Savage (14 page)

Dad stopped his thunderous laugh track cold to add, "Sounds like you are spanking yourself in there."

My face flushed, insides a bit off-balance, I turned my head and glared at Dad, disgusted by his unmitigated crudeness, his insane delivery of perverse hatred of all things normal and sane. When he caught my gaze I delivered my own bolt of living-room terror: "You know, you're a real asshole."

Dad's face paused, caught in the 60-watt accent.

"I
beg
your pardon?"
I beg your pardon?
was Dad's most classic catch phrase, from which I coined what I felt was a massively catchy retort, "Yeah, you
better
beg," fostering the conflict into a certified, plaque-like permanence.

It happened so naturally: Dad rose from the pink sofa, walked the twenty feet towards the dining room table where I sat, took off his belt, undid his pants, turned around and mooned me, spreading his cheeks to show his actual asshole.

Catching a single frame of his anus, I quickly looked away.

"
That's
an asshole!" Dad said, his back to me, holding his cheeks open for a few more seconds, the pose frozen in time like a prehistoric exhibit roped off for all to witness.

At midnight, Holly called long distance from Kingston to let us know she was safe at home, and Mom said, "Call me on Wednesday...I just made hamburger patties for the week, I can mail you a care package or something...no, I won't mail you hamburgers! OK, good night."

As I fell asleep I imagined myself in the throes of wrestling supremacy. My current foes in 1992 were Alex and Andrew, the new duo of squash games and long drives throughout the city buying batteries or whatever the hell electronic equipment Andrew needed to tweak his greedy universe. At first I didn't mind Alex; he even played hockey with Andrew and I a couple of times in my driveway, and we did a video project together for English. But then, both of them just sort of vanished... As I tried to fall asleep, I jostled for position, fingers putting pressure on their trapezes, counter arm-bar with illegal hair-pull: Alex's greasy face sliding off my knuckles, my fists hitting the canvas, the other hand pulled out from under skull like a magic tablecloth. Tripped up, they fall down, and I leap on top of them, shake both their skulls with hands into the mat. Jump up: land the knee across the left jaw. The skull feels it on all sides, from all angles. Flashbulbs went off in a storm of preservatives.

The next morning at school, I couldn't wait to tell Andrew about all the action through the distracting clink noises of our lockers opening and closing. I was relaying the showdown with as much suspense as possible.

"It was so fucked up."

"So what happened?"

"I called him an asshole 'cos he was making some gross joke about my mom spanking herself, and he gets up off the couch, undoes his belt buckle, turns around, pulls down his pants and underwear, spreads his ass cheeks and shows me his asshole!"

"Are you serious?" Andrew said, eyes lit up pinball style.

"Yeah, he just mooned me, showed me his butt hole."

"Oh my God! That's hilarious!" Andrew beamed. "
And
disgusting!"

"I know," I laughed, eating the remains of a bran muffin I found in my locker.

"Your family is nuts."

"How was your Easter?" I asked, with a bedeviled smirk fit for a sitcom prince. On the inside, I felt ashamed, and a large bolt of panic tore through me.

Andrew shrugged. "Just had dinner, whatever. My family didn't expose themselves to me," he said, yuk-yuking and shaking his head side to side.

"Well, you know, everyone celebrates holidays differently," I said, adjusting my backpack and wiping some muffin crumbs off on my light-blue pants.

8 )
World In Motion

August 1992

O
ver the weekend, bored out of our minds, Holly and I filmed the inside of our boring house and threw a bunch of dirty towels down the stairs, drowned the backyard and made muddy rivers and documented the whole thing to show Mom. We cleaned up the towels but the muddy grooves were still pronounced in various depressions throughout the garden. When Mom got home and saw what we had done (both on video and in person), she flipped out and shouted down to me from the kitchen, my camera capturing it all during yet another bedroom press conference: ‘I'M GOING TO RUIN YOUR LIFE, KID, BECAUSE YOU RUINED MINE!"

Despite getting my driver's licence at summer school, applying for a job at Jumbo Video and listening to a lot of Doors music, the summer was an uneventful loner fest.

As the summer dissipated, I was logging more and more silent hours under the watchful robotic eye of my camcorder. I imagined Andrew's silver Camaro sharking through the neighbourhood. It would only be a matter of time before we'd meet again. School was weeks away, our last year of high school.

I kept my unhealthy fantasy warfare workload set on high; between Andrew and my father, I had my work cut out for me delivering taunt videos for my growing infestations and insecurities:

And as for you, David, you and your evil moustache that contains all your powers, well, the way its colour has become diluted with beer suds and those embalming bleaches you groom it with, yeah, well, you can't keep that sick thing on your face much longer! The same fire you breathe, you shall burn by! You are in the danger zone! [I caressed some of the tools in the workshop.]

One day we will be freed, like when Jesus returned from the video store. Oh yes, David, on that day, with your still-alive moustache in my hand, ready to be glued to the cross, vengeance shall be my Valentine! Ohhhh Yeeeeaaaahhhh!

I walked towards the camera and hit STOP.

As for Andrew, since we had stalled over the summer and not really hung out, I figured I'd challenge him to a showdown, just to see, between friends, who was the better man.

On a whim, I called him up to see what he was doing.

"You get your schedule yet?"

"No," I said, coiling the phone cord around my fingers. "I can't remember what I signed up for."

"What'd you do this weekend?"

"Wrote a play about my Dad's moustache," I said, trying not to laugh too loudly or get all hyper and hyena.

"What? You're insane."

"I'm joking. But I hate it. Mostly because he slurps from it, like it's a wet paint brush. And I think it's possessed by Satan."

"Anyway," Andrew said, changing the subject, "you doing anything?"

The husky scent of ground-beef remainder percolated in the kitchen, where the phone hung on a wall, imprisoned.

"Not really," I said.

"Can you get the car?"

"Doubt it," I said, wishing that I could take the car, drive Andrew around and listen to a mixed tape I'd been working on. Husky ground-beef particles were soaking in the sink with fluorescent liquid soap. I dangled from the phone cord, exasperated, clinging to the door frame.

"But don't you have your licence now?"

"That doesn't mean much around here," I said, staring blankly into the living room.

"Is your dad at work?" Andrew asked.

"Nope; on call," I said, looking at Dad sitting comatose with a newspaper shield. "I'll call you back when my life changes."

"Cool," Andrew said, now unable to control his laughter. "Later."

I sensed this final year of school would determine everything between Andrew and me, and in my guts I feared the worst. He had this air to him, as if to say to me, somewhere in the halls at school:
So, that's what you're wearing, that's what you like, that's what you're going to think about all year
.

9 )
Everything's Gone Green

Friday, September 18th, 1992

I
n the couch cushions, I found a sheet of lined paper with what I concluded were Pearl Jam song lyrics written in Holly's loopy handwriting, something about having a beautiful life and being a part of the sky. I folded it up and put it in my pocket. This year would be different: I had promised myself that I would not lose, that I would win at something.

I had a strong desire to be popular and not wind up alone each and every Friday and Saturday night, tiptoeing around my parents. I wanted to be seen.

Earlier in the day, I left a note for Andrew inside his locker. Yesterday, it had been announced that the student-council elections would be taking place soon and that a nomination meeting would be held on Friday—today—after school. I was convinced that Andrew and I should run. All we had to do was show up to the meeting and sign up.

Dearest Mega Power partner Andrew:

So, listen. Here are Some ideas for our presidential campaign:

Send it to the radio day (we make up new remixes of songs and try and get them on air: the whole school sends in hundred of tapes!)

Come to School Naked Day!

Food drive (run over food)

Video dance party with Erica Ehm

Erica Ehm Day

Roof Day (classes on the roof, suntanning, barbecues, concerts, just like The Beatles!)

Wednes-Day

This is the end, my only friend, the end. We should go to the meeting (it's 15 mins.) at 3:20 tonight and see who's runnin'; then we either run or run for the door! Imagine: Don't be sour, vote Mega Powers! Also, I think I'll be playing hockey in the same league as that guy in our Eng. class, Steve, Stevie.

Signed truly,

Nate Savage (co-Mega Power)

*

"Ohhh yeeeah!" I shouted down the sunny third-floor hallway. "Andrew!"

He was wearing his now-trademark green zippered sweatshirt and Boston Red Socks ball cap, blue jeans and tennis shoes, the same combination of attire he had started wearing last spring. He appeared to live in that crusty green thing, lumbering around the halls, his books and Alpine car stereo in one hand. A part of me began to really associate him and his constant rejection of our friendship with the evil forest tone.

A part of me still had hope.

I pointed my finger in the air majestically, then at Andrew.

"What?" Andrew said, glaring quizzically, car keys in his mouth.

"Did you get my note?"

"Yeah, but it made no sense." Andrew said. "So I put it in a pile with the others."

"Did you read the part that went: DON'T BE SOUR, VOTE MEGA POWERS!"

"Kind of hard to miss. What does that even mean?"

"Did you hear the morning announcement yesterday?"

"No," Andrew said, not slowing down his pace.

Inside my own production-studio mind, I was culling up music suitable for montages and spliced my thoughts with campy video shrapnel: cottage go-karts; road hockey; remote-control car racing; a photo still of Andrew and I and another boy from 1983 in front of the church before I went camping on a cub-scout weekend retreat. My recent co-op placement at Rogers Sports made me think in timing and cuts and fades, in voice-overs and sound bites. I was learning new terms like "SWIPE," the button that put text on the screen. Or "FADE-EDITS" from the top left to the lower right, a wash of video, the passage of time and space with crisp toggles and adjustments of frames.

"Mega Powers all the way, oh yeah!"

"We're not running. Are you crazy?"

"Come on, we have a shot."

"No way," Andrew said, dismissing the suggestion.

"So what do you think?" I said. A slight manic tone in my voice cut through the hallway chatter.

"It's stupid."

"I'm playing in the same league as Steve; did he tell you?"

"Yeah, I asked him. He has no idea what you're talking about," Andrew said, squinting into the sun, his large head and thick blonde hair, moderate in personal grease, were kept hidden under his aging baseball hat.

"So what do you think?"

"No way."

"Why not?"

"You're totally nuts. No way!"

"We could run!"

"Not."

"The meeting is tonight. We have to go. Just think of it!"

Andrew popped the doors and started to walk up the roadway toward Bayview Avenue. I gave slight chase.

"Where are you going?" Andrew asked.

"I don't know. You have a spare now?"

"Yeah."

"What are you doing this weekend?"

"Squash probably with Alex and Scott."

"What are you doing now?" I asked. I wanted to tell Andrew about
Blade Runner
returning to theatres after ten years. We had seen the original together with Andrew's dad a decade earlier.

"Going home," Andrew said.

"Can I get a ride?"

"I guess so. Don't you have class?"

"No, my co-op placement thing; it's only three days a week. I don't have to go in today."

"I can't believe they let you work on television."

"I mostly just walk around with video tapes and move equipment. It's not like I'm hosting a show in my driveway about road hockey or something."

"I'm sure you'll suggest it."

On the bus rides to and from the television station, I would sketch mythological friendship logos while a haunted, possessive tone filled me with a sense of comfort and belonging. I lived inside the energy of the drawings, until the faint blue-ruled line became filled with clutter and intrigue, the page entirely consumed in my dark etchings and explosive contours.