Wicked and Weird

by Rich Terfry

  I crept out of the bathroom, embarrassed by the paleness of my legs, just as she was pulling my sweater over her head. Light from the fireplace glowed on her perfect body. I thought about baseball and rat traps and my manager’s angry face.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked as she worked my pants down her expensive legs.

  This question made her more upset. “Men are such assholes,” she said again, but louder. And as she said this, she threw my pants in the fireplace.

  I lunged toward the fire, but it was too late. The pants were cheap—made of a synthetic blend—and were incinerated within seconds. “What am I going to do?” I moaned.

  “I have an idea,” she said. She grabbed me and started kissing me. Looking back on this night all these years later, I badly want to kiss her back. But at the time I was just worried about my job.

  “I gotta go!” I said, breaking free. I grabbed my sweater off the bed, collected my shoes and ran out of there without a plan.

  I made it back to the stairwell, undetected. With my heart pounding in my ears, I hurried my shoes on and then loped down the stairs to the ground floor. Luckily, there was a door on that floor that opened directly to the outside. I wouldn’t have to walk through the hotel and risk being seen without pants by my co-workers.

  What the fuck? I asked myself over and over as I ran flopping back to the parking garage booth. It was 4:30 a.m. I was relatively safe in the booth. I covered myself with a jacket. All I had to do was make it until 7:00 a.m. without being seen by my manager.

  Seven came and the coast was clear. When my relief showed up to work the next shift, I explained the whole thing to him. He was a lackey, like me, and he thought my situation was hilarious. The problem was, I had to go inside to cash out and punch the clock. And to go inside I needed pants. My colleague was a good sport and loaned me his. When I came back out, we discussed the next part of the plan. I offered to work for him on my day off and to make him a few mixed tapes, and in return he let me wear his pants home on the promise that I’d change and come right back with them. I did just that and survived to work another day.

  After I had toiled in the parking lot booth for a year and mastered its intricacies, I was assigned the task of training a new guy. His name was Tong Jin and he had recently emigrated from China. Word around the hotel was that he was an artist of some renown back home. I explained how to collect payment for parking privileges and he taught me a bit of Chinese. Sometimes I would watch him draw. It was astounding. With a few simple lines he could sketch an incredibly accurate portrait in seconds. He’d render some of our fellow employees in pencil on paper—anyone he thought had an interesting face.

  During the wee hours of the graveyard shift, there were only a handful of us working in the hotel: the front-desk clerk, the night accountant, a cleaner or two, the parking garage attendant and a security guard. If the parking garage attendant needed to take a bathroom or lunch break, the security guard would have to cover for him or her. This was usually a simple matter of calling the guard on a two-way radio, and normally the guard in question would come right away. The exception was a security guard named Dirk Perkins. Dirk was a lifelong-pantywaist-turned-horse’s-ass who took his job way too seriously. He carried handcuffs and assorted makeshift weaponry—against regulations. Every time I’d radio Dirk to ask him to cover me for a break, he’d say, “No can do. Currently engaged in tactical security operations.” Then he’d make me wait an hour while he did a stakeout, trying to bust teenagers sneaking into the pool.

  One night during Tong Jin’s training, I was called away from the booth to help deliver newspapers. Tong Jin radioed Dirk for a pee break and got the usual “no can do” response. So Tong Jin peed in the trash can. When Dirk finally did arrive for Tong Jin’s break, he smelled the pee and gave Tong Jin a humiliating dressing-down. When I came back, Tong Jin was very sad. He told me that he hated Dirk and thought that he was a bad man.

  The next night, I was working with Tong Jin again. And again Tong Jin called Dirk for a break. About forty-five minutes later Dirk still hadn’t surfaced. Tong Jin announced that he couldn’t hold it anymore and exited the booth. I watched as he walked to the nearest wall of the hotel and began to relieve himself. His back was to me, but I noticed that he was rocking in a strange way. As this was happening, Dirk showed up and saw what Tong Jin was doing. He blew his top.

  “Tong Jin! What the hell are you doing?”

  Tong Jin zipped up and moved away from the wall, revealing a perfect likeness of Dirk Perkins in piss on concrete.

  •

  Once Tong Jin took over the graveyard shift, I started working daytimes and evenings. The change was good for my health and sanity, but it also meant sometimes missing baseball games when there was a conflict in the schedule and I couldn’t get anyone to cover for me. I found this painful, and in an effort to keep my days and early evenings clear I began seeking paying DJ gigs. I bought a cheap mixer and a couple of turntables. I had built up a good record collection and had access to the library at the radio station. And I was willing to do anything—birthdays, weddings, house parties, whatever. The first job I landed was a wrap party for a film shot in Halifax. The film was called The Secret and its star was Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas. I had loved him in The Bad and the Beautiful and in Ace in the Hole, so I jumped at the chance.

  Kirk Douglas was seventy-six years old at the time. My belief is that all of us maintain a strong relationship with the music of our teenage years, so I brought along tunes from the thirties, figuring Douglas would be happy to hear the hits of Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby, Fats Waller and Cab Calloway. It was a blast to play that music, and for the first few hours of the party it went over very well. Mr. Douglas was the centre of attention and the life of the party, and the entire cast and crew seemed to be having a great time on the dance floor.

  But as the night wore on and alcohol fuelled the ego wars, the air in the room changed. The mood became more tense and desperate. A man with a face like a fist approached the DJ booth and said, “Kirk Douglas wants to hear Elvis.”

  “Uh, okay. I’ll see what I can do,” I said, knowing I hadn’t brought any Elvis records with me.

  “Don’t fuck with me, punk. Play some goddamn Elvis.”

  I continued playing the hits of the thirties, but the magic had stopped working. The dance floor was thinning out. I had to try something else. I did have other records in my crate: proven, money-in-the-bank, can’t-lose dance-floor fire starters. I played songs that had started dance crazes in the sixties. I played songs that had changed the world in the eighties. I played the one-hit wonders and rock and roll hall of famers. Nothing worked. It was as if Mr. Fist Face had poisoned the well.

  Fist Face himself soon returned.

  “I thought you said you were going to play Elvis. What’s the fuckin’ problem, asshole?”

  “I checked. I don’t have any Elvis. I’m really sorry.”

  “Look. This isn’t your party, shithead. It’s Kirk’s. ‘Sorry’ isn’t good enough. If you don’t play Elvis, I’m going to kick your worthless ass.”

  His threats alarmed me, but I still didn’t have any Elvis. In desperation, I played records I had been saving for the end of my set in the hope of ending the night with a bang. The dance floor was now desolate. I took a wild gamble on “I Only Have Eyes for You” by the Flamingos, hoping the egos would be game for some slow dancing, but as I looked over to the end of the room where the bar was, every single person there was staring at me with a scowl. I wasn’t just ruining this party—I was wrecking everything … the whole city, the film industry, the world.

  As the Flamingos song ended, I fired up “Popcorn” by Hot Butter—not as a piss take but because I honestly had no idea what else to do. When I looked up from the mixer, I could see Fist Face charging at me like a rattled-up bull. He came to within twenty feet and pulled out a hunting knife he’d concealed in his jacket.

  I yanked off my headphones,
and with “Popcorn” straining through the PA system, I raced for the door. That’s where Fist Face caught up with me. This time, he didn’t say anything about Elvis; he just waved the knife around. Fortunately, he was drunk at this point and not so steady on his feet. I managed to grab his knife arm and slam it into the jamb of the door. The knife fell to the ground. Then I punched him square in the face as hard as I could. He fell into a pile of himself, out cold. I walked on out of there and headed for home.

  A few blocks down the street, after my heart rate and adrenaline levels returned to normal, I felt throbbing from a spot on the back of my right arm. I contorted to take a look: Fist Face had got me with his knife. I changed direction and walked to the emergency room to get sewn up. And I swore then and there to never again DJ a party for the film industry set. I’ve kept that promise but have DJed countless parties since that night. I had learned some valuable lessons from Fist Face and his crew: to read the room carefully and be ready for anything; and to never leave home without some Elvis and a blade.

  Before long, I had the chance to put this know-how to the test at a house party. It was a big old house and I was set up in the living room. The crowd was young and fun and I had the place jumping from the get-go. At around midnight, a popular local band started playing in the backyard and the room cleared out except for two people. They were a couple, and considerably older than anyone else at the party. They looked like they had sashayed in right off skid row. Their buttons were undone and they smelled like diesel fuel. Although neither of them could walk in a straight line, they were amazing dancers. Their style was somewhere between ballroom and interpretive. And the story they seemed to be telling was one of domestic violence—they expressed savagery toward each other through dance.

  I had the feeling that they didn’t hear music so much as a beat; they had to dance, and it didn’t much matter to what. Since they were the only ones on the dance floor, I decided to see how far I could push them. First I played “Venus in Furs” by the Velvet Underground. I love that song so much, but I had never before imagined it as a dance number. Not only did this couple continue to dance, I realized that they were indeed paying attention to the music and lyrics because they pretended to whip each other and kiss each other’s boots.

  Next I played “Girl” by Suicide. The couple responded as if this was their favourite song of all time. They allowed themselves to collapse to the floor. They slithered over the floor and each other. The man paid tribute to his partner’s femininity, worshipping her with his legs and mouth. She took pleasure in indulging his rhythmic advances for a few moments and then slapped him hard in the face. Then the whole ritual started again.

  I was so caught up in the wonder of their art I made the next selection without even thinking: “Something Came Over Me” by Throbbing Gristle. The dancers continued with their satanic tango of sex, violence and repentance.

  Finally I knew I had to push this performance to the limit. I cued up my secret weapon—“Horizontal Hold” by This Heat, the musical equivalent of Godzilla destroying Tokyo. I needed to see where this most unpredictable of instrumental compositions would take my drunken Fred and Ginger. But as the sonic onslaught commenced, I immediately regretted my choice. The dancing became so violent it was bone-chilling. The man pushed and pulled his partner back and forth; her arms stuck straight out at both sides and flailed like broken wings as her head tossed wildly …

  But then! She broke free of this move and started beating him back toward the wall behind him. She pounded her fists against his chest as he backed away. Once he was against the wall, she brought her knee up and buried it between his legs. As he doubled over, his rump was thrust into the wall, blowing a giant hole in the Gyproc. Directly above him was a shelf, upon which sat several large candles that illuminated the room. One of these toppled to its side, sending a cascade of hot wax over his head, neck and back. The wax must have been incredibly hot, but he didn’t flinch. He just straightened up and continued dancing. As their ritual of brutality continued, the wax hardened, turned white and flaked off. The destruction triggered something in them and now they started wrecking the entire room. They smashed everything they could get their hands on. They threw each other against the walls, leaving more holes. I thought the music must have driven them insane, so I started to dig frantically for something gentler. I threw on “I Go to Sleep” by the Kinks.

  When I looked up from the turntables, the two were in each other’s arms, swaying in an exhausted waltz. But all was not calm: the cuff of one of the man’s pant legs was on fire. Slowly the flames climbed. I yelled “Hey!” to alert them, but they couldn’t hear me—not because the music was too loud but because they were in another world. The last shred of the man’s pants turned into smoke as the Kinks faded out. When it was over, they walked off the dance floor, out the door and into the night.

  •

  By now I was keeping a busy schedule. I worked full-time at the hotel. It was a boring job that allowed me to study and to write papers for school, where I was maintaining a full course load. I DJed on weekends. My radio show aired once a week and was growing in popularity. I was also using the station’s facilities and equipment to record demos of my own songs. I wrote songs about baseball and growing up in a small town. I wrote songs about things I was studying in school as a way to help me learn, especially when there was a lot of memorization involved. I wrote a song about fish taxonomy to help with my ichthyology course. I also wrote a song about Kiss and how a friend and I used to pay tribute. To my surprise, the demo began to circulate around town and became popular. That popularity led to offers for gigs for me to perform my songs onstage. This was a terrifying prospect; I was still terminally introverted. But I was determined to take any paying job I could get. I was still desperate to fund my baseball dreams. I didn’t know what else to do besides play hard all summer and save money. I didn’t have a plan, just desperation. Deep down I hoped that if I was good enough, baseball would find me somehow.

  There was a great music scene in Halifax in those days, but it was mostly indie rock. I stood out with my weird rap songs. It came as a big surprise when one of the local record labels suggested I record an album and offered to release it. The label was called murderecords, and it had been started by the guys in a band called Sloan. They were the most successful band in the city and were on their way to becoming one of the biggest bands in the country. I was flattered by the encouragement. I went to work right away.

  By the spring of the year I graduated, I was faced with a tough choice. Another baseball season was about to start. But my first album had also just been released. I was offered a job going out on the road with a band called Thrush Hermit—one of the other bands on the murderecords label. I was asked to manage their tour (which meant doing some driving, collecting money from concert promoters and selling T-shirts). I was also offered the chance to play a short opening set before the band went onstage every night.

  Music or baseball?

  Playing baseball in Halifax was getting me nowhere. There were no opportunities, nowhere to go. I knew I had to get out of town if I was ever going to have another chance. And now I was being offered a ticket. I chose to not overthink it. I said yes to the tour offer and packed my glove, resolving to stay on the lookout for any opportunity to play along the way.

  We set out from Halifax in the middle of the afternoon and drove straight through the night. Just as the sun was coming up the next morning, we rolled into Montreal. The van was out of gas. Before filling up, we had to hit an ATM to withdraw some cash from the band’s bank account. Cliff, the drummer, was driving. He parked the van at an odd angle in front of a wig shop situated next to a bank. He didn’t bother with a proper parking space because the lot was empty. Only us birds were up at that hour.

  We barrelled out of the van to stretch our legs after being cramped inside for the previous fifteen hours or so. A split second after the doors slammed shut Cliff yelled, “The keys!”

  It took
a few minutes for us to work through the morning grog and process the situation. Joel (vocals/guitar) and I were given the assignment of walking to the nearest gas station to seek help. We found one a few blocks away, but it wasn’t yet open. We’d have to wait two hours. As we were making our way back to break the bad news to the other guys, fire engines sped down the street past us, sirens blaring. The sight and sound was startling enough, but when we saw the trucks pull into the lot where our marooned van was parked, we ran.

  We arrived, panting, back at the strip mall to find the wig shop in flames. The fire was wild. Making matters worse, the firemen couldn’t properly fight the blaze because our van was in the way. There was much yelling.

  “Move that piece of crap now!”

  “The friggin’ keys are locked inside!”

  “IDIOTS!”

  “We know!”

  The firefighters did their best, but with our van blocking access, their only option was to prevent the fire from spreading to the neighbouring businesses. The wig shop burned to the ground. When the excitement was over and the firemen were getting back into their trucks to leave the scene, we had the gall to ask if they could help us with our van. They must have hated our guts, but still they said yes. Deeply ashamed, we sat and watched as half a dozen of Montreal’s finest worked the vehicle’s every crack and crevice. After struggling valiantly for ten minutes, they gave up.

  “The locks are electric. There’s no way. You’re screwed.” And with that they drove away.

  We thought about smashing one of the van’s windows but decided against this; we couldn’t afford to replace it. We had no choice but to sit, think, wait for the gas station to open and hope someone there could help us. As four-fifths of us did just that, Ian (bass player) rummaged through the wreckage of the wig shop. He came away with a twisted, foot-long scrap of steel.

  “Oh, forget it, Ian. If six firefighters couldn’t do it with proper tools, there’s no way you’ll be able to,” said one of us, giving voice to what we were all thinking.