Chris

Chris Cooper was one of my best friends through high school. We rekindled that friendship over the years, first when I was in my last year of college, and then whenever we crossed paths.

We all had pimples in puberty. No matter how carefully we washed, no matter how much deep cleaning astringent used, they found a way to make their presence known, usually within twenty-four hours of a school dance.

Chris was not so lucky. Chris had acne. Chronic acne. I discovered through him that acne was a curse and that one stricken with it was not dirty, not unwashed, and that those afflicted sometimes took medication to combat the condition. Chris had medicated cream. It was rarely effective. I’m sure the acne took its toll on his self-esteem. It must have. Luckily for Chris he had friends that saw beyond those abscesses and pustules. There were days we might be taken aback by them after seeing that day’s fresh batch, but those spots faded rapidly to nothing in our eyes because we had our own fresh batches too, didn’t we.

What we saw was Chris. Smart Chris. Clever Chris. Chris, who breezed through high school while we studied and studied and studied to keep up with what seemed to come naturally to him. Yet Chris was not the pocket protector sort, either. He was one of the first to drive, he fished, he had a phenomenal album collection, far better than mine, far more inclusive, far more diverse. I give thanks and praise to Chris for unknowingly guiding me in my evolution of choice.

Chris participated in track, too. He wasn’t fast. He knew that. But he could go the distance, able to run distances that had me laid out like a gasping corpse. He was a complex, diverse, interesting person. As we all were. But he was likely as unsure of himself as we all were, too. John Lavric and Marc Charette would know far better than I would though. As close as I was to Chris, I spent more and more time at the pool and we drifted apart some, even if I didn’t realize it then. I can’t say that I knew what was going on in his life in those latter high school years. I don’t recall Chris dating much, if at all. That may have been due to the acne. That may have been due to Chris’s inner response to that acne. He began to date some in university. He married some time afterwards. I suppose Chris and I were much alike in that aspect.

But where I seemed to slowly gain steam as a student, Chris was faltering when we reconnected in Sudbury, he at Laurentian and me at Cambrian, if you can call his still getting higher GPAs than me faltering. But I didn’t want to be a doctor. Chris did. His father was a doctor and he wanted to follow in his footsteps. But no matter how hard he studied in pre-med he couldn’t make the cut. Competition was fierce and the bell curve defeated him, so he changed course and focused on bio-chem and life labs. He did well at it. He always did well in chemistry, but then again, Chris always did well at every subject, as I recall.

Then I left Sudbury for London and Chris disappeared from my life for a while.

Then one day I was hanging out in the humidor room in Finn McCool’s when I saw what I thought was a familiar face walk in and toss a backpack into the space between the coffee table and comfy couch he flopped into.

He took a pull from his beer before I said, “Chris?”

He seemed startled, as one does when not expecting to hear one’s name in a strange place, because this was a strange place in a way. He’d been away for years and when you’ve been away for years you don’t expect to run into someone you know; indeed, you expect that everyone you knew had moved on, much as you had.

He spun. He recognized me. We both beamed. He shook hands but that wasn’t good enough because we drew one another in and hugged like brothers. He was up to visit his parents for the long weekend, he said, and had just stepped off the bus, he said, and was waiting for his old man to finish work, so he thought he’d have a beer while he waited.

We caught up. I told him about Kidd and what I’d been up to, my travels, a little about my off and on stumbles at I called a love-life, because he asked, and Chris told me a little of his. He never became a doctor. He finished bio-chem and life sciences and landed in Ottawa, working for the government. He had a girlfriend. I was jealous and very happy for him, what with the misery he’d endured back in school.

I asked him what his plans were for the weekend. There was a concert in Hollinger Park the next day. I asked him if he was interested and wanted to go, if he wasn’t that busy with family throughout the weekend. He thought on it, said that it sounded great. We decided to meet at Finn’s again the next day before heading over.

I bought two tickets that next morning. I was already going to go, but if he were going too, I thought I’d save the time and him the money and not have to wait in line when the time came. Then I got a call at noon.

“Dave,” Chris said. I heard an apology in his tone. “You’ll never guess where I am; I’m in Gore Bay and it’s beautiful.” His parents had decided that since Chris was up, it would be great for the family to head down to their cottage just off the Island.

I told him that sounded great, feeling my stomach drop a little, realizing that he was probably not going to go to the concert with me.

I had no idea where Gore Bay was. I looked at a map. It was six hours away. Needless to say, Chris did not make it. I didn’t see Chris again for years.

When I did, Bev and I were together. We had made our second trip to Manitoulin and decided to stop into the Little Current Beer Store to drop off our empties after our week at her family’s camp. We were just leaving when we spotted Chris pulling in. He got out of his vehicle and hailed me. We shook hands and hugged like brothers again.

We introduced our wives and asked the usual questions. They’d just arrived and were stocking up. We had another five hours ahead of us. We spoke for no more than ten minutes. The clouds were gathering overhead, ominously indigo as though night was falling. The wind was picking up. We shook and hugged again and were on our way. That was the last time I ever saw Chris.

A few years later, Bev brought me the paper and handed it to me.

“Isn’t that your friend?” she asked.

I stared in disbelief at Chris’s obituary. He’d died after a courageous but brief battle with lung cancer.

He was only forty years old.

I felt tears well up. My throat closed off. I had to leave the room for a while and be alone with my grief.

I miss him still.

Days of Welcome

I decided to buy a computer. I’d put it off long enough, not knowing what I’d actually do with it. Everyone I knew who had one just played videogames with them, or signed up on ICQ (the messenger of the time) and talked to random people around the world about the weather. I had no clue why anyone would want to do that. Why not spend the energy getting to know the people you knew, or people who you met who you’d actually see face to face.

Granted, the internet was relatively new. I suppose it wasn’t by then, it was 1998, and the internet had only been around since about 1992, but you had to seriously know what you were doing with a computer back then. Windows 95 and Netscape changed all that. So I bought one. And pretty well just played video games on it.

But I began to see other uses, too. I discovered that there were dating sites on the net, and since the prospect of my meeting women through my friends was bleak at best, I thought I’d give modern technology a shot. There weren’t a lot of local women on them, not by comparison, but we were only just beginning to dip our toes in the modern age, or at least I was. I crossed my fingers and dove in.
Not much happened for a while. Slow start, small steps.

Neil had dropped out of university by then. He too was floundering. Like me, he was getting on, relatively speaking, and still had no clue what he wanted to do with his life. We hung out more and more, struck up a D&D game, grasping at the past as we were unsure about the future.

He was doing a little better than I was. Many of his friends were still in town. He was dating Sharon (not Martin, St. Jean). He may not have known what sort of career he was striving for, but he was firmly grounded.

He introduced me to the Welcome Tavern. I knew it existed, but I had never been in it. Not true. I’d been in it once, back when I was a student. My car pool of students had met up there once to bid farewell to the summer, years ago. It had been an old guys’ bar then. As far as I knew it, it still was. I was wrong.

Wayne Brown had bought it, and had transformed it by happenstance. Wayne put in a new Jukebox, banishing all country except the outlaw sort, Cash and Jennings and the sort. He began to bring it bands. Small bands, up-and-comers from down South, local bands with small followings. The university crowd, unhappy with the usual favoured establishments, heard about Wayne’s and what he was doing with it and opted to make his their own, much to the chagrin of the old guys who were finding themselves being pressed out.

Neil dragged me in there to see Babelfish, a little local band slapped together by his friends, John Huggins, John Tunnicliffe and Lee Hannigan. I was impressed. The Welcome was exactly as I remembered it, yet it was completely different. A few old guys still scowled at the trespassers from the dark corners, but it had a whole new vibe. And the price was right. The price of beer had rolled back by a decade.

I still began my weekend evenings at Casey’s (I’ve always been one for misguided loyalties), but I vacated it a couple hours later to walk down the hill to that shabby old Welcome, where even Dawson and crowd had begun to frequent, owing to Wayne Bozzer’s attendance. Bozzer and Brown were old friends. And Dawson had toiled alongside Bozzer at the college with SAC to book bands for the college pubs, so they were all one big happy clique. Another I’d joined the hazy peripheral vision of, one I was not afforded the privilege of being taught the secret handshake to. Not a problem. I knew where I stood with them now. I was filler at a party. I was a fallback when all plans fell through. I was their failsafe.
But not with Neil. Neil called me. Neil made plans with me. But Neil had also begun to work with the MNR, fighting fires by then too, so Neil was beginning to be away, hanging his duffel in Chapleau a lot.

I rekindled a few tentative friendships from Haileybury while at the Welcome, with Scott Smith, with Peter Kangas, with some of their hangers-on. We had a shared history, even if we’d never been friends while there. We recalled the Matabanick Hotel, the Haileybury School of Mines, survey classes and chemistry labs. And school sponsored curling bonspiels. I recall us sitting together after my match, nursing beers, watching Boston play “More Than a Feeling” on MTV when they, Scott and Pete, decided to pool their resources. They bought twenty bucks worth of Nevada tickets and won a hundred. Pay-dirt! Their weekend had been funded. They tried that same trick the next weekend. They pooled what bills and change they had, collected their tickets, and began to rip open the perforated tabs. Hope slipped away as the pile of lost chances piled up on the table before them, and then deserted them altogether when the final two came out losers, too. They lost what was left of their weekly budget on a whim, they skulked home wondering who they could hit up for some beer.

Neil called me one week to say that Ron Hawkins was coming to the Welcome.

“Who?” I asked. My synapses weren’t firing.

“Ron Hawkins,” he said. “Ron Hawkins of Lowest of the Low!”

We bought tickets early. Good thing, too. They sold out in no time. It’s not like the Welcome was a big place.

The night came. We arrived at what we thought was an early hour. And found the bar already full to the rafters. We carved out a spot along the back wall, bought our beers and awaited Ron and his new band. It was the Rusty Nails. But they’d yet to record anything. Ron was touring his solo material he’d just released: The Secret of My Excess.

He came down from his fleabag rooms upstairs and inched to the “stage.” We’ll call the space cleared of tables a stage. We were no more than twenty-five feet away, directly in line with the speakers.
Need I say that it was loud? ‘Nuff said.

Between sets Neil and I pressed forward to meet the man. He was amicable, he thanked us for coming out (the usual cliché heard from all performers when met). He was likely stoned. He admits now to the unlikelihood, and miracle, of his survival of that period of his life, and he must have had really high tolerance when we met him, because we couldn’t tell. I bought his solo CD. I got him to sign it. Neil bought his cassette. Ron signed that, too. We made small talk. He was eloquent. We shook his hand. He promptly forgot our very existence.

I think my ears rang for a week.

A Touch of Envy

The Casey’s crowd took an annual trip to Buffalo to watch the Bills play. Why the Bills? Proximity I suppose; that and Brian Reid was a Bills fan.

I never went. Not once. I really wasn’t a football fan, not really. I watched the CFL sporadically, more often later than then, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to go. It looked like fun, taking a road trip with a bunch of guys I knew. I thought it might open up my social circle, make me more friends, and get me out of my weekly rut. I just didn’t have the holidays to spare in those days. It took years to accrue four weeks holidays at Kidd. It still does for P&M (Production and Maintenance). I’m not certain when they began to go. I became aware of them later on, and by that time I’d begun investing in a two-week international adventure and a Stratford road trip, usually with a stop in Toronto to watch the Jays.

I’d mentioned that I only had one week’s holidays my first year at Kidd. I had two weeks in my second and third years, three weeks in my fourth and fifth. It wasn’t until 1994 that I finally had four weeks, and that was the year I really began to travel. Prior to that, I was rather limited to what I would, could, do.

I really couldn’t tell you what I did with my holidays in those early years of employment. Not much. Garry was still in town, doing his accounting placement at Ross Pope, deciding he didn’t actually want to be an accountant. Henri was in town, working for the city, then Aquarius Mines. Neil was in town holidays, summers, and for a time after dropping out of university. I spent time hanging out with them. I spent time trying to convince my friends to go somewhere with me, something they never did for a number of reasons. Long story short, I didn’t do much. I hung out. I spent weekends at Casey’s and Dirty Dave’s, and then Mendez’.

Because of that, I had few markers to chart my progression through those melancholy years. They got all mixed up and jumbled together in my mind, taking some thought after all these years to disentangle. Further research resolved some of these, requiring corrections to my timeline. That’s nothing new. If you recall, I’ve had to do this before. You wouldn’t have known had I carried on, but I would, and I’d have felt bad about it, so here’s what I did do to set things straight:

1989: I began work

1990: I bought my first car, the Pontiac Sunbird

1990: Blue Jays with Henri

1991: Sudbury and the Watchmen

1994: Jamaica

1995: Jamaica 2

1996: Caribbean Cruise (with Henri and Sylvie) mid-winter; and my first Stratford trip, “Waiting for Godot” and “Sweet Bird of Youth.”

After that, I began hearing about the Buffalo trip.

I watched Mike Reid post a sheet to the bar. When I asked him about it, he told me that he and Brian were organizing an autumn football trip. The fee was included. Not being much of an NFL fan, and not having any holidays left for the year, I put it out of my mind.

It was only after they returned and I heard their stories that I wished that I’d gone. It sounded like fun. Mike and Brian had gone, obviously, their having organized it. Dave Payne and Pete Cassidy, too. Peter Vernick, among others. But in some ways, I was also glad I hadn’t. The drinking began as they climbed into the bus, continuing until they stepped back off in Timmins. I don’t think they actually remembered the game. I’m certain they didn’t. They’d drank way too much to remember anything. What they did remember was the comradery. I was jealous of that.

Their tickets were crap those first years, usually nose-bleeds in line with the visitors’ end zone. They’d begun to plan too late for good ones. But as the trip became an annual event, a time-honoured tradition, the week was set aside by all as a given, they booked earlier and gained better and better tickets. They added Leafs games later, too. It was an event, not to be missed by those dedicated attendees.

“You’ve got to go,” some said.

So, one year I watched the game they were set to see. Bills and the 49ers. Being the bookish sort, I grabbed a book and a pot of tea and settled in front of the set.

They returned with stories of how great the game was. The Greatest Ever, in fact. I begged to differ.

“How drunk were you?” I asked.

They shrugged that off. That didn’t matter, they said. It was a GREAT game, they said.
“It wasn’t that great a game,” I said. “I made a point of watching.”

They reminded me that I wasn’t much of a football fan. True enough.

But I reminded that that I had watched quite a few games while at Casey’s. I’d listened to their opinions and their comments, so, I did know the game. I did know the rules. Most of them, anyways. And I had watched the game. Sober. So, I began to describe it to them.

At the half, the score was 3-0, 49ers. There was a lot of stoppage. That in itself caused the game to drag. In fact, there were so many flags in the first half that when all the penalties were added to the forward yards gained, the 49ers had advanced 3 yards cumulative, the Bills had lost 4.

I fell asleep in the second half.

If that were my introduction to the NFL, I’d have never watched again.

Actually, I haven’t. Not really.

Cruising

1996 was a big year. It was the first year I went to Stratford, that alone would have made it noteworthy, but before that, it was the year I went on my first cruise. It would also be my last cruise in decades. That is not to say that it was a bad experience or a bad holiday, because it wasn’t; it just wasn’t what I wanted at the time. A cruise was just a floating resort, I’d learn, and I’d had my fill of resorts after peeking behind the curtain and seeing what backpacking could offer.

Henri asked me in late ‘95 if I wanted to go. He told me that he and Sylvie wanted to get away now that Eric (their firstborn) was old enough to not require Sylvie’s full attention. After all those years I’d spent trying to get him and others to go on a trip with me, I could hardly say no. If anything, I was thrilled at the prospect of travelling with friends. He told me later that his sister Cecile had expressed an interest and would be coming along, as well. The more the merrier. I’d learned that travelling alone can be a lonely affair at times.

I’d never been on a ship before; indeed, I’d never even seen one up close either, so in my humble opinion at the time, the Seawind Crown (I think that’s what its name was) was enormous. It wasn’t. It was actually quite small compared to the ships being built at the time. When Henri told me that it was older and smaller, I was actually pleased we weren’t on one of those larger boats. I expected the passengers on a smaller ship to be friendlier than those on a larger one. We’d meet more people, I thought.

I was wrong on that count; there were well over a thousand passengers on board, and as the ship was “small,” dinner was set in two seatings. We’d opted for the second seating on the advice of our travel agent on the pretense that we would not be in a rush to get ready for dinner after shore excursions. That sounded like sound advice. It was, and it wasn’t. Our later dinner was served while the shows were being performed, so we didn’t see any of them.

I thought we’d meet people after the shows. I was wrong on that count, too. The Seawind Crown became a ghost ship after the shows were done, and Henri and Sylvie went to bed early, far earlier than I did. I suppose the casino was hopping until all hours, but I was not a gambler, and all the whoops and bells and jangling of the slot machines drove me out of my mind, so I stayed clear. I did haunt the other bars looking for people, the nightclub, the disco, the piano bar, the forward and aft lounges, but there was almost nobody in them. I’d wander in, see a table or two in attendance, and within the hour, they’d throw back their nightcaps and tootled off to bed.

I began to observe the other passengers day and night to discover who was actually on that boat with us and decode their habits. Most aboard were newlyweds and octogenarians. They both went to bed early for reasons I need not explain. There was at least one extended family, Italian, their parents looking more harried and exhausted as the week wore on. But there were few singles that I could see. There was the staff, but the staff were under strict instructions not to fraternize with the guests. I did get to know the bartenders. And they got to know me by name.

But those girls I did see were young, too young. Or Italian and there was a language barrier. But hope abounds. I’d had a couple holiday romances and was hoping for a third.

Alas, I found myself wandering the halls by myself late at night, the self-described ghost of the Seawind Crown. It was quiet. It was eerie at times how quiet it could be.

Henri was gracious enough to give me a wake-up call each morning at 7 am. Henri and Sylvie were always up early, they were still on baby time, hence their early to bed, early to rise schedule while on board. If not for him, I’m sure I’d have missed a few excursions. There weren’t many, not that I was interested in, but Henri and I signed up for all the scuba diving available. We were new divers and wanted stamps for our dive logs.

The diving was good. The diving was great. In Curacao, we dove with stingrays. I’d say we dove with sharks too, but that wasn’t entirely true. That first dive site was a walled in cove, the animals and fish trapped within. In a way it wasn’t a real dive. It was a zoo. As for the sharks, there was a glass barrier between us and them. We’d feed them through holes, careful to keep our digits away from their teeth.
Dominica was far better, the best of the trip, in fact. We dove a champagne reef, sulphurous bubbles rising us from the flat rocky seabed and curling around us. I pass a hand over one of the vents. The water was hot enough to cook my fingers were I to linger there for even a minute.

We didn’t dive while in Guadeloupe. There was little time there to do much more than step off the ship and visit the farmers market. Guadeloupe was expensive. It was dirty. The streets had ditches deeper than any I’d ever seen, mostly filled with detritus from the jungle, washed down with the last rains.
Barbados was good too, if uneventful. Getting there wasn’t. We had to leave the Caribbean shelf behind, entering the Atlantic in earnest. That evening, we watched as the crew placed airsick bags everywhere. The ship began to pitch. The ship began to roll. Passengers weebled and wobbled, a few fell down. Seasickness grew to epidemic proportions within a few hours. When Henri and I came down for dinner, there were only six other passengers in attendance. Sylvie was deathly sick, so Henri stayed out later than usual. It’s boring watching someone else sleep, after all. We cast about, taking a tour of the ghost ship by night. We even rounded the promenade, at least until we nearly pitched overboard; after that we promenaded indoors. I was rocked to sleep while listening to and feeling the ship shudder with each wave was straddled and crashed through.

We dove another flat reef in Barbados, carried along by a swift current. We couldn’t stop to get a good look at something, even had we wished to. They dropped us off on one side of the reef and picked us up by runabouts when we surfaced after spotting the “end” posts. I’m not complaining. The water was delightfully warm and clear. The day was gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. I spent my afternoon browsing the curios shops and street venders, buying some beads after haggling atrociously.

I did meet a few day-timers at the aft lounge of the ship, where I spent my steel beach days. One was a judge, and he and I spent more than a few hours sitting about chatting. There were others in that little group, those of us who weren’t chasing the bragging rights of a tan.

But every day I’d share a beer at about 4 pm with the same gentleman. He was working class like me, I imagined. He spoke in the same gruff manner I’d grown accustomed to underground. He was abundantly tattooed, had two sleeves, from collarbone to wrist, a belly and back full of them, too.
One day I asked about them. He said it was something that he and his pals did.

I read the script scrolling around one, a pair of dice. “Pair of Dice,” I read aloud, not reading it properly through his tan and mass of hair that all but obliterated all of his tats.

“Para-dice Riders,” he corrected me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s my club,” he said. “It’s a motorcycle club.”

Henri just about choked when I told him about it a little while later, after the tattooed gentleman had left with his friends to dress for their first seating.

How was I supposed to know he was part of a criminal biker gang?

I’ve never been into True Crime.

Stir It Up

That little trip to Sudbury had been fun, but it only served to whet my appetite for more.

Before long, Garry Martin was gone, and only Neil Petersen and Henri Guenette were left to me. I’d made no lasting friends at the Mine, and those guys I had begun to hang out with at Casey’s were sad, tired, boring young old men who were waiting for their turn to die. God help me, I realized that was becoming one of them. The difference between me and them is that I knew it, and I had every intention of ensuring that didn’t happen. I would not waste away in Timmins on a barstool. So, I began planning my next escape.

I asked Neil and Henri individually. They were only slightly acquainted, so it was an opportunity for them to become more so, in my view. Neil declined. No money. I couldn’t argue with that. Henri was all in this time. That was encouraging, but I wasn’t holding my breath, just yet. I’d heard that level of enthusiasm on the subject before.

The day came that we were to book the trip. We’d decided after some deliberation on Jamaica. I called Henri, asking if he wanted me to pick him up. He told me that he would drive. I waited with anticipation. This time, it was actually going to happen.

Henri pulled up, and I was out the door in a flash. I was excited and chatting endlessly. Henri was not.

He spoke up after a time, when we were on the outskirts of downtown. “I can’t go,” he said.

There it was, the expected hammer blow. “What?” I asked. “Why not?”

“Because I’m getting married,” he said.

Wow, I thought. Married. I wasn’t expecting that.

“Congratulations,” I said, trying to stir up some enthusiasm about his declaration, all the while wondering about the state of the trip I was until then stoked about. “When’s the lucky day?” I asked, not sure what else to say.

“In two and a half years,” he said.

Two and a half years? I was confused. I was bewildered. Then I felt a black rage rise up in me.

“Wow,” I said. I had just then come to the realization that I was not anyone else’s number one choice, that I would always come second. Were I to ever do something, I’d have to do it myself. I’d just come to the realization that I’d become a loner and would be one evermore.

“So, you see why I can’t go,” he said. “I’ve got to save up for the ceremony and the honeymoon.”
I was thinking about how I had waited four or five years to go on a trip with my friends, listening to them beg off, watching them leave town, and I made up my mind that if I were to wait on someone else to do anything with me, I’d die a bitter old man who’d never gone anywhere except to a bar and a barstool. I made up my mind that I’d never wait for anyone, or to rely on anyone else, ever again.

“Do you want to go for coffee?” he asked.

“Drop me at the travel agency,” I said.

“What?” he said.

I repeated what I said.

“You’re going to go without me?”

“Well I’m not going to go on your honeymoon with you, am I?” I said. Did all this play out the way I’ve said. Maybe. Probably. I have a vague memory of these phrases. It’s a largely emotional memory, and memory can be painted by anger and rage.

He dropped me off downtown. I walked in alone. I sat with the travel agent, and she asked if we should wait for my friend.

I told her I’d be going alone. She processed that, said, okay, and set about asking me where I’d like to go, what I expected out of the vacation. I said, anywhere singles go. I wanted to go somewhere where I’ll meet people, and that I wanted to party.

She booked me into Hedonism II. I had no clue about what sort of resort it was, I only knew what she told me. That it was an all-inclusive, adults only Superclub, that it was party oriented. She told me that as I’d be going by myself, I’d have to pay a single supplement, and she explained how much extra that would cost me. I paid my money, collected my tickets and vouchers and made my way to the airport when the day came.

I was nervous. I’d never been on a plane before. Oddly, I’d been in a helicopter, but never a plane. The flights went well, despite my experiencing turbulence for the first time, as well. Montego Bay drew closer, and I saw palm trees for the first time. I felt tropical heat for the first time. I was set upon by Red Caps for the first time. Everyone was eager to move my luggage two feet for 20 American dollars. I escaped with my wallet intact, found my shuttle bus, and was offered a cold Red Cap by the driver. “It’s free,” he said, after my telling him there was no way I was going to pay 20 American dollars for a beer.

Once the rest of our fellow Hedonistic passengers were herded in and collected, we were on our way. I shared a couple more beers and chatted with them on the way, never to have anything to do with them ever again once we arrived. I spied palm trees and poverty whisk past on our way to the highway, remembering how everyone had told me how beautiful Jamaica had been when they’d been there. They never mentioned the garbage shanties, the junkers, or the emaciated cows tied to trees, the overabundance of exhaust hanging in the air. Or the near death experience the Jamaican roads turned out to be.

We pulled into the resort, opulent in comparison with what I’d seen on the ride there. But there was wear at the corners, the tiles sun-bleached and scuffed. I wondered how many thousands of feet had shuffled up to the front desk before me since its last reno, how may bags had rubbed and rested up against the corners and pillars.

I signed in, showed my ID, my vouchers, my credit card, and was given a map that laid out the resort for me, a neat circle where my room was in relation to this and that. The staff bid me welcome, the maintenance staff went one further, whispering to me that should I like to party, they had the means, if I were so inclined. I expected that said means was likely to come to about 20 American dollars and might be a little Rastafarian in nature.

I found my room, opened the door with my key, and wrestled my bags inside. The room was dim and woody, the colours vividly ‘80s dark. The upholstery brown, orange and gold, as was the bed. A little musty from the humidity.

I stood by the door for a few seconds taking in the ambiance. There was a mirror above the bed, a mirror where a headboard ought to have been. A mirror lined the wall across from the bed, reflecting the other endlessly if you set yourself just so.

I dropped what bags I still carried. And laughed. I laughed so hard I bent double and crouched, my arms folded and resting on my knees.

I don’t think I’d ever seen anything so tacky in my life.

For the next two weeks, I was in pornland.

Henri

Henri and I have been friends for more than forty years. Those years have not been continuous, though. There are gaps. There was a gap towards the end of high school. There was a gap after college. There was a gap shortly after he left contracting at Kidd for contracting at Kinross Gold. He got married. He had children. He bought a trailer and then a cottage. Our interests diverged, as interests sometimes do. That said, fortyish years of acquaintance is unparalleled in my life.

We met at the Schumacher pool, that gross, smelly old beautiful concrete and cinderblock building. We were enrolled in Beginners together, otherwise we’d probably have never met. He was French, fated for Theriault, I was English, ordained for O’Gorman. He lived spitting distance from the city core, I lived out on the northern edge of town, such as it was then. It was unlikely we’d have ever met had it not been for swimming lessons. Beginners became Intermediates, then Juniors, and then Seniors. Most people stopped talking lessons there. We continued, enrolled in Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion ad Instructors. Our older sisters were helpers and guards and instructors, so I suppose we were both destined to follow along in our sisters’ wake. Such is the way of hero worship. The elder forges a path, the younger following in their footsteps.

In many ways we grew up together. He introduced Dungeons and dragons to me, we shared a few of our first beers together. We paced one another on ten-speeds, haunted arcades, crossed paths on the steps of McDonalds, and reeled drunk together at the Mattagami.

I recall his having collected me after Afternoon shift, closing bars, pooling together our small change for cigarettes, pooling together for cab fare to get us as close as that loose change allowed and still left enough for poutine at La Chaumiere. Some of those rides were torture, the centre lines diverging wildly from the hood of the cab, my mind unsure which lane the cab should follow.

He was the only person I wanted to accompany me on the Casey’s Blue Jays trip to Detroit and Toronto. He endured my browsing far too many leather shops on Yonge Street in search of the perfect leather jacket that refused to present itself, until it did, and I wrestled with whether I ought to spend that much for it.

And then there was the night at the Legion. Henri wanted to do something different. “Let’s go to the Legion,” he said.

I was unconvinced. I wanted to go someplace where girls were. But Henri was driving and I bowed to the prospect of a few games of pool over a like number of beers before moving on.

We parked and shuffled across the icy lot to the rear entrance to the basement pub below the hall. The leather jacket I’d bought was unequal to the task of warding off the bitter cold that lay across the night, pressing the smoke issued from the buildings back to the ground.

“Take your hat off,” he said as we descended the steep stairs into the pub proper.

“Why?” I asked, never having been in a legion before.

“To show respect to the soldiers who died in the War,” he said, “and if you don’t, you have to buy everyone in the place a round.”

I pulled the cap off as we passed through the door into a dry warmth of silence.

I didn’t like not wearing a hat when out of the house then. I was already tired of the less than well-meaning jokes about my failure to hang onto my hair. But I had visions of having to empty my wallet in the early hours of our evening, so off it came.

I took a good look around as we crossed the floor to the bar. A full sized snooker table dominated the space to the right, columns of brass plates etched with the names of members and the fallen behind it. A single television hung from the corner north of the table, dark then. Two ancient vets nursed a beer mid pub; otherwise the place was empty.

A pretty girl manned the bar, brunette, curvaceous. I liked her straight off. Marbled glass behind her, a wide and deep expanse of polished stainless steel before her.

We ordered glasses of draft and began to play a few games. I hate playing on a snooker table. It’s so long. I lose sight of the far pockets when I lean over the cue, and what looked straight and true is invariable off by a mile by the time the cue ball crosses its length, a humbling display of a lack of skill not apparent on the smaller billiard table.

We asked for music, but the girl said that the old guys didn’t like it, preferring the quiet for whispered conversations. We accepted that, although I was far from pleased. It was a Friday night and I wanted to listen to some music. Before long our presence filled the pub. The balls clacked together. We tried to keep our voices down out of respect for the vets and their quiet conversation and their memories and the ghosts of their long passed comrades, but boys will be boys, youth will be young. Our voices notched up a peg or two, and then a peg or two more. We were having fun.

Our pretty barmaid hushed us when delivering our next round, smiling at us while she did it. “The old guys are complaining,” she said.

“Jesus,” I whispered, casting my annoyance at the two old guys, wishing them on their way.

I got my wish an hour later after the vets shrugged on their coats and wound their scarves around their necks. And I got my music too. There wasn’t a proper sound system, but there was that little TV overlooking the pool table. She turned on Much Music and turned it up as loud as its speakers allowed before buzzing and crackling. We asked her to join us. She said she shouldn’t but she did after a while. She brought us our beer. We bused our own tables. She flirted and we flirted back. She kicked our asses at pool.

It was last call before I knew it and we had to go. We helped her clean up and waited for her halfway up the stairs as she locked up.

She hugged me out in the lot. She kissed me too.

And she kissed Henri too. He kissed her for far longer than I had, as long as I wish I had.

I thought about her from time to time, but I was not a member at the Legion so I didn’t go back. The Legion is not a place to linger in alone. Not to my mind, anyway.

Stepping Out, Part 2

Toronto was a veritable haven of order and cleanliness compared to Detroit.

And the accommodations were far better, as well. We pulled into the Royal York, my first time there. My head was filled with the tales I’d heard of Kings and Queens and Presidents, of Grey Cups and horses that ran up and down its long vaulting lobby, and of Prospector Conventions where swindlers were shot down upon leaving the elevator for having done their partners wrong. It was beautiful. It was opulent. It was home for the next few days and Henri and I were staying on for the weekend after the games.

Our arriving in Toronto had split that now newly tight group of ball fans. The Torontonians went home. The others had split into disparate groups. The girls wanted to shop. Their guys were in tow.
So, Henri and I were on our own. I was disappointed at first, but we were eager to explore the city. I’d been there with Matt a few times, so I knew my way around a bit, but that was years ago and Matt had navigated the whole time, with me along for the ride, so its geography was a little hazy. My mind had been preoccupied by the city’s overwhelming immensity at the time. The booze didn’t help much, either.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much need to navigate. The Skydome being within walking distance of the hotel, so that sense of group was lost. We all made our own way to the games individually and found ourselves funnelled up a concrete ramp up into it furthest heights, exiting behind home plate in the high 500s, only to discover our climb incomplete. Stairs steeper than ladders led to our seats, two rows down from the gulls. I looked them up while there: $4. I could see why. We were of an altitude that the workers under the dome were eye level with us. They at least were wrapped in parkas. We were not. We felt the full force of the wind blowing off the lake. It was cold. It was brisk. It had the bite of winter despite its early September’s howling.

Stories below us, those lucky patrons in the 300s were sweltering in the high sun. We spied shorts, tank tops and sandals. I was envious.

We shooed venders away when they hawked ice cream bars. One tapped an offending bar against a railing, its ring carried brightly on the icy air. He changed up his bright happy hawking calls thereafter to, “Something hard; something frozen!”

“Bring coffee!” I yelled back to him. We all did. He did, much to our surprise and delight.

Those seats were crap! We couldn’t tell where the ball was headed unless it was coming straight at us. We saw a few people below us reach out a little in preparation of its arrival, but there was never a hope of its ever reaching us. Not even Hercules could have batted a ball that high up.

I’d had enough after my first ineffectual coffee, caving in to my first impulse buy of the trip, a black Skydome knit sweater. Henri bought a Jay’s sweatshirt, team blue. Both were quite fetching. Both lasted us for years.

The second game was no warmer. By the 4^th inning we retreated to the bar two stories below us where we found two of our group’s number, the two eldest who’d had the sense not to freeze their tender bits off for the sake of $4 tickets. Where we’d thought to duck out of the cold for a cold one before braving the winds again amongst the gulls, we changed our minds when we saw them there and they invited us to join them, rekindling our earlier Detroit comradery. A half beer later, a third of the others joined us. By the 7^th inning stretch we were all there, watching the game on the surrounding TVs, comfortably basking in the heat streaming through the long wall of reclined windows that surrounded us.

The game over, we scattered to the four winds, and Henri and I were wondering what to do. Henri was all for cruising Yonge Street, but I wanted to head back to the Skydome Hard Rock Café; there was a stunning woman behind the bar the night before and I’d taken to her. I ought to have gone with Henri, but the call of a pretty face had overwhelmed my disdain for overpriced beer; besides, I’d done Yonge Street before, I said to myself. There were a few good bars there, but most of the better entertainment had moved on to Queen and Bathurst and Ossington years before. Henri went without me, probably pissed at me for my obvious foolishness.

Stupid of me, really. Girls in Timmins didn’t have much to do with me, so why did I think a sexy bartender in Toronto would take an interest and show me her world. But hope abounds.

Two beer later, seated in a much depleted Hard Rock café, owing to their not being a game played that night, I saw the error of my ways, but Yonge was a ways walk away, and I had no doubt that I’d ever find Henri in all those bars, so I headed up to John Street to Queen Street W and the Horseshoe, making a pit stop at a couple pubs along the way.

Later, back at the hotel, Henri told me that he’d had much the same night as I did, hopping from bar to bar. He told me about the ones he’d been in, and the ones he’d almost gone in but hadn’t. They looked too seedy, too rough, too scary. Had I been with him he’d had gone in, he said, though how having me in tow accounted for strength in numbers was beyond my ken. My rough and tumble side had never scared anyone, let alone the seasoned toughs that would have hung out in dives like those Henri had seen, but I’d always had a reckless streak. I’d probably have gone in without a second thought. I was always oblivious to the possible dangers around me when in the big city. It may have been all those dives Matt and I crawled through while in university. I must have made Henri nervous more than once when I decided to take a short cut through some alleyway.

Keith knew we were in town, so we made plans. He and Laura met us in the lobby.

“Where do you want to go,” they asked.

We’re in your hands, we said. Where’s good, we asked.

He suggested The Big Bop.

I’d never seen anything like it. Three bars in one, and black as pitch. Red pin lights and glow strips marked the walls and stairs, just bright enough to say, “Whoa, there!” STOP WALKING! WATCH YOUR STEP!

I loved the ambiance. I couldn’t see shit, only silhouettes, cigarettes glowing, the undulating sea of hats and heads, and those hellishly insignificant lights and strips. Waitresses carried little flashlights to match faces to drinks.

The band played Petty and Mellencamp covers on the first floor. The second-floor blared electronic dance, the third beat urban rap. Little alcoves lined the stairs, the sweet reek of cannabis rising from one level to the next. A ratty old wingback chair and a table lamp might fill one, where couple necked and groped, where couples congregated to smoke their weed. One music or another was piped into those narrow spaces from one bar or another. I was hopelessly lost in no time. Okay, I wasn’t that lost, but it’s fun to think so.

Keith and Laura left early by our reckoning. They were dependent on the TTC to get them home and had a ways to get there and no desire to pay a cab the fare for the distance they had to go.

Henri and I watched them go and discovered that we were exhausted. We decided to retreat to the Library Bar at the Royal York for one last drink on our last night away from home.

I promptly took a short cut and was already deep into another alley without him.

“What are you doing?” he said, whispering loudly and harshly, unable to keep the exasperation from his voice.

I shrugged his concern off. “Taking a short cut,” I said. “Look, you can see the end of it. Who could possibly be hiding in here?”

I didn’t bother to mention the puke at my feet. Like I said, reckless, oblivious.

Stepping Out

It took some doing to get me off that barstool, despite my appetite being whetted by that small step to Sudbury. Not that I was idle, even though I was. My days and weeks were full, or so it seemed. I was not bored. New people entered and exited my life with increasing regularity. But inertia is a powerful thing. There’s comfort in familiarity, regardless its nature.

I began to feel a void in my life. Incomplete. I flirted some, first with Holly Barkwell, then with Janice Milton. Janice Kaufman and Cathy Walli, but sparks never flew. What seemed like interest was likely only curiosity. My sister begged to differ, telling me on those rare occasions that she was out with me, after my future ex-brother-in-law had become just that, that once or twice she’d caught one or another of them checking me out with more than just curiosity. Or so she said. I didn’t believe her, or more accurately, I wouldn’t let myself believe her; but her words were seductive. They seduced me with hope. So, I decided to try. But when I did pursue them there was always reluctance, an excuse, a sudden illness when time came for me to pick them up for a movie.

That led to more time spent on that barstool, a spectator to all that unfolded around me.

I suppose spending time on the barstool paid off, in time. I won some tickets to see the Blue Jays play in Detroit and in Toronto, plane fare and hotels included. I really didn’t know a thing about baseball. I’d stare up at the screen while at Casey’s, belly to the bar and beer in hand for more than a few games, but I didn’t care if I watched or not. I listened to some of those sad lonely souls argue and debate this play and that, how this player was “due” and that one not, but I was more of a movie guy, a bookish sort far more interested in story and character than the clichés spewed by the fan boys. I didn’t want to spend a week with any of them, so I asked Henri if he wanted to go

Henri didn’t know much about baseball back then, either, but he accepted, and began to watch games while he wiled away the hours at the city’s fresh water plant, where he was summering.

We flew to Windsor for the first games and met the other winners at the meet and greet. We were all Ontarians, but it was remarked to us that we were from the “super-Casey’s.” Apparently, even those from Sudbury weren’t aware how few “poplar” bars there were in Timmins where we Gen-X could gather to listen and dance to the only music we were interested in. Dinner was had, then we were on the bus to Detroit for the first game in the venerable Tiger Stadium. I was of mixed loyalty at those first games. I’d won Jays tickets, but I had been introduced to baseball while in London at Joe Kool’s, the unofficial Detroit Tigers foreign headquarters. But for that trip, I bought a Jays cap, and rooted for our “home” team while away.

Detroit was an awakening. We left Windsor in its manicured glory and spotted the burned husk of a thousand and one Devil’s Nights, as burnt and broken as Beirut at the time. Shattered glass caught the low light, a blackened and windowless church standing lonely vigil in its empty grounds.

I loved Tiger Stadium! It was like an open-air cathedral. We gained entry at field level, the green stretching out before us before climbing back up to our seats in all their obstructed glory.

I bought hot dogs and beer for Henri and me, mistakenly resting them on the head of the guy seated in front of me. His quick anger fled upon hearing my largely Canadian “sorry!” I offered him a hot dog or beer for his trouble but he declined, now laughing with the rest of us.

The Jays won. The Jays were great that year, making a run for the pennant. The bus lost. One of its windows was smashed, but shatterproof, the glass remained fixed in place. We left. There were cops on every corner, baring arms I’d only seen in movies.

We were halfway across the Ambassador Bridge when someone declared that we were missing someone. How the hell could we be missing someone, I wondered. Didn’t we do roll call? I thought we had. We turned around. In the middle of the Ambassador bridge! Alone at first, I watched as the big bus inched back and forth in its graceless U-turn, the distant traffic bearing down on us.

“Any time now,” we yelled as that distant traffic resolved into cars.

We were missing more than one. Fully four people decided to cross the street to watch the game from an authentic Irish American pub down the street. The game over, they walked back, only to see their ride gone when they got back to the stadium.

Back at the hotel we convened to drink and get to know one another better and relive our American adventure. What was the pub like? How was the crowd? Mainly Black, we were told. Were they nervous, we wondered, our heads filled with Hill Street Blues and the like. No, they said, they were baseball fans.

We still had another game to see in Detroit before moving on to Toronto.

I drank Molson Ex, much to the other’s amusement. It was a Labatt sponsored event, after all.

Life in a Northern Town

It’s not easy living in a cliquey town outside of one. Cliques are close knit. Cliques have stood the test of time. They close ranks. They do not accept new members. So, being friends with a member of one is like pitching a tent outside a walled city. You can hang out with them, but you’ll never be closer than arms-length.

I had yet to realize this, but upon returning home I’d lost my clique. Garry Martin had returned ever so briefly after graduating from math and accounting at Waterloo, only to discover that he hated accounting. He much preferred teaching, so he accepted a temp position doing just that in Moosonee and having done that was accepted into teaching college. He and his sister Sharon and I hung out for the duration, until they too found their way. Sharon found the love of her life and drifted away personally if not geographically. And then Garry too was gone. The next time he returned, he had an older woman in tow. He’d met her in teacher’s college. He was co-habituating. He was all but married. And then he was. And once married, he almost never returned. It seems she hated Timmins. Two visits were enough for her. So left the boy who’d been as much a brother to me as any. I’ve never seen him again.

Henri Guenette and Neil Petersen filled the void.

But Henri was busy much of the time. Henri worked weekends. Henri had little desire to remain a security guard after dropping out of college, and had strived for better, for more money, for what opportunities he could root out. He left security at Aquarius Mine for the mill, then underground, then the hoist. And before long, he left there for Redpath and even longer hours. In time, he too met the girl that was to be his wife, and he too began to slip away.

And soon that left only Neil. And Neil’s clique. And that’s when I realized that I could have friends that were not actually my friends but someone else’s friends.

I looked around at work. There’d been quite a few of us who’d been hired before the gates crashed down at Kidd. We were of a similar age, so I began to try to spend more time with some of them. But time passes quickly with the young; and if you’re not in through the gate early on, you might have not come at all. Those others were in production crews. They saw a lot of each other. I was sequestered behind vent doors bearing signs that read “Authorized Personnel Only.” When I did see them out, they were already a closed group, and my being a year or two older than them didn’t help much either. Nor my having spent 5 years in postsecondary. One’s personal view of the world can be remarkably different from those who’d gone straight to work after high school.

So, Neil and Neil’s friends were where I lingered for a time. Where I was definitely the old man in the midst. Four years older. Out of school. A miner. A Man. Hair noticeably thinning. I must have seemed quite a catch for the girls within their circle.

I shouldn’t complain. They were good years. Lots of new music. Some local bands, Babelfish, Authority, Skinny and the Beer Guts, among others. Large gatherings at Parello’s farm. Day in the Parking Lot at Casey’s. Some newer acquaintances met at Casey’s.

Generation X began to kick in, in earnest. I evolved from the pre-grunge punk Plaid-Lad kid, fading to black. Trainers were traded for Docs. They blended nicely with my Ray Bans, my Levi’s jacket and Donegal tweed. A cigarette hung from my lips most of the time. Self-conscious of my ever so shiny top, I took to ball caps. Detroit Tigers. Why? Shades of Joe Kools, and D for David. My subtext rose. The angry young man rose up with it. The ready smile I’d always worn fled. If most people didn’t want me, what did I care? Fuck ‘em, I thought. I might meet up with them at Casey’s, but I went out alone, most often. I could keep others at arm’s length, too.

That said, I was still very close to Neil and Henri. I spent a great deal of time with each of them. But never together.

Henri and I decided we were sick of smoking and that it was time to quit. We made a bet on it. There had to be a lot of trust between us since we weren’t hanging out a lot then. Henri was spending more and more time with Sylvie by then.

But not always. The bet was still on, we were bar hopping, talking a lot about smoking, and how hard it was to quit. We noticed every cigarette lit, our eyes instantly drawn to the flash of a lighter. We decided to put a pause on the quitting and the bet, for the span of one smoke. I approached two girls seated at the table next to us, both of which had just lit up.

“Excuse me,” I said. I told them our sad little tale about our quitting and how we were both craving it so bad that we were willing to put our bet on hold. The girls gave us each a smoke, and then slid over to join us.

We were a little drunk by then. Me, more so than Henri, I think. We bought a round to thank them for saving us. Then they bought us one. Then the girls had the idea of doing Sambuca shots. I decided to make mine a Flaming Sambuca. I lit it. But as it was a very tall and narrow shot glass I inhaled it through a straw. When I say inhaled, I mean inhaled. The liqueur disappeared from the glass, up the straw, the flame following it. I don’t actually think that the flame followed the booze up the straw, but the fire certainly did.

The Sambuca hit my stomach, and the colour drained from my face.

Henri asked, “Are you okay?”

I swallowed hard. But the nausea wouldn’t be kept down.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m leaving now.” I threw on my coat and was out the door.
I’d broken one of the important rules of drinking taught to me long years prior. Don’t drink shots and shooters; they’re only puke in a glass. When Henri had caught up with me I was power puking out on the street.

After I’d walked it off, Henri told me, “Too bad you took off like a bat out of hell; that girl wanted to rip you clothes off.”

No matter. I was not going back in there smelling of sick.