REDEMPTION SONG
A Novel
By Michael Hammond
“I think of a hero as someone who understands the
degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
Bob Dylan
For my mother
1.
INTO THE BLACK
Neil Young was right, it turns out. It really is better to burn out than to fade away. I burned out. Fading away feels much worse. I feared fading away so much that I died. At least I think I did. What’s worse, I end up fading in and out of these strange visions all the time. Or maybe they’re dreams. Just what it is that I’m going through doesn’t matter right now, though. All I know is I go from vision to vision, but only as a spectator. Every time I see someone I know in these visions, I get to shadow them just long enough to care before I fade away and repeat the cycle with someone new. This is my punishment, no doubt, whatever this may be. I wasn’t a complete atheist during my bohemian run to the top. Deep down, I still clung to the belief that my life was a fraud and my decadence had a price. I tried to forget about it by downing twelve beers in a night. I tried to find meaning by picking up the twelfth empty bottle and peering down the neck at the residual suds clinging to the bottle’s bottom. Finding meaning amidst debauchery is harder than it seems. Don’t let those sappy power ballads fool you. I tried to find meaning and failed.
I knew I was on the Highway to Hell. You can only party so much, drink so much, smoke so much, inject so much before you come to the realization that life is an assignment, not a right. I had a mission and I failed. My purpose was to make people forget about their troubles by singing about mine; by gritting my teeth and clenching my fist at a crucial part of a song; by sweating through my T-shirt on stage and falling to the floor when I was done. The fringe benefits that went along with my nightly therapy sessions were just the rewards for laying my life out there for people to consume. So, I indulged.
Don’t ask just what it was in my life that required therapy. What is there to run from, after all, when you grow up in suburbia with a loving family and are given all the opportunities afforded to the middle class? Some people would say there’s plenty of fodder for therapy here and I would have been one of those people at one point.
As I descended further down my selfish path, I forgot people’s names, many of them friends. I indulged in all the popular stimulants or depressants, depending on my mood. People were left behind, tantrums were thrown, weird rock star fits were common. My personal favourites include demanding twenty-dollar, five-foot sandwiches from this place in Calgary. I lived the life that people expected of a rock star. In other words, I became all the things I initially swore I would never become.
I sometimes wonder if I’m still on the Highway to Hell, right on the outskirts of the hellfire and brimstone city limits. One thing is certain, though. Nothing could be much worse than where I am at, which is nowhere. There is no night and day here, just a grey haze that seems to have no discernable beginning or end. I get to shadow the lives of all the people I know and love. The cruel twist however is that I’m unable to do anything but suffer along with them for a brief spell. To make it worse, my suffering doesn’t seem to go away. This isn’t anything like life.
Life always seems to work itself out. Problems eventually become memories. In life, sadness never lasts, although some people fool themselves into believing their life is one continuous struggle. I know now that there’s some good in every life. But in my state, there’s no end to my sadness. I get to relive all the hurt I caused without being able to undo the damage.
The difference between the sadness in life and the sadness I experience here makes me think of what my 11th grade teacher taught me. Every story has rising action, a crisis, falling action and eventually a denouement where the problem is resolved. Life seems to work in cycles like that English lesson. Whatever it is I’m experiencing now isn’t like that. Seems like I’m stuck at the crisis part. I see one person’s suffering; then it all fades away only to be replaced with another person’s suffering. One person’s misfortune makes way for that of another. The common thread is that everyone’s suffering seems to be a result of my actions. Being in this state must be like what Ebenezer Scrooge felt as he struggled through that sleepless night with the spirits. That’s about as close as I can get to describe this state. I wish this plunge into the black would just end already.
I don’t know when it all started. The beginning is hard to pin down, although I have flashes of distant visions, seemingly from long ago. Mostly though, I can only remember visions of the last five people who have made an impression on me. I don’t know when this will end, if ever. I have accepted this, whatever this is, as my fate for now. I only wish I had properly prepared for this when I had the chance. I knew there was a God and I knew he was looking down on my life as a glorious waste, but it’s difficult to change your life when everyone adores you and is willing to buy into your image, feeding this insane fantasy lifestyle. Someone should have reminded me it was all too good to be true. Toward the end, I realized as much. That’s why my band’s last album was called The Other Shoe Drops. Misfortune was coming. Maybe that’s why I consumed every overpriced indulgence I could afford with the fervency of a drifter looking for water in the desert. I consumed to forget and maybe even survive. I just didn’t count on not being able to get a chance at redemption. In a way, I guess it’s fitting that I didn’t get a chance to clean up my act. Aerosmith’s comeback, while commercially successful, was a joke. A band that was once notorious for songs like Uncle Salty, Lord of the Thighs and Major Barbara is now subsequently known by another generation for such syrupy sweet ditties such as Angel, Cryin’ and I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing, all songs its founders penned when they stopped using drugs. I couldn’t imagine myself doing that. Unfortunately, I never had a chance to even consider a redemption tour, one last album or even one last sell-out. Now, I’m just a memory and a fleeting one at that. I let everyone down and I’m reminded of this with every vision I see. What’s worse, I really don’t know if it’s all over for me or this is just a bad dream.
I find it so incredibly frustrating that I don’t know what this is I’m experiencing, even though I reluctantly accept it. Still, I don’t know where I am or what I am. I think that’s part of the process, though. What I do know for certain is that I don’t have the memory to connect all the dots yet. Some parts of my life are crystal clear. Every time I shadow someone I know, I remember more about my life. I begin to piece together what it is I’m doing here only to have the clarity I seek washed away every fifth vision, give or take a few. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, it seems. The memory melts away into oblivion like a piece of ice on the Rideau River during the spring thaw.
Wait a minute.
I’m surprised I remember the Rideau. I don’t remember that coming up in any recent vision.
Sigh.
This is like watching a reality television show. As soon as you’ve seen it once, you don’t care to see it again. But I do see it again. I see things over and over, I’m guessing, even though I can only remember very recent experiences. I know there has to be a point to this, but I don’t get a chance to contemplate my fate much since I’m constantly fading in and out of people’s lives. I wonder if Jacob Marley had this problem. I try not to think cynical thoughts like this, though, since Marley knew he was dead. I don’t know that for certain. I can only hope that some truth at some point will begin to lodge itself in my memory so I can get out of this state or at least figure out where I am.
Wait a minute. Something is coming to me.
The river. The Rideau River. Ottawa. I lived in Ottawa. Yes, I’m sure of it now. I grew up there. But, why do I remember the spring thaw on the Rideau? Why am I retaining this piece of information? The person’s life I’m watching right now has nothing to do with Ottawa. Even though I’m in this state of limbo, drifting in and out of people’s lives, I suddenly feel this sensation that isn’t unlike the feeling of kissing the girl you’ve had a crush on for years. This memory of the Rideau River is exciting. The image must mean something. I hope it means something. The river just has to mean something. This is uplifting because it’s the first time I’ve retained permanent knowledge. I know this because the last four lives I’ve shadowed belong to people I went to university with in Waterloo. Yet, this piece of a memory from Ottawa has sparked in me my memory of who I am, or was, and where I came from.
I should insert another sigh here.
Who am I kidding? This could be nothing. There’s no way of knowing how many people’s lives I’ve shadowed in this state. The memory of the Rideau could just be a result of the large number of people from Ottawa I know or knew. Up until this point, any vague notion I have of who I am and where I am is attributable to repetition. In other words, any small memory I have has to do with the number of people’s lives I’ve shadowed. I’m thinking that I’ve seen a lot of people’s lives from Ottawa. That’s why I remember the Rideau. I must have known a lot of people in Ottawa. I must have spent a lot of time near the river. That would explain why I remember it, even though I haven’t seen any person I know from Ottawa lately.
The question of whether my life is over or not ceases to excite me all that much now. I have this notion that I’ve been weaving in and out of people’s lives for a while in this indescribable state, so I really don’t care to fight against it anymore. If there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout this experience, it’s to take every shred of wisdom out of the each moment I experience. I don’t always wish for a new beginning and I don’t always dwell on the past; at least not the past that I can recall. Instead, I’m trying to figure out, with each vision I see, where I went wrong in life.
Rock n’ Roll was supposed to be my salvation. My music was supposed to be my way of overcoming my own frailties. The music was supposed to take the good in me and let it blossom. I was a sensitive soul once, I think. I wrote from the heart and connected with people. I know this because one of the last visions I had was that of my old friend Lars. Before I was in this state, Lars and I were good friends and band mates. We grew up together, went to university together and formed Epic. We named it after our favourite group Faith No More’s hit single from 1989. We thought that the name would grab the attention of critics and music industry types. After all, if we had the guts to call our band something so bold, at least people would take notice even if they thought we sucked. This was the case sometimes. Right up until the end, people used to tell me that calling our band Epic was an uncharacteristically American thing to do. After all, we were just this little Canadian band from different parts of Ontario that got lucky. We took criticism like this hard at first, but we eventually became accustomed to it. Either that or we were too drunk or stoned to care, just as long as the CDs were flying of the shelves. We had enough people that couldn’t care less about the name just as long as the songs we released were honest. I have to say, as far as I can recall, I think all our music was pretty honest. We may have angered people with that honesty at times, but it was honest nonetheless. I know we were successful, even though we were on the brink of splitting up because we couldn’t stand each other anymore. The burden of being a star was hard for all of us towards the end because we were still such good friends. We didn’t like the fact that we seemed to hate each other.
So, I know heading into this latest vision that I was in a successful band and I was likely from Ottawa. That’s about all I know, but things will become clearer, I hope, once I realize whose life I’m going to shadow the next time around. This time, I am following Lars as he goes about releasing a CD of our drunken studio outtakes and live cuts in order to allow the bloodthirsty record industry execs at our label to cash in on the band’s remaining legacy. After all, many of the great artists and musicians throughout history were never terribly popular when they were alive. I was popular, I think, but it seems that my fame is briefly skyrocketing now that I’m a ghost. But I’m not necessarily Kurt Cobain carrying a generation’s frustration with me to the grave. Maybe it’s the Canadian part of me that feels I’m fading from people’s memories. At least I think I am. That is, if I’m dead. There I go again with that dead or alive question. What frustrates me with this thought of being a third-rate, less-than-Cobain is that I’m fairly certain I can do nothing about it. The press will now have to expound on my legacy and even create parts of it.
I suppose it could be worse, though. I could have endured a life like Emily Dickenson. For some reason, I was always fascinated by her story. She lived her whole life writing brilliant poetry that was honest and passionate but completely unknown. At least I achieved some success in my life. Emily had to wait until she died for her sister to find her work in the attic of the family home before it was published and recognized. She wrote that she heard a fly buzz when she died. At least she felt something.
I’m amazed that I can recall so much about other people’s lives but so little of my own. I could go on and on about Cobain, Dickenson or any other misunderstood genius but not have the slightest clue about parts of my own life. How can you be a complete stranger to yourself and just accept it or tolerate it? The answer is I can’t for much longer. At least I feel this way sometimes.
I suppose I will go on looking in on people’s lives as long as I must. I will be a ghost as long as I need to be. I will sit there and watch people I know and love as they cry, but not be able to wipe their tears away. I can watch them shout at a framed photograph of me and not be able to respond. I can tell them not to empty the bottle of Canadian Club just because of me, but they never hear me. They never see me. To them, I am just a terrible little thought wiggling its way through their head. To them, I’m nowhere. Reduced to the role of spectator. I’ve accepted this.
But I remember the Rideau. I remember it well. When I was young, I used to sit on a rock along the river during the spring thaw and watch the rapids hiss and tumble onto the cement pilings of the old railway bridge near Carleton University.
Something has changed. I remember something that I haven’t seen or experienced in some time. For all of my ramblings, I sure do have trouble making my point. Here it is. I’m a bit of a liar. I don’t accept this state I’m trapped in. I still hope.
2.
ABOUT A GIRL
This is promising. I’m sitting in the Second Cup coffee shop at the corner of Somerset and Bank streets, in a windswept section of Ottawa’s core. I feel good being back in this rugged strip of Centretown, right about the spot where the small shops give way to the dreary glass government office buildings. This is one of the parts of Ottawa whose sidewalks don’t roll up at six o’clock every evening, despite what some people say. I remember spending some time here after I finished my degree and moved back to town in 2000. I remember feebly trying to turn my life around by taking a French course at the French language school around the corner. My class mates and I used to come here during the break in our class and order our coffees and teas in French, as per our teacher’s orders. I didn’t live too far from this intersection. I remember once living in a beautiful apartment building called the Governor Metcalfe just a couple of streets over from this shop and just down the road from the Museum of Nature. I liked telling people I lived in the Governor Metcalfe. The name seemed so ridiculously pretentious but it was endearing nonetheless.
People are covering their faces since it’s a bitterly cold spring day in Ottawa, although I can’t feel the cold at all as I don’t seem to exist. I’m perched on one of the stools near the giant window facing Bank Street. The lower part of the window is a greasy grey colour, from buses splashing slush. This part of the coffee shop where the stools are is where the loners come to read their Noam Chomsky literature or write in their hemp-bound diaries. I used to sit at these stools before, but it wasn’t alone. I came here once with someone, but I can’t seem to remember who it was.
This is a new experience for me. Ever since I’ve been in this state of limbo watching other people’s lives, I’m usually thrown right into the action. This time around, I’m sitting in a coffee shop with a scattering of people I don’t recognize. This time, I’m just sitting here watching some young man with gangly brown sideburns, a dishevelled mop and small glasses reading a tattered poetry book. Occasionally, he breaks from his reading and jots down a few notes in a tiny black leather-bound notepad. I don’t know who he is and I’m at a loss as to why I’m here watching him. I sense that this coffee shop must have something to do with whomever it was I came here with. I wish I could remember who it was.
Watching this guy read is boring. I look around and see a few other people in the shop reading newspapers. One couple, both with greying hair, read different sections of the Ottawa Citizen without saying a word to each other. Two young women sit near the window facing Somerset Street looking at photographs and laughing at each image.
“Can you believe that I did that? That’s so unlike me,” says one of the woman with wavy, shoulder-length auburn hair.
“Would you do it again?” asks her friend, also with frizzy shoulder length hair, but with a decidedly more brownish tint.
“I don’t know if I would do it again,” says the first, with a deceptive grin.
This scene is strange. I’m listening to two women I don’t know talk about a roll of photographs. I’m watching a guy read a book of poetry. I’m watching an aging couple ignore each other. I’m used to not being able to connect the dots, but this is weird. I don’t know whose life I’m shadowing and I don’t know what lesson I’m supposed to looking for in the Second Cup.
Some type of jazz emanates from the store’s sound system. Behind the counter, the two Second Cup employees chat about their weekends. The young man with frosted blond tips and too much gel in his hair is windexing the glass display case for the baked treats. He’s talking about some band he saw just up the street at this club called Barrymore’s. The name is familiar.
“Their show was weird. The lead singer had all this pancake make-up on his face and his hair was purple. Like grape-juice purple. He’s was kind of like a happier, gentler Marilyn Manson.”
“I’m not crazy about Robin Black but it sounded like fun,” says his co-worker, a lovely blond-haired woman with her hair in a pony-tail and a cute set of black frame glasses. “I’m not even crazy about this jazz, either. It’s putting me to sleep.”
I don’t blame her. The song that’s playing has some woman singing, “Da, da, da, daaaaa… beep, beep, uh huh.” Maybe that’s scatting. I could never understand it, although I never reached my Carlsberg years where I was supposed to begin understanding and appreciating jazz. I wonder if I’ll be able to pull a Lee Aaron career move by changing from rock to jazz. Perish the thought.
“I’ll change the stream,” says the male employee. He walks back behind the counter to the satellite console and looks for the right satellite radio channel. I’m still amazed that so many businesses no longer tune in to the local “At work radio station that everyone agrees on.” Nothing is left to chance these days. Many businesses now invest in a satellite feed of music that is sent out across their chains from a glass office tower in Toronto, no doubt. Businesses think they know what their customers want to hear and it’s not some local deejay (gasp) talking between songs. Also, no two coffee shops can deviate from the prescribed brand of music that management deems suitable to its customers. The man behind the counter changes the satellite feed all the same. Good for him, I think. Stick it to the man. He turns the console off the jazz channel onto the middle-of-the-road rock channel. There’s a Dave Matthews song playing.
“Well, it’s better than the jazz,” the man says to his female co-worker, who scrunches her nose at the song.
“I guess,” she says. “I just hear this guy so much on the radio.”
The two continue to chat about their weekends but I eventually tune them out. I listen to the next song playing over the sound system. The tune sounds eerily familiar. That’s because it’s my band. This is my song. The title is coming to me. The song is called Labour Day, I think. I listen to the acoustic guitar introduction done so skilfully by my friend and band mate. His name is coming to me as well. Steve. That’s it. I’m humming along. The song begins.
Today was the day
Where the world faded away
I work my mind over
Looking to find that piece
A peace of mind.
This song earned us our first Juno award, although we said we didn’t care about such recognition from the industry. All we cared about was what our fans thought of it. This is from our 2001 album Turn, Turn, Turnaround. The song brings back the memory of a certain young woman I spent a Labour Day with in 2000 and instantly fell in love with. What’s significant about this song is it reflects the only time in my life that I actually fell in love with someone. Everyone else I dated, or slept with, was different. Some women I dated and grew to love. Some were friends from university that I tolerated. Some were just convenient for the night. But, this song is about Michelle — the one woman who drew me in from the get-go. Even though I don’t know whose life I’m supposed to be dropping in on this time, I have to say I like this vision much more pleasant than the previous ones I remember.
The man behind the counter softly mumbles the words under his breath. In all my time at the top of the charts, I can’t imagine experiencing something more rewarding than seeing this: a seemingly ordinary person connecting with my music. He sings the fourth verse while wiping down the bottom of the desert display.
Today, the world faded away
All my hang-ups drifted away
So perfectly ironic
on this Labour Day.
On this Labour Day, on this Labour Day…
I don’t know if people really understood the play on words at the end of the song. I always thought it was ironic that, on a day devoted to celebrating the plight of the worker, I would lose all sense of my duty in the eyes of one special woman. On a day devoted to remembering someone’s toil, I totally forgot about all my responsibilities and practical concerns. Is that even irony? I don’t know. All I know is that day with this woman required no effort.
The woman behind the counter is nodding her head along to the music and says something cryptic.
“What a shame what happened to Perrin.”
“Yeah, but Epic was on its way out. The Other Shoe Drops was weird. Way too Radiohead. It seemed like it was weird for the sake of being weird,” says her co-worker, who is rubbing out a boot mark from the bottom of the glass display.
Perrin is my last name. Yes, I remember that now. Labour Day was the first single released for the Turn, Turn, Turnaround album in March 2001. The tune was about the only woman I instantly fell in love with. I wrote it on Sept. 4, 2000 when I returned home to my shared apartment flat in this old house somewhere. I lived there up until Turn, Turn Turnaround was released. I wrote that song because my heart felt like it was swollen to the point of overflowing. I had never been hit like that before.
***
September, 2000
My alarm wakes me up earlier than it usually does on a work day. But, instead of bussing tables at the restaurant, I’m getting ready for a date. I’m not sure if that’s the right description for it. After all, I just met Michelle a few weeks ago. Even though we had a class together at Waterloo, we really don’t know each other. That’s why today is so important. Michelle just moved to Ottawa and I want to make a good impression. She knows a little about me since she’s staying with a friend in town who just happened to go to high school with me. Still, it feels like a first date even though we’ve only met a couple of times for coffee so far. I have this dull burning sensation just below my stomach that happens any time I’m nervous. I’m feeling it now just like I did when I went to bed last night. Last night was a fractured night. I woke up a handful of times, since I couldn’t get comfortable or shut my mind off long enough to go to sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about when Michelle and I first met at my friend Corrine’s apartment. Corrine invited me over for dinner, which she periodically does, since I was back in town from school just like she was. I was surprised when I got there to see Michelle. She was beautiful. She had gently curved dark brown hair that was cut just above her compact shoulders. Her eyes were dark brown. They pierced right through me. I assumed Michelle could tell that I had this nervous feeling in my stomach. Something in the way she looked at me told me she could see the inferno. She was dressed in a short canvass skirt and stylish white T-shirt. She wore chique dark-rimmed glasses but they did nothing to disguise those intimidating, yet benevolent, eyes. When we met, her eyes twinkled.
When I first arrived at Corrine’s place, I quickly ditched Corrine and left her in the kitchen. I turned my attention to Michelle and attempted to make polite conversation about work and the development of the next album. Michelle listened intently and spoke of her job waiting tables at Darcy McGee’s pub near Parliament Hill. The conversation was pleasant, but muted, until I made some snide comment about the CBC Radio One broadcast that Corrine had playing in the background. Michelle looked at me perplexed so I immediately tried to do some damage control.
“I really love the CBC though. My band was featured on Brave New Waves once when our first album was released.”
“That’s so cool! I love the CBC!” Michelle said excitedly. As she said this, she touched my leg twice to emphasize some point she was making. I couldn’t hear what she was saying because I was so excited that she was touching me. I hoped it was a sign. Before I knew it, we were sitting there talking about the CBC for half an hour while Corrine silently stirred her pots in the kitchen, half-smiling and shaking her head. By the end of the night, I was offering to help Michelle look for an apartment. I wanted to see her again so much but I didn’t have the courage to ask her out nor the creativity to think of a charming line. This lame offer was all I had. But, it worked. A few weeks later, we were going out for coffee, occasionally trading stories about university and anything else we had in common.
I quickly give my head a shake and make my way to the shower to get ready for this Labour Day date, although I’m quick to caution myself it isn’t a date. We are going to head downtown to watch the first taping of CBC Radio One’s This Morning for the fall season. The show is being taped in the Byward Market, which is a forty minute walk from my house near Lansdowne Park. I try not to reminisce about our first meeting at Corrine’s too much since it takes away from my prep time. The trick is to look good, smell good, but not too good since this really isn’t a date. I want to impress her and endear myself to her but I don’t want her to get the impression that I’m absolutely smitten with her. I don’t want her to think I’m trying too hard, which is exactly what I’m doing. I remind myself that there’s no need for the effort, since everything comes so effortlessly with Michelle.
Since coming back to Ottawa in May, I have had to endure a break-up with my long-time girlfriend from university, so this new woman could be the shortcut to my final bit of recovery. But I can’t dwell on the first couple of months back in Ottawa because they all seem like a blur now that I’ve met Michelle — this articulate, passionate English major who just happens to be gorgeous. Corrine’s fiancé Matthew agrees with me. He says she’s hot in a “pixie-ish” kind of way.
I barely shovel down some cereal and toast before Michelle arrives at the base of the stairs of my apartment.
“Let’s go, are you ready?” she blurts out in a frantic tone.
“Yep, let’s do it,” I whisper, hoping Michelle hasn’t woken my roommates who are still sleeping, as I should be on a day off. The whole day with Michelle looms. I can’t wait. On the way up to the Byward Market, I tell Michelle everything I know about Ottawa that I think she’ll find interesting. After a while, I try to let the beautiful trail along the Rideau Canal do the talking for me since I feel like an idiot for talking so much. When my band released our first album in 1999 and played gigs in Waterloo, I could talk to a whole bar full of disinterested women and sound good. This morning, I can’t seem to say anything terribly witty. For the first time since Epic’s first gig at the Bomb Shelter pub at the University of Waterloo, I have stage fright and I’m only speaking to an audience of one. The first red leaves of the fall season provide a jarring contrast against the gloomy grey September morning. We both start talking about the weather, which makes me nervous. Weather is usually a bad sign. To me, it signals of the death of a conversation.
Luckily, the conversation turns to the topic of the CBC and things get easier. We arrive in the Byward Market where the outdoor taping of the CBC show is about to begin. We walk into a nearby French bakery and grab two coffees. Michelle is thankful that I’m paying. I’m feeling my confidence build. This is going to be a good day. The only thing that I’m thinking about is Michelle. I’m not thinking about the next album or my double-shift at the restaurant tomorrow. All I’m thinking about is how beautiful Michelle looks as we watch the taping together. I have to make a concerted effort to watch the taping and not stare at Michelle. But her smile says it all. She’s having a good time, and better yet, she’s having a good time with me.
I watch Michelle laugh at the host’s jokes. I watch her wrinkle her nose at the lame jokes. We both make fun of the beatnik CBC Radio fanatics that gush praise on the show’s host during the news break. This is perfect. A man can lose all sense of ego with a person like Michelle. I’ve only known her a couple of weeks and already, it doesn’t seem to matter to her that I’m a semi-famous musician (although I’m technically still rated as an up-and-comer by the music press). She doesn’t flinch when she sees the odd teenager point at me and wave.
When the show ends, I take her to my favourite place in Ottawa just behind the National Art Gallery, along a high bluff overlooking the Ottawa River. We hike up to Nepean Point which offers a stunning view of the river, the Gatineau Hills in Quebec and the Parliament Buildings. Sitting by the statue of Samuel de Champlain, we open up to each other. We discover that we both suffered great hardship in high-school because we were smart, sensitive, awkward and artsy. In other words, we were both near the bottom of the all-too-important social pecking order. When I tell her about some of my experiences, she consoles me without any condescension.
“That’s so sad,” she says of one of my memories. My heart melts.
What started out as a gloomy September morning has turned into a blustery but brilliantly sunny fall day. We head back to the Byward Market for lunch. She introduces me to sushi although I stick with my bagel sandwich. I can’t believe she’s convinced me to at least try raw fish after I swore I would never eat that crap. She’s got a hold of me already. I’m losing myself more and more as the day goes on. I want to know everything about her. For the first time ever, I’m getting to know someone with no pretexts. Nothing I do matters when I’m with her. All she seems to want is someone to talk to and connect with. This day is perfect. I don’t want it to end. After lunch, we walk around town some more and check out a few sights. We talk about our backgrounds and the musical interests we have in common. I ask her about her time in Toronto. I do whatever it takes to keep this date going. She smiles more and more as the day goes on. I want to kiss her but resist the urge for once. Where is my rock star confidence?
***
A few new customers walk into the coffee shop and the staff behind the counter quickly springs into action, forgetting about my band’s song. The last strains of me singing “on this Labour Day…” fade into a remake of Big Yellow Taxi. My moment of connection with the man behind the counter is clouded by the fact that my heartfelt song about Michelle is sandwiched between Dave Matthews and whoever it is singing this Joni Mitchell cover. It’s all about selling more coffee. My song is selling coffee. Worse still, I’m still in this Second Cup with no idea why I’m supposed to be here.
The nervous feeling in my stomach seems to return, although I’m not sure if I’m feeling anything since I’m not physically anywhere. I watch one of the customers swagger in, bragging to his buddy about something. He looks like the scholarly type —short, lightly-gelled blond hair with tiny wire-frame glasses. He’s wearing some sort of canvas bag on a strap around his torso like a string of ammunition. He’s wearing expensive khakis and a black turtle neck that is supposed to emphasize his physique (that is if he had one). He orders a chai tea and slowly saunters over to the set of stools facing Bank Street where I am perched. The two hop up on the stools and continue their conversation. I’m trying to pick up what they’re talking about, because my burning feeling suggests to me this is why I’m here.
“It’s so simple, man. She’s only dated a few guys and the last one sounded like a real fucking jerk. Some fucking Canadian rawk star.”
His accent absolutely gives him away. He’s an American who is likely from Michigan, given that twangy, nasally accent. I know this because we played in Detroit a few times. The people there pronounced words like soccer as “sah-ker.” Pop was “soda pap.”
“So, you met her at Michigan. How’d it all begin?” asks the Michigander’s buddy who doesn’t seem to have the Michigan accent.
“We are both doing our English PhDs and she got to talking one night when she was feeling down and I just listened. It was as simple as that. Since then, we’ve had a good thing going. She’s so fucking hot, too, so that’s not too shabby. I’ve got it made.”
“Remind me. What the hell are we doing here man? Canada is so goddamn cold.”
“I know, I know,” says the Michigander. “But, it’s reading week and she’s got friends up here so we figured, what the hell? We’re staying at her friend’s place and we’ve got the spare room to ourselves. Plus, you got a free ride up, man.”
“Well, I’m just here for the hockey game. I still can’t believe it’s so cheap up here. My hotel room is worth like thirty bucks American and it’s close to the Corel Centre. Speaking of, I hope Yzerman lights it up tonight.”
“Yeah, for sure,” says the Michigander vaguely, staring off toward a passing bus on Bank Street that screeches to a halt near the coffee shop window. “There she is. Let’s go.”
I strain to see who is it, but I already know. Michelle is walking up the street. I follow the two men out of the coffee shop onto the wind-swept street. How I wish I could be heard now. Michelle is more beautiful than my shoddy memory allows me to remember. Her eyes have that same twinkle, but it’s not for me.
“Hi sweetie,” says Michelle as she reaches for this guy’s elbows. She pulls herself in and creeps up on her toes to kiss him. I am crushed. Even though Michelle and I broke up right about when Turn, Turn, Turnaround was released in March 2001, seeing her so smitten with someone else saddens me, especially considering how it ended between us.
***
March, 2001
Three days before St. Patrick’s Day and all I’m focusing on is Epic’s first gig at Barrymore’s. The official release of our new CD is set to go. Already, Labour Day is playing on the radio, thanks mainly to our previous association with the Sonic Unyon label and Treble Charger. Still, I’ve got a sick feeling in my stomach. I’m not worried about how the album will sell. The first one sold 200,000 copies and the press is describing us as Ontario’s answer to Sloan, although I think our sound lends itself more to the Faith No More vibe. I’m not worried about the band. We seem to be on the brink of a huge breakthrough and I’m fired up for the gig. We’ve been jamming for weeks and our impromptu busking in the Byward Market generated some publicity. That is, until the cops shut the gig down because our fans were crowding around us on the street in front of the CHUM building. Everything seems to be fitting together for the band but I’m worried about Michelle.
I’m sick of Michelle. That would be more accurate. She’s trying to get into some American colleges to pursue her PhD and it’s not working out yet. She’s already received a few rejection letters and it’s caused a strain on our once amazing relationship. We’ve been fighting on and off for weeks about silly things. I resent the fact that she challenges every one of my opinions. She seems to think that she’s smarter than me just because she’s a year older and a true academic. I told her that it doesn’t make a difference to me that she’s older or that she’s going to be a PhD graduate while I settled for my insignificant geography degree. I have no doubts that she’ll make it, but I’m getting really tired of the verbal abuse. The other night, we had a discussion about religion and she became irate with me when I began questioning the Roman Catholic Church. I’m a card-carrying member of the guilty-as-hell following, so I think I’m entitled. She looked at me incredulously and blasted me.
“What right do you have to question these beliefs? You don’t even go to church anymore.”
I wasn’t bothered so much by the comment she made. She was right. I hadn’t been to church in years and I really didn’t have the right to call the church’s elders onto the carpet unless I was prepared to back up my opinion with some action like attending a service. Michelle’s tone is what killed me and it wasn’t the first time in recent weeks she’d used that tone. She might as well have said I was a stupid dreamer. In fact, if she had called me stupid, it would have made things a lot easier for me now.
At work today, I took my break with Corrine’s fiancé Matthew to talk about the situation. He was very succinct when dispensing advice.
“You’ve got to do it, man. No question. She has no right to treat you that way.”
I knew Matthew was right and his words only reinforced what I knew I had to do. Tonight it feels cold in the apartment and I’m pacing around my room, trying to think of what to do. So, I close my door and roll up a joint. I’ve been smoking way too much lately and drinking way too much at rehearsals. I’ve even dabbled in some of the naughtier stuff. I know I have to stop, but I always get this way when it comes to the music. It’s my career and it just can’t fail. That’s how I justify it to my friends. I went to university to please my parents but that doesn’t mean I want to go to Teacher’s College. That’s all my degree will allow me to do. Music is my life. Still, I haven’t been thinking clearly and I’ve been acting irrationally with Michelle.
I pick up the phone and start dialling her number. I hang up and lay on my bed for a while, staring at the water stain on my ceiling from this winter’s roof leak. The weed does nothing at all. I’ve still got that awful feeling like my stomach is knotted like a pretzel. I think about it for a while. Michelle is great, but she’s repeatedly belittled me and nagged me about little things for weeks. She doesn’t like the fact that I still talk to my female friends from Waterloo on a regular basis. She tells me flat out that one of my university friends, Cindy, is in love with me. I feel trapped. I’m about to go out on the road and do what I love to do, but Michelle will likely only get worse. She’s already had some terrible days, like the one when the first rejection letter came in from Columbia. I remember being in her apartment and trying to hug her. All she did was push me away and scold me for patronizing her. The way she stared at her rejection letter, which had been tossed on the floor, was weird.
I rationalize this imminent break-up by telling myself that I will be able to meet someone else like Michelle. I’m still young and I’m about to go out on tour. What would it be like if I was still with Michelle out there on tour? I’m sure she’d be full of questions about my whereabouts. She’s already questioning me way too often about the women I speak to at work and who I talk to on the phone. Given the attention I receive when I’m with the band, I can’t say I blame her, really. I’m not helping my cause since I usually go along with the attention instead of discouraging it. It’s part of my job, I usually tell myself. Whatever it takes to sell CDs. I sigh as I think of how weak this explanation is, even to me. Poor Michelle. No wait, I can’t think like this. She’s been mean to me for weeks. I pick up the phone again.
She picks up and seems weary, yet pleased to hear my voice. I stumble with my words and use the old stand-by.
“Look, we need to talk.” I can’t believe I just used that line.
As I try to explain diplomatically that her increasingly hostile tone over the last few weeks has made it difficult for me to support her, I realize I’m taking the easy way out. I even go so far as to suggest that we take a break. I have no idea what I’m walking into.
Michelle explains to me that she just got rejected by all of the American universities. The final rejection came in the mail today. She has no other plan. She feels bitter and lost. I stumble further with my words and just try to get off the phone. Michelle is too upset to let me get away with the easy way out. She opens a door for me.
“Are you saying you want to break up?” she asks with a mixture of anger and some tears. I jump at the chance.
“It’s just that I don’t think I can be there for you.” I can’t even say yes. I feel bad enough that I can’t face her in person to do this. I have to do it over the phone and I have to wait for her to help me break up with her. This is such a disgusting display on my part. Thankfully, the call ends and I hang up. I feel relieved. Things had been bad for two months. Michelle, as wonderful as she was at first, is now quite belligerent and condescending. Then again, I had my future on track and she didn’t. I break up with her at the time where she’s at her lowest. And I do it over the phone since I can’t face her. All I can think of is me. I didn’t even try to address the issues that may have caused the hostility between us. I have this bleary feeling that, despite the fact that I just broke up with Michelle, I still love her. I probably couldn’t have broken up with her had I gone to her apartment tonight. I feel sick again.
***
Michelle and her boyfriend walk hand-in-hand down Bank Street. Seeing as how I am forced to witness their happiness as part of this latest vision, I follow them. They chat about the weather, Corrine and other inane things. I can’t see the smile on Michelle’s face but I notice the spring in her step. They stop at an intersection waiting for the walk signal. Michelle turns to her boyfriend, grabs his other hand and whispers something in his ear. Her smile reminds me of the time when she and I walked downtown one fall afternoon when we first started dating and she turned to me at this intersection near the Chateau Laurier. At the moment, I was busy marvelling at the gleaming copper roof which had just been cleaned in the previous few weeks. She looked at me with a pleading, brutally honest look.
“You aren’t suddenly going to lose interest in me, are you?”
I had never heard anything so endearing in all my life. She was so honest, so sincere and so brave to say that. Now, I have to watch her say similar things to this new guy. Strangely though, I feel some happiness for Michelle. Yes, we flamed out pretty fast as a couple and I abandoned her in the most cowardly way right when she hit rock bottom, but I still wish her well, in a way. I think.
They turn down a quiet residential street where old brick houses are crowded together. They saunter up an old wooden porch with peeling grey paint and proceed into Corrine’s apartment. When they get there, the boyfriend’s buddy leaves for his hotel in a cab. As soon as they enter the apartment, they tightly embrace and quickly exchange a small peck before taking off their shoes. They quickly close the door behind them but I walk through it anyway, since I don’t exist and all. Matthew is watching an afternoon hockey game on CBC between Toronto and Montreal. I check the score and smile. Montreal is up 2-1 with a minute to go in the third. I would join Matthew on the couch to catch the rest of the game but I follow Michelle and her boyfriend into the kitchen while Corrine fixes a giant bowl of pasta. Corrine calls to Matthew to turn the TV off as supper is almost ready.
“In a minute C. The game is almost over.”
“You said that five minutes ago.”
“Three, two, one. There you go. It’s done. Want me to turn on the radio?”
“Put it on X-FM,” Corrine says as she drains the pasta through a large white plastic colander.
Looking over at Michelle, Corrine motions her near as her boyfriend edges his way to the living room to talk to Matthew. Corrine whispers something to Michelle and points to Matthew. Michelle, always one to liven up a room, blurts out, “Oh my God!” I see the smile that follows and I hear her laugh. Her happiness starts to sap any of the happiness I felt for her.
I watch them eat and wonder when the revelation will hit me before I get sucked out of Michelle’s life and thrust into that of another person. The dinner goes by without incident as does the rest of the evening. Everyone has a few drinks and shares some tales from university. Then the radio intervenes with another familiar song. I’m hearing my band again. This time, it’s a live version of Labour Day that’s off the just-released rarities disc that Lars put out to finish our contract with Universal. I hear the crowd roaring and I hear myself speak.
“This next song is a song about falling in love,” I say with a slight slur to my words. This version must have been recorded during the Turn Around Canada Tour in 2001. The crowd lets out an “Awwww.” I laugh and continue. “Don’t get too sappy, I dumped her.” The crowd roars with laughter and cheers. Ingrates just like me. I can’t believe I said that. I feel horrible since I took the easy way out with Michelle. I had to brag about something I never did. I never broke up with Michelle. She let me slither my way out of her life. I hear the familiar licks of the acoustic introduction and I watch Michelle’s reaction. Her face is white but no one seems to notice at first how quiet she becomes. Michelle knows the song is about her and I’m guessing by her silence that’s she not too pleased with my comments to the audience. She doesn’t appear angry, only distant. As Matthew talks to her boyfriend about sports, Michelle only stares out the front window. Corrine motions to her to follow her to the kitchen in the back of the apartment.
“Are you okay?” Corrine asks, although she must know what’s wrong.
“Yeah,” says Michelle with a restrained sigh. “Even when David and I spoke after we broke up, he told me the song was going to be the first single. I was flattered and sad that someone with that type of depth could ditch me at a low point. I’m still kind of partial to that song. It makes me think of the good times we had. Then I hear shit like that. He dumped me. Yeah, right. I haven’t given him a second thought since I left Ottawa but that kind of brings back some of the hurt.”
Corrine is kind to me. She never takes a cheap shot.
“Dave was different then. He was so wrapped up in that second album and then it hit and things got out of control. It was probably for the best.”
Michelle nods glumly, looking at the floor. I nod as well. My name is Dave.
“Another beer Meesh? I’m having one.”
Michelle brightens up and grabs a beer and heads back with Corrine to rejoin the men. My song is still playing. After it finishes, the conversation quickly dies down as Matthew and Corrine both start yawning. After another half hour of small talk, everyone heads to bed. I can’t bring myself to follow Michelle and her boyfriend into the spare bedroom. Instead, I stay in the front room, looking out onto the street and the muck spilling out from underneath the shrinking snow banks. The apartment is dark, except for the faint yellow glow of the street light pouring in the front window through the Venetian blinds. I want to get out of here. I don’t see how Michelle moving on with her life is supposed to teach me some lesson. This vision is more useless than the last one. I look at the clock on the cable box. It reads 2:20. I’ve been sitting here for an hour, although it seems like a minute in this state of limbo. Everyone’s been asleep for at least an hour and a half.
I hear the floorboards in the kitchen creak. Slowly, almost timidly, Michelle walks out into the front room and sits in the couch across from me. She draws her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. She’s looking outside with that same distant look I noticed when she heard my song.
She sits there, staring out the window as if she’s waiting for a taxi. I don’t remember if Michelle and I ever had this type of quiet time together. When we were first together, we both had so much to say since we were amazed at how well we seemed to connect. Towards the end, we spent a lot of time bickering. I remember one time when we bickered all the way home from a restaurant to her apartment which was seven blocks away. She didn’t like the way I poked fun at her in front of my family. But, we never really had quiet time like this. The silence is positively intoxicating as I watch her stare out that window. Just like I did when we went out for Labour Day, I lose myself in the moment.
“Michelle, I just want to apologize for what I said about you on that CD,” I say. I still occasionally forget that no one can hear me.
Michelle doesn’t budge. Instead, she keeps peering out the window with a half smile on her face. After a few more minutes, she walks back into the spare bedroom and quietly comes back into the main room with a portable CD player. She leans over the side of the couch and looks through Corrine’s CDs. Near the bottom of a messy stack of CDs, she carefully pulls one out, making sure not to disturb the rest of the pile. She opens up the CD and gently places it into her player. I know which CD it is. It’s our second album, Turn, Turn Turnaround. She pushes a button three times to skip ahead to the fourth song. I know it’s Labour Day. I hear the tin-can strains of the acoustic guitar introduction from her earphones. She opens up the booklet and turns on a small reading lamp in the corner. She’s reading the words to the song. She still has that half smile. I don’t know whether it’s because she’s listening to this. But, the smile doesn’t fade. She sits there listening to each note and slowly closes her eyes as she lays on the couch.
The song ends. Michelle doesn’t stir. I hear the bouncy title track to the album blast in her ears. She’s obviously asleep. From the spare bedroom, I can now hear Michelle’s boyfriend snoring as the door has creeps open. Michelle’s crooked smile gives way slightly as she falls asleep. Her wavy brown hair fans out on the couch, some of it still clinging to the nape of her neck. She looks so peaceful and content. I listen to the words of the song, still pounding away in her earphones.
And so I salute you
for my turn, turn
turnaround
And my life will turn around.