Right Away Monday, page 2
And, I reckon, maybe the women were sniffin around too when I first got home, simply because I was outta town for so long. Truth. It’s like this: what’s the quickest way to get your skin around these parts? Leave town for a few months.
Me first two weeks home I holed up at the General’s Inn on Elizabeth Avenue. And listen here, I never had one lonely night. I even had two on the go one night. Not the same time, but fuck, I barely had one out the door before there was another one knockin. Mostly Hatchet and Ship girls though. Never a Gropevine girl, where if they gotta pay for their own cab they’re slummin it.
But by Christ the poppers, the sex part, I had no clue. This girl named, ahhh, this missus comes around one night and we were hot and heavy for a while there, but then it got kinda awkward so I whips out the poppers and starts sellin ’em to her, how they’re s’pose to be good for doin the wild thing. I’m kneelin there with me cock goin soft inside ’er. She gives the bottle a little sniff, then says fuck it and takes a giant huff and closes her eyes. I takes one then and holds it in for as long as I can. I’m fully expectin to go off me fuckin head but then the sweat breaks out on ’er forehead and she starts breathin heavier and pushin at me and then I’m hard as a rock and everything else in the fuckin universe fades away except the walls of her cunt. And I knows that sounds crude but it’s fuckin true, there really was nothing else, like our bodies were one and the same. Not like we had some connection of the fuckin soul or that kinda shit, just that we were both in the same place at the same time with the heat and the hearts poundin and the sweat and the smell of hungry, rabid fuckin primal sex.
Never laid eyes on her after.
So this first morning with Donna, that’s the fuckin business alright. She wants me to put on a safe first. We tries it out, but it’s like washin me goddamn hands with cotton gloves on, so when it slips off we just keeps right on. Fucking. She wants it every which way too, and she dont need no coaxin. I’ll just be gettin a good pace up and the next thing I knows she’s flat on her belly with the poppers under her nose and her two hands on the cheeks of her arse tellin me to take me pick of where I wants to put it. I aint long makin up me mind either. That’s a rare one, I’ll tell ya. Loud too she is. Fuck.
In the blink of a fuckin eye then, two or three weeks is after rollin by and I’m still knockin around with her. However that happened I’ve no fuckin clue. I helped her lug in what furniture she had, set up the bed and stereo, slapped on a fresh coat of paint. Everything good and laid-back too for a while, nice place to lay low, watch a bit of porn and eat and fuck. Course, then I shows up one evening and she got all this crowd in for drinks and draws, that greasy Jane Neary, who hooked us up and seems so fuckin proud of herself for it, that shiny Philip dink and a few other faces from the Hatchet. Battered and twitchy Jim McNaughton, older than everybody by at least two decades, sittin there noddin along and smilin in his own world and cant peel his eyes away from Donna’s tits. Have a good gawk Jim, I knows I’m s’pose to give a fuck but I dont. I really fuckin dont. Everyone’s talkin politics and fuckin art and treatin me and Donna like we’re some cute little item. Donna with a pack of smokes and a half dozen non-alcoholic beer in the fridge for me, fuckin Molson Exel, and has to go announce it to me in front of everyone, like she wants to make bloody well sure they all knows she’s lookin after me or something. And so I barks at her:
—I got fuckin smokes girl. Think I cant fend for meself or wha?
I yanks open the fridge and sees there’s a load of beer, real beer, and wine on the bottom shelf alongside the Molson Exel. Molson fuckin Exel. Same slop old Randy use to cart home every time he’d take the pledge. He’d guzzle cases of it for about two weeks, then slip over to a light beer for a while, then on to “the good stuff” again.
Molson Exel. Lord fuck. Like I aint allowed now. Like I aint to be trusted around real beer, like I havent got no mind of me own. If I wanted to drink that fuckin bog water I’d fuckin well hunt it down on me own.
Thinks she knows me now do she? Thinks she got it all sussed out.
I stands at the counter and demolishes five Black Horse in ten minutes flat. Fuckin flattens ’em. One after the other. The second one hits me head like a shot of fuckin morphine and I has to laugh at how foolish I’ve been to be puttin meself through such stresses. Cause if there’s one fucker who can handle his drink it’s Clayton goddamn Reid. Donna watchin me outta the corner of ’er eye, askin no questions. I turns John Lennon on crank and then I gets all bloated and saucy with Philip till he fucks off for fear of his teeth. When he’s gone everything goes right quiet. They’re all starin at the floor and sippin their wine like fuckin youngsters caught at something they shouldnt be at. Too shitbaked to look at me, so I fucks off too, cause I’m in the mood for a good old-fashioned dust-up.
I swipes a near-full bottle of wine from the kitchen counter and closes the front door soft behind me. Never even says goodbye.
Down to the Hatchet then, shit-faced. Open mic on the go. I keeps gettin up singin Bob Dylan and the Doors and gettin free beer. Donna shows up at some point, all pissed off at me for bein a prick and spoilin her little fag-fest. I cant stop laughin at her, with the fuckin gold earrings danglin and the bright red blowjob lipstick and that starved and battered need just drippin from her eyes. She grabs me by the sleeve and tries to drag me out the door, but I breaks away and climbs onto the pool table, keeps jabbin at her with the pool stick so’s she cant get near me. Next thing I knows I’m arguing with Mike Quinn while he’s shovin me out the front door.
Last goin off I’m out in the back alley smokin a big dirty draw with Petey Thorne, the chunky fucker hostin the open mic, and I’m tellin him about me own songs, how I useta have a band, and he’s just noddin at me like I’m some kinda shithead wannabe.
And then someone’s pullin us apart.
I wakes up on the floor in me bedroom at Val’s with blood on me elbow and the knee tore outta me jeans.
Val with one of his demos on bust downstairs. I can smell that fishy coffee he makes, with the steam and the milk. I was never much on coffee. We only ever had the instant shit in the house growin up. Tea was it and it still fuckin is. The bottled coffee was only kept on hand for townies. Anne-Marie, me old man’s missus, always made a big sarcastic deal of it when she offered someone a cuppa tea and they said they wanted coffee. But that’s the way up the Shore, ask for anything outta the ordinary, like a cup of fuckin coffee or skim milk, and run the risk of havin yourself labelled a snob, stuck-up: That one thinks her shit dont stink like the rest of us. Honest to fuck, wouldnt know but you’d put in a request for broiled lobster or caviar or an eight ball of coke or something. Anne-Marie. Fuck her. She knows nothing, perfect match for the old man.
I tumbles down the stairs, hopin against hope there’s still a few codeine left in the cabinet, and there she fuckin is, Donna, gigglin over some shit Val’s fillin her head with. She looks at me then. Fine fuckin sight, first thing in the afternoon. And she all dolled up again.
—Well mister. Did you get it out of your system or what?
Outta me system? Fuck do she know about what makes me tick? Thinks she got me pinned already. Think again little miss. Val lookin at me and shakin his head and smilin, like he got the inside scoop on my fuckin life when he barely knows what’s goin on in his own.
—Fuck are you doin here?
Right hateful I says it, and she’s not expectin that. She goes red and stops smilin and drops her eyes to the floor. Val gets right cuntish with me and I tells him to fuck off and he laughs, cause he gets a kick outta how I dont take no shit from no one. Cause I fuckin dont. Then she starts laughin and we all has a little draw and that brings me head right around to what I went and done. I was almost five weeks this time. Not a drop. She gets yakkin about the way I got on at the bar last night and the sauce I gave to that sparkly Philip fucker. I starts to turn a bit shy, even guilty, because she seems so delighted with me. And even though I wants her gone, gone now out of my life so I can start again on me own where I belongs, I cant help but notice the way the sun catches on her neck, that soft spot beneath her earlobe and how her stretchy top hooks across her nipples that way. How you can almost see right through them little white shorts and I reasons with meself that maybe she’s alright after all, that I just might hang out with ’er for another bit.
—Want to go out for a bite or a drink Clayton? On me.
Fuckin hell, see how they lines up against you? Forces. Go out for a drink. Easy as that. But I dont want to anyhow, cause she had to go and say, right in front of Val, that it was on her, like I cant find me own dinner or something, or like the only reason I’d go anywhere with anyone is if I didnt hafta pay. I dont answer her. Val gives me a sharp and sadistic poke in the small of me back with the neck of his guitar. It fuckin hurts. I feels like snappin the guitar in half only for he told me I could have it whenever he kicks the bucket. He might be kickin it sooner than he thinks, if he dont fuck off.
—First two rules of rock-and-roll Clayton: never turn down a free lunch, cause there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
—Well now Val, that’s only one fuckin rule isnt it?
—What’s that?
—Well, if I wrote it down on paper, it’d only come out as the one sentence, one rule.
—Fuck off Clayton.
Me and her went down to the Hatchet then. Me stomach too delicate for anything more solid than a pint of Guinness. Game of pool and a straightener. Or a primer I should say. On her.
2. The Lobster Complex
Been crashin at Val’s for near on two months now. I had nowhere else to go after they gave me the heave at the General’s Inn. Val insisted I move in though. Massie, his wife, my elusive aunt, is after takin off to Corner Brook with some painter. Val, on his own in the big empty house. He didnt give a fuck about rent and shit like that.
So I said why the fuck not?
Val lived in Vancouver for years and then he got all screwed up with his record company and came home. I was livin in Town nearly six months before I knew he’d moved back. I saw his old snarl on a poster downtown and I showed up at his gig that night and introduced meself. He knew me, but he didnt really. He fuckin well called me Clarence first. I mean, I knew him on and off over the years. He’d show up at the house like a fuckin tornado and leave weed all over the floor and the counter, bang away on the guitar for me. He was around a lot after Mom’s accident, come to think on it, maybe cause Randy was so fucked up. They’d stay up and have a few beer. Sometimes they got pretty loud and nasty with each other and I heard shit I knows I prob’ly shouldnt have. Just Randy all stroppy and spoilin for a racket after a few too many, always lookin to point the finger at anyone atall other than himself. Diggin at Val I s’pose just cause he’d gone out into the world and made something of hisself. I never heard many good things about Val over the years. Anne-Marie always sayin to me that he was fucked up and his head was all swole up. I s’pose that’s the price you pays for gettin on the cover of the fuckin Herald. One time he came up the Shore to play at the folk festival and asked some dickhead to turn off his video camera. Of course they all had to go make a big stink about it, but Val was only lookin out for the bootleggin thing. I asked him about that a few weeks back and he says:
—You dont want tapes out there Clayton, especially amateur video, with that shitty outdoor festival sound that gives people the licence to verify what they want to believe about you anyhow: that your success is unwarranted.
Slick enough. Gotta look out for your own interests I s’pose, cause no one else will. People’re just jealous anyhow, cant stand to see one of their own get ahead in the world. That’s that whole lobster complex: soon as one makes a break for the top of the tank, the rest gives it their goddamn best to drag ’im back down. But I still always looked up to him for doin what he did. What he does. I had a poster of one of his albums on me wall when I was in high school and I ’members Randy belchin at me about gettin suspended and tellin me I’d end up in jail if I didnt straighten out. I points to the poster of Val and says that that’s what I’m fuckin into, that’s where I wants to go. And ole Randy clicks his teeth and says:
—Yes now, and fuck over everyone in your path to get there? Some life.
But that’s the way you gotta go old man. Let yourself get bogged down with the bullshit, fuckin relationships and money and education, and then where’s the goddamn music? Fuck that. I’m goin for it. Not the music part, not no more, not now, but maybe I’m thinkin I might write a play or a movie or some such shit. Dont seem to be much to it. I got a few ideas, I knows a few stories. Just needs to get meself rigged out.
Like I said, I tried the band thing for a few years. Me and a bunch of fellas from the Shore had a decent little setup for a while. We did mostly cover songs at first, but after a while we sorta weeded ’em out and wound up with about a dozen of our own. I did all the writin of course. I’d just kinda be walkin along the roads in the night time and I’d hear a song in me head and I’d start singin it and comin up with the words right there on the spot. It’s like that shit is waitin there in the back of your head all along. Course, I could never get the hang of the guitar. I mean, I knows a bunch of chords and a few little riffs, but I could never manage to sing and play the one time. So I’d basically end up bringin a song into the band and singin the melody and then Corey, cousin fuckin Corey, he’d just work out the music parts and Mark’d shove a bass line to it and then Jason’d just come in on the drums. At the end of the day we sounded pretty good. But more often than not it wouldnt turn out to be the song I heard in me head first goin off, and we had a few rackets. Good fun though. We played our first show at the Horseshoe down in Cape Broyle. Teenage dance. Packed. People starvin for it, goin cracked dancin and drinkin and fightin out behind. Some shithead grabbed the mic stand and banged the microphone off me front teeth. I booted him in the guts and then the owner came down and told us all to turn it down a bit. We made nearly seventy bucks each and we were delighted with that. Grand laugh it was. We called ourselves the Lost Weekend, after John Lennon’s infamous tear in San Francisco where he smashed that fucker’s head in with a cigarette case.
The band was good. I can say that much. I sent Val a demo to his address in Toronto but he never did remember gettin it. The Lost Weekend. And I reckon we coulda done alright in Town. We even got bumped up in the battle of the bands on George Street. But everybody was always off at something more important and we could never get it together to have a jam and there was more drinkin goin on than was necessary. I fucked off to Dublin then, to save me own life. And when I got back the b’ys had a new singer, some flimsy fag-boy from Mount Pearl, a CD in the works. They were called the Cold Shoulder, one of the possible names that I was after comin up with when we first started out. Fuckin loyalty for ya. Here I was, fresh home, with all kinds of new ideas and songs and nothing goin on in me life and rearin to start singin again, but they were just a bunch a fuckin detached pricks. Corey even told me that he’d sell me a CD at a discount when it was finished. Me fuckin cousin and everything. I wanted an explanation, to know what they were all bein so cunty about, but they couldnt come up with a proper excuse, said I was too hard to handle and that there was too much tension all the time and that I was a bastard with everyone when I wanted to be and that I’d just fucked off overseas and left everybody hangin. But sure they had no clue about the stress and the strain I was under. I saw that program in the paper advertising for Dublin and I knew that if I didnt go for it, I’d die. Had to go, had to just get the fuck outta town. I was livin on me own then, in a little deathtrap on Mullock Street with no fire escape and a bunch of psychos and retards on all sides. Me girlfriend was just after havin a so-called nervous breakdown and she was all the time screamin at me to love her and be there and then her grandmother died so everything got worse. I blew me student loan on booze and had no way to pay the rent and I was drinkin night and fuckin day.
I swiped a bike one night on Hayward Avenue and rode it up to the university parking lot and went round and round in circles till I fuckin collapsed with the tears rollin down me face and no one in the world to talk to. The next day I checked into the detox centre down in Pleasantville. I had to. I was there for a few days dryin up before I got a call at the pay phone, cause that’s the number I gave out, tellin me I was picked to go overseas. So, who in the fuck are they, the Cold fuckin Shoulder, to tell me I was too hard to handle and self-centred and shit when they had no idea I was on the verge of death? Fuck ’em. They’ll all get theirs. And like I said, if I hadnt got out when I did I’d be fuckin dead now anyhow. That’s just it see? I got out, I moved on. From where they were standin I was bettering meself, makin a break for the top of the tank. And by turnin their backs on me, well that was just their way of pullin me back down.
I s’pose I coulda started something up on me own around town when I got home, but I didnt really have the energy to go balancing other people’s schedules and shit. Plus I drank so much in Dublin that I was just plannin on layin low for a bit when I got home. Dry out and get me shit in order. See how that’s workin out? Anyhow, the way I sees it, if you really wants to make a band work, you gotta be all livin under the one roof and all drawin welfare. That’s the only way, to have nothing else in your life but the music and a few draws and a bit of skin. Not a girlfriend, mind you, not someone who’s gonna want you to go off watchin fuckin movies and hangin out with the family on the weekends and houndin you about watchin your money and puttin on clean clothes, just someone to bang around with on your own fuckin terms every now and then.
Plus I figured by then, where I was the great Valentine Reid’s nephew, well that’s what I’d have to live up to all the time, and I said fuck that, I aint goin livin in his shadow for the rest of me fuckin days. Valentine Reid’s savage little crippled nephew?
