Deb, The Beginning of the End

Sadly, all good things come to an end. The end began the night we went to see the Transvestite show. The end may have begun even before that. Had events unfolded as I wished, I’d have stayed in Sudbury, I’d have asked Deb to marry me, got a job, and I’d have raised two to four Irish-Polish Canadian children. I was young, I was idealistic, I was naïve. And I had not heard a damn thing that Deb was telling me. She liked me; that much I knew. Much later on, I understood she may have loved me, too. But Deb had seen her mother give up everything for house and home and husband and children. And although she had resigned herself to her fate, her marriage had not been good, she had not been prosperous, and she had lived mainly for her family. Deb vowed that would not be her lot in life, she vowed that she would have her own life, that she would make something of herself. Then I came along. I must have been the embodiment of the loss of those dreams.

So, as time wore on, I found her more distant. I grew increasingly desperate, and I probably crowded her. I know I crowded her. Maybe frightened her. Definitely scared her off. Time passed and there was more distance. I began to grow angry. There was a fight. There was no yelling; I’ve never been a yeller; if anything, I internalize anger and rage, trying to smother it; so, there were hushed tones, there was jaw clenching anger. And then more distance.
Deb hung out with the girls more, and then there was another guy. I guess that was inevitable. I have no clue where he came from, or what his relationship to her was, but I felt betrayed. Time passed. We had not seen one another for a while. Truth is, I was avoiding her. I didn’t know what I might say, only that I’d make things worse if I opened my mouth. I’d excelled at that with Roxanne. So, why not with Deb, too? One night she approached me, said there was “a get together in her room and would I like to join them?”
“Who’s there,” I asked. She rattled off some names; I knew all but the one. I wanted to go, I wanted to be near her. But I didn’t go. I couldn’t bear to be banished across the room and see her cozy up to another guy. I just could not bear that. I was devastated, all over again, felt a burning in my chest and a tightness rise up in my throat, all but choking me off. I bit back tears, said maybe later, and didn’t go. I shut my door, thought myself the coward I knew myself to be, and buried my agony in my pillow and wept.
I hung out more and more with Henri Guenette, then with T.J. Quenelle. Treffle Jay. I’d never met a guy named Treffle, before. But Treffle drank, and by then, so did I again, even though I could ill afford to, financially, and emotionally. But T.J. was a distraction. T.J. had an Austin Mini, the first I’d ever seen, the first I’d ever rode in. I recall having to look up at the driver of a VW Bug next to us and thinking it unbelievably ridiculous being seated in a car that had wheels that were no larger than a foot in radius. I began to giggle, then lost control of myself and laughed so hard I began to cramp up. It was not the Mini. It was not Bug. I was losing control of myself.
Time passed. Fire alarms were pulled in the dead of night. You could always tell if someone was tying one on in Res. Weekday, weekend, no matter; when someone tied one on, someone pulled the fire alarm. T.J. came out yelling, “Rats! It’s those damn rats! They’re in the walls, they’re in the wiring. They’ve taken over the administration!” Deb approached me on some of these occasions. I made nice. I talked, we laughed. I kept my distance.
I began to keep to my room, door closed. The burning lump of anger and regret rarely left my chest. My eyes hardened, most likely. My circle dwindled. I read more. I recall Henri and I reading the same book concurrently, a sequel to a fav of ours back in high school. The supposed main character of the trilogy died, and Henri rushed down from the 2^nd floor to share his shock. My door was actually open again, by then. “Did you get there?” he asked, not wanting to spoil the surprise. I looked up. “Allanon?” I asked, already there, already in the know, “Yeah,” I said, my voice a dull monotone in my ears. I must have smiled. I must have appeared as shocked and thrilled by it as he was. Henri looked pleased.
I was amused, on occasion. I laughed when I heard about Henri and his 2^nd floor circle having kicked bottle caps through the gap under a neighbour’s room. Her parents were visiting, and she’d spent hours cleaning her room, getting it just so. She and they went to lunch, and while they were gone, Henri and the others kicked about a hundred caps into her room. They’d fly in all directions when they cleared the door. Her face fell when she opened the door and saw her room littered with caps. Her father thought it rather funny, I was told. Her mother didn’t. But I did.
I listened intently, and without a hint of jealousy, as Henri told me about his hook-ups, and then his girlfriend. He tried to hook me up. I presumed to be with the girl for a while, but it was obvious to even me that she was not into me. Maybe I gave off a glow of heartache. If I had, she showed no desire to lift me up, fix me, or save me.
I began to think about escape, much as I had in Haileybury. I concocted an idiotic belief that I needed the Old Boy’s name behind me if I were to get a job in my most hated chosen profession, so I applied to go back. What was I thinking? I wasn’t. That comforting habit had reasserted itself. I applied, and God help me, I accepted. So, I was leaving yet another space, this one the happiest and most comforting I had ever known.
Deb and I settled into a quiet truce. We said hi, we avoided one another, until one of our circle had had enough. A Cochrane girl, she had little patience for bullshit. She cornered me, and asked me, what the fuck, in so many words. She said, Deb misses you. I hung my head and mumbled something, but she’d have none of that, either. Talk to her, she said.
So I did. The truce warmed. Deb seemed relieved and spoke about how stupid it had been that we’d both thought the other mad at one another, and over nothing. I did not ask her about the other guy. I hadn’t seen him about, but I hadn’t looked for him, either. I didn’t see the point of mentioning it (him), by then. I told her that I was leaving, and she seemed sincerely disappointed that I’d decided to go. I too had begun to regret my decision, but I’d always been tenacious in my follow through of bad decisions, so why stop now?
That’s why that night that she and I and Evan had spent together while all the others were out at the Brian Adam’s concert had been so special to me. We were saying goodbye.
That memory guts me to this day, 30 years on. Subtext.