Peninsula Sinking

by David Huebert

  The two boys raced down the street, sock feet slopping March slush. Gavin held the blue tube over his head, laughing and shouting, “Blue Velvet! Blue Velvet!”

  They peeled around a few corners, deked a crew of grade sevens, and wheeled across Summit. A car slammed on the brakes and Gavin, entering Jackie Chan mode, leapt and slid over the hood, wagging his blue wand at the driver. With Theo’s breath hot in his ear, Gavin got low and burst for the next corner.

  Up ahead was the busy intersection across from the school. A string of cars was turning left and neither walk sign was on and just as Gavin was deciding what to do he felt hands on his shoulders, weight on his back. A lurch, and he was tumbling.

  He landed palms-down in the snow-bank, watching the blue tube arc through the air. Theo’s fists were thumping, searing into ribs and kidneys. The vibrator hit the pavement, cracked a little, and rolled under the tire of a minivan.

  The light changed, and the van rolled forward.

  Whenever the phone rang, Gavin went half psycho. He started coming home from school early, just so he could check the messages. Six weeks later, Nancy still hadn’t called. Gavin’s parents had no idea about the Blue Velvet incident. Part of Gavin wanted to write Nancy an apology letter. He craved some sort of penance, yearned to drain his guilt with words. But he was so used to the simple rhythm of either getting away with things or getting caught that he didn’t know he could atone on his own. He thought discipline only came from the outside.

  Every dream was a terror. One, in particular, kept recurring. He was in the principal’s office, getting grilled by Mr. Aucoin. “What’s this I hear about you parading around with a sex toy? I understand you’re at an experimental age, but...” The dream always ended with Nancy showing up, bringing the smell of rain into the office with her. Mr. Aucoin would tell Gavin to apologize and he would try to say sorry but Nancy would always get a call on her cell and leave the room before he could get the words out. Then he’d be teetering on the edge of the five metre, trunks see-through, Aquafit ladies giggling, pool echo getting louder and louder. He’d look down and start to lose his footing. This time there was no water below. Reaching behind him, he would try to grab the platform but there was nothing there. Nothing but bleachy blue tiles rising towards him and the echoing laughter in his ears, almost deafening now.

  Theo cooled off after a couple of weeks. Neither he nor Gavin could afford to stop hanging out with Drew, so they put up with each other. Before long they were back to their usual routine of weed smoking and mailbox dumping and pretending they weren’t always pining about the same two or three girls. Months passed. Summer vacation started. Without really noticing, Gavin had a growth spurt. One of his mother’s prettier friends said “you look so teenagerish” and he could not have asked for a better compliment. Drew told him he should probably start shaving unless he wanted a skivstash. The summer swelled and flexed. Gavin’s social group multiplied, probably because he knew some girls who knew some older boys who knew how to get liquor.

  Nancy still hadn’t called.

  Gavin found Theo and Drew at Ardmore, taking turns with a king-sized Sharpie. The marker oozed chemical hum as Theo scrawled his hideous tag, “Hellzbellz.” The second zed curled down and sideways, stretching into a pitchfork.

  Drew pumped Gavin’s fist. “What’s the word, Big Turd?”

  “What’s on, Small Dong?” Gavin reached into his backpack and pulled out a Gatorade bottle, two-thirds full of murky brown liquid.

  “What’s that?”

  “Whiskey, rum, vodka. Splash of schnapps. I call it Hybrid Vigour.”

  “Nasty.”

  Gavin took a long gulp. Gasping, he clutched his stomach, made a puke face, panted: “Fucking delicious.”

  Drew laughed, reaching for the bottle.

  Soon their bellies were warm and toxic as they walked down to Westmount, chasing rumours of a field party. The August sun was setting on the far side of the field. Jen and Tessa were there with six or seven of their Cornwallis friends. There were also a few older kids from QE. Sam Hoffman handed a tall can to Gavin. Tessa was smoking a cigarette and he tried not to stare at her lips.

  Soon Theo and the biggest Cornwallis dude were arm-wrestling and Drew was staggering around shouting “Hybrid Vigour!” Gavin was on his third beer and he’d had some drags of Tessa’s cigarette and was starting to teeter on the far end of a buzz. He was trying to get closer to Tessa but Sam kept holding his shoulder and talking man-to-man.

  When Sam loudly mentioned the electrical tower by the mall, Tessa leaned in, eyes sparkling. Sam said last year he was an arm’s length from the top when the cops showed up and started pouring everyone’s beer out. The cops were so stupid they just herded the kids out of there without ever looking up at the tower. When they were all gone, Sam climbed quietly down, a full bottle of citrus-flavoured vodka safe in his backpack.

  “That’s so cool,” Tessa said. “We should do that tonight.”

  Sam shrugged. “I’m not getting stuck up there again.”

  “Whatever,” Tessa said, looking around.

  Gavin did not have it in him to spurn her curious eye.

  When she saw him, gentle and plaintive and half-drunk, she beamed: “Gavin’ll climb it.”

  Gavin laughed and shrugged and Sam slapped his back and soon they were all crowded around the electrical tower, everyone shouting Gavin’s name. Drew yelled “Hybrid Vigour!” and Sam handed Gavin another tall can. He took a long drink and gave the beer to Tessa. She said she would guard it until the end of time and then she kissed him on the cheek and whispered “Good luck.” Gavin started to climb.

  At first it was nothing special: just climbing a ladder. The voices below got quieter and he wondered if the crowd was losing interest, but when he looked down he could see everyone huddled by the ladder, necks cranked back to watch. Tessa held the tall can up and wagged it at him like a trophy. He kept climbing.

  Gavin could see cars pulling out of the West End Mall and the hill rising up from the Rotary, houses and streetlamps glowing. In the middle of it all was the Northwest Arm, cutting into the city, lights glittering off the wavering blackness of the inlet. Looking up, he saw that he was fifteen or twenty rungs from the top. He got eager, charged higher. Then he felt something strange. The air crackled and closed in around him. His arm hairs pricked. There was a chatter in his teeth, a buzz in his ears. He imagined himself standing on top of a huge blue whirring mountain.

  Looking down, he saw Theo, Drew, and Tessa. They were all waving their arms frantically. They were so far away.

  What if it was you, then, alone in the middle of the stark night sky, clinging to those shuddering rungs, hot terror searing like cobra venom? What if a dry panic clutched your throat and your bones went jittery and you both knew and didn’t know what was going on? What if you heard that same pool echo from that day on the five metre but this time you knew it was just your own warbling ears? What if underneath the warble people were screaming and you were sure you recognized Tessa’s Sarah Michelle Gellar-like voice trilling in the unthinkable distance? What if it was you, then, who looked out over the clouds and the stars and it was you who were in space and under water at the same time? What if there was a smell like burning hair and you saw the Aquafit ladies flying through the night sky, riding huge blue lightsabres and jabbing vibrating wands in your direction, and you couldn’t tell if they were trying to save you or hurl you into an angry electric abyss? What if the charge was still building and all your muscles were twitching and the ladder was starting to char and every nerve and muscle was urging you to flee? What if the sky, then, turned unspeakably clear and lovely and the Aquafit angels were beckoning and a soft breeze soothed the burn and you were sure, for a moment, you could ride the wind? Wouldn’t you dive towards the Northwest Arm, shooting for the glittering black pool? Wouldn’t you think that maybe the cool water could save you, that on
ce you landed safely Tessa would run down to the water, tearing off her clothes, and jump in beside you? Wouldn’t you be astonished as you found yourself soaring not towards the Northwest Arm but straight for a leafy elm that made you think of Nancy reading in her shady backyard? Wouldn’t you go reverential when, as some small branches broke your fall, you heard a voice lilting from the core of the tree, sounding just like Nancy, pleading for you to come closer? What would you do if when you landed between two large but merciful branches you heard that same silky voice saying you could forget all about Blue Velvet and the apology letter you never wrote? What if, as you lay there wheezing in the tree’s embrace you ceased to wonder about life and death, ceased to pine over Tessa Brown? What if, when everything else was gone, you apologized and meant it and knew, knew with a feeling fiercer than truth, that Nancy understood?

  SILICONE GIDDY

  Yeah there were non-stop girls. Yeah the girls did not stop. Yeah we were silicone giddy. Yeah there were enhancements. Yeah there was tanned skin and colossal bass and buoyant handfuls of T&A. Yeah there were bright G-strings glowing in the blacklight. No you could not actually grab the buoyant handfuls of T&A without getting wrist-locked and possibly choke-slammed by the dragon-armed, lazy-eyed doorman and subsequently barred from this nirvana of non-stop girls. Yeah by dragon-armed I mean the doorman had badass dragons tattooed all over his enormous trisauraceps. Yeah there was sugar-free Red Bull. Yeah there was shitty coke laced with fuck knows. Yeah there was a shot called the Tequila Mockingbird. What else was there? A yoyo and an astronautical-themed room called the Space Heater that I was earnestly considering until I found out it cost two hundo just to walk in. A joint that may have had a hair in it, maybe something more sinister. A bride and groom who’d been married at noon, both of them grinding face into the stripper with blond streaks in her jet-black hair. At some point I learned the name of the stripper with blond streaks in her jet-black hair. Annie or Mandy or Bambi. Annamandambi. Also a white dude with a Jheri curl and a Vietnamese woman sipping straight well vodka and leering at Theo, one eye fluttering shut. A table full of chunky-watch-wearing Bobby Bigwheels who found out we were from Nova Scotia and started buying us Jäger bombs. Some sort of reparative gesture due to the endemic unemployment/poverty/alcoholism of Nova Scotia and Ontario’s historic heist? When I told them I dropped some Jäger on a hamburger last year and created the Jäger bun they did not register the hilarity. At one point Theo walked into the dank strip-club kitchen—which had closed several hours earlier—and grabbed tiny, cold pulled pork sandwiches for the entire table. Drew invented a drink called the Comatose and Corrine countered with the Consensual Rufie. We proceeded to consensually rufie one another and then got into an argument about which sexual indiscretions should now be referred to as “pulling a Jian” in honour of J Ghomeshi. At some point the bartender cut Drew off and Drew tried to give him forty bucks for a pint but the bartender just wiggled his enormous neck muscles and said no. One of my last blustery memories is Drew wearing two pairs of wraparound sunglasses, shouting, “This bartender is a good bartender and a quality dude because I tried to bribe him and he would not accept the money!” Last call happened and Theo grabbed a suspiciously full pitcher off an empty table and poured us all pints and then the Bobby Bigwheels came back in from smoking cigarettes and asked where we got the now suspiciously empty pitcher and we said something about Jäger buns and walked off cackling into the vacuous lightscape of Yonge Street. Yeah there were non-stop girls. The marquee said so and the marquee was legit.

  Why were we there? I don’t mean the Silicone Palace. Should be obvious why we were there. I mean why tread the lurid urban cellulose of Yonge Street? Why were we milking the city’s inflamed urethra when we might have been stumbling around Ossington or somewhere else genuinely cool? Why, even though I’d seen on Twitter that there were some good poets reading on Queen West, did I not go? I’ll tell you why. Because I’m a half-closeted poet who becomes an inferno of envy every time I see a writer my age with a book out. Because I feel secretly threatened by tight-pants Torontonians with their slim bicycle wheels and I do my best to make jealousy and resentment seem like casual loathing due to Ontario’s economic hegemony over the East. Because some part of me knows that to become a real writer I must become an adult and it is so much more fun to keep having a time and scribbling anonymous lines. Because me and Drew are two dirtbags spending two thirds of our lives cashing VLT chits in a dingy pub back home in Halifax and our tyrant boss would only give us two days off. Because even though my dad lives in Newmarket I’d rather share a room Drew booked in some mall-like downtown hotel than talk to my father about nine irons and search engine optimization and market segmentation. I’d rather listen to Drew fart and snore than listen to my father telling me he’ll help me pay for an MBA if I want it but he won’t help out with that cooking course at NSCC because that doesn’t count as me vacating my comfort zone. Because after getting jagged in our hotel room and walking out the door the first thing we saw was a sign that said “non-stop girls” and although Corrine and Theo were saying about a place on Dundas it seemed safer and easier to get rowdy here than go somewhere dim and fashionable that would make me feel pathologically provincial.

  But why were we in Toronto at all? Because Theo was finally marrying Corrine and we hadn’t seen anything like enough of them since Corrine became a bona fide TDSB art teacher and Theo started his Ph.D. at York. Strange: this guy was going to be educating people about environmental studies and I remembered him tipping porta-potties as we walked home shittered from the Ward Room during that blur of beer and books I now call undergrad. I remembered how proud he was in grade ten when he traded a cigarette for a blowjob from Sarah “Darth Vader” MacDonald. I remembered him kicking out taillights because Handsome Pete whispered in his ear. I remembered him squealing the tires of his parents’ VW as we peeled up Barrington Street, flying a skull and crossbones out the window. I remembered him convincing Drew to moon some girls from the back seat of said VW and then just easing on the brakes and coming to a gentle stop while Drew shrunk into an amoeba of embarrassment and it turned out the girls were Shelly and Tara from St. Pat’s. I remembered him throwing an empty bottle of Colt Forty-Five high into the air, the glass skittering all over the skate park, each fragment a startled insect. That tall streetpunk shouting “my dog doesn’t wear shoes!” and Theo just laughing, pitching another bottle into the floodlit sky. I remembered him getting in a fistfight with Drew the day we graduated high school because Drew thought it would be funny to kick a half-eaten McChicken out of Theo’s hand. Drew kept saying he didn’t want to fight but Theo was staggering and mouthbreathing into his face and eventually Drew just leaned back and one-punched him. Thankfully I caught him on the way down, because Theo weighed a solid two hundo back in the pre-vegetarian era and he was all white-socketed and wobble-kneed, tumbling tooth-first towards the phalt. For some reason Nancy still displays the picture on her mantelpiece: Theo wearing his tux and grinning next to Tara McDougle, one eye squeezed into a bloat of purple chub.

  Which reminds me: Nancy.

  Antsy Nancy. Anansi. Nance.

  I might end up sitting at a table with Nancy. I will certainly see Nancy. I may well end up having to talk to Nancy. Sure it’s been fifteen years since I stole Nance’s vibrator, Blue Velvet, and tore around the neighbourhood before losing it to the tires of a moving van. Sure I never actually managed to apologize even though I’ve now formed at least eight million different syntactical combinations of the words I would have liked to say. Sure I’ve seen her hundreds of times since the Blue Velvet incident and it’s always been, if anything, eerily congenial. Sure she’s super respectable and in her mid-fifties now, though still miraculously mom-hot. Sure she’s remarried to a doctor named Cliff who walks as if his genitals out-weigh a T-bone. Still: this awkwardness in me. This psychological kidney stone of shame. This complete cowardly inanity. I want nothing more than to cower before Nancy, bare the
foul cavities of my soul and beg her forever-forgiveness. But that is something I will never do. That is something for which I do not have the marrow.

  Theo and I are standing in line at a brunch place on Queen West and even if it was worth the wait my hangover would probably reject all gustatory value of the quail’s eggs or cashew butter or whatever else makes Theo’s favourite brunch spot so special. The line is a miasma of cut-off jean-shorts and Hitler Youth haircuts. There’s a guy with a tangle of hops tattooed on his forearm, a beard that could nest an owl. A girl wearing a denim skirt is dribbling a basketball. Several dogs sit quietly about the outskirts of the patio, catching baguette ends and cubes of pancetta.

  We are standing in line at a place that we may never get into and I am thinking of the vestibule of Dante’s Inferno. I am thinking of the uncommitted, souls who chose neither goodness nor sin, the ones who sit on the shores of Acheron, perpetually stung by hornets and wasps, their existence a tailing pond. Nothing left but to envy the dead.

  We are waiting, now, in this procession of hipster cred and I am thinking this place represents all the hollowness of Toronto and my dad is texting me to see if I want to go for brunch at Yonge and Eglinton and Theo is ranting about the Anthropocene. Theo is talking about the Anthropocene and how we’re in the middle of the sixth mass extinction event in the last five hundred million years. I’m texting my dad to say thanks but no thanks and Theo’s talking fracking and fossils and some geologist who believes that after humans go extinct the earth will be inherited by rats. “Look at their track record,” he says. “A startlingly versatile genus. Even now they colonize and rule entire islands.” I am nodding haphazardly and craving water, craving coffee, hankering to sit. Theo’s talking Rattus sanila and Rattus norvegicus and saying how rats have been following humans around since the Pleistocene and there’s a solid argument that the project of human civilization has built a perfect habitat for our whiskered successors. Once we’re gone the rats could proliferate indefinitely, some growing as large as mastodons and others scrawling on the walls of caves.