I was talking to my Father the other day about the semi-charmed life I’ve led. No concrete complaints thus far. HOWEVER… I can be at The Rotten Kid’s softball game or in some sales meeting (When is the last time anyone made a god damned dime off of a Sales Meeting?). I might be in line at the bank or sitting in traffic, stewing in my own hateful juices, when my brain bends back to a glorious time or a lovely moment. Sometimes I’d WAY rather it was Sunday night around 7:45 at Malone’s, right when the volume gets turned up and I’m with Dale and Jeffy, sucking back far more than our fair share of Coronas. Each clear bottle of golden nectar doled out by the one and only Chris Matlock (can this bill be right? There’s no WAY we drank that many). All involved absent of ill will or any conceivable consequence. Its just nostalgia and I’m lucky to have the memories I do.

The Shpeed of Shound

If I was what Sheldon wanted me to be, or even what he thought I could be… This is what I’d do; I’d come in high above whatever western water. I’d close my eyes and I’d roll over on my back at twenty or twenty-five thousand feet. I’d perform an angular dive towards the bright lights of Burnaby. I’d deal with the Gs, jink left and in a heartbeat I’d pull prone to come in straight and true maybe sixty feet above those big homes near the lake. Thirty feet now and I’d wail over McMansions inland. “Howl Tony, like a TIE fighter” he’d whisper. And I would. Past the old Telus building at Boundary, setting off every car alarm up Kingsway. “Scream East”, he’d urge. Taking into account my speed, he’d (and he’d be specific here) want me to bust the sound barrier only AFTER the intersection at Joyce. This would shatter glass in all of any of the fish joints and the laundromats or the stores and the bars or and especially the dump we used to live in. He’d laugh that maniacal laff of his, and he wouldn’t have to tell me to pull up and roll away. We’d both be a million miles gone before the fuckin’ cops showed up.

Wildly Enjoyable

Its so fucking difficult to explain to The Kid Talia that these people around in her life, both those that she cares about and the ones that vex her young days and nights, they will not be around forever. While whimsical of late, I’m not talking about DEATH, more the shifting plates of friends, friendship and god help me sweet Jesus, lovers. I met a girl once, lived across the bridge from me in Trail. We were lovers for I think, like, 3 months. Couldn’t pick her out of a lineup today and I doubt she could me. Same deal, I hung out with one dude in the mid 2000s for like, 8 weeks. Hung out at bars, went shopping and the movies together. Narrowly avoided a DUI pulling a U turn in his Taurus on Columbia. “Undue care and attention” (wink). Good guy. Funny guy. Could not tell you his name or what he looks like. If he walked into my office on Monday it would be a brand new relationship. They come and they go and that time can be wildly enjoyable or fraught with peril, but mostly they’ll land somewhere in between.

I’ve met a ton of Talia’s friends because we’re at the TaxiDad stage. I’m not entirely blameless. Recently, my wife told me about a particularly harrowing drunk driving death that affected the entire community up north. It was at that point that I told Talia that no matter what… Anytime, any place, I will come get you. What I MEANT was when she was drinking age. She’s only twelve, but hey, I swore an oath so now its mall trips, sleep overs and PICK ME UP AT 6. NO. 7. NO 8 NOW DAD. NO WAIT… I’m sleeping over for FUCKS SAKE CHILD. Anyway, buddies come and go and who the fuck is this now in the backseat? DAAAad its DeNISE. You’ve MET HER.

Shrug.

I love her friend ____________ though. When they get together, they are complete idiots. Reminds me a lot of Dale and I. Whatever subterranean adolescent girly-girl patois they engage in, it sends them both into paroxysms of teary-eyed laughter, and its a wonder to hear. I’ve given up trying to understand it. Not because I think the humour is beneath me, but because it’s not FOR me. This damnable diction is foreign by default and for good reason. Whatever teenage country these morons live in, my passport from Loserton will in no way grant me passage, so I just wait by the gate ‘till she needs a ride.

I’ll tell you about a country I DO get into tho. One that welcomes me with open arms like some conquering hero back from miles of long. Every five or six years, the men you see pictured manage to end up in the same pub or living room and, for me, it is a fucking riot and a joy rarely experienced.

After graduation in Regina, I rocketed out to Trail/Rossland in BC’s southern interior. Not long after, I was off to Whitehorse, but In that almost 2 year span, these guys became such good pals that they’ll forever be mates. We skated, snowboarded, drank booze and partied and just generally goofed off, and not necessarily in that order. The stories we told tonight were as though I’d spent ten years among them, beers in hand, toes cooling in lake waters under Kootenay skies. First and foremost, they’re all great Dads. Anyway, these guys have, all of them have such razor-sharp wit and stellar comedic timing. Each has the innate ability to blow the dust off of some rare and ancient reference, and drop it into the middle of another’s tale of drunken derring-do circa 1993. Its all I can do to keep up and catch a breath between the laughs. Alone each man is almost TOO funny and with the three of them at a table… Listen, in this… nobody steps on anyone’s story. There are beats and pauses enough where someone can pop in with a last name or clarification but its only ever a redoubt that enhances the tale.

So that’s it for another few years. Now I’m just supposed to go to work on Monday and allow the conversations about Purchase Orders and Closing The Loop and How are the First Few Bites Tasting make me feel like I’m wandering through my days hip deep in setting concrete.

So The Kid Talia might not know it when it is happening or why, and that these friendships we make can be fleeting or forever. I know its confusing for a young mind, ‘cause I had one once. I don’t tell her outright, but I do encourage certain relationships that I see promise in and roll my eyes at those I don’t. Be yourself. Be yourself kid, and wrap your arms around ’em anyway. The stuff that falls out is just stuff you can’t, shouldn’t or don’t wanna carry. They’re for someone else and thats OK. The ones that remain are close to your heart. Like these wildly enjoyable clods are to me.

GONE FOREVER!

Your cat might do this. Or your dog. Might be your ferret or monkey. In a weird way, it might be your husband or wife. Your kid does it. Kids have these smooth brains that aren’t cluttered with 40 years of Top 40, nattering nonsense or the News of the Day… When I pack a bag to go someplace, Our cat Frankie likes to sit inside of it as I dump my gonch and toiletries into it. I try to placate him with treats and snuggles.  He’s got this sense about him. He knows I’m going somewhere and look, I don’t know how the minds of cats or animals work but I know that when I pack my bag, bring it downstairs, and the garage door opens he’s a little frantic. I try to assure him verbally that I won’t be gone long, but he’s only two, so his English Comprehension is questionable. There might be a long time until that garage door opens again. When it does, it’s totally Pavlovian. He knows I’m back, shakes off his 18 hour slumber and he’s at the top of the motherfucking stairs yowling like a raccoon. Boy do I get lovin’ then. It might be three, maybe seven, maybe ten days, but my return is heralded with meows and kisses and a joy for both of us that we do our best, in our own shells, to express. What I feel like sometimes is when he hears that garage door open when I’m leaving, even if it’s just down to the corner store on my skateboard to get a soda pop, does he wonder whether that that garage door is ever going to open again… Or does he think once it closes that he may never again hear that sound? Does he think I’m Gone Forever? 

My Rotten Kid and I have this thing that we do… When I drop a quarter or lose the cap of of the toothpaste… The lid off of some spices or condiment in the kitchen and it dances across the floor into some recess betwixt appliances. “GONE FOREVER!” We’ll shout. Some errant chit from an event or an earbud falls into the yawning cavernous depths between the passenger seat and the console “GONE FOREVER!” A knife slides off of a plate on the way to the dishwasher hits the floor, spattering filth, still CLEARLY VISIBLE, gleaming and mustardy on the hardwood. We’ll still mutter in unison, GONE FOREVER.

Even as it falls. 

I’ve written about this trip in this space before, but if you’re at my house, you can plug Trail BC, where Momma lived, into your preferred map app and it’ll tell you 7 hrs 1m. This trip is hardwired in my brain, as it is in my younger brother Cameron’s. There is an eidetic map we both follow along the HWY3 Crowsnest pass that allows us to leave at the optimum time and make it there in 6:30. I’d gamble we can both do parts of it with our eyes closed. I think Cam has made it in 6:25 but I’m pretty sure his Malibu had a HEMI. 

Before she finally passed from complications due to her multiple myeloma, My Momma was in and out of the hospital three times in six weeks. I raced back to Trail the first and second time she went in. The second time she came out of care, she told me “The next time I come back here I’m just not gonna come out.” The pain was just too great. Third time she went in, I think I had some moronic trade show or travelling for work on the Monday following. Whatever…. For some weird reason the third time, around noon on a Sunday, I’m all like “Well let’s just see what happens…”  Like a moron. 7:30. My younger brother calls me and says, “We lost Mom. I could have made it.

Now, I  don’t want you to think I harbour any guilt for not being there during her last moments. Like no two people on this planet, she and I knew where we stood with one another. That is sacrosanct. Well before the garage door closed on her days for the last time, she told me. She told me she wasn’t coming back. I’m unsure as to what silly church you couch your faith in, but in a succinct a way as one facing death would, my Momma told me she was gonna be GONE FOREVER.

Even as she fell.

I’ll tell you my one regret: I know what she would’ve said to me had she been able to. Had I been there for her last moments. She she would’ve said “I just hope I did a good job with you kids…”

I’d have responded to that concern she’s had since fucking forever. I’d have held her hand and said,

“Momma, nobody’s ever done it better.”

CARLOS!

It’s a lazy Saskatchewan summer day. Through patio doors long and tall, a morning sun bathes. Three teenage boys. George Basu, Dave Gaffney and Chris Vermeulen are laying around at the Basu Residence staring at a console TV. It’s a weekday ‘cause Wheel of Fortune is on. The world, the whole world is right outside our door ripe and fresh like a juicy fuzzy peach but who cares? We’re busy sinking into the corners and crevasses of these A-1 leather couches, our socks half off Deedle-Dumpling-style and scratching our teenage balls. We’re passing around a bag from a box of Old Dutch chips and barking out wrong answers to puzzle solutions on Wheel of Fortune. It’s around 10AM. There’s not not a parent or figure of authority in sight, and there won’t be for some time. George’s Father is a cardiologist and his Mom is a psychiatrist, so not a lotta “working from home” going on. George’s older Bob brother saunters through the throw pillows and chip shrapnel. He’s a Senior at Campbell, and at least to Dave and I, he is the hero of our young lives. Always getting laid, drives a cool car, plays the drums and has abs. An aside here: I have a series of tales I’d love to write about my misdirected worship of this teenage dirtbag. He walks into the midst of us with a peeled banana. Takes a bite, chews and surveys the scene. “You guys are such fucking loooooosers” he whispers incredulously. George rolls his eyes, while Dave and I both think, in unison I’m sure, “You’re absolutely right, Bob.” And meaning it. Bob heads back upstairs. There goes my hero. My attention is back to the TV.

One contestant picks a vowel, Vanna spins the letter and host of hosts Pat Sajak intones, “E… The infamous ‘E’”. We laughed. WTF is that supposed to mean? Didn’t matter that we didn’t know. We kept saying that all morning. E! THE INFAMOUS E! Repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. By noon, it sounded for all the world like the name some Bond villain. By 2pm we had a rudimentary storyline down, wardrobe sorted and George’s dad’s shoulder mount JVC camcorder out. For the next three days we would be making a movie called “Indiana Jones and The Infamous E”. 

The “Infamous E” was a some faceless supervillan no doubt bent on global domination. The film would really just shots of us jumping off of roofs, skateboarding and careening through the streets on the hood of Kirby Walkers car. 

Indiana was played by Dave in a fedora with, I think, a length of rope or a black extension cord for a whip. Yours truly played Indy’s assistant, Carlos. With zero idea of how to make a movie and even less of an idea how to edit VHS footage in 1986, we shot it linear. What I mean by that is, act 1 act 2 act 3 and all of the scenes within those acts had to be shot in the order they appeared in our script, which appeared not on paper but only in our collective teenage minds. We had no choice. OK ROOF SHOT. JUMP! OK NOW RUNNING PAST THE CAR. OH WAIT THE ROOF SHOT I WASN’T RECORDING. BACK UP TO THE ROOF. It really was ham-handed by today’s standards. We didn’t miss these new technologies or lament their absence because they didn’t exist. Hell, we were just elated to have a camera to use. Over the course of the next three days, this shooting format inevitably led to continuity issues and errors. Weather changes, dentist appointments, my shirt from day 1 in the wash on day 3. We lost Dave’s fedora somewhere too. There was also my character, Carlos, getting killed off. Think Alfred Molina in “Raiders”. I was never gonna be around for long, so this wasn’t gonna be a problem… Then Dave’s MOM wouldn’t let him jump off the roof! Can you believe that shit?!? Look, I have no ill will here. Beth KNEW we were rarely supervised over there (that’s why it was the place to be). Their house was right across the street from George’s and all she’d need to do from time to time is look out her front window and see one of us hanging on to the roof of Kirby’s car at 35km to know that it could get dangerous. She drew the line at her boy free-falling into the Basu’s backyard rock garden. And so, we had to resurrect Carlos. No problem. There would be no practical or fancy special effects required (or available, on this budget). We simply had my character appear from around a corner. Dave as Indy yelled (for some reason) with a Spanish accent—“CARLOS! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!” 

That utterance has echoed and rattled around inside my skull since Day 4 of shooting. Now, we didn’t actually shoot anything on Day 4.  We just sat around and watched that scene five thousand times. We laughed at its absurdity. We laughed that we thought we’d get away with it when the final film screened in Cannes. We laughed because we didn’t know what we were doing. We laughed because we were laying tangled up on a couch in a basement, be-kinding-and-rewinding a 5 second scene from almost 90 mins of footage. We laughed because we were teenage boys with the whole world right outside our door ripe and fresh like a juicy fuzzy peach.

My good friend David is gone and I miss him dearly.  Whenever I don’t hear from someone I care about for a few days… If I don’t see ‘em on social media and if noone else has heard from ‘em… When I finally DO get back in touch with them, blood still warm etc etc… I’ll whisper, bellow or text, “CARLOS! I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!”

The Lazarian Star-Pilots of Windfield Road.

My bike got stolen once. Actually I’ve had many bikes stolen from me. Not elaborate heists either. Just taken outside of a store or, like in this story, from my front yard cause I was too dumb or lazy to lock it up. Between the ages of 8 and 16 more than one of my bikes found themselves under some other dude. ONE is too many. Hand me downs from my big bro in some cases, but whatever. Gone. Growing up, this caused my parents no end of consternation. “Jesus don’t you care about anything?”

One summer afternoon, I ripped home and dumped my bike in the front yard. I raced inside ’cause I’m 10 mins late for dinner (again). After dinner? Eat. Read. Goof off. Annoy my older brother until he lets loose a stampede of Charlie Horses. Before you know it, bedtime. This night, however…I never put my bike into the back yard. Lost or stolen, whatever word you wanna use. It wasn’t just bikes though.

I lost shoes, books, toys, boots. I lost wallets. A velcro wallet with a zipper that wrapped around my wrist. I managed to lose that. I lost short pants, sweatpants, snow pants, regular pants. I lost full snowsuits for Christs’s sake, and all of the above in the plural. Didn’t matter. I didn’t lose one watch. I lost several over the course of my youth.You name it. If it was an item of clothing or a personal possession that my parents had provided, chances are I didn’t know where the fuck it was. When I was adopted, the adoption store threw in a baby blue elephant whose floppy ears were a pink and blue flower pattern. Gone in like, grade 2. I think it might be down Ronny Delmage’s basement in Yellowknife but y’know, it’s gone. In a landfill somewhere (and Momma don’t think I don’t think about that). Talk to my older brother Cayle Vermeulen for the full tally of wool mittens I misplaced in grade 2. In the North West Territories. Somehow I would come home mittenless. In. The. Arctic. Trust me, my big brother keeps this knowledge like a gun on his hip when we visit Carol Ferro. I can’t ask anyone where my phone is or if they’ve seen my earbuds. Even if I say nothing but have the APPEARANCE of looking for something, that’s when Cayle sounds the alarm. After 30 years without fail, some variation of ”UH OH MOM WE’VE GOT ANOTHER MITTEN SITUATION!”I never reeeeeally got the full weight of the shit my parents did for me. They would never attach a dollar value to raising me and my siblings. They never bitched and moaned about taking me places I reeeeeeally thought I needed to go, at least, not at my volume. We didn’t get everything we wanted but we sure got what we needed. The honest truth is they were loving parents and great providers.I sure I get it NOW as I fork out bucks for Talia’s stuff. It’s not even money, though. I realize now how much they were doing for me every time I have to get my ass up off the cou­ch to clip, cut, push, move pull, twist, measure, adjust, lift, drill, make, feel, bend, buy, check, hang, cook, bake, build, break, mend something, drive some­where or meet someone or tape something up or wipe away a tear from The Rotten Kid’s cheek. Its 10:00 pm as I write this and if I hear her say “DAD?” with a certain inflection right now I will fucking explode. AND I ONLY HAVE ONE CHILD. They raised four, each with their own wants, needs, pains, put-ons and proclivities. Each with their own personalities and all that those entail. Part of MY personality was that I was bit of an idiot. Back to the bike. They bought me a beautiful brand new Raleigh so I could roll with the neighbourhood kids and be part of something, however fleeting. Now I was moving from Humpty Dumpty banana bikes to the world of BMX, and this bike was really something. Structurally it was metal, like all bikes, but coated in gleaming chrome. The seat which sat high on a post was made of molded high density red plastic. Red brake lines piped out from dark red brake handles which snaked their way down through chrome past the cross bar (!) around the handlebar stem to red calipers. These brakes were ready to do my bidding as they clutched like claw around knobby red tires on silver rims. Across the lower bar were scarlet letters framed in black. RED BARON. Ho ho holy shit this baby was beautiful. This thing glowed. If it was noon under a Saskatchewan sun, you couldn’t look directly at it. It was Street Hawk. It was Bandit’s Trans-Am. It was an X Wing Fighter with foils locked in attack position. This bike, this bike, it was…It was no longer in the front yard…Raising a child, what I’m about to illustrate may never happen to you. If it does, hopefully just once or twice and that’s the end of it. You may hear something your kid says from the other room. They might make a remark to the TV or ask a question to some other kid or visiting adult. Could be when you’re picking them up from or dropping them off to school. You’ll hear it and despite the training, teaching, showing, educating, explaining and lesson learning… Despite all of your efforts, you might hear them say something or see them do something and you will wonder to yourself…”Is my kid stupid?”This inevitably leads to other, larger questions like, “He’s 12. Is it too late to turn the idiot bus around, or will he be stupid teen?” Stupid teen begets stupid adult and that right there is when you’ll cease these thoughts and stamp out the vision of your child as a full grown adult, head down, wandering past multiple signs that read TEST RANGE as he searches the ground for unusually smooth or shiny rocks. You may never wonder this, but I know my Mom had concerns. Especially that night.“Ummm, Mom, have you seen my bike?”Mom with her back to me doing dishes. What she wanted to say is, “Why the FUCK would I know where your FUCKING BIKE is. I’ve been HERE all day and you’ve been out doing GOD KNOWS WHAT Mister GOOD TIME CHARLIE!” But she did not say that. She calmly puts her hands out on either side of the counter. Soap bubbles up to her elbows. The only sound in the world is a plate’s muffled bump as it hits the bottom of the sink. Never been religious, this woman. Least not since I’d known her. So like, a few weeks after I was born. I doubt however, there was a woman looked to the sky more than Mom when she dealt with yours truly. “How.” She must have wondered to [insert higher power here]”How? How among the hundreds of thousands of lone, orphaned and/or wayward children… How on earth did I end up adopting this tool?” I really put her and the Old Man through the ringer by virtue of being a clueless dolt for a great many years.Ok so the bike. I’ve misplaced it. It’s not as though it’s “a set of car keys now is it?” Mom still over the sink. Head down now, still praying for some hairy thunderer to please SMITE her son with a [I swear to god, Chris I wish a] BOLT OF LIGHTNING [would hit you and you’d snap out of it!] She began to rattle off one of about 8 or 10 places it might be. The first location wasn’t even out of her mouth, and I knew the bike was gone. I head out the front, heart in my throat as the screen door slams behind me. Mom still rattling off spots stream-of-conscious;“izzitinthega-RAGE izzitinthefront-YARD izzitatyour FRIENDS place”I’m now out of earshot as I wander the yard and pretend to search for something that I know is, by now, over the hills and far away. Dad is going to fucking KILL me… Night has fallen in suburbia and a small, doomed boy lopes across the lawn. I ponder running away.. But wait! Lo! Just beyond the cone of the streetlight, barely lit! What… What dim thing rests there? I stride over hoping the night had deceived my eyes, and all would be well again. What lay at my feet bore no resemblance to my shining steed. There in the gutter, half on and half off the sidewalk rested an old, beat up 12-speed.How am I gonna spin THIS one?I stood over the thing, bent down and pulled her up on her worn wheels. My mind was trying to understand how MY Bike Is Gone, but THIS Bike Is Here. I took stock. The shit had been beaten out of this bike. No way to tell if it was years of wear and tear or just a good solid month of ‘ride-it-like-its-stolen’ thrash. It had those gear shifters on the neck that stick up like two thumbs. Brakes looked like they’d been rewired, and poorly. Haywired would be the word, with a lot of frayed spindly splinters everywhere.It looked grey or else the paint was gone where there wasn’t dings. No rust, but this thing had seen some shit. The seat was crooked but I gave it a twist back and forth until it straightened out. It hadn’t been cared for maybe ever and nobody loved it. There had been SOME maintenance, I noticed. I don’t know if this was a Regina thing or a nineteen eighty thing or what, but at some point the bolt on the neck had been loosened, the handlebars had been pulled back up then the bolt tightened again. The bottom of the curved bars now pointed forwards, like the horns of a bull, if a bulls horns were wrapped in blue “GRAB-ON” foam and pointed straight ahead. I wheeled her into the sodium light, and held this behemoth out in front of me at arms length. It dawned on me. Who ever rode her past out yard must have purloined the Red Baron! I’ll never make detective.Y’know in those murder shows where the special guy/girl envisions the crime scene just by walking into the room? They see it play out as though they were there. I had a vision of this dude careening down the road in front of my house, freewheel spinning. Clicketty Clack Clicketty Clack. Suddenly on his left he sees a bike laying on new-mown grass. Chrome glistens under twilight. The star field in the wide Saskatchewan sky spins above as he ghost rides the whip, a beat up 12-speed. It slows wobbles but before it even falls near the streetlight he’s already on the Baron and gone. All full piston pumping action go go gone off into the night.Could I blame him? I saw this interview once with a con artist. I don’t remember most of it but what stuck with me was, when he had decided on someone as target or a ‘mark’, he’d see the Rolex and think to himself, ”Thats MY watch. it just happens to be on your wrist for now…” Whether the bicycle thief felt he owned it upon first sight, we’ll never know. Standing on the sidewalk I thought, “He sure as shit owns it now”. And I own this.Speaking of con artists, earlier I wrote, “How am I gonna spin this one?” and I think its fair to tell you that I used to be be quite creative with the truth. I’d lie to get out of shit. I’d lie to get INTO shit. I’d lie about this, I’d lie about that. I’d lie in a rhyme like The Cat in the Hat. Some kids in my kindergarten class asked why I was black (or brown, I can’t remember). I told them IT WAS BECAUSE I’M FROM HAWAII. Now everyone was fine with this, even the teacher. We coulda just kept crooozing along with me as the King Kamehameha of my kindergarten class. But NOOO! My meddling mother had to go and stick her nose in MY business during a parent teacher interview. The teacher asked why (in hell) we would come from Hawaii to Yellowknife, NWT. Wouldn’t be the first time my bullshit caught my parents flat-footed. At this point, in grade 6 I think, I was a prolific purveyor of half- truths, lies of omission and full on boldfaced falsehoods, each with their own intricate and intersecting webs of lies layered upon layers of lies. You can’t BE that way without an active fantasy life. I was a voracious reader of fantasy books in those days and I knew two things, right then. 1) It had been written in the stars and foretold by the ancients; This bike was my Destiny. 2) Taking ownership of this bike right now, fully and completely, would allow me to walk inside and, when Mom inevitably asked me “Did you find your bike?” I could, with unflappable confidence and ease reply, “Yes.” Dad would obviously see the thing in the garage. A garage also curiously absent of one Bloody Red Baron. “The truth will out”, as the bard once wrote. The bike was mine and it remained so for a number of years. Shit went down. I got busted. I took whatever pain and punishment I got. Probably still in Dad’s ‘Bad Books’ for that one. Thats not the point of the tale. Before the lie was discovered, there was a weekend where I took that beast out for a rip (are ya bud?). I’d gone from trike to Bump-Mobile (another tale) to banana bike. My BMX phase was rather short lived, but I now rocked a 12-speed built for a Full Grown Man. This was Quantum. I had EVOLVED. That weekend, myself and David Gaffney took turns tearing up Windfield Road. It was a revelation.We’d start from Dave’s house ‘cause he had a steep driveway. Haul ass in lower gears up the street. The Vermeulen home was on the left about 8 houses up the and at this point I’m cooking pretty good. Shift. I Keep pedalling I keep cranking the gears up and I’m now at about 8. Now 9. No real readout for the gears, I’m guessing. If I had looked down I’d have missed seeing Andrea Gibson‘s place ahead on my left. I shift up now to 12. Holy shit Shauna Kazeil’s place is a blur on my right. The speed and the danger was incomparable to anything I’d experienced. I could have easily been killed.In “The Right Stuff” (1983) Sam Shepard plays Chuck Yeager. In one scene he takes an F-104 to the very edge of the atmosphere and peeks into space. It’s so dope. You should watch it. Anyway thats what it felt like, but better ‘cause remember, my handlebars were up and back with brakes on them like laser triggers and that made it feel like I was flying an attack ship off the shoulder of Orion.Nothing holding me back. Now what I do is I pray to some God my parents don’t believe in that there will be no cars as I lean, lay it down low and move left up and across a T intersection. I make the turn wide. It’s all me now. I get upright. On my right, Riverside Memorial Cemetery whizzes by. I’m literally whistling past a graveyard. A boy atop his rough beast, speeding towards Bethlehem. There was an arcade game at the local waterslides called “Lazarian”. Like many games of that day, Lazarian required sharp reflexes to turn and dodge while firing weapons. Dave and I were obsessed with it. A soon as he’d taken it for his first spin, that’s what he christened the bike. DECADES later we met up. We’d finally finished filling each other in on our lives for the last 30 years. There was a long pause. I smiled and asked him, “Hey remember Lazarian?” “Holy shit.”, he responded.

My Mom and Matt Good

I lost my mother to cancer. She outlived her prognosis by six years. I wrote this not long before her death.

Six-and-a-half hours later Its 9:30 and I’m hammering down the hill from Rossland towards Trail, BC in the dark. I do what I always do at this point of the journey, which is to feel fully free to wander across the double yellow line hitting the apex of each of those 18 corners, its great man. Whether I shave any time off of my trip by doing this, I dunno. I used to run with a rag-tag bunch of devil-may-care skaters affectionately known as the Litigators, and we’d would howl down this same hill in the dark of night, at speed. I know this stretch like the back of my hand. Well past Wedding-Cake and I’m at Waterhole corner now, then I keep it easy through Warfield. I tap the brakes as I pass the fire station and I come upon a well lit intersection, right by the school my little brother went to. I pick up speed now past the community pool on my right, under a bridge and around a few more bends. Maybe I pass someone here. It’s miles in my rear view, but the freedom that slipping along relatively vehicle-free Crowsnest Pass affords me on a Thursday afternoon still courses through my veins. I slide into the gulch.

All lit up.

I do what I always do at this point of the journey. I make certain that Matt Good’s ‘Last Parade’ is cued up to play through the speakers and I drive in silence. I Slow things down now and rightly so. The streets are empty In Trail but I’m an adult for fuck’s sake. I behave! I come past some bar that’s had a hundred names and take a look to see what its called this time around. Now I take a right at this big intersection. Industry hums over the hill directly in front of me and some sodium lights beam upwards. Its Cominco, Teck or whatever. A ruinous blight on the land, the smelter swelters in the twilight. The financial heart of this community with a thready pulse.

Burnin’ futures in the mountains.

I take that right and head down a hill, past what was once a 7-11. Used to be a rag-tag, devil-may-care group of skateboarders would congregate there. I maybe see the ghost of one or two of those boys out of the corner of my eye. Victoria St. A.K.A. Hwy 3B cuts like a knife through this town, and on it I cross what is known as the Trail Bridge. I’m all brakes and easy does it because I need, for the first time on this trip, I need my progress slowed.I’m at the intersection of Third Ave and Vic. The light turns green and I press play. Gas. First little bit of this song is like a dirge and I calmly take these next left and right rolling corners at the speed limit. My headlights quickly haunt the entrance to the local landfill until the road straightens out. I’m whistling through what’s known as Shaver’s Bench, past a Husky station into a hamlet known as Glenmerry. The strings come in. In about 10 seconds I pass an RCMP station on my left.

It feels like time to let it go.

Probably no safer place to do so. I see, like, four or five police vehicles in the parking lot but I mean, the cops are all in there doing paperwork or hitting on whatever bored admin staff remain. The likelihood that these guys are gonna pour out the front entrance, sliding over the hoods of their cruisers eager for hot pursuit after they see me whip by is so fucking remote it gives me a little charge. I mat it into a mild left arc on the road, then another right. I head downhill now.

It feels like time cut your brakes.

I’m at 70 km now seeking 90, diving into this natural valley now where on my left, shacks and shuttered quonset huts lie dormant in the foothills of an unnamed mountain that juts up high and blocks out the night and its stars on that side.

It feels like just another day, like one more dead town’s last parade. Like we’re takin’ pictures of a tidal wave. On the shore, grinnin’ a hundred feet away.

To my right, I know without looking that there are a few rock islands out in the water. I look anyway. I can’t see their slick surfaces but I know they’re there. The Columbia River, as deep and black in the night now as oil, roils and churns around them. I breathe in and

It feels like time ain’t time at all.

Gas again ‘cause there are lights up ahead and to have a red one impede my progress at this late stage would just be too much to bear. It is green, I capitalize and rocket past the lumberyard where some thirty years ago, this boy stumbled around for a paycheque. Still more pressure on the pedal now ‘cause here we go uphill and this is the “home stretch”, son. In every sense of the phrase. Two lanes. At this point I usually pass maybe one other traveller. The only sounds are my engine with Matt’s stellar accompaniment. I feel like he’s both sad and angry here, but I don’t attach myself to that end of it. Whoever is doing the guitar here in the song, its like that sound has been in my soul for as long as I’ve been alive. I love hearing this yearning riff tonight in the hills, this close to Momma’s place. There is just so much hope and despair in the back end of this song and it just loosens up all of the wires I keep around my heart, if only for 90 seconds.

Just black out. Wake up foreign. Wander home, Oh, wander home

Heart is cracked open and I speed toward the last turn into Montrose. Fists at ten and two. My head tilts forward and I stare at the road ahead like Max Rockatansky might . If I wanted to, I could shoot right off the cliff two or three hundred feet out into whatever air that hangs past the road on that final turn. Just pull a Slash “Don’t Cry” move right off the edge and soar into the night time sky. I’m not gonna do that though. I hit that last left turn easy. Streetlights whip by at a frequency that suggest I oughta slow down to 60. 50, 40 now then 30 Almost no speed now as I take a right off the highway, then a quick left toward Mom’s place. In the middle of the dark I’ve got about a hundred yards to go. So close! I do what I always do at this point of the journey. I gas it to the end of the street because fuck you. Right then Matt goes, he goes, he’s all like,

Take me out, lay me down, let the dirt fall all around me now

And if I’ve played my cards just right, I pull into Momma’s driveway just as he wails,

Baby, ain’t it good to be back home?

Ain’t it good to be back home?

And it is, man. Its fucking great to be back home. I shake the road off a little while the guitar ends importantly. Momma comes on outta the house and greets me with the same wide and lovely Cheshire grin I know she has for all of you when you come to her door. The piano outro ensues and before the song is over, before the last note is struck, I’m in my Momma’s arms.

TEN

Young Talia is TEN and there isn't a day
Without heartache or drama or grief
From embarrassment, pain, or some silly retort
Like somebody made fun of her teef

She wails through the house like a banshee of sorts
Streaming tears, O my sweet summer child
She blubbers and sputters and tells me the tale
I'm like "Shit, I'll beat that by a mile"

Whenever she's lonely, embarrassed or bummed
I'll tell her a time I felt worse
I think that it helps in a weird little way
Knowing Daddy has some kind of curse

She'll feel shamed and afraid and she'll have what I call
An emotional sort of upheaval
She'll cry and I'll ask "Did you fall on your face
In front of like, six-hundred people?"

Its a trick that I use when she's feeling real small
Theres high drama in the reportage
I'll tell her my tale, an embarrassing one
Of which there is surely no shortage 

Like the time she fell down and the schoolchildren laughed
I said "Hey did your pants catch on fire?"
She frowned and said "No, did that happen to you?"
I'm like "Kid, this is how it transpired..."

Or how bout the time when her friends were being mean
I said "Ooh did you poo on the floor?"
She's like "Don't be a moron, I'd never do that."
I'm all "Kid, calm the light, close the door."

Now I'll tell you a tale I've related to her
When her temperament needed a boost
"ALL BOATS ARE AT SEA, I'M OUTNUMBERED, OUTGUNNED
AND THE CHICKENS HAVE COME HOME TO ROOST!"

There's a splinter of graphite inside of my handAnd its been there for forty-two yearsI'll show and you'll see when the light hits it right
And we've all had a couple of beers
It floats and it moves in the meat of my fist
When my fingers move everything 'round
A tiny grey token,a bruise gone unspoken
From when I let somebody down

Grade 2 was the year and my school was up north
"J.H. Sissons" if I can remember
In Yellowknife City, N.W.T.
And the memory burns like an ember

My teacher was tall (aren't they all at that point?)
Mrs. Monaghan I'm not mistaken
She saw me she thought, "A responsible boy!"
To this day even then I was fakin'.

She said to me "Chris, I'll be gone for a spell
Keep the students subdued and be cool."
"Certainly" I responded and soon she absconded
The room in the hands of a fool

A maniac quiet encompassed the class
And I wasn't quite sure how to take it
Everybody was chill and behaving it seemed
And I thought we just might fucking make it

Then Kenny just smiled as he dumped all his books
On the floor for the whole class to see
He started a fire with some kindling and brush
It was then that they knew they were free

Standing up from their chairs and just moving around
They'd never had such range of motion
Suddenly they went wild it was if they'd all gone
And ingested some powerful potion

Like a cease-fire the calm had belied the true trauma
The room filled with drama and screech
In the back of my mind and the forefront as well
"Please come back here god dammit and TEACH!"
So then out of control was this inmate revolt
A-aron Levy had blood in his eye
Kimani hit Mike and Mike screamed bloody murder
Like something from 'Lord of the Flies'

A rebellious roar came from Darla, she tore
Pages out of some tome in her lap
There was no time to question her move as I mentioned
"Its time to be quiet and snap

To attention I'm sure our dear teacher is near
Striding purposefully through the rotunda!"
Just then Sally moved up on my left from the rear
And Mike finally crawled out from under
Sally gave me a kiss (English Sally, I mean
Not the other one, she was like EEWW).
It was right on the lips and it gave me the feels
An experience totally new

Okay Sally was wild but they're all, to a child
Running rampant beyond my belief
My anger, frustration, their wild ululations
Compounding on top of my grief
I looked to my right and Kim Weaver was laughing
Amid all this evil unrest
She'd pulled Dana's hair but before I could act
Ronny Delmage stood up on his desk
I'm not sure of the tune but he started to sing
Thats when Mikey hit Kimani back.
"I'm alone in this world" I then muttered aloud
As the other kids hid from attack.
I'd alerted this crew once already it seemed
But they weren't about to be quiet
My dad used a tactic called "Yelling and Screaming"
I thought maybe now I should try it
The noise in the room a cacophony now
I knew soon I would need to erupt
I inhaled rather deeply and summoned a shout
"OKAY PLEASE EVERYBODY SHUT UP!

"Then I slammed my fist down with the pencil it held
With my voice loud and clear 'oer the din
I didn't know it just then but in moments I felt
That the pencil bit deep in my skin

What was wild, what was weird is the kinda were quiet
These reprobates, dervish and imp
Like flicking a switch hey I urge you to try it
When your nine year old thinks he's a pimp

Our teacher was coming, I felt it I knew it 
My skin went all clammy and cold
That feeling of loss or of failure you get
When you know that the centre won't hold

I leaked and I bled and I suffered in silence
Then Monaghan walked in the room
She yelled "Whats this NOISE all this CHAOS and VIOLENCE"
Her voice was all thundering doom

Now aware of the damage her jaw seemed to drop
She surveyed this Heironymous scene
The total disaster, remarkable flop
That leaving me sentry had been

"I tried and I hoped!" I said wondering why
She had put me in shaky command"
Its a nightmare" she moaned, she looked down at the floor"
It reminds me of Custer's Last Stand"

In retrospect now I look on it and think
Lady why did you put me in charge?
My voice says the words then my thoughts meet and merge
It was never an issue that large

Amid the confusion and havoc that day
What I'll choose to remember is this:
Not error nor mishap, betrayals abound
What I'll choose to recall is THE KISS

Its just us in our minds when our mem'ry rewinds
Wherein everything's worse than it was
You replay it enough soon you like how it feels
It can give you a kind of a buzz

I'm explaining to Talia that Life can get crazy
She furrows her brow and she asks,
"So what the fuck happened Dad, how did it go?
"And I tell her "Its all in the past."

I told you before 'neath the skin of my palm
Rests a piece of a pencil in stasis
I look at it now when the world doesn't care
'Bout the feelings and vibes it erases.

The mistakes that you've made and your shortcomings meet
In the 'burbs of your brain if you let them
Soon Woe and Regret find a place on your street
They move in next to Chaos and Bedlam

So breathe in and be still know that life is a game
Take these moments for all that they're worth
And in days or in months maybe years you will find
They can all become sources of mirth

My gift to you child, not just pain of my past
Also laughter and jokes in replete
Ev'ry moment I've lived has prepared me for you And you laughing 'cause Daddy's a geek

My advice to you now as you tumble headlong
Towards doubt, likely trouble and wrath
Its just thirty-eight words but I feel like they're strong
My most solid and confident math:

Breathe in deep when you can the sweet smell of the grass
Breathe in deep all the roses and lilac
Hold tight to your chest all believers in LOVE
And forget those who choose to deny it
 

My Favourite Word

What is your favourite word? I’ll tell you mine. I like words. Actually I love them. Catch me when we’re talking in person forgetting what you said because I was watching your mouth do its thing. If you think about it, your lips are the LAST check on your thoughts. The final governor before you put your voice out there. Thats why cowards love the internet. They can clickety-clack stupid things on the keyboard without saying them and the likelihood of getting knocked out drops exponentially. Once I was working at some bar and this nice young lady barked at me that she had “VIP” privileges. I furrowed my brow and politely asked, “What does VIP stand for?” Half way through the word ‘IMPORTANT’ her eyes sort of died. Like a light went out when she realized how dumb she sounded.

So do this: IF YOU CAN BREATHE right now, shove air up and out your chest. Let it bounce around and scratch past your vocal cords. You are opening and shutting your throat like a valve, and your lips are working with your tongue against your teeth, and the roof of your mouth to regulate the delivery. All these tools and muscles work together to ensure what comes out of your mouth isn’t just a scream. Unless you want to scream. You say what you want to say. I mean obviously the brain is involved here but if we get into that we’re gonna get into the disconnection between the two and that is not what this is about. So air, throat, tongue lips. A real team effort that we don’t often think about. Words are like this puzzle for me, written or spoken. I tried to explain to my 8 year old the other day, how I ‘see’ words when I close my eyes. “BULLSHIT” she bellowed. She looked at me quizzically and I told her that I see words spin around when I close my eyes or when I’m half asleep. You might see them too. These words, they couple and uncouple and drift apart and around and back together on axis like double DNA helices in space. Letters drift apart on Scrabble tiles, then come back together to form words or phrases that make no sense lain out. In my mind they form fully coherent sentences, conversations and delightful little turns-of-phrase that I see myself speaking in a big hall or at an event and everyone there just understands. When I see this storm of characters, I know just what to do. I know how to arrange them. It is not something I’ve ever told anyone but her. I’m forty-eight. She’s just now learned about this thing I’ve had all my life and both of us are equally unclear on how it all works. She then asks me, like a kid should, “What’s your favourite word?” I told her that I like “infected”, when the stress is on the ‘FEC’. You hear that and you’re like, “EEEEW! PUS!” “Subterfuge” is another one that I love. It is just so a rich a word. Its hard to fit into your day-to-day. If you don’t know it, subterfuge is like, okay its 1940’s Germany. A girl from the village walks past the colonel’s window every day to and from picking flowers. She sees him and smiles. He smiles back. Weeks and months pass, and, after a hundred or so nights in his bed, she’s gathered all the info she can. He trusts her. She is a part of his life. Not fully, but one he looks forward to. One he would rather not be without. While he is snoring his fucking nazi snores she puts a letter opener in his fucking nazi throat, slips out of his nazi bed down his nazi stairs and out the cellar door off into the night. The flowers. The smile. The walk and the weeks and the months, that’s subterfuge. My favourite word, though, by far, is “Rebellion”.

You should say it out loud right now. If you’re gonna shout it, then spit the ‘B’ when you shout it. If you whisper it (I know the kids are sleeping) leave some saliva on your bottom lip. Rebellion. Doesn’t it make your heart sing? It’s like the peal of a great bell in the centre of town. If the word gives you pause, or even frightens you, well you MAY be on the wrong side of all of this. If you’re in the middle, you gotta pick a side, here. C’mon. It’s time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need you on my team for this one. I’ve come this far without you. YOU need you. Rebellion. I could look it up on the internet dot com but I don’t need to. The word ‘rebellion’ is an African word. It is an Algonquin and an Arapahoe word. It is Russian. It’s a Jewish and its a Polish word. A Somali word. Rebellion is a Canadian word, too. It is, and make no mistake about it and never, ever let them tell you otherwise, “rebellion” is an American word. I’m not sure what your news or your social media feeds or your LIFE is full of right now, but mine are full of Rebellion, and it is glorious.

Magic

My brain sees it as this wild amalgam of 80’s movies and cartoon machismo, but I was twelve years old at Regina beach one day, and this happened.

Radios were blasted. Greasy bags of salty, salty fries were wolfed. Car tires screeched their complaints. Cigarettes jutted out from under many a high school moustache. Bikini’s were worn and sun dappled cheeks sweat under a prairie sun. Breasts moved and shifted in space independent of their owners and absolutely none of it had anything to do with me. The wind and winter snow in Saskatchewan would leave scars across the land were it not frozen solid. That gets all the press, but a summer day on this square patch of land smack in the centre of the country, it is fucking KILN-like, kid.

Ok, Regina Beach. This sore thumb of a twelve year old black kid on this main drag type thing. Amid the din of the cars and kids to my left and the BLEEP BLOOP BLEEP of an arcade on my right, the throngs on the beach ahead, I’m standing there in orange and yellow “Cougar” sneakers and red gym shorts. There’s an untamed afro on my head. I don’t have any pimples yet but they’re in the mail. I’m wearing a union jack sleeveless shirt because of Joe Elliott and a RED VELCRO WALLET on my WRIST that MOM got me so I don’t LOSE my MONEY ‘cause “I’d LOSE my friggin’ HEAD if it wasn’t SCREWED ON”. God help me I don’t know who the fuck I am (who would, in this get up?) or what I’m supposed to be doing. There are girls everywhere and I have exactly what I am supposed to have right now, and that is all the charm and style of a twelve year old with a RED VELCRO WALLET on one wrist and a calculator watch on the other. I move to the arcade just as a bunch of high schoolers pour out the door and hang right in front of it, blocking my entrance. Curses! I don’t wanna get beat up or have illegal drugs pushed on me by these obviously illegal drug pushers. I mean, JEAN VESTS? Criminals, gotta be. I move off of the sidewalk to go around them I HAVE NO DESTINATION IN MIND IM MAKING IT UP AS I GO ALONG and just praying nobody asks me what I’m doing ‘cause I would turn to them and scream, scream that I don’t know. Two banana boards under the feet of more teens whip out and scare me back onto the sidewalk. I move past the arcade boys and walk and Oh god I’m heading beach ward and what the fuck am I gonna do there and this blue Camaro comes out from between two buildings. Just misses plowing into our hero. A late reaction on the brakes leaves the car half in the road and half in whatever alley or driveway it had come from. A car full of girls. Jesus. Just what I needed. Laughter from the back and the driver, a blond girl, hadda be eighteen, has her left hand on the wheel. Passenger seat girl hunches down to get a look like you do when your’e in that position. There is beer in her lap. The driver is blond and her hair is feathery feathered, the style at that time. She’s wearing these mirrored sunglasses and lipstick to match her red bikini top. There is this guitar riff blasting from the car radio and I’ve never heard anything like it. Like a stomping riff with this punchy keyboard holding it aloft. I’m standing flat-footed, directly in front of the drivers side door and I see an image of a complete dork reflected in her shades. Lord. Just then out of the speakers of this Camaro, a voice that I now know to be Ric Ocasek’s, drools the words “Summer, Summer, Summer… It turns me up side down…” Laughter from the back seat and the driver, like some woman out of time, looks me up and down. Left hand on the wheel her right hand comes up from the shifter or whatever and pulls down her sunglasses. The words ribbon out from between her lips. “Hey peck. You’re kinda cute.”, she breathes. Like a starlet might.
Ok so now there is this electricity shoots out from the centre of my chest. My throat closes and my head swims and my ears are hot. This jolt takes forever to reach my extremities, but it all happens in a heartbeat and all of my fingers are numb and If my knees buckled i don’t know, cause I couldn’t feel my legs. I don’t think they buckled. The shock collapses back into my chest, then sinks down to my groin, bouncing around in my tighty-whities where it remains to this day. She smiles. My mouth is agape. Probably have a lil boner at this point. Tires crunch gravel, bump over the curb and off they went. There I stood in that moment, in their rear view mirror. And it was something man. It was fucking Magic.

I think about her sometimes, that faceless beauty. Where she is or what she’s doing or if I heard her correctly and If I did, what she meant. I don’t know what a peck is but that day, that moment, I was one.

The truth of this all is that it was a Saturday night, Sept. 14th, I spent drawing pictures and listening to music with the headphones up high sipping a little rum. I mean I’m fucking middle aged, man. And that song came on. “Magic”, I mean. And I was brought back to that day at the beach. Do you want to know how I know it wasn’t the hour or the rum or rain on the window brought me back? I know because hearing “Magic” always brings me back to that day, that moment on the sidewalk, every time. And at or about 1:30 am I swore to myself that if Ric Ocasek ever passed away, I would write about what that song means to me, where it takes me and how wonderful it makes me feel. I’d write about how that woman and that song to me are timeless. I’d write about how at that point in a boy’s life, they stoked all the wonder and hope and fear a boy could have. And most importantly, I’d tell you that there are some sounds in that song, some interminable moments that I believe are mine alone. Sounds that make me close my eyes ‘cause they break my heart every time I hear them. The next afternoon the news tells me he is gone, at 75 so thats what you just read.