Table of Contents
1- Burned Bikers
2- The Sadist
3- Why I Have Respect for Celine Dion
4- “Your Driver's License Please, You Infidel Dog!”
5- Mama’s Cooking
6- The Seer
BURNED BIKERS
When I was a child of about eight or nine, I came across a picture in a magazine of the coolest man I had ever seen riding what looked like the coolest motorcycle ever. I liked it so much that I clipped it our and carried it with me wherever I went, until the paper lost molecular cohesion and just fell apart a few weeks later. I knew that when I grew up I was going to have a motorcycle.
I would ride my bicycle around the neighbourhood while wearing a plastic replica of a motorcycle helmet and an old vest pretending to be cool like the man in the magazine ad. I couldn’t wait to be old enough.
A year or two later my father and brother were in a discussion about cars, when my dad suddenly asked me what kind of car I’d like to drive.
“I don’t want a car,” I answered, “I want a motorcycle.”
“No way!” my father exclaimed, “you could get in a serious accident. If you want a motorcycle, I’m not going to help you get it! You’re not cut out for that lifestyle anyways.”
I guess that was Dad’s way of telling a nine-year-old that he was not, and would never be, cool enough to be a biker. And he was also pretty smart. He knew how expensive they were, and there was no way I could afford one on my own until adulthood.
A few years later, when I was a teenager, I had saved up and bought a cool leather motorcycle jacket. I had it all figured out: First I get my regular driver’s licence, then when I was eighteen I’d get my motorcycle permit. After a few years of saving I’d be tooling around on my very own Honda Nighthawk or something like that.
One day while perusing the motorcycle section of the Multimags store on Ste. Catherine Street I had an experience that I will never forget. I was checking out a copy of Cycle World, when I turned and saw a huge man standing next to me. He was at least six-foot-five, and was wearing a leather motorcycle vest with an eagle and the Harley-Davidson logo on the back. He had long black hair on the left side of his head. He didn’t on the right side, because he had suffered severe burns. In place of his right arm was a stump that was covered in what seemed like melted tattoos. His right ear was little more than a nub, and he walked with a decided limp. He was looking at a copy of Biker’s Lifestyle magazine.
Right then and there I put away my copy of Cycle World, and picked up a copy of Car and Driver.
Many years later I had a girlfriend named Melanie who lived on the top floor of a triplex in Ville Emard. One evening I arrived at her place and she was very excited. Some new neighbours had just moved into the basement apartment.
She was enthusiastic about this because her building was a bit of a slum and most of the other tenants were there mutated, demented freaks of nature who either escaped from the circus or an asylum. The new people were a young couple like us and she said they seemed nice. She told me the girl was called Julie, and her boyfriend was a tattoo artist. Melanie was anxious for me to meet them.
I was game for that, and soon enough we were knocking on their door. Now the front entrance to the apartment opened into a narrow hallway. Julie was on one side, while her boyfriend (whose name I can’t remember) was hidden behind the door. Julie was a very attractive woman. After Melanie and I entered, Julie closed the front door to reveal her boyfriend.
His face had suffered very bad burns, similar to those of the guy at the Multimags; only his entire face was badly scarred. About two-thirds of his head was covered with curly, blonde hair. The left side had none, and like the man at the Multimags, his ear was just a nub. It reminded me of former Formula-1 driver Nikki Lauda, who had suffered similar injuries in a car crash.
I was surprised and taken aback by this and he could tell. I felt like such a heel. He was incredibly cool about it, though. Later I spoke to him alone in the kitchen and apologized. He told me how he was used to that kind of reaction, and it was nothing to him anymore. I asked him how it happened, and he said a few years earlier he was speeding along a highway at almost two hundred clicks on his rice rocket and took a nasty spill. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. The rice rocket’s fuel tank ruptured and must of his upper body suffered third degree burns. He even joked about how he was mostly upset because it ruined a few thousand dollars worth of tattoos.
I told him the story about the guy at the Multimags and how that turned me off of motorcycles. What did he do? He laughed at me and called me chicken-shit baby. He said that he still rides, and speeds, and doesn’t wear a helmet. I was shocked. I mean, what more has to happen to him before he learns his lesson? I imagined him getting into an even worse accident, and after that still riding as just a headless torso.
They were a pleasant couple, and we had a good time. After we left, I asked Melanie why she wasn’t shocked when she saw him. She told me she met him earlier in the day.
“What!?!” I shouted, “You knew? Why the hell didn’t you warn me?”
“I forgot.”
“How could you forget something like that? I made a fool of myself in front of the guy. He was cool about it, but what if he wasn’t? It’s not some minor detail, like he’s missing a toe or something. I mean, his face was melted!”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Stop being such a baby!”
In my adult life I had never before been called a baby twice by two different people on the same day.
About three weeks later Melanie and I broke up. It had nothing to do with that incident, though. I never saw the couple again.
To this day I wonder if I ever really have the nerve to be a true biker. Here were two guys who despite horrific accidents were still able move on, and here I’m giving up just because of something that happened to someone I didn’t even know. Maybe Dad was right all along.
THE SADIST
Nick is my best buddy. He’s a great guy. But he has, like all people, his flaws. His most annoying character trait is that he, well, how do I put this? He finds it funny when someone he knows gets hurt. The worse you are injured, the more hilarious it is to him. Allow me to elaborate.
Now we’ve all had unfortunate accidents that have caused us physical pain and injury. The last thing we need is some bug-eyed fool pointing a finger and laughing at us. But no matter how badly you are hurt, if Nick is in the area, and he knows you (it’s only hilarious to him if you are someone he “cares” about…and I’ll give him credit, he never laughs when misfortune befalls a stranger), he will be there to add insult to injury by pointing and chuckling. It’s enough to make you want to inflict pain on him, and see how he likes it! But of course you won’t, because if you did everyone will crowd around him and offer sympathy and comfort.
I recall one night when Nick and I were playing hockey at one of the Town of Mount Royal’s outdoor rinks. Because it was a cold weeknight, there were almost no other people around. We had an entire rink to ourselves. The only problem was that one of the lights that illuminated the rink we chose was not working, which created a dark section.
We mostly ran skating and passing drills. Now it is important to know that as well as being a sadist, Nick does not believe in passing the puck. He doesn’t like to pass. It’s not in him to pass. And on the rare occasion he does pass the puck, he wants it back right away, which is difficult because his passes are either in my skates or behind me. He of course thinks that’s my fault. I think he fails to grasp the concept that he is sending the puck to an object in motion, and must pass way ahead of the skater to allow for that. Of course, my passes to him are always right on the blade of his stick.
At one point I was standing in the dark part of the rink, and Nick was headed for the bench to retie one of his skate laces. I asked him to pass me the puck. We weren’t wearing any protective equipment. Nick decides all of a sudden that he’s Bobby Hull and fires the puck at me full force from about 10 meters away. I wasn’t expecting that, and he couldn’t see me clearly (or so he maintains to this day). The puck struck me full force on the center of my right shin, (sharp end, mind you). I went down like a sack of potatoes, screaming in agony.
Nick immediately skated to me, not to help, but to laugh as I curled up on the ice, clutching my shin and cursing his name. If he thought that was funny, we should’ve gone afterwards to our local hospital’s burn ward for some real chuckles!
The puck opened up a painful welt on my shin the size of half a golf ball. It took weeks to go away. To this day I can feel a small bump where it happened. And Nick still laughs every time he tells the story to someone else. He maintains it was not the injury, but my reaction to it. Bullshit! Neither of those was funny!
Of course if I ever fired the puck at him unexpectedly, and missed, he’d go all apeshit.
“Careful, man! You almost hit me!” he’d shout in all seriousness, even if I missed him by as much as a meter.
The week after I purchased some used shin guards from a second hand sporting goods store. And I bought a brand new cup from Canadian Tire, as well. You can never be too sure with Nick just what he’ll injure next.
About a year later I was at the same park with Nick and his girlfriend. This time it was summer, and we were playing softball. His girlfriend was small, and had never played softball before. I watched as Nick taught the poor girl how to throw and to catch. They were standing about 5 meters apart.
She stood glove ready as Nick gently tossed her the softball over-handed…and hit her in the face, right between the eyes! Even before he went to see if she was badly hurt, he started to laugh. Of course, she got angry.
“You did that on purpose!” she cried.
He tried to console her, but he just couldn’t stop laughing.
Interesting footnote: She is now his wife!
Nick doesn’t have to be the one inflicting the pain in order to enjoy himself. I remember one afternoon a few years ago I went to visit him at work. It was a rather warm January, and freezing rain had been falling for days. The sidewalks were covered with smooth, slippery ice several inches thick.
It was also my 24th birthday, and I wanted to know what was planned for that evening. Nick has a brother and sister (who are twins) that share the same birth date as I.
As I walked across the parking lot back to my car after leaving Nick’s office, I slipped on the ice. It was as if my feet were violently yanked out from under me. I fell to my left, and hit my head on a sheet of ice that shattered on impact. It felt like my head exploded. I thought my skull cracked open. But the moistness was just the rainwater and what I thought were pieces of my skull turned out to be broken bits of ice. An older gentleman (I later found out his name was Abe) helped me up. By coincidence, he was headed for where Nick worked.
When Nick saw me…oh the hilarity! Everyone else came to my aid. They brought me an icepack, and offered to call me an ambulance. Abe went on a rant saying how dangerous the parking lot was (I think he was more upset than me), and all the while Nick had to bury his head under his desk so I wouldn’t see him laughing his ass off.
Someone who worked there passed by a few minutes later and asked what happened.
“I slipped and fell on the ice,” I said, “and hit my head.”
“No...What’s wrong with Nick? Why is he under his desk?”
“Oh, that! He’s just laughing at me. I guess he thinks this is funny.”
“I guess it is kind of funny. Yeah, I could see that. You’re not really hurt bad, are you?”
Even then, with an icepack to my head and in obvious pain, people were still taking Nick’s side over mine! Goddammit!
“I guess not,” I answered.
Within a few minutes, thanks to The Sadist, everyone in the office was laughing at me, except for Abe. (Thank you again Abe!)
Nick called the girlfriend I had at the time, and told her what happened. She came and picked me up. We had lunch together, and I recall it was a pretty good time considering I had just received a concussion.
Later that evening we had the birthday dinner with Nick’s siblings. He told the story again, and most everyone at our table laughed. The only holdout was Nick’s girlfriend, probably remembering the softball incident.
I’m still not sure why Nick laughs at the misfortunes of his friends and loved ones. He says it’s the way we look when hurt, but to tell you the truth, I bet Nick himself doesn’t really know why. I guess I’ll just never understand that about him.
WHY I HAVE RESPECT FOR CELINE DION
Why do I have respect for Celine Dion? Allow me to explain…
It all began the spring of 1986 when the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup. An unexpected victory and their first championship season since the legendary dynasties of the seventies combined to make it a monumental deal for all of us. You see, unlike the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Habs had won so many consecutive cup titles that a spring celebration and parade were almost routine. It had gotten to the point where Stanley’s appearances in Montreal were taken for granted.
Even though the Habs didn’t face a single division champion in the playoffs, and thanks to Steve Smith they didn’t have to face the Edmonton Oilers at the height of their mid-eighties greatness, it was none-the-less a welcome triumph, lest we forget the 1986 playoffs were also the coming out party for noted Quebec hockey hero and future hall-of-famer Patrick Roy. And at the celebration was another soon to be world famous person from Quebec, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
My friends and I skipped school to attend the wild parade that ran up rue Ste. Catherine and ended at the Mecca of Hockey: The Hallowed Montreal Forum.
During the parade, I got to shake hands with the aforementioned beer-soaked and wiry M. Roy, winner of the Conn Smythe trophy as playoff MVP, as well as overtime hero Claude Lemieux, the late John Kordic, an off-his-rocker drunk Chris Chelios, and Mike Lalor.
Inside the Forum they held a hastily prepared celebration concert featuring a who’s-who of the Quebec music scene. Tickets were $2 each, with the proceeds going to charity.
The atmosphere inside the hockey shrine was an undignified melange of mayhem and anarchy. While tickets had assigned seats, the inept Forum security refused to enforce the rule of law and the drunken throng in attendance sat wherever the hell they wanted, whether they had tickets or just crashed the gate, horribly disrespecting true fans like my friends and I, who bothered to get there early and wait in line for hours like a bunch of chumps for our tickets in the red section, only to lose them to a gang of illiterate hooligans who planted their fat asses in our seats and would not to relinquish them. And the “security” on hand for the event flatly refused to do their jobs and evict the squatters, so we were forced to stand in a crowded aisle throughout the over two-hour extravaganza.
The show featured acts like 80’s rock band The Box and the most popular performer on the bill, the singer described as Quebec’s Bruce Springsteen, (although to my knowledge The Boss has never done time for dealing heroine, but I digress), Claude DuBois.
In the midst of the mishmash of fading legends, flashes in the pan, and rising stars was a thin, awkward teenager popular throughout French Canada as a singer of sappy, sentimental love songs named Celine Dion, who at that point in her career was learning to speak and sing in English in order to conquer the international market.
She was greeted with polite applause when introduced, and sang “What a Feeling”, a song made famous by Irene Cara in the film Flashdance. Celine sang her heart out and received more polite applause at the end, probably because she was finished.
The Habs’ arrival was delayed and so the Emcees kept stretching the show, much to the ire of the raucous and increasingly impatient crowd. They wanted to see Lord Stanley’s Cup, and they wanted to see it now!
In an ill-conceived and desperate attempt to keep the ugly mob from turning hideous, one of the Emcees grabbed Celine Dion by the hand, and said that she would now sing “What a Feeling” again, which brought about a cruel chorus of angry boos.
Ever the trooper, Celine took the microphone and sang her heart out again, completely ignoring the shouts of “get the hell off the stage, bitch!” and other such rude comments.
Did she get angry? Did she storm off the stage in tears? Did she even miss a note?
No.
Celine Dion stood up to them. She finished the song, shrugged her shoulders, and laughed the whole thing off as she exited the stage.
How many of us would’ve had the courage to finish the song? How many of us could’ve faced down over 15 thousand inebriated morons? I certainly couldn’t.
Before the crowd could reduce the Forum to ruins, Claude DuBois grabbed a microphone and led his band in an impromptu version of the Hendrix classic “Purple Haze” that tamed the Beast.
Shortly after the Habs came out with the cup, and a fun time was had by all except the drunken goofballs who were vomiting and passing out in the aisles.
I don’t need to tell you that Celine Dion went on to become one of the top selling singers of all time.
I won’t lie to you: I’m not a fan of Celine’s music. Although her albums are superbly written and produced, and although she has a nice voice and puts her soul into every note she sings, and although she worked very hard to get to where she is, Celine Dion simply isn’t my cup of tea. Just too schmaltzy for my taste.
Now you understand why I have respect for Celine Dion?
“YOUR DRIVER'S LICENSE PLEASE, YOU INFIDEL DOG!”
Around the time of the first gulf war I was a gas station attendant in the Cote-Des-Neiges district of Montreal. I got to meet quite a few strange characters and interesting people, especially on the overnight shift. But I never thought I would encounter someone who would change my perception of an entire people.
One night a taxi driver entered the kiosque to pay for his gas and buy a pack of cigarettes. He worked for the same predominantly Greek taxi company my father did, and he looked Greek, so I greeted him in Greek. He didn’t understand me, but he knew what I was up to.
“Sorry, I’m not Greek. I’m Iranian.”
I asked him if he knew my father, but he didn’t. There was no real surprise. My father worked days in the Park Extension area, and this guy spent most of his time working nights either in Cote-Des-Neiges or downtown. He left after paying and I didn’t see him again for a few shifts.
The second time I saw him I noticed he was wearing a military style belt.
“Were you in the army in Iran?” I asked, wondering if he were a veteran of the bloody Iran/Iraq war of the late eighties.
“No, I was a police officer,” he said with a friendly smile, “Iranian highway patrol.”
Iranian highway patrol?
Then it hit me. Why shouldn’t Iran have a highway patrol? Their roads need policing too, don’t they? But because the only thing I heard about Iran in the news is how they hate Israel and how they cut off the hands of thieves, or want nuclear weapons, or when there’s some sort of radical anti-western protest, certain things did not occur to me at the time.
I mean, think about it…did you know that Iran had a highway patrol, that did not enforce Islamic law (I’ve never read the Koran, but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in it about highway safety and rules for operating a motorized vehicle), but hands out tickets for speeding, or not wearing seatbelts? And if someone violates those laws, they are not stoned to death, beheaded or dismembered, but required to pay a fine or relinquish their licence, or pay higher insurance rates?
We never see in the news anything about how old you have to be to drive in Iran, or what are their speed limits, or how difficult are their driving tests. The people over there have to wait in line at the motor vehicle departments to have their licence picture taken, or their plates renewed, just like us. They have to go to driver’s school and take tests like everyone else. Their teenagers have to ask for the keys to the family car so they could hang out with friends or go see a movie as do ours.
At the time the airwaves were flooded with American propaganda about Iranians that essentially painted them as people who only acted based on the Koran and spent every moment of their lives doing little else. The western media would shock, horror and frighten us with images of an Iran where they teach the Koran in public schools, and make children recite “Death to America”. Meanwhile the very same media has no serious problem with prayer and Bible class in American schools or something as ridiculous as “Intelligent Design” being taught. The only difference I can perceive is which way the respective holy texts open.
Are you afraid of the idea of Iran having a nuclear weapon? I am. But to be fair, I am afraid of any nation, including my own, possessing such horrible weapons. It scares me that the U.S.A. has weapons of mass destruction and the man who controls them claims to be quite religious, and uses examples from some anachronistic, outdated “holy” book to guide how he governs his land and passes or vetoes laws (sound familiar?). But what horrifies me most of all is that Christianity is essentially a doomsday cult (see the book of Revelations) with it’s most ardent followers anxiously awaiting the return of the Messiah, and the apocalypse that will ensue (which would mean that every man, woman, child, puppy and kitten in the world would have to DIE!). And why they are looking forward to this? Because it is written that all true believers will pass unto the Kingdom of Heaven. This seems okay to them, wanting the world to come to an end, and everyone in the world dying and all that, yet we call a suicide bomber crazy because he believes he’ll get a shitload of virgins in Paradise? To me, this does not make sense. How is one better than the other? And who is more frightening? A small country in Asia with a crappy nuclear reactor or the world’s largest and only real Superpower with enough nuclear weapons to annihilate us all, and the man controlling it making decisions from an ancient doomsday text?
Maybe it’s only rhetoric, but why can’t it be rhetoric from both sides? Why does one have to be good, and the other evil? Can’t they both be wrong? Or right? Or good? Or evil?
And as all of this is going on, along some lonely stretch of highway, sits a police officer in his patrol car with a radar gun hoping to catch a speeder and make his quota of tickets. As he waits, the officer is thinking of what to do for his upcoming child’s birthday, or where to go for vacation. But what highway is it? And which country? Does it really matter?
MAMA’S COOKING
I remember once when I was around four years old; I awoke from a nap and went into the kitchen where I found my mother. She was standing in front of the stove, casually stirring something inside a huge pot; the same pot she used to colour the Easter eggs. When I say that pot was huge, it's an understatement: It was gigantic. They used less steel to make a Buick Roadmaster. It was reminiscent of the cauldron Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters used to make their famous “eye of newt” concoction.
“What are you making? Easter eggs?” I innocently asked.
She never answered. Instead Mom stirred the pot a little more, and then used her large, wooden spoon to fish out the pot’s contents. It was an entire octopus. An octopus! A disgusting, slimy octopus! My mother went to the store and spent money on an octopus! I ran out of the kitchen, horrified.
People aren’t supposed to dine on octopus. They’re unfit for human consumption. That’s like buying and cooking a skunk or racoon; it’s the kind of thing another wild animal should eat.
Needless to say that night I did not eat any of the octopus. My family gorged themselves while I was totally grossed out.
Of my mother’s cooking, my father would always say that while he didn’t always like what she made, she always prepared it well. Didn’t always like what she made? Could’ve fooled me. My father ate like a vacuum cleaner with teeth.
In fact, mealtime was my family’s version of survival of the fittest. My mother would prepare plenty of food, and place it in the centre of the table. The four of us would grab what we could, and eat as quickly as possible, while doing our best to engage in what passed for sparkling conversation. If I stopped eating for as much as a second, my father would look over the table at my plate, asking “you gonna finish that?” My answer was irrelevant, because he was already reaching over the table for whatever scraps were left.
My favourite was when Mom made rib steaks. After I was done my father would take the rib bone off my plate and gnaw away at it like a starving dog, licking it clean.
But there were things Mama would make that were so awful I could not understand what masochist would invent such recipes. One was called pasticcio, a traditional Greek dish similar to lasagne, only no where near as appetizing. It was made with a thick, hollow noodle on the bottom layer, ground beef sauce on the middle layer, and topped with some kind of cheese-like substance. It smelled bad, it was moist, runny, and tasted terrible, so of course my father and brother couldn’t get enough of it. Made me wish I had a dog I could pass it to, but the dog probably would’ve spat it back.
The worst thing she would make was also the most common. We would have it at least five times a month. It was called yemista (pronounced YEE-me-STA). It consisted of ground beef, rice and spices stuffed into hollowed-out eggplants and/or tomatoes, baked to “perfection”. Mmmmmm, tasty!
But don’t ask for this at any fine Greek restaurant, they’ll never serve it there. Why? Because it’s crap! No one would order it. And if they did, they’ll never order it again, I can assure you. Going to a restaurant is like a married man going to a prostitute: He wants to get something better than what he’s getting at home.
What’s so bad about yemista? First of all, the filling looks like someone ate a ton of rice, and then took a dump into an empty tomato they just dug out of the garbage. Second, well, let’s just say one shouldn’t put hollowed out tomatoes or eggplants in the oven. They shrivel up and become horribly discoloured and foul.
Once again, my father and brother couldn’t get enough of that shit. And the kicker is…my Mom would always be surprised when I wouldn’t eat it! She could cook that crap a million times, yet she was always shocked when I refused. Did eating yemista give her amnesia? What the hell did she expect? I would suddenly find appetizing something that looked like someone else ate it first?
And of course, being a Greek household, no meal would be complete if you didn't drag out a plate of black olives and feta cheese. We could be having a breakfast of cereal and toast and Mom would pull out an oily, slimy plate of that shit. They were so vile and pungent that I would often lose my appetite altogether, and once again for some reason everyone was surprised when that happened. Over ten thousand family meals, and not ever, just as a favour to me, did one of them say "Hey, let's ease off on the olives and feta, just once! Let's make Andreas feel like his opinion actually matters!"
By my mid teens my parents were divorced, my brother was in college, and we all kept different schedules. The family dinner went the way of the Dodo, as I started preparing my own meals. My mother still makes pasticcio for my brother when he brings my nephew to visit her. And he still eats it like a champ. I guess for him it is a slice of something special he never learned to make for himself, and he misses. I envy him in that way. For me family mealtime does not bring back any fond memories.
Nowadays the only time I eat Mama’s cooking is Thanksgiving and Christmas. I must say, at least she makes the best turkey in the universe. And nobody can beat her stuffing. If I could just get her to stop putting out those goddam olives and feta cheese! When will she learn!?!
THE SEER
I am not a believer in the paranormal or supernatural. I don’t claim to know the nature of existence, but I’m pretty sure the universe will never be deciphered in a deck of tarot cards or in the entrails of an owl. While I do practice some personal rituals, I try not to delude myself into thinking that fate can be controlled by carrying around part of a dead animal, or avoiding cracks in the sidewalk. As for those who claim to know all the answers with some kind of divine power, I am completely aware that they are hucksters and charlatans.
There was, however, an occasion where I did pay a visit to a Fortune Teller. And as usual, the story involves a girl.
Her name was Melissa DiMeola. We were students at Dawson College’s Creative Arts program. I was a rocker nerd, and she was the hottest thing in the solar system that the Earth did not revolve around. I mean she was an h-o-t hot blonde bombshell! If you looked up “hot” in the dictionary, it would say: “see Melissa DiMeola”; a hard rock goddess with a curvaceous, voluptuous body poured into a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, black leather vest, jeans, and tasselled, brown suede cowboy boots. She cruised the halls of Dawson with the slick, smooth saunter of an old west gunslinger, turning heads and breaking hearts. Whenever she entered the room, each one of my gonads would repeatedly shout “Me first! Me first!”
Melissa was a well-connected player and a party girl who liked to date older, cool guys who were total assholes like musicians and drug dealers. She once told me she had sex with David Lee Roth. At first I thought it was bullshit, but a reliable source told me it was true. The Source informed me of the time they went to a concert together, and she got him backstage, where he discovered she was a renowned groupie. He said she was able to procure some “All Access” passes and they got to meet Robert Plant, (although he didn’t say if she had sex with Mr. Plant as well). When I asked where she got the passes, The Source said she “knew some people”, which I took as a euphemism for “gave some people a blow job”.
I, being terminally uncool, was not even a blip on her radar, and too dense to know she’d never go out with me. But I still gave it my best shot.
Whenever I’d run into Melissa in the cafeteria, I would park myself next to her, and because we liked the same kind of music and I played guitar at the time, we at least had a few things in common to talk about.
One day I sat next to her as she was talking to some girls from our television production class.
“Hey Arthur,” she said to me.
She never got my name right. Once in the same conversation she called me both “Angelo” and “Anthony”.
“I was just telling everyone about this fortune teller I just went to named Mrs. Melina. She was incredible. You should all go see her!”
“Sure, I’d love to,” I enthusiastically said, “give me her phone number!”
Of course the only reason I wanted to go was so that I could have another excuse to talk to Melissa.
I telephoned and made an appointment to see Mrs. Melina on the following Saturday. What sounded like a young girl took the call, and gave me instructions on how to get to the house. She would not let me talk to Mrs. Melina, saying she didn’t like to talk on phones. The hour-long session would cost $20.
I showed up that Saturday a half hour before my appointment. The house was a typical N.D.G. brown duplex. Nothing special. I rang the bell and waited for about a minute before someone answered.
The front door slowly swung open to reveal a pair of pre-teen twins with brown hair combed the exact same way, and light blue eyes. While not dressed in the same colours, they were clad in similar sweatshirts and jogging pants.
“Ah, hello,” I said.
They just stood there, silently staring at me.
“My name is Andreas. I’m here to see Mrs. Melina.”
Still nothing.
“Am I at the right house?”
They looked at each other for a second, then one of them said: “You’re early.”
“Ah, yes, I know. Sorry. I miscalculated how long it would take to get here. I don’t usually come out to N.D.G. by bus and metro, you see… Ah, is she available?”
After a long, awkward pause, the other twin said: “We’ll see if she can take you now. Please come in.”
I cautiously entered the house to find it’s interior very inconspicuous and average. No creepy taxidermy or talismans in sight. The flat contained typical hardwood floors and a long hallway that connected the most of the rooms. I followed one of the twins to a small, undecorated room that was little more than a passageway from one larger room to another. The only furniture was a small wooden table with two wooden chairs, like the kind we had at school, on one side.
On the table were two sets of cards: One thick deck with a blue and white pattern on the back; the others were thinner and black.
“Just have a seat, and put the $20 on the table. My sister will bring Mrs. Melina when she’s ready,” she said.
I thanked her and did what she said. After a few minutes of twiddling my thumbs, the room’s other door slowly creaked open, and out came a wheelchair pushed by the other twin, who rolled it’s occupant to the table, making sure she was facing me. The twin locked the wheelchair, and then quickly exited the room, shutting the door behind her and leaving us alone.
“Mrs. Melina, I presume,” I said.
“Yes,” she answered in a pronounced Italian accent.
“Sorry I’m early, but I guess you knew I’d be early, didn’t you?”
“No. Why would I know?” she said with a confused look on her face.
“Forget it,” I said, not wanting to be so rude as to remind her that she was supposed to be able to divine the future.
Mrs. Melina was clad in a black dress similar to the one worn by Greek or Italian widows. She had a set of front teeth Bugs Bunny would be envious of, and her grey hair was tied back into a bun.
She was obviously ill, although I never found out what she suffered from, choosing instead to spent most of the session hoping it wasn’t contagious. Her entire body appeared paralysed and shrivelled. The only thing she seemed capable of moving was her right arm, however her right hand remained locked in a curled-up state. She had very long, sharp fingernails.
She asked if I had trouble finding the house and made small talk while trying to shuffle the cards with her only good limb.
“Do you want me to do that for you?” I asked, trying to be helpful.
“No!” She screamed, awkwardly waving her claw in my face, “I have to do this or it will not work! You do not touch the cards or there could be dire consequences!”
It felt like I was like I was playing blackjack in Vegas.
Just then a scary thought hit me: Nobody knew I was there. I had her phone number and address on a piece of paper in my pocket, and didn’t tell anyone of my plans. Mrs. Melina could just push a button under the table and I would drop though the floor and into a dungeon where she kept young men to feed on their brains in order to regain her motor functions. Hell, I was afraid she’d swing that jagged hook of a hand into my jugular and open up a gusher for the twins to feast on.
But neither of those things happened. We just continued the session. She first shuffled the blue and white cards and asked me point out a number of them. She then proceeded to tell me my fortune based on what she saw in the cards, and honestly I can’t remember two things she told me, for I had neglected to take notes.
Then she asked me to select several cards from the black deck, and again I don’t remember anything except that one of the cards I selected was referred to excitedly by Mrs. Melina as the “card of destiny, the best card of the deck to pick!” So at least I have that going for me.
After the session I thanked her and left. While departing I saw her next appointment waiting on a couch in the living room. He was a very well dressed, middle-aged man who didn’t look like someone who would need such artificial reassurance.
On my way out I passed one of the twin’s bedroom, and caught a glimpse of her lying on her bed and gabbing on the phone like a typical pre-teen girl about the latest teen idol. She suddenly didn’t seem so creepy anymore. And I realized I was just another victim of their con.
The following Monday I looked for Melissa so that I could tell her about my visit to Mrs. Melina. For some reasons I can’t to this day explain, I thought she would be anxious to hear the story. Instead Melissa told me she didn’t recall ever giving me the number, and then said, “Good for you I hope you enjoyed it” as she walked away. I felt like a damn fool.
I don’t know what happened to Melissa. She wanted to become an actress, and I heard she moved to Toronto after graduation to pursue that goal, but to date I’ve never seen her on TV or in any movie.
And me, I never got Melissa. Not even close. But at least I have yet another story to tell about the crazy things I’ve done to win a woman’s heart.
