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To Me You Seem Giant

Page 8

by Greg Rhyno


  By the end of our set, Soda is shirtless and in the middle of the crowd, lying on the beer-splashed floor of the bar and playing his guitar spastically on his back. Someone has drawn a lightning bolt on his chest in magic marker. Deacon is standing on top of his amp, trying to keep his balance, and trying not to put the headstock of his bass through the ceiling. Three girls I don’t even know have commandeered the microphone and are singing a slightly out of tune version of our final song, a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Hey, Hey, My, My.’ I’m hammering away at the crash and snare, just trying to keep it all together. The crowd is sweaty and pulsing like one giant organism. A few meaty-looking guys who haven’t figured out that moshing died with Kurt Cobain keep slamming into each other. I try hard not to take any of this enthusiasm too personally. Kids have an innate need to fuck shit up. We just provide the soundtrack.

  The show ends in crescendo of cymbal noise and feedback, and as Soda pulls the strings from his Telly, it’s clear there will be no encore. And really, there doesn’t need to be. It’s been our best show yet, and all the right people were here to see it.

  After the cheering subsides, the soundguy moves forward in his Metallica catalogue and turns up the volume on Ride the Lightning. We’re being evicted from the stage to make room for the out-of-town talent. Still, Deacon and Soda take their time to wander out into the crowd, to get their hands shaken, their backs slapped, and to soak up a little flattery. I stay on the stage, putting my stuff away. I’m drenched in sweat, and there’s blood on my hands from when I grazed my knuckle on a cymbal. Part of me wants to go out there and swim around in all that good will, but there’s another part of me that needs a few minutes to come down. Plus, seeking out congratulations is really just a way of tempting hubris. I like my praise when I least expect it.

  “Nice show, asshole!”

  I hear Evie’s voice as I crouch behind Chris Murphy’s drum kit, wiggling my kick pedal off the bass drum. When I look up, she’s standing beside Ruth at the edge of the stage. Her arms are crossed, she’s tapping her foot, and she’s either mad, pretending to be, or a little of both.

  “What’s up?” I shout over the house music.

  “What’s up is you promised us a show. I want answers, Curtis. Don’t toy with our emotions this way.” She’s only half joking.

  “Okay. All right,” I say, pushing my gear with my foot into the corner behind the drums. “Let’s go talk to Rita.”

  They follow me over to the merch table where Lovely Rita’s still on duty.

  “We should’ve made more t-shirts,” is the first thing she says when she sees me. “We would’ve made a killing.” I can barely hear her over James Hetfield singing ‘Fight Fire with Fire.’

  “Rita, these guys are from Martha Dumptruck. They want to set up a show with us. Can you talk to them? I need to finish packing up.”

  She eyes the girls skeptically. “Sure thing. Nice show, by the way. You guys killed it.”

  I leave them to figure out details and head back toward the stage. As I do, I scan the room for signs of Kim. I’m riding a pretty serious high of adrenalin and optimism when I run into Matty Wheeler for the second time that night.

  “Wheels! Hey, I thought you weren’t going to make it tonight.”

  He looks at me and grins sheepishly. “Well, I felt bad about missing your big show, so I cancelled my other plans and hoofed it back.”

  In that instant, I re-evaluate him. Maybe Matty Wheeler isn’t so flaky after all. Maybe being really, really good at devil sticks doesn’t automatically make someone a total idiot.

  “Thanks, man. Hey, did you like our Neil Young cover?” Neil Young seemed like some safe common ground. Hippies like Neil Young.

  “Well, that’s just it,” he says, looking down at his mukluks. “When I got back to the bar, I saw this guy climbing out of a van, and he looked really familiar. So I talked to him for a bit, and he turned out to be that guy from Sloan—you know, they had that ‘Underwhelmed’ video a couple years back?”

  “Sure. Chris Murphy.”

  “Right! Well, we get chatting, and turns out that guy knows so-o-o much about The White Album. I mean, wow. We could’ve talked for hours.”

  Suddenly I’m not sure if I like where this story is going.

  “Anyway, I totally lost track of time, and when we headed back into Jack’s, you guys had just finished. No worries, though, right? It looks like you had an amazing turnout.”

  I resist the urge to grab Matty by his filthy dreadlocks and bang his head off my knee.

  “Well, I need a beer. Oh, hey—“ he starts to slink toward the bar “—I gave that guy outside—Chris?—a Bunsen Honeydew demo tape. You should too. I think he has a record label or something. He’d probably be really into your music.”

  When I get back to the stage I see Deacon standing beside his heavy amp, waiting for a little help. The collar of his shirt is still dark with sweat, and he’s got a little satisfied smile on his face, like he just got laid and nobody else knows it. I help him lift the amp off the stage and manoeuvre it through the crowd. When we get outside, everything is covered with two clean inches of snow. It squeaks a little under the weight of our boots. Soda’s already outside, smoking and talking to some pretty, green-haired girl I don’t recognize. Where Soda finds these girls is a mystery to me. It’s not like he ever tries to pick them up. They’re just suddenly there, touching his arm, laughing at his jokes, giving him phone numbers. After Green Hair goes back inside, he walks over and helps us lift the amp into the back of the Sabre. When we slam the hatch shut, chunks of ice slide musically down the back window and then disappear into the snow below.

  “Are you guys sticking around?” I ask.

  “For sure,” Deacon says.

  Soda flicks his cigarette butt into oblivion. “I hate to say it, but my new friend Jillian just offered me a ride home, and I think it would be impolite of me to refuse.”

  “Got it,” I say.

  I’m a little disappointed. I want to keep the night going, maybe get ourselves invited to some kind of after party. There were always rumours about where the bands stayed when they came through town. Apparently, Frank owned this flophouse in the East End, but I had also heard that Ariss Donaldson’s hippie parents had some kind of rock ’n’ roll bed and breakfast down Highway 11/17. But without Soda, I wasn’t going to see the inside of either of those places.

  Rita’s always trying to get me to talk to the out-of-town-band guys, but I don’t think she really gets it. Those guys in the Super Friendz are adults. They pay rent, go on tour, and sleep on the dirty floor of their van. Deacon and I reek of teenager. Our hair is too clean, our clothes smell too nice, and we’re too full of our moms’ cooking. Soda’s the only one of us with any kind of real credibility. He’s spent the last four or five years being the only adult in his house. He’s the guy who cashes his dad’s disability cheque to make sure the Hydro bill gets paid. On some level, people seem to get that.

  “I should go grab the rest of my stuff off the stage,” I say.

  I walk back into the damp heat of the bar to the opening bongs of ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ and it reminds me that I have precious little time to accidentally run into Kim. The house music is loud enough as it is, but once the band starts, any conversational attempts on my part will be reduced to the utilitarian shouting usually reserved for trench warfare.

  Hurrying, I hop back up on the stage, pack up what’s left of my gear, and do a quick survey of the room. Through the crowd, I think I catch a glimpse of Kim’s jacket, but before I can chase her down, Rita appears like a cock-blocking angel.

  “So, I think we can kill two birds with one stone,” she tells me. “Townie wants to set up a show for you guys next month, and he’s willing to put those girls—Martha Dumptruck—on the bill. Okay?”

  “Sure. Sounds good.”

  I scan the bar over Rita’s shoulder. There’s no sign of her. James Hetfield growls.

  “Hey, Pete,” Rita waves her
hand in front of my face. “Could you at least listen to me when I’m doing you a favour?”

  I look at Rita and realize I’m acting like a dick. “Sorry.”

  “She’s gone, by the way.”

  “Who’s gone?”

  “Kim. Townie had to take her home. She was pretty drunk, and Frank was starting to give her the stink eye.”

  And there it is. For whom does the bell toll? Turns out it tolls for me.

  I mule my gear past Rita and through the door. Back outside, I’m cruelly flanked by couples. Deacon and Ruth debate the merit of Kim Deal’s bass playing, while Soda’s green-haired chauffeur—Jillian, I presume—ties her scarf around his neck. Suddenly, I’m just a fifth wheel that’s rolled to a dead stop on the sidewalk.

  “Somebody going to help me with this?” I feel very tired.

  Deacon disengages from Ruth and unlocks one of the side doors. I chuck my stuff on the back seat. Through the wall of the bar, I can already hear the muffled notes of guitar players tuning and Chris Murphy testing the drum levels. Boom. Boom. Thud. Crack.

  “That Kim chick was looking for you,” Soda says before he goes back to playing with the zipper on Jillian’s winter coat.

  “Yeah,” Deacon confirms. “She was wasted. She climbed up on the hood of the Sabre. Her brother had to pull her down. She left a message on the windshield for you.”

  I walk around to the front of the car and expect to see a piece of paper flapping under the wiper blade like a parking ticket, but instead, I see something written in new snow on the windshield itself. A number. 7 6 7 8 5 1 2. It takes me a second to process that it’s a phone number.

  “She said you’ve got two days to call her,” Ruth explains. “She’s kind of ... intense.”

  “She’s kind of a crazy bitch is what she is,” Deacon says.

  “Yeah,” I say, repeating the number in my head. Memorizing it. “She kind of is, isn’t she?”

  SIDE B

  The Laws Have Changed

  I put the phone down on the receiver and claw at my skull through my hair. “Crazy bitch.”

  “Who?” Ruth asks.

  “This parent.” I motion toward the telephone as if it still possesses the disembodied spirit of Dylan Beaucage’s mother. “She’s pissed off because I won’t meet with her during my dinner break tonight.”

  “Hm. You’d think that one of the five hours you’re available would be sufficient.”

  “Yeah. You’d think.”

  Ruth leans back in her chair and taps a pile of papers with her pen. “What’s a nicer way to say Your essay is utterly devoid of critical thought and demonstrates little to no understanding of the conventions of language?”

  “I don’t know ... leave out the word utterly?”

  She makes a few more notes on the page in green ink—green, not red, because someone told us in teacher’s college that red ink is psychologically damaging to children—and then pushes the stack of marking away from her in disgust. “What’s the point of teaching English if you can’t say what you mean?”

  “Yeah, and what’s the point of teaching history if you can’t say what happened?”

  “Your daughter can’t shut up for more than ten seconds at a time. Why can’t I put that on a report card?”

  “Your son has a reasonable understanding of course concepts, and is proficient at pocket pool. That could be helpful information for a parent.”

  I look at the clock, then dig tonight’s schedule out of my binder.

  “What time do you have to be down in the ‘Lyons’ Den’?” I try to pronounce the name with sufficient irony.

  “In about half an hour. I’ve got a full dance card as of four o’clock.”

  “Shitty. Well, I guess I’ll see you there. I have to go use the staff bathroom downstairs.”

  “What’s wrong with the boys’ room up here?”

  “They closed it. Someone barfed in the sink and clogged it up.”

  “You guys are animals.”

  I run into Molly just as I’m leaving the washroom.

  “Ready for a long night?” I ask, praying I’ve remembered to zip up my fly.

  “Ugh,” she says. “I kind of hate these things.”

  “A few of us are going to go to this new Italian place for the dinner break. Want to come?”

  “Thanks,” she says, “but I can’t tonight.”

  While trying not to be too pushy, I’ve made a point of keeping Molly informed of any staff outing I could stomach myself: the Welcome Back mixer, after-work drinks, and last month’s Halloween party where Danny Pound got so drunk he pissed in Tanis Jansen’s sauna. So far, all my invitations have been met with cheerful and apologetic unavailability.

  When Molly and I reach the gym, she smiles politely and wishes me a good night. I give her a little wave and watch her walk away across the free-throw line.

  Although no one actually uses the name, our gym is now officially called the Lyons’ Den. The school board shelled out for the new facility in 1998 when they discovered that the old one—where I attended my first high school dance, kissed my first kiss, and was subjected to endless laps and burpees by my beer-gutted grade nine phys. ed. teacher—was apparently riddled with asbestos. Since then, the administration has used the Lyons’ Den to hold parent–teacher interviews, rather than having parents wander through the labyrinthine hallways in search of non-sequential room numbers. If anyone ever wanted to take out Mackenzie King’s teaching staff in one fell swoop, this would be their chance. Around the wide circumference of the gym, I can see more than sixty of my colleagues in alphabetical order, displaced from their classrooms and chalkboards, looking small and vulnerable in orange plastic chairs and wobbly student desks.

  On the other side of the gym I can see a woman sitting across from a small placard labelled Mr. P. Curtis. A quick glance at my watch tells me she’s a few minutes early, but it doesn’t matter. You don’t keep your public waiting.

  Students think these interviews are about them. They think their moms and dads come in to get the straight dope on how they failed a quiz or don’t participate in class discussion. The fact is, parent–teacher interviews are bi-annual opportunities for parents to size up their kid’s teachers to see what kind of person is spending seventy minutes a day in a room with their child.

  “Hi there,” I say, taking my seat and trying to sound a little winded. “Sorry I’m running late.”

  “Oh, no problem,” she says, “I’m probably just early.”

  For an evening out at a high school, Mrs. Adams (Oh please, call me Sondra) looks a little too polished, like a beautician you might see working behind the cosmetics counter at Sears. She’s draped in a fur-trimmed mauve coat and a fuzzy, expensive-looking scarf loops around her neck. Her perfume is a mess of artificial flowers. The introductions are cheerful, but then Sondra leans forward and makes a let’s-get-down-to-business face.

  “So. How’s Tracey doing in your Civics class?”

  Tracey, who has perfect attendance and has never received a mark lower than eighty percent, is doing A-okay in my Civics class. I imagine Tracey has always done A-okay in all her classes and will continue to do A-okay when she graduates with honours and a scholarship a couple years from now. Sondra’s got nothing to worry about.

  Most of the parents who come out to these interviews are the ones who don’t really need to. They’re the parents who make a decent living and who force their kids to care about school because they can afford to send them to university afterward. They’re the ones who make sure their kids have a lunch, who write notes when their kids are sick, and who come out to watch them play football, or sing in the school choir, or whatever.

  I’m not saying that rich kids don’t have their problems. Both of Chuck Turrie’s parents are lawyers and he still got kicked off the hockey team and spent three months in rehab for OxyContin addiction. The difference is that some kids invent their bullshit and other kids inherit it. The kids who are really fucking up are usually f
ucking up because their parents are fucked up.

  At the end of our allotted seven minutes, Sondra and I shake hands and wish each other the best.

  “Call me if Tracey ever gives you any trouble,” she tells me, but we both know I’ll never have to.

  I take a moment to catch my breath. Across the gym, Ruth seems to be a popular destination. She’s got grade nines this semester, so already a group of anxious-looking forty-somethings is hanging around her desk like they’re trying to get backstage at a Josh Groban concert.

  About fifteen seats to Ruth’s left, Vicky is also attracting attention. As always, her cleavage seems to have the gravitational pull of two perky suns. I watch her leaning over her little desk and speaking confidentially to someone’s dad, who is, in turn, leaning forward himself and laughing along. The same someone’s mom sits and watches them, arms and legs crossed. Even from the other side of the gym, I can tell there’s going to be a fight on the drive home.

  Since I ditched her at the Halloween dance, Vicky had gone on a flirting rampage with every Y chromosome who happens to be in the building. I’m sure sooner or later she’ll find someone else to push her self-destruct button, and I guess I’m a little relieved. Still, it would’ve been a pretty fun button to push.

  A dozen or so parents come and go before I notice a familiar name on my schedule. Marshall Heyen-Miller is this smart, funny kid who almost makes that shitty Civics class bearable, but I actually met his mom, Dr. Karen Miller, years before when she taught me seventeenth-century literature at Lakehead. She gave me an A on my final paper about John Donne, and we kind of bonded over our shared love of Tom Verlaine. So, when it’s time for our appointment, I’m a little disappointed to see the shadow of a stranger darken my desk. A thick-haired stranger with a carefully groomed mustache who, like Sondra Adams, seems a little overdressed for the evening.

 

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