Chapter Eleven
I ambled around the city a bit. After a time I found myself in front of a downtown park with benches in it. I was drawn to pass some time there, to rest, revive and once ready, to propel myself forward.
From where I sat I could see people moving everywhere on the Western streets, some commanding a skin-deep respect by the way they walked and looked at you stone faced while others, wishing to go peacefully from one place to another, did so without being noticed. There were many of those who had ridden the boom of the west hanging around. They always stood out – you could almost always tell them from the locals. They were prone to getting extremely drunk and spending freely, always expecting good times in return. It seemed that they always wanted a good time.
The solitude of the road was not to be found in the city, but that didn’t matter much - being Mr. Lonely Hearts on the side of the highway had worn pretty thin in the time it had taken to hitchhike from Toronto to Edmonton. I didn’t want to travel around like a hobo anymore and vowed that I would cut anything hobo-like out of my image. I promised myself that I would shave every day, buy some decent clothes and find some work. I would learn soon enough though, that vows are easily forgotten when traveling the highway has a hold on you. Hitchhiking was like seeing the country but with a bit of an edge – you never knew what was coming your way.
In the meantime, I welcomed the liveliness and variety of the city, the different faces, the sullen, menacing heavies, their antithesis, those who weren’t looking for any trouble and others who seemed afraid; hookers and their clientele – the painted women, some beautiful, some bored, some brazen, and some seemingly bashful, happy to have a nondescript man in tow. Everything was punctuated now and then by the shock of a staggering drunk in his own world. It was a slice of life that seemed foreign after being on the road. I was once again in a world within a world.
“Stay put. We’ll pick you up in two shakes.” I had moved from bench to phone booth, passing the prostitutes who stopped primping when they saw me and the drug dealers who similarly quit pitching their wares when I was in their vicinity. Well, it seemed so anyways.
I had called my brother and couldn’t help wondering who the ‘we’ were that he’d spoken of. I didn’t like meeting new people. I feared it and, in spite of myself, became increasingly ingratiating the longer a new social situation dragged on. I went belly up and exposed my jugular. I wouldn’t make eye contact and I mumbled. I repelled people with submissiveness and they left me alone. I had to protect myself somehow; I had to avoid clutter in my head.
An hour passed and I was about to phone my brother again when he and his friend reached a stop in a loud, gaudy convertible. Having stood around waiting for a time, I was even less in the mood for a meet and greet session than usual. Nevertheless, I shook the driver’s hand when he was introduced to me as Ted. We had different ideas about hand shaking and our attempt at greeting was largely unsuccessful. I settled into the back seat. We drove and though at first I found the backseat cold, in no time I began to wish we’d just drive forever, soothed by the unruffled darkness.
As we left the city’s core behind I began to feel less defined by what seemed to give others a leg up on me, a feeling of being see-through that made me self conscious to an extreme. Freed to think I did so, regarding my new acquaintance through quizzical, veiled eyes. I surmised that anyone who drove a convertible must be a bit of an extrovert, a person who needs to be noticed. I laughed scornfully to myself.
My brother had yet to speak to me. His silence reaffirmed the belief I had, that my family held me accountable for my supposed illness. You’re getting paranoid I thought to myself and then I wondered: did I just talk out loud? I was suddenly praying, please God let my private thoughts be private. Part of me was convinced that the two up front, one as familiar as the favourite ball glove I had to take absolutely everywhere and the other as foreign as a Chinese dictionary, already knew everything I was thinking. I fished out my phial and two tablets discreetly traveled to their new home in my stomach.
The hands of time, when one is nervously going somewhere unfamiliar, can pass with a terrible quickness. You’re where you fear being before you know it. It was not surprising then that shortly after the wind in my hair had helped me to shed some anxiety and I started to enjoy the ride to Bob’s place, we were there.
It seemed that, in a few twisted minutes I went from a park downtown to scrubbing myself in a hot shower. My fear of strangers had made my stomach feel raw inside. I hid in the shower until I found myself numbed by the steadily pounding spray whose force per unit area and warmth managed to wash some shyness away. With a few inhibitions having backed off, I went and joined the others in front of the TV. The downtown exodus was a dim memory, and, for the moment, the journey from Toronto to Edmonton forgotten.
No one had taken notice of me when I entered the room and that was fine. Being invisible was something I was learning to be thankful for. I didn’t want to be obviously anywhere – being a specter-like person was great. I wanted to relax, to enjoy a special relationship with peace and with quiet. Cagey, like a church house rat on the scent of something half rotten, I made myself comfortable on the couch without disturbing a soul. Part way through the show my pills took effect and though I felt strong enough to fight sleep, it had me as it always did.
When I woke in the middle of the night, it was chilly. Someone had thrown a blanket over me. Most likely Ted’s girlfriend Katy, I thought, she seemed nice. I sat cross-legged in the dark and rolled a cigarette. It was cold and, shivering, I pulled my blanket tightly around myself. I wondered what I would do now that I had reached the end of the line.
“Go back,” I said aloud and laughed at myself.
Out of the shadowy corner, I heard a rustling that sounded like tree leaves in a mild breeze. It was a noise that laughed back at me.
“Who’s there?” I asked, wishing my voice were more assertive.
“Hey, Carmen,” went the reply.
“Who’s there?” I repeated.
“Carm. Carmen.”
I flicked my lighter. By its flame I found a table lamp and turned it on. Looking around I could plainly see that no one else was present, yet I hadn’t heard anyone leave the room. How could I have heard anyone speak, I wondered, if no one was there? The voice had been clear; it had belonged to someone. I was more than bewildered. When sleep finally returned to bewitch me against my will, a bright room greeted it; I had turned on every light I could find.
The next morning when I began to wake I didn’t do so abruptly, as you might expect someone who’d experienced a nocturnal fright would. I came to slowly in a room filled with a great deal of giggling and whispering. I caught part of a sentence and some stifled laughter. ”Scared of the bogey man, I’d say.”
At that something snapped and wide-eyed, I jumped quickly to my feet. My brother and his friends were standing there taking me in, curiously, without sympathy. I thought that they were probably wondering why I had to sleep with all the lights on and that was a good guess.
“Afraid of the dark, brother?”
I shrugged, a “who me” shrug. “We pay the hydro here, you know,” he continued and as he walked away I knew I’d embarrassed him.
“I’ll give you some money for hydro,” I told the others.
“Don’t worry about it,” went the reply. Later that day I went looking for work.
I had no skills to lay claim to. Leastwise I’d none that could be of much use; my rusty skills with a clarinet weren’t needed. My ability to read at a level that went beyond what I’d learned in school was not marketable. For a small man I could lift fairly well. I could handle a broom, wash dishes and the like. I was determined to find something and mere days after arriving in town I found myself walking home, cold and soaked to the bone after working at washing other people’s dirty cars. I was a full time car scrubber. I could pay my share of the hydro and leave the lights on if I wanted to. I could fall asleep with the TV on.
Every day at lunch, I went to the cavernous restaurant next to the car wash and wolfed down a hamburger and a plate of fries. One day I listened, between ravenous bites of my daily bread, as one of the waitresses told me that they were looking for a busboy to start as soon as possible. I thought starting at the bottom in the hospitality business would be a good idea and filled out an application. I was hired on the spot. I moved from the carwash and trudging around feeling like a puddle had tried to swallow me, to a nice dry restaurant where the work wasn’t too hard and the waitresses gave me ten percent of their tips. It didn’t take them too long to understand that if they didn’t cough up the ten percent, I’d take it from the tables. Most of them paid me fair and square.
When everything had been going well for a while, I again came to the conclusion that I didn’t need any medication. I stopped taking it completely, without consulting a physician.
From the time of that decision my world began to slide out of control. The life I called mine would soon become too far gone to be worth much to me or anyone else. The disease I grappled with would find a permanent foothold and would drag me to depths I had never dreamed existed.
One day I was clearing tables when a pretty girl spoke to me.
“You look very sad,” she said, smiling softly.
“Just one of those days,” I replied absently and went about my work. So I was sad, so what? The next day found her at the same table. As I passed, keeping my distance, she beckoned, shyly.
“Come here, sit for a minute.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling, falsely cheerful, not wanting her to see that I was still sad.
“What’s on your mind,” I asked.
“Look,” she blurted, “will you read my poems.”
“Okay,” I said, “jeez, I’d be honoured.”
“You can keep them overnight.”
“I’ll look at them,” I said, bashfully.
We sat until I was told to get back to work and so began our brief romance. Our relationship was made of gestures, smiles, poetry and sad eyes gazing into sad eyes. It was an event that took root, prospered, bloomed and died within the confines of the four walls of a restaurant, an establishment in the business of making money, not inspiring affection. Somehow poetry flourished among the clatter of dishes and orders being bellowed.
Her visits to the restaurant became precious. At the height of our bistro passion she gave me her phone number. I didn’t draw a connection, as day passed day and I didn’t phone, that there might be a relationship between my not calling and her visits to the restaurant becoming less frequent. Ah, if only she could have forced the telephone issue, or otherwise kept her number to herself.
Eventually she was nothing but a fuzzy image. I remembered what a warm smile she would direct my way and how it could make me feel like cupid had thrown a butter knife at me with great force, trying to pierce my heart but only managing to wound a part of it.
She was a memory. I wished Cupid would twist his bloodstained blade he’d put in me and put me out of my misery. I kept seeing her wherever I went, her blonde hair and alluring manner. Still, I didn’t call her. Eventually I misplaced her number. She must have thought I’d betrayed her. How could she know otherwise, that I couldn’t call her initially because, for some reason, I had believed that we were better off without each other and that later on I didn’t call her because I didn’t know her number?
When all was said and done, I had been a bit selfish; it had been about me, not her. I had been more than vaguely afraid of being dumped and was convinced that her family, friends, pets, minister and so on would find me unsuitable, lacking too much to be considered a serious wooer.
I kept picturing her father telling me to go away. I mean, I was supposed to be mentally ill. I’d been to jail. My history made me concede defeat before the fight began. In the end, I sent her flowers and retired into my strange world. You have probably have hurt her, I thought; what gave you the right?
It was with chagrin that I eventually realized she was quite possibly off with someone else, barely even remembering my name. Still I didn’t call her to find out one way or another and I never saw her again except when I lost my footing while wrestling with my psychosis and thought I saw her every day, glaring at me, glaring her disgust for me, the rat who’d betrayed her affection.