Beer

           

            On Saturday I woke up from too little sleep. The night before had been a rare night of lying awake with too much energy. So just before noon I went to sleep for an hour and a half and got up feeling fairly refreshed.

            I studied again for my exam, but once I’d run through my Derrida notes, I felt cooped up, so since I needed fruit and beer, I first headed over to the LCBO. There was a guy panhandling outside with an enormous belly that wasn’t the usual round shape of one that size, but rather more like a rounded pyramid sticking out sideways. It didn’t look like it was made of fat but either like some kind of growth or else that he had an object under his sweatshirt. On my way out I heard someone joke that he looked pregnant. I went to Freshco where I bought some ground beef, yogourt, Macintosh apples, a tomato and some bananas. They had 907 grams of Imperial margarine for $1.99 and I did a price match on some seedless grapes, which at No Frills were $3.28 a kilogram, so I got them at Freshco for almost half the Freshco price.

            I watched an episode of I Love Lucy in which, to help promote Ricky, Lucy pretended to be the “Maharincess” of a made up country called Franistan who came to New York just for a command performance from Ricky Ricardo. Afterwards, considering her ruse to be a success, she was about to leave the Waldorf when some foreign men in Middle Eastern dress burst into her room. They said they knew she was the real Maharincess of Franistan because she had the black and red hair that only royals of that country had. Lucy declared, “I’m not a Maharincess, I’m a henna rinsess!”

            My upstairs neighbour, David, knocked on my door for the first time in months to give me six cans of Budweiser. I checked the labels later and saw they were from the States. I think his sister buys it over there and brings it back. I doubt if Canadians who like beer would actually go to the United States to buy it other than because it’s cheaper there. Though it’s a myth that Canadian beer has more alcohol, some have observed that even Canadian versions of US beers have a fuller taste.

It’s weird that I hadn’t run into David in such a long time. I used to see him often in the hallway but then I didn’t see him at all, making me wonder if he was working a different shift. I think though that he might have been going through a rough time, because he told me his father died.

            One day a few months ago, I went out in the hall and saw that someone had pasted signs that read, “Smile You’re On Camera” all over the hallway walls and on any doors that weren’t apartment doors. It turned out that it had been David, and he’d put them up as a message to his third floor neighbour, who is also from Ethiopia, but who he resents because he’s always having parties in his place and he doesn’t trust the guy’s guests. He took down the disturbing signs later that day, after he’d calmed down, except for the one on the inside of the front door.