Savage Read online

  I looked to the ground; my heart was beating fast like a crazed clock. The plastic bag with my wet bathing suit inside was wrapped around my handlebar; it hung still, a twisted plastic wasp nest.

  "Later, Liz," Jake said and peeled off in a blaze of exhaust and laughter.

  "Stupid trash," Elizabeth added, pulling her pedal back with her shoe, adjusting her weight, shifting the handlebars back and forth.

  "I think it’s gonna rain," I said, looking at our house a half block away. It resembled a toy, the white sidings especially.

  "Shall we continue?" Elizabeth suggested, aligning her pedals to a more comfortable starting position.

  "Let’s," Holly said. "Let’s race!"

  Soon we’d be inside our house with all the Band-Aids, batteries, condiments and folded denim that lay on exhibition.

  "Go!" Elizabeth charged. The girls and I peeled down the street for the short ride to our house as the sun began to set into the concrete’s far-off pocket.

  I remained dazed for a millisecond before I pushed off and glided my BMX to my driveway past a patch of pink cosmopolitans outstretched along the side of our neighbour’s front lawn.

  I felt a comfort once I came to a full stop inside the garage and walked towards the side door.

  As Dad, Holly and I got off the escalator, deep inside Maple Leaf Gardens’ aging belly, I prodded them for the answers. "What section?"

  "Red twenty-six."

  "Straight that way," the usher said, after examining our stubs through his Coke-bottle glasses. He wore a big fat smile along with a short-sleeved shirt and tie.

  "Enjoy the show," the usher said.

  As I passed him, I could read his fat face: You paid for this crap? Grow up, kid. Dragging your father to this shit...

  It was July 28th, and I had been twelve years old for nearly two weeks. As I sauntered behind Holly and Dad, I saw a bevy of teens and dads chattering on escalators and lining up for sugary treats, ready for two hours of feeding on the acidic residue like sweet-sick ants. As we passed a merchandise table, a man handed me a single black-and-white sheet with the rundown of matches.

  "What’s that?" Holly asked.

  "Like a thing for what the matches are."

  At home, Dad always exuded a ghastly predisposition, wearing the thin, polyester-cotton-blend tea-coloured pajamas with black socks, fogging his way through the grim early morning routine. It was strange to see him surrounded by extras and wrestling fans in Maple Leaf Gardens. Every morning I saw him, Dad appeared only half-lit; on mute, a stale, predawn musk tricking from his mouth, a mouth full of grown-man realities: failed mouthwash, under-brushed teeth, overlooked food particles. His senses honed in on the substantial, a fresh veneer, hoping coffee would place him elsewhere—if only mentally. This was our Dad; always, first thing, first light, with the rising morning air and the house yawning alive and his first cigarette to set the mood. But I forget about all those tiny corporeal details of my then forty-five-year-old father David, because all I cared about was that those tickets he bought meant we’d be at Maple Leaf Gardens, Red Section, West Gate, by eight o’clock. Each ticket costing $14.00 ($12.73 + RST $1.27 = $14.00), plus snacks and TTC costs. On the way up, I noticed the prices for seats: we had the second-best tickets available next to gold! WWF Maple Leaf Wrestling Live!

  Overhead, a crackled voice unspooled from the Gardens’ dirty quadrants; a booming, invisible bull roar charged through the building’s ghastly innards: "Welcome, everyone, to Maple Leaf Wrestling, presented by the World Wrestling Federation."

  The voice was tinny; it continued: "Ladies and gentlemen, souvenir programs and other WWF merchandise are available at the concession stands. Don’t forget to pick up the latest merchandise from all your favourite WWF wrestling stars."

  In our cold seats, Dad cleared his throat and peered out into the crowd that slowly filled the Gardens. He asked Holly if she was cold, if she wanted a hot dog, and "ask your brother..."

  I fidgeted with my shoelaces; my legs were cold. I stared at the empty wrestling ring, how the colour of the canvas was lighter than my own homemade ring, the ring that had been through so many battles already—real1 and fake.

  1. In June, the ring had to be reinforced after an incident with Dad where he hit his foot on my homemade wrestling ring, then in his usual spooling rage, snapped and crashed his size 9 black-sock foot through the meek tangerine box, the wood as flimsy as skin. The toy blew up like a fake prop coming undone at the perfect Moment. After the attack, I had to reinforce the ring’s floor with pieces of wood about two inches thick, until the material could be stretched over it again. Bringing the ring back to the living room, I said loudly, “Now it’s foot proof.”

  "Is there a program?" Dad asked. I showed my father the single page. Dad nodded as Holly took the page from me.

  "Just like church, right?" Holly joked, passing Dad the fight card I had let drop onto my knee. I heard what Holly said and looked at my sister. Dad seemed to like the joke and had a smirk on his face until it returned to his standard stiff offering. Still, the mention of church freaked me out because of the whole Jesus thing2.

  2. One night a few weeks earlier in the month, Dad woke up in the middle of the night and ran down two flights of stairs to wake me up and yell at me for not apologizing for messing up his workshop. Mom screamed behind him in her pink-and-white nightgown, and I peed a little in my pants. That weekend I took the large crucifix he had given me and hammered a nail into Jesus’s heart and threw it from the basement doorway onto the kitchen floor at my Dad’s feet. He said, “You’re not hurting me when you do that,” like Jesus was now in real agony.

  "That was funny," I whispered.

  Holly’s hair tampered with the Garden’s dark mystery. She put her hair in a ponytail and tried to hide a yawn. The garden howled with gusts of cold-air reverb.

  I had goosebumps. I looked at my sister’s legs as she rubbed them, her pale limbs poking through the denim curtain of her fraying jean shorts.

  Holly was talking to Dad. She looked down at my month-old blue Converse canvas shoes dangling, not quite hitting the ground, then at the creased program in my lap.

  Dad sat dumfounded, his face void of erratic enthusiasm or query. When he did stand, it was at around 5’ 9" in total; his greying beard with hints of red in it surrounded his roundish face. He was thin but sometimes bloated in the summer from his usual 170 pounds, depending on his diet and activity. Mom was 5’ 2", with a body type that lacked definition. She got perms twice a year which would grow out and resemble a bit of an afro. I called her hairstyle "meatball" for some reason. Her large nose and coal eyes dominated her face. Mom spoke with a high, metallic twang which made some of our friends ask Holly and I if we were from the South.

  Dad muttered something to Holly and got up, blowing his nose loudly as he rose. As he blew his nose in the familiar four-burst chime, Holly and I moved our heads to the beat. He disappeared into the cavernous static.

  Holly kicked my foot.

  "So, you want Ricky Steamboat to win ’cause of your newt? You know, your lizard, your dragon you have in your room? Didn’t you call him Ricky? Is that—"

  "No, not because of that, duh," I said, cutting her off. "I think he’ll win the belt from Macho Man tonight."

  "You think so?" Holly scratched her knee, the tiny hairs on her arms and legs standing up among sparse freckles. "Mom said she found your newt on the floor. Did it get out?"

  "It always does. I had to put some records on the top of the tank."

  "Oh."

  "But yeah," I said to Holly, "I think Steamboat is gonna win because he’s a lot quicker. I think he’s got better stamina. He’s wicked." I had just seen a bloody match on television between former Intercontinental Champion Tito Santana and the current champion Macho Man but missed some of it because Dad wanted me to put my bike away properly in the garage. I tried to tape it but couldn’t find an empty tape in time.

  The heads of two devout Savage fans in the
row in front of us turned around.

  "No way, man. Macho’s gonna kill ’em. Steamboat’s a wimp, ohhh yeeaahh!"

  I could smell their Right Guard, they were older, bigger. They were chewing on candy, stuffing their braced faces with a lacquer of sugar nectars and other bright, noisy foods. Holly sniffed the air in disgust at them, disgust for the way their concession-bought candy had caked along their ugly braced teeth.

  I wanted nothing to do with them. One boy continued at a lower volume. "Macho Madness all the way," the other declared before both turned to face the empty ring.

  "Ohhhhhh yyyyyyeeeeaaaahhhh!" one boy said, nodding and manoeuvring his hands in manic finger gestures.

  I heard one of the boys tell his friend in a low rumble, "Stupid kid likes that fag Steamboat."

  I swung my legs. I liked Savage OK, but he had won the Intercontinental title in February by reaching into his yellow trunks and pulling out a piece of steel, hitting Tito Santana in the head with it when the referee wasn’t looking. I didn’t trust him.

  "So, it’s a title match though? That could happen?" Holly asked. "Who’s better?"

  "Well..." I said, a bit quieter, still feeling goosebumps. This was like the times on the couch on rainy days, watching videos we’d borrow from the library, when the rain and the movies and the thunder rolled over the house—a few cans of diet cola, a few handfuls of candy, watermelon—and how we’d tug on the Saturday-morning couch blanket until some boundary-smashing question would send me into a fit of shame: "Do you jerk off?...Yet?...You will. All guys do...But you’re not a guy."

  And now here, my birthday gift: the wrestling match.

  "Do you have their dollies?" Holly asked.

  "You mean action figures? Yes. I have both. I want Bundy though, can’t find him anywhere."

  "So who is going to win? Ricky or Randy?"

  "I think Ricky is faster, but the Macho Man is tricky, and stronger. And smarter—maybe."

  Holly pulled out a small emery board.

  "Who else is fighting?"

  "JYD is versing King Kong Bundy," I said. I was sniffing the program, holding the page under my nose as if it were a fence to peer over.

  "You mean versus."

  "Yeah."

  "JYD? Oh wait—Junkyard God, right?" Holly said.

  "Not ‘God’—‘Dog.’"

  "That’s what I meant," Holly said, a decapitated string of red licorice dangled limp in her hand.

  "Who do you think will win that one?" She now had the program on her lap and was digging into a small stash of candy in her bag.

  She pointed at Bundy’s name. I scratched my chin. I looked into the arena’s crevices; the sparse audience looked tiny and distant.

  "Well? Bundy or Bow-wow?"

  I thought about it: Bundy had been furious since losing the cage match to Hulk Hogan in April at Wrestlemania 2, but Junkyard Dog was friends with Hulk and wouldn’t want to let the Hulkster down.

  "The God! Bow-wow-wow!" I howled, stirring with excitement. "The God Dog damn it Dog!"

  Holly tilted her neck back and offered me a piece of gum. "What time is it?"

  She rubbed both hands over her knees.

  "Eight-fifteen," I said, noticing the ring attendants fussing with a turnbuckle.

  "Where’s Dad?" I wondered, reluctant to turn my neck to look where I imagined Dad might emerge and burst into the ring in some ridiculous gardening costume.

  "Washroom," Holly answered, nodding toward the nearest exit. "Or maybe he went to the ring."

  "That would be amazing."

  "I’m a bit hungry. Where’s the popcorn geek?"

  "Did you talk to Grammy? She called yesterday."

  "No, no one told me," Holly said, pulling her gum out in a long strip and sticking it under her seat.

  "Whaddyathink Mom’s doing?" I asked.

  "Dunno. Talking to herself? Folding your underwear?"

  "Gross."

  Holly was laughing.

  "Mom’s probably vacuuming her farts," she said, howling even louder as an announcer stepped into the ring.

  Dad returned to his seat as the house lights went down.

  "OK, show time, Nate!" Holly said, squeezing my forearm. Standing up partially, I ground my feet into the Gardens’ unkempt skin.

  *

  "Goodnight Nate," Mom said, closing my basement bedroom door. "Glad you guys had a good time tonight."

  The eerie and galactic light waned to a thin slit. "Shooooooooooooo-wooooooooooooooooo-waaaaaaah-kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk," I said in a low murmur, dubbing a spaceship door closing. "Sweet dreams," I said.

  "You too," Mom said. This specific two-word phrase, you too, was the hook I always waited for, that exchange, the back and forth.

  As I lay there, I remembered some of my Mom’s jokes from earlier in the school year when I was sick a lot. She took me for blood tests because no one knew what was wrong with me. She joked that the doctor would use a foot pump to take my blood and that I’d have to start paying rent at his office. I just got so nervous going to school and dreaded the thought of doing presentations. The work was piling up, and I faked illness for about a month straight.

  Sleeping in the basement for a year now, the enamelled luxury of my own concrete washing sink and access to the workshop gave me a sense of bounty. The floor was partially covered in an oval-shaped maroon rug; the floor was tiled and cool, especially in the summer. Calculating the dimensions of the floor tiles (10" x 2¼"), often cleaned with bleach and water, the grit sopped up with a cornflower-blue dishtowel...these tiles helped ledger my world.

  My paper route that summer had been filled with terrifying news of a girl my age lured out of her house to have her photograph taken at Varsity Stadium. Her body was found a couple of days later. Thirty-two times I saw her face as I carried papers up driveways and quietly tucked them into screen doors or milk boxes.

  You too…

  Soon I would be asleep, counting flying elbow drops instead of sheep.

  *

  The remaining days of summer filled themselves with sun-glazed hours, bike riding or ghosting in the basement listening to the radio. When at home, Dad skulked and trotted with Tyrannosaurus procedure. It had been a tough summer, especially when weeks earlier Dad broke my hockey stick in two over his knee right in front of me! Just for leaving it in the driveway.

  I looked at the broken Sher-Wood stick. I had bought it at a garage sale for a dollar. I was being careful in how I picked it up; perhaps it could be fastened back together somehow. I had this piece of paper that I wrote all these things down on, and how I loved them. Sher-Wood hockey stick. Orange Corvette Hot Wheels. If I lost something, I’d write it down on this faded four-fold piece of paper. There were dozens of entries haphazardly queued on the page: everything from broken toys to dates Grammy had visited, to lost movie-ticket stubs, to items of clothing.

  A few days later, I saw the hockey stick pieces stuffed like body parts into the sides of our iron garbage can resting at the curb, awaiting extinction. I imagined how I would fix it with a plastic blade shaft and some screws. This reconstructive surgery hung enormous in my psyche as I tried to calm myself with distraction and fantasy.

  2 )

  Temptation

  Thursday, September 29th, 1988

  The first three weeks of grade nine were like watching a grade-school photograph get aged for some missing-person article. Grade nine was all the torture and terror I’d seen in panty-raiding, locker-stuffing teen sex comedies over the decade.

  I noticed many students at Leaside were people I hadn’t spoken to since grade five. (I’d left Northlea in 1985 for Cosburn’s Late French Immersion program for grade six through eight). Now, colliding in pseudo-recognition, in that strange divide between rudeness and reality, I felt myself wishing everyone were authentically strangers, beyond any clinging semblance of familiarity.

  Save for Andrew, it seemed I would spend the next four years stone-faced, passing these equally denim-clad teens in laid-back
oblivion. Not exactly what I thought would happen.

  "My cousin told me Jake Cavers was at this party on Saturday and pushed all these tables over," Andrew said, unlocking his bike near the tennis court’s tall fence. The sun was all over his face.

  "Why?"

  "He was partying," Andrew said, pulling his bike from the fence to the sidewalk.

  "Where’s your bike?"

  "My chain is fucked up."

  "Later," he shouted, turning his head from me as he peeled out of Leaside High’s sprawling school property. "I’ll call you later about the cottage!"

  The rest of the day was gobbled by sun and daydreaming: me gliding around on my blue-and-yellow Norco 18-speed mountain bike, tucking my neck as I’d edge into Glenbrae at the last minute or swerve and circle around my block via Broadway, left on Laird to Glenvale. These Moments were the best: the rest of the day was mine—alone in the house until at least 5:30 p.m. Holly usually went over to Elizabeth’s straight from school to do who knows what—smudge their lips on samples they took from the cosmetics counter or work on school assignments, practice their French, smoke weed. Holly had cornered me in the hallway just as 9th period was letting out. "Why so gloomy today? You’re all head down, dead-boy sad!"

  I said nothing. Fuck her, I didn’t feel gloomy—just waiting to hear about the cottage on both ends, if Mom would let me and if I was in fact invited for sure.

  Holly sped up behind a bomb of blonde and red manes and disappeared down the stairwell.

  Now, under the late-afternoon sun, I sprint-walked for as long as I could manage, trying to distance myself from any neighbour recognition. I didn’t talk to them or their children in class, and wasn’t going to speak to them out in the wilderness of our common real estate. Andrew was the only person I wanted to talk to, or could talk to, in all honesty. He was rapidly becoming my entire universe.