Savage

S A V A G E

 

1 9 8 6 – 2 0 1 1

Other books by Nathaniel G. Moore

Bowlbrawl (Conundrum Press)

Pastels Are Pretty Much the Polar Opposite of Chalk (DC Books)

Let's Pretend We Never Met (Pedlar Press)

Wrong Bar (Tightrope Books)

NATHANIEL G. MOORE

___________

Anvil Press | 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Nathaniel G. Moore

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

 

Anvil Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council.

 

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

 

Moore, Nathaniel G., author

 

Savage, 1986-2011 / Nathaniel G. Moore.

 

ISBN 978-1-927380-55-0 (pbk.)

 

I. Title.

 

PS8626.O595S29 2013 C813'.6 C2013-904801-4

 

Cover design by Derek von Essen

Illustrations by Andrea Bennett

Interior design by HeimatHouse

Author photo by Derek Wuenschirs

 

Anvil Press Publishers

P.O. Box 3008, Main Post Office

Vancouver, B.C. Canada

V6B 3X5

www.anvilpress.com

 

Printed and bound in Canada

Suffering is one very long moment.We cannot divide it by seasons. We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return.With us time itself does not progress. It revolves. It seems to circle round one centre of pain.
— Oscar Wilde,
De Profundis

Against this obsession with the real we have created a gigantic apparatus of simulation which allows us to pass to the act “in vitro” (this is true even of procreation). We prefer the exile of the virtual, of which television is the universal mirror, to the catastrophe of the real.
— Jean Baudrillard,
The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

Randy Savage thinks he represents the light of righteousness. But you know, it takes an awful lot of light to illuminate a dark kingdom.
— Jake “The Snake”
Roberts, WWF Magazine

Dedicated to

Benji Hayward (1973–1988)
Corey Haim (1971–2010)
and
Spencer Gordon (1984–Present)

Table of Contents

 

Prologue: You Know You're Right

 

Part I: Substance (1986–1989)

1. Bizarre Love Triangle

2. Temptation

3. True Faith

4. Round & Round

 

Part II: Savage (1991–1996)

5. Blue Monday

6. Every Second Counts

7. In a Lonely Place

8. World in Motion

9. Everything's Gone Green

10. Confusion

11. Ceremony

12. Fine Time

13. Ruined in a Day

14. State of the Nation

15. Procession

16. Touched by the Hand of God

 

Part III: The Last Savage (1997–2011)

17. Brutal

18. Vanishing Point

19. Special

20. Thieves Like Us

21. Run

22. Mesh

23. Atmosphere

24. Sooner Than You Think

Prologue
You Know You're Right

December 2012

I
am hours past a sleep I don't recall finishing—but entered regardless—when, in my queen-sized bed, I tried for a minute to just
relax
and
calm down
and
get on with my life
and other family-crest slogans, when I realized it wouldn't have mattered what year it was of the many I examined (in total, twenty-five: 1986–2011)—and so, I came to the simple conclusion that millions of people have had twenty-five years of family matters to recall at one all-consuming sitting: a big uneatable meal. We all have the ability; nothing unique in forming an interior focus group, now, is there?

Jukebox-fresh, my gut flush to the bar, I vie for the attention of Nancy, her eyes behind her post-ironic Buddy Holly glasses. My drink is empty. I begin to unravel at what I had attempted to understand, to escape from and exorcise, as if writing a lyric redo for the underlying bass and synth beat of a New Order art-house techno gem.
Enjoy each childlike day, of your after-family progress, these slogans of sacrifice, and thank you for the lonely default settings, the banana bread, I was truly being the person I am, pass me another time-bomb can: Family Soda is the one!

The vodka crested with cranberry undulates; here we are, oh-so-much older, moments anew. I hear the slow-mo citrus and sprinkler sound of an antique family-oriented sitcom theme and its diametric use of rhyme, poetry, perspective, lamenting cliché and the seeds of depression. I down my red drink. My maudlin wasp nest of a brain just gets more Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix from here.

Maybe I was once this innocent child, painting in the kitchen with one of dad's dress shirts on backwards (Mom called it my smock), and she was this incredulous blob of black psychiatric paint—invasion of the present-tense psyche—Oh, hey there. Your new girlfriend says you are the best in the world, and you feel the same way. You guys have been babing, babing it up, right? But she has a thing for good-looking people, historically right? (The flashback forecast is a threat of midnight zippers and inaugural orgasms you are not responsible for...always a possibility if you let down your psychic guard.
Player One Up
and
flashing
.)

Nancy's back is to me. I can put the dimmer switch on our banter and concentrate on taming my theatrical unstitching; my ritualistic preoccupation with pain and chaos.
Are you just aren't you just the sweetest most inappropriate maniac and you beat your imaginary wife with ice cream and cake then sniff her sugary limbs all the while getting a big toothache
. Beauty, duty and romance.

"This is a bar not a mental institution," Nancy says, when I make some inference to bleach in a drink she's making.

The Nirvana song I chose comes on, and its Native tribal guitar tears into the bar, soon to be joined by Kurt's ragged, poisonous voice. The small puddle from an ice cube I scooped out of my drink lies awaiting a tap from my finger, the one I broke in gym class playing football in June of 1987.

Here we are among the leather or ether clad, non-entities, our lives on mute, the perennial unemployed as we hear a toothless man's voice, like the derelict from a dystopian time-travelling science fiction film: "Hey, Nate! It's in the teeth—that's the way they find you, what's that, Nate? What year did you say you think you're in here?
2012
? They don't always send you to the right year, Nate, you see. I'm in the next bar, next door see? Hurricaines it's called right, Nate? Named after the boxer, isn't that right, Nate? But I tricked them, Nate, I took my teeth out, so they can't find me! I know about you, Nate...
I know your whole story, bud
. Say, did you know something? Section 225.11 of the New York State Athletic Commission clearly states that they don't like any "striking, scratching, gouging, butting or unnecessarily punitive strangleholds," eh, Nate? The commission is there to protect athletes. Too bad they didn't live across the street from you. Could've come and wiped your ass every time you didn't eat your meatloaf or clean your room."

Despite all the investigation, there is still much unrest in the family.
May as well try and enjoy the time we still have on earth
. Well, I feel so much sometimes I guess I just get a bit clouded, a bit off-colour. You know that colour? A trout in a blender or that big dumb fat sparrow hoping around on its twig legs that a part of you wants to crush, and it's plump and juicy, and you want it to dance alive in your semi-closed mouth, then set it free.

Our house (161 Glenvale Boulevard) in north Leaside was built in 1960, and our family of four moved in one crisp weekend in March 1981. During the first week, select relatives visited and photographs were taken of Holly and me discovering the "secret" wood-panel door in the basement beside what would be my eventual bedroom (1985–1994) which led to a small pantry, bunker or bomb shelter under the stairs. The tiny passageway connected to the workshop.

Each and every Sunday we all agreed the roast beef was beautiful; its heart-red and pink cross-section caused Dad to make sex noises in between throat clears. "Oh Diane, orgasm," Dad would groan, rubbing his grey or brown sweater, overacting the pleasure of each sloppy bite with his prop tongue.

The story is disconcerting. It deals with time, madness and a perception of what a family is or isn't. It is a study of desire, of memory, death and re-birth, set in a world coming apart.

Look, I tried the whole straightforward "here is the scene where we were stealing porn,
Variations
, fall of 1988, this is my life" routine...you want to listen to
Savage 1887-1903, Vol. 7
, you got it: it's coming! Jesus is putting on some Band-Aids and making the popcorn.

Excusing myself to Nancy and the bar, I stand up, shaking a fake reporter with my hands. "You're either gonna kill this animal or you're gonna cut off its food supply!"

There will always be a Leaside
With four-way traffic signs
Where sports and scholarships and grit
And youth and age combine

—True Davidson, first Mayor of East York (1967–1971)

PART I:

1 )
Bizarre Love Triangle

July 1986

T
he city was full of glamorously tanned kids on bikes, in hyper-coloured bathing suits, on skateboards, who were having their hair cut, who sweated while mowing the lawn, who fell silent and glazed at the crude video arcades at Bayview and Millwood.

To my left I noticed my shadow with its jagged facsimile, an angular swatch of bony grey that straddled the dilapidated cement.

I waited for the green light before pushing my bike hard off the curb with one big thrust, now fully able to enjoy the breeze, tailing my taller, older sister, Holly, and her best friend, Elizabeth. Holly said sometimes people called her "lanky."

Holly had a birthmark freckle thing over the left side of her upper lip and a windy pile of brown hair that hung down into her eyes, while I had a Playmobil haircut of sitcom quality, parted to the left. Elizabeth was a semi-freckled blonde with blue-green eyes and a hyperactive personality who would occasionally sunbathe and prance, fawn-like in backyards; her legs were long, taut and seasonal.

That summer, Holly got her learner's permit, six months shy of her sixteenth birthday. We sat in the car, driving it up and down in the driveway and once we took the two-tone Oldsmobile tank around the block. Sitting in the car, I watched the keys go from her frayed jean-shorts' pocket to the ignition like she was opening the door to our own private apartment.

The sun had pushed the day into a netherworld of speed, sweat and cool air. The day was a wide, brilliant green and a large, tireless orange; it swelled in crisp miracles.

Taking a left when we got to Bayview and Broadway, we flickered past a hefty waft of hot garbage towards the top of our street, Glenvale Boulevard. "Yee-haw!" I cackled, still pool fresh in my semi-soaked navy blue Ralph Lauren golf shirt, which clung to my sissy torso. We stared across at the great supernova of sun that crested the long stretch of cemetery. I mistook the curb's size and ended up wiping out, right in front of the girls.

"Don't worry; they don't break at that age," Holly joked to Elizabeth. "Come on, Nate, get up, you wimp!"

I sprang up off my hands, dusted off and remounted, ready to continue our Kodak descent, when Holly circled around and stopped me with her front tire.

"Hey," Holly said, nudging her head towards 6 Glenvale, "isn't that where your girlfriend lives? Kerri?"

"That was when I was in grade one, like six million years ago."

"Grade eight Kerri!" Holly laughed. "That's what Nate called her!"

"Oh her!" Elizabeth said. "Blonde with the gel in her hair, tons of eye make-up like a raccoon. I remember her. My mom is friends with her mom."

"Yeah, Nate loved her. He'd walk up the street for blocks behind her after school. I'd always see him tailing her up Broadway."

"She's probably married now," Elizabeth said, rolling her pedal back, balancing on the sidewalk. "Darn, I think I got a sunburn," she rubbed her shoulder and caught my eye on her.