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10/18/2005: "Various Beatings I Have Taken"
Hi All,
Sorry it's been awhile since my last post; no computer access, I'm afraid. But I'm back, I've got a computer, and I'm pissed as hell and not going to take it anymore! Well, I've got a computer in any case.
Wordfest update: a great time. Great seeing Holly, Erin and Brandon, Greg and Naomi, Kim, Lorie, Ian, Shelley from Riley, and many others. Got to spend a night with Sheila Heti and Joseph Boyden, chatting about books and writers and trapeze artists and I ate a damn good steak. Thanks go to Cathy Tippet, publicist extraordinaire, Robin, Patrick, Jeff at CBC, Deborah at 103.1—basically, anyone I met while I was at Wordfest. Celebrity sighting: Dan Ackroyd at the Palliser bar. A wonderful fellow, certainly quite jolly, and it was nice to bask in his celebrity glow for a few moments.
The readings went quite well. Both were well-attended. Thanks to Dr. Smith and Angus, the MCs. A few books were bought, so that was very cool. I wandered around to some bookstores in Calgary, where I signed copies. So if you live in Calgary and haven't grabbed a copy yet—whyever not?—there are some signed ones floating about.
Actually, the whole walking-into-bookstores-signing-books thing was a bit of a pride-swallowing experience (one of many such experiences recently; I haven't eaten in days, as I'm constantly full from swallowing so much pride). Most times I'd find my book in the store and bring the copies to the front cash, where some gum-popping highschool guy or gal would say, "You want to sign them? Yeah, well, what the hell?" As I stood there signing, they might ask me what the stories were about, and when I told them they would often go, "Oooooowwwwhhhhhh-kay," drawing the word out while giving me this look like I'd just farted in their soup bowl. Then again, they were highschoolers, and the stock in trade for many that age is to be disenfranchised and cynical about everything. I may well have gotten "Oooooowwwwhhhh-kay," had I said book was about anything, except perhaps precocious wizards or a zany professor who'd discovered an anti-zit remedy. In any case, I left one bookstore feeling, as Joe R. Lansdale might have written, "Lower than a snake's dick in a wagon-wheel rut." But I'm still glad I did it.
A funny thing has come to my attention. I think it is because of the nature of my book, or the author photos Penguin is using, or some other factor beyond my reasoning, that people, when they meet me, frequently seem surprised to find me well adjusted, cordial, decently well mannered. It’s like they were expecting me to behave like that old wrestler, “George The Animal Steele,” hoping perhaps I’ll take a bite out of a nearby chair or something, piledrive random passers-by. And while I’ve been known to piledrive strangers every once in awhile (actually, one night me and my buddy drunkenly suplexed one another off the hood of his Nissan Micra—but that, as Hammy Hamster would say, is another story for another day), I really AM a well-adjusted person. And they also ask me about my background, particularly as it relates to boxing. While I did train for a time as a boxer, I took it up at a late age, and my intent was never to fight.
But I have been in quite a few fights—although the results have rarely favored yours truly. This has something to do with the opposition I’ve settled upon. I seem to be somewhat snakebitten in this regard. I possess a preternatural ability to pick fights—or rather accept the challenges of—a rogue’s gallery of psychos, nutzoids, and wolves in sheep’s clothing (or wolves in wolves clothing, but I’ve been too idiotic to pick that up).
So, to that end, I’ve decided to occasionally post ruggedly journalistic accounts of my more cinematic beatings. This accomplishes the dual purposes of establishing I am really not a tough guy—though, just for taking the lickings I’ve taken, you’ll have to agree I am, at very least, TOUGH—and also allowing me to come to grips with my past through these acts of cathartic re-enactment.
So.
BEATING #1: Craig Davidson vs. Jason Luke.
Read on if you’d like to hear about this ill-fated tussle. Beware: it gets bloody.
Okay, this all went down over ten years ago. I was in high school, Oooohhhwww-kay? Me and my brother Graham were playing basketball at the downtown YMCA in St. Catharines, Ontario. These two guys my age come along and we get a game going. I play pretty rough sometimes—nickname: Elbows McGee. We were up a few points and I turn to check the ball when it goes zipping past my face at warp speed. The guy I’m guarding had chucked it at me. Then he’s right up in my face telling me to fuck off, I fucking suck, and do I want to fucking go? I’m looking at this guy thinking, No, I don’t especially want to go: he’s not big per se but a wiry devil, all ropy-limbed and muscular, plus he’s black—or not totally: mulatto—and he’s eyeing me the way a pitbull eyes a flank steak. He’s got crazy eyes and I’m thinking, No thanks. But at the back of my mind this little voice is piping up (this is the same voice, I realize now, that always piped up a few minutes before I was to receive an epic beating), this voice is going:
THE VOICE [shrill and indignant]: Hey, fuck this motherfucker. Fuck ALL OVER his ass! What did we do to him? We’re playing a nice little game of pickup then the fucker’s whipping a ball at our tater! He wants a piece, well then we shall OBLIGE! It’s GO TIME, motherfuck! Let’s get ready to Ruuuuuuumble!
ME [reasonable]: Maybe we should just walk away…
THE VOICE: You can go FUCK all over that plan! Don’t MAKE me kick our ass!
Anyway, me and The Voice were debating the relative merits and drawbacks of fighting ole Crazy Eyes when this guy, the gym supervisor or whoever, strides into the gym. Total Coach stereotype: grey sweats, hoodie, a goddamn WHISTLE around his neck. I’m thinking, okay, this guy will sort some sense out of the situation; he’s an adult, he’s in control, everything will be everything.
Instead the grey-sweatsuited, weedy-mustache-growing bastard takes a look at the both of us and goes,
“You two wanna fight? Take it outside!”
I’m like, “No, sir, I don’t really want to—”
“Take it outside!” he hollers again.
THE VOICE: Oh, we’re gonna TAKE it outside all right! We’re gonna take it down the block and whip on its ASS!!
“Listen, I’ve got no problem with this guy. We were just playing ball and—”
SWEATSUIT JOE: “What part of TAKE IT OUTSIDE do you not understand?”
So I was left with no choice but to take it outside. And to this day I wonder: was Sweatsuit Joe in any way affiliated with the YMCA? Or was he just some prick, a member like anyone else, who took a break from his 5 minute abs routine long enough to cement my fate? Either way he was a total douchebag. I swear, if I see that guy again, I’m gonna beat HIS ass. Sweatsuit Joe, if you’re reading this—you know who you are—BEWARE!
Anyway, we head downstairs out to the street. My brother’s kneading my shoulders like I’m Rocky or somebody, he’s getting me limbered for battle.
“You got this guy,” he’s telling me. “His ass is grass and you’re the lawnmower. He’s nothing, he’s a turd burglar.” My brother was calling everyone turd burglars back in those days.
THE VOICE: That’s what I’ve been telling him all along! We gonna KICK some royal HEINIE!
It’s winter, Christmas break. The sidewalk slick with ice. Everyone’s breath puffing white. I’m shivering, but not from the cold. My body orchestrated this massive adrenaline dump: I was seeing new colors, new angles, these freaky new dimensions. Crazy Eyes had his contingent: a few guys from the basketball court. I had mine: my brother. Across the road a few people stopped on their walks to watch. I got another look at my opponent: not big, not small, but fucking solid. And totally unafraid. That’s probably what I remember most: like he could’ve been waiting in line at a movie, or watching TV. A little bored, even.
I knew then—right…THEN—I was going to catch a holy beating. But once it gets to that point, your only option is to settle in for the payoff.
I want to say I got a few punches in, but really the events are totally scattershot and hazy; my brother could probably tell you. I remember the guy kicked me—we’re talking full-on Bruce Lee style chop-sockey maneuvers. I remember he hammered me in the nose and something cracked, remember he yanked my shirt over my head, grabbed my neck, and slammed my melon into the frozen bike racks. I remember at the end of it I said, “Okay, okay, enough,” and that he let up—just like that, he let up. Looking back, I suppose I appreciate his sportsmanship. I remember a lot of blood, all of it my own: on my face and hands and chest, on the pavement and bike racks.
THE VOICE: Well, THAT didn’t quite turn out the way we were hoping, huh?
And that was it. It lasted maybe two minutes. Felt a lot longer, but fights always do. He went back inside with his buddies. My brother went to the lockers and grabbed our stuff, then we went home. My parents pitched a fit, wanted to know who did it, threatening to call the police. I told them it was no big deal, lay off, I didn’t know who did it and anyways nobody called the cops when two guys fought. I remember sitting in front of the Christmas tree in the darkened family room, my eyes swelled so tight all that came through were little slivers of muticolored light.
A few weeks later I was at a basketball game and who’s on the opposing team but ole Crazy Eyes. He didn’t give me any grief—it was like he didn’t even remember me. I don’t suppose that’s uncommon: the losers hold onto their memories longer than the winners. His name was/is Jason Luke. All Star lacrosse player; the team’s enforcer. Made a habit of picking fights, and I just happened to be one of them. That was the end of the story at the time.
I went away to university. Years pass. I never see or hear of Jason Luke.
Then, maybe four years ago, my buddy asks me, Did I hear about Jason Luke. I say I haven’t heard anything. Then my buddy drops the bombshell:
Jason Luke murdered his father.
They were on a camping trip apparently, words were spoken, they fight…
…Jason stabs his dad 40 times with a hunting knife.
This is true. Every word.
They find him staggering down some country lane soaked in blood. There’s a trial. Jason is judged to be insane and put in an asylum. But last I heard he’s out now, still living in St. Catharines.
Anyway, like I said, I’m glad the guy let up on me when he did.
So that’s it. My first recollected beating.
And it feels so good.
It feels so good to SHARE.
—Craig.
