The only death before this moment that has truly shaken and disoriented me with grief was the death of that laptop. Until now the only event that even let me access the dark topographies of death was the loss of that laptop. The only benchmark I had to anticipate my grief over your death was the death of that laptop. You, preceded only by my MacBook. And it occurs to me this betrays the truly pathetic and barren emotional landscape of my life. Reveals my heart to be the stunted and gnarled root vegetable in the ground that it is: a sheltered white turnip. But I had six years of writing saved on that laptop. Plays, half-finished novels, my best thoughts. My best self. All the videos I ever filmed, all my photos — my trips, my friends, my family. My young adulthood. Erased.

I was writing late one night at the kitchen table. Will was back home visiting his family in PEI, so I had Videofag to myself. I went to pick up my mug of tea when it slipped from my fingers and clattered across my keyboard. Fuck fuck fuck, I grabbed my laptop, flipped it upside down, shook it twice, righted it, and used my sweatshirt to wipe the keys clean. It wasn’t so much, I reassured myself. Most of it went on the desk. And I had acted quickly and decisively. For good measure I saved my document, shut down my laptop, and stuck it in a large bag of basmati rice I had in the cupboard. Ana had shared this trick with me; she apparently saved her computer this way after dousing it with red wine. I killed an hour pottering about the kitchen before pulling the laptop back out of the rice. I placed it down on the counter, pressed the power button, and it awoke with its usual perky chime. I opened my Word doc and everything was there. I typed some nonsense and the letters appeared just as they always did. The A key produced a’s, the L key produced l’s, and the space bar made spaces as it was wont to do. I went back to my desk and carried on writing.