matthewgruman.com

I used to work at the Blenz Coffee on Broadway at Granville. The day after moving to Vancouver, I was looking for a part-time job and dropping generic resumés at various places around the city. I’d always wanted to work at a café, and even though my service experience consisted only of a 3-month busboy stint at Homard Plus (loosely translated to “Lots o’ Lobster!”), I walked in to apply.

The girl behind the counter seemed a bit confused and asked if I was there to speak with the boss. In hindsight, they were probably expecting a scheduled interviewee, but I said “sure” and was ushered to a 2-seat table for my interview. It went something like this:

Him: are you reliable?
Me: yes
Him: do you show up on time?
Me: ye… I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Does anyone actually answer “no” to these questions?
Him: [look of consternation]
Me: YES! I mean, yes, I show up on time

The interview ended and he mumbled, in broken English, something about calling me within a week to follow-up. I left making mental notes to be less “difficult” in my next job interview because I was positive I was *not* getting that café job.

The next day I got a phone call from someone telling me I was scheduled to work the next day at 6pm, and to show up a bit early for training, etc. It took me a while, but I eventually figured out who was calling and that I was going to be working at a café! Very exciting.

I showed up, got trained, and started working. For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed the work. My co-workers were fun, I was getting free coffee (to the tune of 1.5 litres of black coffee per shift, followed by 4 shots of espresso, and a 1/2 pound to take home every week), and I got to cross out an item from my life’s to-do list. I quickly became the night shift supervisor, and the job let me afford a year’s worth of school and rent.

But there were a few things I did not like at all (note: that store has completely new management now). On my first shift the boss told me that, under no circumstances, was I allowed to let “bums” into the café. Leftover coffee was to be dumped at the end of the night, and leftover pastry was to be sold at 1/2 price or thrown out (we couldn’t take it ourselves because it would “motivate us not to sell it”). So, like any early-20s leftist, I quickly gained a reputation in the area as a source of free coffee and pastry at the end of my shifts. The deal was that a) you did *not* come in on nights I wasn’t working, and b) if you’re an asshole, you don’t get anything.

One of my co-workers was John: from the interior, 6 and a half feet tall, and about 220 pounds of solid muscle and long corkscrew hair. Intimidating as hell, he was actually a gentle giant who’d accidentally terrify customers with poor English by leaning over them and booming “EH?!” when he had trouble understanding their order. He also loved cleaning, and the second he started the shift he’d be mopping, dusting, and all the other things I hated. It worked well—I handled the coffee/customers, and he took care of the cleaning.

During one of our shifts, a homeless man I’d never seen before dumped a bunch of MacDonald’s garbage on the counter and demanded a free coffee, failing to respect the “no assholes” rule. I don’t remember exactly, but I’m sure my response was something like “clean this up and leave.” He kept going on and on about how he always gets free coffee, and I kept reiterating that he had to leave immediately, and that I’d never seen him before.

Then he got agitated and pulled something out of his backpack: a long, curved piece of metal with a very sharp tip. He started mock swinging it around and threatening to “mess up the place.” At this point I gave John a very clear “please help me, gentle giant!” look that was apparently interpreted as “hey John! What’s up?!” He smiled and happily kept mopping the floor.

For some reason, realizing I was alone to deal with this situation, I didn’t just pour him a coffee. No, I was stupidly offended that he was trying to take advantage of me and stood my ground, refusing his coffee. Customers started leaving as we faced off. Eventually he stopped swinging his weapon around and sat at one of the tables, all the while being told that he had to leave. The strangest thing about the whole situation was that neither of us were yelling, or even angry: he seemed amused by my reactions, and my fear was presenting itself as foolhardy confidence.

He started pulling things out of his bag and putting them on the table: a tennis ball, a tourniquet, Extra chewing gum, various small envelopes, and a syringe. I finally understood that this was a situation that should be resolved immediately, poured him a coffee (in a final act of rebellion, I did not give him a sleeve or lid and only poured a medium), and said “here’s your coffee. Get out of here.”

He happily took the coffee, thanked me, and offered me some of his gum in return. We were now best friends, had a quick conversation about chewing gum, and he started to leave while I was struggling to not pass out from stress. When he got to the door he suddenly stopped and turned around. “Wait a minute… this isn’t MacDonald’s!” Then he came over, apologized for his behaviour, looked at my name tag and made direct eye contact: “You’re a smart guy, Matthew. You stay in school.” Then he left and I never saw him again.

The few customers still in the shop came over to see if I was alright, and I scanned the café for John. I was preparing my “why didn’t you help me?!?!” speech when I saw the front counter: it was clean. Per usual, I was dealing with the “customer,” and John was taking care of the cleaning.

Original post.

Around this time last year, I participated in a couple of panel discussion for my alma mater. The theme for both was what you can do with an Arts career, and I was selected because a) I have an Arts degree, b) I have a job, c) and I said yes.

The first one didn’t go so great. I started getting sick about five minutes beforehand, and spent the next hour feeling increasingly uncomfortable. There’s a joke about my brother’s wedding that you can look at pictures and tell what time of night it was based on how many clothes I was wearing on the dance floor: I started in a three-piece tux and somehow ended up in jeans and a tee-shirt. It was the same thing at the panel: I entered dressed properly, but my body decided to overheat until I was down to jeans and a rolled-up shirt. I also left twice for bathroom breaks, infinitely more times than the rest of the panel and moderators combined. The actual discussion went by without a hitch, but would you take life advice from a sweaty stripper who gave the impression that he needed to ESCAPE! at the drop of a hat? Me neither.

The second one went a lot better. I left work and headed over to the landing area where I’d meet the two others on my panel. Only one was there, Josh (same name as my brother), and after making our introductions he gave me a strange look and asked “are you famous? I think I know you from somewhere.” For a delusional second I thought that I was famous and he was just being coy; of course he knew who I was! But no, I ran through the list of places he might know me from and came up empty. The conversation turned to my cardigan, and we moved on.

There were two panel sessions that night, with a short break in the middle. It was me, a girl who worked in the private sector as a recruiter, and Josh, who was an unemployed photographer/journalist/recent father of twins. They both had notes with planned-out answers based on the questions we’d been provided ahead of time. I had nothing, and borrowed some paper from the girl so I could doodle while we talked. I learned long ago that preparing what I want to say ahead of time inevitably leads to disaster, and I fare much better just knowing as much as possible about the given subject and winging the actual content.

I was my brother’s best man and decided, along with my sister-in-law’s sister, that we would each focus on our own sibling for our mutual speeches. The day before the wedding she wanted to compare notes to make sure we covered everything, and she showed me her beautifully written speech. I gave her “I don’t know, I’ll figure it out tomorrow” in return. She laughed nervously.

The next morning I scribbled a few things I didn’t want to forget on a Post-It note: La-La’s boots (I used to call Josh La-La, and when we were two and four respectively, I proudly burst into his pre-school class with “La-La’s boots! La-La’s boots!”), the fact that he taught me to read when I was three because I wanted to be more like him, and that he was easily the most influential person in my life. It *killed*. Four laugh breaks and leaving the audience in tears killed. Whenever I need a public speaking confidence boost, I think back to that memory.

So the panel started and I spent 45 minutes answering questions about my life and doodling (poorly) audience members. Not as much fun as I’d hoped, but the students liked what we had to say. We took our break, I had a bite to eat, and it was time for the second session. Newly energized, I suddenly found myself bored and started thinking about how awful it must be to be famous and answer the same questions over and over again. I decided that I’d already answered my questions the same way twice and had no desire to do that again.

When it comes to the “how did you end up at your current career” question, I have a very long story that involves five schools, three provinces, four distinct areas of study, a lesbian rock star, a miserable year off, a student job involving NASA, an absurd amount of course credits, sporadic moves across the country, a well-timed University recruiter, and the Pacific Ocean. The first and second times around I focused on the scholastic route, answering what I thought I was supposed to say. This third time, I focused on the lesbian rock star and how, during a game of Asshole at a Montréal café, she gave me the idea of moving to Vancouver. I stopped answering questions directly, and instead tried making parables of my life stories. I had a lot more fun, and the audience was a lot more engaged.

When someone asked about money, I launched into my story about Steve, my best friend’s father. When I first moved to Québec, I became best friends with a guy who lived down the street—the kind of best friends who, fifteen years later, can still find themselves awake at 3am five days in a row talking about anything from computational math to religion. Steve, however, was never my biggest fan—he described me as “spacey” and assumed I was stoned most of the time (coincidentally, this occurred during my misguided straight-edge phase). It got worse as I got older, and the majority of our interactions involved him making fun of my hair, piercings, and clothes, while I silently pitied and ignored him.

Before I moved to Vancouver, I was at Greg’s house to say goodbye to his family when Steve saunters up the stairs. I let bygones be bygones and was prepared to bid him farewell with a handshake when he launched into a speech about how irresponsible I was. I should be staying at home to finish school, student loans are going to put me in debt, I should have stuck with Science or Commerce, etc. I kind of lost it and cut him off:

Are you kidding me? I’ve known you for eight years, and not once have I seen you happy! You hate your job, you’re out of shape, and you spent your free time alone in your basement! How do you possibly think you have the right to tell me what I should be doing? Even if I end up broke and working a minimum wage job, I’m still going to be more successful than you because I’m never going to end up a miserable little bastard enjoys insulting other people. So yes, I’m going to throw myself into huge debt, study a field with no guaranteed career, and I’m going to enjoy every second of it!

Then I shook his hand and left.

To sum up the story, I said “whatever you do, don’t be like Steve.” If you only think about how much money you’re going to have, you’re probably not going to be happy and that is infinitely more important. If you want to do something and someone tells you that you can’t, you should probably do it. Be in debt if you have to, screw up a few times, but make sure you’re happy. An older gentleman in the audience laughed nervously.

I was asked about what to do when you’re in the last year of your degree and still aren’t sure what to do. I answered “stay in school for another year and learn something new, maybe you’ll love that. An extra year, even five extra years, in your 20s will always be shorter than the rest of your life; you will never regret it.” I’ve always been somewhat terrified of those people who, at 17, know exactly what they want to do with their lives and go through their schooling with a singular purpose. There’s jealousy in my terror, but the idea of 17 year old me making life decisions for the current one is an absolutely horrifying proposal.

The rest of the discussion went really well until the moderator made a joke about getting one of the ladies in the audience to answer a question. I leaned close into the mic and, in my best baritone radio voice, said “this one goes out to the laaaaadies.” If you’ve seen that Demetri Martin bit, you can probably guess the faces on the audience.

Afterwards we had a meet-and-greet for students for follow-up questions. To my surprise I wasn’t completely shunned, and spent the next hour talking to students who appreciated what I had to say. One person said “I like how you say things. I like the words you use.” I’m still not completely sure what that means, but it’s a nice-sounding compliment and I like it.

Once that ended, Josh and I decided to grab a beer and headed to the pub. Throughout the night, various students joined us and there was another hour of talking. The guy on my right spontaneously announced his bisexuality—I thought it was just an abrupt subject change, so I launched into my story about the lesbian rock star. Eventually I clued in and explained I wasn’t interested, but instead of him getting embarrassed, we ended up having a really enlightening conversation about sexuality in the Muslim culture. It was pretty awesome.

Turns out it was open mic night at the pub, and the host came to our table asking if anyone wanted to play. I was in that content stage right before drunk and did not think I wanted to, but apparently my face said otherwise. Josh volunteered to do a few songs, and the host kept pestering me: “it’s so obvious you want to get on stage!” She was right. I didn’t want to sing, but I spotted a piano and agreed to accompany Josh.

There were three problems with the situation: 1) I didn’t know what songs Josh wanted to play, 2) I’d never played piano onstage, and 3) while I love playing piano, I’m not very good. It was close to our turn, so I asked Josh about the songs he wanted to do: “The Gambler,” some Grateful Dead song I’d never heard, and “Sweat” (you know, “a la la la la long”). “Don’t worry,” he said when I told him about my lack of piano skills. “They’re all really easy to play.”

I asked him to tell me the chords, and with an evil grin he said: “No.” I responded with “what do you mean ‘no’?!” Our names were called. We walked to the stage and I asked him what the chords were for the first song. “It starts with G.” We settled into our positions and I asked him what the rest were. “No.” Suddenly I was bickering onstage with someone I’d met three hours earlier, and he eventually agreed to at least turn his guitar towards me.

Like the first two panels, the first two songs went OK. There’s a chord in “The Gambler” I didn’t like for moralistic reasons and kept forgetting to play it, but by the end of the Grateful Dead song I was really getting into it. He started playing “Sweat” and it’s a really easy song, so I didn’t have to think about the notes I had to hit. We were two very dorky white guys playing an absurd folk rock version of a reggae song, and I figured that the only way out was to just push through. I stopped playing stabs, moved down a couple octaves, and started a lush accompaniment with walking bass lines, arpeggios, and generally anything else you would hear in an 80s rock ballad. It was awesome ridiculous and I was having the time of my life. Josh’s uncontrollable grin the first time I threw in an F# was priceless.

The song ended and the small crowd erupted. My new bisexual friend gave me one of those awkward high five/back slap combos that only happens three drinks in, and the host came over to say “I told you so! You loved every second of that!” Like I said, it was awesome ridiculous, and it was fun.

I sat down and suddenly thought about Steve. Over the years we have arrived at a healthy respect for each other, and get along quite well these days. I remembered how, years ago when he was learning to play piano, he asked me to help him figure out a symbol on the sheet music for “Titanic.” It was a sweeping arpeggio that went across four octaves, and he complained that his hands don’t stretch like that. I told him that it didn’t matter, just play what he could and it will sound good. He refused, claiming that it was all or nothing. It was more important for him to play the song as someone else wrote it down than it was to enjoy the song.

Utah Philips tells a story that includes the line “if the only true life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain over to someone for eight hours a day to do with what they please? That’s stupid.” It’s a little more elegant than “don’t be like Steve,” but the message is the same.

Original post.

When I was little (6-7 years old), my favourite toy was a Fisher-Price tape recorder. My brother and I spent hours making up and recording little songs about our stuffed animals, dog, family, Lego/Construx creations, etc.

My “best” song was about my favourite stuffed animal: a small brown dog named Timbit. He had an alter ego, “The Weirdo”:

When the Weirdo goes walking down the street

Doot doot doot doot

He shoots out snakes

With the beat

The recorder and tapes disappeared when we moved out of Nova Scotia.

About five years ago, my brother found one at an antique in Edmonton and picked it up for me. I just finished all my unpacking and found this blues lick I used to test out the microphone.

Original post.

I made some carrot caviar today, and it’s pretty awesome. Unfortunately, my scale is a piece of shit (who knew that a $3 scale from China with “Digital Scale” as the brand name wouldn’t work right?) so the ratios were off, but it still worked out. Just a little jubblier than I’d hoped. They really do taste just like carrot juice with a jello-like outer layer.

I ran it through a bunch of tests:

1. Hot water: No change in taste or texture
2. Boiling water: Slight volume increase, but otherwise no real change
3. Hot pan: Lost a bit of volume
4. Hot pan with oil: No chance in taste or texture
5. Hot oven (450F): Pruned a bit, but otherwise no change
6. Microwave (30 seconds): No change in taste or texture
7. Dropping on the floor: No change in taste or texture (we’ll pretend this was intentional)
8. Squeezing: Juice bursts out

In other words, the only thing that really alters these things is direct pressure. I’m completely surprised by all of it; especially the hot oven. I figured that would dry it out right away, but ten minutes later, no change. I’ve also got some in the freezer, fridge, and on the counter to see how it stands up to them.

I’m really hopeful that they hold up to freezing because I think it would be an awesome way to make a dark chocolate dessert. Little tiny balls of chocolate, maybe with some white vanilla ones speckled around; mmmmmmm. I think olive caviar in a martini will look amazing too.

Original post.

Surrounding my time at that telemarketing company from ten years ago, I was living in Laval and going to school/work at various places around Montreal. That meant a lot of years with 2.5 – 3 hours a day of public transit, and I was reading a lot. My favourite used book store was on the east side of Stanley, between Ste. Catherine and de Maisonneuve. The owner looked like a shorter Bruce Cockburn and, no matter how much time I spent at his shop, never said a word to me that didn’t include the price of purchase. Last time I visited, it was still there.

I would go in weekly, head to the fiction & literature section, and look at covers until something looked good. My rule was less than $7 for something that looked interesting, $7 – $9 for something really interesting, and $9+ if it was something I’d heard about and actively wanted to buy. One day I came across Nick Bantock’s Griffin & Sabine, a gorgeous-looking book about letters between two people that featured actual envelopes from which you would pull out the story page by page. Definitely in the really interesting category, but priced a little too high, so I didn’t buy it.

Later that night I was reading some E/N sites (blogs before they were called blogs, meant Everything to the writer but Nothing to the reader). I came across Nicki, an interesting and artsy girl whose archives contained a quote from someone named Sabine about letter-writing. Was it a coincidence? I wrote her asking if was from Griffin & Sabine, and whether or not she thought it would be worthwhile to break my price rules. She wrote back saying it was from that book, and that it was one of her favourites. I bought it the next day.

It’s an amazing book; the first of a trilogy. Reading a correspondence that makes you physically remove letters from envelopes is completely unmatched in terms of fictional voyeurism. There’s a second trilogy which is pretty bad—the novelty has completely worn off and the new characters are very forced—but the initial three are just wonderful. They’re fully illustrated by Bantock—who before G&S was known for his pop-up books—and just as enjoyable to look at as they are to read.

The inside of my copy was inscribed with what you see at the top of the above picture. For years I’ve wondered who Marina and Jeff are, and how (what seems like) such a personal gesture could have ended up in a used book store. Margin notes and inscriptions are some of my favourite things about buying used books, and this is by far the most elaborate I’ve found in a “modern” book. The added voyeurism was almost criminal.

When I first moved to Vancouver, in 2002, I started dating this girl named Jen. It was one of those insanely rocky relationships that had amazing highs and devastating lows; nothing was calm, but nothing was boring. We became a couple in the middle of a (very loud and rude) argument at the Fringe Café when one of us, as an excuse for our behaviour, screamed “I only said that because I like you!” and got “oh yeah? Well I really like you, too!” Followed by an awkward silence, a “now what?” moment, and then a year and a half what is still my most interesting relationship.

In 2004 we’d broken up for the umpteenth time, but decided to try getting together again—Jen suggested we go see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at 5th Ave. Cinema. Neither of us knew what it was about, but we’d both heard good things so it was a date. Cue about two hours of awkwardness, followed by a walk down 4th to Jitters Café. We drank coffee and played chess in an unspoken agreement that we’d just seen the absolute worst movie to watch in our situation and did not want to talk about/discuss it or its implications.

A few days later, Jen came over to my apartment. She didn’t know, but I wanted her to over to finally end it for good; fun as it was, staying together was unhealthy for the both of us. She bought me a copy of Nick Bantock’s The Venetian’s Wife, which I awkwardly accepted before the “talk.” A combination of just finishing the second G&S trilogy and the end of the relationship meant that it ended up unread on my shelf for a lot of years. Somehow it survived last year’s enormous pre-move book purge, and I finally picked it up a couple days ago to read while waiting for a couple of books to come in the mail.

And there it was, an inscription! I’d never even opened it and had no idea. I don’t know what she means by “I saw this book and automatically thought ‘Ooh!!” I assume I’d lent her G&S and she knew I liked them, but was “Ooh!!” an inside joke I’ve since forgotten? Is it just something to write on an awkward gift? On top of that, I have absolutely no idea what that symbol means. Possibly the start of a regretted sign-off, scribbled over and replaced? Something cultural? Just as mysterious as Marina and Jeff to me.

The Venetian’s Wife is alright, but nothing I’d recommend. The whole thing feels incomplete, with an annoying meta-awareness of incompleteness built into the plot. Bantock uses a similar device to the letter-writing of G&S, but it too feels incomplete. While one character’s parts are written in a sans-serif font, italics when in thought, the protagonist gets no such distinction. Her first-person narrating, emails, and diary entries are all the same indistinguishable serif. The binding and paper are beautifully high quality, but the pages haven’t been cut well and constantly threaten with paper cuts. The written letters and art in the pages, while meant to look like scans of real art, look computer-generated and very fake. It reads like a rush job to capitalize on the success of G&S.

But then I hit page 105 and realized that I was either caught in a coincidence, or took six years to notice a really thoughtful gesture:

We passed a store with a display of old record albums. There was that early cover with the picture of a woman striding side by side with Bob Dylan; she’s leaning into him and her arm is wrapped round his. I wanted to do that with Marco, but I didn’t. I did allow myself to walk a little closer to him. He’s taller than I’d realized. My eyes are exactly on a level with the tip of his nose.

One of my favourite memories with Jen was walking her to the bus stop late one night. We were headed down w 13th to MacDonald after a rare Vancouver snow storm that left the sidewalks un-walkable. It was late enough to walk down the middle of the street and she was holding onto my arm while I kept pulling her to the point where she’d lose her balance and have to lean into me. Finally she asked:

“What are you doing?!”

“I’m trying to recreate that Bob Dylan cover.”

Then she called me a dork and I pushed her into a snow bank.

Original post.

Continuing the ten-year nostalgia is a new girl who showed up at work one day. She was five foot nothing, had a Greek face with curly brown hair, and looked about 15. Like most co-workers we smiled “hello” to each other, but nothing more. One day I looked up from my desk and saw her aiming an elastic band in my direction, smiling. I put on my meanest look and mouthed “don’t even think about it” before getting back to work, projectile-free.

After work that day I was in Indigo Books and saw her sitting in that seat between the biography and fiction sections, reading an art book. So I went over to say “hi,” we finally introduced ourselves (Sophie, and she was actually in her 20s), and started talking. She was looking at a book of photography taken of adolescent boys. I pretended that I didn’t think it was the weirdest thing ever, and she explained some bullshit about the art behind it. Years later she told me that it was possibly the most embarrassing moment of her life and she’d been looking at it because she was amazed that it existed; I still think she just wanted an excuse to look at naked adolescent boys in public.

Turns out Sophie also lived in Laval and gave me a lift home. Coincidentally, she lived half a block away from my best friend (a triplet—she knew them as “the fat one,” “the other one,” and “the girl”), who lived a block away from my family’s first apartment in the city. She ended up becoming my concert buddy (living in a suburb + having a concert buddy with a car = awesome) and invented the horrible “count the creepy old men checking out Matthew” game one night on a walk from the Cabaret back downtown to her car. She got to five before I made her stop. I blame the bleached blonde hair.

One day near my birthday (another coincidence, it’s her birthday today) we were at Indigo, looking at the sale tables. I picked up fermentation and used hand signals (couldn’t talk, too excited) to call Sophie over. The jacket flap describes it as:

fermentation is an erotic novel about carnal pleasures, desire, and one woman’s insatiable appetite. Set in Paris during a relentless heat wave, this is a surreal and sensual tale about pregnancy, heat, dreams, and cheese.

An erotic novel about cheese! I had to own it, but there was no way I could buy something like that for myself. So we made a deal: she bought me fermentation and I bought her a pair of socks (winner = me).

Each chapter is named after a different cheese the protagonist eats and the ensuing erotic dream; that scanned page is from “Brie”:

“Brie should feel slightly plump and supple. It should have a mild flavour and ideally its body should be of a rich, pliable consistency. Eat at room temperature and avoid cheeses that are inflexible, have a chemical smell or any that are rheumy.”

The dream starts with a women milking a cow, and the sexy farm hand who makes her get on her knees and lick up the milk she accidentally spills; then they have sex. That’s the least absurd scene in the entire book; though, admittedly, I only got about halfway through before my brain shut down and wouldn’t let me continue. Also, the awkward amusement of answering “what are you reading?” with “um, an erotic novel about cheese” wears off pretty quickly.

Original post.

Thomas King at the Museum of Anthropology for Canadian Literature.

About five years ago, I had a “Corn and tie” party: I bought and served a ton of corn, and if you weren’t wearing a tie, you couldn’t come into the apartment. It was lots of fun; everyone loves fresh BC corn, and I picked up a bunch of extra ties from the BCSPCA Thrift Shop for anyone who thought I was joking about that requirement (I do not joke about theme parties).

I’d just finished playing bass for a run of Little Shop of Horrors at the Waterfront Theatre so a lot of the cast/band was there. I’d also just started a café job at a new Bean Around the World, and most of that staff also showed up. There was also a bunch of friends I’d met through my then-girlfriend, M, from UBC’s Music and Theatre depts; and the regular bunch of Vancouver people. Finally was my new roommate B and my other roommate N, who I’d known for years and had recently moved back to town after spending a couple years in Prince George. N brought his old roommate, whose name I can’t remember and possibly never did. N was a good friend, but had recently started working out way too much and walking around with his arms pointed out in that “look how big I am” way. I didn’t know anything about his friend, we’ll call him G, but he had a similar way about him.

The party went on, lots of people, lots of things to do, everyone getting happily intoxicated (corn being the perfect drunk/munchies food). People were playing music in my room, chatting/dancing in the living room, and at one point I play-wrestled my friend S—a heavy set half-Chinese/half-Native girl with a gorgeous face who I knew through a mutual friend—in the kitchen. I won. Like I said earlier, lots of fun.

At one point I came into the living room and plopped down on the couch between M and G and witnessed what I thought was a joke between G and my friend K. K is half-Japanese, has bones like a bird’s, and is possibly the prettiest boy I’ve ever met. Prettier than S; it’s ridiculous. Anyway, they were “joking” about fighting each other, with K laughing constantly per usual.

The atmosphere suddenly changes and everyone realizes that G isn’t joking; he was really drunk, and really angry. I try getting him to chill out and he turns the agression at me, getting really confrontational:

G: do you want to fight?
Me: no of course not. No one wants to fight here
G: what are you, a pussy? [to M] Do you think I can beat your boyfriend up?
M: [flabbergasted] um, probably?
G: [to me] what do you think about that, asshole? Your girlfriend thinks I can beat you up!
Me: um, I think she’s pretty observant? You outweigh me by about 100 pounds, dude

It goes on for a bit until I get annoyed and find N to calm his friend down. N comes out, apparently G gets like this often, and says something that really sets him up. Next thing I know I’m diving to stop my television from falling on the girl sitting in front of it, then grabbing one of the large men as they start primate-style chest bumps. As a few of us are getting them separated, G takes a swing and hits N in the mouth. People calm down, G leaves, and N heads off to his room.

The party got a little awkward from there. People starting filtering out until only a few were left. I notice that S is stumbling around finishing off half-drunk glasses of wine and bottles of beer—not a good sign. I tell her that everyone’s leaving and it’s time to go; she gets angry. Starts yelling and swearing at me: “fuck you Matthew, don’t tell me what to do!” Sigh. Calm her down, call a cab, and get her outside when it shows up; all the while getting yelled at. I get her in the cab, give the cabby directions to her place and some cash, and off they go. More on her later.

Everyone finally leaves and we go to bed. The next morning, I’m woken up by a phone call:

Me: hello?
Them: hello, this is the Vancouver Police. Please open up your front door
Me: um, ok…

I go to the front door, no one’s there. I check outside at the upstairs door, no one’s there either. No cop car anywhere. Confused I go back inside and figure it’s as good a time as any to start the day. I put on the coffee and start getting rid of anything on the coffee table that might get me arrested if the cops do show up. Post-coffee, I end up back in bed when the phone rings again. The cops again. This time, they are at the front door.

So I let them in and we’re talking—turns out N had called them to “teach G a lesson” since it’s not the first time they’ve come to blow. They get our statements one by one as the rest of us clean up, one of the cops helping us. At one point he comes into the kitchen: “I found a Bible and rolling papers on the coffee table—what kind of party did you guys have here last night?” he asks with a grin. It was actually an old edition of Shakespeare (theatre friends, remember? We may have definitely recited a few plays). I grabbed both immediately, made a joke, and went back to cleaning. He comes in a few minutes later with a carton of cream:

Him: oooh, you’ll probably want to throw this out…
Me: actually if you notice, it’s still cold, meaning that it’s only recently been taken out of the fridge and still good. But, good detective work there, buddy [gives him a thumbs up]
Him: [cocked, questioning, eyebrow]
Me: Oh my God, I’m so sorry…

A few years earlier I’d been work at Blenz Café and offered a cop the last ham and cheese scone, winking “ham… get it? Like bacon? Pigs…? Oh my God, I’m so sorry…” Smooth.

We’re finished giving our statements, the cops leave, and I’m sitting in the living room when it happens… B bursts out of his room, without a shred of irony or shame, and screams “SOMEONE STOLE MY MAN PURSE!” Not bag, not sack; not even murse. Man purse. I lost it. The idea that someone stole his stuff was shitty, but the conviction with which he yelled MAN PURSE! was amazing.

When the laughing stopped and my stomach stopped hurting enough to speak, we worked out the details. His bag was gone, but S’s was still there; they were almost identical. So I called her cell, it rang in my living room. Called her home phone, no answer, but another number to call in case of emergencies. I called that one and got through to her neighbour.

Details were hard to piece together, but it seemed like the cabby had dropped her off at the corner of 4th and Alma, near her apartment. She had been stumbling around, trying to get hit by a car, and was now at the VGH’s Psych ward, presumably with B’s stuff. I head down to the hospital to see if she’s OK and get the full story. Her blood alcohol level was at a near-fatal level, and she had been trying to kill herself. Apparently, it was near the anniversary of her mother’s suicide and this kind of thing had happened before. Since she was a friend of a friend, I had no idea about any of it (but it certainly explained the “finishing other people’s drinks” behaviour from the night before). Someone had seen her in the intersection and called 911 on her (actually B’s) phone. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt and she did have B’s stuff.

So we swapped her stuff with B’s and she headed back to bed. I visited her a few days later and things had gotten better; last I heard, she was doing pretty well.

Anyway, the point/reason behind this whole story is a bizarre dream I had last night. For some reason, I enrolled in a computer science class at UBC in the Hennings building, but not in a Hennings classroom. It wasn’t really computer science though, instead a really weird math class. The prof would put really simple algebraic equations on the boards, occasionally with students sneaking up and writing their own (which, when he noticed, would grade). The class was populated with old friends, and people whose faces I’ve only seen on the internet.

It was really confusing. They would “derive” complicated formulas I didn’t understand, but the “answer” was always a horrible pun based on the way the numbers/variable looked. They really loved using pi. It became a challenge for students to make puns out of “difficult to pun” equations. I was asked a question, but not paying attention, I didn’t know the answer. So I blurted out a number like 5.274 and was wrong (the answer was 5.275, which I missed by a rounding error); it was determined that I wasn’t a good fit for the class.

Class is over, we’re getting to leave, and I run into N. We chat for a bit, and he’s putting papers into his shoulder bag. I blurt out “MAN PURSE!”

Next thing I know I’m awake, it’s 4am, and I’m laughing aloud in my bed. Five years later and I still think it’s the funniest thing ever, enough to wake myself up from laughing too much! So ridiculous.

Original post.

I found out that the video of my MRI is about to hit a thousand views. It’s weird knowing that so many people have seen the inside of my brain…

That was my third MRI, the first when I was 10 years old. The year before, I’d started getting pretty severe headaches that varied between short-term sharp pains and occasional migraines. Without going into too much detail, I was “the sick kid” growing up; I’ve got a story that describes it fairly succinctly.

A couple years ago in Toronto, I ended up getting in touch—after a couple coincidences—with my best friend, Kurtis, from when I lived in Nova Scotia. I hadn’t seen him in over 15 years, but we ended up hanging out at C’est What? until the wee hours of the morning chatting and drinking. He’d been speaking to his mother on the phone earlier in the day and relayed part of their conversation:

Kurtis: oh you’ll never believe this! Remember Matthew Gruman? He’s in town and we’re hanging out tonight
Kurtis’ Mom: Matthew… the small guy who was sick all the time? He’s still alive?

Followed by one of those amazing moments where all the friction disappears from the room and gets immediately filled with uncontrollable laughter.

Anyway, point being that it wasn’t a huge surprise that I was headed to yet another specialist. They couldn’t figure out the problem, and I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes the year later so the headaches were played off as a symptom. Diabetes, by the way, is a lazy doctor’s best friend as nearly every symptom in the world can be blamed on the patient’s “poor control.” At an rate, diabetes was a more pressing problem, and moving to another province a couple years later supplanted any follow-up.

But they never went away and, in grade 11, came back in full force. I caught the Sydney Flu, a very bad strain that year and the cause of my hospital stay, and the headaches were exacerbated. I dealt with lots of acetaminophen, but the sharp headaches got sharper and the migraines got longer, so I went to a neurologist.

Dr. Rosenblatt, as Jewish and blunt as his name implies, sent me for a number of tests including another MRI. His diagnosis was “there is trauma on the brain, but we don’t know what it is or what it’s doing.” Also, it turned out that I’d become addicted to acetaminophen and had to spent a week of horrible headaches without pain-killers. After my body was “flushed,” he put me on different medications, with none of them doing anything. After he hit the tenth he gave up, said there was nothing he could do, and that I’d have to deal with them.

A few years ago, after dealing with nearly 20 years of daily headaches, I went to see another neurologist who sent me for MRI #3. I’d asked for a copy of my MRI the last time—I’d heard that Anne Rice made yearly tee-shirts from her’s and wanted to do something similar—but was denied. This time I planned to be as charming as possible and get my brain scan so, when the technician had to adjust the head brace to accommodate my nose, I instantly made a joke about it being the Jewish genes.

Somehow, he’d never heard the stereotype-that-isn’t-a-stereotype about Jews having big noses and I had to explain that I’d made a semi-racist joke, but it was OK since I was Jewish. That was awkward. Anyway, he told me that it’d cost $120 to get a copy of the MRI, but I could wait a month and pay half that. I wasn’t sure if it was worth it, but went to the lab secretary anyway to see if some charm would work better on her. Success! I got a copy of it for free and eventually walked out with very high resolution pictures of my brain.

Yet again, the tests came back inconclusive, but I least I could do something with the results this time. So I went home and started looking through the images, figured a way to export from the included propriety software, and pieced them together as a stop-motion video. Cex’s “Take Pills” seemed like an appropriate soundtrack.

Just last year I was contacted by someone named Ann, who claimed to be the “Europe based curator for AYACC – Asian youth Animation & Comic Contest. It’s the biggest animation festival in China right now.” She wanted to use the video in the “Science Animation” category, and sent me details about how to submit the film and a biography. It seemed a bit sketchy to me. But since she contacted me through Vimeo and not email, I sent a courtesy note back saying that she could use the video if she wanted, but I wasn’t going to mail in a higher quality version or send a biography.

To my surprise, she wrote back saying she’d still love to use the video, but needed a bit of information about me to go along with it. I checked her out and she seemed legit; bizarre. So I wrote back again saying that she could use the video, sent her a link to a bio I had elsewhere, but made sure to mention that I doubted I had rights to the actual image scans (the hospital probably did) and I definitely didn’t have rights to the soundtrack. She wrote back saying she was checking into it. I still don’t know if it was ever screened in the festival.

Original post.

…and I’ve become increasingly concerned with its well-being.

I was leaving through the back door, on the way to the garbage bin, and jumped a little when I saw movement. The white cat and I looked at each other for about a split-second, and then it made for the still-open door. My automatic thought was “after you sir” (including a hand-sweeping gesture) and I held it open before realizing that it was a cat, not a human neighbour. Before I had time to rethink, it was inside and the door shut. I went about my day.

But my building isn’t very cat-friendly. Pets are allowed, but there’s far too many heavy doors that would be impossible for a cat to use even if they were propped open. The area the cat entered was, at most, 30 square feet before it would be presented with a door.

I haven’t seen it since. Where did it go? It was a very fast cat and I’d imagine anyone trying to get it outside would have a difficult time. The day I let it in, the weather was fairly nice; but it’s been moody since then, and the not the kind of weather a cat would trade for the comfort of inside. So where is it?

I have an interesting relationship with cats. I’m allergic, and I’ve always been a dog person, but I talk to cats all the time. I’m always waiting for the phonetic coincidence when I meow something in fluent cat and get a “holy shit, that guy speaks cat!” reaction; followed by a lifetime friendship. At my last apartment, within a week of moving in, a black cat batted at my window to get my attention. Over the next year he’d come by often and we’d hang out together; not talking but just enjoying each other’s company. Excluding the smell of Vij’s on my morning walk to the bus stop, that cat is what I miss the most about the old apartment.

I read (or watched) somewhere that cats have a certain brain wave that’s different that any other species; something about constant alpha or beta waves. I tried looking it up but couldn’t find any evidence, so I think it might have been fiction. But now I’ve obviously forgotten so many details that I have no hope of ever figuring it out.

I’m also fascinated about the myth of a cat’s three names. How there’s one we give them, one they use amongst other cats, and their real name that only they know. If you guess their real name, they go away forever. When I first heard about that, I stopped myself from meowing at them for about in year in fear that I’d finally hit my phonetic coincidence but it would simultaneously ruin any chance of forming a relationship with the surprised feline.

One time, late at night, I was walking home to an even-older apartment and saw a cat in middle of the road. I didn’t think much of it until I passed a “lost cat” sign the next block over that described the cat I’d just seen. I didn’t have my cell phone with me (presumably), so I took the poster and walked back to find the cat. I coaxed it into my arm and uncomfortably (dog person; I don’t know how to carry a cat or if it’s even done) carried it home. The second I opened the door it bolted back into the night and was gone. I called the owners who informed me that it wasn’t their cat, but actually a neighbourhood cat who had already been “rescued” about a half dozen times since they lost their’s. I still don’t understand why it was so willing to come with me, but bolt the second we ended up somewhere that I could feed it.

Anyway, I really wish I knew what happened to that white cat.