Life's a Beach: Excerpt #5

June 22^nd 2013

What is the average lifespan of a toothpick?

Gary is always munching on one, swishing it around from side to side. It takes a certain confidence of character to chew a toothpick. Spaghetti armed geeks and sissy boys don’t chew toothpicks. You got to earn that pick.

Toothpicks generally remind me not of a thin, double-edged wooden instrument used to poke out impossibly wedged in tendrils of corn and/or steak, but of Razor Ramon, the suave and ruthless Cuban-American WWE character from the mid-90s. That’s what toothpick means to me. 

            Men who constantly chew on things like gum, toothpicks, and pen caps tend to be high strung. They don’t know how to detune. Which reminds me of a phrase my uncle, who is a great pianist, often says: “Old musicians don’t die, they just decompose.”

I want to tell Gary to mellow the fuck out, but it’s no use. Like telling a tiger to drop a buffalo leg. Gary is alternately nice and laid back and then intensely aggro, creating scenarios out of thin air and asking vague, misleading questions where you’re bound to give the wrong answer and then be berated for giving the wrong answer. I’ve already seen him get right in people’s faces and scream at them, spittle dancing through the sun beams and sprinkling some turnt-up kids’ face. The mighty pines look down upon the proceedings, stoic as ever.

For instance, Gary barked at three harmless seventeen year old wimps without wristbands talking to their friends—who were Stillwater guests--on the edge of the property. Big deal. It’s the middle of the day, they’re peaceful teens on the cusp of adulthood, chatting in the summer sun. Let them be unless they walk deeper onto the property towards the cabins and out of eyeshot. But they won’t--because Gary and myself are here, and they know we’re here. A child won’t stick a hand in the cookie jar with Momma staring. Nonetheless, Gary duck waddles up to one of them and lays a paw on what little fabric there is at the back of his tank top, and like an elastic band stretched it until the boy inside reached the limits of the stretchiness of fabrication and flung backwards towards Gary.

            “Hey!” The teen yelled, “the fuck you doing, man?!”

Gary drags the guy to the road begging him, or anyone of his friends to “Punch me in the face and see what happens next.” I stood there, a few feet away, hands on hips, flexing my neck muscles to seem bulkier, hoping the situation didn’t escalate, but putting up a front that said otherwise. The teen stoners took off down the one way street abutting the property muttering insults towards Gary. Gary just smiled, his tongue juggling a toothpick back and forth.

            “I’ll be at the office,” he said, climbing up and plopping himself down into his white Ford truck.

The girls were taken aback by Gary’s iron fist.

            “What the fuck is his problem?” One of them asked me after Gary left. She was definitely stoned on weed, most likely on MDMA, and possibly drunk. She was wearing a neon pink hat with Wasaga, Bitch scrawled across in white capital block letters. “They’re from our high school; they just wanted to say ‘Hi,’” she lamented. Often, after I explain the simple wristband rule, how their friends haven’t paid to stay at Stillwater, they’ve paid to stay somewhere else--a resort with its own wristband policy, generally less stringent than Stillwater’s, enforced but with less zeal than us.

            Twenty minutes later I’m patrolling the front of the property looking down at the footfalls of my black shiny dress shoes, alternately crossing my arms for one go round then dipping them into my pockets for the next. I look up and see the same boys that Gary manhandled are walking up the street towards me. Ah, Christ. The gals are still out front drinking, too, smoking Belmont’s and listening to Drake. A confrontation was all but inevitable. I quietly curse under my breath and saunter up to the approaching gang. You got to lean into a hurricane, right?

            “OK guys, here’s the deal--I don’t give a shit if you stand around drinking and talking, but if you go into one of the cabins I’ll call the fat man.”

            “Nice--” one says.

            “Sweet--” another one says.

            “You rock, bro,” said a third, giving me a bro-hug, which is simultaneously a handshake and a half-hug. The other two then hit me with their respective fist-bumps.

            “He’s sooo cool, our security guard, huh?” the girl with the neon hat cooed.

            “Fuck yeah,” one of the guys agrees, lighting a Belmont off his buddies’ Belmont.

            “All in a day’s work, gentleman . . . ”

I was supposed to work from 6am until 12pm--the cleanup shift--but ended up working from 6am until 5:30pm. The cleanup shift is the least desirable of all the plebeian jobs at Stillwater because you actually have to work, like, hard; like, actually, actively making a difference. Cleaning up half-eaten, beer soaked vomit burgers, and making tens of trips to the dump lugging heavy, extra large, extra thick garbage bags with shards of glass poking through, leaking a murky brownish mix of vomit and stale beer onto your shoes.

But there are so many fun little goodies to find at 6am in the aftermath of a wild beach party!

Today’s leftovers consist of . . .

One red bra slung over an Adirondack chair; one full twenty ounce bottle of green tea alcohol, the cap sealed; one half full mickey of Jagermeister; three cans of Miller Genuine Draft; one crumpled pack of Belmont’s with four cigarettes left; and one half full forty-ouncer of Grey Goose with--unfortunately--no cap. I can’t go for that, no can do. 

            I don’t give a flying karate kick if anyone is manning the cameras, however unlikely that is at this hour. I take the Belmont’s and cans of MGD and put them in my car, on the floor of the back seat and drape a golf towel over my booty. I’m drinking one right now as a matter of fact. Wearing the bra, too.

            Gary told me I was going to have to work until around five or six pm. It would be another twelve hours spent mainly on my feet, patrolling in the blazing summer sun. These third world problems in the first world are that much harder on the soul. I could try to weasel out of things but I’d end up on Gary’s shit list. And I need the money, of course. Just from an organizational and professional standpoint, a schedule should be worked out with some modicum of accuracy and consistency. Isn’t that what schedules are for? Isn’t that a cornerstone of what successful companies are founded on? What was even stranger and more disconcerting was Gary seemed to relish the power and control of messing with the work schedule and by extension, our personal lives. He longed for control over the Edgewater dominion and all the plebeians therein.

            Last week Gary called me at 9:58pm to come in for a 10p - 6a shift. He wanted the staff to live in fear of his call to arms. The staff, most of whom, unlike me, actually had personal lives in and around Wasaga, Collingwood, and Barrie endlessly bickered about him being disorganized and lost in a fog of obfuscation. I bickered along with them, too, though, not because of the social disruption it caused in my life, but my inability, or hesitancy, to drink on some nights for fear of being called in to work. That’s the way this Stillwater ship is run.

            That night, like most nights, I was a few pints deep when the inimitable Gary called the home phone. My Mom yells downstairs that the phone is for me.

“Taylor!” She wails until I meet her half way and she passes the cordless baton and I go outside to speak in private.

            “What’s sh-sh-sh-shaking man?” Gary asks. “You want to come in for 10?”

            “Tonight? In two minutes? Oh man, I’ve been drinking, I can’t drive!” I tell him. Considering I only live a couple kilometres away from HQ, Gary gave it a long hard thought, I’m sure, but he didn‘t put up a big fuss, perhaps for legal reasons. “Alright, go to sleep. I may need you tomorrow, so call me.”

Click. Okay. What does that mean? I work tomorrow? I don’t? Call you at noon? Call you in the evening? Who the hell knew.

            The problem was coming back inside the house. “So . . . are you working tonight?” my Mom asks.

            “Uhh, no. He just wanted to check in and confirm for tomorrow night.”

            “Oh,” she said.

It’s hard to figure out any specifics of the weekend schedule until Thursday. For a regimented man, the lack of cohesion drives me nuts, but what can you do but suck it up and earn an honest buck when the phone call comes in? It’s either that, or find yourself another gig.  

I put on my best professional guard face and dive right into my duties, whether it be running around changing propane tanks, or kicking people off the property without wristbands, or mingling with drunken teenage girls in bikinis. I can do it all--I’m your man.

            Gary is like Matthew McConaughey in Dazed and Confused, plus two hundred pounds. I get older and they stay the same age, heh-heh. If I call him for scheduling information he’s tends to comment extensively on all the pretty things that he‘s ogling, like a play-by-play colour announcer, and I’m the only audience, staring forlornly at the Blue Jays and Song Sparrows in my backyard. The most oft used phrase in his repertoire, which he says to me each time with the same vigor as if it were the first time is: “I’d eat her pussy for three days before I even showed her my dick.” Yep, that’s it. That’s the line. I stopped even the half-hearted chuckles long ago. When you have about twenty employees operating below you, I suppose it’s easy to forget which person has heard which line and Gary is always getting his lines tangled, retelling the same phrases and stories over and over. The guy has a paucity of material and doesn’t do much with what he’s got.  

            Man oh man. I’m not exactly the leering, caveman type like Gary, but when you’re a zilch who hasn’t been laid in years who’s living in his parents’ basement, and all of a sudden there you are among scantily clad, boozed up young women in a unique position of authority, it’s nothing less than overwhelming. It’s like Rob Ford with a gift card to the local WC & V-Mart (Whores, Crack, and Vodka).

            Now, I’m nothing if not one of the most professional security guards at Stillwater--aside from the booze drinking/stealing. Professional in this context means not dealing drugs or taking monetary bribes from guests, or having sexual relations with guests. I don’t do any of that (except maybe once or twice accepting a twenty and looking the other way to let someone party with friends).

I’m just a run-of-the-mill addict piece of scum. Hardcore addicts only want to be left alone to consume their poison to the point of sweet, sweet oblivion. Other humans are mere props in the charade that is the life of an addict.

And I’m depressed as all hell, and the effort to seal the deal, in a sexual sense, with a woman, is so far beyond me at the moment. Sometimes it gets so bad that boiling an egg is like climbing Mt. Everest. I know, I know, somebody call a wahhhmbulance.

Everything beautiful is so far away.

I’m certainly no shill for any pharmaceutical company (though any representatives are free to contact me) but the pills I take really do help. SSRI’s don’t exactly turn me into a numbed out zombie, or a fully functioning happy worker bee. What they most certainly do, however, is mitigate the tendency to dwell in dark places. Before I was taking meds I could easily wallow in such outrageous self-pity and self-hatred for hours on end: I’m so fucking worthless, such a scumbag, so selfish and narcissistic, just die already, etc., etc.

Before taking anti-depressants, my emotions were more hysterical. I would cry during commercials, and not the really sad, sponsor-this-starving-African-child-for-the-price-of-a-cup-of-coffee-a-day; or an adopt-one-of-these-sad-eyed-caged-animals-or-they’ll-surely-be-put-to-sleep types.

I’m talking TP commercials.

There’s this one Just For Men ad where the single Dad comes home after the big job interview and the two young daughters run up to him anticipating the news and his toothy smile lets them know he got the position and they’ll be able to keep the house, and Dad, who is in his late forties, runs a hand through his lustrous, thick chestnut brown hair with a touch of grey.

It’s not like crying is out of the question just because I’m on Cipralex. The name Cipralex was, no doubt, endlessly fretted over in a pharmaceutical marketing boardroom. It sounds like an evil genius drug;  like something a villain in a Bond movie injects into our hero’s arm with a cartoonishly large syringe to get him to spill his guts.

The name also reminds me of an insect. I can picture a Cipralex Scorpion scuttling about the desert, or a Cipralex Beetle climbing a tree.

Thankfully nowadays, instead of tearing up during thirty second videos of multi-national mind control propaganda, I cry at more tasteful televisual works of art: the end of a Woody Allen movie, say. So, I’m not emotionally dead. It only takes a little more to get me to spill the salt water. I’m balanced.

There are, however, some side effects. Namely, harder to fall asleep (that’s where the weed really earns its money), and harder to reach climax. Aside from those two niggling biological effects, the drugs work pretty well. The warning on my the pill bottle should read: May cause difficulties extracting bodily fluids during masturbation and/or crying.

Depression, on the surface, really is a wimpish problem. Nobody cares if you have ‘depression’. Is that even a real thing, some ask. I don’t want to get up on Monday mornings and go to work, either, but I do, some say. And it’s true, to a degree depression is a cop-out, but to a very real degree it’s not. I’m not arguing about where the line should be drawn, only that there is a very real battlefield. It’s pervasive and debilitating. One of the problems of depression is that the very symptoms of the disease—lethargy, ennui, hopelessness, anhedonia, anxiety--make the patient forego seeking treatment in the first place. Imagine if your shoulder is strained and possibly dislocated, and it hurts like a mother. Though it throbs with pain, you think maybe it will get better after a couple days. After day three it’s a no brainer. All your friends are saying, “What is wrong with your shoulder? Go see a doctor already!” And you’re pretty much convinced there’s a basic bodily problem. Your shoulder aches when doing nothing, and lightning bolts of horror shoot through your nerves when you use the shoulder in any meaningful way. A call is then placed to the doctor’s office, and an appointment is booked (if you’re lucky), and off you go. There is nothing inherent about shoulder pain that would prevent anyone from seeking medical help.

That’s one of the painfully ironic loops of diagnosing depression: Pain screams for a cure, but depression’s scream is always in search of a mouth. The very symptoms of the affliction prevent the afflicted to seek help to stop the affliction so they retreat further into the affliction.

There are thousands of Canadians already on mind altering psychotropic drugs and thousands more holding out; grinning and bearing it. In a macro sense, the structure of modern North American life is to blame for the rise in depression along with the millions of dollars pharmaceutical companies spend promoting SSRI’s. It’s both of those converging factors that fuel the rise in depression. The industry is plugged in and now pretty much runs itself. My doctor prescribed Cipralex after speaking to him for two minutes. I told him my hands were always tingling and I felt faint, especially after smoking a cigarette.

“I’m going to give you a prescription for a thirty day trial period, and we’ll see how you like it, OK?”

And that was it. This was five or six years ago; only missed one or two days since.

            Like any intangible, ethereal, mental health issue, it’s difficult to describe the feeling of depression to someone who doesn’t constantly battle with it. Can someone without paranoid schizophrenia really understand what it’s like to be a paranoid schizophrenic? Or a synesthete? Or Lyme Disease?  

There’s a wide spectrum of depression, too. Some got the bug worse than others. Some can’t eat, can’t get out of bed for days on end. I’ve never had the beast dig its claws that deep into my back. I’ll take a steak and stuffed peppers on my worst day. Though I will occasionally starve myself and then binge eat. That’s fun. What depression feels like to me most of the time is more like a soft buzz that echoes through all thoughts, interactions, and teeth brushing; happiness sporadically sprouts forth like a dolphin leaping out of a deep sea of torment, its concrete coloured body shimmering in the sun for a second before disappearing again into the void.

Back at Stillwater, I’ve never so much as pecked the cheek of a young lady since I started almost two months ago. A couple of hugs, but that’s as far as it goes. That’s it for the lurid sex stories. I’m a professional, or something. Why would you want to read about that, anyways? Who cares if I took advantage of some eighteen year old or she took advantage of me (yes, there’s always one woman in the group who is quite aggressive, sexually. They don’t mince words, they just blurt it out in no uncertain terms. The other day a snookie-esque girl with a voice hoarse from screaming said she wanted to get a “Cock injection”).

This summer story is a quiet one. Or at least I’m trying to make it one. Somewhat like the main character, William Stoner, from the novel Stoner. Instead of Oklahoma, our setting is a small beach town in Southern Ontario. Instead of a professor of English, we have a security guard. Instead of an entire life, we have three months.

            Stoner is one of those books that stays with you long after you read it. Essentially, it is the story of one man’s simple, ordinary life told chronologically; its attendant ups and downs, detailed in sparse, tight prose. Just the right amount of detail. The result is a life rendered poetic despite its ordinariness, like most of our lives are in the end. Outside a handful of friends and family (if we’re lucky) we’re all nobodies with different sized egos.

That previous thought may sound easy when reduced to a simple sentence, “ . . . rendered poetic despite its ordinariness,” but in practice it is obviously not, or there would be tons of these books to choose from and enjoy. In John William’s semi-autobiographical book there are no superheroes, or guns, or mysteries, or post-modern trickery, or drugs (despite the title), or government cover-ups, or the deciphering of ancient symbols, or really much of anything that is typically considered entertaining. After all, the beginning and the end of the book are revealed in the first paragraph. William Stoner was born in 1891 and dies in 1956 at a typical age, late in his adult life from a common disease. The author does not want you to pay attention to those types of details. There is no mystery to figure out, so the reader relaxes and enjoys each line for what it is: perfect sentences that float along at a tranquil, steady pace behind your eyeballs. Who’d believe that a middle class man’s regular life in the middle of America, to his death in the middle of the 20^th century, could be so engaging?

Man, guys can‘t get enough of the pussae. We just can’t stop staring at a tight, bubbly ass in cut-off jean shorts. The most refined gentleman can be reduced to a drooling, dimwitted, dunderhead in the presence of a beautiful woman--never mind teenagers. I see family men, in their forties, fifties and beyond who stare at Stillwater guests like pork chops and apple sauce as they pass by with the wife, dog, and kids. I guess the old adage is true: age really is only a number.

Gary has great teeth, all straight and shining. He’s definitely had work done. They’re cute little rectangular testaments to the wonders of 21^st century dentistry. To any sane, objective observer with eyeballs they look ridiculous considering his giant, egg-shaped mirth. His weight negates any serious attempt at physical attractiveness. You would think that he would have lost a few pounds along with the dental work to bring the whole package together. Instead, the teeth are like a dollop of whipped cream on a turd.

            On top of the teeth, the only other thing Gary has got going for him is a great head of hair--straight and thick, yet with whispy strands fluffing about his forehead. And this big fat oaf likes to yell and get angry. I tell myself I’m impervious to his condescension-laced rants, and for the most part I am, but there’s this fragile sensitive man-boy inside me which is shaking, curled up in the fetal position, futilely clutching his kneecaps for a semblance of warmth, the world storming around him.

            He’s the kind of guy whose attention is never fully on you. Comments are made and he just looks around, oblivious to the fact that a comment was uttered directly at him, intended for him to mull over and respond to. That is how us humans with our big, smarty-pants brains vanquished the animal kingdom: communication.

Gary is the Rob Ford of Wasaga Beach.  

            I went back to the Inn to grab a recycling bin to bring over to Cottage Court and he called to yell at me about it. It wasn’t even a yell, more like spewing white-hot vitriolic rage.

            “WHY DID YOU GO TO THE INN? I TOLD YOU TO GO TO COTTAGE COURT!” (Muffled frothing and possibly eating sounds.)

            “I went to the Inn to grab a bi--”

            “I TOLD YOU TO GO DIRECTLY TO THE COTTAGES!”

            “Yeah, but I went to the Inn, I was trying to be respon--”

            “I DON’T FUCKING CARE! WHEN I TELL YOU TO GO TO THE COTTAGES, DON’T GO TO THE FUCKING INN!”

            “Jesus Christ, dude, I--”

            “DON’T YOU ‘DUDE, JESUS CHRIST’ ME!”

            “Well, actually, it’s the other way aro--”

            “SHUT UP! STAY THERE! I’M COMING OVER IN TWO MINUTES. YOU HAVE TO FIX A BARBEQUE.”

            “OK, then. See you soon.”

            Click.

He is a brute force of a man that plows through life, through his managerial duties genuinely unaffected by any employee resentment towards him. This beast is five seven, three hundred and fifty some odd lbs. Chew on that frame for a minute. Short and stocky. His arms and legs and monstrous, his fingers like sausages.

It was a long afternoon. Carload after carload of people arrived. Some were mom’s and dad’s in mini-vans and SUV’s, and some were teenagers in souped-up Honda’s. But the age and experience gap between the two sets did nothing to stop their mutual inability to figure out where to park. Granted if you’ve never been to Cottage Court, it can be difficult to figure out the parking scheme due to the irregularly placed cottages. The cottages go north/south, east/west, thirteen is where you’d think four would be, one is at the far end of the property, etc. To further fuel this fire, both sets of groups are in no mood to deal with something as trivial as parking. Either they want to get the hell out of there (parents), or to start partying as soon as possible (teens/young adults). I have to speak with each driver and correlate their cabin number to a specific parking space, or, rather, parking area, because there are no ‘spaces.’ The layout of Cottage Court is not like a strip mall. It’s a lackadaisical beach resort and aside from the parking fiasco it’s actually much more pleasing to the eye compared to a cookie-cutter suburban strip mall or Howard Johnson.

I do my best directing cars around the sandy patches of land, the nooks and crannies between, behind, and in front of the cottages where an automobile can be wedged in for the weekend. Typically, it’s a nightmare, veering into a total anarchy until slowly I reign it in after much juggling and car switching.

I only have a limited window of time for the rearranging because after half an hour the drivers of the vehicles are slamming shots and Stillwater has a strict policy about operating guest vehicles. I’m supposed to receive explicit verbal and/or written consent to operate their vehicle. For the duration of the summer I dread this check-in shift. It is the most stressful part of this generally non-stressful job.

            During the chaos of signing in two prom parties from Mississauga, Gary remarked to me apropos of nothing, “I can’t believe I haven’t been in a fight yet this year. Last year at this time I was already in three or four.”

            “Yeah, I’m surprised myself,” I chuckled.

            Gary is a man prone to violence. A man who relishes punishing limbs and faces with his ham hock fists.

            I often day dream about fighting Gary. Not because of some outrageous hatred, though sometimes because of that, but more from a practical, could I do it? angle. Sure, he’s way thicker and stronger than me, that’s plain as day; the man has two hundred pounds on me. I’m a lightweight and he’s in the humpty dumpty weight class. But all that heft can work against him. On my side is speed and reach, mainly speed. I only need to land one or two clean ones on the button without letting his t-rex arms get a hold of me to win. Dance around him, tire him out, spin kick him in the mouth, destroying his dental jewelry. Basically treat him like a boxer in Mike Tyson‘s Punchout!: Figure out his pattern, bop him on the head during my small window of opportunity, and then get the hell out of the way, bobbing and weaving until the window opens again. That’s all there is to it! Let’s fucking do this bro!

Life's a Beach: Excerpt #4

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Life's a Beach: Excerpt #3

June 8^th 2013

I’m at Bayside from 7pm to 6am tonight. Most of the inhabitants are socializing by the chiminea on the large swath of sandy grass in the middle of the property. Bayside is built for utilitarian partying—open your front door and there you are, right in the thick of things.

Think sleazy motel.

           

Visiting for the weekend is a prom from Mississauga. Right out of the gate I tell them about growing up in Brampton and they collectively groan their disapproval. Oh no, already behind the eight ball. Some people cringe at the mention of Brampton, their hearts bursting with pity, looking as if they’d like to pat me on the head and say, “You poor thing.”

Huh? Did I grow up in Chernobyl or something? It was the suburbs. Yes, there were a lot of visible minorities, particularly from India, Pakistan and the Caribbean, but it was the suburbs. The template is the same whether you’re from Oakville or Brampton; only the details change. Plus, our street hockey games were epic battles with imperialistic undertones—the Whites versus the Indians. Us whites generally won only because we’re genetically superior (duh!), but that’s neither here nor there.

A couple of girls with stupendous posture sidle up to me, their teenage heads full of air and vodka. One of them shoves an iPhone in my face, imploring me to say ‘turnip.’ I didn’t quite understand and asked, “You want me to say turnip? Like the vegetable?”

            They both laughed uproariously at my naiveté.

I must be getting old. I don’t even know why they’re laughing anymore. I was duly informed that it’s not turnip but rather turnt up, which roughly translates to fucked up. Got it now? Good. 

While I was having a smoke with Kelly, the manager of the motel next door, who cannot stop twitching and scratching herself, four youths ambled up to the party behind my back and made themselves at home. “These kids are always watching you!” Gary’s voice echoed in my head. We flicked our butts onto the street and went back to our respective properties. I sighed, knowing that once interlopers have succeeded in gaining access and have ingratiated themselves to the legit guests, it can be more difficult to get them to leave. If a guard is paying attention, as he should, he can stop the insurgents from even entering the property.

These four had already made themselves at home. I approach the four who are standing nonchalantly in a group of ten and ask to see their wristbands. One of them, the closest to me, in a bright orange hoodie, confidently holds up a wristband but it is not made of the same material as ours—it was cheaper and made of a papery substance. Our wristbands, on the other hand, were made of plastic, with multiple notches like a belt to secure it to a wrist. The wristband’s also a different colour. The other three don’t even bother to show theirs at this point. “You, you, you, and you,” I said, singling each intruder out with the rubber antenna of my radio, “have to leave the property now; you’re not allowed to be here. Let’s go.” I wave my antenna towards the street and add for good measure, “Hit the bricks.” 

            “Dude,” Orange Hoodie says, “relax, we’re from the same school. We’re just hanging out for a bit.”

            “Doesn’t matter. You guys aren’t staying here so you’re not allowed on the property.”

            “Can I at least finish my smoke?” Orange Hoodie asks, incredulous at this draconian display of power. He probably sees these people every day at school and finds it ridiculous now that he’s up north partying with them, he can’t even stand on the same ground and say hi. It’s a wicked world bucko, and the quicker you learn that the better, I want to tell him.   

After five songs, whose common themes were drug dealing, bitches, and weed, I again told them to skedaddle, careful to make eye contact with each of them. Two of them openly scoffed at my suggestion; I knew it was time for drastic actions--the threat level had to be ratcheted up a notch. I went over to the stereo and turned the volume all the way down. That got everyone’s attention.  “Kay guys, you gotta leave now,” I said, pointing in the general direction of the foursome, “or I have to get the boss down here and you’ve seen that fat bastard, he likes to fight, too, or maybe he’ll just throw out a random room. I’m not going to let the music play until you leave, either way, so . . .”

It’s simple: divide and conquer.

            All eyes are on me. I’m nervous and excited, unable to delineate where one feeling ends and the other begins. I’m the centre of attention and I have to out-duel these four guys, making sure they leave the party in a peaceful manner. Now that the four guys are pariahs, threatening to end the good times of the others, their backs are against the wall. Nobody ever wants to give in without a fight. They coalesce together in a huddle and discuss their future options for the night. They’re saving face, pretending to debate the matter and prolong the situation when they know full well they’ll be leaving any minute. Orange Hoodie looks back to see if I’m still watching—I am--and he mutters, “Fucking Paul Blart motherfucker.”

            “Time’s up. I’ve got to radio the boss and you can talk to him when he gets here.”

            Now, sometimes I’ll pretend to radio Gary (or even the police) and sometimes I’ll actually radio Gary. It depends. It’s amazing how easy it is to fake the use of a radio. There could be anybody on the other end. If I’m faking it, I’ll say, “Gary,” --pregnant pause-- “We have four guys here who are getting belligerent and refusing to leave the property, 10-4.”

            If I’m being for real, I’ll say, “Guy come in,” and wait for Guy to actually verbalize a response. 

            “We have four guys who are being belligerent and refusing to leave the property.”

            “I’ll be right there,” Guy would say.

            Guy is a kilometer away at the Inn or Cottage Courts. He could be here in his white Ford pickup in a couple minutes.

            The four guys are posturing to leave, but not wanting to make it easy on any of us. “I’ll fucking talk with the owner, I don’t care,” one of them chimes in with his own brand of musky braggadocio.

“That’s fine with me, he’ll be here in a minute or two,” I say.

            “Fucking Paul Blart, what a loser,” another says for me to hear as they finally walk away, and the four chuckle derisively.

I go and turn up the music, the first audible lyric being the tail end of a word ending with the two syllables: igg-er.

I consider how many words rhyme with the N WORD, because I hear that word come out in disproportionate numbers from the guests’ mouths and iPods, and I can’t help but theorize that rappers must know like every single possible word that rhymes with the N WORD. As the tunes are blasting through the Peavey amp, I scroll through my mind’s lexicon and could only come up with a marginal number of words that rhyme with the N WORD: Bigger, Trigger, Figure, Chigger. Are there any more?

Another world blossoms if you soften up the ‘er’ and turn it into an ‘ah’ sound. You can pronounce the word ‘litter’ ‘littah’ and well, the half-rhyme options become endless, as I’ve heard too many times to count. Does ‘Brita’ kind of half-rhyme?

Human language is so rich with the subtlest of nuances that it is the intent and context of the words that are being spoken by the word vessels (humans), not the words themselves.

And the N WORD is one versatile word. It can be a stinging rebuke, a racial epithet, or a greeting to a good friend. It is a happy, sad, angry, mad word, with lots of history, just like the world. It’s here to stay.

Most of the teens that come to the beach listen to rap and EDM primarily, but oddly, they also throw in the occasional country song as well. Without fail, it’s “Love my niggaz, but where’s my bitchez” this, to “I love my beer, but where’s my freedom?” that.

            There’s something comical and incongruous about these fresh faced, skinny limbed, middleclass Ontario boys and girls listening to hardcore rappers waxing poetic about the gangster lifestyle. Most of the rappers themselves are bullshitting, too.

I let a couple of harmless kids onto the property; they were clearly friends from the same school but couldn’t secure a room at Stillwater so they were staying at another motel up the road. I levied the Taylor Tax: Article One, Subsection Two, which states: “Unlawful entry onto Stillwater premises is permissible only if Taylor D. Nesbit is allotted one to two shots of vodka or similar spirit.”

The perps smartly complied.

            “We have to go into one of the rooms over here, though. There’re cameras all over the place,” I explained. A Bieberesque teen with a basketball hat planted atop his dome, carefully askew, follows me into room twelve and he declares to the occupants, “The guard’s gonna take a shot!”

A collective ‘Wahoo!’ ensues.

We can be heroes, just for one day.

            The Blackhawks/Kings game is on and it’s OT. If the Blackhawks win they go to the Stanley Cup finals. I take the bottle of Smirnoff and down a swig, big as I can handle without gagging or throwing up, a much bigger swig than if it was my bottle. I exhale, and the burn slides and sloshes its way down my esophagus like a waterslide before splashing into the pool of my belly. I repeat the process and hand the bottle back to the anonymously pleasant kid with swooping bangs.

Not all fires move upward, my friend.

           

It was refreshing to see a group of three fellas with an acoustic guitar, even if they were intensely misogynistic and aggro. Only one of them could actually play, lugging the guitar around on his back like Jesus with the cross. The guy played along with any old rock number that came on the iPod. He figured out the riff right away and learned the song on the spot, even some of the solos. I’ve been playing guitar for almost twenty years and this guy was quite impressive. They were listening to a song off of Tool’s album, Undertow, and drunkenly singing along. Shit adds up at the bottom!

Later on, I popped my head into their cabin (the door was wide open) and one guy was chopping lines on top of the fifteen year old Zenith TV. I stood there without saying anything hoping he’d notice me and offer up a snort. He never did, and I walked away, salivating and disappointed.

Attitudes regarding drug use are very laissez-faire on Stillwater property. I asked Zach about them snorting shit in their room with the door wide open, and he said it was Oxy, not coke.       

“They’re all carpenters from Brampton; they make hella money, bro” he said. “Gave me a line of Oxy, too. I don’t do that stuff though. It only made me dizzy.”

“What? You fucker! I was by their room and they didn’t offer me anything.”

One of the non-guitar playing carpenters, who looked like Stephen Baldwin in wigger gear, was shacked up with a short, buxom black girl who was herself a dead ringer for Serena Williams. You look at enough new people every night, they become incarnations of celebrities. She resembled Serena so much that I had to tell her, confident that she’d heard this dozens of times before from totally random strangers, because the resemblance is uncanny, and we’d laugh about it, but instead she was mortified by the mere suggestion. “I don’t look like that bitch!” she saucily said to me, an index finger cocked and wagging. The afternoon sun beat down upon my brow and I was sweating profusely. I didn’t want to incur the wrath of this feisty woman with the violent boyfriend, but the guy was laughing at her anger, and took to calling her Serena for the rest of the day until she simply disappeared early in the evening, never to return.

I thought she had merely gone to the corner store, so I apologized to the Stephen Baldwin wigger about offending his girlfriend. He told me it’s all good, “I only met her last night. Pump and dump, bro!” he said, laughing and taking a healthy swig from his can of Heineken.

           

You’ll never see a CD at any of these resorts. They are almost extinct, as you know. The march of progress is inevitable; it’s 2013 and I knew going in that CDs weren’t used much anymore among young people. I knew this because most of my friends don’t use CDs anymore, either (though I’m noticing more vinyl). Inherent in every smash success of a medium, encapsulated and woven into the form of it, is its death. iPods are at the peak of success right now and in ten years another goofball is going to anthropologically document his summer and he will lament the decline of the iPod, while simultaneously decrying the rise of microscopic boombox stereos implanted directly into our brains.

I yearn nostalgically for all of the extraneous uses of CDs and their covers. Just what in the hell do people snort coke off of nowadays!?

            Now that music is centralized somewhere in the digital ether, entire libraries of sound are literally at our fingertips. No more annoying stacks of CDs taking up precious space in the glove compartment. No more driving on the 410 while frantically searching for Ani Difranco’s Dilate, dying to hear Superhero only to discover the case is empty or it’s the wrong CD, and squeezing the case shut so hard in frustration that a plastic shard rips open my thumb and I have to pull over, tears dripping onto the blood soaked case. I licked up the fluids of a smooth piece of clear plastic and swallowed it. I’ll need all the blood and tears I can get. 

            Listening to music never really was a tactile experience. Would Houses of the Holy sound as good without prepubescent blonde children frolicking among ancient ruins on the cover? Probably.

While it’s true that ears and hearts do all the heavy lifting, but the artwork and presentation enhance the bond. It’s kind of like this: some potheads take great care of their bongs, replacing the screens and cleaning the pipe stem with a wet Q-tip, getting rid of all that sticky resin that builds up, knowing that the bowl of marijuana will be easier to smoke once the passages are cleared. It’s about the process.

            One outcome of the digitization of vast libraries of music is the ability to easily switch to any number of thousands of songs with the flick and click of a thumb. The end result is not letting any song play all the way through. I call these people who are forever changing the current song in search of a better one, Stereo Nazi’s. With the multitude of options it’s too irresistible. I’m guilty of it myself. There’s got to be something better going on somewhere else on this device. There’s got to be something better, something I’m not considering.

Songs are frequently cut off mid second chorus and then the next song only gets the intro and first verse, then okay, a full one (people are distracted playing beer pong), then half of Blurred Lines, then a prolonged silence while the iPod user scrolls through the alphabetized data for the perfect song, then finally finds it, after shouts from the interior of the party to “Pick a fucking song already!” and stands holding the iPod, still unsure of her selection though it had already been made, until the end of the first chorus, and then she gives up, gauging the lacklustre response from the crowd and plays another song right away as if she just gave up on the search, and walks away to join the festivities until another person takes up her place to futz around with the damn thing and the whole process begins anew.

            All hail our OveriLords!

           

One looming, uncomfortable drawback of this job is the clear and present danger of physical violence.

            Now listen: I’m a dweeby, lightweight, tranny-loving scumbag stoner who benches ninety pounds and couldn‘t tell you the first thing about a driveshaft. I don’t punch guys. I have soft feminine hands and I cry during Woody Allen movies. And if you don’t know, now you know, nigga.

            Real violence is plain scary. I’m not an embedded reporter in Afghanistan. I’m not a steroid slamming psychopath. I hit people in my dreams, not on the streets. Every now and again, though, I’m overcome with a seething rage, a will to violence--like given the slightest provocation I’ll gnaw your testes open and spit the viscous sack fluid in your face and then ground and pound your head until it’s hamburger meat--but it always passes after a moment or two.

            I am seriously unnerved by the prospect of violence from Zach in particular. I like him and get along with him well. We can joke around and shoot the shit, no problem. The guy attracts the ladies, too; very good looking--blue eyes, blonde hair, and well-built. Yummers! Next to Zach, I’m the fat guy with braces and a penis growing out of his ear. The kid’s got a nasty hair trigger temper, perfectly in tune with his primordial vestiges of caveman rage. He’s one extra lumpy protein shake away from making the first person who talks back eat a curb sandwich. My fear is that I’ll be the unwilling backup man who is forced into taking the other guy.

Zach is obsessed with fitness the way junkies are obsessed with heroin. Hours are spent sculpting obscure chest muscles. His girlfriend, too, is a bodybuilder/English teacher. He showed me a picture of her on his cell and she was a striking lass, even if I couldn’t tell where her pecks ended and her breasts began.

Because Zach places such a premium on physical beauty, it’s hard not to muse that his anger stems from his most salient physical flaw of which he has no control: he’s short. Like five foot seven six and a half short.

I sat there in the predawn hours on a ridiculously comfortable plastic adirondack chair and watched the stars slowly fade from the night sky until Gary radioed me, and apropos of nothing, asks to hear some jokes. It is immediately clear that Zach and/or Brianna have told Gary about all the dirty jokes from the other night and possibly even my ‘Possession of an Explosive Substance’ charge from when I was fifteen and for no good reason tossed a Molotov Cocktail onto a street from my backyard. The stupid thing just exploded on the asphalt like it was full of piss instead of lighter fluid. Memories!

            It’s five am and there is an audience of about six guards listening on their radios who are looking to ease their boredom via some distraction. I was tired and taken aback by the request to perform like a monkey on the spot to an unseen audience.

I bombed horribly.

Speaking on the radio is still a nasty feedback loop of self-consciousness that I’m slowly overcoming. I feel as though I am outside of myself and watching as this average looking white dude talks on the magical radio device. And then there are all the other guards listening in even though I’m not talking to them, but they’re listening by default because there are no other channels, so I have to watch what I say. Thinking clearly is not easy when caught in a feedback loop. I panic and the end result is I sound like a stuttering-muttering fool. And sounding stupid only further shakes up the nervous system and makes me more self-conscious about how I’m bombing and sounding stupid, and the whole thing makes my head hurt, never mind yours.

I am The Depressed Person, I know.   

I launched into the ‘Catholic Priest and Red Bull’ joke, willing my mouth to form the sounds that connote meaning. Like a mountain-bicyclist going downhill way too fast to maintain control, I held on as long as possible through the setup until I crashed and burned--forgetting the punch line and panicking, gnawing the loose flesh on the insides of my cheeks. I’m bombing horribly, and finally, after a couple seconds the magic of the joke evaporated anyways, and now I had to radio that I forgot the punch line.

I threw my co-workers out on the line and cut the cord. Who wants to hear the setup of a joke without the payoff of the punch line? They must think I’m a complete fucking moron. A moment later when I remembered the punch line, shamelessly diving back in for the re-tell, there was obviously no more heft left in the punch--the moment was over. There might have been a pitiful chuckle or two.

Comedy is a sensitive bitch, that’s for sure. You can say the right thing but if it’s not at the right moment, well then go fuck your mother.