The Antagonist

8


06/27/09, 2:04 p.m.


SORRY IT HAS BEEN so long. Or maybe you don’t care — I can’t help but notice Chub Central continues to maintain its radio silence. The old ignore-him-and-he’ll-go-away tactic I suppose? Well guess what, Adam, I’ve done more than my share of market research on that one, and I’m here to tell you: he doesn’t. He won’t.

You’re not going to believe this but I called Gord the other day. I was feeling a little stalled since last we spoke. That goose always takes it out of me. I had to hit the couch for a while. I lay there for a good couple of days asking myself if it was really such a great idea to set aside my summer vacation for this. If this is really what I want to spend the next two months gnawing away at. Usually, I’ll take on some project or another. I’ll work on the house or volunteer at the Y to do some coaching. Not hockey, if that’s your assumption. The kids are all about soccer these days. Hockey’s time, it seems to me, has come and gone. The players stopped seeming like demi-gods around the time they started seeming more like rich, whiny babies, and the playoffs have been depressing pretty much since Gretzky left for L.A., and most kids’ parents can’t afford all that gear anyway.

Fortunately and speaking of which, the Confederations Cup is on the sports channel, so it wasn’t like I just spent two days staring at the ceiling. I first started watching soccer back when I started coaching — teaching myself about the game and figuring out how to give a shit about it — and now I look forward to the soccer finals more than I ever did Lord Stanley’s bashfest. I happen to live in a neighbourhood with a pretty big Greek contingent and they always go bananas at this time of year. I can wander from one block party to the next, being handed napkinfuls of baklava and shots of ouzo with every step I take. When Greece won the Euro Cup a few years back, there was literally dancing in my street — the party went on for days. (Oh and I’m not going to get any more specific than that about where I live, by the way, because I could be anywhere, Adam. I’m a ghost, after all. Maybe I’m on the other side of the continent from you. On the other hand, maybe I could get up out of my chair right now, take a stroll a few blocks over, and knock on your door. Who knows, right? Not you.)

So anyway, right around the time Italy was going up against Brazil I started thinking about Gord and how disgusted he would be; how he always hated soccer because Europeans played it and Europeans are by definition homosexuals, even though the Russians have proven themselves able to play hockey every once in a while like respectable hetero males. And then I found myself snickering up at the ceiling thinking how fun it would be to call Gord up and tell him that I was watching soccer on TV and describe to him how much I was enjoying it, especially that one player with the flowing chestnut hair and taut buttocks.

So one day, after a great many beer, I did.

When I drink a great many beer, you have to understand, I soften up a little about Gord. That is to say, I go from my sober default setting of wanting to never look at or speak to him again, to my great-many-beer status of wanting to call him up and provoke him.

“How’s it going, f*cknuts?”

“Well piss on a plate! Is that who I think it is?”

“It is who you think it be.”

“Well isn’t this a surprise. Stay right there now son and let me turn off the TV.”

That’s when I lost a bit of my great-many-beer glow, realizing at once how happy I’d made Gord with my phone call, realizing I was actually sitting there on the line waiting for him to come back and talk to me.

So I hung up.

But of course he called me immediately back.

“Guess we got cut off there.”

“Guess so.”

“These goddamn phones! They make you buy new packages every year that are supposed to save you so much trouble for more money and the service just gets worse and worse.”

“They make you buy them, do they.”

“Well they don’t give you any goddamn choice. This young one called me up the other day, some kinda accent on her, I can understand maybe every third word, Oh we’re offering this new service . . . ”

“Just hang up on them, Gord.”

“Well I would but I’m too polite. So I say maybe one of you a*sholes can tell me why every time I pick up the line now the goddamn thing goes boop boop boop like a busy signal?”

“It means you have a message, Gord. It’s like an answering machine.”

“What’s like an answering machine?”

“Like — an answering machine that’s inside your phone. They gave you voice-mail on your line — it’s internal voice-mail.”

“Well that’s dandy but who said I wanted any goddamn voice-mail, internal or external? I get my mail in an envelope, and it goes in my mailbox, and that’s all the internal mail I need. Then I take it out and, by Christ, it’s external. Whoopee-ding, aren’t I high-tech.”

I could tell by the tone of his voice, by the sprightly lilt to his goddamns, that my father was thrilled to be speaking with me.

“Hey Gord, guess what? I’m watching the Confederations Cup on TV. Big soccer finals.”

“Is that a fact? Watching a bunch of fruits run around in their shorts now, are you?”

“Sure am.”

“Well to each his own. Live and let live I always say. Just as long as you keep those types away from me.”

“It’s not gonna be easy Gord. You’re a good-looking man.”

“Oh kiss my ass.”

“Don’t say that to them.”

Gord wheezed himself a scrawny chestful of laughter at that one. Ah, father-son queer bashing. How did I get into this?

“Hey Gord?” I called over his delighted gasps for breath. “Listen, I gotta go.”

“No you don’t, you just got on for Christ’s sake,” he said, hacking up the results of his laughter — into a Kleenex, I hoped. “You didn’t call just to tell me you’re sitting there watching fruits in shorts.”

“Actually I did.”

“Well I hope you have more than that to say for yourself these days.”

And then I thought: Oh well. Gord’s not good for much, but he does constitute a living archive of sorts — which, as I think I’ve already indicated, is why I’ve avoided him most of my adult life. But undertaking this little project with you, I suddenly realized, was going to require a complete readjustment of my lifelong MO.

So what the heck, I thought, time to open up the archive.

Was this a bad idea? Yes. Did I open, and swiftly down, another beer precisely to drown out the clamouring voices of my better, smarter angels, who were telling me this was a bad idea? Yes.

“Gord,” I said. “Hey Gord. Do you remember when I almost killed Mick Croft?”

And Gord — you’re not going to believe this — he was ready for it. It’s like he had spent the past twenty-odd years like a runner, coiled on the starting block, poised for the pistol.

“That little f*cker,” Gord began. “I will tell you something right now, son of mine. That little f*cker was looking to get his head kicked in pretty much the moment he poked it out of his mother’s you-know-what. And now I’m going to tell you something else. You didn’t almost kill him, that’s bullshit. It was self-defence and everyone in this town knows it, and has known it, for the past twenty-three years.”

My god. Gord had kept count.

“We did this town a favour, you and me. We were the f*cking clean-up squad. Bill Hamm and his keystone cops up there at the detachment couldn’t do anything about it, but oh my Christ, they sure as hell could come after me and mine once we finished doing their goddamn job for them, couldn’t they?”

“Me, Gord,” I said, spastically thrusting my hand into the beer cooler I’d stationed by the couch when the Cup began. But all I got this time was a fistful of ice. “You were in the restaurant. You were on the other side of the glass from where I was.”

But Gord was off. Gord had been coiled and ready too long to slow down now.

“Almost killed the little bastard — if only! How many kids did he almost kill pushing his drugs? Not to mention that knife he was always carrying around for the love of god and everyone and their cousin’s dog saw it. All those half-drunk tools over at the Legion. If that useless lawyer had any kind of clue what she was doing we wouldn’t have . . . ”

I was just digging around in the ice at that point, had been this whole time, my hand was going numb. And I knew I couldn’t do this.

“Me, Gord,” I said. “You’re all: we we we.”

“Wee wee wee all the way home,” rejoined Gord. “Listen here, son. You did nothing wrong and I will go to my grave with those words on my lips, Gordie, that you can believe.”

“It’s everyone else’s fault, right? The lawyer, the tools at the Legion . . .”

“It was his own goddamn fault! Are you gonna sit there and tell me different? Oh, he had a hard childhood, is that it? Oh boo-hoo, maybe his old man gave him a tap with the hairbrush every once in a while. Oh no, they fed him too much red meat. They didn’t buy him fancy sneakers, wouldn’t get a big screen TV for his bedroom. My god, when you think of it, they should have named a holiday after the little a*shole.”

“F*ck, GORD!” I roared into the phone.

“DON’T YOU CURSE AT ME!” he roared back. And here we were at last. “YOU’RE NOT TOO BIG FOR ME TO . . .”

“YES I AM TOO BIG! JESUS! STOP BEING SUCH AN IDIOT! I’M JUST TRYING TO HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH YOU!”

“Well who’s stopping you?” Now he just sounded perplexed. Oh, I remembered this tactic from long ago and far away. Gord switches tracks — shifts with stomach-turning swiftness from wrath to bewilderment. Who, me? Lovable old Dad, screaming, making threats? You’re mistaken, sir. And then you hear yourself panting and feel your face throb as you make rigid your neck tendons in preparation to holler some more at the poor, bewildered old man.

“I knew calling you would ruin my day,” I told him after a while. “You’re a lunatic, Dad.”

“Well you know I always love to hear from you, Gordie.”

And can you believe this, Adam? He was being utterly sincere. Utterly proving my point.

Brazil won, by the way.