Jane Finch Is Doomed
Jane Finch lived in a very spacious apartment close to the
intersection of College & Bathurst in Toronto. Her apartment was
very spacious because she didn’t have enough furniture to fill it. She
had spread her furniture across two rooms six months ago, when her
roommate committed suicide. She had felt that it would be difficult to
find a new roommate on craigslist, without admitting the details of her
previous roommate’s suicide, (extremely messy), so she spread her
furniture out over two rooms and therefore found herself with a more
spacious apartment. Twice, she brought boys back to the apartment and
twice, they said the words ‘feng shui’.As a result, she wrote a series of poems called ‘Fucking and Feng Shui,’ which were difficult to understand and generally ‘lacking in literary merit’. Jane later realised that just because she knew a good poem when she saw one, it didn’t necessarily mean that she could write good poems herself. On the night on which she realised this, Jane Finch sat on the edge of her bed for a long time and repeatedly said ‘Goddamnit!’ while brushing her hair.
Jane Finch didn’t have to worry about the rent money for the two rooms though, because her parents were oil tycoons who paid for her to live a lavish lifestyle. The Finch family had been severely fucked up as a result of a rapid transition from a fairly well-off, middle class background to a nouveau-riche/douchebag sort of situation. Her parents now lived in Las Vegas, in a hotel suite. Her brother lived in Dubai, on board a yacht.
Jane Finch lived in a two bedroom apartment with very little furniture. She was mostly frugal with money but sometimes would go on shopping sprees at ‘The Gap’ and would sometimes splurge on expensive hummus. She wore neutral coloured clothing made from cotton and sometimes cashmere. The cashmere came from Banana Republic and felt gentle on her sensitive skin. Her interests included self-help books, professional ice hockey and crack cocaine.
For a while, Jane thought about moving to Portland, Oregon a lot. She heard that there was a good music scene, or something. She liked music. She imagined that there would be a lot of ‘cute band guys’ in Portland, Oregon. She fantasized about an unhealthy relationship with a violent drunk named Tag who would cut her thighs with razor blades during sex. Jane Finch considered herself a real freak and she wasn't happy about it. She could recognise that she had been seriously fucked up by her family’s meteoric rise to riches, so she started to see a therapist twice a week to alleviate her anxiety. Unfortunately her therapist was insane and derived pleasure from Jane’s misery. The therapist smelled like cigarettes and tequila, which Jane Finch thought was sexy.
And then one time she saw a post-it note on her therapist’s desk that said the words, ’Jane Finch is doomed’.
Jane was constantly plagued by the idea that moving to a new place would solve all of her problems. Despite knowing that moving to a new place would most likely create more problems, she fixated on the idea of moving to a new place for several hours every evening. She once bought a plane ticket to Brazil as a direct result of some kind of Holly Golightly hallucination, and then she later wrote a poem called ‘The Holly Golightly Hallucination,’ but just like the rest of her work, it really sucked.
Jane Finch felt like a failure and she was tired of things. She woke up one morning with a tremendous urge to wander the streets aimlessly whilst listening to The Absence of God by Rilo Kiley on repeat. She had, also, a tremendous urge to eat an entire bag of ‘Smart food’ popcorn. She was impulsive and she was stubborn, and once Jane Finch got an idea into her head, there was no way to stop her from acting on it. Especially when the idea was about smart food popcorn, or crack.
Jane Finch walked out of her apartment in the morning and headed North towards Bloor Street. When she got to Bloor, she turned right and headed East, walking on the South side of the street, until after a while she walked into the BMV bookstore and stood in front of the poetry shelves for the duration of one play through The Absence of God, (3 minutes and 56 seconds).
She picked up a copy of Anne Sexton’s selected poems ($3.99) and slipped it into her coat pocket. She didn’t need to steal of course, because her parents were fucked up oil tycoons who lived in a hotel suite, but she didn’t much feel like speaking to the cashier in the store either. She slipped a $100 bill into a secondhand copy of Letters To A Young Poet by Rilke instead, and let the song play through again. She skimmed through Rilke. The thought, ‘This is good shit,’ flew through her brain and she smiled a little bit. She may even have giggled.
The song ended and she decided she liked it a lot. It was probably her favourite song of the last year, she thought. ‘I’ve got to get out of here’ she said, to nobody in particular, and a middle-aged man smiled as though he felt embarrassed. Then a plant died. Then a tsunami started to form in the South Pacific... but that was unrelated.
Jane Finch started walking quickly along Bloor Street, heading East towards downtown. She had listened to the Absence of God nine times at this point and she was starting to experience very strong feelings regarding Jenny Lewis. Jane started to wonder if she was a maniac. She thought, ‘I wonder if I am a maniac?’ and looked across the street at three pizza places. She thought ‘Pizzaiolo is best.’ and then ‘Pizza Pizza sucks’ and then ‘I wonder if I am a maniac?!’ She started laughing pretty loudly as she passed over Spadina. ‘I am most definitely a maniac!’ she thought.
As she walked past The Gap and Banana Republic, she waved to the staff members with whom she was on first name terms and they came rushing to the door to smile at her and wish her well. One girl cheered, ‘Jane Finch, we love you!’ and Jane cheered and smiled too. She cheered and smiled all the way to Yonge Street and then she thought, ‘Those people are fucked up.’
Jane Finch started running once she got to Yonge Street. She was still listening to The Absence of God and she had eaten two large bags of smart food popcorn, (and she had left a light trail of kernels). She was running really fast. She headed East towards the Danforth, running faster than a world class athlete and singing loudly along with the music, ‘You’re not happy, but you’re funny, and I’m tripping over my joy!’
At which point, she tripped over a piece of garbage on the sidewalk and fell down a hole, into the depths of hell.
She remembered the post it note as she descended.
Jane Finch is doomed.
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