Harmless Misfits

By Vera Oren

Six stories about six different men, an University professor forced to retire by false accusations, a man reliving his parents' loss through his sister's story, a alcoholic man and his first days in rehab, a man redescovering love after years of tendernessless, a man coping with a society chaging rapidly and a millenium man trying to keep his sanity in a fluid and unforgivable environment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796063424

Vera Oren

Vera Varga is a sixty-year-old electrical engineer born in Bucharest to a poor family. She fell madly in love with her husband, and she left Romania for Israel in 1980, where she spent six years. She is currently living in Montreal with her husband. She has two kids. She loves writing. This book is her first book.

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Copyright © 2020 by Vera Oren.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/22/2020

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Contents

Chapter 1 Fading Lion

Chapter 2 Coliva

Chapter 3 Razors Cuts

Chapter 4 The Ceremony

Chapter 5 Democracy of Shaming

Chapter 6 The Prophet

1

Fading Lion

It was only an ordinary Friday in July and Leo was feeling a bit idle and out of place. He was sitting on a bench not far from Goldman’s hall at McGill University wistful of the past that he has to face in 30 min. He let himself bask in the glow of the afternoon sun sieved by the yellowish leaves. Watching the young women passing by with revealing see through deep V neck T-shirts matched with extremely short summer shorts didn’t change his mood. The hips and the gentle arc of half-naked breast and snappy nipples seem to make his blood flow through his body rejuvenating a lost feeling of lust that quickly disappeared like fairy dust on a golden lake.

Many of them were sporting a smooth skin covered in tattoos, like a transparent veil of a sari, a half shaved head, blue short hair or lip piercing. They were rebellious against their natural beauty, placing themselves to the opposite spectrum of Barbies.

He looked up. The sky was hazy blue and a white lace of a shredded cloud was stuck in the branches of the maple trees. He realized that he chose this spot because of those trees. Maya leaned on one of them 15 years ago. The persistent and annoying drone of bulldozers cracking the asphalt on Sherbrooke Street, not fading away, was bringing him to reality.

Leo left home at 10h00 AM early enough to get in time from Ste Agathe to downtown Montreal. Montreal is not his place anymore. The traffic has been horrendous. He had a chuckle thinking that the ultimate proof of love is to fight the Montreal traffic on an ordinary Friday. He and Rebecca were hip when living in Griffintown, their loft with high ceiling fit to stuck books for no place left on the shelves. There he was prone to write poetry like any young man doing scuba not afraid to dive in deep waters. Now, they are a nice couple in a huge chalet. He has a real office, a real desk, but he feels more like a prisoner in a cell with a nice view. In there, he is prone to write fiction or even worst, a meaningful book about social changes well documented where the footnotes are paramount and peer approval needed.

After his slalom through the orange cones of Montreal construction sites making the downtown a maze, he parked his car in the spot he was happy he still remembered and he went straight to McGill Community for Lifelong Learning (MCLL).

He didn’t see anything on MCLL activity board located on the first floor of 688 Sherbrooke West just across the secretariat. The hall still had the heavy scent of old people even if nobody was on sight. Fridays’ lectures were scheduled between 1 and 3 PM, now was almost 4 PM. Maybe it was just dust. He is old too, but he still has problems admitting. He was glad the hall was empty. He is a bit unsettled by those old ladies despaired to be cool while sporting tied jogging suits, the best suspender for sagging skin. They are all in shape, toned tights but wrinkled faces trying to be presentable for their grandkids or for a last minute lover who never comes. Others are flashy and flamboyant, wearing big earrings, flowery dresses or colorful hats. He is lucky to have Rebecca, his wife. She is 60 years old and still working remotely most of the time as an IT consultant. She is content with her age, she is classy and elegant, with a soft unwrinkled skin, except maybe the wrinkles around her lips, and a fit body without doing any sport blessed by the fact that her body was not tortured by pregnancy. She has good genes, the genes of an undying love for him. She smokes long, white, feminine cigarettes and when she does, her ample gestures give her character and substance. Or maybe, he is used with her and he sees her through a lens without focus.

He used to despise this McGill wing, a wing of white heads looking to get themselves a temporary goal in late life or to find a long forgotten hobby. This was beneath him, a professor for 30 years, a scholar with credentials. He dedicated his free time of retirement to write a book and he is proud of it, a detailed history of an insidious movement, the post modernism. He was able to be objective and fair, an easy task when you have nothing to lose anymore.

The MCLL Dean invited him two years ago to give a lecture on SJW but he refused. This was a trap. SJW, BLM, LGTBQ, GMO, a society of overly sensitive millenniums who are not comfortable with culture appropriation or with classical and cruel literature, stopping any debate by screaming, attacking, condemning and using slogans as Shame & White men tears and trigger warning, refusing to communicate, a mob entitled to unlike a less lenient professor, but also entitled to leave the classes and religiously find refuge in safe rooms.

McGill Human Resources also got a trigger warning soon after the June 2010 meeting of the admission committee for the Graduate Philosophy studies, a meeting that killed his carrier. He was in the committee and he didn’t accept the unwritten rule embraced by most of his peers, to compensate merit by color or gender or both. He insisted that McGill tradition was always Judge by merit be color blind or sex blind as Justice Statue. This tradition didn’t stop diversity in the campus if you want to look around. Not even a month after the two following letters from the administration asking him to give his vote of approval to 5 Post graduate students, two blacks, two gays and one gender neutral, who’s grades where not among the top 10 % of applications and after two refusals from his part, he has been offered an early retirement package he could not refuse.

He took the exit and crossed the street to enter the Goldman building where he found his poster on activity board on the ground floor. To calm down his nerves, he went outside and found a bench in the shadow. The bench didn’t change but he did, he lost touch with this world that once was his, a world where touching is forbidden. He is a man of physical touch and now a days touching is banned. A man cannot nudge or hug a woman without being accused of inappropriate behaviour. No wonder so many young men resort to touching themselves in front of a laptop. The new world is full of robots and clones and drones, apps, icons, emoji, twitters and likes, urban legends, hackers, viruses and tinder subscriptions. He wouldn’t be able to function among hipsters and gamers, metros and queers, intimidated men and provoking but offended young women. Leo doesn’t get it how Maya became part of this movement.

Indeed, Maya was one of them but lately she was not so sure anymore. In fact, she was wondering right now while she crossed the street following without knowing his footsteps making her way through the construction cones, cones looking more like lazy queen bees. The noise of bulldozers was like a Tam-Tam Sunday session on Mont Royal, the sound reverberating in her chest like a dysfunctional heartbeat. Montreal became a crazy city, alive and surprising. When she was with Leo, McGill ghetto was serene.

She is late, 20 min to go. She rushed when she left her friend’s loft and she doesn’t remember if she turned on the house alarm. She went straight to Goldman’s and checked the poster, big yellow letters Deconstructing post modernism with Maya Varga and Leo Levy - Debate but if you get close enough you can see that every letter is written with small crying emoji. This was a different version that the one approved by her. Two days ago, Lumbria, her Haitian assistant sent her the poster for review. Now, her and his pictures were on opposite corners of the posters, facing each other, open mouth. She didn’t like it. Their wanton anger didn’t go well with the rainbows on the two other corners. The poster was crooked, making them look like the two angry lovers from Klimt’s The kiss now being separated. Where did they find those pictures? Do they know anything? She disliked the poster not able to pinpoint why. Maya tilted her head to check the location, Agora, Science building, up the hill.

She exited the hall through the revolving doors to face the heat and the hill. She didn’t notice Leo sitting on a bench and looking up at the sky. She turned right taking the hill along the Economics building while Leo lowered