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y f i n g e r n a i l s a n d wonder if I'm receiving sufficient dietary calcium. Dag's story continues.
    I runs in my head w h i l e t h e t h r e e o f u s e a t l u n c h . " B y t h e n i t w a s winter. I moved in with my brother, Matthew, the jingle writer. That res in Buffalo, New York, an hour south of Toronto, and a city which
    • once read had been la -beled North America's
    first 'ghost city' since
    a sizable chunk of its
    c o r e b u s i n e s s e s h a d j u s t
    up and left one fine
    1970s day. "I remem-ber watching Lake Erie
    freeze over a period of
    days from Matthew's

apartment window and
    thinking how corny but
    a p t t h e s i g h t w a s . M a t -thew was out of town fre-quently on business, and I'd sit by myself in the middle of his living r o o m floor with stacks of pornography and bottles of Blue Sapphire gin and the stereo going full blast and I'd be thinking to myself, 'Hey!
    I'm having a party!' I was on a depressive's diet then—a total salad bar of downers and antidepressants. I needed them to fight my black
    thoughts, was convinced that all of the people I'd ever gone to school with were headed for great things in life and that I wasn't. They were having more fun; finding more meaning in life. I couldn't answer the t e l e p h o n e ; I

    seemed unable to achieve the animal happiness of people on TV, so I had to stop watching it; mirrors freaked me out; I read every Agatha Christie book; I once thought I'd lost my shadow. I was on automatic pilot.
    "I became nonsexual and my body felt inside-o u t —covered with ice and carbon and plywood like the abandoned mini-malls, flour mills, and oil refineries of Tonawanda and Niagara Falls. Sexual signals became omnipresent and remained repulsive. Accidental eye contact with 7- Eleven grocery clerks became charged with vile meaning. All looks with strangers became the unspoken question, 'Are you the stranger who will rescue me?' Starved for affection, terrified of abandonment, I began to wonder if sex was really just an excuse to look deeply into another human being's eyes.
    " I s t a r t e d t o f i n d h u m a n i t y r e p u l s i v e , r e d u c i n g i t t o h o r m o n e s , flanks, mounds, secretions, and compelling methanous stinks. At least in this state I felt that there was no possibility of being the ideal target market any mo re. If, back in Toronto, I had tried to have life both ways by considering myself unfettered and creative, while also playing the p a t s y c o r p o r a t e d r o n e , I w a s c e r t a i n l y p a y i n g a p r i c e .
    "But what really got me was the way young people can look into your eyes, curious but without a trace of bodily hunger. Early teens and SUCCESSOPHOBIA: The
    younger, who I'd see looking envy-makingly happy during my brief
    fear that if one is successful,
    agoraphobia-filled forays into the local Buffalo malls that were still open.
    then one's personal needs will be
    forgotten and one will no longer
    That guileless look had been erased forever in me, so I felt, and I was have one's childish needs
    convinced that I would walk around the next forty years hollowly acting catered to.
    out life's motions, while listening to the rustling, taunting maracas of youthful mummy dust bounce about inside me.
    "Okay, okay. We all go through a certain crisis point, or, I suppose, or we're not complete. I can't t e l l you how many people I know who claim to have had their midlife crisis early in life. But there invariably comes a certain point where our youth fails us; where college fails us; where Mom and Dad fail us. Me, I'd never be able to find refuge again in Saturday mornings spent in rumpus rooms, itchy with fiberglass in-sulation, listening to Mel Blanc's voice on the TV, unwittingly breathing xenon vapors from cinder blocks, snacking on chewable vitamin C tab-lets, and tormenting my s i s t e r ' s B a r b i e s .
    "But my crisis wasn't just the failure of youth but also a failure of c l a s s a n d o f s