Mean Boy

by Lynn Coady

  Sniffles from somewhere behind me.

  “But, ladies and gentlemen, I’m now in love, as I said earlier. Now imagine the, um, beauty of that, after so many years. How it would be like emerging from life underground. It is, and it may be private, but I want to express it. I’d like you to know. When you wonder about love, about your own worthiness, maybe you’ll read a poem I’ve written about it. Maybe you’ll recognize yourself in there. I want to evoke my feelings, my ragged faith, my desolation, and my subsequent salvation so completely, so perfectly, that for you there will be no mistaking what we have in common. At least—that’s part of what I’m trying to do. And sometimes, when I’m doing this,” and here he nodded toward Mrs. Dacey, “I have to be explicit. Because I know that my experience is human, and the more palpable I can make it, through the writing, the more you will know, as a reader, that I am telling you a kind of truth. A truth we don’t talk about, and maybe even can’t. That, I hope, is the value of what I’m doing—assuming we can speak of poetry in such a way. I mean, assuming we even should—”

  That line from the Acorn poem above my typewriter. It is truth, the word I am not. Schofield’s face contorted and he groped with one hand, as if the words were revolving around his head faster than he was able to organize them into speech.

  “I am trying to,” groped Schofield, “communicate as best I can. I want to help. I want you to know.” He looked around. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know how else to say it.”

  And then he shrugged like a wince, smiled like pain, and moved slightly away from the mantelpiece, looking to Jim. The Schofield reading was over.

  13.

  “WHAT A PILE OF CRAP that was,” says Todd, slouched against yet another wall, waiting for me when I emerge from the Dekkers’ upstairs bathroom. The bathroom is full of art as well, but not Ruth’s. Pictures of paintings and of photographs—cut out from magazines—are taped all over the walls, and tiny African sculptures have been placed on every available surface alongside of the cans of shaving cream and bottles of toilet water.

  “What?” I say.

  “The crap Schofield was talking before.”

  “After the reading?”

  “Yeah. Poetry is about love and—and communication, oh my fucking God.”

  Todd is making it sound stupid, what Schofield said, and it incenses me. I feel protective after seeing him blush and stutter all alone up there.

  “You gotta like the way he shut the old lady up, though,” I say, being offhand and, in order to emphasize my offhandedness, slouching against the wall along with Todd.

  Todd smirks, eyebrows bouncing. “Yeah, but you can tell he believes that crap.”

  “Well, okay, maybe it’s a simplification,” I allow. Because, let’s be honest, what Schofield said was embarrassing. It’s not the kind of thing you’re supposed to say if you’re a guy, and a poet, and standing in front of an assemblage of people. I can’t be caught defending it outright.

  “Is it ever,“ agrees Todd.

  “But, then,” I say, attempting to switch tracks, “what is poetry about, anyway? I don’t know. Who can say?”

  “It’s not about fuckin’ beauty,” says Todd. “If anything, it’s about dredging up all the shit.”

  “Dredging up all the shit,” I repeat. “All what shit? From where?”

  “From wherever it comes from.”

  “It comes from your colon,” I say.

  “What I mean is,” says Todd, “buddy is up there saying that poetry has to be beautiful, and I think that’s fucking dangerous. Sometimes it’s gotta be ugly, or even, even banal or obtuse. Maybe, sometimes, it doesn’t even have to be about anything. But it’s not about ‘the human soul,’ for Christ’s sake. Sometimes it isn’t going to be pretty. People aren’t going to like it necessarily. That’s what I would have told that old bag if it was me standing up there.”

  “But you’re still talking about communication, just like Schofield was saying,” I argue.

  “I have been in love,” quotes Todd, ignoring my point, tucking in his face to give himself a Schofield-esque double chin. “Jesus. Poetry is about pain—suffering it and inflicting it, not telling the world you finally got laid at the age of thirty-five or whatever. That’s just sad. It’s about breaking bones—breaking and then resetting them so they grow in a completely different way.”

  What, I marvel to myself, has Todd been reading? “Where did you get that?” I demand, assuming it’s a stolen quotation.

  Todd shrugs. “It’s just something I came up with.” He looks around, as if to check for spies. “I’ve been doing a lot of experimentation lately.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say. “No more cave-ins and pit ponies?”

  Todd’s blue eyes flicker up at me. “It’s not that I’m not interested in those stories anymore, it’s just that I’m becoming more and more taken up with form itself. There are people in this country who would laugh their asses off at the kind of shit Schofield was spouting tonight. There are people for whom poetry is an end in itself, it’s not about meaning.“ Todd utters the word meaning as if he was saying “little girls’ dresses.”

  “It’s about getting underneath meaning, it’s about bypassing meaning.”

  “Bypassing meaning?” I say. “So what does that leave you with? Gobblede-gook?”

  “Yes,” answers Todd, folding his arms, “in some instances, it leaves you with gobblede-gook.”

  “Who?” I want to know. “Who’s doing this sort of stuff? And where?”

  “Claude is,” answers Todd. “And Vancouver.”

  Claude? Vancouver? I don’t know where to begin.

  “Claude writes villanelles!”

  “That’s only part of what he does. He experiments with form in general, so you know, he tries out villanelles. He’s tried sestinas, sonnets, haikus.”

  Haikus? Is it supposed to be haikus, with an s? I rack my brain for the plural of haiku. I thought it was just haiku. How I long to make Todd look like an idiot by pointing out such a fundamental mistake, but I can’t remember which it is. I’m not sure. Frustration churns behind my eyes and I switch tracks yet again.

  “What does Claude know about Vancouver?” I do my best to imbue the word Vancouver with the girly-dresses quality Todd evoked before.

  “Claude’s been all over,” Todd reminds me. “He’s been to Paris, like Jim. He saw the Black Mountain poets read in New York City. He knows about all the different movements.”

  Movements. It reminds me of the way Gramma Campbell used to discuss her bowels after every meal. I don’t want there to be movements when it comes to poetry. It’s hard enough trying to figure out Hucksterism versus the Real Thing, just trying to write a line that’s any good.

  “Since when are you interested in the kind of stuff Claude does, anyway?”

  Todd shrugs some more. “We both experiment with form.” At some point in the past few months, it would seem Todd has traded in his pissed-off energy for an obnoxious faux-apathy.

  Please! I want to spit at Todd. Your poems all rhymed because you never read one that didn’t before you got here. But we’re interrupted by a groaning noise from somewhere beneath us. It’s the staircase, suffering under some massive weight, followed by the heavy thunk of footsteps. I clench guiltily, thinking it must be Schofield, until I see Chuck Slaughter’s bristled, bullet-like head appear, accompanied by the dual hams of his shoulders. I’m not exactly relieved.

  “There you two fuckwits are,” Slaughter greets, pretending to punch Smiley in the gut. When Todd instinctively caves in at the gesture, Slaughter takes the opportunity to seize him around the neck in a headlock.

  “How do you like that?” he inquires of Todd, who flails. “Not much with the reflexes, are we, Smiley?”

  “How you doing, Chuck?” I say, backing up a little.

  He releases Todd and shoves him lightly away. “I’m going to nail that Mitten one,” Slaughter imparts. “I’m going to pound the mittens right off her.”

 
; He looks glazedly cheerful at this admission. I am terrified for Sherrie.

  “Oh yeah?” croaks Todd, holding his neck.

  “Just coming up here to make my intentions known to Campbell.”

  “To me?” I repeat.

  “Well, I seen you two hanging out sometimes.”

  “Not really,” I say, jackrabbit fast. “We talk about—books, poetry. You know … Susanna Moodie.”

  Slaughter nods, “You’re after one of her friends?”

  Todd snorts.

  “No,” I say stupidly. “Susanna … Moodie.” Stop talking, stop talking. Because I can feel myself gearing up to explain to Chuck how Susanna Moodie is a Canadian literary figure, but The Journals of Susanna Moodie isn’t actually the journals of Susanna Moodie but is a book of poetry written by one of the Margarets purporting to be … I will be drop-kicked down the stairs before I can utter the second Susanna.

  Fortunately, Slaughter cuts to the chase. “So you don’t wanna do her?”

  I recognize the question to be a snare. If I say I don’t want Sherrie, I’m a fruit. If I say I do, I’m potentially a blotch on Ruth Dekker’s upstairs rug. I have to think fast. I don’t think fast enough.

  “You know,” I say, trying for casual, slouching hard against Todd’s wall, “it’s never even occurred to me, really.”

  Chuck opens his mouth and Todd cocks his head, both sets of hands settling on both sets of hips. They are big and little versions of each other.

  Slaughter drawls, “It’s never even occurred to you?”

  “Of course it’s occurred to me,” I correct. “I just—she’s not my type.”

  “Oh yeah? Blonde, and a fox? So what would be your type, Campbell?”

  I give up talking and thrust both hands in the air. Slaughter is smiling, non-violently, and I am surprised to realize he knows exactly what he’s been putting me through.

  “Be my guest, that’s all I’m saying,” I tell him. In the next instant, I’m seized, immobilized, and hoisted into the air. Slaughter suspends me above his head like a barbell, holding me against the ceiling, pinned and fluttering like a moth. But before the terror and vertigo can register, he swings me back onto my feet, pulling me into a pig-iron embrace.

  “Ooh, I just love you, Campbell,” Slaughter murmurs into my hair. “You’re just the duckiest.” And then I’m shoved into Todd, who shoves me away.

  “Christ,” I say, pulling my sweater down.

  “Hawg, hawg, hawg,” guffaws Chuck. “Oh, my good men, my fuckwitted friends, I am so high right now.”

  Todd and I gape. Me because the blood hasn’t rushed from my head yet, and Todd because he’s from Sheet Harbour and thinks only hippies and Satanists get high.

  “The first dose kicked in right in the middle of that old lady’s diatribe. All of a sudden her voice just sounded fucking insane to me. She sounded like a spring peeper. I don’t even know what that is, but her voice, it sounded like peep peep peep to me and I thought, she sounds like a spring peeper. But mean. And then I thought, she’s a big, mean spring peeper. And then I got this picture of a bird like fucking Big Bird or something but mean, right, like an evil Big Bird. And then I just fucking lost it.”

  I’m smiling through my confusion and rapid heart rate. This is the most I’ve heard Slaughter say since the night of Rory’s flag.

  Todd laughs a little mechanically. “What are you on, man?”

  “Mushrooms,” Chuck replies. “We’re standing in the mushroom capital of the world, here, you fuckwits didn’t know that?”

  “Wow,” says Todd, sounding impressed, trying to be cool. Todd, of course, has never taken a mind-altering substance in his life. Drugs are for Beatnik poets, whom he deplores for their depravity and self-mythologizing—for their popularity, basically.

  “Here,” says Slaughter, digging around in his pockets. “Eat some.”

  “Oh,” says Todd, doing some fast thinking of his own. “No thanks, man. Not tonight.”

  “Why not?” I goad. “Tonight’s as good a night as any.”

  “Listen to Campbell,” advises Chuck. “He’s not as big a pussy as he comes across.” Slaughter seizes my hand, turns it over, and sprinkles what looks like a few shrivelled bird turds into my palm.

  I am a poet experimenting with drugs! I think, bounding down the stairs. Blake! Rimbaud! Ginsberg! Derangement of the senses!

  We decide to head over to the Mariner. It’s that kind of night. I picture us all traipsing down to the Mariner together, maybe stopping at Scarsdale Holdings to yank down another flag—we already have three stashed in Slaughter’s dorm—and the bunch of us getting mystically, majestically fucked up like merry pranksters on electric Kool-Aid, far into the morning hours.

  But as we arrive downstairs I see Schofield on the landing shaking hands with Ruth and Dekker. This is not how it’s supposed to go.

  “You’re going?” I interrupt.

  He turns to me. Fatigue seems to emanate from the man like heat, or a smell. “Larry,” he says. “I wanted to thank you again for everything.”

  “But we’re all heading downtown for a beer,” I protest. “You’ve got to come.”

  “There, now!” says Jim, appearing from the living room. “I told him it was too early!”

  “It is too early,” I complain, and Jim flings an arm around me.

  “Listen to this lad,” he tells Schofield, pulling me close, heat radiating into my shoulder from his armpit. “Wise beyond his years. We’re all expecting great things from Larry—aren’t we, Bryant.”

  I had forgotten about Dekker and Ruth standing there waiting to conclude their evening. Dekker is smiling like a genial host, but Ruth is sucking in her cheeks in an intentional sort of way, as if to make her expression unreadable.

  “You should come too, Professor Dekker.”

  Dekker grins and glances at his wife. “Ah, Lawrence, it’s a bit late for us old guys, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, listen to him!” yelps Jim. “You’ll give us all a bad name, Bryant.”

  Dekker shakes his head. “We’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

  Since I’m not quite as interested in prolonging my evening with Dekker as I am with Schofield, I lean over to continue working on the latter.

  “How are you going to get back to the inn?” I ask over the noise of Dekker’s excuses. “Come out for one beer and I can walk you back.”

  “I have a cab coming, Larry, but thank you.”

  “A cab! That’s crazy, it’s only a five-minute walk!” I declare. “We’ll just duck into the Mariner for a quick beer and duck back out again and you’ll be home.”

  Hearing myself wheedle, I realize that this is a technique I’ve learned from Jim. To just keep denying what the other person says until you get the answer you want. Make your alternative sound like the most natural one, whereas the other person’s alternative should be depicted as mild lunacy.

  But Schofield is smiling and shaking his head.

  “I’m exhausted, Larry.” His face changes as something occurs to him. “By the way—is it Larry or Lawrence?”

  “Um,” I say, not sure what I want it to be for Schofield. “Larry’s fine.”

  “Larry. I thought I heard people calling you Lawrence earlier.”

  “They do, sometimes,” I say, moronic.

  “Well, then,” says Schofield, reverting his features back into the pained, apologetic smile of a second ago. “As I was saying, Larry. It was good to meet you, and I’d love it if you’d write to me sometime—send me some poems. I edit the student journal at Ralston and we’re always looking for new work. And now, I’m sorry, but it’s been an exhausting day.”

  Although thrilling, I don’t let the invitation to send him my poems throw me off course, as it was clearly intended to do. “Beer’ll perk you right up!” I insist, having heard Jim use this line to great effect on countless occasions.

  I’m feeling confident and aggressive with Schofield, which is certainly not my usual demeanour,
and I can’t help but wonder if maybe this is the effect of the mushrooms kicking in. Will I start hawg-hawg-ing soon? Before I’m able to squelch Schofield’s resolve?

  There’s a honk outside, startling me, as it’s like a more nasal version of Slaughter’s hawg—and not much louder. No doubt it’s Friendly ready to grin and clack his dentures at Schofield, ferrying him through the snowdrifts across town to the Crowfeather. Dermot reaches to accept his parka from Ruth, who’s just stood there with it for the last five minutes as Jim and I, entwined as we are, applied the pressure to Schofield and her hubby. Now, handing over the coat, she’s glancing at Dekker and replying to a question it would seem he just asked. She’s saying, “It doesn’t matter, Bryant.”

  “Are you sure?” says Dekker. “I won’t be more than an hour.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” repeats Ruth.

  “It doesn’t matter!” says Jim, trying to reform the words so that they sound a touch more lighthearted than they did coming out of Ruth. Shit! Jim should have been working on Schofield and me on Dekker this entire time—Jim is the expert, I the apprentice. Schofield is leaning into the living room, now, waving and saying his goodbyes to everyone, and I duck out from underneath Jim’s armpit to follow.

  “Dermot,” I call as Schofield moves to the door. I realize my hand is extended only when Schofield grabs it.

  “Thank you again, Larry,” he says. I can feel the warmth and dampness of his big mitt seeping into my skin. He’s going, I realize. There’s no calling him back. The fact of it is as solid and certain as his hand in mine.

  “I didn’t even get to tell you how much I enjoyed your reading,” I say. “And all the stuff you said.”

  Schofield nods rapidly in that way that tells me he doesn’t really want to hear it. He’s probably endured all the hedging, uneasy compliments he can stand.

  “No really,“ I emphasize, trying to gain traction on the slippery, too-large mass in my grip. I feel like I can’t let him go until I’ve gotten something across. “You inspired me,” I add, suffering the insufficiency of the words the moment they’re out.