by Greg Rhyno
“Yeah,” Deacon says, holstering the gun in his jacket pocket. “They were.”
I don’t need to look for the house number when I get to Banning Street that night. There’s no mistaking a keg party. Already there are a few people standing on the front lawn wearing heavy knit sweaters and drinking out of plastic cups. On the porch, some guy with a ponytail is trying to work out the chords to ‘No Woman, No Cry’ on an acoustic guitar. He looks cold. I smile when he looks up from his fingering, and he eyes me with something between indifference and open hostility.
“If you’re going to drink, you have to pay Steve twenty bucks,” he says, re-adjusting the strap on his guitar. For a hippie shindig, this seems like a pretty capitalist venture.
“Okay,” I say, as cheerfully as I can. “Where is he?”
But by then he’s moved on to ‘Buffalo Soldier’ and instead of answering me, he’s enthusiastically singing to no one in particular.
I go inside and leave my shoes in the giant pile by the door. From the front hall, I can see the place is pretty packed with people I don’t recognize. The stereo is blaring Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and the house has this damp, living smell, like the inside of an old cooler. I head for the kitchen, the nexus of all house parties, in hopes that I’ll find Lovely Rita, but she’s nowhere to be seen. I do, however, find the keg, and as there’s currently no lineup, I pull a plastic cup out of its sleeve and pour myself a beer. I’ll have to pay Steve his twenty dollars when I see him.
Armed with a beverage, I go in search of Rita and get a feel for my surroundings. Most parties I go to are still in the houses of my friends’ absent parents, where I spend an inordinate amount of time feeling nervous around Royal Doulton figurines and dangerously pale-coloured carpeting. Here, the only breakable decorations are a lava lamp and a neon Molson Canadian sign. Where there is carpet on the floor, it’s already stained. The walls are decorated with posters: Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, A Clockwork Orange. There’s an enormous Canadian flag hung like a curtain in the front room and a stolen construction sign on the bathroom door that says No Dumping.
I’m on my way up the stairs when I run into Matty Wheeler and his enormous dreadlocks. I guess now that he plays in a band with university guys, it makes sense that he’s hanging out at university keggers.
“Hey, bu-uddy,” he says, sounding a little too much like Pauly Shore. “What are you doing here? Is Soda here too?”
I hate how relieved I am to see him. On principle, I usually can’t stand him and his tribe of musical beardos, but right now he’s the only friendly port in a sea of strangers. I tell him I’m looking for Lovely Rita. He knows who she is—everybody does—but he hasn’t seen her tonight.
“I’m just about to smoke a bowl in the basement. Want to come with?”
I hesitate. The truth is, I’ve smoked pot only a few times in my life, and I’m starting to suspect that it’s all just a big scam. The only physiological effect I’ve experienced is sleepiness, and I’m not such a big fan of sucking some wet end another guy just had his lips all over. Of course, that said, I’ve got nothing better to do.
“Yeah. Sure.”
“All right, brother. Follow me.”
He puts his arm around me and steers me back down the stairs. We head through the kitchen, and on the way, Matty stops and interrupts this guy with big teeth and weirdly purple gums. He’s talking to a blonde girl who’s really pretty in a bored and angry kind of way, like how some runway models always look so pissed-off about nothing in particular.
“Dude,” Matty says to Purple Gums, “I’m going to conduct some business in the basement. You should come.” He looks at Angry Face. “You too, little sister.”
They fall in behind Matty and I follow them. We all go down a very rickety set of stairs. At the bottom, the room opens up into what looks like a rehearsal space, with a few amps, a drum kit, and a set of bongos. Suddenly, I realize I’m in the lion’s den: Honeydew Headquarters.
“Is this where you guys practise?” I ask.
“No, Sherlock, it’s our interpretive dance studio,” says Purple Gums.
“Oh hey, sorry, dudes,” Matty says, packing the bowl. “I’m just no good with, y’know, formalities. This is Pete. Pete, that’s Steve, our trumpet player, and that’s Kim.”
“Our groupie,” Steve says. Kim looks in the opposite direction and shakes her head.
“Oh, Steve,” I say, feeling a little guilty about the beer in my hand. “I’ve got twenty bucks for the keg.”
“Nope. Wrong Steve.” He seems inexplicably put out. “Fucking people have been trying to give me money all night.”
“Must be awful,” Kim says.
“That’s Sudbury Steve,” Matty gestures toward Purple Gums. “You want Kim’s brother, Townie Steve.”
“Townie Steve.” I turn to Kim. “Does that mean you’re also a townie?”
Sudbury Steve rolls his eyes.
Kim aims her index finger and thumb at me like a gun, and winks. “Born and raised, dude.”
We stand in a loose circle and watch as Matty lights the bowl and sucks on the glass pipe a couple times. A thick cloud of smoke rolls out of his mouth, and then, miraculously, travels back up into his nostrils.
“Ni-ice,” Sudbury Steve says. “Irish Waterfall.”
Matty exhales. “So yeah,” he says, passing the pipe to Steve, “this is our new space. We even have an eight-track set up so we can just roll tape and record our sessions. Last weekend we got fucked up on ’shrooms and jammed for three hours straight. It was beautiful.”
“Bet the neighbours loved it,” Kim says.
“Oh, fuck the neighbours,” says Sudbury Steve, passing the pipe to Kim. “That guy’s a crackhead.”
“Well at least he doesn’t kick puppy dogs,” she says and takes a haul.
“Fuck you. That thing is a Doberman, and it was trying to bite me.”
“It’s a chocolate lab. Her name is Cocoa.”
After Kim finishes, she passes me the pipe. I take a couple drags, but I don’t feel like I’m getting very much. “I think maybe it’s out.”
Kim takes it back and inspects it. “Looks okay,” she says. She puts it back in my hands, then gently directs my fingers with her own. There’s something a little intimate about the way she doesn’t break eye contact. “Just take your thumb off this hole when you inhale.”
I do as she says. I take a good suck and suddenly a flaming fist of smoke punches me in the back of my throat. I start hacking. In seconds I’m a red-faced, watery-eyed mess.
“Easy, champ,” she says, patting and rubbing my back.
I hear Sudbury Steve cough out the word loser and I decide that I don’t like him very much.
“I’m going to take him upstairs and get him another beer,” she says, referring to me. “I think he could use one.”
As we walk back up the stairs to the light and noise of the kitchen above, I think I can hear Matty and Steve laughing, but by the time we get to the top step, I don’t remember what they’re laughing about.
We stand in line at the keg for a little while, and Kim seems to know everyone. I watch her talk and smile at people I’ve never met. She looks less intimidating when she smiles. And her laugh is really musical. What song is that? She introduces me to somebody—Jamie? I think his name is? I wave at him, but he seems really far away. Everyone seems really far away. All I can do is concentrate on her. And then I can’t even do that. What song is that? I wander into the living room and watch the stereo make music. It’s the greatest song that anyone has ever written. Ever.
There’s a beer in front of my face.
“How we doing, Pete?”
“This is the greatest song that anyone has ever written.”
When I say it out loud, it doesn’t seem to have the same kind of gravity as it does in my head. I feel a little dizzy and take a few steps toward the music.
“You look a little pale,” Kim says. “Want to sit somewhere quiet for a bit?”
I don’t remember agreeing, but she gives me her hand and I take it. It feels warm and small, but she has an incredible grip. Maybe her hand is metal underneath the skin, like Luke Skywalker. Or, no. The Terminator. A small, blonde Terminator is leading me up the stairs. She opens the door to somebody’s bedroom, then sits down on the bed inside. I lower my ass down slowly beside her and hold my beer with two hands in front of me so I don’t spill.
“Whose room is this?” I ask.
“Steve’s,” Kim replies, pointing at a map of Sudbury on the wall.
“Oh yeah,” I remember. I take a sip of my beer. “Are you ... dating that guy?”
“Something like that.”
“Weird. I don’t think I like him very much.”
She finishes the rest of her beer, then takes mine and puts it on the nightstand.
“I think the feeling’s about to be mutual,” she says. She leans in and kisses me.
The first thing I notice is how she smells—like dewberry soap, that purple stuff girls get from the Body Shop. It’s nice. She pushes me backward onto the bed and crawls up toward my face. I can feel her breasts against my ribcage. For a while, we’re just mouths. Just lips and tongues. And then she kisses my neck, just under my jawbone, and that’s all we are. When she works her way up to my ear, I can feel the humid rhythm of her breathing, but I can hear it, too, and that sound blocks out the rest of the world.
I’m not entirely sure why she’s doing this, or whether it’s a very good idea, but I don’t want her to stop. And then, about thirty seconds later, she does. Very abruptly. She seems to be listening for something, and I realize there might have been a noise outside the door. It’s hard to say because until very recently, her tongue had been probing the inside of my ear. What I do hear is the doorknob turning, and the sudden increase in volume as the sound of the party infiltrates the room. Then I hear something else.
I hear Kim saying, “Hi, Steve.”
There are moments where your destruction is so inevitable that time seems to slow down so you can fully comprehend how fucked you are. This might be one of those moments. Or maybe I’m just really stoned. Either way, it feels like an eternity or two pass before I realize that Kim is not acknowledging her boyfriend, but her brother, Townie Steve. Her brother who is accompanied by Lovely Rita.
“Thought I might find you in here,” Townie says to Kim. “Who’s your new friend?”
“Pete?” Rita says, laughing. “How long have you been here?”
“I don’t even know ...” I tell her honestly. Then I try to make my eyes focus on Steve. “You’re Steve?”
He nods.
“Hi, Steve. I owe you twenty dollars.”
There’s more laughter. I’m pretty sure it’s mine.
SIDE B
Almost Crimes
There’s an interesting difference between the laughter of teenage boys and the laughter of teenage girls. When boys laugh, especially that sort of Beavis-and-Butthead-style sniggering, it always seems unintentional. It squirts out of them like an unguarded fart. When girls laugh, no matter if it’s a giggle or a cackle, it always seems a little calculated. Like they’ve come to a decision about something. Their laughter is a verdict. When I’m covering a class and some of the guys start laughing, I worry about what they did. When the girls laugh, I worry about what they’re going to do.
At quarter after three, I’m standing at the door of a grade nine French class, trying to keep the students from sneaking out before the bell rings. It’s like facing the slow advance of a zombie horde. Everyone wants to be as close to the door as possible so they don’t waste a second of their Thursday night. When the bell finally sounds, they speed up so they’re more like those zombies in 28 Days Later. I’m nearly trampled.
“Who are these little hooligans?”
I hear Ruth’s voice behind me. I tap the poster of a smiling Eiffel Tower cartoon that reads Bienvenue à la classe de français!
“Ah, très bon. Parlez-vous français?”
“You were in my grade eleven French class. I barely passed.”
“Trop mauvais. Maybe you should’ve spent more time studying the textbook and less time studying the teacher.”
“Touché.”
“Nicely done. Mademoiselle Gauthier would be so proud. Is this her class?”
“No. Carruthers’s.”
“Hm. Oh hey, don’t forget—you’ve got that department meeting after school today.”
“I know. And I agreed to supervise the dance tonight.”
“Seriously? You’re a glutton for punishment, my friend.” Ruth has this way of being sympathetic in a way that doesn’t really make you feel any better. “You know it’s the Halloween Dance tonight, right? It’s going to be Slutty Angel, Slutty Maid—half-naked teenyboppers all night long.”
“Ugh.” I hadn’t thought about that.
“Skip it,” Ruth insists. “Say you’re sick.”
“Can’t,” I say, and before she objects, I remind her that some of us don’t have a permanent position quite yet.
“Well, skip the meeting, at least.”
“Can’t do that either. Kovalski’s making a guest appearance. Checking in on us.”
“God,” she says, “that guy.”
Stan Kovalski was a vice-principal at Churchill when Ruth worked there last year. They were transferred around the same time. Ironically, it was Kovalski’s unflagging commitment to incompetence that made Ruth want to transfer in the first place.
“He’ll be gone soon enough.” It’s my turn to be sympathetic.
Kovalski is what you call a Career VP, and his career is almost over. Photocopy room gossip says he’s going to retire at the end of the school year. It’s kind of sad. He climbed his way to the top of the minors, but never got called up to the big leagues.
“Personally, I don’t need any more responsibility,” I’ve heard him say in the staff cafeteria. “I’m right where they need me.”
Of course, this is crap for two reasons: one, his job sucks; and two, he sucks at his job. Being vice-principal means a lot more headache for only a little more pay. It’s a lousy stepping stone on the path toward bigger and better things, and you can forgive most VPs for doing a shit job because they don’t do it for very long. Kovalski had been a vice-principal for eleven years, in five different schools. I’d feel sorry for the guy if he weren’t so goddamn useless. So far, he had spent his brief tenure at Mackenzie King attending workshops, massaging parents, and offering fun-sized Butterfingers to aspiring young drug dealers.
“Any word who’s going to replace him?” I ask.
“Doesn’t matter. Anyone would be better.”
“Careful,” I say. “The devil you know ...”
On my way to the department meeting I do the math in my head and decide I don’t quite have the time for a much-needed smoke break. For the same reason I can’t skip the dance supervision, I can’t risk being late, even though I know full well Gail won’t start until Ellis arrives. Ellis has been late to every meeting and no one bats an eye, but of course, he’s also sixty-something and pretty close to retirement, so it’s not like he’s going to get fired. Knowing him, I’m kind of surprised he shows up at all.
I remember the first meeting in September, when I could already see a cynical glaze hardening over his eyeballs. I was the new kid, so I sat up straight, paid attention, and asked questions. This strategy quickly hurled me into a soul-crushing vortex of impenetrable buzzwords and statistics. When I came out on the other side, I had somehow volunteered to attend a day-long seminar entitled Engaging Intelligences, during which about thirty teachers were locked in a conference room with a turtlenecked presenter who possessed the enthusiasm of a kindergarten teacher and the comb-over of a cult leader. Through the cloudy lenses of his Transitions, he eyed us coolly, then proceeded to tell us that everything we had ever learned about teaching was wrong.
“Surprised?” he asked us. A few Dedicated Teachers sat near the front of the room and
took careful notes. Others leaned back and ate the free crullers. “I was a little surprised too, when I realized that kids don’t learn with their heads.” He paused and tapped his head for dramatic effect. “They learn with their hearts.” He then put his hairy-knuckled hand on his chest, as though he was about to pledge allegiance to some invisible flag. Dedicated Teachers smiled approvingly.
He continued to romance us with the idea that the current methodology was outdated and didn’t respect students’ emotional intelligence. He spent a couple hours engaging in conceptual foreplay—Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Valid Assessment, Backward Design. At last, he began thrusting into his central premise. Throughout the presentation, his voice rose in pitch as he described in agonizing hypotheticals the challenges that young students face. His pace became more and more frenetic, until finally, he showered us with his solution: “learning strategies designed to engage today’s high school student in community-based learning,” described at length in a series of DVDs that were available for purchase through his website. In the end, I couldn’t help but feel a little used.
Since then, I’ve adopted a new strategy. As Gail speaks, I focus my energy on the box of donut holes as it’s passed around, and psychically prevent people from taking the coconut ones before they come to me. Sometimes it works. If Gail polls the room for a volunteer, I frown and tap my pen thoughtfully on my agenda, as if to say If only it was another day ...
While we sit and wait for Ellis, I notice that Candice Chang, our incredibly pregnant Ancient Civilizations teacher, is conspicuously absent, which seems to suggest that she’s had her baby and that the stranger sitting at our table is her replacement.
The unexplained female looks about my age, which is in itself pretty rare, but more than that, she’s beautiful. I don’t mean supermodel gorgeous, but I also don’t mean office pretty. She’s beautiful in exactly the way I find women beautiful, as if someone had rifled around in my subconscious and yanked her out. She’s got these jungle cat green eyes and faint freckles. Her dark hair is tied back in a bun, and she’s wearing a slightly beat-up leather jacket that makes her look a little like a photojournalist recently back from some remote and possibly dangerous assignment. How I didn’t notice her the moment I entered the room baffles me. All of the sudden, she was just there, quiet and exotic.