen dollars here. If I keep yelling at the produce the people of my new land are going to think I am a lunatic. Which I am, but it’s generally a nugget of wisdom I like to only share with the polar bears I sleep with.

After another minute and a half of screaming expletives on the inside of my head, the fat kid inside of Scott says “Fuck it!” and buys two. I didn’t come up with the Fuck It diet, but I endorse it. Maybe not to the pseudo-sexual extent that Jerrod endorses Subway, but it is one of the paths that will eventually lead to my dream lifestyle: The Cake-A-Day diet coupled with zero point zero percent physical activity. Oh, to live the dream!

Since I still haven’t sold Sherman on “the lifestyle” yet, I instead choose to down both Dr. Peppers and read some David Foster Wallace on the ice berg I frequent. I don’t understand what Wallace is talking about most of the time, but it makes me happy that Sherman does. Also, since water is a fairly prized commodity in the arctic, his commencement speech takes on an even more layered meaning. Since this is the closest I am going to get to a layer cake this afternoon, I dive right in.

In this space, where I feel free from all I held dear in the south, I know my understanding of freedom pails to that of Sherman’s. It is he who anoints me even as I annoy him and it is he who welcomes me into all that he cloaks from so many. He makes me believe in myself enough to forget to think about it. He allows me to be unconscious. “Damn this is good Dr. Pepper! It beats the shit out of that apple juice I had the other day, too!”

When I get back to school after my lunch break from heaven, I ask my literature students one question: “What is your name?” The caffeine over-load has caused me to forget even my own. After I recover, I ask them a better question: “Why do we celebrate Halloween?”

 It is a timely question, given that it is All Hallo’s Eve.

One of my students, with a visible insulin patch, looks up at me and, instead of acknowledging I had even spoken, says "Boring Dr. Bubbles, you have a double chin! Bwahahah! You better lay-off the Dr. Ps!"

"Thanks for the insight Cooper!". Given Cooper’s  understanding of English, “double chin” could mean anything from a double chin to a hang nail. Either way, it really is a reality check. They have also come up with a myriad of clever nicknames for me. Little-Head-Big-Gloves was the first, because I am always wearing three more layers of clothing than anyone else. This was followed by Boring Dr. Scott, which eventually bled into Bubbles, presumably from The Trailer Park Boys because, like Bubbles, I too wear glasses.

 On the inside, I am Boring Dr. Bubbles. I probably always will be. The reason I forget this most of the time is because of Sherman. It’s his petty little sacrifices—the ones that go completely unnoticed most of the time—that make me believe I can do anything. Even move to the Arctic Circle and carve out a life in the snow.

I should remember to thank him when I get home tonight. Or, even better, to treat him with the same unflinching devotion that he extends to me. Then, on my way home, I go into the Co-op to pick us up a couple of Dr. Peppers. As I walk toward our frosty abode I take a sip. And then another. And then another. By the time I’m inside I’m on a sugar high.

In addition to my aforementioned double-chin, a sugar high inspires me to believe that “You know what? I probably should have been a pop star!” I then proceed to sing Train’s Soul Sister on a loop until someone throws something at me. In the south this job went to the pesky Blue Jay family that lived next to my cave. In the tundra, it appears the job has been inherited by a white fox that lives just down the snow trail from my front door.

“Hissssss!” he screams.

“Yeah, yeah,” I snarl, throwing him some raw caribou meat I picked up a few minutes before. It was supposed to be for Sherman’s thank you dinner, but I suppose he’ll have to settle for my continued company. Even I know that this is a rather weak consolation prize.

By this point I am in a complete mood. The empty calories from the Dr. Peppers are leaving both me and my double chin tired and irritable. The fact that the post office was again closed bothers me way more than it should and I think I can barely see anything because everyone in the school just has to try on boring Dr. Bubble’s boring glasses.

I throw down my briefcase and remove my glasses. I look into the kitchen, where I see Sherman and Ms. Richard Hatch both sitting at the kitchen table, with a full meal of broccoli and whale in front of them—guess whose is whose—waiting for me. “Welcome home honey!” Sherman says, smiling.

I am definitely the ungrateful one here. I know I don’t deserve him—and I doubt I ever will. I’ll probably never get around to telling him how much it means, but, at least on the inside, boring Dr. Bubbles is starting to get what that Wallace dude was talking about. I am standing in the midst of frozen water and I am home.

Enter The Bitchy Snow Queen--Survival in An Unchartered Land

“You know what really pisses me off?” I ask Sherman after another hectic day of employment (my third one in a row…how do you people keep this shit up?).

“Blue jays? Apricots? Sunlight? Should I keep guessing?” Sherman asks, smiling. He has a point. I am a bit of a lunatic, but I have different fish to fry today—northern fish, filled with blubber.

“No. I can’t stand people that use Facebook as a vehicle to pretend to be political activists while they continue to be ignorant and aloof in their daily lives,” I say, smacking my fist down on the block of ice I call a kitchen table. I try to imitate Paula Abdul demanding something from her pharmacist but I can’t remember what she looks like since we don’t get American Idol this far north. Instead, I come off more as a cross between Paula Poundstone and the band, Abba, which is definitely not as threatening.

“That’s fair,” Sherman sighs as he simultaneously rolls his eyes and pours himself a cup of tea. He knows this is going to be a long night.

Sherman legitimately has his shit together. This makes him different than myself. This was made abundantly clear today when I bitched-out my boss. I am aware that this approach does not work on Survivor and I am beginning to suspect that it doesn’t work in the high-stakes work of college teaching either. Fortunately, he is deaf in one ear and by the time he caught wind of what I was doing I had lost my steam.

“Why do you even keep a Facebook account?” Sherman asks. “You aren’t exactly a people person.” That’s an understatement. I think most people are stupid and lazy, which wouldn’t bother me, except I am jealous. Stupid and lazy is my M.O. and if you are plagiarizing me you’re also pissing me off.

“I like to snoop,” I scowl, defensively. “Why do you think?” I really keep it to communicate with my friends in Ethiopia, but since they are living the high life in the desert outside of Jima, I am not speaking to them currently. Well, that and the fact that my computer freezes itself off on a regular basis.

“So, what did you do today?” Sherman asks, trying to change the subject. I hated this question when I was living in the south because nothing really seemed to happen to me. It was kind of a toss-away moment in a conversation, like how do you think the Ottawa Senators are doing? Or, do you think Lindsay Lohan will win an Oscar this year? If you already know the answer, don’t waste my time asking the stupid question.

However, shit happens to me all the time up here in the Arctic, so I usually have something decent to contribute these days.

“One of my students walked out of my class,” I say as I pour myself some apple juice. I was never really a fan of what I think of as a drink developed for six-year-olds, but after having gone a month without pop or liquor it has certainly shot up the list of things I am willing to drink when compared to water you have to boil for seventeen minutes. Don’t try and skimp on the seventeen minutes either. It is scientifically irrefutable. Just ask the polar bears.

“I could see that,” Sherman says, somewhat condescendingly. “You aren’t very authoritative. I can’t imagine you have terrific classroom management skills.”

“Maybe not,” I counter, getting ready to display my trump-card. I just learned how to play cards from the old lady who lives on an iceberg at the edge of our inlet. I love sports that only require you to move when you need to refill your plate. “But it seems I have pretty bad-ass community management skills.”

“How so?”

“I took the rest of my class on a ‘field trip’ to the Co-op and made her come back to school,” I say. “Next time she feels like skipping she is going to ask herself, ‘is it worth it to leave the lunatic’s class or should I just sit here and wait for fourth period Spanish?’”

Of course Sherman’s jaw has dropped wide open at this point. “You’re worse than a child,” he scolds.

Whatever, we both knew I was a child long before we moved to the land that thought Sarah Palin would make a good politician. I sit here, ignoring Sherman and, instead, examine my nail like I have done some heavy labour recently. The dirt it is caked in is still there from a couple of days ago when I took my class on another field trip—this one to a waterfall where I was promised we could watch the mythical caribou herd trapeze past as though we were David Suzuki on-loan from The Nature of Things. I thought it was a pretty big adventure, mostly because I confuse the terms caribou and unicorn all the time. My students thought this was a stupid trip, as they already knew what caribou look like and four of them had been to the waterfall the night before to smoke cigarettes. Not exactly a scene from The Last Unicorn.

“So you are really winning people over is what you are saying,” Sherman laughs, interrupting my self-manicure.

“Those kids know I love them. They know I suck as a teacher, but they know I care about them. I think that goes a long way,” I say, taking a swig of my apple juice. “Damn, that’s good.”

“No. I could see that about you,” Sherman replies. Someone is clearly rocking out the rose-coloured glasses.

“I think my legacy in the Arctic is going to be a cross between Bitchy Snow Queen and that psycho art-history teacher from Mona Lisa Smile,” I admit. “More Bitchy Snow Queen though.”

“Did anything else shake down today?” Sherman asks. This kind of slang made more sense when I thought Sherman was a black bear. Since he is clearly a polar bear I think it is kind of awkward. Like when Justin Timberlake sings without a box in front of him.

“Who are you—Harriet the Spy?” I ask, getting my Bitchy Snow Queen on. Then I remember that he has spent the last fifty-one minutes boiling three litres of water so that I can eat vegetables for dinner and I change my tune. “The Bitchy Snow Queen got in a snowball war again.”

Last week’s snowball war ended in what I like to recall as a draw, but what was actually a wipe-out when almost every student on campus pummelled me with dirty snow. “Same result?” Sherman asks, preparing to console me.

“Nah, round two went to the Bitchy Snow Queen,” I smile. “They started throwing snowballs at my window and I yelled down to them that if they break my window it will be freezing for two weeks until someone fixes it and I will make them all come every day and freeze with me.”

“That must have gone over really well,” Sherman assesses.

“The girl I chased down at the Co-op, who was understandably still pissed with me, replied ‘you don’t know where I live’ and threw another ice pellet at my head.”

“I'll find out,” I said.

“I doubt it,” she countered, shaping another snowball with her palms—this one even bigger than the last. I wish I was as acclimatized to this cold as she is. It is like a superpower.

“I found you at the co-op didn't I?” I said, playing another trump card.

With that, the girl drops the snowball. Check. Mate. It even formed a perfect Inuksuk on the ground.

With the end of my story I finally get the dirt out of my fingernail too. “And it looks like the Bitchy Snow Queen just won round three as well!” I exclaim.

I think of myself as a survivor in this place. But, I think the problem most of us have with the idea of survival is one of basic definition. From evolution to religion to literature to the insipid tv show from which my cat bequeaths her name, all interpretations of self survival include the idea that others don't survive. We have adopted this notion that for us--self, like-minded believers, those with political allegiances--to survive, we need to burry those that are different. We need to prove we are superior, as though this justifies our survival and the demise of all others.

I think we are off. As off as the snowballs I have become used to being flanked with. I think the true survivors are the people who realize that as long as you fear difference, you live from a place of self-doubt. As long as you belittle those around you, you will grapple will shame in your heart. The true survivors are those of us that live as we are, and at peace with the world around us.

I'm not saying I'm there yet. I may never be. But, laying here, I think this itchy snow queen gets it.

As I lay sleeping in the arms of Sherman later that night, with Ms. Richard Hatch snuggled even more tightly in my own grasp, I snore with the roar of a train from one of those far-away southern lands with things like tracks and roads and hair conditioner. Yet, from beneath my nasal engine, the flickering Northern Lights can still hear the sound my dreams have been seeking all my life. “Sweet dreams my Bitchy Snow Queen—the one with Mona Lisa’s smile,” Sherman whispers.

It may have taken the Arctic Circle, but, I think I’ve found my people, the ones who embrace my difference from themselves, and allow it to continue in the worlds of their own survival.

The Morning After

“Oh. My. God!” I shriek into the darkness. “I am staring at a fucking wolf!”

Sherman rolls over on our air-mattress, not even opening an eye. “Go back to sleep Scott. It’s on the other side of the window.”

This is how I begin every day now—freaking the fuck out because I realize that I have moved to the Arctic Circle with my polar bear of a lover and our cat, Ms. Richard Hatch. Perhaps Sherman is right to ignore my lunacy; but, on the other hand, he could show a little more empathy. After all, I left a wonderful life of unemployment several dozen degrees lower than the 60^th parallel where Sherman himself waded on me paw and foot in exchange for a life of freezing my precious little fingers off as I slave away as a teacher in the land that ice takes a vacation to get away from.

This is the thought that runs through my mind when I kick my lover, who has returned to snoring, as the temperature continues to move toward the dark-side of fifty below zero. “Ouch!” Sherman hollers.

“Now you know how I feel,” I cry like a banshee or one of those fame-whores from The Jersey Shore if someone fails to recognize them. I’m not usually this belligerent, but I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept replaying the events from the day before when I had had recess duty and thirty nine children decided it would be fun to throw snowballs at me. I know it was thirty nine children because there are only forty children in my school and the last one was busy peeing in the middle of the playground. I chose to ignore this event as drawing attention to it would lead to the one thing worse than thirty nine children accosting me with snow-bullets—thirty nine kids urinating in public.

Well, the second worst. Apparently the children threw frozen dog shit at one of the teachers last year. So the snowballs are kind of like a minor victory. There is a lot of available dog shit in the community Sherman chose as our winter retreat.

It isn’t that the children throw snowballs at me that bothers me. Who doesn’t like a good snowball fight? Who doesn’t like to pee in public, for that matter? It would save a lot of time driving through traffic looking for restrooms. It was more the fact that two of my colleagues just stood there and watched, like it was the premiere UFC match on pay-per-view. Not that they had what Charlie Sheen would label as ‘winning’ personalities to begin with, but I thought they should have at least said something. I am pretty sure I would have, and I don’t even make the effort to bathe before I go to work. Sometimes I even wear the same clothes two days in a row. I tried pushing it to three once, but I didn’t have the guts—since my appendix was removed a year ago.

Besides, there really is a wolf at our window.

“It’s just staring at me—licking its lips,” I breathe with apprehension into Sherman’s ear. Then I try to kick Ms. Richard Hatch toward the window. She is what doctors would describe as obese-warranting-liposuction and should at least give me a chance to get away.

“A wolf isn’t going to break into a house with a polar bear in it,” Sherman yawns. “They are smarter than humans."

 I would normally bitch Sherman out for a dig like this, but yesterday I almost got eaten by a crow. Ergo, I don’t want to be left to my own devices in this land that enjoys eighteen hours of darkness a day.

That's a true story too. Crows are bigger in the Arctic. Way bigger. They are about four times the size as the ones in places that only have snow for one season and they are about ten times as hungry. I know this crow was threatening to eat me, or at least take a bite out of my ever-expanding mid-section, because there was nothing else alive in the Tundra—just me, the bird and his desire to eat me. Not exactly the ménage-trois I am looking for. I much prefer a date with my two best friends, cake and pie, which is probably why the crow had such high hopes for the two of us.

“It was screaming all night,” I moan.

“No, that was Ms. Richard,” Sherman says. “She doesn’t like the Arctic.”

“There’s a surprise,” I blurt out, Ms. Richard only likes things that are as hot as hell. They keep her body fat in a liquid state, allowing her to find her feet. It’s genetic. The wolves were howling all night too though. They never shut up. It almost makes me long for the days when all I had to deal with were a couple of pesky blue jays in the morning. Oh, how things look so much more appealing from an ocean away.

“You better get to school,” Sherman says, finally opening his eyes. “What are you teaching the hope of tomorrow on this fine day?”

“Oh, we have a big day planned,” I say, rolling my eyes. “First I’m teaching them how to do detention and then we are going to practice pissing in a urinal, because those are two experiences I never plan on enduring again.”

“What about gym class?” Sherman asks. “These kids need to get in shape.”

By kids, I assume he means me. He is just too much of a gentleman to ever say it directly. Fortunately, I am not. “I don’t do gym. I’m going to teach them how to make slingshots though. If they need to attack something I know a crow and a wolf I wouldn’t mind driving out of this village. I might be small and I might be kind of dumb, but when I come to the Arctic I expect to be respected.”

“No, you just want another bonfire in the Tundra with a couple of foxes and some Northern Lights action.”

“That might be true, but when we are out there I can’t take my eyes off of you,” I coo. That’s when Sherman does what he does best. He ambles out of bed, scares away the wolves and makes my breakfast.

The Blair North Project

“Sherman,” I whisper, covering my mouth with my right hand to funnel the sound. “I think there’s a polar bear outside.” I say this with the same weighted pausing as those people from The Blair Witch Project, although, I like to think I have less phlegm on my face.

Sherman just stares at me. “I know. It’s my cousin Francine,” he finally says.

Not that I knew Sherman has a cousin and certainly not one with such an insipid name as Francine. Not that Scott is much better, but still. As it turns out, Francine’s name far out seeds her personality. She runs a modest crocheting business and I really cannot fault her for that, but she has the kind of social skills one would expect of someone who spends the better part of her life with a needle and thread—none.

I was just in the middle of telling Francine my master plan for taking care of my body if Sherman ever marries me and we have children together. “I’m going to go on the cake-a-day diet.”

“The what?” Francine asks. Clearly if it is not stitched with needle-point, she will not understand.

“The cake-a-day diet,” I repeat. “If Sherman ever puts a ring on it I am going to rock out the cheesecake like it is out of season.” Francine eyeballs me from head-to-toe. I had put on a little extra cushion recently, but upon learning that I have been bedding down with a polar bear I realized this had just been my ingenious subconscious preparing me for a life roughing it in the north. Let’s be honest, that bitch Margaret Lawrence has nothing on me.

“I plan on eating a large three-cheese pizza every day too,” I continue. This could be the Michael Phelps diet, except I don’t know how to swim.

“Have you ever heard of a little show called The Biggest Loser?” Francine inquires?

“Oh, you mean Fat Man on the Loose?!” I squeal. I had never actually seen this show, but a former roommate of mine had been obsessed with it. Literally, she wanted to eat the show the way I want to eat cake and pie—a lot. “I know what you’re thinking, but I would never go on it. I have no intention of losing my fat when I put it on. I am going to catch it and trap it in my belly forever.”

“Oh, my cousin is a lucky, lucky, man,” Francine astutely observes. I have no time for sardonic humour, especially when it comes from someone whose hobby involves being boring.

I turn instead to my new favourite hobby, Skype.

Skype doesn’t work as well in the north as it does in the south, so everyone sounds like Darth Vader and the video feed is more like a photographic snapshot. It gets you when you are least expecting it and holds the usually unflattering picture of you up on the screen for at least a minute until it is ready to pounce again. I love this feature. It may keep me in the north permanently.

I see my good friend Miranda is online. We bonded when we both realized we have difficulty walking through doors and instead spend the better part of our days walking into walls that seem pretty obvious to other people.

“Miranda I miss you!” I squeal.

“You smell,” is all I heard. It is true, I had not bathed in a couple of…days. But, how could she smell me over the internet? “Don’t they have showers in the north?”

“Yes, but I don’t shower every day,” I said, feeling confident. “I like to conserve the water.”

“Conserve my nasal passage. Take a bath bitch!”

I guess this seems like a night of honesty. What other reasoning could there be for what next came out of my mouth. “Twice I did not even brush my teeth. I like to think it is gangsta', but it’s not. It’s just gross.” I was expecting her to give me another blast. This was not to be the case.

“Do you notice that as we get older we start smelling more, like stale and old smelly?” Miranda asks.

“Yes.” Especially when I don’t bath. “Do you notice that we mind it less too? Lowered expectations and all.”

“So you are probably rocking the old spice aroma in the morning I assume,” Miranda chuckles.

“You would think, but no. And another thing, sometimes I’m like whatever too much toothpaste isn’t great for you anyway.”

“Oh, so a la natural in the Arctic,” Miranda laughs. “I like it! I don't use toothpaste most of the time either. But I still brush.... kinda...”

“ Kinda! I love it!” I squeal. This is why I love Miranda.

“Also, I have definitely warn the same clothes two days in a row before,” I slide in.

“Really?” Miranda asks more quizzically than before, as though this, unlike brushing or bathing somehow crosses an imaginary line in her head.

Not exactly the reaction I was anticipating, but whatever, you only live once. “Once I tried to go for a third day, but I balked on my way out the door.”

“Probably a good thing, since you have an appallingly poor fashion sense,” she notes.

Trying to change the subject I mention that I have a blog. “I should put this conversation in it!”

“Nooooooo way bitch!” screams Miranda in that fun, high-pitched way that people say one thing when they are really hoping you will do the exact opposite.  “Well, okay. If you use fake names. I need a good fake name that doesn't sound like a stripper.”

“We could call you...Janet?” I ask. “That sounds like a good name. Or Condolesa. You could be black and work in the White House. Yes! You could be my friend Condolesa and you could rap "from the south side!"

“Sounds good,” laughs Miranda. “I’ve got to go not brush. Later bitch!”

“Love you Condi!”

As I turn off Skype. Or, as I do what I think is turning off Skype but is really providing an elderly couple in Mexico a low-budget screening of the show Passions, Sherman cascades into the den.

“You just never know what stuff is going to end up directly and indirectly railroading your life,” he says. “You think you are going down one path and things are going fine but then something happens and you are thrown onto a completely different track.”

I take Sherman’s hand in my own. I look into his eyes and finish his thought. “And after a while, you realize that the path you thought was fine never could have led you to the experiences that you consider the most fulfilling, most rewarding. It is the failures and missteps that end up having been your greatest achievements. Because, without them…”

“You never could have been this happy,” Sherman says, smiling. "The special people are the ones that grow with you. It doesn't mean the people that come and go aren't important. It just helps you appreciate the ones that stay."

“God, you two make me want to vomit real bad,” Francine says, dry-heaving a little.

“Damn it, are you still here?” I ask. But secretly I loved her comment. I'm glad she has some spunk under all that needle-point.

After Francine finally gets the hint and exits stage left I run back to the computer. “Who do you need to Skype with now?” asks Sherman. “I want to go to bed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, brushing him off. “Go ahead in. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I dial Giselle’s number. Something I had been discussing with Miranda had triggered an earlier conversation.

Before she has a chance to say hello I scream into the phone. “And that’s why you need to have a double chin-up in life just to get through the mother fucking day. And, arm fat helps too. It is more than a preventative measure for flesh-eating disease. If you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t be able to bend your elbow.”

This really made no sense, but somehow Giselle runs with it. That's how she rolls. “Or give a blow job,” she adds.

“I don’t think that applies,” I chuckle.

“Sure it does,” she says, with a calm, balanced tone. “It always does.” Giselle is kind of an expert. In addition to having been my childhood babysitter, she has also moon-lit as a higher-low-end prostitute for most of the last twenty years. That is, until she contracted chlamydia, or what she likes to refer to as her “retirement package”.

“Fair enough,” I agree. You don’t stay friends with a woman like Giselle by being confrontational. Since I need to borrow her Harley Davidson Four-wheeler for my next adventure in the tundra, I don’t want to blue ball this particular relationship. “Listen Gise’y. I just wanted to say I love you, but there’s a wolf staring at me through the window so I’m going to have to go."

That’s when I do what I do every night up here in the north. I hang up on her and scream “Sherman, you better get your ass in here! It's back!”

Hey There Teacher Man!

“Good lord! Polar bear attacks, peeping tom wolves and vampire kids! Sounds like you are having an awesome time!” Giselle sang into the phone. Giselle used to be my childhood babysitter. She also remains what she always was—a middle-upper-scale prostitute. Admittedly, we had lost a lot of communication since the ‘very helpful’ woman at the phone company informed me that I can’t get voice-mail service in the north. This had surprised me since Sherman not only knew how to use voicemail when I met him, but could also Skype and text—two things that I could not.

When I had agreed to move up to the Arctic Circle when my summer fling informed me that he is not in fact a black bear, but a very dirty polar bear, I didn’t exactly know how far up I was coming. Since there is even less to do in the Arctic than there is in the forest we used to live in with our cat, Ms. Richard Hatch, I had taken a job as a college art professor to keep myself occupied. I was in the middle of teaching a lecture on abstraction when I actually looked at a map for the first time.

I was a little shocked. "Wait a minute, Greenland looks kind of close,” I said, taken aback.

“That's because it is" one of the students responded.

"Keener," I grimmaced to myself.

After I slipped myself a Xanax and sent the children home early after pretending to see a polar bear through the window, which really shouldn’t bother me, since I live with one, I tried to call Giselle. That’s when I realized that the phone and internet both shut down at the first sign of rain, snow or sleet. One of which falls every four minutes up here.

I decided that since I was obviously committed to spending the winter here, mostly because there is no plane to take me home, I might as well make the most of it. I decided to run the local movie theatre. This being running a movie on my computer and projecting it onto the wall of the school gymnasium. I envisioned myself as Elvira—Mistress of the North, and bringing my zany sense of humour to the youth of Wasilla.

The world had other plans for me. As I walked across the stretch of tundra between my home and the co-op, where I anticipated finding both a cold Dr. Pepper and a movie to show the youth, I crossed one of my new neighbours.

“I saw you wandering around in the tundra the other day,” he said. “Do you have a gun?”

Believe it or not I have never fired a gun. “No, but I have this bear whistle,” I cheered, whipping it out of my pocket. “I consider it my rape whistle of the north!”

I was just so happy someone was acknowledging my presence, as I had been here for over a week and no one had done anything but spit in my direction. I could understand that. I am a little shocking to people no matter what hemisphere I am in, but only until you get to know me better.

“Is it a gun?” he questioned, hopefully rhetorically.

“No,” I smiled awkwardly, pointing at it. “It’s a whistle.” It's pretty obvious.

“Then it doesn’t count," the man shot back. "There are wolves and polar bears here. They will eat you.”

I felt that it was best not to bring up the fact that I live with a polar bear and am in the midst of filing for domestic partnership with the big lug. “Baby steps,” I kept mouthing to myself. “Baby steps.” Unfortunately, I also mouthed it to him.

“Whatever,” he said. “You’ve been warned.” I interpreted this to mean he did not want me to die, which I considered reassuring. I also realized that Sherman has probably faced far more oppression than I have from those around him. My family may not understand my choices in life, but they don’t carry armed weapons with the desire to shoot me either. I was preparing to go home and remind him how fond I am of him when I stumbled into the co-op.

This is always a bit of an adventure, as the woman who runs the shop refers to me as “Bubbles” who I believe is a character from the Trailer Park Boys. However, this is a more enviable name than “Small Head, Big Gloves” which is what I have been referred to by my students ever since I waltzed outside in my parka and mittens with the first sighting of snow.

“How was your first movie night, Bubbles?” the woman asks.

“Oh, you know, movie nights definitely have their ups and downs, but it is all part of the adventure,” I say.

What I meant by this is that on the first movie night, Elvira thought she would treat the children to the comedy classic Police Academy. They seemed highly entertained for approximately 73 minutes, which is, understandably, all anyone can take of Steve Gutenberg. I could rationalize their getting a little restless with the lack of a script at this point, but, I was not expecting them to turn into the gremlins if you let them have pizza after dark. By this, I mean, they went fucking nuts.

Not only did they fly out of the gym, but they unlocked all three doors to the school and managed to evade my every attempt at getting them out and home. Had it just been me they were ignoring, I would have appreciated that. I ignore me most of the time too, but this was Elvira—Mistress of the North, and I felt she deserved better. She certainly did not deserve to be bitten. This is exactly what she got—twice. She also got peed on.

Instead of bringing this up with my new friend at the co-op, I thought I would ease into another question I had. “There appear to be bits of something, as in skeleton bones, scattered around my backyard,” I begin, hesitantly. “Do you know what it might be?”

“Caribou,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“This is the fucking savage land,” I think to myself. Obviously it is not. It just takes some getting used to. The same way I take getting used to. I really have to remember that. And I am the anomaly here. No one else is ridiculously living with a polar bear in the north. Nor are they vegetarians in a place where there are no vegetable, nor viable lands. Yes, I am the ridiculous one here. But heck, it's always more fun to be the one left of center. Being me is kind of like living in the middle of Carnival of the Damned sometimes.

As I listen to my new friend continue on about how she can't wait for "country food" which is obviously all of my favourite things to eat (i.e. caribou, seal and whale) I begin to realize how easy it is to not notice the tiny sacrifices the people around you make every day. For instance, both Sherman and Miss Richard Hatch love meat and wouldn’t be able to get enough of any of those things. Yet, they have been living on a legume-based diet for me for months now, and so it is my turn to appreciate the needs of others. This is when I realize I have totally lost track of the conversation and snap back to reality.

“Well, we aren't all living in a grand metropolis with a co-op AND a post-office I told her” the woman finishes.

“You can say that again sister!” I roar, trying to overcompensate for ignoring the last eight minutes of her story.

“I am actually jealous of those places,” she continues. “Since having a separate post-office would mean staffing a post-office. Ours opens randomly but most often at the hours of 10am and 3pm for an undisclosed number of minutes. It is such a pain because I have things to mail.”

“You can say that again sister!” I repeat, as I walk out the door in a daze.

“Good luck with your classes tomorrow!” she hollers after me. “Today, one of your more dynamic students told me you aren’t boring anymore.

“I consider that up there with getting into law school on my major achievements list!” I proclaim. “I also consider myself to have more aboriginal blood in me than my Mohawk father, as a result of last week’s bite.”