Read an Excerpt from The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley

Award-winning writer and filmmaker Alex Pugsley has reached the middle of his recent trilogy of novels, with the author bringing the reader back into the world of Aubrey Mckee, who is winding his way in and out of love at the close of the twentieth century.

Moving from the Halifax of the previous novel (Aubrey McKee), the titular character finds themselves in early-nineties Toronto, where they happen upon a beguiling stranger named Gudrun Peel at a house party. This kicks off an exciting and idiosyncratic relationship in which both characters sometimes thrive and sometimes struggle to find their footing as their creative and personal lives develop and their love deepens in complexity. 

The Education of Aubrey McKee (Biblioasis) is an apt title for a novel about two people discovering themselves in the city of Toronto, a metropolitan campus in which they live, work, and play, and where they learn who they are within the bright bloom of first love.

We're delighted to share an excerpt from the latest in the Aubrey McKee trilogy right here on Open Book!

An excerpt from The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley

Falling in Love with Gudrun Peel

By Alex Pugsley

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Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: 

For thy love is better than wine.

   — highlighted in Gudrun’s copy of The Song of Songs

She was Snow White with tangly hair.  Snow White in falling-apart corduroys.  Snow White confronting a mystery.  To see the colour rise in the cheek of Gudrun Peel was like the completion of a prophecy.  I wanted to be the first she saw when she cleared her hair from her eyes, the first she thought to tell a funny story, the first to hear her views on everything.  I dreamt often of her face and waist, wondered why her fingers smelled faintly of peppermint, my awareness of her addictive, increasing, circumambient.  I loved how smartly she thought about the world.  She had an elliptical intelligence and her intuitions for the movement of beauty—behind the curtain, around the bend—quirked often into a sort of genius.  Sometimes, fearing things were moving too fast, she’d kick me out and midnights would find me walking home dazed and disoriented.  But soon we seemed to spend every night together, my clothes at her place, hers at mine, every evening a fascination.

We saw movies the world remembers—GoodFellas, Miller’s Crossing, The Grifters—and movies the world does not—The Russia House, Henry & June, The Nasty Girl.  On weekends, we’d wake near noon, go for newspapers, and return with croissants and coffees.  We’d wander Queen Street or simply return to bed.  “I think I’m actually sore,” she said happily.  It was intoxicating to have someone kiss you, miss you, wish to be with you.  I think we were daring to be in love and beginning to prepare, in some not-too-distant future, a place for ourselves.

“I don’t know,” said Gudrun one night when we were both in her bathtub.  “Maybe this year’s gone all wrong.”  

“How’s that?”

“Because I was sort of planning to have three lovers.  Two men and one woman.  That’s what I was planning in my head.  When I got back from Poland.  And I was going to arrange it so they had different nights and never meet.  It was going to be very sophisticated and discreet and very—something.”  She passed me a face cloth.  “Ah, if I had to do it all over, I’d be a dyke.  Wash my back?”

“You would?”

“I don’t know if I really would.  But I’d be more adventurous.  I tried to pick up a woman once.”

“I’ve tried that.  What’d you do?”  

“And wash up there?  Oh, I sprawled on her bed and tried to look sexy.”

“How’d it go?”

She shrugged.  “Didn’t really happen.  I mean, I’ve thought about being with a woman but it’d probably be too confusing.”

“I’m washing here, too.  I just think I should’ve slept with more people in university.”  

“I wouldn’t worry about it.  You’ve got a cute butt.”

“Yeah?  I’m so grateful when my butt works for someone.  Though then I always feel sorry for them.”  

“Oh God—” said Gudrun.  “I’ve played that game.  The what’s-wrong-with-them game.  I used to think every person attracted to me was sort of defective.”  

“Wait—I’m defective?”

“Oh, you know you’ve thought that, too.  I mean—”  She laughed at the ambiguity.  “That people attracted to you were.”  She stood up.  “Listen to us.  We’re doomed.  Only a couple of goombas would talk like this.”    

“Hey— ”  I watched the water spill from her shoulders.  “When do I get to read what you’re writing?  I thought you said I could read a poem.”  

“I don’t remember that.  Must’ve been one of your other girlfriends.  Must’ve been your fiancée.”  She stepped to the bathmat and reached for a towel.  “No, I don’t think I want you to read anything, Clifford.  Not now.”  She wrapped the towel around her waist.  “I know I’m being weird but I had this vision of you talking to people about it and it freaked me out.  And Dalton, when he read my stuff, well, I was absolutely sort of destroyed by his reaction to my work.  Probably because he was right.”  

I watched her wrap a second towel around her head.  “I have to tell you something,” I said.  “When I first read a poem by you, I threw the zine at the window.  I didn’t like it.”

“It was probably something I wrote when I was eighteen.  I was kind of a jerk back then.  I mean, most of my poems were flops in one way or another.”  She picked up a toothbrush.  “There’s this long poem I’ve wanted to do for years but it’s just not working.  I mean, all my poems are barely one page.”

“You’re probably not a real poet until you write a four-pager.”

“Yeah?  It’s sort of gross being young and doing work you’re not proud of.  I’m always thinking am I writing something sucky?  And most of the time, yup, I am.  And stuff recently?  Terrible.  Like worse than undergrad.”  She blew a sigh through her lips.  “Being a poet is one of the stupidest things ever.  No one cares if there’s another book of poetry in the world.  And how do I even talk to people about what I do?  It’s like an AA meeting.  ‘Hi, my name is Gudrun and I’m a poet.’”  She sighed, conscious of difficulties past and present, and rinsed the toothbrush under the tap.  “I just want to do something real.  Not a stapled-together zine.  Or a poem in a journal nobody reads.”  She squirted Colgate onto the bristles of the toothbrush.  “I do all this shit.  I do a bunch of random jobs.  All I want is one ‘Gretel in Darkness’ and my own book.  Is that too much to ask?”  She gazed at me in the mirror.  “Because without a book, Clifford, I’m sort of fucked.  I won’t get a proper job.  I won’t get a placement.  I don’t want to be thirty years old without a book.  No one will take me seriously.”  

“I will.”

“You’re sweet, Aubrey.  But you’re not the world.”  When she was finished brushing her teeth, she looked at me.  “I’ll write you your own poem if you want.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, I promise.”

“Will you put rain in it?”

“As you wish.”

“Will it rhyme?”

“Well,” she said, “a poet never knows.  It’s only in the writing that you find out.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“About as complicated as your butt.”

“Let me see your butt.  Lift up that towel?”

“Oh, I see what you’re thinking—”  She glanced into the tub.  “You little floater.”

“Maybe I am.  I don’t know.”

Gudrun suddenly shut her eyes, as if in sharp pain.  

“Clifford,” I said.  “Are you all right?”

“Oh my God you make me want things.”

“What things?”

“All of it.  I don’t know.  Weddings.  Babies.  Houses.  Stuff I never really considered before.”  She pursed her lips.  “Maybe we should’ve met after a couple more relationships.” 

“Well, we’ve known each other almost two months now.  I think we should worry about our relationship way more.  Like, put aside time each day to be frightened.”

Gudrun jiggled her head, as if to concede her histrionics, and asked, “You coming to bed?

“Give me a kiss?”

She bent down and gave me a toothpaste-y kiss.  “I might have to just fall asleep tonight.” 

“Cool.  I’ll just lie in bed and stare at your ass.” 

“Ha!” said Gudrun.  “That’s the real McKee.  You should do that more.”

*

Lying in bed, as she slept beside me, I kissed her shoulder, her ear, the nape of her neck, and stared at the line of her profile.  She seemed perfection itself—her hair so black, her complexion so fresh—her beauty was as stark as a black-inked comma typeset on white paper.  I don’t think I’d ever felt closer to anyone in my life.  

“Gudrun,” I whispered, for my movements had wakened her.  “I love being with you.”  

“Mmm-hmm,” she murmured, before falling back asleep.  “Me too.”

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Alex Pugsley is the author of the novels Aubrey McKee and The Education of Aubrey McKee, as well as the short story collection Shimmer. Following the publication of Aubrey McKee, he was named one of CBC’s Writers to Watch. He has been nominated for Canadian Comedy Awards, Gemini Awards, Hot Doc Awards, National Magazine Awards, and is a winner of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. His feature film Dirty Singles is available on Apple TV and Prime Video. His next novel, Silver Lake, the third book in a series about Aubrey McKee, is forthcoming from Biblioasis.