1998, Campbell River Trailer Pack
Ryan Dewing, a south African with a big
burn scar on his left arm. His mom supposedly bumped into him and
spilled boiling water all over the kid, and now there were burn scars
up and down his arm and chest. He was a funny looking kid. I think
his mother was a gypsy. Jeff Swim dated her briefly. Sharn Dewing was
her name. Her room was an eclectic mix of south African art,
paintings, little knick nacks and details from different cultures.
She also had a daughter, Raquel, a young blonde girl who avoided us
most of the time. She used to fight a lot with her brother. He was
often mean to her, and would hit her to the point of making her cry.
I used to hang out at Ryan's trailer. We played sega games on his old
tube tv. It had been heavily magnetized to where the picture was all
funky shades of purple and green. I remember playing some basketball
game, Rambo, and others. He also had a model train set, complete with
Styrofoam terrain. That was the first thing I noticed when we met. It
seemed so out of place. We worked on it for hours. One night, Ryan
got all weird, started talking about god and god's love, Jesus, etc.
Bible stories. That's when he really started to weird me out. I kept
my distance.
One random night, his mother, who often
biked in the forest, came home from freezing weather conditions. She
put her feet in plastic bags to... prevent hypothermia?
One time, Ryan and I began delivering
small trial bottles of Sunny D to the other trailers in the
neighborhood. I think at one point we ended up drinking more than we
delivered.
Fast forward to 2007. I'm working at
the Vancouver Sandman hotel on Davie street. I'd moved there over the
summer after refusing to continue working at Staples Soul sucking
death job. I spent a few weeks after leaving the job just sleeping
all day, eating, and playing WoW, trying to avoid the world as much
as possible. This went on till I couldn't pay my rent anymore, and
Char Aimers decided it was time for me to move to Vancouver with my
sister. Immediately I got in with my sister Emery's work crowd. A
shady bunch of white people and urban gays. One of the gays followed
me to the cybercafe and began playing WoW near me. Creeped me out. My
sister would invite them over for Coronas and we'd go out places,
even on New Years and on some boat together to get hammered. I
remember puking off the side of the boat and passing out for the
night. Had to work the next day. Who were these people? It always sat
uneasily with me that it seemed so difficult to get a bead on who
these people were. Out came the mask again. Was it my way of replying
to their fake acting? On at least 3 occasions random dudes came up to
me on the streets after i'd smoked weed in public. One of them said I
looked like elvis. Another sat with me on the bench and we talked
about halo before I got weirded out and walked away. Yet another came
up to me on Canada day and started talking about people, the
government, and all these other things. Something about these people
just didn't add up. For the most part, i'd pick up a few key words or
expressions from these folks, and determined that it was time for me
to leave.
I remember walking to work at 6 am,
locking the door behind me, and seeing Vancouver as it woke up. The
old school building where I took night classes in creative writing,
smoking joints on benches under old trees and near the beach after
work at sunset. Passing the Hypatia sex shop on the way to work,
wondering about all the sex toys. I read about Hypatia and often
thought of her when I passed the shop in the morning. To me her name
felt a lot like saying Labia. There was another sex shop right beside
work, filled with bondage equipment showing right out the front
window. It was an interesting contrast to be right beside a hotel.
One of my favourite things to do was sweep the front entrance outside
in the morning chill, right around sunrise. Often in the morning, I'd
see a giant walrus of a man, homeless, wondering around outside Mac's
convenience store carrying a stained white blanket. He'd usually be
hollering about something, waiting for free leftovers from the store.
Sometimes he was just staring blankly into space. He semi-reminded me
of the alcoholic englishman who often peeked out of his apartment
room window in a back alley behind my work. He had a thick accent and
would go on and on about different things, sometimes talking to
nobody at all. One day, in the poring rain, a suspicious vehicle came
up to the window and exchanged a large package with the man. The
package looked like a loaf of bread, but it might as well have been a
brick of hash. Strange people would show up in the alley looking for
redeemable recyclables. Scott Johnson, the dangerously fat hotel
manager, often stood in the back parking lot smoking cigarettes with
the Iranian maintenance man whose name I can't recall.
How had I even been hired at that job?
Sloba Milosovich.... she hired me one random October day after i'd
already been interviewed at a downtown Chapters. And then I'd already
been hired at another hotel as a maintenance man. I only showed up
for one shift before being hired on at the Sandman. It was a
thoughtless job. Eventually a gay hotel serviceman took Slobas spot,
and I now started reporting to him. Can't remember his name. I came
to work stoned driving shampoo machines up and down the hallway for
hours, then cleaning the pool, and pouring Eucalyptus shampoo on the
walls in the spa room. One time I found suspiciously placed porn
magazines on top of a vending machine. Even though the porn was
filled with naked girls, I felt certain the gay guy had planted them
there. I took the porn home and put it in the same drawer I kept all
my weed materials.
Every morning I brought apples to the
front desk in a glass bowl, making sure to clean them and shine them
before hand. Got a lot of calls to unplug clogged, shitty toilets. On
more than one occasion, some Brazilian kids clogged up the sink with
weed resin from their bong. I plunged and it all belched out like
black tar and the sink spilled over. They left joints all over the
place. Sometimes i'd find unsmoked joints that had fell from the
balcony. Rustom, the old east Indian who worked the houseman job
before I'd been hired, joked that I spent all day playing with
garbage.
I went on a date once with my redheaded coworker named Ashley. She told me about her gay dad. We talked about Star Trek voyager and took shots in some small mexican food place. Something was off about her. She kept wanting to take me home, but it didn't feel right. Soon after, I pretended to want to join up with the Navy to get back to Ottawa, but really I went to play computer games and redo a semester in grade 12. I ended up graduating with awards and went to an extremely awkward prom wearing a hot polyester suit from Moores. We had a great time. I'll never forget Mr Sinha's english class or Ms Bryans history class. I wrote good essays for her high on adderall. She docked marks once for using Mein Kampf as a source.
I went on a date once with my redheaded coworker named Ashley. She told me about her gay dad. We talked about Star Trek voyager and took shots in some small mexican food place. Something was off about her. She kept wanting to take me home, but it didn't feel right. Soon after, I pretended to want to join up with the Navy to get back to Ottawa, but really I went to play computer games and redo a semester in grade 12. I ended up graduating with awards and went to an extremely awkward prom wearing a hot polyester suit from Moores. We had a great time. I'll never forget Mr Sinha's english class or Ms Bryans history class. I wrote good essays for her high on adderall. She docked marks once for using Mein Kampf as a source.
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