The Handsome Man, page 4
I’m not sure what I’ll do.
I think of that moment now, riding my motorcycle through Tennessee because I’m sweating so much from the sun and the heat and the leather and I have a lot of time to think and this is what I think about. There’s a rider who passes me and he’s going 140 at least and he’s not wearing a helmet and he has a long black braid and all black leather everything with a big black flaming skull patch on his back and in his left hand he’s holding a long black whip that is trailing behind him like a tail and he looks over at me as he passes and he nods and I’m giddy from nerves, what is this world where this man nods to me, how different we are, the most different. I’m a few hours from Memphis and the sun is high and I’m sweating, everything down here sweating, the ash and the oak and the willow trees green through the rolling valley.
My host, Jean, comes outside when I pull into her driveway, all the big white houses and abandoned storefronts, brown, train tracks and streets with no street lights, dark, it’s the magic hour when everything turns rose quartz, warm orange. I smell like gasoline, Jean says, “Hi! You’re a little late but I’m glad you made it.” I say sorry, I had to stop a few times because the shaking from the bike made my hands go numb and she says, “No worries, you don’t have to explain. Come around back, I’ll show you where you’re staying and then I have to go, there’s sweet tea in the kitchen if you need it.” We go around her very small house to a very small backyard and in that yard there’s a structure like a small house, smaller than her own house and it’s a wooden pallet about six feet wide and ten feet long and a roof made of tin and it’s all walled in with a screen so thin you can see inside and Jean shows me the camera above it, says, “We have that camera there just in case anyone breaks in, it’s always recording at night so don’t worry,” and I set down my things inside, next to the cot where I’ll be sleeping tonight and tomorrow. Jean says, “Keep your things on this table, you don’t want roaches getting in there,” and I do and I say thank you.
“Just make sure to lock this door when you leave,” she says, motioning to the door made of rotting wood, made of broken screen. “Can I trust you?”
“I think so,” I say.
I’m so hungry. I walk through the neighbourhood. Everyone says hello, everyone I pass. I go to a store marked Liquor all neon lights and inside is all glassed in, I’m alone in a glass box asking for beer. I go to a takeout place and inside is all glassed in, I’m alone in a glass box asking for food. I bring my food and my beer home in the night, the night that smells floral like cinnamon laurel, loud pops in the distance, cars squealing tires, wet wood steaming popping in a fire. I write Laura and I say,
hi, I’m in Memphis I’m safe, how are you?
Laura writes me back,
hey, I just got in from work. glad you’re safe, I’m fine things are fucked here
And I call Laura and she answers and I say, “Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing,” she says, “work was hard today. I’m so tired. I just want to eat some CBD gummies and lie down.”
“Sounds nice.”
“Oh it will be. Soon, I hope.”
“So what’s up? Why are things fucked there?”
“Oh man. Do you have a minute?”
“Of course,” I say.
Laura tells me about going out the night before, she met this guy, she says. “I really liked him, he was sweet. I was at Poisson Noir and it was late and I was dancing and this dude next to me just had this way of dancing that was like straight from his hips, it was really sexy. And he was wearing this long white shirt that looked like a dress and I was super into it and we danced for a minute then we talked a bit and he was really cool and we knew some of the same people so he seemed safe and he walked me home and we sat outside my place for hours talking. I wanted to ask him up but I didn’t, I don’t know. Anyway I liked him, he made me feel something, like I felt happy going to sleep. Then someone told me something really bad about him today.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know the details but apparently a few years ago he did something really terrible to this woman I kind of know. Like, he assaulted her at a party.”
“Oh that’s not good.”
“Yeah, it’s not. It’s so fucked. I don’t know. Everything I’ve been told is so vague. It sounds like it was something that happened that wasn’t intentional. But it’s not people’s intentions that matter, it’s what they do, right?”
“Right.”
“I was thinking a lot about Étienne today. Our breakup has been really hard and I’ve been dealing with a lot of back-and-forth feelings about it but it makes sense. We drifted apart. He made a few mistakes in the end and that hurt but I don’t think he intended to hurt me. I need some space from it and in time I think I’ll forgive him for those mistakes. He’s not a bad guy. But there’s a big difference between making a mistake and breaking trust. Like, you can forgive a mistake but when you put your trust in someone and they break that? Some people don’t come back from that feeling. Forgiveness doesn’t even exist in that place. Like, did this guy make a mistake? Or is it something more insidious?”
“Does that matter?”
“I don’t know! That’s what’s fucking me up. Like, is this a bad guy? He didn’t feel like he was. The way I felt the other night, I haven’t felt that in years. Not even Étienne made me feel like that when we started dating. But I don’t want to put my time into someone who ends up being a piece of shit. I’ve gone through enough shit myself. I don’t need to get myself wrapped up in this. I liked him, I don’t know. Maybe I’m overthinking it.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
“Ugh, I don’t know. I’m still so new to this. It hasn’t been long since Étienne left and I don’t know how to date, you know? It feels like I don’t know how to do anything. I feel brand new, like in the worst ways. Like, I liked this guy but what’s being said about him, it’s bad. If I hadn’t been charmed by him I’d probably have heard this and been like fuck that guy and I would have ignored him. Aren’t abusers usually charming? It all feels like a warning. Maybe I shouldn’t be dating at all. The feelings inside me are so confused. I don’t know. I want to see him but something is telling me I should stay away. Why can’t this be easy?”
“I don’t know if it can be.”
“Well, ugh, anyway I don’t know. How are you? How are things going down there?”
I say hey thanks, Laura, for telling me these things, I’m here for you whenever and she says shut up, I know, tell me about America. I tell Laura about my trip so far, the drive to here, all the things that happened, the man with the whip. I ask her what I should do in Memphis and she says you should go to Jay Reatard’s grave and I say shit, why didn’t I think of that.
A few years back Laura was visiting Toronto, we went to see Jay Reatard play a show. There was no slow buildup, as soon as he started playing the room became violent, the room screaming, “My shadow!” along with him, some kid jumped onstage and the kid got punched in the face and the crowd was pushing and rolling into each other like all of us in a storm and someone threw a pitcher of beer and it hit Jay Reatard hard and he threw it back harder and he screamed and he thrashed and he packed up his gear and he walked out on everyone and the guy who booked the show got onstage and he yelled, “Fuck this American! I don’t care if they’re from Memphis! This is the Alamo!” and he was screaming in tongues into the microphone the room filling up with chaos and nonsense and people were booing and people were cheering and everything falling apart openly, in public, all of us powerless. Except Jay Reatard, who left. Now I’m on my motorcycle and I’m driving to a graveyard in Memphis to find his grave.
And I’m sweating and I’m standing over the grave of a man I’ve never met and I’m saying thank you, I’m saying I’m sorry. There are no roses here, no decorations. Stone. There’s a cave nearby with depictions inside of the stories from the Bible, a man and a woman holding each other, three men shrouded they’re walking away, they all look like the man, they all look like different versions of that man walking away. Square and broken black cameras in the corners their red lights gone out. I go to the Wolf River, I go to the zoo, I stand overlooking the tiger cage, a memorial here too, tourists all around me. Everyone says hello and it’s nice, it’s nice here and later I tell Jean this, about everyone saying hello, everyone nodding. I tell her over sweet tea and she says, “You know, Southern hospitality is real but I’ll tell you what, those people aren’t saying hello because they’re being hospitable. They’re sizing you up.”
I ask her what she means and she says, “Down around here people aren’t too friendly to people like you. You look like a threat. Some kid got shot just a few days ago, right down the street not five minutes away and for what? Nothing. When someone says hello to you they’re seeing if you’ll say hello back. They’re seeing if you’re scared of them or not. And if you say hello that means you’re friendly, they don’t have to worry about you. People have to protect themselves. I mean, it still feels good to be smiled at, to say hello. So it is hospitable in a way I suppose.”
It’s night and Jean is making a fire in the backyard and it’s so close to my screened-in room where all last night I woke from mosquitoes in my ear, branches breaking just outside and the fire is hot against my still sweating in the night skin and she says, “What brought you down here anyway?” and I tell her, I skip over the hard parts and I tell her I’m running away for a while anyway, on my way west.
“You got friends out there?” she asks.
I say no. Not in California where I’m going. I’ll ride north to Victoria where I know some people, my only friend right now is Laura back in Montreal. I tell her about Laura and I tell her about the guy that she met and I tell her about what happened.
“That’s really a shame,” she says. “Women getting hurt left and right, all over, it’s always the same. What do you think of that? Do you think you’re much different from a man like that?”
I say I don’t know, I suppose maybe, I try to do my best.
And she says, “Well, you never know what you’re capable of so be careful. I’ve seen good men turn bad plenty of times. It’s easy to be a bad man in the world we’ve been gifted. People will stand with you. You gotta work every day to be good. You’ll be tested every day.”
We finish our sweet teas and she goes to bed. I stay up at the fire, I message Laura to see how she’s doing, no answer. In the morning I’m packing up to leave, I’m hungry, it’s so early it’s almost still night and there’s a note taped to my door and it says:
Thank you for last night. If you want to come in and wake me up with a foot massage you can do that. —Jean
And it’s strange, this note, I’m not sure what to do and I pack up my bike. I leave a note that says thank you, see you again and I leave.
* * *
I’m in Leland, Mississippi, I’m filling my tank and a man in a truck who had been driving behind me long enough for me to notice him, to feel like he might be a threat, he pulls in too and he comes over and he looks at my licence plate that reads Ontario and he says the thing that scares me most, here in the most south of the South, in the most southern of southern drawls: “Long way from home, aren’t ya?”
“I am,” I say. “You from around here?”
“I am,” he says, “grew up here all my life. Never set foot outside Mississippi.”
“That’s impressive.”
“Yup. No reason to leave, got everything I need right here. What brings you to these parts?” he asks, standing too close.
“Just travelling through, I’m on my way to Baton Rouge right now.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, following me too close into the store where I’ll pay for my gas.
Inside I pay the woman behind the counter for the gas, seven dollars, not much to go on, the man standing close, watching me. The man looks to the woman behind the counter, says, “This boy’s all the way from Canada.”
“Oh,” she says, and she looks at me like she’s impressed but it’s feigned, a superficial kind but it’s nice anyway.
The man says, “You know, I collect postcards from all over the world. It’d be a peach if you sent me one,” and he takes a torn old piece of paper from his pocket and he writes something on the paper and he hands it to me. It’s his address here in Leland, Mississippi, and the paper is thin and browning and it’s crumpled and at the top, written in quotes, in his handwriting it reads:
the mustard seed
and below that,
it’s everywhere destroyed—delight / the mass of darkness is shattered
and I think maybe he heard this somewhere, maybe it’s some sort of motivational quote and I ask him what is this you wrote here? and he says, “Oh just a little something from this thing I’ve been reading. Nothing much,” and he says good luck out there, you’ll need it.
* * *
Coming out of New Orleans the stretch of highway is all bridge over swamp, the I-10, the smell of humid mossy bog like sweat and it’s so hot, I’m riding in only a T-shirt and it starts to rain not hard but it’s like needles on my skin pricking away at my entire torso and no place to stop, nowhere to pull over. I ride singing “ow, ow, ow” a full ten minutes, wiping my visor clean of water, keeping distance from the cars that drive past, the wind off the transports pulling me close to push me away. When I can finally stop I put on my leather and the rain stops and I’m in Louisiana and I want to be home and I have no home now my stomach empty and thin. I think about Laura and about having told her partner Étienne once, one night we were at a bar when I stayed with them, stayed on their couch, I told him about being a kid and all the kids in my neighbourhood that were my age, they were all girls, about a dozen of them. I remember they came to my house one day and they all were playing in the garage with my brother, twelve girls and him, and from outside I could hear them all laughing and I wondered, what are they laughing about? They were wonderful to me, kind and mysterious, “I wondered about them a lot,” I tell him. “My brothers would beat me up but the girls I knew, they were always nice to me.” I told him this, I think, because we didn’t know each other well and here I was sleeping on his couch, friends with his girlfriend, I wanted to tell him I’m safe, I’m a safe person and I remember him saying mmm hmm, looking away, taking a drink of his drink, putting his arm around Laura, her turning to us and saying, “Hey, what are you guys talking about?”
“Nothing,” he said, “nothing important,” and I remember this now and I’m embarrassed because what I said wasn’t entirely true and I knew he could see right through me. I only said it so he would see me as something that maybe I was not. I did feel something for Laura and I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t trust it. I was desperate then, I could mistake and mould any kindness into something more. Maybe his instincts were right, I think, not to trust me. Maybe he thought I was a bad man and maybe I was, maybe I am.
I make Baton Rouge, afternoon, lots of time to rest. I park and I unpack and the people hosting me aren’t home, it’s just me in their garage rebuilt into a little apartment, little bed, little table. I need to eat and I walk to the nearest place that sells chicken, all fried chicken everything, I’m in the South, chicken and biscuits, great red flowers, red crape myrtle, so heavy and red in the glow of the great neon signs of fried chicken shops, the air smells everywhere chicken and red crape myrtle like lilacs like olive, a great sweet and salty smell of the South. I eat and I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy and I’m thankful for the break from movement, for a hot meal and a place to sleep. Some days I won’t have that, most days. I write a little. I message Laura,
I’m in Baton Rouge, lots of strange things happening
My phone is ringing. It’s Laura and I answer and she says, “Hey! Glad you’re alright, I’ve been thinking of you lots. What kinds of strange things are happening?”
I tell her about the man in Leland. I tell her about the conversation with Jean, the note.
Laura says, “Wow. So you just left?”
“Yeah, I felt weird about it. I didn’t know what to think.”
“Well, I don’t know, it’s weird sure but she’s probably just lonely and doesn’t connect to people often.”
“Is it okay that I feel a little uncomfortable about her asking me to come give her a foot massage?”
“Of course it’s okay that you feel uncomfortable. And I think it was good you left a note acknowledging that you were leaving. But I don’t know, I kind of get it, you seem like a safe person.”
“What if I’m not though?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean like maybe I seem safe but she doesn’t know me and I don’t know what I’m capable of myself even. Maybe I’m the worst.”
“Are you the worst?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
“Is this about that guy I met?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “How are things going with him?”
“Well, I talked to him,” she says. “I asked around about him and what he told me seems to match up with what everyone else says. He was friends with this girl, they went to this party together, they were doing some coke in a bedroom and things started going down and he thought it was all consensual but then she said stop and he didn’t stop. He says he didn’t hear her. He said when he realized something was wrong it was too late. She was different.”
She pauses and I ask, “So then what happened?”
“Well, she left and I don’t know what happened then. A mutual friend of ours said she was pretty fucked up for a while. She never outted him. He said he apologized and tried to make up for it. He tried to ‘atone’ for it, he said. He said they stayed friends after that for a little while but then she stopped talking to him. He said he feels remorse, like he understands that he did something terrible to someone and she’s different now because of it. And nothing can change that, no amount of apologies or atonements. She’s changed. You know?”
