The Homeless Millionaire

"You're impossible."

"Completely impossible."

"You lied to us, again."

"How can you do this to us? We've worked so hard to give you a good start in life."

"You're so ungrateful."

"Totally ungrateful."

"Look at us! Look at us when we're talking to you."

I looked, as requested. At my parents, standing side by side, their faces full of righteous indignation. I knew that scene only too well. It was played out at least once a month; I really didn't need to look. I didn't need to listen either; I'd heard all that stuff many times before.

They were silent now, glaring at me. I stared at the spot of wall between their heads, specifically at Keith Richards' red thumbnail. I had a cool poster with Keith Richards, the Rolling Stone, on the wall of my room: a head-and-shoulders portrait in which he was supporting his chin with his fist. His thumbnail had been painted scarlet red, contrasting nicely with his black hair and a green-and-white floral pattern shirt. He was looking at the camera, and thus at me, with his trademark f.u.c.k-you smile. I felt my own lips begin to curl in response, and quickly squeezed them together. This wasn't the right moment to give my parents a f.u.c.k-you smile.

Too late; they'd noticed, and they exchanged knowing looks before my father began puffing himself up for his big speech. They invariably followed the same pattern: an intro filled with complaints and accusations, followed by the Big Speech, in which my father summarized my assorted misdeeds and transgressions, and sometimes announced a punishment. The ending was supplied by my mother. She always acted out a short play named How You Make Us Suffer, full of dramatic gestures. My mother is a drama queen. She loves making hysterical speeches. I give her inspiration, I am her male muse. She should be grateful, really.

My father, always the professional diplomat, said:

"What have you got to say for yourself?"

"Yes. We would very much like to hear what you've got to say for yourself. How can you explain... How can you explain all... this." My mother's final gesture seemed to include the entire universe. I was tempted to tell her I couldn't explain all that because I wasn't a god, but of course I didn't.

But they noticed, they always do, they knew I wanted to say something. They both leaned forward expectantly, preparing arguments that would destroy anything I said in my defense. I stayed silent. A clever German guy called Goethe once said: never get into an argument with fools. They'll drag you down to their own level, and defeat you with experience.

I stayed silent even though I had plenty to say to them. Hell, I could easily keep going for hours if I was allowed a sip of water now and then. I would start by informing them that they'd lied to me, too. They constantly told me I was wonderful for the first four-five years of my life. There were shrieks of delight whenever I did something: used a spoon to eat my food, took a shit sitting on the toilet, said a new word. Then complaints appeared, more and more as time went on. For the past couple of years, all I heard were recriminations. At first I took them seriously, and became suicidal. It made me realize that I had only one life, and that I sure as hell didn't want to share it with my parents.

The last time they were nice to me was when I graduated high school. Right after that, we had a big fight: I told them that I wanted to study art at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Montreal. They wouldn't understand why I had to go to Montreal when I could study at the University of Toronto, and live at home. I couldn't tell them that was the whole point: to move away from home. It was another of those useless family discussions that go nowhere because no one says what's really on their mind. However, this particular talk ended with my father declaring that he didn't support my move, and thus wouldn't help me out financially.

He scored a good hit there, because I needed money for the Montreal move. But I surprised both them and myself by getting a couple of part-time jobs. I'm not going to talk in detail about those, because they were f.u.c.k.i.n.g awful. I want to forget that particular experience as quickly as possible.

I spent almost a whole year working in those two jobs, and managed to save just over a thousand dollars. I should have been able to save more, but guess what happened: right after I started work, my dear dad informed me that since I was making money, I should contribute to the household expenses. He used the term 'a symbolic contribution' because my monthly payment would be less than what he sometimes spent on single visit to a restaurant. The thing was, he could easily spend the equivalent of my weekly wage on a single visit to a restaurant; he liked good restaurants, and aperitifs and wine and all that shit.

What really hurt in all this was that my parents had plenty of money. That's why I couldn't get a stipend; I had to provide household income information on the application form, and the woman who took in my papers just laughed in my face. And so I spent ten months washing dishes in a scuzzy eatery at lunchtime and serving beer in a rundown bar in the evenings, turning over one of my two weekly paychecks to my father every month. After eight months of this, back in June, I applied to the Ecole des beaux-arts de Montreal and was accepted.

It was August now, and I had already quit both of my jobs. I would be starting my studies in just two months' time. I had to make a trip there first to find a place to stay, and hopefully another part-time job, because most of the money I'd saved up would be spent on tuition. I told my parents about that right after breakfast: it was a Sunday, the traditional day for heavy-duty family conversations. I wanted to leave on Monday - the very next day. That was what led to the fight we were having, though maybe 'fight' is the wrong word. It was like a court session where the accused has been found guilty and condemned even before the trial has started.

I was sitting on my bed, not saying anything. They were still pretending to wait for me to say something; pretending, because what they were actually doing was trying to think of a decisive argument that would make me fold, roll over, and tearfully ask for forgiveness. I had no intention of doing that. The silence grew heavier with each passing second. Eventually my father said, somewhat triumphantly:

"So, you have nothing to say for yourself."

I had intended to freeze them out with total silence; I knew from experience that this was the best way to cut the scene short. But I couldn't let that remark go unanswered. I said:

"I've actually got plenty. I would tell you if I knew you would listen, and try to understand. But I know you won't. So why don't we all give ourselves a break here. You're already late for your barbecue." They had been invited to a Sunday barbecue by friends of theirs, and had earlier tried to force me into going along. I refused, which made made them all the more angry.

I could tell from my father's face that he was about to tell me to go ahead and say whatever I wanted to say, so that he could pick it apart and stomp on the pieces; as mentioned earlier, he is a professional diplomat, and he's good at that kind of thing. But my mother interrupted him with a passionate cry:

"Don't you tell us what to do!"

She had raised her voice, and within seconds we were all shouting at each other. That was how a lot of conversations with my parents ended these days. A minute later, it was all over: they left my room, with my father forgetting that he was a professional diplomat and slamming the door on his way out.

As soon as they were gone, I got out my pack of Rothmans and lit a cigarette. I started smoking when I was fourteen. I fell in love with smoking with my very first cigarette. I'd always liked the smell of tobacco smoke, and I was never sick after smoking the way many kids are. As you can imagine, my smoking didn't improve the relation with my parents. They did a lot of shouting and stopped my pocket money, but that didn't stop me. I cadged smokes from the my two friends at school who also were smokers, and stole the packs my parents' guests left behind in their drunken stupor. My parents held dinner parties at least twice a month and I only smoked a couple of cigarettes a day at that time, so I got by.

By the time I finished high school, I'd also smoked pot a few times, and loved it too. Marijuana has different effects on different people: it made me completely relaxed. My worries would just fade away. I kissed a girl for the first time in my life when I was stoned; I would have been too uptight to kiss her otherwise. Had I been straight and sober, I would've probably just sat there, and mumbled some nonsense or other. The sad truth is that when I'm straight and sober, I worry all the time. I worry about all the stupid things I've done, stretching all the way back to early childhood; I worry about what's happening right there and then, and about things to come. It drives me f.u.c.k.i.n.g crazy. Cigarettes take the edge off, while pot or alcohol or both erase the worries completely. I don't have to get heavily stoned or drunk for that to happen; a toke or a beer are enough.

You must be thinking that I'm really f.u.c.k.e.d up by now. Yeah, okay. So I'm f.u.c.k.e.d up. But you know something: if you've got a working brain and a heart, so are you. The only people who aren't f.u.c.k.e.d up are people who are brain-dead, and/or incapable of deeper emotions. Of course we all have to keep up a front, we all have to hide our painful little secrets. It's a question of coping. My coping strategy involves cigarettes, the occasional joint, and a beer or some wine or whatever from time to time. That's all there is to it, and there's nothing f.u.c.k.e.d up about it. A lot of people use that coping strategy too, if you look around you'll find it's pretty popular.

I stood by the window smoking cigarettes until my parents' car finally pulled out of the driveway. I felt a huge relief when it disappeared from sight. The street was empty and silent: a typical Sunday in Toronto. Living in Toronto is - no, that's the wrong word, it should be DYING in Toronto, it's a city where a small part of you dies every day even though physically you're just fine. Back in the fifties, you weren't even allowed to play with a ball in a park on a Sunday. The storefronts were all covered up with brown paper, so that people wouldn't commit the sin of shopping with their eyes. You couldn't even go and see a f.u.c.k.i.n.g movie, the first Sunday they allowed cinemas to open there were lineups stretching around the block. If you wanted to buy any liquor, you had to have a doctor's prescription. I'm serious. There would be a doctor or two in every liquor store, standing near the entrance with a prescription pad ready. That's how f.u.c.k.e.d up Toronto used to be, and still is in many ways.

And that, really, was one of the reasons I wanted to study in Montreal. Montreal is in Quebec, and in Quebec things are different. French people seem to have a special talent for enjoying life, and it's something you see very sharply when you arrive in Montreal, fresh out of Toronto. But then they had to screw it all up with their stupid liberation movement. They actually had martial law there couple of years back - soldiers in full combat gear on the streets, armored vehicles, helicopters, the works - because the Front de liberation du Quebec started a bombing campaign. They also kidnapped the Deputy Premier of Quebec and a British diplomat. The diplomat was released later, but they killed the Deputy Premier and a whole lot of shit came crashing down. This gave my parents one of their best arguments against my studying in Montreal: that it was dangerous over there. It was bullshit, the martial law thing was over after a few months. But I still hate the f.u.c.k.i.n.g Front de liberation du Quebec, I hope that they will all rot in hell.

I waited a few minutes to make sure that my parents were really gone; sometimes they'd find out they'd forgotten something, and return to pick it up. Then I went downstairs and made a beeline for the booze cabinet. I was out of luck: there were only a couple of bottles that I could drink from without fear of discovery. All the others were unopened, nearly empty, or nearly full. I took a swig of Bacardi rum, then walked out on the backyard deck and smoked another cigarette, waiting for the alcohol to hit me. When it did, I had a big swig of Crown Royal - it has this broad-shouldered bottle that makes it possible to steal quite a lot unnoticed when it's three-quarters full.

My plan was to spend the day packing and generally preparing for my trip the next day, but I didn't feel like it any more. I sat down on the back deck instead, smoking cigarettes, staring at the vegetation, the birds, the sky. I enjoyed the sun on my face, the silence, the peace.

I sat like that for several hours. Then I went back into the house, had some more Crown Royal, and realized that I was very hungry. I picked up the phone and ordered a pizza, I didn't feel like mucking around with the frozen dinners in the fridge. When the pizza arrived, I tipped the delivery guy lavishly without worrying that I was spending my savings, then ate the whole thing in one go - it was great. After that, I didn't feel like packing and preparing at all. I went upstairs to my room and smoked a couple of cigarettes lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, imagining all sorts of cool things that would happen once I got settled down in Montreal.

Before long, I began feeling sleepy; I didn't sleep well the previous night. It was still early, the sun was just beginning to set. But I said to myself what the hell, pulled the curtains shut, took off my clothes, and got into bed.

I was asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.