571,778¥ (Chapter 24 of 38)

Gil revisits the past in the next episode of Park's v-cast. But his biggest fear is that the past might visit him.  

Transcript

Sitting on “stage” in the v-cast, I was uneasy, because it wasn’t as easy to get lost in the experience when I knew that this Judas contraption I was wearing on my head might be reading every thought and memory I ever had. Park still kept telling me that he didn’t think it was likely, or even possible, but I wasn’t so sure. Would our “bouncer” suddenly shout out to everyone in the room that I was a coyote who shat my pants once in a while? And speaking of everyone, the last v-cast had gotten fifty thousand views. So now there actually were about fifty people coming and going from the “club” during the live version. This made me even more nervous. I should have had more wine before I started. I was starting to notice already that one glass didn’t cut it. 

“The last time we were here we only talked about why you wanted the de-aging treatment. Why don’t you talk more about your past this time? Give everyone some context.”

“What about my past?” I asked. “Where would I start?” 

“Well,” Park said. “Full disclosure, I uploaded some pictures.” 

“Park, you didn’t.” 

“Now, I don’t have to project them on the wall behind me, but wouldn’t it be fun? What do you think everyone?” 

The room hooted and hollered. 

“What kind of pictures? God only knows what you got there. I’d rather see them first.” 

“I promise you it’s nothing bad or embarrassing…well, nothing too embarrassing.” 

“Come on, Gil, Let us see them!” some guy with a strange accent shouted from the back of the club. I couldn’t see him, or anyone else, from the glare of lights shining in my eyes at the front of the stage.”

“I’m going to kill you,” I said to Park, but I was curious what he found. “Oh well, if you were Melvin not a chance, but I trusts you to have a bit of sense in what pictures you chose. Melvin would deliberately find the worst pictures.” 

“Melvin is his son, my father,” Park said to the audience. “He’s a bit of a…how shall we say…” 

“Handsome devil?” said a familiar female voice from the smokey darkness. 

 Park and I held our “hands” over our eyes and stared into the lights. 

“Who is that?” I asked. 

“Jeez Louise, you’ve got me forgotten already?” the lady said. 

“Is that Audrey?” Park said. 

“That’s who it is,” she said. “In the flesh…but not really.”

“Where are you?” I asked. 

“Three rows back,” she said.

“No, I mean are you still in Ontario?” 

“My body is.”  

“Sorry everybody,” Park said. “Audrey is my father’s girlfriend. We didn’t know she was here. Club, turn off the stage lights.” The lights shining in our eyes turned off, and I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. It was almost like that bar scene in the first Star Wars movie, with a mixture of creatures, animals, and people. Some were a mixture of both. One guy had a horse's body on the bottom and a human’s body on top. What do you call it? Lig says it’s a centaur. There were cats, dogs, mice, and people that looked like aliens, with big black eyes and fat green heads. Elves, Elvis, rag dolls, you name it. I almost felt stupid just being me. But Park was himself too, so I didn’t feel so out of place. 

And by the way, when I said earlier that it was smokey, I meant it. Just like the bars and clubs were in the eighties. Only this digital kind didn’t give you cancer. 

Audrey was herself, except that it seemed like her breasts were bigger, her nose a little smaller, and her face a little smoother. Oh well, why not make yourself look better if all you had to do was tell a computer? Who was I to judge? I wanted to live forever. 

“Most of them already know who I am,” Audrey said. “I invited some fellow Normals to come see you. How many Normals we got here?” Around a dozen people hollered back.  

“Bang!” Park said. 

“Yeah,” I said. “Bang.” 

“What do you think so far?” Park asked her. 

“I’m enjoying it so far,” she said. “Entertaining and interesting. I asked Melvin to come but he said he doesn’t have a headset. Excuses. I watched the recorded version of the last one too. You guys have a lot of chemistry.” 

“Yeah, literally,” Park said. “Same blood.” 

“Do the…Normals usually get together like this?” I asked. 

“Comedy clubs are our churches, but you guys are funny, so this sort of counts.”

“V-cast comedy clubs or real ones?” 

“Both. The old Yuk Yuk’s in Ottawa is our Sistine Chapel obviously, but we take in all forms of comedy. And we’re all donating to your cause by the way. Melvin and I are getting the shot too, eventually. I hope. We’ll see. But enough about me, keep talking!” 

“So will I show the pics?” Park asked. Everyone hooted again, and I hung my head.

“Okay folks, you asked for it.” 

The first picture was of me as a boy, probably around seven or eight years old, holding up a He-Man action figure on Christmas morning. I was so proud of my toy that I didn’t even notice Mom was taking a picture. I was showing Dad who was smiling and holding a Skeletor figure in his hand in a fighting stance against my He-Man. It had been a long time since I saw that picture, and it gave me a good sad feeling. Even if Dad did look hung-over, or maybe still drunk from the night before, with a smoke hanging out of his mouth. 

“Good Lord,” I said. “That was a long time ago. That He-Man and Skeletor was all I got that year for Christmas. Imagine. That would only be a stocking stuffer these days.” 

“That tree is so nice,” someone in the crowd said. “Look at the long shiny stuff hanging off it. Is that strips of tinfoil?” 

“Tinsel,” I said. “People used to use it to decorate their trees back then. We stopped using it when it killed one of our cats.”

“Is that my great-grandfather smoking indoors with you standing in front of him? You were just a kid. Did he always do that?”

“Everyone smoked indoors back then.”

The next picture was in the summertime, and I was lying across the back window of Dad’s station wagon, with a billow of dust rolling away from behind. I was probably a few years older than the first picture. Around ten maybe. In the seat in front of me, my brother Scott and my sister Emma were wrestling. They didn’t get along that great, so fighting is probably more like it. 

“I’m just noticing the dust billowing behind you, and the blurred images outside the window. Was your father actually driving with you there like that, lying across the back window? Where’s your seatbelts?” 

“I didn’t start wearing a seatbelt until I was in my late twenties. And I only did it then because I didn’t want to get a fine. A lot of times I just put it across my lap, but didn’t hook it in. Didn’t want to get nabbed.” 

“That’s so crazy! If you got into an accident you would have shot through the windshield like a cannonball, and maybe your brother and sister would have stayed in the car. This is one of my favourite pictures here. I wish it was better quality. I don’t understand why it’s so hazy. I got my shadow to clean it up.”

“Oh that’s not the photo quality, that’s cigarette smoke from Mom and Dad. If I can remember right, that car had five ashtrays. Three in the front and two in the back. I don’t think it had seatbelts in the back anyway.” 

“Didn’t have seatbelts?”

“Yeah, I think that was an option. Don’t quote me on that. No one wore seatbelts back then anyway. The only time Dad wore a seatbelt was when he was drinking because he could stick the beer bottle down between himself and the belt at his gut. There was no shoulder straps, just the one that goes across the waist.” 

“This is blowing my mind. Make no wonder no one wore them. The car is filled with smoke, you’re lying across the back window of a moving car, and my great Pop is probably drunk. Was everybody insane back then?” 

“Different times,” I said, grinning. “Different times. But that wasn’t the worst part. 

“It gets worse?” Park said. 

“Well, in that car in particular there was a hole in the exhaust, see. So every fifteen miles or so, if it was a long drive, we had to stop the car, turn her off, open all the doors, and get out to let the exhaust fumes out. If we went any further you’d start to get nauseous. We went too far once because Dad didn’t want to miss the hockey game, and my brother Scott got so sick he spent ten minutes throwing up.”

“Ah, so that explains this,” Park said, and he brought up the next picture, and there was my brother Scott, leaning into the ditch with Mom’s hand on his back. The audience laughed their arses off at that. I could hear Audrey’s cackles as if she was standing next to me.

“Who took that picture?” Park said. 

“My sister, Emma.” 

“Why would she take a picture of her brother throwing up?” 

 “For fun. She was probably laughing while she took it. That’s why the angle is all weird. No one knew how to take a picture back then anyway.” 

“I get that all cars took oil back then, but—”  

“Gas, not oil. The engine did take oil to lubricate the pistons, but the car didn’t run on oil.”

“So like, diesel?” 

“No, gas. Some cars took diesel, but not many around here. Only the big rigs took diesel.”

“So burning the gas made a poison gas that was leaking from the exhaust? “

“Yeah, carbon dioxide.” 

“So he had carbon dioxide poisoning. Can’t that stuff kill you?” 

“It’ll put you to sleep first, and then, yeah, it’ll kill you. Especially on them old cars. They improved them later on so that if you fell asleep in the car it would only give you brain damage.” 

Park rubbed his hands through his hair. “Bang. Okay, lets go to the next picture, or we’ll be here all day.” 

The next was me climbing a cliff outside my house. 

 “I should be going chronologically, but I can’t resist showing this one. You don’t look any older than five here, and you’re climbing a steep cliff.” 

“Yeah, that’s about how old I was.” 

“And you’re climbing a cliff by yourself. Who took the picture?” 

“I don’t know. Probably Mom.” 

“And no one was supervising you.” 

“God no. At that age I would be drove through the door after breakfast and come back for supper. Then go out again until dark.” 

“What did you do outdoors all day?” 

“Hide and seek. Kick the can. Trouting. Swimming -not that I was very good at it. Paddle bike. Hitchhike to the store—” 

“Wait, you were hitchhiking when you were five years old?” 

“Yes, well, it was a small town. Everyone who picked me up knew whose youngster I was. I probably knew them too most of the time.”

“And how far was it to the store?” 

“Ray’s Convenience was probably only a half-hour walk, but that seems like forever when you’re a boy. So me and my buddies would hitchhike. My God, I was hitchhiking until I got my first car in my mid-twenties. I used to hitchhike to town. A few times I hitchhiked to St. John’s, but now that was when I was a teenager. Mom wouldn’t let me hitchhike to the city when I was a boy. She wasn’t crazy.” 

“Wasn’t crazy? Everything you’ve told me since you sat here seems crazy. I’ve never hitchhiked in my life.”

“It was normal at the time. I dare say an autonomous car is not going to pick you up anyway. Well, mine probably would. That thing don’t know if it’s coming or going these days.”

“And you never got in any dangerous situations getting aboard a car with strangers?” 

“Nah, like I said, everyone knew you in small —well, there was that time me and my brother Scott was hitchhiking to town and we got picked up by a big shot pervert.” 

“Pervert how?” 

“He kept trying to touch Scott.” 

“Okay…I don’t even know if I should ask.” 

“It wasn’t no big deal.” 

“Touch him, like, touch him touch him?”

“Yeah, it was a long blue car. Fancy. I can’t remember the make. Maybe a Crown Vic or something? It had an 8-track player in the back where I was sitting. Scott was in the front seat with the pervert. It was an old car for the time because 8-tracks was before my time. We all had tapes by then.” 

“So what was the driver doing?” 

“I couldn’t see what was happening. I might have jumped out if I did. All I knew was that we dropped into a store, and the guy got out and ran in, all excited. Then Scott turns around and says, ‘I just got a free case of beer and a pack of smokes.’” 

“Why?” I said. 

“‘I’ll tell you when he drops us off,’” was all he said, and winked at me. 

“Well, next thing I knows, we’re turning off in some gravel pit and stops. I didn’t drink, but I sat there bored out of my mind while Scott and the old guy drank all the beer. They talked about hockey mostly. What else could a fifteen-year-old and a middle-aged man talk about? Then Scott says to the old fella —now mind you, he seemed old at the time, but he was probably only in his forties. Forty was an old man to me then. So he says to the old fella, he says, ‘You ready?’ The old fella says, ‘You better believe it,’ and starts undoing his belt. That’s when Scott pulls back the last mouthful of his beer and smashes the empty bottle right over the man’s head. I think I got a bigger fright than the poor man did. Then Scott yells, ‘Thanks for the beer you…friggin —he didn’t say friggin. I don’t want to use bad language here. But anyway, he says, ‘Thanks for the beer you friggin pervert! I’m only fifteen years old. I could call the cops on you for this!’ And then he half jumps half falls out of the car. So I’m sitting there like a fool, haven’t got a clue what’s going on. The old fella is moaning and holding his head, with blood running down his face. “I wasn’t going to do anything!” he kept saying, but when I looked over the seat I could see his bird poking out of his zipper. Next thing the back door flies open on the opposite side and Scott leans in across yelling, “What the fuck is you waitin' for?” He hauls me out of the car by one leg, my ass hits the ground and he drags me for about fifteen feet. He even took the case of empties with him, and he's so drunk he can barely stand up. Then he starts throwing the empties at the car, pop, pop, pop —it was an expensive car too. I think I already said that. And I’m all confused and heartbroken because you could get over a dollar for a case of empties in them days, and here he is throwing them all away. So while I’m wrestling with him trying to stop him from throwing the recyclables away, like literally yanking them out of his hands as he holds them up to throw them, buddy in the car nails the gas, rocks and gravel flying everywhere like the Dukes of Hazard, and I’m left there with my shitfaced brother in a gravel pit in the middle of nowhere, and a half case of Dominion Ale empties.” 

“Bang. These stories keep getting better!” Park said. 

 “So I ask Scott, what in the name of God just happened?” 

“‘He was a friggin pervert,” he says. “He was trying to feel me up the whole way. He even got his hand on me bird at one point. Outside the jeans. But I got a free drunk out of it, so frig him.’ And then he laughed to kill himself.”

“You could have told me what was going on,” I says. 

“’Frig that,’ he says, ‘you’re so nervous as a cat. You wouldn’t have went along with it.’”

“Would you have?” Park asked. 

“God no. I would have jumped out of the car.”

“Left him in the car?” 

“He was big for his age. He would have been alright.”  

“So he wasn’t a pervert, he was a pedophile,” Park said. 

“Yeah, but we called them perverts back then. Or diddlers. I don’t even know pedophile was a word back then.” 

“I’m pretty sure it was. But this is insane! Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this before?” 

“You didn’t ask.”

“So did you find out who the man was?” 

“Yeah, he was our local MHA, Leo Holland. He was the most popular, successful member we ever had too. We were one of the first communities in our area to get paved roads and cable in the 80’s. I think he served twenty-something years in the house? Anyway, he’s been dead now for years.”

“No one else ever charged him? I’m sure this wasn’t his first time.” 

“Not that I knows of.”  

“And you were five at the time?” 

“Five? What? No, I was a young fella when that happened.” 

“Like how old?” 

“I’d say twelve or thirteen. Thirteen I guess, if Scott was fifteen.”

“So you went back on the road, hitchhiking?” 

“Yeah, but we had a hard time getting a ride because I wasn’t throwing away them empties. I even found enough bottles in the gravel pit to take place of the ones Scott threw away. Everyone just threw their empties and garbage out the window back then. Even at the house Dad didn’t put out our garbage on the road for pickup. He’d just bring it down and throw it over the bank down in the beach. No odds. The tide would take it out anyway.” 

“See, ladies and gentleman,” Park said turning to the audience, we had the stage lights back on by then, “my grandfather is what’s known as, ahem, frugal, or as Dad says, ‘so cheap he hasn’t spent his tooth fairy money yet.’”

“I’m not cheap, but I looks after my money. You got to when you’re my age.” 

“Whatever you say, old-timer. Speaking of that, when you get the shot, I won't know if I should call you old-timer or not. You’ll be biologically younger than Dad.” He looked into the audience, “How many here are planning on getting the shot, if it’s real.” 

The lights were turned down again, and everyone (every thing? They were still people on the outside I guess) in the audience had their hands up. Except Park.

“What about you?” I asked Park. 

“Probably not,” Park said. 

“Seriously?” 

“Seriously.”

“Ah you’re young. That’ll change when you starts getting aches and pains in your forties, or gets old enough to see an old friend sittin’ in the corner in an old age home, staring off into space with a string of drool hanging from his mouth.” 

“I don’t know if it will. I think life might have an expiration date, no matter how young your body is.”