Once in awhile, in order to clear one's head, you just have to do something stupid - which is what we have here with dear Henry.
The following is based partially upon observations of the bike couriers that hung at the Royal Oak; a different breed they definitely are.
We all have our own special ways and rituals of cleansing the body after a relationship goes south. For Henry, the escape from TV and movies has been self-eliminated; cigarette-thought has replaced pot - and he's still hoarding them damn Q-tips.
Well, what to do? You read and find out.
The following is based partially upon observations of the bike couriers that hung at the Royal Oak; a different breed they definitely are.
We all have our own special ways and rituals of cleansing the body after a relationship goes south. For Henry, the escape from TV and movies has been self-eliminated; cigarette-thought has replaced pot - and he's still hoarding them damn Q-tips.
Well, what to do? You read and find out.
Chapter 27: Ottawa. Jesus Year Done; Stupid Shit.
One medium-sized carrot with a considerable bite inflicted upon it. A couple of three half-smoked cigarettes. Some freshly torn oregano. The most recent issues of 'Bon Appetit,' 'Just 18.' All these, a Zippo and a garbage can. The basics.
He had been cutting himself as often, but more so blood than usual. His tabby cat had up and buggered off for days on end and the phone just kept ringing and hanging up, not even a hot breath for his efforts to run over and pick up. The passion for creating those soups of his was going and almost gone: three straight days he had served us tomato with basil.
I should add that more than one pint of beer is was involved in the process of ridding the soul of bad karma; to not only extinguish but mark the end of the ceremonial questioning of whether or not one was paying off a debt incurred before birth or merely within an adjusted form of sanity. Because that’s where he was, amongst the accidental scaldings and seemingly endless fights with his cougar girlfriend, Cher, that went unreported to the gossips.
In the unsaid word, we knew that he carried around the ghost of stuck Jimmy.
“I think I’m actually cursed,” by himself, perched on a stool, after his shift and during the free beer in his hand. I had tasted the soup and wanted to agree with him, was inclined to smile and continue on with a little white lie joyfully contrived into a rather personal impact study. It was because I had tried the rather uninspired soup that I going to play with him, lean over my bar and ask him if he was serious about this cursed business.
“Do you think … or does you know?” was the manner I put it.
To the scent of that salsa still on his hands. To the odour under arm moving with the flap of his point and say of what was to become the beginning of three partially grown men standing around a garbage can with their cocks out, yellowed urine escaping from drunken bladders, High School Bar and Grill. “Bad voodoo, Henry; because … I can not be this dumb - you know that.” Prince Holmwood walked his mental in a circle around his lonesome and arrived upon some selected mysticism. It was all there on that napkin diagram he handed over to me: pins and needles and dark clouds sticking out of dolls. The man can draw a fascinating picture given only a pen and half the chance.
“Man, I could lie and tell you that you’re crazy, but according to this here map everything is in order. It’s all right there on paper.” He thought me a meanie for that, and I nonetheless commanded him to slurp his freebie, shut the hell up while I turned his voodoo scrawl into a paper airplane. “Go on - but talk about the weather, say something about this endless snow, explain me the end of an era that is only a birthday. I double dog dare ya.” I left out the part about the Q-tips and tossed my simple geometry to float across the bar, die a soft death on a floor of scattered peanut shells. A restaurant done for the night.
“Your buddy … he’s nice and warm now, huh - buddy Ef walking his nut sack around in his Speedo out in fucking Vancouver.” Maple Ridge, I corrected him, reminded him the difference between a city and its encroaching satellites. Left out the piercing of Ef’s nipple. “But yeah - he’s still warmer than us, jackass.” And true them reasons to up and move or go on vacation, start anew. Sweep away and hide for the time involved within the busting up of that encrypted gang of mine that never really knew, never truly realized its vast importance on the scale of all things Ottawa.
Ef, that friend of ours, and my lack of overly large hug for him on his last night in town, front of Royal Oak on northern stretch of Bank Street; Barney and his right handshake, a limited lend of his French seeping apology into the cosmopolitan Say of sorry: “A la prochaine,” in that manner of trying harder, the English translation that would of course lose the humour that was meant to be there at two- or three-in-that-A.M. Next time - the gift of a phone call or a pit stop in Vancouver along the way of a trip to Australia or Thailand that be small Barney and the group of us that was very near chronological end of Jesus Years mine, 240 used Q-tips that I no longer counted as I continued to hoard them out of pure habit, daily do, somewhat strange comfort in placing them in a box.
“Tell him I hope that he turns queer on the Left Coast.” If I were to talk to him, I promised the Prince; if I were to enforce his staying out of the Life or ask his advice now that I was alone against a particular Armenian-Canadian by name of Kes: someone to help explain to this now seemingly omnipresent boss why I’ll tolerate sports but shun the commercials on the TV sets mounted over both my shoulders. “Tell him that his bitch is all shaky and nervous now that he isn’t here to back him up. Yeah, tell him that, Hen.” This my job and the toss of a coin late one night, that friend who started me down the show biz path in that first place.
I asked this young man, this Prince of Holmwood, if he ever considered getting out the Life, but apparently it wasn’t an option to him; Fuck no, was the way he put the blood on his hands, them old gnarled fingers of twenty-two-year-old cook without his papers, sous-chef never to be on his lapel. I asked him the latest on stuck Jimmy, for this was my source to these suburbs and the Kelseys’ and the Boston Pizzas and the circuit that is the off off Broadway of our tiny metropolis.
“Jimmy does Mexican now, that place out in Orleans. Mexicala Rosa’s. You been?” X and I had occasioned at the original one in tony Glebe, near our apartment. I reminded him that I didn’t have a car, that the burbs scared me; he flipped me the bird and I confessed to having grown up in this East of Ottawa’s Ends, done the now extinct drive-ins by the airport and the Queensway, delivered propane from just down the street. I knew the city better than my hand. “Relax there, jackass, I don’t care about the life story stuff.” And so I left out the bit about dreams and hopes of a never-to-be stuntman, even though he had joked and I had laughed and poured us both a beer - an Alexander Keith’s, an India Pale Ale to be more the proper to the voyage of discovery into the value of hops to preserve the taste of Empire the long sail towards colony, ship trip to that India of old. “Fucking fantastic,” he believed me and my little nugget of info right in the face.
But the afternoon had been merely somewhat alright to me, and that evening only just barely jim-dandy, so I dealt him this: “In Fight Club, Brad Pitt and Ed Norton are the same person.”
The Prince he returned me this: “The first rule of fight club is that there’s no talking about fight club.” He had seen the movie, and so I hid the facial muscles involved in producing a smile worthy of ruining an ending for someone. Give me another one, he taunted, but a cartoon in my head began its play of something entirely out of the realm of divulgence. Leave me be, I told the Prince, for the gibbous characters stepped on marshmallows of concrete love as I wrote in the empty clouds streaming from their moving mouths. When’s the last time you saw a human, the drawn girl asked the similarly boy walking by her side, in my head.
“What’s the last movie you saw?” one of us said to the other. Something old, something new; maybe something borrowed or downloaded, or rented for a night of view. That was my further to the Prince, myself setting the mental table in a restaurant closed for the evening. Waiting for me to lock the joint up, now that I was deemed responsible out of necessity - a conversation had with a second-generation Armenian amongst the impresarios of this world that present the floor beneath these acting shoes, employment to wizened stage hands grasping drink across from me. The people that one meets.
The Prince began speak to me of a little man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, but he was just screwing with me because no one really sees this movie out of want. It’s homework, I told him. A reference to be learned for coffee conversation - the Bible, I added; turn down the sound and watch it synchronized to the tune of The Dark Side of the Moon, I instructed.
“You're old,” reminded the Prince; but while I did spread urban myth, I never did utter him a lie.
“I, myself, can’t remember the last time.” The fingertips of my left hand towards my heart.
“Jackass, don’t go crying on me. It’s Ok. It’s Ok for the old to forget and not remember that I asked them for another beer.” He nosed his empty glass and I continued to mumble on about television and cinema, the possibility of remembrance occurring; I haven’t had the time to see any, is the way it was specifically put to him. Just because, I needed a drink to go with the comic strip playing in my head. Just because, the cartoon boy was entirely unsure if he’d ever even seen a human before; his animated girl assured him that it was definitely something he would remember. And to this I sipped my beer, a Sleeman’s cream ale that was my pause to listen in on these two without appearing the freak with his eyes up in lids and towards the Big Guy in the sky. But I am better now, I silent swore to myself: because despite the continuing fear of moving picture shows, I did indeed have a life.
Someone waved a bandaged hand in my face and I employed the required facial muscles involved in turning countenance away from grimace, onto smile. Sorry, I told this Prince, with a clink of glass and shrug of shoulder. Because, he didn’t know, and no one knows this conversation that is me talking to You and trying to make sense out of an ageing stage actor’s role within the everyday peeling off of the clothes that is to be respected and desired by someone of the opposite sex despite my bruises or such things revealed.
And he continued to open his mouth and say stuff. Because, he could not have known my birthday had come and gone with me having to work on it. “Girls always book off on their B-days,” I interrupted him, “why in the whatever, huh?” To this an added moment of silence for the televisions turned to Off. “A wee X put through a day on their calendar, yes? Another year done, hip hurray, and they wanna celebrate a something that they will eventually refuse to pinpoint down to an exact year.” He fed me another cigarette to go with the first three I failed to mention. Just because, I hadn’t had a spliff since before Barcelona, since the initial lisp of Valencia and the recognition of them godforsaken Jesus Years. Mere time within the twelve turnings of a large page. “I only just left Jesus the other day.” And already I had said too much to this Prince throwing smoke signals at me and the front door keys to the Grill. “Sorry,” I began, trailing off into the silence that was the two of us on a Monday, early February, breaking the law with every indoor puff snuck within our workplace. This my stall for thought, for the portions omitted to the smell of this cook, this almost boy with his very real name. “You’re right. I am old, getting there and beyond.” I then did something very stupid and toasted to the death of a Man long dead, just because it was after January and I was free from the grips of a calendar’s say within the context of stuff pertaining to little old me on a planet spinning its way into the record books. “Thanks for them memories and the wonderful recipe suggestions.”
“Jesus couldn’t cook, jackass. Not one mention of him ever cooking ever is written anywhere that I read.”
“And, in the end, this be the why I up and had to leave this damn man.”
“I’d cook for you, and this damn man,” with the tilt up and towards me of the stringy blonde hair on tip of his chin, certain smirk that be a joke that he laughed and clapped his hands in unison to.
“Yes. And most certainly I would let you be my little cook, if it’s alright with your woman.” Not a problem, after he chugged his beer, lit another ciggie, spit on the floor, scratched his face his armpit his nether regions. Not to worry, was the way he put it. “But the signs, Prince? The signs on that there piece of napkin you would have me believe in?”
Not a big deal, after he deadpanned me in the face. Did he own a shovel, have a secluded plot picked out for her. Don’t be crazed, was the smirk he put to me: Cher wasn’t the hurdle, the space she took up was. We needed to create some air. He needed to brew some fresh breathing, we needed to cook up some difference.
And I smiled, left out the part about the distinctive blend of colour for the eponymous instrument in The Red Violin having been the result of the master builder bloodletting his dead wife’s life into a mixture of stain later applied to his uniquely shaped wood, exquisite sound that would be adored by those through the centuries … if only in a movie.
As I say, I believed the young man. This was my world, are my days; was the free Sleeman’s slipping down my throat that night. “Salut y Força al Canut,” I proposed in certain Spanish, a say I had heard from Chusko and Andamio within those Jesus Years of mine. “Health and power to the penis,” or similar, and one would think that I had learned nothing in the previous twelve months. A veritable prince clinked my glass and studied my lisp, practised with me a different kind of way to pronounce a soft ‘c.’ Fun.
We were to concoct a soup so delicious and vile.
Final sips and my first night locking up the joint, a Monday in early February with the white stuff still falling on the ground of my Ottawa, East End of. The Prince’s particular bus caught and moving him farther into suburbia; myself and a frosted transit window to view the lights of downtown drawing me in. The illuminated maple leaf flapping at tip of Peace Tower, visible from any number of far away points; the count of the hourly chime that I play along with from my tiny apartment not five minutes from Parliament Hill and its Gothic awareness passed down from the colonizing peoples that still colour our spelling, our comedy different from Americana. Pity.
I stepped off a number 95 bus at Albert Street and You’ll know some of the rest as soon enough as I remind myself of departures on big old jet planes, backs of Greyhound buses; three-fourths of a song ringing out from the national carillon behind me that night - a quarter-to-the-hour of that Monday trudging through fresh snow in my black Nikes that would scream if they could talk. ‘Tis the every fifteen minute way of the Parliament song that sings out over my city, revealing its more until full say on the hour. If bad memory serves, I made it to Cooper and home before the big hand stretched to 12. Sorry. Our big deal in a tiny bilingual town that actually be a fairly large city situated by the necessary waterway of every beginning on a map - placing of dot, or star in my case; for we are a capital of a land that be large enough to get lost in, dissolve into diaspora.
That was me putting the key in the front door on Cooper Street, Centretown proper. Speaking British to myself, nonetheless a mutter out loud.
That was me grabbing the lower of my lips and moving through the vestibule of a brick building from a-nineteen-hundred-and-a-nine, pondering the ingredients to a most unique soup for the soul of the shortest of breath. I dragged on my ciggie and immediately recognized the innards of my tiny bachelor palace; that was me inhaling without sniffing, trying to decide whether it was crazy Susie or X that always insisted upon chili peppers for their slice of late night from Georgie’s Pizza just off Elgin.
Trying to remember if it was crazy Susie or X that initially insisted upon a condom because she knew not where I had been - said aloud by her, just before first time, with a smile and flick of her auburn hair. So, yes, X it be, and the wonderful trinkets of this memory mine walking itself over to a bear-trap futon in the couch position, adding up the days since Fallas and Spain, reaching for a shoebox full of memorabilia and dignity, a decaying cactus with a name somewhere on its forehead.
Ignoring them dirty Q-tips and fiddling for the hockey cards that were never there.
*Pause ... press Play ... exhale and continue to Read*
I believe I put on some music, left the television turned to Off. Smiled towards the happy face finger-drawn on its dusty screen, attempting to recall the last show I had watched, the final time I had pressed On and heard that low buzz before the growing of the light - the channel making itself aware. A lap around the tube, a possible pause for full or partial nudity. A click of the remote towards the familiar or new.
Chris Cornell finished singing what he and his new band had to say and I stood up, put myself back out in the white of snow and tagged a way down those ornate lampposts of Somerset to the Oak, towards comfort and possibility. A Guinness and the whisper from a pub.
Those pile of smokers forced to have a puff out front, in the long cold of winter.
The feel of the iron door handle; a soft pull and I was in. Fonzie was off that night, my first return since the ending of the Jesus Years with a glorious cycle sprint down the right of Bank Street. Nothing to be embarrassed about, and quite honestly a considerable step up from pounding the snot out of some Oak skid tossing his glove down my way. I walked in with the full reverent knowledge that I had grown an inch or maybe three because of the episode.
And I could lie and invent me a type of grand turn of heads en masse; for I had been loud and quite visible in my disdain for the pieces of pulp and paper that dare involve themselves with the construction of calendars. I had even sworn and taken the Lord’s name in vain.
But it was this later Monday that I speak of, and Fonzie wasn’t working. It was a mellow crowd and I was in the mood for this that whisper not a yell. I was indeed better, if not still avoiding the moving picture shows and the possibility of incurring the remembrance that was them Jesus Years not three days gone by the wayside.
While X calmly walked the streets of Centretown.
While Betty continued to tell me nothing to the questions that I never asked of her and another not so simple night I may or may not have believed to You.
But I decide to call him Potsie, this slightly average bartender with the striking absence of a wart that took the patience to three-pour my Guinness that very recent Monday that I recall. He is quite very one of the nicest people, that straight sprig off of the old human tree that deserves the four seconds of fame that we allow before stumbling back towards the stories of redemption that involve Me and Me’s alone.
While just the other day I spied X from across the street by name of Elgin.
While I got my monthly hair cut at Oui Design, I fantasized about a particularly tasty God sandwich that had the pleasure of granting me interlude and confusion. Of whispers asked and never spoken of again; stupid shit that I left out of the usual dish of dirt that all are guilty of spewing once under the soak and scissor and clip of razor employed for perfect coif. The complimentary magazine a prop that afternoon; that Monday night beer a crutch before me.
Myself, and all the other lone gunmen at the Royal Oak. “What’s this I hear about…,” began the lips of Potsie on an early February night that was by then next day, into Tuesday and the continuation of me and the first person of things: my halting hand to tip of face his. I knew the young man and liked him, was civil to a someone who took the time to layer the bed of Guinness lining my tummy - this was a nice man in no way involved in the Jesus Years of my creation.
“I turned a corner, Potsie.” He smiled and I pretended not to stare the remarkable lack of wart on left or right cheek of his. “I left behind a dear friend in a hail of glory.” Did I indeed make it, he wondered. “Yeah, kinda,” as I had successfully bicycled from any lurking authorities in this nation’s capital once upon that recent time.
That had been me shriveling at the end of a January amongst the original National Library at the back end of our rebuilt Parliament upon a Hill. I had huddled and relaxed with the wisdom of accomplishing absolutely nothing apart from the view sniffed over the wrought iron and mangle of hibernating bush that probably has a specific Latin name: I could see Hull, and or Quebec. Two bridges. A smoke stack puffing its industrial love into the stars, a series of well-lit appeasements in the form of government buildings relocated across the Ottawa River into another province, another country nearly.
Tom turned a page, reaffirmed a transparent yellow over a paper white view that may be processed much different than the brain of me. A quiet read thus he had.
Timbo studied the religions that were indeed his choices. He stared hard into a broken spine, smoothed them constant edges devoid of doggie ears. A quiet thought to the backdrop of the me myself and others within satellite radio filling the air - an 80’s tune, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana if it really matters.
Joan Jett slipped another slug in the aural jukebox as I drew Potsie a map down Bank Street, explained him a right turn of the slippery wheel that guided me along the stones of Wellington Wall; told him about a sneaky left taken just before the open gates that lead up to the Eternal Flame, that which walks tourist cameras towards the final steps of Peace Tower telling my apartment the time some six the seven blocks to its southern. In Centretown.
Tom flipping another page if only to advance the latest piece of journalism that explained away the Kennedy assassinations, life’s other certain mysteries - the renting of that winterized 12-speed for one night at the end of my Jesus Years.
Fonzie calling me a nutter; and I had given the bike courier dude the agreed upon small portrait of the Queen in green denomination despite it all. My nudity, my clothes to be the deposit available upon return of his work vehicle. The strip dance and the description within that Friday night of walking into the second room, their table with a view of Bank Street and smeared memory of younger brother punching older for some odd reason or another.
I had asked for the fastest damn bike in the joint, of all that lump safety-chained and woven into the front bars of the Oak’s façade. They had stared up from personal pitchers and paused into the Who the hell was asking and I had said that it was Me that wanted the swiftest machine in Centretown. Fine. But what actually kinda left my mouth was, “Hey - I need to borrow one of your bikes. Twenty bucks to the first guy - or girl, sorry - that says me yes.” They thunk and I divulged that it was in the name of Jesus, and that we all were, really, God’s children.
Normally my proposed act would be part of one of those dares, would have seen money or promises placed in a dirty ball cap passed around a table. Payable upon completion.
I explained that I knew the drill but that they of course did not know me in the per se beyond the occasional sideways smile across the urinals. Only three rooms but it’s still a fairly big bar, I added, despite the fact that I have failed to invent a single solitary shred of garb towards any of those four the five longhair freaky people swimming the truth from my thoughts. For this is the part to draw a stick man or woman on a piece of paper, steal a box of crayons and wonder what happens with chestnut brown and piss yellow and a midnight black so dull but still just sharp enough to rub against their 3-day socks and never clean spandex. And maybe, just maybe, take a minute to forgive or remember the Seattle Scene, to give it a shave or let it grow. Fair enough, as I try to instill the urgency in securing that ride down this part of Bank Street; tell them that I most certainly admired them all wet and smelly and controlling of the utter disregard for the situation of earning just only enough beyond rent to have the ability to spark up a spliff in front of the World Exchange Centre on their lunch breaks; lean and ponder whether to say that I probably used to buy from the same guy, even though it would be a stretch.
And I won’t presume to speak for them, only offer up that I could taste the weed seeping from their pores; and how I still like the sweet, acrid smell of the delicious dope embedded in their clothing on a dreary Friday night.
When all else failed I told them it was almost my damn birthday; that I was even being forced to work on the wondrous celebration of my first moments on the planet. This Friday at the end of January, a something which they gave some thought to. Grab a crimson red and draw a bandana for a bandit, remember a dusk for its frayed edges - but of course, this is all a suggestion, as is the chestnut stubble that may or may not have been there in this for real that I say was a someone called Lucas shaking my hand and agreeing to allow me the luxury of giving him twenty dollars.
Did I know how to ride in the snow and slush: and so yes I nodded. More important, did I agree to wipe the seat upon completion being the more exact of his worries before making everyone stand up and walk me over to the big door. Use a series of crayons on that there strut of ours. Create atmosphere and the smell of booze that is peoples’ winter coats on backs of chairs and stools, the mix of ciggies that finds its inevitable way back inside thee erstwhile smokiest bar in Ottawa - before the indoor ban, before I began the switch to the lovely sensibility of shoving a du Maurier in mouth. Choosing reality above a weed nicknamed Mary. Before I was better such as I am now.
After having come from behind his bar, after having called me that name in usurped British, Fonzie accepted my wool my undershirt my blue of denim my boxers not briefs. Socks and shoes the one allowable luxury. Imagine an adjective for purple and add it to the appropriate crayon in arsenal scribbling my strip in front of the crowd that decided to meet one and others at the Oak that night which I bring to the forefront. At some point someone somewhere made reference to a carrot, but I was in fact too busy running out the door to confirm or deny.
Let’s say that she was very young, if not just starting off in life.
Pick up forgotten snow white and decide with its tip whether or not it possess enough colour to transcend a self-inflicted thought described with nothing more than a child’s learning utensil. Begin with the chilled temperature and remember some red for my nerves. Help me out that door, help me with the litany of bike locks towards the bottom of pile of inner city mail pushers. I was naked and attempting a slipping away from that outpouring of crowd, Fonzie’s smile shaking his head good-bye. I was off, without the obligatory chase vehicle normally necessary for verification purposes - stupidity spelled all different.
One tends to stand when biking in the buff.
She was in this same Ottawa of many English pubs, Italian restaurants. Elgin Street some three blocks to the east.
It was a squeeze of a rush of blood to the extremities that blew the red light at MacLaren and nearly ran a taxi over myself coming upon Somerset.
She had most probably locked up her nameless work obligation and made her way down to Maxwell’s to meet up with blue dress Betty: slurping slightly pink Cosmopolitans with a hairdresser that had left me in the late snow of that pre-Noël party at Johnny’s. Of certain things tasting good, things feeling different in that after; I had licked my lips of her and staggered on home to converse a dirty little secret to a two-limbed cactus within the confines of a tiny apartment on Cooper Street, Centretown.
Through the magic of peripheral vision absolutely nothing touched me and a Shimano shifter clicking a way down Bank to shake hands with Parliament Hill, all in the name of that guy named Jesus - the particular when he died. Our Ottawa cabbies, taxis of a deep blue, did just barely sway and they be the best damn drivers of all the people that practice a craft all the workday long. Slater, Albert, Queen, Sparks - S.A.Q.S. the game I employ to remember the names of streets that need be explained as traffic lights blown along that way. Laurier pronounced in the necessary French, passed by me in the dead of winter. Wellington Street that took me along its thick stone wall abutting the snow-buried front lawn, wrought iron bars that sit on its atop. Protect. R.C.M.P., another acronym, that idle in cars and watch over. My full name somewhere within the data of their on-board computers. An early left turn for this guy on a borrowed bike; clockwise up the counter-clock traffic circle that guides visitors and tourists and cars alike.
Playing the accidental nudist was I, gawking up at the biggest wrist watch in town; halfway done, but basically counting the ticks till big and small hand 12. I was completely in the first person peddling past the West Block - Terry Fox, Sir John A., Neil Young nowhere near on that Canadian mind of mine sneaking around the back of the Centre Block; a mounted bell on display from the great fire of a 1916, a rounded library that was the mere that survived destruction thanks to the closing of a couple of its big doors. Wonderful.
But sorry; beauty - the What on my brain instructing my two hands to rub my butt cheeks apart now that I had dismounted from rented steed and taken it upon myself to thank the conjured sweat for what was left of dissipating warmth straddling the first two months of the Gregorian calendar.
She quite possibly took one or two westerly steps towards Bank before squeezing Betty’s hand in thought. “What a lovely evening,” she would maybe tell this good friend of hers, mine. They quite maybe even skipped their way through the Friday night crowd that is our restaurant strip known as Elgin Street. Whatever. I could should lie and deny the reality of a no one around to enjoy my fabulous conquest of making it to Parliament wearing nothing but the Nikes on my squishy toes, but no longer bitter am I.
I was fixed and ready to go. Getting cold amongst the fabulous view of the snow-covered Gatineau Hills across the frozen river between.
A song beginning behind me; a tune that would chime in its entirety. It was of the hour, the next day in fact, and to say that it was no big deal, or that Cool Hand Luke disproves that it is quite possible for one man to eat 50 eggs on a dare on a bet for no good reason at all, would be akin to me being not at all happy to be done with them Jesus Years.
I was fixed and ready to take a run at Day 1.
She and Betty could have been anywhere by then.
I should really explain that I paused briefly in the dark and had me a good on cry, that a 12-speed nuzzled my side in a consolatory notion. There was a giggle that two Mounties never saw, and my nipples hard and flush with Indian red. My legs pumping furiously back down Bank Street to the odd honk of horn, flash of high beam within one of those movies where all of the police cars are in the shop and six-shooters fire nine bullets: the audience talks out loud to the screen, warns or laughs at the ensemble that performed the artistic deed many months before click of remote, purchase of cinema ticket.
These same people had crawled out of their warm apartments, left comfy theatre seats to go and meet each other at the Oak, imbibe black gold Guinness or cheap 60-ounce domestic pitchers that be illegal to serve to one person but technically Ok when done with an advertised 59-ounce pour. They met at this particular Royal Oak and talked of this mutual movie that they had witnessed in multi-colour.
In true Centretown fashion she would have walked through the big oak door with Betty in tow, stomping the winter from their girlie girls as they made their way through the standing crowd. Fonzie his offering smile a wall of yellowed teeth, his penetrating stare for the both of them that never did strut on in that night, despite my imagination that be the tactile squeeze of the hand brake with my left hand. Fantasizing in Ottawa to a Stop. A hoped reunion that was an ongoing romance of the past - just another night as I pulled up out front and begged by the door for my clothes back. Smiled for the nonexistent cameras, posed for the memories soon to be written as graffiti on the bathroom wall. Accepted my boxers left to chill in an ice machine.
But this the story of those left out details. People waving or perhaps laughing, the colours involved in making something truly believable. I failed in relating my gratitude for the flood lights that look up the Gothic façade upon the Hill, the Eternal Flame that was the trance and the calm that occupied two armed men and their moustaches for the good twenty minutes that was my waiting time. The minutiae of my world-weary sneakers bearing me silent witness once the more. This the story of those left out because I was too busy being the first person to ever go wander through a set of 365 days with a specific name attached to it. And then some, as I pulled up a seat in the second room and drank beer with my pants off because Fonzie had soaked them before leaving them to freeze in the walk-in fridge.
My pullover warm and the smell of cigarettes.
And this is the part where I let someone else talk. “This is Beauregard, that’s Daisy, and Ernest … and Ross.” Lucas was the fifth in a box of 64 crayons to tell me that I would never make it in the courier biz. “Way too slow, bud.” But I had stopped to think. Sure as shit, was the way that I nodded to him and this story of Tom and his hardcover resting comfortably in front of a personal pitcher floating a glass of ice within; Timbo disturbed by the frames per second of that night flicking before his medicated eyes.
Brother Clay rounding out the cast of those that failed to show up uninvited on the final countdown to my birthday.
A phone call at my work from Mommy earlier in the eve. Them red hot lies and visions of sugarcoated truths as I poured Bombay, added bits and pieces of Cointreau and Campari, splash of juice from a lime. Shook a shaker. Cradled a receiver in my crook, stretched a cord and assured her that I was fine, that I still talked to my lone brother and that Harry eventually got the Sally that he Met way back When. Some dead air, and the subsequent crack and pour of my concocted Jasmine Martini into a chilled glass all pretty. “Mother, you drink gin, don’t you?” More dead of air, and the dinner rush at the High School Bar and Grill. Love and kisses, and You’ll know some of the rest just as soon enough as I decide upon the further complexity of my family affairs.
I could lie and maybe forget my dear gone father. I could return to the meeting of minds that was talk of bikes and genital shrinkage and people commenting on my striped boxers or my fresh membership into the Parliament Club, perhaps speaking for themselves longer than a line or two before the inevitability of the me running out of creation dialogue.
Tommy had leaned over with a whisper and bummed a Green Death ciggie of the Export variety off of Daisy, walked outside for a very direct sip of cancer. Left in-wait a half-finished book. Daisy offered us up a something a little stronger, and thus my pause and my waver directly into the array of Crayolas walking their colours down the tangled beads in her hair; but yes, I’ve gone and described way too much beyond my short stroke and fake inhale performed upon a back alley spliff merely to prove that I was not a narc, could still be trusted at their young round table with a view. My free knees walking back in that rear door, guilty to Fonzie’s smile holding up them dungarees of mine with the fresh grill marks upon. A gift of warmth replete with life affirming hug, lovely moment in the maybe invented world of one Henry James Deza from Centretown, Ottawa, Ontario. Me.
Little known fact: for a time The King of Kensington was my father’s favourite TV show. Even though everyone else in Canada hated hates Toronto; houses many peoples and an ex-roommate of mine that scour its core for a centre that resembles the small town we city folk all deny exists in the burbs. Fantastically sad.
Wonderful then that I should keep mostly all of the specific aesthetic to my greedy little self, let others decide which way the wind done blew down Bank Street that or any night of the week month Jesus Years. Leave it up to others to picture my good-bye to them new friends and wander me out the door and back into the piling snow with a funny grin and colour in my cheeks the hue of promise; imbue me with the ability to remain myself off the phone to Betty blue dress that night.
It helps explain away the ingredients of three partially-grown men standing over an enriched garbage can with their members fully exposed within hands of the left and right variety. I should add that it be Tuesday night by then, and the Grill be once the more closed for biz, waiting for me to punch in an alarm code. The Prince and I had decided upon the soup of future days, kept around Iguana the dishwasher as a talisman, our witness, someone to run across the street to purchase the required fresh porn. “Will do, Boss. Need smokes too?” So we did. So I let him keep the change, told him to buy his two abandoned kids some candy; be nice to their mother and all that good stuff. “You bet, Chief.” I should describe the stains down the front of his muscle shirt revealed, the number of times I have failed to beat him in an arm wrestle. He should light my cigarette and remove cellophane, flip through that latest edition of 'Just 18.' We should at least attempt to glean a recipe or two from the venerable 'Bon Appetit' before pouring the Stella Artois - a fine lager with inches of lovely head to be sliced clean off by their Belgian-supplied butter knife. A few of those down the throat to the tune of no bathroom breaks. Pictures of naughty girls passed around, commented on with familiarity.
“Let’s do it, jackass.” And so yes, we would do it purely for him, that Prince of Holmwood; because I was fine - fixed, as I have stated on the record. The blend had struck me as a thoughtful slight of hand thrown to benefit his way, and perhaps possibly maybe a small swirl to my whisper back to reality.
Into the eventual dumpster out back. Ashes and all.
“Never date a Cher, Henry. Even if they offer to teach you a wicked game of stick, walk away from the name. Just walk the fuck away.”
Some newly torn oregano to compliment the sweet of a bitten carrot. A series of partially smoked ciggies, butted and tossed within. Young girls in need enough to pose for creepy old men; loving of red-necked boyfriends with enticing Camaros and Polaroid cameras. No ceremony, no dancing around; just a firm belief in the meaning of placebo. A Zippo to set magazines and new soup on a fine way. And us three gathered around that garbage can at the High School Bar and Grill on a Tuesday, early February. Having the necessary whiz. A giggle or two for the near peckers displayed. Perhaps a stagger to our different numbered peasant limos whilst midnight died on the billboard-lined boulevard called St.Laurent, the near-burbs. East End of our Ottawa and a 1-9-6-9 fingered by me into a security panel, a then turn of key and responsibility.
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