foremost, because she plays such a small role, ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, having died right out of the gate. But then, all of a sudden, I remembered who I was talking to and now I’m feeling protective of her.
She was still more or less freshly dead when I met you in first year — which made me the mess that I was, the emotional disaster zone you were eventually able to take such incredible advantage of. Let’s just take a little break at this point and acknowledge a single fact: my mother had died, and you put it in your book. It wasn’t a big deal, in your book — nothing that should have been a big deal was made into a big deal. It didn’t have any consequence, my mother’s death — I mean, your character’s mother’s death. Didn’t kick off a police investigation or a funeral full of teeth-gnashing, clothes-rending mourners. It did nothing, it was a just a thing that had happened to this guy — his mom died, by the way. Background information. It’s mentioned once and never again.
Imagine what you would have done with her if I’d given you more to work with. Even now I don’t trust you. So fuck you, Sylvie stays with me. You can have the prick — who I can’t help but notice got even less play in your novel than my mother. Like zero. I find that puzzling considering how much I used to complain about him to you guys. Dead Sylvie was allowed in, but poor alive-and-kicking Gord barely made the cut. Which is hilarious compared to the reality because — you know. What I wouldn’t have given and so forth.
All you guys from the house, you and Kyle and Wade, you wondered what the hell I was doing there half the time — why I bothered to hang out with people like you. I was feared and massive and you guys were — in the parlance of guys like me, guys who played sports — kind of gay. Right? I don’t think you’ll dispute that. I mean generally speaking. You sat around getting high and listening to Van Morrison when nobody in the world was listening to Van Morrison anymore. Wade even had a poster of Van Morrison. It was so embarrassing. And anyway I show up at that party they had for homecoming week in first year and I start making out with the poster of Van Morrison, like I’ve pinned poor Van against the wall and am sexually assaulting him, and you guys are like Oh my god that’s the guy from the freshman mixer who chugged all the purple Jesus right out of the barrel and then vomited into the barrel and then started chugging that, who in Christ’s name let him in? But you’re delighted to have me, I can tell, because I am — and you sure as hell can’t deny this now, Adam — a Character.
So that’s why you hung out with me. I livened things up. I brought colour and physicality into your world. I shoved you into walls, got you in headlocks, squashed you up against unwilling women at various functions and held you there until both parties gave in.
But why did I hang out with you pussies? That was always the question no one on either side of the equation could capably answer. Why did I quit hockey in second year, losing my scholarship, so I could lounge stoned with you guys slouched in Kyle’s idiotic beanbag chair wasting an entire afternoon flinging Wade’s vinyl Grateful Dead across the room and into the sink?
Because Rank’s fucking crazy, people used to say.
And that was correct. That’s how I would’ve explained it too. But I’m a grown man now with the wisdom of many accumulated years and now I see that I was crazy in a very specific way. It was a layered kind of madness; it had texture. One, I was crazy with grief. So crazed I didn’t even know it. I thought I was fine. I figured this was simply how life went for a motherless young man just kicking off his twenties. I thought, as I chugged my purple vomit to the cheers of countless admirers, things were chugging along quite nicely. Mom was dead, sure. But look how popular I was! And at least I was away from Dad.
And that’s the thing — that’s where I was mistaken. There’s where all the underlying