Chapter 11:  Ottawa.  The Betty Blue Dress Spanish Debriefing.
 

Betty, that server and also styler of hair, is fond of reminding me that my various endings are always nigh, whether I choose to meet them within the confines of my tiny brain or not.  This be paraphrase, but I do indeed swear at her, very many bad words as to the recognition of her powers, the believing of this supple girl as my vision and giver of metaphor.  Simply put: the girl of scissors and snip saw this specific All coming a Canadian kilometre away.  So she say.  Great.  Absolutely fantastic for her.

In the before and in the now;

Of hanging out at that specific one of two Royal Oaks situated on Bank Street, having the occasion to meet people of certain paragraphs of description that evolve within the span of time.  This is perhaps euphemism.  A nicer way of explaining away a person’s funky fascination with watching the filling of more thick red to ketchup bottle - a something chore done by staff at end of most all restaurant shift.  In the before, I took this Winnepeg’s kink for the mere late night amusement that it was and ran with it and him.  This the initial of personality that I lived with, a someone older than me and well within the industry for a number of years; this very smart man who not only presumed to talk to the various of rodent and bird family scurrying around his mother’s Glebe home, but also a divined receiver of their certain answer as well - and the man was is not schizophrenic.  But nonetheless, could not throw a baseball to save his life.  In this before he the added colour, he was my friend, Fonzie’s friend.  This was is my Centretown.

What is left of my shorn hair forms hyphens into the folds of the black bib that cover me; Betty works the back of my head with a razor and number 4 tip while continuing the Unfold that is me succumbing to the inevitable gossip that is a hair salon.  In this now, I wait for the cue and the prompt - I am the customer, and hers to relax.  But she is my friend and I be her regular - I do relax and begin the fantasy as always.  She is reaching over for a comb, the fine-toothed black of back pocket variety soaking within mystery of blue liquid, and I remain.  So, in this now, I move the mouth in the mirror and watch myself lip-sync the sounds that I hear myself say to her: “What does she want?  I can’t just switch hairdressers like that.”  I had larger things to deal with - and I know You know some of it.  In the before, in the now, I came come to Oui Design for my cutting of the hair.  Simple.  And it was in that sometime before that I introduced X, brought her to salon and Betty and the eventual in between.

In this now, I watch a reflection of Betty snip the small of my hair, careful shave the curls of my sides.  She leans for the dryer to blow away the loose, and my left hand works its way underneath black bib - helps shake cuttings to floor, grazes left nut ever so.  “Loyalty has to mean something.  I can’t just stop coming here because she left me, or because you’re best buds with her.”  I stare and she stare; two knowing friends into a mirror.

In the before, Winnepeg made the somewhat of my senses tingle with his pinpoint fascination for redheads.  He warmed the temples of my freak with his dead stare proclamation that for the last fifteen years he had been cutting his own salt-and-pepper hair with the aid of a triptych - all this confession at three-in-the-morn across from a gay bar as I shook his hand good night and staggered to bed my Centretown.  Winnepeg called those people ‘tasters.’  He was a curiosity to me, this man in the biz before I even used the word.  This man who went to work half-cut on JD and lessening amounts of cola; crunched two, maybe 3 aspirins - dropped dry into mouth.  A few squirts of Visine for each red eye.  It was the smell of alcohol and the disguise of - and this is the Before, when I delivered truckloads of P-pane and merely hung with the industry at particular Oak on Bank Street.   

These are the adjectives and nouns of invention.  Everything that I say or have said is a potential Not.  Winnepeg - the obvious of a typo for a now necessarily distant friend of mine, magical of real name and real life that managed to cross my path and become fifth business to the What that I think to You now.  And as I seek to explain this person in terms fictional enough to save me from the life of a bartender unable to keep a secret, I grasp at the before to clear and yet cloud this now even all the more.  This be the excuse and the way to distance myself from the too weird.

Betty removes my shroud, walks me over to the rinse sink and places an always white towel around my neck.  I know to sit and lean back, wait for the warmed water, the unnecessary application of expensive shampoo, hand massage upon my scalp.  I slow close my lids and continue to envisage phrenology for the sensuality that it is, the pornography that it can be.  And this wondrous treatment all-inclusive.  And I tip her big, and she chides - I say Take It and walk myself towards the door to leave it at that; to stifle my hard-on, get her to relax and abscond on this Monday of all afternoons.  She is my connection and person in the middle through association - the borrowed gel still wet to my shortened hair.  “What are you doing - right now?”  And whatever did I mean.  “No, can you take late lunch or a break?  A wee pint at the Oak?”  I lean my fake English accent up the street towards said pub.

She tells me that my hair is absolutely fab - after all, she did it and it must be fantastic, regardless of my mother’s side of the thinning hereditary trail.  “I’m coming, Hen, just shut the hell up.”  It is three on a Monday - I let her clearly know that she is the bestest of all my friends in this most of post-traumatic.  “Shut up, I’m coming already fuck.”  I wink, casually brush the now itchy remnants of past from my neck and collar.

Then.  Betty and I slowly move this Now up some of the most fantastic two blocks sad of all of Bank Street; past Gilmour and up near MacLaren of what exists somewhat off all downtown cores - not of tourists but year-round bent regulars and beggars getting by doing what they do in the swaying of their already dying light and forever dark.  Yes, sidewalk and pavement of cracks.  Red brick buildings and old, boarded-up rock clubs that open and close every two years.  To us it is sunshine and promising for a Monday not so far removed from the perhaps night of a heavy drinking for the mere sake of; this is my return from Spain.  My now.  I walk Betty and the click click of her heels to the Oak - open the heavy front door and watch her red hair grow progressively blonde; I view this back of her for an apparent long enough to invite suspicion.  This be Betty, somewhat even in height to mine eyes with those two-and-a-half lift of heel.  And does this matter: we sit at the wood - and it doesn’t.  But yes, You do know more of that useless information now; observe me calculate her breast size, that various of maybe pain experienced in youth, the What she truly believe when of a relax in comfy bed of alone or maybe inserted boyfriend.

At this point she is mine to say.  In the before, and the maybe now.  She the medium of choice and I have changed her name so it be Ok.  Cheap, but Ok.  But she orders red wine in a skank pub and I stick to Irish stout on a warm day - it does not matter in this pretend.  We clink glass and swear some utterly unattainable oath to one another; we are not drunk, but invented.

“I really meant that I was sorry, for any and all of her pain.  But how - how - does she go and show this affectation any generosity - by kicking me out anyway.”  This the speak of sad in the already; I trace initials carved into the wooden rail before me, ginger smile the Betty that I know, but kiss the figment of my X before.  I want to lean over and ravish the bloated vermillion pout of the friend of the girl that I used to live with and I want to do it now.  I want to talk to this girl, want it to lead somewhere near romance, sex - and I do not want it to cause a problem.

“You’re buying, right?”  I nod my head to her raised eyebrow of a question.  “I’m not getting specific with you at all about her.  I can’t and you know it.  And why don’t you talk to her?”  She touches my chest and it inspires the small crowd; I have to lean across to give an afternoon skid of a customer the finger - to turn his awakened eyes away and mind his own damn business.

“Did you not get the debriefing about Spain from X?  It was not pretty.”

“That’s not what she said.”

“Of course not, she was the one snubbing, all happy and hanging with Frances and doing her hair all different.  She actually made us stay in separate hostels when we went up to Barcelona.  Nice, huh?”

“Oh boo the fuck hoo, Hen.  You two were done before Spain, well before.”

“You saw this in one of your …um …lava lamp visions, did ya?”  I sip from her glass, fill my cheeks.  Swallow.  There be about three people in this first room of the fabulously wooden Oak; this lazy Monday of ours and others, and this Now bartender I don’t know, for the sun is out.  “What else does it say about me lately?  Will I live with a spiny cactus the rest of my days?  Will I ever get laid ever again?  Do you see me paying for It at some not so distant point?”  I am a slow, steady whisper, not mad at her but rather enjoying this saucy girl dipping her finger into my Guinness, flicking its thick cream at me.  She’s mentally writing all of this down - a hairdresser and a server is a large gossip mouth to feed; but, by the way, her breasts are fairly average.  She wears a lot of blue dresses to match her eyes, seems older than her two dozen-odd years, and is of the doomed relationship variety: the classic deluxe.  “Alright, missy, tell me what you think of when all alone in bed, any old bed?  And this isn’t about me; just, what do ya think about?  Huh?  Shall I’ll yell you what I think is…” and she shushes me.

Here’s what You have been waiting for.  “I give this shit up for free?  No no, Mr. Bartender, not this girl.”  She is feigning a hurt, the actress in her beginning to play.

“It’s not a very hard question, dear.  You only have to close your eyes and imagine, or remember.  Yes, go on.  Go on.  Here, I’ll even start you off.  Picture me in bed, not a comfy queen-size with a duvet, but rather a halfway decent futon that I borrowed from Fred.  The sheets are pulled off and I’ve decided to keep the drapes open for more air on a warm night.  Are you still with me, missy?  In the display of darkened window in darkened room I stare at my three friends - that cactus with the three prickly hoo hahs that I told you about.  I stare at Pepé, the smallest one, and I hear Spain in my ear, walk into a cerveceria in Torrente to buy the first of many bocadillos that time of Fallas.  Seems I still think in Spanish.  To me, Pepé is Duardo’s youngest brother Salvi: very shy, slightly good looking, and principled enough to be still living at home until he and his wonderful girlfriend can save enough money to buy a place for themselves; they cannot marry until this happens.  It’s some sort of law.  Just move in with her, I say, after meeting him for the first and hearing story in cerveceria; but No, and then that ancient slow wave of his index finger.  I should know better - hey, Betty?”  I pull myself out of a trance and grab a serviette to wipe my brow.  I have invented and told the utter truth.

“Hmm,” she say.  I explain that we went to a licensed eatery to buy a sort of sub on our way to the start of that festival she may or may not have heard about from X.  An elbow goes up on the bar; her head rests on one open palm.  “What do number two and number three have to say?”

“José and Tall Sanchez?  Nope.  You have to play nice, Miss Waitress.  Give me something; make me up some good.  Some bad.  Be honest just before you go to sleep.”

“Ack.  You lie, you lie.”  And I am so very easily hurt, tell her with my quick to wave away the now and rejoin the past.  I describe that first real night out in Torrente: the language barrier that hurt but saved me or us from explaining or lying about our relationship to the new others; I believe that they assumed that X and I were together - boyfriend girlfriend abroad.  We learned that queso is cheese, huevo is egg and revuelto scrambles them.  The stocky owner of eatery the most gregarious, constantly moving his bald head back and forth between Frances’ translation and my every sixth seventh recognition.  Magnificent, I say to Betty at this Now bar.  In that Friday night of Before it was a maybe sort of pizzeria, it was an around-the-corner, it was local, it was narrow and of course played a form of soccer called football on the tube.  Duardo hates the local team and cheered loudly for Real Madrid as we drank quintos and waited for fish and salted ham and mushroom to cook on grill.

I take a breather in the now, rest my changing metabolism.  After the first 33 years, the Jesus period has begun to produce me a change purse for a belly.  The end years are complicated, overly pensive.  Regret is shiny in the Royal Oak death plaques now moved to the wall behind the bar; in the before they were riveted to the now removed support beams that sprouted up from the autographed bar; I pause Betty and squint to read and remember the open and close life of a guy I kind of knew: ‘I eat when I hunger, sleep where I lie, I’ll live each day free ‘til the day I die - Henry 1972-1999.’  Beautiful and trite, I suppose.  Another twenty-seven-year-old tragedy.  This guy shared my given name and now he be dead and reduced to a small brass strip in a bar he hung out at before travelling up to Iqaluit - only to drive a snowmobile throw a barbwire fence.

That’s the story that is told when asked, and it’s most probably true, but this is a bar and people have been known to forget or expand.

“Sorry, Bet - I just spaced out for a sec.  But go ahead now - I’m waiting.”

“Is this a sex thing?” 

Is this invite or admonition by her.  “It is whatever you want it to be, Betty.  Your honesty will shape the answer, so kick up a heel and relax a spell.  I wasn’t saying that you were naked or writhing around in bed with arouse; I was merely referring to quiet time and those few precious seconds that we all share before sleep.  What goes through your fucking head?  What thinkings?  Just answer me.”  I smile and smooth the diatribe, reach around and once again discourage the same old sleepy skid with a display of my middle finger.  I tack on a reverse peace sign, for - after all - this is an English pub.

“This is really important to you, isn’t it, Mr. Bartender?”  I sip my pint and so-so with my right hand.  I swallow and hide behind a cream moustache.  “Before I snuggle down …and when I happen to be alone with myself only, and just lying there for a moment, right?  Well, before anything I thank Jesus Christ almighty for all my good fortunes.”

“Stop!  Do not bring Jesus into this.  Don’t.”

“Oh why?  Did you find religion in that Spain of yours?”

“Hell no; what did X tell you?  Hey, I’m a peaceful man, baby.”

“Yeah, I can tell: let’s put the bar to a vote, shall we?”  I’m two votes down already, and the daytime bartender I don’t know from Adam.  I wince and fake death.  I avoid and wait for divine inspiration, sip Guinness and pray to the beer gods.

“Ok.  Deep breathes from me to you, Betty.  I am not a Jesus freak.  Nor am I opposed to the taking of the Lord’s or even His son’s name in any vain: Jesus H. fucking Christ on a Popsicle stick - see?  Happy are we now?  I only meant that you were mocking me and avoiding the precious moments before sleep, the clearest spot on the brain; and is there such a place?”

“Henry Henry.  The shit that flies from your fat mouth.”  I thank her immediately, listen to my new friend - the skid - snicker and cough up his phlegm all over his shirt.  “I do actually thank some one once in awhile.  I do.  I just prefer to use a little tongue of the street for my way.”  I feel the left side of my chest, close to the centre - a slight arrhythmia, perhaps, but this is normal enough.

“Me, too,” I offer.  “I mean; I mean I’ve never even much thumbed through that Bible book that be the biggest seller of all-time.  I guess everyone knows that about it, huh?  Sorry.  Sorry.  Really.  Ah god, forget it.  Forget it.”  I grab the bartender and ask for the beer on special this fine day: Carlsberg it is, and Carlsberg it be that I present to said leaned over skid at bar beside, half-asleep on a Monday if not for us.  I have given him alms and solved nothing; he chuckles with the memory span of a goldfish, his hand only beginning to steady itself.  He has approximately thirty-five brothers who frequent this fine establishment and I’ve talked to all picture of this man.

And so know: You are in this bar - with me in new, and old.

“Henry.”  Yes, I say upon return.  “Hen, I am infinitely proud of you.”  She say this with mockery and I understand and let slide for it is most likely towards the truth of this actuality that I extend to You.  I have purchased an imaginary vote with alcohol: the old-time politics of a Sir John A. Macdonald et al.  The bartender - who is, by the way, in the range of five- to six-foot tall and going blonde with the face of a tired Nordic god - returns to the crossword that saves a many of us from the Monday that can be and is.  I choose to drain my Guinness and use my smile to pass away the awkwardness of having made others experience the rhythm of my heart.  And I am sorry.

“I was only interested in some privacy for us - but hey, stupid Henry, right?”

“And you want between my sheets?”

“I want inside your brain for a few seconds.  I want to eavesdrop in a polite manner; I want to compare and not just leech off you in between drinks or puffs on heavy cigarettes, and so, yes, I’ve lost my patience for others who have to turn their misery into an annoyance for others.  It’s one of the Ten Commandments.”

“You are so a Jesus freak.”  We growl and laugh so hard I begin to hold back tears.

“In Spain, whenever I would sneeze, Duardo - Frances’ husband - he would say Jésus, instead of bless you: ‘Hey Zeus, Onray.  Hey Zeus.’  Figure that one out.”  And so we giggle, my skid friend following us on a three-second delay.  And we’d snicker at him, and he’d go some more, gain energy and almost stand up and then sit back down.  His lips around my gift, his watchful ears leeching my life.  “Duardo’s whole family is losing their hair, except young Salvi.  The two other brothers have progressively less amounts of hair - all married or in the process of.  And all the women very nice Spanish ass, nice Spanish face.”

“Always with the ass.  Always with the ass.”

I’ve busted one of the Commandments.  “What?  X and I were done, right?  Well done.  We go to this casalet, the falla’s clubhouse, which is just a hall with a liquor supply and nothing really special, but all of the chicks have these amazing butts.  And it’s not just the shape, but the sheer poise of a bullfighter: ‘Here you go, take a swipe at this.’  It was all in the presentation.  And I’m there with my ex-girlfriend, very tiny bits and pieces of the English language.”

“So it wasn’t all bad?” Betty surmises.  I reach for my pocket to pull out the last words ever written to me by X and wonder if Betty realizes that she is explaining some of the last line of said note: ‘It wasn’t all bad - Love always, X.’

“No.”  I have to concede the truth.  “Not at all.  All perky ass aside, it was most weird and wonderful.  A lifetime of things to consider.”  And so I sit, doing half-doughnuts on a swivel stool.  “Is this the spot where I say you have a great ass?  Because I will, B is for Betty.”  I place two fingers on my wrist to race with the pulse; I quickly lose count and the care for.  “I’m sorry.”

“You two talk so different, totally opposite of story.”

“How am I supposed to know or compare - you keep yourself hidden behind this friendship clause.  Why do you even talk to me?”  One, two, three: “Sorry.  Really - I am sorry.  Fuck.”  I am fading fast on one beer and a lack of excuse.  “Do the stories ever start to pile up on top of one another?  Ever lose yourself in a customer, at either job?”

“You need to keep a life of your own, Henry.  The rest is entertainment.”  Gossip, I say.  “Sometimes.  Hell ya.  But when I place my head on a pillow I feel no shame for passing along colourful information.”  Nice word, I say.  “Yeah, whatever whatever.  I feel no guilt and sleep quite well, thank you.”  Does she ever consider the possibility of passing along a mistake.  “I am never mean or dumb about it, but a secret will definitely go stale within forty-eight hours.”  I smirk and feel guilt but still laugh out loud and yet still wonder about the collected virtues of a greedy squirrel.

“And so, Betty, this is your answer: utter peace?”

“No.  I sleep - that is the answer.”

“But what about my missing seconds?”

“Nothing for free, babe.  I told you.”