I woke up this afternoon after surviving another weekend with my usual antics. Turned on the coffee machine, poured a day old coffee and went onto the patio for a cigarette. My head was still sore from the booze so I wasn't quite in a state of awareness. With the cigarette in my mouth I leaned over my lighter and flicked it on. A burst of flame covered my face giving me a unique perspective on the definition of the colour orange. I dropped my coffee and smacked my head against the sliding glass door. With eyebrows still intact I was able to pause and think what I did to deserve that at this godless hour of a Sunday afternoon. The night before I had inadvertently sabotaged myself by modifying my lighter to shoot a foot long flame when used. How clever of me. Picking up the coffee mug, I noticed a bike in the back yard. More flashes of the previous night.
3am the night before. I'm sitting downtown alone on a bench, cursing the sandwich I had just bought. I had bought the sandwich without realizing that the money spent on it was half the cash I needed to get home. Stupid fucking sandwich. And before I had the time to curse Gods name, Deus Ex Machina. Some random person asked me if I wanted to buy a bike.
Following a French PCP addict around a city usually doesn't sound like the smartest way to end a Saturday night, but quart bottles of beer make the bravest fools. Into an the ally. My relief that the guy did actually have a bike, which was a real surprise from my expectations of being beaten to a bloody pulp. 8 dollars later, I had my very own, probably stolen bike. I tied the plastic bag containing my sandwich around the seat, lit a cigarette and prayed to Baal that I wasn't going to ride for five minutes and be stopped by the police. Riding along listening to "Bad Brains" and swerving the entire breadth of the street. I have not ridden a bike in ten years and now for some awful and ridiculous reason I was going to ride 12km home at 3am, drunker than a priest. Despite visions in my head of being rendered into a bloody mash of bones and meat stuck to the grill of a Honda civic, I managed to come away from the ordeal with little more than a hangover. Mind you, if the last thing I heard before I died was the base of European techno before being hit by some greasy club zombie's Honda civic, I believe that I'd have the right to punch God straight in the face for such a classless end to my life.
Here's the thing, I had two options for Saturday night. The "adventure" night of going to some punk show which I figured would have ended in evil, or the much safer and normal night of hanging out with the army guys. I chose the quiet option, far too many things have happened in the past weeks and I needed a rest from the lunacy. Unfortunetly I used up the last of Gods graces the previous weekend, so rest was not to be. I arrived at the mess to cheers from the entire room. That was a rush. Flash forward to the bar and a live rendition of Teen Spirit. Then to The Tavern where I ran into John. If you read the story "Trenches of Life" you'll meet Bandit. John is Bandits nemesis. The guy is about 50, looks and acts like George Carlin. This guy is one of those crazy yet wise old burnt out hippies that are a current dying breed. He's completely convinced of his own super powers and so long as you indulge him, he actually has some weird and interesting things to say. So I'm sitting there talking to him and he says "watch this" and before I can even blink there are about 10 girls sitting with us. This was about the time of the night that I was unknowingly spending my last $20 on beer, which ofcourse results in a trashy bike parked in my backyard this morning. What a nice, quiet weekend.
Last week, Jamie came up from Toronto. This is a guy I've been friends with for the better part of a decade. I knew him years ago when he was "that weird guy" that worked at the movie theatre while he was dating a friend of mine. First time I really met him he was being interviewed by the transit police for "lewd behavior" in a photo booth located in the subway. Jamie is a big scary guy, dresses all in black and has a look in his eye that could peel paint off of walls. But he's a good guy with a good heart. About 4 years back we were attacked by a gang down at the beach, I froze and he took on two of them by himself. On the other hand I've seen him skip down the street with flowers in his hair and a turban on his head. Collectively my friends have dubbed his alter-ego at times like that, "Lola the dirty slut". Seeing a 6'5 guy dressed in black with a mohawk, leather jacket and chains doing an interpretive dance to spoken word poetry at 5 am in downtown Toronto was one of the greatest times I've had. It was even funnier when he accidentally flailed his arms and knocked a yuppie off his bike without even noticing that he did it.
I'm waiting at the bus terminal for Jamie to arrive. Velvet Underground lyrics are circling through my head. The last time my friends came up from Toronto they had gotten into a car accident. When they finally got to Ottawa Jamies girlfriend at the time chased a handful of tylenol with a bottle of vodka. This is the first time any of my friends have come up since. Jamie got off the bus drunk and laughing. He'd sat next to a botany student reading a Margaret Atwood novel. Jamie on the otherhand was drinking Vodka and Rum and I have no doubt in my mind that the student he was sitting beside will remember that bus ride for the rest of his life.
His first night in town was relatively calm and ending roughly at 5am. The following night however, was May 24th. So it was mutually decided that the best way to celebrate the birthday of Queen Victoria was a drunken safari into the cancerous heart of my trashy neighbor's house. The area I live in is suburban and calm. Except for one house. I had been observing their habits for a number of months, using a book on the behavior of rats as a reference. I was able to come to the following conclusions about my neighbor's:
1- They do not sleep.
2- They appear to nest somewhere in their basement.
3- The number of "people" infesting that house is somewhere between 10 and 15.
4- The police know atleast 4 of them by their first names.
Jamie and I were sitting in my backyard drinking when one of them emerged from the house. He seemed to be the alpha male, was around 22 and was the most friendly of my neighbor's so I waved. After a line of talk with the guy I decided to invite him over for a beer.
"Can't man I'm under house arrest"
I was about to laugh when he propped his leg on the railing of his balcony and rolled up his pant cuff to show me the court ordered monitoring bracelet around his leg. For reasons that I can only explain as morbid curiosity Jamie and I accepted the counter-invitation to go to his house, Deep into a nest of Zombies.
Pushing past a blanket hung over the door I was first met by a thug sitting on the couch using a blowtorch to heat a spoon. The sour stench of a burnt electrical fuse hung in smokey air around the room. he introduced himself and explained he was on the Canadian football team. There was no rest for my senses. The carpet was covered a foot thick in garbage; newspapers, cigarette butts, ash, bottles and cans. An old wood cased television up against the wall with a portrait of Jesus hanging above it. A glowing alter to the decay of the room. I poured my host a drink of Jack Daniels and Pepsi. We talked for a while, he showed me his police papers. Assualt, Hostage with a weapon, and a few others that where no longer readable from the folded and over handled paper. Jamie disappeared while I drank more JD and ended up on the topic of fights. My host has regular sparing events. Only rule you don't hit your opponent in the face. Fueled with whiskey I challenged him. Didn't do to badly considering the guy outweighed me by about 80 pounds. Afterward I was introduced one of the other people infesting my neighborhood. This kid was taller than Jamie and about 250 pounds. Without any of my input I was suddenly in a fight with this guy. I hooked and hit him in the chest, and realized that he didn't even feel it. My fist just soaked into his fatty chest without any more effect than a visible ripple throughout his torso. He took advantage of my pause turned against me and hooked my in the ribs. The cigarette in my mouth dropped and I doubled over. An elbow dropped on my back and the fight was taken over by the rush to find the dropped cigarette despite my personal belief that the house could only be improved with fire. That cigarette also happened to be my last. I was about to leave to the store when I was told, "Hold on, I'll phone for them"
Five minutes after my host put the phone down, a girl walked into the backyard with a ziplock back of cigarettes. Since the tax increase these cigarettes are everywhere now. Made on Native Reserves they come in bags of 200 and very in price from $10 to $30 depending on how many times they've been bought and sold.
After that I went into the basement to use the washroom. The Bedroom door was open and not being able to resist the need to explore this particular warzone, I looked inside. 15 people were crowded in one room, all eyes on me as I looked in. Giving me a wide eyed fear as if I was about to arrest them. Haunting looks like that cannot be described in words. The smell of burning Styrofoam filled the air, but there wasn't a word from anyone. I walked out again and found the washroom. There was a hole in the wall large enough to walk through. The interior drywall was completely torn away with plastic bags and all sorts of trash stuffed between the bare rafters. The sink was half broken off, the result of the cinder block half sunk into the floor. In this room more than any of the others it was plainly obvious that there was more than just people infesting the house, small black ovals scurried under the trash. After using the washroom I went to look for Jamie. As I walked up the stairs my host ran past me with a machete in hand screaming at someone in the doorway. Ducking, I walked into the living room and found Jamie standing there with a wide eyed blank expression.
It was the look of mutual agreement that the time to go had arrived. Leaving through the backdoor I could hear screams on the border of terrified squeals from the house. Walking out on a war, a helicopter flew overhead.
I woke up the next day having trouble breathing. I took my shirt off and looked in the mirror, A massive bruise on my rib cage, another center chest and back. My hands were swollen into mitts. That fat bastard broke one of my ribs. Afterward I swore to take it easy for a few months. Try to avoid Murphy's Law for a while. If I had followed that advice, I might not have woken up to a bike in my backyard this morning. Maybe next weekend, but its not likely.
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