excerpt of "Chasing Goffman"
by Shane Neilson

Some nights, I dream of Goffman. We’re at a diner, sharing a coffee and staring out onto a winter street. It’s impossibly late—cars pass occasionally, as if to signal that time is really elapsing. Otherwise, who would know that time hadn’t stopped out there, the world clutched in trauma chronology and holding its breath? Though visibility is good, no one walks towards the diner. No one feels the need to be outside. Inside, it’s just me, Goffman, and two cups of coffee resting in circular grooves on saucers. Mine with cream, black for Goffman.

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The shirt’s thin weave of polyester cannot absorb all my father’s sweat, nor can I reach the pedals. My legs hang in the air. My job: to steer the azure Cordoba along the winding backroads of southeast New Brunswick. Doug’s too drunk to steer but not too drunk to know how fast we are going—a sensory curiosity of the intoxicated mind. With each oncoming car, I veer to the right, too far onto the thin breakdown. It’s time you learned anyway, he says. I was driving a tractor when I was your age. In the confection of child entertainment, a kid driving a car is positive, a fantasy. Right? I am eight years old.

 

 

 

From The Malahat Review's winter issue #229