Thumbs up to the good guys.

You sure would like to give an opportunity to the well-mannered IT guys that your cousin think is so perfect for you. But he’s got that little white concentrate of saliva goo that stretches when he speaks and it’s just plain disgusting!

In short, you’ve had enough of getting your ears harped with the promotion of the “good guy” who should be given a chance. It seems that, in general, you prefer whining about the bastards who treat you like chopped liver than having a calm and loving relationship.

In part, what is displeasing about the good guys is that, in addition to not being particularly handsome, they are clumsy and have a distinct tendency to be “too nice”. Plus, the more they are generous and attentive, the more the sweat circles under the armpits are wide. Women want a man who makes their heart tremble, not the cup in their saucer.

They like a prospect that keeps them on their toes by replying two days later to their text message of 500 words with a thumbs up. They don’t want someone who writes them on the same day. Some of them even reply immediately. What kind of respectful loser attitude is this?

Girls don’t want anything to do with the chubby neighbor who warmly says « Hello there!» Every time he embarks in his Pontiac Aztec. They long for some kind of vroom in their plexus. It has to rip a bit, even if it means refraining from saying “Ouch” when they are courted in the back, cheek crushed against a brick wall.

A good guy will be there for a damsel in distress, they will worry about their well being and will find interesting everything that comes out of their bullshit mill. Isn’t it lame ? Convenient for moving day and to feel beautiful, mind you, but women need a challenge, to doubt themselves a tad. Right, girls? It keeps you humble.

Anyway, your current boyfriend understood many things recently. He apologized, he promised not to do it again and you feel he is changing … It’s about time, because you deserve to be loved. Why can not you be loved properly? You are good girls, after all!

What I want to share with this passive-aggressive delirium is that the good guy might be awkward just because you trouble him, no ? Under his virgin-beige jacket may be hiding the body of an Adonis. Behind the hair t-shirt probably beats a heart of gold. Under the baldness combed to the side surely bubbles a sharp mind that will capture your complexity and your fragility.

So, the next time you flirt, when a stud makes you weak at the knees, look straight over his shoulder. You see? Behind your kind of male? That specimen with this impossible mustache who’s eating the skin of his thumb while pretending to read his coaster? Right there. That’s the man of your life.

Or not…

But you have now increased your odds of being cherished beyond your hopes, my honey bunnies.

However, if you prefer to continue playing love yo-yo with “bad boys” who treat you like shit, don’t call me in tears after breaking up for the thirtieth time. I don’t know what to tell anymore for the self-injury to stop.

Good guys of all stripes, I’m pulling for you! However, take the shirt out of your pants and wipe the corners of your lips ! I’m working hard for you lads but, for heaven’s sake, help yourselves and sex up!

Calluses from holding placards.

I am apolitical, lazy and cynical. A perfect citizen for our government. Sheepy and quiet. I vote when they make me believe that it counts, strategic at most, without much hope. I’m Generation X. Self absorbed and unaware on purpose. No future and fuck the world.

October 1970, Montreal was on the verge of a civil war. I saw it all from my high chair. The grownups were preparing the revolution by polishing their clubs, a joint at the corner of their mouths. I have flashes of loud demonstrations, sitting on the shoulders of adults screaming their displeasure of society as a whole. A lot of red and black banners, a lot of single stars on green berets.

Very young, I jabbered words like “proletariat”, “solidarity” or “anarchy.” I knew The Internationale as well as the lyrics from Sesame Street. “«C’est la lutte finaaaaale, groupons-nous et demaiiin, l’Inteeeernationa-a-a-a-leu, youkaïdi, aïdi, aïda, taratatata!!» Well, I knew most of it. In French. Anyway, the Quebecois hippies thought I was the cutest thing.

I learned how to identify the RCMP quickly. I was sent on the sidewalk to pretend to make mud cakes. They were easy to recognize: a big mustache, mirror glasses, leaning on a blue car. You know the video from the Beastie Boys, “Sabotage”? Yeah. Exactly like that. They were not even pretending to read the newspaper. They looked directly at my house. Some of them took pictures. I just had to get inside and yell, “There’s two of them in front!” and people in my kitchen would flee hastily through the back yard.

I watched my mother paint “Neither virgin nor whore” on brick walls. I remember the smell of vinegar and pepper spray on the shirt of protestors. I remember the posters of Che, the fist in the female sign, that little red book. Around me, all hands bore calluses from holding placards. To revolt was normal, necessary, as long as the pigs rule!

I learned how, if you want to stay chained to a fence, you put a metal tube around your wrists, it takes a very long time to be sawn. If it makes a click sound and tin can echo in the phone, it means you are tapped. If you use an eight-inch nail to fix your protest sign on a two by four, when the cops arrive, you just have to pull the cardboard and whack away.

I also learned that going to jail for your ideas makes you a hero but you can’t go swimming in the States anymore. Not until you get the Queen’s pardon, many, many years too late. I learned that being a rebel involves dangers and sacrifices and I started to kinda hate insurrection.

Being the daughter of activists meant that there was always something bigger and more important than me. The Mission before us, the Mission before all. As a child, I wished “raise in arms” meant “to be taken at arm’s length making airplane sounds” and not “At midnight, we’re taking down City Hall!”

My parents were of all struggles. My mother helped feminism advance, fought for the rights of workers and those of the poor. She was against this and for that. She was a great one. A rebel with all kinds of causes.

And I? Well, as soon as I could do nothing, I did. I ran to the comfort of my navel and didn’t get out much. With the occasional signing of a petition and a button with some shitty slogan on the lapel to give myself a good social conscience.

Today, my son is in the streets. Each image of tear gas in the faces of barely pubescent kids; each riot with whistles and sirens soundtracks; each impatient stick against the bridge of a scarfed nose, my heart gets heavier. Not so much by anxiety, though I worry for the fruit of my loins, but by repentance. Had I not given up the fight, this generation would not have to claim as much.

I still remain filled with a sense of Whatgoodisit? I have a feeling of helplessness before the colossal. Because, after all, we don’t have to complain if we compare ourselves to other countries, huh? Huh?

It’s that sort of thinking that keeps people muffled: bread and circuses, hockey and chips. And I stay on my ass while austerity eats away at the leg of my sofa, my salary, my retirement and the future of our children.

So what?

So nothing.

I just wanted to apologize to my parents for not having continued the battle. To my son for letting him fight to get back lost social benefits.

Because many of my generation did not want to challenge the oppressors and end corruption. My generation preferred to suck its thumb while missing mom gone trying to change the world.

A letter to the one who thinks I’m the one.

Dear man that wants to love me.

Just to say that I appreciate it. A lot. I’m not an easy woman to get along with. If I were you, I’d give it a minute or two before offering your ticker on a silver platter.

I took such a long time to mend my raspberry tart, I can’t have you take a bite and risk you chocking and spitting it back. I know that you’ll tell me that you are not like all the others. You’ll tell me that you’ll do me no harm, so crazy you are about me.

Fuck you.

They all were once madly devoted but I still found myself curled on the floor, writhing with  my angina pectoris, or kneeling, riddled with guilt, with tears of my sweetie rolling down my fingers.

I’m not sure I’m made for the coupling game. At first, it’s easy, we see our future in the eyeball of our soul mate, we swoon, and we spoon, breathing at the same rate. We believe in the thing like we’re fifteen, like in the movies. But then, through cuts, scrapes and scratches, we chip away the good and the beautiful only to leave sorrow and pain.

I fear you’ll try to change me as others did before you. Small things like the way I behave, talk or do the dishes … Your hobbies and habits will become mine, or worse, you’re going to convince me that you want the person I am, only to prove me wrong with blows of veiled criticism and disapproval.

I’m afraid we will accept each other’s way of doing to buy peace, abdicate and transform our personality. Or worse, our idiosyncrasies will drive us to yelling, all veins out, about silly stuff such as how to fold napkins.

What if I never get little tender notes from you, or worse, you lay on me of kilometers of rose colored prose until I gag?  I abhor nothingness, I loathe excess.

I fear that our sexuality will perish and only blood or famine will linger in our sheets. I’m afraid of losing the flame or to get burned. My skin still remembers relationship where I cried poor, or worse, rape.

What if, over time, our hearts pour out all affection to fill with resentment, blame and doubt? What if we get to spew vile poison so badly that we’re left shaken to the core? What if we eventually say so regrettable words that I am forced to slay what is left of us?

You’ll end up leaving, tired of me and my deep-sea journeys, or worse, I’ll plant my claws into the flesh of your chest, pecking wildly, then fleeing while your gaping thorax is rotting on the shore.

Don’t tell me not to be afraid, that we’re the same, that we’re meant to be together! Don’t tell me that, because you’re going to make me believe, you asshole!! I already hate that you’re filling me with hope. You’re there thinking you can approach me with that perfume of golden promises? You want to put your hand on the barrel of my gun and let my guard down? I fear you! God almighty that I fear the pain of love!

It’s not because we found each other that I have to lose myself, understand? I easily feel trapped and am ready for terrible violence to keep my throat from feeling the noose. If I were you, I would go on my way, I’m too much work.

Do you know why I love you? Because the scars on your soul are similar to mine. You’re tempting me. I want to succumb, to let you in…

Bastard.

There. I said I love you. In front of everybody. Are you happy?

No … probably not … Something in the tone, perhaps?

Yours, for now…

The «out of her wits» girl.

Killing time and zombies.

It’s on a warm summer day, sitting on a burnt orange and avocado rug, that my love affair with video games began. My cousins were going berzerk in front of the big tube TV in the living room. On the screen: little white bars and dots. I try the thing, without really understanding why there is hysteria around me. Pong!!! Pong!!! What the hell?

It doesn’t take five minutes, I’m hooked. Look at all that futuristic technology! Had I known what was yet to come in terms of realistic graphics, I would have creamed my Fortrel shorts on the spot.

To win and conquer through a machine! Goodbye marbles and plasticine! I found blissfulness in triangular pew-pew-pews shooting at rectangular aliens.

I didn’t have a console at home. I had puppets and Chia pets. So, as soon as I could get my hands on a few quarters, I went to the corner’s greasy spoon and ate ghosts. The feeling of that ball in the palm of my hand and that «Waka waka waka» in my brain until insane…

I was introduced to the arcades in the years of crimped bangs and Toni perms. That’s where my allowance came to die. Ha… the sounds of my adolescence… A melodious cacophony where the beeps, the pows and kraaashs were back vocals to coins that clinked and acneics that growled.

I’ve always had a weakness for flippers that gave me that famous trust that will make me popular among my prospective lovers. I also loved holding that plastic gun, making a badass move off the screen. But I hated the cable attached to it that broke my momentum. I drove cars, threw coconuts, hit the punching bag, my smile transformed by the black lights in a Cheshire cat grin. Half of my gastroentitis were caught by touching all those clammy controls.

When Kurt Cobain made me tie hunting shirts around my waist, the beige computer finally joined my everyday life. A gift from my mother for my studies. Still no Nintendo, like most of my geeky friends, but settled for floppy discs to fight dragons that glitched or diffuse simplistic bombs on a canvas of gray bricks.

It’s really in the era of g-strings out of jeans and duct tape against terrorism that I started my obsession. My addiction was exacerbated by two catalysts: a nerdy son and an engineer of a husband. Then, the pixels multiplied. The resolutions increased tenfold and so did my pleasure. Boxes of happiness were connected from the telly to my veins and X, X, A, LT, X, B, Y!!!

I gave myself small doses by dragging a game boy in my purse. Only the true ones will know what it’s like to have a Korobeiniki or Overworld theme ear worm. This was a time when my eye twitched continuously after having spent far too many hours in the sewers of New York.

Today, during the era of the emoji poop, I’m on my own and console myself with my own console. I’ve got the control non-stop and loving it. I wear whorish leather armor or dress as a radioactive pin up downing Nuka Colas. I can start my life as I see fit, as often and differently as I wish.

I mate with the arcane mage and create damage before I reincarnate into a bike that rages as in engages in metal cages. I’ve got mad fowls on the throne and wild Animus on the couch. I don’t care about a mere arrow to the knee; I’m the Queen of Blades! If steel wins battles, gold wins wars. I suffer and I survive with no Gods or Kings, only man… or workaholic orcs… Because it is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly.

When I grow old, if I have enough mana left, I dream of wearing a virtual reality helmet before I finally meet the boss. Wii!!! Saint Server Admin, I wish for an old folk’s home run by Ubisoft!

All this to say, that RPG passion is personal. Be lucid when ludic. If I do not bother you with how I kill my time and zombies, get the fuck away with your Candy Crush requests.

Otherwise, I can easily prove that video games make you violent…

“Finish him!!! »