To Serge: Much Appreciated
The somewhat progressive and at least publicly perceived political correctness that I often bandy about my daily life by assuring my students that the test is ‘not a boy test that is sexually attracted to other boy tests,’ can’t always hold up. From time to time I do nothing to hide my enjoyment of a well timed and directed lisp. I feel little remorse in enjoying such crass humor as it is distinctly based in the stereotypical and the few people I have come across that would actually feel personally aped are walking parodies of themselves and have to understand their own magnetism to grade six jokes. One man that falls directly into this category I never actually met, which makes it even stranger that I will attempt to use him to explain the beginning of my summer. Hold on.
As a faceless number in almost all of my lower year undergrad courses I knew very few people beyond my own inane internal description of them. Always brings a laptop guy, indie rock guy I should probably be friends with, guy that probably has angry sex with passed out girls, freshman 25 girl that doesn’t seem to care and should probably learn to dress to conceal and incredibly cute girl that I will never have the balls to even walk in her direction were all incredibly interesting characters in my own mind but remained almost totally fictional and unknown. Thankfully my desire for meaningful belonging was satiated by my housemates who were all in a very specific programme and thus knew each of their classmates well and at times intimately. Almost as an associate member of the programme I was privy to their parties, discussions about profs, due dates and curious lingo as well as being very well aware of the ins and outs of the entire class dynamic, which included one over the top gay guy.
Since graduating to the world of big boy pants my memories of peripheral characters in my past days have become shrouded in the ocean fog of time and often they drown in the tide of the sea of beer I have since consumed, never to be fully or correctly recollected again. In this particular case, never having actually met the man in question, I am only certain that his memory persists in a form unique to my needs and most likely in a way as opposite to reality as I am to an overly confident young pygmy hippopotamus. What I have come to accept as truth is that his name was Serge. Upon entering the room, Serge, in his most prototypical gay slinging of words would declare that a ‘power surge’ had just inflicted the room and that hopefully everyone had saved their work. Why I have deemed this convoluted anecdote worthy of a place in my memory banks that should probably be home to just about any other piece of useful information is a testament to my immaturity. That I just stiffled a smile is a testament to how I need to get out more; a realization that leads directly to the point of this diatribe.
The recklessness of the recent weather patterns in the fair city of Toronto has left my place void of consistent electricity, an affliction that would usually result in great frustration, lost files and reliance on my cell phone alarm clock. When I arrived home after a day of pointless wandering this past weekend I noticed blinking numbers where my properly askew time should have been staring at me. As an incredibly early riser, I am a slave to the piercing blasts of beeps and thus, I darted quickly to reset the time. I stopped before I started. The power surge that had run through my room left me with a perfect opportunity to reflect on the notion that I no longer required notions of time. I left the numbers blinking. The power surge had liberated my desire to sleep later than 5am, my love of rolling over and beginning to read exactly where my heavy eyelids had forced me to stop the night before and most importantly, the entire idea that once my bladder forces my feet to the ground there’s nothing stopping them from crawling back beneath the covers. Serge, wherever you are and whatever you might look like, thank you for introducing the summer to me. Here’s to more sleep.
