Right Away Monday, page 20
20. If You’re Lookin for Drama…
On the steps of the Ship like a fuckin retard, gawkin in through the murky old orange glass to see if I cant catch sight of her. I knows she’s in there. But I aint lookin for trouble, really, no scene, no dramatics. I reckon I dont know what I’m hopin to see, maybe me eyes wants to see something that me heart doesnt. Who she is, how she is when I aint around, how she turns her back on me. Show me something girl, something human: weakness, flaws, disloyalty, dishonesty, fuckin lie to me, humiliate me, dive head first into all them places you swears you’ll never go again. Gimme something. I knows she’s in there, loaded by now too aint she? Just cant bring herself back after the first one. No goin back. Like this acid. It’s in me system now till I sleeps it off. And aint sleep a long way off tonight? With her out here in the city, in some bar without me, entertaining people, talkin, laughin, showin herself. Without me. If I cant catch just a glimpse of her, if I cant connect, make amends, or find some reason to justify this guilt, this rage, some discrepancy in how she conducts herself, I knows I’ll spend the next twelve hours on me knees, lost and broken and pinin for her with a death wish so heavy on me shoulders I’ll never be able to walk upright again. Acid does that shit to me.
I cant make nothing out through this fuck of a window, just shapes and outlines and muted lights. I presses me ear to the cold steel door. The tail end of that Billy Bragg song, from Mermaid Avenue. She loves that album. The music dies away and I strains hard to pick out something of her voice through the garble of mumbles and snorts and hoots and cackles from the crowd. That one, that sounds like her laugh. I conjures up her smile, bright, soothin to me head when I brings it into full focus. I tries to match the image of that smile with the laugh I just heard…Cant be sure. The moment’s gone. And I should get meself gone. Before I goes mad. Or maybe this is madness. Maybe there is no goin back from here. Really.
The bartender turns on the Pogues version of “Dirty Old Town” and before the vocals even kicks in I hears Iz scream across the bar:
—Turn that shit off! You know I cant stand that guy!
And within seconds the song gets replaced by one of Val’s songs. “Hard to Believe”. And Izzy pipes up again with:
—That’s good, that’s the one…
Greasy Dan is dyin for a taxi
He feels a little smaller in the rain
He got a pair of scissors in his old grey coat
He’s goin down to sink ’em in his buddy Shane.
Val’s newly “rediscovered” working-class, disillusioned-street-life song. How low we can sink, how desperate we can get once our worlds get shrunk down enough, once the walls close in finally. The radio’s been playin this song a fair bit lately, for some reason. I dont know how old it is, or even what album it’s on. Val’s got lotsa his shit scattered about anyhow. Most of the bar inside starts singin along and I knows full well none of ’em really understands it, that none of ’em have ever or will ever know the pain of homelessness or wandering the streets without love or home or family or hope. That’s what the fuckin song is about: bein forgotten, cast out in the cold.
Forehead still pressed to the door, I grips the handle. Me heart flutters and then sinks a bit. That quiver in me chin, jaw clenched, the grind of me teeth. I glances down at the slushy concrete beneath me boots and it seems to ripple and dip when I clicks me heels against it. Me boots are muddy and streaked with road salt. There’s a film of sparkly brown glass dust caked into the leather rim of the soles. That’s not good.
I should go now, go back to the acid with Brent and have a good time, drink meself down out of it. Leave her for good. Walk away and suffer it out in some long-drawn-out calm and sober silence. Just find some cozy hole to crawl into and rock meself back and forth till she’s outta me system. Walk away. Be the first to drop the bomb. Before she guts me.
Shane is draggin Sissy through a doorway
He’s numb and he can barely feel her pain
She’s sunk another fifty in the VLTs
Gotta teach the girl a lesson for a change.
I’ll just walk in and grab her hand and drag her home and fuckin take her every which way she wont let herself be taken. Wild and free and open and fully fuckin inside. See her try and gut me after that. I presses me ear harder to the door. There’s talk now. Someone says in a dreary and wintry slurred Canadian accent:
—Is he still alive? What’s his name? McGraw? McDougal? I dont know.
And from across the bar again Isadora shouts:
—MacGowan. Shane MacGowan. He’s a zombie.
I tried to get her into the Pogues a while back, turned it on in the room when we were makin yet another attempt at decent sex. And didnt she just jump up outta the bed and flick it off:
—What are we in high school? I’m not screwing to the beat of some drunk shit.
—But it’s good Iz, there’s romance in there, it’s poetry girl.
—Poetry? Screaming, howling drunken growls is all anyone can make of it. And you only like it cause it’s from over there anyway.
I told her then, about the time I saw old Shane with that other band, the Popes, at the Olympia in Dublin. How MacGowan really was a zombie, how it was all true about his demise. And the crowd lovin it all, like they were there to witness a hanging, a crucifixion, a martyring. Heartbreaking, seein him like that. He couldnt find the mic stand, couldnt raise his voice, didnt know where he was. Threw up on stage. It was all so fucked and sad and tragic. And I was tryna relay this to her you know, tryna get her to listen to the songs, the words, instead of the drunk that was singin ’em. She wouldnt bother though, just nodded at me with this distant ghostly smile. I told her about the crusty scars between MacGowan’s middle and index fingers, how a technician would come on stage with a fresh-lit cigarette to replace the one in MacGowan’s hand. How sometimes old Shane would bring his hand to his mouth to take a draw and there wouldnt even be a cigarette in it, then drop his hand back to his side and the fresh new smoke would just magically appear.
I said:
—It was fuckin soul destroying. If I ever finds meself in that kinda state I hope someone has the good sense to put a bullet in the back of me head.
And she perked up then, finally, and goes:
—Suppose there is a soul Clayton, some part of our essence, our spirit, that carries on through eternity after we’re gone. Do you think if our souls bumped into each other in like a thousand years from now, just out floating in the void, bumping around…do you think our souls would recognize each other? Do you think they’d link up, reunite and stay together? Or would one soul just say Oh pardon me and carry on?
—I…dont know girl. What’s that got to do with Shane Mac—
—I think, that because there are billions of people in the world right now, which means that in a thousand years there’ll be billions more souls out there, that it’s irrational to assume you can meet your soulmate in a downtown bar.
—Okay…
And she smiled then and took me fingers and sucked ’em into her mouth, guided me wet hand under the sheet and between her legs and said:
—We dont need someone screaming in the background do we? Let’s just try and be gentle. And look at me Clayton. Always look at me…
Sissy was a schemer back in high school
She played a pretty tricky little game
But ever since she “took a spill” and lost that tooth
She’s been waiting on the corner in the rain…
I takes one deep breath, settles me heart, sucks in me gut, gives me eyes a good rub and shakes out the throb in me foot. No trouble now Clayton, no fuss, no commotion.
Head high, with what I hope looks to be a good-natured expression on me face, I barges in through the door, scans the room for Isadora. Twenty-odd bodies in the bar and they all turns to look at me the one time. A few nods, but nothing of the welcoming sort. The Table of Death is there, minus Robert Dawe. That’s what they calls the old theatre crowd when they all conglomerates in the corner and drinks themselves into oblivion and bitches about why they aint more famous and why they’re so broke and yaks about what big ideas they got and how the world is gonna one day listen up. One of ’em cornered me a few weeks back and went on and on about some novel he was plannin on writin called The Island, how there’s never been a book like it and how it’s the only book by a Newfoundlander that’ll ever need to be read by anyone, anywhere in time. That’s what he said. And that it was gonna be absolutely brilliant. Just brilliant. I told him to fuck off and go write it then. Arseholes, the lot of ’em. They’ll turn on you in a flash if you shows ’em one sign of weakness or praise you to the high heavens if you might be of some use to ’em. I’ve seen Val at that table from time to time, come to think of it.
And now, here’s the lady of the hour. Sittin on some cocksucker’s knee with her forehead pressed to his. They’re both gigglin. See? I aint so fuckin paranoid after all. Fuckface got on these expensive-lookin Buddy Holly glasses and a skin-tight pin-striped fag jacket with flared pants. He’s got one hand gripped tight on Izzy’s inner thigh. I cant see his other hand. I flexes me arms as hard as I can, to get the blood flowin. Clenchin me hands in and out as forcefully as possible without breakin a bone. To get the blood flowin. I unzips me jacket and marches towards them. No limp. Iz looks up and smiles that smile when she sees me comin. Like nothing atall outta the ordinary is takin place. She says, still smilin, her head rollin loose on her shoulders:
—Hello there you. Do you know Francis? He’s directing that movie I was telling you about.
She grabs this Francis wanker by the two cheeks right playful and says:
—What do you think of Clayton here? Dontyou think he’d make a great bad guy? Isnt he just so scary?
And she’s just drippin with sarcasm of course and maybe wanting me to cause the scene that I’ll be delighted to cause anyhow. Pokin at me. Mr. Director, cunty-balls almighty, scarcely glances at me and then turns back to Isadora, readjusts his grip on her thigh. You cant imagine how red the rage. You cant fathom how badly I’d just love to take that bottle of beer he’s sippin at and jam it down his throat and then knock him to the floor and smash at the outline of the bottle with the heel of me boot and smash crunch stomp and grind the glass into his jugular and watch while he chokes on his own blood and snot and glass dust. Only I prob’ly wouldnt stop kickin and jumpin on his neck once I started, so he wouldnt even have a chance to choke, his head’d just get squat away from his body and then I’d pick that up like a football and fuckin boot it across the bar. I’ve heard all about this hotshot knob-gobbler with his artsy motion fuckin picture that’s makin its way to town. How could I not when the whole fuckin town is talkin about it. Val’s been meetin with people about it, readin through the script with fuckers. And Isadora’s barely shut up about it for the past three weeks, goin on about how she plans to spend the money she’ll make, when she dont even got nothing to do with it yet. Tryna tell me I should fuckin well audition too. And me sayin no, that I have no interest in pimpin meself out to some pricks and she goin on then about how I have no concern for the future, for our future. And me then, like the fuckin proper tool, I went and said to Val that I wanted in on it, how I wants a part or at least a fuckin audition and he just fuckin smirked at me. He fills me in then, how all the unionized crowd, the real actors, gets first go at auditioning. Then when the producers figures they aint gonna find anyone amongst that crowd, they invites the general public in to audition. Just so they can say well, we tried, we looked, before importing some wanker from Toronto or some second-rate wash-up from the States to act like what they thinks a Newfoundlander acts and sounds like. Make ya fuckin sick. Or they might actually find someone in Newfoundland who suits what they’re lookin for and they raises the lucky individual up on a pedestal for a few weeks and then drops ’em like a bag of shit when the shoot wraps. Val’s analysis made me sick to my fuckin guts to be honest. And it makes me kinda sad and nervous for Isadora, how she’s so fuckin desperate to penetrate that world. Who knows how far she’s willin to go to land some role that’ll supposedly “make” her. I was fried on hash one day and said to her:
—Look girl, career stuff, that’s just how we numbs ourselves. It’s a façade that just lets us deny the reality of the shortcomings of our real lives, a life outside of all that, where we’re loved and understood, a life where someone looks deep into your eyes and decides that no matter how much recognition you got, or money or talent, or whether or not you’re a “name,” that there’s still something there worth lovin and upholding and protecting and keepin close. Look girl, it dont matter a fuck to me if you never sees a penny from that world.
That’s what I said to her. Quite the speech, and pretty goddamn insightful if you’re askin my opinion. But still, no gettin through to her. She says:
—I just want to touch it. That world. Then decide for myself if it’s where I want to be. You go be content working a bar. I’m not.
She got this role a few years back in some sci-fi TV thing in Halifax and “caught the bug,” as she likes to put it. It fuckin spoiled her, from what I can gather. They flew her up there and tucked her into a fancy hotel and treated her like glass and paid her a shitload of money and told her she’d be gettin all kinds of work afterwards, that she really had IT. This is what her friend Trish told me anyhow, that’s Izzy’s best friend I s’pose, another fuckin actress type. The two of ’em had a spat one night and Trish cornered me and started bitchin to me about it all, how Iz had come back from Halifax with her head all bloated and waitin around for the phone to ring. But Isadora told me later how Trish was after goin out for the same job. Trish said Isadora did a few “piddly” interviews in the papers, had her picture taken and even did the weather with that CBC fucker one evening. And then that was it. Nothing. Unless you counts the famous Toddler Dawe stalkin her and writin his shitty songs and poems for her. A few theatre shows, a couple of short films that didnt pay a cent, one line in that same movie Val was in last fall. Half a dozen auditions for bigshot films like the one that’s comin soon to a mob of starving downtown artists near you. Casting directors from Canada with mobile phones growin out the sides of their pasty faces who comes to Newfoundland and tosses money around and makes promises and stokes egos and offers roles that’re not yet even written. All so smitten with our quaint little accents and row houses. Buyin up land. Drinkin at the Ship at the end of the day and vaguely recognizing that lovely bartender from somewhere. Too full of shit and ignorant to realize she’s the same girl who just bared her soul in front of their camera not two hours before.
All this burnin through me head as I hefts across the floor of the Ship. That greasy-money hand on Isadora’s thigh. Mine. That little-girl-in-a-candy-shop pout on her face. That’s mine too, that’s only for me.
As I’m nearin the table where she’s sat perched on this director fucker’s lap, I can feel the crowd swell towards me, feel ’em bracin for trouble, feel the shift in the room. Conversation has ceased at the Table of Death. Val’s classic fightin, soul-searchin downtown drinkin anthem punctuating my every step towards Isadora’s table.
Dont let nobody tell you there’s a big love
Our time is but a fleeting little dream
They’ll tell you there’s a tunnel and a garden and a gate
I find it so hard to believe.
Me hand flat on the underside of the little table closest to Isadora and this…fuckin…haughty little prick. The flex of me acid-fuelled arm. The table lobbed into the air in slow motion, ashtrays and glasses crashin to the floor. The look on that cunt’s face. And Isadora still smilin like that, still perched tight and bouncin ever so slightly in his lap, this newest stab at success and recognition. I might kill one of ’em, I dont know. But suddenly there’s hands around me midsection, a sweaty forearm tight around me throat and I’m bein dragged back towards the entrance. The bartender, some spoiled young yuppie spawn from Corner Brook I actually useta knock around with, he goes:
—Careful, watch out, guys. No lawsuits.
Isadora bursts up into me face then, hateful and mean and lovin it all cause she gets to take centre stage, her eyes fogged over and bloodshot with drink and sudden rage.
—Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you trying to prove? I have to work here you know. Go make messes at your own scummy bar.
—Oh fuck off girl, I just wanted to see—
—Yeah fuck you! I know what you’re looking for, what you came to see. Well here.
She pulls her shirt around ’er neck and digs one of ’er tits out of ’er bra and jiggles it in me face.
—Here. That’s all isnt it? Snuggle up to the tit. Right? You and your fuckin—
And then Mr. Director, with his hands around her waist and draggin her away from me. I gives one big surge towards her and there’s a roar from the crowd that’s got ahold of me and the grip around me throat tightens and I knows I aint goin nowhere but out that fuckin door. The Table of Death all turned back to their drinks and misery. Nothing they havent seen before. And then the door slammin in me face and I’m sprawled on me back on the muddy slushy concrete walkway. Back on me feet then, punchin the heavy steel door till the blood runs free from me knuckles and the scarlet droplets pockin the fresh white snow on the railing.
Been sat here on the yellow guardrail in the parking lot beneath the Ship for what seems like an hour. Snuggle up to the tit. I cleans me hand in the snow, then makes a hard fist just to watch the fresh beads of blood seep and then pool between me fingers. Crazy Clara waddles by and asks me if I’m alright, if I’d like her to call an ambulance. She says:
