Janine Armin - Toronto Noir

Needy — people are so needy.

If I had terminal cancer I would just want to be left alone.

I wouldn’t want balloons, or slides I couldn’t slide on, or an ice cream cake I couldn’t eat anyway — and especially no fucking thank you would I want fucking Mr. ET Canada Ben Mulroney signing my IV bag!!!

I mean, Jesus Christ!!! Why didn’t he just sign the kids’ foreheads so they can all be buried with his autograph? That guy is like an animatronic dinosaur at the Tar Pits — he moves his head, he opens his mouth, he moves his head in the other direction.

Best moment : Mulroney corners me while this girl who can’t stop moving her head is getting her face painted like Spider-Man (because he figures nobody can hear him over the girl going umma umma umma) and he asks me, all “real” and sweet and concerned, if I want to talk about Pulsar Girl and why I’m fighting with the director.

Please, why would I fight with a director after the movie is done? What’s the point?

I smell Jayson’s stale CK One all over this. Maybe that’s the new sell talk for the movie — Brianna’s tantrum. Somebody has to be blamed, and it’s never the director because here’s another big secret: Directors are pure profit. You can work a director till he’s like ninety-five, as long as he can point at the actors and mumble.

The sad part is, the kids were really excited to see me. I don’t get it. Maybe one of them, maybe two, has ever even seen me in anything. But Somebody Special was there, and that’s all that mattered.

I kind of think that if I only had a few weeks to live, I would consider myself the most Special person on earth, as a survival strategy. I would let all my animal instincts take over, become totally selfish and full of self-love, even self-worship. I would save every breath for me.

September 8

Azrael sent me the most beautiful plant. I wonder if I can take it back on the plane?

It’s an orchid, I think. There’s no real roots, just a ball of hard wood underneath this cloud of green spongy stuff that looks like a pot scrubber. The flower is navy-blue, or purple, I can’t tell. It’s huge , the size of two grapefruits, and it smells like dish soap, but salty. That part I’m not liking so much.

His note says the flower represents “purity risen from offal” and that the flower has “cleansing powers.” That explains the smell.

I asked Jayson what “offal” meant, but he just went all faggy on me and waved his hands around like I just farted. He says the flower looks like something you put on a coffin. He would know.

September 9

Another fight with Jayson.

He wants me to do a breakfast television show tomorrow, at 6 a.m. It’s a total waste . People who watch television at 6 a.m. don’t go to the movies, because either they are senile and stuck in a home, or because they have to go to bed at 5 p.m. to get up for 5 a.m.

It’s a total waste of time . I mean, maybe I’d do it for Good Morning America or Today, but Canadian breakfast television? Why don’t we just set up a webcam in my room and beam pictures of me to Yakistan, or wherever? It would amount to the same at the box office.

So, I said no. I am allowed to say no .

Jayson freaked, really freaked. He screamed crazy stuff at me like, “I know more about you than you know,” and, “I’m the reason you’re here.” Over and over . I walked into the bathroom and shut the door. So he stood there, right outside the bathroom door, close enough to hear me piss, and I think he was crying!!!

I came out after, like, twenty minutes (because I was bored and that bathroom is beyond ugly ), and he was standing by the window, perfectly still. Calm as a sunflower, like my grandmother used to say.

“What have you got to wear if it rains?” he says. What a psycho .

I sent him to get me some new makeup, which I do not need, to get rid of him. I think I’ll “forget” to pay him back.

I hope you can get Google Maps in Canada. I have to find out where Leslie Spit is (I know, eewww , gross name).

Azrael says it’s the most private place in Toronto — a beach with trails and tall grass and flowers and, I guess, the ocean.

That tells me two things: One, he is from here, which is too bad because I hate long-distance relationships, and two, he is not interested in publicity, he doesn’t want to be Mr. South.

He just wants to meet me, like a person , the way people are supposed to meet — without some Jayson or whoever in the middle, some fixer or arranger or scout or manager or protector.

I am so bored with being protected. It’s not natural.

I mean, if I can’t figure out who my friends are on my own, how am I going to make it to, like, twenty-five?

I’ll get eaten alive.

University of Toronto

Over here,” Meera said, taking Yanni by the hand and dragging him down a freshly mopped corridor.

It stank of ammonia, an antiseptic nasal assault that held a warped erotic appeal for some among the stethoscope and lab coat set. Meera drew Yanni’s mouth to hers and tasted his youth, inhaling his masculine scents and flavors.

“Slow down,” Yanni whispered. “And be quiet. Someone will hear!”

“Wimp,” Meera chastized, running her dark hands under Yanni’s loosened shirt. “There are only two nurses on this floor, and they’re both at the station.” Yanni still hesitated. “Besides,” Meera continued, “maybe you want to get caught?” She grinned in her devilish way and pinched his nipple, pushing Yanni against the sterile white wall.

He was yielding to her touch, soft clay beneath her willful hands. Meera pressed him against the sign that read, 2nd Floor, Rheumatology . The irony was not lost on her, as they strived to express an act of guileless youth in a place of broken agedness. The odors of imposed sterility, the colors of bureaucratic lifelessness and joyless dull lights — these were tokens of a philosophy that pushed aside the ardor of youth, the mystic charms of sex, and dirty, musical physicality. It was as if she and Yanni were consecrating the lifeless drywall with their hot, staccato breaths, all the time mildly aware of the clicking heels of the midnight nursing shift a hallway away, and of the almost imperceptible groans of the elderly patients swimming in their beds, wracked by dreams impossible for naïve, young medical residents to comprehend.

They clutched each other in that particularly desperate way, with each muscle seemingly both shocked and delighted that it had been recruited to such a pleasant purpose, and melted into the slow rhythm of human intimacy. The barren hospital corridor seemed less foreboding now that their eyes became accustomed to the darkness. At the end of the hall, a small window was open, letting in dull sounds from University Avenue below: a rushing stream of honking taxis, whooshing motorcycles, traffic lights hooting and chirping for the blind, and the chatter of the occasional passersby.

“Come on,” Yanni said, spinning from the wall and dragging Meera by her stethoscope. He pulled her into one of the empty patient rooms and onto a bed. The tightly tucked hospital sheets were a cliché, one that made them both chuckle as they gave up trying to get under them. Then they heard a noise.

“Who’s there?” It was a man’s voice, weak and desperate.

Yanni sprung to his feet, letting his open shirt fall back into place. “I’m Dr. Rostoff. This is Dr. Rai. Who are you?” Meera clicked on the room light, revealing an elderly man in the room’s secondary bed. “This room is supposed to be empty.”