Husk Read Online Free PDF

was. There’s no way to retain the information, almost as if it isn’t mine to keep. I figure it has something to do with the change in air pressure, or maybe another side effect of the detox pill, except the first time it happened I was neither on a plane nor medicated.That bothers me. I sit in first class waiting anxiously for the flight to be over, being short and dismissive with the stewardesses when they ask if there is anything they can do to improve my flight experience. My thoughts race. it seems all I have is time to think. A sense of guilt seeps into me, though there is no basis for it. I feel like a total shit. I feel like I have to remind myselfwhy it is I do what I do.
    You see, I’m not what you’d call a skilled man. No trades or talents. I can’t act, don’t play an instrument. Singing a single note in tune is a personal challenge. I’ve got two left feet on a good day. Hell, my work ethic in general leaves a lot to be desired. What I do possess is the looks and little else. It’salways been this way. There wasn’t much for me growingup. My parents, good people, worked tirelessly at low-wage jobs so me and my sisters could keep pace with our peers, just enough to dodge the label of
poor
. Even when I was young I knew the family was living cheque to cheque, sometimes day to day. The fights I heard through the walls, always money, always too little of it. The constant phone calls and piles of mail, new credit card offers alongsideletters from collection agencies running out of patience. First notices, second notices, final notices. Mom and Dad hid it from the kids as best they could, but they couldn’t plug every hole in that crumbling dam.
    There were times when it was more obvious. Conversations overheard, Dad asking friends for loans, Mom requesting emergency funds from family. Once in a while my sisters or I would answerthe phone and get an earful from whoever was owed, threats being thrown around that we were too young to understand. None of us answered the front door much when the doorbell rang. We would stay quiet until the shadowed figures behind the frosted glass moved away. Sometimes our electricity or phone would be cut for a while. Mom walked out on us a few times, unable to cope, only to return laterladen with guilt. Dad increased his drinking. There were times my parents didn’t talk to each other for days, sometimes weeks after a bad blowout.
    Somewhere in those formative years I made a firm decision not to live that way. I craved security, the kind that only fat bank accounts could afford. Instability was unbearable. The anxiety of my folks not knowing wherenext month’s rent was comingfrom affected everybody. Living one bounced cheque away from the poverty line was always on our minds, driving wedges between us when we needed each other most. The absence of money somehow managed to trump all other aspects of our lives. Everything else we had, we had to spare: love, laughs, a certain liberty around the dinner table. My parents entertained every far-fetched dream their kids everhad, told me I would be someone important one day, told me to follow my gut and walk my path wherever it led. I believed them, wholeheartedly.
    I did my damnedest to come out on top, played every card I could. People said study hard. I hit the books. Guidance counsellor told me to go to university. I applied to the best. Eventually I graduated with a Bachelor of Fuck-All and tallied up a shitloadof school debt for my troubles as I entered a job market that was already saturated with degrees and diplomas, but lacking any real opportunities. I ended up taking whatever I could with the rest of the over-educated suckers. We, the post-secondary mass-produced, bartenders with bachelors, hostesses with honours, managers with masters, all of us employed in a tenth of the capacity we were goodfor doing jobs we never expected.
    That’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when everything you were working toward was