From hating life to hating being happy to wondering just what happened, in three movements.

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CHILDHOOD

The first thing I did this morning was knock my glass of water off my bedside table when I was reaching for it. You know exactly what kind of day you’re going to have. Every movement you make is just a couple milliseconds shy of exact. Everything you reach for is just an extra two centimetres away. You want to just go back to bed, like you think incubating for another hour will cure the day.

There’s also no food in the house. Looks like it’ll be Subway Sunday. Again.

I’m standing at the bus stop for work, feeling stuck in the Truman Show. In a shop doorway, a freezing homeless man turns over in his blanket while an 18-year-old Asian kid, bundled in a designer fur-lined winter coat, lights up a smoke as he returns to his Ferrari parked along the curb.

Thanks, just when I felt like I was doing better in life, I’m reminded of how far away I am from success. (and yes, on days like this, success is measured by money.) I also lost my nametag and got a rejection email from some people on trendy Commercial Drive who were looking for a roommate. This is crushing because I hung out with those hipsters for an hour and was sure I got it.

I feel like I was just denied parole. My neighborhood lacks any

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Captain’s log.

Stardate: A Sunday in 2004.

My girlfriend and I spent the afternoon inside from the rain. Like most new couples, we decided to break out the boxes of our childhood remainders our mothers had once packed up. Listen to me when I say, there are reasons why these things are packed up and shoved deep into the crawlspace.

Lost in my new-love drunkenness, I cracked open my box, smiling into her green eyes and completely oblivious to how embarrassing sharing that stuff always is. I hesitantly shared my itty-bitty Spiderman sneakers, my sparkly, homemade Michael Jackson glove and a Tupperware container of baby teeth. As I was picking out a macaroni-and-glue picture of what seemed to be my grandfather (or an amoeba with a moustache,) she reached in and snatched the most horribly embarrassing item in my box.

No it wasn’t the nude baby picture set of me playing in the garden sprinkler (or as my grandmother has affectionately labeled the series: Young Adam in the Garden of Eden - retch,) although, that would come later. It was something so ridiculously appalling that she had to say it aloud, like anyone does when they discover something from someone’s past that they know is sure to destroy them in the most hilarious way.

“A membership card… to the Star Trek: the Next Generation Fan Club?” she asked, clearly aware she was now thrusting the answer in my face, and proceeded to fall on the floor ravaged by laughter so evil and unrelenting I thought she had grown horns and a forked tail.

Yes, there it was in plain sight, with my name inscribed on it in large, space-lettering. She continued to analyze it as if it had come from another world, which it had, really. As I watched her tormenting me and my youth, I began to feel a pain. It seemed to be the back of my mind or deep in my heart, somewhere faint. The voice began to call to me.

Only closet-Trekkies know this. It’s a resounding voice that rings in our minds when watching TV with our girlfriends. It all starts while they flip past channels during commercials (what girlfriend doesn‘t control the remote?) We make that “ooh!” sound when we see a flash of the Sci-Fi network’s Star Trek marathon and they respond, “Why would you wanna watch that? I don’t get what you see in that show. Why don’t you go beam me up some popcorn, Friends is on next.” We shudder, and the voice of a man echoes in our mind, suave and strangely spasmodic. It is the voice of a God,

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