As a Canadian, coming to New York in the winter is like walking into someone else’s hell, only to find out that it’s just like home. Like if Mohamed, in casting off the mortal coil, found himself somehow transposed into an Italian hell—you know, the Dante place: the nasty hot weather, the boiling oil, and the rampant buggery. “Hell? Shit, this ain’t so bad.” Hitches up his jallebeya and scratches at himself. “What’s Whitey bitching about?”

We rolled into town swathed to the eyebrows in cheap but effective winter gear. We looked like Walmart Eskimos. The White Trash from the End of the World. I imagined the New Yorkers sneering behind our backs. Them in their stylin’ double breasted wool overcoats with the big lapels and funky little hats, their ears white with cold, shivering, their hands stuffed into their nethers to ward off frost bite. Maybe they stared enviously. I don’t know.

New York gave me some very strange dreams. One night I dreamed I was playing golf in Bhutan with Charles Levinson. We were plotting to murder someone but I can’t remember who, but I think we were going to do it with a nine iron. I think it was because the place where we were staying—we were house-sitting for Mike and Kelly, friends who have two small children—was full of toys that talked. Great piles of plastic cars and model space ships and guns, keyboards, toy drills and so on and on. The alphabetic fridge magnets sounded out their sounds (“I am an A, and I sound like this…. Aaaaaaaa”), the race track in the bedroom said “Give me speed! Speeeeeeed!” and the spaceships made little laser “tew tew” noises and barked commands at one another “Break right!” and so on. It was all very animist and disturbing. The worst was the Storm Trooper helmet that looked like a severed head. I was helping Mike unload the car after they came back. It was piled high with more toys that talked. It was the middle of the night and the snow was swirling around us and we were both freezing (me because I left my coat inside, Mike because he lives in New York now and if he wasn’t freezing he wouldn’t fit in). Mike pulled the head out of the trunk and stuck it under his arm and started to trudge back up the street. It eyed me for a moment then yelled “I’ve got you covered!”