By Lucy

Monday was a circus. Most of the regulars booked the day off or left shortly after we got there. We were left completely alone in second sort for the second half of our shift, and I ended up taking over. It also didn’t help that they had a temporary forklift driver who didn’t know or follow the rules, and I was worried someone was gonna get run over. Everyone praised and thanked me later, and at the lunch room a few more people pulled up chairs to my table. I blinked and looked around. “Am I the cool kid now?” We were working right up to the bell but we got it all done.

The newest member of my work posse is Graham. He distinguished himself by usually sitting at the back and not speaking to anyone, but when he did finally speak he revealed that he’d been eavesdropping on every single conversation we’ve had in the lunchroom. He has a very dry wit, but he’s very clever and fun to talk to when you can get him to talk. He called me a child of the 80’s cuz I was singing “Smoking in the Boys Room” and talking about watching Lost Boys, and he also somehow deduced that I wasn’t single.

Which does sort of make me muse on why it’s become something of a secret, especially among people I don’t expect to see again. Rich put a fine point on it by mocking that an older guy on TV was my kind, to which I responded by hanging up the call. Amelie underlined by referring to the Vagabond as ‘Gramps’. Graham joked that the best way to get to know someone is to go through their camera roll, and I was curious what his astute mind would make of mine, so I handed over my phone.

• The first picture he picked for clarity was the one of me and my dad at Oma’s funeral. I do believe it’s the only picture I have of me and dad.

• The second picture was a cassoulet I made in October when I got back from Thunder Bay. A cassoulet is a rich, slow-cooked French soup that you throw in the oven so it forms a crust.

• A photo I screencapped of someone’s full back tattoo of wings.

• He commented on the pictures of me and Rich at the Elmvale zoo and Ripley’s Aquarium but didn’t ask for clarity on them.

• He picked out the picture of my blueberry tarts and my “Nowhere Fast” drawing, at which point he commented that I have lots of pictures of food.

• The last picture he picked out before we had to call it was me walking in this year’s Pride Parade, down in Toronto.

When I commented to Amelie that he didn’t say anything about the older man who makes up a good chunk of my photos, she replied; “maybe he thought he was your grandfather”. When I added that the Vagabond is Italian, she burst into laughter and said “that explains so much about you!”

I laughed at first, but later on the comment annoyed me. My partner shouldn’t explain a thing about me.

Like with my fascination with motorcycles, me and the Vagabond got to talking because of how much I already knew about Italy, not that I picked up the fascination from spending time with him. The first night we were out drinking in front of the hotel, he was chatting with someone about climate change in Veneto. I was staring off into the middle distance trying to pretend I wasn’t interested in the conversation because I didn’t want him to know I liked him. The guy he was talking to obviously wasn’t interested, and I’d read an article published an entire year earlier about the Po, the influence of it in the manufacturing and fishing industry in Veneto, and the drought it was experiencing, and I just blurted out; “is the Po still experiencing a drought?”. I realized there was no walking back that I had been interested and listening, so we had an interesting discussion about it.

We’ve got a temp supervisor, one of the regulars booked three weeks off or something. She’s alright, but she’s a little too… enthusiastic. Eager to prove herself. Keith and Derek keep everything running smooth with the regulars and I can wrangle the temps, for better or for worse. As long as all the mail gets out the door at 7 and winds up on the right doorsteps, does it matter what happens in between? She pulled me from second sort on Wednesday as I was ambling back from lunch because she was just pulling the first people she saw with no regard for where their skills are, so Thursday and Friday I made sure to be the first one out the door and to the back before that could happen again.

On Wednesday Cindy came in and was debating what to buy her daughter’s friend for Christmas. Someone suggested make-up and I immediately lost my mind. “Make-up? For a fourteen year old? Sure, chain her to the patriarchy early!” She protested that she couldn’t think of anything else that a teenage girl might like without knowing her specific interests. I exclaimed that I’ve never owned make-up (which is partially true, I own some lipstick and cover-up for cosplay, but it commonly goes months between uses and frequently is lost when I go to use it. Also at this point I usually get comments about my eyelashes, because apparently they are preternaturally beautiful) but everyone at the table continued to stare at me until someone finally muttered “you’re obviously a very different kind of girl”. Is that what we’ve come to? Every teenage girl gets make-up, no questions asked? Third-wave feminism has failed!

I sometimes hide around back, behind the bins, when we’re waiting for another truck to come in (I’m not lazy, I always pop out when I hear the forklift coming back down the aisle). Now that we broke Graham out of his silence, he keeps coming around to ask me questions he knows I don’t want to answer around anyone else. The first thing Graham asked me, when he learned I was dating a biker and had aspirations to be one, was about “female biker society”. I burst out into incredulous laughter. “You watch too much ‘Sons of Anarchy’?” I told him there are two kinds of biker chicks: females who want to be on bikes, and females who just want to date a guy who owns a bike cuz he’s ‘cool’. The Vagabond didn’t introduce me to anyone from any of the clubs, and part of that is that he’s a real loner. Not the kind of movie-style loner who hangs out at a bar in a paradoxical attempt to be forced into social interaction. He’s comfortable with going months without talking to people and only broke that because he found me irresistible to talk to. But outside of that, I doubt there’s any kind of female biker society in Thunder Bay because the Vagabond didn’t mention getting punched out for stealing anyone else’s girl yet. He’s a warrior poet – well, to an extent all of them are. There’s not much else to do once you’ve popped some acid or shrooms and are settled back on the couch with a beer, then navel-gaze. He’s worse for it than most, in my opinion. His main complaint about most of his ex-girlfriends is that they didn’t know when to stop the party, implying there’s not really any biker chicks around who are the contemplative, organizing types (it’s also the part of the conversation where he awkwardly peters out, because clearly I do know when to call it a night. If his only complaint about his previous lovers is a thing I don’t do wrong… that question answers itself).

Graham asked me if he’s bothering me by disturbing my quiet time. I told him no. “To be is to be perceived, and so to know thyself is only possible through the eyes of the other.” I can call myself a biker or a carpenter or a vagabond, and I can own a bike or know how to work or wander, but I’m not any of those things unless other people bear witness and agree. I get enough quiet contemplation at home, any more and it risks turning into rumination.

Friday they gave us a whole 8 hour shift. They even provided a catered lunch. I have Monday and Tuesday off, but next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are going to be 8’s as well.

I never know what to do with my car on the days off. Ideally, I’d like to go to bed around 5 AM – close enough to the end of my usual shift to maintain my schedule, but I’m more likely to be in deep sleep when the homeowner starts slamming every door in the house when he gets up. The problem is that the car can’t be parked on the road until 7 AM. So either I stay awake til 7 and move it before I head to bed, or I go to sleep early and get woken up at 9 or 10 when the homeowner makes his daily trip to the grocery store (yes, literally).

‘Night Moves’ seems apropos as a title. Moving Luna at night, working a night shift, writing my blog at night. Although that isn’t what the song is about, there’s been a little bit of that too. Been listening to Bob Seger, in some kind of ‘cowboy’ vibe.

I sent this to the Vagabond for Christmas.

I’m actually surprised I had a picture of it, I made it two years ago and I sent it to him before I had the idea for this blog (and therefor that every aspect of my life might need to be pictured). I knew he’d never tell me the address he’s staying at in Italy, so I threw it in an envelope with a Christmas card and scrawled on the front of the envelope “don’t open til Christmas!” and sent it in early November. We always joke that he’s a cowboy on a steel horse, so it just came to me as I was sitting at my desk packing up my things that he might like it. The symbol on the top is for the Gerudo people.

Watched “No Country for Old Men” for the first time. It’s unusual for me to watch a movie when the book is available, but I read that the book was originally written as a screenplay, so it seemed like it was really designed to be a movie more than a book. It’s something you can’t translate to a page, the slow pans over the scrubland as a grizzled voice monologues about good and evil. I liked it. I had “The Road” too – my mother brought it after he was on Oprah and gave it to me for whatever reason. I looked up Cormac McCarthy because I was curious why he writes cowboys so well and discovered he passed away the same day I got back from Dryden. There’s some weird kismet about that, too.

He was a strange man. Seemed like he wrote just to write, wasn’t interested in anything that brought him money. Spent a lot of years being kicked out for lack of rent and eating the cheapest food on offer. No answer on the cowboy thing. Was kinda nihilistic, but in an optimistic way. All of his books remind people to “carry the fire”.

I used to say I wanted to be a writer and my parents told me I couldn’t because it would take many years to make any money for it. But, I could go to college and be a doctor or a lawyer and it would take years for me to make money there, no?

On the last night of work Amelie discovered I had been married once. That blew her away more than anything I told her about the Vagabond. I’ve turned so completely towards whatever I am now that the idea I was a middle-class, settled woman is incomprehensible. I was listening to Freebird on the radio and the image that always comes to mind is Jenny, in Forrest Gump, standing on the ledge. I always wanted to be her – hop in a car with some hippies and go where the wind takes me. I took the long road around to being irresponsible.

No country for old men. That’s why the Vagabond isn’t old to me. You can’t be, with the lives we lead, there’s no retirement plan for rogues and ruffians. I’ve decided to swap out ‘scared’ for ‘worried’ in my vocabulary. I can’t be scared ever, anymore.

Am I carrying the fire?