The ManCupboard

Colombo was asking about Percy the other day. And when I looked round for him, I couldn’t see him. “Where is he”, I asked myself. Where indeed.

He’s in the mancupboard of course. But I seem to have mislaid it. Somewhere along the way. I’ll find it at some point. I have found everything so far. My camera in Montreal. My sunglasses twice. Somebody always finds my stuff and gives it back to me.

I pity the poor girl who finds the mancupboard. She won’t know what to make of it.

I remember the night I had the Good Friday party in my flat and Simon came over late and demanded to see it. And I was thinking, dude, you’re standing in it. But it was too big a leap of faith. People can misunderstand you. Well, they do me all the time. They think I’m being really aggressive and actually, I’m just getting my retaliation in first.

I did it at the weekend. I shouted at some poor hotel clerk because he wouldn’t sell me a packet of cigarettes. I told him he was a moron. Well, he was. But I shouldn’t have said that. I do a lot of things I am ashamed of afterwards. But it was weird, when we were all talking about it afterwards, Tracy said that I was right to call him a moron.

That stopped me in my tracks I can tell you.

What happened was, the guy wouldn’t sell me the cigarettes because he was doing his books. And I had to come back in a half an hour. This was at two in the morning, just after the nightclub had closed.

Legends Niteclub. If you’re interested.

In Kentville.

Which is like Smallville. Without Superman.

We were staying in the Wandlynn Motel. Me and Tracy and Tina and Martin. And Kevin was up visiting Tammy, so they called over on the Friday night.

Six of us sitting there with a very large bottle of vodka and Ophelia on the way.

Anyway, I eventually growled back to my room, sans cigarettes, and Tracy went and got them for me from him.

So then I went running back down to the foyer demanding that he sell me a packet. Which he did. I must have frightened the living daylights out of him. But we shook hands and parted friends.

I wonder does he like his job? Or does he just do it to feed his kids? Or does he beat his wife to make up for it? Or is he gay? Or does he have a young one shacked up somewhere that his missus doesn’t know about? Or what? What, what, what? What makes him tick? What makes everyone tick? And why the hell do I want to know so bad?

So yeah, Tracy rides point for me. We’ll be unstoppable. We’re going to drive a rig across America. I want to bring the truth about justice to some impoverished barrio south of Cancun, but I might have to talk him into that. That’s a long way away. Also, he sees angles I don’t. Between us, we have most of them covered.

We didn’t do much on Friday night. We were all tired. We just sat around in our room and had a few drinks. Chatted. They told me about Sarah’s Sister, the sex shop in New Minas. New Minas is the Blanchardstown of West Nova. We decided we’d go and get Kevin a present the next day. He was supposed to come with us, but he changed his mind.

We got up fairly early on Saturday and went for breakfast in the motel restaurant and I had maple syrup on my bacon because you can here in Canada. Then we drove down to New Minas.

Man, that shop is some busy. I couldn’t believe all the people traipsing in and out. It had its own carpark. I of course, being Irish, parked in the lot belonging to the shop down the block and made them all walk up in the rain. Just in case I got spotted. Anyway, it was just a normal store, with deep shelves covered in sex toys of one description or another.

I have led a very sheltered existence I think.

I saw my first Egyptian love swing.

I wonder do they do them in lilac?

We don’t love Kevin enough to pay eighty bucks for a proper luuurv toy, and he doesn’t need one anyway, so we bought him some class of erotic massage oil. Then we went to Walmart to get stuff for Tracey to take to Alberta.

It was my first time in a Walmart too. I usually refuse to go into them. But it was raining and I wanted to see what it was like.

I got my first lesson in Nova Scotia shopping. Buy the cheapest thing. No, not that one you’re looking at, you’re just paying for some doodaas that don’t amount to anything extra. This one. Thank goodness Tina was with me. I’d have bought the wrong thing. I was so busy freaking out about why I had to go and buy it when he was actually in the shop (looking at the electronics section). Then I realised that I was only being allowed to pick it because Tina was with me and I probably wouldn’t have been trusted to do it by myself so that was okay. When I thought about it, it made perfect sense. Buying the cheapest thing I mean. I don’t know why I don’t do it. It is one of my eternal self-obsessed think-ins that I have about myself. I hope I’m not a snob. I live in fear of being a snob. But I think it’s actually because cheap stuff used to be dreadful, but now it’s not, because the countries that make it have gotten better at it, but I just haven’t realised it yet. So I am getting my money’s worth.

Also, Irish people have been brainwashed into thinking expensive equals quality. When it just means expensive.

I’m sure there’s some really arcane leftie reason why I shouldn’t buy cheap stuff in a Walmart in New Minas but you know, I’m not going to think about it today. And the workers all looked reasonably chirpy. Not downtrodden like they are in the Tim Hortons’. Or insane like the people in the Subway outlets.

Then we got bored with shopping so we went back to the motel and crashed for a while and then went for a swim. They had a sauna. It was great. We sat in it for as long as we could bear, which wasn’t very long ever, and then jumped in the pool. We did it a few times and then we got bored again. It was a really dull day weatherwise. It rained, but there was no wind – Ophelia had run out of puff.

So we got ready to go out and went down the road to the Chinese buffet, which was all you could eat for $12.95. Which was also fantastic value. And I had a Chinese beer, the one you get in Dublin, I can’t remember the name of it. The one that tastes like Heineken.

I miss Heineken. The only beer you can get here that tastes like European lager is Schooner and it’s really expensive. Of course. That’s probably why I like it. Doh!

Then we did the girly make up thing (well, Tina and I did) and went to Legends.

It was legend.

I had to say that.

It was mostly hip hop. All the black kids stood around the dance floor drinking beer and watching us white folks try to dance. It was funny. Then they played the most awful techno I have ever heard.

And there was a slow set. Which I managed to avoid. I can’t remember how I did it; I think I just refused point blank.

A truly diverse musical occasion. Remind me to tell you about the Funky Chicken sometime.

We sat and watched a bloke with the biggest muscles and the smallest nose I have ever seen on the same person. You could tell he’d spent his whole adult life trying to make up for the size of his nose. He stood on the stairs near the bar flexing all night.

Then Tracy reached for something and knocked over a beer and in the confusion another one went. And he was sure he had accidentally hit me in the mouth. But I didn’t feel anything, so I reckon he must have brushed his hand against the window or something and thought that he’d done it.

But it’s a great conversation stopper: Honey, do you remember the time you knocked over my drink and punched me in the face in that nightclub in Kentville? Legends, wasn’t it?

The other day Mykyle told me in one of his endless paragraph sentences that although I was bright and educated and cosmopolitan in some way I was a bit trashy. I’m not quite sure where the comma is supposed to go – it’s difficult to know with him sometimes. Before ‘in some way’ or after? Nevertheless, I reckon he might be right. It’s just a mood I get into sometimes. When I’m happy.

I prefer to think of it as earthy. Earthy being the posh word for trashy.

We had to check out at eleven the next morning. That was tough. Seeing as the four of us were still playing jumping on the bed at three thirty. Man, we love jumping on stuff. I blame Tina and Martin for buying that trampoline. It's worse than a bouncing castle. I fell off the bed of course. Thank God Nabla wasn’t with me or I would have gone out and taken the hand brake off the car and rolled out onto the highway. (It’s a long story – we were very young). We went to the Irving gas station in New Minas for breakfast. It was really busy and I was ready to eat the table by the time my maple syrup with bacon under it arrived. Dozens and dozens of people having their Sunday lunch in a petrol station. These people love their petrol. They even eat out beside it.

Then we headed up to Wolfville to meet Kevin and his daughter and her boyfriend. They go to Acadia, the university in Wolfville. It’s a lovely college – it’s like UCG. They live in an apartment beside the bus station where I used to get the bus to Halifax. It was weird being back there. It was the first bit of context I have had, if you know what I mean.

The first time something wasn’t new anymore. That’s not Halifax, obviously.

We hung out for a bit and then drove over to the beach at Cape Blomidon Park. We collected stones for the board game I’m building and I put them on a rock to dry and somebody knicked them. I was well pissed. The stones on the beaches here are amazing – gorgeous moss greens and volcanic reds and sky blue and brown all mixed together in random combinations. Every stone is different. And clear white quartz. And red. Sometimes wrapped around a piece of basalt. And wonderful, mother of pearl-lined shells, glistening like a fingernail on a bloody hand in the red mud of the bay. Tina even found a piece of soapstone and gave it to me to carve the king out of it. I put it in my camera case so I still have that. I have enough to get started anyway.

Nova Scotia used to be part of Africa you know. A long time ago.

We stood around looking at the sea. They’re great to go to a beach with – they all know lots of things about the plants and the shellfish and the tides. I’d never go hungry with this lot. Even in Alberta. They’re going to kill me a bear so I can eat it. We’re going to get a cherry picker and put it on the back of the truck so when we kill a bear or an elk or a caribou, or just find some roadkill, we can grab it with the cherry picker and throw it up back and head off, quick as you like.

Martin told me a story about him and his mother being chased by a black bear when he was young. And his uncle went out the next day and shot it and then they ate it. He was trying to explain what it tasted like but I couldn’t get past the ‘oh, it just stood up on its hind legs and roared at us and then it started to run at us and we ran and my mother fell and I went back and helped her up’ bit of the story. I think he said it had a sweet taste. When I visit Alberta I am not leaving the house on my own I don’t think. I don’t care if they hibernate. They don’t exactly put an ad in the paper advertising the day they wake up, now do they? And knowing my luck with big hairy things, I’d pick that weekend to visit.

Myles, I’m going to take you to task about that comment one of the days. When I think of a witty enough riposte. :-)

Then we went back to Wolfville and went to Joes for supper and I had English fish and chips. Which wasn’t as exotic as bear steak, but which hit the spot. And then it was time to go back to the city. I didn’t get lost this time, thank goodness. More context I suppose.

It rained all the way back. Inside the car and out.