Tales from the Bottom of My Sole

by David Kingston Yeh

  “Is it,” she said, “really you?”

  “I’ve changed, Ma,” Luke Moretti said in his grandparents’ olive grove.

  “You have,” Isabella whispered.

  “I’m a different person now.”

  “Are you?”

  “I promise I am.”

  “Are you ... happy?”

  “I am. I’m a lot happier now.”

  Twelve years had passed since she’d laid eyes on this face. “Luciano.”

  Luke shrugged. “Or Luke. I prefer Luke.”

  “You are different.”

  “You always taught us,” he said, “to work hard, to take things into our own hands, to get the job done. That’s what I did. I did that. I did everything you asked me to that Christmas Day. I’ve remade myself. Things are different now. Things are better.”

  “You look like your father.”

  “Do I?”

  “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “Well, thank you for the invitation.”

  “Your brother told me he couldn’t find you.”

  “David and I thought it was for the best, that I should stay away.”

  “I see.”

  “I changed my mind. I want ... I want to be part of this family again. I’m sorry for everything I put you through.”

  “I’m sorry too.”

  “Ma.”

  “Not a single day has gone by when I haven’t thought of you, when I haven’t prayed for you.”

  “Ma”

  “I promise.”

  “Well. I’m back now.” Luke drew his knuckles across his cheek. “All grown up.”

  “But still my child.”

  ‘Really, Ma?”

  “Yes, Luciano. Always.”

  “Vivi e lascia vivere,” Sia De Luca said.

  PART II

  CHAPTER NINE

  Miasmal Smoke &

  The Yellow-Bellied Freaks

  On the last Thursday of September, while leaving the gym, I noticed Marcus on the cover of NOW Magazine and almost rode into a parking meter. I retrieved a copy from its metal box, and walked my bike to a nearby bench, limping only slightly.

  It was a special themed issue on communications technologies, spotlighting the world premiere (seriously?) of his one-man-show, Face. On the front cover: Marcus crouches naked, his hair spiked up in a mohawk, his war-painted features distorted in a primal scream. He holds an open laptop in front of his crotch, his own blandly surprised face peering from the glowing screen. The headline read: “A View from the Wittenbrink: On Queer-core and the Cyberpunk.” The NOW writer had attended a preview of Face, and was clearly a fan, enthusiastically referencing Marcus’s dense CV, and extolling him as the wunderkind enfant terrible of Canada’s arts and literary scene. The article ended with a quote from Tales From the Bottom of My Sole, Marcus’s award-winning book of poetry and prose:

  Might I be simple

  a glass of water

  a pane of glass a drunken satyr

  bent leaves of grass.

  The words sounded strangely familiar. All the way home, they repeated themselves in my head. When I woke up the next morning, my eyes fell onto my own slim copy of Marcus’s book. I retrieved it from the shelf and flipped through the pages until I found the same passage. Only then I remembered where I’d heard these words before. The night we’d broken up, Marcus had quoted his own poem to me. Even in that moment, his art had gotten between us. The title piece was a lengthy ode to stepping into other people’s cum in a bathhouse (which he’d later adapted into a short film). Like the mythological Midas, the NOW writer gushed, Marcus Wittenbrink Jr. transformed the crudest materials into precious illuminations. As it stood, Face was a “vertiginous descent into the nihilism of social media and the contemporary Canadian psyche.” I wasn’t surprised at all to read the production had a “Sexual Content/Nudity” warning. I would’ve been surprised if it hadn’t.

  On our very first date, Marcus had set the tone of our relationship, bringing me to a dance party called Vazaleen. He made it seem like an accident, but in hindsight, I was sure he’d planned it all along. The venue was Lee’s Palace, a concert hall up in the Annex, its façade covered by a two-storey mural of bizarre cartoon creatures fornicating, fighting, dancing across a psychedelic landscape. “Yeah, my friend Alex painted that,” Marcus remarked as he bypassed the line-up, fist-bumping the bouncer. He reached for my hand. “C’mon. I think you’re going to like this.”

  It was just after midnight when Marcus drew me in. The packed, sweaty space buzzed and vibrated with a carnival atmosphere. Sheets billowed from the ceiling, flickering with kaleidoscopic projections of blurry porn. The floor was a spectacle of hardcore punks and rockers, tattooed dykes, boys wearing underwear and mascara, girls decked out in platform shoes and roller-skates. Someone in a full-body chicken suit pogoed up and down in one corner. A rock ‘n’ roll band was playing, people climbing on and off the stage, everyone interacting and dancing.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “It’s where people can be,” he said, “as perverted or crazy or queer as they want to be.”

  “This is your friend Will’s party?”

  “This party, Daniel, belongs to all of us.”

  “Is that guy naked?”

  “There’s always The Naked Guy.” Marcus laughed. “But it’s not always the same guy. Look, stay right here. I’ll get us some drinks.”

  Marcus vanished before I could think to reply. Colourful spheres glowed over the bar in the back. Two go-go dancers, a black girl and a white boy, joyfully leapt about the stage. A sudden surge in the crowd pulled me down toward the front. Three glittering drag queens stalked past, effusing an aroma of cotton candy, poppers and cloying pot smoke. I half-expected flowers to bloom in their wake out of the stained and pitted hardwood floor. The biggest one stared in my direction.

  To my horror, she whispered in her companions’ ears, turned back and walked right up to me. “Daniel Garneau,” she said in a booming basso.

  I was utterly at a loss for words. She adjusted her boobs and her fox stole, then rested both hands on her hips, licking her gleaming upper lip. “You don’t recognize me,” she said.

  “No. Sorry.”

  “Well. I suppose, I can’t say I blame you.”

  “Really, I don’t think we’ve met.”

  She lay one finger alongside her enormous, bent nose. “Do you recognize this?” She leaned into my face.

  I shook my head.

  Her nostrils flared. “The last time we met, Garneau, you broke my nose.”

  I gawped at him.

  “It’s been bent ever since.”

  She arched back. I was vaguely aware that a small group of onlookers had begun to gather. Incredulously, past the glare of sequins and pasty foundation and DIY glamour, I did begin to recognize her. The set of her eyes, the voice, her five-o’clock shadow and the squareness of her jaw. She smiled knowingly, observing the changing expressions on my face.

  “Gary Kadlubek?”

  She raised her finger. “Tonight, sweetheart, it’s Pussy Pierogi.”

  “Holy shit.”

  She thrust out her chin and batted her eyelashes. “It’s an homage, to my Polish ancestry.”

  Gary Kadlubek had been the enforcer on my midget AA hockey team back in Sudbury. He’d also been the head coach’s son, and the all-around number one douchebag bully in high school. It’d been years since I heard anything about Gary Kadlubek.

  “You,” I said, “were an asshole.”

  Her fierce eyes widened. She straightened, pursing her lips. She plucked a single pink hair off her arm and flicked it aside. “I was.”

  “You used to steal Ann Fobister’s lunch money.”

  “Who?”

  “You got me kicked off the team.”

  “I guess you and I are even then.”

  “Even? I was going somewhere! I was going for team captain! Where were you going? What were you going for?”

  For two
heartbeats, she looked as if I’d just punched her in the face. Again. But there was no blood running down her chin and no one was tackling me to the ice and I wasn’t landing blows with my fists like they were sledgehammers because that’s what I needed to do when the walls came crashing down and it felt like the end of the world.

  Kadlubek (or was it Pussy Pierogi?) drew a breath and rested his hands on his padded hips.

  “Look, Garneau. I just have one question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Back in the day, when we were both stuck in that miserable little sweaty armpit of a town, did you ever fuck around with that assistant coach, the new guy, Tondeur? Truth.”

  Stephan Tondeur. Real estate agent. Doting husband and new father. That beautiful man who’d been the spitting image of Justin Trudeau. I’d lost track of the times I’d jacked off to fantasies about the second assistant hockey coach. I still kept a stained photo of him in my shoebox of high school memorabilia. Truth? I was seventeen when I lost my virginity to Stephan Tondeur, when he gave me a condom and a packet of lube, pulled down his pants and bent over the steering wheel of the Zamboni.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Well. Lucky you.” Pussy Pierogi whistled and shook her head. “So, I was right, after all. Daniel Garneau, you really actually were a closeted, fudge-packing creampuff.”

  “You always told everyone I was.”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t believe it. Not really. I just liked getting a rise out of you.”

  “So now you know.”

  “Do your brothers know?”

  “Pat and Liam? They know. They’re good.”

  “Of course, they’d be. You three boys always had each other’s backs. I envy you.”

  “Why?”

  “My folks threw me out on my ass the day they found out. Nobody in my family talks to me anymore.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Oh, trust me, it’s for the best. But like I said, lucky you.” She extended her hand. I stared at it for two seconds before taking it in my own. “I know I gave you a hard time, Garneau. I was a royally fucked up kid. My dad was one helluva bastard. He treated me like a shitty doormat and I took it out on everyone around me. If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? I know that doesn’t excuse anything. But I do want to let you know, I’m sorry. The truth was I wasn’t going anywhere. I figure you and I both are making up for lost time now.”

  “It seems that way.”

  I couldn’t let go. I felt locked to her somehow, electrified, connected like two train cars. Her grip was a lifeline. Just as she was starting to notice, I released her with an effort.

  “Hey, so, look, Kadlubek, I mean, Pussy Pierogi?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry I broke your nose.”

  “Ha! Don’t be. Truth? I deserved it. But you didn’t deserve to get kicked off the team.” She turned toward the radiant light, snapping open a flashing compact, and examined her profile. “It gives me character, don’t you think? I wouldn’t trade this beautiful schnoz now for the world. After all, we’re all freaks one way or another, every goddamn one of us. Some people are just more honest about it than others. Stick it to the man, I say. Power to the people. Look around you, Garneau. We’re an army of lovers. If we can just let all of it go, we can do whatever the fucking hell we want.”

  That September, when David’s mom returned to Canada, she announced she was engaged to Nicoli Badalamenti, Antonio’s uncle, and that she’d be selling her home in Toronto and moving to Sicily permanently. Three Dog Run had also come back from Burning Man, but without Pat, who’d taken off to New Mexico. When I asked Blonde Dawn if she and Pat had broken up, she said she wasn’t sure, but had to think about it. Apparently, Pat was now in the outskirts of Roswell helping to build an orphanage. Pat had tried to convince the entire band to join him, but he was solo on this one. Luke Moretti had also returned on the same flight as his mom, just in time to model in Ai Chang Cho’s fall Toronto Fashion Incubator show. When David and I helped Luke and Ai Chang move into their new apartment up by Ossington and Dupont, I heard her underwear designs had caught the attention of none other than fashion maven Jeanne Beker.

  It was Sunday evening, and I was on the couch relaying all this news to Karen over Skype while sampling a Chapman’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream Cone. David walked by with the ironing board and helped himself to a bite. “Mm. And the score on this one?”

  “Four,” we said.

  “Impressive. Better than a Creamsicle?”

  “Not quite.”

  David planted a kiss on the laptop’s camera before strolling away.

  “And who’s Jeanne Beker?” Karen asked.

  “The host of Fashion Television,” I said, wiping the chocolate-y smear from the screen. “It was a whole forty-nine seconds of air time. This could be Ai Chang’s big break. She’s playing it pretty chill, but Luke’s super excited for her.”

  “And Luke, what’s his plan now that he’s back in Toronto?”

  “I’m not sure. Right now he’s helping his mom pack up her home. He’s started volunteering with this youth helpline. Last I heard, he had some lead with GoodLife Fitness.”

  “He interviewed with them yesterday,” David said, ironing his pants. “They offered him a job. He starts next week.”

  “Really? Wow, good for him. Look, Karen, the next time you come to Toronto, you can meet him. We’ll all hang out.”

  “So, explain to me again,” Karen said, “what a furbo is?”

  I looked to David, but he was busy laying out damp T-shirts. The dryer in the basement was broken again, and we had laundry strung up all through the loft.

  “A furbo,” I said, “is that person who gets things done because he’s a fast talker, a kind of con artist. Some people might consider him a cheating sneak. But lots of Italians admire him, and think he’s just being really clever or smart. Furbizia is the art of being a furbo.”

  “Oh, like Coyote or Raven.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He’s a trickster.”

  “Sure, you could say that.”

  “Pat’s a trickster.”

  “Blonde Dawn says Pat’s an immature man-child.”

  “Yeah, well.” Karen nibbled the edge of her sugar cone. “Sometimes he’s that too.”

  David shouted from the kitchen: “Your brother’s Han Solo.”

  “What did he say?” Karen asked. “David says Pat’s Han Solo.”

  David draped himself over my shoulders. “And Daniel and I are renegade Jedi Knights.”

  “Renegade?”

  “Jedi are sworn to celibacy.” David stuck his tongue in my ear. “We’re secret lovers.”

  “I see,” Karen said. “Well, I did not know that. I suppose that makes me Princess Leia?”

  “Oh no,” David said. “You’re Mon Mothma.”

  “Who’s Mon Mothma?”

  “‘Who’s Mon Mothma’? Karen, are you kidding me? What kind of rebel living under a rock are you?”

  I leaned into David. “And your brother?”

  “My big brother, Luke Moretti, is a goddamn Gallifreyan Time Lord.”

  Karen blinked. “A Californian what?”

  “Whoa.” I nodded. “Good one.”

  “And Blonde Dawn,” David declared, “is Barbarella.” Then I had to laugh out loud.

  “Who?” Karen said.

  “And Liam,” he said, “he’s like the Road Warrior. He’s Mad Max.”

  “Guys,” Karen said, “I have something to tell you.”

  “Oh my god,” I said, giggling, “that’s so true. Liam’s totally Mad Max. Then maybe that makes Blonde Dawn Aunty Entity?”

  “Awrh, perhaps,” David said, “right you are.”

  “I need your advice,” Karen said.

  “Yes Karen,” David said, “yes, I think you should definitely use the Force.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Ice cream dripped onto my chest. Da
vid and I stared at the laptop screen. Karen popped the last piece of her sugar cone into her mouth and munched methodically.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Karen.”

  “I want to know what you think I should do.”

  “Wait.” I sat up on the couch. “Karen, I mean. What does Bob think about this?”

  “I haven’t told him yet.”

  “You didn’t plan this.”

  “Are you kidding me? Of course not. I’ve been on the pill since high school.”

  “So you weren’t using condoms?”

  “No. Sometimes. No, not every time. Ever since Mike and Melissa’s wedding, things have gotten pretty serious. Sometimes we just wouldn’t have one handy.”

  “Alright. Well, I mean, these things can happen.”

  “Obviously.”

  “How pregnant,” David asked, “are you?”

  “Three maybe four weeks. Look, David, do you mind if I talked to Daniel in private?”

  “Um, sure. No problem.” David glanced at me and backed away. “I think, look, why don’t I go for a walk.” He grabbed his wallet and put on his shoes. “Text me,” he mouthed before closing the front door behind him.

  “Is he gone?” Karen asked.

  “He’s gone.”

  “Daniel. Look.” Karen drew a breath. “I’m not sure it’s Bob’s.”

  “What?”

  “I fucked up.”

  “Oh Karen. Hey. It’s okay. Hey, you’re okay.”

  “No. No, I’m not okay. I’m not. I absolutely do not want this baby.”

  “It’s your body, Karen. It’s your choice.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  “I’m not sure it’s that simple.”

  “Karen, you think, you said it might not be Bob’s?”