I remember sitting beside Brenda for one whole semester of Introductory Phenomenology, more fascinated by her elaborate grid for notetaking than by anything Edmond H. may have said to Martin H. She drew figures in her notebook's margin that seemed to me, at the time, a cruelly derisive comment on the TA's grooming. Only later, when we became better acquainted, did I learn that these drawings were actually supposed to represent me.

What did it mean for your consciousness to be spying on her? How were you to understand an act that in itself constituted a misunderstanding? [5 marks total]

I failed the course.

Much later still, after she had taken several hundred quarters from me during lunchtime games of bridge and euchre, I learned that she and Karl, the grubby teaching assistant, were paying rather more attention to each other's being-there than anyone else in the seminar had suspected. And I was jealous.

Karl, on hearing this, suggested I sleep with them. Brenda, more practical, introduced me to Karen, who (the most practical of all) immediately found a job in Regina, Saskatchewan, and left me a phone number that turned out to be a therapist's. Fortunately, Ida didn't consider my inauthenticity a problem when it came to watching movies.

"I'll just pretend you're Marie Curie," she said. "And I'm Pierre."

I didn't get it, either. But as often as she could slide down Hamilton's mountain, Ida and I had a date. Finally, she said:
"I don't know what you need more, sex or therapy."
"Well, it's too late for you to be my therapist."

It wasn't long after that that she started talking about moving to the west coast.

Alone.

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