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!”