I'll Seize the Day Tomorrow (17 page)

“We're playing a game,” Tony explains when I walk over.“I just invented it. It's called ‘Cozy or Claustrophobic.' Like, for instance: a coffin?”

“Claustrophobic,” Howard says.

“Okay,” Tony answers, taking mental note.“How about a coffin with a teddy bear inside.”

“Cozy,” says Howard.

I refill their glasses and inch away.

6:45 P.M.

I wander onto the balcony.

“I'd been hearing people talk about ‘stay-cations,'” Josh says. “And I couldn't figure out how such a thing could become so popular.”

“It's because of the recession,” says Marie-Claude. “People ‘stay' at home because that's all they can afford.”

“I know that now, but initially I thought it was a ‘steakacation,'” he says. “A vacation where you allow yourself to eat as much steak as you like. It's what I did during my summer holiday and now I've gained six pounds.”

“I just learned that ‘hump day' means Wednesday,” Marie-Claude says.

“What did you think it meant?” Josh asks.

“Something dirty,” she says.

“Oh, I've got one,” Natalie says. “I just learned where the word ‘swag' comes from. It's an acronym for ‘stuff we all get.'”
Josh then asks if I'll be giving out any swag. I offer to give him some CDs of my radio show, and he declines.

8:00 P.M.

Tucker is standing by himself, staring at the dessert table.

“Have you had a piece of birthday cake yet?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “It's a little too ornate for me.”

“It is birthday cake, you know,” I say.

“Yes,” he says, “but it looks like a big glop of makeup that fell off the Joker's face.”

Nonetheless, he cuts himself a piece and plops it onto his plate.

“Thanks for the effort,” I say.

“No problem,” he says. “I'm just a great guy.”

10:15 P.M.

The party's in full swing. Howard is singing Sinatra into a chicken leg,Tony is smoking a cigar on his back, and Katie and Helen are dressing Boosh up in doll clothes.

Gregor pulls me aside. “I'd say it's all downhill from here but that would be the wrong expression, because going downhill is easy. It's all uphill.And harder each day. Plus you'll have to wake up and pee much more frequently and with greater urgency. But as you know, I'm an optimist, which is why I recently reached out to a contact I met at an incontinence conference from
years ago. Guess who's going to be the new face of adult diapers in North America, excluding Canada and the U.S.? That's right, Signor Continental Incontinence.You.”

“I didn't make it,” I say. “This isn't where I thought I'd be.”

“That's why people have kids,” he says, growing sombre. “Before I had mine, my inner monologue was ‘What to have for lunch? Ow, my stomach hurts. I shouldn't have had that for lunch. What to have for dinner?' And so on. But now, since having a son, a primordial protectiveness has kicked in. Just today I was crossing the street with him and thought,‘I will kill any driver who tries to jump this light.'”

“But you've always been full of rage,” I say.

“Indiscriminate rage,” he says. “But now my rage has purpose! Oh, it's a wonderful rage that I hope you'll one day know.”

He pauses for a moment.

“At least think about the incontinence thing. A diaper and sombrero could be a good look for you.”

SUNDAY, 12:30 A.M.

With Boosh curled into my chest, I fall asleep listening to the sound of my friends still going strong through the bedroom door. All in all, it feels like a pretty good night.

2:10 A.M.

I can't sleep. I get up to find everyone gone and a halfeaten chicken leg floating in the toilet. I pour myself some orange juice and drink a farewell toast to my thirties.

11:00 A.M.

My father comes by for a breakfast of boiled eggs.

“How do you feel about getting older?” I ask.“Because to me, aside from the getting sick and dying part, it doesn't seem so bad.”

“About a month ago,” my father says, “someone offered me their seat on the metro. It was the first time that's ever happened to me.”

“And?”

“I accepted it,” he says. “In your forties, fifties, and sixties, you're still competing for those seats.”

“I'm pretty good hanging from the straps.”

“You know, in some ways, I was looking forward to retirement since I was a kid,” he says.

“Did you take to it right away?”

“Not right away,” he says.“‘What will I do,' I wondered.

‘What will I look forward to?' That was scary.That first day, I remember sitting on the couch and looking out the back window. It was autumn and I watched all the kids going back to school, but for me it was a never-ending summer. No more weekends, because now it was all a weekend.”

“Was there a turning point?”

“Yes,” he says. “It was a foggy day. There was frost on the ground. But it was beautiful. I'd been moping around the house for weeks, and I finally decided to go to the library. I remember making my way there and feeling like I was moving in a specific direction. I was going to the library and whatever book I picked out, I'd have all day to enjoy it. Your mother had left me lunch in the refrigerator. It was chicken from the night before, and I was looking forward to that, too. That day felt like a beginning. There's always a beginning.You just have to figure it out. As time went by I began to figure it out.”

Maybe we Goldsteins are late bloomers, only reaching full blossom in retirement. It's early to say, but right now forty is like beginning the second half of a twelve-inch sub: during the first half, you feel like you have all the sandwich in the world, like there will never be a time where you aren't cramming sandwich into your face; but then comes the second half and the end is in sight. If it was a good sandwich, by the last bite you'll want to undo the top button of your pants and lie down. Hopefully in a good way.

After removing the eggs from the water, I remember to turn off the stopwatch. I sit down with my father and with toast, coffee, and orange juice, we enjoy our eggs.

Afterword

by Gregor Erhlich, ex-agent to the star

Having now skimmed the book you hold in your hands, I realize that this should have been the foreword. A foreword was where I could have said, “Before you read this book: PLEASE, READ THIS WARNING!”

Now it's too late.

Jonathan Goldstein is a liar. And that he is a liar needed to be said first. It needed to be said second, third, and fourth. Why? Because it bears repeating. The stuff in this book is conjecture, half-truths that Goldstein twisted into viscous, colourful balloon animals filled with gassy mendacity.

We are talking about my friend here, so I'm not going to come out and say that Goldstein is an evil man with an evil core. Though likely it is evil smelling. I am picturing a custard-like, greyish brown substance that emits a high-pitched whining noise when subjected to the scrutiny of sunlight. I'm just saying he has trouble with reality. Anyone
who's ever been a passenger while he's driving can attest to that.

And as for you others out there who think Goldstein's some grand Canadian absurdist with a Victorian birdcage full of
bon mots
printed on index cards, you are mistaken. Truth is, he's only
half
Canadian. A
dual
citizen. I'd say that's reason enough not to trust him right there. I mean, come on. Choose a country. I did. U.S.A. all the way.You probably chose your home team, too. But not Goldstein. Goldstein likes to play both sides of the border.

Still want proof of his deceit? I present to you evidence from
his own book
! Exhibit A:

Gregor visits me at my office.

“What's this?” he asks, pointing to the large yoga ball under my desk.

Okay, let's stop right there. I know what a yoga ball is. I've been familiar with yoga since before it was Upanishadic. And I know my way around Kundalini, Iyengar, and Bikram, and have read the
Yoga Yajnavalkya
.

Want more? Here's more:

“A yoga ball is the rare object that can boast having had buttocks pressed against every millimetre of its surface.The sphere, my friend. Nature's perfect cootie catcher.”

Why would I mention “buttocks pressed against every millimetre” when, as noted earlier, I am a one hundred percent, apple pie–eating, missile-firing U.S.A. citizen? I don't say millimeter, and certainly not millimetre. I say foot, pound, and inch. And any mention of the fourthousand-dollar Bruno Magli shoes I was wearing? The one-thousand-and-ninety-dollar aftershave? I hardly recognize myself! We continue, back into his dank cabinet of dissemblance:

“I guess that's why it's the perfect shape for a place that's home to asses like us.”

He wanted to make his stupid joke about the Earth— which, by the way, is one of my top favourite planets. In fact, had he dared muse this in front of me—like a man, and not some mouse creeping around musing behind people's backs—I might well have punched him in the eye.

You read this book thinking you'd experience the balancing of a man's soul, and instead you've a book barely worth using to balance out a chair leg. Goldstein remains the same potted plant at forty that he was at thirty-nine. He's like the Human Condition come to life.

This was the diary of a turtle. A slow, frightened, reptilian inhabitant of a hard shell carrying God knows what diseases. Now that I think of it, “Diary of a Turtle” kind of rolls off the tongue.

I've learned my lesson and will write the foreword to his next book,
Diary of a Turtle
, once I've acquainted myself with it first. If it's about turning fifty, knowing Goldstein and his “perception” of “time” and “reality,” that could be anywhere from twenty to twenty-five years from now. When it happens, I'd suggest buying the hardcover edition. Better for killing spiders.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to all the people who helped make this book better: Sarah Steinberg, Jeff Melman, Alex Blumberg, Ira Glass, Julie Snyder, Jorge Just, Diane Cook, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, Ira Silverberg, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Nicole Winstanley, John Hodgman, Paul Tough, Mireille Silcoff, Sean Cole, Karen Alliston, Ben Errett, Isa Tousignant, Arthur Jones, Alia Hanna Habib, and Shima Aoki.

And thanks to those who find versions of themselves herein. They are all dear to me. This means you, Buzz, Dina, Eileen, Marjie, Justin, Mike, Marie-Claude, Helen, Katie, Starlee, Ruby, Carolyn, Mira, Josh, David, Tony, Natalie, Tucker, and agent of my heart, Gregor Ehrlich. I am especially grateful to Howard Chackowicz, who spoke the title of this book to me while staring at his shoes in a Winnipeg hotel elevator.