Yes ... the loveable, laughable, local watering hole. I've enjoyed them from the beginnings of my legal (and not so legal) drinking days because, for feelings good and bad, they are every neighbourhood's living room. As is the corner store, hair salon, bookshop gossip outlet.
As much as "The Jesus Years" is a deconstruction of a romance, it is an homage to the various slices of city life done right. It's what Jane Jacobs laments in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" - the loss of the character that is in fact the lifeblood of a neighbourhood, which in turn leads to the health of a city.
No offence to the suburbs and 7-11 and bored kids - I realize that the world is big, over-crowded and complicated - but I am quite happy fighting the fickle beast called City.
As much as "The Jesus Years" is a deconstruction of a romance, it is an homage to the various slices of city life done right. It's what Jane Jacobs laments in "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" - the loss of the character that is in fact the lifeblood of a neighbourhood, which in turn leads to the health of a city.
No offence to the suburbs and 7-11 and bored kids - I realize that the world is big, over-crowded and complicated - but I am quite happy fighting the fickle beast called City.
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Royal Oak 1
Chapter 17: Ottawa. Brother Clay.
At the High School Bar and Grill, for some unknown reason, we one day deemed our dishwasher the moniker of Iguana; it certainly wasn’t me, but he is, I will add, a very real person with very real dreams of someday getting his Grade 12, takes classes at the adult secondary down on Rochester Street, near Little Italy, near Chinatown. He’s twenty-two, and lives at home with his mom and a brother who is constantly in and out of varying levels of prison for dealing weed and hash to the likes of me and other.
The Iguana has two growing kids from a previous next door sweetheart he bed some years back; she and the girls are a no-longer to his immediate world now and he spends his free time drinking Crown Royal-and-ginger ale with astonishing ease. I mention this person for the smile that enters the sound I hear of his voice in my head, his say of his prowess: “It’s not all that big …but the girth will kill ya!” Guy stuff, and people in close quarters at particular restaurant, East End of my Ottawa. He’s moved up to kitchen by this Now, but in the Old he leaned over to us about that special point, six or so months into the dishwashing gig: “Everyone has there time, Boss, and me after awhile, you just lose it. Staring at that dirty wall back there; keeping at the same shit plate and same glass over and over - brutal; I went a little offside, Boss … started to come in to work half-snapped - brutal … brutal. Ha.” He’s French first, calls people Boss or Chief and walks with a hunch that one finds in the housing projects of every city over a certain population. He’s in the kitchen preparing appetizers - because of his work ethic, a certain pride I guess to put it proper.
I laugh for the Iguana because of the white beer belly that we slap for periodic grand Buddha luck; the tips of hair hidden beneath ball cap that he let his brother dye blonde only after a night of hard drinking. This is the young man that will eventually remain unseen as he cooks an anyone’s meal in an average restaurant of sometime future.
If he’s sober. If any of us others are. And his real name I keep to myself just now, certain seat at Royal Oak on Bank Street. Unfortunately, this is the future and the past. This is where X and I came to in the occasional, because of the location because of the atmosphere because - as other of female gender have had say - Fonzie makes every girl feel that they the most pretty in the entire room; and I watch him work: he will lean over and hug one’s girlfriend all real tight and they will let it slide because it is, after all, Fonzie. He is the man who has grown into the appearance of the grey-haired Irish wolfhounds he loves to raise and let roam his log home in the country just outside city. That he could very well sink me with the various secrets that he knows of my life spent on the other side of a collection of fallen trees formed into the agreeable shape of a bar is a distraction and a comfort, a mainstay to compare with the inevitable changes to any neighbourhood.
There be the gay bar right out the pub windows and across the street - where there used to be a fabulously messy pizzeria doling out pepperoni slices smothered in gravy for a couple of bucks a piece; there is a hip hop club where used to be a strip club we never went to but enjoyed the view of high-heeled girls going to work. And Barrymore’s, grand old red brick façade of Barrymore’s, reopened a number of years ago, back into that live music venue that was is within a former movie theatre of steep, carpeted stairs … side balconies in a this that part of Centretown.
This is to walk these streets, with the open palm stretched up towards one from a tired prophet down on all fours; he amongst the dinky back alleys that seem dank and scary to the hayseed, second nature to locals.
This be my Where, of Centretown that created the opportunity for the happenstance that was me walking into a showy bar on cleaner Elgin Street without my friends on that quiet Monday night when I first met her. In the beginning was over a decade ago, well before X and that job at Griffon’s: former roommates and a move from the semi-burbs, a shift towards the inner city where I can now not talk to her anymore - because of the point before Spain where she lay beside me and explain the very reason why she couldn’t be a party to anymore trying on her any front: so, yes, that loss of romance.
Hun, as leaned over in a dream and preparing me for the worst.
X, was it so terribly wrong for me the man to want to feel sexy.
X, I sit here with measure of saltpeter and consider my urges, the thoughts presented within the span of time that happened to be us over a period of two years. I sometimes get to feeling really silly and hit the alleys off Bank Street seeking to talk to a certain group that has never been held up and kissed on the bare feet - I smirk at the Man who withheld sex from Himself actually on purpose, hear the rumours as to His fidelity.
I relax and realize to this You the pictures snapped in Barcelona, she somewhat agreeable and together with me in need in foreign city of tourists; she the ex-girlfriend on other side of Elgin Street as I shuffle along within my return to Centretown. We no longer share that Glebe one-bedroom with the balcony and two-second walk to the beer store. And this be how I talk to myself now.
This be the time of 85 used Q-tips, day after finally meeting up with my brother Clayton for a few pops; and yes, he does drink beyond red wine of communion.
“What the fuck?”
“I don’t know; you’re asking me … because why? Clay, is it alright if I just sit here and make no sudden movements? Ok?”
That morning I had stepped out of the shower and for the first time noticed a lock on my bathroom door. I am a bachelor and as such always whiz with the door open, mindful of my father yelling for the closing of a door during urination - the unthought past that I currently squeeze and deny You. I creaked butt naked across a hardwood floor and picked up the phone to remember the seven numbers that spelled Clayton, heard his voice and told him to start being the big brother that was in the brochure handed out to his ilk. “Maybe,” he said.
I was dragging my brother into this Centre of Town; I paced my tiny apartment and told him to leave the lovely wife at home - nothing personal, I stressed. He’d paused on that phone. “Just a sec,” he’d lied to her. And then we had met at the Oak. Certain spot on Bank Street that afforded luxury and leeway to a people beyond the legal limit. Thoughts.
“Would it have made any sort of difference if she had truly taken the Lord into her heart?” My brother Clay had the nerve to sip Guinness and speak religion in the same breath. Older brother that he is. “Did you get the sense that she was straying in that time leading up to when you planned the trip?”
Yes; And You realize what I am dealing with in these Years of Jesus. “No,” she would have never done that, I told him, for it is not in her nature, for she is a seriously bright, precious flower of the past that came down around her various points. The things that open up when trust is a word whispered in a queen-size bed. The secrets I was told by her.
“Why does everyone think that A.D. stands for after His death?”
“No one bothers to learn Latin anymore, Hen. And the after death has an easy edge to it. A slang.” That part I bought, the modern life of Man somehow beginning once the Son had been sacrificed. This little that I knew of religion, wondered about once or twice to myself, five chronological years removed from a brother off at camp for the summer of ’78 because he loved the outdoors … because I was am indifferent. Still, I was jealous of his being Away to Anywhere but knew nothing of his growth on biblical education from said Cranberry Hill Fun Camp, only that our preadolescent photos were mirror images on the living room bookcase. And that my brother has always been a happy lad, not even in the near-cult sense: he learned good, clean Bible and the fun with metaphors and parables and stubborn burros. What he has taken to be the Truth of these Jesus Years that I play within, ‘til after death. Anno Domini. The days, the whatever spot on a calendar of the Julian or Gregorian variety; Chinese, Jews, all setting time to a different watch. But sorry - trivial things when one is amongst their brother and a delicious stout at the Royal Oak.
“I’m sorry, Clay. I have become self-centred in these years; my Spanish friend - Eduardo - told me that am within the years of Jesus - 33 and all. Shit, eh?”
“Maybe. You’re my brother so you will always be full of turd, but you consider the same of me, of my firm beliefs.” I shook my head and slurp my Guinness. I had forgotten that a senior sibling is always older till death do you part: brother Clay and the rough hands that have built or supervised the building of scores of homes throughout our fine megacity of Ottawa. His palms remind me of someone; I am selfish and forget that we share the gene pool: our father who art in heaven.
“In Spain it is quite unacceptable to leave home before you are set up in a proper house of your own; and, oh yeah, a wife too. That shit that makes sense to you; there’s still a bit of old school going on there, Clay. Take a tiny trip there and join up with the rest of the group.” My brother has big hands; mine be half-decent, but he has big mitts with pinkies that curve slightly inward - knuckles that belie the fighter that he is not.
My brother’s rather strong grip grabbed my wrists. “You fuck. Don’t you even think of it. Don’t! Don’t pretend to call me up out of this blue and then use His name with me.” My brother and that hold of his. “Do you even suppose for this shitty bar to scare me?”
The long johned bike couriers always meet at the Oak, in the very second room where we sat: they will once the while pass around an upturned donation hat and dare an any one of them to strip naked and peddle the ten or twelve blocks north up Bank Street to Parliament Hill and its eternal flame and R.C.M.P. cruisers … and back. The outer side of life meeting at this Oak and eventually barred from this Oak, let back in.
“Henry, I believe we should have another beer.” My older brother leaned a little towards the first room and its archway, caught the eye of a man behind the bar who raises giant dogs in the smell of open country. Clayton tilted his head and Fonzie understood to send the waitress, presumably because of age, because I continue to underestimate even in these the Jesus Years - the chronological time when He was apparently whacked from this good earth, only to return in the sense before me then, Now. “How the hell do you drink here all this time?” I shrugged my shoulders; we were by a window that peered out onto the rank of Bank Street filing towards what my brother was alluding to.
“Crap, Clay - crap covers up stuff. I’m almost halfway normal here.” And more Guinness. This be how little we had talked amongst the two tribes that be his in-laws and me - as well the pretty girl once amongst and interlacing fingers with mine, her name being that of X: that woman at play with little Debbie, smaller Teri of the straight black hair - my little nieces and godchildren. “This is it, baby.” I leaned and tapped the shoulder sitting next table over - I asked my friend if I could squeal a butt off of him: to my side was this particular dyslexic person reading a book with a yellow slice of diaphanous paper placed over the viewing page - a little something of a trick that he explained to me once as easing the dysfunctional of a certain overly quick area of his brain. “In fifteen words or more, Clay, explain to me this blind faith you seem fit to embrace.” Over a few Guinness - light in alcohol, actually low in calories within that heavy black mixture of yeast, barley, hops and water. Over a loyal din at the tavern I choose to associate with.
And my brother has those big hands, cuts his hair with a patented vacuum cleaner gizmo, an absolutely fantastic head mower. “This isn’t why you got me here, butthead.” Out the immediate window to my left - Clay’s right - a man of life on city streets who will never go bald or hardly ever sleep indoors. It was Listerine in a brown bag Night and the cliché that all know and quickly walk on past; but sorry.
“If you have to ask you can’t afford it then? Fuck, I’m serious, Clay. How does one go from pages of a book to absolute belief that this existed beyond being a guy that people followed around just because he was cool or had long hair? What - it’s not that simple?” And the borrowed nicotine in my pocket waiting out a simpering cadence that allows siblings to communicate on an entirely different level. This is the part where I relate a childhood occurrence suffused with subtle ramifications. “Brother, I shall soon die and be committed to the ground - I think that it is actually quite safe to spill the can of beans and that one piece of fatty bacon that we always fought over. Tick tick: I am thirty-three. Any month now it will happen.”
This was the Where it would occur, amongst the schizophrenic patrons stuffing themselves with cigarettes, using them to calm the voice that is never truly gone. This was where; amongst a temporary lull in the supply chain that would allow their paranoia to catch up with me - and the end would begin to be. “It is very simple,” said Clay. “You will never die, brother, not to me and never to anyone.” The need of nicotine up and asked my recently shaved balls to laugh and smile at the brother across from me and waiting du Maurier. “You will not die to me, despite everything that has happened before and after.”
“Ashes to ashes?”
“Hell no. The concept is the belief of me. Of myself, rather. You will never die to me - regardless.”
“Stop just repeating yourself, my eyes are spinning.”
“That would be the need for that cigarette in your hand, Hen.” He was kind enough not to implicate the Guinness.
“No shit, man. But I was alluding to your voodoo hypnosis stuff; I’m gonna wake up in a back alley with my underwear around my head, reeking of religion and that almighty god-awful that gives you the comfort to perform this ritual on me. How can you do this to blood? It’s lame, man.”
“Still: you will never die to me despite of everything. Because of everything.”
“Just because you wanna be mean … for the sheer hell of it? I believe I shall tell Mom.”
“Go ahead.” At that precise moment, my brother thirty-eight years old.
“Does she believe you? Huh?” My brother paused with the ease of a man aware of certain things. “You screwed with Mom, you bastard! She’s one of your people now, in with the Way and all that.” My brother. The man sharing a pint in that Centretown bar and causing me to wonder if the Kennedys dare even turn on the television anymore. My brother the Christian that they at least be, too - this little that I know. This little that was calm in my head; I was playing, I was seven-years-old and talking to myself.
This is the part where Clayton clinked my glass. Even he began to stretch his words out, to slowly enunciate the say that was the two of us speaking the English language out loud. “Tra.ge.dy.” Yes, perhaps the way - maybe - that some heterosexuals will inextricably attract members of the same sex. “Little brother, yes, for sure you are gon.na die. Not at my hands, and definitely not if I can help it. But that is it, that is all, butt.head. And its manner will all be determined at the necessary point.” My brother the romantic. My brother the one united with me through birth from same mother refusing drugs during delivery, biting down on rawhide in head. Those stories that we have been let in on.
“The necessary point? Last call … is a necessary point. The withdrawal method a necessary point.” I considered of tragedy, and the fabulous 27 diagonal inches of television screen sitting quietly beside a named cactus in my tiny apartment - that audio visual part of the settlement that had gone quite smooth between that X and me. I pictured my brother standing beside those particular Kennedy people in their rather large homes at the Cape; I could clearly see my Clay ignoring the cold stares of the hired help and picking up the remote control with his big hands and hitting the On button, then turning to the various real and hyphenated Kennedy and reassuring them that it was no big deal … this necessary point.
I could go on and think You what current event the in-house artist, Mister Andy Green, decided to depict on his weekly chalkboard of satire off to my left of Fonzie and wooden Royal Oak bar; but at that exact moment, a scared Camelot was thee What that ran the inner of my head.
“That was an entirely different thing, Hen, not at all what I mean of blind faith.”
“It should all fit as one, should it not?”
“Yeah, and it does. Yeah, you’re right, for once.” People speaking that English language everywhere; and a lone gunman sipping a beer at every other table, that certain night at the Oak with my big brother. “The necessary point is blind faith, and …the also name of a great band.” And my brother the comic. And with bad laughs. “But a necessary point. A thought.” I sniffed a parable approaching. I myself assumed a negative beyond a late 60’s band that made one great album before imploding around that very time that I happened to fall to Earth.
“It’s not a biggie, Hen. It’s not tragedy and hurt … or pain. And it’s not brainwashing.” I remembered that my brother and I were indeed friends, and that interpretation was not just within a line scribbled on the wall of a public restroom. The muscles of my stomach relaxed and brought forth the cool runnings of Royal Oak air, the flow of laced talk that occurred between people of alcohol within a dimpled mug or bubbled sleeve. Clayton smiled, and he was my relation from a shared vagina. “If you don’t want to hear this … then, umm, I’ll cover your pretty little ears.” He began to slur. “But I do not wanna hurt your precious feelings. This isn’t a matter of good and, ah, bad and going to dark places forever.” There is a story about sailors crossing the equator for the very first time, an initiation that involves tar and feathers once the perceived is met. “There is a story in the Bible….” I raised my hand, and my Clayton did laugh after his most dramatic pause and then catch of me trying to stop a conversion - and only just a mere moment between friends and brothers. Two. Royal Oak. Centretown.
It will be there tomorrow in form. Still, the Oak on Bank.
“Exactly what part of the brain, Clay? And what d’ya have to do to it to make it believe that the dude in the Book was thee Man.” He was circumcised so therefore he began Jewish.
“A step,” as my brother said that night … and one JFK had supposed of a walking of Man on the Moon - then he died, was killed by a maybe only person acting alone. Sorry. But this: “The priest - the umm … Father - at my church, he does enjoy the odd pint. He might even think quietly to himself, or talk with others and learn. He does talk with others, and mingles with that real world you point out to me with this bad reality that you hang at.”
“You cannot believe that shit.”
“So tell me.”
“So fuck off and die … sorry - in the most politest of all senses.” I could lie and say that a man surrounded by white collar of tiny black square in centre sat down across from us, Royal Oak on Bank.
“You miss her … you’re dying without her. Very original, Hen.” I suppose that I kinda coulda made a little something up before I decided to open my mouth and fling my phlegm towards him. Yes. But this was the part where membership had its privileges: there is No fighting allowed at the Oak. For good reason. And at a certain point it was highly necessary for me to punch my big brother straight between the eyebrows. Yes. And I no longer lie with regards to matters of the heart; I no longer lie - big fat Period. Right square in the noggin my fist done did meet up with his head: that one be for the Kennedys and the liveried workers forced to stand idle while he succumbed the gun-shy family to the speed of modern media and the possibility of tragedy revisited.
And brothers do occasionally fight.
I smoked Clay and that was it for a brief second, there in that particular Oak.
I never do remember much from fisticuffs. For better and or worse.
I hit him square in the mind and then time moved forward, people beginning to speak the English of language directly towards us, mostly me. That familiar of sound that had been entering my ears somewhat throughout the night then quickly became more laced with grunts and swears my way.
My only brother has big hands. This Clay of mine has a certain amount of forehead that can withstand the impact of a closed fist striking it between the thick of the eyebrows: he stared up from the floor and blinked at the tired-ass couriers and other highly neighbourhood guys looking back at him, at me, at him.
I immediately felt shame, I done did. But yes, there was tiny jubilation for the falling of an elder; and soon, the realization of a sneak attack that was mere reaction and nothing more. “Get up!” This I did yell once the more, give or take the expletive of my dear choosing. This all with two or three friendlies at the side of me or perhaps climbing on my back or holding onto certain arm and fist - that guy Tom turned a page, repositioned trick transparency the colour of yellow and continued to read his book; and the myself having thrown a single punch with impunity inside one of two Royal Oaks on Bank Street, Ottawa. Fonzie standing in the archway to that first room housing long bar and death plaques upon wall; him nodding, and then me nodding. He walked away, and the somewhat guilt as I lowered my hand towards my shared blood.
This brother Clay of mine within that killing floor that was night just of any another, certain Oak on Bank. Redundant except for my swat between his eyes.
“That’s better?” he supposed from the bottom of that middle room, looking up with slight race of red tracing its way towards the centres of his face. And it was slightly better. The perhaps mix of fear and people saying that stuff in English to me in the background. “You’re gonna help me up?” Really?” as he pushed away my hand and brought himself to his own feet, a knee and a hand and a slightly bent stance.
It’s not that no one cared, and it is not that no one was following the festivities of that spot in my Centretown.
“Whatever,” left my mouth. More than enough to quell the situation for a sec or two; but I was ready to slug again. My brother’s shoulders slowing climbing their way towards my above. “Whatever,” I repeated. My thumb and forefinger rubbing the edge of a blended material woven into the shape of a collar around my neck, its dye a colour of deep blue and purchased by me in the form of a long sleeve shirt; this tiny never before noticed rubbing sound made by my nervous gesture that one is perhaps to hear only once the girlfriend is gone or up and left for good reasons of her own. Sudden silence. Wonderful. Amazing that night where a brother sat back down beside slightly similar upbringing, stay in likewise uterus.
Someday soon I would die. “Someday you are gonna be dead.” This my Clay done say slow to my face.
Someday soon I shall die. The left hand of Clay rubbed circles over slightly red forehead of his; this was family talk and the what be said after one brother nails another right above the eyes. Stuff such as: “Fuck you,” left me as my sibling crazy-eyed me. Finally, he could understand me and my feelings. “Sorry. Really, Clay - sorry. But what do you want me to do with shit like that? I can’t let that stuff slide. You can’t be saying things like that, you can’t. You can’t.”
“So, yeah, so very sorry,” as he touched a forehead. “So very fucking sorry, Hen,” as he hunched over a round table in that second room of that Oak; big window, view of Bank. The slight in-and-out of my brother breathing and surrounded by people within the grasp of a night of speaking English, perhaps a little French. Their chairs pushed back just a little more from us. But I continue with two guys who happen to be related: I felt a definite warmth as my closed fist pressed on and through his forehead that night I open to You.
Definitely not what Jesus would have done, but yes, the sort of place He would have been caught in amongst for reasons of luck or design - and I am, of course, guessing in the comfort of an afterthought placed without real knowledge of overly Big Book.
This is the part where I dig deep and explain away this whole mess that rhymes with afternoon talk show; my day of smote upon older brother. “Have I ever dissed Julie, come even close to saying a bad anywhere near her? No. And never.” He had no right to come at me about X. He was allowed to keep a hand pressed to his forehead and listen to me.
“What do I do, Hen? I just let you punch me in the head.”
“You didn’t let me - I did.”
“Great! What do I do, Hen, especially seeing how you’re still the same whiny bitch before you threw that pathetic punch at me?” Clay was blinking was ready was still the man with those big hands. I had poked him. I had punched in the face a man with a real job to go to in the early morn - this was all a mistake. My brother leaned over, and I flinched ever so. “What do I do, Henry?”
“You show me a good time, that’s what you do.” I spread my arms out to the side, looked left out the window towards Bank Street, smiled to my right and winked at those fellow customers who had restrained and questioned me in the before: “This is my brother,” I told them. “Everyone, my brother Clayton and I offer you our sincere apologies.” Never ever ring that little brass bell mounted near a bar unless intending to buy everyone within earshot a round of drinks. This is true.
Clay let me go on. This wasn’t his bar, or the people he knew by twitch or brand of beer or secret committed and seen by my eye.
“Do you see that - they don’t really mind. This is why I love this place. And did you notice the way I had you fall away from that table of drinks? Huh? This involves a high level of talent, Clay.” My brother can fall a large tree on a dime - a few whacks on one side, more on the other, a rope a yank and it’s much more difficult than one would think to miss a garage or side of beloved house. He learned that stuff at camp - not only how to fall but section and nail and assemble it into something more than pulp and paper and Big Books read aloud by all taking a turn with own voice in front of congregation. To his credit, what went on at camp stayed there - disregard the foul thoughts swimming my head and take this little story as a Good. We the family said grace before all holiday turkeys and he never ever pushed a single solitary biblical on the any of us, anytime of year.
“These people: you know all of them? - aside from this guy with the yellow stuff over his book.”
“No, not really. I do know some, yes, but it’s the closeness of this anonymity that warms my gonads. Listen, one day I walked in and got a beer from that bartender over there that you ordered off. The very next time that I came in he remembered my brand - that is class, mon ami.”
“So you don’t really know anyone here?” I slow shook my head, shrugged. Looked out the big window that was the certain street of pavement leading to the tiny apartment that was my home and exactly how often to water a cactus. “That guy over there, with the, umm, bald head and moustache - you know him?” I raised my left hand flat and seesawed it. My brother pointed and pointed and I shrugged, gave him an occasional name. Made up a few to this game that we played for no good reason.
“Whatever,” I said. “I do have friends, Clayton, just not a lot in the immediate area.” At the opposite end of Elgin Street, not more than three over-and-down blocks from the where we sat that night - resided X, and the time after Spain that be me revealing to You more than I did brother Clay. “Yeah, whatever. I guess I’m building the perfect neighbourhood, starting with the necessary pub.” I waved around once the more. “I have the bachelor apartment - small - but nearby. I have life out this big window right here.” They were lined up for an all ages show at the hip hop club that I refuse to name or pseudonym; next door to it, people were climbing the steep, stinky stairs of electric sign Barrymore’s to listen to live music in this day and age. The differences out my see.
My brother saying something to me in English: “This Fonzie guy …when the lights go out, are all of these people his friends? Do they see him on a day off, call him when he’s sick, go out for beers with him?”
“Everyone knows that Fonzie doesn’t drink, Clay.” The light turned green and a hugger orange ’69 Camaro laid rubber through the intersection of MacLaren and Bank; my brother smiled. The couriers leaned backed into their seats and continued with the creation of atmosphere amongst university students and first room regulars in their assigned seats. Most everyone knows Fonzie, and yes, he does socialize outside of work; when he misses a shift everyone asks and rushes to make chicken soup. He does alright.
I was speaking out loud, I was just thinking about Jesus and what he might do if and when talking to an older brother. “Fuck, I’m sorry, Clay. Do you wanna hear about Spain?” A picture of the Queen hung on the wall alongside old Guinness advertisements featuring toucans balancing beer glasses on large beaks, ‘good’ writ in big letters behind. “Did Julie tell you about the call before I left?”
My brother: his face resting in large hand, supported by elbow on round table in second room of Royal Oak, Centretown, Ottawa. A red between his eyes. “Yes, she did.”
The clip below, for those not up on their hockey lore, is of the Primeau brothers having an on-ice go at it.
... to this day, they're still friends (and brothers).
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