questions answered

1. When's your birthday?

I was born on December 24, 1975. The interesting part of this is that I wasn't supposed to be born then, but rather at some point in February, meaning that at the time I was quite premature. My family occasionally refers to me as the 'miracle baby,' because of the fact that I was so tiny and pathetic and unready. My mother had come to the hospital at some point to check on me with my father and my older brother and sister, and they noticed that I was looking kind of, um, mortal. What had happened was that one of the nurses had moved the incubator and forgotten to plug it back in (this in the days before they had alarms), so for a couple of hours I'd basically been freezing to death.

I was named after Robert the Bruce, a Scottish King who defeated the English at the battle of Bannockburn in spite of overwhelming odds (my mother was in town last weekend and we were all gathered around talking about this), and it was because of my own struggle, apparently, that my parents chose that namesake. In a lot of ways, I almost didn't happen.

2. Where were you born?

Right here in Ottawa, Ontario.

3. Where have you lived?

The first part of my life was right in the central part of Ottawa. My father died when I was five, though, and after that my mother wanted to move. We traveled to Manotick, which really isn't that far away, though back then it was a small community whereas now it's become a bustling suburb for the upper middle class. When I was ten, my mother met this 'delightful' fellow named Peter (none of us especially liked him), and we moved to a brand spanking new house out in Carp (another little detachment from Ottawa about a fifteen minute drive from where I'm living now..).

After that we had a house in Nepean (essentially a city attached to Ottawa... tackier and dingier and with more annoying white trash neighbors than you might normally get) for about a year, and then we moved to Smiths Falls. Ooooh... Smiths Falls. It's just like smalltown America in every way, right on down to the redneck good ol' boys in pickup trucks. Except they say "eh" more. I lived in Smiths Falls for eight years, more or less, though in 1993 my grandfather died and I spent six months living in Kanata with my grandmother (which is where I'm living now) before going back out to Smiths Falls again.

When I finished my OAC year at Smiths Falls District Collegiate Institute (grade thirteen), I got my butt out of that wretched small town, and here I am today in trendy Kanata, land of the upper middle class business-type bastards and their horrible children.

4. Where's the neatest place you've ever travelled?

I went to Prince Edward Island when I was three and while I was there I had a pet fly. Since then, I've hardly been anywhere. I visited Toronto, once when I was ten, and we went camping in the Manitoulin Islands up north when I was thirteen, but essentially I'm quite the homebody.

5. Where would you like to travel?

I want to see New York City someday. It sounds far more interesting and adventurous than Toronto, which is just entirely too much of a smug and self-congratulatory city for my liking. Montreal would be nice, too, but I suppose if you want to hear something really exotic, then I'd have to say I'd love to visit London, and see real goths and punks and lovely lovely old architecture. Possibly I'd also like to travel to Scotland and Ireland, because these are the countries of my ancestors, and if there were time when I became rich and famous enough to do all this extravagant gallavanting, I'd also dearly like to see some of the ruins of ancient civilizations in Egypt, Italy, and Greece, and the sites of the concentration camps in Germany.

I'd want to see Mars or the nearest populated solar system if I really could.
I'm actually not much of a traveling person in a lot of ways, however. If I could take all my friends with me, there wouldn't be that problem, but my attachments mean very much to me, and there's a lot I don't like about the idea of leaving everything behind just to see something "new" and "different." A lot of people our age have this dream of traveling all over Europe, and while I can see the appeal, it also smacks terribly of trend-following and pretension.

This may have oodles to do with a certain mean ex, whose dream it was above all else to travel to Europe and see everything and be a waitress while there so that she could afford to.

But I'm pretty stodgy in that way. I even hate it when my friends go away to school.

6. What's your favorite colour?

This is a tough question on account of my wishy-washiness. Generally I like black, and to quell any arguements of its relative colourness vs. non-colourness, it seems to me that if you can make a pigment for it, you might as well call it a colour. However, I also have fondnesses for purple and orange.

7. What's your favorite flavor?

I like the flavour of people, in all their various ways.
Well, except semen. Never did get accustomed to that one, although my hat goes off to any and all who have.

8. What are your favorite bands/musicians?

• Nirvana
• Smashing Pumpkins
• Stone Temple Pilots
• Nine Inch Nails
• Marilyn Manson
• Alice in Chains
• Radiohead
• hayden
• Mazzy Star
• Hole
• Violent Femmes
• Pearl Jam
• Leonard Cohen
• The Flaming Lips
• Headstones
• the gandharvas
• the White Stripes
• Portishead
• indeedy do the Butthole Surfers.
• the Doors (yeah, well, you know..)
• anything by Danny Elfman (the soundtracks to The Nightmare Before Christmas, Pee Wee's Big Adventure, Batman i and ii, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice -- essentially any Tim Burton film)
• Green Day (don't hate me, I don't have any of their albums, but, you know, I really like most of their songs and any band with enough sense to hate their fans is nifty by me)
• Garbage
• Veruca Salt
• Soul Asylum
• R.E.M
• Jane's Addiction/Porno for Pyros
• Bjork
• Weezer
• the spin doctors (for Pocket Full of Kryptonite, anyway)

9. What's your favorite article of clothing?

Oh, definitely, definitely, it is my beloved black trenchcoat. My 20-hole docs (just polished them obsessively today) coming in a close second.

And then there's my top hat.

10. What's your favorite movie?

I'm going to round it out to the top contenders:

• The Crow
• The Starwars Trilogy
• A Clockwork Orange
• Trainspotting
• Romeo + Juliet (avec Claire Danes and Leonardo di Caprio)
• Clerks, Mallrats and Chasing Amy
• Harold and Maude
• Dune
• The Nightmare Before Christmas
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Superman
• The Holocaust

Woo.. that's a tough question. I'm quite the bookworm... hmm... Again, I'll do a "top whatever" listing. Sorry to be so danged wishy-washy..

• Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (read it, read it, read it)
• anything by Doctor Seuss
• Amphigorey Also, by Edward Gorey
• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser
• Red Dwarf by Grant Naylor
• Dead Men Do Tell Tales by William R. Maples, Ph.D.
• All things Terry Pratchett
• The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Saks
• Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson
• Suicide Blonde by Darcey Steinke
• A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• The Fantastic Life and Suicide of Mr. Mary Holiday, a series by my friend Brad (http://mh.ph.nu)
• The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe
• The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris
• Anything by Tom Robbins
• Anything by Stephen Jay Gould. Man, he rocks like a chair.

12. What's your favorite animal?

I love ferrets; however, since childhood I've had a strong fixation for frogs that I've never gotten over. There's something just perfectly cute and paranoid about that eternal expression on a frog's face... as if they truly do know that something is up. To confound things further, it must be said that I'm basically a cat person. And fish -- musn't forget fish.

13. If you could be an animal, what would it be? If you were to become an animal now rather than choose to become a specific kind, what kind of animal do you think you'd become?

I'd be a dolphin if I could; they have sex remarkably often. But if I were suddenly to metamorphose into something, based on what I am, it would likely be a frog.

14. Do you believe in Fate?

I shouldn't, but sometimes I'm convinced that I'm truly the Boy of Destiny. I suppose it would be presumptuous to be positive either way, given the nature of the universe.

15. Do you believe in God?

I have no idea.

16. Are you religious? What religion, and why or why not?

After a lot of study and learning and life experience, the idea of "God" as we've constructed Him/Her isn't satisfactory to me, so I tend to think of as an agnostic. The universe runs quite well based on our understanding of science. I don't see why we have to imagine ourselves as being the unique creations of a divinely good being, alone in the universe, and constantly indebted to this god for the purposes of simply being reassured that there really are answers and there really is an afterlife.

I like science, and I hate humanity, and I'm probably not going to like humanity until we cast off our petty differences and prejudices, and unfortunately, religion is a base factor in a lot of our personal biases and hatreds. I doubt humanity will really be evolved until it gets past the primitivism of religion. Our culture can exist without it, or at least, our ideal culture could exist without it.

The opposing views of divinity in so many religions make me wonder why any god could tolerate such misunderstandings, especially when so many of them deign to the 'supreme' or 'only' God. It seems to me that the differences in religions only prove how subjective "god" is, and why it's illogical to try to guess what this god or gods want(s) in order to appease him/her/it. If we can't agree on our religion, we can't, as a species, truly please any deity.

17. What are your views on abortion?

We're covering this in philosophy right now, actually. The media has twisted a lot of 'true' ideas on abortion into these convenient and easy camps that you can pick from. I used to identify with the 'pro-choice' viewpoint, because frankly, I don't think it matters what one's views on abortion are, so long as they don't try to enforce them on others, and I wholly disagree with the righteous contentions of pro-life activists.

However, philosophically, pro-choice and pro-life are really very different things than how we normally view them. The classic pro-life stance maintains that abortion is immoral PERIOD. There is no abortion, not unless it will save the life of the mother. If you get raped, tough. If you're the victim of incest, tough.

Conversely, to be 'pro-choice' means that you feel abortion should be available, on demand. The fetus never enjoys any of the moral rights of a person, and can be dealt with accordingly. If you're seven months pregnant and suddenly your pregnancy will make it inconvenient to go to Europe (this was the example given in our text), the pro-choice view is that you're utterly free to have an abortion to rid yourself of that inconvenience.

As such, I'm now part of what is philosophically called the "moderate" camp. Early in the pregnancy, I frankly don't see a problem with abortion as it's defined by law right now. For the first few months of life, abortions should generally be available to everyone. However, later in the pregnancy, I think there's a problem. The fetus eventually becomes viable, which is to say, it could survive outside the womb, and the process of aborting a viable fetus are particularly grim. Either you peform a miniature cesarean, or you dismember it and extract it piece by piece.

From a technical viewpoint, to 'abort' means simply to remove. Now, early in the pregnancy, you can't remove the fetus without killing it, but later and later in the pregnancy, you can. Personally I don't have a problem with the idea of taking the viable fetus once out of the womb, and, with a little care and luck, raising it to term in an incubator and giving it up for adoption. Heck, even in the future, it will be possible to remove the embryo, freeze it, and implant it into a different mother, or the same mother at a later date. I still think ultimate say should be in the hands of the mother, but, at least it's an alternative.

So basically, I'm a moderate... early in the term, I really wouldn't want to say to anyone that she couldn't have an abortion, because in my perspective, it's not our/my right to say. Later on, well, hopefully the abortion would be more a matter of health of the mother or removing a severely abnormal fetus, because also hopefully, the mother would have given a lot of thought as to whether or not she wanted this baby much earlier in the pregnancy.

18. What are your favorite kind of shoes? (Brand or style)

I love my Doc Martens boots. I have a photo of myself kissing them, (well, the old pair, that is).

19. What do you think of casual sex?

"Sex" to me means intercourse, as opposed to physical intimacy, messing around, and so many other wonderful things. In terms of casual sex: me, I can't do it. I discovered that sex means too much to me, emotionally, to cavalierly go about it with people I don't know well and won't particularly see again. Now, I wouldn't ever want there to be any strong law against casual sex, but I think most people our age don't know nearly enough to have healthy sexual relationships. Sex isn't a matter of age as much as maturity. Most males don't know more about sex than the fact that they want to 'fuck' something.

The more mature your sexual attitudes are, the easier it is to talk to another person about it in a real, frank, honest way. I haven't talked to anyone, male or female, who doesn't have unpleasant memories of their first times, assuming they're not virgins anyway. I know this is different for jocks, but quite typically their experiences are more of rutting or shoving their penis in someone's mouth anyway, as opposed to anything truly emotional. I'm sure most girls have utterly terrible first times, and second times, and so on.

Sexuality is a different matter, but again, it implies a certain degree of maturity. People are innately hedonistic, and if you can be tender and giving with another person, I can't see a reason why you ought not to spend a night with him or her.
Ultimately, I personally (I won't speak for anyone else) don't like the idea of being intimate with someone you don't care for enough to be friends with afterwards. It seems to me that if I meet someone funky enough to roll around and seduce with all kinds of erotic pleasures, then very probably it's a person I'd enjoy being with enough to maintain a friendship with.

I'm a very physical person. I love touch, but I use this touch to convey a large part of the emotions I'm feeling. When I caress someone, or play with her hair, or kiss the back of her neck, or even if I hug my male friends goodnighty, it's an expression of my affection and friendship, if not love.

20. What's your favorite food/drink?

Food --

Drink --

21. Where do you like to shop?

Places that aren't chains, if I can help it, but usually I can't. But I love bookstores, especially large or used bookstores, and stores that hold a lot of funky junk, like goth/punk stores or antique stores, or curiosity shops. I have a strange fascination for computer parts, as well, however, and as well I cannot pass music stores by if I'm in a serious browing/impulse buying mood.

Comic shops and Dollar Stores are also marvelous.

22. Who do you most admire?

I admire my father. I wish I'd known him better.

23. What do you think of body piercing?

As a matter of general principle, I think body piercing is lovely, but I hate, hate, hate people who get body piercings by and large. It takes a special mentality to really aquire a piercing for the 'right' reason, which is to say, more than because currently it's fashionable to. My ultra gothy friend Sean has many piercings, though, and he looks quite lovely, and I can say from experience that they actually do (tongue and lip) add a lot to kissing.

I dislike pain, though.

24. What do you think of tattoos?

I feel quite similarly about them. I've seen heard/of lovely tattoos, but really, I think at this particular time a lot of people are getting tattoos for the wrong reasons, and in ten years they're going to regret them. It's your skin, basically, but people are so easily swept up by the popularity and relative acceptability of tattoos as part of pop culture that I doubt they're really giving thought to them. The tattoo removal industry is something that's really going to boom in a couple of years, when all the cool teenyboppers and twentysomethings get serious jobs and families, or they become wrinkled grandparents with unicorns on their butts.

My purple hair is a big part of my identity, and sure, it's trendy as trendy youthfulness can be, but it's also a lot of hard work to maintain compared to a tattoo, and ultimately the trendies lose interest in it. When I'm thirty eight, frankly, I'll probably need to have normally coloured hair, and quite thankfully my hair, dead as it may be, will recover and grow back to its natural condition.

Tattoos are very permanent steps, and people probably don't give them enough accordant consideration when they walk into the tattoo parlour to get their icons. Why not just put on extravagant makeup or wear interesting clothes, that can change as your personality and self-image change, as opposed to this item that, though it is very possible to get a good tattoo, probably isn't worth the stigma.

And again, I personally dislike pain.

25. Do you have either of 'em?

No.

26. Where's the weirdest place you've messed around?

The Rideau Centre, which is this gigantic mall right smack dab in the middle of downtown Ottawa, has a large and elaborate complex on the roof of its structure. Essentially it is a large garden, with cobblestone paths and trees, protruding skylights from the mall underneath you, and many many security cameras.

A few years ago a friend and I went at it up there after a poetry reading in full view of passers by and security cameras alike (clothing remained intact, of course).

Most of my sin happens in my safe, secure room these days.

27. What's the neatest gift you've ever gotten?

The neatest gift I ever received was a poster I received from my sister when I was about thirteen or fourteen. She, and it, are very responsible for shaping me into the interesting person I am now, as compared to the backwards and painfully shy and socially inept boy I was at the time. The poster, I have it to this day hanging in my room, is by Edward Gorey, who is the most delicious gothic artist. It's entitled, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" and is an A to Z tale of 26 little boys and girls who perish in awful ways... "A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears," or "X is for Xerxes devoured by mice," and so on.
I've had many cool gifts, though. My family and friends are very thoughtful when they get me things, as I myself like to be in turn.

28. What do you think the ideal gift would be?

Any work of art by someone dear to me, I think, is ideal. Art is a labour of love, so to speak, but also an infusion of the individual's personal thoughts and emotions and experiences into a permanent medium that conveys so much. Giving someone a poem or a sculpture or a painting you've done as an expression of emotion and beauty and thought, possibly even relating specifically to yourself or the recipient, is the next best thing to giving them yourself, in your entirety, which, actually, is the greatest but most unattainable gift.

29. What qualities would your 'ideal mate' have?

I've discovered them many times in friends and lovers. They're hard to quantify, though. I think, essentially, anyone I could be absolutely close friends with, I could also be a lover with. I'm very discriminating with who I'll bond with, after all, and if they pass those tests, they're there for life.

I need to be surrounded by intelligent people. My ideal mate is as intelligent, or more intelligent, than I am. Most of my friends likely have either genius or near-genius IQs. My life is one long series of conversations, and if I can't really relate to a person in that sense, of being able and free to talk about everything, as well as articulate the thoughts themselves, from my silly little sick fantasies or my past, of philosophy or recipies or world history, then I don't become especially close to them.

She has to be interesting to talk to and be with, as well. I react differently to different people's personalities. I feel most comfortable being with the people with whom I can share the most, even though for each of those people my 'comfortable' might be a little different.

My ideal mate laughs at my thoughts, but also makes me laugh. I'm easily amused, but I like weird things. If we both find the same things funny, morbid as they may or may not be, and if she can say something that takes me completely off guard, and I find myself laughing uncontrollably, then we're meant to be friends, or more.

My ideal mate is very creative, and has all kinds of original thoughts and ideas. I love artists, and thinkers, and poets, and creative individuals of all kinds.

My ideal mate is also sexual, though this doesn't matter nearly as much as the more internal qualities. What I mean by that is that she is open and honest about what she likes, and has an interest in what also pleases me. I don't really know what I'm "attracted to" sexually, but it would have to be there. She enjoys cuddling whenever the opportunity presents itself, likes to hold and be held, and while she may not be comfortable with her body (who is), is comfortable with its sexuality. I've been very fortunate that I've had very healthy powerful sexual connections in all my relationships. The quality I can describe least is the feelings instilled in me by my 'ideal mate.' For whatever reason, she inspires in me the desire to please her completely... sexually, intellectually, emotionally.. in every way.

And again, all of these qualities occur in my closest friends, and always in my lovers. Not that I want to marry anyone quite yet, and I wonder sometimes if I'll feel something even more definite if "she" and I ever come together, or if one of my relationships (as friends or otherwise) will simply mature and head in that direction as time goes on

30. What's your favorite thing to see a memeber of the opposite sex wear? (Nothing doesn't count.)

I like girls who wear clothes that really say something about themselves. They don't wear Club Monaco or CK shirts, they don't wear t-shirts that say "tastee" or "baby doll" and they don't buy things for a specific label or image... they just find the clothes that allow them to project.

My favourite thing is probably striped tights (black and white horizontal stripes), or shiny plastic pants, or a pair of delicious boots, or even just creative hair/makeup. These are the things that make me goggle. Women in capes can rule me forever.

31. What's your favorite physical feature (on yourself)?

I like my legs a lot. They're the part of my body I feel most confident of. I walk and cycle in excessive amounts, so they're always muscled very nicely, and they're oh so long. Leah and Natalie never cease to tell me how beautiful they think I am, but Natalie pointed out to me last week that whenever I look into a mirror, I cringe first. I have little self-esteem when it comes to body image, though I don't mind being naked at all, once I trust the person I'm with.

I like my hair... both the way it is naturally and the way it is now. Normally, my hair is very light brown, and oh-so luxuriant and thick. Currently it's purple and black -- purple bangs with the back of my hair black -- and not doing terribly well. It *looks* lovely, but two years of dyeing and bleaching have taken their toll on its overall health and vitality. I'm toying with letting the natural stuff grow back in. I'd probably still dye it purple, but only in streaks. It's so much easier to maintain that way.

32. What's your favorite physical feature on other people? (What do you notice first about people?)

I notice faces right off. People fascinate me. You can almost guess how intelligent a person is by looking into his or her eyes in search for that spark of humanity. The face is the most useful and wonderful part of someone's body.

It's different in a sexual sense. I admit quite bashfully that I have something of a wandering eye, but I would never fixate on any one aspect of someone's body.

When I'm in bed with someone, there are different aspects to every person that will intrigue me. Breasts are wonderful in general, but especially for the differences. People have different shapes and feels... the colour and shape of their nipples always interests me. I like discovering the way touching people's bodies makes them feel. What they like, and what they love.

I love bums. I like kneading and stroking the skin there; discovering what the reaction will be. People's backs are one of the most wonderful parts of their bodies. I love well-formed backs, with smooth skin, nice muscles, and an appreciation of being rubbed or scratched.

I also like a woman's belly. Navels are fascinating to me, as well as the lines of her tummy itself.

Genitals can be an obsession of mine. I crave to explore that part of someone's body the most, once we become intimate. I'm very careful, gentle, and patient, but inevitably, unless I'm asked not to of course, my hands will travel there, as happens usually for most people when they "fight crime" (one of many euphemisms maintained by a friend of mine. The "crimefighting" allusion comes from Douglas Coupland's Shampoo Planet, and refers to fooling around, but they invented a bunch more for the other aspects of sexuality). The wetness of sexual arousal fascinates me. I like nothing so much as the slick, inviting, folds of a woman's genitals when she's utterly aroused. Your fingers are practically drawn inside by the slipperiness.

Everyone looks different. Everyone feels different. Everyone tastes different. It's marvelous, to gently touch someone like that first time...to be inside them, and feel the solid walls of her genitals, and the roughness of her curves and folds.
Oral sex is my favourite form of worship.

34. What's your favorite character in Sandman comics?

I really do adore Morpheus. It's the typical answer, but I find him sulky and moody, and fascinatingly like me (he's flawed).

35. Did you ever watch Kindred: The Embraced, and if so, what'd ya think of it?

I saw it once, which isn't really enough to gain a perspective, and I admit that I did go into it with a certain amount of prejudice, but I sadly thought it was dreadfully cheesy. But I feel the same way about most things on TV.