I’d weathered my summer layoff, made my money at the Dome. Bonus had filled in the loss of a week’s pay, and then some. It was not so different at the Dome. There was far more security, I’d had to endure periodic searches, but by and large, underground was underground. Cap lamps and coveralls. I had to prove myself, though. The Dome had so many students that year, I had to compete with all the others to gain the better bonus jobs.
My first shifts were as ditch cleaner, then ditch digger. Then I was trained as a “valve man.” I had to fill ore cars for a battery locomotive trolley. A week later, I was the locomotive operator. A month later, I was hauling ore for a better bonus stope. I finished my summer as a block-holer in a scram. That means I drilled holes in oversize muck that would not fit down the stope shoot, and blasted them. I filled in on occasion with the long-hole blasters, mainly man hauling explosives up a raise to a stope being loaded. Paychecks were good. Bonus checks were better. They were the crème that topped the cake.
Allergies were not. I had a bad outbreak of hives that summer. This is not to say that I had not been plagued by them every year since grade 5, because I had; this is to say that this may have been the worst case I’d had since grade 5. I blame stress. There were days that the hives were so bad that I could not stand to have my helmet sit atop my head. They itched horribly, my scalp crawling under its light pressure, so badly that on one break, I whipped it off and hurled it across the stope. It was a stupid thing to do, more a reaction than a thought, as I had to walk over to retrieve the damn thing. But they passed, as did the summer.
I was adamant that I would not stay in residence again. I was just beginning to grow up and get my act together, so, the last thing I needed was that level of regression again. Would it have been fun? Yes, it would have been fun, but I had no desire to see my GPA regain casualty status again. My first year at HSM had been a near disaster, my average a lofty 2.15; my year in Cambrian had been little better, about 2.25, an improvement, but still a disaster; the past year had been better, far better: 2.7. I was getting somewhere, where, I had no clue, but at least I was beginning to feel less of a failure than I had presumed myself to be. I was older and a far more experienced student. I could just about rhyme off what would be on any given test or exam by the abundance of detail in my notes. I just had little interest in what I was studying. I was far more interested in history and literature, archeology, sociology and the like. People interested me. The march of time interested me. Movies and novels, Vietnam, the Great War, and the War of the Rings.
This is not to say I was any more mature. I was still an adolescent in an aging body. I still haunted the bars on weekends. I still went to parties with my old friends. At one such, Deb Huisson must have taken it upon herself to sober me up some, so she insisted we talk a walk. I’d developed some feelings for Deb that summer, so I agreed without much coaxing. Halfway through, I had to pee. The urge became insistent. So, I told Deb to keep watch. She whispered, “Don’t!” But I was in such need that I told her not to worry, that it was the middle of the night, so who would know? I nestled up to a hedge, and began to relieve myself. I heard a rapping at a window. I looked up, and saw a middle-aged woman beating on her picture window. God knows why she was up at that hour, but there she was, looking down on me up against her bushes. Deb rasped a curse and hid. But there was nothing to be done but finish. If she called the cops, we’d be long gone by the time they arrived. So, I waved the woman off, zipped up, and got on my merry way. Deb kept looking over her shoulder. I did not. “Come on,” I said, reaching out for her hand. She took it, and we ran a little, mainly because it made her feel better to put some distance between us and that bush.
I was even less mature when in Aubrey Bergin’s company. I’d met Aubrey a couple years prior in the Empire. We ogled women on the dancefloor. We giggled like schoolboys at the most childish things. I was still only 18 when we met, already a regular at the Empire. One day, a waitress met us at the door with a stamp in hand, and told us to proffer our fists. “Why?” we asked.
Later, still in my childish ignorance, I began to call a rather attractive Asian woman Jizzum. Why? Because that’s what Aubrey and his friends called her, and Aubrey and his friends were her friends. At first, she took it in stride, shrugged it off. Then, when I called her that the next weekend, she lashed out, said I was a horrible person, and stormed off. I was shocked! I was confused! “What did I do?” I asked Aubrey.
“You called her, Jizzum,” he said.
I must have looked like a vacant kid, because he laughed. “Don’t you know what jizzum is?”
I didn’t want to profess ignorance, so I remained silent.
“It’s cum,” he said, and almost collapsed with laughter.
I still had a lot of growing up to do.
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