by Greg Rhyno
“Hey,” he says, pointing at me with two fingers and a cigarette, “aren’t you the Guy Who Used to Play in a Band with Jesse Maracle?”
He offers me his hand and, begrudgingly, I shake it. I guess we all have our crosses to bear.
The night progresses unremarkably until ‘Rock the Casbah.’
There’s no denying the following fact: I’m an awkward man-dancer. You might think that as a drummer I’ve got some coordination of my limbs and a decent sense of rhythm, but somehow it just doesn’t translate into good dancing. A lot has been said about the white man’s inability to dance, and I’m of the opinion that most of it is fairly accurate. I think white women are equally guilty, but they seem to overcompensate with an enthusiasm and inhibition that I could never muster. I mean, I can bob my head as enthusiastically as the next guy at a rock show, but as soon as I’m in a crowd of people, and the music is getting piped in by a DJ, I’m lost. So, as it stands, I maintain a steadfast No Dancing rule.
There is, of course, a combination of two factors that will cause me to waive the rule, and both of these factors need to be in play in order for me to cut a rug. One, I need to be comfortably drunk—not sloppy drunk—just buzzy; and two, the DJ needs to play ‘Rock the Casbah.’
I’m not sure what it is about ‘Rock the Casbah’ that unleashes my inner MJ—maybe the fact that, like Rush’s ‘Closer to the Heart,’ it was written by a drummer, or maybe the fact that something so funky is being performed by four pale Englishmen inspires me to embrace my own pale greatness; but in any case, when I hear that song, and I’ve had a few rye and gingers, I’m an unstoppable dancing machine. As a result, I’m performing some awful, exaggerated version of the twist (one of the old stand-bys in my limited repertoire) and singing about Sharif (even though I’m not entirely sure who Sharif is) when I feel someone tap me on the shoulder.
At first I assume it’s Ruth. I tried to get her to come up and dance with me, but she opted out. For all her complaining about friends who don’t last past ten o’clock, she’s been doing a lot of yawning at nine thirty.
But when I turn around, mid-twist, I realize it’s Alex.
“Nice moves,” she observes.
I immediately stop dancing and realize I’m the only one left on the dance floor. “Hey,” I say, trying to gather some semblance of cool. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”
“Big Clash fan, huh?”
There’s this great Martin Amis line in The Rachel Papers, something about how not enjoying the middle-period Beatles is like not enjoying life itself. I try to conjure it and make it about the Clash, but fail. “Everything up to Cut the Crap,” I tell her.
“Well, there’s a band playing at the Phoenix that’s supposed to sound a bit like the Clash. Want to go?”
Do I want to go? With her? I’d go see a Hootie and the Blowfish tribute band with her. Of course, she can’t know this. Eagerness is death.
“Depends,” I say. “When is it?” I expect her to say in a few days, or next week.
“In about an hour. My friends don’t want to go, but I’ve heard really good things.”
Well, I guess that calls my eagerness bluff.
“Uh, okay. Yeah. I think so. I just need to let someone know I’m leaving.”
“Oh,” she says, “are you ... here ... with someone?”
The unmistakable disappointment in her voice has got be one of the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard.
“My friend’s wife,” hoping it sounds reassuring and not tawdry. Of course, all things considered lately, I add, “I’m just here for moral support.”
“Oh. Okay cool. Meet you by the front door in five minutes?”
When I approach Ruth, she shakes her head in disapproval and smiles at the same time. It must be hard being friends with a cad.
“No,” she anticipates my question (incorrectly, I might add), “I am not driving you to that woman’s apartment so you can have sex with her.”
“We’re going to see a rock show,” I tell her, summoning a look that hopefully conveys offended chastity. “And we’re going to walk.”
“You know, you’re the worst date I’ve ever had.”
“Oh please. Didn’t Deacon take you to R.O.N.’s Virtual World on your first date?”
“So what? I liked laser tag.”
“Bullshit. Nobody ever liked laser tag. Especially not seventeen-year-old girls.”
“And yet you’re still the worst.”
When I get to the front door, I worry for approximately forty-three seconds that she’s bailed, until she shows up, cute under a fuzzy coat and hat.
The Phoenix is downtown on Red River, so it’s going to be a bit of a hike. As soon as I get out into the cold air, I’m dying for a cigarette, but I’m not going to light up until I can figure out if she’s anti-smoker, or even worse, one of those self-righteous I-quit-so-why-can’t-you ex-smokers. I get through about ten minutes of small talk: So what’s this band we’re going to see? What’s it like working at Video Hutch? Did she remember when Video Hutch had that cigarette machine? But she reveals no clues about her stance on nicotine addiction, and I’m getting antsy, so I cave.
“Mind if I smoke?”
“No. I don’t mind.”
“Want one?” I hold the pack out to her.
“Better not. I’m trying to quit.”
I borrow Vicky’s line—the one about how people don’t actually smoke anymore, they’re just in various stages of quitting—but I feel bad as soon as it leaves my mouth. It gets a laugh, but a few moments later my phone’s message reminder beeps like a tell-tale heart. Call me anytime. It’s a fine hole I’ve dug. I feel guilty when I call her. I feel guilty when I don’t call her. I feel guilty just talking to another woman.
We walk a little while in silence. It’s actually kind of a nice night. It’s snowing a little bit, and the temperature has warmed up. Alex seems comfortable with the silence, but as usual, I scramble to fill it.
“So, Video Store Girl,” I say, “what did you do before you were an employee of Video Hutch?”
“We-e-ll,” she prefaces, as though it’s a long, complicated story and she’s trying to decide which version she should tell. “I was going to school in Montreal, but it didn’t quite work out.”
“How come ‘it didn’t quite work out’?”
“Honestly, it’s not much of a story. There was a guy. There were some drugs. There was a lot of dancing and not a lot of attending classes.” Some drugs? Christ, and here I was worrying about smoking in front of her. “What can I say? It was Montreal. It was fun. It’s the exact opposite of here.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
And of course, it’s then, right then, that our little chat turns into a real conversation. Sure, we’ve already established that we have a few common interests—bands, movies, leaving shags early—but nothing unites people like a common enemy. And in our case, it’s a mutual hatred for our hometown. The floodgates open.
“Seriously. Is there one decent bar in town that hasn’t burned down?”
“And why are they called Persians anyhow? They’re definitely not imported from ... Persia ...”
“Oh, fuck the Hoito. And fuck their Finnish pancakes. I’m not standing in line for an hour on Sunday for a pile of crepes.”
When I lived in Toronto, I defended Thunder Bay to the death, the way you might defend the family moron to outsiders. But one of the greatest privileges of being among family is you can finally talk shit about your favourite idiot.
We finally get to the Phoenix, and I can see the windows are steamy with crowd heat. I want to keep walking. I’m having a good time and I don’t want to share her with anyone else. I know the minute we go in that bar, she’s going to run into people she knows, or I’ll run into people I know, and we’ll be forced to separate and make that annoying bar small talk where people shout things in your ear while you nod and pretend you’ve understood what they’ve said.
I hesitate at the door, then
feel her woolly, wet mitt grab my cold hand.
“It’ll be good,” she says. “I promise.”
And I believe her.
We go in and the door guy holds up five fingers for five dollars. Alex lets go of my hand and digs a ten out of her pocket to pay for both of us. I try to give her a bunch of loonies, but she mimes refusal. The band is just setting up and the house music is still impossibly loud. Metallica. Always Metallica. It’s standing room only, so we hang near the back corner where we can just see the stage over a canopy of Bad News Bear haircuts and ironic trucker hats. Alex holds up a finger—one minute—and disappears. While I wait, I notice a couple people I know toward the front of the room—old campaigners like Danny Grove and Mark Zaborniak—thicker, balder Ghosts of Rock Shows Past. Mike Rotten is also here. It’s a rare sighting. He has two little girls and it’s a miracle when Evie lets him out of the house at all. Still, I don’t want to talk to him. Not any of them. Not right now.
I feel a little self-conscious being alone in a room full of people until I see Alex working her way back through the crowd, two bottles of Moosehead held aloft.
“Thanks,” I shout. “That was fast!”
“I know the bartender!” she shouts back.
She hands me a bottle and I tip it to my mouth. I wonder if she’s going to grab my hand again, or if I should grab hers. We stand shoulder to shoulder and drink our beer, insulated by crowd noise. I watch the band as they silently tune their guitars and tweak the knobs on their gear. The bass player says something into the guitar player’s ear. The guitar player smiles and nods. The keyboard player bobs his head along to the house music.
If there’s a signal, I don’t see it, but the sound of James Hetfield et al. suddenly implodes. The crowd pushes closer to the stage with a slight cultishness, and all that’s left is the hum of the amps and the occasional encouraging Woo-hoo!
“Who are these guys again?” I ask. The truth is, I don’t really care. I just want to talk to her again before we’re separated by walls of sound, but the band starts up before she can answer me.
They don’t introduce themselves. They just play. Slowly at first, building to something bigger, until bigger finally breaks and it feels like the entire bar is caught in an ebb and flow of sonic pulse. I can feel the bass all the way in my balls, and the kick drum beats in my chest like a second heart that’s stronger than my own.
Alex is right. They’re good. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve heard a band this good. I’m a little surprised they weren’t already on my radar, but that’s what happens when you move back to Thunder Bay. The way in which they’re good is hard to say. Music reviews always seem as nebulous as those descriptions on pricey bottles of wine: A masterful blend of the finest musicians from the Southwestern Ontario region, the band layers a heady nose of Fugazi and early Clash, with savoury whispers of Bon Scott-era AC/DC and a rich, lingering finish of unoaked Springsteen. Enjoy on a frosty March evening with a video store employee who may or may not be your next sexual partner.
The band hurtles through five songs before they’re stalled by technical difficulties. While the guitar player pounds on his amp head in an attempt to fonzie out the music, Alex comes clean.
“Okay. Truth,” she says during the unexpected intermission, as if we’ve silently agreed to start a game of Truth or Dare and she’s picked the first option. “We actually met a couple years ago. I saw you play drums with Filthy Witness in Montreal. And I thought you were kind of cute.”
Wait. Who’d she see? She thought I was what?
“You guys opened for Hot Hot Heat at Casa Del Popolo. You were pretty good.”
She says pretty good and not great or amazing, but I’ll take it. It’s probably the truth. I remember that show, because it was the only time I’d ever played in Montreal. Our bass player set up this tour that was supposed to go all the way out East, but our van broke down in Drummondville, and we had to cancel Moncton, Charlottetown, and Halifax. I wish I remembered her.
“I bought a t-shirt from you at the merch table. You gave me a deal because I said I only had ten dollars—which, by the way, was kind of a lie. I was saving the rest of my money for beer.”
I look at the empty bottle I’ve been holding stupidly for the past few minutes. “I’d say we’re square.”
She may be the first person in Thunder Bay to ever acknowledge my musical past and not say the words Jesse Maracle. I want to ask her more, but just then the guitarist’s amplifier crackles back to life, and the drummer shouts out the name of another song and counts in. The crowd cheers and claims their victory over bad wiring. Song by song, things keep getting better. By the end of the set, Alex’s hand makes slow circles in the small of my back as the lead singer—now inexplicably stripped down to his briefs—howls into the microphone.
No one stays long after the band finishes. We follow the herd as it leaves the damp sauna of the Phoenix and spills out into the cool relief of the night. I stop to light a cigarette and notice Danny and Mike enthusiastically recapping the show a few feet away. In a minute or two, they’d see me, and I’d be stuck in a conversational vortex, probably about how Revenge of the Sith has to be better than Attack of the Clones. Alex would die of boredom.
“Want to get out of here?” I ask. She nods. Part of me wants to also ask, “Where to next?” but nothing jinxes getting laid like the planning of it. Without discussion, we start walking west up Red River Road, which just happens to be in the direction of my apartment.
For a little while, we’re back at small talk—“Great show.” “Where are they from again?” “So many people out tonight”—and just when I worry we’ve lost the rhythm of our conversation, she starts telling me about Montreal. The whole deal. How when she first got there, she bought a second-hand Raleigh and spent a solid week just riding through all the cool neighbourhoods, stopping at cafés and book stores. In my head, I could see her, hair tied back out of her face, scarf in the wind, tires humming on the cobblestone. Why are Ontario cyclists all about mushroom-shaped helmets, spandex, and toe clips? In Montreal, a girl on a bicycle is a poem; here, she’s a safety manual.
She doesn’t say much about her art school. I imagine it’s because she didn’t go there all that often. She does talk about the job she got on Rue St. Denis, at a place that was a vegetarian restaurant during the day and a dance club at night.
“But not one of those shitty techno clubs. It was strictly Stax, Soul, and Motown. So good.”
Apparently, she hooked up with her manager, this older guy named Joe—short for Joaquim—fuck, even Montreal names are cooler—and after a couple months of jumping the line at every club in town, imbibing pharmaceutical grade coke and MDMA, and falling “into what I thought was love,” she started to tailspin. She had burned through her savings and couldn’t afford rent. She was failing all her courses, and the school contacted her parents. “So embarrassing.” Her roommate kicked her out, her mom stopped paying tuition, and she dropped out of school and moved in with Joe for a few months until he started fucking another Rue St. Denis waitress.
“You figure out pretty quickly how shitty someone is when you live with him. Turns out Joe was thoroughly shitty. So I figured it was time to come home.”
She exhales like she’s been holding her breath a long time, and I realize she’s been talking for almost ten minutes straight.
“Sorry,” she grimaces. “I go on a bit.”
We walk along in silence for a few moments. We’re almost at the top of Red River, and there are impending decisions to make regarding the destination of this journey.
“What about you?” she asks. “What about your big city misadventure? You know—Toronto, rock band, meeting pretty girls at merch tables ...”
I shrug. “Well, I wound up going to university here in town—which sucked—did a year in Toronto at teacher’s college—which also sucked but a little less. Then I worked part time in a museum, played music when I could, and sank further and further into debt.”<
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“What happened with the band?”
“I don’t know. I guess I got tired of toiling in obscurity.”
“Whatever. I heard you guys were supposed to get signed to Makeshift Records. That’s kind of a big deal.”
“It was, until the guys who ran it realized the label hadn’t turned a profit since 1998 and decided to ‘scale back their whole operation.’ At least, that’s what they told us. Who knows?”
“So you broke up over that?”
“Not exactly. I got offered a job back here and I took it.”
I always hate that part of the story. I know what it sounds like. It sounds like I came home with my tail between my legs. The truth is, I never really clicked with the guys I played with in Toronto. Not the way I did with Soda and Deacon. I hated all the schmoozing and the lame parties and the promises no one ever kept. There was no sense fooling myself. I just wasn’t cut out for the whole Queen Street West scene.
“So that was that?”
“Pretty much. My old Law teacher got me an interview, which is weird because I always thought he hated me.”
“So—wait. You’re a high school teacher?”
“Yep. At Mackenzie King.”
“Weird. I just can’t see it. Do you miss playing music?”
“Yeah. A little. I miss some of the people I used to play with,” I tell her. But just before I parachute the name Jesse Maracle into the conversation in a sad attempt to impress her, Alex slows to a halt at the corner of Summit Avenue.
“Well, Pete,” she says, “I live a couple blocks down there, so I think—unfortunately—this is where we say goodnight.”
Goodnight? How could the night be any good at all if she leaves now? I try to stall, to keep the conversation going, to buy me a little more time.
“Are you living with your parents?” I ask.
“With my mom, just for now. My folks are divorced.”
“Shitty.”
“Yeah. My mom caught my dad with some nineteen-year-old.”
“What, recently?”