I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe that I am thinking about you one minute, writing about you — dreaming you — embellishing you as if you are a figment of my imagination or a creature out of mythology, and then the next minute typing your name into a website that delivers a photo of you twelve years later and an actual portal of contact. You are out there, apparently, and you are real. I am writing for confirmation. Are you out there? Are you real? My whole summer has been one long surreal dream, and now you are a part of it.
Then I deleted that. I wrote: Dear Kirsten. Hey! Don’t be fooled by my internet moniker, it’s me, Rank. How are you? Wow. Are those your kids in the photo? Nice job, if so. Nice cat, also. Looks like you are living a very rich life these days, which is great to see. I just discovered Facebook recently and thought I’d look you up. And there you are. It’s kind of amazing.
all best,
GR
Of course what I wanted to write was, I am so glad you haven’t let your bangs grow out. Are you still into Jesus? Do you still go in for the occasional light spanking pre-intercourse?
And she wrote back.
Dear Rankenstein,
I see you have no friends. Way to go! It is so nice to hear from you Rank. Yes, I have kids and a cat. Am living the dream. Thank you for telling me exactly nothing about how you are or what you’re doing these days. Wonder why you’re friendless. Get with the program!
xo,
K
Adam, it is Kirsten. It is so, precisely Kirsten, ascending from the muck of my afflicted dreams and persecuted memory, clean as a whistle, entirely herself despite my guilty distortions — hands over heart, rolling her eyes sarcastically toward heaven.
So now I have a friend on Facebook. And now I have to write to her and tell her how I am and what I’m doing.
Then I went a bit nuts thinking to myself if Kirsten is on Facebook, everyone must be on there. All the ghosts and figments — all people I thought I had successfully kept to myself for so long. I typed in, for example, T.S. Eliot, and do you know what? He was there. He has a fan page — a couple of them. It sounds stupid, I mean I realize he’s famous and everything, but it freaked me out. I typed in Ivor Breese — no Ivor. I mean, lots of Ivors, obviously — there’s lots of everyone on Facebook — but no Ivor from Goldfinger’s. I typed in Richard’s name and a bunch of Richards came up with the same last name, but none of them were the greasy, pit-faced son of a bitch in question.
I typed in Sylvie Rankin. Five names came up but, I was relieved to see, all of them called themselves Sylvia, which my mother never had.
Then I tried Sylvie Le Blanc. There were five again, all of them younger than me, except for one I couldn’t see, one who hadn’t posted a photo. There was only an empty square containing an androgynous silhouette where her photo should have been. I was tempted to drop that one a line.
To keep myself from doing this, I typed Kyle, and Kyle was there, in hiking clothes and sunglasses with a mountain lake the colour of a swimming pool behind him, just as he’d been the first time he contacted me after I’d signed up to find you. And Wade was still there too, perched atop a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, giving the photographer a hearty thumbs-up, sporting an ill-advised Vandyke beard to camouflage his double chin — everything but a banner proclaiming I CAN’T STAND THAT I AM MIDDLE-AGED fluttering in the background.
But where was Adam? There weren’t even any versions of Adam, with his weird last name, hanging around Facebook. No teenage Adams giving gang signs in Etobicoke, no corporate Adams with their bland headshots looking to network with fellow drones. No photo-less, phantom Adams, even — and no fan page touting the Respected Author, I might point out. No vestiges. Adam was hiding out. Adam remained solidly nowhere.
I typed in Mick Croft. Three Micks, two Michaels, none of them the man whose head I crushed. Then it occurred to me if I wanted to get a glimpse of Croft, all I’d really have to do was head downtown and ask around.