#21

i love february. minus 40 keeps me warm. my skin melts in the summer, falls apart and sheds in shards like a silly little snake. it never fails to surprise me. in the winter i feel supple, generous and full of elasticity. i can function, breath properly, and avoid humiliation. when your skin falls off without regard for social mores you never know when you might leave a piece of your thigh behind. no one wants to sit beside you at a movie when you might leave a piece of your forearm behind.

i’ve tried cures, tried to walk around in a cooler but nothing works and the mess is a nightmare.

i’ve thought about moving to the arctic circle or joining the skinless tribes at the centre of the earth, near the equator but it’s hard to have a job when your skin falls off… it’s hard to hold down a job.

we’ll see what happens i guess. climate change could either be really super positive or really super negative. time will tell. time always tells.

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#22

i actually wrote this for a fundraiser that my colleague amanda bergen and i did for our sterling award nominated production of chris craddock's pornstar.usa ​at the 2011 edmonton fringe. the theme was "significant first sexual experience: fact or fiction". this is fiction:

**​

while on vacation in ottawa

It’s warm today-hot in fact. I can feel my skin remembering summer, sloughing off nostalgia and learning new things to remember. My wife is elsewhere, trapped in the shade and air-conditioned-paralyzed by a fear of sweating through lace. Had I known our views on humidity differed so completely I might have rethought my proposal; perhaps our December wedding should have tipped me off.

So she is there and I am here: basking! Glorious in the sun! I’d be lying if I told you I never thought of other women; never longed for something different; never dreamt of a life without my wife.

A female RCMP agent in a beige power suit with a gun and a bullet proof vest turning her shape into a Victorian queen walks past me, I make eye contact and we smile. I look away quickly shuffling to hide my erection.

“I saw that,” he said sitting down beside me and whispering in my ear. “I felt the same thing.” I blushed. He smiled and put his hand on my thigh. I tried to stutter, “my wife…” but he just smiled again and slid his hand up another inch. I felt myself get harder, my cock straining inside my shorts almost reaching for his hand. I looked down and saw a similar bulge in his chinos. His blue eyes and black hair set perfectly against the late-afternoon sun and for a moment I thought to myself, “black Irish?” or maybe French. As if he knew what I was thinking he winked and my jaw tightened as I felt his hand squeeze my thigh, “I’ve never-” I said and still he just smiled. “C’mon!” he finally said, “let’s have a picnic!”

He stood up and reached for my hand. Instead of taking his hand I stood up trying to hide my erection from the eyes around us. He was confident about his cock and allowed it to lead the way to his car parked just down a quiet street. I got in the passenger side and he in the driver’s and without a word we hungrily  groped for each other, tugged at our cocks, kissed and fondled: hands a blur, never sure who was touching who.

In a moment it was over. Both of us drenched in sweat and cum. “oh my…” I said, “bye.” I got out of the car and found a Starbucks nearby. I got a latte, cleaned myself up and went back to the hotel. I was going to shower but I found my wife there instead.

“How was the sun?” she asked. “Good, there were a lot of cops around.” It wasn’t really a lie. She got up, kissed me and said, “I’m taking a shower…it’s so hot here!”

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#23

dear joe,

it isn’t so much that i’m addicted to you, i just like it… a lot. like, so much so that i think we should just stay in this bed all day; so much that i think we should black out the sun and close our eyes and feel our way towards each other; so much so that i think we should die, right here in each other’s arms.

i’ve got it all planned out joe. we’ll have a romantic dinner: eat and eat and eat; and then when are full we will make love until the ocean of desire we feel for each other finally retreats into sleep. when we are sated (and this might take years) we will each reach to the small porcelain cups i have set beside us on our bedside tables and hold them between our thumb and index fingers, slowly (every so slowly) bringing them to our lips. the drugs are quick and we will feel no pain. all we will have time to do is kiss quickly goodbye.

dear joe, please die with me. if you don’t i swear to god i’ll kill myself.

i love you.

gentlest love,

isabella.

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#24

stunts always work best when the people involved are really really into it. the first time i jumped out of a building i was NOT into it-and i suppose this isn’t too too surprising since i am ABSOLUTELY not a stunt person. my mom pushed me out of the window of our 7th floor apartment. it’s a long story and mostly it’s boring to everyone except me, my mom and the police. i guess the ER doc thought it was a little interesting too since he’s the one that called the cops. it’s too bad that he did because i was thinking about asking him out on a date-he had that noah wylie ease with the george clooney sexiness. i don’t go to the doctor a lot so the only ones I can easily relate to are the ones on TV.

basically it was all just a mess and the whole thing taught me that i didn’t want to be a stunt woman because falling out of a building fucking hurts.