Of Thanksgiving I am able
To say ’tisn’t well-begun
When the gent across the table
Mentions he has brought his gun
~Me
I’d been sitting across the table for about five minutes when the stocky, frazzled-thinning-hair-ed gent with the piggish face, busted blood vessels, and tightly-spaced eyes in the multi-pocketed khakis and red T-shirt announced to me and those others present that he’d brought his handgun.
His name was Steph, more or less. I mentally checked him off as “Possible oddball” (using “oddball” in place of another, more anatomical seven-letter word). In what universe is it acceptable to bring a gun to a Thanksgiving dinner, for God’s sake? But apparently he had. Not only that, but he appeared to have been drinking.
Well sure, I figured he’d left it in the cab of whatever pickup he’d driven. But who would assume that the imbecile would be bringing a damned gun anywhere near a friendly dinner party? This is Canada, thankfully.
He clearly wasn’t at ease, and at first I’d put it down to being “Mom’s boyfriend.” But one of the first things he’d said was that he’d rather have been “up in the bush, with m’brother.” He said he’d spent years out there.
I’ve met bush dwellers, a few of ‘em. They generally aren’t much at home in what you’d call polite society, even one as relaxed as that dinner’s.
The conversation was light pop-culture, TV, strippers, and sex, mostly. Three of us up that end of the table kept a large part of our lives on the internet, a place he clearly felt was much like the surface of Mars.
Thinking to take the conversation to ground he might be more at home on, I asked him his occupation. He was a glazier, it turned out, and had just come (he shook his head as he said this) from a job at Brandi’s, a strip club in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side. That link, by the way, is definitely NSFW.
He’d been moving some mirrors around on the ceiling:
“They were gettin’ in th’way of the air-con. They keep those places cold, see. So the girls’ nipples stand up nice ‘n’ hard.”
When the job was finished:
“I took th’key the guy gave me and went up one floor like he said. And holy s__t, through these two glass doors come two gorgeous chicks … ‘Can we do anything for yuh?’ I said ‘No’ … Hell, people pay a thousand bucks an hour for those things.”
“Sorry,” I asked “What things?”
“Y’know, the girls … I call ‘em things.”
…
The table down our end went a bit quiet. I tensed and slowly turned my head to look at my wife, who is rarely the most retiring of shy violets, particularly when confronted by misogynists with compensation issues.
Lorraine, who knows where The Swedish Touch massage parlour is and has likely met some of the workers, was also watching Lori.
Who put down her fork and said “Pardon me?” In a tone like a fancy Katana gliding from its sheath.
“It’s just my way,” he looked a little off-kilter “I call ‘em thin–”
“They’re people.” Lori hissed. Our end of the table was silent. Henrietta was trying to find a place to look. Steph was red, but looked like a dog that knows it’s in trouble, trying to avoid meeting Lori’s gaze. He was visibly seething.
Me, I’ve worked with Stephs before. But the last one was a long time ago, very far away, and it had never seemed as important for someone to school them when I wasn’t married. Now I was thinking about ways to make sure he didn’t get up if I had to knock him down.
“They. Are. People.” In the fragile silence it sounded like a countdown.
“Aw, that’s just my way. I mean, once they’re on that crack, that meth, they never get off … Kinder to–”
“That’s not true.” Lorraine spoke. She lives in that neighborhood, she’s worked with sex-trade workers, she interacts with the angels and demons every damn day. So she’s considerably more informed than Steph was.
“Nah,” he said, dismissively, angry and off-kilter but sallying forth anyway: “Might as well shoot ‘em. When you’re an addict …”
“No.” She stopped him flatly with her crafted Talking-to-Idiots tone: “I’ve met people who’ve gotten off meth. Some people can do it.”
“Well, some …” he acknowledged. But the tension bled from the moment as he found himself unable to assert he was right, but simultaneously unable to admit he could be wrong. The moment passed, Steph mumbled something and looked into his lap. Light and colour flooded back into the room.
Unfortunately several people left the table at once, leaving me with Steph. Here’s a sampling of his ideas:
“I went driving up that King George Highway one time, ’bout five in the morning there’s crack whores out there … them crackheads … there’s millions of friggin’ crack whores up there.”
He paused and eyed me up:
“Friggin’ things … They try and crawl in the cab with you …”
I drove truck for a lot of years. I know whereof he speaks. Still anyone driving slowly around the KGH at five a.m is usually coming down off a hard night and looking for a little company.
“So you find a polite refusal doesn’t do it for you, then?” I asked, fascinated.
“No, them f__kers won’t ever listen. There’s guys too, down there,” he said, assembling evidence of his righteousness. “I tell you, I’d liketa go down there sometimes and just open up, y’know?” He mimed using an automatic weapon to spray an invisible sidewalk. And smiled at me.
I let myself relax and listen, wondering quietly whether he had any kids and whether it was too late to sterilize them all. Coincidentally he was on about something similar.
“I figure, the second the kids come out, y’know, if there’s anything funny with ‘em, just give ‘em the hammer. That’s how the Spartans did it. How nature does it. Humans, we’ve got compassion, and it f__ks everything up.” Apparently the Spartans weren’t human. He swung an imaginary sledge toward a fictional deformed baby’s head. Then to ensure I understood he pantomimed a single pistol round across the table.
He continued to sculpt himself into a parody of working-class Nazism. There was more, against women, immigrants … you pretty much name anything but white middle-aged males and he wanted them shot. But I’d stopped listening.
There is a point where your opponent says something that translates as “I’m not fit to converse with adults or children who have mastered basic verbs.” He’d hit that point as soon as he opened his mouth. But I’d given him rope enough to hang himself. What’s more, he just kept doing it.
He was still red in the face. And I found myself unable to respond to him. Mercifully he hoisted himself from his chair and left with Henriette. I was able to avoid having to mumble any kind of pleasantry as he went.
I had no idea how badly the preceding moments with Lorraine and Lori had affected him until the following day, when Henrietta’s oldest daughter happened by our house:
“Oh, Henrietta said he was really swearing up a storm: ‘F__king bitch, who the hell does she think she is?’ and that sort of thing.”
“Well thank Sod he’d left his gun in his car,” I said.
“He had?” she asked.
“Well he told us he’d brought the damn thing,” I answered “I mean, what fool brings a gun to a Thanks-f__king-giving dinner?”
“No,” she said “He brought his car?”
“What?”
“Well Mom drove them there in her van. She said she didn’t know he had the gun on him. He had a hip flask in his pants too.”
If I ever find out Steph’s license plate, I think I’m going to shop him to the cops. By his own admission he doesn’t belong in civilization.
Meantime I hope he goes back to the bush. It’s be nice to think that he and his brother could stay there, nice and isolated. By themselves and far from any humans.
I had been concerned that he might have continued his involvement with Henriette. But when they had their family Thanksgiving the following day, he failed to turn up.
Whatever happened to him, I hope it’s nothing trivial.