Week 1 - Tragically Hip
When the Weight Comes Down
At the beginning of the night the consensus is that the band royally sucks. By the middle of the night, they are all singing, dancing, and having a grand old time. At last call, they bang on the tables and scream out for more as if it was the best band they’d ever seen.
It was always difficult being one of the few sober people in the bar, it affords that perspective though, which I suppose is valuable in some way. Servers can’t help but become armchair psychologists; some even delve into the profession of tray-carrying therapists. Not me, hell, I couldn’t keep my own life together. I came about that honestly enough. I guess we all did after we criticized everyone else for doing the same damn things we had done before.
We were at the groovin’ stage as the band blew out ‘New Orleans is Sinking’ to hands raised through the clouds of cigarette smoke.
Bourbon blues on the street loose and complete
Under skies all smoky blue-green
I can forsake the Dixie dead shake
So we dance the sidewalk clean
My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim
It was your typical roadside bar in northern Ontario, deep in cottage country, in the middle of the Kawartha Lakes region. The tables and chairs were made of thick wood, they were durable - they had to be, and they were scarred with burns and random carvings that described decades of alcohol-managed despair and uninhibited debauchery.
Our bartender was a 60-year-old woman who kept a baseball bat behind the bar. She too was durable out of necessity. She was also up on assault charges for using that bat; a story she told freely and often. Some of the patrons, the regulars that is - not those city-dwelling weekenders, you couldn’t help develop an affection for, but others were just plain assholes. At some point toward the end of the grooving-to-the-music stage, one of them would inevitably start something, fists would fly, glasses would shatter, the place would be in shambles, and out would come that bat. If you didn’t think a 60-year-old woman could ever be imposing, you’d never met Marina, even without the bat. They don’t make them like that anymore.
I’d been fucking the guitar player. They were back for their second gig of the summer. The first gig they played at the bar my husband, John, came in with his sidekick Lawrence; he’d left the kids with someone so he could show up and torment me. He wanted to catch me screwing around, which I hadn’t done, not yet. To say it was a bad relationship would be a gross understatement. When he’d left the bar, I had the other waitress cover all the tables, and sat down with some of the happy regulars and proceeded to slam down shot after shot of Sambuca until the world, and my problems, faded away. I woke up bent like a pretzel in the front compartment of my old ’78 Honda Civic. The last fuzzy memory I had was trying to start the car but it wouldn’t go. It was for the best, because I doubt I would have had any success trying to drive the aforementioned Honda home by way of the Trent Canal System. When the band came back the next day, the guitar player told me that they’d noticed me with my feet sticking out of the car door, so they tucked me in and locked it up. I was immediately smitten. He’d done that for me, he had been worried about my safety and he didn’t judge me for being polluted.
So I fucked him that night, in my bed while my husband wasn’t home. I fucked him underneath the hole made by John’s baseball bat which he’d swung at my head the last time I’d come home drunk and he’d accused me of screwing around. It had missed my head marginally, of course, or I wouldn’t be here telling this story. It’s better to be hung a sinner than a saint. They were back for another two-night gig. I felt an odd combination of excitement and fear as I watched him play his guitar on stage. I wanted a repeat performance, but I knew I was risking my life to do it. We’d chatted as they set up. Mostly hi, and how’ve you been, good to see you again, pleasantries, but I had tables to serve and he had sound check.
At forty-five minutes to last call, the band took a break. I felt deft hands wrap around my waist as I ordered half a dozen drinks from Marina. I knew who it was, I could smell him; I could feel his long hair tickle my cheek.
“Meet me out back after last call?” he whispered in my ear. I nodded once, hoping that no one would understand what was going down. In that place, gossip was the main dish on the menu and I couldn’t afford to be flambéed.
“Add a Blue to that, Marina, please and thanks,” she’d think he’d just ordered a beer. I’d give him one, on me. “Oops, and a rye and ginger,” that one was for me.
I swung my tray around and took just one step when I nearly lost the load. John was walking through the door with Lawrence in tow like a faithful minion ready to do his master’s bidding. He looked pissed, but then, he always looked pissed. It could have been anything.
The band fired back up.
Afternoon, see a guy with rubies on his head
and he's shifting like shifting like he was dead
and he's hearing something, she never said
On his way back home, under his bed
John’s eyes tracked me through my delivery; I could feel them even when I wasn’t nervously glancing at him. After finishing my rounds, all that was left on my tray was that Labatt’s Blue and that rye and ginger.
In the night there's a girl who doesn't mind her ragged sleeves
Knowing someone is gonna grieve
And a man he tells her a story, she just don't believe
Called, "Adam never could do right by Eve."
I walked over to the stage and put both drinks in front of my guitar player, then smiled and winked at him. I immediately realized I should not have done that because he smiled and winked back with a look that couldn’t be mistaken as merely a friendly gesture.
And the weight comes down
Down on you, down on you
and a girl walks by the burning bush
She asks, "What's gone wrong here man?"
And he smiles, says, "Open wide, wide, wide"
“What do you want?” I asked John harshly.
“What’s wrong?” he said in the singsong condescending tone that told me I was in for a world of hurt for no reason that I could possibly discern. There was no way that he could know about my guitar player. No one knew.
“Nothing is wrong, why are you here?” I pressed.
“Can’t I come into a bar for a drink?”
I sighed in frustration and ordered beer for Lawrence and him and prayed to a God I didn’t believe in for this night to end soon - and hopefully not my life with it. Surprisingly, John wasn’t a drinker, for the abusive asshole that he was, he didn’t need any additional inspiration - but when he had that extra inspiration then bad things got worse.
Struck between necessity and terror, I looped through a hundred ways to tell my guitar player that I couldn’t meet him after last call. I waited for an opportunity - hoping John would have to take a piss - but he always left Lawrence with his eyes on me. Just talking to someone was enough to set off John’s jealous rage; I knew that from experience so I dared not while he was watching.
The crowd was banging on the tables as the band lit into “Locked in the trunk of a car.” I actually heard a big scruffy guy with a bellowing voice shout out, “this is the best band I’ve ever seen!”
Better for us if you don't understand it'd be
Better for us if you don't understand it'd be
Better for me if you don't understand
let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out
Right on cue, Peter Lytle, one of the asshole regulars, launched the table he was sitting at, bottles scattered and beer drenched the floor, bowling over two guys in the process. So much for last call. He was screaming obscenities at someone in drunken gibberish. Arms started swinging, blood started flowing, some scattered, some jumped in, but all I could do was duck and run for cover. The band kept on playing for a minute, until one by one they stopped with a THUMP, BANG, TWANG. The drums cut out, the bass - my guitar player’s hand still poised on one end of his Fender Stratocaster stopped strumming with the other.
The lead singer prompted into his microphone in a voice that was all too calm and collected, “Hey guys, this is not cool! You might wanna stop before the cops get here.”
No one heeded. As I watched from the kitchen order window, which offered a poor vantage point, I saw Marina’s bat come out. In a state of shear panic, I looked for John but I couldn’t see him. Peter and John were not friends, enemies really, ever since John stole his welding machine. It would be a good thing if John took the opportunity to take out Peter, I thought, and then he’ll stay away from the band. As far as I could tell, they were trying to keep the fray away from their equipment and trying to get what they could out before the crowd caused irreparable damage. Good, get out sweet musician, run for the hills.
But, what if he still intended on meeting me out back? Fill the ketchup bottles. Stock the coffee. Load the dishwasher. The cops should be here soon. Don’t look. You don’t want to know. All these thoughts sprinted through my head vacillating between distraction and dread until I finally couldn’t stand by anymore. Guitar player was gone; the rest of the band was carrying out the last of their stuff. The fight continued on, not as fervently as before - they heard the sirens too. I split out the door and around back carrying a bag of garbage, if my guitar player was waiting for me there I could tell him to go - we’d catch up later. If John saw me, then I was just taking out garbage.
The bar backed on to Mitchell Lake, there wasn’t much behind there and it was dark. I saw a shape and every ounce of bile in my stomach thrust upward into my throat. That wasn’t the guitar player’s slender shape; it was the large, rotund, awkward shape of John.
“Coming to meet someone?” he taunted.
“NO! I’m taking the fucking garbage out!” Too mad. Tone it down I told my mouth. “Why the fuck are you out here?”
“I know you’re here to meet someone!” He was yelling too. Fuck. I didn’t want to step near him. “You fucking SLUT!” He turned slightly and spat on the ground. But it wasn’t on the ground, it was on something lying on the ground - someone lying on the ground. I wished for light but no omniscient super power granted it.
“Yeah CUNT, it’s your boyfriend!”
Oh my fucking god. “What have you done?” I was on the verge of throwing up and it was evident.
“He deserved it!” John spat as he glared at me. “And so do…” I tuned out his words in favour of my own thoughts.
His name was Graham. He thought I was pretty. He wanted to get to know me. I wanted to be in his arms because it made me feel good and “good” was a feeling I hadn’t known since I married that bastard. That bastard was going to come after me now.
Graham wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. The sirens were imminent, loud, out front. I screwed my eyes shut and inhaled deeply through my nose. In one swift motion, I swung the bag of garbage right at him and booked it as fast as I could. It was 50 metres to the front of the building and it was the longest 50 metres I’d ever run. John didn’t even follow though I swear he’d been on my heels. I don’t know where he went that night. I led the cops to the back of the bar and I told them who did it. I told them that he’d kill me next.
I don’t know how John found out. Hell, I don’t even know if he found out or if that smile and wink was enough to send his green-eyed atrocity into its fury.
They arrested John two days after that night for the beating death of Graham Anderson, 21, and charged him with 1st degree murder. His lawyer plea-bargained down to 2nd degree murder and the judge sentenced him to life, with 15 years before parole eligibility.
That was 20 years ago. In that time I went back to college, earned a diploma, had a mediocre career in IT, but made a good enough living to support my kids. Every day of those 20 years I’ve felt guilty for the death of Graham Anderson: guitar player. He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve the jealous rage of the lunatic that had entangled me in his grip. His family did not deserve the tragedy of knowing their brother/son/grandson died because he liked a girl, a girl who didn’t tell him the whole truth because of her own tragic life. For 20 years I had my life back; something Graham would never have.
They released John on parole one week ago. When the notice came, I climbed in my updated Honda Civic (2003) and headed out. He will be coming for me. I don’t know where I’ll eventually end up, but for now, I’ll just be driving across the Canadian prairies in hopes of some kind of redemption. As my car fired up Gord Downie cut off my thoughts.
He sang:
Though you're so real and you're more youth every day
and you can think and feel and get out of your own way
and though I’m nothing, you are just a lake
made to take it and take and take and take
you're not the ocean - I’m standing on my toes
you're not the ocean - you're not even close
you're not the ocean - you're up to my chin
you're not the ocean - you're not coming in
you're not coming in, you're not coming in, you're not coming in
At the beginning of the night the consensus is that the band royally sucks. By the middle of the night, they are all singing, dancing, and having a grand old time. At last call, they bang on the tables and scream out for more as if it was the best band they’d ever seen.
It was always difficult being one of the few sober people in the bar, it affords that perspective though, which I suppose is valuable in some way. Servers can’t help but become armchair psychologists; some even delve into the profession of tray-carrying therapists. Not me, hell, I couldn’t keep my own life together. I came about that honestly enough. I guess we all did after we criticized everyone else for doing the same damn things we had done before.
We were at the groovin’ stage as the band blew out ‘New Orleans is Sinking’ to hands raised through the clouds of cigarette smoke.
Bourbon blues on the street loose and complete
Under skies all smoky blue-green
I can forsake the Dixie dead shake
So we dance the sidewalk clean
My memory is muddy what's this river I'm in
New Orleans is sinking and I don't want to swim
It was your typical roadside bar in northern Ontario, deep in cottage country, in the middle of the Kawartha Lakes region. The tables and chairs were made of thick wood, they were durable - they had to be, and they were scarred with burns and random carvings that described decades of alcohol-managed despair and uninhibited debauchery.
Our bartender was a 60-year-old woman who kept a baseball bat behind the bar. She too was durable out of necessity. She was also up on assault charges for using that bat; a story she told freely and often. Some of the patrons, the regulars that is - not those city-dwelling weekenders, you couldn’t help develop an affection for, but others were just plain assholes. At some point toward the end of the grooving-to-the-music stage, one of them would inevitably start something, fists would fly, glasses would shatter, the place would be in shambles, and out would come that bat. If you didn’t think a 60-year-old woman could ever be imposing, you’d never met Marina, even without the bat. They don’t make them like that anymore.
I’d been fucking the guitar player. They were back for their second gig of the summer. The first gig they played at the bar my husband, John, came in with his sidekick Lawrence; he’d left the kids with someone so he could show up and torment me. He wanted to catch me screwing around, which I hadn’t done, not yet. To say it was a bad relationship would be a gross understatement. When he’d left the bar, I had the other waitress cover all the tables, and sat down with some of the happy regulars and proceeded to slam down shot after shot of Sambuca until the world, and my problems, faded away. I woke up bent like a pretzel in the front compartment of my old ’78 Honda Civic. The last fuzzy memory I had was trying to start the car but it wouldn’t go. It was for the best, because I doubt I would have had any success trying to drive the aforementioned Honda home by way of the Trent Canal System. When the band came back the next day, the guitar player told me that they’d noticed me with my feet sticking out of the car door, so they tucked me in and locked it up. I was immediately smitten. He’d done that for me, he had been worried about my safety and he didn’t judge me for being polluted.
So I fucked him that night, in my bed while my husband wasn’t home. I fucked him underneath the hole made by John’s baseball bat which he’d swung at my head the last time I’d come home drunk and he’d accused me of screwing around. It had missed my head marginally, of course, or I wouldn’t be here telling this story. It’s better to be hung a sinner than a saint. They were back for another two-night gig. I felt an odd combination of excitement and fear as I watched him play his guitar on stage. I wanted a repeat performance, but I knew I was risking my life to do it. We’d chatted as they set up. Mostly hi, and how’ve you been, good to see you again, pleasantries, but I had tables to serve and he had sound check.
At forty-five minutes to last call, the band took a break. I felt deft hands wrap around my waist as I ordered half a dozen drinks from Marina. I knew who it was, I could smell him; I could feel his long hair tickle my cheek.
“Meet me out back after last call?” he whispered in my ear. I nodded once, hoping that no one would understand what was going down. In that place, gossip was the main dish on the menu and I couldn’t afford to be flambéed.
“Add a Blue to that, Marina, please and thanks,” she’d think he’d just ordered a beer. I’d give him one, on me. “Oops, and a rye and ginger,” that one was for me.
I swung my tray around and took just one step when I nearly lost the load. John was walking through the door with Lawrence in tow like a faithful minion ready to do his master’s bidding. He looked pissed, but then, he always looked pissed. It could have been anything.
The band fired back up.
Afternoon, see a guy with rubies on his head
and he's shifting like shifting like he was dead
and he's hearing something, she never said
On his way back home, under his bed
John’s eyes tracked me through my delivery; I could feel them even when I wasn’t nervously glancing at him. After finishing my rounds, all that was left on my tray was that Labatt’s Blue and that rye and ginger.
In the night there's a girl who doesn't mind her ragged sleeves
Knowing someone is gonna grieve
And a man he tells her a story, she just don't believe
Called, "Adam never could do right by Eve."
I walked over to the stage and put both drinks in front of my guitar player, then smiled and winked at him. I immediately realized I should not have done that because he smiled and winked back with a look that couldn’t be mistaken as merely a friendly gesture.
And the weight comes down
Down on you, down on you
and a girl walks by the burning bush
She asks, "What's gone wrong here man?"
And he smiles, says, "Open wide, wide, wide"
“What do you want?” I asked John harshly.
“What’s wrong?” he said in the singsong condescending tone that told me I was in for a world of hurt for no reason that I could possibly discern. There was no way that he could know about my guitar player. No one knew.
“Nothing is wrong, why are you here?” I pressed.
“Can’t I come into a bar for a drink?”
I sighed in frustration and ordered beer for Lawrence and him and prayed to a God I didn’t believe in for this night to end soon - and hopefully not my life with it. Surprisingly, John wasn’t a drinker, for the abusive asshole that he was, he didn’t need any additional inspiration - but when he had that extra inspiration then bad things got worse.
Struck between necessity and terror, I looped through a hundred ways to tell my guitar player that I couldn’t meet him after last call. I waited for an opportunity - hoping John would have to take a piss - but he always left Lawrence with his eyes on me. Just talking to someone was enough to set off John’s jealous rage; I knew that from experience so I dared not while he was watching.
The crowd was banging on the tables as the band lit into “Locked in the trunk of a car.” I actually heard a big scruffy guy with a bellowing voice shout out, “this is the best band I’ve ever seen!”
Better for us if you don't understand it'd be
Better for us if you don't understand it'd be
Better for me if you don't understand
let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out let me out
Right on cue, Peter Lytle, one of the asshole regulars, launched the table he was sitting at, bottles scattered and beer drenched the floor, bowling over two guys in the process. So much for last call. He was screaming obscenities at someone in drunken gibberish. Arms started swinging, blood started flowing, some scattered, some jumped in, but all I could do was duck and run for cover. The band kept on playing for a minute, until one by one they stopped with a THUMP, BANG, TWANG. The drums cut out, the bass - my guitar player’s hand still poised on one end of his Fender Stratocaster stopped strumming with the other.
The lead singer prompted into his microphone in a voice that was all too calm and collected, “Hey guys, this is not cool! You might wanna stop before the cops get here.”
No one heeded. As I watched from the kitchen order window, which offered a poor vantage point, I saw Marina’s bat come out. In a state of shear panic, I looked for John but I couldn’t see him. Peter and John were not friends, enemies really, ever since John stole his welding machine. It would be a good thing if John took the opportunity to take out Peter, I thought, and then he’ll stay away from the band. As far as I could tell, they were trying to keep the fray away from their equipment and trying to get what they could out before the crowd caused irreparable damage. Good, get out sweet musician, run for the hills.
But, what if he still intended on meeting me out back? Fill the ketchup bottles. Stock the coffee. Load the dishwasher. The cops should be here soon. Don’t look. You don’t want to know. All these thoughts sprinted through my head vacillating between distraction and dread until I finally couldn’t stand by anymore. Guitar player was gone; the rest of the band was carrying out the last of their stuff. The fight continued on, not as fervently as before - they heard the sirens too. I split out the door and around back carrying a bag of garbage, if my guitar player was waiting for me there I could tell him to go - we’d catch up later. If John saw me, then I was just taking out garbage.
The bar backed on to Mitchell Lake, there wasn’t much behind there and it was dark. I saw a shape and every ounce of bile in my stomach thrust upward into my throat. That wasn’t the guitar player’s slender shape; it was the large, rotund, awkward shape of John.
“Coming to meet someone?” he taunted.
“NO! I’m taking the fucking garbage out!” Too mad. Tone it down I told my mouth. “Why the fuck are you out here?”
“I know you’re here to meet someone!” He was yelling too. Fuck. I didn’t want to step near him. “You fucking SLUT!” He turned slightly and spat on the ground. But it wasn’t on the ground, it was on something lying on the ground - someone lying on the ground. I wished for light but no omniscient super power granted it.
“Yeah CUNT, it’s your boyfriend!”
Oh my fucking god. “What have you done?” I was on the verge of throwing up and it was evident.
“He deserved it!” John spat as he glared at me. “And so do…” I tuned out his words in favour of my own thoughts.
His name was Graham. He thought I was pretty. He wanted to get to know me. I wanted to be in his arms because it made me feel good and “good” was a feeling I hadn’t known since I married that bastard. That bastard was going to come after me now.
Graham wasn’t moving. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. The sirens were imminent, loud, out front. I screwed my eyes shut and inhaled deeply through my nose. In one swift motion, I swung the bag of garbage right at him and booked it as fast as I could. It was 50 metres to the front of the building and it was the longest 50 metres I’d ever run. John didn’t even follow though I swear he’d been on my heels. I don’t know where he went that night. I led the cops to the back of the bar and I told them who did it. I told them that he’d kill me next.
I don’t know how John found out. Hell, I don’t even know if he found out or if that smile and wink was enough to send his green-eyed atrocity into its fury.
They arrested John two days after that night for the beating death of Graham Anderson, 21, and charged him with 1st degree murder. His lawyer plea-bargained down to 2nd degree murder and the judge sentenced him to life, with 15 years before parole eligibility.
That was 20 years ago. In that time I went back to college, earned a diploma, had a mediocre career in IT, but made a good enough living to support my kids. Every day of those 20 years I’ve felt guilty for the death of Graham Anderson: guitar player. He did not deserve to die. He did not deserve the jealous rage of the lunatic that had entangled me in his grip. His family did not deserve the tragedy of knowing their brother/son/grandson died because he liked a girl, a girl who didn’t tell him the whole truth because of her own tragic life. For 20 years I had my life back; something Graham would never have.
They released John on parole one week ago. When the notice came, I climbed in my updated Honda Civic (2003) and headed out. He will be coming for me. I don’t know where I’ll eventually end up, but for now, I’ll just be driving across the Canadian prairies in hopes of some kind of redemption. As my car fired up Gord Downie cut off my thoughts.
He sang:
Though you're so real and you're more youth every day
and you can think and feel and get out of your own way
and though I’m nothing, you are just a lake
made to take it and take and take and take
you're not the ocean - I’m standing on my toes
you're not the ocean - you're not even close
you're not the ocean - you're up to my chin
you're not the ocean - you're not coming in
you're not coming in, you're not coming in, you're not coming in