zombie_nirbhao

To: Greenpeace
Re: A job

I am writing to apply for a position and I have not enclosed a resume.

I went to visit my friend Ryan, who lives in China town. I've been there a dozen times. I stayed blocks away the last time I was here, and every morning I would wake up early and head over to check my email, to have a glass of juice, to play chess and talk about comics and girls. Sorry, I am not staying on topic. The point is that I knew where his house was. I knew the front door, with its graffiti and stickers. I knew the small restaurant next door with dead birds in the window. But on this visit I was with other friends, and one insisted this was not the right door at all. She was very insistent, actually. So we followed her up the street for blocks and blocks, and nothing looked as familiar to me as Ryan's door had. I started feeling stupid for having doubted it at all. Has that ever happened to you, where someone else is so sure of something that you begin to doubt yourself?

Ryan is great. We wander around the city, just talking, eating ice cream and candy and drinking juice. He gets really upset when I leave my garbage on a table in the park, or set it on a window ledge instead of finding a bin. I will set it down, and when he notices, he will go back to pick it up. Like clockwork, even if I do it again and again in a single day. He doesn't give up. But that's good because I can use this against him for my own amusement. When we get on the subway, the doors woosh closed behind us. Oh no, Ryan, someone has left garbage on the floor out there! But the doors are closed! What can we do?

I'm sorry, I'm rambling, Greenpeace. I have been sitting here applying for jobs, and I would much rather be thinking about sex. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. It's almost September, and soon fall will be here. I don't know what you're doing today, but maybe you would rather be thinking about sex too. This morning I woke up and remembered an embarrassing sex story. Everyone has embarrassing sex stories, I hope.

Once, a girl and I were in bed together, masturbating. She was on her back, naked, touching herself, and I was above her, mostly naked, doing the same. I was eighteen or nineteen years old, and all I could think about was coming on her breasts. You know, like on the Internet. I think, probably, I was saying something to that effect. I wasn't mentioning the Internet, of course, but I was saying I'm going to come on you, I'm going to come on you. I'm classy like that. I don't remember how she felt about the whole coming-on-her idea, actually, but I can tell you that I was very excited about it. I was almost lying on top of her. I was leaned forward so far. So when I felt my orgasm coming, I looked down between us to watch for, "the come shot."

And then I came in my own eye. It came right at me, like a 3D movie gone terribly wrong, and it stung. I started clawing at my face. She laughed and laughed while I tried frantically to wipe my eye clean. She was curled up naked on the bed, laughing so hard there were tears. I started laughing too. I couldn't help it. We both laughed until it hurt, until the muscles in our cheeks were sore from smiling, and then we looked up at her ceiling, on our backs, exhausted. For the rest of that afternoon, every once in a while one of us would start laughing again and then so would the other. It is one of my favourite memories.

I used to say I never want children. But I do. And I want grandchildren. I want them to have lovers and I want them to know how good it feels to embarrass yourself so totally in front of someone you care about. I want the world to last forever just for moments like that. How sappy can you get? But I do.

I don't know when I started believing that the world was going to end no matter what, and there was nothing I could do about it but accept it. I don't know when I started teasing the people who care, or when I started thinking that caring meant you were a flake. I think everyone around me seemed so convinced, so certain, that I let myself get carried away.

Joey Comeau