This latest slurp in the saga of Henry and X delves farther down the thought hole leading to the end of romance.
Off topic/on topic: from a young age, my mother instilled in me a love of writing, as well a taste for books and good magazines. She used to save her copies of National Geographic for me to leaf through and learn of the World we aspire to sniff and travel; some of the passages below are gleaned from those memories of word and glossy photo.
As life would have it, one of my brothers would grow up to be a Hercules pilot in the Canadian Air Force and have the pleasure(?) of doing a stint in Afghanistan. Yeah - that was a fun phone call to get; still haven't made my mind up on that one. Nevertheless, have a read of 'The Kite Runner' if you think it's all just about oil and wishful cartography.
By the way - I forgot/never realized that I had used the phrase "You me and the Gatepost" in this novel until now. As they say in Ottawa: Qu'est ce que fuck?
Off topic/on topic: from a young age, my mother instilled in me a love of writing, as well a taste for books and good magazines. She used to save her copies of National Geographic for me to leaf through and learn of the World we aspire to sniff and travel; some of the passages below are gleaned from those memories of word and glossy photo.
As life would have it, one of my brothers would grow up to be a Hercules pilot in the Canadian Air Force and have the pleasure(?) of doing a stint in Afghanistan. Yeah - that was a fun phone call to get; still haven't made my mind up on that one. Nevertheless, have a read of 'The Kite Runner' if you think it's all just about oil and wishful cartography.
By the way - I forgot/never realized that I had used the phrase "You me and the Gatepost" in this novel until now. As they say in Ottawa: Qu'est ce que fuck?
Chapter 19: Ottawa. Counting Q-tips.
For her to ride with me on the OC - the city bus - became a decided chore. The time of day, the placing of mind, the necessary seat beside the door. We would jump on the number 1 or 7 in the Glebe and head north down Bank Street for sundry reason, or be making our way to work and sharing a bit of the commute - she to Centretown, myself to the semi-burbs and the beginning of Chains, Franchises. But life in the big city: the communal exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide; the rubbing of personal space.
And that’s what it surely was as she would lean over and ring the bell halfway down Bank Street, only part the way there.
And it was Ok with me; mass transit is not for everyone, and she was relatively new to its All; she stood by the side door and waited for those various of lights that tell one that it is alright to push or pull then step or move down - we disembarked and walked the rest of the way, and the air was good for us; we held hands and I was, after all, her mate.
Eventually the anxiety attacks made it impossible for her to ride the bus. She got to know cabbies by name and they in turn came to love the smile in the mirror, the generous tip from another person in the people industry; from our one of two living room couches I would peer out the window and goldfish her a wish for an absolutely splendid shift just as she stepped off the front porch and entered economic limo - a wave and a kiss she would return to me. Gone, before my walk to the bus stop or bike to work.
How I feel for those that can’t adapt to the big city.
How I felt for my X that winter that gradually was the beginning of our Spain.
And You know some of the rest, after that Spain, through my first summer alone, as it turned winter again in my Ottawa and I resumed the riding of the bus - because of the cold, because it is not so much fun biking in a blizzard. I was up to something near 180 Q-tips as I stared out a window making its view along the Transitway funneling me off to work. Betty was gone from High School and independently healthy thanks to the dungeon that is her basement apartment that is her very own hair salon that is her freedom from ever having to suck up to a person again; customers found her through word of mouth and she was quite free to tell them to fuck off and or die. She was popular, still is. And I believe I’ve mentioned that she and X were, are, the bestest of friends.
I had remained loyal to Oui Design for the cutting of my hair and thus limited my supply of information from Betty. But, that was Ok. I was fine and resplendent in the lap of the Jesus Years: one Q-tip a day. I had made strides within adaptation that was a small bachelor apartment on Cooper Street in my Centretown at the beginning of a new winter. Up my street and not so far away is Mags and Fags - where I buy my magazines and to this day wonder what the American tourists think as they stare up at its rather large black and white sign baring down on Elgin. A few steps to the left is the video store that I took a stab at - a fabulous collection of the non-Hollywood movies that I refer to as cinema and the chance to abuse staff. They grew to hate my opening of the door, my stroking of video case and careful parsing of description on reverse: Was there anything remotely resembling love or couples within said video, I had nerve to ask of each, for scene might very well invoke remembrance. A fear … and so thus the one or two Bruce Lee movies that did not have romance at their very core, in any clip.
Until I tired, gave up and stuck to the printed state of affairs for the hours that constituted freedom for self. I read of social injustice, devoured every bimonthly issue of Mother Jones and fell asleep with the firm belief of becoming a rabble-rouser and getting people off the fast food mill, decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels through sound environmental means - I found solace in trees turned into foldable thoughts. National Geographic reminded me to call my mother more than once a month, to perhaps visit the familial home near my former high school in my old stomping grounds of the East End that be the semi-burbs - I was so happy to read of the Afghani cover girl with the emerald eyes of a cat, how the original photographer had found her at very last … that she was, all things considered, alive after a war with the Soviets, a civil war that followed, unaware of her immense international popularity, my love of her face: the magazine’s most popular cover of all-time, and she roughly my age, enduring her very own Jesus Years and problems considerably worse that little old me.
She is married. Has children and is forbidden to be alone with male strangers, to look a photographer or camera in the eye.
I saved the issue and immediately called my mother; we had shared the magazine in my youth and the Girl with the Eyes had waited for me on a bookcase for all of those years.
I left out the part about the Q-tips and my mother forewent any form of inquisition with respect to females. We concentrated on the Afghani girl who was by then a woman, her eyes the same lovely but since written on by the heavy hand of history. The pictures were in my lap, her face staring up at me as I proceeded to slow cry … talk with my mother; and one can never be too careful with invoking the past. I muffled, and it be surprisingly easy to conceal tears whilst on the phone. My brother Clay and I have a pact to keep bad news from our mommy - since the day we heard about Dad, since seemingly forever. She’ll ask occasionally of X, and she was aware that I was working through things - “Everyone does, deary” - but the extents are the very thing that children bury in the white crease of a lie.
I was to come over for dinner. As for the Q-tip count on that date in time, I don’t know; I did make my way, and, no, I do not hate my mother at all - but I definitely do check to see what’s in the bowl after standing up, preparing to wipe. Sorry.
The clock was running on the Jesus Years, and not so fast enough - for 34 would make a world of difference and X was still not just another person walking down Elgin Street in Ottawa’s Centretown. Not never. But she was then closer to her work at that nameless restaurant, free from taking the OC bus or even a cab. Perhaps sleeping clear through the night; and maybe there was a sensation of difference meandering its way through the network of veins that nourished her firm buttocks, fed the colour that was the certain red of her nipples. But sorry. Quite innocently I walked the streets of Centretown: on days off, before work, somewhat everywhere within the freedom of time that was mine. My trick was to suck in the sunshine. My reward was the small patch of black rot noticed at the base of cactus Pepé, the injured side hidden from view: on the afternoon of November 22, approximately 12:30, I pinched clean through his area of bad softness with my fingers. Great. Absolutely fucking fantastic. There was an early snowfall on the ground, the variety that melts before the next day even bothers to open its eyes, and I placed the whole ensemble out on my tiny balcony to catch the sun in the early hours of morn; José, Tall Sanchez - they were fine, stiff, healthy, sprouting. I figured it proper to give them all their weekly watering.
I, myself, was using my walks and them cigarettes to keep me thin and sexy and attractive for the New Female: a different girl, that next gal that every guy dreams of or at least considers in the dead horny of night. Fun stuff.
Fred left High School and got himself out of the life that is the service industry.
It turned frosty early and stayed that way into early December - too cold for a cactus about to lose a part of itself. I was running a convalescence home for the victim of my ignorance and laze to open the blinds every freaking day, my perhaps overwatering; I had talked to him - them three all - but it is, apparently, entirely possible to kill a cactus, somehow.
Betty was, of course, long gone and clean done with High School, still in constant contact with my continued loss that was X’s form: the simple fact of someone not being there, blinking mad or smiling calm. But the New Female would benefit from my Spain and the subsequent winter that was Pepé’s death, the folly that was the thought that talking to someone be quite enough. To water something and consider that to be plenty: but then a cactus - or part of it - dies.
I slept alright, didn’t fight it didn’t always fall away immediately, but made use of the cooing noises of a childhood game performed via a humming of the throat. The vibration that soothed; the sound of my mother vacuuming that had always put me towards straight sleep. Away from certain thoughts.
Away from a kitchen knife used to hack Pepé out of the fold that was the taller green guys sharing his earthen pot; about six inches in my hand, slightly soft and yet definitely dead. His roots remained, beneath - and I placed him in the garbage for all of four minutes before the alcohol kicked in to describe to me his decay amongst dirty diapers and used condoms in intimate detail.
But December, and the continuation of me on my walks. X, herself, I do not know, beyond a casual stroll about Elgin Street witnessed without plan by me. I took my time to sidle down Bank Street that is the graffiti on every second newspaper box, that is Big Bud’s Discount Store near the corner of Somerset: the large owner asking for a fucking price check! at the front cash - rather uncouth Bud, swearing, and holding court amongst affordable things in a diverse store, neighbourhood. I walked straight past my particular Royal Oak on Bank with the supreme knowledge that I would return with the brightness of the moon. Up the way, the recently deceased Annex and its old school collection of porn no longer for sale to those that loved the lack of eye contact between customer and cashier, preferred their girls wrapped in cellophane and placed discreetly into a brown paper bag.
One day big and large Fred joined the banking community, learned a few things, and over a few beers proceeded to tell me to always pay cash for porn, that a teller can call up almost anything on one’s file. They even leave messages, warnings for the next peruser. Red flags on a screen that can’t be seen by customer. I was not entirely comfortable with this information, but happy to be conversing with this friend that was now basically an acquaintance. Since High School Bar and Grill. Since my purchases were the business of me and the elderly Oriental man working the push-button cash at the Annex - may it rest in peace in the hearts of memory Centretown. With its For Sale sign and its sin to consider. With a lack of a saviour coming through in its hour of need: I had done my part as a customer and left the remaining up to chance and that Jesus guy - the recent spring that had been his introduction to me. The Spanish experience that was former lovers returning to Glebe front door together in a cab from bus station, hardly ever speaking again. Except for the details of bringing us to Centretown separately, as soon as possible.
I take this out loud time to stop and personally wish luck to a specifically soft, blue couch that I slept on most nights within that purgatory - fully realizing that, yes, it is unorthodox to give thanks to a piece of furniture; but there was no room for it at my tiny new apartment and thus it now waits out the end at some dump in the West End.
And the We that was slowly gone: that couch was Mine, and this or that was Hers. A television that I am scared to watch sits in what be my living room and bedroom; we divided the purchased paintings and the rest You know some of: the note which I have kept squirreled away for the special moment of too many pills, too sharp of razor, too high of bridge, too lax of a gun law. It wasn’t all bad, she wrote in pen and left beside a few gift beers on a cleaned counter in a scrubbed kitchen in a then finally completely empty apartment in the Glebe of Ottawa. I cracked open one of the bottles, a Steam Whistle reminiscent of the traditional high in hops taste that is a true pilsener. Sorry. I folded the paper into my pocket and headed for my Centretown address with the knowledge that a certain percentage of heart attacks are preceded by fairly recent moves.
I lie in my bed and sometimes still believe in this method of deliverance that be hopefully quick and sudden. Wait for it in the dark with a cactus across the room that’s scared to death of me: I own knives, and I have the power to neglect, overcompensate.
I have Pepé wasting away in a shoebox that’s kept tucked away beneath a bear-trap futon. He is wrapped in bits of dignity and an openness that was once a quality I let loose at Royal Oak after-hours parties; he carries with him a vestige of José Cuervo Gold tequila, and a soft pillow made entirely of TV Guides. I sleep above him, wait for the nightmares that never come and give any sort of guidance; I sit at my Royal Oak on my stretch of Bank Street and do nothing with the energy left over from a daily walk, or the feelings represented in the tips of fingers courtesy my nightly cigarettes. I called up my brother Clay with a new address and proceeded to give him that punch in the head I believe that I thunk to You; we talked some more that night and I told him what little I knew of the Spanish experience that was me and X no longer in love but travelling together; he never brought up Jesus again and I never asked.
And when I bid him good-bye, left for home, I truly believed that it hadn’t all been bad with X.
From its beginning that was me staying over at her place near Ottawa U. To the wearing of a condom because “she didn’t know where I had been.” From my Centretown to our togetherness in the Glebe. To the in-between that wasn’t all good.
When we were the ones out at a café and having a conversation, talking about any and all under the sun. When at some restaurant, or maybe the Oak after a long shift by the both of us: enjoying a quiet, interesting night and someone of the overly drunk persuasion would lean over and join in on the discovery of differences between two people in love and in the same industry.
I think a thanks to a mélange of about twelve or fourteen people that have entered my life through no other reason than alcohol and its companion loneliness. I realize the certain thread of anger within a statement such as, these interlopers that occupy very much of my thoughts these days that are mine and only mine. Against one of them, the first, I defended her honour upon malediction directed her way via him: I kicked his sorry Royal Oak overdrinking ass, smiled at Fonzie, jumped into a cab with my girlfriend and engaged in very much Man saves Woman Sex well into the night. This gift I bray about: the good and the bad that is the ability to drink late, to get into a fight and still be welcomed with open arms by my local pub. These incidents that I ponder because it is the good and the bad and me and You in a small bachelor in Centretown.
The silent agreement that is a good customer, a good bartender.
The actor that I am, and the ease that is short Barney, formerly of the High School Bar and Grill, now of The Keg downtown; yes, they were flies dropping from my work. The long hair that is him working at a better steak house, and the jealousy that is mine; but not the length of hair but rather the belief I notice in him, the actual care that smiles his eyes and keeps him out of the unnecessary. I call this friend once the while with various of unsaid requests: I wish to go for a drink with him, but I watch, observe and steal his manner these recent of times that is too late to change the incident of X and me and number 8 on my Thank you List. We the former couple were together, and I was protective of our conversation; he, this Number 8, was somebody without manners, unwilling to take the loneliness elsewhere, and I stepped up with the gift that is me and You in this bachelor on Cooper Street. He was a white or black male in his early 30’s, possibly a ball cap maybe a hunting hat, and took some sort of offence to my lack of love for the word communist - and he never touched me all his way down to a floor courtesy myself. Not only do I never lie, but I never brag.
I invite Barney out and we discuss the biz that is our industry and the unreported money in our pockets. “Stupid people: white’s for mixing and gold’s for shootin’.” And down went the tequila shots that were the end of my friend Barney observing civilians in the wild, that which be others within the performance of downtime, drunken weekends.
“They know we talk about them.” That was my voice.
“No they don’t. Most don’t know.” And short Barney is aware of such things.
“People should know that we talk about them. They should have the luxury of realizing all our nasty nicknames for them, the bad days that they present to us on a regular basis.” He nodded in that friendly way that I have not emphasized nearly enough. I sipped whatever beer be before me at that time and mentioned further this, “Just between you, me and the gatepost - I think I’m losing it, Barney.”
“You should know that people are talking - about you.” He dead-stared, and then we laughed a long, slow sentence full of commas and hyphens. Wonderful. “They agree that you have lost it. They’re fearful of your tendencies, don’t quite know what to make out of you.” The people had gathered together and spoken or scribbled on a wall at some juncture.
“Pray tell where all this talk be, mon chum.” I grabbed him by the scruff and rifled through the pockets of a suede jacket that was given to him by a dear, dying mother on the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday. Briefly did I touch crumbled paper within, perhaps the invisible monies of a better night than I probably had. I let him go and thanked the audience for its indulgence. “What magical place does all of this say come from, hmm, Barney? Where the fuck?” And Barney knows Betty, who is, of course, best friends with X: secrets have a shelf life.
“Did you ever luck out with her, Henry.” I thanked him kindly for rubbing it in, that I was well aware of the mistakes made. “You lucked out in the way of the aftermath and how she speaks of you and the … care that she gives you whenever it comes up.”
“I am so freaking glad that everyone is so happy and talking amongst each other, communicating and being all open about this shit - there’s a lot of love out there. Great, Barney; this feeling is so warm in my heart.” I grabbed my crotch in a bar that was not the Royal Oak on Bank and I tugged on it, hard. Out the window, heavy snow on the street known as Elgin. And it was after work for the two of us, the time of spewing tales about customers, venting, ridding the mean - or never having it to begin with. “How often do you see Betty?” - for there had always been rumours about those two. But nothing. “I saw Fred the other day, but he’s kind of out of the loop now; you ever run in to him?”
I had spread this butter on my continuation to his statement. I had dangled the past that was our group of people mingling at stage shows in Centretown, wine parties at Christmas, a Danny Michel gig at Barrymore’s that ended in separate ways taken by some - yes, my fifteen-or-so-minute walk down Bank Street from that music club back to spacious one-bedroom apartment in the Glebe. Alone, just me and some argument with X that I would be hard-pressed to reiterate even given presence of maybe Pearly Gates or regretful gun pressed to my head after a hard night of thinking. I had walked home and passed out, woken up beside my girlfriend, my X who had slipped softly in.
How terribly original I had been that night; and the very next morning, talk on two couches in our living room, separate seats for each to resolve us back towards a level in love enough. A degree of mourning determined by a complicated formula involving the moon and stars and capacity of her lungs beyond the cigarettes that were her habit and feminine gesticulation of prop within arguement.
And her chin to thrust towards a living room window guarded by drapes fashioned out of a queen-size East Indian spread - woven with a caravan of camels making its way down the vertical, magic mushrooms painted a similar tan and kissing them at the corners. Distraction, and the What that I generally stared at when not ever saying anything. This little that I open to You and or choose to remember about guilt this right now.
“Let’s get some food, some eggs,” - and that’s as far as I went. That’s as close as Barney was let by me that telling stories night, in Centretown, across from me. We headed up that Elgin of streets to The Diner for some breakfast after midnight. I never told him that X loved to go for eggs; and though he had been amongst the gatherings to do the late night feed before, he probably never had her lean close and tell him just such a thing - warm and giggly back in the together of her and me.
In the latter time of life with X, number 11 or 12 - I’m not so sure - was staring at me, just leaning on the wood, holding up the bar. My father used to do very such thing, minus the alcohol and the Royal Oak and the arbitrary numbers that I have assigned to various people.
In those last days I had straightened up enough to walk up to this male of height and softly inform that I didn’t even like it when my father - rest his soul - had stared at me. I told this man of average looks and hair with colour that I had a certain amount of pull within the establishment and that from that point on I would be informing everyone - staff and patron - that he was serial killer material and not to be trusted. I would even place my left finger to my left temple and make a circular motion that I was certain all would be able to comprehend. This could all stay quiet if need be, I whispered to him, then smiled and left it at that, walked back over to X and reclaimed my seat beside her; number 11 or 12 continued to stare over at me, and I touched my temple just the once. He swayed, then turned and faced the bar. And I was a lucky man. For X had offered to move, and he had only stared at me intermittently.
For the guy had been bigger than me, and I’m not so positive X would have had my back.
I think this thought now, from the confines of a tiny apartment in Centretown, but as for the feeling that ran my spine as I sat back down beside X and realized that she was no longer speaking to me beyond shrugs and facial ticks - I suppose that be the linger in what is left of these my Jesus Years.
For her to ride with me on the OC - the city bus - became a decided chore. The time of day, the placing of mind, the necessary seat beside the door. We would jump on the number 1 or 7 in the Glebe and head north down Bank Street for sundry reason, or be making our way to work and sharing a bit of the commute - she to Centretown, myself to the semi-burbs and the beginning of Chains, Franchises. But life in the big city: the communal exchange of oxygen, carbon dioxide; the rubbing of personal space.
And that’s what it surely was as she would lean over and ring the bell halfway down Bank Street, only part the way there.
And it was Ok with me; mass transit is not for everyone, and she was relatively new to its All; she stood by the side door and waited for those various of lights that tell one that it is alright to push or pull then step or move down - we disembarked and walked the rest of the way, and the air was good for us; we held hands and I was, after all, her mate.
Eventually the anxiety attacks made it impossible for her to ride the bus. She got to know cabbies by name and they in turn came to love the smile in the mirror, the generous tip from another person in the people industry; from our one of two living room couches I would peer out the window and goldfish her a wish for an absolutely splendid shift just as she stepped off the front porch and entered economic limo - a wave and a kiss she would return to me. Gone, before my walk to the bus stop or bike to work.
How I feel for those that can’t adapt to the big city.
How I felt for my X that winter that gradually was the beginning of our Spain.
And You know some of the rest, after that Spain, through my first summer alone, as it turned winter again in my Ottawa and I resumed the riding of the bus - because of the cold, because it is not so much fun biking in a blizzard. I was up to something near 180 Q-tips as I stared out a window making its view along the Transitway funneling me off to work. Betty was gone from High School and independently healthy thanks to the dungeon that is her basement apartment that is her very own hair salon that is her freedom from ever having to suck up to a person again; customers found her through word of mouth and she was quite free to tell them to fuck off and or die. She was popular, still is. And I believe I’ve mentioned that she and X were, are, the bestest of friends.
I had remained loyal to Oui Design for the cutting of my hair and thus limited my supply of information from Betty. But, that was Ok. I was fine and resplendent in the lap of the Jesus Years: one Q-tip a day. I had made strides within adaptation that was a small bachelor apartment on Cooper Street in my Centretown at the beginning of a new winter. Up my street and not so far away is Mags and Fags - where I buy my magazines and to this day wonder what the American tourists think as they stare up at its rather large black and white sign baring down on Elgin. A few steps to the left is the video store that I took a stab at - a fabulous collection of the non-Hollywood movies that I refer to as cinema and the chance to abuse staff. They grew to hate my opening of the door, my stroking of video case and careful parsing of description on reverse: Was there anything remotely resembling love or couples within said video, I had nerve to ask of each, for scene might very well invoke remembrance. A fear … and so thus the one or two Bruce Lee movies that did not have romance at their very core, in any clip.
Until I tired, gave up and stuck to the printed state of affairs for the hours that constituted freedom for self. I read of social injustice, devoured every bimonthly issue of Mother Jones and fell asleep with the firm belief of becoming a rabble-rouser and getting people off the fast food mill, decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels through sound environmental means - I found solace in trees turned into foldable thoughts. National Geographic reminded me to call my mother more than once a month, to perhaps visit the familial home near my former high school in my old stomping grounds of the East End that be the semi-burbs - I was so happy to read of the Afghani cover girl with the emerald eyes of a cat, how the original photographer had found her at very last … that she was, all things considered, alive after a war with the Soviets, a civil war that followed, unaware of her immense international popularity, my love of her face: the magazine’s most popular cover of all-time, and she roughly my age, enduring her very own Jesus Years and problems considerably worse that little old me.
She is married. Has children and is forbidden to be alone with male strangers, to look a photographer or camera in the eye.
I saved the issue and immediately called my mother; we had shared the magazine in my youth and the Girl with the Eyes had waited for me on a bookcase for all of those years.
I left out the part about the Q-tips and my mother forewent any form of inquisition with respect to females. We concentrated on the Afghani girl who was by then a woman, her eyes the same lovely but since written on by the heavy hand of history. The pictures were in my lap, her face staring up at me as I proceeded to slow cry … talk with my mother; and one can never be too careful with invoking the past. I muffled, and it be surprisingly easy to conceal tears whilst on the phone. My brother Clay and I have a pact to keep bad news from our mommy - since the day we heard about Dad, since seemingly forever. She’ll ask occasionally of X, and she was aware that I was working through things - “Everyone does, deary” - but the extents are the very thing that children bury in the white crease of a lie.
I was to come over for dinner. As for the Q-tip count on that date in time, I don’t know; I did make my way, and, no, I do not hate my mother at all - but I definitely do check to see what’s in the bowl after standing up, preparing to wipe. Sorry.
The clock was running on the Jesus Years, and not so fast enough - for 34 would make a world of difference and X was still not just another person walking down Elgin Street in Ottawa’s Centretown. Not never. But she was then closer to her work at that nameless restaurant, free from taking the OC bus or even a cab. Perhaps sleeping clear through the night; and maybe there was a sensation of difference meandering its way through the network of veins that nourished her firm buttocks, fed the colour that was the certain red of her nipples. But sorry. Quite innocently I walked the streets of Centretown: on days off, before work, somewhat everywhere within the freedom of time that was mine. My trick was to suck in the sunshine. My reward was the small patch of black rot noticed at the base of cactus Pepé, the injured side hidden from view: on the afternoon of November 22, approximately 12:30, I pinched clean through his area of bad softness with my fingers. Great. Absolutely fucking fantastic. There was an early snowfall on the ground, the variety that melts before the next day even bothers to open its eyes, and I placed the whole ensemble out on my tiny balcony to catch the sun in the early hours of morn; José, Tall Sanchez - they were fine, stiff, healthy, sprouting. I figured it proper to give them all their weekly watering.
I, myself, was using my walks and them cigarettes to keep me thin and sexy and attractive for the New Female: a different girl, that next gal that every guy dreams of or at least considers in the dead horny of night. Fun stuff.
Fred left High School and got himself out of the life that is the service industry.
It turned frosty early and stayed that way into early December - too cold for a cactus about to lose a part of itself. I was running a convalescence home for the victim of my ignorance and laze to open the blinds every freaking day, my perhaps overwatering; I had talked to him - them three all - but it is, apparently, entirely possible to kill a cactus, somehow.
Betty was, of course, long gone and clean done with High School, still in constant contact with my continued loss that was X’s form: the simple fact of someone not being there, blinking mad or smiling calm. But the New Female would benefit from my Spain and the subsequent winter that was Pepé’s death, the folly that was the thought that talking to someone be quite enough. To water something and consider that to be plenty: but then a cactus - or part of it - dies.
I slept alright, didn’t fight it didn’t always fall away immediately, but made use of the cooing noises of a childhood game performed via a humming of the throat. The vibration that soothed; the sound of my mother vacuuming that had always put me towards straight sleep. Away from certain thoughts.
Away from a kitchen knife used to hack Pepé out of the fold that was the taller green guys sharing his earthen pot; about six inches in my hand, slightly soft and yet definitely dead. His roots remained, beneath - and I placed him in the garbage for all of four minutes before the alcohol kicked in to describe to me his decay amongst dirty diapers and used condoms in intimate detail.
But December, and the continuation of me on my walks. X, herself, I do not know, beyond a casual stroll about Elgin Street witnessed without plan by me. I took my time to sidle down Bank Street that is the graffiti on every second newspaper box, that is Big Bud’s Discount Store near the corner of Somerset: the large owner asking for a fucking price check! at the front cash - rather uncouth Bud, swearing, and holding court amongst affordable things in a diverse store, neighbourhood. I walked straight past my particular Royal Oak on Bank with the supreme knowledge that I would return with the brightness of the moon. Up the way, the recently deceased Annex and its old school collection of porn no longer for sale to those that loved the lack of eye contact between customer and cashier, preferred their girls wrapped in cellophane and placed discreetly into a brown paper bag.
One day big and large Fred joined the banking community, learned a few things, and over a few beers proceeded to tell me to always pay cash for porn, that a teller can call up almost anything on one’s file. They even leave messages, warnings for the next peruser. Red flags on a screen that can’t be seen by customer. I was not entirely comfortable with this information, but happy to be conversing with this friend that was now basically an acquaintance. Since High School Bar and Grill. Since my purchases were the business of me and the elderly Oriental man working the push-button cash at the Annex - may it rest in peace in the hearts of memory Centretown. With its For Sale sign and its sin to consider. With a lack of a saviour coming through in its hour of need: I had done my part as a customer and left the remaining up to chance and that Jesus guy - the recent spring that had been his introduction to me. The Spanish experience that was former lovers returning to Glebe front door together in a cab from bus station, hardly ever speaking again. Except for the details of bringing us to Centretown separately, as soon as possible.
I take this out loud time to stop and personally wish luck to a specifically soft, blue couch that I slept on most nights within that purgatory - fully realizing that, yes, it is unorthodox to give thanks to a piece of furniture; but there was no room for it at my tiny new apartment and thus it now waits out the end at some dump in the West End.
And the We that was slowly gone: that couch was Mine, and this or that was Hers. A television that I am scared to watch sits in what be my living room and bedroom; we divided the purchased paintings and the rest You know some of: the note which I have kept squirreled away for the special moment of too many pills, too sharp of razor, too high of bridge, too lax of a gun law. It wasn’t all bad, she wrote in pen and left beside a few gift beers on a cleaned counter in a scrubbed kitchen in a then finally completely empty apartment in the Glebe of Ottawa. I cracked open one of the bottles, a Steam Whistle reminiscent of the traditional high in hops taste that is a true pilsener. Sorry. I folded the paper into my pocket and headed for my Centretown address with the knowledge that a certain percentage of heart attacks are preceded by fairly recent moves.
I lie in my bed and sometimes still believe in this method of deliverance that be hopefully quick and sudden. Wait for it in the dark with a cactus across the room that’s scared to death of me: I own knives, and I have the power to neglect, overcompensate.
I have Pepé wasting away in a shoebox that’s kept tucked away beneath a bear-trap futon. He is wrapped in bits of dignity and an openness that was once a quality I let loose at Royal Oak after-hours parties; he carries with him a vestige of José Cuervo Gold tequila, and a soft pillow made entirely of TV Guides. I sleep above him, wait for the nightmares that never come and give any sort of guidance; I sit at my Royal Oak on my stretch of Bank Street and do nothing with the energy left over from a daily walk, or the feelings represented in the tips of fingers courtesy my nightly cigarettes. I called up my brother Clay with a new address and proceeded to give him that punch in the head I believe that I thunk to You; we talked some more that night and I told him what little I knew of the Spanish experience that was me and X no longer in love but travelling together; he never brought up Jesus again and I never asked.
And when I bid him good-bye, left for home, I truly believed that it hadn’t all been bad with X.
From its beginning that was me staying over at her place near Ottawa U. To the wearing of a condom because “she didn’t know where I had been.” From my Centretown to our togetherness in the Glebe. To the in-between that wasn’t all good.
When we were the ones out at a café and having a conversation, talking about any and all under the sun. When at some restaurant, or maybe the Oak after a long shift by the both of us: enjoying a quiet, interesting night and someone of the overly drunk persuasion would lean over and join in on the discovery of differences between two people in love and in the same industry.
I think a thanks to a mélange of about twelve or fourteen people that have entered my life through no other reason than alcohol and its companion loneliness. I realize the certain thread of anger within a statement such as, these interlopers that occupy very much of my thoughts these days that are mine and only mine. Against one of them, the first, I defended her honour upon malediction directed her way via him: I kicked his sorry Royal Oak overdrinking ass, smiled at Fonzie, jumped into a cab with my girlfriend and engaged in very much Man saves Woman Sex well into the night. This gift I bray about: the good and the bad that is the ability to drink late, to get into a fight and still be welcomed with open arms by my local pub. These incidents that I ponder because it is the good and the bad and me and You in a small bachelor in Centretown.
The silent agreement that is a good customer, a good bartender.
The actor that I am, and the ease that is short Barney, formerly of the High School Bar and Grill, now of The Keg downtown; yes, they were flies dropping from my work. The long hair that is him working at a better steak house, and the jealousy that is mine; but not the length of hair but rather the belief I notice in him, the actual care that smiles his eyes and keeps him out of the unnecessary. I call this friend once the while with various of unsaid requests: I wish to go for a drink with him, but I watch, observe and steal his manner these recent of times that is too late to change the incident of X and me and number 8 on my Thank you List. We the former couple were together, and I was protective of our conversation; he, this Number 8, was somebody without manners, unwilling to take the loneliness elsewhere, and I stepped up with the gift that is me and You in this bachelor on Cooper Street. He was a white or black male in his early 30’s, possibly a ball cap maybe a hunting hat, and took some sort of offence to my lack of love for the word communist - and he never touched me all his way down to a floor courtesy myself. Not only do I never lie, but I never brag.
I invite Barney out and we discuss the biz that is our industry and the unreported money in our pockets. “Stupid people: white’s for mixing and gold’s for shootin’.” And down went the tequila shots that were the end of my friend Barney observing civilians in the wild, that which be others within the performance of downtime, drunken weekends.
“They know we talk about them.” That was my voice.
“No they don’t. Most don’t know.” And short Barney is aware of such things.
“People should know that we talk about them. They should have the luxury of realizing all our nasty nicknames for them, the bad days that they present to us on a regular basis.” He nodded in that friendly way that I have not emphasized nearly enough. I sipped whatever beer be before me at that time and mentioned further this, “Just between you, me and the gatepost - I think I’m losing it, Barney.”
“You should know that people are talking - about you.” He dead-stared, and then we laughed a long, slow sentence full of commas and hyphens. Wonderful. “They agree that you have lost it. They’re fearful of your tendencies, don’t quite know what to make out of you.” The people had gathered together and spoken or scribbled on a wall at some juncture.
“Pray tell where all this talk be, mon chum.” I grabbed him by the scruff and rifled through the pockets of a suede jacket that was given to him by a dear, dying mother on the eve of his twenty-fifth birthday. Briefly did I touch crumbled paper within, perhaps the invisible monies of a better night than I probably had. I let him go and thanked the audience for its indulgence. “What magical place does all of this say come from, hmm, Barney? Where the fuck?” And Barney knows Betty, who is, of course, best friends with X: secrets have a shelf life.
“Did you ever luck out with her, Henry.” I thanked him kindly for rubbing it in, that I was well aware of the mistakes made. “You lucked out in the way of the aftermath and how she speaks of you and the … care that she gives you whenever it comes up.”
“I am so freaking glad that everyone is so happy and talking amongst each other, communicating and being all open about this shit - there’s a lot of love out there. Great, Barney; this feeling is so warm in my heart.” I grabbed my crotch in a bar that was not the Royal Oak on Bank and I tugged on it, hard. Out the window, heavy snow on the street known as Elgin. And it was after work for the two of us, the time of spewing tales about customers, venting, ridding the mean - or never having it to begin with. “How often do you see Betty?” - for there had always been rumours about those two. But nothing. “I saw Fred the other day, but he’s kind of out of the loop now; you ever run in to him?”
I had spread this butter on my continuation to his statement. I had dangled the past that was our group of people mingling at stage shows in Centretown, wine parties at Christmas, a Danny Michel gig at Barrymore’s that ended in separate ways taken by some - yes, my fifteen-or-so-minute walk down Bank Street from that music club back to spacious one-bedroom apartment in the Glebe. Alone, just me and some argument with X that I would be hard-pressed to reiterate even given presence of maybe Pearly Gates or regretful gun pressed to my head after a hard night of thinking. I had walked home and passed out, woken up beside my girlfriend, my X who had slipped softly in.
How terribly original I had been that night; and the very next morning, talk on two couches in our living room, separate seats for each to resolve us back towards a level in love enough. A degree of mourning determined by a complicated formula involving the moon and stars and capacity of her lungs beyond the cigarettes that were her habit and feminine gesticulation of prop within arguement.
And her chin to thrust towards a living room window guarded by drapes fashioned out of a queen-size East Indian spread - woven with a caravan of camels making its way down the vertical, magic mushrooms painted a similar tan and kissing them at the corners. Distraction, and the What that I generally stared at when not ever saying anything. This little that I open to You and or choose to remember about guilt this right now.
“Let’s get some food, some eggs,” - and that’s as far as I went. That’s as close as Barney was let by me that telling stories night, in Centretown, across from me. We headed up that Elgin of streets to The Diner for some breakfast after midnight. I never told him that X loved to go for eggs; and though he had been amongst the gatherings to do the late night feed before, he probably never had her lean close and tell him just such a thing - warm and giggly back in the together of her and me.
In the latter time of life with X, number 11 or 12 - I’m not so sure - was staring at me, just leaning on the wood, holding up the bar. My father used to do very such thing, minus the alcohol and the Royal Oak and the arbitrary numbers that I have assigned to various people.
In those last days I had straightened up enough to walk up to this male of height and softly inform that I didn’t even like it when my father - rest his soul - had stared at me. I told this man of average looks and hair with colour that I had a certain amount of pull within the establishment and that from that point on I would be informing everyone - staff and patron - that he was serial killer material and not to be trusted. I would even place my left finger to my left temple and make a circular motion that I was certain all would be able to comprehend. This could all stay quiet if need be, I whispered to him, then smiled and left it at that, walked back over to X and reclaimed my seat beside her; number 11 or 12 continued to stare over at me, and I touched my temple just the once. He swayed, then turned and faced the bar. And I was a lucky man. For X had offered to move, and he had only stared at me intermittently.
For the guy had been bigger than me, and I’m not so positive X would have had my back.
I think this thought now, from the confines of a tiny apartment in Centretown, but as for the feeling that ran my spine as I sat back down beside X and realized that she was no longer speaking to me beyond shrugs and facial ticks - I suppose that be the linger in what is left of these my Jesus Years.