by Lisa Foad

1.
Last week, a friend read my tea leaves and saw, in the well of my mug, a dark wet smudge suggestive of a toilet. Over the seven days that followed, I quite suddenly lost the ring that I’ve worn every day for the last six years, became monogamous, threw out everything I’ve ever written in a fit of sometimes-it’s-art-but-mostly-it’s-trash, and woke up twice on the bathroom floor. Today, I found myself thinking, I have no sense of balance. And, I have no toilet paper. Either I haven’t yet accepted that I’m twenty-eight, or I haven’t yet accepted that this is twenty-eight.

2.
My friend, Anne, does not know what’s worth keeping. Terrified of food’s capacity to poison her, she throws out leftovers before they’ve even had time to be declared left over. Sometimes, on a just-in-case hunch, she’ll toss the food just before it meets her mouth. She’s scared of the possibility that coming comes in a finite supply, and that if she jerks off too much, she’ll use up all of her orgasms. And tonight it’s Wednesday and she’s just returned with the same movie from Suspect Video that she’s already accidentally rented three times, because she can never remember having seen it. Val Kilmer, The Saint. She doesn’t even like Val Kilmer.

3.
At the office where I don’t officially work, I’m seated at the desk that’s not officially mine but feigns it. It’s after the team-building pizza party I’ve organized for the team I’m not officially part of. Everything smells like pepperoni, and no one looks pretty in this light. Everyone glares, looking angry and fluorescent.

Two girls, both named Teresa T., stand one desk over. Like me, they’re twenty-something and temporary. Both have tight curly hair the colour of assorted nuts, almonds, pistachios, pecans. They’re rubbing their stomachs in soft, slow circular motions, palms secreting the soft spots marked by fuzzy pink wool and sticky yellow silk.

One is so full. “I am so full. I’m practically puking in my mouth.�

One is so hungry. “I am so full.�

Between them is a paper plate bearing an untouched slice littered with feta, olives and sun-dried tomatoes. Slimy bits of dark lettuce are stuck to the plastic fork.

“You only ate salad.�

Licking her lips like they’re bones. “Food makes me tired.�

4.
It’s summer and it’s Pride and I’m sitting on the curb on Church Street with the girl that I’m fucking, that I’m fucking in love with. It’s new and perfect, in the way that new things always feel perfect, especially when you’re coming a lot. Because I’m cynical and haughty, I make fun of the girl energetically gyrating to the obnoxious fag techno overwhelming the street. She’s wrapped earnestly in a rainbow sarong, and screaming festively. Just as I’m self-righteously noting the value of self-reflexive irony, I’m confronted with the realization that this flaming display of unadulterated pride is my ex.

The hello is awkward. She won’t say hi to the girl I’m fucking, and introduces the girl she’s with as her fiancé. At their wedding, the pianist will play Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.� The only thing worse than the apparent timelessness of Whitney Houston’s tawdry sentimental romanticism is that this was once our song.

Love suddenly feels like an embarrassingly bad idea, something that’s only remembered with shame and humiliation, much like the time I spent my thirteenth year pairing long johns with cutoff jean shorts and high bangs. I close my eyes and think about fucking and feeling perfect, and remember that the idea of forever feels good precisely because it’s not.

5.
At Dundas Station, a white woman in desert boots and an “I heart Jesus� scarf is arguing with someone on the pay phone. Saying, “No, I’m not just going to leave him here! He’s six! Do you have a six-year-old? I have a six-year-old! He’s alone and I found him and he’s six and I am not just going to leave him here.�

At her side, sort of, is a small black boy in scuffed up Chucks and a scuffed up Raiders jacket. Staring longingly, or not at all, at nothing in particular.

“No. No. No! I don’t believe this! I am reporting a lost six-year-old boy and you’re telling me to just leave him alone? He is alone. That’s why I’m calling. No, I’m not going anywhere until you send an officer over to take care of this.�

I’m thinking about the catchy yet useless suggestiveness of slogans. More Than You Came For. Like A Rock. Think. Think Different. Just Do It. Reach Out And Touch Someone. To Serve And Protect.

Apparently, six-year-old black boys wandering subway platforms at 9 PM are best left lost.

6.
Sometime in July 2003, I was chain-smoking on the front stoop with Susan Sharp. Mail delivery was early and I spilled my Limeade all over the $10,000 cheque that fell out of the envelope she’d disinterestedly opened. It was a $9,900 over reimbursement for a bill she’d overpaid by $100. She gave them two years to notice their mistake. Last week, she left for Europe.

7.
This time last year I spend an entire week watching season after season of Sex and the City, alternately feeling inadequate at the lack of melodrama, career, VIP lists and good shoes in my life, and derisive towards the four HBO ladies, for their insistent engagement in the most banal and normative of relationships.

During one episode, clarity came swiftly, in the shape of a toilet. Carrie, temporally swept up by the glory of partying as a verb, goes home with a barely twenty-something boy and finds there’s no toilet paper in his bathroom. In the midst of dripping dry, she recognizes, quite suddenly, the unyielding and immutable gap between her mid-thirties priorities and his twenty-something irresponsibility. With resistance, I recognized myself and Carrie as part of the same cultural moment—that bizarre point in your life wherein you are, irrevocably and unchangeably, an adult—the largest symptom of which is always, without fail, having toilet paper in the house.

Since entering my twenty-eighth year, I have run out of toilet paper more times than I can count. Either I haven’t yet accepted I’m twenty-eight, or I haven’t yet accepted that this is twenty-eight. And therein lies the balance.