June 8th 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.
