Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club

by Megan Gail Coles

  A kind of experiment to gauge her ability to discern pleasure. She was testing her internal thermostat. The test did not yield encouraging results. The tulips were beautiful but they did not register. She could see them, touch them, smell them. She could not feel them in her belly. She photographed them with her phone. She looked at that picture. A sober second look. And it was true, they were pretty even against the dirty corners of the dingy room in a pixelated cellphone photo. Iris saved the picture. She would look again later and hope for a different effect.

  She watched The Princess Bride, swam laps, drank cocoa, read a Chagall biography and went to the gallery. But there was nothing for it, nothing came. It was a worsening situation. She ran bubble baths but didn’t sit in them. There was paint all over the living room dried in place. A younger artist sent along an e-invite to an exhibit at The Rooms. Iris did not attend.

  On days when there is no change in illumination, people accidentally hurt themselves.

  And there is no one to answer the phone because they have grown tired of listening to her say nothing about being nothing. But Iris did not always feel like nothing.

  There were a few moments, clear and crystallized in her memory, when Iris felt very much something. And in those something moments she made promises to herself.

  As a girl-child, Iris vowed to crawl inside her colouring books and clothe herself in a pretty palette. The cape of solitude she wore, while leaning hard over the coffee table examining her pencil leads, shielded her from the loud voices over her head.

  Have another beer, b’y, go on have another, her mother sneered from the kitchen.

  Colouring was like disappearing inside a nicer vantage point. It was like them not seeing her, and so she could not get shot up in the crossfire of their fight. Iris was a weapon for them to use against each other. There was no belt to hit above or below. There was no bell to ring. They were all in, all the time.

  Sometimes, occasionally, when her father would storm from the wreckage, Iris’s mother would colour alongside her. The warm presence of her welcome and unwanted in the same measure. Iris wanted attention paid but not like this, in the wake, where one would alarm at her allegiance to the other. And so she scolded her mother for colouring the elephant purple. She kicked off at the blue sun in the sky. Small Iris wanted things to be right.

  Years later, in a restaurant, today in fact, she will realize in a caught something moment that her mother’s colouring had gifted her the very best thing she knew. That her mother sighing those same sad words upon each reprimand had encoded her creative person.

  I am colouring my feelings, Iris, these are the real colours of my feelings.

  And those tiny tired something moments on their knees all bent over cheap black lined pages had made up Iris’s good parts and bad parts. They were, together, the parts that eventually assembled like a surprising set of slowly appearing furniture to sit upon, and in this way, a gorgeous macabre room rose around her. She thinks she will paint this if she ever gets out of here. She will make something beautiful to prevent more wastage and as a memorial to her wounded self.

  She will colour in a book all the surfaces of her house, the scratched tabletops, the dinged railings, the worn floorboards scuffed free of shine. Iris is a lived-in woman.

  And maybe it is better to be lived-in than admired.

  Iris’s throat fills with bile at the sight of puke.

  Someone has retched alongside the front door. It has frozen into a garish version of its former glory along the wall where the sickness took hold. Looks like lobster salad and sweet potato fries. Popular choices with skaters and suits alike. Their gullets don’t differ in pedigree, and it all comes up after being chased down by a party favour or two. Iris doesn’t understand why they even bother with lobster salad if they’re going to get direct into the rips anyway. It would be better to rest their guts before the rot takes hold.

  This, though, would mean acknowledgement. Iris’s customers would have to plan to shit their legs off themselves and that would use up whole stores of self-awareness not yet cultivated.

  Iris is almost nearing self-awareness. She’s fortifying herself for a surge of epiphanies. When she leaves this restaurant, she is going straight for Jo to share them with her.

  And to apologize.

  Iris kicks some snow on the brick hoping to hide the worst of it. This is not her job. Omi is meant to do it. But she’s in early today. Maybe she has arrived ahead of him. Ahead of everyone, she hopes. But she smells the coffee as soon as she steps through the doorframe.

  And Iris stops.

  Lowers her body onto her haunches.

  Coffee means he’s here. Waiting for her.

  * * *

  Damian can’t believe he’s in the fucking Goulds.

  Something smells strongly of horseshit and hairspray.

  Or shoe polish.

  It was shoe polish. The insides of his nostrils have a familiar wax and tallow to them. He pinched them with his thumb and forefinger to reduce the ache. This could only mean poppers.

  Yes, Damian had brought the poppers to the party.

  He can remember now the brown vial held aloft above his nose, delivered by a hairy back of the hand from behind, a deep inhale followed by a push. Momentary weakness, lying on beach, a disappearance. And then another . . . push. And another. Push.

  Everything coming loose inside him. Weariness and worry. Like a suitcase handle slowly wrenching free after years of him minding to carry it upright through security or else everyone would witness the contents unleashed onto the daily-polished airport floor made shiny for visitors. Damian did not want to dirty up the place with his innards. His mother moaning, what will everyone think? That low, surging feeling back of his stomach that promised eventually it would all come out.

  Because shit comes out. It just does.

  And then alertness, cringing, a wounding, momentary regret and longing before the brown vial reappeared again to push the night onward against the edges of all those sad campaigns.

  Stay alive long enough to buy new jeans, Damian.

  That’s what the economy wanted. Not for him to thrive. Find some kind of peace. Or gather up a fistful of happiness. It was not in the market’s interest to keep him alive for the right reasons. And his human worth was sold back to him as such. Damian could sense it each second preceding the next push. Tonight. Another night. The nights that delivered him here were all a variation on this same theme.

  He could never be comfortable wrapped in skin that was perpetually marked out. Marriage. Adoption. Life-giving donation. What. Have. You. Mere distractions from the puzzle pieces that would never slide into place for Damian. The Board of Trade’s campaign for wealth made all but a select island few feel increasingly worthless and act out in a reflection of their own self-loathing.

  What odds if they all die? What odds? What are the odds? Really. That high?

  Nothing is political and yet everything is political.

  So Damian drank because Damian’s people drink.

  There had been a late-night after-hours party at a bar on Water Street. He had been dancing suggestively with the pool stick to nineties mixed hits. “Mr. Vain.” Or “Rhythm Is a Dancer.”

  He could feel it everywhere when he woke up.

  He touched his face, ran his open hands along his cheeks, down the back of his hair, along his skull, his neck, rested them for a second criss-crossed atop his collarbone, rubbing the thin nubs before examining his hands. Nothing. He practised clenching and unclenching his tight jaw, heard no remaining audible clicks, ran his
tongue across his teeth. When was the last time he had brushed them? Saturday? He had showered before work on Saturday. He looked down now, recognizing himself. His still-black shirt read The Hazel. He had gone out after work. Work.

  What day was it?

  Damian became miraculously cognizant and adjusted to the reality of daylight seeping through the drawn, dirty blinds behind the curtains full of dart marks. Fingerprints clearly visible through the film of grime and nicotine. Evidence of an internal Peeping Tom likely waiting to be delivered once again by bottles retailed in the trunk of a cab. White or black only.

  This is not the fucking NLC, the heavy man hurled back when Damian had requested brand name gin.

  Not that it mattered at all what it was.

  There wasn’t a spirit in the world they wouldn’t drink two days into a tear.

  Damian’s request for something better was just to keep up the appearance of standards so these other men — who were they again? he went to school with a handful of them — so these familiar strangers would think he was in charge of his faculties enough to still find him appealing. But Damian has no standards. He has shotgunned a jug of Carlo Rossi and chased it with Tylenol while watching Queer As Folk out of boredom.

  Damian has drunk sticky cough syrup with curiosity because a decades-past rock god swore by its ability to ease. He has given a hand job for a bomb and gotten his dick sucked for a rip. One rip. Not even a set of wings to fly on. But it seemed like a decent enough arrangement at the time, he hadn’t a clue what the cocksucker got out of it.

  Damian just had to lean back. It was one of many unspoken agreements.

  Everyone in their shit-bake circle agrees without discussion to outdo previously told narratives in delivery. It is a competition that no one can win, though added bonus points can be earned for displays of undeserved enthusiasm and startling volume.

  Sound bites so sharp and loud as to snap all back together with a satisfying click!

  Say it again louder, I can’t hear, my grinding jawbone is speaking over you. Say it again louder still to ensure you will be heard by someone. Anyone. Again. Again. Again! Everyone is talking. Who is listening if everyone is talking? You will have to say it again from the beginning and for effect. You’re a natural born storyteller. It is in your Newfoundland blood. Which is often complicated. And a part of our shared heritage. Except for that grad student over there in the wicker chair. He’s from Alberta somewhere. Or the Yukon. They don’t tell stories up north sure. Too cold. Freeze your cock off spinning yarns in the northern territories.

  Anyway, what was I saying? What were you saying? What was said?

  Yes, of course, telling tall tales is an island tradition. They made a commercial about it. They’ve made a commercial about every jesus thing now. Wipe your nose, b’y. Wipe your arse, b’y. You got a little something something. But come on. Come off it. Come down. Calm. Down. Sure. One more time, one more time, I’m listening now and again, one more time at maximum volume before your nose bleeds and/or the cops show up. Don’t be like that. You might as well go to bed out of it if you’re going to be like that. I won’t remember tomorrow but tell me again and again and again why it is important we ravage ourselves like this.

  Is it because of Oscar Wilde? The church? AIDS? How much Damian’s father hated him? Or why his friend’s father didn’t? Is it the back seat of a hockey player’s car? Or fucking his sister’s friend at prom for cover? Is it never liking team sports but loving the change room? Or is it a haircut? The mere act of having one? Is it that?

  Caring about how he looks when the world looks at him funny because he’s less than deserving of the dick he’s been born with based on a preference to house it somewhere slightly more compact? Or is it because he doesn’t care to uphold the putrid fashionista cocksucker bullshit? What is it? Why is he here again? Still? Does he even like these people? Can he even tell? Can anyone remember how they came by all this cocaine in the first damn place? Was it given to them by an older boy at a party once? Did they seek it out after watching Scarface? Was he still high? Is this what being really nearly always high is like?

  Bodies so conflicted by the presence of countering narcotics, all those beers will keep the gears even keel so no one appears lit up. Loneliness is the same as smoking twenty-six cigarettes a day so smoke ’em if you got ’em.

  Damian remembers that a man, missing from the living room upon waking, had announced after some minor yet escalating skirmish that they were all on speaking terms now.

  We are all friends here goddamnit!

  The skirmish, if Damian was recalling correctly, revolved around an Aphex Twin video declared to be the most fucked up music video of all time ever.

  Hyperbolic statements and flash arguments are fuck buddies without safe words on nights like these.

  The missing man demanded they turn that shit off.

  It’s making me bones right edgy, he pleaded.

  The fucking limo alone was enough to break a man’s mind, let alone that flexible dancing fucker.

  Turn it off, b’ys, he whimpered before changing tactics.

  Once, just once, just once, I wishes that creepy fucker would drive past them black girls, swerve broadside the player’s car and blow the fucker up!

  Why do we always have to watch this same jesus video? Missing Man demanded to know as he ran his forefinger along the neck of his shirt.

  Back and forth, back and forth, with a friction so discernible, Damian could almost smell the sizzling rim of his hot collar.

  Aphex Twin was melting Missing Man’s brain, which, in all honesty, was the desired effect.

  They were watching music videos made on drugs for watching while on drugs. It wasn’t a complicated caper. They always ended up watching it because there was a clarity of pain inside it they could not themselves articulate. This was not happy people music and they were not happy people.

  The doggie yelps had come into a dream Damian was having about being carjacked with a small knife held to his chest. Or snuck into his already waking thoughts about criminal activity. Or a conversation he’d been engaged in, perhaps. He can’t be sure.

  Suddenly, there was a vaguely familiar naked man sat on a fisherman’s sofa chain-smoking. He was reading poetry from a wide-spine selected edition. Damian could not tell if the rendition was meant for him. He was unsure if he had requested this private reading or if he had arisen to it. He could not discern the words, their origin, the poet or the man. But he was handsome. At least the reader was good-looking. Worse to be the lone audience member for nude poems read aloud by some ugly fellow shrouded in a cloud of smoke.

  Of this Damian was certain.

  This is one thing he can feel confident about.

  * * *

  Iris enters The Hazel listening. She can hear the radio deep in the bowels of the kitchen.

  The Wilderness of Manitoba sound off amongst the clanging.

  Iris thinks a comprehensive list must be made of all the songs that wound, catalogued and abolished en masse to prevent morning commuting mishaps. She envisions women from Calgary to Sault Ste. Marie weeping upon steering wheels as sour sentiments are sung to them before nine a.m. on a weekday morning.

  Iris thinks the whole subverted pop song genre, with juxtaposed lyrics and melody, needs to be expunged from a shared mental landscape. As do greeting cards, surprise parties and poems about love. The latter likely more pressing than the former but considerably easier to avoid.

  From far off she strains to hear the radio announcer recount a charming anecdote in his familiar brogue, and Iris suddenly wishes today would be a differe
nt day. Yesterday even. She wishes she could forget the things that had been said. Walk into the kitchen with a dime bag full of hope. Smile. Maybe still be a lovable woman. But lovable women don’t say the ugly things Iris said. Says. Will say. Again.

  Lovable women probably don’t even think them.

  Iris steps into the front dining room to take in a pair of bare heels dangling from her hostess bench. A horseshoe of reddened skin rings worn hooves. Damaged. Irreversible damage. This poor tenderfoot can only be Iris’s shadow.

  Olive: whose gentlemen callers are never gentle or men but dregs of former humans driving red pickups full of smoke. Their pumping cherries recalling every murder program ever viewed to warn, no, educate, no, remind, no, inform single women of the danger lurking just outside their double-locked doors, checked and rechecked and checked again for certainty.

  Iris thinks she cannot be held responsible for Olive’s starts and stops.

  And she is poisoned at everyone who has left her to it as if she were capable.

  Iris isn’t even capable of managing herself, and they are both constantly thrown against the dash.

  The first night the floodlights lit, Iris shot up upon hearing Olive crumple on the curb. Her shrill squeak followed by a thud and smash. She peeped to see Olive grab at the truck door in an attempt to alert the louse that she did not accept his stingy regard.

  Iris watched on as he leaned through the cab, arm outstretched, and hauled closed the door on Olive’s little frame, so fast that the wisp of her fell backward yet again before he thundered off. Her ball hat was tossed into the snow, and Iris’s surging hatred for the man surprised even herself. She suspects Dirty Deeds is a regular track on his stagnant playlist. She wishes him found impotent.

  Olive cried a bit over the loss as she attempted to recover her crushed half-case and cap from the gritty snow heaped atop the shared walkway. She sipped the one remaining bottle and smoked a cigarette before hearing Iris calling her.