112
He couldn’t have said so at the time, but he stayed with Stan in part for the double vision. Like any member of a marginal community, the sick and suffering are entirely fluent with how the central culture works. As a boy, Andy knew the social pecking orders, or loyalty fighting against curiosity or the very public record of who got breasts when — but he also had this other huge life at home. Sadness and fear turned every wall in the house into a mirror. His shadow had a separate life, was a character of secret worry. There were also hidden treasures. Endurance. Adaptability. Even the reach and courage of Stan’s humour. “It sure took the sting out of going bald,” he once said.
Truth was, Andrew didn’t much miss Hug Me Mom. He had checked out of that just in time then looked for it where every other man does. A few years later, in early adolescence, when Shadow Boy dropped his shifts to a surly minimum, one parent was enough to find in constant contempt.
Slogging away here in the dark night on the cold machine, wearing that loneliest of costumes — cold sweat — he recognizes which voice he had missed in the house. He had missed Battle Scar Mom. He has just enough memories of a wry rye voice he didn’t get enough of. Divorce put both mother and child on probation, meant they only ever saw a conscripted good behaviour, a scenario they each hated.
If he were closer to thirty years old, not twenty, he’d be comfortably at ease with sex and all bodies, would see bisexuality as a scale from one to ten. At the bottom of the scale would be the toxic closet, bent, denied lives of hatred and violence. Up at eight or nine, women would do only in a pinch, preferably the small-breasted and slim-hipped. Ten, extreme ten, would be cock-o-rama. It is Mark’s point he’s remembering, still an accurate one, when he acknowledges that no matter how faggy two men might be, they still have two male sex drives, that double-barrelled shotgun of testosterone. His explorations with Mark and Glen spike his scale up to a brief five, but he thinks of himself on the ride as remaining a casual four, curious but largely theoretical four.
All this and he’s still hard for Betty every day, despite not having seen her in nine months. There are still many experiences he can’t even conceive of doing with another man. A little sex, yes. Sleeping? No. He stares up into the dark sky and thinks of not one, but two women, Betty and his mom, sleeping somewhere under this same dark blanket beneath which he rides. His thoughts sometimes linger on male shoulders, abs or cock, the way a fit male ass tucks into itself, but they’d never concentrate on a man in the peace of sleep. Meanwhile, he’s cranked off the last thirty kilometres imagining Betty somewhere far behind him in the east and his mom ahead of him in the west. He doesn’t overestimate what Pat can do for him on his half-fugitive night flight, although of course, he has always known that, in fact, she’s money just one collect call away. And he’s not so sweat-drunk to expect a healing reconciliation the minute he finds a phone booth. He simply admits that he can trust her. What a charade it has been to pretend she was untrustworthy for doing what she wanted. Trust a bounder, just don’t rely on her. One hundred kilometres from now he might doubt he could tell her anything, might think it prudent not to mention his Lady Macbeth right foot, but for now, she’s the one person to whom he can say anything. (One of two?) He can ask his mom whether he loves Betty or whether he just loves love.
Precisely because love is daily and Andrew and his mother do not actively love each other, do not labour for each other, he can ask his mother how he can tell if he really, really loves Betty or whether he just thinks so because he has made her more unattainable. They’re not tremendously close, but they’re honest.
He rides nearly three more hours before he finds a gas station, and by then the bruise of dawn has already begun spreading above the eastern horizon. Stashing his bike behind the garage, slurping endlessly from a wall tap, he finally crosses to the phone booth, trying to avoid his multiple reflections in its panelled glass. A tiny grey sweatshirt. Eyes bulging in their sharp sockets. You have a collect call from — It’s Andrew.
By the time the call pulls Pat from sleep to a dressing gown to a trip downstairs, Andrew admits he is bone-weary, wishes he too could curl up with a blanket for this chat. Slow to wake, she’s eventually all business.
“Do you know, exactly, where you are? I can hit Quebec City in less than five hours.”
Will she wake hubby to tell him or leave a half-informative note? She’d know that potentially fugitive isn’t even worth mentioning.
“No, no,” he replies.
“You didn’t call me for directions.”
“Well, directions of a kind. Before all this started happening, I’d been thinking so much of Betty. Maybe thinking is the wrong word. Hour after hour, she’s just there in my head. You know when you’re not talking but there are still words — mine go to her. Missing her, admiring her, I’ve thought of you too. I wish things were better between you and me. But no sooner did I think that and I got myself into this mess. How do I tell her about that kid?”
“Andrew, I’ll talk with you. I’ll send you money. I’ll come get you. But if you’re talking about love, let me tell you right now, you need to have a conscience, not marry one.”
113
S/he didn’t dump him/her. Betty and Andrew stayed together, one roof, one bed, as his transcript, letters of reference and application essay moved him closer to Nova Scotia and her passport application and vaccinations moved her closer to Budapest and Marrakesh. All this time they’d never been more busy. Senior papers week after week. Politely demanded attendance at lifeless, mumbled public lectures and gallery openings of pathetically diffuse work.
From each of them, I love you lost part of its daily currency, temporarily ceased to be the couch’s punctuation, the dark bed’s echo, only to be soon replaced by I do love you, or, I love you, you idiot.
With their desires now painfully clarified, the sex became prismatic. Self-interest was parsed into commanding violet, generous blue and greedy red. Neither overtly acknowledged the gratitude and respect each felt for the other’s purposeful self-design, for the clarification that their lives were definitely parallel tracks, not a single one. Betty took them closest.
“Mom had an interesting line. Selfishness is the mother tongue. We all know selfishness, can always do it. If this MA is what you think you need to do for you, then do it.”
They fucked now with the skill and efficiency of temporarily reunited ex-lovers, yet talked openly about the sadness awaiting them come end of summer, come plane journeys large and small. When she started her trip purchases with a giant knapsack, he playfully hid it around the house again and again. Beneath the kitchen sink, in the freezer. Permissible too was doubt.
“This may be one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” he said once in their nightly clutch.
“One of?!” She reached back to cup and shake half his ass.
The next night, lingering over the supper table, she gave him
The Argument of Protection
“Dad worked at the tail end of the old school, the wet school of journalism,” Betty said. “It was a man’s game for a long time. When I was going through some bitchy high-school shit, he once said — and remember, this is Mr. Weekend Wisdom here, but it has stuck with me — Sweetheart, I have friends, and I have people I drink with. One of the people he drank with was ex-military. This guy once told my dad that at Royal Military College, feeding you what they want, when they want, clothing you, all these tests, they find who they want very early and then enable them, advance them, throw resources at them. The Executive. The Tribe. The Cult. These doors that open for you, though, maybe they’re also prison walls. Why are these profs opening doors for you? Yes, because you deserve it. Yes, darling, you’re clever as fuck. But isn’t there also vanity here, a fan factory alongside the scholar factory? Do they want you in their tribe for you, or for them?”
A few weeks later, when he tried casually using the word supervisor around the house, she cut even closer to the bone.
“
Supervisor? Supervisor?” Betty had asked as winter began its slow exit. “What’s so super? He’s able to leap tall footnotes in a single bound? That X-ray vision for plagiarism is something you covet?”
“Mentally, I’m in shape. I don’t want to lose that.”
“The Tate isn’t a lobotomy clinic. Travelling, especially travelling with me, isn’t going to make you dumb.”
“But it might make me lazy. Or rusty. I’m still growing.”
“Old men are not the only people who can help you grow.”
“What do you mean, old m —”
“I mean white, male, fifty-something Prof A is sending you off to work with white, male, fifty-something Prof B.”
“That is so irrelevant. I’m being offered money for thinking here, because of my work, this . . . this —”
She did reach for his hand. He should have noticed that.
“I’m not trying to fight here, but can we say father figure?”
He didn’t see or feel himself shake off her hand, didn’t seem to choose the words that flew from his mouth. “You just don’t want to travel alone.”
114
Stan country. The remainder of the ride is evenly punctuated. Two days from Quebec City to Montreal, then another two from Montreal to Kingston. Montreal. Andrew had been there with his parents, with Stan, with friends, with other girlfriends, by himself and then with Betty. Approaching it now, he mostly thinks of Stan, thinks of him going there repeatedly in his mid-twenties to have his suits made. Like most of the rest of Andrew’s stuff (and some of Betty’s), those suits are tucked into the Kingston bedroom he had converted to storage. He’d like to wear one now. Throw the bike off a cliff, shower for an hour, then slide himself into the brown with rust pinstripes. Eat in a restaurant with Betty. Gargle wine.
Of course, he could be well fed and properly clothed right now. Here on the approach to Quebec City he begins easing himself off the vampire riding shifts. He still rides into the evening and sleeps later in the morning, but last night he was finally sleeping again at three a.m., not pedalling.
If he turned off the highway and fought his way through Quebec City traffic, he could buy a new pair of bike shorts and some more gear and be back on the highway in three hours. Comfort aside — and in the hiking shorts things certainly don’t get properly swept aside — the baggy hiking shorts will probably cost him three hours in aerodynamic losses over the next four days. The open legs of the shorts are beginning to chafe his thighs, sliding up and down several thousand times a day. Yet these same sloppy openings send a steady stream of air up to his fading but still noticeable rash.
Why buy more gear when he’s finally in sight of home? Sure, he’ll wind up buying new cycling shorts anyway, but to head downtown to hunt out an outfitter would be both tedious and tempting. One sight of a bivy sack might crumble his resolve to make-do with a foil blanket, pine boughs and a sweatshirt-sleeve-and-bungee-cord toque. As is, the lack of camping gear has actually put him on the bike more hours per day and upped his catch. Biking into the higher population density of central Quebec, he’s now able to buy food every day. He’s been refilling plastic bottles of water. He’ll get by.
Turns out only the shoes are integral. Late in the trip, his ass as hard as a walnut, the padded shorts are an endurable loss. Everything is proving replaceable. At least everything physical. Deciding not to turn into Quebec City, cranking out the miles, he reaches up once again to finger the now scarring cigarette burn on his chest. More than a year ago, Betty told him that healing is the admission price we pay for love. That’s all the map he’s ever needed.
115
Mass versus utility. For at least nine months, first theoretically then hyper-practically, he has thought of the cyclist’s debate between mass and utility. In ways, the bike frame is a scale, weighing a thing’s usefulness against its weight. On a bike, cost-benefit analysis is measured with sweat. He’s sure that one of the reasons most hard-core riders prefer weed to booze is the difference in the weight and volume they claim. That, and the muscle relaxation, and the lesser threat to balance and dehydration, and the immunity to hangovers and calories.
For nearly his entire life, and certainly into his MA, the bicycle has been one of the human inventions he admires most. Mobility. Self-reliance. Fitness. Speed without pollution. Incredible efficiency. More than ninety per cent of the energy a cyclist puts into the machine comes back out. But humanity’s greatest invention is much, much lighter. Living with Betty he’d been amazed at the tininess of the birth control pill. Less than a gram in weight, smaller than the eraser on the end of a pencil, that little dot changed their lives, allowed their lives to be what they wanted them to be, not what they had to become.
In the Kingston house, as spring turned to summer and their separate flights away were less than a season away, Betty wasn’t sure if she was being a jerk absolutely or just relatively when she came home from the pharmacy with a very full prescription bag. She left the swollen white bag on top of her dresser, not in one of its drawers.
He asked as soon as he saw it. “You’re staying on the pill?”
“What? Oh, yeah . . . Aren’t you maybe coming over at Christmas?”
“Yeah, hopefully. Good time to give your body a break, though.”
“Isn’t any time? We could start wearing condoms now if you’d like.”
“Obviously those aren’t all for me — for us.” He nodded at the bulging white bag.
“Long, significant list here,” she said, raising a hand. “One, my body, mine. Two, it’s harder on any body to go on and off. Three, I have all but begged you to come with me, and every one of those pills could be for us. And, quite relevantly: we have chosen different paths for next year.”
“Five, six, seven: ecstasy, raves and hooded cock. I’m just wondering what protection you’re taking on your little path. Does Lonely Planet offer multilingual translations for getting tested? What’s chlamydia in Serbo-Croat? Portuguese? Perhaps we should make up some flash cards.”
When he stormed away and pounded down the stairs, she couldn’t have seen that he was heading for his bike but she guessed as much. “What is it about bikes anyway?” she yelled.
116
The Buddhist notion of chosen suffering has been one of his most frequent thoughts, dredged up hundreds of times a day by the left leg. Newtonian physics has come up almost as often with the right. The energy required to keep something moving is only a fraction of the energy required to move that thing in the first place. Rockets, billiard balls, economies — the big energy is paid up front. Relationships aren’t so simple.
Cycling for sport requires one to bike away from the pedal-and-coast leisure of childhood or adult errands. Genuine cycling is constant spin. Two wheels, two pedals, two lungs. Pedal your breath.
On his approach to Montreal, the jukebox of the bike finds one reedy refrain. Long ago he biked past rationality and the conscious mind and knows by now that he has no choice about what songs he will recall or sing, sometimes even loudly. Before a flicked cigarette and a sacked campsite pulled this trip of peace into a trip of war, before that kid’s face launched a thousand predatory kilometres, he had embarrassed himself with a near-total recall of most of the AC/ DC oeuvre. For days, the ride had him ringing “Hells Bells.” In the next valley he’d abruptly stick on the title and chorus of some song of Betty’s, something, something, exTRAordinary machine. He had no interest in riding with an MP3 player. Touring, you shuffle your past, not your iPod. And today, that past his past is stuck on Neil Young’s “Helpless.” There is a point in fatigue and loneliness beyond which there are no clichés. Deep into a marathon, in the double-digit kilometres, if one thinks at all, one thinks with wonder. And gratitude.
Andrew has read maybe a dozen poems that describe someone walking through a neighbourhood with front lawns awash in the blue glow of televisions. House after house, each one a link in a glowing blue chain. Most of Canada has a similar view. Eighty per cent of the Cana
dian population lives in the twenty per cent of land immediately north of the US border. Granted, that’s also the warmest part of Canada and has the longest growing season, but still. English Canada has its nose pressed to the American window, watching what they watch on TV. A Canadian sees or hears cultural references to Canada one time for every hundred references to New York, LA, Chicago or San Francisco. So, cleansed by sweat, his legs moving more than they are still in twenty-four hours, Neil Young’s “town in north Ontario” has a hold on him. “All his changes” weren’t made in Kingston, not with blood on his sole now and a bed literally under the stars, but enough changes happened there to call it home. And for him to finally want to leave it.
Pat told him he needs to have a conscience, not marry one. Betty has also given him more direction than he thought another person could. And he wants to tell all of this to Stan. More than anything else, he misses Stan’s voice. He was inescapably body yet indisputably mind, and they came together in his voice. He wishes they could talk once more, precisely to talk about him being dead. Andrew wants an afterline, not an afterlife.
Tell me what you couldn’t, wouldn’t. Enumerate your fears. Describe your sins and what took you to them. What should I look out for in life? Here, take a little Scotch.
He wants to hear Stan talk, and then he needs to tell him about Betty. The appetite she has, the need for life undiluted. You can feel the hang of her collarbone from one glance at her jaw. She just floats.
Andrew had followed Mark on trails but Stan in life. He was the first man. The lead man, guiding me with a voice.
Avoiding the numerous highway exits for Montreal, maintaining his spin, he sees past the city’s sprawl, sees ahead three hundred kilometres to the Kingston house. Avoiding the city, keen for home, he’s impatient to drive a particular kind of flag into his lawn upon his arrival, to claim his own island. He can already see his new flag swaying stiffly in the breeze.
The Push & the Pull Page 27
