June
24th 2013
I’m a little bit of an
alcoholic (is that like being a little bit pregnant?). I drink every day, but I
don’t generally get drunk—not falling down, blackout drunk, at least. Nine days
out of ten, it’s four or five pint sized cans of 5% Canadian beer spread
methodically—occasionally with white knuckles—throughout the afternoon/evening.
This is roughly a six pack of regular sized cans for those keeping score at
home. Sometimes I stray from this formula and overindulge, though not often.
The real problem begins when you start to analyze the
stats: six (or more) beers a day . . .
that’s forty two beers a week . . . and one hundred eighty beers a
month. One hundred eighty beers a month?! Are you kidding me? That’s a problem if I ever saw one.
Where do I find all the time!?
I only go a day without drinking if I was totally
sloshed the night before. Even then I may have a couple to tide me over until
the four to five pint regiment begins again the next day. The thought of being
without any beer in the fridge, or wine in the cupboard, is terrifying.
If you internally scream Yes!
when you come upon an unopened can of beer doing clean up, like the alcohol
Gods have smiled upon thee, then you may be an alcoholic.
If you go to either the Beer Store or LCBO 4-6 days a
week, you may be an alcoholic.
If you only walk with a gangsta limp when your gout acts
up, you may be an alcoholic.
If you keep empty beer cans by your bed to pee into
during the midnight hours (because there is so much beer in your belly and you
don’t want to walk upstairs three or four times a night), justifying the
behaviour with an environmental argument—less toilet flushes—then you may be an
alcoholic.
If you have $1.67 in your savings account and can’t
afford any beer, so you pour a couple shots of mouthwash, thinking you’ll have
both a solid buzz and fresh breath, then you may be an alcoholic.
***
There was a large melee out
front of Cottage Court, and this one kid happened to get pepper sprayed—not by
a cop, but by a fellow reveler, then sucker punched while temporarily blinded.
A low-ball, yet highly effective play, if you ask me.
I took it as my duty to find this kid and get his version
of events.
It wasn’t long before I found a short, mulatto kid with
an angular haircut and a black eye. “Are you the one that got pepper sprayed
last night?”
Right away he launched into a terse explanation: “Fucking
got sprayed then sucka-punched, yo.”
His topless friend in aviator shades and a straw cowboy
hat took it from there, explaining how a larger individual first sprayed the
irritant at the slightly structured mulatto boy, and while he closed his eyes,
instinctually bringing his hands to his face to rub and soothe his burning
eyes, he was punched on the left side of his face.
Crackalackaboom!
The wounded young man will leave the beach tomorrow
morning with a badge of honour--for what can a man do after being pepper
sprayed and sucker-punched? The teen did not cower, or get knocked during a
fair street fight (if there is such a thing).
He was blind-sided, and everyone can sympathize with
the guy who didn’t deserve it.
June
26th 2013
At this point, I meet Jackson,
the figure skating sociopath. His words, not mine.
Jackson doesn’t work directly for Stillwater; he’s an
independent contractor but Gary still runs the show. He’s the apex predator in
the Stillwater ecosystem, overseeing all maintenance and management duties.
Jackson is a trusted general contractor, jack-of-all-trades type. This week he
is slopping concrete onto the base of the cabins, filling in the chips and
cracks, then smoothing the concrete out. Touch-up work.
Upon meeting Jackson, my first impression was that of
a calm, affable guy in his mid-thirties. From the moment I met him, he was very
pleasant to chat with on the job site. Jackson was a physically well-
proportioned man, tall and fit with good teeth and a head full of short cropped
hair. The only unsettling feature of Jackson’s body are the crudely drawn jailhouse tattoos
covering all four arms and legs. The tats are now an unnatural bluish-green and
fading fast; I could faintly make out one that read, “Harley Davidson” in the
familiar orange and white logo. The rest were vague shapes and letters that
were indecipherable. I comment on the Harley tattoo and Jeremy tells me he
worked security for some biker bars in the past; also studied martial arts. He
proceeded to dissect North American martial arts versus original Asian martial
arts, engaging with me like we had been to hundreds of martial arts events
together. He was committing a mortal sin of first impressions: talking about
his interests in length and detail as if I, too, was also an aficionado. All I
could do was smile, say “Yeah, cool,” and nod approvingly.
Jackson told me I have a “good frame,” but for what I
don’t know. Figure skating? Taekwondo? After I first met him, I came away
thinking, “Seems like a nice guy.”
****
The previous paragraph took
place a couple days ago. Then today, my second time working around Jeremy, it
was more of the same friendly, pleasant chit-chatting. Out of nowhere, as we
were shooting the shit in between two cabins, me washing out bins with Quattro
and Jackson smoothing out wet concrete with a small darby, he says, “I’m a
diagnosed sociopath.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask. What else am I supposed to say to a
declaration like that?
Curious about this guy’s past, and encouraged by his
friendly demeanor, I then inquired, “Ever been to jail?”
“Yeah. Been in Penetanguishene for a couple a years a
couple a times. Assault, stuff like that.” Jeremy maintained the smile on his
face.
The smell of a burnt roach, freshly put out, wafted from
his truck; I said I was a fan, too. He offered me a puff, I declined.
“It relaxes me,” he said. “It’s the only thing I do. I
can’t drink anymore or I’ll get too crazy, ya know? You sure you don’t want to
smoke a bone?” Jeremy asked.
“Nah, I like to smoke after work,” I told him.
For me, marijuana is a late-night, private affair,
dangerous liason kind of thing. Plus, I didn’t want to get too friendly with a
potential violent weirdo.
Jackson lives alone a couple kilometre’s away from Cottage
Court in a motel owned by Stillwater that inhabits mystery and intrigue because
it does not have any guards patrolling it like the other three resorts. The residents
of Seawater Inn, which is quaintly located right on the banks of the
Nottawasaga, is home to a much older crowd. Men and women in their forty’s and
fifty’s sit around bonfires in Adirondack chairs drinking beer and fishing. There’s
no beer pong being played here. Only serious hardcore drinking; the booze
unable to hide behind their tired eyes. These are the folks of Wasaga that time
has forsaken. They once had dreams like the teenagers down the road celebrating
the completion of high school. It’s okay to act crazy when you’re eighteen
because you have your whole life ahead of you. Sitting on the banks, drinking a
twelve pack, watching the water flow along on its merry way, at fifty-two, is
pathetic. Humans are always analyzing whether the behaviour of others is age
appropriate.
The difference between these
inhabitants and the ones at the other Stillwater properties is the Sea Breeze folks
are permanent--or at least they’re trying to be, scrounging up enough cash for
today’s beer and next month’s rent. Neither families nor high school graduates
come to Sea Breeze. It is for those who live in Wasaga barely cobbling together
a living, never quite hustling enough money to get out of the monthly motel
rent game. A lot of them are hardcore alcoholics.
“So . . .” I begin, “if I had an accident with the lawn
mower and my hand was cut off, blood shooting out in arterial spurts, you
wouldn’t feel kind of weird about it at all, and think ‘Hey, that guy Taylor I
met yesterday seemed like a nice guy, I enjoyed talking to him on the site . .
. too bad he had his fucking hand cut off! I’m going to have nightmares about
the horror.’ Or something like that? You wouldn‘t feel bad for me?”
“Well,” Jeremy seemed to consider, “I’d definitely jump
right in and help you,” he said, not fully understanding the thrust of my query.
Maybe he was just dumb.
“No, I don’t mean actually when the horrific lopping of
my hand and the subsequent screams and cries happen--I mean later, when
you’re at home eating dinner, reflecting on the incident. Wouldn’t you think
about it? Unwillingly replay the horror of it all in your mind? Would you not
hope I was okay, that possibly my arm could be surgically reattached and I
could again masturbate with both hands if I so choose?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose I’d have to have dinner. If it was
later.”
I’m sure Jeremy could be bullshitting me for his own
twisted pleasure. I couldn’t quite tell, but he did seem to be genuinely off; I
sensed it. Using my own twisted pop psychology, there was must be a positive
correlation between Jackson’s tattoos and the number of years he spent in
prison. Why else would his limbs be festooned with such nonsense as skeleton
bikers with bandannas on their skulls, wildly waving machetes? Nevermind the
tattoos are drawn with the skill of a common crackhead felon.
Could Jackson be a sociopath as he claims? Probably
not. Sociopaths generally don’t go out of their way to tell you they’re
sociopaths—they prefer to hide that aspect, to fake it so that others think they have appropriate human
feelings/reactions. That being said, the guy really didn’t understand and/or
acknowledge the basic thrust behind my hypothetically gruesome situation. I
dropped the issue and went back to spraying bins with a highly powerful
disinfectant, getting rid of barf and burger residue, wondering where it all
went wrong.
I have an honorary degree in Psychology from a
reputable Canadian University! Good lord! What am I doing with the plebeians
and ingrates amid the rotting stink of dumpsters in forty degrees Celsius! Oh,
the injustice of spraying bins with a commercial level disinfectant! My hands!
My soft, precious, writerly hands! They’re so smooth, as if God used his own
personal darby to carefully sculpt them. Whatever happens, I don’t want to lose
my velvety hands!
We had trouble locating the trusty yellow nozzle that we
shared, the kind with six different notches of varying modes of H2O dispersal. It
was supposed to be with the hose at all times, and it was driving me fucking
nuts because I needed to wash out garbage bins, and more importantly, my
psychotic pal Jackson needed to wash out some concrete bins with the jet spray
before the concrete dried and hardened. All he needed was the goddamn yellow
nozzle, so he could put it on blast, but there he was, laughing about how we
couldn‘t find it.
Ha-ha-ha! No matter. The yellow nozzle
would turn up sooner or later. He wasn’t getting frustrated like me. Secretly,
I was worried that his calm and cool exterior would hit the breaking point and
all of a sudden explode into a psychotic rage if I didn’t find the yellow
nozzle for the hose. I feared Jeremy’s nice guy façade was only a ruse, that
all the DIY jailhouse ink had invariably poisoned his well.
“See, that’s the problem with this place!” I ranted.
“Other people come in and use our shit and then don’t put it back where they
got it! I’m going to take a yellow nozzle and go over here and attach it to
this hose and then selfishly carry on with my business. Stupid, selfish
motherfuckers!” Maybe I’m the psycho.
Jackson told me he’s been single
for fourteen years. An unusual and embarrassing tidbit to offer up to someone
you just met. Though to be fair, I did let him know that I myself had been
single “for quite some time.” (“Quite some time” being a euphemism for “Years.”
“Years” being a euphemism for “At this point, I’d fuck a hole in the wall.”)
He tells me that he, unlike myself, couldn’t work
security at Stillwater, because he knows it would provoke him. Jackson is a
general contractor, a jack-of-all-trades, master of none, his own boss, because
he knows he has issues with authority. At the very least, he’s well aware of
his violent tendencies and is proactive about taking himself out of those
situations. Quite a civil sociopath, this Jeremy.
At the end of the day he heads back to the Seawater Inn,
back to the true-grit Ontario folks. They’re funny, these local gents. One day
I helped a colourful group of them, under Gary’s supervision “move some
things,” as Gary described over the phone. I arrived at the Seawater and walked
down a ten foot wide set of stairs into the basement where there was what
appeared to be a long-defunct club from the late 70’s/early 80’s. many chairs and tables, as well as a massive,
L-shaped bar. Gary explained that this was the décor for a disco club on a houseboat
that cruised the Nottawasaga in the misty ‘70s. When I walked through the
basement doors it was like being transported back to 1977. I could feel the Bee
Gees’ nasally falsettos bleeding out of the walls. I listened to the guys doing
the grunt work, mostly in their forty’s, bust each other’s balls to pass the
time. They were putting on a show for me, trying to make an impression on the
young outsider. I stayed quiet and politely laughed at their jabs. I accepted a
proffered beer, the gesture ingratiating myself to them. After all, it was only
ten in the morning. It takes hutzpah to slug cheap beer at ten am. Though considerably
younger and not quite as weather beaten, I proved myself a trouper. Am I
looking into the future?
We spent a couple hours lugging all the chairs and tables
carefully up the stairs and into a hatch attached to Gary’s truck. The whole
load was to be hauled thirty minutes away to a 19th century barn
converted into the dining/dance hall of a bucolic bed & breakfast, nestled
in the peaceful farmlands between Wasaga Beach and Barrie. The B&B was
owned by Ned, the owner of the Stillwater empire, and Gary’s boss. The only man
Gary is deferential to. Ned is the boss to end all bosses in this story. He’s
the Godfather. Ned walks unnaturally, and constantly has an inappropriate smile
on his face.
After a light-hearted debate between Gary and a greasy
haired man with silver flecked stubble, that was, underneath the surface, a
clash between two alpha males trying to assert dominance and leadership during
a logistical puzzle. It was the kind of conversation that could spiral out of
control into violence if one party says the wrong thing, jokes too hard, or does not acquiesce. As for
the rest of us, we stood there mute, not daring to offer up our private
thoughts about how best to haul the humongous Tetris piece up the stairs; our
theories played out in our heads alone, clashing silently with each other.
There was a complex set of belts looped around the
right-angled bar for leverage. These belts looked like they were torn out of an
Oldsmobile. Eight of us, four on each side, grabbed hold of either a belt and/or
the bar. One of the guys, with a short cropped head of hair and a six inch long
goatee, took the lead: “Ready? One . . . Two . . . Three . . .”
Our ragtag octuplet gave it everything we had and
began hauling that fucker up the stairs. After much testosteronal grunting and
straining, we reached the top, the bar safely intact. One rowdy guy with the city
of Hamilton spelled out across the middle of his back in bold, arching letters,
walked away flexing his arms and screaming in victory: “Yeah motherfucker!” He
then tilted his head back and slugged what was left in his can of extra strong
bargain beer, the sun glinting off the upturned concave aluminum rim, the
liquid gold flowing down his gullet.
We then hoisted the bar, home to the ghosts of thousands
of elbows, up into the hatch. I hopped up and helped secure the irregularly
shaped wooden beast with more belts. The move was and it was now hardcore
drinking time. High fives went all around. Mr. Hamilton bro hugged me so hard I
thought I felt a rib snap. If I had to guess, the total number of years spent
behind bars by this feral clan totaled well over the age of a common Canadian
grandpa.
Gary pulled out a wad of colourful bills and handed it
to Mr. Hamilton, who in turn peeled off a couple of green twenties and handed
it to a buddy who pocketed the cash and dutifully hoped onto his ten-speed and
took off towards The Beer Store.
The men grabbed their open beers which were sitting
conspicuously in a row on the ledge of a nearby porch, and went back towards
the river bank to finish them off. There was a mass of soot and ashes in a
pile. One of the guys threw a couple logs on top and squirted the wood with
lighter fluid. It was a plan. A fire, lots of beer, and perhaps a hard-boiled
egg with some Mr. Noodles for dinner.
It was only noon so the guys were mostly sober. Who
knew what kind of state they’d be in come nightfall. When you don’t live with
these down-and-outers, they are mostly delightful to be around—less annoying,
yet more set in their ways than the teenagers jacked out of their gourds on
MDMA and hormones.
In the early evening, Gary sends me back to Sea Breeze to
round up a man named Derek, as well as his dog, to stay the night at HQ, The
Stillwater Inn, while some renovations are done on his Sea Breeze room. A
common event, this temporary reshuffling for upkeep and maintenance.
The whole lot of them are wary when I pull into the
driveway, collectively thinking Who is this potential bother and/or
disrupter—until, that is—I get out of my car and they recognize me from the
earlier move. Their faces fall into toothy displays of merriment. “What’s up,
bro?” Mr. Hamilton said. Everyone was smoking at the same time, just like the
kids at the beach, except these folks know the real monetary cost of long-term
addiction and plan ahead, buying a lot of cheap cigarettes, the ones you buy in
large Ziploc bags. Down the road, the kids mainly buy Belmont’s—generally the
most expensive brand—mainly as a peacock display. The irony, of course being
that the teenagers, compensating for their lack of manhood and financial
stability, grasp at some of the lowest hanging cultural fruit (cigarettes!) to
promulgate an image of refinement and wealth and overall badassery. Smoking a Belly is like a crack hit of cache. It’s
not like pulling into the parking lot with a Porsche. The power of a Belmont is
fleeting and ephemeral, yet it’s undeniable for a few minutes. And then juice
is used up. Until you pull out another one.
Almost all of the Stillwater guests smoke Belmont’s.
Do they have secret agents infiltrating this town? Every kid buys into this Belmont
conspiracy. It’s about $14 a pack and you could trade a carton for a kilo of
smack. Bravo Belmont. As a company peddling 1st class, downright tasty
lung death in the 21st century, they’ve somehow, brilliantly, got a
lot young Canadian adults on board even though they sell the costly cigarettes,
and they’re not much better than any other of the decent smokes out there. I
can remember it being similar in the late 1990’s when I was in high school.
Only the cool kids smoked Belmont’s.
They were expensive back then, too, a lot more than my brand, Du Maurier’s. It
was uncool for a real, punk rock stoner teenager to be seen smoking a Belmont.
Belmont’s were reserved for the nice looking, cookie cutter alpha jock types.
The sensitive, artisanal snowflakes like me wouldn’t be caught dead with a
Belly.
I see a man sitting by himself
on a log away from all the muckrakers, reading a book, while his large golden
retriever sits in the shade, its tongue pleasantly lolling. He didn’t notice me
as I walked towards him, his right hand holding a thick paperback in front of
his face. He was an older gent and shabby looking. He appeared to be the kind
of person that glory has no time for any longer; an unknown soldier in the
battle of life.
“You Derek?” I asked, the man setting his book down on
his lap to look up at me.
“Yep, sure am.”
“I’m here to take you back to the Inn for the night.”
On his lap was a small forest, written in fine print. The
book looked like a serious endeavor.
“Whatcha reading there, Derek?” I asked.
“Oh,
just something about a captain, out at sea for many years,” he said.
Derek told me the author’s name but it eludes me now,
not someone I’d ever heard of, so I didn’t inquire any further. He told me the
dog’s name was Goober, that much I do know. We hopped in my car for the short
drive to the Inn.
He was a pleasant man with a very Zen attitude. Not
much of a talker, which I liked, because it’s tough to suffer fools and all those
dumb sounds that spill out of their mouths.
Derek did not
seem like a current drinker, but he reeked of past abuse. Years ago he could
have been at Cottage Court funneling an ice cold Molson Canadian, a crowd
chanting his name. His whole life was ahead of him. Derek took some wrong turns,
and now he’s ended up back at the party, thirty years too late. Derek has a
story to tell, like anyone else, but I don’t know what it is. He remained
silent. Was he abused by a creepy uncle? Did he have a family? A wife and kids?
An ex-wife and kids? There were no answers, only questions that tumble into
more questions. All he had was Goober.
We eyeballed the women walking in bikinis and hid the
desire for our favourite girl. Goober’s head was far outside the window, a
subhuman, goofball smile on his face, and he stared, presumably, at his favourite,
too.
At a stop sign, I snuck a glance at Derek. He looked
haggard and unkempt, the transient life clearly taking its toll. The eyes were
clear, though. I imagined Derek flitting from hotel to hotel, barely keeping
dog food in the dish. Not exactly homeless, yet still without a home. Like a
light switch stuck in the middle between on and off, buzzing and flickering.
I left the two of them in the car and went into the
office at the Inn to confirm the details. Jacky gave me a room key. I escorted
Derek and Goober to their room for the night—the stock motel room laid out the
same way as Sea Breeze. Goober was excited about the new accommodations,
frantically inspecting and sniffing the room out. Dogs will love you just the
same whether you live in a one room dump, or a house on the hill, and that’s
more than I can say about some people.
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