Wild Game

I went moose hunting today. I didn't see a moose but I did find a gorilla. The gorilla. That gorilla. In that picture, you know, the one of me and that gorilla. That you took. I've framed it in glass, part of a triptych in black and white. On the left is a marble statue at the top of the National Parliament Building in Havannah, Cuba. On the right side is a dead frog floating in a chlorine pool. And, between them both, is a picture of me, wearing your hat, in front of the highway monument gorilla. I am smiling at you, so naturally and easy, it, the smile looks real, even to me.

Before the picture, Jack, who hadn't smoked a day in his life until his divorce at forty, fell asleep with a lit cigarette between his lips and died in the ensuing fire at the age of forty three. You said, "Baby, baby, baby. What's it going to take to cheer you up?"

I said, "I need a road trip."

Forty-two hours before the picture we dropped off the Boy, the one I'd had a crush on since before you and I met, at his friend's campground. In fact, the night you and I met, I'd been at the pub telling my best friend all about him when he walked in with a girl.

"Huh," I said, watching the two of them walking hand in hand to the bar, "I hadn't considered that possibility at all." When my friend and I finished laughing we ordered another two rounds which is how I ended up pretending to french kiss you through the window pane before we ever spoke a word. (I like to blame the alcohol but you and I both know, I'd have probably done the same sober.) This, the pub and the kiss and the poem you recited when we stumbled out into the street after closing time, are all a years worth of hours before the road trip.

So after dropping off this boy whom I still had a crush on at the camper his friends dubbed the "The Silver Bullet" which, it turns out, was only a double entendre to you and me, after this but still before the gorilla, we spent a night in a nicotine coated cabin under linens that smelled like fermaldehyde and moss. when I couldn't sleep, you called me back to bed and, placing your lips beside my ear, told me the story, again, about your favourite snowboard run. When you got to the part about the unblemished powdery snow and made the swooshing noise that tickled my ear, the vibration made my toes curl for the third time that night.

Thirty-two hours earlier there was that small town with the best ever second hand store, where I had to buy the blue cowboy shirt with snaps and the brown wool sweater, the one like your ski sweater without all the holes, because both were too small on you. After that, any time I wore either one you'd say, "Man, it tears me that that's too small for me," and it made me happy to make you jealous over something so mundane.

Thirty hours prior was the 200 km side road that dead ended in a peculiar town with a two table coffee shop and a grocery store that sold only blighted vegetables and expired milk. The people in both establishments eyed us suspiciously but, while I have no patience for small talk, you quickly won them over with your rent-a-smile and bad jokes.

Twenty-two hours before we were caught in a pulp trailer checkstop by a trucker who went around us to park in front of us and so must have seen everything. "No, wait, c'mon who cares," you said but I was already back in the driver's seat. You smiled and made the airhorn gesture at the driver as we drove past, then you mooned him as we drove away. I ought to have been embarassed but I couldn't stop laughing.

Twenty hours before the photo there were hours of silence; just us and the road and motorized metal containers hurtling behind us like our blurry pasts or towards us like our even blurrier futures. You hit repeat to listen to Leonard Cohen's, "I'm Your Man." three times. After the second listen you said quietly, more to yourself than to me, "I think I'm starting to get it." I didn't know what "it" was and I didn't ask. We finally found relief in the guise of a hitchhiker. A tree planter. Money for school, he said. Was it to be a doctor? Or an engineer? Neither of us cared. He was glad for the ride, we were grateful for the company. He was not either of us. Nothing else was important.

Just eighteen hours before that photo we played pool and owned the juke box in a seedy bar in Thunder Bay, until a drunk girl in white hightops and a ZZ Top t-shirt challenged us to pool and tried to pick a fist fight with me.  You were disappointed I didn't take the bait. This after checking into the Art Deco 50's style hotel, and the steak dinner at the Casino that made you throw a tantrum which in turn made me laugh til I cried.

Four hours before you took that photo I tried telling you the story about the conversation I had with the old man in the Swiss Chalet parking lot only I got the sequence all wrong and somehow it sounded like I had told him I wanted you to propose. "OHHH," you said, "If that's what you want let's do it. Let's get married right now." I told you to fuck off.

After all of this, as if only to prove the absurdity of us, there is a black and white photo of me in front of a gorilla, wearing your straw cowboy hat and smiling at you like I mean every dimple of it. when I got the film developed I couldn't remember where the picture was taken. What remains vivid in my memory is the minute after you snapped the picture.

Three jeering pre-teen girls came walking down the highway, resentful of their tiny town and the tourists passing through to bigger cities with brighter lights and cooler, harder boys. You turned to watch them and I knew you saw your own daughter and wondered what she despised now. There you were, a grown man, wondering what they liked and what was the secret codeword to get into their club. And I, watching you, wanted to tell you, reassure you, there is no way to crack that clique when you are older than twenty, but I realized no matter how many miles we traveled together, the distance between us would always remain the same so I didn't say anything at all.

We got back in the rental car and drove away. We didn't stop again.