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Editor's note: I could say that Brendon's tale is touching or poignant, but I think his narrative sends a message better than any comment I could make. Please just give this a read and let him know what you think. -Jay
There’s a possibility
There’s a possibility
All that I had was all I’m gon’ get.
– Lykke Li, “Possibility”
I shouldn’t have.
Nothing about my present circumstances recommends I throw money around, especially the dangerously fictional kind my credit card company insists on giving me more of.
But sometimes, when things are grim, you have to be nice to yourself to keep on keeping on. You have to say, “Self, at some point, we’re going to be gainfully, consistently employed again, and at that time this will be nothing. So let’s pretend this is that time and damn the consequence.”
As they say, a fool is soon parted from his money.
Still, while I can tell myself I shouldn’t have, I don’t regret it. I love the little guy. I feel for it. In a way it’s like me — out of step with what the world wants, struggling to get by. But not dead yet.
On July 3, 2010, I bought a PSP.
*****
Apple knows how to design objects you want to hold.
Years ago, when I got an iPod, I loved the weight of it. It felt substantial for something so small. A bit of gravity. A touch of seriousness. Just enough heft to feel important, balanced with the right amount of tactile whimsy in its smooth metal back and matte-finish flywheel. I carried it around for hours, giving it a gentle bounce in my palm every now and then, like asking for assurance.
My mother bought the iPod for me. It was a birthday present.
She never buys things for herself. She suffers from practicality. She never floats a balance on her credit cards if she can help it. She saves, she sews, and she cuts coupons. She will go to three different grocery stores if each has something different on sale. Every penny counts and she counts every one.
In April of 2009, my mom was diagnosed with cancer.
*****
Shortly after getting my PSP, which I named Peesp, I went on a trip to Ottawa.
I like travel by bus. I have no expectations. All I have are space, time, and little distractions to mitigate how they pass.
I expected to play my PSP — I was deep in like with Persona 3 Portable, which was something of a miracle for me, since I'm genetically adverse to turn-based combat and teenage drama. But after a few minutes thumping Shadows and flirting with boys, I lost interest. It felt a bit thin.
Outside the sky was bruised with thunderheads. The rain started in hard and streaked the windows. I have a little purse, which I don’t qualify as a man-purse because I've matured past the point that such a justification is necessary. It is brown and canvas and has a flaked stencil of a white airplane on it, aligned right. For something so small it carries a lot — my chewed-up moleskin, my wallet and smokes, my iPod and Peesp, a few pens, and some tobacco-flecked restaurant candies.
I traded the PSP for the iPod. Lately I’ve been obsessed with “Possibility” by Lykke Li. Ponderous and heartbroken.
The PSP is a welcome addition the purse family, but my iPod is my lifeline. I like to play games on the go, but I need music. And since getting the iPod, I realized I need all my music at all times.
You never know when you’ll be caught on a bus in the rain and want someone to sing you something sad.
*****
At the time of my mother’s diagnosis, my life was already in free-fall. For two years I had worked freelance for a designer who was handsome with promises and careless with lies. At the beginning of April, I cut loose. For six months prior I waited by the phone like a lovestruck teen, but the calls came less and less. Work got scarce for our kind, and what little he had he stopped wanting to share.
I was a week free when my mom called and said, “I have something to tell you.” She had tears in her throat. Before she said the words, I felt my world shift. All my petty griefs died on the vine.
Cancer, then. Caught early, surgery already scheduled, outlook positive, but cancer nonetheless.
I moved home.
*****
It can be said that I am a bad influence.
Witness Exhibit Anne, my Ottawa friend, who immediately fell in love with Peesp and started lobbying her husband to get one. There I sat, deviling her ear with how awesome it was. She tried Patapon 2 without much success. She is not a native of the land of game, but an enthusiastic visitor.
While visiting me, Anne had played and loved LittleBigPlanet on PS3. We happened upon a GameStop in the Rideau Centre, and lo, there sat its little brother at a discount. She insisted on buying it — for me, of course.
A stack of red and white boxes sat piled by the register — refurbished handhelds. She eyed them like diamonds. Out came her cellphone; off went a text to the husband. We stayed in the vicinity until she heard back. It was a terribly diplomatic “if you think we can afford it”. Which is spouse-speak for "No, but I love you."
When we got home I needed to wash the heat off, so she played LBP while I showered. As I went up, she was all smiles and curiosity. On my return she put it down with a shrug. I think she liked the idea more than the thing itself — fun to visit, no reason to stay.
She pulled out her phone to ask the husband when he would be home.
*****
Mom was already back at work when I moved in full time. She was often tired, frequently in pain, but still doggedly practical. An example: in surgery, which went as well as they do, doctors lost a needle in her while sewing her up. Retrieving it required a far more invasive procedure than removing the cancer. We were livid. But mom, a nurse, said, “These things happen.” And that was that.
She lived in an apartment — a temporary solution drawn out over a few years as she settled into the right job in the right city. She wanted a house. She said if she was going to die, she didn’t want it to be in a shitty two-bedroom with poor air circulation. She wanted to have a home of her own again.
She had been saving for it. Her impeccable credit would have allowed her to get a house twice the cost of the one she eventually found, but she remained practical. With the line of credit she got to fix the new place up, I encouraged her to get an iPod — fancy new Touch. I told her it was a quality of life issue.
Normally she would have said no, she didn’t need it, and it wasn’t necessary — but after all she had been through, I think she realized she deserved a little impracticality.
*****
On the bus back from Ottawa, I played Persona 3. The weekend started out raining and ended in sun — hot throughout, but you adapt.
I really like the fit of it in my hands. Every hour I need to put it down and crack out my wrists, but I blame that on being thirty. You’re supposed to take breaks anyway.
It comes with me for cigarettes, sleeps under my bed, and travels in my purse. I could have done without it. The next game I’m looking forward to doesn’t even come out until next year, assuming it lasts that long.
People like to say it has failed. I’d rather rethink the terms of success.
*****
Mom opened the package. She slipped the iPod Touch out of its plastic coffin and dropped it into her palm. Her hand dipped a little. Her eyes lit up. “It’s heavier than it looks,” she said. She bounced it gently. She ran her thumb over the smooth screen and smiled as the icons shuddered. “Cool.”
Her iPod doesn’t get as much use as mine. She has a stereo for music, a computer for email, a Blackberry for work, and a DS for games. I think the iPod confuses her practicality. Often the Touch just sits on the table by her chair, wrapped in its leather jacket, too cool for school, fool.
But every few days, she picks it up and fiddles with it. Apple designs objects you want to hold, even if you don’t have a reason to. Maybe you don’t need one, other than because it's there, and you're there, and it's yours.
Not dead yet.