Before We Go Extinct by Karen Rivers Page A

baseball and I think zoos should be illegal and the Empire State Building?
    Well, it’s boring.
    Sorry, but it is.
    The elevator in the Empire State Building smells like hospitals. The view is something you’ve seen in pictures so many times that when you actually see it, it feels old already, like you’re watching a rerun on TV. Unless you’re my dad, and then you’re snapping pictures like no one will ever go up there again, like no one would ever see this .
    Last time he was in town, he took me and The King and Daff to a “fancy” dinner. We ended up at TGI Fridays on Forty-Second, uncomfortably making conversation over plates full of terrible shrimp, The King and Daff shooting looks at each other over the rims of their Shirley Temples. I tried to pretend it was so lame that it was actually cool. Ironic. But no one was buying what I was selling and Dad was trying too hard. Like always. Afterward, I seriously considered just drowning myself in the East River so that I’d never have to go through anything like that again. But I went along with it because after that it was all, oh, it’s lunchtime, who wants a formal shrimp plate? Shall we take the town car to TGIs? Hmmm? Oh, that isn’t funny? No, it isn’t? Want to call your dad? He’ll wear his fanciest T-shirt! Not funny? Oh, okay.
    But I’d laugh because yeah, it was really at the expense of my dad, not me, and my friends got me. They knew what my dad was like. “You know,” Daff whispered behind her menu, “your dad is kind of like a visitor from another planet. I feel like a scientist, observing life on Mars. Let us take notes.” And just then, my dad stood up to go to the washroom and a server walked right into him with a tray of sizzling meat and Dad’s legs were scalded and he kept saying, “Man, I am so sorry,” while the waiter said things like, “Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll sue you, jerk,” and Dad apologized again and again as if he was a dog, which is what he reminds me of, specifically a golden retriever, he would have been wagging his tail exuberantly and knocking over more things in his effort to be forgiven. The King said, “I am a lawyer. I am a lawyer.” And Daff laughed and laughed and actually, so did I, and it was only actually just now that I realized that Dad wasn’t really the jerk in that situation.
    It’s better not to remember stuff.
    It’s better to just focus on the now. Buddhism 101. Or, you know, what I think Buddhism is. I was never into that stuff. That was The King’s thing and who knows how much he made up and how much was real, how much was the philosophy of The King and how much was ancient religious tenets that could change everything if only we would just get on with it and believe in love and hope and peace and not attaching to anything ever. Not attaching to anyone. Not putting your hands into a girl’s hair while your best friend’s eyes see you and his face sees you and his heart sees you and just for a split second, his face is lightning-split open and you can see his brokenness. But you can also see her lips, right there and you didn’t kiss them but you could have. You should have. And if the timing was just a few seconds the other way, you would have. And you are such a jerk for thinking that because then he would have seen something even worse.
    But then again, why did he get to decide?
    The purple car, look at it. I look at the purple car. I am not at Daff’s place, she is not here, The King is not breaking. I am here and I am breathing and that’s over and I don’t have to think about how even looking at Daff gives me panic attacks so intense that I feel like my heart is rolling on a tsunami and one day it will rip right out of my chest like an alien baby and anyway thinking about her makes it hard to breathe this tiny, peculiar Canadian air.
    I concentrate on the car, but I still can’t