January 25, 2008 VANCOUVER

I was watching a girl's reflection try on a winter coat in front of a mirror the other night. What made her interesting was how interested she was in what she was doing. She was inside a bright, hygienically lit department store with puddles of squeaky light gleaming off the ground beside her feet. The cosmetics section and a large window divided us. I was outside in the cold watching my white breath fog up the view against the window and frantically wiping it off while a street light hung over me on Howe Street, drooling its sad creamsical glow into a puddle in the gutter that'd be frozen before I'd get into my front door that night. The girl's reflection swiveled her hips a helluva lot of degrees in one direction then swung the other way just as far, both times looking over her shoulder with a downward glance that didn't betray a result. I felt less cold when she took another crack at it and bit her lip. She stood on her tippy-toes and tucked a strand of hair behind an ear. She arched her back a little, leaned over; kept tabs of the results but never tipped her hand to me by the expression on her face. Without even once shoving her hands into the pockets of the big puffy coat she discarded it, returned it to the rack, and abandoned the whole mission for a few squirts of free perfume over in the cosmetics department and started talking up some cosmetics female atrocity of a salesperson and I went on my way.

Even a winter coat is all about a girl's ass looking okay. Don't get me wrong, the concern has plenty of merit. My theory on fidelity is firmly planted in the conviction that a man needs a face he can marry and an ass roughly 36 inches beneath it that makes it an enticing idea and practice to cheat on it with enduring satisfaction. Lingerie has a similar cheating element built into fidelity thing, too. It's still YOU under there all right, but it's covered in PINK for the 3.4 seconds it takes me to see it and tear the motherfucker off. Next time BLUE! Shucks...

But the girl's reflection kinda got to me. Mostly because I've never tried the pockets of a coat in my life when I was looking around for a coat to keep me warm when it's cold outside. And I've never bought a coat other than when it was, that day, that hour, that minute, WAY too fucking cold to not impulse buy, in cold blood, a coat.

I've gone for plenty of girls that were like coats without pockets. No comfy place. But it takes me a while to even realize it. Which is pretty fucking dumb.

That girl's reflection kinda reminded me a bit of this girl I used to watch at night through a telescope when I had an apartment in the Westend. When I moved in I didn't have a TV so I borrowed a telescope off a crazy neighbor of my mom's whose dad was shot in the face with a 357 magnum and for the last thirty years he collects shit off ebay. One of those things was a really impressive, expensive telescope complete with a laser scope thingamabob. To make the telescope into my evening entertainment I needed dependable story lines. Over a few evenings I cased about 400 windows for activity and bought some different colored pieces of scotch tape and made a constellation of all the interesting rooms on MY window so that I could easily point the telescope to the tape and, in turn, the room, and tune in. I never once caught anybody fucking. Which at first was VERY irritating. Until after some examination I discovered that I barely caught any couples even TALKING to each other. Even LOOKING at each other. It was frightening. Not too many people live alone, but everybody just ignores each other. She watches TV, you go on the computer; after a while, SWITCH, shower separately, phone call, leaf through US magazine, go to bed.

I'd kinda hoped there'd be SOMETHING perverse out there in the world of apartment life, but nothing prepared me for how perverse the reality actually was.

Then it got way more creepy: this one girl became the star of everything. A Japanese girl of 20 or so who arrived home to her apartment around 1130pm and went about trying on 20 dresses or so from her closet in front of a tall mirror. One after another just working herself up and tearing herself down until a big fat breakdown against her bed, fists plunging into the mattress, bawling her eyes out. And all of it like clock work every weeknight (weekends I have no idea where she went). She always tried on the same red dress last every time.

But that was over a year ago. Maybe in another 15 minutes or so she's somewhere or other near that red dress working her way up to it. Or maybe she's wearing it right now with somebody she loves who doesn't even suspect there's any particular significance to what lies in her closet. Who knows. The stars were out tonight---and maybe hers' were too---and I always feel okay being in this cozy place walking over a bridge to get home with the water calm and checkered like a dance floor, the moon fat as Orson Welles' cheek buttering the sky and the clouds clumpy bits of chalk.