Adam Fieled (Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania, USA): "Undercurrents"
In the usual miscellaneous array of things-that-have-been,
the early Aughts emerge as another time, another configuration.
The idea of the Internet café, passe by the Twenties, was big
then. What Saint Catherine Street had was an Internet café
of sorts, directly across the street from Mary and I’s temporary
abode, and also on the second floor. So that, if Mary was tired
out from the day’s exertions, and we were, perhaps, waiting to
change clothes and go out to dinner, she would pick up her
sketch book and I would head across the street. The café level
was weak; they didn’t have much but candy, candy bars, & soda;
but that wasn’t important to me. The big e-mail I remember
receiving in Montreal was from Ted, who I had grown up with
in Cheltenham. Ted, who had a bi-coastal orientation at the time,
but was always interested to hear what had befallen his errant,
unceasingly amusing comrade. Ted heard the entire tale of our
vacation as it had unfolded, and offered a sense of congratulations
for our having arrived, albeit briefly, as ex-pats. As I would read
Ted’s missives, I flashed back to being thirteen with Ted at
the Jersey shore. It was all there— the Otherness, the adventure
level of being in a strange place, and I was already precociously
dreaming of blonde goddesses, even as Ted preferred brunettes.
The picture snapped of us, together on a floatation device, returning
from a bout with Atlantic undercurrents— salt on our tongues, we’d
been dunked— was about brotherhood. We took on the ocean together.
Now, we were handling another ocean— marriage. Salt on our tongues,
indeed. Ted thought of me in Montreal with the blonde, remained
laconic about his brunette. I didn’t push. But the two grown men
lived with undercurrents we could never have guessed were there, before.
© Adam Fieled 2026
the early Aughts emerge as another time, another configuration.
The idea of the Internet café, passe by the Twenties, was big
then. What Saint Catherine Street had was an Internet café
of sorts, directly across the street from Mary and I’s temporary
abode, and also on the second floor. So that, if Mary was tired
out from the day’s exertions, and we were, perhaps, waiting to
change clothes and go out to dinner, she would pick up her
sketch book and I would head across the street. The café level
was weak; they didn’t have much but candy, candy bars, & soda;
but that wasn’t important to me. The big e-mail I remember
receiving in Montreal was from Ted, who I had grown up with
in Cheltenham. Ted, who had a bi-coastal orientation at the time,
but was always interested to hear what had befallen his errant,
unceasingly amusing comrade. Ted heard the entire tale of our
vacation as it had unfolded, and offered a sense of congratulations
for our having arrived, albeit briefly, as ex-pats. As I would read
Ted’s missives, I flashed back to being thirteen with Ted at
the Jersey shore. It was all there— the Otherness, the adventure
level of being in a strange place, and I was already precociously
dreaming of blonde goddesses, even as Ted preferred brunettes.
The picture snapped of us, together on a floatation device, returning
from a bout with Atlantic undercurrents— salt on our tongues, we’d
been dunked— was about brotherhood. We took on the ocean together.
Now, we were handling another ocean— marriage. Salt on our tongues,
indeed. Ted thought of me in Montreal with the blonde, remained
laconic about his brunette. I didn’t push. But the two grown men
lived with undercurrents we could never have guessed were there, before.
© Adam Fieled 2026
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