Proquest Dissertations
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MEWORLD A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph by DAVID MILLER In partial fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts June, 2010 © David Miller, 2010 Library and Archives Biblioth&que et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de Edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-67443-7 Our file Notre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-67443-7 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par ('Internet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non- support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondares ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Part One September 1 Cohabitation "You want to what?" "Move in. Do you think I could move in?" I'd walked in from work about five minutes before, sat down on the couch, turned on the TV for my daily after-work dose of The Simpsons, and my phone began to buzz. Diana, panicky, irritated. She sounded like she'd been crying. "Dave?" "Yeah, yes. I'm here." "I know it's sudden. Sooner than—" Her voice broke. She was going to cry. "Maybe I could just stay with you for a while. You know, until..." "Of course it's fine!" I blurted out, and then I thought of Paul, my roommate, how he and Diana didn't necessarily get along. And my room. My bed. We'd be sharing those things now. But that was okay because I was a changed man; I was in my mid-twenties and this was the type of thing couples did (I had to remind myself). But I'd never lived with a girl before. At eight months—give or take—this was the longest I'd even been with the same woman. Ever. 2 Diana had just lost her job. Her job and therefore her condo. She'd only moved back to Montreal from Toronto eight months before, lured back by the prospects of a new marketing agency in the Old Port that had promised her big things: promotions, salaries; they found her a fully furnished condo in the quickly gentrifying west end of the Port. It turned out the company wasn't as stable as it had seemed. About a month or so before, they started with the layoffs. A week before, nobody's pay cheque had been deposited in their bank account. Within days of that, the company went into bankruptcy protection. "There was a letter on the door this morning," she said. "Crap about the recession, no choice. What am I going to do?" "Maybe I could move in." I said. Our place was a standard Montreal walk-up apartment that hadn't been renoed since about 1966. Hers was a gleaming new condo that reminded me of the future. "What if it takes me a while to find a job? You think we could swing this place on your salary?" There was just a touch of hope in her voice. "Oh. You're probably right." She was way more than probably right. "Yeah. No." I tried to get the image of the gleaming new condo out of my head, and I had to look away from a long jagged crack that ran down one of the murky-white walls in my room. I felt like the future was slipping away. I did my best to reassure her that everything was going to be all right and hung up, telling her I'd come by in an hour or so. I sat back, stunned. Tried to take in The Simpsons but it was a season nine repeat (the one where Seymour is revealed as an imposter) and I couldn't focus on it. I couldn't get the word "cohabitation" out of my mind. It was a strange word. It conjured images 3 of two people linked together by a thin sheen of flesh. Like twins only by choice. It was all so odd because in the beginning it seemed like our relationship was going to be exclusively online. I met Diana on the message boards of a website called MBS.com (Mile End Broadcasting System) originally a Montreal-based, student-run, online "station" that ran many different webcasts in bite-sized formats (some as tiny as one, three-minute episode a week). There were dating shows, a purposefully terrible melodrama, a cooking/cleaning show for young bachelors, sports wrap-ups, travel shows. I quickly became addicted to a webcast, "Marc and Mel Do Canada", which featured a couple who'd decided to hitch-hike/backpack across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver and record it all. They updated with 5-6 minutes of edited video every few days. Although I'd never really been one for message boards, I did begin to follow the posts of "Torii Purchase in Toronto", another fan of the show. We struck up an online conversation initially about the "Largest Things" element. We compared things that we had seen and that hadn't been included. I mentioned the massive apple in Berwick, Nova Scotia; Torii wrote about the largest Canada goose in Sault-au-Mouton, Quebec. Shortly after that she started stalking me on Buddy Blogger, so, of course, I started stalking her too. Next we started messaging on Buddy Talker. We got more and more personal. One night, our conversation went later than usual. Based on her typos and the randomness of her messages, I figured she must have been drinking. Out of the blue, she told me she was "lonely" and put it in quotes like that. One thing led to another and I had my first, of what would be a few, "sexagging" experiences. Which was weird. But okay. Like sexting only online. 4 In December last year, after a few more bouts of sexagging, she told me she would be in Montreal and wanted to know if we could "meat". I corrected her, "Yeah, let's MEET." She wrote, "lol. No, meat. Get it?" "Yeah sure," I wrote. But I didn't. Eventually we picked a popular pub on Bishop Street, a busy downtown strip. Despite our online intimacy, and aside from our Buddy Blogger profile pics (mine was a sneaker, hers a cartoon blond) it had all been kept to text, so I walked into the bar half-expecting her to be some fat, scruffy guy from Laval. All that I had to go on was her hair; she'd told me her hair was red. And, eventually, I finally did see her standing near the bar, back to me, like a flaming beacon in a sea of brown-blond blandness. Her red hair was shoulder length; severe bangs cut straight across her brow. Her ears were small and delicate. She was wearing a tight black tee-shirt, a pair of dark blue jeans that clung to her legs, and short black heels with an almond toe. She was slim, but not gangly, and her arms were pale and coated just lightly with a layer of freckles. My first thought (though I would never reveal this to Diana) had been: I've never been with a redhead. "Torii?" I asked as I approached her. "McDaveKay?" She had sharp, almost fragile looking features, from a narrow chin, to a slightly upturned nose. Her skin was milky white and there was only a light spattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and under her eyes, which were an odd, but intriguing hue of green. Most certainly not a fat, scruffy guy from Laval. We shook hands. "Torii?" I asked again. Things were a little awkward. Tense. Like first meetings usually were, even though we'd shared such intimate experiences online. 5 "You can call me Diana." "Dave," I said. Her fingers were thin, wiry. I could see—faintly—the veins on the top of her hand. We ordered some drinks and sat down in as quiet a corner as possible. She'd explained to me about the marketing firm and how she was in the process of returning to Montreal after four years in Toronto where she'd finished her B-Com at U of T. She'd tried to stick around Toronto, but ended up hating it.