Birthday Party Intolerance

For Kassie

I arrived in Montreal licking salt off my wounds. It was late spring, the tip of summer’s tongue, soon to be swallowed whole. The heat always makes me worse, and this summer was the most guilty I’d ever been. Nothing can hide in burning light, so I spent my days kissing hot pavement as I moved against the sun, pretending my body had never known my mind.

I remember the first day of heat— a warning of the final breath before summer’s devour. In the morning, Kassie and I sat on a bench in the park across the street from my shitty sublet that smelled like cigarettes and unfamiliar laundry detergent. Back then, she lived just a few blocks down in a castle made of pink velour and painted tiles. Some days, I’d sit on my balcony and look below to watch her walk to work; she’s always been a sight for sore eyes.

That first hot morning, the sun warmed our cold cheeks. She was wearing pyjama pants and sipping coffee from a mug that said “Cunt” on it. I had the same clothes on I’d worn the night before, jean shorts that were too short and a shirt that said “In Dog Beers I’m Fucking Hammered.” My hair was greasy, unkempt and smelled like the new lover I had spent the previous night with.

She asked about him, whether he’d be sticking around for a while, if I wanted that.

I looked down at my shoes and put my hand under my shirt, feeling the sweat on my stomach, “I don’t know, I want it to be meant for me, but when he gets close, I feel this pit in my stomach, it burns like a curse.”

She looked at me kindly and told me she knows the feeling. She said, “Sometimes I think it will always run through me, the curse; I can feel it in my body just sitting there, waiting.”

We both know a familiar motherly frost that slithers down the spine, pinching us at our best and comforting us at our worst. I told her that I feel forever haunted by a fear of being found out; if anyone knew how far I’ve walked astray or how many times I listened to someone tell me how it was gonna go, I’d no longer rest on the pedestal that exists only in my mind, forcing me to succumb to the frost.

I put my head in my sweaty hands and groaned, “I just want to write, I mean, that’s why I came here, but I can’t give him up yet, that wouldn’t be right.”

She rested her head on my shoulder, the tips of her long brown hair dipping into her coffee that had grown lukewarm. She whispered gently, “All that matters this summer is what we’ve created; what no one can take away from us; everything else will sort itself out, things with him will make sense in time.”

He also lived just down the street; his apartment was covered in vines, and some nights I’d walk down to the vines just to crawl into his bed and softly confess to his sleeping body. I’d promise him that if he let me, I’d do right by him, in my own way.

I really would’ve.

We were intertwined by an invisible ribbon made from memories of child selves once forgotten but now reimagined, and to lose that felt like saying farewell to a vision that lit our paths to self-release. We spoke of books and stories and things we hoped to one day understand, letting summer swallow us whole without resistance.

At first, I pushed him away as far as I could. I’d tell him that if he got close, I’d only make him sick, but he always inched closer, touching me gently like a friend, making me feel known among the vines.

It’s winter now, and I’ve become slathered in frost. I dream of summer, lukewarm coffee and things I’ve created, hoping to feel a semblance of warmth.

Some nights, against my better judgment, I lie awake thinking of him, and when I close my eyes, I see blue butterfly stickers.

It was the last night of heat, and I went to the vines after dancing with friends. I was covered in glitter, butterfly stickers on my cheeks, my hair dripping with cleansing rain. I went into the shower, and he came into the bathroom pretending to look for something. I poked my head out the shower curtain, he stood there smiling, I told him to leave, trying not to grin, he said he’d leave, but when I closed the curtain I could still feel him in the room. He told me with a charming sincerity that I looked the most beautiful when I spoke, something about the way my mouth moved, showing my crooked teeth. I looked down at my feet, watching glitter run down my legs with the shower water, and I felt that thing, whatever it is you’re supposed to feel; I finally felt it.

I felt the frost melt off my back, reminding me what warmth felt like without burning heat. I peeled one of the butterfly stickers off my cheek and stuck it on the shower wall, hoping it would serve to remind us both of this night, this moment, the end of frost.

I’ve prayed for my body to forget summer, but the memories are so vivid that sometimes I still see glitter pour down my shower drain, and I feel a sunlit glow on my cheeks even in the darkest winter nights.

I spend my days wandering the streets, feeling an urge to tell every couple I pass that I, too, once had a lover, and I know about all the stuff you do when you have a boyfriend, like sleeping in the same bed and “setting boundaries.”

I wish to make it known that I, too, once embraced warmth without letting it ignite into fire.

A few nights ago, I met Kassie for dinner at her favourite restaurant in Montreal, it’s up in the Mile End, and our server was named Francis. She had already met Francis before, and when we walked into the familiar restaurant lit by candlelight, she exclaimed, “Francis!” the moment she locked eyes with him.

He didn’t recognize her but played along and seemed almost as excited as she was to introduce him to her friend, also named Frances.

“Yeah, but I’m Frances with an E, I’m assuming you’re Francis with an I…” I said it like it was a dig, I’m not sure why, I guess I like to twist the knife when I can.

He kindly replied, “Yes, indeed, table for two?”

Kassie was overjoyed.

When we sat down, she told me that she had stopped taking birth control after five years and finally got her period again a few days ago. “Yeah, to be honest, I always thought you were being overdramatic when you’d complain about your PMS, but I get it now. I think I should get the steak. If I get it rare, then I can replace the blood I’ve lost.”

I told her I wasn’t sure if that’s how it works.

That night at the Franci(e)s restaurant, I felt like myself for the first time in months. Maybe it was meeting another Franci(e)s or perhaps it was watching Kassie poke the blood out of her steak, but I finally felt shamelessly odious, a reflection of my inner self.

As I revelled in my return to personhood, Kassie expressed that I hadn’t seemed like myself in a while, that she’d watched me lose myself over a summer.

I looked down at my legs, feeling the cold skin under my shirt, “I don’t know, I guess I was just trying to be someone else.”

Its true, as summer grew an unbreakable fierceness, I strived to become someone I could never be. I wanted to be the kind of woman who uses Google Calendar and spells negotiating right every time, a woman who blow-dries her hair and makes hard look easy.

But I’m a terrible actress, and I soon realized that living without frost meant the warmth grew into unbearable heat, burning the vines at the stem.

It’s puzzling to reflect on this disguise now because what initially brought him and me close was this irresistible ability to be ourselves in each other’s presence. It seems to be a common truth found in many forms of loving partnership, where once we get too close to each other, too close to desire, we then reach out desperately for difference, we beg for distance.

Some nights when I’m alone with the frost, I wonder how much we’d all give in if we had only pride, letting fear become a thing of the past. Perhaps we’d fall to our knees and give love our all, or maybe we’d just leave it all behind and become something entirely new, who knows.

Kassie asked when I knew it was over, if there had been signs before the official break.

“Its hard to pinpoint one thing, but nothing felt the same after that birthday party. He wasn’t too happy I got in that fight,” I replied shamefully.

Summer was over, and it was a brutal October night. He brought me to his friend’s birthday, it was a small but lively party, we drank red wine from the bottle, leaving a red film on our top lip. I spent most of the night sitting on the couch ominously and being kind of withholding, but to no one in particular. As the night neared its end, the small remainder of the party went outside to smoke on the deck.

I stayed inside along with one other guy who kind of looked like the boyfriend I had when I was nineteen, I’ll call him Party Guy. He and I exchanged forced small talk, we shared experiences of living in Toronto, discussed our school endeavours and how we ended up in Montreal. But like most one-on-one conversations with a man, it took a curious turn. He paused for a moment, turned to me without reservation and informed me with a heavy heart that “There is a lot of intolerance coming into Canada.” He said it like it was a secret he had waited to tell me all night. He told me he saw a video of a “woman wearing a hijab stomping on a pride flag in Toronto,” and that his girlfriend is “catcalled near the Metro station every day by Arab men.”

For fucks sake.

Despite initially giving him the benefit of the doubt, my conversation with Party Guy devolved into an insufferable debate where he insisted he is not Islamophobic or anti-immigrant but was simply concerned from a “feminist point of view” about intolerance ruining Canadian values, which should make us all very worried because, according to him, “Canada was built on tolerance.”

One man’s genocide is anothers tolerance, I guess.

As my summer lover trickled back inside with the rest of the party, happening upon the tense climax of our argument, I felt my body grow hotter and hotter, nearly burning me alive as my lover looked at me like he didnt know me anymore, like I wasnt who he thought I was, it was the nail in the coffin he had already begun to build, I pushed our summer warmth into fire, I had chosen too many hills to die on.

When we arrived back at the vines, he seemed off. I could sense something dire. I decided to leave it; I had already exhausted the night. But as I began to fall asleep, I felt an uncontrollable urge to sob. It was like Party Guy had exorcised something out of me; I could no longer be someone I wasn’t. I cried into my pillow, leaving streaks of mascara across its case. I could feel the guilt burning my flesh. I had stepped out of line, I made my boyfriend uncomfortable, I was no longer good, and nothing was going to be okay.

“I guess having a mouthy girlfriend is fine in private, but around his friends was a step too far over the line,” I said to Kassie.

She angrily shifted in her seat, blood spread across her plate, her hand gripping her beer, “Jesus Christ, well, I can say with certainty that Francis would never treat you like that...”

We both looked across the restaurant at Francis as he rolled cutlery. I don’t know if he noticed us staring, but I wouldn’t blame him if he had chosen to avoid any eye contact with us.

After dinner and a brief goodbye to Francis, we walked along a bridge in the pouring rain to catch the train. It felt like we were fourteen again, walking home late from school, kinda drunk.

“Sometimes I worry I’ve dated guys who are just like my dad,” she told me.

“Yeah, me too, I never think they’re like my dad, but then in retrospect…”

“Maybe we have ecolocation for guys who are like our dads.”

“Yeah, or like that horror movie where the guy cuts people’s faces off and wears them. That’s a metaphor for us dating guys like our dads, the face underneath is our dad, and the face he’s wearing is our boyfriend.”

We cackled into the night until finally arriving at the metro station in soaking wet clothes, leaving puddles as we walked.

I rested my head on her shoulder as we rode the train home, letting tears fall down my cheeks in release. She kissed my forehead and gently whispered, “I don’t think we’re cursed. We’re gonna be famous writers and start a magazine, and everyone’s gonna have to read it.”

In that moment, I felt my spine become warm with pride. I felt the frost melt and drip softly down my body with the rain, making the train floor glisten with warm, glittery water.