Walk like a Man (14 page)

A lot of what makes his memories of high school so positive, though, are his friends. And on this I agree.

We were close, all of us. Kevin and Victor from the team. John, almost as big a Springsteen fan as Greg and I were. Brendan, a year younger than me but smarter and cooler and more confident and creative. The girls. Roseanne and Deanna and Karen. Nicole, who was at once my nemesis and competitor and a dear friend: we bickered like a couple from a 1940s romantic comedy. And Jennifer, with whom I was madly in love: a condition I never did anything about, not wanting to risk one of my great friendships.
⁴

I had two girlfriends in the last few years of high school. Sisters, in fact.
⁵
I dated Andrea for a few months in the spring of 1986. We slow-danced to The Hooters in my family room while the opening ceremonies of Expo 86, the world's fair in Vancouver, played on the TV behind us.

At the time, Andrea's younger sister Shawna was one of my confidantes. She was pretty and sweet with a caustic sense of humor and a slight, charming insanity. I developed a huge crush on her, even as I was making out with her sister at any given opportunity.

When Andrea dumped me, I invited Shawna to the Bob Dylan/Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers show in Vancouver. It was my second date ever. We kissed for the first time on the beach, a day or two later.
⁶
We were together for two years. And we spent a lot of that time at the beach.

The beach at Harrison was the focal point of my last few years in Agassiz. Beach-wise, it's nothing much—just a strip of sand and a man-made lagoon (which locals refer to as “the spit”
⁷
), with the miles of Harrison Lake stretching out postcard-perfect to the horizon. The main drag runs along the beach, and across the road is a string of hotels and motels and restaurants, anchored at one end by the “world-famous” Harrison Hotel (locals just call it The Hotel). Also on the main drag was the Memorial Hall, an auditorium the size of a high school gym used for weddings, readings, concerts, and plays. Up a rickety set of stairs, well hidden save for a tiny window, was a room reserved for a couple of summers as the office for the Harrison Beach Patrol.

Greg and Shawna both worked for the Harrison Beach Patrol.

And they hated each other.

Greg thought Shawna was insane, and Shawna thought Greg was . . . well, Greg. I tried not to get in the middle, or to let it bother me.

The two of them working for the patrol wasn't the reason the beach became our main hangout, but it was a handy justification. We would spend whole days in the sand, lying on blankets, drinking beer or—more typically—wine coolers, which we could always get someone to bootleg for us from a bar near The Hotel. We'd hide the bottles from the police and the patrol under our blankets, unless the patrol was Greg, who kept his own bottle at the ready for his periodic stops.

When he wasn't working, Greg would bring his ghetto blaster, and we'd play Springsteen bootlegs or Tom Petty albums. Some of the stuff we played we called “woman-hating music,” caught as we were in the throes of perpetual teenage heartbreak. We'd watch the city girls walking by in their bathing suits and t-shirts as we sipped our lukewarm booze. We'd walk around the spit, or swim across. We'd sleep in the sun.

Our gang was a loose, ever-changing constellation. People would come before work or after (or, in Greg and Shawna's cases, during). We'd sit for hours shooting the shit, making plans, making promises.

In the evenings we would convene at the home of whoever's parents were out or, failing that, whoever's basement rec room was the farthest from where their parents were.

We had what we thought were epic parties, complete with bootlegged booze and clandestine making out and, later, vomiting in flower beds. In retrospect, these parties were so innocent as to be adorable: an occasional joint might be smoked,
⁸
but there were no other drugs. No sex. No drinking and driving. No fistfights. We were practically wholesome, despite the images of ourselves that we had in our heads.

It was paradise, really. Every kid should have a summer or two like that.

And then it came to an end, like the credits rolling on a movie before it was really done. There was no gradual dissolution, not for me. For me, it stopped sharply on the Sunday of the Labor Day weekend, 1988.

Peter and Shawna had already left town before people started gathering at my house; they were headed—separately—for Edmonton: Peter to university, Shawna to stay with relatives while she did her grade twelve.

Despite the fact that my goodbye with Shawna had been considerably more intimate,
⁹
it was something that had happened with Peter a week or so prior that really stuck with me.

That last summer, Peter and I drove a lot. Well, he drove, commandeering his mother's car for things like Friday night trips into Vancouver for midnight showings of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Some nights, late, after Shawna had gone home, we'd meet up and just drive. We'd often end up past Harrison, out of town, up the winding road to the provincial park at Green Point,
¹⁰
or farther, into the hills.

This was one of those nights. It was a Saturday, or early on a Sunday morning, and we were listening to the radio, not really talking, as we rattled along a logging road. Van Morrison came on, singing “
Moondance
,” and it was perfect: it was a cloudless night, the moon almost full, the air silver and end-of-summer cool. I turned up the music.

As we rounded the corner toward the wharf at Hicks Lake I think we both stopped breathing.

A low mist was clinging to the lake, and when the headlights hit it, it seemed solid, impenetrable.

We left the lights on as we got out of the car and walked down to the wharf.

I don't know what it was—maybe nothing more than angles and physics
¹¹
—but the lights fell along the wharf with the brightness of daylight until they reached the last wooden slat. Beyond that, there was nothing but grey. Once we were down on the dock, there was nothing in the world but us, the short path ahead of us, and a swirling, silver-grey mystery beyond.

Everything I had been feeling since that spring, since hearing Springsteen sing “Born to Run” as that broken, melancholy ballad, came to a head. This was the end of things. Nothing in our lives would ever be the same. It was inevitable: within days, we were each going to be stepping off the end of that dock into the grey mystery, with no notion of whether we were going to drown or rise into the clouds.

I was shaking when we got back to the car.

We didn't talk about it, that night or ever. But it was clear, I think, that we had said goodbye not only to each other but to something inside ourselves.

That awareness made the party I hosted on the Sunday night of the Labor Day weekend both celebratory and sad.

It was great having (almost) everyone together, but our hedonistic enjoyment of the vodka and lemonade was undercut by the knowledge that this was the last time our group would ever be together in the same way.

I wish I remembered more of that night; I got fairly drunk fairly early. I remember that Jennifer was beautiful in a pink summer dress. I remember all of us sitting in a circle on the carpet, drinking and telling stories. I remember Greg passing out on the couch, and Jennifer taking care of him.

I was sadder than I had ever been in my life to that point. And so happy I felt like I might just explode, fireworks over the town, over the lake, over my life.

I kissed Jennifer as she was leaving, and I remember the look she gave me, the sadness in her eyes, the love. It wasn't the first time we had kissed; it was the last time, though.

Sandy the aurora is risin' behind us

The pier lights our carnival life forever

Love me tonight for I may never see you again

Hey Sandy girl

1
. There should to be an English word for this feeling, but I haven't been able to find it. The Japanese call it
mono no aware,
“the pathos of things.” Which, now that I think about it, would make a great tattoo.

2
. I'm not actually that polite. I just figure, why add to their pain?

3
. That same high school now features a poster of me on their Wall of Fame. It was the first such poster, actually. I'm still working through the levels of irony and mental discord that fact creates in me. I should probably talk to someone. Perhaps on a couch.

4
. If I could give my sixteen-year-old self some advice, it would be this: make your move. Because that friendship you're trying so hard not to endanger? It doesn't turn out the way you think it will.

5
. No, not at the same time.

6
. The kiss probably wouldn't have happened were it not for a friend of my dad's named Larry. Upon seeing me mooning about the day after the show, he asked what was going on. When I told him the situation, how confused I was, how I didn't know if she even liked me, he shook his head. “Just kiss her,” he said. “That's the only way you'll know for sure.”

7
. Given the temperatures the water reaches in summer (stagnant and cut off from the glacial chill of the lake) and the number of people in it, calling it “the spit” is more polite—though probably less accurate—than calling it “the lukewarm piss.”

8
. Usually by me.

9
. It's hard to tell whether it's just the rose-colored lenses of retrospect, or whether it really is the universe messing with your head, but have you ever noticed that the last time you make love with someone tends to be the best, the most fulfilling? I usually come down on the “universe messing with you” side of the argument: “Are you sure about this path? Are you really, really sure?”
Mono no aware.

10
. Green Point has a lot of memories for me. Family picnics. The day I almost drowned trying to impress that girl I mentioned previously. Nightswimming with a girl I was in love with, but would never tell.

11
. Peter, who has become a physicist, would likely argue that there's never anything more than angles and physics.

Thundercrack

Album:
Tracks

Released:
November 10, 1998

Recorded:
June 28, 1973

T
HIS WILL COME as no surprise to anyone who knows me: I'm not the world's most organized person. Quite the opposite, in fact. Some would argue that I'm a hoarder, though I haven't quite reached the stage where I might be featured on an exploitative television show.

This makes me, in many ways, a bad Tramp. I've got decades' worth of magazine articles, but do you think I can find them? My Springsteen books are scattered through a multitude of rooms in two separate buildings (three if you include the books still at my mom's place in Agassiz). My bootleg CDRs are mostly in unmarked sleeves in a box, labeled with a title and disc number if I'm lucky; no song listing, no dates, no other identifying information.

I tend to lose things. This was brought home to me—acutely— while writing this book. It wasn't just that it was a struggle to pull all the materials together. No, I even had trouble seeing things right in front of me.

Take “
Thundercrack
,” for example.

One of the main reasons I was so thrilled when the
Tracks
box set came out in 1998 was that it contained—finally!—an official release of “Thundercrack.” Sure, it was a studio recording, but beggars can't be choosers, right? I'd fallen in love with the song from bootlegs of legendary early seventies live shows, and I'd spent the last decade plus hoping that Springsteen Inc. might someday, in their infinite wisdom, release one of those live versions. I knew it was a vain hope; I knew there was no chance.

I knew that right up until I was writing the “Born to Run” chapter for this book.

I was watching the documentary included with the
Born to Run:
30th Anniversary
box set; I needed to confirm some information about the recording sessions, and the film is a gold mine.

And there, in the DVD menu?

“Thundercrack.”

Not just a live version of the song, mind you. A live video, from 1973.
¹

Vintage.

It had been right there, under my nose, for five years, and I hadn't realized it.
²

I can't express what a treasure this video is, a fossil record of what, at the time, was one of
the
Springsteen songs. It was everything I had envisioned, and more.
³
It's a balls-to-the-wall performance, filled with humor and intensity, superbly played and delivered with passion.
⁴

Just another night in the bar for Springsteen and company.

Even after the release of the first two albums, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were journeymen musicians going from town to town, night after night, paying their dues. They played theatres and larger venues in cities where their following was developing (those cities—Philadelphia, New York, Boston— remain Springsteen hot spots to this day), but mostly their gigs were isolated, one-night barroom stands, winning their audience over one sweaty set at a time. You can follow the development of the band through what Springsteen once referred to
⁵
as “the magic of bootlegging.”
⁶

Two of the finest pre–
Born to Run
bootlegs were recorded at the Main Point, a bar in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, two years apart.

The second show, on February 5, 1975, performed as a benefit for the club, finds the band on the cusp of their
Born to Run
–era powers. The almost three-hour set includes “Born to Run” itself and an early version of “Thunder Road” (with different lyrics, and under the title “Wings for Wheels”), along with definitive versions of “
New York City Serenade
” and, yes, “Incident on 57th Street.”
⁷
The show also includes a carefully chosen set of covers, including “Mountain of Love,” Chuck Berry's “Back in the U.S.A.” as the show's finale, and a version of Bob Dylan's “I Want You” that has me weeping at the mere memory of it.