Selling Your Soul

Selfie at a tradeshow in Germany

I was on the bus to work at a trade show downtown. I rarely take the bus. But who wants to pay for parking downtown? As a new senior, I have a card for reduced fare, but it is running low.

Like me, running low. And this was pre-cancer diagnosis. Funny thing is I have felt run down for over six months now, attributing my malaise to post Covid, or perhaps burning both ends, as I juggle my work life and my music life.

I am working the second day of a tradeshow, which I call Kill Me Now, more commonly known as The Wellness Show. The company I work for is exhibiting our best tasting vegan cheeses. The Wellness Show is a consumer show, which means our audience will be a niche of the general public who identify with Wellness as a concept or perceived lifestyle.

I call this market wedge The Angry Inch, which I appropriated from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The Angry Inch is small but mighty, an uncommonly loud segment for their size or their significance. Morally superior, strident, certain in their judgements- of which there are plenty.

The bus is about 20 minutes late, which means I will arrive at the show just about on time. I usually prefer to arrive early, as a trade show is like a day long performance, a sort of day long sucker. That is how I feel; as if my life is being sucked out of me, leaving nothing but a cancerous husk of a man. Boo fucking hoo. This is the price I pay for years of pretending to be in rock bands, touring our vast land in a crowded band van, sleeping on floors. To be truthful, I not slept on a few floors. I draw the line at floors. My comfort trumps my punk rock integrity. Oh the glamorous life of post punk travel.

Today’s music on the headphones is First Aid Kit, two sisters from Sweden. Like the Everly, or Louvin brothers before them, there is an unearthly beauty to their sibling harmony.

I am wearing headphones. Headphones or earphones are a necromancy on the bus. Correction: I intended to say necessity, not necromancy. Isn’t autocorrect bizarre? Necessity translates to necromancy? What strange witchcraft powers this devil device? The Chinese woman across from me has been clapping her hands for the last few minutes. A young guy with what looks to be spindly dreads hanging down in front of his face walks by. I realize, upon closer inspection, that his dreads are actually tattoos.

I am sitting on one of those side seats on the bus, where one has to keep shifting your weight just to keep from falling over. My Chinese lady friend is now popping a pill from her pill bottle, which only reminds me that I forgot to take my pills. I will have to ask Michelle to check my pill tray at home.

This bus, the Number 8 Fraser bus, goes through the Downtown Eastside. For non-Vancouver readers, the DTES is our “Skid row” filled with multiplying tents on sidewalks, a profusion of graffiti, and abject poverty. No matter how bad your day is, their day is definitely worse.

There are now just two people on the bus. I guess the smart ones already got off. Finally, we come to my stop and so I exit the bus. I am walking down the streets in the rain, with my headphones on. I cross the street, and an SUV cuts me off, narrowly missing hitting me. I flip off the driver, who then pulls over and opens his window to complain that I wasn’t looking as I crossed the street. I yell back that pedestrians have the right of way, and why don’t you just fuck off asshole. He rolls up his window and disappears down an alley. I approach the alley with some trepidation. I say trepidation as my big mouth has got me into troublesome situations before.

One night, many years ago, I was at one of the early punk shows at a place called O’Hara’s. I had left early as the bands were boring me. I was living in Skitzalano at the time in a bachelor suite, being that I was a bachelor at the time. There was a table, a chair, and a twin bed. I stopped at a Chinese restaurant called The Beach Cafe. A couple of French Canadian guys were hanging around a juke box waiting for their order. I placed my order and sat down to wait for the late night nosh.

Three noisy kids come in, and immedIately start harassing the French Canadians, then the Chinese owners. I watch them in disgust but keeping my mouth shut. My food is ready so I grab the paper takeout bag and exit, but not before opening my intemperate mouth to utter what I later learned to be fighting words.

“ Why don’t you just go back to where you came from and listen to your Foreigner records!”

Do You Know What Love Is? I’m not sure they did, as about two minutes after I left, two of the three came running down the street toward me. I stupidly stood my ground.

What did you say?

I said and I repeat, “Why don’t you just go back to where you came from and listen to your Foreigner records”.

Years later, I would wish I had said something better.

Well I will, said a ferret faced little creep. He then proceeded to kick the paper bag of fast food from my hands.

Stupidly, I bent over to pick it up. At this moment he suckerpunched me in the eye, breaking my nose, and I later lost a tooth from the impact of the punch. One punch and they were gone, their business completed, my facing melting in blood down my shirt. So much blood. The third guy that was part of their group, comes running down the street. He is much larger than the other two.

Are you ok?

I say fuck off, through the blood. He runs back to his friends. I take my bloody Chinese food home, and being barely out of my parents home and living on my own, I didn’t know what to do next. There was a lot of blood pouring from a cut above my eye, from my nose, out of my mouth.

I called 911, and two police officers came. They asked me to describe the assailants. Three guys with blue jean jackets was all I could provide.

Oh, we will be sure to be on the lookout for them, they said without a trace of irony. I applied pressure to my wounds. I probably ate the Chinese Food.

Next day, my face was swollen, my eye shut, black, purple, yellow. A rainbow of wounds. In a day or two after, I had me a great looking black eye. I went to the Smilin’Buddha, a local punk haunt, and was greeted by none other than Wimpy Roy of the Subhumans.

What happened to you?

I got a black eye for being a punk.

Well, Wimpy said, I guess you are a punk then.

And with that, I was anointed by punk rock royalty, my punk rock integrity intact.

You can imagine my trepidation as I walked past the alley where the SUV had gone down. But he was already on to something else. I proceeded on to the tradeshow.

Our company had one of the few food stalls at the show and we were super busy.Most of the booths were alternative healing therapies, massaging chairs, or vaginal sprays. It is a tangled web of Wellness.

I am standing behind a “solo”, which is a podium of sorts. I am wearing a mask, one of a scant minority who is wearing a mask. Two trade shows previous, I had taken off my mask for parts of the show, which resulted in getting Covid five days later.

“What do you get when you kiss a guy?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia.”

You catch my drift.

I catch your drift.

We are all a bunch of drifters.

Kill me now.