Gosh—someone didn’t buy an ad in a newspaper, and for their stupidity they paid with their life.
In Canada a while ago, the press revelled in the fate of an Edmonton couple who rented out their house on Airbnb and came back only to find it trashed to the tune of C$100,000. Airbnb now has the largest hotel footprint in the world. Uber has image problems, but they’re on the correct historical track. Craigslist, Lyft et al—the shareconomy? The freeconomy? It’s going to happen. And the moment these firms start paying more in taxes is the moment they officially suffocate to death the old economy. As for Vancouver, which has the lowest number of taxis per capita in Canada, fear-mongering can only last so long. People travel. They know something better when they see it. And one day soon I’ll be able to follow the red laser dot on the floor of my hometown.
361
First, let me tell you who I am. I’m Sharon Firth and I was an elementary school teacher in Vancouver, Washington…not the Canadian Vancouver—the other Vancouver, across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon—and I really liked teaching younger kids. Younger kids are so sweet. But I will add that, at thirteen, the girls turn into bitches, and when I look at their little heads, all I can see in the classroom is shoplifted mascara and thought balloons filled with very cruel nicknames for me—or whoever got stuck teaching them. Boys become sulking monsters at fifteen, and that’s easier to handle. So, yes, I got to teach the young kids, and it really was like teaching angels, but I’m also very aware that it is dangerous to confuse angels with children, and this is my tale.
It was in late October 1975. It was just past three and class had gotten out for the day. Most of the kids had gathered their things and left, then there were a few stragglers, and then there was quiet, and when I looked up, there was one student sitting calmly in his chair: Greg Cushing, the sweetest little guy ever, tight brown curls and never any sass. He was twelve.
“Greg, sweetie, you’re not leaving?”
“I’m not Greg.”
“Greg, I’ve got papers to mark and I don’t have time for games. Come on now, scoot. Get home. Your mama’s waiting for you.”
“I’m not Greg.”
I decided to go along with it. “So, then, if you’re not Greg, who might you be?”
“I don’t have a name. Not the way you think of names. I guess you’d call it more of a number than a name.”
“Okay…”
“This is Greg’s body. I’ve hijacked it. He’s not here right now. Greg is in storage.”
“Greg, sweetie, you’re scaring me.”
“I guess you’re not listening to me…Sharon. If you want to call me a name, call me 361.”
That’s when I understood it was real. It doesn’t take much. Greg wasn’t there. I exhaled and sat back in my chair to collect my thoughts. It was a rainy day already and getting dark out, even at three-thirty. I wanted to run out of the room, and badly, but how could I?
“Okay, 361, tell me something that would confirm to me that you are indeed alien.”
“Very well. You’re a lesbian but you’re not coping with it, and the stress of maintaining a heterosexual facade is causing you to overeat and gain weight. You think nobody knows, but there’s always chatter in the staff room. And in any event, suppressing your identity is making you profoundly unhappy. You’ve contemplated leaving teaching and leaving Vancouver, but you have a cowardly streak and it will probably get the better of you. It will set you up for a lifetime of pain and regret.”
I stood up and stared at him. I walked over—I didn’t even look to see if the door was open or if anyone was looking—and I slapped him hard on the face. “How dare you!”
“A slap. How clichéd, Sharon. As if a slap is going to make the truth go away. Here, while you’re at it, why don’t you kick Greg’s body and damage it—give it scars. Give it something to make his mama want to take you to court.”
I was terrified. I didn’t know what to do.
“Sit down,” said 361. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
I slumped down into the seat of the desk beside him. The chair was tiny. I felt fat. And 361 was indeed correct in everything he had said about me.
“Good,” he said. “I think I’ve got your attention.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Excuse me?”
“Where do you come from? Some other planet? Why are you on Earth?”
“You’ve been watching too much late-night TV, Sharon. If I’m alien, it’s only in personality.”
I could feel myself sweating. My ears were buzzing. I don’t know what it was…maybe what it would feel like if a panther walked into the room and was sniffing around while I sat there hoping I didn’t smell like panther chow.
“I can see you need time to think over my brief visit, Sharon. To prove to you I’m legitimate, I’ll give you a list of things that are going to happen in the world over the next week.”
“What?”
“Just stop and listen. Today, October 27, a man in Ottawa, Canada, killed a man and wounded five people in a high school and then shot himself. You haven’t heard about it yet. Also today, Rex Stout, an American detective novel writer, died. Tomorrow, Georges Carpentier, a French boxer, will die. On the twenty-ninth, President Ford will announce that he will veto any legislation calling for a federal bailout of New York City. The cover of The Daily News the next day will read: ‘Ford to City: Drop Dead.’ That same day Juan Carlos I of Spain will become acting head of state after dictator Francisco Franco concedes he is too ill to govern. Also, a Yugoslavian airliner will crash while attempting to land in Prague and seventy-five of one hundred and twenty people on board will die.”
“How do you—?”
“Shush. I’ll see you again same time next week. Goodbye, Sharon.”
Greg’s—361’s—head slumped and then suddenly it was Greg there, no mistaking it, and seeing me there with an astonished face quite reasonably freaked him out. “Miss Firth? Wait—what happened? Where is everyone? Why are you here? Am I in trouble?”
I sucked in breath. “Sweetie, I think you have a cold. You’d better go home to your mama.”
“So I’m not in trouble or anything?”
“You? Greg, you don’t have a troubled bone in your body. Now go home. Scoot.”
“Bye, Miss Firth.”
I really don’t know what I thought. Trickery? Demonic possession? Blackmail? I mean, it was simply too mind-blowing to even remotely try to explain to anybody. I couldn’t phone my family or my friend Donna because…how could I even begin to ex…
…And then Gerald Ford really did tell New York City to screw off, and Franco did concede power, and then the airliner did crash. After that I didn’t sleep for the whole weekend. Come Monday, I think the stress was showing. Miss Milne in the staff room offered me Midol, so I could tell I wasn’t making a very good show of things. I blew it off as “Mondayitis” and got a few laughs, and then I walked into my classroom. I had to have been on some form of autopilot, because all I remember of the day was parroting math lessons, making construction-paper chains and trying not to stare at Greg Cushing.
Classes finally ended and the students left, and of course Greg was sitting there.
“Greg?”
“No, Sharon. It’s not Greg.”
“361. Hello.”
“It’s not a very exciting week coming up, Sharon. I wish I could tell you more exciting news, but the news is what it is.”
“Why are you talking to me? How many of you are there?”
“How many? That’s an odd question, which, for various reasons, can’t be answered. Let’s just say not very many.”
“So again, why are you reaching out to me?”
“Sharon, you’re being a bore.”
Then 361 went quiet and Greg’s body froze, as if he were rewinding or something, and then he said, “We are your friends.” Something new was speaking and it had a mechanical sound.
“How do I know that?”
&nbs
p; “Because we have taken the time to learn about you, assess your life and develop the choices you can now make to ensure that the remainder of your life goes unwasted.”
I decided to be tough. “What would those choices be, then?”
“Leave this Vancouver and go to the other Vancouver. Stop teaching and start making objects with your hands. We recommend metal at the scale of jewellery. That will then make you comfortable within a lesbian existence, and out of that you will meet someone who will stick with you until you die.”
“Who the hell are you to be telling me what to do with my life!”
“We wish you to activate what is most likely your last chance at what you call happiness.”
There was a knock on the door: Ed Jarvis, the phys-ed coach, kind of a goofball. “Am I interrupting anything?”
361 and I turned into the picture of sunshine and happiness. “Just a bit of detention and some math homework, Ed. Everything okay?”
Ed looked understandably suspicious. “I came to drop off the unused UNICEF boxes from last week.”
“Oh, right. Just put them there by the pencil sharpener. Thanks, Ed.”
“No problem.” He dropped off the boxes and left.
361 said, “Don’t worry about the coach spreading rumours. Ed steals underwear from his apartment building’s drying machines. Just mention that and he’ll be quiet.”
“Jesus, what am I in for here?”
“Here is your news for the next week, Sharon. Tomorrow Fidel Castro will order 6,500 troops to Angola. On Thursday an English rock band called the Sex Pistols will play their first performance at a London art school. On Friday a vapour-cloud release from a Dutch petroleum cracking facility in the town of Geleen will kill 14 people and injure 109. Also on Friday, Patricia Hearst will be declared fit to stand trial. That’s it, I’m afraid. All in all, an incredibly boring week. Goodbye, Sharon.”
And then 361 was gone.
What would you do in a case like this? What would anyone do? I was certainly not dashing off to a church…and I wasn’t going to run to a shrink. I actually ought to have gone to Donna’s brother, who dealt weed from the back of his bakery, but I didn’t.
I looked at my life.
361 was absolutely correct. Who was I fooling? I’d dated a few guys in high school, but I might as well have been dating cardboard boxes; there was no sexual anything there. At the same time it seemed like gay guys were suddenly in the news, growing mustaches and having endless sex, and there was all this new disco music. It didn’t seem like there was much for a gay woman—certainly not in Vancouver, Washington, more or less a blue-collar suburb of Portland.
I was lonely. Having to maintain a normal face for the world was taking its toll: “Are you seeing anyone? Let me help you meet just the right guy…” So 361—whatever the hell he was—had nailed my life, and that was humiliating.
And, of course, everything he said would happen that week happened, and come Monday I wasn’t so much nervous as I was excited. Miss Milne (she of the Midol) said, “Aren’t you full of beans today.” I giggled nervously…as if she could ever imagine what was happening. All day long, it was all I could do to contain my excitement. After class ended, for some reason the kids were dawdling that day, and I had to almost bark to get them out of the room.
Greg’s body sat there waiting for me. “Hello, Miss Firth.”
“Hello, 361.”
“I’m hoping by now you understand my authenticity.”
“Yes, I do. So—you’re obviously here for a reason: you want me to be happy. Well, that’s fine and all, but why me? Are there millions of 361s out there going around telling people how to be happy?”
“No, Sharon. You’re almost unique.”
“Me? Unique? How? And how does that help you?”
“Your body’s cells contain the CCR5-Δ32 variant protein. They lack both CCR5 and CXCR4 receptors on their surfaces, and thus confer you with resistance to a broad range of viruses and their variants.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
“I am currently inhabiting the body of Gregory, and Gregory is gay.”
“What? He’s twelve.”
“Have it your way. He will be gay, then.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The virus that will kill him will be one that targets gay men, and it will target and kill Greg.”
“What the—? How is that even biologically possible? Wait. Don’t even…What does this have to do with me?”
“Greg is doomed. You need to see what’s at stake if you don’t follow my advice.”
“I’ll just give him some of my blood if I’m a living cure.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Are you going to knock on his parents’ front door and say, ‘Hello, I’m Sharon and I’d like to give your son some of my bone marrow’? You also have, Sharon, another protein mutation that will be important in the year 2018.”
“Who does that one target?”
“Almost everyone, except a few people like you who have another specific protein mutation.”
“Why don’t you just suck me up into a UFO and deep-freeze me or something?”
“We would if we could, Sharon, but it doesn’t work that way. Channelling Greg here is about the best we can do. And besides, we need you alive.”
“Do you have any idea how creepy you sound?”
“Creepy as sex between two women?”
I whacked Greg/361 across the face, then heard a voice—Ed’s—behind me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Sharon?”
My face flushed red. “Mind your own business, Ed. Go steal some panties from your basement dryer.”
The blood drained from Ed’s face. What had I done? He stared for a few moments, then closed the door and walked away. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Not to worry, Sharon. He won’t blab.”
I was winded. “So then, what happens next?” I asked. “Do we meet every Monday from now on?”
“No. You’ll hear from me again, but not through Greg.”
“But when?”
“Soon enough. It’s very difficult for us—for me—to do this, Sharon. I’m at the end of my time here. Remember my life advice and act on it as quickly as possible. Goodbye.”
It took a minute for Greg to return, during which time I went back to my desk at the front and pretended nothing had happened. When he came to, he looked at me. “Is this a…detention?”
“No, sweetie, I think you just took a quick nap.”
“Oh. Okay.” Poor, doomed Greg got up and left the classroom.
I walked down the hallway and looked outside. It was pouring rain and the Columbia River was swollen. In a blur I got into my little Datsun and drove home, to the small bungalow I’d gotten a rental deal on from a friend of my father. I went into the kitchen, stared inside the fridge and poured myself a glass of milk, a reflex whenever I get worried, which stemmed from a hygiene class slideshow on the perils of osteoporosis in women.
I put the glass down on the counter and turned around. Ed was standing there. “I don’t want to be doing this, Sharon.”
I knew what he meant. “Don’t, Ed. This is a dumb idea.”
“How did you know?”
“About the underwear? Ed, it doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me!”
I made up a lie. “My girlfriend lives in your building.”
“What’s her name?”
I had no idea how big Ed’s building was, so I tried to pick as common a name as I could. “Susan.”
“Her?”
Thank God I’d hit a nail on the head. “Yes, but she only told me because she knows we work in the same place. She thinks it’s funny. But it’s your secret, Ed. We won’t tell anyone.”
“I don’t trust you, Sharon.” He took a step toward me.
I tried to open the fridge door between us, but he pounced too quickly. He put a rope around my neck and I was almost insta
ntly unconscious…but I didn’t die. Instead I went into a coma, where I am now, and I feel very stupid indeed. Obviously 361, that bastard, was smart enough to see the future, and he engineered the whole Ed fiasco to keep me alive yet immobilized.
And so here I am. I don’t know what the date is or what time of day it is, but I know that my body has become the equivalent of a working farm. Almost daily someone’s removing eggs or taking tissue or marrow samples, and I suppose I don’t mind. I do feel sorry for Greg. He must be long dead by now. Judging by the recent increase in marrow harvesting, I suppose we must be getting close to the year 2018.
My Name
The morning after my Sweet Sixteen party, I saw the eyes and mouth of a Halloween pumpkin wash up onto the same spot on the beach where I almost lost my virginity. It was Saco Bay, south of Portland, with the beautiful tall grass and the wooden walkways leading to the sea. It was November and cold, no tourists anywhere, and that grey morning it was just me on the sand, relieved I’d not done the nasty with Nathan Schein, and then these little orange eye and mouth chunks washed ashore, like a ghost of a smile.
Symbols like these are important. Last week I saw a white bird, an albino crow, land on the freeway beside speeding cars and pick up trash with the black crows. It seemed like the regular crows should have been bringing it food instead of it having to look for its own. It was different. It was special.
Last night an animal scuttled across the roof…Maybe it was a ghost, but I’m too old to believe in ghosts. Yet I do believe in souls. And I believe that when you talk about souls, they suddenly fill the room, and you can feel them all around you. Even people who don’t believe in souls know what I mean when I say this. Rub the bottle and out comes the genie. It’s there.
My name is Hayley. I’m one of those surplus Chinese girl babies everyone began adopting back in the 1990s. Two decades later and still people in my town stare at me, and I know what’s going through their minds…I was unwanted…Some people maybe pity me…definitely some racist stuff going on…and sex fantasy stuff too…I’m not dumb. They’re probably waiting for me to magically produce a violin and play like I’m in the Boston Pops.
Bit Rot Page 31
