My Life Among the Apes Read Online Free

I USE MY cell to phone Long and McQuade in Toronto. I order an electronic tuner, a set of Martin strings, a capo, a dozen Fender picks, and three instruction books. The bill comes to more than twice what I paid for the guitar.
    ON FRIDAY, WHEN I COME in, Fred, the motel owner, looks at me with the placidity of a man who knows that time is an illusion and hands me the package from Long and McQuade. Walking quickly to my room, my sample case in one hand and the package in the other, I fantasize about telling Candice that I have taken up guitar, as if somehow this might impress her the way I had hoped to impress girls when I was twelve. The fantasy is somewhat spoiled by my knowing that Candice would be confirmed in everything she thinks about me, but I’m feeling too expectant to let that get me down. On my bed, I unwrap the goodies and lay them out, everything just so cool. The first thing I do is change the crappy strings. It takes me a good forty-five minutes, puts me in a total sweat, and three times I lance the tip of a finger with the sharp end of a string.
    Next, I tune up, checking one of the instruction manuals.
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xercising. Finally, I take one of the fake tortoiseshell picks, smooth and pleasing to the touch, find my G chord, and strum. To my amazement, the room expands with sweet fullness. Turns out even a shitbox of a guitar has music sleeping inside it. I strum hard and faster, but when I get a decent rhythm going, when I’m starting to feel good and thinking that I could play this one chord into eternity, the porn addict next door starts pounding on the wall again.
    I take the guitar out back, along with the instruction book and an unrefrigerated beer. I head for the townhouse that I like to refer to as my own. I am vaguely dismayed by a SOLD sign on the one next to it, but I march right inside mine, calling, “Honey, I’m home!” and sit on the toilet in the dining room. With the instruction book open on the floor I practise these little four-bar exercises. After about ten minutes the fingertips of my left hand start to get sore, so I skip the next seven pages of exercises and plunge right into the first song, “On Top of Old Smoky.” Dang, I’ve always wanted to play that ol’ classic. I make my way haltingly through it, pausing for a swig of Blue, the working man’s beer.
    â€œCandice, babe,” I say aloud, “It does not get better than this.”
    TODAY I HAVE SEVEN APPOINTMENTS with doctors serving the suburban Chinese community from shopping mall clinics. I like these doctors, first or second-generation Canadians who are less arrogant and dismissive of parasites who feed on their underbellies. Plus, at lunch time I have my choice of Chinese restaurants.
    Back at the motel, I change into jeans, grab a beer and my guitar, and head out back towards my townhouse. But, crossing the street, I hesitate. Someone is at the house on the other side from mine, pounding another SOLD sign into the ground. All I can see is that she is wearing a sweater and a knit skirt too warm for the weather, stockings and heels. I decide to lay the beer down at the roadside and continue on. She is straightening the sign as I come up the walkway. East Indian or Pakistani, pretty but thin, with a beaky nose and a premature streak of silver in her hair.
    â€œHello there,” she says, reaching out. I have to switch the guitar over to take her enthusiastic, real estate agent’s handshake. “Beautiful houses, aren’t they?”
    â€œYes, I’ve been admiring them,” I say, not altogether disingenuously. “It looks like they’re starting to sell.”
    â€œMore than half are already gone. The agents are too busy to put up the signs. Everything will be finished in two months. I find it so exciting when a new community begins. It’s like instant happiness.”
    â€œSo, who is moving in?”
    â€œVery nice