Chapter Text
Twenty-eight-year-old Stathis Borans glanced at the clock in his office at the Monolith Building in Toronto late on an early September 1978 Friday evening. He had just finished a mountain of work for Particle Magazine. He glanced at the pile of resumes for the assistant editor position that his secretary, Renee, had left on his desk. It was next on his to-do list, but it could wait until Monday. He left the building and drove to his apartment.
When he opened the door and turned on the light, he was taken aback by how empty the place was. He had been so busy finishing his degrees and building his empire of Particle Magazine throughout his youth that the thought of the fruits he would reap in what had to be the near future had been enough to keep him warm. However, on this particular night he wished he could have come home to a loving woman. If only he could walk into a warmly lit apartment with all her unique personal touches throughout to meet her eyes as she greeted him and delighted in his arrival. He, of course, would delight in seeing her, too. Instead, what awaited him was the last lonely weekend before he had to start teaching a course nobody else wanted to teach at the University of Toronto. Maybe he would go skeet shooting this weekend.
He walked into his kitchen, took a leftover container of minestrone soup out of the fridge, heated it in a pot, and felt very sorry for himself.
The next morning he awoke with a start. What a horrible nightmare he had had! He held up his left hand and pulled the blanket off his right foot. Still there. He breathed a sigh of relief. The telepods, Brundlefly, the acid vomit! It had all felt so real! He had to pinch himself upon seeing he was safe in his own bedroom in the real world.
He gazed out the window and allowed his mind to wander back to the woman in his dream. He could not remember her name or even what she looked like. He had loved her. What stayed with him most from the dream was the raw emotion, the devastation of losing her. Why again had she left him?
She said he was just beginning to notice her when they split up. She had called him disgusting. Crude. He had been a jerk in the dream. A creep. Arrogant. Morbid.
It felt unfair. He was not like that at all. Sure, he had been told on multiple occasions that he had a confidence that bordered on arrogance, but he never went to that extreme.
He rose and went to the bathroom. As he brushed his teeth, he looked at his reflection in the mirror. He averted his eyes uneasily.
He put his shotgun case by the front door, and went to the kitchen to eat his breakfast. He tried to concentrate on the newspaper as he ate, but his mind kept wandering back to The Nightmare. Who was he trying to fool? He set the newspaper down, stood up, walked over to his desk, and took a notebook out of the drawer. He sat back down at the kitchen table and started journaling as he finished his oatmeal.
How could he have time to notice a wife and kids if he left the office at 8 PM every night? He seldom felt jealous of the other men his age he knew who had families and left work by 5 PM each night, but in this moment he did. The assistant editor he hired would have to be capable of taking on many of his duties. Perhaps he ought to hire a second assistant editor, but he would need more subscriptions and other customers to be able to afford the salary.
He set his pen down, washed the dishes, and put his shotgun case back in the closet. He would spend this weekend planning how to fix himself. Although it terrified him because it was not a common choice among men his age, he would have to start therapy. Yes. It was decided. He made a note to himself in his calendar to call his doctor for an appointment for a referral first thing on Monday. He took out the phone book and browsed the listings for local therapists. He left that section open on his desk.
He decided to take a break. He sat in the living room and turned on the TV. After a while, he caught himself laughing at jokes at the expense of other people on the shows. He sighed and went back to the kitchen to grab his notebook. On a clean page he wrote, "Fix my humor," and in the first bullet point underneath he wrote, "jokes at the expense of others". Enough was enough. He did not want to be that person anymore, but humor was still important to him. He set his pen down and changed the channel. Soon he was engrossed in a new show, but he spent quite a while laughing at morbid jokes. When he caught himself, he wrote, "morbid jokes," in the second bullet point and switched the TV off.
He decided to head to the library. There, he approached a librarian.
"Excuse me," he said. "I was hoping you could recommend some books to me. There needs to be humor, but it shouldn't be morbid humor, and the humor can't come at anyone else's expense."
"Do you mean books that see the humor in everyday life and funny coincidences?" she asked.
"Yes, that would be good."
"Let's get you started on The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde," she said. She led him over to where it was and gave him a few more books for good measure. He thanked her, checked out the books, and drove home.
For the rest of the weekend, he read the books and journaled about The Nightmare and behaviors he regretted and felt ashamed of. On Sunday he typed a letter of resignation to the dean.
At the office on Monday, he called his doctor first thing and booked an appointment for Wednesday. Next he picked up the pile of resumes. What had the name of the assistant editor who had outlived his usefulness in The Nightmare been? Craig. He found Craig's papers and read them. He was young and seemed eager. He put Craig's papers at the bottom of the pile. He read through the rest, and the best candidate by far was Mary Humphrey. She had years of editing experience, and she was described as efficient in her letter of recommendation. He called her and booked an interview for later that afternoon.
He did not arrive home that night until 8:30 PM. With Mary starting the next day, the future looked brighter. He would just have to see whether or not her work would get him home early enough that he could forget the second assistant editor.
Tuesday was the first day of classes at the university. It was chaotic as usual. The first thing he did was march to Dean McCullogh's office. He handed him the letter of resignation.
"You can't do this to me, Stathis," Dean McCullogh said. "You already know I couldn't get anyone else to teach Biochemistry 101. All the other professors' course loads are already too heavy. You were my only hope. It will be impossible to find someone else at the last minute."
"This is not my two weeks' notice. This is my one semester's notice. I'll teach Biochemistry 101 this fall. You have until January to find a replacement for me. I will not come here in January. I need to focus full time on Particle Magazine," Stathis said.
Dean McCullogh sighed. "All right. It will be hard to replace you. With your journalistic experience in presenting scientific breakthroughs to the masses, you're so good at explaining complicated concepts to our students. You've always been so good at everything you do. It already pained me to cut your courses down to this one. Disappointed students have been asking after you."
"Thank you, sir. But I'm not a Master's student or a doctoral student anymore. At some point I have to leave university life behind and focus on my career."
"I understand. I was hoping to hold on to you for a bit longer. You will be missed." They shook hands, and Stathis left.
He had a little bit of time before his first Biochemistry 101 lecture started. He headed over to the English department and asked an old friend there for more book recommendations on the natural humor in life. She was happy to oblige.
The first Biochemistry 101 lecture was uneventful. It was, after all, the umpteenth time he was teaching the course. He distributed the syllabi and warned the first-year students, one of whom he would later learn was named Veronica Quaife, that their first paper was due relatively soon.
The fall of 1978 progressed. He began therapy and brought his journal often to discuss the behaviors he wanted to change. His therapist, Dr. Carmelo, recommended more books with a different kind of humor. They discussed the models and examples of manhood he had received as a child and worked through them. He found himself arriving at home a tiny bit earlier at 8 PM with only one course instead of the multiple courses he had taught in previous semesters. As Mary increasingly got on her feet in her new job and proved to be effective, he found himself at home at 7:30 PM. Things could be better, sure, but he took comfort in having just that much more time to read his novels in the evening before bed.
One Friday afternoon, Renee invited him to happy hour.
"We all go just down the street. You never come," she said.
"Nah, too much work," he replied.
"If not today, then you can come whenever you want. The invitation is always open."
He discussed this with Dr. Carmelo, who encouraged him to go some time soon. He said it would be good to practice seeing how it would make him feel.
He went the next week, but he found himself staring at the clock. He felt his irritation levels spike at the sheer idiocy of his colleagues' babbling about their shallow personal lives.
At Particle Magazine he experimented with increasing the advertising.
One afternoon a tall student with curly dark brown hair came to his office hours. "Hello, Professor Borans," she said.
He looked up and said, "Hello."
"I'm Veronica Quaife. The word around campus is that going to office hours really helps to study for exams," she explained. "I've been trying to study for the upcoming exam, but the textbook is more difficult to understand than your lectures."
"Let's have a look. Veronica Quaife, you said?" He felt a small, involuntary smile on his lips.
"That's right."
He picked up a pile of essays and looked for hers. "Miss Quaife, I was planning on returning the essays tomorrow, but I can give you yours right now. I was struck by the journalistic quality of your writing."
"Did you have to lower my grade for failing to follow format?" she asked worriedly.
"Not at all." He handed her her essay. "Did you write for your school newspaper or take journalism courses in high school?"
"No. I received top grades in all subjects, including the sciences, math, and English, but I never did anything related to journalism."
When she said that, he caught himself from blurting that her essay had made him see himself in her. His passions had been both science and journalism since he was a child, and he wrote for the school newspaper since elementary school. He joined journalism projects every time they were offered in junior high, and he was the editor of his high school newspaper. He had flourished in his high school journalism elective. This young woman was naturally gifted without the same experience he had had.
"You covered all the complex concepts I required you to, yet you explained them in layperson's terms so that it was clear to me that you didn't just copy from some books without understanding what the words meant," he said. "I'm the editor-in-chief of Particle Magazine, a science magazine based here in Toronto, and that's exactly what we do there. Do you think you'd be interested in working for the magazine as your summer job?"
Veronica's face broke out in a smile at her luck. It was too early to start looking for a summer job, but she wanted one. Instead of having to apply all over the place, she was being offered one and would not have to worry about it for the rest of the academic year. "Yes," she said.
He handed her copies of a few issues of the magazine. "Read these and see if you like this kind of writing. Here's my phone number at Particle Magazine. I won't be teaching here in the spring, so you can't stop by my office." He handed her his number and a blank piece of paper. "Write your phone number here, and if I don't hear from you by the end of April I'll call you," he said.
"Okay," she said as she wrote down her number.
"Good. Now let's take a look at that biochemistry textbook," he said. He clarified all the issues she had marked.
After she left when his office hours ended, he thought to himself that Veronica's female voice might get him more female readers. He made a note to himself to hire more women to write for the magazine.
As the weeks went by, he noticeably decreased his snarky and nasty comments at the faculty meetings and staff meetings at Particle Magazine. He became so confident that he bet his old friend, obstetrician and gynecologist Dr. Brent Cheevers, one hundred dollars that he would not make a single joke at someone else's expense the whole time he was at Brent's New Year's Eve party. He lost the bet by 9:30 PM.
For the next two years, his goal remained to build the magazine so that he could leave by 5 PM each night. He hired correspondents in Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Edmonton, and Waterloo to report on the scientific breakthroughs there. He later did the same for U.S. cities. Veronica's and the other newly hired women's contributions helped boost sales noticeably. When extra money came in, he invested in more aggressive advertising, which, in time, he expanded to a global scale. By late 1980 he was able to hire yet another assistant editor and buy a 1980 Maserati Quattroporte III. One month later, he was leaving the office by 5 PM.
The first night he did that, he stood in his apartment and looked around. Well, he thought, now he had his evenings carved out for a family. He felt foolish without a family because he was always the kind of person who immersed himself obsessively in his work and spent a lot of time on it. Letting go was difficult. What would he do with those extra hours? He experimented with cooking large batches of food to freeze before settling into bed with a book. He tried different recipes until his freezer was full. He started going skeet shooting and going to the gym in the evenings.
He was well-connected among the professionals of Toronto. One night at a party for the cream of the city, he recounted the recent meeting of his goal and his new evening routine. The men in the circle started recommending single women they knew and giving him their numbers. They were unanimously convinced that he now had time to date.
His dating experiences, however, had ups but were tainted by downs. He repeatedly took one step forward and two steps back. One poor lunch date ran away crying after he made a comment that made her feel stupid. He realized too late, as if in slow motion, what he had done, and he felt like a failure. At the end of one cafe date, his face broke out in a victorious smile at the wrong moment when he realized that he had successfully refrained from cracking a joke at her expense. His date mistook that for interest in going on another date, and in an attempt to correct the misunderstanding, he told her the honest, ugly truth. She said she did not want to see him again if he harbored such nasty thoughts about her.
"I felt so ashamed at my complete and utter lack of social savvy," he told Dr. Carmelo. "Everyone knows to be discreet and delicate in a situation like that."
Dr. Carmelo said, "Next time you can tell your date that you were smiling at an unrelated thought and that you're afraid you and she are incompatible."
"It wouldn't be a lie."
"Don't beat yourself up on not being socially savvy. You've spent many years on science and journalism, studying and working. Practice makes perfect. Go back out there and give it your best shot."
Stathis had plenty more phone numbers of women to get through. He had dates in which he considered himself successful because he was able to rein himself in from saying anything nasty. However, he found himself too irritated with the women to move any further regardless of how beautiful, smart, funny, successful, and kind they were. They all were all of those things. He had dates mixed in in which he failed and said things he should not have. He felt nervous showing his face at the next party after telling so many female acquaintances of the guests they were incompatible. However, the men eagerly gave him even more phone numbers. He grew weary from feeling so much irritation and from this killing his motivation to seek interesting women to ask out. He wanted to marry and start a family. Why could he not love someone the way he had loved the woman in The Nightmare? He still could not remember anything else about her.
He asked Dr. Carmelo about this irritation.
"Perhaps you're exceptionally sensitive."
"No, I'm not feminine."
"Men can be sensitive, too. Irritation is a normal and natural experience if you're sensitive. Merely being naturally prone to feelings of irritability doesn't make you a bad person. It's when you hurt someone that you do wrong. You can decide what you do when you feel irritated. Will you continue going on dates? Will you leave the restaurant? Will you fill your time with more solo activities? Will you wait until you find someone interesting to go on another date? Will you step away from depending on others for your feelings and happiness?"
Stathis gave himself a break from dating. He continued to read books with the type of humor he aspired to, and in time he realized that he had needed quite a long time to take that kind of humor in before he started speaking that way. In 1981 he was slowly but surely recalling the funny bits of everyday life and funny coincidences when humor was needed.
Before the fall semester of 1981 began, he told Veronica, "I'm so pleased with the work you've done here for the past three summers. Would you consider coming on board full time after you graduate?"
"Yes."
"You don't have any other dream job in mind?"
"No."
"When you are ready and finish all your studies at the end of next spring, all you have to do is call me. I can have a contract drawn up for you, and you can sign it and start immediately."
"Thank you. I'll be there," she said.
By the end of that year, he brought himself to call Agatha, an E.R. doctor at a nearby hospital, to ask her on a date. He found her company exceptionally enjoyable and asked her to meet him again at the end of their first dinner. She agreed. He felt lucky. It was so difficult for him to find people he liked. It must mean something that he liked her. They went on a few more dates but did not put a label on what was between them. One afternoon he spent his lunch break walking through the park near the Monolith Building to clear his head. He spotted Agatha there, too, smiling and talking to a man. She had stars in her eyes. Stathis turned and walked back to the office, hoping she had not seen him.
Later that night after they finished their dinner, he asked, "When do you want to meet again?"
"I'm sorry, but now's not a good time," Agatha replied. "I'm getting an increase in shifts at the hospital. I've been really busy at work, and it looks like it will just get worse. I don't want to be unfair to you. I don't know how long this will go on. We should stop seeing each other. "
He said, "Okay," but in his car he saw red. He thought she really preferred that other guy. He drove home and had trouble sleeping that night. On Saturday after he finished his breakfast, he decided to drive to her home. If her car was gone, he would drive to the hospital and park near her car. He would wait for her to leave and then follow her and see if she went to see that man. He justified his plan with the fact that he liked her when he never liked anyone he dated and she must be lying. He put on his coat, went out to his car, and turned his key in the ignition. He looked at his reflection in the rear view mirror. He turned the ignition back off. What was he doing? She had every right to prefer someone else before they committed to each other. How disgusted would she feel if she knew what he had planned? He pulled out his key and headed back to his apartment.
This was a humbling experience. It frightened him that his tendency to immerse himself completely had veered into obsession like that. He worked through it with Dr. Carmelo, who told him not to do it again. Stathis gave himself another break from dating. In the spring of 1982, he started going to happy hour with his Particle colleagues. They took well to his increased kindness. He would not let himself become too confident for fear that he would open his mouth and insert his foot again.