This is the 18th of 21 instalments of my Spiritual Künstlerroman: What is Left When Everything is Gone.
Ladies and Ginklemen, step right this way for plenty of SexSexSex. Get it while it’s hot, and don’t be last.
Sexuality is everywhere: the way a bureaucrat fondles his records, a judge administers justice, a businessman causes money to circulate; the way the bourgeoisie fucks the proletariat; and so on. (Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oepidpus.)
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The new guys from the Jaguars are singing twit, twat, a penny or two, we are the Griffins so fuck you. I hate words like twat. Everyone knows what it means, and it makes me feel dirty to hear it.
I hate people who say that. Or more like I look down at them from inside myself, because Stacey Peters, Jerrod Jones and Ian Wilson are great guys apart from all that twit twat business.
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We are getting changed out of our equipment. I won’t take a shower here. There are guys who love taking showers, who say showers are their favourite thing. You don’t wanna be around those guys when they’re showering.
McNab, Bill Smith and some of the other guys on the senior team are having fun. This is the kind of thing Pawchuk encourages. They just did what they called the three-man-lift with the new juniors from the Jags. Stewart Adams said he would lift all three guys at once, so they got the three Jags to lie down together with their arms and legs linked. Then old Stewie pretended he was going to lift them up together, but he smeared a handful of heating rub all over Jonesy’s balls. Jerrod Jones is the only black guy in our school, probably the only black guy in Calgary.
I couldn’t believe they would do that. JJ is in the shower now which I’m not sure is the greatest idea. He’s a good guy and he sure didn’t deserve that.
Those guys and their Rodeo Song. Well it’s forty below and I don’t give a fuck, got a heater in ma truck, and am off to the rodeo. I despise that song. Cowtown.
Allemande left, come on you fuckin’ dummy, get your right foot right, get on my nerves, ya god damn jerk. Man, I hate that song, but it gets stuck in your head, and you torment yourself with it later, especially with these idiots singing it all the time. Strelow sings it too, but he sings it for pure spite. Just as bad.
A few more juniors wander in and they are at it again. They have Ryan Mercer on his back on a bench. They have challenged him to an atomic sit up. Stewie holds a t-shirt over the guy’s eyes, and when he pulls it away, McNab is squatting his naked ass over the poor guy’s face, so his nose goes right in.
Guys are all laughing now, saying there’s brown on Mercer’s nose. He is going into the shower now too.
How could you let anyone get away with doing that? You would have to fight to the death to get revenge. Nothing could stop you.
I can see Alex feels like I do.
I have come out of the back door of the school to get to my car and there is Jerrod Jones over by the fence. I try to talk to him but he is crying, and he just turns away from me. I say, sorry bout that buddy, and then I keep going.
Why can’t people just leave other guys alone?
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Of course Lambrina had to be Greek. Alex is making fun of me about Kathleen and Lambrina. When I am driving with them both squeezed in the front seat with me, I sometimes think I have this great life where I’m dating the two most beautiful girls in school, but Alex always brings me down to earth.
It all comes down to the question of are you gettin’ laid? he says.
I say, Love has pitched her mansion in the place of excrement. It’s all piss and shit. I only care about their clothes.
Alex sighs wearily and looks away from me. Tries to shake what I just said out of his head.
I tell him I much prefer their company to his. They are civilised, and not always grunting. Plus, they smell good and look good. That doesn’t make me gay.
That’s exactly what makes you gay, he says, like he’s caught me out in some kind of logic trap. I bet you’re one of those kids who played with Barbie dolls. In fact, I know you are.
I move behind him, put an arm on his shoulder and try to hoik his arm up behind his back. He is too huge, and he just steps back and smashes me into a tree.
He says, if you don’t get laid soon you’ll become a fucking homo.
Well, I’m not a homo anyway. Maybe I’m something worse though, if anyone knew, but you can’t tell anyone about what you think about when you jerk off, even though he told me once he was dreaming he was fucking a hot chick, and she looked around and it was my face.
If anyone’s a plain old homo, it’s him, not me. Greeks.
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Whitfield has parties every weekend in his basement. His mom and dad are upstairs in the kitchen. They’re super easygoing. They’re even having a drink themselves at the kitchen table, and they’ll chat to kids. His dad is in a wheelchair because of an accident. They don’t mind the loud music from the basement, because Kevin has the best music collection of anyone, and he is always introducing you to good new stuff. He doesn’t have any metal or even classic rock. It is all New Wave stuff, with synthesisers.
It’s early in the party and no one’s wrecked yet. Ian Wilson is on the phone in Kev’s bedroom. I ask Stacey Peters who Wilson’s talking to, and he says Lambrina Horvath.
Ian is a really nice guy, but I tell him to give me the phone, and he gives it to me, still being a nice guy and all. I sit down and start chatting to Lambrina. Ian is beautiful, like Sir Lancelot, or an angel. They can go back to the party.
I talk to her like I talk to her every night, and she doesn’t ask me to put her back on with Wilson, but she does start asking me questions about him so anyway, we can talk about this. To be fair he is a nice guy so you don’t have to try to say something nice about someone you hate.
Kolese Milliken is in the room now. She is trying to get my attention. She says, Don’t you think you should give the phone back to Ian? I just look at her like a murderer looks at someone he’s about to kill.
When I get off the phone with Lambrina, I’m feeling pretty ornery. I take a swig of the whiskey in my mickey pocket, grab a beer and go looking for Tom so’s we can get high.
I find Major Tom dithering down the stairs with his eyes stoned out of his head. He has on big white headphones that are connected to a stereo in the living room by a long lead he is dragging behind him. He spots me, strays down a step shaking his head in awe as though bliss is opening up to him. His eyes are like the wide eyes of a fish.
He says, way too loud, holy shit, man, you have to listen to this. People look at him and chuckle. I follow the nut job up to the living room and sit down with my beer between my feet. He hands me the headphones and lifts the needle back to the start of the song. Before I put on the headphones, I tell him to roll up another reefer.
Whoa. Holy shit, man, is right.
Comfortably Numb. How the guitar pulls such sweetness up out of sorrow. It is like it is reaching into me, dragging all my sadness out in furious colours without colour. Everything that makes life beautiful.
Tom and me are standing out under a streetlight having a joint. I keep drinking the whiskey from my mickey pocket. Whiskey makes me angry. It’s pretty cold. You can see your breath even without a joint.
I am back downstairs, behind the bar. Kathleen and Skinny Don are singing into one another’s faces, Should I stay or should I go now.
Skinny Don? Man.
Rosey O’Grady is a cute little redhead guy that looks like a baby. He is talking and everyone is laughing at how cute he is. I pull back my head and whack my forehead down onto his.
Crack.
People are looking away; Gord is saying whoa, wow, why did you do that? I am saying it is because people like him so much. I am thinking though, like Gord, whoa, wow, why did I do that, and even whoa, wow, why did I say that? I don’t know. I’m an asshole I guess. It’s ok though, not so many people saw, and we are all so loaded you forget things as they soak into other things.
Tom and me are parked up in Edworthy, looking out over all the moon base lights of the futuristic city. The Calgary Tower isn’t the tallest building anymore. It’s strange to have a building shaped like that if it isn’t the tallest building anymore. It makes the world seem phoney.
We are going to have a last joint and then I will drop Tom off at his house. He sticks our favourite in my ghetto blaster, and fast forwards to the start of Moving in Stereo. By the time it gets to All Mixed Up we are finished the joint and Tom sticks the roach in his little roach baggie.
We sit saying nothing, just listening to the music building up. The city lights make clouds a grey pinky white from up under against the night sky. The saxophones are going and it is like your heart is swelling up out of you, out into the world, and suddenly for maybe a few seconds you know everything, and it is very simple. If only you could tell someone.
I am closing the front door of our house. Nobody is up. I think for a second, did I park the car? I’m pretty wasted. I go down to my room and pull out my dirty mags. I kneel down with my back to the door in case anyone would walk in.
There is a party and I am tied naked to the table in the middle. I am not man or woman. I am not even human.
Kathleen and Lambrina arrive. They are with Wilson and Skinny Don. I look at their faces looking at Wilson and Skinny the way they sometimes looked at me, while someone is telling them about what I did to poor little Rosey O’Grady.
I have saved all the details of their faces and their bodies, how they move and react, and I bring these pieces together to make them alive in my puppet show, so that I can even smell them, hear their breath, and with all the details and the reality of the thing that I bring to it, after the grand finale, in the rich collapse, I feel such despair and such emptiness, I fall down so far inside myself that is a dead thing, a body that I hate.
•
The Manning Griffins are in the finals. We are at McMahon Stadium. The lights are on, and you can see the plumes of breath above us. Everyone says Pawchuck made this happen.
He just gave us this super corny speech which they all loved, and then it was all ooh ooh ooh, mighty mighty Griffins. You’ve got to scream along, even if you don’t feel like it anymore.
Our new uniforms are very cool. They’re white mesh with blue numbers outlined in yellow. We have yellow helmets, and all season whenever you do a good play, you get a little blue griffin sticker for your helmet. Dave Cutting, Hal Larson, and Rob McNab have the most. Their helmets are totally covered. Everyone has some griffins though, even Skinny Don.
Maybe I’m not into football as much this year because it’s all about the grade twelves really. Alex isn’t as into it this year either because he is so focussed on wrestling. He’s the Canadian Champion now.
We are playing the E.P Scarlett Lancers. They have cool silver helmets with a charging knight in burgundy. McNab is on the field for the coin toss. He is coming back now with his special rolling hips, and talking to Pawchuck.
Everyone is acting. Everything’s pretend. They have to believe it, because they’re too chickenshit to face reality.
We are walking onto the Astroturf to find our places for the kick-off. Angelus Karmis runs at the ball and kicks it way down deep to the E.P Scarlett guys.
We’re all on top of the guy with the ball now, and as I get up and run off the field I can hear all the cheering people in the stands.
Win or lose, I know these guys are going to be singing The Rodeo Song tonight.
This is not my game.
I just like fighting.
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I am in the basement playing D&D with Deane and Dan. Deane is getting taller. He’s almost as tall as I am. He has long hair now like Dan. He is dressed light, in an elven cloak and boots. He is ahead, stepping carefully through the dark pine forest, avoiding snapping twigs, because there is a party of Blood-Thirst orcs nearby.
Dan follows, short and strong, with heavy armour and an axe. He is always laughing and drinking beer, so this could give them away.
I’m watching them, listening to them, these two fine young men out seeking their fortune, and I am all the bugbears about to come out of the trees behind them.
I am the absence holding everything open. You can see it all, feel it all, smell the clatter and ruckus as I charge.
We are in Edworthy, at the fire pits. There are often bonfire parties for heads down here in the summer. Deane and Dan go to these parties. I have been to a few with Alex and Ange, looking for fights. Long haired guys stumbling out of every bush with their cases of beer. Some guy cranking out Black Sabbath on his crappy ghetto blaster.
It is a wintery afternoon now though, and there is nobody around. Deane is trying to light a fire. He prides himself on being able to light fires. Some kind of elven survival skill, he thinks. He’s also proud of being able to light cigarettes in the wind.
I’m kind of tired of this and I’m telling him to forget it, he can’t make a fire in all this snow, and then his blue lighter flies past my ear. He’s back at it, striking matches now. Dan is looking stressed because he doesn’t know what is about to happen.
I let it go, pretend he didn’t just throw his lighter at my head. He gets a fire going, and it grows. We are standing in front of its noise now as the low cold sun moves above the black treetops, stretching long shadows across the snow behind us.
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It’s summer again. I’m in Whitfield’s car with Tom and Gord Pedlar. We’re driving to Prince’s Island Park. The sky is so blue, with only a few stray clouds drifting. It’s so hot, you need to be drinking Slurpies all the time. We are all bobbing our straws now, and sucking up the slush. It changes the colour of our mouths. We just had a joint, and everything is crisp and laughable.
We get out of the car. There are people everywhere on the grass down to the lazy Bow River with people floating past on inner tubes and in bright little dinghies. Gord and Kev are always so organised for having a good time. They are gathering the cooler of beer, towels, a frisbee, a football, a pre-rolled joint, Kev’s ghetto blaster and his cassette case. Me’n Tom would never think of that kind of thing, but it sure is good that they did.
We are picking through people looking for a place to sit down. It’s incredible. There are chicks in tiny bathing suits all over. Your mind is getting blown this way and that. Brown legs, asses, tits and smiles.
I am always horny. It makes it hard to think about anything else. We put everything down, and sprawl out on the grass. Kev and Gord already have their shirts off, working on their tans. I have a pretty good tan too. I take off my shirt.
Strelow doesn’t take off his shirt, because he takes a lot of pride in his shirts. He gets good shirts by shoplifting them. He also stole the shades he’s wearing now. He loves them because you can’t see his bleary eyes.
I lean forward because behind his head now a chick in a bikini is bending over to throw out her towel. Her hips hold a smooth bend for a moment and then wiggle as she stands straight and the cheeks of her ass drop again into fullness. I can’t believe that life could so casually contain that perfect ass.
I look up and see everything at once. I’m not horny for somebody’s body: I’m horny for all of this; the clouds, the blue, the river with people floating past on rafts; horny to be the nothingness holding everything in place.
I am bobbing the straw up and down in my Coke Slurpie.
Dammit, there’s Blair. He’s with his new girlfriend.
Wow, she’s hot. She wore stockings and suspenders for his birthday, and kept letting him see when he was driving. This guy. He even has two lawn chairs with him. He’s standing here now talking to Kev and Gord like he’s Action Jack, with that let’s-make-a-serious-plan look on his face, scanning the environs like the captain of a ship for a place to park his lawn chairs. Blair.
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I am sort of the king of the jock benches now that we are in Grade Twelve. Not that I can get a girlfriend, but everyone thinks I’m psycho. I could probably beat anyone in the school in a fight except for Alex, though a few guys probably wouldn’t agree. It means I get to set the tone around here.
There’s Alex now, walking past on his campaign trail. He’s holding a sign shaped like a pointing finger and it says Vote Karmis. He’s giving me a peace sign like Nixon, walking past with his big baby-smile and his leather folder under his arm.
He’s full of secrets nowadays. There are so many things he won’t tell you about. He wants to be an entrepreneur or a gangster. I haven’t the slightest clue what I want to be.
Alex has a little buddy on either side of him. He likes having little buddies, and then all the Greeks. He probably tells them more than he tells me; he’s past us now, and me’n Strelow are chuckling. I know Strelow is thinking up a good one.
There is Kevin Smith passing. He’s in a hurry, thinking to himself, and he’s smiling. He has those scars all over his arms. I don’t know him but he seems like a nice guy. He was gone from school for a while after the accident. His older brother’s friend was driving them to Medicine Hat or somewhere, and it was raining so their car hydro-foiled into the pillar of the underpass. His brother and the other guy were dead. Kevin was in the back seat, hanging upside down until the police and ambulance arrived.
How can he be smiling?
Peter Bennett is passing by with his face painted half white and half black, hair long on one side and short on the other. He is one of those guys who is just tempting you to make fun of him. He gets off on it I think. He loves seeing himself as a persecuted artist. I won’t give him what he wants.
I say nothing, and leave him to Tom.
There is Melanie Markevitch. I pay attention while she walks past. She is quite racy. Even though she’s a Jehovah’s Witness and can’t date anyone who isn’t one, there’s a lot of steam between her and Blair.
You couldn’t say much to her these days though, because her best friend got killed last winter down on Suicide Hill. She went down the hill on a tube with a bunch of people piled on top and they went so fast that at the bottom they bounced up over the hay bales and she was cut in half by a tree. That’s what they say.
Melanie was there. What must it have been like? You can’t even imagine or you are just watching cartoons. Everyone panicking and screaming and blood in the snow so red it doesn’t seem real.
Or was it nighttime? Because then the blood would seem black.
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