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.”

Okay Sleepy Head

“Okay sleepy head, it’s time to leave,” Sherman purrs into my ear. My reaction to this is the same every morning. I flail my arms like a maniac until I hit him in the face.

“Sorry lover,” I say, as I do every morning.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sherman says. He is walking on egg-shells because he still thinks I am going to bolt from our planed journey to the north. The thing Sherman is forgetting about me is that I am lazy. There’s no way I would exert the mental energy required to cancel my plane ticket. I’m kind of an idiot too, but that’s not what we are talking about here. The thing about Sherman is that he was a big black bear until about a week ago. As it turns out, he is actually a polar bear. However, our cat, Ms. Richard Hatch, is still a cat and the three of us are all getting ready to move back to Sherman’s hometown—Wasilla, Alaska.

Understandably, Sherman likes to spend his summers in the south for several reasons. Not the least of which is getting away from the Palins and obviously, he was never going to find a gem like me up in the colds of Alaska. What he did do was meet me—as an unemployable wreck sleeping in my car on the edge of the forest he makes his “summer home” in—make me become completely reliant on his love and survival skills—which, let’s be honest, didn’t take much—and then, tell me he has to move back up to the Arctic Circle for the winter.

“You’re still coming with me, right?” he asks.

“As long as you’re not going to abandon me for some hussy wolf or polar bear,” I yawn. “Plus, I can’t wait to get away from these fucking blue jays.” I throw a stick up in the air in their direction. The blue jay family flip their right wings at me (the avian version of “screw you”) and proceed to dive down one-after-another and try to crap on my head.

That would really suck too, as I recently bleached my hair so that it would match my lover’s naturally white locks. Thankfully, these blue jays are about as adept as I am, and they all miss. “Fail, bitches!” I holler. The sound echoes over a dozen times, as though the blue jays are saying it back to me. Probably what they had planned all along. “Figures,” I sulk.

“Okay, we’re going to need to go if we are going to make the plane,” Sherman says. This is when Ms. Richard Hatch howls as though she just found out tuna is out of season and tries to make a bolt for the front of the cave I have been living in with my make-shift family of choice. Fortunately, Richard is about as athletic as I am and she doesn’t get more than a few feet before she gives up and sits in her Kennel Cab II (because Kennel Cab I wasn’t even close to big enough).

Sherman leans down, gives Richard some tuna snaps and closes her cage. “Thank you Ms. Richard. No one wants to go up north without you.” Richard is only mildly tolerable of me, but she worships Sherman. It makes sense. He feeds her. He walks her. He even plays with her. The most I do is throw crap at her when she won’t shut-up at night.

When we get to the airport things go from boring to ridiculous. Sherman is usually in control of everything, which I enjoy because thinking has never been my strength. But Sherman doesn’t do as well in large gatherings of people. Neither does Ms. Richard. They both lose it, which makes me jealous. However, I love them, so I guess I am going to have to pull my own personal shit together for this journey to where the sun doesn’t wander.

When we get to the front of the line some four-hundred pound woman who is sporting a rape whistle informs us that Ms. Richard will have to travel in the cargo. “She was pissed enough when she thought she was going to be travelling coach.”

 We notice that the man behind us in line has a 26er of Budweiser.

“Maybe she’ll get wasted,” I joke as I watch Richard rolling down the cargo belt. Inside it’s unsettling though. This is the first time since I had found Ms. Richard hitchhiking on the side of the freeway that we have been separated. She had been running from the pound. I had been running from a traffic cop. We forged a bound of mutual deviancy and in the process she had become a kindred spirit. A fat, balding, bitchy, kindred spirit—the best kind.

“Oh Ms. Richard,” I cry, I miss you already!

Sherman hugs me as we move toward the gate to get our boarding passes. I may be vulnerable without Ms. Richard Hatch by my side, but when I get vulnerable I get super pissed too. It isn’t a great time for someone to mess with me is what I’m getting at.

“Hello,” says the bubbly woman on the other side of the counter.

“Screw you,” I respond, sullenly. Admittedly, this is an over-reaction, but she is wearing an awful lot of tangerine. It may be her work uniform, but that is the reason we have unions in this country—so you can fight the man on issues like that. If she isn’t going to bother meeting basic social protocols, neither am I.

She looks over at Sherman. “Your friend will have to buy an extra ticket or stay in cargo.”

I had heard about the ridiculous law that said a plus-sized individual would now have to pay for two seats, but I clearly thought it was a gag. “No fucking way,” I respond, meeting her stare. “If you even think about trying to make him pay double, I’ll have CNN, CBC and Fox all over this story. I am a highly-connected journalist of the highest integrity.”

“Yeah, and what’s the story?” Mellow Yellow asks, trying to call my bluff.

“Belligerent orange-clad stewardess goes on homophobic tirade over plus-sized albino couple trying to honeymoon in the Arctic,” I say without skipping a beat. “The press will eat it up the way I eat everything in the forest.”

 If I didn’t think Sheba would know how to respond to this. I was wrong.

“Fox will never publish that shit,” she says, without blinking.

“No, but you think Anderson Cooper, CNN’s silver fox, will pass it up?” I ask. “Sherman and I will be on 360 and Ellen every day for a week!” Like I said, when I get vulnerable, I get bitchy. I don’t know about how Sherman feels, but I think it really works for me.

The woman who looks like Tang’s wet-dream pretends to push a few buttons as she contemplates her next move. The line behind us is starting to get kind of long and I pull out my grocery list and pretend to jot a few notes down as I continue to channel Erin Brokovich.

“Okay, I can upgrade the two of you to first class and then there will be lots of space for your…” she hesitates while she breaks our stare and looks at Sherman. “…special friend.”

“You better add a couple of free cocktails after that last little comment,” I counter. “I may have been bluffing before, but that was rude and these people all heard you.”

“Fine,” she snarls as she hands me the coupons. “Have a nice flight.”

“We better,” I say, as Sherman and I go to board our plane.

The trip to The Arctic Circle requires a couple of flight transfers, a bus and finally a dog-sled ride. There is probably an Inuktitut test in there somewhere, but I had an awful lot of champagne on the first leg of our journey, so the ending was a little hazy.

When we got off the first plane I couldn’t wait to be reunited with Ms. Richard Hatch, who would be riding with Sherman and I for the rest of the journey. When she arrived through the cargo chute, she was sporting her bitchy-face-on look. Kind of like a modern-day Power Ranger without the spanks.

“What smells so rank?” Sherman asks.

Of course, it was Ms. Richard Hatch. It appears that 26er of Budweiser had been bunking on top of Ms. Richard and one of the bottles had busted open, spilling its contents all over her. “First impressions Richard. First impressions,” I laugh, as she howls at my with her you’ll pay boy, oh how you’ll pay face.

“If this is any indication of what we are in for during our Arctic Circle adventures, it does not bode well, does it Ms. Richard?”

In response…a blank stare.

“Well, we have arrived in your kingdom Sherman,” I sigh, as I pick Ms. Richard Hatch’s drunken ass up and walk into the blizzard that is my new home. “Hi Tundra, I’m home!”

“I hope we survive the experience,” snickers Sherman, as he follows me out into the white abyss. “I hope the Arctic does too.”

Sherman's Big Surprise

“…and that’s how I came to live in the forest with a big black bear named Sherman,” I say, as I hang up on my good friend Giselle, the middle-aged prostitute-cougar who used to babysit me. She recently married my childhood friend, Jake, which had only served to bring us closer together. Believe me; if he is marrying a prostitute-cougar, we are not talking about Jake Gyllenhaal here.

“Doesn’t Giselle already know about us?” Sherman asks, as he wanders in from his morning walk to get me honey and take my cat, Miss Richard Hatch, for a stroll. Sherman is one smart cookie and he is right about this as well. Giselle had recently met him at my ten year high school reunion. It was quite the site, a bear, a cougar and Jake Gyllenhaal’s doppelganger. Needless to say, the twenty-year reunion has already been officially cancelled.

“I just love telling that story,” I smile, as I stir some of the fresh honey into my Earl Grey tea. “Kind of like how Miss Richard loves to not pay her taxes. I look over at my cat, who is glaring at me. I keep forgetting that her deal with the devil included the ability to read lips. “Besides, Giselle has done so many recreational drugs in her time that she has absolutely zero short-term memory. I could tell her that story every day for the rest of her life and she wouldn’t be bothered a bit!”

“Well, then I guess she is lucky to have you in her life,” Sherman says, rolling his eyes. He does this so often that I barely even notice anymore. It’s almost as though we have become an old married couple in the short season we have been together. Then he throws a bundle of bills onto the trunk of a tree we use as a table. “Here, the mail’s found you.”

I am beginning to detect a bit of edginess to Sherman this morning, which is a real change of pace. He is usually all sunshine and rainbows while I am the bitchy one, but I don’t want to bring anything up since winter is inching its way closer. I used to love winter. Snow men, skating, watching people slip on the ice. It was all so majestic. But now, my priorities have changed. I have a black bear and a confused cat to keep busy taking care of me, and both of them will be getting ready to hibernate in like 2.2 seconds.

You might not have guessed, but I don’t do well in isolation, which is the main reason I have never robbed a bank. Instead, I choose to tackle the lesser of two evils and open some mail. “Shit! My subscription to Sylvia Brown’s mailing list has been declined!”

“When is the last time you paid that bill?” Sherman asks.

“Paid?” I respond, as though he just tried to slip in that he thinks Chuck Norris would actually make a good president. “She’s supposed to be a psychic. She should have seen this coming.” Obviously Sylvia Brown is an even bigger lunatic than I am, but that’s why I find her so fascinating. Well, that and how she went to jail—twice. Celebrities that go to jail are the only ones worth paying any attention to. The ones who make it a regular occurrence are worth following on Twitter.

“Maybe it’s time you start thinking about some form of gainful employment,” Sherman smiles.

“Oh, I see,” I retort, which is my word of the day. Otherwise I would have only responded. “That’s what this is about.”

“That’s what what’s about?” Sherman asks, confused.

“Your pissy mood,” I say. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re due. I am usually the one bitching and moaning. I just thought maybe you were upset about the same thing I am, but I guess I was wrong.”

“Huh?”

“I thought you were upset because you will be hibernating soon and I won’t get to see you anymore,” I say, beginning to blubber like a baby.

“Oh, Eahore,” Sherman responds. “I’m upset because I am going to have to go away soon, but not to hibernate.”

“No? Are you going to jail too?” This seems far more exciting a prospect than it should.

“No,” Sherman smiles, as he beckons me over to sit with him. “There is something I have to tell you. I am not really a black bear. I’m a polar bear.”

“You’re a what!” I holler. “But, you’re so black?”

“Camouflage,” Sherman says. “I like to come down south for the summers. I just dye my hair. Do you hate me for lying to you?”

 It’s moments like these that you have a choice. You can let the shock of the unknown overwhelm you, or, you can choose to recognize the unconditional love and acceptance someone needs to see. I might be ridiculous about most things and I might not have a job or a future planned, but I know I love Sherman, no matter what.

“Hate you?” I ask, allowing a beaming smile to sweep across my face. “I fucking love polar bears! I was actually hoping you would be one!” Again, sure, it was a bit of a shock when Sherman gave me the news, but the fact is that the people we love are the only things that really matter in this life. The fact that he loves me enough to share his secrets with me is such a bigger reward than anything else.

“Plus, now I get to bleach my hair so it can match yours!” I shriek. “I bet we both look better as bleach-blondes!”

Then I look over at Miss Richard Hatch. Richard hisses at me. “Richard, don’t’ get your bitch on. There’s enough bleach for the two of us.”

“Scott, you don’t get it,” Sherman says, hugging me. “I have to go back up to the Arctic.”

“Brilliant!” I smile. “I’ll come with you. I could teach or something.”

“You’d do that?” Sherman asks. “For me?”

I give him one of those big bear hugs he loves so much. “Of course I would. You’ve done so much for me. I mean, you even befriended Giselle. I have already met your parents. You think a little thing like the fucking Tundra is going to stand between us?”

“It’s not always as romantic as Dr. Zhivago you know,” Sherman says.

“Pish,” I say, waving my hand in the air. “Look over there, Richard Hatch is purring.” Obviously she is sleeping. Richard doesn’t purr when she is awake.

“Do you think she’s dreaming about all of the new things she’ll get to eat in the Arctic Circle?” Sherman asks. Isn’t that sweet, I think. He really has come to care for her like she is his own.

“No,” I smile. “She’s going to be super pissed with the two of us. But who cares, she’s super pissed with me most of the time anyway.”

Then I walk off to the back of the cave. “Where are you going?” asks Sherman.

“To pack,” I smile. “I’m moving north! Oh, also to go give those blue jays a piece of my mind. There’s really no reason for me to feign friendship with them if we are just passing through.” I know in my heart this is going to be the scariest adventure of my life, but hey, that’s what you do for the ones you love. Plus, I have finally found the one person who is willing to provide for me. You think I am going to let a small thing like him running off to the North Pole let him get away?

Not fucking likely. Even Sylvia Brown could have seen that one coming. Well, maybe not from behind the bars.

Bragging Rights

You might be surprised to learn that my parents are not jumping off the rooftop singing my praises these days. I don’t know why. I have a loving partner. I am ‘with child’. I own my own home. Life looks pretty good on paper.

Oh, wait. That loving partner is a big black bear named Sherman. That child is a female cat named Richard Hatch (because she bitches and doesn’t pay taxes). And that home—it’s a big cavern that sits on a mountain-top in the middle of the forest my car broke-down in front of. It still feels pretty damn good, but it looks a little better on papers, is all I’m saying.

“Your parents should be proud,” fawns Sherman, my domestic partner. Although, I don’t know how accurate the term domestic is, considering we live in the bush. However, unlike Miss Richard, when I file my taxes, it is as a couple. “What’s not to love about you?”

Sherman really is sweet. That nun that keeps calling him the spawn of Satan has really missed the mark. If anyone deserves that title, it is my grandmother, and even her deal with the devil has recently timed out. So, it would really be nice for Sister Sylvia to stop throwing rotten eggs into the entrance of our cave.

“I know you love me, Sherman,” I sigh, taking his head in my hands and kissing him gently on the nose. “But, my parents think I am something of a hot mess.”

I feel bad complaining about my parents considering we just got back from visiting Sherman’s parents. The problem wasn’t that they live far, or even their tempestuous nature, but the fact that they are in prison. Well, bear prison. This would be the zoo.

To be honest, I was kind of excited to go and see them because I can’t recall ever having been to a zoo before. My parents were lazy and so we tended to vacation at The Holiday Inn—swimming pool, sauna and pay-per-view, what what!—so even though I knew this was supposed to be a difficult venture, I admit that I was looking forward to it.

“Now, just let me do the talking,” Sherman had counselled me, as though I were going up to testify in his defense in some court hearing and was bound to fuck things up. “I haven’t told my parents about us yet.” This probably should have bothered me more than it did, but Sherman had purchased me a chai latte and it is my weakness. Well, that and big black bears that take care of me, so really, how was I going to get mad at someone currently shooting two-for-two.

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m going to go look at the giraffes. Take your time.” I think he grimaced at the casual nature I was taking with this whole scenario, but I knew he was stressed about it, and I really didn’t want to add to that. And by add to it, I mean deal with it. Sherman is the one with his head on his shoulders in this relationship. I, on the other hand, am not good in tense situations. “Call me when you think it’s a good time.”

I walked off to ‘see the giraffes’ which was code for ‘find the cotton candy’, which is all I really wanted to do. I mean, I live in the forest and am surrounded by wildlife, why would I want to come and see all of the same stuff locked up in cages. It would be like owning a private pool and paying to go and swim in a public one that people can urinate in. Obviously this is just stupid. And gross.

By the time I heard Sherman’s laborious roar—the same one he uses when I’ve been watching Hell’s Kitchen for too long—I had almost chowed down on a full stick of the sugary-goodness. I probably would have gotten rid of all of the evidence, but I had stumbled upon the nacho stand first. I idled over to his parents’ cell in a veritable sugar-coma.

“Hi Mom!” I squealed. Ever since I had gotten drunk at a karaoke bar and woken up next to a biker with a mullet the size of my husband’s bear-paw I had sworn off both alcohol and sugar. Clearly my tolerance had deteriorated and the cotton candy was taking its toll on me. ‘Mom’ was pissed.

“Roarrrrrrrrrrr!” Gina growled. I can’t blame her. I would be pretty pissed if I was stuck in a zoo and my son was dating someone super-cool like me too.

“Wow Gina!” I said, doubling back. “Watch it with that breathe. Floss much?”

Clearly this was not the right introduction. In retrospect, a cautious hello would have probably been better. But, then again, I have never been one for small talk.

“Mom, I’d like to introduce you to my live-in-lover,” Sherman said, wrapping his arms around my shoulders in a full-embrace. “This is Scott.”

I could see why Gina wouldn’t necessarily be full-on impressed with me, but there was no reason for her to do what she did next. She tried to climb over the fence and attack me. When this failed, she started cleaning herself.

“Oh, how disgusting,” I said, before realizing that I am really no one to judge this sort of behaviour. So, to make Gina feel a little more at home, I began grooming myself as well. This seemed to make her relax—at least enough to relieve herself in front of me. Then she seemed to get bored and froliced off toward the man with the fish.

“That’s mom,” smiled Sherman. “She is kind of a hobgoblin, but I love her.”

“So do I!” I over-embellished. “The bitch has spunk! She kind of reminds me of Tonya Harding. You know, in all the good ways.”

Then Sherman’s father, Teddy, wandered up to us.

“Hi dad,” Sherman smiled, pushing his head up against the cage and allowing his father to give him a big lick up side the face. “Daddy!”

“Oh, get a room would you!” I gushed, trying to make them feel like they were a big deal.  They both smiled. It’s pretty safe to say that Sherman has gotten all of his maternal instincts from his father, and not from the mean lady that is now biting the poor zoo-keeper who is trying to feed her.

Then I stuck my head up to the side of the cage and let Teddy lick it too. “Oh, get a room would you!” Sherman hollered, all the while smiling.

So, like I was saying, I feel bad complaining about my own parents when Sherman’s are in lock-down, but at least his are the co-presidents of Sherman’s Biggest Fans Club. “Well, your drag-queen father is a pretty big supporter of yours,” Sherman smiles, meekly.

“Yeah, right,” I say, rolling my eyes. It’s not that my drag-queen father isn’t a supporter, but he is off being a Cher-impersonator most of the time. The fact that I never joined him as Lady Gaga or Britney Spears really gets his chops. “He likes anyone who brings him glitter.”

“Just because you dropped out of law school doesn’t mean your parents aren’t proud of you,” Sherman says, trying to console me. “You’ve done a lot of other really neat things I’m sure they’re impressed by.”

“Like what?” I pout. “Getting my piece-of-shit Hyundai stuck in the middle of the forest?”

“No, like the year you spent teaching art in Nunavut.”

“Right,” I say, rolling my eyes again. “All of my students were better than me.”

‘Well, isn’t that the mark of a good teacher?”

“I guess,” I deliberate. “What else do you got?”

“What about the summer you spent in Ethiopia working with trauma victims.”

“I guess that was one of my finer moments,” I agree. “But, I can’t help thinking my parents think I’m a failure. Partly because I’m a law school drop-out and partly because I can’t impersonate Lady Gaga, but also because they don’t approve of our love the way Gina and Teddy do. It’s not their fault. It’s the world they were raised in. It isn’t as accepting as the forest.”

“Well, that’s tough,” smiles Sherman. “But, it could be a lot worse.”

“It could. You’re right,” I smile. “I could be that skanky little skunk that keeps trying to seduce you. At least I have the one I love, and, for whatever reason, you seem to love me too. Why is that again?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Sherman sighs in resignation. “Just do.”

“And don’t get me wrong. I am so grateful that I found you, because I never thought I would. I just hate that they think I’m a failure.”

“Why do you think they wanted you to be a lawyer…or Lady Gaga?” Sherman asks.

“I don’t know,” I say, scratching my head. “So they can brag to their friends?”

“Right, but…”

“But they don’t have any friends…?”

“No,” Sherman screams in exasperation. “They just need to know there are other things to brag about when it comes to you.”

“Like what?” I ask, unbelievingly.

“Like that you follow your heart, even when it takes you down paths that the world you grew up in told you you weren’t allowed to venture down. Like that you found the love of your life and, in spite of a world that told you to hate yourself, you knew enough to not only love yourself but to love me too.”

I smile at this. It is totally true.

“Like how you make me smile and laugh every day. Like how the world of the person you love the most is made complete because of you. Like how you, in spite of all your flaws, are perfect in my eyes and unconditional in your love for those around you.”

I have to say, I am touched. I’m bound to get another chai latte out of this too.

“If your parents can’t be proud of that, then we’ll just have to spend all of our holidays at the zoo.”

“Well, they do make a mean cotton candy,” I smile. "And it's way better than The Holiday Inn."

“True that,” says Sherman. “Besides, if you hadn’t failed at all that other stuff, you never would have had the chance to succeed at making me happy, and you are the only one who’s ever been able to do that.”

That’s touching. Not enough for me to hug his beastly, iron-wielding, mother the next time we go to the zoo, but certainly enough for me to brag about him the next time I go to cheer-on my drag-queen father during his Cher-impersonation-tour.

I’m beginning to think that this life is definitely something worth bragging about.