My name is Ronald McDonald Weaver and I work in a call centre. As far as shit-jobs go, it's alright. I work inside, there's no heavy lifting or meat frying and a lot of my female co-workers are hot and easy. Sure, I was hearing the incoming call tone in my sleep and answering my home phone with an opening script but the work's straightforward enough. And like any job it would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers.
Beep...beep
“Thank you for calling your Customer Friend Center, my name is Ronald. What would you like to Talk2Me about today?”
“Is this Talk2Me Cellular?” a man’s angry voice asks.
“Yes it is Sir,” I'm wondering whom else this guy expected to talk to after dialling the support line. “How may I help you today?”
“Do you have a thumb up your ass too?” the customer asks without changing tone.
The account information that had populates on my computer screen shows three active units registered to Bob’s Towing. I picture a rough sort of older man in grease stained coveralls on the other end of the connection - the kind of guy wife-beater shirts are made for. “No sir. All digits are present and accounted for.”
“Good, ‘cause I’ve talked to three of you dizzy assholes already and no one seems to understand what I want done here.”
“And how may I help you sir?” I've got the call log associated with his account and there's not reference one to any other calls made today. Which means Mr. Bob’s Towing is full of shit or the so-called dizzy assholes exited the account without noting it. A great first call of the day.
“My bill’s wrong. Fix it.”
I've got last month’s bill in front of me in a jiffy. New charges show $1546.39, a lot for three phones. “I’ll need to know the problem before I can fix anything sir. Who do I have the pleasure of speaking to?”
“You’re speaking to Bob Spitts and the problem is I aint paying you no sixteen hundred for three goddamn phones. Fix it!”
Skimming through the list of charges I can see that each phone has exceeded its allotment of Talk2Me Time which determines how long a customer can use the phone before being butt-raped with overage charges. I communicate this fact to Mr. Spitts.
“Fix it!”
“They’re valid charges sir," I say in my best suck-ass voice. “Each of the users on your account talked for more time than you had contracted with Talk2Me for that month and that’s why your bill is so high.”
“I said fix it!”
“Mr. Spitts, there’s nothing to fix unless you would like to contract with Talk2Me for an increased amount of time per phone. Your bill is correct and I’ve already told you why.”
“And I already told you that I aint paying no sixteen hundred for three phones!”
“And, of course, that’s your choice Mr. Spitts but I am required to remind you that, per your agreement with Talk2Me Cellular, non payment will result in suspension of all services. Past that point we will forward any moneys owed to a collection agency and be shut of you for good.”
“Fuck you and your mother! This is robbery!”
“No sir,” I continue in my best suck-ass voice. “Robbery is using a service without paying for it just because you don’t agree with the charges.”
“Are you calling me a thief, you dizzy asshole?”
“No sir, I was simply clarifying the definition of robbery (you seem to be confused as to its meaning) and to demonstrate that Talk2Me Cellular is not robbing you.”
“Fuck you and all!” Click.
It takes less than a minute for me to leave a log note: All charges valid, see overage, caller hung up before hearing about new rate plan offers. True enough...next.
Beep...beep
“Thank you for calling your Customer Friend Center, my name is Ronald. What would you like to Talk2Me about today?” Nothing. Calls with no one on the other end happen daily in any call center. The deal is you try saying your lines again and hope they’re really not there so you can say your “I’m Dreadfully Sorry Script” and take a breather before the next call. “Thank you for calling your Customer Friend Center...”
“Did you say your name was Ronald?” a woman’s voice asks.
“Yes I did. Just like the burger slinging clown. How may I help you today?”
“I’m not sure that you can.”
“Try me. Nothing's so insurmountable that I can't help."
A moment of silence from her end and then she drops it, “I don’t think I want to live anymore.”
Whoa.
They talk about this kind of thing in training. The chick from HR with the huge cans even came in for an hour to talk about the company's official stance on suicide callers, i.e. pray it never happens. But there's a process involved here too and the first step is keep them talking. “May I ask why Miss?”
“Yes, I guess so. Why do you care?”
“Why did you call?” I ask, stalling for time.
“I wanted to tell somebody,” she says, “and anybody at all would do. Your number was the only one in my Friend File.”
“You’re one of our customers?” Melons McGoo from HR told us in training that some poeple see any kind of service number as a potential sounding-board for marginalized individuals - she menat nutbars. But we were also trained to recognize the company lingo when he heard it. I'm on feet feet signalling wildly for the nearest supervisor to come over.
“I got this phone hoping that I’d be able to have someone call me," she says. "I even left my number on a men’s room wall. You know, for a good time call Fern at 705-476-3161. But no one called. I would have given a dozen blowjobs to anyone who had even called.”
Typing frantically I enter the phone number onto his search field and bingo... Fern French. The supervisor arrives just as I finish writing “I’ve got a suicide call” on a piece of scratch paper. She nods and uses the same paper to capture Fern’s address and contact information before rushing back to her desk to call 911 - all per Talk2Me policy. “Sounds like you’re pretty lonely there Fern?”
“Yeah, alone and lonely. Just me and the whispers.”
“Who’s whispering to you Fern?”
“I don’t know, voices. Sad voices.”
“Sad voices telling you to do bad things Fern?”
“Yes,” she says and then starts crying, great blubbering sobs that fill my ears like poisoned honey that make me forget the company line and actually empathize with this woman. Something that Melons told us was a big no-no.
"Been there," I say.
“Really?”
“Yup. Life can get anybody down, especially if it seems like the universe is singling you out to be ignored and walk the Earth friendless and miserable. Sure I’ve thought about taking the final exit but I was always manage to find a reason not to.”
“Like what?” asks Fern. Her voice is slow and slurry as if she was drunk or stoned and a buzzing static rising and falling over the connection makes me wonder if she might be calling from a basement somewhere. Another point we'd have in common.
“Well first there’s always the great debate on how I’m going to do it.”
“I’ve got a gun,” Fern says and I'm thinking, oh shit, she has a plan. “I read you’re supposed to put it to the roof of your mouth and pull the trigger. At least I can give my gun a blowjob before I die.”
“ I don't know about that. I’ve thought about using a gun myself but then I have to think about the poor bastard who finds me and the mess I’ll leave behind. Personally, I don’t like people having to clean up after me; it’s bad manners, even with suicide.”
“So how do you find the strength not to just pick another way? There are dozens of ways to kill yourself. You can put a bag over your head.”
“Or fill your garage with exhaust and fall asleep in the car."
“There’s hanging,” Fern offers back.
“Or you could do it Roman style and cut your wrists open in a warm bath.”
“You could jump off a bridge.”
“Whoa, I’d have to object to that one. I’ve always considered myself a disciple of the Suicide Protocols and if you plan to jump off a bridge there are factors to consider. Now personally, I wouldn’t want an audience if I was going to jump. People are unpredictable and you never know who might try to stop you in a situation like that. All it would take is one responsible citizen and instead of the Sweet Hereafter you could find yourself under twenty-four hour guard in some drab suicide ward. Or even worse is you get a bunch of yokels urging you on and that can only take away the dignity of your last worldly action. But you don’t want to jump from a deserted bridge either because if suicide’s the last grand gesture it’s kind of pointless if nobody can find your body.”
“You sound like you’ve got it all figured out Ronald,” Fern says through what's left of her tears and with even the hint of a smile in her voice.
“But that’s just it Fern, I don’t. If I had already figured it all out then there’d be nothing left for me to do except off myself. One thing I’ve learned from life is that you never have it figured out, never. And that’s the beauty of it, the beauty of life is that there’s always something new waiting for you around the corner to give you a surprise.”
“Friends?” Fern asks.
“Sure, I’ve been surprised with new friends.” I don't mention that they're a bunch of thrown together misfits suitable only for bad fiction. “Who’s to say that tomorrow won’t have you meeting the certain someone who lives only to make you happy? Just because you’re lonely now doesn’t mean you’ll be lonely forever.”
“I understand what you’re saying but it’s not that easy for me to make friends Ronald. People say I’m repulsive. They call me gross and ugly when I go outside, every time. They make me cry,” and there's a hitch in Fern’s voice now as she tries not too. It doesn’t work. “Oh Ronald!” she wails and there's almost too much pain in those two words for me to bear. “Why does everything have to be so hard?”
I stand up to see what the fuck is taking so long and the supervisor's speaking rapidly to someone through her headset and offers a thumbs up when she sees me looking. Good, real help's on the way. “I know it’s hard now Fern, I do. But remember that life’s always changing, that’s the only thing you can count on really. Well death and taxes too but neither of those is especially appealing to me right at the moment. How about you Fern, do taxes get you down?”
“Sometimes,” she says with a sniffle.
“Same here. Do you cheat on yours too?”
“Sometimes,” she says with a giggle.
“Glad to hear it.” And I take the plunge that flies in the face of everything we learned in training “So does your gun still look as good as it did before you called?”
“I feel a bit better,” Fern says and I believe it. “But what about tomorrow and the next day? I don’t know how to make those better by myself.”
“You can have help for that Fern. Like I said, I’ve been there, you don’t even have to ask.” What the hell. “If you’d like, I could help you Fern. I’ll be friends with you. I don’t have many myself. I guess I could use a friend too.”
“Do you mean it Ronald? Really?”
“Yup. So how about putting the gun down Fern? Put the gun down, okay. This is your friend asking nicely. How about it?”
“It’s heavy,” she said. “I’ve had it in front of my face but its making my hand wobble. Ronald, it’s so big.”
“Well then put it down Fern. You don’t need it anymore.”
What comes next happens so fast that I don't have time to react until it's too late. All at once there's a thud like something heavy hitting a wall (or a door), a muffled shriek and a tremendous bang oer the headset that leaves me deafened.
“Fern!” I'm shouting to hear my own voice. “Fern, what happened?”
Nothing. And then, faintly at first as my ears clear, the sound of strange male voices.
“Shit, we’re too late.”
“Dispatch said there was someone talking her down. I don’t see anybody.”
“Who could see for all these flies in here? Damn, it stinks. Open a window Sanchez, let some air in.”
“Fuck that, check her vitals.”
“Bitch is done, see. Bullet took the side of her face off. Help me shift her.”
“Ugh she weighs a ton. Goddamn! How the hell could she sit in her own shit like this? Look there’s maggots crawling in it. Fuckin’ disgusting.”
Over top of it all I can just make out Fern's voice, "Raw...raw...raw..."
“This is it Sanchez, she’s going.”
“Raw...Raw...Ronald,” and then a rattling gurgle before she stopped forever.
“What’s she on about?”
“Who cares? Maybe she wants one last large order of fries. Look, there’s blood and shit everywhere, open the window. How could anyone live like this?”
“Get down to the rig and grab the saw. We’re gonna’ need to widen the door she’s so fat. And put on a double pair of gloves too. I don’t like the look of those sores on her ass.”
“Which acre? What an ugly bitch.”
Dimly, I'm aware of my surroundings i.e. bustling call centre and oblivious co-workers. But I'm too busy listening to pay any more attention than that.
“For fuck sake!” I scream into my headset. “She’s a human being! She’s my friend! Treat her with some respect you goddamn giddy shitheads! Hit the end button and do your fucking jobs!”
“Oh...what the hell...Here it is, under her thigh. There we...”
Click
Fuck it, I'm done.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
The Cross-stitch Rant
You know whatcha’ gotta’ watch out for though, right?
It's cross-stitch. I’m serious. Cross-stitch is the root of all evil and has the potential to end all life as we know it. Think about it. You’ve probably got one at home, am I right? Hanging on the wall all pretty and framed saying something nice about puppies or Jesus. Or maybe on that throw pillow you’re always spilling stuff on.
Odds are it was a gift from an older relative. Maybe Grandma Millie whipped off a couple for you all alone in the Day Room at the Home with nothing but her arthritis for company. And let me tell you, start from center cross-stitch kits go like smokes in jail at the Home. They fill a need you see. Imagine you’re in the twilight of your life, haven’t had sex since the Trudeau administration, your kids stuck you in the Home and one day someone passes you a plastic packet full of one last chance to make something nice that’ll last after you’re dead. Tell me you wouldn’t tear that bastard open and go right for the needle.
Who wouldn’t? But like I said, it’s evil. Endless hours of doing your rows, no need to talk. Hell, the clock punching hacks they have watching you aren’t going to change your diaper any faster just because you’re doing something more productive than sitting in your own shit. You’re filling the need. But any time you have something that fills a need you’ve got the chance of hitting bad batch. Maybe some factory worker got sidetracked and folded so far off center that poor old Millie - who’s seen more cross stitch than cock - takes her gleaming, antique silver from the old world needle in hand to pick out a fluffy pastoral scene from nothing only to find that the tree tops are straying up too far past the clouds. And then what? Ho-lee sheep shit then what?
I’ll tell you. You get a sweet little old lady who wouldn’t say boo if you pissed in her tea screaming for the number of whatever third world slave labour camp sent her bad cross-stitch. And she’s shrieking fit to strip her throat raw and doesn’t care ‘cause it’s life’s last joke, as far as she’s concerned, waiting for the punch line so the curtain can finally fall on this stage of her life. So watch out, ‘cause maybe it’s your turn to visit the condemned that day and she spots your outsider’s eyes and there's nothing but nothing standing between you and fury with a needle in hand. What’ll you do then, huh?
Well there’s no way you can haul off and lay out a centigenarian without looking like the world’s biggest asshole so you try your best to keep your eyes whole in their sockets while holding her off for the men with the tranquilizers to show up and walk her off for some quiet time in a room with rubber walls. And all the time you’re proper pissed because an old lady has effectively kicked your ass and you‘re wearing scratch marks on your face to prove it. Maybe - gods forbid but it could happen - you’re the leader of the free world and not even your earpiece wearing, gun toting spooks lifted a finger to keep Millie off of you. So you get back to the office and pick up the phone to order an Armageddon special with a side of revenge, hold the hassle, all because of cross-stitch. It could happen.
It's cross-stitch. I’m serious. Cross-stitch is the root of all evil and has the potential to end all life as we know it. Think about it. You’ve probably got one at home, am I right? Hanging on the wall all pretty and framed saying something nice about puppies or Jesus. Or maybe on that throw pillow you’re always spilling stuff on.
Odds are it was a gift from an older relative. Maybe Grandma Millie whipped off a couple for you all alone in the Day Room at the Home with nothing but her arthritis for company. And let me tell you, start from center cross-stitch kits go like smokes in jail at the Home. They fill a need you see. Imagine you’re in the twilight of your life, haven’t had sex since the Trudeau administration, your kids stuck you in the Home and one day someone passes you a plastic packet full of one last chance to make something nice that’ll last after you’re dead. Tell me you wouldn’t tear that bastard open and go right for the needle.
Who wouldn’t? But like I said, it’s evil. Endless hours of doing your rows, no need to talk. Hell, the clock punching hacks they have watching you aren’t going to change your diaper any faster just because you’re doing something more productive than sitting in your own shit. You’re filling the need. But any time you have something that fills a need you’ve got the chance of hitting bad batch. Maybe some factory worker got sidetracked and folded so far off center that poor old Millie - who’s seen more cross stitch than cock - takes her gleaming, antique silver from the old world needle in hand to pick out a fluffy pastoral scene from nothing only to find that the tree tops are straying up too far past the clouds. And then what? Ho-lee sheep shit then what?
I’ll tell you. You get a sweet little old lady who wouldn’t say boo if you pissed in her tea screaming for the number of whatever third world slave labour camp sent her bad cross-stitch. And she’s shrieking fit to strip her throat raw and doesn’t care ‘cause it’s life’s last joke, as far as she’s concerned, waiting for the punch line so the curtain can finally fall on this stage of her life. So watch out, ‘cause maybe it’s your turn to visit the condemned that day and she spots your outsider’s eyes and there's nothing but nothing standing between you and fury with a needle in hand. What’ll you do then, huh?
Well there’s no way you can haul off and lay out a centigenarian without looking like the world’s biggest asshole so you try your best to keep your eyes whole in their sockets while holding her off for the men with the tranquilizers to show up and walk her off for some quiet time in a room with rubber walls. And all the time you’re proper pissed because an old lady has effectively kicked your ass and you‘re wearing scratch marks on your face to prove it. Maybe - gods forbid but it could happen - you’re the leader of the free world and not even your earpiece wearing, gun toting spooks lifted a finger to keep Millie off of you. So you get back to the office and pick up the phone to order an Armageddon special with a side of revenge, hold the hassle, all because of cross-stitch. It could happen.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The Thirteen Steps
There’s a list of rules next to Grover’s door that lays it down for customers sure as Moses laid it down for the children of Israel: "Thou shall not forget thy money, Thou shall not draw heat unto the door of my house, Thou shall not bring anyone unto thy Dealer who is a stranger to Him upon pain of death, Thou shall not refuse a toke should it be offered unto you. Thou shalt always wipe thy feet." The last one's for his mom's benefit and I can feel her eyes on me as I pretend to scan the list. You’re supposed to always read them before descending into the Sepulchre but most of us have the lot memorized. The first time I read them I thought they were a bigger joke than the original commandments and said as much. His mom told me that without rules there is disaster. I've since learned that she believes god acts through her. I just wanna' score but I do wipe my feet before descending into the Sepulchre.
The thirteen steps leading down look like a suicidal carpenter's afterthought and creak like a rusty hinge in the wind. There’s no railing at all, just bare wood leading down to bare cement. No Holy Steps these, just a narrow road down which one misstep leads to concussion or skull splitting death. The first time I took them I slipped on a cat and almost broke my leg. The cat didn't make it and Grover gave me a free gram for my trouble. It was his mom's cat and they never got along.
Grover knows every one of his customers by their foot wear, sees my surplus combat boots and calls out in his mushy voice, "One-Nut descends into the tomb of his Dealer. All praise One-Nut."
I half expect to hear an echoing chorus of worshipers but it's way to early for that yet and it's not nearly smokey enough. Instead I find Grover wedged into his spot in the corner and dressed for receiving in a not too stained bedsheet and a T-Shirt that doesn’t quite cover his nipples with “Welcome to Paradise” scrawled across the front in what looks like black lipstick. The floor's littered with empty beer cans, fast food take-out trays and enough fat roaches to pinch out half a pound of second hand green. "I like what you've done to the place? Very flop-house modern. Your mom must be shitting kittens."
“Fuck her,” he says. “She should have thought of that before she threw me down the stairs.”
About that: Grover's mom - all ninety-six pounds of her - pushed him down the basement stairs when he was fourteen. When I met Grover in Grade Eight he was just topping six feet and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was a bad lad back then and gave her no end of trouble with all of his petty theft and mob enforcement work. She locked the door and left him down there with a cracked skull to die. Not that she ever knew what state she'd put him in - she never bothered checking - she just locked the door and never let on to anyone where he'd gone.
Grover will always say that he pulled through out of shere hate and stubbornness but you have to give the man some credit in the brain department - even if it is the animalistic hind brain. He'll tell about slipping in and out of consciousness for hours (or days) before touching the crack in his head and realizing that his life was leaking through it. He'll tell about fumbling for his belt and looping it around his head to hold the break together. He'll even tell you about eating the vermin that came nosing around the rich meal of blood and matter left by his head wound. My favourite part is listening to him tell about climbing the stairs one agonizing step at a time over the course of interminable hours and finding the door locked. So he knocks on the basement door calling weakly "Ma...Ma.." sounding more like a lamb than a man to find it opened by Mrs. Kackas from next door. She's watching the house while Grover's mom takes advantage of his "unexplained absence" to make a pilgrimage to some shrine in Kilaloe. Mrs. Kackas feeds him lamb and rice enough so he can find his feet and he leaves the house to establish a dope connection and delivery windows. The rest is history.
Looking at him now it’s hard to say if he’s grown any taller since those days but his bulk offers one the impression that it’s pushing against the fabric of reality. He’s not so much sitting as he seems to have fallen and got a settee jammed up his ass. It looks like the basement was built around him. His mom hoped that the basement would be his tomb but he rose again so he calls it the Sepulchre to piss her off. Can't say as anyone would blame him. They've never mentioned the stair pushing incident again but she'll always have his mushy sounding voice and the crease down his skull (which is obvious when you know it's there) to remind her.
I hold up a brown paper bag in my hand. "Brought you tandoori chicken from Indra's."
"Awesome." He reaches a pale crablike hand for the bag and sets it down next to his seat. "You want the usual?"
"Yeah, Man." The only other seat's a broken down lazyboy that Grover grew out of two years after being pushed down the stairs. The seats sagging and broken but it's still a comfortable chair. I take it watching his bulk negotiate the process that is weighing out my bag.
"Remember Spacey Stacy Childers?" he asks while adding fat green nuggets onto his tiny digital scale.
"You mean that chick from the old homeroom, the one with the huge cans?"
"That's her. Georgie Porridge brought her by the other day and she knew me right off. Started talking all sorts of shit like where have I been and did I know that folks still get together on weekends to speculate about me." His hands move through their practised ritual of weighing while he talks without looking at me. "Says she always wondered where I wound up and never expected to see me stuck down my mom's basement."
"She still have a wicked case of chest mumps?" I ask remembering eighth grade erections in homeroom.
"Oh, Man, you'd better believe it. She even hinted at trading favours for smoke."
"Brave girl, " I tell him as he finishes the half-O. "Looking for your Johnson would be like searching for ancient buried treasure."
"Fuck you and gimme a hundred dollars, One-Nut." We trade money for smoke and he settles back into his seat while I stash it down my sock. "Had a kid question my weights and measures the other day."
This perks me up some. Micah "Grover" Groves is the most scrupulously honest dealer I have ever met. His scale is always a top of the line two points after the decimal job and he sells dry weight premium buds. No one questions his authority in the Sepulchre. "What happened?"
Grover shrugs and its like watching the Earth move from orbit. "He was going on about how the last couple bags he got seemed light and wanted to check the read-out on my scale. I told him he could take me at my word or get the fuck out. He took the bag and left."
"Sucks, Dude," I say trying to find an excuse to leave. "Maybe you should bow out for a while?"
"Fuck that," he says while opening his take out tray. "People just gotta' realize that you don't question Grover down here."
"I hear you, Brother. Enjoy the food and I'll see you next week." He mumbles something about bringing him a burger next time and I turn away. Watching Grover eat is like watching a starving crocodile tear an antelope to pieces. Sometimes he'll lose a piece of food in his folds and find it a week later - he calls them tit-bits.
His mom's waiting near the basement door. I know she always listens when it's just him and one other person alone down there. She lives in fear of being ratted out to the cops about what she did those years ago. Grover maintains that her current station in life - co-conspirator in a dope ring and living in fear of the truth - is more punishment that jail could ever be. Dressed in her house-coat and fuzzy slippers she looks like any other late middle aged mom but she pushed her kid down the stairs and left him for dead and it's hard not to see when you know what to look for.
There's guilt and fear crinkling around her eyes 'cause she knows that there are two pushers living under one roof.
The thirteen steps leading down look like a suicidal carpenter's afterthought and creak like a rusty hinge in the wind. There’s no railing at all, just bare wood leading down to bare cement. No Holy Steps these, just a narrow road down which one misstep leads to concussion or skull splitting death. The first time I took them I slipped on a cat and almost broke my leg. The cat didn't make it and Grover gave me a free gram for my trouble. It was his mom's cat and they never got along.
Grover knows every one of his customers by their foot wear, sees my surplus combat boots and calls out in his mushy voice, "One-Nut descends into the tomb of his Dealer. All praise One-Nut."
I half expect to hear an echoing chorus of worshipers but it's way to early for that yet and it's not nearly smokey enough. Instead I find Grover wedged into his spot in the corner and dressed for receiving in a not too stained bedsheet and a T-Shirt that doesn’t quite cover his nipples with “Welcome to Paradise” scrawled across the front in what looks like black lipstick. The floor's littered with empty beer cans, fast food take-out trays and enough fat roaches to pinch out half a pound of second hand green. "I like what you've done to the place? Very flop-house modern. Your mom must be shitting kittens."
“Fuck her,” he says. “She should have thought of that before she threw me down the stairs.”
About that: Grover's mom - all ninety-six pounds of her - pushed him down the basement stairs when he was fourteen. When I met Grover in Grade Eight he was just topping six feet and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was a bad lad back then and gave her no end of trouble with all of his petty theft and mob enforcement work. She locked the door and left him down there with a cracked skull to die. Not that she ever knew what state she'd put him in - she never bothered checking - she just locked the door and never let on to anyone where he'd gone.
Grover will always say that he pulled through out of shere hate and stubbornness but you have to give the man some credit in the brain department - even if it is the animalistic hind brain. He'll tell about slipping in and out of consciousness for hours (or days) before touching the crack in his head and realizing that his life was leaking through it. He'll tell about fumbling for his belt and looping it around his head to hold the break together. He'll even tell you about eating the vermin that came nosing around the rich meal of blood and matter left by his head wound. My favourite part is listening to him tell about climbing the stairs one agonizing step at a time over the course of interminable hours and finding the door locked. So he knocks on the basement door calling weakly "Ma...Ma.." sounding more like a lamb than a man to find it opened by Mrs. Kackas from next door. She's watching the house while Grover's mom takes advantage of his "unexplained absence" to make a pilgrimage to some shrine in Kilaloe. Mrs. Kackas feeds him lamb and rice enough so he can find his feet and he leaves the house to establish a dope connection and delivery windows. The rest is history.
Looking at him now it’s hard to say if he’s grown any taller since those days but his bulk offers one the impression that it’s pushing against the fabric of reality. He’s not so much sitting as he seems to have fallen and got a settee jammed up his ass. It looks like the basement was built around him. His mom hoped that the basement would be his tomb but he rose again so he calls it the Sepulchre to piss her off. Can't say as anyone would blame him. They've never mentioned the stair pushing incident again but she'll always have his mushy sounding voice and the crease down his skull (which is obvious when you know it's there) to remind her.
I hold up a brown paper bag in my hand. "Brought you tandoori chicken from Indra's."
"Awesome." He reaches a pale crablike hand for the bag and sets it down next to his seat. "You want the usual?"
"Yeah, Man." The only other seat's a broken down lazyboy that Grover grew out of two years after being pushed down the stairs. The seats sagging and broken but it's still a comfortable chair. I take it watching his bulk negotiate the process that is weighing out my bag.
"Remember Spacey Stacy Childers?" he asks while adding fat green nuggets onto his tiny digital scale.
"You mean that chick from the old homeroom, the one with the huge cans?"
"That's her. Georgie Porridge brought her by the other day and she knew me right off. Started talking all sorts of shit like where have I been and did I know that folks still get together on weekends to speculate about me." His hands move through their practised ritual of weighing while he talks without looking at me. "Says she always wondered where I wound up and never expected to see me stuck down my mom's basement."
"She still have a wicked case of chest mumps?" I ask remembering eighth grade erections in homeroom.
"Oh, Man, you'd better believe it. She even hinted at trading favours for smoke."
"Brave girl, " I tell him as he finishes the half-O. "Looking for your Johnson would be like searching for ancient buried treasure."
"Fuck you and gimme a hundred dollars, One-Nut." We trade money for smoke and he settles back into his seat while I stash it down my sock. "Had a kid question my weights and measures the other day."
This perks me up some. Micah "Grover" Groves is the most scrupulously honest dealer I have ever met. His scale is always a top of the line two points after the decimal job and he sells dry weight premium buds. No one questions his authority in the Sepulchre. "What happened?"
Grover shrugs and its like watching the Earth move from orbit. "He was going on about how the last couple bags he got seemed light and wanted to check the read-out on my scale. I told him he could take me at my word or get the fuck out. He took the bag and left."
"Sucks, Dude," I say trying to find an excuse to leave. "Maybe you should bow out for a while?"
"Fuck that," he says while opening his take out tray. "People just gotta' realize that you don't question Grover down here."
"I hear you, Brother. Enjoy the food and I'll see you next week." He mumbles something about bringing him a burger next time and I turn away. Watching Grover eat is like watching a starving crocodile tear an antelope to pieces. Sometimes he'll lose a piece of food in his folds and find it a week later - he calls them tit-bits.
His mom's waiting near the basement door. I know she always listens when it's just him and one other person alone down there. She lives in fear of being ratted out to the cops about what she did those years ago. Grover maintains that her current station in life - co-conspirator in a dope ring and living in fear of the truth - is more punishment that jail could ever be. Dressed in her house-coat and fuzzy slippers she looks like any other late middle aged mom but she pushed her kid down the stairs and left him for dead and it's hard not to see when you know what to look for.
There's guilt and fear crinkling around her eyes 'cause she knows that there are two pushers living under one roof.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Great K-Mart (Attempted) Robbery
Knowing the difference between right and wrong was an important precept in my early spiritual education. Basically, if anything you did broke any of the Ten Commandments or disappointed your parents then you were fucked in the eyes of God and your recording angel had tape on the whole thing. Doing right was always supposed to be accompanied by a warm rising in your chest which meant that the Holy Ghost approved of whatever thought, action or deed heralded the warm rise. We even had a song to sing in Sunday school to encourage us in our journey along the straight and narrow. The refrain follows:
"Choose the right, choose the right,
Let wisdom mark the way before.
In its light, choose the right
And God will bless you ever more."
And being the good little Mormon boy that I was supposed to be meant a lot of wrestling with the concept of right and wrong. Do I take the pop my mom's been saving in the fridge to slake a reader's thirst or drink tap water instead? Do I tell the recess monitor that Rich Bully is playing house with a second grader or let him piss in her hair some more? Do I forgive my sister for pouring new model paints over my mattress or offer some percussive discipline about her head and neck? If I ever "chose the right" it was by accident.
Being bad was and is the shit. I could do things that no sane parent would condone, take what I wanted from whomever I pleased and diddle the afternoons away despite a religiously applied proscription against touching oneself. The best thing was that I was taking my badness cues from the one place where no one suspected - the Bible. If Jacob's brothers could put him in a pit and sell him into slavery then I could tie my sister to a tree and rent her out for the afternoon. If the Prodigal Son could take and squander his inheritance on wine women and song I could snatch the change off my dad's dresser to buy a Jumbo Mr Freeze at the store. And Onan...wow...what do you say about a guy who has the best sin of all named after him - I'd tip my hat if I had a hand free or wore a hat.
It got to the point where I was around thirteen that my badness always had a turtle head poking out. Not only was I unstoppable but largely unsuspected as well - no one ever blames the quiet one. I collected a fair army of Battle Beasts (squat mostly immobile anthropomorphic action figures with interchangeable weapons used to play a wood, water, fire game much akin to paper, rock scissors..."Battle Beasts, they grow into an army, Battle beasts") with the five finger discount method and increased my comic book collection too. Cash could always be obtained from the Bank of Mom (her purse) for sundry needs and I never went without the little things that make every kid's life bearable (ships, pop and chocolate bars). My downfall was that I was too greedy.
INT - K-Mart - Pembroke, Ontario - DAY
A rotund 13 year old boy in dripping muk-luks and a grey plastic parka surveys the rack of audio cassettes. Five dollars pilfered from his mother's purse is burning a hole in his pocket and there are some cassettes on sale for $3.99. He spins the carousel display past such offerings as Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" (got it) and the marked down Devil's Music (i.e. AC/DC and Iron Maiden) to stop when he sees the Holy Grail of Church approved listening, "The California Raisins Sing the Hits" for $11.99 A quick glance at the case shows him several choice songs being covered by the four wrinkled fruits. A quick glance around him shows no one looking and the tape slides easily down into the parka's lining through a strategically cut hole through the inside pocket (it's the first coat he's owned that has an inside pocket owing to the fact that a man's medium coat was necessary to cover his man sized gut).
His father waits at the front of the store since depositing the rest of the brood in the car. The father has an inherent hate of shopping that his son will inherit in later years and just wants the fuck out. It's snowing outside and he wants to make it home before the ploughs come out. They've almost made it out through the automatic doors but a strange voice stops them both:
"I need to see what's in your coat?" The speaker is a stocky man in work boots and Kubota tractor hat. He's accompanied by a tall cadaverous blond woman in a long mangy black fur coat who wears glasses studded with rhinestones. The father thinks that the man is talking to him and starts to protest but the woman clarifies.
"We were talking to the Boy."
"The Boy" tries to make himself as insignificant as possible which is a tough order considering that he is the biggest person there (around the middle at least). He slaps half-heartedly at his pockets and opens his coat hoping that their search won't be too thorough but the cadaver woman has eyes like his mother's. They spot the bulge in the lining down by the hem and she asks if the Boy would kindly remove the cassette. The Boy knows he's busted and it takes a minute to free the cassette from the sticky confines of the coat's lining.
"Did you buy that?" the father asks hopefully.
The Boy takes advantage of this unsuspecting ally and nods an emphatic yes.
"Do you have a receipt?" asks the corpse woman. The father turns his face down to his son's waiting for his first born to produce the scrap of paper.
The Boy hangs his head, "No."
"You'll have to come with us," the man says, all business. He leads the way down the stores main aisle followed by the Boy and his father in single file with the blond cadaver bringing up the rear. It's a Saturday afternoon and the store is crowded enough that the boy's shaming is noted by half a hundred people.
The tiny room that they are lead to smells of cigarette smoke the ammonia reek of old urine. He is sat down next to his father and questioned at length with the cassette tape sitting on the desk between him and the inquisitors. It feels like hours that they're sitting in that room. The Boy is told that since he's over twelve years of age that this incident will be attached to his Juvenile record. He will never be able to get a government job, come in to a K-Mart for one year (he will never return to a K-Mart again, ever) and probably become a bed wetter for stealing. The Boy sits silently, speaking only to answer a direct question while his father refuses to even look at him. Because there is something much more serious on the father's mind; more serious than being able to shop at K-Mart or work for the government. The thirteen year old boy has shamed his father by dishonouring his newly ordained priesthood. And the Boy will never be forgiven.
End Scene
Do I still do wrong? Meh...I suppose an outsider would say so but I stopped caring about other people's opinions after that trip to the smelly room in the back of K-Mart. Quitting the Church helped too and so did the discovery that ethyl alcohol plus a certain type of girl equals dirty bad fun. I haven't stolen anything since (and been caught) but that piss smelling room will always remind me that there dark places in this world waiting for people like me to take that one toke over the line into damnation. Whatever...I've since lived in worse smelling places than that back room and counted myself among the fortunate. I've made and spent a few fortunes of ill-gotten wealth with nothing more to show from them but an abused liver and a spank bank full of mammaries.
The important thing is that I have the presence of mind not to give a shit anymore.
"Choose the right, choose the right,
Let wisdom mark the way before.
In its light, choose the right
And God will bless you ever more."
And being the good little Mormon boy that I was supposed to be meant a lot of wrestling with the concept of right and wrong. Do I take the pop my mom's been saving in the fridge to slake a reader's thirst or drink tap water instead? Do I tell the recess monitor that Rich Bully is playing house with a second grader or let him piss in her hair some more? Do I forgive my sister for pouring new model paints over my mattress or offer some percussive discipline about her head and neck? If I ever "chose the right" it was by accident.
Being bad was and is the shit. I could do things that no sane parent would condone, take what I wanted from whomever I pleased and diddle the afternoons away despite a religiously applied proscription against touching oneself. The best thing was that I was taking my badness cues from the one place where no one suspected - the Bible. If Jacob's brothers could put him in a pit and sell him into slavery then I could tie my sister to a tree and rent her out for the afternoon. If the Prodigal Son could take and squander his inheritance on wine women and song I could snatch the change off my dad's dresser to buy a Jumbo Mr Freeze at the store. And Onan...wow...what do you say about a guy who has the best sin of all named after him - I'd tip my hat if I had a hand free or wore a hat.
It got to the point where I was around thirteen that my badness always had a turtle head poking out. Not only was I unstoppable but largely unsuspected as well - no one ever blames the quiet one. I collected a fair army of Battle Beasts (squat mostly immobile anthropomorphic action figures with interchangeable weapons used to play a wood, water, fire game much akin to paper, rock scissors..."Battle Beasts, they grow into an army, Battle beasts") with the five finger discount method and increased my comic book collection too. Cash could always be obtained from the Bank of Mom (her purse) for sundry needs and I never went without the little things that make every kid's life bearable (ships, pop and chocolate bars). My downfall was that I was too greedy.
INT - K-Mart - Pembroke, Ontario - DAY
A rotund 13 year old boy in dripping muk-luks and a grey plastic parka surveys the rack of audio cassettes. Five dollars pilfered from his mother's purse is burning a hole in his pocket and there are some cassettes on sale for $3.99. He spins the carousel display past such offerings as Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" (got it) and the marked down Devil's Music (i.e. AC/DC and Iron Maiden) to stop when he sees the Holy Grail of Church approved listening, "The California Raisins Sing the Hits" for $11.99 A quick glance at the case shows him several choice songs being covered by the four wrinkled fruits. A quick glance around him shows no one looking and the tape slides easily down into the parka's lining through a strategically cut hole through the inside pocket (it's the first coat he's owned that has an inside pocket owing to the fact that a man's medium coat was necessary to cover his man sized gut).
His father waits at the front of the store since depositing the rest of the brood in the car. The father has an inherent hate of shopping that his son will inherit in later years and just wants the fuck out. It's snowing outside and he wants to make it home before the ploughs come out. They've almost made it out through the automatic doors but a strange voice stops them both:
"I need to see what's in your coat?" The speaker is a stocky man in work boots and Kubota tractor hat. He's accompanied by a tall cadaverous blond woman in a long mangy black fur coat who wears glasses studded with rhinestones. The father thinks that the man is talking to him and starts to protest but the woman clarifies.
"We were talking to the Boy."
"The Boy" tries to make himself as insignificant as possible which is a tough order considering that he is the biggest person there (around the middle at least). He slaps half-heartedly at his pockets and opens his coat hoping that their search won't be too thorough but the cadaver woman has eyes like his mother's. They spot the bulge in the lining down by the hem and she asks if the Boy would kindly remove the cassette. The Boy knows he's busted and it takes a minute to free the cassette from the sticky confines of the coat's lining.
"Did you buy that?" the father asks hopefully.
The Boy takes advantage of this unsuspecting ally and nods an emphatic yes.
"Do you have a receipt?" asks the corpse woman. The father turns his face down to his son's waiting for his first born to produce the scrap of paper.
The Boy hangs his head, "No."
"You'll have to come with us," the man says, all business. He leads the way down the stores main aisle followed by the Boy and his father in single file with the blond cadaver bringing up the rear. It's a Saturday afternoon and the store is crowded enough that the boy's shaming is noted by half a hundred people.
The tiny room that they are lead to smells of cigarette smoke the ammonia reek of old urine. He is sat down next to his father and questioned at length with the cassette tape sitting on the desk between him and the inquisitors. It feels like hours that they're sitting in that room. The Boy is told that since he's over twelve years of age that this incident will be attached to his Juvenile record. He will never be able to get a government job, come in to a K-Mart for one year (he will never return to a K-Mart again, ever) and probably become a bed wetter for stealing. The Boy sits silently, speaking only to answer a direct question while his father refuses to even look at him. Because there is something much more serious on the father's mind; more serious than being able to shop at K-Mart or work for the government. The thirteen year old boy has shamed his father by dishonouring his newly ordained priesthood. And the Boy will never be forgiven.
End Scene
Do I still do wrong? Meh...I suppose an outsider would say so but I stopped caring about other people's opinions after that trip to the smelly room in the back of K-Mart. Quitting the Church helped too and so did the discovery that ethyl alcohol plus a certain type of girl equals dirty bad fun. I haven't stolen anything since (and been caught) but that piss smelling room will always remind me that there dark places in this world waiting for people like me to take that one toke over the line into damnation. Whatever...I've since lived in worse smelling places than that back room and counted myself among the fortunate. I've made and spent a few fortunes of ill-gotten wealth with nothing more to show from them but an abused liver and a spank bank full of mammaries.
The important thing is that I have the presence of mind not to give a shit anymore.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
By Hook or by Crook
What’s it gonna’ take for people to start helping each other out? I mean really help and not just pose with limbless kids for photo-ops to abolish land mines on another continent or stage sing-alongs to stay the inevitable advance of genetically altered foods. This is the sort of factory charity for show that’s usually run off by celebrities on behalf of internationally publicized agencies - filler on an entertainment news show. All that anyone’s looking for is press good enough to draw attention away from an ugly truth. And forget about the many ribbon campaigns that help the ideologically challenged decide what cause to support based on their favourite colour. In the end you wind up with a bunch of people wearing ribbons around months after the awareness week is over and their good intentions no more than absent minded evidence of maybe once giving a shit. Best of all, you can always indulge your sense of right-doing and leave your spare change in one of those clear plastic coin boxes that sit in front of the register at your local fast food franchise and think you‘re making a magnanimous contribution to any thing from cystic-fibrosis to the local humane society. What a load of shit.
I’m not cynical enough to deny that there are some organized charities that do good work - so I won’t bother. Sure, a movie star might raise awareness of refugees from war torn Somewhere-in-Africa I’ve never heard of and make pity contributions pay to have a well drilled but they don’t stick around to see it appropriated by the same heavily armed men who displaced the refugees to begin with. And granted, national fundraising campaigns do raise millions of dollars for medical research but I know a guy who owes his lavish lifestyle (including an 11,000 square foot lake-front home, boats, stables, servants and winters in Bora-bora) to the chunk he allocates himself every year from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. And yes my dear sainted mother gave a nice young girl at the market two dollars for a "tear" stained bit of green ribbon that would show the world she supported…something about the environment or legalized marijuana - the girl wasn't too coherent. And I worked out of a Wendy's where the coin boxes might as well have said “Managers' Laundry Money” instead of claiming to support adoption. But what the Hell, nobody`s perfect. Right?
Funny thing is that I take what I cherish most about charity came out the mouth of the only guys more than twelve people ever thought was perfect. He gave a famous sermon on a hill in the Middle East to a lot of people who were probably just as miserable and run down as a lot of people today. He laid down some crazy cool stuff about loving your neighbours as you love yourself and that doing good works to one another was the best way to follow the example he was trying to set. These were Great Ideas in their purest sense but I do believe the Man overestimated his audience’s attention span. I can imagine walking away from that meeting with every good intention under the Son - maybe even helping an old Pharisee to cross a Roman highway - only to get home and yell at the wife for not having my goat and rice ready and kick the dog for failing to honour his master. I can imagine that because that’s the same day to day shit that people pull nowadays. It doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the message, I just think the meaning’s been getting lost in translation over time.
Know what else I think? I think the message is a lot easier to swallow without the divinity starching it up. "Be good to each other and get into Heaven." Yeah, that never led to any despicable double standard. How many people do you know who only do good works towards people who give them stuff or have the power to have stuff given? Bah! There are people on my street whose kids where jean jackets in the dead of winter and can't give their families enough to eat. Forget land mines in Africa, forget Farm-Aid and ribbons for children done away with by the fear and hate towards homosexuals - make a difference in your own backyard.
I can hear people asking, "What's this all got to do with the stupid fucking title of this post?" Well, I'm sure that everyone's heard the phrase before even if they don't know what it means (or, more specifically, my meaning). A hook and a crook are pretty much the same thing except that a hook's got a pointy end. Shepherds in the Bible stories I used to like were always carrying crooks to lift lost lambs out of holes or to prod the flocks into what passes for order with sheep. Hooks are most commonly seen on the ends of fishing line to pierce and pull a fish into a boat or onto shore. My point is that charity work usually takes the gentler crook approach and that, if something doesn't change in our attitudes, people needing the help might go for the hook and take what they want because they don't have what they need.
There...satisfied, now go out and do some good already.
I’m not cynical enough to deny that there are some organized charities that do good work - so I won’t bother. Sure, a movie star might raise awareness of refugees from war torn Somewhere-in-Africa I’ve never heard of and make pity contributions pay to have a well drilled but they don’t stick around to see it appropriated by the same heavily armed men who displaced the refugees to begin with. And granted, national fundraising campaigns do raise millions of dollars for medical research but I know a guy who owes his lavish lifestyle (including an 11,000 square foot lake-front home, boats, stables, servants and winters in Bora-bora) to the chunk he allocates himself every year from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. And yes my dear sainted mother gave a nice young girl at the market two dollars for a "tear" stained bit of green ribbon that would show the world she supported…something about the environment or legalized marijuana - the girl wasn't too coherent. And I worked out of a Wendy's where the coin boxes might as well have said “Managers' Laundry Money” instead of claiming to support adoption. But what the Hell, nobody`s perfect. Right?
Funny thing is that I take what I cherish most about charity came out the mouth of the only guys more than twelve people ever thought was perfect. He gave a famous sermon on a hill in the Middle East to a lot of people who were probably just as miserable and run down as a lot of people today. He laid down some crazy cool stuff about loving your neighbours as you love yourself and that doing good works to one another was the best way to follow the example he was trying to set. These were Great Ideas in their purest sense but I do believe the Man overestimated his audience’s attention span. I can imagine walking away from that meeting with every good intention under the Son - maybe even helping an old Pharisee to cross a Roman highway - only to get home and yell at the wife for not having my goat and rice ready and kick the dog for failing to honour his master. I can imagine that because that’s the same day to day shit that people pull nowadays. It doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the message, I just think the meaning’s been getting lost in translation over time.
Know what else I think? I think the message is a lot easier to swallow without the divinity starching it up. "Be good to each other and get into Heaven." Yeah, that never led to any despicable double standard. How many people do you know who only do good works towards people who give them stuff or have the power to have stuff given? Bah! There are people on my street whose kids where jean jackets in the dead of winter and can't give their families enough to eat. Forget land mines in Africa, forget Farm-Aid and ribbons for children done away with by the fear and hate towards homosexuals - make a difference in your own backyard.
I can hear people asking, "What's this all got to do with the stupid fucking title of this post?" Well, I'm sure that everyone's heard the phrase before even if they don't know what it means (or, more specifically, my meaning). A hook and a crook are pretty much the same thing except that a hook's got a pointy end. Shepherds in the Bible stories I used to like were always carrying crooks to lift lost lambs out of holes or to prod the flocks into what passes for order with sheep. Hooks are most commonly seen on the ends of fishing line to pierce and pull a fish into a boat or onto shore. My point is that charity work usually takes the gentler crook approach and that, if something doesn't change in our attitudes, people needing the help might go for the hook and take what they want because they don't have what they need.
There...satisfied, now go out and do some good already.
Boobies Rock Hard!
Boobs are nature’s greatest invention - a bold statement, I know. I can hear people thinking that the human brain deserves top honours while others must feel that life as we know would stop without a heart. I can appreciate these points of view since I do think about boobs an awful lot and fallen in love with a pair or two. Without boobs I’d be hard pressed finding anything worth thinking about and be left feeling nothing below my waist but knees and toes. Without boobs…no, I don't even want to consider it. My love is too deep.
I started forming my conclusions at a young age. At about three or four I was still small and cute enough to get women with racks. With the right mix of ennui and guile I could usually get a two base hit. Unfortunately, my exposure to women outside of the immediate family was restricted to church and the welfare ladies who shared the yard in geared-to-income housing. The church ladies usually looked and smelled better than the yard ladies but the holy-hangers were a lot harder to access than backyard breasts (mostly because yard ladies would trade feels for cigarettes and church ladies didn't smoke). I was a brave explorer charting islands in the stream and logging the results - wee as the log was at the time.
Grade one was an eye opening experience. Some of the girls in grade six were starting to develop and that got me bugging `cause I shared a yard with them and there`s all sorts of stuff a twelve year old will trade for a touch or a peek. I learned a few more important lessons; boobs grew off of girls, girls don`t like you staring and arithmetic is just plain old math in fancy dress. Eventually I even learned to read but it took so long because the TA who taught remedial reading drove a Trans Am, smoked in her car during recess was stacked out to yowza. I spent more time looking at her bumpers than the books she brought me (and there were some good books too including Where the Wild Things Are). When pressed I could manage a few sentences before finding a long word to stumble over and stumble I would. She would lean over and point to the word and help me sound it out while my eyes feasted on the breast meat revealed. I remember the day after she saw through my ruse like greasy underwear - the day a woman finally put me in my place.
It was starting on to summer and she wore a tight T-shirt with something printed right across the front. In my mind it was carte blanche to stare and after a few moments she asked if I was having trouble with the word. She said it out loud and I could see how the sounds came from the letters on here shirt - especially the J circling her left nipple. And then she gave me a twenty minute lecture on the meaning of the world.
The word was OBJECTIFICATION. For the effect it had the word might as well have been CASTRATION. I was devastated and ran home weeping uncontrollably. When my mother asked me what was wrong I couldn't tell her - make that would`t tell her - what had happened at school. I was too ashamed of my behaviour to tell her and I knew that she`d be mad enough to offer a little of the old percussive maintenance. The less I talked the more she started worrying and jumping to conclusions. Mom’s are funny like that. “Did you have reading today?” she asked. “Yes,” was my barely audible reply. “Did something happen with Miss Grace?” “Yes.” “I need to know what happened?” “no.” I started crying again. In the end, my mom went to school with me the next day and we talked with the principal. I read him my copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" (long since memorized) and he said that I didn’t need remedial reading anymore. Then he and mom talked when I went back to class. Half an hour later the whole school hears Miss Grace peeling out of the faculty parking lot. At recess the grade fours told us she was giving the finger too and the burnt rubber hung heavy in the air - and in my heart. The best boobs in school were history.
In a perfect world I would have stopped there and been better for the lesson learned but it was only a matter of time before my boob love reared it ugly head again and again. Successful completion of grade school led to junior high where hormones hit over-drive and girls became women - women with boobs. I grew an extra two inches every day, starting on the bus ride. But Miss Grace’s lesson was never far from my mind and I had learned to keep my glimpsing furtive and non-descript. Still, it didn’t stop me from learning a few more important lessons; girls always know when you’re looking and most of them want you to - there are exceptions to every rule. I did, however, limit my worship to glimpses of the divine peaks. I never got to second base or even kissed a girl until I was just shy of leaving high school and all the way towards quitting on God.
And I won’t say any more about that.
My boob love continues unabated through the years and, nerd that I am, I have learned my lessons well. Short of teaching myself enough about genetics and cloning to grow the perfect pair I can content myself with the boobs at my disposal (i.e. Internet porn and not suggesting that women are trashy or garbage). A little self control and imagination goes a long way towards lifetime fulfillment of my desires but I don’t base my opening statement on fetish alone. Don’t misunderstand, I can’t deny that my statement has a lot to do with a deep seated boob appreciation and lifelong fascination - but nature‘s greatest invention? Yes. After all, for the first seven-odd months of our lives, our favourite food is made by boobs.
Mmmm…breast milk.
I started forming my conclusions at a young age. At about three or four I was still small and cute enough to get women with racks. With the right mix of ennui and guile I could usually get a two base hit. Unfortunately, my exposure to women outside of the immediate family was restricted to church and the welfare ladies who shared the yard in geared-to-income housing. The church ladies usually looked and smelled better than the yard ladies but the holy-hangers were a lot harder to access than backyard breasts (mostly because yard ladies would trade feels for cigarettes and church ladies didn't smoke). I was a brave explorer charting islands in the stream and logging the results - wee as the log was at the time.
Grade one was an eye opening experience. Some of the girls in grade six were starting to develop and that got me bugging `cause I shared a yard with them and there`s all sorts of stuff a twelve year old will trade for a touch or a peek. I learned a few more important lessons; boobs grew off of girls, girls don`t like you staring and arithmetic is just plain old math in fancy dress. Eventually I even learned to read but it took so long because the TA who taught remedial reading drove a Trans Am, smoked in her car during recess was stacked out to yowza. I spent more time looking at her bumpers than the books she brought me (and there were some good books too including Where the Wild Things Are). When pressed I could manage a few sentences before finding a long word to stumble over and stumble I would. She would lean over and point to the word and help me sound it out while my eyes feasted on the breast meat revealed. I remember the day after she saw through my ruse like greasy underwear - the day a woman finally put me in my place.
It was starting on to summer and she wore a tight T-shirt with something printed right across the front. In my mind it was carte blanche to stare and after a few moments she asked if I was having trouble with the word. She said it out loud and I could see how the sounds came from the letters on here shirt - especially the J circling her left nipple. And then she gave me a twenty minute lecture on the meaning of the world.
The word was OBJECTIFICATION. For the effect it had the word might as well have been CASTRATION. I was devastated and ran home weeping uncontrollably. When my mother asked me what was wrong I couldn't tell her - make that would`t tell her - what had happened at school. I was too ashamed of my behaviour to tell her and I knew that she`d be mad enough to offer a little of the old percussive maintenance. The less I talked the more she started worrying and jumping to conclusions. Mom’s are funny like that. “Did you have reading today?” she asked. “Yes,” was my barely audible reply. “Did something happen with Miss Grace?” “Yes.” “I need to know what happened?” “no.” I started crying again. In the end, my mom went to school with me the next day and we talked with the principal. I read him my copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" (long since memorized) and he said that I didn’t need remedial reading anymore. Then he and mom talked when I went back to class. Half an hour later the whole school hears Miss Grace peeling out of the faculty parking lot. At recess the grade fours told us she was giving the finger too and the burnt rubber hung heavy in the air - and in my heart. The best boobs in school were history.
In a perfect world I would have stopped there and been better for the lesson learned but it was only a matter of time before my boob love reared it ugly head again and again. Successful completion of grade school led to junior high where hormones hit over-drive and girls became women - women with boobs. I grew an extra two inches every day, starting on the bus ride. But Miss Grace’s lesson was never far from my mind and I had learned to keep my glimpsing furtive and non-descript. Still, it didn’t stop me from learning a few more important lessons; girls always know when you’re looking and most of them want you to - there are exceptions to every rule. I did, however, limit my worship to glimpses of the divine peaks. I never got to second base or even kissed a girl until I was just shy of leaving high school and all the way towards quitting on God.
And I won’t say any more about that.
My boob love continues unabated through the years and, nerd that I am, I have learned my lessons well. Short of teaching myself enough about genetics and cloning to grow the perfect pair I can content myself with the boobs at my disposal (i.e. Internet porn and not suggesting that women are trashy or garbage). A little self control and imagination goes a long way towards lifetime fulfillment of my desires but I don’t base my opening statement on fetish alone. Don’t misunderstand, I can’t deny that my statement has a lot to do with a deep seated boob appreciation and lifelong fascination - but nature‘s greatest invention? Yes. After all, for the first seven-odd months of our lives, our favourite food is made by boobs.
Mmmm…breast milk.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
The Entertainment News Dream Biopsy
Through no fault of my own, I watch a little too much entertainment television before bed. I once saw George Clooney propositioned by an Italian journalist and later learned that it was all a hoax (apparently the Venice Film Festival will never be the same again). Lately it was revealed that Joaquin Phoenix’s paradigm shift from hare-lipped actor to hare-lipped rapper was a hoax as well (in related news he’s set to play Leonardo DiCaprio’s lover in a film adaptation of FBI founder J Edgar Hoover’s life). And who can forget how the death of GUESS cover model Anna Nicole Smith resulted in a custody battle which proved once and for all that washed up celebrities sleep around on their shyster husbands with photographers (and the lazy eyed little girl is doing well by all reports). Oh, and Michael Douglas has some sort of throat cancer that his younger wife is very pissed off about (she made a point of saying early on the doctors didn’t find it fast enough).
Ever dream about the last thing you see before falling asleep? Well, I must have drifted off to an update about the Micheal Douglas tragedy one night because there was a very strong Gordon Gecko theme to the last dream I remember having. I was at some hoity-toity but at the same time too risqué social do in an opulent penthouse looking over a night time city-scape lit up like a crack addict’s Christmas tree. Maybe I was playing the main role but there was this tickle in my throat that had me coughing bubbles into my two-hundred year old Scotch. Excusing myself from the discreet cocaine and nubile young bodies enjoying it one off another I went to lie down in a perfect copy of my own bedroom set on a raised platform in the centre of the party. I laid my self down fully clothed and tried not to cough but the tickle kept getting worse and I was disturbing my guests. With a complete disregard for my dream walking gag reflex, I reached an index finger down my throat to scratch the tickle. That’s when it started getting weird.
The cancer tickle had turned into a hand holding a feather to the back of my throat. Sensing the intruding digit the cancer-hand abandoned it’s throat itching and grabbed my finger. I must have made some loud if muffled exclamation because there were party guests surrounding me in an instant. They started taking off my clothes and rubbing me sensually like spectators in a group sex scene. I locked eyes with a pretty red-head bearing a striking resemblance to Mary Hart and saw myself fisting my own moth reflected in her eyes. She turned to tell the elderly woman next to her what she was thinking and the old bitty started seizing while John Tesh licked her nipples. Soon everyone around the bed was engaged in symptomatic sex of some kind while the cancer-hand swallowed itself so that I could taste my arm up to the elbow. Lubricated with my own blood, the throat rape began. So appalled was my dream self, so bound and determined to prevent the spectacle I had become, that he pulled back against the cancer hand with a might that tore a baby shaped mass out…
That’s when I woke up paralyzed. (This sometimes happen when I’ve dreamed something so fundamentally disturbing that my waking mind just can’t deal with the horror. I’ll lie completely still, barely daring to breathe, for anywhere from five minutes to half the night, hoping that the nightmare hasn’t carried me somewhere too far from which to return.) I didn’t so much regain my senses as I recouped their loss and found my throat drier than twice baked bread. Luckily I remembered the way to the bathroom,slurped three hand-cups of water out of the toilet before seeing my reflection in the bowl and the new vagina shape to my mouth with traces of a fresh...
Then I woke up for real. Or have I? Life’s been feeling entertainment newsworthy of late and I keep finding myself embroiled in petty scandals and intrigues. People are getting all up in my business and I don't go out anymore. I'm thinking about shaving my head, adopting a third-world baby and driving around drunk with my shaved head out the window, baby in my teeth, looking for a transgendered prostitute selling drugs. And I would if I couldn't see it all every weekday night from 7 to 8 on one of the only two channels I get on my analog television.
Maybe I should just fall asleep to porn. That'll fix me right up.
Ever dream about the last thing you see before falling asleep? Well, I must have drifted off to an update about the Micheal Douglas tragedy one night because there was a very strong Gordon Gecko theme to the last dream I remember having. I was at some hoity-toity but at the same time too risqué social do in an opulent penthouse looking over a night time city-scape lit up like a crack addict’s Christmas tree. Maybe I was playing the main role but there was this tickle in my throat that had me coughing bubbles into my two-hundred year old Scotch. Excusing myself from the discreet cocaine and nubile young bodies enjoying it one off another I went to lie down in a perfect copy of my own bedroom set on a raised platform in the centre of the party. I laid my self down fully clothed and tried not to cough but the tickle kept getting worse and I was disturbing my guests. With a complete disregard for my dream walking gag reflex, I reached an index finger down my throat to scratch the tickle. That’s when it started getting weird.
The cancer tickle had turned into a hand holding a feather to the back of my throat. Sensing the intruding digit the cancer-hand abandoned it’s throat itching and grabbed my finger. I must have made some loud if muffled exclamation because there were party guests surrounding me in an instant. They started taking off my clothes and rubbing me sensually like spectators in a group sex scene. I locked eyes with a pretty red-head bearing a striking resemblance to Mary Hart and saw myself fisting my own moth reflected in her eyes. She turned to tell the elderly woman next to her what she was thinking and the old bitty started seizing while John Tesh licked her nipples. Soon everyone around the bed was engaged in symptomatic sex of some kind while the cancer-hand swallowed itself so that I could taste my arm up to the elbow. Lubricated with my own blood, the throat rape began. So appalled was my dream self, so bound and determined to prevent the spectacle I had become, that he pulled back against the cancer hand with a might that tore a baby shaped mass out…
That’s when I woke up paralyzed. (This sometimes happen when I’ve dreamed something so fundamentally disturbing that my waking mind just can’t deal with the horror. I’ll lie completely still, barely daring to breathe, for anywhere from five minutes to half the night, hoping that the nightmare hasn’t carried me somewhere too far from which to return.) I didn’t so much regain my senses as I recouped their loss and found my throat drier than twice baked bread. Luckily I remembered the way to the bathroom,slurped three hand-cups of water out of the toilet before seeing my reflection in the bowl and the new vagina shape to my mouth with traces of a fresh...
Then I woke up for real. Or have I? Life’s been feeling entertainment newsworthy of late and I keep finding myself embroiled in petty scandals and intrigues. People are getting all up in my business and I don't go out anymore. I'm thinking about shaving my head, adopting a third-world baby and driving around drunk with my shaved head out the window, baby in my teeth, looking for a transgendered prostitute selling drugs. And I would if I couldn't see it all every weekday night from 7 to 8 on one of the only two channels I get on my analog television.
Maybe I should just fall asleep to porn. That'll fix me right up.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
The Dope
I recently scored a quarter pound and got a good price. Fuck that, the best price I’ve ever had on a QP. I’m sitting here trying to understand how I ever managed this on ten hours notice and all I can figure is that I must have had it coming. Who knows why? I could speculate on a number of reasons but most of them favour a reality in which wrath is rewarded with the choicest fruit and choices have no consequences. Oh sure, it’s an outdoor grow and the bottom of the bag was a lot of shakey-bake but the nipple tip buds are furrier than vintage gash. The fly little hottie who delivered it to my door even brought me a coffee and if she’s sporting any bush south of the equator it’s been pared down to a landing strip. She smelled good too - almost as good as the Dope.
Weighing it out into ounces by the quarter brought back a lot of old memories. No one ever took a short count off me - I sold fat baggies. Small bills and big profits. And yes, Friday nights would always see a motley queue of hooligans out my basement cell door - Fresh Fish Fridays. Some would take little nibbles and others took bigger bites while I weighed the scales. Weights, measures, justice and universal balance in the palm of my hand. Good times and good smoke. I had lots of cash and lived in relatively high style for a stoner monk. Busty house bunnies brought me take-out trays of prime rib and potatoes. As the Great God of Plenty I was the happiest camper in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Wake-n-bakes, plenty of sleep-overs and booze with every meal. Until the rats chased my fish away and started sapping at the foundation of my tidy little enterprise. In recall I can say that the Barbarians were encamped without the gates of my Rome - blocking the Apian Way of the basement stairs. Truth to tell, I was lucky to have gotten out with my skin.
Do I really want to start another back-pocket empire and deal with all of the shit that entails? Oh, the extra money would be nice and we could get the Cable in maybe if there was anything good on TV. Free smoke and cigarette money’s nothing to complain about but nosey pig calling neighbours I can do without (and a certain pus-arsed cock-jawed example of same remains to be squared away). There’s nothing wrong with getting ahead but a jump from wage slave to dirt merchant can land you in a lot more than a new tax bracket. You move from anonymity to wearing a sandwich board which reads along the lines of, I’m better off than you are…feel free to pick at my still twitching carcass. And I never lacked for the envious scavengers in those bygone days - carpet-crawling flunkies and dogs begging at table who turned to bite the hand providing. I guess it all depends on putting the word out and come what may.
Thing is that I also ran into an old customer last weekend who was visiting from being away at college. He greeted me warmly, asked if I was still burning the herb and if I could help him out. But the cupboards were bare at home and I was waiting on emergency relief like a starving Ethiopian for UNICEF pennies. Thing was that he also said the cupboards were bare back at the college and folks were getting hungry. That got me to thinking as I finished my grocery shopping - I sure would like to be the hand providing again. So maybe I made the decision last weekend and this auspicious quarter-pound is the seed for my future prosperity. Maybe I'm following a would-be bean counter's fateful suggestion down the wide and winding way to my own private hell.
Or maybe it`s all just the Dope talking.
Weighing it out into ounces by the quarter brought back a lot of old memories. No one ever took a short count off me - I sold fat baggies. Small bills and big profits. And yes, Friday nights would always see a motley queue of hooligans out my basement cell door - Fresh Fish Fridays. Some would take little nibbles and others took bigger bites while I weighed the scales. Weights, measures, justice and universal balance in the palm of my hand. Good times and good smoke. I had lots of cash and lived in relatively high style for a stoner monk. Busty house bunnies brought me take-out trays of prime rib and potatoes. As the Great God of Plenty I was the happiest camper in the Garden of Earthly Delights. Wake-n-bakes, plenty of sleep-overs and booze with every meal. Until the rats chased my fish away and started sapping at the foundation of my tidy little enterprise. In recall I can say that the Barbarians were encamped without the gates of my Rome - blocking the Apian Way of the basement stairs. Truth to tell, I was lucky to have gotten out with my skin.
Do I really want to start another back-pocket empire and deal with all of the shit that entails? Oh, the extra money would be nice and we could get the Cable in maybe if there was anything good on TV. Free smoke and cigarette money’s nothing to complain about but nosey pig calling neighbours I can do without (and a certain pus-arsed cock-jawed example of same remains to be squared away). There’s nothing wrong with getting ahead but a jump from wage slave to dirt merchant can land you in a lot more than a new tax bracket. You move from anonymity to wearing a sandwich board which reads along the lines of, I’m better off than you are…feel free to pick at my still twitching carcass. And I never lacked for the envious scavengers in those bygone days - carpet-crawling flunkies and dogs begging at table who turned to bite the hand providing. I guess it all depends on putting the word out and come what may.
Thing is that I also ran into an old customer last weekend who was visiting from being away at college. He greeted me warmly, asked if I was still burning the herb and if I could help him out. But the cupboards were bare at home and I was waiting on emergency relief like a starving Ethiopian for UNICEF pennies. Thing was that he also said the cupboards were bare back at the college and folks were getting hungry. That got me to thinking as I finished my grocery shopping - I sure would like to be the hand providing again. So maybe I made the decision last weekend and this auspicious quarter-pound is the seed for my future prosperity. Maybe I'm following a would-be bean counter's fateful suggestion down the wide and winding way to my own private hell.
Or maybe it`s all just the Dope talking.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Won't you be my neighbour?
So, I'm in my underwear in front of this idiot machine and watching a few choice episodes of "The Big Bang Theory" when the phone rings. Caller--ID says unknown name, private number. Well, I'm more than willing to answer the phone when I'm expecting a call and I'll answer if I know who's calling and I want to talk to you but this privacy shit is for the birds. Blocking your data means that you're either a telemarketer or a bill collector or you're too pussy-assed to let your name and number show on my display. Fine...I get it, privacy's important but if you value your privacy more than a conversation with me then I don't wanna' know ya and we sure as hell aint gonna' talk on the phone.
Low and behold, there's a message waiting. Hmmm...okay, I'll play the message game...that's cool...you listened to mine so I'll listen to yours. So I punch in the codes that keep my messages private and listen. "Hello, this is Constable X calling for [the author's wife]. Can you please call me back at XXX-XXXX. Thank you..." My only thought at this moment is "why the fuck do the cops wanna' talk to my wife?" Really, she's the most law-abiding, kind and nonthreatening person I've ever met...I mean, she brakes for chipmunks crossing in front of the car, she pets every dog that walks by her and married me of all people.
And as it's Sunday and barely a quarter after ten in the morning, she's not up. (I wouldn't have been except that I was running snot out my nose like a steady drip of...well, snot.) But I want to know what the hell's going on so I take her the phone.
"Hey, babe," I say with the phone a half inch from her nose. "The cops called you, there's a message."
"Cops?" she asks. I can imagine her using the same voice if I suddenly grew a third testicle.
"Yup. Call them, will you?"
She does and I wait to see what's happening. She's switched around a few times and ends up leaving a message for Constable X. By this time I'm figuring that it can't be too bad. If she's done something really wrong we wouldn't be getting a phone call. Shit, if she'd done something really wrong and we did get a phone call I sure as fuck wouldn't be getting her to call them back. In any case, she goes back to sleep and I get back to the antics of Doctors Sheldon Lee Cooper and Leonard Leaky Hoffstaeder.
At noon someone rings the doorbell. No one rings my doorbell unexpectedly...I just don't have anyone who ever wants to come over. Glancing out the window I see a North Bay City police cruiser. Irrationally, my first thought is, "They're never gonna' take me alive!" But then I reach back through the haze of three morning screwdrivers to remember the phone call. Shit! They're here for my baby-girl and she's the nicest, kindest person in the world and they'll never take us alive.
So, I let the wife know that the cops are here and cover my shame with a robe before answering the door. The cop's cute enough that I think, "Strippergram?" but I know that's the vodka talking. She asks if my Mom's home and I'm all, "Huh? She's in Utah." And then the cop asks for my wife by name. "Yeah," I said, "she knows you're here?" And the cop asks if she can come in. Seeing as I moved the meth lab and the white-slave ring accounting department across town last week I step aside and admit her.
The wife's bleary eyed and tired looking when she comes to the door. The cop confirms her identity and says something about a car accident. We're both like, what the hell are you talking about? The wife's so discombobulated from being woken up by someone else that I suggest maybe she'd like to go out with the officer and see what's up. The officer agrees and they're gone.
Here's what happened...at some point last week my wife's left front bumper brushed against the car parked in the space next to ours hard enough that some paint transferred. My neighbour, who's a member of our nation's armed forces, decides that he doesn't want to deal with me directly (for whatever reason...I am a scruffy, shiftless ne'er-do-well apparently) and calls the cops. Constable Strippergram is the end result of that phone call. In the bad old days I would have gone ballistic in this kind of a situation but my wife has mellowed me considerably. Instead of calling this fucking dough-boy a fucking dough-boy I listen to the officer explaining that she won't be charging my wife under the Criminal Code (like that could have happened because there was never any intent to damage pus-balls's shitty little rice burning hatchback in the first place) and that both parties need to bring their vehicles to the collision reporting centre on Princess Street. Then the officer says that we should hash these things out on the spot and come to resolution.
Listen, my wife's no Chatty Cathy and doesn't do well speaking to people she's never met. I tell the pus-arsed mincing fairy shit-lipped cry-baby across the hall (who has supply-tech written all over his weak chinned ferret face), in my best customer service voice (with extra syrup) that we have no trouble paying for any damage to his car. "But," I say, "why didn't you just leave a note on the car or maybe cross the hall and knock on the door if you had a beef with us? Why call the laws on us?" He mumbles something about not knowing how to pursue the issue and some shit about covering his bases and I'm thinking, If this guy's any indication of what Canada's military has become then I'm gonna' start learning Mandarin and Farsi tomorrow.
In the end it was an amicable deal but there's a part of me that knows this isn't over yet. I am so pissed off that I can't see straight! He called the cops about a scratch I could have made with my fingernail! We live right across the hall from each other and he never once asked about this. I swear to Christ by all that's good and holy that Mr. Fred Rogers himself would bitchslap this pseudo-soldier and feed him to the Kingdom of Makebelieve! Yeah, yeah...I can here the more reasonable among you saying, "Leave it go, Air. What's done is done." or "It could have been worse." And all I'm thinking is, Yeah, it could have been worse. Constable Strippergram might have had a soldier fetish and sent my wife to the bucket for something that didn't even register at the time. I've had any number of sweet revenge schemes go through my head in the five hours since that I'm starved for action. Deep down (and for legal purposes) I know that nothing's ever gonna' come from any of them (yet) but what's a simple man to do in the face of such a shitty neighbour?
Peace...for the time being.
Low and behold, there's a message waiting. Hmmm...okay, I'll play the message game...that's cool...you listened to mine so I'll listen to yours. So I punch in the codes that keep my messages private and listen. "Hello, this is Constable X calling for [the author's wife]. Can you please call me back at XXX-XXXX. Thank you..." My only thought at this moment is "why the fuck do the cops wanna' talk to my wife?" Really, she's the most law-abiding, kind and nonthreatening person I've ever met...I mean, she brakes for chipmunks crossing in front of the car, she pets every dog that walks by her and married me of all people.
And as it's Sunday and barely a quarter after ten in the morning, she's not up. (I wouldn't have been except that I was running snot out my nose like a steady drip of...well, snot.) But I want to know what the hell's going on so I take her the phone.
"Hey, babe," I say with the phone a half inch from her nose. "The cops called you, there's a message."
"Cops?" she asks. I can imagine her using the same voice if I suddenly grew a third testicle.
"Yup. Call them, will you?"
She does and I wait to see what's happening. She's switched around a few times and ends up leaving a message for Constable X. By this time I'm figuring that it can't be too bad. If she's done something really wrong we wouldn't be getting a phone call. Shit, if she'd done something really wrong and we did get a phone call I sure as fuck wouldn't be getting her to call them back. In any case, she goes back to sleep and I get back to the antics of Doctors Sheldon Lee Cooper and Leonard Leaky Hoffstaeder.
At noon someone rings the doorbell. No one rings my doorbell unexpectedly...I just don't have anyone who ever wants to come over. Glancing out the window I see a North Bay City police cruiser. Irrationally, my first thought is, "They're never gonna' take me alive!" But then I reach back through the haze of three morning screwdrivers to remember the phone call. Shit! They're here for my baby-girl and she's the nicest, kindest person in the world and they'll never take us alive.
So, I let the wife know that the cops are here and cover my shame with a robe before answering the door. The cop's cute enough that I think, "Strippergram?" but I know that's the vodka talking. She asks if my Mom's home and I'm all, "Huh? She's in Utah." And then the cop asks for my wife by name. "Yeah," I said, "she knows you're here?" And the cop asks if she can come in. Seeing as I moved the meth lab and the white-slave ring accounting department across town last week I step aside and admit her.
The wife's bleary eyed and tired looking when she comes to the door. The cop confirms her identity and says something about a car accident. We're both like, what the hell are you talking about? The wife's so discombobulated from being woken up by someone else that I suggest maybe she'd like to go out with the officer and see what's up. The officer agrees and they're gone.
Here's what happened...at some point last week my wife's left front bumper brushed against the car parked in the space next to ours hard enough that some paint transferred. My neighbour, who's a member of our nation's armed forces, decides that he doesn't want to deal with me directly (for whatever reason...I am a scruffy, shiftless ne'er-do-well apparently) and calls the cops. Constable Strippergram is the end result of that phone call. In the bad old days I would have gone ballistic in this kind of a situation but my wife has mellowed me considerably. Instead of calling this fucking dough-boy a fucking dough-boy I listen to the officer explaining that she won't be charging my wife under the Criminal Code (like that could have happened because there was never any intent to damage pus-balls's shitty little rice burning hatchback in the first place) and that both parties need to bring their vehicles to the collision reporting centre on Princess Street. Then the officer says that we should hash these things out on the spot and come to resolution.
Listen, my wife's no Chatty Cathy and doesn't do well speaking to people she's never met. I tell the pus-arsed mincing fairy shit-lipped cry-baby across the hall (who has supply-tech written all over his weak chinned ferret face), in my best customer service voice (with extra syrup) that we have no trouble paying for any damage to his car. "But," I say, "why didn't you just leave a note on the car or maybe cross the hall and knock on the door if you had a beef with us? Why call the laws on us?" He mumbles something about not knowing how to pursue the issue and some shit about covering his bases and I'm thinking, If this guy's any indication of what Canada's military has become then I'm gonna' start learning Mandarin and Farsi tomorrow.
In the end it was an amicable deal but there's a part of me that knows this isn't over yet. I am so pissed off that I can't see straight! He called the cops about a scratch I could have made with my fingernail! We live right across the hall from each other and he never once asked about this. I swear to Christ by all that's good and holy that Mr. Fred Rogers himself would bitchslap this pseudo-soldier and feed him to the Kingdom of Makebelieve! Yeah, yeah...I can here the more reasonable among you saying, "Leave it go, Air. What's done is done." or "It could have been worse." And all I'm thinking is, Yeah, it could have been worse. Constable Strippergram might have had a soldier fetish and sent my wife to the bucket for something that didn't even register at the time. I've had any number of sweet revenge schemes go through my head in the five hours since that I'm starved for action. Deep down (and for legal purposes) I know that nothing's ever gonna' come from any of them (yet) but what's a simple man to do in the face of such a shitty neighbour?
Peace...for the time being.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Sinspiration
I've been reading about psychic poison lately in science fiction. It's an interesting concept whereby a trained assassin plants a mental suggestion in the subject that breaches the victim's internal fortifications to seek out and destroy any willingness to resist a nasty end (check out Frank Herbert's "Dune Messiah" for the discussion in Chapter One). The funny thing about all of this was that I realized it had happened to me already... and it started when I was four.
Listen, Sunday School teachers once had me believing that the Holy Ghost talks through people by filling us with warmth and upliftment when we do what is right or hear what is true. I thought that this was the most amazing thing I had ever heard, having felt the warmth and upliftment on many occasions at church during hymn singing. So, if the Holy Ghost was talking through me and acting as God's intermediary then the feeling I got inside was actually God talking to me. Right on, proof that God exists, I thought...that's bitchin'. It got so that I could talk to the Holy Ghost pretty much whenever I wanted while doing different things. '
Warmth and upliftment used to fill me until tear ducts spilled the excess whenever Dad told me a good story. The Holy Ghost used to come around for a chat every time I put my hand down my pants. I told my mom about that one and she spanked me so I learned to keep those conversations to myself. But I was just a kid and didn't understand the difference between fact and metaphor...I actually thought the feeling I was getting was the Holy Ghost speaking inside of me. I actually thought that I was doing right and hearing truth all over the place.
I started having my doubts at around seven. The first time I ever saw a naked woman, I told the friend who showed me that the Holy Ghost was saying this gash was right and true by filling my dingle with warmth and upliftment. Buddy pissed himself laughing. Honest, his mom sent me home so that she could change him. And it started me wondering why my Sunday School teachers never picked me to offer an example of the Spirit speaking to me after the time I told them that God loved Theoden, King of Rohan.
Why else, I advocated, would the speech he made to the Rohirrim before charging on Peleanor Field affect me so if not for the Holy Ghost communicating God's approval? They told me I was wrong. See, without knowing it, I had already realized that any number of unholy things could make me feel the same way as the "Holy Ghost" speaking to me. I was a sinner. What a fucking nightmare for the son of a father who stood true to the faith despite constant testing and daily trials. I'd also fallen for the line that I would die and come before God whose recording angels would have offered up an account of my life entire. All of my sins would be presented to the Lord of Hosts via Betamax and all of my dead relatives would be watching. The Holy Ghost began whispering God's shame and guilt every time He caught me tucked away with Tolkien and a meat sandwich. Masturbation was actually the Devil using my idle hands despite the warmth and upliftment. It was all too much for a kid to deal with. No wonder I left the straight and narrow way to cavort on the wide road down to Hell.
That was years ago - too many to admit and I stopped believing in Hell before I started getting laid. Nowadays I sit around wondering how I could have ever fed in to that whole line of shit and think about psychic poison. I've since built my life on a foundation of understanding that people can be inspired to do pretty much anything they damn well want and make others believe it's right and true. Look at Hitler and the Heaven's Gate - see how many people have tasted poison for one man's being inspired with warmth and upliftment. I doubt that it was the Holy Ghost goading Hitler and his psyched out minions to attempted genocide and I don't think God would have wanted Marshall Applewhite and his crew of martian loving misfits in Heaven with Him anyway. And the boy I was in Sunday School would hardly recognize the man I am today for all of the psychic poison he'd been fed about voices in his belly and the warmth and upliftment brought by God.
I wish that I could meet that kid I was...really and truly. Maybe then I could get to him before he realized the lies he was being fed would hurt him bad in the long run. I could tell him that the warmth and upliftment he feels when something rings true is body chemistry and nothing to do with a Father in Heaven. I could tell him to jerk it as much as he wants and that no one will get hurt so long as he does it in private. I could tell him that being inspired by what Dad calls sins is okay and that people will appreciate him for it some day (hint hint). I'd tell him to talk to someone about the despair he experienced every time something "bad" made him feel good and that contemplating suicide was nothing an eight year old should ever have to think about.
But I probably wouldn't have believed myself, that's just the kind of kid I was. Maybe it's better that I discovered the truth behind sinspiration all by myself. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to sit here and tell you all about it. But then maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing either. Meh...I'll always have Tolkein, meat sandwiches and masturbation.
Listen, Sunday School teachers once had me believing that the Holy Ghost talks through people by filling us with warmth and upliftment when we do what is right or hear what is true. I thought that this was the most amazing thing I had ever heard, having felt the warmth and upliftment on many occasions at church during hymn singing. So, if the Holy Ghost was talking through me and acting as God's intermediary then the feeling I got inside was actually God talking to me. Right on, proof that God exists, I thought...that's bitchin'. It got so that I could talk to the Holy Ghost pretty much whenever I wanted while doing different things. '
Warmth and upliftment used to fill me until tear ducts spilled the excess whenever Dad told me a good story. The Holy Ghost used to come around for a chat every time I put my hand down my pants. I told my mom about that one and she spanked me so I learned to keep those conversations to myself. But I was just a kid and didn't understand the difference between fact and metaphor...I actually thought the feeling I was getting was the Holy Ghost speaking inside of me. I actually thought that I was doing right and hearing truth all over the place.
I started having my doubts at around seven. The first time I ever saw a naked woman, I told the friend who showed me that the Holy Ghost was saying this gash was right and true by filling my dingle with warmth and upliftment. Buddy pissed himself laughing. Honest, his mom sent me home so that she could change him. And it started me wondering why my Sunday School teachers never picked me to offer an example of the Spirit speaking to me after the time I told them that God loved Theoden, King of Rohan.
Why else, I advocated, would the speech he made to the Rohirrim before charging on Peleanor Field affect me so if not for the Holy Ghost communicating God's approval? They told me I was wrong. See, without knowing it, I had already realized that any number of unholy things could make me feel the same way as the "Holy Ghost" speaking to me. I was a sinner. What a fucking nightmare for the son of a father who stood true to the faith despite constant testing and daily trials. I'd also fallen for the line that I would die and come before God whose recording angels would have offered up an account of my life entire. All of my sins would be presented to the Lord of Hosts via Betamax and all of my dead relatives would be watching. The Holy Ghost began whispering God's shame and guilt every time He caught me tucked away with Tolkien and a meat sandwich. Masturbation was actually the Devil using my idle hands despite the warmth and upliftment. It was all too much for a kid to deal with. No wonder I left the straight and narrow way to cavort on the wide road down to Hell.
That was years ago - too many to admit and I stopped believing in Hell before I started getting laid. Nowadays I sit around wondering how I could have ever fed in to that whole line of shit and think about psychic poison. I've since built my life on a foundation of understanding that people can be inspired to do pretty much anything they damn well want and make others believe it's right and true. Look at Hitler and the Heaven's Gate - see how many people have tasted poison for one man's being inspired with warmth and upliftment. I doubt that it was the Holy Ghost goading Hitler and his psyched out minions to attempted genocide and I don't think God would have wanted Marshall Applewhite and his crew of martian loving misfits in Heaven with Him anyway. And the boy I was in Sunday School would hardly recognize the man I am today for all of the psychic poison he'd been fed about voices in his belly and the warmth and upliftment brought by God.
I wish that I could meet that kid I was...really and truly. Maybe then I could get to him before he realized the lies he was being fed would hurt him bad in the long run. I could tell him that the warmth and upliftment he feels when something rings true is body chemistry and nothing to do with a Father in Heaven. I could tell him to jerk it as much as he wants and that no one will get hurt so long as he does it in private. I could tell him that being inspired by what Dad calls sins is okay and that people will appreciate him for it some day (hint hint). I'd tell him to talk to someone about the despair he experienced every time something "bad" made him feel good and that contemplating suicide was nothing an eight year old should ever have to think about.
But I probably wouldn't have believed myself, that's just the kind of kid I was. Maybe it's better that I discovered the truth behind sinspiration all by myself. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to sit here and tell you all about it. But then maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing either. Meh...I'll always have Tolkein, meat sandwiches and masturbation.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Parents Strongly Cautioned
The only reason I took the plunge into French Immersion was for the trip to Quebec City in Grade Eight. Every year like clockwork Monsieur Arsenault would pack his students into a bus and pilot them eastward Joseph Conrad style - right into the heart of darkness. The stories from years past were the stuff of legends with plenty of deflowering by nubile Quebec girls and illicit drinking binges. Yes, for that kind of opportunity I would suffer to learn French.
I never got to go because we couldn't afford it. Instead I spent the week at my elementary Alma-matre helping Mamselle "Flat Chest" Farrell mercilessly beating her nose pickers at Zut! and other classic French class blackboard games. Reports filtered back from up the river that everyone was doing fine and enjoying the local culture - blatant propaganda as ever there was. The truth was much more sinister.
Sure, I can remember a few of them (mostly prissy girls who spent too much time holding on to Teacher's dick) coming back to civilization with airy tales of Old Quebec's cobblestoned streets and loading muskets on The Plains of Abraham. They made sure to rub that one in harder than a masochistic Thai masseuse when they saw me listening but my interest was only peripheral. See, the boys brought back something far more valuable, far more exotic than pretty spoken tales of a far-off land. The boys brought back music we'd never heard before, songs that could only be purchased in multi-cultural cities with links to vast trading partners around the world. And who knows, the music might have been decent but we were only interested in the tape case which held a notice that read: "EXPLICIT LYRICS: parents strongly cautioned."
Say what? Explicit lyrics? Whassat? Crack 'em open and let's have a listen. Oh, NWA's "Fuck the Police"...yeah that's explicit. Ice-T and Too Live Crew...pussies and drugs and me so horny...yup my parents should be cautioned about this. Hell, my mom would stroke out if she heard "Fuck Martinez" played at full volume. Where had these been all my life? Gimme more bad words and driving beats. Gimme the chance to live a little before a lifetime of religious service. Hell yeah...gimme explicit lyrics and caution my parents to stay out of my way, 'cause this boy's found his muse and it ain't got nuthin' to do glory, lauds and honour so much as surrender, slander and shame. more...More...MORE!!!
Now that I'm older and a tad wiser (no comments from the peanut gallery, please) I can safely say that I scraped through those years rather well. I never got anything pregnant, I never had any trouble with the cops (with one exception) and I did eventually beat my teen age alcoholism. I've also learned what not to do if I ever have children of my own...never let them out of my sight or else chaperon trips away from home. A little freedom goes a long way and can sometimes take a child all the way to the heart of darkness. Heck, I never even left the province and I still got into trouble...just ask Mamselle Farrell.
Tell her that her "petit chou" sent you...she'll remember.
I never got to go because we couldn't afford it. Instead I spent the week at my elementary Alma-matre helping Mamselle "Flat Chest" Farrell mercilessly beating her nose pickers at Zut! and other classic French class blackboard games. Reports filtered back from up the river that everyone was doing fine and enjoying the local culture - blatant propaganda as ever there was. The truth was much more sinister.
Sure, I can remember a few of them (mostly prissy girls who spent too much time holding on to Teacher's dick) coming back to civilization with airy tales of Old Quebec's cobblestoned streets and loading muskets on The Plains of Abraham. They made sure to rub that one in harder than a masochistic Thai masseuse when they saw me listening but my interest was only peripheral. See, the boys brought back something far more valuable, far more exotic than pretty spoken tales of a far-off land. The boys brought back music we'd never heard before, songs that could only be purchased in multi-cultural cities with links to vast trading partners around the world. And who knows, the music might have been decent but we were only interested in the tape case which held a notice that read: "EXPLICIT LYRICS: parents strongly cautioned."
Say what? Explicit lyrics? Whassat? Crack 'em open and let's have a listen. Oh, NWA's "Fuck the Police"...yeah that's explicit. Ice-T and Too Live Crew...pussies and drugs and me so horny...yup my parents should be cautioned about this. Hell, my mom would stroke out if she heard "Fuck Martinez" played at full volume. Where had these been all my life? Gimme more bad words and driving beats. Gimme the chance to live a little before a lifetime of religious service. Hell yeah...gimme explicit lyrics and caution my parents to stay out of my way, 'cause this boy's found his muse and it ain't got nuthin' to do glory, lauds and honour so much as surrender, slander and shame. more...More...MORE!!!
Now that I'm older and a tad wiser (no comments from the peanut gallery, please) I can safely say that I scraped through those years rather well. I never got anything pregnant, I never had any trouble with the cops (with one exception) and I did eventually beat my teen age alcoholism. I've also learned what not to do if I ever have children of my own...never let them out of my sight or else chaperon trips away from home. A little freedom goes a long way and can sometimes take a child all the way to the heart of darkness. Heck, I never even left the province and I still got into trouble...just ask Mamselle Farrell.
Tell her that her "petit chou" sent you...she'll remember.
The Khan of Khans
Good Arghun, tarry yet awhile.
I’ve plucked you from the rank and file
To take a place in history.
(Your songs of battle make me smile.)
The council’s done, our course is set,
That now, good Arghun, hearken yet,
It’s time to carve my legacy
In flesh with bloody ecstasy.
Before the west was pacified
I fought against a mighty tide
Of faithless fools and jealousy
That forced my hand to fratricide.
And since those days of living rough,
I’ve taken pains to take enough.
My sole regret was having none
To sing the work my blade had done.
When acts of vengeance made my name,
The seed for all my present fame,
I wanted men to bear its fruit
So flew my flag and many came.
They, daily, dwell in muck and mud
And sing my skill for shedding blood.
I’ve bled them too, they love me still,
By right their mouths are mine to fill.
Ambitions make me more than man.
I loot and burn because I can.
No mortared stone or timber wall
Has yet protected foes who ran.
Gone soft in shelter, safe and warm,
They shake before the coming storm
And soon the world will call me Lord
Or fall beneath my motley horde.
The afterglow of rout is sweet
As honeyed wine. Each tribe we greet
With steel is offered certain death
Or pledge my flag with no deceit.
With deep salaams and prayers of thanks
Mohammedans have swelled our ranks.
Betrayals meet with swift dispatch,
A smartly severed head to catch.
As nature bids me stand erect
The captured women genuflect
For all my earthly gifts are great.
They bare themselves to show respect.
But needs demand our next contempt
Of humankind for so I’ve dreamt.
We’ll turn towards the rising day
And boldly conquer gold Cathay.
I see the doubt behind your eyes
But fear no more, your Khan is wise,
We strike because the time is ripe.
Let yellow scholars criticize
We fighting men enduring pain
While non-combatants cast disdain.
But take some consolation thus:
Their livelihoods depend on us.
So long as men are ruled by kings
They’ll bend to breed distasteful things
Pretending everything is fine
And knowing why the caged bird sings.
My acts will likely touch a nerve.
It’s better far to rule than serve
Unless the folk you’re shitting on
Have sense enough to see the con.
I’ve plucked you from the rank and file
To take a place in history.
(Your songs of battle make me smile.)
The council’s done, our course is set,
That now, good Arghun, hearken yet,
It’s time to carve my legacy
In flesh with bloody ecstasy.
Before the west was pacified
I fought against a mighty tide
Of faithless fools and jealousy
That forced my hand to fratricide.
And since those days of living rough,
I’ve taken pains to take enough.
My sole regret was having none
To sing the work my blade had done.
When acts of vengeance made my name,
The seed for all my present fame,
I wanted men to bear its fruit
So flew my flag and many came.
They, daily, dwell in muck and mud
And sing my skill for shedding blood.
I’ve bled them too, they love me still,
By right their mouths are mine to fill.
Ambitions make me more than man.
I loot and burn because I can.
No mortared stone or timber wall
Has yet protected foes who ran.
Gone soft in shelter, safe and warm,
They shake before the coming storm
And soon the world will call me Lord
Or fall beneath my motley horde.
The afterglow of rout is sweet
As honeyed wine. Each tribe we greet
With steel is offered certain death
Or pledge my flag with no deceit.
With deep salaams and prayers of thanks
Mohammedans have swelled our ranks.
Betrayals meet with swift dispatch,
A smartly severed head to catch.
As nature bids me stand erect
The captured women genuflect
For all my earthly gifts are great.
They bare themselves to show respect.
But needs demand our next contempt
Of humankind for so I’ve dreamt.
We’ll turn towards the rising day
And boldly conquer gold Cathay.
I see the doubt behind your eyes
But fear no more, your Khan is wise,
We strike because the time is ripe.
Let yellow scholars criticize
We fighting men enduring pain
While non-combatants cast disdain.
But take some consolation thus:
Their livelihoods depend on us.
So long as men are ruled by kings
They’ll bend to breed distasteful things
Pretending everything is fine
And knowing why the caged bird sings.
My acts will likely touch a nerve.
It’s better far to rule than serve
Unless the folk you’re shitting on
Have sense enough to see the con.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
"Gloria"
The title's in quotes to let you know that "Gloria" is a song title and does not name anyone from my past (although in this case I really wish I could name names). And to be clear, I'll be referring to Laura Branigan version as it's the only one I ever heard. In fact, if you don't know it then you might want to take a moment to find it and take a listen. You can hear it free online (via google) or if you've got a copy of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories" it plays on FLASH FM regularly - just don't start mowing down hookers willy-nilly while you do. I'll wait...
Good...not a bad song eh? It was recorded in 1982 so I would have been seven years old but I didn't hear it for the first time until I was ten. See, Mom had traded me and my brother to a fat guy in Eganville in exchange for a week of peace and quiet. Ostensibly, we were there to keep his three young niece's company but I think back and remember some strain around Dad's eyes and maybe there was some deeper current moving underneath. Regardless, the fat guy managed an holistic retreat in the wilds around Eganville and the girls were going stir crazy so he came with his brother-in-law to pick us up and take us in to meet them.
There were three of them...I don't remember their names but the oldest and youngest were sisters and the middle one was a cousin. I don't think they thought too much of us at first. My brother and I were devout Mormon boys and these girls were straight out of Babylon - we had no idea what to expect from each other. Anyway...we were left completely unsupervised for long periods of time in the main lodge with a big screen satellite TV and stereo system. The girls had a tape of 80's hits and "Gloria" was the first track on the A side. I'll tell you that what happened next changed my life forever.
See, they wanted to dance for us and said so with many giggles and sideways glances. (Apparently, this is something that girls do when they're together and feeling wicked...they dance.) They kept asking us if we liked dancing and if we'd ever seen girls dance for just us. For shit's sake, these were the first girls we had ever met outside of school and the prim confines of Church besides our sisters...we were ten and nine. I was totally in the fucking dark. But when I tried to ask my brother if it was OK he didn't even look at me...he kept his eyes on the oldest and nodded - completely stunned.
So they put the tape in and "Gloria" starts pouring out the speakers. Immediately the girls start light stomping to the beat and moving their hips. They must have danced to this song together before because they had a routine down. In fact, if you google videos for this song you'll find a Much More Music's Retro Video Dance party version of the song. Look it up and watch the lovely Miss Laura Branigan dance...that's what the girls were doing. They lip synced the song as well...at least the oldest did and whenever she sang along to the "and you really don't remember...was it something that he said...or the voices in your head calling Gloria" lines she'd do a little shirt lift and rub at her hair which (for some unknown reason) had me feeling pretty fine in my pants. Of course the supposedly stoic Mormon boys pretended not to like it but I, at least, refused to get up off the couch for a while after they had stopped. And when I finally managed (at the insistence of the oldest) it was only to accompany her out to the spring house for some exploring (wink wink, nudge nudge, how's your father).
I write this not as a brag but as a plea for help. See, I've always wondered what happened to those girls from that summer 25 years ago and I'm sort of ashamed that I can't remember their names. There's a hope burning in me somewhere near my pants that one of them will read this some day and remember the boys they met that week at Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty-Anne's place. Maybe then I could apologize to the middle one for going out to the spring house with her cousin and tell her that the quiet game of trivial pursuit we played under the pool table remains one of the strongest sense impressions of my life. Maybe all I'll ever have to remember of them is "Gloria."
But I hope not.
Good...not a bad song eh? It was recorded in 1982 so I would have been seven years old but I didn't hear it for the first time until I was ten. See, Mom had traded me and my brother to a fat guy in Eganville in exchange for a week of peace and quiet. Ostensibly, we were there to keep his three young niece's company but I think back and remember some strain around Dad's eyes and maybe there was some deeper current moving underneath. Regardless, the fat guy managed an holistic retreat in the wilds around Eganville and the girls were going stir crazy so he came with his brother-in-law to pick us up and take us in to meet them.
There were three of them...I don't remember their names but the oldest and youngest were sisters and the middle one was a cousin. I don't think they thought too much of us at first. My brother and I were devout Mormon boys and these girls were straight out of Babylon - we had no idea what to expect from each other. Anyway...we were left completely unsupervised for long periods of time in the main lodge with a big screen satellite TV and stereo system. The girls had a tape of 80's hits and "Gloria" was the first track on the A side. I'll tell you that what happened next changed my life forever.
See, they wanted to dance for us and said so with many giggles and sideways glances. (Apparently, this is something that girls do when they're together and feeling wicked...they dance.) They kept asking us if we liked dancing and if we'd ever seen girls dance for just us. For shit's sake, these were the first girls we had ever met outside of school and the prim confines of Church besides our sisters...we were ten and nine. I was totally in the fucking dark. But when I tried to ask my brother if it was OK he didn't even look at me...he kept his eyes on the oldest and nodded - completely stunned.
So they put the tape in and "Gloria" starts pouring out the speakers. Immediately the girls start light stomping to the beat and moving their hips. They must have danced to this song together before because they had a routine down. In fact, if you google videos for this song you'll find a Much More Music's Retro Video Dance party version of the song. Look it up and watch the lovely Miss Laura Branigan dance...that's what the girls were doing. They lip synced the song as well...at least the oldest did and whenever she sang along to the "and you really don't remember...was it something that he said...or the voices in your head calling Gloria" lines she'd do a little shirt lift and rub at her hair which (for some unknown reason) had me feeling pretty fine in my pants. Of course the supposedly stoic Mormon boys pretended not to like it but I, at least, refused to get up off the couch for a while after they had stopped. And when I finally managed (at the insistence of the oldest) it was only to accompany her out to the spring house for some exploring (wink wink, nudge nudge, how's your father).
I write this not as a brag but as a plea for help. See, I've always wondered what happened to those girls from that summer 25 years ago and I'm sort of ashamed that I can't remember their names. There's a hope burning in me somewhere near my pants that one of them will read this some day and remember the boys they met that week at Uncle Bob and Aunt Betty-Anne's place. Maybe then I could apologize to the middle one for going out to the spring house with her cousin and tell her that the quiet game of trivial pursuit we played under the pool table remains one of the strongest sense impressions of my life. Maybe all I'll ever have to remember of them is "Gloria."
But I hope not.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The Dungeon Master
He was the fat kid whose clothes never fit and whose skin never tanned. He had long greasy hair and a bumper crop of acne in the furrows on his forehead. No one but his younger brother would sit next to him on the school bus and a year of that was enough. There was one girl - a pretty little gamine with green eyes - who thought he was mute until the first day he was left to sit alone. But by then his backpack had become so stuffed with rule books, notes and miscellaneous magic that he needed the seat next to him. She asked what was in the bag and he told her in a way that had her bemused from Pet to the Broke and then asked why he wouldn't look at her. He said that mortals were forbidden to look upon perfection and she turned her countenance away - typical goddess behaviour.
There were always two or three guys to meet him when he got to school - sometimes as many as six. Times had been they'd be waiting to prey on him sure as wolves shit sheep only now he was their king and the keeper of secrets. He was their Dungeon Master. This fat loser would mediate disputes, settle accounts, offer advice gleaned from too much science fiction and too much time alone, basking in their attention where before he was shunned. Their tributes had filled his pack to bursting and they all carried a complete set of dice in either draw string leatherette bags or carved wooden boxes. They were ten in all with names like Merit Goodgrass, Slim Picker, Dirk Blackmoor and Siriadin Urktenuct and they saved his life with their adoration so he served as their God.
He worked harder at creating their afternoon adventures than at most of his subjects and would never advance past 11th grade math but he could add sums in his head as fast as he could roll the bones. There were hand drawn maps and painted figurines that earned him praise from his group and the art teacher. Adventure stories that earned him a trip to the Principal's office made for grim fun behind the Island of Pines by lunchtime. Weekends would see them all gathered at an ambivalent parent's house, huddled in the basement with pizza and soft drinks while they overthrew dragon ruled empires and spelunked into dank monster lousy dungeons. Buckets of blood and barrels of booty awaited the boys brave enough to endure the Dungeon Master's Company...
Until they discovered women and booze mixed together in a more compelling manner. And that was the end of the grand adventure. The Dungeon Master crawled into a bottle for lack of anything better to do. The Unwritten Laws of Primitive Teenage Society contained articles on fallen idols and lost glory. It didn't matter if you were jock or a nerd, a bad ass or a boy scout; the fall from grace is complete and absolute. You're lucky if you don't get beat up every day and ranked out by teachers. The best you can hope for is a quiet corner to eat lunch in and a nod in the hallway.
This was me.
And now they want me back. Not those same guys from school, no, they've all grown up and got jobs or kids - sometimes a bit of both. No, this is a new group still shifting and sliding to find their fit in the foundations of a new Company. They're single or still engaged with no kids but furry quadrupeds and one of them is a woman - an actual woman with breasts and everything. Yes, I wouldn't mind introducing them to Razkale Blackgob and Porcine Thunder or the Fey Knights of Thinwhistle Moore but I have also developed some self-respect over the years. My clothes fit better and I wash my hair daily, most of the acne's gone. I've brought women to bed and been taken...the game's gotten better. All that I have to do is forget all I've learned in the years since high school and I could be a Dungeon Master again.
We'll see...
There were always two or three guys to meet him when he got to school - sometimes as many as six. Times had been they'd be waiting to prey on him sure as wolves shit sheep only now he was their king and the keeper of secrets. He was their Dungeon Master. This fat loser would mediate disputes, settle accounts, offer advice gleaned from too much science fiction and too much time alone, basking in their attention where before he was shunned. Their tributes had filled his pack to bursting and they all carried a complete set of dice in either draw string leatherette bags or carved wooden boxes. They were ten in all with names like Merit Goodgrass, Slim Picker, Dirk Blackmoor and Siriadin Urktenuct and they saved his life with their adoration so he served as their God.
He worked harder at creating their afternoon adventures than at most of his subjects and would never advance past 11th grade math but he could add sums in his head as fast as he could roll the bones. There were hand drawn maps and painted figurines that earned him praise from his group and the art teacher. Adventure stories that earned him a trip to the Principal's office made for grim fun behind the Island of Pines by lunchtime. Weekends would see them all gathered at an ambivalent parent's house, huddled in the basement with pizza and soft drinks while they overthrew dragon ruled empires and spelunked into dank monster lousy dungeons. Buckets of blood and barrels of booty awaited the boys brave enough to endure the Dungeon Master's Company...
Until they discovered women and booze mixed together in a more compelling manner. And that was the end of the grand adventure. The Dungeon Master crawled into a bottle for lack of anything better to do. The Unwritten Laws of Primitive Teenage Society contained articles on fallen idols and lost glory. It didn't matter if you were jock or a nerd, a bad ass or a boy scout; the fall from grace is complete and absolute. You're lucky if you don't get beat up every day and ranked out by teachers. The best you can hope for is a quiet corner to eat lunch in and a nod in the hallway.
This was me.
And now they want me back. Not those same guys from school, no, they've all grown up and got jobs or kids - sometimes a bit of both. No, this is a new group still shifting and sliding to find their fit in the foundations of a new Company. They're single or still engaged with no kids but furry quadrupeds and one of them is a woman - an actual woman with breasts and everything. Yes, I wouldn't mind introducing them to Razkale Blackgob and Porcine Thunder or the Fey Knights of Thinwhistle Moore but I have also developed some self-respect over the years. My clothes fit better and I wash my hair daily, most of the acne's gone. I've brought women to bed and been taken...the game's gotten better. All that I have to do is forget all I've learned in the years since high school and I could be a Dungeon Master again.
We'll see...
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Where There's Smoke...
There's a picture of me playing with fire when I was a year old. I know because it was taken at my first birthday party - the single candle told me so. In it I'm in a high chair, wide eyed and fascinated with a single pointing pink digit straining to touch the flame lit to celebrate successful completion of my first year of life. I say straining because the picture also shows a piece of my father holding me from being burned by a taut handful of my overalls. Whenever it's shown to my immediate family the inevitable "I told you so" looks and "We should have knowns" get passed around like joints at a Hip concert- freely and without consideration of offending. Or so I'm told after the fact. I'm always too captured by the glimpse back at true and perfect open wonder to notice.
So, I can be completely confident in my assertion that I have always been fascinated by fire. I can remember the first book of matches I found under the slide in the park behind the house before my sister was born and being caught with burned fingertips. Then there was a Sunday School class about Samson tying several pairs of foxes to a torch each and sending them pell mell through Philistine cornfields - I had a taste of what heaven's savour is rumored to be like that morning. (In fact, your Bible's chock full of bonerific burning imagery and it's a wonder that there aren't more devout Christian firebugs.) No sooner were we home from Church that day then I was out the back gate with a pilfered bic to spend the afternoon raining brimstone on sinning ants. Again, I was betrayed by burnt fingers and the blue plastic lighter was confiscated. Keeping fire away from me only fuelled my desire for more and I learned from my mistakes.
Lighting fires became a secret thing to be shared only with close confidences who would be in as much trouble as me if caught - mostly my brother. It was his idea to keep the fires small and us out of trouble and I complied in his presence. But I would argue that only containment was key to not being discovered and one day he relented. We filled a garbage can full of birch bark, set a match to it and didn't account for the wind. The rest of that day stays locked away in a sealed juvenile record. Two years later we were both in cubscouts where the same man who held me back from my first birthday candle and tanned my ass after court initiated me into the Art of the One-Match Fire. Soon I was performing in front of crowds and providing a service at the same time - like masturbating for a sterile posterity or nose picking to feed the homeless.
See, I've got a fire to look forward to. It's been raining for the past two days which means that there can be one out at the cottage this weekend. I can lay it, light it, feed it and kill it at my leisure - for my pleasure. I'll play the dutiful scout and be safe about it but the wide eyed, apple cheeked one-year old in me is always reaching for more. Only now there's no one to hold me back by my overalls and I'll be drinking enough to maybe let myself loose as well. Maybe I'll smoke a joint too many and imagine that fires get the munchies too. Let's just hope that I don't feed it the world.
So, I can be completely confident in my assertion that I have always been fascinated by fire. I can remember the first book of matches I found under the slide in the park behind the house before my sister was born and being caught with burned fingertips. Then there was a Sunday School class about Samson tying several pairs of foxes to a torch each and sending them pell mell through Philistine cornfields - I had a taste of what heaven's savour is rumored to be like that morning. (In fact, your Bible's chock full of bonerific burning imagery and it's a wonder that there aren't more devout Christian firebugs.) No sooner were we home from Church that day then I was out the back gate with a pilfered bic to spend the afternoon raining brimstone on sinning ants. Again, I was betrayed by burnt fingers and the blue plastic lighter was confiscated. Keeping fire away from me only fuelled my desire for more and I learned from my mistakes.
Lighting fires became a secret thing to be shared only with close confidences who would be in as much trouble as me if caught - mostly my brother. It was his idea to keep the fires small and us out of trouble and I complied in his presence. But I would argue that only containment was key to not being discovered and one day he relented. We filled a garbage can full of birch bark, set a match to it and didn't account for the wind. The rest of that day stays locked away in a sealed juvenile record. Two years later we were both in cubscouts where the same man who held me back from my first birthday candle and tanned my ass after court initiated me into the Art of the One-Match Fire. Soon I was performing in front of crowds and providing a service at the same time - like masturbating for a sterile posterity or nose picking to feed the homeless.
See, I've got a fire to look forward to. It's been raining for the past two days which means that there can be one out at the cottage this weekend. I can lay it, light it, feed it and kill it at my leisure - for my pleasure. I'll play the dutiful scout and be safe about it but the wide eyed, apple cheeked one-year old in me is always reaching for more. Only now there's no one to hold me back by my overalls and I'll be drinking enough to maybe let myself loose as well. Maybe I'll smoke a joint too many and imagine that fires get the munchies too. Let's just hope that I don't feed it the world.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
The God Dilemna
Have you ever wondered who invented God? It has to be a man that did. And I don't mean that in a good way. I just can't see a woman perpetrating something so fundamentally flawed - not when they have the engine of perfect creation inside themselves. I have no trouble imagining early man kneeling before their creators and keepers of the secret of life to acknowledge female superiority. And I can imagine some spurned male (a malingering dreamer, more than likely, who would rather fake digestive distress than do an honest day's hunting) crawling off to his favourite sillyberry patch or magic mushroom ring after a good browbeating bent on getting his own back from a castrating woman. Shame, delusion and revenge sounds like a recipe for religion to me.
Really, all he'd have to do is stay away from the community for a while - long enough for everyone to start speculating of his fate. He could then return wild eyed from the wilderness, sunburnt and half mad from privation with a line of shit about visions imparted from by the maker of the WORLD - nay, of the very universe - to show his fellow MAN the error of their goddess worship. He would have planted whispers over the trench of ease, schemed in the sweet smelling smokey drugged darkness of the single men's shelter, goading the weak willed to admit his weakling's truth; a man made the world with women to serve his needs. There would have been his ordeal to consider and his former status to forget but I have no trouble imagining they bought it all in the end. The wild eyed wretch from the desert would be fed and sheltered in the most lavish style of the day for the rest of his life, provided he keep up the mindless chatter of a made up God.
Only, his disciples learned their lessons too well and took the game to a whole new level. No doubt there was a stronger, abler man who saw the prophet-weakling's work who wanted to reap the rewards for his own. He could have struck down the malingering puke and claimed God made him do it for the people's sake. His harsh, authoritarian regime would have upset more than a few willing dupes who figured that beating feet for greener pastures was the order of the day. These men could then impose the word of God with fire and sword upon pagan populations and perpetuate the vicious cycle for generations. Isn't missionary work grand? Believe me or die by the will of He who Created the Universe. Inevitably the view of who is God would mutate under the pressures of culture and geography until tribes fought each other to determine whose notion of God is more correct. They would have killed and enslaved each other over the musings of a subordinate male doper.
Just consider the world we live where "God is dead and we have killed him." Nations war with each other, all carrying the countenance of God, all his true and chosen people and people who don't even go to church cheer from both sides. Fundamentalism drives the faithful to divide their neighbours into groups who fight against each other over questions of free will, sin, freedom and the right to life itself. It's a world where those made with the engine of perfect creation inside have started to get their own back from those same men who once worshipped on their knees. Doubt, spiritual drought and indecision drive people to put their faith where they can. The flock has been disturbed by current events and longs for someone to show them a better way.
So, anyone want to help me start a new religion?
Really, all he'd have to do is stay away from the community for a while - long enough for everyone to start speculating of his fate. He could then return wild eyed from the wilderness, sunburnt and half mad from privation with a line of shit about visions imparted from by the maker of the WORLD - nay, of the very universe - to show his fellow MAN the error of their goddess worship. He would have planted whispers over the trench of ease, schemed in the sweet smelling smokey drugged darkness of the single men's shelter, goading the weak willed to admit his weakling's truth; a man made the world with women to serve his needs. There would have been his ordeal to consider and his former status to forget but I have no trouble imagining they bought it all in the end. The wild eyed wretch from the desert would be fed and sheltered in the most lavish style of the day for the rest of his life, provided he keep up the mindless chatter of a made up God.
Only, his disciples learned their lessons too well and took the game to a whole new level. No doubt there was a stronger, abler man who saw the prophet-weakling's work who wanted to reap the rewards for his own. He could have struck down the malingering puke and claimed God made him do it for the people's sake. His harsh, authoritarian regime would have upset more than a few willing dupes who figured that beating feet for greener pastures was the order of the day. These men could then impose the word of God with fire and sword upon pagan populations and perpetuate the vicious cycle for generations. Isn't missionary work grand? Believe me or die by the will of He who Created the Universe. Inevitably the view of who is God would mutate under the pressures of culture and geography until tribes fought each other to determine whose notion of God is more correct. They would have killed and enslaved each other over the musings of a subordinate male doper.
Just consider the world we live where "God is dead and we have killed him." Nations war with each other, all carrying the countenance of God, all his true and chosen people and people who don't even go to church cheer from both sides. Fundamentalism drives the faithful to divide their neighbours into groups who fight against each other over questions of free will, sin, freedom and the right to life itself. It's a world where those made with the engine of perfect creation inside have started to get their own back from those same men who once worshipped on their knees. Doubt, spiritual drought and indecision drive people to put their faith where they can. The flock has been disturbed by current events and longs for someone to show them a better way.
So, anyone want to help me start a new religion?
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Incomplete Pass (for AJ)
The Emperor’s Palace Buffet House inhabits the gutted carcass of a K-mart that died when I was six. It’s been ten years since I’ve been inside and that star crossed night was a hell of a time that turned into eight years of hell. The cabbie lets me off as close to the front doors as possible, owing to an unruly crowd gathered outside. He keeps the change from my twenty with a smile and heads off to his next fare while I contemplate the scene before the source of mine. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for a desperate message waiting to be found in the oubliette that is my answering machine. Hearing the words playing back in my memory I shoulder my way through the crowd. People throw me dark looks like lightning bolts while others step aside at the sight of a fat guy in a tailored tuxedo – a sight seldom seen at the Emperor’s outside of Prom nights and it’s August.
Clear of the crowd I check myself in the front door. There’s a sign over my decidedly dapper reflection's starched white shirt proclaiming “Closed for Private Function” in a ten point font. The saffron garbed door flunky clutches his clipboard like it was an automatic holstered low on his hip and gives me the stink eye. I grin and give him my best cool-guy voice. “I’m expected.”
He’s unimpressed. “Name?” he orders.
I almost give him One-Nut and check myself in time. “Ronald Weaver.”
The clipboard comes up like a timed drill. He flips a sheet over and grunts. “You’re late.” I don’t expect him to wait for a reason and he doesn’t disappoint me. With a sharp about face he pulls the door open and steps back for me to proceed. I wave to the crowd, rubbing my belly as the smell of a million greasy meals wafts ambrosia into their disgruntled faces. There are a few protests before the door closes and I look back to see the door flunky’s hand on the automatic clipboard. I’m hoping none of them thinks their lives are worth the buffet when the desperate voice from my answering machine assaults me softly from the bar.
“I was starting to hope you wouldn’t show.”
“I can turn right around and leave if you want me to, Manon.”
There’s no time to wait for a response. She comes flinging herself into my arms and I wrap her up like a gift from the gods. She steps back to get an eyeful, not hating what she sees. Her laughing lights up her yes and they might have been dyed to match the short green dress she’s wearing. Manon is five-foot-fuck-all of gimme-some-of that wrapped around one of the sweetest hearts ever to pump life through meat. For this girl I’d stick what’s left of my little monster into a box of starving rats and she knows it.
“I can’t believe that you got my message,” she says, hugging me close again.
“Happy Birthday Manon,” I tell the lavender scented darkness of her hair. "I hope I'm a good present 'cause I didn't get you anything else."
She draws herself back, takes my hand and leads me towards the bar. “I was worried you wouldn’t get my message.”
“I almost didn’t.” I accept the cigarette she offers and glance towards the only occupied table in the whole place. Maybe ten people sit around it in uncomfortable silence. “Looks like Madame Tousseau’s over there.”
“They’d be more fun made of wax,” Manon grumbles. The saffron garbed bartender looks like the door flunky’s big brother only with an automatic pistol holstered under a sweaty arm pit but he makes two rye and gingers appear as if by magic when Manon waves her hand. A quick check of the room shows at least six other armed guards and it wouldn’t surprise me to find more. I know enough about Manon’s family to guess their significance. “Your Mamere must be here?”
I watch her face fall and wish I could call the words back down my throat. “She’s ill. Too sick to make the trip from Montreal.”
“Then who ranks having the heavy artillery?” I ask.
Manon smiles sadly and sips her drink before answering. “It was my mother’s idea. Doctors say Mamere might not last the week and no one wants to take chances that someone wouldn’t try kidnapping an heir apparent to get their hands on a juicy ransom.” She swirls the ice cubes in her glass to make a drunk’s favourite music. “I’m just here to celebrate my birthday with you.”
I raise my drink to her. “Here’s to a happy thirtieth.”
We touch glasses and some of the sorrow leaves her eyes. “My God, I hope so.” She nods to the bartender who reaches for our drinks and they follow us to the table where I seat Manon to the right of an over dressed woman at the head of the table. No one says anything while I seat myself, trying not to notice the cold looks I earn for sitting. There are a dozen of us all told. When our drinks are served and the server is out of earshot the overdressed woman nods to Manon with a benevolence born of bullshit.
“Mother,” Manon says like the word never meant love, “may I present to you and our gathered family, my dear friend Ronald Weaver, PHd.”
“Enchante,” the head lady offers a bejewelled hand which I touch. “I am Manon’s mother. My name is Eunice Champlain. My family and I welcome you to Manon’s birthday supper. I apologize that the surroundings are so poor.”
I can taste the flavour of the entire evening’s conversation on her words and sense Manon stiffen beside me. I decide to change the recipe a bit. “Our definitions of poor must differ wildly. I’ve never seen the Emperor look so fine.”
Madame Champlains smile doesn’t waver. “She assures us that great measures have been taken even if I can’t see them myself. I have been assured that the food is good.”
I give her smile back two-fold. “Sure, good and salty, good and starchy, good and cheap.” I raise my glass and Manon’s follows. “Vive l’Empereur.” The toast earns me a lion’s share of dirty looks from everyone but Manon who smiles and thanks me with her eyes. I’m here to make sure that she has a happy birthday and to hell with the rest.
“Shall we,” she says and I’m there to help her up off of her chair.
“Shall we what?” wonders a fat lobster faced man from the opposite side of the table.
“Strap on the old feed bag,” I flip back over my shoulder, already on my way.
“Who is to serve,” the red faced man wonders to his companions who shrug. “I am not accustomed to menial drudgery.”
“Then don’t eat.” I don’t know if he hears me but Manon and I have our plates already so he can screw himself for all I care.
The buffet concept is not lost on everyone else. Manon and I drift between steam tray islands, happy marauders on the high cholesterol seas while the others look down their noses like tourists put to shore on a third world food spill. It’s a plush spread by Emperor standards with more savoury meat dishes than I’ve seen in one setting. We heap our plates high with the choicest delicacies and make our way back to the table while the others pick and complain.
We sit and the red faced man casts hopeful eyes at the fruits of our first trip into the great unknown. I’m trying to make every morsel out to be the most delicious thing to ever hit my tongue and drive the poor man mad. The others are returning with their own plates and he throws the same imploring glances their way. He might be the unremarkable family dog for all the attention anyone pays him.
Manon’s playing right along with me. “The barbecued short ribs are so tender," she says before taking an orgasmic bite as proof.
“Pick up some of the sweet and sour chicken wings on your next trip,” I add. “You won’t be sorry.”
Red face sputters indignation all over the man across from him who lashes out at the behaviour. “God damn it Martin! Does mother still wipe up under you as well?” Martin goes even redder and stalks off for the islands not so blithe to the bounty.
Manon and I spend the better part of a half hour stuffing ourselves and ordering rye and ginger by the pitcher. Everyone else – except the young lady to my right – has deemed the food ultimately unpalatable despite Martin's scarfing massive helpings. Manon’s so busy drinking and ignoring her family’s snide comments to introduce me to my spoon-side companion, parts of whose face are familiar enough that I can’t put a name to the rest. Mme Champlain’s notices my divided attention and puts on a face pasted over with spite.
Her eyes find Manon. “My daughter,” she says the word like it never meant love, “has never told me how you two met.”
It’s an open invitation to play the dancing bear and I accept. “Funny story, we were at school together – apparently. In four years I never saw her until her Eddie section’s Christmas party. It was supposed to be a private function but I’d signed up for the drinking contest.”
I pause for a sip and await the inevitable question – supplied by my spoon-side companion. “Drinking contest?”
I nod. “Section 14's Forty under 14. It was tradition of some kind and there weren’t enough future liver transplant cases in her year to fill the roster. So they posted a sign up form and I wrote my name. I won, of course. And while you’d think that fact alone would draw any woman’s attention, it was my victory cigarette that brought us together.”
One of the aunts crows indignation. “Manon! How could you smoke?”
“Ma tente, let him say.”
Another sip during the exchange to savour the moment. “She didn’t smoke back then but she did save my life?”
Madame Champlain ships the inevitable this time. “She saved your life?”
"Yup, see, I’d kinda’ sorta’ cheated by growing my beard out before the contest. I let a little of each shot dribble down to get absorbed and when I lit my victory smoke up goes the beard in a pop of blue flames and the sickly sweet stench of burning hair and tequila. So, before the panic can start playing my brain like a chump this really cute chick down the bar tosses a pitcher of beer in my face – the contents anyway.”
“Manon!” bleats the other aunt, “drinking beer from a pitcher.”
“Ma tente, I was there with friends!”
I don’t mean to gap out but it's hard to forget one of those friends was Carol. It was Carol whose purse-slash-rucksack produced the lady shaver I used to mow my ruined whiskers. It was Carol who used a pair of scissors from same to even out my scorched hair. It was Carol who’s suggested we all go out to the Emperor for food after the bar. It was Carol who did me greasy in the men’s room and Carol who I gave my heart to and Carol who left when she couldn’t see me as more than half a man.
Everyone’s looking at me. “Anyway, that’s how we met.”
I recognize the anti-climax on their faces from long experience. Manon knows that something’s wrong in my head and forces the attention away. “Marie-France was there too.”
There’s the name to the rest of the face beside me – Marie-France. Someone surely paid out the nose for some brave plastic surgeon’s private jet to make me forget her. Remembering gives me a rare glimpse back through oblivion to see myself sitting between Carol and Marie-France and saying how I was a thorn between two roses. She had blushed and left the table.
“And once again I’m a thorn between two roses.” This time she does not blush or leave the table. Instead I’m treated to a stockinged foot running up my shortening pant leg. I hope it’s Marie-France and not the aunt across from me and gulp down the rest of my drink to cover my discomfort.
“Is drinking to excess still your habit?” asks Uncle Martin around the rim of his eighth glass of wine.
“Whenever it’s warranted,” I say topping myself off with the pitcher.
Uncle Martin nudges his unnamed brother. “ Maman never should have let her choose what school to attend. Look at what she’s reduced to.”
“Me!” chokes Manon. “Why you simpering...”
“Hush, child.” Mme Champlain hardly whispers and spares Uncle Martin by directing Manon's wrath at herself.
“I will not hush and I am not a child!” She yells like a spoiled little girl and I stay out of it. “This is my thirtieth birthday supper! I am an adult! I earn a living doing something I love! And I choose my own friends!”
Uncle Martin has recovered enough to rejoin the fray. “Like this one here,” he says dripping contempt on the plastic wrapped table cloth, “who lights himself on fire and doesn’t speak to you for years. Are you so poorly tried that you cannot find anyone of stature to present at our table? I’m glad my mother is not here to see this.”
Manon wants to ream him out, opens her mouth to do it and flings herself away from the table in silent tears instead. No one’s eyes follow her. No one rises to go after her until I stand up possessed of a chill calm that still can’t freeze my tongue. “Would you step outside with me Monsieur?”
Uncle Martin’s eyes bug out a bit. “I beg your pardon?”
“Beg your niece’s pardon. Answer my question with a question again and I’ll put a chair leg up your ass. Would you step outside with me?”
Maybe he’s thinking about the chair leg and that’s why he gives me the answer I'd expected. “There are ladies present.”
“And the best among them has left the table while the one she loves most is absent – no offense Marie-France.”
Mme Champlain sees fit to intervene. “You may absent yourself. We have no further business with you, Mr. Weaver.”
“And you may kiss my ass, Madame,” I say and stay long enough to watch her face pale with rage. Regardless, the only thing left to do is collect a weeping woman from the ladies’ and get her away from this scene that she can enjoy her birthday. I hear footsteps following me and my fist is up when I turn around.
It’s Marie-France. “I’m coming with you. I have my car.”
My grin shows teeth. “Let’s go to the bathroom.”
Marie-France stops me just short of going into the ladies' myself. I suddenly want to regale her with the story of a similar misadventure but the door closes behind her before I can get a word in. And before I can begin to regret it they're back out - Manon a little wet around the eyes and Marie-France with a wicked gleam in hers.
"Sorry about that, Ronnie," she says and takes my hand. "I really didn't intend to drag you into my own private hell."
"No worries, chere," I say, tilting her chin up so that she can see the sincerity in my eyes. "I always wondered what it might be like to grow up rich and powerful but aside from the armed goons it's just like growing up poor."
Manon tries not to smile, fails and leans into me for support. When I move to hold her, Marie-France moves to hold us both and it's an official group hug. We stand that way for a handful of heartbeats until Marie-France moves a step back and turns her wicked gleam on me.
"Take us to a real party," she says.
"Done. How do we ditch the goon squad?"
"Like this," Manon says and strides boldly to the bartender. Marie-France and I are swept along in her wake. He grins at her determination and bows his head when she talks at him. "I want to leave."
The bartender's grin grows to shit-eating proportions. "The Lady thought it might be so. I am under orders to let you pursue happiness today."
Now it's my turn to lead the way. I take a pretty girl's arm in each hand and head for the door. The crowd outside is dispersed and the way ahead is all clear. 'Where's your car?" I ask Marie-France who's fetching keys from her designer clutch.
"Right there." She pushes a button on her key chain and the resulting beep and flash of headlights draws my eye to a BMW z4 Coupe in the centre lot.
I'm not much for cars but even I can appreciate this low slung beast on wheels. "I just hope it fits me," I quip when the two doors dawn on me.
"Shotgun Ronnie's lap," Manon says when Marie-France starts handing her the keys. I haven't had enough to drink that I miss a cross little look flash on the driver's face.
I summon enough courtesy to wait until Marie-France has her own door open before piling in through mine. Manon wiggles onto my lap, slips off her shoes and daintily lays her feet on the dash. I half expect her cousin to object but she just starts the engine and looks past Manon to me. "Where to?"
She takes direction well and were out of the city in ten minutes. With my attention divided between telling her where to turn and Manon's sweet heart shaped ass urging the ruin in my pants to stir it's a surreal ride. 'We're not headed into the country, are we?" Marie-France asks worriedly when I direct her onto the highway on ramp but I've already thought of the car.
"It's a good road all the way there to a level gravel drive," I tell her and her hands relax visibly on the wheel. "And not far. Ian's place is just outside of town.
The farm is easy to spot from the highway all aglow in a sea of country dark. Every light in the big old house is on and there's a crescent of parked cars shining headlights into the filed but the fire's not started yet. Marie-France guides her Beamer gently onto the gravel drive and even with the windows up we can hear the music thumping from a hundred yards away. A few sullen stragglers glare at us through our opulent conveyance and one guys gives us the finger. The girls are nervous.
"Are you sure that we're okay here, Ronnie?" Manon asks.
"We're okay here," I assure her. "I learned how to drink on this place. Ian's had it for his own since his folks died starting the fire of '04 but it's always been the place to get shit faced."
"A bonfire party?" Marie-France sounds like the gleam is leaving her eye.
"Only for the hoi-poloi, chere," I tell her and Manon wiggles with glee at the ready-to-party tone in my voice. "There will be slightly more sophisticated entertainments in the manor. Park on the basketball court."
The car draws a curious crowd and if they care where we park no one lets on. I recognize a few faces and spot one straining under the weight of home brews on ice. Each of the girls takes an arm as I make a bee-line for the drinks. We catch them up quickly and the guy doing the heavy lifting turns when I call out, "Hey, Scammer, slow up a bit."
He turns fast enough to nearly drop his tub and his eyes light up at the sight of the girls. "Yo, Ronnie man. Thought you had another do tonight?"
"And miss a Fleming fire party? Check your head man, you may be concussed." He laughs while his eye's shift between checking out the girls, getting an eyeful of both. "Here, let me help you with that, " I say and his relief is shortlived whenI only remove three bottles from the ice. "So, what's on the burn this year?"
"Oh, we've had donations from all over the county, pile's almost as tall as the house. Plus, Ian's uncles brought twenty five gallons of old paint and the same of gas. It's gonna' be a good burn." He enjoys telling the story so much that he actually takes his eyes off of the girls long enough to look over his shoulder towards the unlit fire. "Come get a spot before the good ones are gone."
The invitation ios directed more at Manon and Marie-France than me but I answer for them. "We're fine here, thanks. I don't want them too close when that goes up. Just tell Ian that I made it, if you see him."
"Sure thing, One-nut." Scammer knows that he's been dismissed but he's too jazzed to let on. He turns back toward the pile of lumber, paint and fuel waiting to become the 2010 Fleming Bonfire while I open beer for the girls.
"Interesting guy, " Marie-France observes as her trudges away under his load. "But why'd he call you One-nut."
"Long story," I tell her while Manon preens for the crowd of onlookers. She's about to start an intimate relationship with her beer bottle when six and a half feet of man comes towards us from the fire site. "Ah, " I say with just a hint of regret, "here comes the pig-fucker himself."
Before the girls can ask what the hell I'm on about, Ian's got his arms around me and my feet leave the ground. "Weaver, you fuckin' guy! Scammer told me you were here with two gorgeous women and I didn't believe him." He sets me down none too gently and tips Marie-France a wink. But when he looks at Manon, his eyes glaze like he's had a ten pund sledge between the eyes. "Who's the little goddess?"
Manon blushes prettily while digging an elbow deep in my ribs. "Ian, this is Manon Champlain-Ducepe. Manon, this great hulk..."
"Yack, yack, yack..."
"Is Ian Fleming, our host." They shake hands and I can tell that they won't be letting go of each other for a while. "It's Manon's birthday today."
Ian's drinking a jug of homemade wine, tips it effortlessly up into his mouth, wipes it with a huge red haired fore arm and stares. "We then, mam'selle, how 'bout a tour of the place?"
"Yes please, " she breathes as she takes his arm to be led through the throng. Marie-France and I aren't spared so much as a backward glance.
"Well kid," I say to her, "it's just you and me."
She smiles. "Finally."
Really? "How's that beer treating you?"
"I'd prefer some herbal refreshment," she says taking my hand and pulling me close.
"That's not going to be a problem here," I say and wrap my arms around her waist. "This whole place was built on dope."
"Not homegrown shit," she says while nuzzling my ear. "I've got some good stuff. Is there anywhere we could be alone."
"Yeah, sure...no problem." She's tugging on my belt and I need to get my brain back up to my head when I see the farmhouse's blue painted back door. There's a laundry room just through it and down the stairs that would be perfect. Taking Marie-France by the hand I scan the crowd for any sign of Manon and lead the way. The door's open and there's sounds of some seruious merry-making but I take her right down stairs to the laundry.
"Does that door lock from the inside?" she asks, surveying the place.
"Yup," I say and it's done while I wonder at my luck.
Marie-France has already got one spun in her purse and I've got my light ready when she raises the spliff to her lips. She puffs and passes, easing herself up ionto the dryer, not trying to straighten her skirt which hikes up her thigfhs like an eager shirpa. We trade off in silence for a while before I take a seat on the washer next to her.
"So why did that guy call you One-nut?"
I toke before I talk, wondering if she really needs to know and half relieved that she's asked before finding out the hard way. "Because it's true."
"You mean that you have only one testicle?"
"Yup," I pass the joint back top her with a trembling hand. "But it's better than most of the other nicknames I've been saddled with since the accident."
"Like what?"
"Oh, Half-man, Half-sack, Burntballs, Frankencock, Roasted Weiner instead of Ronnie Weaver..."
"What happened?" passing the roach back to me and leaning back against the wall so that her brasts press against the sheer fabric of her blouse.
"You really don't know? It made the news and everything."
"Would I be asking if I knew?"
I toke a little more and decide not. Thinking about the past like this always makes me cringe a little but I'm fuzzy-headed enough to pretend like it doesn't matter. "It happened about four years ago. I got this lighter from my girlfriend..."
"Carol?" Marie-France asks rescuing the neglected roach from my fingers.
"The same. So she gave me this lighter, really just a fancy ass piece of jewellry, for my birthday and it's great. I carry it with me everywhere, people ooh and ahh whenver I bring it out, all that good shit. So one day I'm walking up Main Street, I've just lit a cigarette and I feel a hot spot in my pocket against my leg. It's high summer so I don't think much of it until I smell smoke. I look down and my pocket's on fire. And before I can pat it out or shuck my pants there's this loud snap-pop like a gunshot and I feel my right nut disintegrate. I'm on the ground twitching, too shocked to make a noise and five poeple step over me before anyone stops to call for help. But there could have been a surgical suite set up right there on the sidewalkb and it wouldn't have made a difference."
I usually throw the story off fast so that it doesn't sound like the most traumatic event in my life - casual like. Marie-France is just staring with the last scrap of joint smouldring between her fingers so I pluck it back and finish it off for lack of anything better to do. "That's terrible," she says as her eyes shift ever so slightly down towards my crotch.
I puff the last light out of the spliff and flick it into the corner. "This is the easiest telling I've ever done. But yeah, it was terrible. Third degree burns on your cock isn't something that you can pretend easn't terrible. Right testicle evaporated, surgically inserted cathertre, salves and unguents enough to drown a baby in and all the while never knowing if I'd ever be a functioning man again."
"And are you a functioning man?"
I smile, "More or less. I can get it up and make gravy but I'll never have kids. And it looks a gory mess to boot."
"Is that why Carol dumped you?"
"Yes and no. What it really came down to was that there was no common ground between us, just a gap we bridged on our backs." She looks like she wants to hear more but that's the only answer she's gonna get.
She accepts it and fold her hands in her lap. "I never liked her."
"Carol was a hard person to like and easy to love." Marie-France finally pulls the hiking hem of her skirt back down over the tops of her thighs and I scramble for anything else to say before she ditches. "I'm hungry." Good one.
Marie-France reaches for her clutch - so different from Carols old carry-all - and fishes out a pair of fortune cookies. "I took these after you left the table," she hands me one bfore cracking hers open eagerly.
I follow her lead, stuff both halves into my mouth, playing the clown so I don't have to think about anything else to say. She nibbles one half of hers while looking at the fold of paper she found inside. "So what's the wisdom of the ages?" I ask with a mouthful.
She smiles and reads, "'The only constant in life is change.' What about yours?"
I choke on the cookie paste in my mouth when I see my fortune. It's the same one I read ten years ago back at the Emperor. "'Happiness is sitting right next to you.'"
Her memory is as good as mine, "It's the same one you got the night we met."
"Yeah, " I mutter, " we - Carol and I - had a laugh about it before..."
Her memory is too good. "Before she followed you into the bathroom."
"That's right, buit that was then and now it's you sitting right next to me."
She smiles at that, a little sadly. "I was sitting next to you that night too."
And of course she's right, I just hadn't even considered her because of how she looked back then. It's not easy looking her in the eye but I mange it. "I was a different person then, a real jerk and Carol was easy...I was just going the easy way..."
She stops my mouth with a finger on my lips. "I was a different person back then too. But at least now we know that the only constant in life is change...the cookie told us so."
"Is that the same message you had back then too?" I ask in hopes that the subject will change from what a creep I was.
"No," she says, "that one said 'Even an ugly duckling can become a swan.' It was that message and your thornh between two roses comment that made me decide I wanted plastic surgery."
"I'm sorry about that comment and the way we - Carol and I - laughed about it. I was drinking and..."
"And nothing. You put your arm around me when you said it and it was the first time a man I wasn't related to ever touched me. You didn't say it mean, you just really weren't saying it to me. I realized then that guys like you would only ever look at girls like Carol and my cousin. I cou;dn't go through life like that."
I'm stuck on something she said, "Guys like me?"
She smiles shyly. "You know - smart, funny, sexy guts. I didn't want to be the girl who only gets attention when guys find out about my family's money. I want someone to love me and not invest in me."
"But, Marie-France..."
"But nothing." There's enough heat in her voice now to melt away any protest I could make. "You can say anything you want about inner beauty and personality and it would all be so much bullshit. I was an ugly duckling who wanted to be a swan and my money helped me make that decsion. I'm a whole new person from the girl you met that night...from the girl who didn't have the nerve to follow you into the bathroom."
I nod. "I didn't recognize you when I sat down tonight, not until Manon said your name."
"And you made the same thorn beween two roses comment."
"And you didn't blush or run away either." I remmber something else. "That was your foot unjder the table."
She smiles. "Mmm-hmm...I knew that you meant it this time."
She leans into me, eyes closed, lips parted, hem rising. I'm drawn to her like a straight line and find myself kissing a woman for the first time in two years. It starts lightly but soon intensifies to the point where her tongue becomes daring and traces my lips. The monster in my pants stirs and I break away. "Marie-France..."
Her eyes are glinting with kind of hunger that a fortune cookie can't touch. "I can help you forget her, Ronnie. I can make it better." She slips off of the dryer and slides over to stand between my legs, her hands on my chest. "I can make you happy."
Her hands are moveing - before I can say anything - down to my belt. She's locking eyes with mine, undoing the buckle. She licks her lips in case I had any mistake about her intentions. I should stop her but only to keep her going eye to squinting eye with my toasted trouser snake. But she's already got my fly down, already plucking at the stiff business in my boxers when I close my eyes. I can feel myself released to the air and hear her indrwan breath. "I'd understand if you don't..."
But she engulfs me with her mouth and words escape me even as she mumbles around my member. I look down to watch her head bob and lips do some of the greatest work I've ever seen. She's taking me deeper than anyone before and there's no one else in the world but the two of us. And when her pearly lacquered nails scratch the tops of my thighs I groan and die a little inside her mouth.
After I'm empty and twitching she slides her head off of me and smiles. I avoid looking at what's broken between my legs and concentrate on that smile. She rises up to me, pulling me forward, lips parting...
And spits my load back into my face. I scrub a hand across my eyes as she caws laughter. I'm blinded by spunk and clawing for my fly when I slip off the washing machine. The laudry room door opens and shuts while I'm tucking the truckered out monster away and all I can do is hope that it's not someone coming in to see what's gone down. I find something with a groping hand that might be roll of paper towl, tear off half a mile's worth and start mopping madly at my face. Hopefully there's nothing stuck in my beard but I need to know what the fuck that was all about.
I make one last swipe at my face and follow Marie-France out of the laundry room but it's way too late. News of the crazy French girl tearing off in the Beamer is already starting to trickle back to the house when I get oustide. There's a huddled shape on the steps leading up to the back door and it's Manon with no Ian Fleming in sight. If I'm secretly glad that she got ditched too it doesn't show on my face when I sit down next to her. I'm really just hoping that she wasn't in on any kind of set up with her cousin.
She just smiles. "So you got ditched too, huh?"
"Yup, where's Ian?"
"Oh, out in the barn fucking some pig." She says it like she's fetching the mail or some shit. "Did you know that it's custom to wrap your cock in electrical tape before fucking a barnyard animal. Over the counter condoms just dont cut it."
"I had no idea, to tell you the truth," I'm trying to make her smile bigger. "My experience with bestiality is limited to small mammals - hamsters and such - but then again you do end up wearing them like a condom."
She's not really listening to me. "He said I was a goddess." She lays her head on my shoulder.
"Yup, I heard that too."
"Why do I always have to go and run off with some boy?" she asks like I didn't just take skull from her cousin in the laudry room.
"Search me, Kiddo. Whay do I always fall for crazy chicks?"
Silently we agree that we're both fucked and get up to find somewhere better than the stairs to be. The fire's lit and looks ready to consume the world but there are too many people whooping and hollering, trying to get close without burning their hair off. I can't take that scene right now. Instead I commandeer a bottle of homemade wine from a passed out reveller. Without knowing how we're getting back to town we start walking. I just hope we don't get halfway there and start wishing we'd stayed on the stairs.
The gravel shoulder of the road slopes down into marshy ditched so I only take the inside when a car passes. I'd rather have her muddy and mad at me than bloody and dead after all. The wine's gone fast and when the bottle hits the ditch she's leaning on me for support. I'm content with the contact and the rhythm of walking when she decides to shatter the night with a question.
"Why do you call Carol every night at eleven and hang up when she answers?"
"What are you talking about, Non-non?" I ask with feigned innocence.
"Carol told me that she subscribed to call display because someone kept calling her at eleven o'clock every night. When I asked her how to get ahold of you she just said to try the number she sees. She didn't know if it was you or not and when I called it I half hoped it wouldn't be your voice in the answering machine."
"Do you want an honest answer to that question?"
"Just spare me your bullshit and, yes, answer honestly."
"Okay, I will, if you answer one of mine." It's a firm offer and she nods agreement. "Fine, after the accident, Carol used to always try for me when the news came on a t eleven. I wasn't ready for it and she'd stalk off to satisfy herself with the shower head. So I call her every night at eleven hoping to hear water running in the background."
She nods. "You're fucked. But it is your turn to ask me a question."
I can't help but sound suspicious. "Why did you want me out with you tonight?"
She stops walking without letting go of my arm and stops me in my tracks. She's looking up at me and I can see myself reflected in the moonlight trapped in her eyes. There is nothing stuck in my face. "I sometimes think about that night you set yourself on fire and how good you look without a beard. I wonder what kind of life I would have had if you hadn't signed up for a drinking contest. I wanted you at my birthday supper so that Mamere could meet you and say how charming you are, then maybe you'd remember and quit pining over a woman I was always jealous of." I think she's done but there's more. "And I wanted you to see how good I look inthis dress."
She does indeed. "You'd look better without the dress."
"And you'd look better without a beard."
I smile. "I'll shave if you shave."
She smiles back. "Way ahead of you, Ronnie."
I have to laugh at the dare in her voice and hope she doesn't take it the wrong way. "You're the perfect end to a shitty night. Did you know that?"
She pulls me down to her height and gives me a gentle kiss on the mouth. It's our fisrt kiss and too perfect for words. "Let's go," she says when it's over, "we have a lot of ground to cover."
Clear of the crowd I check myself in the front door. There’s a sign over my decidedly dapper reflection's starched white shirt proclaiming “Closed for Private Function” in a ten point font. The saffron garbed door flunky clutches his clipboard like it was an automatic holstered low on his hip and gives me the stink eye. I grin and give him my best cool-guy voice. “I’m expected.”
He’s unimpressed. “Name?” he orders.
I almost give him One-Nut and check myself in time. “Ronald Weaver.”
The clipboard comes up like a timed drill. He flips a sheet over and grunts. “You’re late.” I don’t expect him to wait for a reason and he doesn’t disappoint me. With a sharp about face he pulls the door open and steps back for me to proceed. I wave to the crowd, rubbing my belly as the smell of a million greasy meals wafts ambrosia into their disgruntled faces. There are a few protests before the door closes and I look back to see the door flunky’s hand on the automatic clipboard. I’m hoping none of them thinks their lives are worth the buffet when the desperate voice from my answering machine assaults me softly from the bar.
“I was starting to hope you wouldn’t show.”
“I can turn right around and leave if you want me to, Manon.”
There’s no time to wait for a response. She comes flinging herself into my arms and I wrap her up like a gift from the gods. She steps back to get an eyeful, not hating what she sees. Her laughing lights up her yes and they might have been dyed to match the short green dress she’s wearing. Manon is five-foot-fuck-all of gimme-some-of that wrapped around one of the sweetest hearts ever to pump life through meat. For this girl I’d stick what’s left of my little monster into a box of starving rats and she knows it.
“I can’t believe that you got my message,” she says, hugging me close again.
“Happy Birthday Manon,” I tell the lavender scented darkness of her hair. "I hope I'm a good present 'cause I didn't get you anything else."
She draws herself back, takes my hand and leads me towards the bar. “I was worried you wouldn’t get my message.”
“I almost didn’t.” I accept the cigarette she offers and glance towards the only occupied table in the whole place. Maybe ten people sit around it in uncomfortable silence. “Looks like Madame Tousseau’s over there.”
“They’d be more fun made of wax,” Manon grumbles. The saffron garbed bartender looks like the door flunky’s big brother only with an automatic pistol holstered under a sweaty arm pit but he makes two rye and gingers appear as if by magic when Manon waves her hand. A quick check of the room shows at least six other armed guards and it wouldn’t surprise me to find more. I know enough about Manon’s family to guess their significance. “Your Mamere must be here?”
I watch her face fall and wish I could call the words back down my throat. “She’s ill. Too sick to make the trip from Montreal.”
“Then who ranks having the heavy artillery?” I ask.
Manon smiles sadly and sips her drink before answering. “It was my mother’s idea. Doctors say Mamere might not last the week and no one wants to take chances that someone wouldn’t try kidnapping an heir apparent to get their hands on a juicy ransom.” She swirls the ice cubes in her glass to make a drunk’s favourite music. “I’m just here to celebrate my birthday with you.”
I raise my drink to her. “Here’s to a happy thirtieth.”
We touch glasses and some of the sorrow leaves her eyes. “My God, I hope so.” She nods to the bartender who reaches for our drinks and they follow us to the table where I seat Manon to the right of an over dressed woman at the head of the table. No one says anything while I seat myself, trying not to notice the cold looks I earn for sitting. There are a dozen of us all told. When our drinks are served and the server is out of earshot the overdressed woman nods to Manon with a benevolence born of bullshit.
“Mother,” Manon says like the word never meant love, “may I present to you and our gathered family, my dear friend Ronald Weaver, PHd.”
“Enchante,” the head lady offers a bejewelled hand which I touch. “I am Manon’s mother. My name is Eunice Champlain. My family and I welcome you to Manon’s birthday supper. I apologize that the surroundings are so poor.”
I can taste the flavour of the entire evening’s conversation on her words and sense Manon stiffen beside me. I decide to change the recipe a bit. “Our definitions of poor must differ wildly. I’ve never seen the Emperor look so fine.”
Madame Champlains smile doesn’t waver. “She assures us that great measures have been taken even if I can’t see them myself. I have been assured that the food is good.”
I give her smile back two-fold. “Sure, good and salty, good and starchy, good and cheap.” I raise my glass and Manon’s follows. “Vive l’Empereur.” The toast earns me a lion’s share of dirty looks from everyone but Manon who smiles and thanks me with her eyes. I’m here to make sure that she has a happy birthday and to hell with the rest.
“Shall we,” she says and I’m there to help her up off of her chair.
“Shall we what?” wonders a fat lobster faced man from the opposite side of the table.
“Strap on the old feed bag,” I flip back over my shoulder, already on my way.
“Who is to serve,” the red faced man wonders to his companions who shrug. “I am not accustomed to menial drudgery.”
“Then don’t eat.” I don’t know if he hears me but Manon and I have our plates already so he can screw himself for all I care.
The buffet concept is not lost on everyone else. Manon and I drift between steam tray islands, happy marauders on the high cholesterol seas while the others look down their noses like tourists put to shore on a third world food spill. It’s a plush spread by Emperor standards with more savoury meat dishes than I’ve seen in one setting. We heap our plates high with the choicest delicacies and make our way back to the table while the others pick and complain.
We sit and the red faced man casts hopeful eyes at the fruits of our first trip into the great unknown. I’m trying to make every morsel out to be the most delicious thing to ever hit my tongue and drive the poor man mad. The others are returning with their own plates and he throws the same imploring glances their way. He might be the unremarkable family dog for all the attention anyone pays him.
Manon’s playing right along with me. “The barbecued short ribs are so tender," she says before taking an orgasmic bite as proof.
“Pick up some of the sweet and sour chicken wings on your next trip,” I add. “You won’t be sorry.”
Red face sputters indignation all over the man across from him who lashes out at the behaviour. “God damn it Martin! Does mother still wipe up under you as well?” Martin goes even redder and stalks off for the islands not so blithe to the bounty.
Manon and I spend the better part of a half hour stuffing ourselves and ordering rye and ginger by the pitcher. Everyone else – except the young lady to my right – has deemed the food ultimately unpalatable despite Martin's scarfing massive helpings. Manon’s so busy drinking and ignoring her family’s snide comments to introduce me to my spoon-side companion, parts of whose face are familiar enough that I can’t put a name to the rest. Mme Champlain’s notices my divided attention and puts on a face pasted over with spite.
Her eyes find Manon. “My daughter,” she says the word like it never meant love, “has never told me how you two met.”
It’s an open invitation to play the dancing bear and I accept. “Funny story, we were at school together – apparently. In four years I never saw her until her Eddie section’s Christmas party. It was supposed to be a private function but I’d signed up for the drinking contest.”
I pause for a sip and await the inevitable question – supplied by my spoon-side companion. “Drinking contest?”
I nod. “Section 14's Forty under 14. It was tradition of some kind and there weren’t enough future liver transplant cases in her year to fill the roster. So they posted a sign up form and I wrote my name. I won, of course. And while you’d think that fact alone would draw any woman’s attention, it was my victory cigarette that brought us together.”
One of the aunts crows indignation. “Manon! How could you smoke?”
“Ma tente, let him say.”
Another sip during the exchange to savour the moment. “She didn’t smoke back then but she did save my life?”
Madame Champlain ships the inevitable this time. “She saved your life?”
"Yup, see, I’d kinda’ sorta’ cheated by growing my beard out before the contest. I let a little of each shot dribble down to get absorbed and when I lit my victory smoke up goes the beard in a pop of blue flames and the sickly sweet stench of burning hair and tequila. So, before the panic can start playing my brain like a chump this really cute chick down the bar tosses a pitcher of beer in my face – the contents anyway.”
“Manon!” bleats the other aunt, “drinking beer from a pitcher.”
“Ma tente, I was there with friends!”
I don’t mean to gap out but it's hard to forget one of those friends was Carol. It was Carol whose purse-slash-rucksack produced the lady shaver I used to mow my ruined whiskers. It was Carol who used a pair of scissors from same to even out my scorched hair. It was Carol who’s suggested we all go out to the Emperor for food after the bar. It was Carol who did me greasy in the men’s room and Carol who I gave my heart to and Carol who left when she couldn’t see me as more than half a man.
Everyone’s looking at me. “Anyway, that’s how we met.”
I recognize the anti-climax on their faces from long experience. Manon knows that something’s wrong in my head and forces the attention away. “Marie-France was there too.”
There’s the name to the rest of the face beside me – Marie-France. Someone surely paid out the nose for some brave plastic surgeon’s private jet to make me forget her. Remembering gives me a rare glimpse back through oblivion to see myself sitting between Carol and Marie-France and saying how I was a thorn between two roses. She had blushed and left the table.
“And once again I’m a thorn between two roses.” This time she does not blush or leave the table. Instead I’m treated to a stockinged foot running up my shortening pant leg. I hope it’s Marie-France and not the aunt across from me and gulp down the rest of my drink to cover my discomfort.
“Is drinking to excess still your habit?” asks Uncle Martin around the rim of his eighth glass of wine.
“Whenever it’s warranted,” I say topping myself off with the pitcher.
Uncle Martin nudges his unnamed brother. “ Maman never should have let her choose what school to attend. Look at what she’s reduced to.”
“Me!” chokes Manon. “Why you simpering...”
“Hush, child.” Mme Champlain hardly whispers and spares Uncle Martin by directing Manon's wrath at herself.
“I will not hush and I am not a child!” She yells like a spoiled little girl and I stay out of it. “This is my thirtieth birthday supper! I am an adult! I earn a living doing something I love! And I choose my own friends!”
Uncle Martin has recovered enough to rejoin the fray. “Like this one here,” he says dripping contempt on the plastic wrapped table cloth, “who lights himself on fire and doesn’t speak to you for years. Are you so poorly tried that you cannot find anyone of stature to present at our table? I’m glad my mother is not here to see this.”
Manon wants to ream him out, opens her mouth to do it and flings herself away from the table in silent tears instead. No one’s eyes follow her. No one rises to go after her until I stand up possessed of a chill calm that still can’t freeze my tongue. “Would you step outside with me Monsieur?”
Uncle Martin’s eyes bug out a bit. “I beg your pardon?”
“Beg your niece’s pardon. Answer my question with a question again and I’ll put a chair leg up your ass. Would you step outside with me?”
Maybe he’s thinking about the chair leg and that’s why he gives me the answer I'd expected. “There are ladies present.”
“And the best among them has left the table while the one she loves most is absent – no offense Marie-France.”
Mme Champlain sees fit to intervene. “You may absent yourself. We have no further business with you, Mr. Weaver.”
“And you may kiss my ass, Madame,” I say and stay long enough to watch her face pale with rage. Regardless, the only thing left to do is collect a weeping woman from the ladies’ and get her away from this scene that she can enjoy her birthday. I hear footsteps following me and my fist is up when I turn around.
It’s Marie-France. “I’m coming with you. I have my car.”
My grin shows teeth. “Let’s go to the bathroom.”
Marie-France stops me just short of going into the ladies' myself. I suddenly want to regale her with the story of a similar misadventure but the door closes behind her before I can get a word in. And before I can begin to regret it they're back out - Manon a little wet around the eyes and Marie-France with a wicked gleam in hers.
"Sorry about that, Ronnie," she says and takes my hand. "I really didn't intend to drag you into my own private hell."
"No worries, chere," I say, tilting her chin up so that she can see the sincerity in my eyes. "I always wondered what it might be like to grow up rich and powerful but aside from the armed goons it's just like growing up poor."
Manon tries not to smile, fails and leans into me for support. When I move to hold her, Marie-France moves to hold us both and it's an official group hug. We stand that way for a handful of heartbeats until Marie-France moves a step back and turns her wicked gleam on me.
"Take us to a real party," she says.
"Done. How do we ditch the goon squad?"
"Like this," Manon says and strides boldly to the bartender. Marie-France and I are swept along in her wake. He grins at her determination and bows his head when she talks at him. "I want to leave."
The bartender's grin grows to shit-eating proportions. "The Lady thought it might be so. I am under orders to let you pursue happiness today."
Now it's my turn to lead the way. I take a pretty girl's arm in each hand and head for the door. The crowd outside is dispersed and the way ahead is all clear. 'Where's your car?" I ask Marie-France who's fetching keys from her designer clutch.
"Right there." She pushes a button on her key chain and the resulting beep and flash of headlights draws my eye to a BMW z4 Coupe in the centre lot.
I'm not much for cars but even I can appreciate this low slung beast on wheels. "I just hope it fits me," I quip when the two doors dawn on me.
"Shotgun Ronnie's lap," Manon says when Marie-France starts handing her the keys. I haven't had enough to drink that I miss a cross little look flash on the driver's face.
I summon enough courtesy to wait until Marie-France has her own door open before piling in through mine. Manon wiggles onto my lap, slips off her shoes and daintily lays her feet on the dash. I half expect her cousin to object but she just starts the engine and looks past Manon to me. "Where to?"
She takes direction well and were out of the city in ten minutes. With my attention divided between telling her where to turn and Manon's sweet heart shaped ass urging the ruin in my pants to stir it's a surreal ride. 'We're not headed into the country, are we?" Marie-France asks worriedly when I direct her onto the highway on ramp but I've already thought of the car.
"It's a good road all the way there to a level gravel drive," I tell her and her hands relax visibly on the wheel. "And not far. Ian's place is just outside of town.
The farm is easy to spot from the highway all aglow in a sea of country dark. Every light in the big old house is on and there's a crescent of parked cars shining headlights into the filed but the fire's not started yet. Marie-France guides her Beamer gently onto the gravel drive and even with the windows up we can hear the music thumping from a hundred yards away. A few sullen stragglers glare at us through our opulent conveyance and one guys gives us the finger. The girls are nervous.
"Are you sure that we're okay here, Ronnie?" Manon asks.
"We're okay here," I assure her. "I learned how to drink on this place. Ian's had it for his own since his folks died starting the fire of '04 but it's always been the place to get shit faced."
"A bonfire party?" Marie-France sounds like the gleam is leaving her eye.
"Only for the hoi-poloi, chere," I tell her and Manon wiggles with glee at the ready-to-party tone in my voice. "There will be slightly more sophisticated entertainments in the manor. Park on the basketball court."
The car draws a curious crowd and if they care where we park no one lets on. I recognize a few faces and spot one straining under the weight of home brews on ice. Each of the girls takes an arm as I make a bee-line for the drinks. We catch them up quickly and the guy doing the heavy lifting turns when I call out, "Hey, Scammer, slow up a bit."
He turns fast enough to nearly drop his tub and his eyes light up at the sight of the girls. "Yo, Ronnie man. Thought you had another do tonight?"
"And miss a Fleming fire party? Check your head man, you may be concussed." He laughs while his eye's shift between checking out the girls, getting an eyeful of both. "Here, let me help you with that, " I say and his relief is shortlived whenI only remove three bottles from the ice. "So, what's on the burn this year?"
"Oh, we've had donations from all over the county, pile's almost as tall as the house. Plus, Ian's uncles brought twenty five gallons of old paint and the same of gas. It's gonna' be a good burn." He enjoys telling the story so much that he actually takes his eyes off of the girls long enough to look over his shoulder towards the unlit fire. "Come get a spot before the good ones are gone."
The invitation ios directed more at Manon and Marie-France than me but I answer for them. "We're fine here, thanks. I don't want them too close when that goes up. Just tell Ian that I made it, if you see him."
"Sure thing, One-nut." Scammer knows that he's been dismissed but he's too jazzed to let on. He turns back toward the pile of lumber, paint and fuel waiting to become the 2010 Fleming Bonfire while I open beer for the girls.
"Interesting guy, " Marie-France observes as her trudges away under his load. "But why'd he call you One-nut."
"Long story," I tell her while Manon preens for the crowd of onlookers. She's about to start an intimate relationship with her beer bottle when six and a half feet of man comes towards us from the fire site. "Ah, " I say with just a hint of regret, "here comes the pig-fucker himself."
Before the girls can ask what the hell I'm on about, Ian's got his arms around me and my feet leave the ground. "Weaver, you fuckin' guy! Scammer told me you were here with two gorgeous women and I didn't believe him." He sets me down none too gently and tips Marie-France a wink. But when he looks at Manon, his eyes glaze like he's had a ten pund sledge between the eyes. "Who's the little goddess?"
Manon blushes prettily while digging an elbow deep in my ribs. "Ian, this is Manon Champlain-Ducepe. Manon, this great hulk..."
"Yack, yack, yack..."
"Is Ian Fleming, our host." They shake hands and I can tell that they won't be letting go of each other for a while. "It's Manon's birthday today."
Ian's drinking a jug of homemade wine, tips it effortlessly up into his mouth, wipes it with a huge red haired fore arm and stares. "We then, mam'selle, how 'bout a tour of the place?"
"Yes please, " she breathes as she takes his arm to be led through the throng. Marie-France and I aren't spared so much as a backward glance.
"Well kid," I say to her, "it's just you and me."
She smiles. "Finally."
Really? "How's that beer treating you?"
"I'd prefer some herbal refreshment," she says taking my hand and pulling me close.
"That's not going to be a problem here," I say and wrap my arms around her waist. "This whole place was built on dope."
"Not homegrown shit," she says while nuzzling my ear. "I've got some good stuff. Is there anywhere we could be alone."
"Yeah, sure...no problem." She's tugging on my belt and I need to get my brain back up to my head when I see the farmhouse's blue painted back door. There's a laundry room just through it and down the stairs that would be perfect. Taking Marie-France by the hand I scan the crowd for any sign of Manon and lead the way. The door's open and there's sounds of some seruious merry-making but I take her right down stairs to the laundry.
"Does that door lock from the inside?" she asks, surveying the place.
"Yup," I say and it's done while I wonder at my luck.
Marie-France has already got one spun in her purse and I've got my light ready when she raises the spliff to her lips. She puffs and passes, easing herself up ionto the dryer, not trying to straighten her skirt which hikes up her thigfhs like an eager shirpa. We trade off in silence for a while before I take a seat on the washer next to her.
"So why did that guy call you One-nut?"
I toke before I talk, wondering if she really needs to know and half relieved that she's asked before finding out the hard way. "Because it's true."
"You mean that you have only one testicle?"
"Yup," I pass the joint back top her with a trembling hand. "But it's better than most of the other nicknames I've been saddled with since the accident."
"Like what?"
"Oh, Half-man, Half-sack, Burntballs, Frankencock, Roasted Weiner instead of Ronnie Weaver..."
"What happened?" passing the roach back to me and leaning back against the wall so that her brasts press against the sheer fabric of her blouse.
"You really don't know? It made the news and everything."
"Would I be asking if I knew?"
I toke a little more and decide not. Thinking about the past like this always makes me cringe a little but I'm fuzzy-headed enough to pretend like it doesn't matter. "It happened about four years ago. I got this lighter from my girlfriend..."
"Carol?" Marie-France asks rescuing the neglected roach from my fingers.
"The same. So she gave me this lighter, really just a fancy ass piece of jewellry, for my birthday and it's great. I carry it with me everywhere, people ooh and ahh whenver I bring it out, all that good shit. So one day I'm walking up Main Street, I've just lit a cigarette and I feel a hot spot in my pocket against my leg. It's high summer so I don't think much of it until I smell smoke. I look down and my pocket's on fire. And before I can pat it out or shuck my pants there's this loud snap-pop like a gunshot and I feel my right nut disintegrate. I'm on the ground twitching, too shocked to make a noise and five poeple step over me before anyone stops to call for help. But there could have been a surgical suite set up right there on the sidewalkb and it wouldn't have made a difference."
I usually throw the story off fast so that it doesn't sound like the most traumatic event in my life - casual like. Marie-France is just staring with the last scrap of joint smouldring between her fingers so I pluck it back and finish it off for lack of anything better to do. "That's terrible," she says as her eyes shift ever so slightly down towards my crotch.
I puff the last light out of the spliff and flick it into the corner. "This is the easiest telling I've ever done. But yeah, it was terrible. Third degree burns on your cock isn't something that you can pretend easn't terrible. Right testicle evaporated, surgically inserted cathertre, salves and unguents enough to drown a baby in and all the while never knowing if I'd ever be a functioning man again."
"And are you a functioning man?"
I smile, "More or less. I can get it up and make gravy but I'll never have kids. And it looks a gory mess to boot."
"Is that why Carol dumped you?"
"Yes and no. What it really came down to was that there was no common ground between us, just a gap we bridged on our backs." She looks like she wants to hear more but that's the only answer she's gonna get.
She accepts it and fold her hands in her lap. "I never liked her."
"Carol was a hard person to like and easy to love." Marie-France finally pulls the hiking hem of her skirt back down over the tops of her thighs and I scramble for anything else to say before she ditches. "I'm hungry." Good one.
Marie-France reaches for her clutch - so different from Carols old carry-all - and fishes out a pair of fortune cookies. "I took these after you left the table," she hands me one bfore cracking hers open eagerly.
I follow her lead, stuff both halves into my mouth, playing the clown so I don't have to think about anything else to say. She nibbles one half of hers while looking at the fold of paper she found inside. "So what's the wisdom of the ages?" I ask with a mouthful.
She smiles and reads, "'The only constant in life is change.' What about yours?"
I choke on the cookie paste in my mouth when I see my fortune. It's the same one I read ten years ago back at the Emperor. "'Happiness is sitting right next to you.'"
Her memory is as good as mine, "It's the same one you got the night we met."
"Yeah, " I mutter, " we - Carol and I - had a laugh about it before..."
Her memory is too good. "Before she followed you into the bathroom."
"That's right, buit that was then and now it's you sitting right next to me."
She smiles at that, a little sadly. "I was sitting next to you that night too."
And of course she's right, I just hadn't even considered her because of how she looked back then. It's not easy looking her in the eye but I mange it. "I was a different person then, a real jerk and Carol was easy...I was just going the easy way..."
She stops my mouth with a finger on my lips. "I was a different person back then too. But at least now we know that the only constant in life is change...the cookie told us so."
"Is that the same message you had back then too?" I ask in hopes that the subject will change from what a creep I was.
"No," she says, "that one said 'Even an ugly duckling can become a swan.' It was that message and your thornh between two roses comment that made me decide I wanted plastic surgery."
"I'm sorry about that comment and the way we - Carol and I - laughed about it. I was drinking and..."
"And nothing. You put your arm around me when you said it and it was the first time a man I wasn't related to ever touched me. You didn't say it mean, you just really weren't saying it to me. I realized then that guys like you would only ever look at girls like Carol and my cousin. I cou;dn't go through life like that."
I'm stuck on something she said, "Guys like me?"
She smiles shyly. "You know - smart, funny, sexy guts. I didn't want to be the girl who only gets attention when guys find out about my family's money. I want someone to love me and not invest in me."
"But, Marie-France..."
"But nothing." There's enough heat in her voice now to melt away any protest I could make. "You can say anything you want about inner beauty and personality and it would all be so much bullshit. I was an ugly duckling who wanted to be a swan and my money helped me make that decsion. I'm a whole new person from the girl you met that night...from the girl who didn't have the nerve to follow you into the bathroom."
I nod. "I didn't recognize you when I sat down tonight, not until Manon said your name."
"And you made the same thorn beween two roses comment."
"And you didn't blush or run away either." I remmber something else. "That was your foot unjder the table."
She smiles. "Mmm-hmm...I knew that you meant it this time."
She leans into me, eyes closed, lips parted, hem rising. I'm drawn to her like a straight line and find myself kissing a woman for the first time in two years. It starts lightly but soon intensifies to the point where her tongue becomes daring and traces my lips. The monster in my pants stirs and I break away. "Marie-France..."
Her eyes are glinting with kind of hunger that a fortune cookie can't touch. "I can help you forget her, Ronnie. I can make it better." She slips off of the dryer and slides over to stand between my legs, her hands on my chest. "I can make you happy."
Her hands are moveing - before I can say anything - down to my belt. She's locking eyes with mine, undoing the buckle. She licks her lips in case I had any mistake about her intentions. I should stop her but only to keep her going eye to squinting eye with my toasted trouser snake. But she's already got my fly down, already plucking at the stiff business in my boxers when I close my eyes. I can feel myself released to the air and hear her indrwan breath. "I'd understand if you don't..."
But she engulfs me with her mouth and words escape me even as she mumbles around my member. I look down to watch her head bob and lips do some of the greatest work I've ever seen. She's taking me deeper than anyone before and there's no one else in the world but the two of us. And when her pearly lacquered nails scratch the tops of my thighs I groan and die a little inside her mouth.
After I'm empty and twitching she slides her head off of me and smiles. I avoid looking at what's broken between my legs and concentrate on that smile. She rises up to me, pulling me forward, lips parting...
And spits my load back into my face. I scrub a hand across my eyes as she caws laughter. I'm blinded by spunk and clawing for my fly when I slip off the washing machine. The laudry room door opens and shuts while I'm tucking the truckered out monster away and all I can do is hope that it's not someone coming in to see what's gone down. I find something with a groping hand that might be roll of paper towl, tear off half a mile's worth and start mopping madly at my face. Hopefully there's nothing stuck in my beard but I need to know what the fuck that was all about.
I make one last swipe at my face and follow Marie-France out of the laundry room but it's way too late. News of the crazy French girl tearing off in the Beamer is already starting to trickle back to the house when I get oustide. There's a huddled shape on the steps leading up to the back door and it's Manon with no Ian Fleming in sight. If I'm secretly glad that she got ditched too it doesn't show on my face when I sit down next to her. I'm really just hoping that she wasn't in on any kind of set up with her cousin.
She just smiles. "So you got ditched too, huh?"
"Yup, where's Ian?"
"Oh, out in the barn fucking some pig." She says it like she's fetching the mail or some shit. "Did you know that it's custom to wrap your cock in electrical tape before fucking a barnyard animal. Over the counter condoms just dont cut it."
"I had no idea, to tell you the truth," I'm trying to make her smile bigger. "My experience with bestiality is limited to small mammals - hamsters and such - but then again you do end up wearing them like a condom."
She's not really listening to me. "He said I was a goddess." She lays her head on my shoulder.
"Yup, I heard that too."
"Why do I always have to go and run off with some boy?" she asks like I didn't just take skull from her cousin in the laudry room.
"Search me, Kiddo. Whay do I always fall for crazy chicks?"
Silently we agree that we're both fucked and get up to find somewhere better than the stairs to be. The fire's lit and looks ready to consume the world but there are too many people whooping and hollering, trying to get close without burning their hair off. I can't take that scene right now. Instead I commandeer a bottle of homemade wine from a passed out reveller. Without knowing how we're getting back to town we start walking. I just hope we don't get halfway there and start wishing we'd stayed on the stairs.
The gravel shoulder of the road slopes down into marshy ditched so I only take the inside when a car passes. I'd rather have her muddy and mad at me than bloody and dead after all. The wine's gone fast and when the bottle hits the ditch she's leaning on me for support. I'm content with the contact and the rhythm of walking when she decides to shatter the night with a question.
"Why do you call Carol every night at eleven and hang up when she answers?"
"What are you talking about, Non-non?" I ask with feigned innocence.
"Carol told me that she subscribed to call display because someone kept calling her at eleven o'clock every night. When I asked her how to get ahold of you she just said to try the number she sees. She didn't know if it was you or not and when I called it I half hoped it wouldn't be your voice in the answering machine."
"Do you want an honest answer to that question?"
"Just spare me your bullshit and, yes, answer honestly."
"Okay, I will, if you answer one of mine." It's a firm offer and she nods agreement. "Fine, after the accident, Carol used to always try for me when the news came on a t eleven. I wasn't ready for it and she'd stalk off to satisfy herself with the shower head. So I call her every night at eleven hoping to hear water running in the background."
She nods. "You're fucked. But it is your turn to ask me a question."
I can't help but sound suspicious. "Why did you want me out with you tonight?"
She stops walking without letting go of my arm and stops me in my tracks. She's looking up at me and I can see myself reflected in the moonlight trapped in her eyes. There is nothing stuck in my face. "I sometimes think about that night you set yourself on fire and how good you look without a beard. I wonder what kind of life I would have had if you hadn't signed up for a drinking contest. I wanted you at my birthday supper so that Mamere could meet you and say how charming you are, then maybe you'd remember and quit pining over a woman I was always jealous of." I think she's done but there's more. "And I wanted you to see how good I look inthis dress."
She does indeed. "You'd look better without the dress."
"And you'd look better without a beard."
I smile. "I'll shave if you shave."
She smiles back. "Way ahead of you, Ronnie."
I have to laugh at the dare in her voice and hope she doesn't take it the wrong way. "You're the perfect end to a shitty night. Did you know that?"
She pulls me down to her height and gives me a gentle kiss on the mouth. It's our fisrt kiss and too perfect for words. "Let's go," she says when it's over, "we have a lot of ground to cover."
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)