By Lucy

Thursday evening we had a little virtual get-together on the new Discord server. We played Putt Party and later some Jackbox. We had 7 or 8 people at one point, the call lasted 4 hours. Someone mentioned a death in the family and Kevin mentioned his cat has passed away. The casual way he said it made it sound like it was the anniversary of the cat’s passing.

Friday I went to get my last bit of rent out. As we were chatting, my landlord mentioned the guy above me being noisy and asked about it.

“Oh, I didn’t want to cause a fuss…” I stammered.

“Lucy, we can’t just be silent and let people walk all over us. Look at the state of politics! You have to speak up.”

That made me uncomfortable, because I am usually the one admonishing people not to be silent. I just didn’t see a point this time.

The new girl is moving in Saturday night, her plane gets in late. I was asked to show her around, I suspect because we are both female!

I ordered from 2Good2Go again. I got lucky and managed to snag a bag from a local bakery for 6$. I scoped out their Instagram and noted they had a 1$ shelf that graciously included some cakes and sweet treats. I thought a loaf of bread, maybe some rolls or bagels, and some of the sweet treats.

Nope.

There was 4 loaves of bread (at the very least, 4 different kinds of bread, but still), a bag of kaiser buns, a bag of hotdog buns, and a bag of bagels.

It wouldn’t even have mattered if I had a normal living situation – all the bread could have gone in the freezer and been eaten at my leisure. But of course, since I’m leaving, I can’t, and I shouldn’t stuff the freezer full here either.

I decided to keep a bag of bagels and a loaf of bread. Either one of those would have cost 5$ at the grocery store, so I was still technically ahead. I offered the kaiser rolls to Wayne because that’s what he uses instead of bread for sandwiches. Hanuman got the raisin bread immediately. I posted the rest on the Discord for people to argue over.

At 5, I went down to the marina for sailing. The summer heat has broken and autumn wind was starting to kick in. Labour day is always the end of summer in southern Ontario, but here it is moreso. It would have been pleasantly warm weather were it not for the stiff breeze. On a whim, I threw the hot dog buns into my bag to give away.

There was a large group of newly minted international students milling around the crew bench. A couple of them wandered past me as I sat by the gate to the pier (Chris has informed me how I could get a key, but then he runs the risk of arriving at 5:03 and discovering I’ve already entirely prepared the boat because I was bored). One angrily told the other “It’s a race, not a cruise! Get your head in the game” or something to that effect.

No Foster and no Gillian today. Marcus showed up in his starched pilot’s pants, dragging along his wife Becky. He’s developed a habit of calling Chris “Grandpa Chris”, or unleashed a former habit he was suppressing. We had the boat prepared quickly, when the two international students wandered back along the dock.

“Is there a race tonight? Can we join you?”

Chris glanced at us. We shrugged. 5 people is a little short-handed on this boat, but also we don’t know these guys from the next. He invited them aboard. He directed me to show them around below-decks, where they questioned my directive to chose some gloves. Ok, get rope burn then! Don’t cry to me when you’ve lost all the skin on your palm.

Lee showed up and hopped on the boat last minute.

The race went smoothly, the two international students were middling competent. Marcus seemed determined to put me through my paces and was pushing me to do everything that seemed to make me uncomfortable.

I messed up on the last tack – I knew where the buoy was, but I didn’t realize there was a boat in front of us with right-of-way, so I released the jib too early. Fortunately Marcus was holding onto the sheet as well, so we were able to reel it back in, but it was a mistake that cost us speed and time nonetheless.

After the race was finished, Chris asked the international students about themselves. One is from Egypt and the other from Iraq, both mechanical engineers. Lee immediately put his foot in his mouth by informing us the Egyptians had invented Pythagorean theorem before Pythagoras, to build the pyramids.

As we were disembarking, Chris pointed out a beaver nonchalantly swimming through the marina.

Marcus ended up taking the hot dog buns, although not before rassing me a bit about it!

Saturday morning I had plans to go out with Kevin2 to the Thunder Bay Museum. I’d gotten free tickets ages ago – 4 tickets with the intent of a double-date with the Vagabond. That obviously wasn’t happening, but they expired after August 31st so I might as well enjoy the museum myself! At the last minute he asked if his paramour could join us, to which I said sure! The more the merrier! I also gifted him a loaf of bread.

Kevin2 does not understand museums – he kept touching everything and trying to take it off the wall to play with it!

It was nice to meet Heidi as well. She’s Cree and has been to the museum before, so she had lots of insider knowledge. The exhibit on the second floor had a section for the indigenous day schools (not to be confused with the residential schools) and we all went quiet for a minute.

“Eli went to day school.” I said, just making the connection then.

“Which one?”

“Gull bay.”

“That checks out.” Heidi said.

I hadn’t heard from him in two weeks. He dropped the coveralls off before leaving for a job. I’d tried reaching him to return the coveralls before I left, but he wasn’t replying at all. I hope he’s just out of service and not injured. The other problem is that if I can’t get ahold of him before I leave, the only place I have to leave the coveralls is the Vagabond’s…

I mentioned something about Kevin. Heidi perked up.

“The other Kevin? His cat died on Thursday, poor guy.”

Wait, it died on Thursday? I thought it was the anniversary! Cue immediate and profuse apologies and condolences. The cat was 16 years old and named Nomsley.

The conversation stalled for a few minutes while both Heidi and Kevin2 gushed about what a nice, trustworthy guy Kevin is. I fell silent.

That was a constant refrain – he was odd, legendary, but the most trustworthy guy in Thunder Bay. It was uncomfortable for 2 reasons, the first being that I’m cynical and the more people praise someone the less I trust it. The second is that I just don’t feel like a good person. Part of my attraction to the Vagabond, sad to say, was that he’s such a dark, negative presence I felt like I couldn’t possibly sully him. If Kevin really is the paragon that people keep making him out to be – and there is no real proof he isn’t – then I just felt even more unworthy. I felt the crimson letter burning on my chest, every unkind thing my parents said to me bouncing around my head.

I realized, slowly, the Vagabond was wrestling with the same thing. Feeling I was too good for him.

The New Zealand trip is well-timed. 6 months to improve my imposter syndrome and general sense of unworthiness.

I went home and hung out around the house for a bit. I had one of my last Factor meals – “Middle Eastern style beef”. It was actually pretty good, I wish I had the recipe. Around 4 K texted me and asked if I wanted to hang out, but a storm had just rolled in. I watched the rain lash at the windows for a couple of hours before it cleared up enough for us to go for a walk.

K asked me to drive him to the grocery store after the walk, since his car is still broken down. As he hemmed and hawed over the fruit section, I grabbed a thing of strawberries and put it into my cart. I grabbed some cream cheese flavoured with strawberries as well.

“Since when do you eat strawberries?” K asked.

You know, most First Nations cultures are matriarchal. The men hunt, sure, but that’s all they do. The women raise the children, gather plants, perform healing, and run the tribe. In contrast to patriarchal societies, your monthly period isn’t viewed as an unclean time, but instead the time when you are at your most spiritually powerful.

When a girl becomes a women (read – when she gets her period) she goes on a fast, locally called the Strawberry fast. She spends a year abstaining from strawberries and other luxuries for… reasons, I’m not indigenous and I’ve not had the teachings. But I get the gist. You see a lot of regalia and indigenous crafts featuring strawberries, presumably for the connected reasons.

Even white people tend to associate strawberries with passion, and occasionally a yonic symbol.

Maybe it was something about how I had been suppressing my desires for a while, hoping for enlighten. Alternatively, that I am a glutton who’s sort of failed at controlling her desires.

Or maybe I’m just craving strawberries.

The next day, I was supposed to go to Hymers Fall Fair with Kevin, but he still wasn’t feeling well.

Maybe… I should ask the Vagabond. We’ve been quiet for a few days – maybe he’s been thinking.

I started trying to edit the videos we had taken of the circle tour. They needed to be done, and I wanted them done before I left for New Zealand. An hour passed. I decided to walk to the store for something. Since Kevin is walking distance and still house-bound, I asked if he wanted me to grab anything.

“Grape soda?”

As I was in the soda aisle, I realized the woman standing in my way was Lee Ann, from the Soroptimists. I said hi and we chatted a bit while she shopped. Then I walked up to Kevin’s place.

“Want to chat for a bit? We can sit in the backyard.” He offered, masked up.

“Sure.” I said.

As we sat down in the backyard, my phone buzzed. I checked it and my heart fell. It was a torrent of verbal abuse, calling me selfish and manipulative for even asking.

I tried to put it out of my mind and just hang out with Kevin, but after half an hour I couldn’t take it anymore and excused myself.

The Vagabond could just say no. Or he could ignore or block me. He just enjoys trying to hurt my feelings.

I sat at my desk, staring at the frozen image of the video that was supposed to be a vacation but had instead been a nightmare. I glanced out the window – Kevin lived so close, I’d be able to see his house from my window if there wasn’t an apartment building between us. Then we could do dorky things like send morse code messages to each other. Funny how going out to meet a stranger had turned into that stranger colouring my life for two weeks, and presumably for the rest of the near future. And yet…

“I feel like crying.” I messaged Kevin.

Some emotions are hard for me. Crying was and still is difficult – I always hear my parents telling me “don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about” – but I’ve made a lot of progress. Truth is, I only cried about the break-up during the initial walk with Hanuman. Since then, I’ve been effective at distracting myself – too effective. I could feel my uncried tears accumulating behind my eyes. At Kevin’s suggestion, I tried listening to music that usually brings me to tears, but it didn’t work.

Try connecting to your body.

I asked him if he would be available for a short walk and he agreed. Slightly unsteady on his feet, masked up.

“It’s not just… a break up. My whole life is changing.” I realized, finally.

“You’re not the gestalt entity you+Vagabond anymore. You’re just You.” Kevin said kindly.

One of the things that was hard to process is the extent to which the Vagabond became my identity. Some of that was usual break-up blues – like how blue cheese reminds me of him now, as opposed to just being something I enjoy. But some of it was all the changes I’ve made in the last year and a half, where I plugged him into the gaps in my personality.

Usually in the past, untangling myself from a relationship was about feeling like I failed as a provider. I was always the more experienced one, the breadwinner, paying the bills and knowing how to do things. Extricating myself meant letting go of the idea that I could rescue everyone.

This time, I was having to untangle my feelings about the relationship, and my feelings about myself; who I am, who I’m becoming. I still felt a bit like an imposter every time someone says I travel a lot or that being a carpenter is some sort of accomplishment. This wasn’t just a relationship – this was my new way of life, my entire way of being. And I was being pushed into the deep end by the person who was supposed to be my rock.

I always liked Divergent, just the first book. The whole “everyone is sorted into 5 factions” is baby’s first metaphor, but I liked the depth of characterization for each faction.

What I really identified with, though, was the main character’s switch from Abnegation to Dauntless. Abnegation takes selflessness to its logical extreme – you aren’t even allowed having a mirror in the house, because looking at yourself at all is selfish vanity. Whereas Dauntless, as it stood at that point in the book, was a bunch of adreneline junkies who view “bravery” as selfish excess. Tris’ internal monologue as she remakes herself to fit in with the Dauntless matched how I felt trying to achieve normalcy in high school. Even moreso now, as I try to fit in with the suicidally confident and insane scaffolders, as people assume I have always been some kind of hellion.

And now I have to navigate all these new worlds I’m half-in, half-out of, by myself.

We stood outside his house talking for a bit after the walk. I still didn’t feel like tears would flow, although now I had another reason to cry – existential horror.

I went back home and called Rich, and we watched Canada’s Worst Driver for a bit. Then someone posted in the Discord that they were going to a bar in half an hour. I checked the location on Google maps – less than half a click away.

“I’m gonna go to a bar!” I said. Meeting random strangers had worked so well for me last time!

As I was getting ready to leave, I realized I didn’t know what the guy I was meeting looked like, and the last thing he said was that he didn’t have Discord on his phone! I messaged Kevin2, who sent me a picture.

Walked down to the bar. A bunch of Harleys were parked outside. I walked around the bar, scanning for the face in the picture. A group of bikers in colours were sprawled around a table, and I flinched in my mind.

He’s not here, get ahold of yourself. You shouldn’t be having a PTSD reaction to the end of a relationship. And yet...

Jeremy and his buddy Jake were buried at the back of the bar. They grew up in Dryden, but Jake had moved to Vancouver and Jeremy had moved here. It was fun to talk about small-town Dryden, even as the name caused me almost physical pain. They were a lot of fun generally – we ordered a couple rounds of drinks and some food, and sat around talking for three hours. Eventually I realized it was past 10 and I should head to bed.

I woke up in the morning to several notifications. What the heck…

It started with some profuse apologies. Did the Vagabond suddenly realize how cruel he was being? One of the messages was a voice recording. I listened to it; some woman I don’t know, speaking Italian. I put together a rough translation in my head from the words I knew for sure…

Diavolo.

Wait, what? I paused and went back.

It does say diavolo. The woman in the recording is calling me the devil.

You know what? I’m done. I have no idea what this recording is, who this woman is, or why she thinks she can comment on me when she hasn’t met me, but it was just rude to send to me. Was the apology sincere, or just a trap to convince me to listen to this insulting recording? Was it possible the recording ended with something nice? Sure. But I’m done. I deleted the messages, then went into my phone settings and blocked his number.

I threw on the bright red shirt Julie had given me and walked down to the Labour Day picnic. As I stopped in the shade of some trees and surveyed the tents of the various unions. Public Services, nurses, steelworkers, labourers, teachers…

We weren’t here.

Why weren’t we here? We had the shirts and everything!

Unsure of what to do, I jumped into the longest line. Then I noticed a lot of people had a red slip of paper with a hotdog and drink printed on it. I asked the woman behind me, and she said I was supposed to go across the park to another long line, and register, and then I could get free food.

Well, that’s dumb. And not sign-posted anywhere. Why don’t they just have one long line, register people and then hand them their hotdog? Why waste the paper?

Also, free food, yay! I posted the event in the Discord. I would joke I had paid for it, because obviously the spread was coming from the union dues of the various unions here, but mine wasn’t here!

At the front of the proper line, the clerk noted my union shirt and asked if I was a rep. Nope, just got the shirt, for some reason.

So they gave me 2 hot dogs, a bag of chips, a water bottle and a brisk. Also this little “lunch bag” for some reason, with a bamboo spork in it, which I much appreciate. I also went and got myself some cotton candy, also free, as was all the plastic swag the tables were offering.

Jeremy and Jake raced down, so I explained the 2 lines to them. We also noted there was a draw at 3, so we had to kill time until then. We wandered through the various booths, signed some petitions, collected some swag (I declined most of it). Jeremy’s expressed an interest in sailing a few times on the Discord group, although he’s always stopped short of showing up at the crew bench. Well, it was the Monday of a long weekend, and the wind was getting strong as we headed into fall… probably need ballast, if nothing else. We sat down at a picnic table and I used a piece of string one of the booths gave us to show them how to tie a bowline.

I smiled. Duff would be proud; “Look at you sis, showing off your skills!”

I texted him as they practiced. He was back home – the Regina job was done. So I would have had time to finish it and come back here to plan the New Zealand trip… Actually, he’d been home for a week and I sort of wished he had mentioned it sooner. It would have been nice to hang out hang out, and not just be two tradies at a bar after work. I wasn’t leaving town this late in the game.

Just before we left the picnic, a man walked by our table wearing a skirt clearly made of ties. Jake guessed it was 37 and was correct (the 37th tie is the belt loops). He showed us a few magic tricks and gracefully agreed to be in a picture with me.

I sent the picture to Kevin and he immediately said “Oh, that’s Simon!”

Of course!

I went home and made myself a bite to eat, then walked to the marina to meet them. They waited next to the boat for Chris while me and Gillian got the boat ready.

When Chris walked up, I snapped my fingers at them.

“Uh, hi sir! We’re Lucy’s friends – ” Jeremy started.

“I wouldn’t go that far!” I yelled jokingly. “I met them yesterday, they wanted to try sailing, and I spent an hour teaching them to tie bowlines today.”

Chris smiled. “Sounds good! Welcome aboard.”

I was glad I brought them today, actually. It was just me, Gillian, Lee and the Terminator, otherwise. Lee was at the traveler, a series of ropes controlling the direction of the main sail, so Marcus decided today was a good time to break me in.

“Come on Lucy, time to learn how to put on the spinnaker!”

Are you sure? I can’t just sit back here and tack, and Gillian can do the spinnaker? My life is a dumpster fire enough as it is, stop teaching me things!

The spinnaker, like everything on the boat, seems complicated but will probably be easy enough once I’ve done it two or three times. This rope here, this rope there, this boom here and here. The biggest hassle with the spinnaker is that you have to attach it to the front of the bow like a figure head, which is daunting when the ship is under way and you’re leaning over the railing watching the waves break under you.

“Don’t drop it!”

Thanks, Marcus, I wouldn’t have figured that part out by myself.

Actually, what would happen if I dropped it? Would it float long enough for us to hook it? How much do sails cost? Was I being trusted with a piece of equipment worth hundreds of dollars that would sink like a lead balloon?

No pressure.

Marcus’s signature overexplaining style doesn’t help either. I lost track of where we were and he yelled at me to go do something to it while we were fast approaching the breakwaters. I fumbled it, for the first time on the boat actually panicking that I might get tossed overboard with how wobbly the bow of the boat is. We passed the breakwater into the choppy waves of the open lake as I was still arguing with the spinnaker, but somehow I managed to wrestle it into submission and crawl with jelly legs back to the safety of the sidedeck.

Chris had Jeremy on the sidedeck as ballast, while Jake was tacking with Gillian. The two of them were a good team. Jeremy was struggling with the fast, improvisational work of sailboat racing, so we let him go over the top first.

It was good and windy, as it presumably would be for the rest of the races I would be here for. That fall change in the temperature brings strong winds with it.

As we finished the second leg of the race and went to put the jib back up, everything got messed up. There’s a spot where the sail goes into the mast, and it’s frayed. Someone patched it with electrical tape, but the tape is giving way. It took Marcus a long time to argue with it – Foster is best at convincing the sail to go up smoothly.

Gillian went below-deck to repack the spinnaker – it has to be packed a specific way into a bag every time it’s deployed – and came back up empty handed.

“Chris said to leave it down there.” She said.

Probably cuz we lose more time arguing with the frayed jib than we gain by swapping to the spinnaker on the return leg. On the next leg, we went wing-on-wing – staggering the sails like the outstretched wings of a bird. It’s a strategy I’ve done in Sea of Thieves, even.

There was one point in time where we watched two boats sail so close to each other it looked like they had locked their masts together. I lack the words to explain it, but it was intimidating.

We did alright in the rankings. For whatever reason, we ended the day pretty banged up. Marcus had a gash above his elbow, Lee was bleeding below his knee. At one point Gillian accidentally stepped on my hand as we scrambled across the top of the cabin. When I went home and changed into pajamas, there was a rainbow of bruises across my knees.

Just like work!

I’m in a Marianas Trench mood. They’re pretty upbeat and positive. They came out with an album this year and I have not listened to a single song on it!