I was not of age, a year or so too young, and I had found a secret lonely lovely place, the corner of a bar on Yonge Street below Dundas, The Hard Rock before The Hard Rock was The Hard Rock, dark and empty, the street outside like that too, a Blue Diamond stubbie on a Blue Jays cardboard coaster, one other person here, the bartender, an old guy, probably in his 40s, in this magic lonely lovely place.

I was thinking about why I hated teachers, how they liked to yell and assert their bullshit because they could, the bully of bullies. “If you don’t listen, I will kill you.” It was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t. She had assigned a 300-word piece of verisimilitude, as much detail as possible conveying a thing or moment. I had chosen a tea kettle boiling, the click of the switch, the bubbling and steam, the anticipation. She said that I should try again. “You haven’t quite captured it, have you?”

It was my first rejection of many to come. I didn’t know that then, but I know it now. I’m not getting it apparently. “It just isn’t the project for me right now.” I think about, imagining the world on hold, back in the dark lonely lovely place, an old guy in his 40s, slumped at the end of the bar, and have another drink.