Radioland

Chapter 2-1

Running fixed me, it was my go-to. Running kept my mind sharp. If I couldn’t run, I was f****d. It broke up the pool of garbage coalescing at the back of my head and kept it from inserting its flotsam into my thoughts. Running allowed me to shift focus, dodging suits and tourists along Front Street, past the convention centre and its curbside fry trucks, the CBC mothership and the levelled debris of the Globe and Mail building on the other side of Spadina. Running helped me shift focus so that life wasn’t just a song on the radio: verse-chorus-verse-chorus. A cab was going to pick me up in two hours, and every two blocks I hacked like a chain-smoker, spitting out bits of phlegm when no one was looking. I could do this. Distance running was awesome: you could do it hungover, stoned, with an empty stomach or, like right now, all of the above. Distance running is awesome because your only opponent is you.

Running. Two hours before a cab was supposed to pick me up, I was running, my first since coming down with a chest cold a few weeks before, worse than anything I’d had as a kid. And today my nerves, not wanting to eat. Feed a fever, starve a cold – was that the right order? Tightness in my chest like it was bound with elastic.

A cab was coming for me.

I needed to keep my head straight for tonight. Focus. Nerves crawling with ants. My legs were struggling as I fought to look forward to the dopamine rush ahead. All the role-playing you have to do when you’re running and not particularly good at it: the coaching, the bargaining and pleading, the faith that you’re going to feel better at some point in the future. Fighting not to think about …

Notices stapled to hydro posts. Ads for underground cinema, punk shows, the ever-present “success workshop.” Distractions that made it easier to take my mind off my lungs. This weird ad I kept seeing repeated throughout my route, offering a service to “cleanse” houses of their “negative energy” or something, “call Geoff.” Shook off the sweat, slicked the hair out of my eyes and looked for familiar landmarks from previous runs, precedents to prove that I could actually pull this s**t off – running, the big-a*s ceremony tonight, the f*****g email I got this morning. Keep pushing, keep pushing.

I remember his teeth, how they were stained by nicotine, how their tarnished ivory was revealed through each parting of his bearded lips.

I could do this. I’d done it before; my legs were up for it. Better now. Push. Relax. Keep moving. As I came out of the underpass my pace was good as I pushed uphill past Liberty Village and Lamport Stadium. I rounded Dufferin, due north, upping my pace, hoping I’d have some reserves left for a sprint at the end. Keep running, strip off that rust. Lungs were staying with me. I pulled up at the stoplight at Queen, bouncing on the balls of my feet to keep my legs limber, keep the rhythm, starting to feel complete, glaring across at the short distance between where I stood and the street I lived on, the gaping shotgun barrels of the CN Rail underpass, the crescendo of a UPX train crossing above. Flickering shadows and stale raindrops falling from the green girders onto the pavement below. There was an advance crossing signal and after a beat I pushed myself off the curb. I’d be in the shower in a minute focusing on –

The object hurtled toward me on my left, a cyclist rocketing downhill who had gambled on his speed to beat the oncoming crosswise traffic. I don’t know who got the most of it. Within a second or two of his angry shriek, his veering last minute, I turned inward to absorb the blow with my side, and got struck hard. Our torsos collided, somehow the handlebar ram horns didn’t hit my chest, somehow I had the time to see the audience of streetcar passengers gawking at us like balcony ticket holders at the Winter Garden Theatre. Bike frame wobbling, breathless, he continued eastbound, pedalling, building speed from shock. I was buckled over, holding my ribs.

“You should’ve looked where you were going!” he shouted from the fluted shadows of the underpass. He wasn’t looking back.

Every part of me wanted to snarl and howl like a battered animal, strike out. Instead I shuffled shell-shocked across the intersection with a couple of seconds remaining on the crossing signal, gripping my side like a cracked urn that might spill – red mist, red eyes, red ants crawling on me – staggering spiked with adrenaline, like a toy sputtering on the stupid momentum of a rubber band. There had been an explosion. Someone on the sidewalk stared at me when I stepped onto the curb, staring at me as if I should be lying on the road, dead. I actually turned around, doubled over and glanced, wondering if I was there, remembering the day not long after my father had left us and my mother had taken to convincing me there were no such things as gods.

Verse-chorus-verse-chorus.

Glancing repeatedly at my guitar and pedalboard in their respective hard cases sitting by the door as if someone else had packed them, their presence reiterating that tonight was still happening, and I was as ready as I was ever going to be. The hole I’d kicked in the wall just within my periphery. Searching for anything to distract myself from the radiating heat of my rib cage. Had a coughing fit that caused waves of soreness in my side.

Patterns. Patterns of patterns.

The drip-drip of the leaky bathroom faucet begging my attention. Wanted to rip it out of the vanity. Anger like boiling diesel, fists, gritted teeth.

Clop-clop-clop came the shoe heels upstairs. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus.

Needed to get out of here. Everything was a pattern jamming my head, which is why I ended up kicking the hole in the wall. I was ready to kick another.

You should’ve looked where you were going!

Clop-clop-clop. Clock. Check the clock. The cab would be here soon. Check my phone for texts. Looking for distra–

The email subject header from this morning:

Re: Charges filed against Charles Ibbitson

Turned on the TV and cranked the volume stupidly high – f**k the upstairs neighbours – and watched a band opening for some American sports megalith, and … I … didn’t … get it. I’d heard of them but I’d never actually seen them before. They were all basically twenty-three and immaculately clothed and shorn, these four visibly unique personas on stage: the pink-haired lead guitarist in the leather b*a doing high kicks, the bassist with the dumb-a*s smile who wore a Stars and Stripes muumuu, the drummer – trapped, like most drummers – effortlessly singing backing vocals despite doing sixteenth notes on the hi-hat. The lead vocalist dancing and strutting. Oh, and he sang. And at the end of their number he did a headstand on the stage. Effortlessly, all of them, like they were bred and trained on a secret army base in Guam.

Fun times, fun times. If you didn’t enjoy this s**t you had emotional issues.

I stared at these kids with amazement. I wondered if they’d ever climbed onstage while fighting diarrhea, had their gear damaged, looked out from the stage at a half-empty room of strangers in a strange city right after reading a smirky takedown of their album in the local indie or stared at one another backstage after learning that you were getting paid half of what was initially offered for the gig and unable to pull out without looking like assholes. Wondering whether this was worth sacrificing a more stable life for, whatever that was supposed to be.

Tonight was it. There might as well not be another day after this. The cab was coming. The email. My ribs. My lungs.

There was a case of beer waiting for me at the bottom of the stairwell when I got home, sent by none other than Red, one of the great damaged rock gods walking amongst us, with a note in his jarring polygraph script congratulating us, wishing us luck. I hoped he would reach out if he was staying in town. Someone who knew the real me. Please.

I jumped when my phone buzzed. Everything tense. Patterns. Before I could mute it I saw a bunch of texts with multiple exclamation marks. Attention. Attention.

A cab was coming for me and I was exhausted and it was barely past noon. I’d had the enterprising idea of booking a bunch of gigs in the lead-up to the ceremony tonight. And somehow they all went well enough, well enough were it not for there being no time to take care of anything in the real world while it was happening: work, money, my girl Heera wondering where I was at inside my head when I wasn’t making eye contact with her. And me, suspecting I’m inching further inward, yet becoming more see-through. Less adorable ha-ha. What exactly was I thinking?

Gotta move. If I could just keep moving then I could distract myself. Scrolling through congratulatory notes on my phone. There’s a cab coming for me. Meanwhile I was standing in the middle of my basement apartment like an actor dressed how people were expecting me to look, a more subdued riff on the cartoonish bullshit I’d had burned into my retinas, making me wonder who in fact the fake was. A polyester shirt with dots I got in Kensington Market for five bucks. The collar was long and pointed like it was from the ’70s (it was probably from the ’70s). A pair of whatever black jeans with honest holes in the knees that came from working barback and helping friends with renos for under-the-table money. I’d spent fifteen minutes wondering whether or not to put product in my hair or wait until later, closer to showtime. My socks had holes in them because they were the only pair left – no time for laundry. What do you even wear for being on TV?

Visible in patterns. Hiding in patterns. Prowling in patterns. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus.

You should’ve looked where you were going!

Reality was settling in. The pain in my side was glowing, my plants were nearly dead. I was basically living in a made-for-TV movie about a bachelor who gets his act together, except I wasn’t sure if I was the protagonist or his deadbeat friend.

My phone buzzed: the driver was here. My heart beating in my neck, I grabbed my gear, moved them into the narrow stairwell and locked the door behind me, feeling somehow as if I wasn’t supposed to return, or more weirdly that I would come back different: winner, famous, star, invisible, victim, loser. Monster. I ran up the steps two at a time until the radiating ache in my ribs made me slow down. I waved at the driver that I was here, then went back down and began the too-familiar process of gear hauling. At ground level I kept from looking into the first-floor window for fear of spotting my housemates, a stressed-out software developer couple in their twenties (she was seeing someone else).

“Kris?” the driver asked. The trunk was already popped, and he was standing outside the cab as I got to the sidewalk; I only needed to glance at his expression to know he was going to insist I put everything in the trunk.

I texted Waz as we pulled away from the curb to make sure he was on his way. Kendra would kick our asses if we were late. Drummers. In these moments she existed more like a football coach. She had more gear to haul so there was also the implicit guilt that we had to respect the burden of her instrument of choice.