LOND HO ADVENTURES PART FIVE

(The beginning, realy...)

LATE SEPTEMBER 1992

I am living at the London House flats, although you’d never know the name of the place by the sign. Years of inclement weather and neglect have burned out most of the illumination on the sign which now reads simply “Lond Ho.”
A week before my buddy Bill and I are looking through the newspapers, searching for a suitable place for us to hang our hats, as neither of us make enough money at our shitty-ass mcjobs to afford a place without a roommate to pick up the slack. We call a few places before deciding to try our luck at the Lond Ho if for no other reason than the landlady we spoke to on the phone sounded young, and attractive. Bill tells me he might try to seduce her to see if it would help us get a rent reduction, even though what the ad quoted was more than reasonable: 2 bedrooms, $475 a month, includes cable and all utilities.
Bill has just given me the lowdown on the party he went to last night at Derrick’s place. According to Derrick, there was no better place to meet women than “The Fucken Downtown” as he called it. According to Derrick, we would be waist deep in “chicks” every weekend, and our flat would become “party fucken central” for all of our friends. According to Derrick, we would be getting laid every night. We have no idea how Derrick could be privy to the inner-workings of inner-city society as he has never in his life ventured beyond North East Calgary with the exception of the occasional hunting trip with his uncle. I look out the train window and the sky is darkening, gray clouds are settling in; it is going to be a long winter.
The moment we step onto the sidewalk, making our way north on Fourth street the first snowflakes begin to fall, slowly, almost lazily, from the overcast sky. The traffic, both pedestrian and automotive, on the streets is thickening as rush hour begins. The snow melts as it touches the ground giving the city a bright, glistening look to spite the grayness that attempts to suffocate us.
Walking in silence the mind wanders and I remember Karyn. She was the one. I know that now of course, now that it’s over, now that that there is no chance for reconciliation. The last time we spoke she told me she was getting married to a Lebanese guy she met at community college. I tell her I’m happy for her but I’m not. How could I be? It was suppose to be me that she was marrying, not some faceless college kid. The cliché says you don’t realize how much you miss somebody until they’re gone, no not gone, but so long departed, so far out of reach as to be completely inaccessible. So far that even if one had the ability to reach across light-years, that which is the object of profound desire would still be just out of reach, just millimeters from the fingertips. Taunting, but at the same time not. Beaconing, yet shunning. Opening up and at the same moment shutting one off, closing the door, almost taking off the tips of the fingers with it. All around the universe goes on, swirling, expanding, contracting, uncaring and most likely completely unaware of one’s feeble, insignificant existence.
We arrive at the building and buzz the landlady. She lets us in immediately and we are directed by the signs to her office. As I get a look at her I’m shocked by her age. If I had to judge by her voice on the phone and through the intercom I would have swore she was in her late twenties. The woman dwarfed by the huge, ancient wooden desk who sits before us hasn’t seen her twenties in a great long time. Any thoughts Bill might have had about working his mojo on the landlady for a reduction in rent have flown the coop.
The first thing the landlady wants to know is whether we want a one, or two bedroom place. “Two!” we both shout out at the same time before looking at each other and chuckling nervously at the vociferousness of our reply.
She takes us to the lifts and up to the fourteenth floor which is really the thirteenth, but due to the absurdly superstitious nature of North American society, we are forced to lie, and delude ourselves into thinking we are someplace less “unlucky.” Personally I think it’s nothing more than a load of puritanical bullshit, but that’s another story. She unlocks the door of #1401 and strides in ahead of us extolling the virtues of the place; the new carpet, new stove, new paint, new cupboards, etc. We need no such convincing, we want this place. She goes on with her sales pitch speaking about the rent and all that it includes, saying nothing more or less than what we read in the newspaper advert.
She takes us down to the pool and shows it to us, explaining the hours of operation etc. before taking us back down to her office where she explains that the whole “interview” is merely a formality and if we would just sign the lease and give her a cheque for the damage deposit ($250) and the first month’s rent, then the place was ours. Furthermore, she tells us, we can move in as soon as it’s convenient for us as the place had apparently stood empty since the end of July.
The flat was ours! We decide a little celebration is in order and head on over to the Unicorn for a pint, or six. Bill gives Fred a call from a phone booth in TD and tells him to meet us at the pub. As I’m waiting for him to get off the phone, a young missionary starts talking to me, axing me if I’ve found Jesus. I tell him that I didn’t know He was lost. My humor is lost on him, but he nonetheless tells me he will be praying for me and hands me a CHICK Publications cartoon book. I thank him for the little comic book, but tell him save his prayers for the truly wicked.
Bill hangs up the receiver and tells me he needs to stop in the Canada Trust for some cash. Bill jumps out into traffic on Third Street and I run to catch up with him as a silver Acura screeches to a halt, the driver yelling obscenities at us, and inquiring as to weather we want to “get killed?” We push through the revolving into Eaton Centre and Bill makes his way through the throng of people in the crowded bank. He takes out fifty bucks, and we are on our way to the pub.
The place is just starting to fill up as we take a place at the backside of the main bar, tossing our coats over a third stool saving it for Fred. I order a Big Rock Traditional Ale, and Bill orders a Molson Canadian, and shakes his head, axing me how I can “drink that piss?” Before I can answer him the bartender, a big girl with a shock of beautiful, blonde ringlettes speaks.
“So, that’s a Trad, and a Swill. Coming up.”
Bill lights up a smoke and I flip through the amusing little Christian comic book. It’s all about a guy that drinks “too much” and because of this (?) his wife dies, he loses his job. But the so-called “last straw” for his children comes when he (gasp!) decides to stop going to church! For this his kids decide to desert their poor, drunken father! It has a happy ending of course, with the little comic book alcoholic going back to God who, so the writers of the comic would have you believe, is single-handedly (does God even have hands?) responsible for getting the man to stop drinking, and getting his family back, and turning Coke to Pepsi, etc. “I feel so much better now that Jesus is back in my heart!”
Fred joins us at the bar after a time and Bill and I read the little comic story to him, giving each individual character his or her own wacky cartoon voice. For some reason he doesn’t find it as funny as we do.
A booth opens in the back corner so we migrate over to continue our celebration. Fred relates to us something he read “somewhere” about how “cattle consume fifty percent of the Earth’s water supply, and the other fifty percent is consumed by every other living thing.” For this reason he has decided he is no longer going to eat any meat that has been ranched. That’s right, only meat that has been hunted down in the wild and killed either personally by him, or someone else, is fit for his consumption.
We listen politely to his little diatribe before Bill puts it to him that he could never kill an animal. In fact he would become physically ill, and in all likelihood never again go hunting if he could even manage to shoot straight enough to kill something.
Fred shakes his head in denial (not just a river in Egypt) and tells us that he not only has the stomach for it, but is planning to go out with Derrick and his uncle the next time they go deer hunting.
Bill starts to graphically describe the gutting, and butchering process. Fred begins to look a little green before telling us that maybe he would let Derrick and his uncle do the dirty work for him, thereby reaping all the so-called “rewards” of fresh meat, but with none of the nastiness.
I decide to open my own can of conversational worms and axe him if he was planning to eat fish.
“Of course,” says he.
Bill then mentions that some fish are farmed for consumption.
Fred says that he will only eat fish that is not farmed.
I want to know how he will know the difference to which he replies: “I’ll just know.”
This was the way most conversations went with Fred. He says something banal, or makes a statement based on something he “read somewhere,” or “heard from someone,” which we usually find out later are just regurgitations of what some Professor told him when he went to university, or something he read in some socialist rag like “The Gauntlet,” or even something he saw on a television programme like W5. Then Bill or I (or perhaps the two of us together) would tell him not to believe everything he reads/hears/sees in an attempt to bring him back down to a little place we like to live on called “Earth.”
The drinking, and talking, and celebration continue until the bell for “last orders” rings out. I bring our last pints to the table and get stuck in for the dénouement of the evening festivities when a street lady wearing men’s Levis (about two sizes too big for her), a couple of ratty shirts, and a “Jamaican flag” decorated toque begins to clear the empty pint glasses from our table.
“You work here?” I axe her.
“Oh, no! Of course not!” She says with a thick West Indian accent.
“Ah,” I say, nodding.
After she clears our table she moves on to others.
I look over at Fred and we both start snapping our fingers and humming a tune from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks as it was clear, at least to the two of us, that the moment had a certain Lynchian quality to it.
We are on our way out when it’s decided that we will try the electronic breathalyser that’s bolted to the wall beside a pay-phone. Bill blows a .134, Fred blows a .09, and somehow I manage a .180. I win!