So he didn’t feel like fucking much anymore. It wasn’t about her—he didn’t really want to have sex with anyone. Maybe it was his weight. Maybe it was sage nature just saying that at his age his sperm wasn’t required anymore, so no more itchy urges down below for you, Sir. Maybe he’d simply had enough, maybe it was like Saturday night roaring with the guys: what once had seemed so essential becoming just one more thing he couldn’t really remember when he’d stopped or why, he just had. Maybe it was the existential essence of what people meant when they said they didn’t give a fuck.
But he’d keep fucking. Fucking, after all, was living. He’d keep fucking until there wasn’t any living left for him to do.
~
Girls were like that. They weren’t supposed to be as strong as boys—and sometimes, when it didn’t matter, they weren’t—but if they cared about something they would try harder and stick with it longer and you’d hear yourself say that whatever it was they were doing was dumb and you didn’t care about it anyway. Jogging in the cemetery with Allison was like that. She was on the cross-country team and I wasn’t, so I knew I might be rusty, but I wasn’t prepared to have to stop so the pain in my side would go away while Allison jogged in place waiting for me to catch my breath. And she wasn’t even trying to make me feel bad—was only doing what she needed to do until I was ready to jog again—which only made me feel worse.
I needed help. It wasn’t enough to build up my wind; I had to build up my body, too. My muscles. Boys had more muscles than girls. Or at least bigger ones. Potentially, anyway. I needed help building my muscles.
Even though the fate of Harrison Hall still hadn’t been decided, construction had begun on what was going to be the mall’s main parking lot, goodbye Marks and Spencer’s and Eaton’s and Walker’s Clothiers. How they could build a big parking lot without knowing for sure if there was even going to be a mall, at least where they intended it to be, didn’t make sense, but there were piles of bricks at the construction site free for the taking after dark, perfect makeshift dumbbells. But I needed more than weights. I’d never been inside Garden of Eden Health Foods before, and I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew I’d have a better chance of finding it there than anywhere else.
The first thing that was different about it wasn’t what was on the shelves or the salesperson behind the counter selling it, but what was playing on the stereo. It was what people called “classical” music, the kind of thing you heard snatches of in movies or radio commercials or on TV, Elmer Fudd intent on killing the wabbit to the melody of “Ride of Valkyries” my introduction to symphonic music, just as the theme song to Good Times was my first foray into the world of gospel and the title tune to Barney Miller where I heard jazz for the first time. But there were no cartoons or sitcoms to accompany this music, no interruption of what it was for the sake of something else. The woman at the cash register with the long straight silver hair and the amulet around her neck and the man in the turtleneck sweater pushing the miniature shopping cart seemed to be actually listening to what was playing. I walked to the rear of the shop trying to look as if I knew what I wanted while also attempting to listen to the music, but it kept sliding away because there weren’t any lyrics for my mind to sink into.
“Can I help you find anything?”
I hadn’t even noticed that the woman behind the counter wasn’t behind the counter anymore, was standing in front of me. The amulet had a black stone in its middle shaped like a human eye. It and the two eyes in her head were watching me, waiting for my answer.
“Do you have anything to help a person… I mean, if a person wanted to get stronger, say, stronger as in, like, weight-lifting stronger, is there anything you might have that might help a person get that way if they wanted to?”
The woman was tall and thin and might have been pretty except, I noticed, she wasn’t wearing any makeup, not even lipstick. Her lips were a smile, though, while she considered my question.
“Are you the bodybuilder in question?” she said.
“Sort of. I mean, yeah, but I’m not really trying to be a bodybuilder”—the woman pursed her lips, nodded in understanding—“I just want to get stronger all around. I also jog a few times every week.”
“That’s great,” she said. “I’m a jogger too. Where do you go?”
“The cemetery.”
“That’s interesting.”
“People say it’s weird or creepy, but it’s not. It’s quiet and there are ponds and stuff and no one’s there to bother you.”
“I’m sure.”
“Yeah.” I looked around at the surrounding shelves, at row after tidy row of pill bottles and mineral water and books on yoga and fasting and meditation. The music had changed while we’d been talking; it wasn’t a symphony anymore, only a single piano with just a whisper of identifiable melody so that, once again, I couldn’t catch it and own it and say I know it like I could with a rock song. The way it rose and swelled and fell, however, the way it twisted and teased with meaning, made it impossible not to try keep trying.
“Do you know what this music is called?” I said.
She tilted her head and shut her eyes. “Bach,” she said.
“Bach,” I repeated. It sounded the same as the word that you used when a baseball pitcher got caught pretending he was going to throw to the plate.
“I know it’s the Goldberg Variations,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure it’s Glenn Gould. I’m not positive—my business partner is the classical music nut around here. I’m more into jazz.”
“I thought you said it was”—I sounded the word out in my head— “Bach.”
“That’s right.”
“So… who’s the other guy?”
“Glenn Gould, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Bach is the one who wrote the Goldberg Variations—in the eighteenth century sometime, I think—but Glenn Gould is the one playing. At least I think it’s Glenn Gould. If Judy were here, she’d know. She’s in Toronto visiting her mother. Which is where Glenn Gould lives too, now that I think of it.”
“He’s”—it sounded funny to say it—”Canadian?”
“Uh huh. I’m pretty sure he was born in Toronto, but I’m positive he lives there now. We saw a documentary on him last year on CBC.”
The CBC was Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday and Disney movies on Sunday and Mr. Dressup and his puppet friends Casey and Finnegan in the morning.
“Okay, well, thanks,” I said. It was nearly five o’clock, but it was Saturday, Sam the Record Man was open until six. I didn’t know if they had any Glenn Gould records or even any classical music. I’d never noticed before.
“Don’t you want what you were looking for?” the woman said.
“No,” I said. “I mean, maybe, but I’ve got to get something else first. Thanks for your help, though. Thanks a lot.”
Girl Leaves, Woman Returns,
This Is Her Home
“Why Should What I Do or Don’t Do with My Genitals Define Who I Am as a Person?”
WHY SHOULD SHE be the one to leave? She, who loved this place as much or more than they did and who performed her civic duty as well or better than they did and who wanted—yes, there was that—to show them that she deserved to be there just as much as anyone else. Of course, thinking about them the majority of the time couldn’t be what life was about—anger spat always eventually blows back—but how could she, even now (a business owner, a homeowner, in love: happy) not occasionally understand herself in relation to them. Even before she knew was gay (she always knew), there was her and there was them and who they said she was.
She was a tomboy: would rather play baseball with her brothers and their friends than with the boring, dead-eyed dolls her parents bought for her.
She was difficult: wouldn’t wear the nightgowns her grandmother gave her for Christmas, a pretty l
ace collar a sandpaper choker chain.
She was weird: volunteered to work the door at the Friday night high-school dances and didn’t seem to care that she wasn’t inside the gym with everyone else where all the fun was.
She got good grades and she had big plans and she went away to McGill and was never coming back, not to stay, anyway. A big city like Montreal allowed little you to hide away and be nobody, which is exactly what you need if you’re ever going to be somebody someday and not just something that someone else says you should be. She studied biology and fell in love (a couple of times for real) and learned to love to row (misty river rude early morning freshness, the pleasant ache of abused muscles all day long) and four years later she was gay in the same way that she was a Scorpio or had brown hair. Maybe she’d take a year off after graduation to travel (she just might be able to afford it, having worked part-time at a health food store near the university her last two years at school), maybe she’d apply to graduate school to study nutrition, the things she learned at the store about alternative healing and diet ultimately more interesting than her biology textbooks and boring labs. Or maybe she’d… but that was the point. A question mark can sometimes be the answer.
She didn’t end up going to graduate school, she did work for a decade at this health-food store and that one, always bumping her head on being the manager but never the person who really ran the place or the person who made more than a barely-living wage. She turned thirty as a Montrealer of more than ten years, and love something or someone long enough and you’ll likely grow to occasionally loathe it, too. Haute couture oh so what, spending a week’s pay on a pair of boots you might wear twice and fashion magazines that smell better than you do are not the summit of cultural sophistication. She could speak French okay—could order her fresh bread across the busy bakery counter and even ask for directions if need be—but for some francophones, speaking French wasn’t enough, you had to be French, had to be born there (and your parents before you) to be accepted, and at what point does the understandable need for self-determination become a linguistic license for out-and-out discrimination? She was no puritan, that was for sure, but for someone who didn’t eat meat, smoke cigarettes, or drink more than the occasional glass of wine, the obligation to sit through a two-hour lunch or risk being considered rude was a bit much. She started to miss Chatham. She started to miss home.
Chatham: home: how funny was that. Since she was a kid at university, not calling Chatham home was one of the ways she knew who she was. She hadn’t belonged there, she’d moved somewhere where she did, she’d made her happiness happen. And now, the first grey hairs flecking her long brown hair, having successfully marooned herself in Montreal, here she was feeling sort of… homeless. God, life was funny. Was something, anyway.
So she moved back. And met Susan. And they opened Garden of Eden Health Foods together. And because they were the only such shop in town, they managed to make a living, a life, the life she knew she was supposed to live. And if she never advertised her relationship with Susan, she never hid it, either. This was the woman she chose to spend the rest of her life with and this was where she was going to do it and she wasn’t going anywhere, so they’d better get used to it. Whoever they were.
~
Dale called—he never called anymore—to ask what I was doing, did I want to hang out. Turned out that Sarah was away for a week with her parents in South Carolina so her dad could golf and her mom could shop, so suddenly he had time on his hands, had time for me. I tried not to sound too happy to hear from him. “I guess I’ve been pretty busy,” I said when he asked me what I’d been doing since summer vacation started.
“Oh, yeah, doing what?”
“Well, I’ve still got my paper route every day. Every day but Sunday.”
“Right.” He sounded contentedly bored, like he was relieved that I hadn’t been busy after all and that nothing had changed since he’d started spending all his free time with Sarah.
“And I’ve been jogging,” I said. “Three times a week, at least.” In truth, never more than three times a week, but technically, anyway, I wasn’t lying.
“Really?”
“I’m just trying to get in shape for football. I know it’s not for awhile, but I want to be ready.”
“How far do you go? I mean, where do you do it?” He sounded sort of panicky. Somehow this made me feel calmer.
“The cemetery,” I said.
“Really?”
“It’s quiet and kind of nice actually. Nobody bothers you. We like it there.”
“Who’s we?”
“Allison and me. She’s actually the one who told me about it.”
“Allison Hamilton?” He laughed as he said it, but it wasn’t a happy laugh and I didn’t feel happy hearing it.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“Something’s funny or you wouldn’t have laughed when you said Allison’s name.”
“I didn’t, I didn’t laugh.”
“I don’t care if you did, I was just wondering why.”
“I told you, I didn’t laugh.”
“Okay, fine.”
“Geez.”
“I said okay.”
“Okay.”
The phone pressed to my ear didn’t emit any noise, but I knew he was still there, I could hear him willing me to say something. I could wait just as long as he could. If necessary, I could wait forever.
Sometime before then, “So what are you doing today?” Dale said. “Do you want to come over? The Abominable Dr. Phibes is on the Creature Feature at one. We haven’t seen that one in, like, ages.”
I knew he was trying to be nice, and it really had been ages—six months, at least—since the last time we saw Vincent Price being hilariously abominable as Dr. Phibes, but, “I can’t,” I said. “I’m meeting Allison at one. We’re supposed to go jogging.” I wasn’t and we weren’t, but unlike sometimes when you lied, I didn’t feel bad saying what I said.
“Okay,” Dale said. “Talk to you later.”
“Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”
Chapter Eight
Allison wasn’t my girlfriend, I knew that. I didn’t know what she was. Worse, I didn’t know what I wanted her to be. I should have wanted to be her boyfriend. I’d be entering grade eight in a couple of months and a girlfriend would be a good thing, like the moustache I was hoping to have by high school. Jack “Hacksaw” Youngblood, the Los Angeles Rams’ All Pro linebacker, had a Fu Manchu moustache like Dad that made him look even fiercer than he already was, and the drummer in Pink Floyd wore the same thing, only on him it provided a sort of whiskery wisdom. To be somebody you needed to have things. All I had was a paper route and a journal where I wrote down everything I ate that I couldn’t tell anybody about.
Allison was undeniably good girlfriend material: was smart but didn’t act like it; was good at sports but wasn’t a ball hog or a prima donna; was well-liked but not in any danger of being considered popular. What she wasn’t was who I told myself not to think about when I went to bed at night and couldn’t go to sleep because my body wouldn’t let me. I told myself not to think about long-legged Bailey from WKRP. I told myself not to think about Mrs. Stanton, the office secretary at school, whose hair was black and long and who wore earrings that were silver and long. I told myself not to think about Angie, sunbathing with my sister on the roof outside Julie’s bedroom window.
But Allison was nice. Not icky “Isn’t she nice?” nice; nice for real, nice to me. Nice because she let rookie me run with old-hand her, nice because she waited for me when I needed to stop and catch my breath, nice because she gave me pointers (like to stay loose but in control when I jogged) without seeming like she was lecturing. But she wasn’t just nice. Nice is never enough.
Once, when we were jogging in the cemetery and saw James’ dad, the Reveren
d Dawkins, addressing a group of black people standing around a freshly dug grave, I said, “I wonder why those people don’t have their own minister.”
“That’s stupid,” Allison said.
“I’m not prejudiced,” I was quick to answer. “I mean, like, maybe black people would want a person like themselves to do their funerals and stuff, is all I meant.”
“They’re not listening to him,” she said. “They’re listening to what he’s saying.”
We crossed the small wooden bridge that went across the stream dividing the old cemetery from the new section. Our running shoes thudded a surprising amount of noise—enough that a few people from the bowed-headed gathering looked up.
“The Bible, you mean?” I said.
“The Bible. And whatever else they need to hear.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but kept moving my feet and my clenched fists. Later on, taking a shower, I still didn’t know whether she was right, but I couldn’t come up with a reason why she was wrong, either.
United Church Minister Questions His Calling
“God Isn’t Dead, He Just Doesn’t Give a Shit”
HIS PARISHIONERS, HIS flock, his people—white, black, and otherwise:
Newspapers and television to tell them what to think.
Telephones to keep them busy babbling on about who’s sick (or getting better) or what the weather’s like (or will be later in the week) or who’s coming to visit (or just left) or who moved away (or just moved in) or who’s getting married (or divorced) or who had a baby (or just died) or Anyway, I just called to say… You know, I can’t remember why I called; when I do, I’ll call you right back—all to avoid even the tiniest temptation to use their heads for anything more than a human hat rack.
Sports to give them something to care about.
Politics to assure them that their opinions matter.
Marriages to avoid being alone.
Children to do the same, in addition to aiding in the illusion they’d actually accomplished something with their mortal lives.
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