from Jimmy’s fall from grace — Gord cannot help but be reminded of my own brief period of salvation. I knew it was coming.
“Whatever happened to that girl?” he wants to know.
“What girl?” I say, knowing precisely who he means.
“That young one you brought home a few years back.”
I know precisely who he means because I’ve never brought any girl home but her, that single time, twelve years ago.
Of course Gord also knows the answer to the question he’s posed. The two of us are camped out in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon, a tray of tea and ROC Centre cinnamon pinwheels on the table in front of us, watching a Pentecostal preacher rant and weep. In short, Gord is attempting to direct the conversation down a fairly obvious path.
“We broke up when I left the church,” I say.
Gord keeps his eyes on the TV in an attempt to be casual.
“How long you stick with that stuff anyway?”
“Couple of years I guess.”
“She have sex?”
I frown, parsing the question. “What?”
“They have the virginity balls, I guess, the born-agains. True Love Waits they call it — there was a story on NBC. They wear these bracelets . . . ”
“Yeah, yeah, no. No. She wasn’t like that.”
I can feel my muscles reluctantly tense up. Today I have been mostly too tired to keep my guard up with Gord. Two weeks in his presence — not just in his presence but actually catering to the man — will do that. After about the first week my body just sort of collapsed with the fatigue of maintaining a 24/7 fight-or-flight response. It’s too bad — I was actually on the verge of enjoying myself, filling up on cinnamon pinwheels in front of the TV. I was up writing to you pretty much the entire night before and up until this point had been sitting here feeling nicely emptied-out — as close to relaxed as I’ve been since I arrived.
But now Gord is about to say something crass about my former girlfriend. I just know he is — it’s an unfortunate habit he acquired around the time I started Grade 9. Except for Sylvie, and perhaps his own mother, Gord has never quite been able to imagine women in anything other than a pornographic milieu. I would get home from a night out at a dance and Gord would be sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me with his tongue practically hanging out, wanting the details of the wild sexual romps he imagined Kids Today indulged in. Because, he informed me, girls my age were now “loose.” Every last one of them — it was a well-known fact, he insisted. “Not like in my day,” he said with regret. “Not the girls from Our Lady of the Crossed Legs, like I grew up with. These days, they’re all on the pill. Anything goes! Tell me I’m wrong!” And he’d lean forward, ready to drink in all the tawdry details of my teenage exploits.
“It’s not true, Gord,” I’d say, even though in fact I did okay on those weekends. It wasn’t exactly porn star time, but it was sometimes, at the very least, furtive hand-job time. That said, I couldn’t imagine a bigger hormonal buzzkill than having to detail my activities to the old man. So I’d just shake my head and tell him I got nowhere. Which he never believed.
“Horseshit! Big, good-looking fella like yourself. The young ones must be shoving their panties at ya in the halls.”
And I’d grimace and have to go to bed before my dad cured me of heterosexuality altogether.
So here I am, flopped on the couch in front of the TV on a Sunday afternoon, feeling one muscle group after another bunch up in anticipation of Gord saying something gross about a girl I once liked very much.
But all he says is this. “She was nice, that one.”
“Yes, she was nice,” I say.
“What was her name again?”
“Kirsten,” I reply after a moment.
“Kristen.”
“Kirsten.”
“What kinda name is that?”
“I think it’s Dutch.”
“I liked her,” says Gord. “Wasn’t always going on about the blood of the lamb and all that shit, like you were for a while there.”
“No,” I agree. “She didn’t actually like proselytizing very much. You’re supposed to try to save everyone you come into contact with, but she didn’t like bothering people. She couldn’t bring herself to do it half the time.”
It’s funny to remember this period of my life — how I was secretly still me