Photos by Jim Tinios

Toronto author J.M. Frey gives sci-fi a jolt of much-needed diversity

It’s not every day you read a science-fiction novel that features a polyamorous relationship, with one of its partners being a blue-skinned, bat-wing-eared, short- snouted alien, and a plot that involves time travel, a murder mystery and a near-future look at sexuality, bigotry, immigration and gender politics.

Welcome to Triptych, and the science-fiction and fantasy worlds of Toronto author J.M. Frey.

Frey doesn’t write the kind of sci-fi or fantasy you find in Star Wars. She writes the kind of genre fiction we need more of: progressive, representative and accepting, like her critically acclaimed Lambda Literary Award–nominated debut novel Triptych. The novel is a story of acceptance and hope about two humans (Basil and Gwen) who take in a polyamorous alien refugee (Kalp), come to accept Kalp’s way of life, and eventually participate in it to their betterment.

Triptych reflects Frey’s passionate belief that genre fiction can help us live better. “Science fiction and fantasy writers have the great privilege to be able to be on the front line of the battleground. It’s always been the frontier of the new,” she says. “Science fiction and fantasy can change the world.”

Of course, changing the world happens one person at a time, and Frey discovered sci-fi’s power to do that firsthand when she was eleven year old. When a crush on young actor Wil Wheaton led her to reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Frey found a deep love for Gene Roddenberry’s accepting universe, and a feeling that she was understood. “What I really liked about The Next Generation was that they really explored alternate cultures, societies, and what it means to be different,” she says. “As a kid in rural Ontario who felt really different from everybody else, that really appealed.”

Star Trek’s influence led directly to Frey becoming, as she calls herself, a “professional” geek and a published author. It also left a lasting impression on her work. As someone who continues to feel underrepresented in fiction­—because, as Frey explains, “I walk with a cane, I’m going blind, going deaf, and I’m queer”—much of her playful revisionist and meta stories are propelled by questions of representation: “Where’s the gap? What’s missing? Whose perspective has this story not been told from yet?”

“Women,” is often the answer, and works like her novella The Dark Side of the Glass and the short-story anthology Hero is a Four Letter Word tackle female empowerment and the problematic male attitudes that can be found in sci-fi, fantasy and its fans.

Attitudes Frey’s very familiar with. It’s no accident she uses a gender-neutral pen name. Several years ago when she began seriously pursuing writing, she overheard two men talking in the science-fiction section of a Chapters bookstore. She recounts that “one of them pulled a book out, turned over to the back, read it and said ‘Oh my god, this sounds amazing. Dude, read this! Doesn’t it sound great? I wonder who it’s by… Oh, it’s by a chick. Never mind.’ And he put it back on the shelf.” That was the day she became J.M. Frey.

It’s a testament to Frey’s abilities as a writer that despite the issues she tackles, her writing doesn’t feel political or read like an after-school special. “I try to write books that look like the world I live in. I don’t set out to write issue books.” After a beat, she adds: “But the issues are there because they’re there in real life.”

When asked what she hopes her work will achieve, Frey answers in metaphor. “If you think of a pond and throw a pebble in the pond, it ripples. But then the surface of the pond goes still and you go back to being the person you were when you finished reading the book,” she says. “But that pebble is still there. It’s still at the bottom of the pond. That’s what I want to do. I want to change the world. I want to just drop a lot of pebbles in a lot of ponds.” Gene Roddenberry would be proud.

Illustration by Daniel Downey

Michael teaches English at the high school. His classroom is in one of the portables set up beside the outdoor basketball court, the garage where the guys in auto shop fix cars. During Grade 12 drama, I spent a lot of time in there with Mr. Chen who’d come from the city, who Lara thought was gay. Once he told me to stop acting so soap opera and get the hair out of my face. Until then I thought it was a gift how I could make myself weep by remembering our cat Smiley who died the winter I was 11, who my dad wrapped in a plastic grocery bag and put under the strawberries in the chest freezer until the ground thawed enough to bury him. Save your tears, Mr. Chen told me, and to this day, whenever I feel like I’m going to cry his voice comes into my head with the soft accent that flattened out the Rs.

The classroom looks different now. Michael’s covered the walls with movie-sized posters of Shakespeare performances at Stratford and pictures he’s drawn and laminated that teach basic grammar rules: a bright red X over ITS’ like the word is akin to smoking. I don’t understand my apostrophes but I don’t tell him that. Possession isn’t a topic I want to bring up.

We’re both teachers but Michael and I met at the bar. I was out with Josie and we were sitting on the Ladies and Escorts side, cracking peanuts, dropping the shells on the floor. Her nose running, a tremble in her bottom lip. Earlier that week, on Wednesday, she and Bruce had had a fight over whether she should put garlic in her beef stew and he’d taken a room at the Lakeshore. I was trying to listen, shoving slim paper serviettes across the table, guzzling from my Canadian because she preferred coolers and didn’t want to split a pitcher. Through the row of windows overlooking the river I could see the moon, a bright orb that lit the wide white plain. Headlights jumped up the shore into the parking lot and that was how he arrived: in a jumble of guys climbing off their sleds to enter the Gentlemen’s area. Our eyes immediately caught, and when I went to order more drinks, he came up to the heavy wooden counter that stretched the width of the building like the middle bar of an H, linking the two sides together, and asked me my name. Josie’s damp eyes stayed on me until finally I invited him over. When she turned to him, I saw her face flicker open with the slightest, shaky smile.

Michael is writing a novel. Sometimes when I let myself into the house he’s rented up the hill from the high school, beside the water tower where the kids carpet the bare rock with the glittering amber dust of bottles, I’ll hear the keys of his computer steadily clacking. While he works, I make him dinner and occasionally he’ll read bits of what he’s written as we eat. I don’t cook anything special: mainly pasta and hamburgers, a meatloaf or casserole, mostly meals with ground beef or canned tuna. Josie is the one who took to that when we were kids and I still love getting an invite from her because you never know what you’ll have: beef bourguignon that took six hours, a Moroccan lamb stew with mint jelly, and always a special dessert, Key Lime Pie or a truffle, no matter the occasion.

The first night we met, Michael and I fucked. That’s what he calls it, the sharp consonants percussing on his lips. Josie left early, drove home in her half broken-down Honda, even though in the bathroom, I’d told her I’d do whatever she wanted. Under the glare of the fluorescents, I’d seen the splotchy weakness of grief in her face, the first lines around her eyes like pins hemming a skirt and thought, We’re too young for that. Drunk enough, I hugged her, and I think that was when she decided just to leave.

Michael took me home on the back of his machine. I left my car in the parking lot. He went fast and the wind bit at my earlobes, pressed easily through the denim skin of my jeans but I’d had a few shots of cinnamon schnapps and the whole situation made me laugh. It seemed grandiose, an unusual adventure, a story to tell Lara the next time we talked on the phone.

As soon as we got through his front door, we did it. Right there in the living room, on the worn carpet, beside a stack of books I kicked over halfway through, hearing the tumble of their hard covers as if from a distance. Michael came, collapsed, and went suddenly so quiet that I thought he might have died or gone instantly to sleep and I’d be stuck there until the morning, pulling thin breaths beneath his significant weight.

I tell Michael my stories. He is fascinated that I grew up in Hixon Bay. We go out with Josie or over to her house, and he draws them out of us, standing up from the dining room table like a gentleman, refilling our wine glasses, stopping any drips with that final, professional twist of the neck. In the attentive heat of his eyes I feel alive and love when he gets so excited that he pulls out his tiny, leather bound notebook and starts jotting things down. It’s like a dare, that pen taking dictation, like an Oprah interview digging deeper, so Josie and I go further, telling all our tales about the four of us, Sam, Lara, her and I, until finally he stops. He shakes his sore wrist, fingers flashing like a wing in full flight and sits back, smiling his defeat. Somebody pours more wine and Josie asks about his own childhood, spent down in Scarborough, in a suburb behind a mall. I act like I’m listening when I’m actually thinking about later, how I’ll pretend not to want to and then let him, let him do whatever he wants.

When the literary journal arrives in the mail, he tells me he’s won third place. The Tar River Review Short Fiction Contest, he says, like it’ll mean something to me. Three hundred bucks, he shouts from his kitchen after he pulls the issue out of its plastic wrapping. I hear the champagne pop. For a story? I ask. It seems impossible but he’s nodding when he comes back through the doorway. His face is flushed, thick auburn hair a mess from the way his hand always pushes through it. His green eyes gleam. I step closer to him, drawn into his orbit. He’s like Jupiter, I think, or whichever planet has those glittering rings of dust. They circle eternally, never flying free, decorating the quiet orb of rock.

He scoops one arm around my waist and taps his glass against mine so they clink. Bubbles float up from the bottom of our glasses. In the liquor store he’d lain down a hundred dollar bill for the bottle and the cashier only gave him a five and three quarters in change. I sip it slowly, rolling the sweet sparkle around in my mouth. Can I read it? I ask, after I swallow, a sudden tartness stinging my throat. He pauses, purses his lips. His eyes settle on the wooden bookshelf my uncle made me for Christmas the year I turned 15 which I gave to Michael for his birthday back in March. Sure, he says. Yes. Of course.

The story isn’t what you think. It’s set in Bracebridge, not Hixon Bay, and the protagonist, the main character, is a guy, a draft dodger, nicknamed Trout.

Still, halfway through, there’s the scene from Josie’s wedding.

He describes it like I’d told him, with a few altered details.

Instead of the community centre gathering room with a Pee Wee practice down on the ice, the wedding is in a former cannery turned into a banquet hall. There’s turkey and mashed potatoes drying out in the chafing dishes. Josie had roast beef and red fingerlings. The same sunflower and daisy bouquets in clear glass vases with blue ribbons around thick stems. Lara, who Michael’s never met, was on her fifth glass of table wine and already hammered. Up at the mic she unfolded her speech and then crumpled it up in a ball and told the 86 people in the room how Bruce first fucked Sam—although she didn’t use that word, she said seduced, I remember—back when they were only 13. In a mildewed tent trailer set up behind his uncle’s barn, a detail Michael retained.

I’m not sure how to feel when I read the story. Robbed, I suppose. Like part of me, a page from my diary, has been shown to everyone on earth.

How…, I start, but he cuts me off.

It’s fiction, he says, voice firm. I shake my head. I’ve spent enough time with him to know that writing isn’t like that: coring stone and hefting it out intact. It’s about the gemstones, he told me once, and I remember that lecture, given in bed, his palm sliding up my bare hip. You take what you want from the grey shatter of life, he’d whispered before he rolled over and snapped on the light to write the line down.

Hours later, when we were all good and wasted, Josie kept saying, it’s fine, it’s fine, like she was the only one who’d been hurt. We were outside, Lara on her back on the grassy median pointing out the constellations as if we hadn’t all learned them at the same time, on the Grade 7 Mackenzie Island trip. Sam wiped at the cake crumbs caught in the sequins on Josie’s dress. My eyes stung from tears that might have genuine or may have been faked. It seemed all right as we edged past the rage, all that sputtering emotion, but I could sense the encroaching cold, and in the last photo taken of us, Sam and I are squished in the middle, Josie on one end, Lara beside me, the lake a blank blue page behind us. We were 18, and there was the rupture. The dividing line between childhood, becoming adult.

In Michael’s story, the women fight, but they take it off stage while Trout does shots at the fake luau bar with his best man, bemoaning his lost lifestyle. He doesn’t deal with the conflict between us and I know it’s because he doesn’t understand, not really. Michael always wanted to hear stories like the one about Chad Dunlop who tried to hydroplane over an open hole in the ice and didn’t make it or Adam Gagnon who dropped acid before he went hunting with his buddies and died from a gunshot wound or how we jumped off the cliffs on Lake Matinenda every July, plunging until our toes touched the architecture of sunken logs like an underwater city. He is a man, so I suppose the drama of female relationships—how deep they run, how rocky—just doesn’t appeal. He wants action, adventure.

What if Josie sees it? I ask, the book hanging from my hand. Or Lara or Sam?

He laughs. They won’t, he says. He licks the sticky champagne off his lips, presses them together so his mouth turns into a thin line. If I’d known it would bother you…, he says.

I want to tap my finger against the black letters on the page, marching so steadily in even explaining lines, and say, This is mine. This is ours.

You cocksucker, I’d add. You asshole.

But how can I?

I lift the story up to my face and finish it. Trout and his bride walk a path in the woods for photos, passing through the mist off a waterfall that tumbles into a crumbling gorge. He drapes his jacket around her shoulders while the family watches, framed by the wide doorway of the old cannery. Later, he fumbles a clichéd kiss with the bridesmaid in the kitchen, his hand cupping her ass through the thin yellow taffeta of her dress while the catering staff moves around them, oblivious, and the bridesmaid, heavy in the story with a flush of acne on her chin, kisses him greedily back.

Oh, shit, I say out loud, the book dropping into my lap. My mouth tastes sour. I think that’s it, I tell him. I think we’re done.

Because of a story, he says, surprised. I don’t hear it as a question although it might be one. He doesn’t speak as I go around his place stuffing items into my purse—a loose sock, the box of tampons from under the sink. While I search out every personal fragment, I remember the night Josie and I told him about her wedding. More and more details spouted out of me, as Josie faked laughter at our old selves and tried to get me to stop. Her free hand heavy on my arm as I plunged forward, thinking all the while how none of it actually meant anything, how no one else would ever care so much, as much as us.

That night, on Josie’s back deck, Michael manned the barbecue while we stood with drinks in our hands, poured into red plastic glasses. Josie’s cheeks burned; there was an embarrassed smirk on her face. I could tell, though, that she was pleased to be the centre of attention so I kept going right to the bitter end when I told him how Bruce had moved out. Fun while it lasted, eh, Jose? I said meanly, poking a finger into the extra flesh on her waist, watching her coy grin disappear. Jealous, I suppose, of how Michael looked at her, as if she was so exotic, had lived such an interesting life.

Lauren Carter is the author of the dystopian literary fiction novel Swarm which appeared on the CBC Canada Reads Top 40 list of books that could change Canada. She is at work on a second poetry collection, a book of short stories and another novel at her home in The Pas, Manitoba. Visit her at www.laurencarter.ca

Collage by Dave Donald

Inside media’s troubling gender-biased coverage of celebrity meltdowns

Charlie Sheen took thinking outside the bun to a whole new level in July when he drunkenly wandered around a Taco Bell drive thru greeting fellow fast food visitors with “Sorry I am so fucking hammered.” Video of the incident soon made the rounds and the winning warlock was once again making headlines. As it did with the actor’s well-publicized 2011 meltdown, media covered Sheen’s bad behaviour like it was a sitcom—wondering what hilarity and hijinks he would get up to next. Then and now, his substance abuse problems, anti-Semitism, and responsibility for making #winning happen were largely swept under the rug. Little mention was made of his history of violence against
women or his lacklustre parenting record. Instead, Sheen landed a 2012 Rolling Stone cover and made several prime time appearances. He earned reported $1.8 million (U.S.) per episode of Two and a Half Men.

It doesn’t take long to see the double standard when it comes to celebrity meltdowns: Compare coverage of Sheen’s meltdown to that of Drake-lover Amanda Bynes or an umbrella-wielding Britney Spears. At the same time Sheen was gracing the cover of Rolling Stone, Lindsay Lohan appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in a piece that painstakingly detailed Lohan’s substance abuse issues and legal troubles. It also made frequent reference to her haggard appearance and questioned whether she would ever, ever get her once-promising career back on track. The verdict: no. Sheen #winning. Lohan #tragic.

For bad boys like Sheen being bad is good for business. Not so much for Lohan. Her last film The Canyons was largely panned before it even hit theatres. Reviewers seemed unable to separate the Lohan they saw on the big screen with the Lohan they saw on the TMZ small screen. Lohan is definitely not the worst thing about The Canyons, but almost every review focussed on her performance and never missed an opportunity to refer to her as “embattled actress Lindsay Lohan” or “troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan.” Chris Brown is always just Chris Brown not “Rihanna beater Chris Brown” or “violent misogynist Chris Brown” or “serial douchebag Chris Brown.”

And then there’s Shia LaBeouf. Where do we even start? If you’re just joining the LaBeouf crazy train already in progress: he’s been arrested for disturbing a theatre performance (he didn’t care much for Cabaret); chased a homeless men around Times Square; plagiarized people; punched people; and just generally behaved bizarrely. He announced his retirement from acting—how very 2010 Joaquin Phoenix of him—and then appeared at a film festival sporting a paper bag over his head with “I’m Not Famous Anymore” scrawled on it. It turns out this was all part of a performance art piece called #IAMSORRY. Media coverage of the piece focussed on LaBeouf’s eccentricity and his valuable contribution to the dialogue around performance art. One media outlet even gathered a panel of performance artists to discuss LaBeouf’s work with one going so far as to say: “He’s starting a broad cultural discussion that needs to be had.”

Following his recent booze-fuelled NYC meltdown, the media speculated on whether LaBeouf would head to rehab. He was photographed carrying an AA book which was enough to satisfy bloggers who didn’t question whether LaBeouf was really serious about recovery or if the book was just a PR prop. There was mention of his mental state, but not nearly the coverage of say a 2007 head-shaving Spears. The consensus was that LaBeouf ’s career would recover—just maybe not as a theatre reviewer. Compare this to the seemingly endless column inches devoted to whether Lohan’s career will ever bounce back and speculation that the mean girl now uses her talent to trade blowies for blow.

Media rarely commented on LaBeouf’s appearance, despite the fact that disturbia could be used to refer to one of his films, as well as his approach to personal hygiene. Media coverage of Bynes’ meltdown focused largely on her physical appearance, commenting on what she wore and how much her appearance had changed—and not in a good way. The media regularly updates us on Sheen, while Bynes has received little post-meltdown coverage. Redemption stories
only get coverage when there’s a male protagonist. And while the Bynes story has a happy ending—post rehab she is doing better and has not once asked Drake to murder her vagina—that’s not always the case. If Lohan or Bynes were to die, they would get a media circus of Whitney Houston proportions, not the respectful coverage afforded Philip Seymour Hoffman or Heath Ledger.

I hope it doesn’t come to that, and that Lohan’s actually been punking us all this time. Soon she’ll announce it’s all been one big performance art piece. If she did, the media would no doubt accuse her of stealing LaBeouf’s paper bag and he’d be arrested for disrupting her show.

Lisa Whittington-Hill is the publisher of This Magazine, and like
Shia, she doesn’t care much for Cabaret.

Cover illustration by Matt Daley

For the past three years, This Magazine has waded deep into the bad deeds of our country’s corporations. Each time, we scour hundreds of public records, court cases, company filings, and media reports to find our country’s most shameful corporate citizens. For 2013-2014, we found more than enough to enrage us. The now (unfortunately) familiar list of bad deeds included everything from shady ethics to eco disasters, and from oppressive labour practices to chilling human rights violations. There are also animal rights horror stories, bad aboriginal relations, and pukey corporate spin.

But, through all of it, this year we also found one thing to make us cheer: people are fighting back. They are protesting and marching, taking companies to court, and launching impressive awareness campaigns. They refuse to be silent. Ready to hold these companies to account? Go on and pick up This Magazine’s second annual Corporate Hall of Shame, on newsstands until the end of October!