RJ

Drinking pitchers of beer with Bradford at The Bear’s Den, a mid-sized karaoke lounge in the Big Bear hotel. Full house, Bradford’s girlfriend following us with phone calls at every bar we hit.

“Fucking paranoid. Thinks I’m gonna cheat on her.”

“She’s called every place where we’ve been at. That’s weird.”

“She just keeps calling all the bars until she finds me.”

A large woman who I went to high school with but whose name I can’t remember is the karaoke DJ. Singing in the downtime when there are no request slips turned in. Might have heard she had cancer. So young. Looks OK now.

She finishes her song to applause from the karaoke pros who are there every night, sipping coffees and Cokes, the occasional beer, indifferent to those like Bradford and I who are there mainly to get fucked up, the entertainment secondary, the fuzzy fringe of an already fuzzed-out consciousness.

“Let’s go smoke a bowl.”

“What about our beer?”
I waive the waitress over.
“Can you watch our beer? We’ll be right back.”
“Sure.”

We smoke a couple bowls in Bradford’s car passing back and forth until we are pot high again, then go back inside to find a dirtbag sitting at our table, raising Bradford’s glass to his lips.

“Hey!”

Bradford grabs his glass back.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The guys shrugs apologetically, turns his palms up, simian smile.
“Get the hell out of here!”
The waitress – noticing the commotion – marches the guy out the door, one more too-drunk-to-speak apologetic shrug before the door closes leaving him in the hotel lobby.

We sit as the karaoke applause fades and the DJ thanks Darlene and reads from a white square of paper, “Up next, RJ.”

Wearing a Christian thrift store donated baby blue suit from the 70s with hair and mustache styles from the same decade, a narcotically warm smile on his face as the introductory bars of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree” begin, he rocks slowly back and forth to the music.

When I notice RJ – wide-eyed – I ask Bradford, “Who the fuck is THAT?”

“RJ.”
“You know him?”
“Talked to him here before a couple times. Nice guy.”
“Check out that fucking suit!”

RJ’s singing was mediocre, even poor – hitting as many notes as he missed – making up for it with his earnestness, at the most dramatic parts of the song clasping his free hand into a fist, eyes closed, as if he was striving to express by will the intensity of his emotions.

Time slowed down, all outside the illuminated stage darkening and lowering in volume until all that was perceptible was RJ until the triumphant final bars were sung, a few desultory claps from the audience, awareness returning to engulf the rest of the bar, RJ slinking off stage, still smiling warmly, shyly acknowledging the tepid response with a nod.

As RJ walked past us I gave him a thumbs up.
“Great job, man.”
He raised his empty coffee cup, nodded humbly, almost shy.
“Thank you.”
“You going up to sing again?”
“Yes.”
Awkward pause.
RJ lifted and pointed at his coffee cup.
“Have to get a refill.”
He walked over to the coffee pot – left on the burner for hours, its contents burnt and thick – and helped himself, adding generous amounts of cream and sugar. He said hello to the waitress, but she didn’t reply, busy getting drinks for paying customers.

At a long table beside us – half a dozen sitting around it, with just as many pitchers of beer in varying states of emptiness – voices rose, people rose, until a tangle of bodies sent one onto our table, Bradford’s bar reactions honed and automatic enough to to pull our pitcher off and save it.
The waitress came over and determined who was at fault, kicked them out, apologized to us and got us new glasses to replace the ones that were smashed on the floor.
“You need anything else?”
“Yeah. Another pitcher.”

It’s close to last call and RJ is sitting at our table with a glass of water.
“So you really liked my singing?”
“You were great. The best singing tonight, for sure.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“Did you know RJ was making a CD?”
“Really?” I ask, interested as I had been working on songs with a 4-track machine I bought with money I won on a video poker machine. “You write songs, then?”
“No. I’m going to buy a karaoke machine and when I get good enough I’m going to record them on a CD.”
“Oh.”
Bradford changed the subject and asked me when I was going back to Saskatoon where I was technically attending university, but was in reality spending more time writing and recording in clouds of pot smoke instead of attending classes, let alone hand in essays and show up for tests.
“Friday maybe. Go back for weekend.”
“Saskatoon?” asked RJ.
“Yeah. Going to school down there.”
“Saskatoon’s a nice place. I was just down there myself.”
“Really?’
“Yes. One morning I got up and God said to me, ‘RJ! YOU ARE GOING TO HITCHHIKE TO SASKATOON!’ and I said, ‘OK, God.’ So I walked down to the highway and stuck my thumb out and gosh! a driver pulled over right away and drove me to Saskatoon.”
“Wow.”
“And when I was in Saskatoon I was walking down the street and came to the corner and God spoke through a speaker outside of a coffee shop and said, “RJ! I WANT YOU TO CROSS THE STREET!” and I did!”
RJ stopped and looked at us expectantly, waiting for us to reply and share in the wonder.
“That’s amazing.” I eventually said.
“Yes it is, isn’t it?”
The waitress came by to take our glasses, Bradford chugged the last of his beer and handed it to her.
“It looks they’re shutting down. Wanna split?”
“Sure. Let’s get out of here.”
“All right, see you later RJ.”
RJ stood up and shook both our hands.
“Yeah. Good luck with the CD.”
“Thanks.”

Weaving down the dark and quiet Prince Albert streets, buzzed from the booze and the weed, looking in the rear view mirrors paranoid about the cops.
“Man, that RJ guy is fucked up. That fucking tripped me out!”
“No shit.”
“That was some pretty good weed. Who’d you get that from?”

I saw RJ the next time I was in town, driving my parents car, a few blocks from my parent’s house, walking along the street on the South Hill Mall grass, wearing the same suit and smile as when I saw him last. I honk and he waves, continues walking, an anomalous sight in a town where no one walks.

Sitting around in the living room of the duplex Kirkpatrick has been sharing with Oily and Todd, smoking continuous bowls when we should have stopped a long time ago, as high as we can possibly get, just wasting weed, the high taking on a hallucinogenic intensity.
“Did you see those posters around town?” Kirkpatrick asked, a death metal tape on the stereo. Sub-self-consciously he pulls a pillow over the gut straining his tight black t-shirt.
“What poster?” I ask, sitting on the edge of the couch.
“You didn’t see it?” Kirkpatrick laughed. “You’re gonna love this …”
Todd got up and tried to find some beer in the bare-cupboard-and-condiment-fridge kitchen.”
“Where you going Todd?’ Oily yelled after him.
“RJ has put up a bunch of posters all over town,” (pause) “inviting the whole city to his birthday party!”
“No way!” I stood up and double over laughing. “I would love to go! Where is it?”
“At the Emma Lake hotel.”
“Oh man, when is it?”
“The beginning of next month, I think.”
“Oh crap, I’ll be back in Saskatoon by then. Shit.” Crestfallen. “That would be so great to go. Just get blasted and check it out.”
“RJ!” grunted Oily. “RJ!”
Kirkpatrick and I recited our favorite and RJ stories and sightings. Another bowl was packed. Kirkpatrick raised it to his lips. Oily peeked out of the closet shut curtains.
“Who is it?” barked Kirkpatrick.
Paranoia decended, quieting the room, freezing motion.
“No one. I thought I saw headlights.”
Kirkpatrick sighed, relieved. “Maybe turn off that light by the window …”

Time proceeds.

Pull up and stop at the intersection by the corner store/catering outfit kitty corner to my old junior high school. RJ crosses in front of me, the suit gone, replaced by runners, tight and short blue tarry cloth gym shorts and a skin tight golf shirt from the 70s, church mission thrift store donations.
My window rolled down I yell, “RJ!”
He sees me and strides over, his typical smile now turned to ecstasy as he stares in wondering awestruck at the procession of the invisible universe unique to his perception.
“Hey RJ! How was your birthday party?”
“No one showed up!”
“What? No one showed up? That’s too bad.”
“It’s OK. I asked God why no one came and he said, ‘Because your shoes are too tight!’ then I was down at the Rose Café and someone gave me a poisoned cigarette …”
“What?”
“Yeah someone had injected poison into the tobacco and so when I smoked it I had to go down to the riverbank and lay down and wait for the poison to wear off. I called 922 to tell them someone had tried to poison me but I couldn’t get through …”
With that RJ bid farewell, eyes scanning, striding off in the pursuit of the invisible.

I was at the dinner for Kirkpatrick’s wedding, a few years after his toxic living situation and lifestyle fell apart in an acid-inspired expression of remorse which lead him to leave that scene behind, re-unite with his girlfriend and child and get a job that could provide for a living for his family.

I sat and nibbled at the only vegetarian special ordered at this Alberta wedding, queasy from the drinking the night before and touring the local bars. I sip on a rye and coke, not much to say to the strangers I’m sitting with, not having brought a date just having broke up with my girlfriend I suspected of being an ex-junky, her claiming that I was too paranoid and jealous, thinking that she was fooling around behind my back.

After dinner Kirkpatrick sat down at our table, looking bloated with home cooked meals and a real wage.
“How was your ‘vegetarian’ meal?” Kirkpatrick laughed, ‘vegetarian’ said daintily.
“It was OK. Not too hungry today, after last night.”
“I know what you mean. Good time last night, eh?”
“Yeah. Hilarious.”
Kirkpatrick nodded a greeting to the guy who was sitting beside me. “J. Did you meet Neal?”
Neal nodded at me.
“Yeah, we met earlier.” I said, though I forgot his name a quickly as I heard it.
“He knows RJ.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” Said Neal. “My family lives just outside of P.A., by his property.”
“I guess RJ used to be a normal guy.”
“Yeah. He used to have a large scrap metal lot. Was pretty successful.”
“What happened?”
Neal leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms. “I heard he got heavily into the drugs. Caused him to lose it.”
“Huh. Weird.”
I sat and mulled over the new information until Kirkpatrick got up and said, “J. I need to speak to you for a sec.”
“Sure.”
We smoked a bowl in the alley and came back in buzzing and smiling, Oily behind the mic, hammered, attempting to MC, mostly just grunting and trying to quote Andrew Dice Clay.
Was Oily always that stupid? How come I didn’t notice that before?
“Man, what’s up with that?” I asked.
“Some people never change.”
The seniors at the tables looked around for a signal, nervous and confused, not knowing if they should laugh or condemn.
Eventually the DJ started and drowned Ollie out, his “ahhhs!” and “here’s to you sucking my dick” only audible between songs.

The last time I saw RJ was before Kirkpatrick’ wedding, a few days after the time he told me about his poisoned cigarette. Again I was driving in my parent’s car, downtown this time, checking out the change that has happened since I left, retail stores shut down unable to compete with the Wal-Mart and other big box stores that now circled the town, many of the empty buildings demolished to make way for parking lots or government offices – welfare and the courts and legal aid – for the management of the increasing native underclass.

I was at an intersection and saw RJ across the street – still in the same clothes – standing and waving his arms over a man who was sitting on a bench who wasn’t merely indifferent, it was like he didn’t notice RJ at all.

I crossed the street and drove by, RJ fading into my rear view mirror.

“OBJECTS IN MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.”