Savage Read online

  S A V A G E

  1 9 8 6 – 2 0 1 1

  Other books by Nathaniel G. Moore

  Bowlbrawl (Conundrum Press)

  Pastels Are Pretty Much the Polar Opposite of Chalk (DC Books)

  Let’s Pretend We Never Met (Pedlar Press)

  Wrong Bar (Tightrope Books)

  NATHANIEL G. MOORE

  S A V A G E

  ___________

  1 9 8 6 – 2 0 1 1

  Anvil Press | 2013

  Copyright © 2013 by Nathaniel G. Moore

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Anvil Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Moore, Nathaniel G., author

  Savage, 1986-2011 / Nathaniel G. Moore.

  ISBN 978-1-927380-55-0 (pbk.)

  I. Title.

  PS8626.O595S29 2013 C813’.6 C2013-904801-4

  Cover design by Derek von Essen

  Illustrations by Andrea Bennett

  Interior design by HeimatHouse

  Author photo by Derek Wuenschirs

  Anvil Press Publishers

  P.O. Box 3008, Main Post Office

  Vancouver, B.C. Canada

  V6B 3X5

  www.anvilpress.com

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Suffering is one very long moment.We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return.With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.

  — Oscar Wilde, De Profundis

  Against this obsession with the real we have created a gigantic apparatus of simulation which allows us to pass to the act “in vitro” (this is true even of procreation). We prefer the exile of the virtual, of which television is the universal mirror, to the catastrophe of the real.

  — Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

  Randy Savage thinks he represents the light of righteousness. But you know, it takes an awful lot of light to illuminate a dark kingdom.

  — Jake “The Snake” Roberts, WWF Magazine

  Dedicated to

  Benji Hayward (1973–1988)

  Corey Haim (1971–2010)

  and

  Spencer Gordon (1984–Present)

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: You Know You’re Right

  Part I: Substance (1986–1989)

  1. Bizarre Love Triangle

  2. Temptation

  3. True Faith

  4. Round & Round

  Part II: Savage (1991–1996)

  5. Blue Monday

  6. Every Second Counts

  7. In a Lonely Place

  8. World in Motion

  9. Everything’s Gone Green

  10. Confusion

  11. Ceremony

  12. Fine Time

  13. Ruined in a Day

  14. State of the Nation

  15. Procession

  16. Touched by the Hand of God

  Part III: The Last Savage (1997–2011)

  17. Brutal

  18. Vanishing Point

  19. Special

  20. Thieves Like Us

  21. Run

  22. Mesh

  23. Atmosphere

  24. Sooner Than You Think

  Prologue

  You Know You’re Right

  December 2012

  I am hours past a sleep I don’t recall finishing—but entered regardless—when, in my queen-sized bed, I tried for a minute to just relax and calm down and get on with my life and other family-crest slogans, when I realized it wouldn’t have mattered what year it was of the many I examined (in total, twenty-five: 1986–2011)—and so, I came to the simple conclusion that millions of people have had twenty-five years of family matters to recall at one all-consuming sitting: a big uneatable meal. We all have the ability; nothing unique in forming an interior focus group, now, is there?

  Jukebox-fresh, my gut flush to the bar, I vie for the attention of Nancy, her eyes behind her post-ironic Buddy Holly glasses. My drink is empty. I begin to unravel at what I had attempted to understand, to escape from and exorcise, as if writing a lyric redo for the underlying bass and synth beat of a New Order art-house techno gem. Enjoy each childlike day, of your after-family progress, these slogans of sacrifice, and thank you for the lonely default settings, the banana bread, I was truly being the person I am, pass me another time-bomb can: Family Soda is the one!

  The vodka crested with cranberry undulates; here we are, oh-so-much older, moments anew. I hear the slow-mo citrus and sprinkler sound of an antique family-oriented sitcom theme and its diametric use of rhyme, poetry, perspective, lamenting cliché and the seeds of depression. I down my red drink. My maudlin wasp nest of a brain just gets more Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix from here.

  Maybe I was once this innocent child, painting in the kitchen with one of dad’s dress shirts on backwards (Mom called it my smock), and she was this incredulous blob of black psychiatric paint—invasion of the present-tense psyche—Oh, hey there. Your new girlfriend says you are the best in the world, and you feel the same way. You guys have been babing, babing it up, right? But she has a thing for good-looking people, historically right? (The flashback forecast is a threat of midnight zippers and inaugural orgasms you are not responsible for...always a possibility if you let down your psychic guard. Player One Up and flashing.)

  Nancy’s back is to me. I can put the dimmer switch on our banter and concentrate on taming my theatrical unstitching; my ritualistic preoccupation with pain and chaos. Are you just aren’t you just the sweetest most inappropriate maniac and you beat your imaginary wife with ice cream and cake then sniff her sugary limbs all the while getting a big toothache. Beauty, duty and romance.

  "This is a bar not a mental institution," Nancy says, when I make some inference to bleach in a drink she’s making.

  The Nirvana song I chose comes on, and its Native tribal guitar tears into the bar, soon to be joined by Kurt’s ragged, poisonous voice. The small puddle from an ice cube I scooped out of my drink lies awaiting a tap from my finger, the one I broke in gym class playing football in June of 1987.

  Here we are among the leather or ether clad, non-entities, our lives on mute, the perennial unemployed as we hear a toothless man’s voice, like the derelict from a dystopian time-travelling science fiction film: "Hey, Nate! It’s in the teeth—that’s the way they find you, what’s that, Nate? What year did you say you think you’re in here? 2012? They don’t always send you to the right year, Nate, you see. I’m in the next bar, next door see? Hurricaines it’s called right, Nate? Named after the boxer, isn’t that right, Nate? But I tricked them, Nate, I took my teeth out, so they can’t find me! I know about you, Nate...I know your whole story, bud. Say, did you know something? Section 225.11 of the New York State Athletic Commission clearly states that they don’t like any "striking, scratching, gouging, butting or unnecessarily punitive strangleholds," eh, Nate? The commission is there to protect athletes. Too bad they didn’t live across the street from you. Could’ve come and wiped your ass every time you didn’t eat your meatloaf or clean your room."

  Despite all the investigation, there is still much unrest in the family. May as well try and enjoy the time we still have on earth. Well, I feel so much sometimes I guess I just get a bit clouded, a bit off-colour. You know that colour? A tr
out in a blender or that big dumb fat sparrow hoping around on its twig legs that a part of you wants to crush, and it’s plump and juicy, and you want it to dance alive in your semi-closed mouth, then set it free.

  Our house (161 Glenvale Boulevard) in north Leaside was built in 1960, and our family of four moved in one crisp weekend in March 1981. During the first week, select relatives visited and photographs were taken of Holly and me discovering the "secret" wood-panel door in the basement beside what would be my eventual bedroom (1985–1994) which led to a small pantry, bunker or bomb shelter under the stairs. The tiny passageway connected to the workshop.

  Each and every Sunday we all agreed the roast beef was beautiful; its heart-red and pink cross-section caused Dad to make sex noises in between throat clears. "Oh Diane, orgasm," Dad would groan, rubbing his grey or brown sweater, overacting the pleasure of each sloppy bite with his prop tongue.

  The story is disconcerting. It deals with time, madness and a perception of what a family is or isn’t. It is a study of desire, of memory, death and re-birth, set in a world coming apart.

  Look, I tried the whole straightforward "here is the scene where we were stealing porn, Variations, fall of 1988, this is my life" routine...you want to listen to Savage 1887-1903, Vol. 7, you got it: it’s coming! Jesus is putting on some Band-Aids and making the popcorn.

  Excusing myself to Nancy and the bar, I stand up, shaking a fake reporter with my hands. "You’re either gonna kill this animal or you're gonna cut off its food supply!"

  There will always be a Leaside

  With four-way traffic signs

  Where sports and scholarships and grit

  And youth and age combine

  —True Davidson, first Mayor of East York (1967–1971)

  PART I:

  SUBSTANCE

  (1986–1989)

  1 )

  Bizarre Love Triangle

  July 1986

  The city was full of glamorously tanned kids on bikes, in hyper-coloured bathing suits, on skateboards, who were having their hair cut, who sweated while mowing the lawn, who fell silent and glazed at the crude video arcades at Bayview and Millwood.

  To my left I noticed my shadow with its jagged facsimile, an angular swatch of bony grey that straddled the dilapidated cement.

  I waited for the green light before pushing my bike hard off the curb with one big thrust, now fully able to enjoy the breeze, tailing my taller, older sister, Holly, and her best friend, Elizabeth. Holly said sometimes people called her "lanky."

  Holly had a birthmark freckle thing over the left side of her upper lip and a windy pile of brown hair that hung down into her eyes, while I had a Playmobil haircut of sitcom quality, parted to the left. Elizabeth was a semi-freckled blonde with blue-green eyes and a hyperactive personality who would occasionally sunbathe and prance, fawn-like in backyards; her legs were long, taut and seasonal.

  That summer, Holly got her learner’s permit, six months shy of her sixteenth birthday. We sat in the car, driving it up and down in the driveway and once we took the two-tone Oldsmobile tank around the block. Sitting in the car, I watched the keys go from her frayed jean-shorts’ pocket to the ignition like she was opening the door to our own private apartment.

  The sun had pushed the day into a netherworld of speed, sweat and cool air. The day was a wide, brilliant green and a large, tireless orange; it swelled in crisp miracles.

  Taking a left when we got to Bayview and Broadway, we flickered past a hefty waft of hot garbage towards the top of our street, Glenvale Boulevard. "Yee-haw!" I cackled, still pool fresh in my semi-soaked navy blue Ralph Lauren golf shirt, which clung to my sissy torso. We stared across at the great supernova of sun that crested the long stretch of cemetery. I mistook the curb’s size and ended up wiping out, right in front of the girls.

  "Don’t worry; they don’t break at that age," Holly joked to Elizabeth. "Come on, Nate, get up, you wimp!"

  I sprang up off my hands, dusted off and remounted, ready to continue our Kodak descent, when Holly circled around and stopped me with her front tire.

  "Hey," Holly said, nudging her head towards 6 Glenvale, "isn’t that where your girlfriend lives? Kerri?"

  "That was when I was in grade one, like six million years ago."

  "Grade eight Kerri!" Holly laughed. "That’s what Nate called her!"

  "Oh her!" Elizabeth said. "Blonde with the gel in her hair, tons of eye make-up like a raccoon. I remember her. My mom is friends with her mom."

  "Yeah, Nate loved her. He’d walk up the street for blocks behind her after school. I’d always see him tailing her up Broadway."

  "She’s probably married now," Elizabeth said, rolling her pedal back, balancing on the sidewalk. "Darn, I think I got a sunburn," she rubbed her shoulder and caught my eye on her.

  "She’d be about nineteen now," Holly said, blowing her long hair from her face; taking me away from Elizabeth’s sunburn. Arms stretched out to the heavens, Holly balanced her bicycle with no hands. She just pivoted the frame with her hips, keeping it steady.

  "Now he likes Danielle, a girl in his French Immersion class," Holly said.

  "Do not."

  Holly began to turn her bike in the direction of our house, then added, "You kept a note from her. You said you smelled it!" We pumped our pedals and breezed down Glenvale; the cicadas harmonized, and the sun, half-asleep now with a threat of rain somewhere beyond the house tops, made the sky wobble in and out of all-blue to tones of white and silver.

  *

  The three of us had spent the last two hours in salvation at the pool near Yonge and Eglinton. The wet splashing frenzy was still visceral and glistening and clung to my senses.

  "Come on, Nate!" Elizabeth said, with a succession of splashing gestures, her one-piece slick black suit shining bright in the sun. I remember pacing myself, my heart racing, taking a scan of the pool, my eyes like a fin across the chlorinated ocean, its wet blue skin hovering over two tranquil black stripes which stretched from the shallow to the deep end. I was fastened to the deck, which was giving off the smell of oiled skin, the sun heating my bare feet starting at the toenail.

  "Come on, get in the water. We’re bored in here!"

  I stood up, felt dizzy and dramatically flopped into the pool’s deep end. Heckles from the lifeguards ensued.

  "Let’s see who can hold their breath the longest!" Holly said.

  "OK," I said. "I am undefeated in these parts."

  Elizabeth’s teeth, her lips parting, water going in and out.

  "OK, ready?" she said, mouth burbling in the water.

  "One."

  "Two."

  "Three."

  At thirty-three seconds, Elizabeth and Holly surfaced. Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. I adjusted my position underwater as the girls attempted to distract me with tickles to throw me off my game or something. I was fighting off a boner. Gone was the wash of cricket noises from the telephone wires. Fifty-nine, one minute, one-oh-one, one-oh-two...

  I broke through the water at the one-oh-seven mark. The overcast clouds tightened in the sky. A big fat horsefly circled our little wet camp. My tight grey swim trunks with single blue and yellow stripes seemed invisible. Hands fell over my eyes from behind: Elizabeth’s hot breath on my neck, a kiss on the cheek.

  Elizabeth spewed a spurt of used pool water on Holly’s head.

  *

  I was half a block behind the girls now, all of us edging towards Hanna Road, when I noticed that the sunlight gave the lower numbered houses a different sheen, and I couldn’t fathom how my house was on this same street—how somehow, up here, in the early numbers, life looked completely different.

  The sun was a deep orange, filmed in 8 millimetre, played back without sound. I was breathing in slow motion, feeling my lungs burning, my hair now a bit crunchy, in my mouth a faded piece of gumball lodged in my molar, my tongue playing with it. Soon we’d be back to sucking on the homemade popsicles that were on heavy rotation, watching a movi
e, eating crackers and cheese and dill pickles and maybe we’d order a pizza. We had left the little leeches of leathery Kraft Dinner noodles stuck to the pot from lunch.

  The idyllic thought of a tall glass of ice water suddenly flatlined as a chorus of honks interrupted the speedy finish home. A dented grey pickup truck slowed down as we came to Sutherland Avenue’s stop sign.

  "Well, well, well!" a thick voice said, plucking along with a slow mischievous groan-and-laugh combo. The truck honked twice.

  "Lame," Holly muttered, looking at me. "Get lost, Jake."

  Jake Cavers, nineteen, red-eyed and bleached blond and freckled, kept catcalling. My stomach knotted up. I looked up and down my street, imagining the infinite statistics attributed to my interactions on this stretch of pavement: the number of times, for example, that I tore my paper-route collection tabs prematurely. Eighteen times? Forty-three? Fifty-two?

  Now Jake had a truck. Last summer he was still chasing me bike to bike, trying to kick my legs as I pedalled faster. Andrew had told me that his cousins were close with Jake, and he was totally crazy. I didn’t dare say his name. I wanted to bike home fast to our white house that sat like a lone aspirin in a hot stomach.

  I stared haplessly into the truck, which had two giant viper decals along the hood. To me, Jake had huge pale arms with bulky biceps, a thick neck, red eyes to match his hair, yellow teeth with a bloody tongue and knuckles full of scabs from constantly pounding on people. From all the speed biking and windy tears, I had no sense of what he even looked like up close; just his horror of a voice yelling, "You’re dead, kid!"