EIGHT
UGLY SWEATER PARTY
À la mode
It wasn’t particularly safe, and the hours were terrible, and the asbestos or lead or formaldehyde had given Milton a perpetual rash, but working for S&M was mildly entertaining, good material for his future novel, and most of all, money. More money than Milton had ever made.
His work for Uncle Randy or Farmtime was part-time work that paid below minimum wage. S&M paid $50 per day—less made-up deductions like angry truck driver extortion—six days per week, cold hard/warm wrinkled smelling like feet cash.
The supply of $50s allowed Milton to resume his search for Robin.
Several nights per week he’d go out to bar shows and house parties and gallery openings looking for her. Several nights per week he’d schlep back home, alone.
Finally, after weeks without a trace, he got a break in the hunt for his one true love by way of an invite from Ava to an ugly sweater party at Owly’s place.
Milton was sure Robin would be there. He agonized over it all week.
One night after work he rode the Green Line way out farther than he’d ever been, into the heart of Francophone working-class Montreal to Village des Valeurs to find an ugly sweater. He ended up spending that day’s entire $50 on 15 ugly sweaters.
The night of the party he was modelling each sweater in front of the grimy, busted bathroom mirror when Noddy burst in.
“Whaddayat, b’y?”
“Trying to pick—”
Milton was distracted mid-sentence by Noddy pulling down his pants and sitting down on the toilet.
“Pick what?”
“Dude!?”
“Wha’?”
“Are you… pooping?!”
“Aw, c’mon, b’y. Everybody shits, don’t be such a pussy. Jesus.”
“Yeah, but not in front of other people!”
“Well you turned the shitter into your ugly shirt fashion show thing here, what do ya want?”
“You not to… not to poop in front of me!”
“You’ll live. What are ya doing with all them ugly shirts now?”
“Seriously!”
When the most earnest grunting started Milton made for the door.
“Aw, come on, man. I’m almost done.”
The smell followed Milton out into the hall; he nearly gagged.
Noddy yelled after him.
“Goddamn, b’y. This is a wild one! Enough to curl the hair on your chest!”
Milton had his breath mostly caught when Noddy’s head poked out from around the corner, scaring him.
“Left ya a present. Bahahahaha!”
“Gross. You’re so disgusting!”
“Really, though. You going on a tear tonight, or what?”
“Ach! It smells like something died.”
“Something did die: my ass. If you’re going out tonight, I’m coming with ya. I haven’t gotten laid in a week. My pecker is going to dry up and blow away if I don’t do something about it.”
“That’s not a great idea…”
“Don’t be a dick. You’re getting dressed for one of them ugly sweater parties you stupid hipsters have. I’ll wear this piece of shit.”
Noddy pulled on Milton’s favourite ugly sweater of the 15.
“It’s a stupid hipster thing. You won’t like it. It’ll all be students.”
“Hey, hey, hey! I like students, b’y. Young and supple minds. If you know what I mean?”
“Yeah.”
“Supple. Get it?”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“I mean tits.”
“That’s great.”
“And ass.”
“Mmhmm.”
“And cooter.”
“Super.”
. . .
Chinatown Centre
When he wasn’t riding giant dick missiles around town, Owly lived in a shopping mall, The Chintown Centre, in Chinatown, which was quickly becoming the next frontier in the AngloAdultescent invasion.
The Chinatown Centre was on the edge of the country’s third largest Chinatown. Next to the city’s best Pho restaurant, across from a new ramen place that charged $16 for a Mr. Noodles but got a good review in The Mirror because its decor and entire ethos was trapped somewhere between Ed Hardy, Hello Kitty, and The Grapes of Wrath.
The rest of the street was alternating green-grocers and steamed bunneries punctuated by a coffee shop that aspired to all things but making a cup of coffee that didn’t taste like lukewarm blood; a bubble tea bar with free fooseball that was the bar three bars ago; an ad agency with a messiah complex as evidenced by its insistence on selling branded t-shirts, and that being its most successful line of business; and an unmarked storefront crammed around the clock with old men playing Mahjong.
The sidewalk was filled the entire day with old women ramming wheelie carts full of exotic vegetables into the shins of an ever-increasing crowd of young people migrating by the handfuls from The Plateau to try the new ramen place they read about in The Mirror, and drive up the prevalence of aspirational coffee joints and drive down the vacancy rate.
The Chinatown Centre was definitely one of the shittiest malls in the country. Built in the Cultural Revolutionary style—narrow cheek-by-jowl storefronts adorned in asbestos, jaundiced semi-gloss paint, and stained concrete floors—its dozen tiny storefronts crammed L-shape in a too-small building on the corner would, if not for the filthy skylights, receive no natural light at all.
There were three units that kept somewhat regular hours: a herbal medicine clinic that no one ever went to, a novelty legging store that would be closed before the end of winter, and a discount clothing store owned by an old lady who spent the day reading Les Presses Chinoises, working through her Easy Sudoku Bible, smoking cigarettes, and never selling anything.
In addition to these, there were three units with signage that were never open: two tattoo parlours and a pottery studio.
The rest of the units had big curtains draped behind their clear security gates. Which gave the impression of a ghost town.
Owly, in a burst of miserly inspiration that dwarfed the dick missile as probably his greatest accomplishment, figured out that an entire storefront in the Chinatown Centre could be rented for much less than an apartment of comparable size. It was owned by an absentee slumlord, who only corresponded with Owly through his emissary, Vick. And even then, Vick and his bad breath were rarely seen, only when rent was late, and he left the distinct impression that rent shouldn’t be late. Ever.
The lease Owly and his roommate Pochard, the sometimes-filmmaker, sometimes-Russian Lit. grad student at Concordia, signed was an over-copied copy of a 25-year old commercial lease that forbade pets and smoking and unlicensed medical and food establishments, and, most of all, forbade two bachelors in their almost-30s from building elaborate dummy walls out of Les Presses Chinoises back issues and one-by-twos to divide the space into living quarters and sleeping quarters and turning a discount storefront into a makeshift two-bedroom bachelor pad and giant paper-mâché dick-missile studio.
Soon the rest of the vacant units were filled with bachelor pad pottery studios and bachelor pad novelty dragon-etched polymer skateboard studios and bachelor pad abstract conceptual Lego sculpture studios.
Owly and Pochard’s unit was about 800 square feet. About 25 of which were spent on a half bathroom—toilet and sink—in one corner. Another 50, which was theoretically an office in which legitimate businesses could theoretically conduct their legitimate business, became Owly’s bedroom. Pochard slept in a makeshift Le Presses Chinoises room. The rest of the store was, well, a store. Just one wide open space perfect for building dick missiles, hosting ugly sweater parties, or, theoretically, running an actual business.
. . .
La toiture
Owly and Pochard found their way onto the roof of the Chinatown Centre through a maintenance corridor that ran behind their unit, so obviously they immediately thought to throw a mid-winter rooftop Ugly Sweater Party complete with an ice couch—which was really more of an ice love seat—and a keg.
Milton, all nerves and not wanting to be late, and Noddy were the first to arrive. Noddy and Owly rekindled their dick missile friendship as Milton, Noddy, Owly, and Pochard took turns carrying party supplies up the old wooden stepladder wedged in a long-forgotten janitor’s closet.
It was just the four of them hanging out on the roof waiting for “the chicks to show up!” Noddy kept them entertained by playing non-stop KISS on the stereo and telling stories about the politics of whaling in pre-Confederation Newfoundland—“Controlled by a bunch of slippery fucks in Boston”—and comparing notes on Russian literary theory with Pochard—“Bakhtin’s take on Rabelais is fuckin’ reductionist bullshit. Deconstructionism my hairy arse! It’s kid’s stuff, b’ys!”
Owly and Pochard found Noddy fascinating, especially when he attempted a solo keg stand.
“Let’s get ’er goin’, b’ys!”
When the cold started to set in, Noddy scampered down the ladder, into the alley, grabbed an unsupervised trash can, dumped out the contents and brought it up to the roof with an armful of books and papers he’d collected off a shelf in the unit.
“Chicks won’t take their shit off if they’re cold.”
And he started a fire in the trash can.
Gradually people started arriving, giving Noddy a much bigger audience, and soon he was down to his yellowing tighty-whiteys, “spinning” Megadeath and Metallica, and attempting, with less and less success, to perform his solo keg stand trick.
. . .
La femme
Robin arrived a few hours into the party and several hours after Milton and Noddy had first showed up. She was coming from an art opening in Verdun and was half in the bag already. She took up residence beside the burning trash can that was now being fed various pieces of furniture.
Milton, with a very deliberate lack of urgency, nonchalantly made his way over to her. By the time he reached her, she was surrounded by various wannabe suitors eager to discuss the merits of anything she wanted so long as it was with them.
Milton lurked behind her looking for an opening.
The night went on like that. Milton just a step behind the murmurations of the flock of Robin hangabouts. Groups would form that he’d want to be part of, to be near her, but there wouldn’t be an opening. Then they’d break up, dissipate, rearrange, and reform all before he could orient himself inside the circle. Milton always just a half-step out of time, out of the conversation, out of luck, running out of chances to win Robin’s heart.
Finally, as if a gift from God, Noddy told all the trashcan-fire-standers to take a step back so he could attempt to pole vault over it with a table leg. Robin took a step back right into Milton.
“Oh, sorry.”
“Oh, Hey.”
“Ah, yeah, hi.”
“Long time no see!”
“…”
“It’s me, Milton.”
“…”
“Ontario.”
“…”
“From Saskatchewan.”
“…”
“We met a bit ago.”
“…”
“At that potluck in St. Henri.”
“…”
For weeks, Milton had been rehearsing what to say and how the conversation would go and calculating how quickly it would take from first contact to when she fell in love with him. But none of this was in the script.
They should have already been slow dancing to Noddy’s Quiet Riot by now, not playing Twenty Questions about whether she could remember him or not.
The next stage of their headlong rush into happily ever after was derailed by Noddy barrelling headlong into a burning trash can, scattering bits of flaming Russian novels through the party crowd. Had he been wearing any kind of flammable clothing, or clothing at all, Noddy surely would have caught fire. But luckily for him, skin on the verge of frostbite is slower to catch than ugly 1980s polyester sweaters.
“Nice night for a roofy, eh?”
“What?!”
“A roof party, a roofy!”
“Right.”
“I’m Milton… From before.”
“Yeah, the poet.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
The space taken up by the silences between Milton’s lines and Robin’s grew exponentially and approached infinity and squeezed Milton. He was suffocating.
“It’s been a while, eh?”
“…”
Suffocating.
“What has?”
“Since we last hung out.”
Gasping.
“Right.”
“Y’know, I saw you the other day, at that giant omelette thing after Toot la Newy.”
“Oh my god! It’s you! You’re the guy from TV! I got absolutely blasted with eggs and arrested. I should turn you in.”
She laughed, sort of, to either throw him off the scent until the cops arrived or to show that she was kidding. Sort of.
“I… uh… was coming over to say hi, actually.”
“To me?”
“Yeah, it was good to see you.”
“I can’t believe you started a fire and a riot.”
“Yeah, pretty unlucky.”
“You’re like this asshole running around in his skivvies.”
“Who?”
She pointed at Noddy who was in that moment launching the frozen keg off the roof. Milton and Robin watched as, almost in slow motion, it tumbled towards the dark ground. It exploded when it hit the ground and golden beer ice crystals twinkled in the streetlights. It was almost magical. Noddy howled.
“That guy.”
“Oh jeez, him. Who is he!?”
“The kind of person who starts a fire and a riot.”
Milton couldn’t tell if that was a joke, a jibe, or both, so he laughed, just to be safe.
“How’s your dirty bird?”
“What?”
“Your movie?”
“Oh. Fine.”
“Cool.”
Sheer agony. Ever expanding, stifling, soul-crushing space. The weight of all his hopes and dreams and wildest desires. All imploding in that moment. His molecules being pulled apart and crushed at the same time.
“What are you working on now?”
“Ah, a follow up to DB. About vultures in Florida.”
“Ha, neat. It’ll be warmer there than it is here.”
“Yup.”
Dying.
“What about you?”
“Oh, I’ve never been to Florida. Too hot. Haha.”
“No. What are you working on? Still a poet?”
“Yeah, I got a new job so I don’t have a lot of time these days, but I’m still working away on things, ya know?”
“Oh yeah, what’s the job?”
“Um… It’s like design and renovations and stuff.”
“Right on.”
“Are you still cooking at that vegan place?”
“Freegan, yeah. I’m surprised you remember.”
“That was the best soup I’ve ever had.”
“Huh?”
“In St. Henri. At the potluck.”
“Oh, yeah, that. I didn’t make that.”
Agony.
“Would you, maybe, like to hear a poem?”
“A poem?”
“Yeah. One I wrote?”
“Um… why?”
“I dunno, just… Thought you might.”
“Okay… I guess…”
“It’s okay, I don’t have to. Just thought… Never mind. It’s okay.”
“No, no. Go ahead. Please.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, yeah. Go for it.”
Milton dug in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a bundle of papers that had been rubbed shiny in his pocket.
“Okay, let’s see…”
He sorted through the stack of pages. One escaped his hands and fluttered to the ground through the golden mist.
“Here’s one. It’s called: ‘Floored’. You’re in it. Heh.”
“…”
Others started to clue into something happening and turned to watch:
floored
we sat
in the remains of a million minks
trapped for their furs
and drank the remains of a million sink
traps full of beet juice
and chewed the fat
and the zucchini loaf
and mused on the state of the arts
and art of the states
interrupted by dick missiles
and anti socialist missives
firecrackers misfired by
fired up cracker jack skippers
mistaken for an emergency
the po po descend
and give chase
so the revelers flee
you and me
to find refuge
and pizza refuse
to chase our sink trap soup blues away
The look on Robin’s face landed somewhere between hadn’t-been-listening and planning an escape. Neither of those faces were the reaction Milton had been hoping for when he carefully scripted which poem to read and practiced reading it in front of the mirror for several days.
The other onlookers snorted and turned back to watching Noddy stuff his entire ugly sweater into the crotch of his tighty whiteys and begin shouting, “Deez nuts!”
The weight of the entire universe was leaning on Milton’s trachea now, trying to snuff out the last spark of his pitiful little life.
“Ah. Cool.”
“It’s… It’s still a work in progress. I write poems like that about everything. I’ll write poems about this later too, I’m sure…’We sat on the edge of the earth, I read you poems, creeped you out…’ Heh. Heh.”
“Ha. I’m going to… I’ve got to… Uh… Pee. I will be right back.”
Robin got up and left Milton sitting on the edge of the earth by himself. He looked back and watched her climb down the ladder back into the house.
This wasn’t how he’d planned this night to go. Not at all. He replayed it over and over in his head looking for errors, finding none. He thought the poem was flattering to her. He slyly smelled his armpit. It was fine. He couldn’t figure it out.
He sat alone on the ledge watching Noddy and Owly hoist the ice love seat over their heads and toss it off the side, shattering it on the ground below, completely flattening what was left of the keg and the neighbour’s trash bags.
Robin wasn’t coming back. Milton had lost. He got up and went home.
. . .
Dommage
The next day was Sunday, a day off. No 5:15 a.m. knock on the door, no god-awful slog through the dark city to the bus, to the metro, to another bus, to some rapidly deteriorating mansion or sex office. Milton could sleep in, but the weeks of early mornings had reprogrammed his bladder, so he was up at dawn needing to pee anyway.
The winter dawn filled the house with a cold, heavy, greyness. There was a sliver of light shining under Noddy’s door, and “Welcome to the Jungle” was playing. Milton hadn’t heard him come in, but if he was home, Noddy mustn’t have gotten the lovin’ he so desperately desired; but neither did he die of exposure, apparently.
Milton shuffled down the hall, around the corner, and pushed open the half-closed bathroom door.
There. She. Was.
Robin.
On the toilet.
Peeing.
He thought he was seeing things.
He rubbed more of the sleep from his eyes. It was her. In his apartment. In his bathroom. Sitting on his toilet. In the middle of the night. Wearing one of Noddy’s rotten free-in-a-case-of-beer t-shirts.
Milton never found out how it happened. It didn’t matter how, just that it did.
It didn’t matter what number of impossibilities had to align for her to end up there at that moment on that toilet in that t-shirt. Besides, no matter what those impossibilities were, no matter what blanks needed filling between Milton leaving the party and this moment, a great deal of those moments, the most vivid ones playing on endless loop in Milton’s head as he stood frozen in the bathroom, involved Noddy slobbering, and sweating, and humping all over her. All over Robin’s perfect body.
She had some weird tribal bird tattoo thing climbing up her leg—dirty birds of Calcutta. Milton found this out now, in the pre-dawn greyness of this dirty bathroom, and so that is burned into his imagination too: dirty birds wrapped around Noddy’s hairy ass.
None of that mattered because less than 12 hours ago Milton stood in that exact same spot choking back vomit while Noddy sat on that very same toilet taking a shit. The most vile, disgusting human on the planet defiling Robin’s perfect body.
Milton had survived all sorts of humiliations and brushes with death since moving here. He’d been punched and kicked and chased by dogs. He’d been mistaken for a junkie and left for dead on the street. He’d been wanted by police for starting a riot at a publicity stunt. He’d inhaled more asbestos and lead and formaldehyde than was okay.
Yet, he persisted.
He continued, up late into the night, writing poetry in a time when no one else wrote poetry. When no one else cared.
When all they wanted to do was wantonly hump like disgusting animals.
There was no justice or decency or sense of order or self-worth in the universe, it was all put together just to fuck with Milton.
Had he not been stuck there, frozen. Had the window not been tiny and over the toilet, he would have jumped through it right then.
“Hey. You.”
The aneurysm he was having at that moment kept him from being able to tell if she was surprised to see him or couldn’t remember his name.
“Uh, I didn’t see a lock on the door. Didn’t know anyone else was up. Didn’t know you lived here too.”
“Yeah.” To all of it.
He didn’t move. She sheepishly finished peeing.
“Could you pass me the…”
She pointed towards the last few shards of one ply still stuck to the tube that someone left just out of reach on the edge of the sink.
Milton obliged.
She wiped—in front of him.
“You’re all out.”
Stood up, bottomless, covered not nearly enough by Noddy’s disgusting Labatt Bleue t-shirt that had never seen the inside of a washing machine—in front of him.
Turned and flushed—in front of him.
Turned back to face him—in front of him.
And joined him in a lifetime of excruciatingly awkward silence.
“…”
“I’m… It’s good… Um… Yeah.”
She maneuvered around him and out the door, back to Noddy’s den of depravity. On the way out her bare arm brushed Milton’s, and the smell of Noddy’s shirt and sweat and freshly-had sex hit him in the face like a shovel.
He didn’t move.
He imagined that the sound of her naked ass swishing on the shower curtain as she twisted around him was actually her apologizing.
It wasn’t.
“It’s okay.”
It wasn’t.
She escaped out the door and back down the hall. Milton heard the faintest sounds of laughter from Noddy’s room.
It took another eternity for Milton to return to his body and begin to grasp the situation: he had stood there that whole time, watching her pee, mouth agape, in his disgusting ginch with the frayed and discoloured waistband, with a very noticeable erection.
. . .
Onterrible
Milton was broken.
He spent the rest of Sunday locked in his room. He found a Canada Dry bottle to piss in and half a box of Triscuits to choke down between the sudden urges to vomit and tear his own heart out.
He wept.
Tears and snot streamed down his cheeks and into his ears as he lay on his bare mattress.
Monday at 5:15 a.m. the usual knock at the door came. Milton was still awake. He’d been laying wide awake weeping, plotting revenge, being numb for 24 hours. He didn’t respond to the first knock. Nor the second, 2 minutes later. Nor the third a few minutes after that.
“Milt, let’s get at ’er, b’y!”
He didn’t respond to that either. Nor when Noddy began jiggling the doorknob and knocking louder and louder.
“Are you in there? Get your arse in gear! We’re late.”
He knocked until Georgette woke up.
“Putain, Nohdee! Shudafuckup!”
Noddy eventually shudafuckup and left for work.
When the coast was clear, Milton got up and went to the bathroom and then collected whatever food he could from the kitchen and went and barricaded himself in his room for the rest of the day.
And the day after that.
By the third day, Noddy didn’t bother knocking. Milton heard him ask Georgette and Ruddy and Ava about him. None of them had seen him, and didn’t know why his room was locked.
On the fourth day Milton sat at his typewriter for 37 hours straight, tears streaming down his face, hate-writing poetry.
On the fifth day Georgette caught Milton in the hall.
“Milton! Putain! Where ’ave you been? Nohdee wants to keel you. We’re all worried. You okay?”
“Yeah… I’m fine.”
She didn’t believe him and followed him into his room.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I’m fine. Just leave me alone.”
“Mon dieu! Putain! Your room is disgusting. It smells comme ton cul!”
“I’m fine, Georgie. Please go away.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been ’iding in ’ere for days.”
Milton laid back on his bed and pulled his winter coat/blanket up over his head.
“Leave me alone.”
Georgette stayed. She opened the window and began picking up dirty clothes and dishes, and crumpled poems from the floor. Milton begged her to leave him alone.
“I’m begging you to leave me alone!”
She wouldn’t. When she finished cleaning his room she sat on the edge of Milton’s bed and began flattening the wrinkled poems she’d collected from the floor, and reading them.
“Aw, Milton, a girl broke your ’eart.”
Milton looked out from under his coat/blanket and saw her with a stack of his poems. He tried to grab them from her, but she leapt back, and he slid off the edge of the bed. She kept reading.
“Oh no, it was Nohdee!”
“What?”
“Nohdee, that asshole, steal your girl?”
“What?”
“C’mon, Milton, tu n’es pas si malin que ça.”
She began reading aloud.
you stupid foul mouthed
loud mouth neanderthal
indiscriminately hate fucking
my life while
welcome to the jungle
blasts through
the crack
under your door
wearing only
work boots
for protection
“That is Nohdee, je sais.”
Milton broke down and began sobbing.
Georgette sat and wrapped her arms around him.
It was the first time Milton had been hugged since his mother hugged him before he left home. This made him cry harder.
He began pouring his heart out about Ashley D. and Joey Flipchuk, about the sudden-onset penile hypertrophy, about the Lake Diefenbaker fire, about his misfortunes at PUS, about Ashley D. and Dr. McClutchsmoke, about the S800 in the Chaff Days Parade, about the walk through the park, about the punch in the jaw, about the Omelette Riot, about the attack dogs and the 2x4 to the throat, about everything all the time, and, most of all, about Robin.
He went on at great length about the conspiracy theory he had been formulating in the last week while lying in the dark. All about how the universe was trying to kill him.
“The universe is trying to kill me.”
“The universe is trying to keel everyone, Milton.”
“But not like this.”
“Don’t be silly. You packed too much and you don’t take taxi so you rip hole in your bag et tes sous-vêtements se sont échappés. It is not the universe. It is bad planning, mon ami.”
Milton tried his hardest to tie all the bad luck and bad planning and half-hearted attempts derailed by indecision and half-assery in his life into one continuous string that could be nothing but a grand plot against him. But Georgette didn’t buy it.
“L’univers, mon petit, te doit que dalle. The universe does not owe you anyt’ing. Especially not a woman. We are not there to be won. What do you think? We are a prize? To be won in a box of Cracker Jacks? We are woman. People. Pas des possessions. If you want something from the world. Si tu veux un amoureux. You must earn it. You must work for it. You must be worthy and an equal. Tu dois être un égal. Mais, maintenant you do nothing. You give nothing. Tu viens de te rendre invisible and expect the universe to notice. Et quand tu n’as pas ce que tu veux, tu deviens fou et tu boudes and lock yourself in your room and write funny poésies about that big dumb gorilla across the ’all. Fuck ’im. Connard! Become who you is, not something that is empty, waiting to be filled by the world, by something ou someone, par une femme. Non, c’est à toi de décider. It’s up to you who you will be, mon ami. Et à toi de le devenir. Up to you.”