Tag Archives: hockey

An Education in Three Parts

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In celebration of National Poetry Month I’ll be writing and posting a poem a day for the entirety of April. No haikus. Nothing about wheat, unless fermented. All of the poems can be found here.

1. When I got to the backyard he was standing over the fire pit
pouring lighter fluid onto the flickering embers,
and drinking a bottle of six dollar vodka.

I hid the cat and cigarettes,
brought him a bucket of water,
and moved my chaise back a few feet
so I could watch the slow process of learning.

Later, speakers played Bright Flight from the kitchen window,
and we watched the rest of his favourite cardigan burn
a raven cloud up through the courtyard, shared a bottle
of gifted bourbon, and with the confidence of experience,
I did my best to explain exactly where his evening went awry.

It was a Tuesday. We were both single,
and despite the smell of a cotton blend ablaze,
and the taste of midweek whiskey,
we were entirely unsure as to why.

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O to Copa: Home and the Local

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I miss a lot from my former lives. I’ve spent time living in Ottawa, Vancouver, Costa Rica, Montreal, and now Toronto, and with each move, each shift of life, I’ve left something special behind: a girl I loved, a friend I cherished, an apartment I felt right in, a diner that burned my grilled cheese just right, a quiet street I liked to stumble home, a spot on the beach to celebrate the eventide, a girl I loved. I like moving. I enjoy that sense of displacement. The rush of adrenalin born of fear of solitude and loneliness. The way a new place smells. The way it tastes. Of walking unfamiliar streets completely alone. And what I like best of a new place, a new temporary home, is discovering a local, a pub or tavern to call my own. And on a recent visit back to Montreal, I stopped by a former local to find it turned inside out, contemporized, changed. And I realized, much to my disappointment, that I haven’t had a local in some time, that I’m without a true home.

Many more intelligent folks than I have considered what we “need.” Virginia Woolf claimed that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Why this only applies to women and fiction is beyond my two degrees in English, but it didn’t turn out all that well for Ginny did it? Neil Young claimed a “man needs a maid” but Neil is notoriously messy, and that all turned pretty bad for Carrie Snodgress. Hunter S. Thompson told us “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me,” which some of us have tried to varying degrees of success, Thompson himself on the low end of that measurement. For me, a man needs a home, and that home is a local, a bar to call his own, a place where you can drop in at 11am without judgment for a cold 50 and read the paper. A place where a stool is always empty, where you can have both conversation and silence, where a hockey game plays on a TV quietly in the distance, where a friend will drop by, or not. And where it doesn’t matter.

My first local was an Irish pub in Ottawa called Gentle Annie’s. My friends and I went there because, well, it was close to our homes and they’d serve us even though we were sixteen. The owner, Des, whose nose had burst so many blood vessels it looked like an irrigation chart, and his staff very much knew how old we were, mostly because we would drunkenly admit it in the wee hours. We were peach-fuzzed little drunkards, but we could hold our liquor and we tipped well. We knew all the words to all the Irish songs, and we belted them out as best we could. The only problem with being so close to our homes, was that from time to time a friend’s parents or one of our high school teachers would come in. We’d all pretend not to see each other, except for on one occasion when a rather inebriated algebra teacher struggled to his feet to declare he was taking attendance, and proceeded to call on the five of us by surname over and over until someone settled him down.

On one of my last visits to Gentle Annie’s, I accidently broke my buddy Joe’s front tooth with the end of my pool cue. Opinion on how it happened differs, as Joe claims I hit him and I maintain that he face planted into my cue as he bent over for his pint.  Joe, suffering from too many drinks and a bit of vanity, naturally called 911 from the bar payphone. We were a little surprised when two cop cars, a fire engine, and an ambulance showed up upon hearing of a broken tooth at a local not averse to the occasional scuffle. The cops laughed at us, the fire engine quickly departed, and after the ambulance attendant explained to Joe that he would be charged a $95 fee for the ride, he thought it best to just go home and sleep it off. To this day his cap doesn’t quite match his teeth, and his mother holds me responsible for his now slightly less than perfect smile. He’s still very pretty, though.

There were a few places when I moved to Vancouver that I considered my local, but I never really felt at home in that city until I found The Fringe Café. The Fringe was like a house party with all your closest friends, every night, all night. I would imagine that the party is still going on, but I haven’t been there in twelve years. The Fringe was special, in that you could go in at any time and feel comfortable whether you were reading a book or hitting on the barmaid or doing shots of Jäger. The staff was more than friendly, and it was not uncommon to stay drinking right into morning, and greet the day staff as they came in for their early shift. On two separate occasions I put my ball cap down on a candle, nearly setting fire to the table, and perhaps the bar. Another time I left the bar not by walking out the front door, but by somersaulting the length of the room and out the back. I remember once refusing to leave the patio, and being carried, pint in hand, by Karen the bartender to an indoor seat. I remember great music. I remember feeling light. I remember good people. I remember being three thousand kilometres from home, and not at all.

Eventually, the sane man sobers up and leaves Vancouver. And in the years that followed I was without a local. There were a few weeks in Ottawa where the Alibi Room was close, but it was too small and dark to find any real comfort. It was, however, the place that supplied my roommate and I with toilet paper, as we were broke and he was handy with opening the locked dispenser in the men’s washroom with his Swiss Army knife. But then one night a girl I was seeing decided to pour an entire litre bottle of water over my head in the middle of the bar, and after that it wasn’t really a place I wanted to go back to.

In Montezuma, on the Peninsula de Nicoya in Costa Rica, there were a couple of little hotel bars I liked, where eventually the staff acknowledged me as a pseudo-regular. If I was a true regular anywhere there, it was the breakfast place that would whip up my eggs and café con leche as they spotted me coming down the beach, or the groceteria that had cheapest pilsners and discounted guaro. But down there, we were always happiest to drink on the beach, and no one is in Costa Rica on any permanent basis. No one is home.

It wasn’t until I got back to Canada, and moved to Montreal that I found a local again. The Cock n’ Bull was one of the first bars I had been to in my youthful visits to Montreal, so it seemed natural to return. I didn’t know anyone in the city, and I liked going there alone in the afternoons for pitchers of 50 and to read the paper, maybe try and do some writing. There were always these sad old men at the bar, Bukowksi’s without pens or poetry, drinking draught beer from white wine glasses, contently awaiting some kind end. I kind of admired them, their comfort in solitude, their confident quiet. It was here that I wrote most of my first book, where I could look into the future of my speakers as they sat at the bar next to me. As I found a community, when we called each other, we didn’t even need to say which bar to meet at, just when. The Cock n’ Bull became a home. Many nights would start at a large table, pitcher upon pitch being devoured, and inevitably end up with just myself and Nick McArthur as 3am rolled around, doing shots of Southern Comfort, wondering where everyone went, talking about how one day we’d be writers.

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Sometimes an All-Star Notion

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I did something horrible this weekend. Something for which I feel great shame. I degraded myself in a way I hadn’t since I was a petulant and ignorant young man.  It was a victimless crime, of sorts, and the only one who was hurt was me. What I did, what I need to admit openly so as to feel some sort of absolution, is watch the NHL All-Star game. In fact, not only did I watch the game, but I preceded that horror of half-hockey and hype by watching the NHL All-Star Draft followed by the NHL All-Star Skills Competition. And as Sunday night frittered away in a sad haze of whiskey and regret, I clutched my Larry Robinson vintage Wales Conference, its polyester blend repelling my tears like an unforgiving ex-girlfriend, and I promised the absent hockey gods that I would never again demean myself like that. I would never again disrespect the game by actively condoning its corporate bonanza played at half-speed. I would refrain from the hype. And as the whiskey and tears combined to blind me in my confession of sin, I cried out to no one in particular: At least I have not sinned as my brother, at least I have not watched the NFL Pro Bowl! And in that moment, I found my redemption: combine the NHL and NFL All-Star events.

It should come as a sign that the two major league all-star events that are both unsuccessful and unlike their respective sports fall on the same weekend, for hockey and football require more physical effort and contact, and as such more chance of injury, than their basketball and baseball brethren. As a result, the all-star games themselves are played with the cautious fervor of Sidney Crosby getting out of a shower. The NBA All-Star Weekend is perhaps the most successful of the four, as their slam dunk and three-point shooting competitions provide an exhibition of the sport’s athleticism, as does the playground feel of the game itself. Additionally, it’s the one weekend a year where illegitimate NBA offspring can go to find their absent dads in one place. It’s what Shawn Kemp called the “family reunion” until he ate and fathered his way out of the game.

Baseball has it’s Midsummer Classic, an all-star game with a title nearly Shakespearian with a history and tradition to match. Plus, if Prince Fielder can weigh the same as my ’93 Honda Civic and have the body fat of an apathetic humpback whale and still sign a contract for $214 million that takes him well into his recliner and Pringles years, one at-bat against 80 mile-an-hour soft tosses every July isn’t going to hurt him. The NFL and NHL all-star “games” are played at half-speed because no one, not even the fans, want to see a player hurt in a nothing contest. So, by my reasoning, two events at half-speed added together equals one at full-speed, no? No.

I’m certainly not suggesting NFL players lace up their Bauers to take on the NHL stars, though the opportunity for Ray Lewis to try and kill some kid from Saskatchewan with his skate for snowing him could be interesting. Nor am I suggesting that NHL players throw on the pads, and try and convert a 3rd down against the NFL stars, mostly because NHLers are notorious for throwing like girls, and the Canadian players would be attempting rouges all afternoon. What I’m humbly suggesting is that the two leagues combine their all-star weekends into one massive, two-sport mega-event. And Drake could still perform, because if pro athletes have one thing in common it’s an affection for mediocre pop hip hop.

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A Chronicling of my Harlotry

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I have to admit that I’ve been cheating on you, and with multiple partners, in multiple cities. I’m not proud of my philandering. I always thought I was better than that. But I’m weak, weak to the temptations of flesh and fortune—the cockteasing of happiness. But it’s a cruel way of being happy, an exercise in vanity. I’m here to apologize to you. Here is a chronicling of my adultery, my writing for multiple publications and other self-indulgent acts of the past week or so:

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An Enforcer Goes to the Office

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George woke up the way he so often did: with a rabid hangover, his hands bloodied, his knuckles bruised, and his helmet askew. He had a fair amount of vomit on his jersey, which made him all the more thankful that the jersey was a vomit repelling polyester blend. His mouth was crusted in dried blood, and his living room, in which he was now sitting wearing just his helmet, his jersey, and mismatched socks, was spinning violently. The front door to his condo was missing, and his cat, Donnie, was suspiciously dead. George’s coffee table was covered in crushed Percocets, ground Vicodin, and spilled Jägermeister. He located the alarm clock that hung in the centre of the living room, and found it flashing 9:16. He was late for work. He changed quickly into a fresh jersey, and rushed from his condo, failing to shower off the odour of sick, and Jägermeister, and the late night from his imposing six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame.

Despite the fact that George was ever so late for work, it was imperative that he start the work day as he always did, with a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, six thick slices of peameal bacon, four poached eggs, three slices of whole wheat toast, and a happy ending from a middle-aged Asian masseuse. It was fortunate for George that he had drunkenly parked his red Audi A5 on the condominium complex’s front lawn, making the car easy to find and expediting the process of his morning. He sped off towards Eggs & Endings, not bothering to fasten his seatbelt, the windows down to freshen him up, and his helmet so tight it was restricting his blood flow and making him lightheaded. As he weaved recklessly in and out of traffic, blasting HITZ 103.4FM, he considered the previous day at the office. The fighting, the name calling, the screaming, the filing, the drinking, and the data entry. Same Tuesday as it always was, though George thrived somewhat in the monotony of the grind.

Considering the hour, he used Eggs & Endings’ Drive-Thru Full Service, swiping his members’ card, and earning forty bonus privilege points. He arrived at his employers downtown office building at around 10:42, leaving the Audi parked in the emergency lane right out front, and dropping a handful of change into a non-existent parking metre. Quickening his pace, he made a hasty stop at the lobby Starbucks, where he ordered a quad shot Grande Americano, to which he added ten sugars and one Sweet n’ Low. On the elevator ride up to the tenth floor, he popped a package of Extra-Strength Sudafed, straightened his helmet, and chugged a Diet Red Bull.

George knew his boss would be waiting for him at reception, and sure enough there was Mr. Wilson as the elevator doors opened.

“You’re fucking late, Georgie,”  he spat.

“Fuck you, Ronnie, you fucking twat,” George shot back.

The men shoved at each other for a few minutes, before two of the secretaries broke them apart.

“You’re a fucking disgrace, Georgie.”

“Fuck you, Ronnie, I’ll cut you right in the fucking mouth,” George shot back.

Each of the secretaries took the men to their respective offices, which were positioned at opposite sides of the centre of the office’s north wall, an office like so many others, an endless sea of cubicles. For a few minutes the men glared at each other through their large windows, hurling obscenities, coffee mugs, and staplers at the glass. Finally, they settled down and Mr. Wilson went back to work, while George tried to get organized to make up for his tardiness. Though he loathed his job, George liked the company and hated being late. He had missed the anthems, and the morning announcements. He could feel his coworkers knowing eyes on him as tried to get to work. From his top drawer he pulled out a half-bottle of vodka, and used what was left to top up his Starbucks. He straightened his helmet, and then got on with his day, which progressed as any other day would.

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