All That and Then Some

MAEVE

I DIDN'T REALLY BELIEVE Jeffry when he said he would hitch from NYC back to Toronto to be with me in my hour(s) of need. I guess I should have because that's exactly the kind of thing Jeffry would do. He prides himself on living a life of total freedom.

He doesn't talk about it to anyone except me, but when he was just a young teenager — maybe only as old as my little brother Tim — he came out to his parents. They were never, as he put it, the loving type, but any parental affection they'd had for him dried up when they realized their kid was something they'd been raised to despise. His Dad mostly ignored him, looking past him as if Jeffry had become a ghost that could no longer be seen. His mother tried hard to convince him that his gayness was caused by television and inappropriate music lyrics, going so far as to sign him up for a Christian Teens camp that was well-known to be a conversion therapy group. At that camp, he was punished for some imagined gay-signalling infraction and forced to wear a sign around his neck that read "Sissy." That night, he took his canvas bag full of clothes and walked through the forest until he reached the highway where he hitched to Toronto. He bounced between youth shelters and the street for years and never saw his parents again.

That's when I met him. I needed someone older looking to get the vodka for my vanilla business. We struck a deal, became secret partners, eventually got caught by my parents, who fixed up the shed out back and let him move in.

Now, he lives in New York and works as an artist and photographer; just about as free a life as you can imagine except for the demands of New York City rent, which can be hard to make.

Anyway, I was wrong to doubt him because, no more than 36 hours after I texted him, he's here -- standing on our porch, same old canvas rucksack slung over a shoulder, hair flopping over one eye and a lopsided grin on his face.

"Hi, Mr. MacKenzie," he says to my Dad, who opened the door before I could get to it. "Long time no see! Is Maeve home?"

My father hardly looks surprised to see Jeffry at all. Dad waves him inside and goes back to his TV room to finish whatever sports game it is that he's currently watching on TSN. I hear him sigh but figure that probably has more to do with the interruption than with Jeffry's unannounced visit.

I'm standing on the stairs, feeling rooted to the spot at the sight of my long-lost best friend ever in the whole world.

"Jeffry," I say, unsure of myself in front of him because it's been so long.

He has no such uncertainty. He drops his bag on the hall floor, strides across the hall and grabs me by the waist, pulling me off the stairs and into a huge, twirling bear hug.

"There's my girl," he says, hugging me so tight and so long that I'm starting to wonder if he's planning to let go at any point.

Finally, he does.

"Oh, man, is it ever good to be back."

I smile for the first time in months and say, "What do you want to do first? Eat? Drop your stuff in the shed and get the heater going in there?"

"Actually," he says. "Would it be cool if I grab a shower first? I haven't had hot water in my place for six months. It would feel excellent to get under a hot jet stream."

WHILE JEFFRY'S SHOWERING THE hitchhiking miles off, my mother comes home with Buddy's little terror attached to a giant stroller. The first thing she spots when she rolls in the door is Jeffry's canvas bag in the front hall.

When I explain that Jeffry's come home to support me, she actually looks overjoyed. I know she loved him as much as I did and has missed him since he moved away. Then, there's this pause where you can see her mental clock winding. She hands me Angel, marches straight over to Jeffry's rucksack and, picking it up with only her fingertips and holding it well away from her body, rushes it through to the laundry room. I hear the washer door slam and the water go rushing through the pipes.

She comes back out with a relieved look on her face, takes Angel back and says in a low voice, "New York. Bugs. Can't be too careful."

What a freak.

WE ARE SETTLED ON the rollaway bed in Jeffry's old "shed-room." The space heater is warming things up, and he's looking happily up at his old Smiths, Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys posters. He's not much older than me but has a strong affinity for 80s pop culture.

I've told him everything. All of it. The disillusionment with higher education, the way I got weird with Jules after what should have been a really, really good moment. The way I've just backed out of everything I thought I wanted because, on the cusp of getting it, realized I couldn't.

"But so..." he's trying to clarify my many feelings but is having a hard time, likely due to the fact that we're both a tiny bit high on legal weed. "So... is it that you don't know what you want to do with your life anymore? Or is it the girl?"

I want to answer that accurately since it feels like inside that egg lies the Kinder surprise of all Kinder surprises.

"It's both," I say, finally. But then, "It's also neither. Kierkegaard talks about the three stages of existence. These modes of being-in-the-world that are basically like stages we grow into. The first one, the aesthetic, that's where most of us start and stay. Like, especially these days where we curate this perfect-looking social media existence just to feel okay about ourselves in comparison with others. Perfect hair, perfect latte, perfect sunrise beach moment, perfect fucking... everything."

Jeffry nods, totally on board with me so far, so I continue.

"The next stage, if you can get there, is the ethical. This is where you move past all the vulgarity of perfection, beauty, sex, and you get to this place of a higher moral standard."

"Sounds uptight," he interjects.

"No, it's not!" I insist. "It's liberating and cool. You're above the striving and comparing yourself to others. You think in terms of morality and conscience. Like, you might still *want* to have sex with everyone you meet, but you rationalize it first. You think, will it be a fair exchange between equals? Am I inevitably bound to hurt this person more than they can hurt me?"

"Sounds like a way of protecting yourself from hurt feelings, if you ask me," he says, taking another drag from the joint we're passing back and forth.

I ignore that.

"Then, finally, the ultimate stage: religious."

"Oh, fuck no," he says on the inhale. "You know how I feel about religion after that youth camp business."

"No, no, not religion in that sense. It's just like pure, authentic existence. Purpose. Good. Reverberating with harmony and meaning."

"Like a tuning fork," he says dreamily.

"Exactly," I reply. "Like a tuning fork for the universe. That's what I want to be."

We lay there silently for a while, contemplating the nature of being a universal tuning fork.

After a few minutes, Jeffry turns his head to look into my face, and he goes, "So why are you so bothered that Jules hasn't texted since you left? Not very third stage."

I punch his upper arm.

"I'm a work in progress, asshole."