Riverside Revisited - Chapter 4, Getting Primed for Yaybars

At six o'clock that Friday night, after I'd had my nap, supper, a shower and brushed my teeth, I was feeling refreshed. The air outside was still hot and humid but a soft warm breeze made walking on the shadeless streets bearable. I walked around the corner to Coates' street, up to his house and off we went down Belleperche on our way to the liquor store at the K-Mart plaza.

The spring thaw had been over weeks ago and so we cut through Schiller's Bush, what had once been our earlier childhood magic playground, a deep and mysterious forest from pre-pubescent summers spent furrowing deeper into the woods and discovering the furtive pleasures of cigarettes, matches, bonfires, Playboy magazines and tree-forts. On nights like this, the bush would be alive and fresh - still muddy in spots, Polliwog Pond still full of water and the sound of young frogs around it, no mosquitos out yet and only the sound of birds and scared rabbits running as you walked along the wagon trail, stepping around puddles, pushing branches out of your way and listening all the while, never knowing what was behind the bush, feeling a little apprehensive remembering those old stories of bums that lived in Schiller's Bush and lived on lost little kids and then finally reaching the open fields that lay before the railroad tracks and your nerves would begin to settle down as if a great danger had been passed and in the next moment your heart lept into your throat as a pheasant would take off into the air from the knee-high weeds three feet in front of you, startling the whole forest into silence and scaring the shit out of you.

We would walk along the tracks, breaking the monotony of the lack of passing trains by walking balanced on the rails for half a mile, walk over a few planks that made a bridge over the ditch which ran along the tracks, climb K-Mart Hill, cross the back parking lot and go buy two bottles of 'Rat' our favorite sherry - a dollar eighty-five a bottle, 19 per-cent alcohol. Minutes later we would be on the back side of K-mart Hill, hidden from the plaza and parking lot, looking down the tracks at the Detroit skyline, looking straight ahead at the fields and bush we had just crossed and looking down at the screw-on bottle caps that lay dropped at our feet, clink bottles together in a toast and then look into the bottom of those bottles tilted to our mouths and see in the distorted reflections of the scene around us, the promise of things to come.

"So, Howie. Have you figured out what this book of yours is going to be about yet?"

"I don't know. Harlequin Romance seems to sell pretty well." This cheap shot gets a chuckle out of both of us and I continue, "Seriously. My mother reads them all the time. I don't think it would be that hard to write one."

"Well, what if you're just going to write by formula, why don't you imitate Harold Robbins? They sell a lot more than Harlequin Romance and are probably easier to write."

"Can't. Too much sex. First rule about writing? Write about what you know. I'd better stick with the heartache and traumas of wealthy virgins for the time being."

"Speaking of the rich," says Coates. "I was with Terry at this party in Detroit last weekend and there was this chick from France who says she's a model and wants to stay in the States and so she's thinking of getting a marriage of convenience just to be able to stay there."

"Well, that lets you out. Wes, you're Canadian!"

Coates gets a kick out of this. "Yeah, but I didn't tell her that. No, I'm serious. If I'm going to live in California, I have to become an American citizen and marrying one might just be the way to do it."

"I knew you'd give up on that idea about joining the Marines."

"Yeah, this is less painful and has better benefits."

"Sure, and if you play your cards right and find a rich babe willing to marry you, you can file for divorce and get paid alimony."

"That's what I'm banking on, Howie."

Our conversations on The Hill always went like that. For the most part, the talk circled around the future - images of money and less boring places to call home and images and fragments of dreams. With Coates and I, escape was a tangible reality. Something we had in common and seemingly shared with no one else. I was moving north; he to California. Other people always complained of living in Windsor. I think it was an expected civic duty, like taking out your garbage. But for many Windsorites, their talk was as flatulent as the city's nickname, 'The City of Roses' when considered in the context of the expression 'to drop a rose.'

For Coates, escape was forthcoming. With each pay-cheque, two-thirds went into a special bank account. This was his California account. He had already asked for an indefinite leave of absence from his job and had paid for and booked a one-way flight to Los Angeles on September 21st, a day deliberately chosen because it was the last day of summer. Supposedly it's always summer in California. I was escaping to a less exotic locale and the only conceptions of London I had which endeared it to me was that someone had once described it to me as 'quaint.'

Coates that evening looked resplendent. Seemingly having just stepped out of a travel brochure for southern California, he was a beautiful sight to behold after a hungover hot afternoon. He was dressed in light colours. A pair of tan suede brogues worn without socks, white pants and white linen shirt, a soft brown belt. On his head he wore cheap bright yellow plastic sunglasses he had bought on a whim and had set him back fifty cents at Bill's Confectionary. This was topped by a light brown derby, a nice touch and a hat I admired with envy even though I knew it would only get him into trouble at Yaybars. This elegant ensemble was compromised by an old, much loved beige windbreaker whose sleeves had been cut off at the elbows with a pair of dull scissors.

With his deep tan, blond hairs climbing out the top of his open-collared shirt, his lean strong build, sharp facial features - all this crowned by mane of golden curls, he looked like the son of Apollo, appropriately the Greek ideal of male perfection and upon meeting him outside his house set against the grimy drabness of that suburban asphalt driveway, I looked at this young Adonis, blinded and stunned by his radiant beauty and called him 'Sunshine.' It is thus, I always like to remember Coates.

I myself was dressed also in West Coast fashion, only mine was a style found north of San Francisco. Dressed in Levis (it was the mandatory dress code at Riverside High - if you were new to school and showed up in Wranglers, it would only happen once,) black&white P.F. Flyers (far too hot for work-boots,) a Neil Young flannel shirt and long, straggly hair, I was the epitomy of the 'California laid-back' look.

After finishing our wine sometime after sundown, hitching a ride up to the river, we made an unlikely couple entering through the back door of Yaybars.

... Next Installment - Yahoos at Yaybars.