Le Dauphin

On sunday Malcolm and I took our regular trip to the Save-On-Foods near our home to purchase some groceries. At the check-out counter, Malcolm spotted a large, inflated dolphin. He told me that he would buy it for me if I carried it downstairs to Starfucks, where I was to get my coffee, and then on the walk home. I took him up on his offer, and le dauphin, which means both dolphin and sovereign in French, is still floating in my room today.
I suppose malcolm and i have a complicated relationship. This is to be expected after 4 years of seeing each other almost every single day. for the last 2 years we have lived together (is this possible?). Malcolm and i take on different roles, most of which can be described as binary to one another. I play the radical feminist, Malcolm plays the indifferent sexist. I play the intellectual-interested in the classics (art, literature, history, philosophy), Malcolm takes on the role of modern technocrat. Perhaps the most uncomfortable binary that Malcolm and I enact is that of parent and child. I am almost completely financially dependent on Malcolm-for my housing at least. I pay my own tuition, waiting tables and applying for a score of bursaries and scholarships. There is no way, however, that i could ever go to school and live independently without incurring a large debt if I were to do it without him. I certainly wouldn't be able to finance my trip to Europe this summer. the binary, nonetheless, is troublesome. Malcolm is far more emotionally mature than I, as well as 5 years older. He's very stable, financially secure, and happy with his work (he designs video games for EA, and he's excellent at what he does). I, on the other hand, am a neurotic, and unsure of everything (being a child of the Post-Modern condition), poor, poor, poor, and only 22. so, we take on these roles. I put on tantrums, and malcolm tells me to stop acting like a child. i wake in the morning, pouting, grumpy, and stomping around the house in nothing but a pair of socks. Malcolm has a little laugh, and then in a voice one would only use to address a 4 year old, he asks me "what's the matter, grumplepuss?" in a way, this arangement gratifies us both: i get the attention and family that i so desperately need, and Malcolm, as Dr. B has put it, gets something of the unpredictable and wild in his otherwise mundane life. not that Malcolm would ever accompany me to a poetry reading.

Also, i have received a message from Mike W. on my answering machine. I don't know if i've ever described him here. When I started at Hansworth in grade 12, i met this gorgeous specimen of a man/boy named Mike. He is 6"4, blond, blue-eyed. then, he dressed like he belonged in a GAP add, and at the time, he was a rower. I'd never seen anything so good looking in my life. Of course, he had a long term girlfriend, who i was furiously envious of. We were in English together, and competed for grades. the first semester i garnered the highest mark in the class, the second semester he was the victor, as in the third semester. I kicked his ass on the Provincial, as I recall. This was another thing that attracted me to him: he was ridiculously intelligent and ridiculously arrogant about his intelligence. I didn't know creatures such as he could exist: both superintelligent and superattractive. Until that point I had divided men into three groups: those that were attractive (the athletes and skateboarders) but not very intelligent nor thoughtful, those that were superintellingent (such as Milan and his ilk, with the exception of Nick, who was incredibly attractive and a genius, but alas, gay, gay, gay) but unattractive, and those that were neither attractive nor particularly intelligent nor creative: in a sense, mediocre (this description fits most of the guys i had dated until then, with the exception of Bill Chaddock who was hot, and is now getting his PhD in Philosophy at Concordia). He remained the apple of my eye throughout grade 12, and into my first year at SFU, since he was also there as a student of economics. we haven't seen each other much, and to my surprise, when i met up with him in september, he had changed considerably. He has a small layer of fat on his body, his hair is long; tied in a pony tale. he no longer dresses like a preppy, nor maintains the arrogant demeanor he projected in highschool. he seems calmer, more reflective. i'm impressed; he seems to have grown so much. I'm not attracted to him anymore. I guess i have clung to that image if him in a tight white t-shirt with a picture of himself as a baby on it (what a narcissist), those loose khakis, that short, clean cut, blond hair, the arrogance, the killer grin. I do however, hope to be friends with this Mike. he's much more interesting and much easier to talk to now that I don't think about fucking him when in his presence.
so, i shall give him a call.