of the continent from you. On the other hand, maybe I could get up out of my chair right now, take a stroll a few blocks over, and knock on your door. Who knows, right? Not you.)
So anyway, right around the time Italy was going up against Brazil I started thinking about Gord and how disgusted he would be; how he always hated soccer because Europeans played it and Europeans are by definition homosexuals, even though the Russians have proven themselves able to play hockey every once in a while like respectable hetero males. And then I found myself snickering up at the ceiling thinking how fun it would be to call Gord up and tell him that I was watching soccer on TV and describe to him how much I was enjoying it, especially that one player with the flowing chestnut hair and taut buttocks.
So one day, after a great many beer, I did.
When I drink a great many beer, you have to understand, I soften up a little about Gord. That is to say, I go from my sober default setting of wanting to never look at or speak to him again, to my great-many-beer status of wanting to call him up and provoke him.
“How’s it going, fucknuts?”
“Well piss on a plate! Is that who I think it is?”
“It is who you think it be.”
“Well isn’t this a surprise. Stay right there now son and let me turn off the TV.”
That’s when I lost a bit of my great-many-beer glow, realizing at once how happy I’d made Gord with my phone call, realizing I was actually sitting there on the line waiting for him to come back and talk to me.
So I hung up.
But of course he called me immediately back.
“Guess we got cut off there.”
“Guess so.”
“These goddamn phones! They make you buy new packages every year that are supposed to save you so much trouble for more money and the service just gets worse and worse.”
“They make you buy them, do they.”
“Well they don’t give you any goddamn choice. This young one called me up the other day, some kinda accent on her, I can understand maybe every third word, Oh we’re offering this new service . . . ”
“Just hang up on them, Gord.”
“Well I would but I’m too polite. So I say maybe one of you assholes can tell me why every time I pick up the line now the goddamn thing goes boop boop boop like a busy signal?”
“It means you have a message, Gord. It’s like an answering machine.”
“What’s like an answering machine?”
“Like — an answering machine that’s inside your phone. They gave you voice-mail on your line — it’s internal voice-mail.”
“Well that’s dandy but who said I wanted any goddamn voice-mail, internal or external? I get my mail in an envelope, and it goes in my mailbox, and that’s all the internal mail I need. Then I take it out and, by Christ, it’s external. Whoopee-ding, aren’t I high-tech.”
I could tell by the tone of his voice, by the sprightly lilt to his goddamns, that my father was thrilled to be speaking with me.
“Hey Gord, guess what? I’m watching the Confederations Cup on TV. Big soccer finals.”
“Is that a fact? Watching a bunch of fruits run around in their shorts now, are you?”
“Sure am.”
“Well to each his own. Live and let live I always say. Just as long as you keep those types away from me.”
“It’s not gonna be easy Gord. You’re a good-looking man.”
“Oh kiss my ass.”
“Don’t say that to them.”
Gord wheezed himself a scrawny chestful of laughter at that one. Ah, father-son queer bashing. How did I get into this?
“Hey Gord?” I called over his delighted gasps for breath. “Listen, I gotta go.”
“No you don’t, you just got on for Christ’s sake,” he said, hacking up the results of his laughter — into a Kleenex, I hoped. “You didn’t call just to tell me you’re sitting there watching fruits in shorts.”
“Actually I did.”
“Well I hope you have more than that to say for yourself these days.”
And then I thought: Oh well. Gord’s not good for much, but he does constitute a living archive of sorts — which, as I think I’ve already indicated, is why I’ve avoided him most of my adult life. But undertaking this little project with you, I suddenly realized, was going to require a complete readjustment of my lifelong MO.
So what the heck, I thought, time to open up the archive.