To Me You Seem Giant

by Greg Rhyno

  That evening, a portable billboard in the Shenanigans parking lot invites us to the 8th Annual Cupid Bash. I can’t help but picture a mob of angry singles beating the little cherub until he bursts open and bleeds cinnamon hearts. When we walk inside, the half-assed majesty of the bar reveals itself to us. Between sponsored neon signs for Molson and Labatt, red-and-white streamers swoop lazily above us. Metallic paper hearts and cupid silhouettes appear sporadically on doors and counters. In the corner, there’s a pretend wedding arch of pink and white balloons and a sign that cheerfully announces future participants as Just Married. Every tabletop has been outfitted with a tablecloth, a dish of foil-wrapped candies, and one long-stemmed rose in a beer bottle. The manager, a goateed, stocky guy in his late forties, appears from the back of the bar with his arms outstretched.

  “All right, the band is here. The talent! You must be Ruth—” he shakes her hand “—and you must be the Gentlemen.”

  “Gentlemen Callers,” Deacon corrects him.

  “Gentlemen Callers. Right. I’m Aries.”

  We take turns shaking his hand and saying our names. He repeats his each time, as if we hadn’t just been a part of the same conversation.

  “Michael.”

  “Aries!”

  “Peter.”

  “Aries!”

  Aries loves Valentine’s Day and Aries loves life.

  “Hey, maybe you guys can let me come up on stage with you later. I’ll play the tambourine. Or the cowbell. ‘More cowbell!’ You know? Like on Saturday Night Live? ‘More cowbell!’ Love that.”

  Never have I met a more enthusiastic bar manager. In fact, for all the years that I played in Thunder Bay and Toronto bars, I don’t think I’d ever met the manager until I tracked him down at the end of the night in some fluorescent-lit back room where he’d glare at me until I asked for our tiny cut of the door. Instead, Aries pays us up front with an envelope full of crisp green twenty-dollar bills, then directs us to a dressing room complete with bottled water and a vegetable-and-hummus platter.

  “Drinks are on the house. Just tell Solly, our bartender, what you want. Uh, what else? Todd, our soundguy, should be here in about an hour, so if you want to set up now that’s cool, or you could order something from the kitchen while you’re waiting. Our cook Jorge makes really great empanadas, if that’s your thing.”

  Eventually Aries leaves us to stare at each other and wonder aloud if he’s made some kind of mistake.

  “I don’t know about you,” I tell my bandmates, “but I’m getting a free beer before he realizes we’re not famous or important.”

  Load-in and set-up take a little while, but every time we’re about to shoulder something heavy—Deacon’s bass amp or the rolling coffin that houses my drum hardware—Aries suddenly appears and insists on helping out. When the soundguy arrives, he is neither stoned nor surly and demonstrates a rare attention to detail during sound check. After, we spend about ten minutes sitting in our dressing room before we feel stupid and anti-social and decide to sit at the bar and make friends with Solly and Jorge. Slowly but surely, Shenanigans begins to fill up with thirty- and forty-somethings.

  “Sure beats huddling around a mickey behind Jack’s,” Deacon says.

  “Or hoping that ten of your friends show up so you’re not playing to the back of the room,” Ruth says.

  As I watch the crowd mingle to the sounds of Shania Twain, I worry we won’t go over quite as well as our predecessors. The guys in Silverwolf, I’m sure, were pretty crack musicians and far better at crowd-pleasing banter and bad jokes than we could ever be. I order another beer from Solly to drown the butterflies.

  I’m a little surprised when Aries reappears and gently suggests we start making our way toward the stage. I know the arrangement is that we’d play two one-hour sets starting at nine o’clock, but the concept of a show actually starting on time is completely novel. What’s more, we don’t have to stall and wait for more people to show up. The bar is at capacity. I’ve never played in front of this many people, and as I walk through the crowd toward the stage, I wished we were playing our own songs and not a bunch of covers. I sit down behind the drums, pick up my sticks, and once again, see the crowd through stage lights.

  “Happy Valentine’s Day!” Deacon says cheerfully into the mic. “This is Ruth Kipling—” he pauses abruptly for unexpected cheering “—and we’re the Gentleman Callers!”

  Egged on by all the unearned enthusiasm, we break into our most thematically appropriate song of the evening—Sam Cooke’s ‘Cupid.’ Without any coaxing, the crowd is on the floor, dancing, swinging each other around, getting a good return on their babysitting investment. When we finish, they erupt like we’re the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Deacon looks back at me with an astonished grin and pulls a What the fuck? face.

  Four songs deep into the first set, we are rock gods. We slow it down a little, because it is, after all, a Valentine’s dance. Ruth does a really pretty acoustic version of ‘Forever Young’ by Alphaville, and when she’s finished, some guy sporting a salt-and-pepper mullet repeatedly demands Def Leppard. When we just happen to have “Love Bites” in our back pocket, he celebrates with the joie de vivre of one recently laid in a Pontiac Fiero. He slow dances close to the stage with his hands all over a small, embarrassed-looking woman in high-waisted mom jeans. When the song ends, the guy disappears, only to return soon after balancing three shots of Jägermeister “for the best fucking band in town.” I realize, as I down the mediciney syrup, that I’ve never felt like such a superstar or like such a shill.

  There are some familiar faces in the crowd. Despite her pleadings to the contrary, Ruth’s adorable parents have made an appearance and stand quietly back near the bar, smiling proudly whenever the crowd cheers, frowning only when someone yells at Ruth to “take it off.” Deacon’s sister Deandra is back there too, with her second husband, Tommy. They stand arm in arm wearing matching leather jackets and Sorels.

  Vicky’s on the dance floor, as promised, bouncing around in a tiny skirt. Her husband is nowhere to be seen. I try not to make eye contact, but inevitably do.

  We finish our first set with Glass Tiger’s ‘Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone)’ and promise our new fans that we’ll definitely return after a short break. Aries is quick to grab the microphone as we get off the stage and insist that the crowd reward our hard work with yet another round of applause. As I make my way to the washroom, I can hear him announce that they will be serving free champagne and taking Polaroids at the fake wedding booth. A woman in a sequined crop top and stirrup pants, who’s clearly old enough to be my mother, plants a sweaty hand on my forearm and pulls me toward her.

  “Wanna get married?” she yells boozily over the din. I smile like her joke is hilarious. “Y’know, it’s nice to see some young blood up on the stage.”

  “Thanks. It’s a fun night.” I start to walk away, but she grabs my arm again. My bladder screams in protest.

  “What are you guys called?”

  “Uh, Ruth Kipling and her Gentlemen Callers.”

  “Gentlemen Callers? Honey, you can call me anytime.” As her laughter disintegrates into a phlegmy death rattle, I smile and escape. I make a weaving beeline for the urinal and drain myself of three pints and the Jäger shot. As I zip up my fly, it occurs to me that I’m fairly drunk and dying for a cigarette.

  Aries cranks the house music—‘Mambo Number Five’—and I slip through the shockingly bright kitchen, wave at Jorge, and duck out the back door. The back of the bar is lit by a buzzing fluorescent tube, and as I blow smoke it travels in and out of shadow. Once Soda tried to teach me to blow smoke rings, but I never really got the hang of it. They always came out as billowy blobs.

  The little clock on my cell phone says that it’s quarter after ten. It’s probably too late to call, but I dial her number anyway. It rings a couple times, then a mechanical voice tells me to leave a message.

  “Hey, Molly,” I say, trying not to slur my words, “Ruth and I ar
e playing this lame Valentine’s show at Shenanigans, and it would be really fun if you came out. I mean, if you’re still in town. Which, I think, you probably aren’t. But if you are, you should come.” I punch the red button before I make a more gigantic ass of myself. At least I’ll have something to regret in the morning.

  It’s funny. When I was younger and I stepped away from the crowd, I almost always hoped that some pretty girl would notice me standing alone and come talk to me. Now that I’m a little older, I find that I just want to be left alone. So of course, Vicky Greene shows up with two plastic champagne flutes. Her top half is all puffy winter coat and her bottom half is all legs.

  “You really should be buying one of these for me.” She holds out a glass and I take it. “You still owe me a drink.”

  “Aren’t they free?”

  “That’s beside the point.”

  We make a clicky cheers, and I suck down half my glass in one go. It’s sickeningly sweet.

  “Can I bum a smoke?”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out a fresh cigarette. She puts it between her lips and when I flick my lighter, she pushes her hair behind her ear and leans in like an old pro.

  “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  She exhales like she’s been holding her breath for a very long time. “Nobody actually smokes anymore, Pete. Everyone’s just in various stages of quitting.”

  She has a point. I had planned on quitting for New Year’s, but never got around to it. It would’ve been my third attempt.

  “I thought Jamie was coming tonight.”

  She looks sideways at me and then contemplates the red ember between her knuckles. “You know, so did I. I really believed him this time. Jamie’s been telling me he’s going to come to this thing for years now, and every February he finds some reason not to. Yesterday, he suddenly decides he needs to see his parents in Dryden for the weekend. Says his mom is sick again.”

  She says Dryden like the word tastes bitter, and in the pale light, her eyes shine and shift behind water. I imagine her ten years ago, prettier than any teacher should be, recently married to a local hockey hero turned teacher turned vice-principal. She must have felt like she had climbed above all the bullshit, like there was no way life could reach up and drag her back down to grocery stores lineups and bad sitcoms and putting off kids for a career. And now she’s out here with me—some guy who used jerk off to her staff photo in the 1993 Lyons’ Pryde—and I barely even give her the time of day.

  “Are you guys going to play any Matchbox Twenty tonight?” she asks.

  “Uh, no. Sorry. We don’t know any.”

  “Oh. How about the Cars?”

  I smile. “Let me see what I can do.”

  She smiles too.

  We finish our champagne and go back inside through the kitchen. When we pass the bar I order a beer and something for the lady.

  “White wine spritzer?” she asks the bartender.

  We cheers again, a proper clink, and as I drink I see Ruth and Deacon standing close to the stage talking to a woman wearing a lot of scarves—Matty Wheeler’s mother, I think. Ruth notices me with Madame Greene and gives me a little frown. She holds up her wrist and taps an invisible watch. I nod okay.

  “Got to get back to it,” I tell her.

  “The Cars,” she reminds me.

  The second set seems to go by a lot faster than the first. The crowd is still enthusiastic, but it’s clear that our novelty has worn off a little. We get another round of shots—Jack Daniels this time, from Aries—when we play ‘Honky Tonk Woman.’

  “More cowbell!” he yells into the microphone, and everyone cheers.

  People seem to like our minimalist treatment of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ and we get a final burst of frenetic dancing when we play ‘Love Shack,’ but the dance floor is already starting to clear (babysitters charge time-and-a-half after eleven) when we end with ‘Drive’ by the Cars. By request.

  “Well, you sure made me wait for it,” Vicky tells me when I find her afterward. She’s sitting alone at a table with another white wine spritzer.

  The sun’s coming up when I take Roach’s Taxi home from Vicky’s house in Fort William. I sit in the back and try not to make conversation with the driver.

  “Mind if I smoke?” he eventually asks me.

  “Not if you don’t,” I tell him.

  I reach into my pocket for my pack, but instead I find the fake wedding photo. Vicky and I stand awkwardly still like the weird-looking farm couple in that American Gothic painting, but without the pitchfork. I pull apart the Polaroid into very small pieces.

  The cabbie cracks his window to let the smoke out, and the morning air feels cold and good on my face. I crank my own window down and throw the evidence into the air like rice at a wedding.

  “Hey, man,” the cabbie says, “I could get fined for littering.”

  “You could get fined for smoking, too,” I tell him.

  An unfamiliar melody sounds in my pocket. I fish out my cell phone and, sure enough, I’ve managed to miss three calls: Molly Pearson, 10:41 pm; Molly Pearson 11:02 pm; Molly Pearson, 11:36 pm. There aren’t any messages.

  SIDE A

  The Party Rages On

  “Dude, I called you, like three times.”

  “Well, maybe you should’ve left a message.” I’m starting to hate it when she calls me dude.

  “I’m not leaving a private message for you on your parents’ answering machine. I’m just not. You need to get your own phone line.”

  Of all Kim’s many talents, the one I like the least is her knack for shifting blame. Let it be known—Kim never is, never was, and will never be at fault. For anything. It was the same deal after the whole Valentine’s debacle. I was the one who didn’t show up at Jack’s, so what was she supposed to do? Wait around all night? How was she supposed to know that I was busy getting into some stupid fight?

  I tried to give her the cold shoulder and broke down after two days. I made myself crazy thinking about what her eyes look like when she’s unbuckling my belt, what her breasts feel like when she presses against me, and how her mouth sort of curls up in the corners, even when she’s angry. I couldn’t stand the thought of giving that up. Or letting someone else have it.

  And anyway, it’s not supposed to be easy. I mean, if it was all happily ever after, if there was no boy-loses-girl stuff, it would be boring. Things are supposed to get a little screwed up before they get better. Or at least, that’s what I tried telling Soda when she bailed on me again last weekend.

  “That’s bullshit,” he said as we watched The Wedge and drank beer in his basement. “You just want her because you can’t have her.”

  “What do you mean ‘I can’t have her’? I have her all the time.”

  “Right. She’s on a real short leash.”

  “Dude, she’s my girlfriend, not a cocker spaniel.”

  “Maybe. But one day you’re going to call and she’s not going to come.”

  After lunch, Kim pulls the Divorcemobile into the Mike’s Milk across the street from the school. Dirty snow and chocolate bar wrappers line the edge of the parking lot.

  “I’m going to buy smokes, so I’ll drop you off here.”

  I know for a fact she’s still got three quarters of a pack minus the one I stole after we ate.

  “No sweat,” I say, pushing out of the car. “I’ll call you later.”

  I had been hoping for a nooner, but Kim said she got her period, so I had to settle for Taco Time instead.

  “Hey,” she shouts out the window. “Happy birthday.”

  I give her a little salute and start walking.

  So far, I’d say the age of majority has been a bit of a bust. The fact that you can decide who runs the country but can’t buy beer is a cruel joke. At least when you turn sixteen you can get your licence—not that I have—but it’s an option. The problem with becoming an adult is that nothing really good comes with it.

  I guess my parents did buy me a swank
y watch, but it looks super expensive and makes me a little nervous. My dad was kind of disappointed when I decided I didn’t want to wear it to school today. He told me that part of being an adult means not always dressing like a hobo. So really, I got a lecture wrapped in a gift. Awesome. In any case, it’s a better present than the one I got from Mother Nature.

  I get pimples now and then, but it’s rare that I get one this big. Already this morning, I’ve noticed my parents staring at the bright red dot on my forehead like they’re worried someone’s trying to assassinate me from a distance. Without warning, it birthed itself fully formed from my forehead, like Athena from the head of Zeus. I tried to pop it, but all I managed to do was create an angry, swollen lump that was going to make me feel self-conscious for the rest of the day. Our bodies betray us in the end, but we do our fair share of betraying them long before that happens. Luckily, the thing’s high enough on my head that I can cover it with a hat. I know the whole wearing-toques-inside thing is getting a little trendy, but it’s also the most practical way to hide my shame.

  As I walk up the front steps of the school, I hear the bell ring, but I know Mr. Murdock won’t care if I’m late. OAC Art has been pretty awesome so far. I’m not sure how much I’ve learned about watercolours, charcoal, or sculpture—all promised in the course description—but it’s been fun listening to Howlin’ Mad go off on whatever tangent he happens to be on that afternoon. Last week, he spent an entire class talking about David Lynch movies and then two more classes showing us Blue Velvet. This week he was all about Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, and the Exploding Plastic Something-Or-Other. I’m not sure what it has to do with the curriculum, but I don’t care. I’d rather hear about that stuff than secondary colours and crosshatching. When I get to class, he’s already blaring The Velvet Underground and Nico.