Been crashin at Val’s for near on two months now. I had nowhere else to go after they gave me the heave at the General’s Inn. Val insisted I move in though. Massie, his wife, my elusive aunt, is after takin off to Corner Brook with some painter. Val, on his own in the big empty house. He didnt give a fuck about rent and shit like that.
So I said why the fuck not?
Val lived in Vancouver for years and then he got all screwed up with his record company and came home. I was livin in Town nearly six months before I knew he’d moved back. I saw his old snarl on a poster downtown and I showed up at his gig that night and introduced meself. He knew me, but he didnt really. He fuckin well called me Clarence first. I mean, I knew him on and off over the years. He’d show up at the house like a fuckin tornado and leave weed all over the floor and the counter, bang away on the guitar for me. He was around a lot after Mom’s accident, come to think on it, maybe cause Randy was so fucked up. They’d stay up and have a few beer. Sometimes they got pretty loud and nasty with each other and I heard shit I knows I prob’ly shouldnt have. Just Randy all stroppy and spoilin for a racket after a few too many, always lookin to point the finger at anyone atall other than himself. Diggin at Val I s’pose just cause he’d gone out into the world and made something of hisself. I never heard many good things about Val over the years. Anne-Marie always sayin to me that he was fucked up and his head was all swole up. I s’pose that’s the price you pays for gettin on the cover of the fuckin Herald. One time he came up the Shore to play at the folk festival and asked some dickhead to turn off his video camera. Of course they all had to go make a big stink about it, but Val was only lookin out for the bootleggin thing. I asked him about that a few weeks back and he says:
—You dont want tapes out there Clayton, especially amateur video, with that shitty outdoor festival sound that gives people the licence to verify what they want to believe about you anyhow: that your success is unwarranted.
Slick enough. Gotta look out for your own interests I s’pose, cause no one else will. People’re just jealous anyhow, cant stand to see one of their own get ahead in the world. That’s that whole lobster complex: soon as one makes a break for the top of the tank, the rest gives it their goddamn best to drag ’im back down. But I still always looked up to him for doin what he did. What he does. I had a poster of one of his albums on me wall when I was in high school and I ’members Randy belchin at me about gettin suspended and tellin me I’d end up in jail if I didnt straighten out. I points to the poster of Val and says that that’s what I’m fuckin into, that’s where I wants to go. And ole Randy clicks his teeth and says:
—Yes now, and fuck over everyone in your path to get there? Some life.
But that’s the way you gotta go old man. Let yourself get bogged down with the bullshit, fuckin relationships and money and education, and then where’s the goddamn music? Fuck that. I’m goin for it. Not the music part, not no more, not now, but maybe I’m thinkin I might write a play or a movie or some such shit. Dont seem to be much to it. I got a few ideas, I knows a few stories. Just needs to get meself rigged out.
Like I said, I tried the band thing for a few years. Me and a bunch of fellas from the Shore had a decent little setup for a while. We did mostly cover songs at first, but after a while we sorta weeded ’em out and wound up with about a dozen of our own. I did all the writin of course. I’d just kinda be walkin along the roads in the night time and I’d hear a song in me head and I’d start singin it and comin up with the words right there on the spot. It’s like that shit is waitin there in the back of your head all along. Course, I could never get the hang of the guitar. I mean, I knows a bunch of chords and a few little riffs, but I could never manage to sing and play the one time. So I’d basically end up bringin a song into the band and singin the melody and then Corey, cousin fuckin Corey, he’d just work out the music parts and Mark’d shove a bass line to it and then Jason’d just come in on the drums. At the end of the day we sounded pretty good. But more often than not it wouldnt turn out to be the song I heard in me head first goin off, and we had a few rackets. Good fun though. We played our first show at the Horseshoe down in Cape Broyle. Teenage dance. Packed. People starvin for it, goin cracked dancin and drinkin and fightin out behind. Some shithead grabbed the mic stand and banged the microphone off me front teeth. I booted him in the guts and then the owner came down and told us all to turn it down a bit. We made nearly seventy bucks each and we were delighted with that. Grand laugh it was. We called ourselves the Lost Weekend, after John Lennon’s infamous tear in San Francisco where he smashed that fucker’s head in with a cigarette case.
The band was good. I can say that much. I sent Val a demo to his address in Toronto but he never did remember gettin it. The Lost Weekend. And I reckon we coulda done alright in Town. We even got bumped up in the battle of the bands on George Street. But everybody was always off at something more important and we could never get it together to have a jam and there was more drinkin goin on than was necessary. I fucked off to Dublin then, to save me own life. And when I got back the b’ys had a new singer, some flimsy fag-boy from Mount Pearl, a CD in the works. They were called the Cold Shoulder, one of the possible names that I was after comin up with when we first started out. Fuckin loyalty for ya. Here I was, fresh home, with all kinds of new ideas and songs and nothing goin on in me life and rearin to start singin again, but they were just a bunch a fuckin detached pricks. Corey even told me that he’d sell me a CD at a discount when it was finished. Me fuckin cousin and everything. I wanted an explanation, to know what they were all bein so cunty about, but they couldnt come up with a proper excuse, said I was too hard to handle and that there was too much tension all the time and that I was a bastard with everyone when I wanted to be and that I’d just fucked off overseas and left everybody hangin. But sure they had no clue about the stress and the strain I was under. I saw that program in the paper advertising for Dublin and I knew that if I didnt go for it, I’d die. Had to go, had to just get the fuck outta town. I was livin on me own then, in a little deathtrap on Mullock Street with no fire escape and a bunch of psychos and retards on all sides. Me girlfriend was just after havin a so-called nervous breakdown and she was all the time screamin at me to love her and be there and then her grandmother died so everything got worse. I blew me student loan on booze and had no way to pay the rent and I was drinkin night and fuckin day.
I swiped a bike one night on Hayward Avenue and rode it up to the university parking lot and went round and round in circles till I fuckin collapsed with the tears rollin down me face and no one in the world to talk to. The next day I checked into the detox centre down in Pleasantville. I had to. I was there for a few days dryin up before I got a call at the pay phone, cause that’s the number I gave out, tellin me I was picked to go overseas. So, who in the fuck are they, the Cold fuckin Shoulder, to tell me I was too hard to handle and self-centred and shit when they had no idea I was on the verge of death? Fuck ’em. They’ll all get theirs. And like I said, if I hadnt got out when I did I’d be fuckin dead now anyhow. That’s just it see? I got out, I moved on. From where they were standin I was bettering meself, makin a break for the top of the tank. And by turnin their backs on me, well that was just their way of pullin me back down.
I s’pose I coulda started something up on me own around town when I got home, but I didnt really have the energy to go balancing other people’s schedules and shit. Plus I drank so much in Dublin that I was just plannin on layin low for a bit when I got home. Dry out and get me shit in order. See how that’s workin out? Anyhow, the way I sees it, if you really wants to make a band work, you gotta be all livin under the one roof and all drawin welfare. That’s the only way, to have nothing else in your life but the music and a few draws and a bit of skin. Not a girlfriend, mind you, not someone who’s gonna want you to go off watchin fuckin movies and hangin out with the family on the weekends and houndin you about watchin your money and puttin on clean clothes, just someone to bang around with on your own fuckin terms every now and then.
Plus I figured by then, where I was the great Valentine Reid’s nephew, well that’s what I’d have to live up to all the time, and I said fuck that, I aint goin livin in his shadow for the rest of me fuckin days. Valentine Reid’s savage little crippled nephew?
Fuck that.
I got a few ideas. Just gotta get meself geared up now.