Click on Dirty Santas for Google Street View of Centretown
Like one's children, you shouldn't say it, but this is one of my favourite chapters in 'The Jesus Years.' Most of it is made up, some of it based on actuality. As always, the parts truth a dirty smelling secret to be kept to myself.
But, back to my old neighbourhood. Figuring out religion through the eyes of the local schizophrenic. Going to parties based upon the whim of some cad's zodiacal sign - good times.
And yet, that being said, what the hell is a "God sandwich?" Google it and you shall find naught - it is my entire slice and creation to apologize to you in advance.
Ok - yeah yeah; and now, a little flip of music from my high school yearbook to fully smooth the mood onto this rather big ball of beeswax:
But, back to my old neighbourhood. Figuring out religion through the eyes of the local schizophrenic. Going to parties based upon the whim of some cad's zodiacal sign - good times.
And yet, that being said, what the hell is a "God sandwich?" Google it and you shall find naught - it is my entire slice and creation to apologize to you in advance.
Ok - yeah yeah; and now, a little flip of music from my high school yearbook to fully smooth the mood onto this rather big ball of beeswax:
Chapter 21: Ottawa. Christmas of the Jesus Year.
I am growing somewhat cold in this body of mine and thus appreciative that the burgeoning corporation that owns my digs is most generous with the amount of heat that it chooses to emit from the two radiators that bookend my tiny apartment this now. Thanks, most illustrious giver of warmth and highest rent. It is still the month of December and I am not at all bitter, but rather giving in the every man sense that be aroused in this time of Santa and ornament that is placed on an actual tree cut down and surreptitiously dragged away, perchance put upon reasonable facsimile pushed and wished together from memory or instructions for colour-coded tips.
It is Christmas, these ultimate months after the plane trip back. ‘Tis the season in the Centretown of my Ottawa; Santa is standing in front of the automated doors of Hartman’s grocer on Somerset, this block away from that Royal Oak on Bank Street. He is ringing a big cowbell, proffering a donation bucket; he is entirely sober.
-
My friend - simply Tim, I shall; this middle-aged man, with the essential sense of reality that causes me to speak of him - because of his faith, because of this Centretown of persons diving into dissimilar points of literature and having a jolly good wallow at it while I explain that Tim tends to cut short a conversation that sways or in any manner involves film, television. Artistic edits. He enjoys Jesus, for the concept saved him: his words, not mine.
I sip the funny face carved into the head of my Guinness courtesy Fonzie. I pause and appreciate this situation of my Ottawa that has afforded me the luxury of sitting in a for real pub and talking to the actual people that knew me before X.
“My parents had money, and could afford to send me to this one of the best, in Hartford.” I had asked of him to impart me a certain something. “This man, the man Dr. Hunt, and the utter terror that he brought me back from - him and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Did you grow up with the religion - in the family, or did it come to you there, in Connecticut?” was wondered by me that time of questioning.
“San Francisco, Haight Ashbury, I did a lot of dumb before Jesus. Oh yeah.” Fair enough, went the more of my Guinness.
“But … beyond the Book and into your life that is now - when, where did that become … who the hell I talk to across from me?”
“Have you danced with the spirit of the Holy Ghost?” Tim leaned on his chin, hmmm me. “Have you? Oh, Oh, wonderment wonderment. The Lord Jesus Christ and,”
“But what?” I continued my Guinness.
And he stood up and hardly thanked me. A bad edit on my part: out the wooden door he was, off and down the way of my Bank Street. His neighbourhood.
-
“Did He make sense beyond the leap of faith?”
“Have you tangoed with the spirit of the Holy Ghost?”
“But Tim, was it something you read, was it this doctor you say, was it just something that made a certain sense?”
This, and yet another day in my city.
-
If ever near the Royal Oak on northern stretch of Bank Street, one has an inevitable visit next door; this tiny convenience of corner store run by Vietnamese, abused by drunks, and frequented by late night me’s, cooks up the best smell of burgers in the entire world; the finest poutine, according to my X. It shouldn’t, but it does.
And, depending on the night, my friend by name of Tim mops their small floor sometimes around 3-in-the-A.M. Takes him fifteen minutes for a ten-minute job - all of that arranging and scrubbing away the everyday, any night.
-
The Transitway, and its speed through the inner city; the ability to take a bus to go work in the semi-burbs and do nothing along the way other than think, overanalyze the innocent schmuck beside, across. Advertisement or poetry posted on inserts above the windows to distract and draw one in.
Tim truly believing in me, despite his medication, regardless of those talking too loud on a cell phone nearby. “I understand the utter terror,” he says. I casually mention that I beat up the school bully not once but twice … and he smiles his dirty Chiclets, his peppered beard that be his years older than mine. “The utter terror before I danced with the Holy Ghost … the utter terror.”
As to whether he was self-diagnosed or the family realized after a series of tries and misses blamed on the terrible teens, Tim’s world will always be slightly different - without television, without film and its twenty-four-frames-per-second that captivate most, make him nervous or perhaps tempt him out of the written world of nonfiction. The sheer reality of dead German philosophers and theological historians.
San Francisco was named after Saint Francis of Assisi, I tell him. It was initially settled by the Spaniards, my add. “Wonderful,” he says me, and decides to leave before the part about Alcatraz being Spanish for pelican. Sorry, I yell after him.
-
The arrival of Santa nears, and here I be with this list of what to be thankful for, or rather the mental pen and time between pouring drinks at the High School Bar and Grill.
I am grateful for at the very least considering the matter. (My tongue wets the tip of quill and struggles to remain sexy while trying in earnest to remember what the fuck comprises a Singapore Sling, one of the firsts to be learned by any bartender). I am aware of having a warm home whilst others freeze in the downtown alleys, the Centretown streets. (The brain wanders and my expression takes on the thought of whether or not my oven has been accidentally left on; I am a soap opera star in mind - this be my motivation for the stare off into outer space, my style with a shaker full of gin or vodka, juices of colour).
On this day of near Santa I am mindful of remaining in contact with friends, regretful of the inevitable Efs that happen along the way that is any life. I am thankful for the call display that allows me to answer Fred’s occasional plea to go for a pint, but sad for the new crop of kids at High School who see only the Jesus Years in me, are oblivious to my links to the past that be blue dress Betty and Barney with the long hair - our slang with one another, bartenders and servers inventing out of fun, necessity.
I donate a loonie into a bucket held by a man hired at whatever god-awful rate to stand on a cold street corner wearing a red and white suit and an ill-fitting piece of disguise, and somehow I am giddy that I be a bartender and allowed to keep when change tossed my way; I am guilty that I actually internalized that emotion to You, but glad that a cold piece of monies found its way from my pocket into that source of no return. (Perhaps to go with a close-up after this statement). I am happy for the daily walk that is the way through the slush and the varied graffiti painted high and visible by design or bullshit luck.
-
Up until sometime in the late 60’s he was considered to be of a split mind, thus the literal translation of his condition within the psychiatric scene of today.
Tim, on the cusp of the rule of television over so many lives. He, somewhat older than me, and yet unable to recall his father using him as a remote control. But Timbo, I say, referring to the time-honoured living room art of father and son and blaming flatulence on the family dog. But nothing. Nothing but the good news about Jesus and Neitzche, supermen. But Timbo, I prod, did you not watch or perhaps accidentally overhear the odd snippet of TV land. M*A*S*H. Mod Squad. The shows I saw in re-runs, the life he avoided in real time - this I ask of him.
“Have you ever mamboed with the Holy Ghost?”
“Have you ever given a straight answer to a simple question?” A snowplow howls on by the big window and every one of us Oak persons turns to their respective left or right. “Timbo … what does the Big Guy have to do with a movie, or television - what does it have to do with anything?” All this before he started over my head, changed tables.
-
The act of playing Santa in front of a busy grocer on dirtied corner must weigh on the sober mind, unable to even stop to have a necessary smoke in front of maybe kids. To be good in this neighbourhood of skids that are interesting to watch, unable to avoid; I go for milk or those goddamn cigarettes I now must buy and become confronted with the thoughts that love to heal over into recognizability - knowing all kinds of people by the face or their action of beating up a Stop sign or taking a squirt behind Barrymore’s after a gig. I go for smokes or the milk that I try very hard to remember to ingest and I am comforted by the daylight that is a sometime hiss and prelude to the inevitable seesaw with the visible moon chaperoning me home, punching in a security code and turning a key in a lock, flopping me on bear-trap futon set from couch to flat position for the purposes of sleep.
The fact of that playing Santa in front of Hartman’s takes some of the best of money away from the usual full heads of dishevelled hair connected to the bums that dot the concrete intersection that is Bank and Somerset; their persistence is offered to me, and my “Sorry, man” meets their unwashed body shaking within wool or fleece and the bumping into of a Monday afternoon, growing evening full of shoppers crossing to the tune of little white men, pausing with flashing orange hands wired for the purpose of Wait before Go safely to other side of street. Me going home for a nap.
Betty meets me at the spot where this splendour of Bank Street begins to fail the eye and intersect the dour of Gladstone - this cross avenue whispered as Happyrock by us natives with nothing better to know.
Betty blue dress shivers and scowls next to a bus stop for the number 7, number 1.
It is almost Christmas and I am singing the fact that I know people with genuine names and phone numbers. “Where are we going?” and her lips glisten with the knowledge of the fine line between layering and clown school; our feet move this side of the still within the parts of Ottawa deemed Centretown. I tell her that it doesn’t matter at this time of night, that I have a place to go and do stuff. “Stuff? You woke me up for stuff?” Keep your blue dress on, I give her - that this party is determined by animals and music. She is informed of her pretty outfit, but does nothing much more than smile then smirk beneath the fur that ring the mauve that is the velour comprising her coat.
Half a block down Gladstone we enter the side door of Sunny’s Music Store and make our way inside a typical three-storey brick that be subdivided into what was needed over the decades. Hence the staircase, a daytime business below the party we make our way up towards. She asks questions and I grab her hand and pull us inside, screaming over the 80’s music, “You really don’t know about this?” She is relatively new to living and not just working in the neighbourhood and I forgive her with a soft brush across the left of the cheek that is the Betty that loves to dance; it is the Monday within the zodiacal sign of the man that books bands for Barrymore’s, rents the residence we buy bottles of late night beers out of a fridge from for a measly two Canadian dollars. This is what it is, I tell her as we turn and stare around a darkened kitchen at 2-in-the-A.M. We clink these two bottles of Export that I present and put into our hands, hear the vast second-floor Centretown apartment accepting music from a decade that I choose to repress and entirely not dance to without goodly amounts of alcohol.
The hardwood of the floor creaks and the room be warm with the remaining breath of people still awake and moving on a Monday night, now early Tuesday morn.
“Do we just stand here?” Hell no, I say, and lead her past the beautiful Centretown people into the designated TV room, hand her down to a Salvation Army couch and observe her knees cross all proper; the jacket is off and the blue from her dress is lost and found within the indigo that is the diaphanous material cut and imposed upon an innocent enough lampshade. And we are within the time of Capricorn, and this means absolutely nada to me other than Johnny having a predilection for throwing late night parties to celebrate the sign that he was born under.
A movie with no need of sound emanates from a twist-dial TV supported with screw-in legs: James Bond, circa Sean Connery, and I apologize to all for shielding my eyes. Ah Ha plays their famous one hit and I look at Betty and ask, “‘Take on me?’” and she smiles and sips a beer in Centretown.
I see the birthday boy walk on by the doorway, see him strut on back; Johnny smokes a cigarette the manner Sinatra drinking a martini - a couple of sips and then on to the new, the always endlessly new.
And I do not make this Johnny person up - I actually know him from moments within the Royal Oak of certain spot on Bank Street, across the way from grand old Barrymore’s. “Is this guy a skid?” Betty whispers into my ear. A particularly high note is sung by a spiky-haired lad from England or Norway, presented via a reel-to-reel and a set of speakers in another room - and I take her hand and bring it to this man stroking his gilded cravat at two- or three-in-this-A.M. He holds and brings the knuckles of her right hand near, kisses them in a manner that I would normally take offence to: she giggles … and I laugh at the ceremony that be Johnny.
“Betty - this skid is Johnny; Johnny - the somewhat lady that is Betty.”
Wonderful the movement of a word, a shortening, an inventing. A Say that various people from the High School Bar and Grill will claim ownership to: the seedy points of town that would arise around its workers; trees and loggers and the need to slide or skid some product or other along - and somehow thus the omitted Row part of the equation that is me with You and using the word Skid at points within thought. Sorry.
“Happy fucking birthday, Johnny. Love the music, love … various parts of your ensemble.” And I let her say all this.
“Charmed, Betty.” Johnny is persuaded by me to call her mistress and or dominatrix. “Mistress, what would you have me change … about this self of mine?” He steps back and blocks my view of a laser making its way towards the crotch of Double-O-Seven. “Tell me,” he says and puffs and rubs out ciggie, lights another and lifts his chin to the breasts imbedded in the paint design of his walls. I remind Betty that it his birthday week, but he shoos me.
“Honey, a man of your age should know better than to comb his hair forward; please - please cut it short on top and clean the sides up, salvage the charisma that you have built up.” She invites him to keep the smoking jacket to go with the tie thingy, but questions the patent leather shoes and wonders as to the dire tone of the cummerbund. He’s working the crowd, I implore her; he’s a freaking lounge lizard of a host, I whisper. “Fine fine then. Just let me do the hair and I’ll be happy.” She is not joking; Johnny surveys the room of pot and Molson Export with the tip of his cigarette and a succession of Whaddya think? Whaddya think? - the general consensus turning into a collective search for a pair of scissors all to a Cyndi Lauper soundtrack.
“Well done, dominatrix - you have commandeered a party and a personality.”
“Henry, this is what I do - I shape.” Her words rise the necking couple from the corner of this room with television turned to On and hooked to VCR - Betty with voice and presence that leads one to thoughts of spanking and giving oneself over to another for long weekend of secrets or just one night in kitchen with simple chair of floral pattern readied and thus sat in on one’s own recognizance: Do me, Johnny duets with Soft Cell’s Tainted Love - to the passing of spliffs amongst the 60-watt lighting, to the buying of bottled domestic beer for 2 bucks from a fridge in a linoleum kitchen somewhere in Centretown, Ottawa, as a black-cuffed jacket of red velvet is pulled away from the man with the beach towel about to be wrapped around his willing neck. The shades are left on.
“Give me the scissors,” she snaps, tosses the toke from her left of hands. I begin to peruse the gathered luminaries that I don’t necessarily know by specific name beyond adjectives and invented nouns. I judge, despite the friendly alcohol flowing freely through the nexus of nerves and vessels that enable my temporal lobes to enjoy a certain slant of warmth within the little city at 3-in-the-A.M. on a Monday that is now a Tuesday.
I observe Betty perform a series of simple cuts to Johnny’s ongoing growth that be his certain image turned somewhat former.
We all stop and check the possible messages on our cell phones.
A girl of maybe twenty-two beside me, staring the up and down of Betty and her visible calves; a similarly young man and his toque matching the general description of Jesus dressed for northern climates, the passing of a big hand around a circular clock hung on a wall behind a saucy tart with just enough sass to keep her and me on the good side of a party suggested by chance, by call from me to her just because it was a Monday and I was dreaming the calendar prompting a fat man in a red suit making his eventual way down my invisible chimney.
The party is now the kitchen watching the proceedings that be Betty and her borrowed scissors, her right hand measuring and presenting the fatal tips of hairs for the left to cut; she cleans up those sides of his and suggests that he grow a set of fabulous sideburns: “The bigger the better, sunshine.” She’s two decades his junior, and he sits quietly in a chair and listens to the power of a hairdresser cultivating outer appearance.
A guy beside me - apparently a musician, his talking friend also of the way: they are dishwashers and cooks and drummers and singers who every few months finagle one of their gigs into big house Barrymore’s via the necessary conversation with Johnny; their bands open for a Someone soon-to-be or play an off night with the sacred promise that their many fans will bump up the liquor sales and justify the favour that is the business of booking acts. They talk of the upcoming, the night of work that was, the hair cut before them.
The blue of Betty’s dress is covered with the bits and pieces of aftermath. She is removing the towel from his neck and tidying up the inevitable mess involved, using her hands as a comb, shaping. The description of the crowd evolves into a series of characters smacking one hand against another: Johnny is high and tight and a man of this new century with fresh zeros for the offering. Betty almost bows but settles for a hit of God’s good earth from a well-known comedian; I, myself, decline, walk up and brush leftovers from the dimensions of her dress; with my lean to ear she is told that she needs to visit the washroom; I catch her in this upswing of glory, flap my eyelids and shake the hand of Johnny.
I am skid.
We lead one another past this line up for the bedroom around the corner from performance kitchen; Betty begins with the networking and signing of autographs in the air; she is making friends and remembering the names that I never knew - borrows a pen and writes her Given directly onto the white of drywall, advertises her number. I am turning a brass knob and opening the door to the washroom, her hand in mine, her God sandwich on my dirty, little mind.
To the porcelain tub with the tiny feet and toes of brass, a circular curtain hung from above. To the square tiles that be the floor. To the clicking of the door and the smell that be the bathroom of a bachelor’s apartment. “Henry, Henry.” And the rest is within the meeting of eyes and difficult to gossip about; it is 3-something-in-the-A.M. and she is sitting on the edge of a sink, leaning back against a mirror with its edges gradually unable to stare me in the face as I bend my knees onto the chill of a December in Ottawa. It is God’s sandwich that I wish to bring to the surface with wink and consent from girl willing to disregard the crowd presence on the other side of 3 hinges and an old-time key hole exchanging fact and fiction and air with the outside world. It is the sag of the wet towel hanging from a rack - Michael Jackson in his prime and singing in the background;
Her underwear unable, then willing to fully leave the right ankle that does not want to let go from the source of its leverage.
I’ve got id. I have the Blue Dress truly revealing herself; we have people in need of makeovers and bowel movements banging on a door separating them from taste and smell and the girl I refuse to specifically disclose for reasons of my own. She whispers a thought I couple with my eyes staring the little rod amongst the little latch moved to the left, towards locking out those entreating need and or interruption upon me and my fantasy; “They can hear me,” I believe her exact words to be moaned as she gives my hair a styling with her hands. “They can hear me,” she repeats 3 seconds later.
And I can indeed taste her: “They can hear me.” My left hand that was the initial walk in her park; the say that is the opening of my mouth; the collective arch of our ankles and the inner and the outer that be a God sandwich, her hidden olive mentioned by Greeks, eaten by Italians and Spaniards to varying sizes and degrees.
The cold of this December floor as my wish is granted in the Centretown that I have returned to live in.
Betty slow whispers a name I take to be mine or His and I bring her on down from a sink with four brass points leading off of an ivory C for cold, an H for hot. Wonderful the imprint of a tap I imagine into the small of her back - this I think softly towards the stepping of a high-heeled boot through the right leg of a pair of Venus-cut undergarment. The blue of her dress is returned to the down position; she stares the mirror and fusses the mostly red of her highlighted hair and I sigh before unlatching the tiny rod separating us from explanation or simpering denial. I pause her body into my left of hands that has touched God; she returns ever so and places the remaining fuchsia from her lips directly to those that are mine, recently hers.
And this girl reaching past me and turning a door knob, making me wink the parts spelled life, distraction, and its inevitable mornings.
-
He passes call display and I pick up: “Bonsoir,” greets him, for short Barney is French and yet fully bilingual in the sense that I am not.
“Meet me at the Oak,” I quote from the menu of said pub, of actual saying amongst locals. It is Tuesday, this further towards the annual celebration of His immaculate birth. I still taste of Betty, but cannot bring myself to turn on the 27 diagonal inches of television staring me in the face as I press End on my cell and make my way out the door and down Cooper towards Bank Street, turn left.
We slap hands and pull up a chair on the wood, make disparaging comments to Fonzie and then compare tips and the fact that Barney always makes more than I do; I’ve got to leave High School, says me; I have to learn more French and or improve my attitude, I add, but the truth be that the more bitter I become the better bartender I seem to be to my clients. That’s weird, Barney tells me. I nod my head as he removes the long of his hair from its Keg-required ponytail. “Oh, yeah,” I start, and proceed to describe the God sandwich that I had the night before, as secrets have a shelf life and their telling gives me a breath of life. He leans forward and sniffs me, but I do not believe that I am bragging - merely asking him a question denuded of its mark of inflection.
I have satisfied a fantasy and yet know that I am still in love, seemingly for the rest of a life that almost leads me to make shit up. “Man … fucking fantastic that her; mmmm, I couldn’t even bring myself to shower, Barn. Could not. We clutched hands, cut our way through this all-knowing crowd of freaky people I barely knew beyond Johnny - you know who Johnny is, eh? - and we grabbed some Ex and ran into this room, his big living room of the disco balls and the paper mobiles hanging from strings - real creative Grade 3 stuff that you look up and stare at in front of two big spools of round and round music spitting out this sound of the 80’s.” Whatever, I coughed.
He prompts me for details and I thank the gods that I was half-pinned and able to dance that night at Johnny’s; he asks once the more, for he wants the same Betty. “I moved with a shaman,” I give him, but begin to believe that he can’t hear the question that I do not ask. “The snack of God, buddy,” I say. And guys often lie, but as You know I no longer indulge such matters. This world-travelled man of twenty-five or twenty-six calm years grabs me and asks me for a taste. “I can’t turn on the TV,” I finally admit to this young friend that I look up to. “I haven’t watched television since March.” A statement that is a question whispered to a guy in a bar on Bank Street, Centretown. “What was it like?” I repeat, and me actually moving my eyes away, to around the corner of wood that be solid oak and forever Fonzie the legend and his inevitable death plaque riveted on the wall behind him at some necessary point in the future of anyone’s life.
“Nothing?” Barney asks. “You licked her and this is all? Huh?”
I slow nod him, and this young man that I aspire to continues to pine for the pages of God’s notebook. He stares and I ask Fonzie for another; short Barney chuckles and I have to explain to this close male friend that it has been quite some time since being able to handle the complexities involved with watching television, film; I cower and try to remember being of the Neilson family of ratings that no Canadian viewer ever speaks of, let alone knows of.
“I was warm, I was certainly fuzzy, mon chum. And she tasted very fine.”
“Tell me, ya bastard.”
It’s just Centretown, I hear myself over and over in the head. It’s just Barney trying, and not hearing.
-
Hand in hand with Tim and the Holy Ghost. Filling in the spaces that be the fact that Barney has left me to secure the sleep that is needed by the youth that I wish upon myself within the waning days of walking the streets of Centretown, year of our Lord, new century of zeros.
In a few days Christmas and the gathering of the tribe Deza; recent past has called us out to brother Clay’s West End of dear Ottawa, because of the space within house snug enough for adults and nieces to have beds, enjoy couches. Soon it will be another Yuletide without my father; and, with all due respect, Jesus would have been increasingly older than two thousand years.
It is a Tuesday now early Wednesday in Centretown, and within a number of hours I have to come up with a good if not better excuse for not meeting my mother at Clayton’s. I have to decide if I want to stand by the implied cough or just handcuff myself to the warmth of a radiator and swallow the contrived key. But most likely still go anyway.
“What ya think, Timbo?”
“Oh heavens no. No. Family, family, Henry. I love my family.” He loves them with his arms extended out for all of fellow patron to see.
As do I - but this not my point. “Have you ever seen the movie Harold and Maude?” It is late and I have forgotten the unwritten rules of Tim.
“Have you ever waltzed with the Holy Ghost?”
“Did you ever meet my girlfriend, Timbo?” I give her name and present a general description, but he glazes over: “I don’t think so, eh? Do you … have a girlfriend?”
“Not for quite sometime. But I, yes, have enjoyed the love of a woman, God’s creation.” Was she pretty, I ask. Was she understanding, did she fight him on sex. “No,” he says to a suffix of dead air - and this is Tim. I count the grey of his beard to the rhythm of a few Mississippis. “She was quite hideous to look at, Henry.”
“But you lived with her?” He nods. “You liked or loved her?” And a nod of the up-and-down variety. “You had carnal relations with this very ugly woman?” I perform one of the many hand puppets used to signify the Deed and he smiles his dirty Chiclets down my way. “But, Timbo …” and I within this silence making perfect sense to the only dancer currently having relations with the Holy Ghost, Royal Oak, Centretown. “But, how?” The stutter of my how, and he is quite clear in the logic of this and that moment when he found love, companionship and the ability to attain an erection in the arms of a truly ugly female. “But, Timbo,” and he stands up, and You know a little something of the rest, I suppose. Him walking away and Christmas so near.
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