julie raze "gord and julie," steve said. "what do you think of that?" "i like her," i said. "fuck liking her. that chick is ugly. if she didn't have tits, she would be a man." she wasn't ugly. steve was the one who was ugly. julie moved here from sault ste. marie to go to school. she had short hair and a pierced septum. she was always wearing hoodies. she liked led zeppelin and nofx and hayden. "when the levee breaks" was her favourite song. she wanted to learn to play the harmonica like robert plant. she said she liked my lyrics. she had a smile that looked like the sun kicking all the clouds out of the sky. she would smoke pot until she couldn't keep her eyes open anymore. when someone said or did something she thought was cool, she would say, "right on." gord and julie were old friends, and then they were more than friends. she moved into the town house where gord was living with josh and mark. josh said you could always tell when they were having sex. the music in gord's room would get really loud, and you'd start to hear words that didn't belong to whatever song they were listening to. one weekend everyone slept over at my place. gord built a pyramid of beer bottles in the fridge. it rained all day. we stayed inside and got drunk. when the day was gone and it wasn't raining anymore, we walked to the park and drank a little more. we sat on the wet grass. josh opened another beer for me with his teeth. julie looked at me and said, "so, you guys want to go somewhere with your music, right?" "yeah," i said. "if we can." "how are people supposed to know about you if you aren't promoting the music or playing any shows?" before i could say anything, gord said, "so what you're saying is we're not going anywhere." "i didn't say that," julie said. "i was just curious what your plans were." "you hear that, guys? i'm a fuckin' failure. i'm not going anywhere." "that's not what i said." josh gave me a look that said, "oh shit." the argument lasted all the way back to the house. all the colour had gone out of the night. we went to bed. josh took the couch in the living room. gord and julie took my dad's room. they left the door open. i never closed mine. "i can't believe my own girlfriend doesn't believe in me," gord said. "i never said that!" julie said. she was crying. "i love john. i love your music. all i was trying to do was ask a question about what you wanted to do. i'm sorry. please." "i should just give up," gord said. "i'm never gonna make it. my own girlfriend doesn't even like my music. i should just kill myself." julie kept saying she was sorry and telling gord he didn't understand. he kept moaning about how she didn't believe in him. pretty soon she was crying so hard she wasn't saying words anymore. gord was lying in bed with his back to her, staring at the wall. she was shaking, trying to get him to turn around and look at her. i wasn't in the room with them, but i could see it. i could feel it. you can't crawl into bed with your best friend's girlfriend and hold her while he's right there next to you. but i wanted to. josh came upstairs. "they're still going, huh?" "yeah. i guess you can't sleep either." "shit's fucked up." he came into my room. he thumbed through some of my cds. "sunny day real estate. i never really got into them. but i remember this album. i liked that song ... what was it called? something shining." "every shining time you arrive?" "yeah. you've got so many cds." gord and julie passed out. josh went downstairs and gave sleep another try. i fell asleep watching rachael leigh cook in "josie and the pussycats", trying to dream myself into the movie. it didn't work. in the morning gord and julie had no memory of their fight. i found julie standing in the kitchen. she gave me a smile that wasn't a smile. she went to bed with her eyeshadow still on and cried most of it off. it was on her cheeks now. she looked like a living doll that was made to hurt without ever being told why. 210929 ... kerry i didn't know you but i do know your face because they keep you alive. miranda, especially. it's been while since i've ridden a bike and this isn't really your fault, none of it was, but if things had been different i'm sure i wouldn't think of you when i'm debating whether to walk or bike somewhere. i could walk, but it'll take so much longer. i could bike, but... i haven't forgotten about don, but we didn't talk about him that way. when we talked about don we talked about watercolors, mexico, the oil painting of his art table that hung in peter's room since he was born. when we talked about don we talked about tim, and how hard it was for tim, where they sent him, who he was when he came back. you became a symbol, a reminder. fluffy blond hair and rosy cheeks like your baby sisters', ski slope nose like your mother's. the sound of your name isn't a bell but a gong, an echo in a cave. put on your helmet. remember what happened to julie. even on phone calls spanning a continent, when i was sleeping in that walk-in closet in the house on genoa street and i bought that used bike, my dad was unhappy. you better be wearing your helmet, he'd say. and i didn't tell him about that girl at work who got doored and flipped head-over-heels across the road, and i don't have any idea how he reacted when ellen crashed her bike in front of lois_the_pie_queen and was in the hospital for a week because at the time i was also heavily medicated and not allowed to watch television or use a computer or phone and wouldn't have been able to anyway. her boyfriend flew back from his trip to japan just to sit in her room with her all day. you on the other hand had just gotten in a fight with your boyfriend. you were sixteen. when i was sixteen i was writing on blather and didn't have a boyfriend but wanted one and then had one the next year and we fought all the time. so now i realize how unlucky you really were, biking home in tears, fuck the helmet, i need to get out of here. also on genoa street, i was biking home from the jcc and becky was biking towards me. she always wore tiny miniskirts and always biked. she was sobbing. she and her boyfriend were always breaking up. she was crying so hard she didn't even acknowledge me when she passed. and a week or so later i was also sobbing on my bike. i was supposed to take the gre at 8am and when i got to the test site realized i'd left my id in my other bag. they wouldn't let me in without it, and they wouldn't admit anyone late. i biked home in tears and ate some of the day-old bread from work. i wasn't wearing my helmet, but here i am. i think don wore a helmet, though. maybe in your case it wouldn't have mattered either way. mostly i wonder what you were fighting about. 210929 ... tender square my first car crapped out on me around 2007 when i was living downtown, just died in the middle of giles two blocks from my apartment in the dead of winter. i didn’t get a new one because i couldn’t afford it, so i embraced a life of public transit and cycling since it got me everywhere i needed to be. my family thought i was nuts. windsor had bike lanes, but not very many, and cycling was not as popular then as it is now. i didn’t wear a helmet at that time. i didn’t start wearing a helmet until my 30s, which in hindsight, i realize is foolish at best and deadly at worst; in my twenties i did a lot of drinking and cycling and wiped out a couple of times but was unscathed. since windsor is the sprawling automotive capital of canada, many drivers were not accustomed to looking out for cyclists in the road. this used to piss me off, and i had a few close calls with cars turning in front of me—i’d ring my bike bell, shoot them the finger, and yell a few choice swear words in response to nearly running me over. once, on my way to work at cjam, i was cycling down parent ave in the bike lane heading north when i anticipated a minivan in the left turn lane about to cut me off; i could see them, but they couldn’t see me. i slowed to the intersection, and when they turned in front of me, i gave them the finger as i usually did and kept cycling. a block or so later, as i approached giles and was passing begley public school, the van that had cut me off started driving at the speed i was pedaling. it was a woman a few years older than me, and she had her passenger window rolled down and she was screaming at me while children played outside for recess behind the chain link fence i was passing. she threatened to run me over with her car and called me a fucking bitch. i’d never felt so scared in all my life. i thought about ditching my bike right there and running away because i didn’t know how serious she was. she sped off and i biked the remaining four kilometers shaken. after that encounter, i changed my approach with drivers who nearly clipped me. i’d ring my bell and wave and say “share the road please!” 211002 ... kerry ugh that's awful. drivers in philly are terrible to bikers. stuff like what you described, harassment, sometimes even trying to run them off the road. plus there's the potholes. but yeah despite the warnings i rode my bike sans helmet many times. drunk, stoned, etc., until i finally fell (into a bunch of poison oak no less) and fractured my wrist. it was my own fault since i was in no shape to ride. 211002 what's it to you? who go blather from