Bowering - No One

No One

George Bowering

He is walking up Tenth Avenue, slower than he used to, checking out the scene, especially the women and girls. He often seems to find himself out on Tenth Avenue about the time the girls in their private school uniforms are about. Hes been in this neighbourhood for almost half a year, still getting used to it.

He sees that he is approaching a short woman who is walking down the sidewalk, and so he has to make the usual decision pretend hes wrapped in thought, looking at the ground, feigning interest in something back there down the hill, or look at her and smile a hello. By the time they are just about to meet he sees that she is looking right into his eyes, and she is not smiling. He takes that as a signal not to smile himself.

They pass one another, and he continues up the hill, to the library, to the mailbox. The small persistence with which she looked at him nags at him. Was she challenging him to recognize her? Did he recognize her? Yes, now he thinks she looked as if she could have been a certain woman he has wronged. But this one has grey hair. But she had looked sort of challengingly at him.

In the following days and weeks he thinks about the way she looked at him. It could have been her, couldnt it? She could have gone grey after they stopped seeing each other. Maybe she went grey for a reason he doesnt like to imagine. The more he thinks about it, the more he thinks it was the woman he wronged. She hadnt said anything, though. Maybe he was supposed to. Maybe she heard he was living around here now, and was walking with purpose on this sidewalk. He had not seen her there before that and he had not seen her since that time.

It must have been her. She must have wanted to see him once, or more likely she wanted him to see her, with her grey hair.

If he wants to he could find out where she lives, find out what has happened in the meantime. Or he could just forget about it. Sure.

Well, he was I.

He will be I for a while here.

Though maybe not throughout.

I just know you are going to be tempted to throw this book away when I start off by comparing myself with Odysseus, or Ulysses, if you like. He is, I know it, the first great hero of our Western culture, and the epic voyage is the first great type of narrative we have. I dont even look right. I remember Odysseus looking like Kirk Douglas in his prime, what with those naked thighs and that chin your knuckles would break against.

Remember when Kirk finally got home, and there were all those assholes hanging around Penelope, waiting for her to finish knitting so they could compete for her hand, and ass and property? Kirk gets back and shoots an arrow through a bunch of circles for some reason, goes on a bloody killing spree, wiping out all those suitors at top speed thats what I remember, the speed. And one guy, Kirk grabs his head and splits it on a double-headed axe that was in a chopping block. Errgh, we squirmed in our seats at the Lawrence Theatre.

I didnt look all that bad when I was twenty or thirty or even fifty-five, but I was no Kirk. There have been some more recent Odysseus movies, and all the heroes have had meatier chests than I ever grew. But I didnt look all that bad.

And I did resemble the guy in one important way. No matter how many adventures I was forced to have, no matter how long and zigzagged the voyage, all I ever wanted to do was get home and be with my wife.

Her name was not Penelope, of course, though that was the name of one of the other ones. Her real name was Harriet, still is, I guess, wherever she is now. But everyone called her Honey. It was kind of funny, because that meant that I had one less pet name to call her by. Also, all my friends called her Honey, which was funny at first, but I got used to it. She never got used to me, though. Heres what she called me more often than not: Asshole. I would always answer to that, I can tell you.

Ill bet Penelope never called Kirk an asshole.

Honey could always be counted on to be clear about her opinions. In her shop she kept up a steady stream of observations, opinions and remarks, not to mention analysis and characterization.

She would occasionally read one of my new poems. I am one of those painters who write poems. The country is full of them. Us.

Whos that about? she would ask, not quietly. How old is she? Old enough to vote?

Nine times out of ten the poem would be about her.

I spent most of my free time courting Honey. I would come by the shop with an orange-peel-and-ginger chocolate from the so-called Belgian place up the street, and offer it to her.

Give it to one of your skinny ones, she would say. You know damn well I am trying to lose a few kilograms.

But I had seen the mess in the kitchen that morning. A giant empty Ruffles bag lay on the tiled floor beside the wastebasket.

I dont remember any of them as being particularly skinny. In fact, one of the best was a little on the heavy side. She had a king-sized mattress, and it was on the floor of a room the same size as a king-sized mattress. The idea was that you took your clothes off just outside the room and left them there while you went in, on your hands and knees.

She was usually shiny. Even before we started, even before she got that fine layer of sweat on her round muscular well-tanned body, she was shiny. She was what they call toned, I think. Everything on her was somewhat bigger than average, and she was really fit. It was a little intimidating if you were a bit sinewy and pallid such as I was, especially when she started the breathing and grunting.

She seemed to be enjoying herself so much, as if someone had had her on a chain all day and now she was let loose to exercise her physicality. This was Dana.

The walls should have had mattresses on them too. She would come at me all dangerous and hungry, on her hands and knees, breathing that turned into singing, and what was I supposed to do? I lay on my belly with my feet together, and she landed on top of me, weighing more than I did, her breasts muscular, large and globular on my back.

She rolled off and easily flipped me over.

I guess there might have been one or two who were skinny. There was really short, really tall, really hairy, really loud. But now that I mention it, I could have really gone for skinny. You could lift skinny up and move her. Come to think of it, that puts me in mind of that one in Regina. She held on to the shower-curtain rod without having to worry about bringing the curtain down.

But that is not what I am on about today. If you want to read about a number of women and interaction, call it that. You should read the novel I was reading last night. It is called Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon, and all the important characters are women. There isnt any odyssey, really, unless you include wandering the world to look at archeological ruins. Well, I guess you could say that. Anyway, it is not the easiest thing in the world to read this novel, but one thing that does come through women are interacting just about any way you can imagine.

There is also a lot of talk about fiction.

If you can imagine.

I once spent an evening with the author of Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon in a roadhouse somewhere along the Bayou Teche. It was a huge old wooden place, including a dark bar with bright advertising lights, a big dining room crammed with long tables, and the biggest room of all, the dance hall, with a stage at the north end. On the stage was my favourite local band of all time, drums, accordion, steel guitar, banjo, stand-up bass with a pickup, piano, triangle and washboard. Plus a skinny old lady in a dress that had been washed three hundred times, and a violin that was only occasionally tucked under her chin. These were all white people, and so were the dancers.