JUST A BOY AGAIN

Pen Drop

My Nana was 101 at the time, maybe 102. At 99 she decided she’d had enough of looking after her apartment, housekeeping, cooking. She moved herself into an Anglican ladies’ residence on Guy Street in downtown Montreal. A grand old place that reminded me of one of those summer resorts in the Eastern Townships or upper New York State. Clapboards and verandahs. Adirondack chairs.  White paint, green doors and green window trim. “An institution, mainly for tax purposes,” Nana told me. Staff insisted she walk with a cane. When I visited her from Alberta, Nana simply dragged it behind her. “They say I need it.” Nana said that knitting, playing cards and completing crossword puzzles had become more challenging because her eyesight wasn’t what it was. Oh, and a dead tooth needed extraction. These were not complaints, just facts.

Nana led me on a tour. The place was quaint and musty. A group of elderly women, decades Nana’s junior, were watching a video of The Sound of Music in a common room. Nana pointed at one woman with the tip of her cane. “You remember your Auntie Agnes, Geoffrey.” I did. “Look at her; she’s a cabbage now.” Agnes began to tell me that when she was 16 her long red locks of hair were the envy of all the other girls in Brighton (UK), or possibly Montreal. She was unclear. She did remember that boys had really liked her. Nana said, “Agnes, maybe the doctor will give you a new head.”

Years later my mother moved herself into a ritzier residence in a ritzier part of Montreal. Mom expected to spend her final years in a reasonably priced hotel as opposed to an institution. Her plan panned out for the most part; scheduled communal activities held no allure. Probably the next to last time Ann and I saw Mom, she required a wheelchair to move around anywhere beyond the confines of her one-bedroom suite where her walker and any number of canes were always at hand. In this particular instance we wheeled her down the hall to the elevator. The three of us were to lunch together in the dining room. The elevator doors slid open. It was crammed with residents and visiting relatives. There was an apologetic shuffle in the lift, a lame attempt to create space for three more bodies and a wheelchair where there wasn’t any. I addressed the crowd: “That’s all right! We’ll take the stairs.” Half of them laughed. Mom did too.

Our former neighbour Forest, a cranky lifelong bachelor and self-described “lapsed Buddhist”, moved into a seniors’ residence on Jasper Avenue, Edmonton’s main drag, just before the covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns hit. Prior to that, Ann had two part-time jobs next door, dietician and handyman. I was Forest’s secretary: I sorted and reviewed his correspondence, helped him take care of business. When his latest issue of New Scientist was delivered, I went through it for him at his kitchen table, reviewing the content, describing the illustrations, reading aloud when required. Ann and I accompanied him on his walks. He told us that we had allowed him two additional years of independent living. Very precise.

His new home, while completely understanding he had no other option, still doesn’t quite suit. Legally blind, he doesn’t want to hear about other residents’ grandchildren and their pets. All this useless talk. He was banned from a Bible discussion group because hadn’t doctrine and dogma retarded civilization and therefore enlightenment? Didn’t it make sense that the purported da Vinci portrait of Jesus would portray an androgynous figure because the Christ must embody and personify all that is righteous in the feminine and masculine. The best of everything. And speaking of perfection, the Oilers need 40 goals from their fourth line and better goaltending.

All these things. All these things add up. All these vignettes stored, milled and put through the hopper. They colour my night dreams, sometimes they wake me up a little ahead of my bladder. A story churning. My God, how would I fare in one of those places? What would the tenor of a retirement home be like with the tail end of the baby boom cohort in residence? The Sound of Music on movie night just wouldn’t do. I thought about high school: its cliques, the new student, its dynamics, crushes on girls and smoking in the boys’ room. I thought about Hogan’s Heroes and Stalag 17,  finks and ferrets, rules and confinement, non-adherence.

I dread the thought of having to play out the end of the game in such a place whatever the marketing brochures promise. It could happen: you just don’t know; you never can tell. What would I take when time and space got tight? So many books and record albums. Meaningful pieces of furniture. All the pictures on the walls. Shoeboxes overflowing with mementos and curling snapshots. A threadbare twentieth century t-shirt. An Expos baseball cap. It’s the dessert island scenario for a glutton, the entire buffet is out of the question. One slice of cake, one wedge of pie and as many cookies and brownies as your pockets will hold.

I began to type in May, 2022. My Hilroy exercise book was filled with notes. I decided to run with a first-person narrator again because that technique, that single point of view, allows some leeway for narrative inconsistencies and outright mistakes. They’re not my fault! Tom Danger from Of Course You Did was still in my head (I still don’t know if his surname is on his birth certificate or just in his mind). I knew his backstory inside and out. I decided to run with his voice again, but pitch it fifteen or twenty years into the future. Write what you know – less research. Besides, fiction is made up.

So, a new book due sometime in 2025. Just a Boy Again is not a sequel to Of Course You Did. It’s merely a continuation of that voice. That may sound like a very precious distinction, but I sell so few books that an actual, proper sequel would be an utterly pointless exercise. The continuing futility of my need to create is already enough, maybe too much, for me. But having just dropped my pen in September 2024 after many drafts and lots of fussing, I’m compelled to tell you that I’m feeling all right, pretty good myself.                              

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything since 2013. My companion site www.megeoff.com is a little dusty, but up to date.