nine, ten, eleven, twelve

nine....

Thirty days pt. 3 (pulling up/R. coming over)


As we pull up to Arbutus and Broadway I lift my head to see the street and notice a street cleaner must have just been by as all the crap from the middle of the street-the leaves, bits of garbage, are now all wet and piled up against the curb. The cab driver drifts his cigarette out the window and searches the dash for his pack to get another. I figure it’s time to get my head around getting out of this cab and somehow finding my way into my building as he comes to it in a couple of minutes. Over Broadway past Eighth, Seventh, Sixth, I know this place too well. Over twelve years in the same place. We turn left onto Fifth Ave. and I know every car we pass-parked for the night. They’ve all been home for hours and I’m just getting here now.
As we cross Yew St. I feel relieved as we pull up in front of my building as if I didn’t actually think I’d make it here. The meter reads $17.50. I hand him a twenty and then reach into my pockets and find another five and give it to him. He deserves it. He says something I can’t understand as I gather up my stuff and get out of the cab. No sooner have I closed the door and he’s off and around the corner towards the Vineyard restaurant, down Fourth Ave. and gone.
Inside the answering machine light’s blinking and indicates three messages. Hitting it I send it into rewind and notice the time on the clock is four a.m. Two of the messages are hang-ups and the third has a long delay before the person-she starts to speak. I can hear noise in the background and then the voice comes. She’s out somewhere, wants me to call her when I get in-whenever I get in. Looking at the clock again I wonder whether I should call her.
I pick up the phone and dial her number and head to my bedroom and take off my shirt. She answers and seems pleased, but a little confused and dazed as she’s been asleep, by my call. I tell her I’m just returning her call and she thanks me and then asks me if I’m working today or not. For a second or two I can’t answer because I can’t remember what day it is or whether or not I have to work. Then remembering I say no.
She asks if she can come over and spend the night. I sit down at my computer and if by instinct turn it on and don’t answer her right away. The computer’s alert tone startles me and I say yes as if by command and she says she’ll right over.
I nod, as if she can see me and hang up.


ten.......


"Is he looking at my ass?"
"What?"
"Is he looking at my ass? Right now. Look over my shoulder. Is he?"
"Which guy? Maybe they all are."
" Terry. The guy who looks like a high school janitor."
"Terry? The janitor?"
"He's not really a janitor he just dresses like one." Fawn was now explaining as if he was an actor on TV. Who played a janitor but wasn't really one. " He's over in the corner with Stan and that bitch Silvana"
"Yeah." I manage to mutter after finding Terry in the corner of the bar.
"Yeah what?"
"Yeah. He's looking at your ass. " I say as if reporting back from the front. "Anything else you need to know right off?"
"Nope. Just wanted to know. He's always checking my fuckin’, ass out." Fawn says standing up straight as if to pull her ass in more towards her body.
"What have you got eyes in the back of your head?"
"No, but whenever I ask anyone they tell me he has his eyes trained right on my ass. That's a fact."
"Jack." I add
"So what's up with you anyway, newly unemployed guy?" Fawn asks
"What do you mean?"
"Jamie says your writing a book or trying to."
"Sort of, I am," I say looking around to see if there's anyone there I want to exploit for my story, "I just started a couple of weeks ago. I'm looking for things to write about right now besides old girlfriends who’ve dumped or burned me. Which doesn’t leave me with a lot of options"
“Lots of those bitter ex-girlfriend sorts out there, that’s for sure.”
“Thanks for the update professional dater”
"Not a profession just a hobby of sorts.”
“One I may have to take up. For research reasons”
“What kind of things are you researching?"
"Things I wouldn't normally do. Things that are outside my normal activities." I say really looking at her for the first time since we've gotten to the bar. "I mean, my life is so regular, so uneventful, that I think in order to write from a point of view I know something about I need to experience a few different things. Live a little."
"Like getting a regular job, a regular paycheck?"
"Right."
"Wouldn't be such a bad thing, I mean, I know you do just fine but.."
"But..."
"You're like a big kid."
"And that's bad thing?"
"No. But you should take your firing as a sign to get a job with some sort of stability."
"Soon. Not yet"
I try and deflect the conversation by turning waving to a friend and hoping that Fawn finds something new to talk about, something other than the book or my job prospects or lack of them.
"So what have you done so far?"
It obviously doesn’t work. I shouldn’t have even tried.
"About what?" I answer turning back towards her
"The book, the story. The new fucked you"
"I don't know. I'm trying to get out more."
"But you're out all the time."
" I know but places I'd never normally go. Clubs, restaurants, churches, hanging out in malls. Looking for shit."
"So? Any notable events so far?"
"A couple of dates with women I met through friends of friends. A couple a little older than me, not too much older, well, maybe. But nothing to write about really, just dates"
"Older is good. Maybe you’ll meet a sugar granny"
"I took home a couple of women the other night." I say turning away to look around the bar, as I can slip it right by her.
"What? Where from?"
"Here."
"Holy shit! And?"
"I don't know. It was different. They sort of put on a show for me." I say again looking around the room for victims
"Showtime at the Yard. Did you know them?"
"One of them. I'd been with her before. A long time ago. A friend of a friend. She's a big Red Wings fan so I kinda like her that way"
"Very good." Fawn says taking a long slow drink "So did you like it? Watching a couple of rug doctors go at it?"
"I think so," I say somewhat unsure of my answer, " It was strange. Kinda freaky really, but something I wanted for a long time but there it was presented to me on a platter and I didn't know what my role was really. What was I suppose to do? Join in? Maybe, I suppose, but I didn't. I wanted to just watch. Catch every moment, every second, then it was over and they were asleep in my bed. "
"Then what?"
“I think I may have been a little shell shocked because I didn’t really know what to do.”
“So?”
"I slept on the couch in front of the TV." I say turning too see Terry still watching Fawn from the seat in the corner, "When I woke up one of them had left and the other was still asleep in my bed. So I crawled in and tried to sleep but couldn't so I just laid there thinking about my book and where this would all fit in, if it could fit in. That and when she would go. Which I know sounds shitty but, I really kinda wanted to be alone. Or at least not with her. I hardly knew her. Fuck, I don’t know her."
" Easy big fella. It’s okay. So, what do you think? Can it fit in?"
"I haven't really decided what the book's about yet. It could I guess, if I get a character that does that sort of shit. Someone who it makes sense to. I don't really have a handle on the whole thing yet. It's just going to sort of evolve over time. I'll probably figure it all out when it's all written down. After it's out, if anyone wants to publish it."
"Sounds like, maybe you're just creating a new life for yourself because you think maybe yours is a little boring. A little plain, vanilla was it?"
"Could be. But I also need to expand my world a little. You only write about what you know. And right now, I don't feel like I know shit. "
“Come on. You’ve been around the block more times than the Good Humour man.”
“Sure, but, the things I’ve done are fairly regular. Dated girls, had a little sex, fallen down drunk a few times. Whatever. I want the sick shit.”
“Oh my Tim. Maybe you’re my type after all.”
“You know what I mean.”
"So what's next?," Fawn asks reaching across and grabbing hold of my collar almost as if she’s about to kiss me but stops just short of touching my lips, “a date with a transvestite dance team, maybe a game of naked twister with a flock of lesbian nuns, a donkey ride?”
"I'll let ya know when I know. It probably won’t be that exciting. Maybe it’ll be a job washing dishes."
"It's a job."
“So’s shoveling shit in a dairy farm”
Fawn smirks then turns and leaves me to pursue some guy she's had a crush on for at least a week who plays in some band. She's always had a thing for drummers or guitar players but not in a groupie sort of a way, she's too smart for that, but she always seems to end up with a guy who plays something. Maybe I should learn an instrument or sing in a band. Bad idea. Then I'd have to drive across the country in a van full of stinky guys and sleep on floors in some freaky fan's house. Something about ending up in Thunder Bay freezing my ass of in January playing to fifty people just doesn't do it for me. Maybe going back to school isn't such a bad thing when this little book thing is out of the way.

eleven...

Night's end.... Something-Could be anything.

I've been driving for what seems like hours now, actually in some respects, days. Slightly drunk but still within the levels that I can operate at, I think. And though the alcohol seems to dull my senses a little, the drugs, somehow keep me alert. I drive around trapped in some sort of cycle that takes me from street to street, block after block, looking for something, even though I have no idea what it is I'm looking for. I'll know what it is, or who it is, when I find it. The lanes and streets have all begun to look the same as I course my way along them. Broadway turns into Macdonald and it into Fourth, the street on which I live. My apartment faces the street and from its three stories above the street I can often hear the buses as they pass by my window early in the morning. And if it's not the buses it's the guy next door with the death stroke hack that seems to have no end. Bastard. I've got to move out of the neighborhood soon, twelve years in the same place is too much. My parents have been in the same place, the same house, for over thirty years and the last thing I want to do is end up like them. Trapped in a place that seems like a dream, with the same ending every night.
The street's slick with rain tonight and because of the wet the sidewalks are void of any foot traffic. The clubs let out hours ago and now as it approaches four thirty even the Denny's on Davie Street is empty. People are now at home alone or with those they picked up in the clubs just hours before. The years old ritual and dance of getting that chosen one home with you over and the real dance now beginning. The cab ride over and done with. The small talk on the way up in the elevator, or up the walk to the house, merely formalities for what the real agenda is. The mandate of the evening finally being realized and the plan taking it's course. Inside bedrooms right now across the city men are coaxing women into things they hadn't planned on doing and women by the same token taking advantage of a men wanting sex at, almost, any cost. Hands and mouths entering uncharted territory never, for the most part, to ever enter again. Then comes the silence afterwards, the getaway planned, prepared, well in advance and now as the hours turn into daylight the passion turns to fear of the impending questions. Numbers being exchanged, shoved into pockets to be run through the wash and later settled into lint catchers in dryers. I'm a little busy this week, but I'll call you early next week. Okay? Sure.

twelve...

Christ. My lungs feel as if I smoked ten packs of cigarettes last night-maybe I did. And I have the voice of poorly aged Scotch and a thousand drags off of a cancer stick. My friend Dave gave up smoking when he married his wife Janet. She didn't make him quit, he just decided to. The will to change for someone else must be something unto itself. I'd like to try that sometime. In the mornings after a long night out my clothes smell like a dozen after hours bars and the sweat of people long gone home. Yet at night, as I hover around these dingy pits, these hellholes of booze cans for the ‘last chancers’, I feel as if the experience of it all is, maybe, somehow worth it. I'm getting out, seeing a little of what makes this town tick. And, while it's not a pretty sight, a large majority of the time, I'm learning the lessons of life as they're presented to me. Saw the song and dance routine last night, the buying of drinks, the passing out of numbers and cards, the looks, then came home, slightly drunk, and jotted down a few lines about it all, if maybe a little dramatically. I'm not sure I learned anything last night, except how to navigate my way home while slightly drunk-not something I'm really very proud of, but the dance was interesting nonetheless.
Fawn seemed a little put off as we split up last night, after she discovered her crush had a girlfriend, maybe, hopefully, that was it. I'm not sure whether or not I should have told her about the two women at my house. She knows everything else about my life why not that? She left last night to head off to some art opening in the West End that I felt was a little out of my league and something that I have seen so many times before that, as far as material was or is concerned, was a dead end. She'll come around, if she is, indeed angry at me. She's a keeper.
I ended up falling, literally, into a cab with several of the regulars at the club after last call had long come and gone. They were heading to an after hours party down on the East Side, a place I had never been to, near Pigeon Park and I decided that it would be worth a look anyway. I was out of money and somehow managed to get out of the cab before anyone realized I hadn't put in my share of the fare. A young woman, who was for some reason, holding and rubbing my hand during the cab ride ended up paying for the entire ride. Then as we headed towards the doors to the party she disappeared down the alley next to the bar next-door and wasn't seen or heard from again. Her friends seemed to think she was just getting some fresh air after hanging out in the club all night. I had other ideas about where she had gone with Pigeon Park being the heroin center for Vancouver. But I was, at this point in the evening, no wiser than them so I decided to take their lead and head into this after hours party that was, as I figured out later, only two blocks from my house.
Strange what attracts people to places like this or that late in the evening long after the bars have closed. But then again, maybe it's not so strange, it's all about booze and drugs. And sex. Young people hell bent on making the good times last for as long as possible and older party goers trying to preserve their fast slipping youth by hanging on as long as they can. The ritual, the dance, the last chance thing happening right before everyone's eyes. People trying to look their best when they're at their all time worst.
I ended up in a small room off the main area sitting with a young petite woman, apparently from Regina. Who told me she just wanted to get back to Regina and start school again to get her grade twelve and then go to college or university, maybe become a nurse. She looked as if she knew her way around a needle so this idea for a new occupation didn’t seem to far fetched. She wanted to stop this cycle she was on but found it hard to stop. It was all too easy. Her boyfriend dealt speed and coke and always took her along as he trolled the after hours clubs looking for customers. She knew all the regulars and often helped him sell his stuff to them. She tried to stay away from getting high on her own supply and for the most part was successful but tonight had taken a whack of speed laced with MDA and was now wishing it would all just go away. When I asked her where her boyfriend was she told me he was off fucking some woman they had both just met and that she wasn't jealous because she knew he really only loved her.
"You don't care that he's fucking her?"
"No. Not really," she said looking towards the light coming in from the main room, " It's just sex, it's not as if he loves her."
"What if he ended up loving her. Do you worry about that?"
"He won't. He wouldn't." She answered as if so sure of herself nothing could possibly sway her.
"That's interesting," I say now really feeling the effects of all the booze I had consumed ,"I hope it all works out for you. Maybe you'll get back to Regina and sort all this shit out."
"Maybe" she said pausing as if reflecting on something," I hope so. "
After what seemed like a short lifetime and several headaches, I decided it was time to head out and try and make it home in one piece.
"I gotta get going, " I said looking towards the only window in the place and noticing for the first time that it was getting light out, "I sort of have this rule that I like to be in bed before it gets too light out."
"Me too, but I never get to bed before noon usually."
"I'm usually up by then."
"See ya later." She said extending her hand to me
"You never know."
"Hey. I was wondering, " she said stopping me by grabbing my hand, "Could I come back to your place? We could have sex if you like."
Looking around I began to wonder if I was being set-up or if this was really happening. I have always been more for the direct approach than anything less so but this worried me a little. Her boyfriend, a drug dealing sex freak-or so I sort of hoped, was off with some other woman and his girlfriend was now asking if she could sleep at my place, or at the very least fuck me. It seemed, at best, surreal, but I felt as if I was about to be taken for some strange ride down a dirt road never to return or perhaps end up in a black body bag down near the sugar refinery. Well, maybe not but the prospect of having this young woman at my place rooting through my stuff as I slept made me a little uneasy. That and the need to perform sexually at this time of the morning after what could only be described as a shit mix of drugs and booze really made me wonder if this was a good idea but somehow I still had to ask her.
"What about your boyfriend?"
"I'll call him later. I always let him know where I end up."
Somehow getting a hold of myself, if maybe with a tinge of regret about not getting to see this young prairie girl naked.
I managed to say.
"Maybe next time," I said kissing the top of her hand and letting it drop to her side, "I really should get some sleep."
"How about a blow job?"
"When?"
"Right now."
"Here?"
"Yeah. I want to help you sleep." She said wiping her hair from her eyes.
"I really have to get going."
On the way out I pass a guy, who I think I recognize and assume, is her boyfriend, on the steps outside holding a woman who has, seemingly by no fault of her own, lost her top. He's telling her he has to get going, that his girlfriend is still inside and that maybe she, the woman with no top, can come home with them tonight. For a moment I think that maybe I do know him and maybe even, know her as well but figure I don't but may have seen them around before so many times that my mind thinks I may know them, maybe I served then at the bar.
Outside I see people I have seen around from time to time now heading home alone and in pairs. Flagging down taxi's and exchanging numbers as the buses pull away from the curb leaving them once again alone and looking like ten pounds of shit shoved into a five pound bag. Many of them I only know because we have revolved in the same circles for years. Not really friends but a kinship has developed over time that makes me actually care what happens to some of them, but not all of them. Some I can't even remember how I originally met them or for how long I've known them.
The two short blocks to my apartment seemed like miles as I shuffled along no longer drunk but much worse for wear. Numbers I don't remember getting lined my pockets as I searched for what was left of my cash supply. Bills, soiled receipts, and bus transfers also filled my pockets from days well passed by as if I've been living in these clothes for weeks. I'm was so aware of my tiredness then that when I looked down and noticed that my shoes were untied I dismissed the thought of bending over to tie them lest I fall forward from my weight and end up sleeping in the gutter outside the sub shop. Pigeon Park was alive and well as I passed by at what must have been 6:30 a.m. The drug dealers flashed signs at me as I passed by them with the only thing smelling worse than me being them. I see them every day and feel as if I know them and what they do.
Rounding the corner to my house I saw that another junkie had parked himself outside my building door and was in the process of trying to find a vein that hadn't been destroyed yet. The security guard inside had fallen asleep again and missed all the action that he is suppose to be attending to. I like him though and made a quiet entry into the building so as to let him sleep, noticing a well worn thumbed through copy of soldier of fortune on his desk, leaving the junkie outside to fend for himself.
My answering machine was flashing as I entered my apartment early this morning, but I decided that instead of listening to it then that I would leave it until I woke up. It's noonish now and I have just remembered the young woman who offered me sex so that I could sleep as if she was dolling out sleeping pills. What was I thinking? Why didn't I take the prescribed medication? Deep down there must have been something, going on in my head, that made me think it was a bad idea. Sometimes it's good to have an internal scale on which to weigh things out-good idea, bad idea. Every once in a while I put things into the ‘good idea- bad idea’ categories and then assess what may be the right thing to do.
My phone has rung three times, maybe more, since I went to bed at 7:00 a.m. So there were now at least six messages on my machine just waiting to be returned. Grabbing my Winstons I decide to check them and see what the world has in store for me today. Not before, of course, loading up my Bodum, filling my mouth with a smoke and putting the kettle on high. All things in the right order and right now it's first things first.