(no subject)
Walter hunts a thick blonde at the bar. She’s wearing these hideous black leather pants that are so tight they look like some rubbery second skin. I think of her taking those things off at the end of the evening. An unsettling silence punctuated by a lone creaking. The leather releasing itself from its pink, fleshy host. Christ, I slur out loud.
I went to school near the U.S. border but dropped out after my freshman year. Got sick of trying to learn while sitting in an auditorium, those amplified voices and cold, campfire faces lost under woeful light. During warm, summer evenings I would settle into a soft headrest over the Ambassador Bridge, handing customs officers a passport photo taken just over a year ago of a healthy boy, solid-framed and wide-smiling. Made for fields, for goal posts and seashell necklaces. They would study the picture, raise their eyes to the unshaven floor mop sitting before them, and hand the passport back. Stare into poker faces and smile. Just staying with some friends overnight, going to a party, coming back tomorrow morning, thank you sir/madam. Across the highway, dry-heaving smoke stacks and Detroit’s meager, beat-down skyline appearing slow like a dreadful realization. Descend into it’s aching, pulsating vein; into it’s dripping, snaggletooth mouth belching fire and noise. I would swallow funny pastels and trade sweat with the wild boys, deep bass making the walls swim, sweet smoke in the air, and my body starting to feel like a thick, warm motor is running through it… all that wet, dark, pulsating flesh, all the men with alligator eyes who will wait patiently for you, wait for you to cross the bridge again, knowing it’s only a matter of time…
Walter and I work in a call center, which is the only semi-professional thing you can really do in this town other than dig up nickel. Trade the cart for the cubicle. The swinging lamp for the fluorescent headache. The headset will get warm and sticky in your ear and your collar will get wet around its edges. You will hear a phone ring and ring and ring forever…then be shocked out of your meandering daydream by an answering machine’s sudden voice. You will learn to tune things out: the distant wailing of a child, the indignant elderly. I first met Walter when I caught him in his car before work - a shadowy, mythic figure cloaked in white fog. Bent over in the driver’s seat, he lifted his head and caught my eye through a milky haze. Raising one finger in a “hold on a minute” motion, he reached across and opened the passenger side, releasing a volcanic river of smoke. He was blood-red, coughing and hacking, barely able to get out the words “COUGHheyman……COUGHCOUGH……you smoke?”
Since then, this has been our pre-work ritual. In the farthest corner of the parking lot, in his rusted black hatchback, watching tiny, excitable bubbles spring upwards inside that translucent tube to gurgle at the surface. Waltzing, hypnotic ribbons from our noses and mouths fill the interior, and we listen to the kind of shit old people like to listen to when they get baked. Walter’s classic rock tapes - stuff like Jefferson Airplane and Hawkwind. He lowers his grey head, the water gurgling, the bubbles forming and rising, then a sudden jerk upwards, his eyes raw and on fire…oh man…listen to what Hendrix does here…out of breath, he sounds like a dying man ….did I tell you my Hendrix story?
The blonde is sitting alone for now, but Walter says she has a friend. He saw them show up together. The blonde looks at nothing in particular: gazes at the neon beer signs above the bar and looks over the bartender when his back is turned. She traces a finger around the mouth of her bottle, legs crossed, then uncrossed, the leather groaning. She looks around the room quickly, then cups her breasts with both hands, arches her back and quickly shifts her girls back into place. She is Walter’s type. He doesn’t even listen when I talk, when I try to get him onto another subject by telling him about some car accident I saw on the news last night. That smile is a filthy, gaping wound across his stubble. He stares until she turns around, and they hold each other’s gaze for a few seconds before she starts to smile and Walter gives a tiny wave hello. She tilts her head slightly and laughs, but the entire thing seems very awkward and rehearsed. She turns around and says something to the bartender. I decide to try one more time.
Hey man…
Yeahyeahyeah. The hand lifting from his chin to lightly dismiss me. The eyes never straying. I take another long swig of my beer.
So you gonna go talk to her or what?
For a second I don’t think he hears me, but then Walter says he doesn’t know and we both fall silent. Her friend returns from the bathroom and now we both stare, this new girl the smaller of the two, a black bob-cut hovering above blue denim and rhinestones. The blonde says something to her, and both of them now turn their eyes to our table. Twin terrors since high school. They probably live together, too. Maybe they got pregnant, got beat up, but they still emerge every weekend from a steamy, scented bathroom, bundling up tight and stepping out into another winter’s night to dance and drink and forget that the world is a terrible place full of awful men and dead end jobs and blood-caked, frozen roadkill. That’s how this place works. Day in and day out that depression stays with you, even after sleep, grinding in your teeth and overheating you until you are released and you are free - to drink and yell yourselves hoarse, to throw misguided haymakers in the alley behind the bar, to remove clothes and ignore desperate pleas from familiar voices. A blank stare behind flashing red and blue. A bloody, hanging mouth. You spit a tooth off the hood of a cruiser and the cop asks you if you wanna lose a few more there, tough guy. Defeated….no, officer.
The bar fills up quickly. A Bon Jovi song is received with ecstatic applause. The girls tap their heels on the stools and the boys line up their shots. Beer breath coasts over bruised, green velvet.
More drinks, more talk; and then the warm, sudden feeling of breasts grazing my hairline. I turn and Walter is smiling and laughing, his eyes exclaiming upwards. I tilt my head back to the upside-down blonde with her friend, a bored expression under that bob cut. The blonde does all the talking….Hey, dontcha like dancin’? The men in Stetson hats and cowboy shirts step lightly with their partners - the women of the sandy blonde hair and cloudy eyes and smoker’s laugh - moving back and forth in time, that guitar perfect and crisp in my ear and Walter says to the blonde yeah I wanna dance, and off they go hand in hand. The bob-cut sits down at our table and takes the seat adjacent to mine. Walter watches me from the outer edge of the dance floor, his hands fastened to the blonde’s wide hips and her arms draped around his neck like some flabby life preserver. The DJ segues into a song by Roxette and she doesn’t let go of Walter, just moves slower and rests her head on his shoulder. Walter turns his head sideways to feverishly get rid of stray hairs falling into his mouth, sticking his tongue in and out like a lizard, and I can’t help but laugh. My mood lightens. I find it easy to ignore the bob-cut as she sits cross-armed, alternating her glare from me to the ceiling, and I raise my eyes towards a list of beers written on the blackboard hanging above me. I can feel her looking at me again. Finally I turn to her.
So, you from town?
Yeah but I wasn’t born here, she says defensively. I was born in Calgary.
Do you and your friend hang out here a lot?
Laughter. A jarring, unhinged kind of laughter that shakes me out of my skin. Her face turning red, she cups her hands around her face and can’t stop. Eventually it passes through her, this girl staring at me breathless, smiling for the first time. A wonderful and natural smile that reminds me of sun entering a room, the sun reflected off glass…
Sorry.
That’s ok. What’s so funny?
She almost begins another laughing fit, but stops herself in time.
She’s my mother. I mean, I guess she’s my friend, too, but…
I turn to see the blonde swaying with Walter, arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders and hair in her eyes. Bob-cut smiles at the tabletop.
Right, I say, still staring at the slow dance, now ending. So how old are you anyway?
I'm eighteen.
And they let you in here?
Well, my mom knows the guy who runs the bar so they let me in some nights. I’m just not allowed to drink.
She smiles toward me awkwardly and I start to notice her details now, her soft features and eyes the colour of deep, rain-soaked foliage. I begin to find her shifty, nervous mannerisms sort of endearing and I suddenly get a strong sense that whatever is going on here is wrong. The DJ moves on to “You Shook Me All Night Long”, Walter and the blonde coming back to the table with secret smiles on their faces. He sits down beside me, the blonde sitting beside bob-cut. Woo, says the blonde, smiling at Walter, I am in the mood for a shot of somethin’..howsabout it? Sure, says Walter, then looking at bob-cut and I, smiling at me, how bout you two? Nah she don’t drink, says the blonde, brushing a rogue wave of dark hair from bob-cut’s face. The tired waitress arrives and the blonde orders three shots of Wild Turkey.
Ain’t no candy!
She howls as we lift our tiny shotglasses in the air, knock them together and slam them back, leaving no taste on my tongue but rupturing my stomach hard. I breath steady, try to keep it together, cursing myself for doing that shot, for talking to that girl, killing my buzz. Harsh vibes coming, I can feel it, waves inside me crashing back and forth as if rocked by violent winds. My mouth is all of a sudden very dry and I know I have to get to a toilet.
I mumble something to the rest of them about taking a piss and briskly walk to the bathroom door, trying to keep everything down until I hit the stall and then…eruption. I am the king snake, my gut wrenching and undulating, spewing a barely recognizable stew of the day’s meals into murky toilet water while I lean over to spit long strings into the mess, tears in my eyes and my nose running, my throat feeling torn. I wipe my eyes and nose with my sleeve, catch my breath and carefully step out. No one around. I head to the sink and splash water on my face, collecting handfuls to wash out my mouth. A tall man in a Roughriders jersey walks in and I hear a commotion outside the door. Loud male voices, some glass smashing and I think of the cowboys fighting again…gonna get another bar shut down and then where will you drink and draw blood you dumb fucks? I put one last handful of water in my mouth before wiping my face and heading back out.
I arrive amid chaos. A stone-faced Native man the size of a phone booth has his hands on bloodied Walter, the blonde looking manic and confused, being held back by some boys from the bar while a few others help the bouncer break things up. Walter is out of it completely: his eyes rolling back and forth like lottery balls and his shirt soaking wet, spackled with red. Bob-cut is standing by her mother, sees me coming towards them and shakes her head desperately no no no, go back where you came from, but this is my only friend in town and I will be damned if some big, dumb Indian is going to kill him tonight. My veins pumping Budweiser and my brain becoming some sullen grey cloud, I take a bottle from the table and line it up with the back of his head, gear up once, twice, three times….then release! The bottle launches from my hand, through stale air, spiraling and revolving before bouncing against the Native’s skull and smashing onto the floor. He staggers a bit, lets go of Walter’s shirt and tries to turn around, holding the back of his head with one hand. Before he or anyone else can identify me, before I can smirk like some ninth grade shit disturber, the men restraining him finally get the upper hand and wrestle him to the ground. I run over to Walter, who is being helped over to a nearby table, his face slick and crimson, his right eye taking the form of a rotten plum. I call for paper towels and vodka. The blonde is sputtering and blubbering apologies, clumsily chasing after the Native as he is led out the door, her face streaked with wet mascara. The bartender announces that the police are coming, and I flash back to one smoked-out Honda afternoon, Walter proudly reciting his litany of drug-related arrests. Together with bob-cut we grab him and exit out the back door.
In a snowy alley, Walter is a red-mouthed birthday clown, slipping in and out of consciousness, responding to my questions with an obnoxious, high-pitched laughter. I’ve cleaned him up a bit with the fallen snow, but his eye will need to be looked at. Between short bursts of collapse, he tells me things. I’m on fire, he says, I’m in love…
My back now against the wall, my head grazing a cool, rough brick and her mouth soft and small as it moves with mine, my eyes shut tight through the whole thing and I’m crawling in behind them, trying to drown myself in a black and borderless landscape. Snowflakes land calmly, dissolving on our eyelashes and on the tips of our noses, my hand exploring further, seeking warmth, leading me to the moistened outlines of her center. I am blind and feverish. I want to be a student of her weather; a vagabond living within her endless geography. Fingers now move on instinct, tiny claws digging deeper into my back and I hear her whimper and squeal - a sudden, jerking spasm leaping out of her like the devil. She pulls me in closer, her hand working me, those young and fearless green eyes glaring hotly into mine and I lean my head back gently against the wall to gaze up at a silent audience of stars. She tugs harder and I moan something undefined, a sound not my own but born out of a sharp, ethereal light, and I croak like a poisoned tree, a dried river. Something that knows it ought to be dead.
I went to school near the U.S. border but dropped out after my freshman year. Got sick of trying to learn while sitting in an auditorium, those amplified voices and cold, campfire faces lost under woeful light. During warm, summer evenings I would settle into a soft headrest over the Ambassador Bridge, handing customs officers a passport photo taken just over a year ago of a healthy boy, solid-framed and wide-smiling. Made for fields, for goal posts and seashell necklaces. They would study the picture, raise their eyes to the unshaven floor mop sitting before them, and hand the passport back. Stare into poker faces and smile. Just staying with some friends overnight, going to a party, coming back tomorrow morning, thank you sir/madam. Across the highway, dry-heaving smoke stacks and Detroit’s meager, beat-down skyline appearing slow like a dreadful realization. Descend into it’s aching, pulsating vein; into it’s dripping, snaggletooth mouth belching fire and noise. I would swallow funny pastels and trade sweat with the wild boys, deep bass making the walls swim, sweet smoke in the air, and my body starting to feel like a thick, warm motor is running through it… all that wet, dark, pulsating flesh, all the men with alligator eyes who will wait patiently for you, wait for you to cross the bridge again, knowing it’s only a matter of time…
Walter and I work in a call center, which is the only semi-professional thing you can really do in this town other than dig up nickel. Trade the cart for the cubicle. The swinging lamp for the fluorescent headache. The headset will get warm and sticky in your ear and your collar will get wet around its edges. You will hear a phone ring and ring and ring forever…then be shocked out of your meandering daydream by an answering machine’s sudden voice. You will learn to tune things out: the distant wailing of a child, the indignant elderly. I first met Walter when I caught him in his car before work - a shadowy, mythic figure cloaked in white fog. Bent over in the driver’s seat, he lifted his head and caught my eye through a milky haze. Raising one finger in a “hold on a minute” motion, he reached across and opened the passenger side, releasing a volcanic river of smoke. He was blood-red, coughing and hacking, barely able to get out the words “COUGHheyman……COUGHCOUGH……you smoke?”
Since then, this has been our pre-work ritual. In the farthest corner of the parking lot, in his rusted black hatchback, watching tiny, excitable bubbles spring upwards inside that translucent tube to gurgle at the surface. Waltzing, hypnotic ribbons from our noses and mouths fill the interior, and we listen to the kind of shit old people like to listen to when they get baked. Walter’s classic rock tapes - stuff like Jefferson Airplane and Hawkwind. He lowers his grey head, the water gurgling, the bubbles forming and rising, then a sudden jerk upwards, his eyes raw and on fire…oh man…listen to what Hendrix does here…out of breath, he sounds like a dying man ….did I tell you my Hendrix story?
The blonde is sitting alone for now, but Walter says she has a friend. He saw them show up together. The blonde looks at nothing in particular: gazes at the neon beer signs above the bar and looks over the bartender when his back is turned. She traces a finger around the mouth of her bottle, legs crossed, then uncrossed, the leather groaning. She looks around the room quickly, then cups her breasts with both hands, arches her back and quickly shifts her girls back into place. She is Walter’s type. He doesn’t even listen when I talk, when I try to get him onto another subject by telling him about some car accident I saw on the news last night. That smile is a filthy, gaping wound across his stubble. He stares until she turns around, and they hold each other’s gaze for a few seconds before she starts to smile and Walter gives a tiny wave hello. She tilts her head slightly and laughs, but the entire thing seems very awkward and rehearsed. She turns around and says something to the bartender. I decide to try one more time.
Hey man…
Yeahyeahyeah. The hand lifting from his chin to lightly dismiss me. The eyes never straying. I take another long swig of my beer.
So you gonna go talk to her or what?
For a second I don’t think he hears me, but then Walter says he doesn’t know and we both fall silent. Her friend returns from the bathroom and now we both stare, this new girl the smaller of the two, a black bob-cut hovering above blue denim and rhinestones. The blonde says something to her, and both of them now turn their eyes to our table. Twin terrors since high school. They probably live together, too. Maybe they got pregnant, got beat up, but they still emerge every weekend from a steamy, scented bathroom, bundling up tight and stepping out into another winter’s night to dance and drink and forget that the world is a terrible place full of awful men and dead end jobs and blood-caked, frozen roadkill. That’s how this place works. Day in and day out that depression stays with you, even after sleep, grinding in your teeth and overheating you until you are released and you are free - to drink and yell yourselves hoarse, to throw misguided haymakers in the alley behind the bar, to remove clothes and ignore desperate pleas from familiar voices. A blank stare behind flashing red and blue. A bloody, hanging mouth. You spit a tooth off the hood of a cruiser and the cop asks you if you wanna lose a few more there, tough guy. Defeated….no, officer.
The bar fills up quickly. A Bon Jovi song is received with ecstatic applause. The girls tap their heels on the stools and the boys line up their shots. Beer breath coasts over bruised, green velvet.
More drinks, more talk; and then the warm, sudden feeling of breasts grazing my hairline. I turn and Walter is smiling and laughing, his eyes exclaiming upwards. I tilt my head back to the upside-down blonde with her friend, a bored expression under that bob cut. The blonde does all the talking….Hey, dontcha like dancin’? The men in Stetson hats and cowboy shirts step lightly with their partners - the women of the sandy blonde hair and cloudy eyes and smoker’s laugh - moving back and forth in time, that guitar perfect and crisp in my ear and Walter says to the blonde yeah I wanna dance, and off they go hand in hand. The bob-cut sits down at our table and takes the seat adjacent to mine. Walter watches me from the outer edge of the dance floor, his hands fastened to the blonde’s wide hips and her arms draped around his neck like some flabby life preserver. The DJ segues into a song by Roxette and she doesn’t let go of Walter, just moves slower and rests her head on his shoulder. Walter turns his head sideways to feverishly get rid of stray hairs falling into his mouth, sticking his tongue in and out like a lizard, and I can’t help but laugh. My mood lightens. I find it easy to ignore the bob-cut as she sits cross-armed, alternating her glare from me to the ceiling, and I raise my eyes towards a list of beers written on the blackboard hanging above me. I can feel her looking at me again. Finally I turn to her.
So, you from town?
Yeah but I wasn’t born here, she says defensively. I was born in Calgary.
Do you and your friend hang out here a lot?
Laughter. A jarring, unhinged kind of laughter that shakes me out of my skin. Her face turning red, she cups her hands around her face and can’t stop. Eventually it passes through her, this girl staring at me breathless, smiling for the first time. A wonderful and natural smile that reminds me of sun entering a room, the sun reflected off glass…
Sorry.
That’s ok. What’s so funny?
She almost begins another laughing fit, but stops herself in time.
She’s my mother. I mean, I guess she’s my friend, too, but…
I turn to see the blonde swaying with Walter, arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders and hair in her eyes. Bob-cut smiles at the tabletop.
Right, I say, still staring at the slow dance, now ending. So how old are you anyway?
I'm eighteen.
And they let you in here?
Well, my mom knows the guy who runs the bar so they let me in some nights. I’m just not allowed to drink.
She smiles toward me awkwardly and I start to notice her details now, her soft features and eyes the colour of deep, rain-soaked foliage. I begin to find her shifty, nervous mannerisms sort of endearing and I suddenly get a strong sense that whatever is going on here is wrong. The DJ moves on to “You Shook Me All Night Long”, Walter and the blonde coming back to the table with secret smiles on their faces. He sits down beside me, the blonde sitting beside bob-cut. Woo, says the blonde, smiling at Walter, I am in the mood for a shot of somethin’..howsabout it? Sure, says Walter, then looking at bob-cut and I, smiling at me, how bout you two? Nah she don’t drink, says the blonde, brushing a rogue wave of dark hair from bob-cut’s face. The tired waitress arrives and the blonde orders three shots of Wild Turkey.
Ain’t no candy!
She howls as we lift our tiny shotglasses in the air, knock them together and slam them back, leaving no taste on my tongue but rupturing my stomach hard. I breath steady, try to keep it together, cursing myself for doing that shot, for talking to that girl, killing my buzz. Harsh vibes coming, I can feel it, waves inside me crashing back and forth as if rocked by violent winds. My mouth is all of a sudden very dry and I know I have to get to a toilet.
I mumble something to the rest of them about taking a piss and briskly walk to the bathroom door, trying to keep everything down until I hit the stall and then…eruption. I am the king snake, my gut wrenching and undulating, spewing a barely recognizable stew of the day’s meals into murky toilet water while I lean over to spit long strings into the mess, tears in my eyes and my nose running, my throat feeling torn. I wipe my eyes and nose with my sleeve, catch my breath and carefully step out. No one around. I head to the sink and splash water on my face, collecting handfuls to wash out my mouth. A tall man in a Roughriders jersey walks in and I hear a commotion outside the door. Loud male voices, some glass smashing and I think of the cowboys fighting again…gonna get another bar shut down and then where will you drink and draw blood you dumb fucks? I put one last handful of water in my mouth before wiping my face and heading back out.
I arrive amid chaos. A stone-faced Native man the size of a phone booth has his hands on bloodied Walter, the blonde looking manic and confused, being held back by some boys from the bar while a few others help the bouncer break things up. Walter is out of it completely: his eyes rolling back and forth like lottery balls and his shirt soaking wet, spackled with red. Bob-cut is standing by her mother, sees me coming towards them and shakes her head desperately no no no, go back where you came from, but this is my only friend in town and I will be damned if some big, dumb Indian is going to kill him tonight. My veins pumping Budweiser and my brain becoming some sullen grey cloud, I take a bottle from the table and line it up with the back of his head, gear up once, twice, three times….then release! The bottle launches from my hand, through stale air, spiraling and revolving before bouncing against the Native’s skull and smashing onto the floor. He staggers a bit, lets go of Walter’s shirt and tries to turn around, holding the back of his head with one hand. Before he or anyone else can identify me, before I can smirk like some ninth grade shit disturber, the men restraining him finally get the upper hand and wrestle him to the ground. I run over to Walter, who is being helped over to a nearby table, his face slick and crimson, his right eye taking the form of a rotten plum. I call for paper towels and vodka. The blonde is sputtering and blubbering apologies, clumsily chasing after the Native as he is led out the door, her face streaked with wet mascara. The bartender announces that the police are coming, and I flash back to one smoked-out Honda afternoon, Walter proudly reciting his litany of drug-related arrests. Together with bob-cut we grab him and exit out the back door.
In a snowy alley, Walter is a red-mouthed birthday clown, slipping in and out of consciousness, responding to my questions with an obnoxious, high-pitched laughter. I’ve cleaned him up a bit with the fallen snow, but his eye will need to be looked at. Between short bursts of collapse, he tells me things. I’m on fire, he says, I’m in love…
My back now against the wall, my head grazing a cool, rough brick and her mouth soft and small as it moves with mine, my eyes shut tight through the whole thing and I’m crawling in behind them, trying to drown myself in a black and borderless landscape. Snowflakes land calmly, dissolving on our eyelashes and on the tips of our noses, my hand exploring further, seeking warmth, leading me to the moistened outlines of her center. I am blind and feverish. I want to be a student of her weather; a vagabond living within her endless geography. Fingers now move on instinct, tiny claws digging deeper into my back and I hear her whimper and squeal - a sudden, jerking spasm leaping out of her like the devil. She pulls me in closer, her hand working me, those young and fearless green eyes glaring hotly into mine and I lean my head back gently against the wall to gaze up at a silent audience of stars. She tugs harder and I moan something undefined, a sound not my own but born out of a sharp, ethereal light, and I croak like a poisoned tree, a dried river. Something that knows it ought to be dead.