ESSAYS by ANDREAS.com
Table of Contents
1- A Day at the Beach
2- The Butcher of Park Ex
3- Something More Than Human
4- Sacked!
5- Sven
6- Nickish
A DAY AT THE BEACH
Montreal is world renown for many things, but decent beaches is certainly not one of them. Although an island in the
I recall one Saturday evening when I was about nineteen. My friend Nick told me that Kosta, a long-time friend of his brother’s, was organizing a trip to
The last person to arrive was someone we all called “Psilo”, which is Greek for “tall guy”. Although he was around the same height me, Psilo was so thin he probably had to walk around in the shower to get wet, so he appeared taller than most people. He of course offered no apologies for being late, also typical of inconsiderate people who like to keep others waiting for no good reason.
By then it was around ten-thirty and even the laziest person there was starting to lose his patience.
“No, wait we can’t go. Let me call my cousin in
Wherever Greeks go, they always feel the need to bring the whole family along.
Much to my surprise, and although he complained the loudest about having to wait for Psilo, Kosta obliged him, probably because he considered it rude to say “no”. And heaven forbid he should be rude to the very douchebag who kept us from leaving on time.
It was another hour or so until Psilo’s Cousin Jimmy arrived, and finally we were off. There was a girl in our group that Nick liked, and he wanted to ride alone with her in his brand new black Ford Mustang GT. Actually, it wasn’t really the GT model. He could only afford the base model with the 4-cylinder engine, so he went to an auto parts store and bought several metal GT decals that he placed strategically on the outside.
There were about six cars and twenty or so people in our little caravan. I rode with Kosta and Psilo, while Jimmy rode in Sven Olafsson’s car.
Sven was in reality a Greek guy who had atypical thin blonde hair, blue eyes, and was white as a ghost. I thought he looked Swedish, so I nicknamed him “Sven Olafsson”.
Also in Sven’s car was someone I knew from high school named Carlos. He was a Portuguese kid with huge buck teeth that looked like a set of white double-doors. He was an extremely annoying and obnoxious smart-aleck. I never cared much for him.
Of course we had to race and otherwise drive wildly all the way there. At one point the car I was in blew past Sven and his gang, and we mooned them. In retaliation Sven pulled ahead of us and that idiot Carlos stuck his entire upper torso out the window of the car while going over one hundred and forty clicks. The damn fool started throwing Kleenex, cans, paper, and whatever else he could get his hands on. Fortunately Sven never cleaned his automobile, so Carlos had plenty of ammo to rain down on us like a moron.
In the confusion, we had missed the exit to the lake and got lost. Psilo, who had a real short fuse, demanded Kosta stop the car so he could “beat the shit” out of Carlos. The convoy pulled over, and Psilo burst out of the car and made a B-Line for Carlos.
“Carlos! Fucking Bugs Bunny!” Psilo exclaimed as he charged at his too-dense-to-know-he-was-in-trouble target.
“What!?!” said Carlos as Psilo tacked him.
It took five of us to finally pry Psilo off of Carlos.
Eventually they cooled down. We consulted a map and were on our way again, finally arriving at our destination around
I saw that Nick was no longer talking to the girl he liked.
“What happened with her?” I asked him.
“Two minutes into the drive she started talking about a guy she liked and she wanted me to find out if he liked her.”
“Must’ve been the longest car ride of your life,” I said,”so, who’s the lucky guy. Is it me?”
“No,” said Nick.
Of course not. It was never me.
“She likes Carlos,” he continued.
“Carlos!” I said, “Fucking Bugs Bunny!”
Nick and I had brought our baseball gloves and a ball, and played catch for a while. Afterwards we took a dip in the cold, bland, lake. I hate swimming in still, quiet, dead bodies of water like rivers and lakes. They aren’t alive, vibrant, and invigorating, like an ocean. The feel just isn’t the same.
We were lying on our towels back at the picnic table, soaking up some rays, when Psilo and his cousin approached us. He and Jimmy wanted to borrow our gloves for a game of catch, and of course we let them.
They threw to each other, and after a few minutes Jimmy decided it would be funny if he tossed one way over Psilo’s head. This was a manoeuvre very typical of assholes like him. The point is to make Psilo stretch to catch the ball, and appear clumsy when he failed. Then he would say something like “What a loser, can’t you catch rhe?” Goofballs like Jimmy often enjoy making themselves feel better by making someone else look bad.
Well the plan worked perfectly. Jimmy threw the ball high, and Psilo jumped for it. He missed, and the ball sailed way over his head, striking a seven year old girl who was sitting behind him. The girl started to cry.
“Rhe, you hit a girl!” Psilo said.
“No, you hit the girl, fucking Malaka! It’s not my fault you can’t catch!” was Jimmy’s sensitive, gentlemanly response.
“Hey! You hurt her!” the girl’s mother shouted.
Did Jimmy apologize? I guess you really don’t know his type. Y’know, the type who see that as an emasculating sign of weakness. Of course he didn’t apologize. That’s what a human being would do.
“Well, next time I’ll throw it harder!” was Jimmy’s answer. He then laughed.
The Mother charged at Jimmy yelling: “She’s really hurt, you sonnova bitch! You owe her an apology!” and started slapping him violently. She then shoved Jimmy to the ground and started kicking him.
Nobody in our group laughed or intervened. We just stood and stared at the pathetic display.
“Okay! Okay! I’m Sorry!” Jimmy cried, “I’m sorry! Leave me alone!”
Jimmy had another typical bully trait. While he talked the talk and strutted around like he was hot shit, he was in reality a Mama’s Boy and about as tough as tissue paper.
By then I had had it with this group. I took back my glove, and packed my bag.
“C’mon Nick,” I said, “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Nick had also seen enough and we quietly slipped away to his Mustang without as much as saying goodbye to the others.
“Nick,” I said during the ride home, “If there’s ever another outing with these assholes, don’t bother calling me. I’d rather spend my Sunday riding my bike around alone or something.”
“Don’t worry. Call me if you go riding. I’m not going to run with that crowd again, bunch of jerks…hey! What’s going on?”
An indicator light on Nick’s dashboard warned that his car was overheating. He quickly pulled over to the side of the highway and popped his hood. We looked over the engine and found a large piece of paper that Carlos threw out of Sven’s car had been obstructing the Mustang’s radiator.
“Carlos!” said Nick, “Fucking Bugs Bunny!”
THE BUTCHER OF PARK EX
Here’s most of what I remember about the seventies: Pierre Elliot Trudeau was our Prime Minister, the Olympics were in town, the Habs were winning Stanley Cups, and Park Extension was my home.
At the end of Park Avenue and nestled in between the Metropolitan Expressway on the north, Boulevard de l’acadie on the west, and railroad tracks on the south and east, Park Ex (as it is popularly known), with its miles of row-houses, dilapidated tenements and crumbling apartment buildings, was my universe; a haven where new arrivals to Canada first settled until they could afford to live somewhere better. It is arguably the most ethnically diverse neighbourhood in the world. I would go so far as to wager that on every city block in Park Ex one can find residents originally from any continent except
When I was little, every Thursday afternoon after school my mother and I would walk to the local grocery store on St. Roch. It was a modest establishment, not much larger than a depanneur, but it had everything we needed at a fair price. It was called the SPG Grocery because it was founded, owned and operated by three middle-aged brothers named Spiro, Peter and George; a proud trio of Greek immigrants who came to the new world to pursue their dream of barely eking out an existence while wearing long white coats and working backbreaking twelve-hour days. Spiro and Peter ran the grocery part of the establishment while the meat counter at the back, right next to the disgusting olive barrels, was the exclusive domain of George, the Butcher of Park Ex.
George was a big, beefy guy with a grizzled, hard-bitten face that looked like it wore out several bodies. He had pale skin, soulless, empty, light blue eyes, sideburns, and long, blonde, thinning, heavily-greased, combed-back hair with greying temples. His meaty hands had kielbasa-sized fingers that were calloused, disfigured, scared, and several missing tips.
And he was strong. I once saw the mighty Butcher of Park Ex carry two entire pig carcasses, one over his shoulder and one under his arm, from a delivery truck to his cavernous meat locker, which somehow contained the slaughtered remains of every animal in creation hanging on a hook. If someone asked for a goat, with horns, teeth, eyes, tongue and hoofs still attached, (mmmmm…appetizing!), he would disappear into the dark recesses of his dominion, eventually emerging with whatever the customer wanted.
George used his heavy meat cleaver, cacophonous electric bone-saw, and long butcher’s knife with the skill of a surgeon and the subtlety of a lumberjack. It would take him only a few violent, blood-soaked, gory minutes of hacking, carving and slicing to reduce a heifer into thick red slabs of rib steak.
The meat counter was, oddly enough, where another form of brutality took place: It was where all the Greek housewives would congregate and engage in sparkling conversation, and by that I mean they would gossip about matters that were often inaccurate and exaggerated, and never a damn bit of their business.
My mom knew, or more precisely claimed to know, every Greek in Park Extension through what was then her world wide web. When Mom would arrive, a woman would usually already be there waiting for her warthog, or whatever she asked the butcher for, to be chopped into bits. Said woman would relate to my mother the latest horrific misfortune that allegedly befell some unfortunate sap in Park Ex. Then the gossiper would leave. While Mom waited for her order another woman would inevitably appear, and of course she took it upon herself to pass on the news, adding her own personal twist to the tale.
Poor George probably had to listen to a hundred different versions of the same story all day long, but he would never participate. In fact, I rarely heard him utter anything other than the occasional grunt when wrestling a difficult steer from a meat hook or Greek profanity when he’d accidentally amputate another of his fingertips while dissecting a walrus or whatever. The customer would simply tell George what they wanted, he’d nod ever so slightly to show that he understood, and went about the task of preparing the order and wrapping it up in butcher paper, which he’d then weigh and price with a magic marker. No patron ever dared barter for a better price or ask him to trim of the fat from a steak, probably out of fear they’d end up in the meat locker hanging next to the manatee.
It never bothered me in the least that Mom would occupy her time with relaying erroneous stories about other people. What annoyed me was Mom’s insistence that she impart the vital piece of information to me during the walk home. She’d usually begin by asking if I had ever heard of a particular person.
“Do you know Tasso Papathanasios?”
“No,” I’d answer, knowing that something horrible must’ve happened to that poor soul.
“You have to know him. He goes to Barclay. He has a brother named Nick who’s your age!” she’d insist, unaware that eight-year-olds do not often exchange the same meaningless social information as adults. My main concern at that age was how to become Guy Lafleur or Han Solo, not whose parents are divorcing or whose cousin was torn apart by wild dogs. Also, Barclay Elementary School was at its operational peak with over twelve-hundred students, and all the boys were named either Tasso, George, Nick or Christos, and everyone was everyone else’s relative. It was entirely possible that I’d be familiar with that person’s face and not be acquainted with the specific individual to whom she was referring, but his name didn’t ring a bell.
“Anyways,” she’d continue, because for whatever reason she felt obliged to pass on this precious nugget of hearsay no matter what, “he was riding his bicycle the other day, and hit a bump or something, and fell off, and cut his leg badly, and it got infected, and they had to amputate it!”
“So what,” I’d ask, “Why are you telling me this? I said I don’t know this kid.”
“That poor boy lost his leg! Don’t you care?”
“What do you want from me? You want me to cry? What good does this do me?”
“It’s just a lesson for you to be more careful on your bicycle. You know I don’t want you to get hurt.”
This was the same woman who would mercilessly beat me with a hard, rubber slipper when I’d horribly misbehave, like speaking when not spoken to, or using bad table manners, and suddenly she was concerned for my wellbeing?
To be fair to my mother, child abuse is a very common practice among Greeks. If any child of a Greek ever acts out, the parent’s inborn reaction is to strike the child as hard as they can, and in public if possible. In fact a periodical called “Child Abuse Monthly” is published in
The next day at school I searched the playground for a kid with a wooden leg or crutches. I even asked around a bit, but no one knew what I was talking about.
Did one of the busybodies just make the whole thing up? Was the story changed from woman to woman until embellished beyond recognition? Did Mom hear it wrong? I never found out, although she continued to insist on its accuracy.
My mother, like most Greek women, was constantly exaggerating and overreacting to situations. When my brother Peter was seven or eight years old, he thought he was Evel Knievel and decided to build a ramp out of plywood in order to jump a large puddle in the lane adjacent to our house with his bicycle. He of course only managed to injure himself, badly skinning his knees and elbows. My mother’s first reaction was to panic as though Peter were scared for life, and this was the greatest tragedy that had befallen any family in the history of humanity. Then she carefully cleaned his wounds with a disgusting brand of iodine that coloured his arms and legs red for days. Then to teach him a lesson she beat him with her slipper. A lot of good it did: The next day, “Perilous Pete” tried the jump again, and was inexplicably surprised when unsuccessful for a second time.
“Mom! A mosquito bit me!” I’d say.
“Oh good God, no! The humanity! Now you are scarred for life!” she’d shriek.
“Mom! The mail is late!”
“Call a doctor! I’m having chest pains!” she’d cry.
She’s been having a heart attack a day since the late seventies.
My dad, on the other hand, was like Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzeneggar in an action movie, in that he could shrug off anything. If a building were to collapse on Dad, he would miraculously emerge from the rubble unscathed, shake away the dust, and keep going without getting the slightest bit upset.
My father survived a gunshot wound, fistfights, multiple car accidents, a stabbing, two hernia operations, haemorrhoids, major back surgery, and three marriages.
Dad’s technique for enduring the aforementioned was to simply throw up his hands and exclaim “Ahh!” as if it were nothing.
“Dad! A shark just bit off your legs!”
He’d throw up his hands and say: “Ahh!”
“Dad! A meteor is about to strike the Earth and wipe out all of humanity!”
He’d throw up his hands and say: “Ahh!”
Beyond his fiery pro-communist political rhetoric (the only thing he was ever passionate about) and the occasional unfunny and often disturbing off-colour joke, Dad rarely conversed with me on any serious level.
Mom continued to regale me with her tales from the meat counter even after I was older and stopped accompanying her to the grocery store.
On one such occasion, she told me of a Park Ex waiter’s sad fate. Apparently he ran out into the street after a deadbeat who was trying to “dine and dash”, and was subsequently hit by a car and killed. Strangely enough, I never heard a thing about that incident in the media.
“C’mon Ma,” I said “I told you I really don’t want to hear anymore of those dumb stories!”
“But he had a wife and five children!”
“Well, he should’ve kept his pants on!” I retorted.
Much to my surprise, she laughed at that.
For a long time I never understood why Mom was so obsessed with telling me about the misadventures of others. And it wasn’t just me, either. I recall an occasion when I arose to the faint sound of her telling the dog about the man down the street who regained consciousness one morning in a bathtub full of ice without his pancreas after a night of partying with a strange, non-Greek woman he should not have trusted. Another time I caught Mom alerting her parakeets to the dangers of not returning chain letters.
That’s when I finally got it: For Mom, it wasn’t about the family trampled to death at Granby Zoo by a rogue hippopotamus; it was about talking. She just liked gabbing endlessly.
Soon my brother and I became adults and moved out. Suddenly finding extra time on her hands, Mom became more active in the community and church, eventually hooking up with a group of old hens her age who do nothing but blather on about ridiculous, inane matters. Park Extension went from being occupied by the Hellenic Community to South Asian domination. As time went by Spiro, Peter and George retired, and the grocery was sold to three brothers from
I recently went to the SPG for a litre of milk and a lotto ticket. Even though the setup inside was essentially the same, it felt weird. Sure, the old meat counter was still there, but alas, with the Greek women gone nevermore will pathetic yarns of woe and misfortune be spun before the Butcher of Park Ex.
SOMETHING MORE THAN HUMAN
In my experience nothing, not even religion, can turn a good person’s heart black like cash, money, dough, moolah, bread. You could fuck another man's wife, you could damage his car, but if you take two cents out of his pocket, whoo boy are you in trouble. I have witnessed more lives destroyed, more friendships and marriages ended, more families torn apart over money matters than due to infidelities or alcohol abuse.
I always felt that “greedy” or “cheap” were the last words anyone would use to describe me. But there was one incident where I surprised even myself.
This story begins, as my tales often do, at my favourite coffee shop on the corner of Hutchison and Fairmount, on a cold autumn night.
I was having a coffee and engaging in sparkling conversation with my friend Nick, when he suddenly had an inspiration.
“Hey,” he said, “let’s go to the Casino!”
I was reluctant to go to the Casino that Sunday night because it was one of those rare times I was strapped for cash, but Nick talked me into it.
Nick is a successful stockbroker and anyone whose spent time with these people knows and understands that they are a bunch of utterly insane, obsessive, superstitious risk-takers who dangerously dance on the razor’s edge of catastrophe. They engage in extreme death-sports, have mistresses and secret families, or are constantly coked up and partying with hookers. Ahh, hookers and cocaine: The Classic Combination. All you need for a good time. Never can you possibly make a misstep; no way can anything go wrong when you have hookers and cocaine.
Now Nick is a family man. He has a wife and three small children. He doesn’t wrestle alligators, drink much, do drugs, party with raunchy bimbos or cheat on his wife. His only indulgence is an occasional excursion to the Casino de Montreal or the Hippodrome. And by occasional I mean three or four times a year.
Nick is by no means a high roller. He prefers to play at the five or ten dollar blackjack tables, and has never lost more than a few hundred dollars, which he could easily afford, although he more often than not breaks even or makes a small profit. For him it’s all about the thrill, like when he invests in the market. He approaches with a strategy, plays intelligently and intensely, and tends to do well. In fact, he takes gambling so seriously I once saw Nick purposely spill a drink on a woman sitting next to him who was playing poorly and, he felt, messing up the card order, to get her to leave the table. Nick started winning after she left, so he was probably right.
About a dozen years ago Nick, his then girlfriend now wife Nathalie and I went on a vacation to the
It was a slow evening at the Casino de Montreal with many open spaces at the ten dollar tables. We found one and I sat behind Nick as he played. After a few rounds, he was ahead about eighty dollars. He offered to spot me sixty dollars so that I may play as well, but I refused. I had no problem gambling with my own cash, but for me accepting his money and possibly losing it felt like taking food out of his kids’ mouths.
Nick kept insisting and eventually I relented, agreeing to pay him half of whatever I had left at the end of the night. It wasn’t long before I began to win and Nick began to loose, so he decided to move to another, higher minimum table.
After about ninety minutes I had four-hundred dollars worth of chips before of me. I swore to myself earlier to stop at that amount, but then I got greedy and decided to extend it to five hundred.
What happened? You guessed it: I lost the next two hands in a row. Until then I hadn’t lost two in a row all evening. So I wisely took my three-hundred and eighty bucks and left the table post-haste. I immediately went to where Nick was playing, and based on the amount of chips in front of him I figured he was probably loosing. I decided to give him two-hundred dollars (ten dollars more than fifty percent), to help him out and because it all did come from his original investment. Hey, one-hundred and eighty smackers is still a pretty good haul for an hour and a half.
Nick took the chips and I went to cash in my share. By the time I returned twenty minutes later he had lost all his money and the two hundred I gave him.
My first thoughts? Why the fuck didn’t I lie and just give him his sixty bucks back and say I lost the rest? He didn’t know how I was doing! Better the money end up in my pocket than in the coffers of those government pricks! That clown just gave the money I won back to those fucking bastards!
I swear I wanted to punch him in the head and kick him in the balls until he bled! I was so pissed I hardly said another word to him the rest of the evening.
A few days later I had cooled down and told him what went through my head that night at the Casino. Nick had felt I was upset at the time; he could always read me pretty well (we’ve know each other since we were fifteen). However he wasn’t surprised that a person could get so bent out of shape over what was essentially a small amount of money that I wouldn’t even have were it not for him.
“Don’t worry, it happens to everyone. I see it every day,” Nick said, “I’ve been in banking for twenty years, remember? Money can make people real ugly real fast. It’s even happened to me. No big deal.”
“But I have such high standards for myself. I don’t want to be that kind of person,” I said.
“What did you think? You are better than everyone else? You think you are something more than human? We all have bad thoughts from time to time. The important thing is that you didn’t act on them. Ultimately you kept your self control. Hell, you even walked away from a blackjack table while you were ahead. Even I have trouble doing that. That takes a lot of discipline. And you ended up with a few extra bills on your pocket. All things considered, it looks to me that you had a pretty good evening. Just forget about it!”
We have not paid a visit to the Casino in a while. I don’t really look forward to going back, but one thing for sure: I’m never going to gamble with someone else’s money again….unless I find a really hot table.
SACKED!
How did I get here?
It felt as if everyone on the street was staring at me; like I had a huge, flashing capital “L” on my forehead. How does a man go from running an office to trying to flag down a cab on a sunny mid-June morning while sitting on a public bench with a cardboard box on his lap?
I worked a thirteen-hour shift the previous Friday, staying late to instruct the carpet cleaners I had hired. Monday morning I was there and hour early to catalogue over eighty boxes of old office records and have them sent to storage; the final task in what had been an arduous four-month office renovation and reorganization. I’d never worked so hard.
Before I could complete the task, my boss asked me to meet her in the conference room. I showed up with a spring in my step because it was the final week of my probationary period, and I was certain I would be rewarded for my efforts with a permanent position that included full salary and benefits.
The two main bosses were not in that day. My supervisor, the Head of Branch Administration for Quebec, was waiting for me with the sixth-floor manager, which was odd because I had never seen him on the seventh floor before. She was quick and to the point. They were not offering me the position. I would get two weeks severance pay and a taxi coupon for a ride home. They gave me five minutes to gather my things and get out.
None of my now former co-workers would so much as look me in the eye as I cleaned out my desk. The office was silent but for the ubiquitous humming of the florescent lights. I sombrely marched to the elevator with the pot-be
As I got off on the ground floor I heard the goofball say “good luck”, or something equally banal. I fought the urge to answer him by saying “up yours with a broomstick, fat-head”, choosing instead to ignore him and quietly walk away with what little dignity I had left.
So there I sat on a bench not far from the office tower feeling dejected and emasculated. I’d never been fired before.
My friends said I should’ve told them off; raised some kind off fuss. But that would’ve played right into their hands. They wanted me to fly off the handle so they could say “You see! That’s why we fired you!” or “That’s just what we expected from a classless individual such as yourself!” and I wasn’t about to surrender that point to them.
I was determined not to be defeated. I thought a man of my knowledge and experience could find another job in no time. Within a week I was sitting across the desk from a head-hunter who specialized in finding work for people in financial services. I gave him what was at the time the best pitch of my life.
“Wow,” he uttered, “you are impressive…but I could never find work for you. You are all wrong for banking. Know what? You should get into show business!”
So essentially I wasted the last seven years of my life, and I needed this clown to tell me that. I had a B.A. in Communications Studies with a minor in English Lit, (a degree that, I easily admit, ranks in usefulness somewhere between Philosophy and Political Science). I’d spent the last half of my twenties managing a record store while trying to get into the entertainment industry. Despite several unpaid internships and numerous other endeavours, I wasn’t unable to make a successful go at it, so I got into banking, and hated every minute I was there.
The pay was good, but the work itself was tedious and unfulfilling. I muddled through bureaucracy, office politics and nepotism, toiling for years in misery doing low-level customer service jobs, and being passed over for promotion time and again, eventually applying to a competing financial institution seeking employment as a broker’s assistant. I gave them what were at the time the three best interviews of my life, and they came back with a surprise offer for an even higher level position: Assistant Branch Administrator and Branch Services Administrator. After years of struggling, I had finally arrived! I couldn’t have felt better. At last some recognition and respect for my years of hard work.
Now I couldn’t have felt worse.
It was all new to me, being unemployed. I had been either working or in school, or both, my entire adult life. To that point I‘d never even been on U.I.
How did I get here?
After some soul searching and a wonderful summer romance with a sweetheart of a woman in Toronto, where I was testing the job market, I decided it was time to get serious about rejoining the workforce.
A shave and a haircut later, with my best suit on and dozens of updated C.V.’s tucked under my arm, I started knocking on doors and emailing anywhere I thought would be fun place to work. I began visiting employment agencies and calling up old friends and acquaintances. I was ready for anything. Or at least I thought I was.
Unbeknownst to me, I had just entered my “too” period, during which I was told by interviewers that I was either too old, too young, too qualified, too unqualified, too tall, too short, too smart, too stupid, too loud, too quiet, too fat, too thin, too hairy, too…well, you get the picture.
I once worked with a seven-foot tall man named Ron, who was a former professional basketball player. Late in his athletic career the Canadian National Team on which he played had hired a new General Manager.
“The moment I shook his hand for the first time I knew that I wasn’t going to make the team that year. I just knew it,” Ron told me.
He was replaced by a player the General Manger preferred who, according to Ron, could not hit the ocean from a boat.
I finally understood what Ron meant. Human Resources people are usually the cheeriest, most terminally happy people one could come across. Countless times when they met me for the first time and shook my hand I could tell by their forced smile or body language that the interview would be futile.
Other times their mood would change during the interview, usually when they’d ask why I was no longer employed and I didn’t have an answer, (they never told my why they let me go at my last job). The interviewer would eye me suspiciously as if I was trying to cover-up some misdeed. Who knows what sins I have committed in the imagination of HR reps all over Montreal. I had become stigmatized, but to be honest, were I in their shoes I would’ve been suspicious as well.
I then entered my frustrated period.
Being rejected for a great, high-level job is one thing. Having an HR Rep tell you that they would not even want you to work on a loading dock part-time at night is another. But the real frustration came from the demeaning aptitude exams and IQ tests employment agencies would make me take, despite being a university graduate with management experience. They were testing me for low-level, mind-numbing data entry or customer service positions. I was a good sport at first, but after several interviews where I was again called “overqualified”, I had had enough.
I made an appointment with yet another agency. Upon arriving at their offices an assistant led me into an exam room and handed another of those asinine tests. I sat there and stared at the test for over twenty minutes, almost crying.
How did I get here?
When the assistant returned with another candidate, I told her plainly I wasn’t going to do the test and demanded to speak to one of their reps a.s.a.p.
She kindly obliged me and within minutes I was pleading my case before one of their career councillors, who immediately set up an interview at their head office for a job as a career councillor with their company. Finally, some progress.
But at that interview the HR Rep shot me a funny glare that said “you don’t look like someone who should work here”. Needless to say I didn’t get the gig.
I hit an all-time low when rejected for a low-level position by an HR Rep whom I found out during our meeting had less experience interviewing people for jobs than I did.
Time passed and the date my benefits would expire was just on the horizon. In desperation I started applying to banks again.
The first opportunity was from an investment broker for a position that was quite similar to my last job. I left nothing to chance, and arrived almost an hour early for our conference. I pulled out all the stops and made an impassioned case for my employment. I put on a show for the man, and left my interviewer dumbstruck for what seemed like forever. Finally, he broke his silence.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I said enthusiastically, thinking he was about to ask how soon I could start.
“Why aren’t you president of some company or something? You are incredible…and so dynamic! I’m sure you would do a great job here. But I’m not going to hire you.”
I sank into my chair like a leaky blow-up doll.
“Why?” I sighed.
“For this job I had in mind a five-foot two middle-aged woman. You are too big, in size and in personality. Most of my clients are the button-down, bland, inoffensive, West Island types, and frankly, you would frighten them,” he confessed.
As hurtful as that was, it was strangely refreshing to hear aloud what likely went through the minds of countless HR Reps.
“Then why did you call me here?” I asked.
“Just curious. Sorry and good luck to you,” he said as he offered his hand.
I took his hand, shook it firmly, thanked him, and slinked away feeling like The King of the Losers. Even at the peak of my “too” period, I had never been called too scary.
Banking had found a way to reach from beyond the grave and deliver unto me one final, humiliating knee to the groin.
A short while later an agency called with a job opportunity. A bank was looking to hire telephone customer service reps for their insurance division, something I considered to be a huge step backward. I hated insurance companies and vowed never to seek employment from them (or banks again), and now I found myself reluctantly agreeing to work for both.
I was told an HR Rep from the bank would telephone me for a pre-interview. I awaited that call like the condemned await the hangman’s noose. After a few days and still no word, I was optimistic that they had decided I was “too whatever” and weren’t going to contact me. Then finally, one sad day, they did.
The Rep seemed friendly (they all are until they meet me face to face) and I feigned enthusiasm (a cinch to do on the phone with over fourteen years of customer service experience under my belt). The Rep informed me the job involved getting an insurance license, which I again pretended to be excited about. She told me of the obligatory six-week course (for which I would be paid), and that even if they didn’t hire me, I would still be qualified to work in insurance anywhere in Quebec.
Oh, joy!
She asked if I had worked in a call center before and I told her I did for three years with a former employer’s credit card division, conveniently omitting that I despised working there.
The more she talked, the more my hands shook and my heart raced. I broke into a cold sweat. Every aspect of the job she described made me physically ill, but I bit my lip and lied like a bastard. I even went so far as to say I was excited about the prospect of working there.
“Great,” she said, “when can you come in for an interview?”
How did I get here?
There was long pause during which I struggled to get the words out; I couldn’t take it anymore.
“I…I…I’m sorry! I can’t do this!” I said, “no, I can’t I’m sorry, this job…no I can’t! I’m sorry, I can’t!” and hung up the phone.
One afternoon, after my benefits had expired, the telephone rang unexpectedly. After almost eleven excruciating months and the slow and painful draining of every ounce of my confidence and self-esteem, I was finally back online, back on duty, back at work; this time at a bookstore.
The pay isn’t what it was at the bank, but hey, I got no complaints; I like the job, I like the store, and I like the clients. I don’t even think of it as a step backward. And it sure beats working in insurance.
SVEN
I knew a lot of characters growing up. Some were interesting and funny; others were a total waste of space. And then there was Sven.
I was the first one to call him Sven. Most called him “The German”, and Nick’s wife, for reasons only known to her, called him “Tweety”, but I always thought he looked like a Swede, so I labelled him “Sven Olafsson”, the only moniker to really catch on.
One afternoon I was hanging out with Nick, his brother and his brother’s gang on the front steps of their parent’s house on
“Hey guys!” he said, “guess who I just ran into? J---, that bitch who tells you your fortune on TV!”
J--- was a blonde Québécoise astrologer what had a 2-minute daily spot on the local TV station CFCF (located only a few blocks away in beautiful downtown Park Extension) on weekday afternoons. She had a special phone number as well, where a person could call in and for a small fee, receive a personal tarot reading or whatever from one of her psychics. J--- had a huge, flowing mane of blonde hair, and an over-the-top, bubbly personality and accent that often made her the target ridicule.
Now personally, I’m not really into all that fortune telling stuff. Sure, I read my daily horoscope, and have my astrological sign tattooed on one of my shoulders, but I’m not the kind of person who winds my entire life or every decision I make around whether or not the moon is in the seventh house, or Jupiter aligns with Mars; and as for J---, I did not deem her a charlatan. To be fair her ads did state that readings were for entertainment purposes only, and she never claimed to be able to converse with spirits, dead relatives, heal the sick or anything like that. As far as I was concerned, she was harmless as an Ouija board at a garden party.
Sven continued with his story: “So I saw her on Ogilvy, leaving CFCF, and I like, went up to her and said that I called her number and the future they predicted for me didn’t come true, and I want my money back!” he said, laughing his ass off as if he were the greatest wit since George Bernard Shaw, and what he did was some monumental, original accomplishment. .
Everyone on the front steps began to laugh uncontrollably like a group of brain-damaged hyenas. Everyone, that is, with the exception of Nick and myself.
“What was her reaction to your statement?” I asked.
“She told me: ‘Sorry, I can’t’! and walked away. That bitch is such a fuckin’ loser!” said Sven.
Sven was no Dorothy Parker, and that crowd on the front steps was no Algonquin Round Table. J--- probably ran into at least one smart-ass goofball like Sven every day, and learned to not let it get to her.
I imagined what she should have done: After Sven asked for a refund she’d say “Give me a dollar and I’ll tell you something that is one hundred percent guaranteed to come true!”
After Sven would give her the dollar, she’d say: “No one will give you a really hard kick in the nuts today!”, and then plant one of her stiletto-heeled pumps right into his goonies with full force.
As he’d roll around on the ground, reeling in agony, she would say: “I guess I was wrong again,” and flick the dollar back in his face.
NICKISH
It all began during a pool party and barbeque at my friend Nick’s new house. After a refreshing dip I took a seat next to his lovely wife Nat and pleasantly engaged her in sparkling conversation…until I removed the towel from my shoulders, exposing several tattoos. Nat immediately turned sour as a Granny Smith apple, grabbed my arm and said coldly: “Stop telling Nick to get a tattoo, okay!”
I was left speechless. Sure, I recently told Nick that I was planning to get some more ink in me, and he expressed interest in doing the same. I even asked him if Nat would mind, and he said “no”. All I did was simply suggest that we go at the same time, not pressuring him in any way.
Apparently Nat did have a problem Nick becoming a “marked man”. He conveniently left out that little detail so I wouldn’t discover her objection and refuse to cooperate. In order to get Nat off his back, Nick threw me under the bus, telling her that it was all my idea and I was begging him to go along, (it never occurred to Nat that I had already been tattooed four times; what did I have to gain by coercing Nick into doing the same? And really, why would I? I was perfectly capable of going to a tattoo parlour on my own).
After thirteen years of marriage, and being fully aware that his nickname is “The Weasel”, Nat had yet to master the finer points of Nickish.
Nickish is exactly the same as English, but the key to interpreting it lies in understanding how Nick uses ambiguities, hyperbole, vagueness and inaccuracies when communicating.
For example, when we were teenagers Nick worked at a fast-food restaurant with a pretty young lady I liked named Eve. I was too shy to approach her until Nick told me she thought I was cute. Overjoyed and invigorated with a new-found confidence, I gathered up the nerve to ask Eve out. She turned me down flat.
I was flabbergasted. Nick told me she liked me! What could have happened?
Upon telling Nick what had occurred, he said I must’ve done something to turn her off, which left me even more self-conscious and less self-assured than before. I discovered later it was all bullshit! Nick had no idea if Eve liked me or not; he just wanted to give me the courage to speak to her. Now for the record that part didn’t bother me…hell, he did me a favour. But continuing the lie afterwards and making it look like I was the one at fault to cover his own ass that was classic “Weasel”.
The “Tattoo Incident” was not the first time Nick played Nat and myself off of each other. When they started dating, I’d often call Nick up and ask if he wanted to see a movie (or whatever). Nick would say that Nat preferred they be alone or had made other plans (or the like) so that I would be pissed at her rather than him.
The gravest example of this was about eighteen years ago when I called Nick to see if he wanted to do something. He said “yes”, and that he would call me back in a few minutes. I never heard from him again that evening.
The next day when I called to find out what had happened, he told me he went over to Nat’s place for dinner, and while there Nat’s best friend Yasmina and her boyfriend Tasso, (two single-digit IQ humans that, for reasons to this day I still have a tremendous amount of difficulty fully comprehending, Nat enjoyed spending, or more accurately wasting, time with), had unexpectedly popped in, and they ended up hanging out all night.
“My sympathies,” I said, knowing that Nick did not much care for them or their company.
And it all made perfect sense to me. I mean, who would voluntarily spend time with those two clowns?
So I blamed Nat yet again. When I later confronted her, she said that the evening had been planned all along, and Nick knew about it.
By then I was starting to catch on about Nickish. I thought Nat would as well, especially after an event that transpired about a year after they were married.
The three of us were going to Old Montreal for dinner with Nick’s sister Yota and her husband Billy. Nick said he just spoke to them on the phone and they were on their way. Of course we arrived at the agreed upon meeting point way before they did, and after a half hour of waiting, Nat finally exploded.
“You said they just left! They should have been here by now! Where are they?”
“Well, they didn’t exactly leave…” Nick said sheepishly.
“What!?! You always do that!” Nat exclaimed, “Andreas is right, you are a weasel!”
But apparently Nat had learned nothing.
I often find myself explaining the finer points of Nickish to his new associates and acquaintances. I recall an occasion when a friend of Nick’s named Bernie complained that he invited him to a round golf a week earlier, and but then Nick never called back and they ended up not going.
“You see, Bernie,” I told him, “for Nick a ‘yes’ is a ‘maybe’ and a ‘maybe’ is a ‘no’.”
“What happens when he says ‘no’?”
“Oh, he never says ‘no’. That’s why he’s so popular. Everyone knows they will at least get a positive answer out of him.”
Here are some other examples of Nickish:
“I’ll call you right back” means you’ll have to chase after him, because Nick never returns calls or checks his messages (actually he does, he just lies about it). Leaving a message has become so futile that I don’t even bother anymore. And Nick never answers his mobile.
If he misses a lunch date, you’ll get an “I didn’t write it down”, implying that it somehow was not his fault. That is his way of saying “I forgot”.
“I’ll be there in five minutes” translates to “I may be there sometime today”.
“I’m just around the courner” is in fact “I’m somewhere in the hemisphere”.
A short time after the “Tattoo Incident” I was having dinner with Nick, Nat and their children. I told them about these new pre-packaged, microwavable rice and chicken entrees I had just discovered.
“Oh, I know those,” Nick piped up, “they have then at the SuperMegaClub store. I’ll buy you some next time I’m there. They’re like ten dollars for a box of twenty.”
“No they’re not! You have no idea! You’re just saying that because you automatically assume they have everything at SuperMegaClub for a dime a dozen!” Nat said angrily.
I think she’s finally starting to catch on.
