HUMAN WRECKAGE

Waiting on a Fiend

Tim and I have been friends for at least fifty years. We grew up together in Montreal, streets apart, went to the same schools. We liked the same music; we liked the same clothes. We both lived in Calgary, AB for a time. When we weren’t in the same city, one of us would always accommodate the other’s visit, business or pleasure. Reunions were always fun, sometimes staggeringly so.

He’s always been a foot taller than me and so I’ve always had trouble keeping up to him: oh, he’s got the latest Stones album, guess I better get it; oh, he smokes Player’s Light, guess I better switch brands; oh, he’s got a girlfriend, guess I better try and get one; oh, he bought Mission stereo speakers, guess I should buy a pair… There have been little victories: if we’re out drinking Tim has to flood the urinal long before I feel the need.

My friend laughs at me because I’m a Rolling Stones completist: Hello, Pot, this is Kettle calling, can we talk about Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young? Sure, sure, put the phone down while you get yourself a cigarette and a beer, long distance calls are almost free in this day and age.

A couple of weeks ago Tim wrote me to crow about the red silk Stones tongue covid-19 mask he’d just purchased. I thought, What a maroon, what an ultra-maroon. But his note prompted me to conduct a mental inventory of my Stones stuff. First and foremost is their music of course: the vinyl, the CDs, the 45s, the 12-inch singles, the cassettes, the box sets; and then the tour programs (we saw the ’81 Buffalo show together); the tour posters displayed in the Crooked 9’s basement; the 1983 fan club package and all of its contents; the embroidered badges, branded cigarette lighters, the fridge magnet and the metal buttons; the t-shirts, socks, rural Alberta formal fleece pants, caps and the flammable acrylic tongue Christmas nerd sweater; the books and hoarded magazines and God knows what else I’ve squirreled away and forgotten about. Tim’s father, a Quebec superior court judge, a lovely, charming man, gave me his copy of a Canadian legal digest detailing Keith Richards’ 1977 Toronto heroin possession court case. Of course I still have it.

I know that when the hand of fate knocks me down for good none of this Stones stuff will mean anything to my survivors. The ephemera of a misspent life. By any measurement of Stones fanaticism, I’m a relatively sane specimen. Yet I was irked because Tim had a pandemic Stones mask and I didn’t. This nugget of knowledge began to eat at me, hurt my guts like hot stuff.

A close friend of my sister’s is a designer, an interior architect. His Montreal firm won the contract for No. 9 Carnaby Street, the new Rolling Stones department store in London’s Soho district which opened last September. I’ve met him a few times. I don’t know him very well but I like him because he’s enjoyed my three novels. So, for me and the Stones, mainly Mick I suppose given the nature of the enterprise, I’m talking two degrees of separation; we’re like this. That’s why the band bombards me with e-mails inviting me to shop their wares.

I was online the other night. I placed a Stones non-medical plague mask in my cart. Not a red Italian silk one like Tim’s, just a simple one, painted black. I thought, Gee, a single purchase seems so counter-productive and since I’m here… Well, didn’t I transform into a curious crow in a land of shiny objects? I loaded up with stuff I wanted but didn’t need, a ‘Goats Head Soup’ lithograph and the Spanish version of ‘Sticky Fingers’ with General Franco-dictated cover art and more, hoping to hit the ever-elusive free shipping bingo. Thanks, Tim. Some day, my friend, there will be a reckoning.               

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of petty bitterness since 2013. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right. The second wave and winter are coming; you’ll need a distraction.