Slipping away

I was settled, somewhat. School was done. I was a working man, working shiftwork underground in the mines. I suppose I was a man by then. A young boy had referred to me as such to his mother soon afterwards, taking me by surprise. I’d never actually been called that before.

But I was still living at home under my parent’s roof. I’d returned from school as usual, no money in pocket, worked my summer, abandoned the prospect of returning to school, gotten a part-time job, was laid off, and had begun to work full-time at Kidd. Life was proceeding; life was in progress. I was drifting through it, but I couldn’t see that then.

I had plans, so maybe I wasn’t drifting, just yet. I was saving up, prepared to get my own place, an apartment first, a house in due course. I was going to buy a car. I would have my own stuff. Or so I had planned.

Cracks were starting to show. My first shift, a miner leaned into me and asked if I’d just started with Kidd. I said I had, rather proud of the accomplishment of becoming an adult. He told me that I was lucky I’d been hired at all. There were rumours of lay-offs, he said. My stomach dropped. That could not be true! Why would they have hired me just then, only to lay me off a couple months later? I brushed his doom-faring off as just that, but the sinking sensation stayed with me.

I postponed the prospect of getting my own place, just so long as the rumours subsided. They didn’t. Six months later, Kidd declared a hiring freeze. Just until the market improved, they said. I began to wonder whether coming home had been such a bright idea.

Life became a waiting game. I worked. I went out on the weekends, always with the intention of meeting someone, being introduced to someone. But I never did, and never was. Most of my friends were still at school or moved on, there were few introductions, and those girls I did meet seemed disinterested, at best. Even with my poor track record, I think I’d have noticed had someone been.
I don’t blame those girls, my self-esteem was not great; I didn’t believe girls were interested in a balding boy in his mid-20s, so I wasn’t particularly aggressive in what courtships I did attempt. When I did venture out, I was soon introduced to their “friend,” (note the presence of the boyfriend) and I found myself belly to the bar, drinking too much, and staggering home. Not what I imagine most girls were looking for in a man.

There were still a few friends living in Timmins. There was Henri, for one. There were others too, but they were largely other people’s friends, friends of those people I’d worked with at the pool. What of my high school friends? I discovered that most of my high school friends were just that, high school friends. I never saw them anymore. I suppose a good many of them had moved away. I’d never actually hung out with them back in school, so it’s not surprising that I’d lost touch with them.

For a time, there were my old pool friends, and their friends. But where once we were all just visiting, I was now the one being visited. Those visits were fun, but they would always come to an end, and were coming to an end forevermore. And I knew it. I just didn’t want to think about it. The “final” winter break was coming to a close, the last before the last ones graduated and were themselves off into their own brave new world of inevitability. Jeff and Fiona and Peter and Fran and Cathy and Sean and I and a host of others had gathered for one last outing before a good many of them were to be on their way back “home,” home being where they hung their hat, just then.

It was New Year’s Eve. Casey’s was packed. Drinks flowed. We danced, we talked, we dreaded the end of the night. At least I did. I could see the writing on the wall. Jeff was leaving, soon never to return. The night came to an end, as all nights do. Jeff and Fiona gave me a ride home. We were parked in my driveway for some time, delaying their inevitable departure. But that moment finally came, and I stepped out into the bitter cold. Jeff told me to wait. He got out of the car with me. He approached me, pulled me into a rough hug and said, “I’m going to miss you, man.”

There. He said it. It was out in the open. I clung to him for a moment, fighting back the tears that were rising, not wanting to appear a child before him.

“Me too,” I managed, patting his back hard.

I turned away and mounted the stairs without looking back. I’m lying. I risked a look back as I unlocked the door. He waved. I waved back. I all but choked. I rushed downstairs, threw off my coat at the base of the stairs and threw myself into the huge plush pillows that spilled across the cushioned storage bench that lined the wall of the rec room. I buried my face within them and wept.

That sounds childish. Maybe it was. But my childhood friends were leaving me. They were finding their way in the world, moving away, and beginning the lives they had prepared themselves for.
Without me.

I felt abandoned, lonely, and desperately alone.

End Run

It was an eventful year. I had become a good student. Attentive. Retentive. I’d found subjects I liked, courses that interested me. But I wasn’t sure where following that road would lead me, except as a teacher. I never really liked being an instructor at the pool. I wasn’t sure I had the knack for it.

There was also an age thing. I was 22, going on 23, and I was losing my hair, making me look older than I was, I suppose. I tried meeting other students, other people in my classes, those people I habitually ran into, but nothing really took.

Matt Hait and I went to a few parties, but there were a lot of Frats and Sororities in attendance. It would have been easier to breach a phalanx than break through those closed ranks, boys and girls alike. This is not to say that I didn’t try. There was a cute blonde at one, and I did make a whole-hearted attempt to get her name, to break the ice, and hopefully get her number; but she begged off, tossed off some feeble excuse about needed to go grocery shopping, and fled with her girlfriends. I wanted to leave. Matt wanted to stay.

“Seriously, man,” I said, “what IS the point? You’re not doing any better than I am.”

He had to agree. We polished off our beers, went downtown, double-fisted Souvlaki street meat, and prowled attic punk bars.

I’d made a feeble attempt at wooing Sharon Martin, Garry’s sister. I’d always thought she was cute, and as we were both in London, I thought I might give her a shot. I asked her out a few times, and though she always accepted, it always turned into a “group” date. It turned out that her friend had a crush on me. I was less attracted to her friend than I was to her.

I made a similar tentative attempt with Alison Tilly, a former Pinecrest classmate. I asked her out a few times, but she kept saying that she was dating a guy in Timmins. I reminded her that we were not in Timmins. We continued to “chum” around, and once or twice I believed myself encouraged. Once, she agreed to come up to my room, she sat on my bed with me, leafing through the LPs I’d brought down with me; and although I did lean in once or twice, gazing intently at her lips, her seating stance was enough to ward me off. I gave up. I moved on. There just wasn’t anywhere to move on to. I was beginning to discover that it was easy to find girls when in a large group, not so easy when one was trawling alone.

Needless to say, there weren’t many girls in my life. I did get a blast from some other David Leonard’s conquests, from time to time. Every so often some girl would call in the late hours to give him shit for not calling. I’d direct them to the UWO phone book listings, and there he was, his name and number right under mine. Some apologised, others hung up in a huff. One was insistent that I was lying. I told her that if she didn’t believe me, she could meet me in the pub, tomorrow after my classes. I went so far as to describe what I would wear. She thought I was blowing her off. I looked at my clock. 11:30 pm. I asked her if she was pretty. She said I ought to know. I told her that if she was that insistent, I’d meet her in the pub in 30 minutes. She paused. I asked, “Well? Are you going to meet me or not?” She was hesitant, then. “Look,” I said, “if you’re not going to meet me, I’m going back to bed.” I repeated the other David’s phone number, and said if it didn’t work out, I’d be in the pub at 3:00 pm, the next day. I was. I brought a book. She didn’t show. If she did, she didn’t grace me with her presence at my table. I mused on how Chris Cooper had suffered the same experience the year before. I, at least, was able to get some sleep.

There was a promising friendship with one of Jamie’s “friends.” He was the very embodiment of urban cool to a Northern hick from the sticks. He was gregarious. He owned porkpie hats, so maybe he’s where I got that from. He didn’t own a car, but he rented one every couple weekends, citing that renting was far cheaper than owning, admitting that he really couldn’t afford one, anyways. One weekend, we were on a beer run. We were stopped at a red light, windows down, Glass Tiger’s “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)” vibrating the panels. We were singing along. Jamie’s friend spotted a couple of girls in the car across the intersection, and began serenading them, chair dancing, pointing directly at them. He nudged me, so I accompanied him, lagging a little behind his dance moves. The girls noticed, pointed towards us, and laughed, loving the show. I couldn’t keep it up; I tried to, but I melted with laughter. The light turned green, and as we crossed, they waved, they called out to us, and we waved back. He called out to them too as we passed by, “Don’t you forget about us, you hear?” Sadly, that friendship didn’t last long. Jamie screwed him over, borrowed money, didn’t pay it back, slept with a girl he liked. He and Jamie had a row. They exchanged blows. “You use people,” he bellowed at Jamie when it was over. “You don’t give a shit about anybody but yourself!”

“See ya, kid,” he said to me as he left (stupid really; we were the same age). But I never did see him again, and that was that.

So, no girlfriend, not many friends but my housemates, Jeff and Walter, I took to myself most days. This is not to say that I didn’t have acquaintances. I did. Chris Loreto, for one (an O’Gorman friend who was studying medicine at UWO); a fellow in my Economics class; a few others; but not many. I hung out at the Wave, the cafeteria; at the Spoke, the pub; and at the bars with them on occasion. But as I said, I took to myself most days. Sometimes I hung out at the Spoke, sometimes at the Wave. Sometimes I hung out at the Encore café in Talbot Hall. It was a sleepy lounge, facing west, the afternoon sun cooking all in it. I liked it there. It was hot, cozy and quiet, so many days I’d crash there with a book.

So, I was especially pleased when Garry Martin called in the early spring, announcing his intention to visit. He was officially visiting his sister, but she lived in an all-girl dorm, so he asked to stay at my place. I was thrilled. I made tentative plans, and we did go out, once with Sharon, once Stag. Garry was open to anything, so we hung out for a long time talking before hitting a dance club. Surprisingly, Garry didn’t dance much; I suppose he didn’t want to leave me at the bannister by myself. We left early, and spent the rest of the night catching up.

Exams loomed. The house grew deathly quiet. But unlike college, there could be some time between finals. There was one final outing with Matt and his classmates.

One gent, a few years older than me, began to roughhouse with another of Matt’s buddies, to impress a girl. It did not go well. He was easily bested. The other guy even took care not to hurt him. That made it worse. His wrestling became more than just roughhousing, but he did no better; that made his feeble fight even more frantic. He was losing face, and he knew it. The other guy told him to stop it, that he’d had enough of his bullshit. He didn’t, and the bested boy was laid flat. Exhausted, he turned away. He may have cried. He saw what little hope he’d had with his unrequited love die a quick, painful death.
I felt sorry for him. We all did, even the guy who’d laid him out. He saw our sympathy in all of our eyes. I saw humiliation in his.

He need not have been. Even though he had failed, he had at least fought for his love, hopeless though it was.

I had seen mine slip through my fingers.

MIRV

Remember Jeff Chevrier? Lifeguard, D&D, Top Hats? We called him MIRV after a stage in RED ALERT, a video game he could not beat. The game would be going well until he saw the script, “Warning, M.I.R.V. being deployed!” Jeff would cry out, “Oh no, not M.I.R.V.” Nothing went well after that.

Not a bad nickname. Try wearing Psycho for a while.

Jeff and I were aware of our mutual residence in London and made plans to keep in touch. The trouble was our mutual distance. Fanshawe was not even close to Western, fully two transfers away. So were we to hang out, it was for the night. That wasn’t possible at my place. I only had a room, while Jeff shared a house, with a perfectly serviceable couch.

Jeff called me early on. He asked, “Have you ever heard of Joe Kools?” I hadn’t. I hadn’t ventured far from my house and campus, as yet. “It’s a bar downtown,” he said, pausing for effect. “It’s a restaurant, too,” as though that ought to explain all. He asked if I wanted to go that weekend. Fiona (Jeff’s future wife, also cashier at the Schumacher Pool that past summer) would be there too, he said. I agreed. We set a time. The Marque under the neon said Josepi Koolinski, but only the letters for Joe Kools were illuminated. It was a great space, not large, sprouting a patio that we never used owing to it being under feet of snow most of the year. It was the interior that drew me. It was amazing! Pictures everywhere, framed rejection letters for its grand opening from the Queen, the Premier and Prime Minister of the time, t-shirts papering the ceiling. Sarcasm reigned supreme. The entry sporting two horses’ asses, hung with the pictures of the asses of the week, accompanied by two papier-mâché jockey’s flipping the bar the bird. A sign declared the bar the unofficial foreign headquarters of the Detroit Tigers, so there was a Blue Jays jersey taped to the floor for all patrons to wipe their feet on. Jeff and I got down on our hands and knees when we arrived, laying a kiss on the one clean patch we could see. We were met with boos, cheers and laughter in equal measure; more importantly, the bartender awarded us with a free beer each for our display of balls.

As we sipped our reward, Jeff and I found ourselves transfixed by the TV. The weather channel, specifically. We watched the weatherman’s arms whirl and gesture, his hands pointing at a maelstrom bearing down on our hometown. It rolled and rolled repeatedly, the eye revealing the word Timmins, again and again. There was no sound from the set, music and the gaggle of the patrons filling the space, but sound was unnecessary; the expression of his face told us all we needed to know. “Holy shit,” we said, before bursting into laughter. We toasted our good fortune to not be at home.

Joe Kools and the Ceeps were great, but more often than not, we economized and partied at his house, Star Trek or porn usually flickering on the screen all the while, usually ignored. There was RISK on the table. Yes…RISK. RISK is fun when played right, by a bunch of beer-drinking near adolescents bent on making and breaking non-aggression pacts. One had to be careful. There could be only one. So, one had to assess what state one might be in after one’s round, having laid waste to one’s opponents, only to have left one’s flank exposed to one’s ally. So, one had to wonder when the best opportunity of betrayal was at hand and have the wherewithal to act upon one’s ally’s lack of preparation for the inevitable. That’s what friends were for. What ought to have been a one-hour game, at the most, could stretch for on for hours with that level of loyalty and subterfuge.

I now come to the party. What party? THE party.

Our landlord wanted to throw a housewarming party. He wanted us, Matt, Jak, and me, to invite all our friends. I didn’t have many in London, but I invited all I knew, as did Matt, as did Jak, as did Jaime, as did all of Jaime’s friends. That was a lot of people. A blizzard raged outside throughout their arrivals. Shoes and boots piled up just inside the door, burying the scrap wall-to-wall carpet Jamie had got his hands on for the occasion. We had no intention of waking to damaged hardwood, so the carpet was our sacrificial offering to Bacchus. It was soon damp with beer, dusted with the ashes of a hundred cigarettes. More guests arrived. The house filled, and soon, there wasn’t any elbow room.

Matt declared that someone could probably walk around naked and no one would know. A statement like that required testing, because a truth is not a proof until it’s proven. Bets were declared, and accepted. So, Matt undressed, completely, then put his pants back on, his underwear atop them, and then said, “See?” As far as we could see, he was right. No one noticed. No one laughed, no one catcalled, no one ogled his nakedness. Those inclined to disprove him paid up.

I grabbed a round and settled in next to Jeff and Fiona on the couch. Jeff accepted a beer, and rather calmly asked me, “Have you been upstairs, yet?”

“Haven’t broke the seal,” I said. I’d yet to have committed to the inevitable 20-minute intervals to the all too full washroom, yet, so I was holding off.

Jeff said, “It’s snowing in your room.” Deadpan.

“What?” I said, trying to see how badly it was snowing outside. Windows had been thrown open throughout the house to release the tropical heat we’d been enduring from the blazing fireplace and blazing bodies. There was no snow falling just then, and hadn’t been for some time.

“It’s snowing in your room,” he repeated, slowly, as though I might understand better were he to enunciate at a more measured pace. I was obviously not processing well just then, so he clarified. “Coke, man,” he said. “There’s a storm of coke being blown in your room!”

I was up the stairs in a flash. True enough, one of Jaimie’s close friends was dealing in my room. Why my room? I had a perfectly smooth, glossy tabletop, that’s why.

I walked up to the dealer. “What’s up?” I asked. Shook his hand, urban like.

“Nothing,” he said. He offered me a blow, call it rent, he said.

“Dude,” I said, “the cops are due here any moment. We just saw a cruiser inch past the house.” That was bullshit, of course, I’d seen no such thing, but it was the only thing that crossed my mind at such short notice.

His eyes snapped wide. He declared the party over, scooped up his traffic, and was out of the house in less than 5 minutes.

Good thing. The cops were banging on the door in 10 to warn us that they’d had complaints about the noise.

Pizza arrived while they were still at the door.

A Niche Found

University was very much an extension of college. Not of Haileybury; that had been like an extension of high school. More like Cambrian. Western treated their students like adults. It’s your education, they said. Make of it what you will. Study, or not; show up, or not; it’s up to you. It’s not our job to hold your hand. I was far more comfortable in that environment than I had been in Haileybury’s strict regimen. But I was older then than I was, an emerging adult.

I stacked all my classes in the morning, leaving my afternoons free for research and homework and study. Having to get up in the morning forced me to go to bed at night. I reviewed my notes daily. I actually liked my chosen subjects. That was a surprise. I’d never enjoyed the subject matter of my classes. This was something different, something I could sink my teeth into.

Granted, I was not in Engineering; I was in Social Sciences, taking Classical History, Sociology, Economics and Archaeology. It was a breath of fresh air. I loved ancient history, myths, cultural studies, and the rediscovery and unravelling of long-forgotten, buried secrets, and had for years. Sound like D&D? You bet your ass it does. D&D opened up a world of interests and mystery to me, much as it did from most people I’ve talked to who played it. Not one of them had any interest in joining a cult, conducting Satan rituals, hiding out in sewers stalking imaginary monsters (thanks Mazes and Monsters); they all became well-read, most attending higher education, some even becoming engineers.

I did dabble with computer programming but dropped it after a few classes. Those classes were all about learning to use an abacus and how to “program” Kraft Dinner in 25 lines or less. I thought it was ridiculous at the time, but I see now what they were getting at. Had I stuck it out, I might have been a millionaire. The timing was right. It was the mid-80s and computer programming was in its infancy. I doubt that I would have, though. I had no passion for it. Code and algorithms rang cold. I probably would have ended up hating it and failing had I stuck with it. Mind you, I did predict the future as I watched it unfold. I wondered why we needed VCRs when TVs were motherboards. I wondered why we needed cable subscriptions when anyone could reach out into the Ethernet to retrieve “whatever,” so why couldn’t anyone watch whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. These ideas of mine hadn’t arrived yet then, but they evolved over time. There was connection speed and data issues to work out, something I’d have never been able to do, but the ideas sparked within me. I suppose those same ideas sparked in a lot of heads, not just mine. But I was more interested in social science and books and movies and the arts and women than I was in code.

There was a pretty blonde sitting next to me in Classical History. There was Sharron Martin, sister of Garry Martin. There was Alison Tilly. I ventured forth tentatively. I asked them if they’d like to go for coffee. I asked them if they’d like to meet at the pub for a drink, sometime. Either I was too subtle, or they just weren’t interested. Most girls I knew then were younger than me, and I was beginning to lose my hair (it was a big hair era, for both men and women, don’t forget), and that had begun to sap my self-confidence, despite Doug’s advice to me about a woman’s worth (see earlier memories). I was not an athlete. I was a bit introverted. I was bookish. Altogether, I lacked confidence, especially when it came to women.

And I likely spent too much time in the university pub and in the bars weekends. I smoked, but a lot of people still smoked then. I was drinking far less than I had, already sick of hangovers. But a good habit is hard to break, and as I’ve said before, I’d long ago begun to associate booze and bars with fun with friends. A stupid mistake. It was the friends that made it fun. Without them, being in bars was dull, fraught with loneliness and depression.

Luckily, I had friends. I always seemed to have friends then. There was Matt Hait and Jak Yassar Nino in my house, there was Jeff Chevrier and Walter Hohman at Fanshaw. There were a couple others I met in classes.

My first friend in London was Matt, that is to say he was the first person I met in London, aside from Jamie, but enough about Jamie for now. Matt and I played chess. Matt convinced me to get a membership at the gym. He gave me the guided tour of London’s best dives and its emerging underground. Matt was not one for dance bars. And he took me to Toronto a couple times when we had his sister’s wreck at our disposal, to Kensington and to Yonge, to College and Bathurst, to Queen St W, to the Horseshoe, to Sneaky Dees, to God knows where else. It was all a blur of backbeat and bass, of mods and mosh pits.

You knew this would ultimately become a tale about alcohol, didn’t you? Of course you did.

He was especially eager to show me the Ceeps (the CPR Tavern), his favourite bar in London. It could be the oldest tavern in London. Opened in 1890, it had long since become a university watering hole by the time I arrived. No one ever went there for the ambiance, there was never any entertainment aside from MTV, but it was the only bar I’d ever been in that encouraged its patrons to etch their names, hometown, and the date into the aged wooden tabletops. The Ceeps led to seedy little basement and attic bars that hosted some of the best and worst punk bands I’d ever seen. Those seedy little bars inevitably led to the raves, little after-hours parties in basements and in loading bays. But not before street meat, souvlaki on a bun.

My favourite was the FIRE STOP. It was a small bar, black as night and decorated in all manner of red. Chicago blues men graced the stage. Old men. Grey haired and fat and by far the best players I’ve ever heard. The FIRE STOP also had the hottest wings I’d ever had the misfortune to order. They came with a free first pitcher. Because they knew you’d be ordering more.

Freshman on Campus, 2nd Time Around

I was moving up in the world. University. I would have never believed it had you told me back in high school, but here I was going to Western University in London. Sadly, I was a grown man among aged children. But as I was far from a mature adult, I thought I ought to fit in. And did. Somewhat. Let’s not forget that I was a 22-year-old among 18-year-olds. I had far more in common with my TAs than I did my fellow classmates.

I didn’t consider Residence as a place to live. I remembered a couple of older guys in Cambrian Res. I thought a couple were cool, I even smoked a joint with one a few times in the front row of the theatre, but most had been ostracized by we young pups; I had no desire to be on the receiving end now that I gained their age. Luckily, we had somewhere to stay while house hunting. My Uncle Derik lived in London (still does, actually), so we made a visit of it, bunking at his house. I never considered living with Uncle Derik. He never offered, and I really didn’t want to live with my Uncle and his partner; I wanted to be on my own by that time, and would never have tolerated a “my house, my rules” environment. I had that at home. Aside from that, I doubt Larry wanted me crashing in his house, cramping his life. I don’t blame him. Armed with the list of prospective houses, my parents and I made the rounds, and found a suitable house a couple blocks from campus on Richmond Street. There was a mall and a grocery store a few blocks to the north, a bus stop around the corner. I was set. I went home to work off the rest of my summer.

That was to be my last summer slumming with Aubrey. He’d been accepted into the military where he’d begin his aircraft mechanic apprenticeship. I was happy for him, if not for his absence. But hanging out with Aubrey had been a case of back-wheeling arrested development, and it was about time we both began to grow up.

Garry Martin, Chris Cooper and Jodie Russell were still about, but wouldn’t be for long. John Lavric was finished school. I was beginning to see the first of my friends drift away. And I was starting university from scratch. I was beginning to wonder what I was doing. I would be in school until I was 28, I realized, assuming I didn’t do a Master’s Program. Garry, Jodie and I were playing D&D with Neil Petersen and Jeff Chevrier. During one session, Jeff told me that he was attending Fanshawe in London, so we exchanged addresses, with a promise to exchange phone numbers once I got one.

I was the first to arrive at my new place of residence. Matt Hait (from Toronto) and Jak Yassar Ninio (from Turkey) were yet to land, so I set about setting up. My landlord, Jaimie, was already there, taking up the basement in its entirety. This was our first meeting. I’d dealt with his mother when reserving my room and signing on the dotted line. Jamie and I chatted, and within about 5 minutes I marked him for an unreliable idiot. He would never disappoint me in that regard.

I was bored, so I grabbed a paperback (yeah, I’m that type, if you didn’t already know) and headed up to the campus to get my bearings, saw posters advertising ROCK and HYDE’s performance the following day, so I made a note of when and where, found a map to see where the when and where might be. I found the cafeteria, and I found my home base, the social science building, where I’d complete registration the following day. And I found the campus pub, arguably, the most important find of all. It was open. I was pleased. Like I said, I was bored. There were clusters of people here and there who took no interest in the old guy entering, so it was a good thing I brought a book.

Jamie had said that he was itching to see ROCK and HYDE, and that he would head up to campus with me. So I waited, crashed out on the couch with a book. And waited. I ought to have known. I’d marked him and he had already not let me down. So I locked up my room, and made my own way to the campus, to the hill descending to Talbot Hall. I was late enough that I was way at the back, but not so late as to miss anything. They played some PAYOLAS too. That made me happy. It was like seeing two bands at the same time.

I met my fellow roommates in due course. I liked them straight off.

Matt had access to his sister junker, once a month, so we planned our groceries around that. We were thrilled to see that rust bucket when it first arrived. Matt said, “My sister says for us to be careful with it.” I gave it a long hard look, and asked, “Why? What could we possibly do to it that’s not already been done?” It stalled. It stalled often the first time he had it, at each application of the brakes, at each stop sign and at each red light, it stalled each time we said the word stall within its hearing; so, we took it out for a 401 for a road trip, to blow the carbon out of it. Matt floored it, that’s not saying much, but it didn’t stall. It did leave a trail of black smoke and backfires behind it. We topped out at 70 km/hr, and over the next 2 hours gained another 10, but no more. We loved it, christened it Bessie, and Bessie she remained forevermore.

Days of Empire

When I was about 15, my father took me on his booster rounds one summer day. I’d never been in a bar and I was fascinated by the Empire’s empty space. I’d only seen a disco in movies and I wondered how a night out in one would compare with our school dances. It seems inevitable now that I’d I spend my weekends at the Empire Hotel in those early years. It was the place to be. It was two bars in one. Adjoined, Charlie’s was the disco, Bogie’s was the music hall; both were loud, both were teeming with people, both were filled with women. And if you weren’t in either by 8:30 or 9:00, you were in for a long wait outside, because every weekend there was a long line to get in. But which one to choose? Word of mouth usually carried the day. If there was a good band, we went to Bogie’s; if not, we went to Charlie’s.

Early on, Charlie’s usually won out. Back then, dancing with girls and spending eight minutes in the arms of one at the end of the night would always beat out sitting still and having ones’ ears rung, any day.

They were an enormous step up from my watering holes in Haileybury, an enormous step down from my haunts in Sudbury. But I was always comfortable there, especially in those days. They were home. Everyone I knew went there. Okay, maybe not everybody. There were those who didn’t waste their time and money in bars, there were those who watered themselves in South End at Jakes and the Zoo (the Central House Hotel), and then there was the Mattog, across the river (otherwise known as the Mattagami, the May-Tag, to some). We never went to the Mattog; it was too far to go, too expensive a cab ride back, and rumour had it, too French, and that we Anglaise were not welcome, that there would be fights. There were others, but it was the Empire my crowd happened to settle into. Lucky for me, because it was also the bar I could walk home from in my sleep (see much earlier memory).

I can’t say that I had a favourite side. I loved to dance, and had ever since I’d begun to feel comfortable putting myself out there at those monthly high school events, and Charlie’s was a place where that could happen every weekend. And I loved live music, the way the bass would hammer my chest cavity, watching and hearing how each musician knit their sound in with their mates, magically recreating all those songs we loved, and Bogie’s was a place where that could happen every weekend!

Charlie’s was a place of wonder. Aged oak, gleaming brass. Marbled glass wall, a disco ball. A bottom-lit, coloured Plexiglas dance floor. Strobe lights. New wave and rock and roll. Everything that could make a night exciting. Mostly the crush of bodies and the uncertainty of whether she’d accept. The dance floor was huge for a small bar, but tiny in comparison to all those who wanted to press onto it. We’d be jostled, thrust into on another, and once, Danny Loreto inadvertently punched a girl in the face who strayed too close to his moves. She was laid flat, the dance floor parted, allowing her to crumble smoothly. It was the one time I’d ever seen such a strip of unoccupied space so close to the centre of the dance floor.

When we first began to go to Bogie’s, we wondered why no one sat in the disused raised stage. We were told that was Carriere country. I thought on how far Carriere country was from the stage, the bar, and the washrooms and said, let the Carrieres have it. I wanted to be closer to the stage, I wanted to see and meet the musicians. I did sometimes. It cost a few rounds to get them to sit with us, but we thought it was worth it, seeing the envy on the faces surrounding us. But we also learned how poverty-stricken most musicians actually were upon getting to know some of them. The vision of glamour I held departed with familiarity and scrutiny. Up close I saw the sometimes-tattered clothes, I heard about the crappy food, the crappy accommodations, the life crammed into a VW van for hours and weeks on end.

Summers passed and I gained some perks when Henri Guenette became a bouncer at Bogie’s. I got to know the staff, and I could skip between both halves of the bar without getting bounced. But I also saw some guys take sucker shots at Henri, I also saw Henri take down a guy who was going after another bouncer from behind with an ashtray. I wondered why Henri did it. Perks were fine. But I didn’t want to see him laid out on the floor, bleeding, either.

In time, my high school friends were elsewhere. Maybe they found other distractions. Maybe they were more in tune with budgeting for the upcoming year. Maybe the polished brass and aged oak had tarnished and cracked in their eyes. Maybe it was as simple as they had girlfriends and weren’t up to catting around any longer. Aubrey Bergin filled the gap they left. Aubrey and I became wingmen. One needed a wingman in a rough joint.

One Christmas holiday, Aubrey and I were coming up on the Empire. I’d dutifully gone to Saturday Mass with my mother, and promptly proceeded to stain my cleansed soul at the Downtown, a strip club round the corner from the Empire, waiting for Aubrey. Well met, we headed out before the Empire was filled and we were shut out. It was a windswept night, a little cold. As we came on to the doors, an old man (late 30s, early 40s, but he seemed ancient to me then) and his friend exited. He hailed Aubrey. Aubrey waved hello to the man, but we were chilled and were set on the heat. The man gripped Aubrey and spun him around. Aubrey laughed it off, but was still held firm.

I turned around and asked, “Is there a problem here?”

The man’s attention snapped to me, but he still held Aubrey firm.

“No problem,” he said.

“Great,” I said. “Let him go.” Those were the only words I said. I just stared at him. At first I was just waiting, then I must have looked angry, because the man pulled Aubrey closer and held him like a shield. He looked nervous. So did Aubrey. But Aubrey wasn’t my concern just then. I’d locked eyes with the man, expecting trouble from him and his friend. I needn’t have worried. He kept insisting that I shake his hand.

“No,” I said. “Why would I shake the hand of someone who’s holding my friend against his will?”

A couple minutes had passed. He finally released Aubrey, and Aubrey began stammering apologies to the man.

“Don’t apologize to him,” I said. Then to the man, “Are we done here?”

Apparently, we were because he walked off. I don’t really know where that FUCK YOU attitude came from. Had we got into a fight, Aubrey and I probably would have had the shit kicked out of us.

Future Endeavors

 

Art by Roy Lichtenstein

My Mining Tech education coming to an end, I had to think about what I’d accomplished, and what I might do with it. I can’t say that I ever liked what I was studying. It was boring. It was tedious. It was baffling that I hadn’t bailed on it after my first year. But my marks had always been in the toilet, I’d lacked confidence in my ability to succeed at anything, and to be honest, I still had no clue what I’d like to do with my life. What I liked and loved was staring me in the face every day, but I was too blind to see that. So, I persevered, and I was on my way to graduating with honours. Honours? I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears.

Graduating with a high GPA changed my perspective on everything. I discussed the prospect of university with my parents. I thought I might like to try my hand at an MBA. I thought it would be a good mix. I could work in the business end of mining; and if that didn’t work out, I still had two mining diplomas to fall back on. My parents ought to be proud. I was always thinking of a practical, marketable application. My parents agreed. The only problem, as I see it, is that I’ve never been motivated by money. And just like engineering, I didn’t give a shit about business. Long story short, my parents agreed.

Budgeting was as much a problem that year as any other. I took to staying in on Saturday nights again, watching Spencer for Hire, and Saturday Night at the Movies with Elwy Yost. I bought pop and chips instead of beer and pretzels. I actually payed closer attention in school. Studied more scientifically. Passed better. One advantage of Cambrian was that their final exams, any exams, did not carry the same weight as they had in Haileybury. In Haileybury, exams were a make or break phenomena, making up such a high percentage of one’s GPA as to stagger the senses, to invoke a level of panic unparalleled. Not so Cambrian. Exams were obviously worth more than any single test, but to not do well on any given exam did not necessitate failure. I did well on my exams, notwithstanding. I was a better student, a more methodical, calculating student.

I applied to a number of universities, Western among them. I was accepted, pending my final GPA. 3.01. Honours. Glory be. I was in.

But one did not just slide into Western’s MBA program. And although Western gave me credit for many of my mining courses, enough that I didn’t require any more 1^st year classes to move on to 2^nd year university (in engineering), I was enrolled in Social Sciences, and engineering credits didn’t count towards a Soc. Sci. degree, and there were Business 101, and 201 to take before anyone was let in to those hallowed ivy league halls.

There was a girl those last couple months. I’d met her through some guys I’d somehow met. I don’t know how we met, just that we did, and for a very short time I played a couple sessions of D&D with them. It didn’t last long. I was not that interested. I’d come to realize that my love of D&D was actually tied to and fused with my love for my friends. These guys were okay, they were as good and kind and welcoming as any others, but I suppose I was feeling nostalgic for those earlier best friends. She was a friend of one of them. She pursued me. She was rather pretty, too. Dark hair, almost black, bedroom eyes, ample curves. Actually being the target of such a girl was novel. Her friend asked me to tread lightly, to be gentle and kind, that she’d been mistreated by the last couple of guys she seen. She asked me if I’d like to accompany her to a wedding as her date. I thought about it, but I declined, telling her that I was leaving in a couple weeks for good, that she ought to set her sights on someone she could grow with. My mining friends told me I was an idiot.

All that said, registration was still months ahead, and money had to be made. Kidd Creek’s woes were temporarily behind them. I was accepted as a summer student again. And I landed work in the load-out again. That was alright. Why spend the summer underground when I could turn my face into the sun on my breaks.

Most of my high school friends weren’t really my friends anymore. There was still Garry Martin, and Chris Cooper, but most had begun to graduate and get on with their lives by then. Garry had begun to call me “Old Man,” citing that for six days a year I was actually two years older than he was, numerically. I couldn’t argue with such tenuous logic, and “Old Man” was better than “Psycho,” despite its esoteric appeal; but as you might imagine, Psycho was a tall order to live up to. There were still some friends at/from the pool, Jodie Russell, Jeff Chevrier (MIRV, nicknamed after RED ALERT, a video game at Top Hats that he could never defeat), and now there was Neil Petersen. Neil was younger, so I wasn’t sure what Garry saw in him then, but Neil played D&D, so he was in.

Were we growing up? Yes. Were we maturing? Somewhat. Not entirely.

Aubrey Bergin had about completed a correspondence course on Aircraft maintenance. He was finding it difficult finding future employment owing to his lack of hands-on experience. Go figure. He was seriously considering the military, the only employer who’d give him an apprenticeship. But until then, Aubrey and I were still lining up on the dancefloor bannister, girl watching, Aubrey still rolling the occasional beer bottle amidst the dancers.

Another night, Jodie and I were meeting others at the Victory Tavern. One block away, Jodie crossed on a Red, where I, noticing a cop lazing up the block, stopped cold. “Jodie,” I said, but Jodie was already halfway across. When he gained the far side, he noticed he was alone, and looked back to see why. There I was, on the corner, standing next to a bear of a cop. I waved. The cop hooked a finger at Jodie, who, after glancing at the still red light, and then the lack of any traffic, re-crossed, again on the Red.

“Never cross on a red light,” the cop said.

I could scarcely believe what he said, after his ordering Jodie to do just that.

More importantly, I saw Deb before I left Sudbury. It turns out that she was in Sudbury the whole time. I’d looked for her. I was always looking for her. But I never saw her. Then one weekend in Timmins I met up with one of my old Res friends. I asked after her, and he not only told me that she was still in Sudbury, he told me where she worked, a Camera shop, right downtown. I found it, and went there. I asked for her, and the guy manning the counter said she was downstairs and would be up shortly. I browsed the cameras they had on hand, and heard her stumble up the stairs. My heart raced. When she topped the stairs, she saw me. Her jaw dropped. She almost fell flat on her face in her rush to embrace me. Any doubts I had whether she loved me or not were dispelled at that moment. I knew then that she loved me when we were together, and I believed then that she loved me still. We embraced hard, we kissed. Tears rushed to my eyes. We kissed again. God, I missed her.

I asked her to join me for coffee. She said she was working. I said, “After.”

I asked her when she was working till, and when she said 9 pm, I said, “Come for a coffee,” again. “maybe I drink. I’ll wait.” I told her I’d do whatever she’d like. I told her where I was going to be, hour by hour. She was noncommittal.

I remembered that guy I’d seen once or twice in those last couple months while still in Res; and I wondered. I should have asked her for her number, but I was terrified that she’d refuse me, that she would actually tell me that she was still with that other guy, with any guy.

I waited for her. I watched the door. With each hour, my hopes slipped, my heart fell. I was crushed. Again. I wanted to leave, but I kept up that futile hope.

I never saw Debbie again. Not once.

Harmonic Disquiet

Living alone does not necessitate a life of pastoral listlessness. But living alone can allow one to choose when one will find solace from the fray. I needed it that year. Doug had told me I did, but I’d brushed him off. I know now that I ought to have paid closer attention to the wisdom of my elders. I’d have had a smoother ride.

Life away from Residence had a certain rhythm. Rise, bathe, breakfast, dress, school, classes, lunch, more classes, return, do homework, cook, eat, watch TV, play pool, read, sleep. Repeat. I hadn’t had such rhythm since leaving high school. It allowed me to concentrate, even though I ought to have applied myself more. But playing pool with my roommate, reading, watching TV seemed far more interesting. That said, I was developing an understanding of my chosen curriculum. Time does that, time and persistence. All I needed was a year away from distractions to centre myself, just like Doug said I did.

I rekindled an old friendship that year. Chris Cooper was studying pre-med at Laurentian, and he and I stumbled across one another one day, got to talking, and discovered how we’d missed one another, so we exchanged phone numbers. We decided to meet up for coffee one day, then for a couple beers one night, then we were beginning to hang out in earnest. Not during the week, and not every weekend, either. Chris had his sights on being a doctor, so his workload was fairly intense, his study hours long. But he would call me when he needed to blow off some steam, when there was a pub at Laurentian worth going to, and I did him the same courtesy.

He invited me to go see David Wilcox. I was thrilled. Wilcox was all over the radio that year. Wilcox was great, but we all thought he was SO old; we also thought he was SO high on coke. His eyes were wild and vacant, never fixing on any given point. He never treated the crowd with his attention once. I’d discover later that Wilcox was/is legally blind. That explained the vacant eyes, the lack of interest in his audience. We must have seemed a blur to the man.

Chris kept to himself most days, struggling with his studies. He called me up one day and asked me out for a coffee, or two. We met and told me how exhausted he was, owing to some crazy girl who kept calling him all night, yelling at him to put her boyfriend on the line. He tried to tell her that he lived alone, that he had no guest, that he had no clue who her boyfriend was, let alone who she was. But she was insistent. He hung up. She called back, and kept calling back, never letting up throughout the night, until she finally discovered near dawn that she’d been calling the wrong number. She hung up on him. No apologies necessary, lady, Chris told me that day.

He would call me up and tell me that he was going home for the weekend, on a Friday night, at one in the morning, and ask me if I wanted to go. I did, once or twice, but by then I’d grown accustomed to staying “home.” There were more things to do in Sudbury, even when there was nothing to do.

One week we were carted off to Mine Rescue training by the College, no exceptions. We were livid. Octoberfest was Thursday night; our test was Friday. Did we go? You bet your ass we went. But we brought our crib notes with us and quizzed each other between eying girls, chatting up girls, and hoisting our less than tankard sized beers. I stayed till 11 pm, was in bed by midnight, and was up again by 6. All but one of us passed. The Stu Unit failed. The Stu Unit didn’t even show up for the final day.
October was as eventful. We all went out pub crawling on Halloween, too (when I say we, I mean the Mining Tech crowd). All but one passed on dressing up. We had no clue where to rent costumes, and were adamant that we wouldn’t waste money on cheap K-mart costumes either; that would have been a waste of money better spent on beer. The Stu Unit did dress up, though. The Stu Unit dressed up in a Wehrmacht uniform. Our jaws dropped. “What the FUCK are you doing dressed up like a Nazi,” we asked.

“It’s not a Nazi uniform,” he said, “it’s Wehrmacht!”

We begged to differ. So did the cops when the Stu Unit decided to tap dance on top of their cruiser. Stu had no idea it was a cop car. Probably because he was too drunk to see straight. The cops stepped out of their cruiser, warned us off with a glance, and hauled Stu back down. They cuffed him, tossed him in back, and drove away. The next time we saw Stu, he was battered and bruised. The cops had beat the shit out of him, he said.

Serves you right for dressing up like a Nazi, we said.

I began a dangerous precedent. I began to go out alone. I asked about at school, but I lived alone (I had a roommate, but he was young, and inclined to go home a lot, much as I did when I was his age, and I really didn’t want to hang out with him much, anyway; we were too different), so it wasn’t like I could just walk down the hall to see who wanted to go. Sometimes the boys from class came out, sometimes they did not. I usually met up with people I knew, and if I didn’t, I had an uncanny ability to meet and strike up conversations with strangers (maybe all young people do, but it’s been remarked on, then, and now), but there were evenings when I didn’t as well. I still went out, though; I’d begun to associate pubs and bars and alcohol with friends and good times. Because they had always been those last few years. So, when someone suggested that we go out, I was usually up for it.

Jim Parisi had some time on his hands one day. He wanted to go see some strippers. The bar was almost empty when we arrived. The bar was almost empty when we left. It was the afternoon, after all. We sat in the front row to watch the show. The girls did their usual thing, an act so old and tired, even they looked bored. Jim and I got to talking. I’d glance up from time to time, but I was looking at Jim throughout most of our conversation. I noticed Jim’s expression change. He began to look amused, his eyes bouncing back and forth from me to the stage. So I glanced back at the stage, just in time to see the stripper take a dive down on my crotch, laying a big red mouthful of lipstick on my faded 501s. I looked from her, back down to my crotch in disbelief.

You bitch, I thought.

Jim thought it hilarious.

You could have warned me, I said.

He laughed. “What, and miss that look on your face? Not a chance.”

The Nomad

Have you ever wanted to just pack up and leave? Probably. But you likely came to your senses and didn’t. The difference between you and I is that I did. On far too many occasions. This understanding that I could just get up and leave may have begun to take root when I was younger, owing to all those moves and restarts and reshuffles I’d weathered. I never quit, though. Not once. I always put my shoulder to the stone and persevered, only pulling up roots on completion of what I was doing at the time. During college I pulled up roots to escape, to run away. In time that became a wanderlust. So, it’s no surprise that halfway through my 2^nd year at Haileybury, I began to feel the desire to move on.

That desire was heralded by a conversation I had at a party, during Christmas break. Garry Martin and Debbie Huisson had, or were about to break up, but she and Garry were still friends, still chumming about. Garry had a gift for that, always able to remain friends with the girls he’d dated. More than that, he was able to get away with just about anything when it came to women. On more than one occasion, Garry would chase down some girl, even one he wasn’t seeing, grab her, lift her off her feet, and turning her upside down, bite her playfully on the behind, growling and shaking his head like a dog while he did it. The girls laughed. They always laughed. Had I done that, I’d have been up on sexual harassment charges within the hour, but not Garry. He did not bite anyone’s ass at the party in question. He behaved himself, as much as Garry behaved himself. Deb and I were talking, and she was telling me about how excited she was for her upcoming spring trip to Aruba. Aruba? I asked, thinking how could she afford to go to Aruba? I certainly couldn’t. I usually began to see my finances dwindle come New Year, requiring my annual loan from my parents, so travel was out of the question. I was jealous, and said so. I said I wish I could go somewhere, anywhere, on spring break, making a joke of it. Then you should go, Deb said, as if it were as simple as that. Of course, it was that simple; for her, anyway. But hers was an affluent family; mine wasn’t. I would never have taken a loan from my parents and then spent it on a trip to fun in the sun. I wish I’d been able to, but I would never have, not then anyway. Duty called. I’d committed myself to an education I’d begun to loathe less than I had, even if I was still baffled as to why I was enrolled in it. As for travel, and new, unknown experiences, I had a fear of forging out on my own, wanting the security of friends at my side.

But her escaping on holiday did raise up the desire to move on. I began to think on returning to Sudbury. There were women there, girls my age, not the high school girls and married women some of the guys I knew were dallying with. And even though the guys I was rooming with were better than those prior HSM roommates, cabin fever was setting in, and I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied. Neil had promised to teach me guitar, and despite my bringing my father’s Gibson back down with me, he never seemed to find the time or the inclination. I tried on my own for a little while, but learning to read music and the instrument at the same time proved a daunting task. Jeff and I began to argue in Milling and Chem class. John Star began to howl how I stole his land after a few drinks. “You’re kidding, right?” I asked. “Look at me,” I said, “I don’t own a fucking thing.”

I found other friends. I took refuge at Roy’s Restaurant. My cash dwindled, but Roy was always pleased to see me, chatting me up at the bar. I began to only go out Fridays, opting to stay in and watch TVOs Saturday Night at the Movies, with Elwy Yost, on a tiny 3 inch black & white TV combo my parents had gifted me when I left for school.

I recall my final D&D session vividly, not so much for the game, but for the evening on which it was held. We were up at the college after hours, in the cafeteria, set up on the short south wall. We were playing, winding things up, when we caught sight of a flash on the horizon. Deep, lengthy thunder rolled over us. We took little notice at first, it was just another spring storm out on the horizon, somewhere far out over Quebec. But in no time at all, another, even larger bolt splayed out over the full length of all we could survey. We stopped and stood as more and more bolts struck out in the far distance. More thunder rolled, closer this time. Just as one bolt died, another arced and stretched and reached out, then another and another, each one closer and closer still, each strike leaping a kilometer ahead of the last, so many at a time that they cast a bright blue blaze over all we could see, the elms, the town, the lake, the horizon, the underside of the boiling clouds. We fanned out, each to one of the partitioned alcoves, watching and feeling the storm as it rushed in on us. The enormous elms whipped and writhed on the storm’s fury as it crashed onto the shore and climbed the hill. Sheets of rain were thrown against the building. We ought not to have remained fixed as we were in the windows, but we were, each of us, awed by the spectacle unfolding before us, rushing up to us and over us. The thunder had become a long continuous, overlapping roar, each peel a bass bell resonating within us. And once past, it was gone, receding faster than it had arrived, leaving a vast silence and ghastly black void in it wake. In its wake I felt an emptiness. I was numb. I wished to be gone.

Towards the end, I’d arrive at Roy’s with no more than five or ten dollars in my pocket, enough for a few beers, enough to catch a set and be gone. The final night there, I was preparing to leave when Roy set a beer in front of me. “It’s on me,” he said. That beer complete, another was set in front of me, then another. “It’s the least I can do for you,” he said. “You may be surprised to hear this, but I think of you as a friend. If you ever pass through here again, say on your way to Toronto or something, I want you to stop in and say hello.”
I never did.

Haileybury, The Scene of the Crime

Why did I return to Haileybury? I suppose I’d forgotten how miserable I’d been there. I may have thought it a symptom of homesickness, which it was in part. I suppose it was mainly my putting distance between Deb and I. Either way, my return was imminent. Where Cambrian took my year at Haileybury into account and afforded me credit, Haileybury was arrogant enough to believe that no other school could meet its high standards, so I was to “repeat” 2^nd year. Like I said, I wasn’t thinking too clearly when I decided to return to the Old Boy. But before I did, I needed to make some money.

I returned home, with the usual twenty dollars to my name, took a loan from my parents to tide me over, and went back to work at Kidd. There was a slight change from the prior year. I spent the summer on surface, not underground, working in the load-out. The load-out is where the muck (ore) is loaded onto the met site train. It was a quiet summer at work. There were sunny days, a few moments of tanning on breaks, tons of clean-up, and one minor accident. I fell from a ladder into a bin of scrap metal, no more than three for four feet, but far enough to earn some scrapes, some bruises. Within the hour I was relatively pain free, so I didn’t report it. Was that stupid? Maybe. Probably. But, it was more a blow to my pride than my body.

I met Aubrey Bergin in the Empire Hotel, that summer, Charlie’s specifically (although we’d spend time in both Charlie’s and Bogie’s; those were the two sides, dance and live music, respectively). A couple years older, he was as adrift as I was, so we hit it off right away. New friends, love to meet people! Of course, I hung out with my old friends too, returning from their first year of university. Most were slipping through my fingers, by then, soon to be just faces recognized in the mall. They, at least, seemed on the road to wherever they were going. True, they were only just finishing their first year, with loads of time to regret their decisions, but those are their stories to tell. There was Garry Martin, and Jodie Russell, still at the pool, and Chris Cooper, John Lavric, and Danny Loreto still out and about, seen mainly on weekends. D&D with Garry and Jodie on weekend afternoons, with Jeff Chevrier and Sharron Martin by then. And then the summer was over. Uneventful? Not really. Vague in my memory? Yes. Who remembers uneventful routine? I was settling in to a routine of work, and weekend indulgence, one that I coasted on until it was time to return to school.

Haileybury was exactly as I remembered it, no surprise there. I even stayed at Shirley’s rooming house again, although that year I upgraded to Marc’s old room, hereby known as the purple palace. Purple wall-to-wall carpet, violet wallpaper. It was by far the largest of all the rooms, and as I was already in the know, I reserved it. But this time, there was a whole new bunch of tenants, guys far more amiable than those I’d slummed with last time. Two of whom were to be classmates, owing to my year’s absence, Brian and Jeff. Brian was quiet, studious, travelled home often to see his girlfriend. Jeff had a Hog. There was a young guy there, Neil (not to be mistaken with Neil Petersen, who’s live large in further memories), one with a guitar. And a native, John Star. A few others.

What was different? I did not return home weekends like I had last time I was there. I’d grown accustomed to my freedom and independence at Cambrian, and was learning to spread my wings a little. I didn’t fly far. We wasted our weekends at the Matabanick Hotel, and at another (an un-named strip club; unnamed because I can’t remember what it was called), down by the Curling Hall (gone now, owing to the new lakeside development throughout), but mainly at a new bar on the corner of Ferguson and Broadway, Roy’s Restaurant (what I remembered as the old defunct theatre). The Matabanick still got the occasional band, but the focus had shifted to Roy’s, because Roy was determined to gain ad keep the college business. Which he did. He certainly gained mine, and my friends, Jeff, and Joe Clark, and Ronald MacDonald.

Yes, those were their names. I am not making that up. Most people wouldn’t believe it, either, at first. Not even the QPP. One weekend we were all headed out to Notre Dame du Nord to drink and meet French women, Jeff and I in one vehicle, Joe and Ronald in another. They were running late, promising to catch us up. Joe and Ronald didn’t make it. The cops pulled them over, asked them what their names were and when they replied, the cops thought they were just being smart-assed Anglaise students making fun of them, so they arrested them. Joe and Ronald tried to show their IDs, but the cops didn’t bother looking at them, they told them to get out of the car, cuffed them and threw them in jail. They released them in the morning when they finally got around to looking at their photo IDs and driver’s licenses, but the night was lost.

I had an experience while waiting for them to arrive. I bought a litre beer from a corner store, and drank it out on the street, talking with an old Quebecoise who sat with me and Jeff while we waited for the bar to open (he was probably the ripe old age of 54, looking back). It was so weird. I’d never met an old guy like him before; pony tail, sideburns, pencil moustaches, gold teeth, grizzled countenance. All decked out in denim and cowboy boots, he looked like something that stepped out of the ‘60s. All the men I ever met that were his age looked like my father, blazers, dress shoes, dress shirts. How’d Jeff and I do, you ask? We drank on Ontario time, meaning we were a couple sheets to the wind by midnight when all the Quebecoise came out. We had no idea bars were open till 3 am in Quebec. We gave up and went home.

But it was D&D that made that year bearable. I met a quiet guy early on in the cafeteria. He was smart, a little terse and condescending most of the time to most of the guys myself included, so he was usually in there alone, lounging in the alcoves along the long wall of windows that overlooked Lake Temiskaming, basking in the heat with a book. I usually ignored him, but I was always curious about what people were reading, even then. One day I sat beside him and asked what he was reading. He angled the cover my way without responding. It was a fantasy book I’d burned through that summer. “Not bad,” I said, not meaning it (I thought it was dull and poorly written, actually; I remember that, not what the book was), “have you read…” That got us to talking, mainly about the books we liked, which turned out to be too long a list, many of which overlapped. D&D was referenced, we discovered we both played, and then like little kids, we were best friends. Not best friends forever, though. My friendship with Greg lasted the year, no more. We’ve never crossed paths since. But I recall him vividly: short, a bit on the stalky side, red hair, receding hairline, and sporting a Van Dyke with a chin strap. I’m horrific with names, always have been.

Thus began my return to the scene of the crime, the crime being the beginning of my life in mining.