by David Eddie
Then there was the party at our place, the Casa di Fromaggio.
A disaster from every point of view. It was supposed to be a select affair, a “small-and-early,” as they used to say, just a dozen dressed-up people standing around noshing and exchanging sophisticated chit-chat, ostensibly to celebrate my ascension into the Cosmodemonic world. However, word got out and it quickly turned into a classic blowout.
It started off in a promising way, about a dozen people in the kitchen, having snacks, sipping wine. Les was wearing a stunning red dress that fit her like a balloon fits the trapped air. Sam looked good, too, though I can’t remember exactly what she was wearing. Max wore a white dinner jacket. Les had made some delicious snacks, cold roast red peppers with capers and garlic, various dips, something with eggplant. We stood around in the kitchen and chatted.
But then, around 10:30, people started pouring in. They kept coming and coming. Andrew’s policy vis-à-vis parties in that era was “arrive loaded,” and this party was no exception — he was drunk and boisterous the moment he stepped in the door.
Something about his vibe worried me, made me nervous. He brought a friend with him, a guy who worked in his ad agency, Lou, a stumpy little homunculus with a Napoleon complex. He stood with his chest thrust out, challenging, getting too close to you, chin held high like a tray, defying anyone to call him “shortie.” He arrived loaded, too, and turned ugly quickly.
“LET’S ALL FUCK SAM!” he said at one point in the kitchen, moving towards her. “I’LL GO FIRST!”
Someone restrained him from actually touching her. Sam quickly exited the scene, left the kitchen, along with the few other women.
Max went over to where Lou was standing, pulled out his wallet, and started riffling bills under his nose.
“Listen, Lou, I’ve got a proposition for you. I’ll give you five bucks if you leave this party.”
“FUCK OFF!” Lou said.
“O.K., make it ten.”
Lou cocked his cowboy boot, then stabbed Max in the shins with the point. Max, surprised, grabbed his shin, hopping on one foot. He didn’t know what to do, how to deal with this.
I did. I crossed over to where Lou was standing, grabbed him by the shirt, and propped him up against the wall, his boots two feet off the ground. He thrashed around, trying to kick me. I brought my face close to his. I had a cigarette in my mouth, the glowing ember about an inch from his cheek.
“Listen, Lou. I’m a peaceful man by nature. But if you piss me off I’ll put my arm down your throat and rip out your lungs. Do you understand me?”
He simmered down. I half-carried, half-dragged him out the door and chucked him out onto the porch. He hesitated, I glared at him, and he took off into the night.
Women were leaving the party in droves. Les came up to me.
“I’m going for a walk, with Sara, until things maybe cool down a bit. We’ll be back later,” she said, and took off.
Mary Jo, a model/singer friend of Sam’s that I sort of had my eye on, came over.
“Great party, Dave,” she said, sarcastically. “But I have to go home and feed my dog.”
“Oh, well, sorry about everything,” I said. “See you later.”
“If you’re lucky,” she said.
That was a bad sign. Mary Jo was an emissary, a sort of scout, from Toronto’s chic, au courant Gen-X hotshots, sent to check out two possibly promising youngish bachelors. Unfortunately, her report would have to be negative: “Two thumbs down. Not only do they live in a dump, but this noisome twosome never rises above their tacky surroundings. Drugs, sexual harassment, drunken frat-boy antics. To be avoided at all costs.”
And things just kept getting worse. Andrew was getting out of hand. He’s one of those who become a completely different person when drunk, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde style. Now he was definitely Mr. Hyde. I later found out he was doing “foilers” of “brown lady” (smoking heroin off a piece of tinfoil) in the bathroom all night, which probably didn’t help. Andrew/ Mr. Hyde was staggering around the party with his shirt off, bouncing off the walls, bumping into people and saying: “Excuse me, I’m with the band.” There was no band, needless to say. He knocked over a lamp, the bulb exploded. He ran into Mary Jo in the hall, on her way out, and grabbed her, trying to maul her.
Finally, we had to throw him out, too. Max and I forcibly put his shirt on, then his jacket — it was tough, because he’s strong, and he didn’t want to be dressed — and bundled him out the front door.
He didn’t disappear into the night, though, like Lou. He staggered over to our scruffy, scrofulous hedge, unzipped his pants, and started to piss copiously. Meanwhile, with his head thrown back, he shouted at the top of his lungs, “I’M THE TYPE OF NIGGER THAT’S BUILT TO LAST. IF YOU FUCK WITH ME I PUT A FOOT UP YO’ ASS,” a line from a rap song.
The cops weren’t far behind, I knew. Sure enough, they appeared — no doubt called by one of our angry neighbours. I observed everything from the window, from between the slats of the venetian blind. I couldn’t believe how quick they were — they came in the time it took to take a piss. On the other hand, it was a long piss.
Andrew didn’t seem at all perturbed by the arrival of the constabulary. In fact, he was glad of the audience. He strutted like a drunken bantam rooster over to the squad car. He appeared to have adopted the persona of some sort of drug-dealer/pimp.
“HEY, PIG, WANT TO BUY SOME HEROIN? WANT TO GET BUSY WITH ONE OF MY BITCHES?”
Just then, in a stroke of terrible timing, Les returned from her walk, without Sara, who had no doubt wisely gone home.
“THERE’S ONE OF MY BITCHES RIGHT NOW!”
Les headed for the house, gamely trying to skirt the scene on the lawn, but one of Andrew’s arms shot out and grabbed her by the sleeve. Suddenly, to my horror, he had her ass on the hood of the cruiser, and started mock-humping her.
The cops crouched, tensed, hands over their holsters. I realized it was time to act. I came out the door, drink in one hand, smoke in the other, trying to look calm and casual.
“Is there a problem, officers? I’m one of the hosts of this party.”
“Is he your guest?”
“I’m afraid so. He’s just a little drunk, officer. I apologize for his behaviour.”
I made a long arm for Andrew and detached Les from his grip. She fled like a scalded rabbit into the night. Andrew gnashed and thrashed, but I held him firm. I had looped an arm around his shoulder, old-buddy-like, but my grip was tight as a vice.
“Are you taking responsibility for him?”
“Yes, no problem, officer. I’ll take him inside, get him a bit of coffee, see if we can’t sober him up.”
“I’M WITH THE BAND!”
I held him tight.
“Don’t worry, officer, I’ve got the situation under control.”
The cop looks a bit doubtful. But I can tell that, at the same time, he’s glad to have Andrew off his hands. That’s the last thing he needs tonight, I can see that: a drunken maniac in the backseat, rage in the cage, and, back at the station, a mountain of paperwork.
“Alright,” he says finally. “But keep the noise down, will you?”
“Yes sir.”
They zoom off.
Argh, what a party. Tiring. I think I began to understand, that night, what Baudelaire meant when he said, “One must work, if not from inclination, at least from despair, since, as I have fully proved, to work is less wearisome than to amuse oneself.”
Perhaps I’ve made it seem I was a pillar of morality, virtue and nobility at that party. Alas, far from it. In fact, in the end, when all is said and done and St. Peter weighs the pros and cons of everyone’s behaviour at that party, I’m afraid it is I who will come out the worst, it is I who will have sinned the most grievously. Everyone else’s sins were strictly venial, easily put down to high spirits, inebriation, youthful exuberance. Everyone else will eventually be forgiven, but when I approach the Pearly Gates, St. Peter will just shake his head, smil
e, and say, “If for nothing else, you deserve this for your behaviour at that party.” Then he’ll pull the lever controlling the trapdoor on which I stand.
Yes, only I committed a mortal sin that night, only I contravened the all-hallowed tenets of… The Dude Code.
The various precepts, statutes, ordinances, and codicils of the Dude Code control all male behaviour, ladies, and the Dude Code is not only unwritten but unspoken — how else would you expect a male code to be? It is simply understood. Through male osmosis I too am familiar with the code:
Rule #1: Thou shalt never touch or covet any woman thy friend has ever even expressed an interest in — let alone gone out with — though ye be drunk and yea, she be covered in cocoa butter, wearing nought but a thong, writhing in thy lap.
Codicil A (The Five Year/Foreign Country Clause): In some cases, an exception may be made if five years have elapsed since your friend dumped her, and/or you meet her in a foreign country.
Lola was the last guest at the party that night, unless you count Andrew, passed out cold on the living room floor at our feet. She had shown up late, after work, at around two, when there were only three or four guys left, Andrew included. She was wearing her scuba-top again, and at one point Andrew reached forward and, with supernatural swiftness, deftly unzipped it. Her big, soft-looking, coral-tipped breasts swung into view. Once again I had occasion to think, “Now, those are some breasts.”
I had a feeling about Lola: everyone wanted her, but he who could stay up the latest would win. I won the Waiting Game. One by one, all the other guys went to bed, until it was just Andrew, Lola, and I. Finally, he passed out at our feet, and it was down to Lola and I, mano a hermana, passing a bottle of brandy back and forth, smoking, using Andrew as an ashtray — that is, we’d balanced an ashtray on his chest, which rose and fell as he sawed logs, and we were tapping our ashes into it.
Lola was impressing me more than she could know. It wasn’t just a matter of her magnificent body, her lush lovely figure, but also I was awash in respect for the fact that this 19-year-old girl was drinking me under the table. I, David Henry, who, back in college, once outdrank the legendary 300-pound El Salvadorean Omar Aguilar in a tequila-off.
While we drank, she told me her life story. Booted out of the house at 16, she worked as a dishwasher for two years (two years! I did it for six weeks once, and by the end I wanted to commit hara-kiri by attaching the supersprayer to the deep-fry vat and giving myself a boiling-oil enema). Eventually, she was promoted to busgirl, then waitress, and now they were giving her occasional shifts as a bartender.
Lola had some hash, she rolled a spliff, we smoked it. As often happens, the joint seemed to double my drunk buzz. I started to slur, slipped into spoonerisms and malapropisms, full phrase substitutions, incomplete sentences, passing bad information, employing faulty logic… Meanwhile, she chatted away merrily, apparently unaffected.
Finally I rose heavily to my feet.
“Lola, I godda hidda hay,” I said.
Lola stood up, too, and stretched.
“O.K.” she said. “The only thing is, I came here on my bike and now I think I’m too drunk to ride home.”
“No problem, you can sleep here,” I said.
“O.K. Thanks.”
“First we should get Señor Piquante here up on the couch.”
I grabbed his head, Lola grabbed his feet. Together we gingerly lifted him onto the couch. He didn’t even wake up.
“Well, that’s it, then,” I said, dusting off my hands. We stood across from each other.
“Where do you want me to sleep?”
“Well, there are several options. You can sleep down here on the couch, and there’s also a couch in the kitchen. Or… you can crash in my room, with me.”
I didn’t need courage to say that. I was that drunk, it just came out naturally.
“I think I’ll take door #3,” Lola said with a smile. Just then Andrew sat up, stared around the room with unseeing eyes.
“I’m the type of nigger that’s built to last,” he said. “If you fuck with me I put my foot up yo’ asszzzz…”
His eyes rolled back into his head, the lids closed, and his head snapped back to the carpet. He started sawing logs. I put a blanket over him. Then Lola, his recent ex, and I, his good friend, headed upstairs to have sex.
Actually, my plan was not to have sex with Lola, to pull the old “let’s-just-sleep-together” routine on her. I’ve used this approach numerous times, with excellent effects. All it takes is a bit of self-control, and the rewards are multifold: you’re relieved of first-night performance anxiety, you establish trust, feel comfortable together, then one night it just happens naturally.
The whole concept went out the window, though, the minute Lola unselfconsciously peeled off her bike shorts and unzipped her scuba-top to reveal the most beautiful body I’d ever seen, and slithered between the sheets.
I’d gone to bed demurely clad in boxers and T-shirt, but these garments seemed simply to melt off my body. Lola slid a big, meaty thigh between mine, grabbed my hair, and jammed her tongue down my throat. Before I really knew what was happening she was on top of me. Then I was inside her, she was straddling me and was sliding a silken sealskin breast in and out of my greedy, gobbling mouth. I babbled like a baby: “Oh, yes, Lola, oh, man, oh that’s great, oh yeah, fuck me Lola…” And I never talk dirty during sex, it just came babbling out of my lips, I couldn’t help myself.
“Whew,” Lola said afterwards, climbing off. “Are you always this horny?”
“Are you always this sexy?”
The next morning, when we came down, Andrew was gone.
18
Cyrano De Faust
I eventually told Andrew about it, of course, and he forgave me, or at least he said he did. Sometimes, when he was drunk, he’d say things like: “Hey, here’s Dave, the guy who doesn’t mind sloppy seconds.” Or: “I’d like you to meet my friend Dave. He’s fucking my girlfriend.”
All of which was good knockabout stuff, I felt. I could handle it. After all, he had dumped her. I’ve always felt the Dude Code was too strict on these matters. Anyway, Lola was a piece of candy I wasn’t willing to give up just yet.
Meanwhile, the money rolled in.
You should see the salaries everyone pulls in at the Cosmodemonic fact-factory. You should get a load of their Beemers, cottages, condos, Costa Rican properties; the perks, privileges, and gourmet buffets everyone enjoys as if by divine right. “And it’s nothing like the old days,” the old-timers will tell you, their eyes misting over as they recall the European junkets, lavish hotel rooms, and buffet tables of the ’60s and ’70s. Back then, there was a lot more cash floating around. That’s when they all hired on, and you should see their contracts. It’s like getting tenure. Especially the techies, with their unions. You could fire a Cosmodemonic techie, but you’d better have a fucking good lawyer. A techie could fuck a ten-year-old boy in front of his boss and all the other Cosmodemonic bigwigs, sign a confession, piss in a potted plant, and go down bawling for more drink, he still wouldn’t be fired. He’d be sent for “counselling.”
Don’t get me wrong. My tone is not disapproving. On the contrary, I loved it, I bellied up to the trough like everyone else, smacking my lips, napkin tucked into my shirt-front. Government fat tastes just like chicken, as I often said to people. In a southern-fried accent: “Jes’ lahk chicken.”
Fifteen hundred dollars every other week! Fattening my bank account, beefing up my lifestyle.
I started travelling in cabs, picking up tabs. I snapped up some snazzy new duds, and rented a groovy new pad. About this time, Max and Sam decided to take the plunge and move in together. Touchingly, they invited me to live with them, but I quickly realized I would be a fifth wheel, and I set about finding my own place.
I checked out the ads in the paper, for apartments in my newfound price range, $600-$700/month. Even with that much cash to burn, most of the places were dumps, an interior decorator�
��s nightmare: mirrors on the closets, tile on the ceiling, shag carpets. Being poor can be romantic in other cities, world capitals, places like Paris, where a “garret” (as I’ve always pictured it anyway) is an attic room with hardwood planks in a 13th-century building at the end of a cobblestone street. In a burg like Toronto, though, you soon discover that cheap pads are that way because they’re so cheesy. It gets to you after a while: one night you wake up in a cold sweat thinking, “Maybe I am a cheeseball, after all.”
Some of the places were so different from the way they were described in the ads I wanted to take a swing at the guy showing me around. I remember one described as “SPLIT-LEVEL IN ST. LAWRENCE MARKET AREA.” In the first place, it was a good 20 minutes’ walk from the St. Lawrence Market. I looked around with the guy, then finally said: “What’s split-level about this place?” He showed me: there was a single step between the kitchen and the living room. “You asshole,” I said to him, and left.
But I kept looking and one day I came across a decent-looking ad in the paper: LARGE KENSINGTON BACHELOR.
“That could be me!” I thought. I’d always wanted to live in Kensington Market—“the breadbasket of Toronto”—with its outdoor markets, the cultural and ethnic mix, cheap bars and restaurants, vintage clothing emporia. Kensington was filled with artists, junkies, drunks, immigrants, alcoholics, the poor; in other words, my kind of people.
It was love at first sight: a big, space above a store called “The Get It On Boutique” on Augusta Avenue. “The Get It On Boutique” sold various knick-knacks, African masks, rattan furniture, and a dazzling array of Bart Simpson hybrid T-shirts. Remember those? A strange pop-cultural cross-pollination: Rasta Bart (“Underachiever and Proud of it, Mon”), Rasta
Clint Bart (“Make my Day, Mon”), Air Rasta Bart (“It’s the Shoes, Mon”). Every once in a while, they got busted for copyright infringement for selling these T-shirts. But as the store’s owner — a tiny Vietnamese man named Johnny — told me, “Bart and rattan put dinner on my family’s table.”