We met at a vernissage of paintings called “Art and Social Change.” I was staring too long at a painting about urban loneliness when a white-haired woman I’d met before at a migrant’s justice group meeting told me I could join in on her conversation if I wanted to. She was speaking with a short, skinny, bespectacled guy with a strong Eastern European accent. The subject was whether participating in any political demonstrations was really worth it or not. The Eastern European guy – it turned out he was Romanian — was very cynical and thought not. He found my recent attempts to join the ranks of the politically active to be pretty naive, like some contemporary form of Christian charity. When he spoke, he would get very serious and had a tendency towards ranting but was quick to laugh when I diffused the overly serious conversation with jokes. Beneath the cynicism, sweetness, a little-boyish quality, saved him.
As it became time to leave the gallery, some people were heading to a nearby bar for drinks. He very awkwardly offered to buy me one if I joined. The group of us — artists, university-types, leftists, art lovers and friends of the artist, sat around a rectangular table, drinking and talking and laughing. I was glad I had agreed to come.
By the end of the night, it was just me, and the skinny, bespectacled guy, a Quebecois girl who said very little and a big-headed Bolivian guy wearing a suit and tie. The Bolivian asked us each to say what we thought about the Scriptures. After soliciting each of our opinions, he then proceeded to show, through a strange kind of logic that we were all at the mercy of a great Zionist conspiracy.
It wasn’t so much the conspiracy theory as the way he had brought us there that annoyed me. I hate it when people pretend to engage in free-flowing discussion only to manipulate it into a didactic monologue. I told the Bolivian as much and quickly excused myself telling everyone I felt a headache coming on. I could tell that the mostly silent and always agreeable Quebecois girl admired me for my ability to put her big-headed friend in his place so directly. I went home thinking it had been an interesting evening.
The Romanian had told me he that he co-owned a bookstore in the neighbourhood, and I had promised to get him back for the drinks he had bought me, so a few weeks later I decided to stop in between classes to say a quick hello.
He was surprised and pleased to see me and agreed promptly when I suggested we go for a beer that weekend. We made plans and exchanged phone numbers. He re-acted to my proposition in a slightly over-eager and gauche way that I found endearing. Seeing him again, confirmed for me that I didn’t find him physically attractive at all and that our plans therefore, didn’t truly constitute a date, in my mind. I briefly wondered if I wasn’t just asking him out because he had the same first name as someone I did desire but didn’t dare to be so forward with. Possibly.
We met that Friday at a bar we both knew. A punk co-op I had often danced at with a group of friends on Friday nights, many years earlier. Since then, the bar had moved a few blocks up the street and its ambience had mellowed a little.
He was already sitting at a table in the back when I arrived. I greeted him and asked him what drink I could buy him. Once I got the beers, I sat down across from him and we started to talk. I think that despite the fact that I didn’t find him attractive, I was still enjoying the idea that he might be consider our meeting a date. I could guess that he didn’t have girls asking him out for beer everyday and that this event was a big deal to him. Maybe this flattered me a little. I considered that I was practicing for the real thing, building up my confidence for future, more attractive prospects. Truth probably was that I was as lonely and desperate as he.
And what a date it was, if it was. The guy was a talker! No matter what subject we started in on, he has an opinion and elaborated on it at length. I could barely get a nod in edgewise. He liked drinking too so he ordered more beers for both of us and I had trouble keeping up on this end as well. It was Friday night and I’d had a long week of work so fatigue was settling in. Since I was so tired, he managed to completely dominate the conversation and I let him. I politely smiled and nodded at appropriate intervals and occasionally interjected. At some point I got up and went to the bathroom and stared at myself drunkenly in the mirror, wondering “why are you still HERE?”
And yet I kept the charade up for a little while longer. There was something about him that fascinated me, morbidly perhaps. He was like a very loud, very physical man trapped inside a puny little intellectual’s body. As he drank more, he became more and more agitated and his rants more extreme. He had a Marxist analysis for everything. And in any case, the world was shit, most of the time. He made it clear that drinking was a favourite activity of his. He told me that his favourite drug of choice was morphine. I’d never heard anyone say that before. A painkiller! It didn’t sound like loads of fun to me.
He’d grown up in Communist Romania with an Orthodox priest for a father. Because of this fact, he’d been ridiculed and ostracized by the other kids. Made out to be a big loser. “I didn’t get to fuck much” he told me, “until I moved cities.”
Hearing this, I thought I understood his character better. Like so many of us, .he’d been rejected for who he was when he was young. And so, he’d never shed his feeling of rejection, had developed a kind of loser complex. Now, he went through life, bitterly, like he’d be rejected forever.
Well, it was time to go. When I explained my fatigue, he offered to let me crash at his place, very close by. I declined his offer. I kissed him goodbye on both cheeks and he squeezed the back of my neck in a disturbingly manly way and promised to be in touch.
The next day, I related the experience of my awful “date” to my friends, relishing in describing the details of how terrible it had been. I laughed about it. I let them laugh too. Wondered out loud what had come over me to subject myself to such an experience? But I rationalized to them and to myself that it was always good to make new friends, especially male ones — which I had so few of —- no matter how strange.
He called me a few weeks later, leaving a message, inviting me to come to his friend’s party, to be held on his terrace overlooking the city. I called him back and said thanks, and that I would have loved to go but that I had a lot going on that day — an afternoon barbecue and a ticket to see the Sun Ra Arkestra play that night. But, then again, maybe I could drop by for a short while. We agreed to call each other.
This time I was the one doing the drinking. The booze was free-flowing at the barbecue and I indulged. With time to kill before the next party and no desire to ride my bike all the way home, I found a bench in a little park off the Main and took a short nap. When I woke up, I couldn’t remember where I’d parked my bike. I called my Romanian friend and we agreed where and when to meet.
The party he took me to was small. Five people gathered around a table and then us. But the view was nice, the summer evening pleasant and the drinks were free-flowing here too. Against my better judgement, I had some more beer. Everyone was kind and in good spirits. There were two joking Quebecois guys, the French host, his Lebanese friend, an Eastern European girl and the two of us. The conversation switched back and forth between French and English. As there was only one other girl, I felt self-conscious about my cleavage, which my cross-over white sleeveless shirt kept revealing too much. I wondered if anyone thought the Romanian and I were dating. The conversation was quite intellectual, with a table full of PhD students, but when the host put some electronic music on, everyone got excited. Someone said it was rare to hear such good electronic music in the clubs, that most of it was commercial crap. I mentioned that I had some DJ friends who often put on events and whose music was uncommercial and good and suddenly everyone wanted to give me their number. I took one guy’s number, promising that I would call him next time my friends had a gig. I think I was happy to find a group of people to whom I had something to give. These were the have-nots, the clueless, looking for a good time but hardly ever finding it and I could make their dreams come true with a simple phone call.
I was very drunk.
It was time for me to leave if I wanted to catch the Sun Ra Arkestra. I thanked the host for his party and said goodbye to everyone. My friend walked me to the elevator. We promised to keep in touch about the next party.
I stumbled my way to the venue and immediately spotted my friend Sandra and her tall, good-looking Ukrainian roommate. His attractiveness jumped right out at me and so I sat down beside him on the sidewalk. We talked easily and I flirted too obviously. So obviously that he may not have noticed that it was directed at him but interpreted it as a simple function of my over-the-top personality.
We went inside to watch the second half of the show. The room was completely packed, filled wall to wall with sweaty, happy people swaying to the music. I stayed overly-conscious of my physical closeness to the hot roommate. It enhanced my experience of the music and the heat. The musicians played joyously and entertained us by marching around the room in their spacey costumes. It was a great show and I was glad I hadn’t missed it.
Back outside we chatted with one of the Arkestra’s members, a trumpet player whom Sandra and I had met before. Another friend was having a party that night and I suggested we head there. The night of parties! After some time waiting for our musician friend, chatting up people in the street and drinking rum, Sandra, me and the hot roommate and musician friend all started walking towards the next party, for me, the third of the day.
I was already so drunk, but when we arrived at Coco’s place, I felt there was nothing to do but continue with the debauchery. This party was nice. Much mellower than I had expected, with people playing live music in the garden. Hash brownies were served. I spent the evening being over-the-top and flirting with everyone in sight except the desired man in question, in some strange misguided and completely unsuccessful attempt to provoke his jealousy. It didn’t work. Eventually it was time to go home. Although my friends helped me, I didn’t find my bike and ended up catching the night bus.
My new friend and I got together again. This time, I invited him to an outdoor reggae party I wanted to attend. I hadn’t found anyone else to go with and I figured he’d say yes. Truth was, it had so far been quite a lonely summer for me. Several good friends had moved away. Other friends had simply moved on. I was having trouble finding a roommate to share my new apartment with and I was nursing a terrible heartbreak. So I appreciated my new friend’s willing companionship, despite his shortcomings. Here was someone who was obviously even lonelier and needier than I was and so I took to calling him when I had none else, because I knew he wouldn’t say no.
I wondered if I was I using him. Sometimes there’s a fine line between casual friendship and using someone for easy companionship. I felt like I was treading that line. A part of me wanted to be friends with him, and yet, a part of me looked down on him for his negativity and his gauche ways, considered him last resort. Did it boost my own suffering ego to spend time with someone I felt somehow – socially or fashionably – superior to? Did it matter? I don’t think I was hurting him. In fact, I felt rather like I was giving him something: asking him out to events, introducing him to new people, places. I thought I was helping him. He was becoming my friend in need, my contemporary Christian charity case. And what did I know about his motives? Maybe he was using me for something too.
The event was in the west end of the city and it was a beautiful summer night so we decided to ride our bikes there. The ride was pleasant, with lots of good-natured banter along the way, riding through a part of the city where I rarely ventured. The evening felt light and carefree.
Although the reggae party — with food, drink and films — was advertised as starting early, I didn’t want to show up on time but rather wait until it would be in full swing. But I hadn’t eaten properly before leaving and my stomach was grumbling so I proposed we stop and get a bite to eat. I found a corner store that sold sushi and I bought a box of twelve to go and 2 cans of green-tea-flavoured ice tea. He insisted on paying for half even though he wasn’t really hungry. This was unusual, compared to most Montreal guys I knew, this little bit of old school chivalry. We found a grassy spot near the canal to sit and talk while I filled up.
Our conversation was good. I felt comfortable opening up to him. Despite his Marxist-coloured cynicism about conventional institutions like marriage and family, he didn’t appear to judge me when I admitted to wanting these things. Maybe my confessions about my broken dreams and recent ex were also a way to delicately make clear that we didn’t want the same things, in case he still had any ideas about a romance between us.
With reciprocal candour, he told me about his sexual past and I cringed whenever he used the word “fuck” — not because I wasn’t used to using the word myself but because he said it so viciously, as if it was an angry, savage act. At that point in time, I had no desire to think about relationships in such base terms. I was nursing my romantic disillusions.
Eventually we headed in the direction of the party and discovered a little oasis of people and music hidden away behind some fences and industrial buildings. We got ourselves each a beer and talked some more but somehow the change of location changed everything. In the context of this party, we were no longer just two friends having a conversation but now, two people trying to look alright and feel comfortable in a social setting fraught with expectations on the image and coolness plane. Thankfully, I managed to avoid making eye contact with any or the people there I knew — acquaintances I wouldn’t have known what to say to, or might have felt slightly embarrassed to be seen with my nerdy, socially gauche friend – so it was okay for me. As long as he had a drink in his hand, so was he.
Watching the films was okay too. We could stay in our private little world of two, making occasional comments. Unfortunately the first film was terrible – a send-up of R ‘n B culture with all the dialogue sung. We managed to tolerate three quarters of it, and then got up in exasperation, just minutes before it ended. Unfortunately, this way we lost our spots and had to watch the second film, a reggae classic, from the back, sitting in the grass. Still, it was nice, sitting in our little private bubble, surrounded by this world to observe, as voyeurs, not really participating. But once the films were over and it was time to dance, I realized we had a problem. He wasn’t really up for dancing and neither of us had brought any weed. I had recently liberated myself from the need for any kind of social lubricants to have a good time but my friend was not so lucky. He kept cursing the fact that he hadn’t brought his usual stash. I didn’t have any alternative ideas so I suggested we leave. He insisted we should stay if I felt like dancing but I said it was okay. After all, I had come with him and I didn’t really mind. I was happy, had come with no real expectations of the evening, and didn’t feel that strongly about the party. I didn’t want to dance while my too sober and insecure friend stood there alone, feeling uncomfortable.
We left and rode our bikes through the busy downtown streets. He told me he had never been to a party like that. He didn’t know such people, such events existed in this town. I told him he suffered from spending too much time in Francophone circles and that the Anglophone circles of Montreal had much to offer in terms of alternative culture. He thanked me for a great night and we said goodbye.
The next time I saw him was when I brought him to a potluck Sandra was having. She organized these dinners periodically in her beautifully decorated apartment. There was always an abundance of amazing food and an interesting assortment of smart, kind, musically-inclined people. I had told my friend I would invite him some time, as an occasion for him to make some new friends. Since he had been complaining to me about how he didn’t seem to fit in or identify with the Quebecois, I had proposed that he needed to meet more Anglophones and that I would help him, if an opportunity arose.
When I called him, he asked if it was obligatory to bring food or if a bottle of wine would suffice. I said sure. We made plans to meet and ride our bikes there together.
Before riding up to Sandra’s house, he suggested that we stop in the nearby park and chill out a bit. We sat in the grass and I asked him about his day. He was in a bad mood. Business at the bookstore was down and he was preoccupied with the idea that he needed to find a new line of work. He had decided that the best job he had a chance of getting, was as a prison guard. This surprised me a little, but he explained. The benefits were good, it was a stable position, and all he needed to do was bulk up a little to qualify.
I questioned his choice. It seemed bleak to me. He did after all, have a PhD in History. Did he seriously believe this was as good as he could find? He reacted very negatively to my line of questions. He explained to me how hard it was to integrate into the job market here. To integrate into Quebecois society. How he was an outsider, how he was a subaltern.
Subaltern. It wasn’t the first time he’d used that term to describe himself. I remembered it vaguely from a class in graduate school, as a term used to describe being in a position of social and political inferiority but I would have to look it up again later. I asked him more questions about his past attempts to find work and got more angry answers. Today everything was black to him. His mood was very dark. In fact, it was so negative that it was starting to get to me. My good mood was deflating. I regretted inviting him, regretted being there with him. I briefly considered telling him I didn’t want to go to the party with him anymore. But I couldn’t do it, couldn’t be so direct. So I suggested we make our way there and tried to steer the rest of our conversation topics off jobs.
We arrived at Sandra’s place just as her hot roommate was coming out the front door. I hadn’t seen him in months, and had long given up hope of having a chance with him, but I still found him attractive. All of a sudden, I felt embarrassed to be showing up with a short, bald, bespectacled guy with terrible, terrible English. I didn’t show it but I was cringing inside. We went in and found a big group of people already assembled outside. I introduced him to a few people and sat with him. More friends arrived.
I spent the first hour of the party with my friend, introducing him to people, sitting beside him, being generally nurturing. I jokingly commented on the fact that he wasn’t trying any of the excellent food laid out. He explained to me that he had eaten a very filling lunch of a blended mixture of eggs, cream and any other fattening substance he’d found in his fridge. This was part of his project of fattening up for the prison guard job. I found his description of his lunch disgusting and also sad. Disappointing that he’d done this knowing he had a dinner party later. Eating fat for long-term security was more urgent than saving room for a delicious meal.
As we started to mingle more with other people, the topic of conversation turned to the power of positive thinking. The people at Sandra’s parties always tended to be very joyful, if overly sincere people. So, of course many, myself included, believed that thinking positive thoughts helped bring positive outcomes into one’s life. Not surprisingly, my friend disagreed. He made fun of us and accused us all of having read and believed The Secret.
At some point, I stopped worrying about my friend’s well-being and focused on my own, moving away from his dark cloud. I was particularly distracted by the roommate’s presence. No matter where he was, my body was overly conscious of his. Although I could plainly see that he was there with a girl, my body had not stopped reacting to his. And it seemed that I wasn’t completely alone in this. I could sense his awareness too. At some point, he winked right at me.
But he was with someone. It was obvious to me that they had something going on. And his effect on me, and the impossibility of the situation disturbed me, destabilized me. I kept trying to avoid him while simultaneously being drawn to him against my will. And despite all of my intentions of goodwill, I felt embarrassed about my nerdy, skinny little friend and hoped no one thought we were an item. I spent the rest of the evening trying to diffuse this inner tension.
People started singing and playing instruments, as they always did at Sandra’s parties. Blues piano riffs, violin, guitar, vocal harmonies. The music was loose and heartfelt. The mood was celebratory and free. I looked at my little friend and observed him to be sitting on the living room floor, smiling happily, and drunkenly.
An hour later and I decided it was time for me to leave. I got ready to go, making rounds to say goodbye to everyone. When I got to my friend, he looked terrible. His eyes glazed over with drink, his lips and teeth purple from the wine. I told him not to worry about leaving with me, that he looked like he was enjoying himself too much. The fact was that he couldn’t even get up off the floor, he was so drunk. He concurred and I went to kiss him goodbye on the cheeks. The handsome roommate was sitting right beside him, eyeing me. I tried to ignore his burning gaze and play it cool. When I leaned down to kiss my friend’s face, he suddenly slapped me on the ass.
I was mortified. Shocked. Embarassed. Humiliated, really. I hadn’t expected that at all. It was so uncouth. And so public. It made it seem like this was the kind of relationship we had. That we had any kind of relationship. The roommate had witnessed the whole thing with amusement. Everyone had seen. I said to him, loudly “You just slapped my ass!”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean anything by it” he protested drunkenly, lamely.
“I just wanted to confirm,” I responded sarcastically, stoically sucking up my rage and embarrassment. I made eyes at the hostess, said goodbye quickly, and left. Walking to the metro, I replayed the events of the evening in my head and tried to calm down all the rage and embarrassment bubbling inside of me.
This was my thanks. It had been a small, spontaneous gesture, provoked by drink, but I didn’t care. He had crossed a line I couldn’t forgive him for. Did he not realize how generous I had been with him? Did he not see how his attitude denigrated all I had tried to offer him? When I got home and looked up his favourite term:
Subaltern:
1. a military rank, a junior, “subordinate” officer in the army
2. a term used in postcolonial theory as a reference to colonized people in the South Asian subcontinent, as a way to see history from the perspective of the colonized rather than from the perspective of the hegemonic power.
Subaltern is not “just a classy word for oppressed, for Other, for somebody who’s not getting a piece of the pie … In postcolonial terms, everything that has limited or no access to the cultural imperialism is subaltern – a space of difference. Now who would say that’s just oppressed? The working class is oppressed; It’s not subaltern… Many people want to claim subalternity. I mean, just by being a discriminated-against minority on the university campus, they don’t need the word ‘subaltern’…They should see what the mechanics of the discrimination are. They’re within the hegemonic discourse wanting a piece of the pie and not being allowed, so let them speak, use the hegemonic discourse. They should not call themselves subaltern.”
- Gayatri Spivak
I never called him again and neither did he try to contact me. I guess we both knew a line had been crossed. I had no generosity left for him, my sad, drunken, cynical friend. I suppose he had no hope left that I would give him and his miserable company another chance. And yet, he could have called and apologized and I would have forgiven him. Better that he didn’t give me the chance. Lonely as I was that summer, maybe I didn’t need a friend like him. Had being with someone lonelier, more isolated, more socially inept than me, been a way to make myself feel better? Had I used him until he no longer served a purpose?
I walk by his bookshop once in a while and wonder if I’ll ever see him again, if our paths will ever cross. If I’ll ever feel the urge to just walk in and say hi. Probably not. It seems, we have both silently agreed that whatever significance our social transaction had, its terms have come to an end.
