It's Colder Inside Than Out
How about that snow?
It’s so beautiful in the beginning, but now we have to contend with the melt and the mess.
Phoebe is moving some stuff closer to the front door of her apartment – my stuff. I’m on the outs and it looks like I’ll be couch surfing for most of January. Thank God for friends. It turns out this was a long time coming but with the holidays we thought we could make it through without dealing with us, but that isn’t the case. Instead, it was impossible to avoid. I’ve been busy boxing my things and silently navigating around her small apartment so as not to run into her. We’re both trying to think of the bad things right now, the reasons why we need to be apart. It’s hard but necessary.
I am bitter about one thing though. She changed the password on her Internet connection so I’m having to go to the internet café to get on-line. It’s disgusting back here and I’m sure the stains on the chair next to the door are… you know,...
12 Rules of Christmas Parties
Phoebe dragged me to her staff Christmas party Friday night, hosted by her manager and his wife. As soon as I got there I broke the handle off the toilet, so when you wanted to flush it you had to lift the back lid, which no one seemed to do.
As if I’d do that on purpose, the bloody thing just broke off in my hand!
This set the tone for the evening, and it was looking like I was going to be ‘that guy’ when this arse named Todd made all the rest of us look like tea-toddlers. You know the people who get completely obliterated and become Christmas legends? This year, her new co-worker Todd must have been nervous because he drank a small bottle of Jack Daniels before he arrived and another when he got there and then went straight for the wine and then beer – my beer! By 11:30 he was hosed. He ended up puking in the kitchen sink and at that point, with the toilet the way it was, he just pulled up a chair and went at it.
As everyone knows the kitchen is an integral...
Election Night
Phoebe and I went to a republican party. She thought it would be fun. She wore her pearls. So did the woman in Blue.
We left early with two bottles of wine and a shaker full of Vodka when they began to pace and kick the furniture. Depressants aren’t recommended when one is feeling maudlin, yet excellent when celebrating.
My greatest fear was death. It was almost two years ago that my friend Trevor told me about Senator Obama. At the time I was fixating on the Earthquake that would wipe out Vancouver, pouring over article after article of the history and our due.
Fixations about doom are far more palpable than your ready-made fear when walking down the street late at night and someone asks you for change – you wear your thoughts of doom for days, and it infects others as you converse and interact: concrete moves out of the corner of your eyes; buildings take on the shroud of potential death traps; people feel your uneasiness, and uncertainty feeds the fear of...
Introduction and Advice
My name is Jacob Banco. It’s not my real name but close enough. My girlfriend’s name is Phoebe Harris, it is her real name, incidentally. She is against me writing blogs because she knows I’ll include her and our relationship in my entries, which is only fair since she doesn’t include me in her writing and I resent it. We are both writers. I’m a knuckles-to-the-keys kind of writer and believe writing is work: heat and pressure to get the diamonds. She prefers stream of consciousness, and rarely edits anything. She writes Erotica, something I refer to as porn for intellectuals who don’t want their parents and friends to know they masturbate like the rest of us. I would like to be more involved in her work.
We live together in a small apartment in East Vancouver. Our toilet doesn’t work very well. Sometimes you have to flush it a couple times to get everything down. My girlfriend knows this and doesn’t flush a second time just to get at me. This passed week she left me a post-...
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Narwhal is an arts magazine from Vancouver, BC, that publishes well-told and often funny stories.