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.
