The End of the Beginning

If there’s one thing everyone learns, it’s that all things end, nothing lasts forever. This includes school. There is a progression, suggesting that there will always be more: grade school leads to middle-school, middle-school to high school, high school to postsecondary, be that trade school, college, or university. It’s a dizzying succession that leads on forever, or so it seems at the time. So many years, so many people.

I’d been fortunate in my companions along the way, both domestic and foreign.

I’m surprised at the number of “foreign” people in my life, the first being Tony Siball. I don’t know if Tony could be categorized as “foreign,” but he was from Jamaica, or at least his father was. Tony never had an accent, so he was probably from Toronto, and not Jamaica at all. But he was black, so he was certainly foreign to these parts. He was the first black person I’d ever met. He was curious insomuch as his skin was a different colour, but he was just a kid, and I was a kid, and we were in the same grade. He liked to play, and I liked to play, and that’s about as far as my thoughts went at that time. Tony was Tony. His skin colour didn’t matter a whit.

Once I left Pinecrest and began attending St. Theresa, there were Natives, specifically John. John was shy. John was quiet. Aside from that, I liked John. He smiled a lot. But John went back up the coast before the year was up, and I never saw him again.

I met Renato Romey in high school. Renato began life in the Philippines, and never lost his accent so long as I knew him.

In college, both in Haileybury and in Cambrian, there were a number of African students. I only knew them in passing; they hung out with one another, generally, keeping to themselves, speaking their mother tongue often, English when needed. I recall our having to make presentations (it didn’t matter on what, so long as we were able to speak in front of the class for about 15 minutes), so one of the Africans chose to lecture us on the life of Bob Marley, his revolutionary music, and his love of the sacred Rastafarian herb. Naïve as I was, I had no idea that they’d heard of Bob Marley in Africa; obviously they had. But love of Bob’s music broke the ice, and allowed we Canadians and they Africans to begin to bridge what had been until then, a fairly wide gap. They never became friends, but from that point on we never shied away from sharing a lunch table.

And finally, there was Jak Yassar Ninio. Turkish and Jewish, Jak was quiet, and a bit effeminate by North American standards. But Jak was not North American, and as I had no reference as to how Turkish men acted, I thought Jak was gay. I could not be further from the mark. Jak’s girlfriend was gorgeous, so beautiful she might have been a supermodel. And Jak’s girlfriend slept over, and slept over often.

And then there was Matt Hait. Even though Matt was from Toronto, he was in many ways as foreign to me as any of those others. Until I met Matt, I had little exposure to Torontonians. To be clear, I know, and knew, people are people and you’d be hard pressed to find two who are completely alike, regardless how close or far apart they may have grown up, but for the most part, I thought Ontarians were Ontarians, and thought little of it. But Matt’s Torontonian perspective, and my Northern one, were rather different. His level of urban maturity dwarfed mine. And though he never belittled my naivety, he did chuckle about my being from the sticks, on occasion.

Matt was wilder than me. When he was drinking. Sober, he was a diligent student, achieving far better marks than I usually did. He was far less constrained by perceived responsibility and duty, and really didn’t think much about decorum. In his world view, it didn’t matter what people saw, heard or thought; because you were likely to never see them ever again. That could lead to rather startling behavior. One might say destructive, evil behavior. And anarchy. Surprising for an Economics major. I’d have expected him to be buttoned dawn and straight laced.

Matt liked punk music. Not like I liked punk. I liked punk that bordered on New Wave. Matt liked his with an edge, nihilistic. Matt liked the violence of a mosh pit. Matt would pop Ecstasy. Matt could then party until the sun came up, writhing to the beat at an afterhours rave.

I was invited to a party by an acquaintance in 1^st year Economics. He introduced himself to me early on, noting my thinning hair. He swept his hat off and said, “Hey man, you’re bald, too!” That really didn’t win him any points with me then. But he was persistent. He’d park himself beside me in the Spoke (the cafeteria) when he’d spot me, insist we pair up in study groups and such. He was a Frat boy. Older than his roommates, so he was eager for a friend his own age. But he was angry and bitter. That annoyed me. I had a lot of anger in me, but I wasn’t that negative. At least I thought I wasn’t then, but I probably was. When Matt heard I was invited to a party at a Frat house, he lobbied me to accept, and he wanted to come. I did. We did.

Their house was older, and more opulent than ours. They had a full-sized billiards table in their rumpus room. We didn’t have a rumpus room. We had a 13-inch colour TV in our living room. I didn’t know anyone there except the one, so I never actually relaxed. We’d also only arrived with a limited amount of beer, owing to our having to carry it on the bus.

We stuck around for a couple hours, largely ignored by the Frat boys and Sorority girls. That pissed Matt off, so we left, drinking our last couple beers on the walk home under the heat of the starlit canopy. That’s when Matt revealed that he’d pocketed four billiard balls on the way out. We pitched them down the street, watching them bounce and roll and roll until they faded from site.

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.

Jamie

Jamie was an idiot. Just an opinion.

Jamie was also my landlord that year in London.

I first met Jamie when I moved into the house on Richmond Street. 1500 Richmond Street, or thereabouts. You can’t miss it: red brick ground floor, with attached garage, broad white siding wrapped around the 2^nd floor. My room was at the end of the hall on the 2^nd, in the back, windows to the south and west; Matt Hait had the front bedroom, both his windows facing front, to the east; Jak Yassar Ninio (Turkish and Jewish, if you’re interested), at the top of the stairs and over the garage. Jamie had the basement to himself. Waterbed, black lights, hanging wicker chair, altogether unkempt and tacky. A stereo that rivalled my own. Far bigger speakers. Jamie was a distracted sort, most definitely A.D.D. He spoke quickly. He cut everyone off. Nothing he ever said showed much forethought or wisdom.

I’d discover over time (from his mother) that Jamie has always been an excitable person, always running, never able to concentrate, always up to his elbows in trouble. He’d had a stint in juvenile, only to get in trouble again the moment he was released. The judge took pity on him and didn’t send him to prison, sending him to a mental health hospital for evaluation and a rest instead. I think that might have saved Jamie. He learned the basics of cooking while there, found a liking for it, and upon release asked his mother if she’d pay to send him to cooking school. She was grateful of his taking any interest, so she agreed. He graduated. His mother also thought it would be good for him to be out on his own, co-signing the loan on the house we were living in. I see no ulterior motive here (supressing sarcasm, and failing). He’d never have been able to afford it by himself, not on his salary, so he needed boarders, which was where Matt, Jak, and I came in.

Jamie gave me the tour. He showed me the woodpile alongside the house, saying that we were all free to use the fireplace in the living room, but we were all responsible for splitting the wood and making kindling.

I found he spoke without thinking. He leapt from subject to subject mid-sentence. He was agreeable to everything, promising all, vague about specifics. I soon found out that he lied, that he stole, that he was consistently unreliable. How he managed to commit to work, I’ll never know. He must have loved it, because he committed to nothing else, not even his friends. He was shallow, self-centered, and selfish. Life was a party. All else was irrelevant.

When I mentioned that ROCK and HYDE were playing on the campus, he said he wanted to go, that he’d “show” me around campus (as if he’d know his way around, having never gone), he even went as far as to extract a promise from me to wait for him to get off work. He’d be back in plenty of time, he said. I waited, crashed out on the couch with a book. Time grew short. He did not show. I found my way there myself. No big thing, by itself; but I’d discover that Jamie was never one for follow-through.

A chef, he promised to teach me how to cook when I expressed interest. I was only a functional cook back then. He never once showed interest.

One day I noticed an inexplicable long-distance charge on my phone bill. My parents had always instructed me to call them collect, so it certainly wasn’t mine. I may have made three the whole year through. I was the only one with a phone, and everyone was free to use it. All long-distance was logged by the user, that way we could sort out the bill, but here was one call not written in our log. I asked around, mistakes are made, after all, but no one owned up to it. I already knew who’d made it; it wasn’t too hard to figure out. All of Jak’s calls were to his girlfriend in Toronto, or to Turkey; all of Matt’s were to family in Toronto; and after a few months I could recognize the numbers, they never wavered. That left Jamie. I bought a phone lock. You may have never seen one before, but they existed. It was a keyed lock that you fit in the “1” finger-hole. Once it was in there, no one could dial out. I explained why I was locking the phone to Matt and Jak, and told them that any time they wanted to use the phone, all they had to do was ask. They understood and agreed. Problem solved. I only supervised Jamie’s calls.

One night Jamie tried to break into my room. I know it was him, because I heard him muttering to himself. He must have known I was in there. The chain lock was in place. He inched the door open and tried to release the chain. Have you ever tried to release a chain lock from the outside? Not possible. But he tried, repeatedly. I got up, and sat at my desk, where I was better able to see through the hall-lit gap, so I’d be able to watch him grow more frustrated by the moment. I could have answered him. I could have opened the door for him, and asked him what he wanted, but he’d already borrowed small amounts of money from each of us, never paying any of us back. I was disinclined to. He cursed me under his breath and closed the door lightly again.

Exam time, I was trying to study. I was trying to sleep. Jamie would come in at all hours and crank his stereo. He was fond of electronic dance music and used to practice his dance moves at deafening volumes. It would shake the foundation, it would fill the house with throbbing bass. I’d descend to the ground floor and ask him to turn it down from the top of the basement stairs. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t. When he didn’t, I’d yell down. He yelled back once that it was his house and he’d do a he pleased. So, I told him that if he didn’t turn the stereo down I would call his mother. The volume dropped to almost nothing moments later.

I heard him say, “Bitch!” He must have thought he was saying it under his breath, but Jamie had no clue how to be quiet.

I yelled back down again. “What did you call me?”

He said nothing at all.

Jamie was a child. If it wasn’t fun, he very likely didn’t want to do it.

Oddly, I became the adult in the house. Me, of all people. I had no idea how that happened. That said, my sphere of control was limited.

Jamie forgot to pay his bills. One day we arrived back from school to a frigid house. We tried the thermostat. Nothing. We checked the furnace. The blower worked, but there was no heat, no matter the setting. We checked the gas valve outside, and found it locked. We phoned the gas company, found out that the gas had not been paid for months, and that they would not turn the gas back on until it was paid; so, we called Jamie’s mother.

She paid the bill, but informed us that as she co-signed on the purchase in the hope that Jamie would grow up and accept responsibly—and since he hadn’t, much to her chagrin—she’d be selling the house when we vacated, and that we needed to find a new place to live the following year.

A Litany of Storms

It’s surprising how different any other place can be from home, regardless how close it may appear on a map. London was no different in that it too was different. London suffered from greater storms than home, or at least it had while I was there. So did Haileybury, for that matter, but Hailebury’s weather was more similar than it was different. Sudbury was much the same as Timmins, so much so I might as well have been home. But the South was noticeably more humid; so it came as no surprise that its autumn storms were more severe. So too its transition.

I recall when back in Sudbury, in Res, a floor-mate from Barrie was bragging about how great Barrie was. It was the perfect city, it was the perfect size, it had the perfect weather. We were crowded into the common room as he declared these simple, indisputable facts. The six-o’clock news was on. He was interrupted by a special report. Barrie had been hit by a tornado, cutting a swath of destruction through the city, dispelling his declaration of perfect weather. He was shocked. He was concerned. We too were shocked. A tornado! In Ontario! We were also amused. And we laughed. The Fates could never have pulled off a coincidence like that again in a million years. Yeah, we were assholes to have laughed, but we couldn’t help ourselves.

Autumn’s first snows arrived as expected in London, in late October. The day it came, it was still rather mild to my reckoning. There was a sporadically brisk breeze when I walked up to the campus, but that’s not to say that it was cold, either. I wore a light sweater and a jean jacket. No other outerwear was required. The wind picked up, slaked off, picked up again, gusting in from the north. The air smelled of snow. If you come from the North, you understand what I mean. Snow has a smell like no other. The sky filled with patchy, yet visibly fat, cloud cover. Whatever other weather held off for the rest of the morning.

My classes complete, I headed home for lunch. Early on, the first flakes fell, then thickened. At first it was rather pleasant. Fat fluffy snow drifted on a light breeze, melting as it lit on the ground. Then the wind picked up. The cloud cover closed ranks, cutting off what warmth the sun had afforded me up till then. The temperature dropped with it. The snow thickened. And turned sticky. As I was passing the University Hospital Parking Garage I was treated with the full force of the wind, and on gaining Perth Drive it began to rain. Thick heavy rain. This is not to say that it ceased snowing; it hadn’t. Snow and rain were falling together, flying in my face on an increasingly icy wind.

I’d never experienced this. Within a block I was soaked through, yet wearing an increasingly thick coat of snow to the fore. Everything I could see was painted by a wet white sticky glue that slid and drooped and defied the gravity that pulled it to the ground. Five minutes later, I gained my front stoop. I had to shake my jacket hard to detach this new skin, and skim my thighs as though scraping slush from a windshield. I stripped and spent a quarter hour in the shower to throw off the damp chill that had enveloped me in about a third of the time. When I was towelling off, I noticed that the snow had been replaced by a driving rain that had erased all evidence of the snow that had until minutes before clung to all I could see. No one in the house was particularly interested in my little adventure. They’d all seen it before.

Winter was milder, if snowier. Storms blew in, the roads impassable for hours at a time. And passed as quickly as they came. And melted away to almost nothing in a couple days. I learned a new weather term: the snow squall. Snowbanks were not the hard-pressed windrows I remembered, but temporary things that could never support my weight. I fell through one such stepping off the bus, landing flat on my face.

Spring was no less gentle. I’d been up at the library studying. It was easier studying there than arguing with Jamie night after night about volume. When I left the campus, it was a gorgeous summer evening in the spring. Hot, humid, heavy. The air felt close. Thunder rolled in the distance. I looked up and saw stars, so I didn’t think anything of it. Without a cloud in the sky, I thought I had plenty of time to get home before the storm arrived, if it ever did. I miscalculated. Before I left the hilltop campus behind, the clouds crowded in, the wind picked up, and the flash of lightning was lighting my steps more often than the overhead streetlamps. I got as far as the University Hospital Parking Garage when I began to get nervous. The flashes and the thunder had become a litany of exclamation. I was counting off the seconds between flash and boom, but I was no longer sure where one left off and the next began. Not a drop had fallen.

Then there was a flash that all but blinded me. The roar was deafening. The thunder hammered me down, buckling my knees. I’d flinched so hard that I’d actually come close to jerking flat on the ground. There was another bolt, and another, and another. And I was up and running for the open wall of the seven-story structure. Luckily the 1^st floor WAS open, so I leapt over the half wall and carried on until I was midway between the rows of parked cars.

I stood there for a few minutes, still shaking, trying and failing to light a cigarette. The gusts kept ripping the flame from the Bic’s spout. The storm passed, as quickly as it came, as quickly as that awe-inspiring storm I’d watched roll over Haileybury two years before. Only that time I was safe within the confines of the 2^nd floor cafeteria.

Not out in the open. Not at ground zero.

I waited there until I’d finished my smoke before poking my head out. It still hadn’t rained.

I could still taste the Ozone.

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.

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.

A Pause Before a Return

 

Haileybury behind me, I set my site on 3^rd year at Cambrian.

I’d weathered my summer layoff, made my money at the Dome. Bonus had filled in the loss of a week’s pay, and then some. It was not so different at the Dome. There was far more security, I’d had to endure periodic searches, but by and large, underground was underground. Cap lamps and coveralls. I had to prove myself, though. The Dome had so many students that year, I had to compete with all the others to gain the better bonus jobs.

My first shifts were as ditch cleaner, then ditch digger. Then I was trained as a “valve man.” I had to fill ore cars for a battery locomotive trolley. A week later, I was the locomotive operator. A month later, I was hauling ore for a better bonus stope. I finished my summer as a block-holer in a scram. That means I drilled holes in oversize muck that would not fit down the stope shoot, and blasted them. I filled in on occasion with the long-hole blasters, mainly man hauling explosives up a raise to a stope being loaded. Paychecks were good. Bonus checks were better. They were the crème that topped the cake.

Allergies were not. I had a bad outbreak of hives that summer. This is not to say that I had not been plagued by them every year since grade 5, because I had; this is to say that this may have been the worst case I’d had since grade 5. I blame stress. There were days that the hives were so bad that I could not stand to have my helmet sit atop my head. They itched horribly, my scalp crawling under its light pressure, so badly that on one break, I whipped it off and hurled it across the stope. It was a stupid thing to do, more a reaction than a thought, as I had to walk over to retrieve the damn thing. But they passed, as did the summer.

I was adamant that I would not stay in residence again. I was just beginning to grow up and get my act together, so, the last thing I needed was that level of regression again. Would it have been fun? Yes, it would have been fun, but I had no desire to see my GPA regain casualty status again. My first year at HSM had been a near disaster, my average a lofty 2.15; my year in Cambrian had been little better, about 2.25, an improvement, but still a disaster; the past year had been better, far better: 2.7. I was getting somewhere, where, I had no clue, but at least I was beginning to feel less of a failure than I had presumed myself to be. I was older and a far more experienced student. I could just about rhyme off what would be on any given test or exam by the abundance of detail in my notes. I just had little interest in what I was studying. I was far more interested in history and literature, archeology, sociology and the like. People interested me. The march of time interested me. Movies and novels, Vietnam, the Great War, and the War of the Rings.

This is not to say I was any more mature. I was still an adolescent in an aging body. I still haunted the bars on weekends. I still went to parties with my old friends. At one such, Deb Huisson must have taken it upon herself to sober me up some, so she insisted we talk a walk. I’d developed some feelings for Deb that summer, so I agreed without much coaxing. Halfway through, I had to pee. The urge became insistent. So, I told Deb to keep watch. She whispered, “Don’t!” But I was in such need that I told her not to worry, that it was the middle of the night, so who would know? I nestled up to a hedge, and began to relieve myself. I heard a rapping at a window. I looked up, and saw a middle-aged woman beating on her picture window. God knows why she was up at that hour, but there she was, looking down on me up against her bushes. Deb rasped a curse and hid. But there was nothing to be done but finish. If she called the cops, we’d be long gone by the time they arrived. So, I waved the woman off, zipped up, and got on my merry way. Deb kept looking over her shoulder. I did not. “Come on,” I said, reaching out for her hand. She took it, and we ran a little, mainly because it made her feel better to put some distance between us and that bush.

I was even less mature when in Aubrey Bergin’s company. I’d met Aubrey a couple years prior in the Empire. We ogled women on the dancefloor. We giggled like schoolboys at the most childish things. I was still only 18 when we met, already a regular at the Empire. One day, a waitress met us at the door with a stamp in hand, and told us to proffer our fists. “Why?” we asked.

“Because we were busted for underage drinking, and we need to be sure that everyone in here is of age.” She did not ask me for ID. Good thing, as I was just the sort they were trying to keep out.
Later, still in my childish ignorance, I began to call a rather attractive Asian woman Jizzum. Why? Because that’s what Aubrey and his friends called her, and Aubrey and his friends were her friends. At first, she took it in stride, shrugged it off. Then, when I called her that the next weekend, she lashed out, said I was a horrible person, and stormed off. I was shocked! I was confused! “What did I do?” I asked Aubrey.

“You called her, Jizzum,” he said.

I must have looked like a vacant kid, because he laughed. “Don’t you know what jizzum is?”

I didn’t want to profess ignorance, so I remained silent.

“It’s cum,” he said, and almost collapsed with laughter.

I still had a lot of growing up to do.

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.