Riverside Revisited - Chapter 5. The Funniest Guy I've Ever Known

That brown derby proved to be very popular that night in Yaybars. There were a couple of old friends of Coates from his basketball days sitting in the back room with their girlfriends and so we sat with them. The girls were much taken with the hat.Indeed, they paid it more attention than they did us or their boyfriends. Passing the derby back and forth between them, it sat briefly poised like an unsteady turtle upon their heads as they gossiped between themselves about some poor soul who had once had the misfortune of knowing them.

"She took off from home and went to Montreal."

"Alone!"

"Then she hitch-hiked to Vancouver."

"With a guy!"

"And now she's back here."

"Alone!"

"She wanted to stay at my place, but my mom wouldn't let her. She looks different now. She's not normal."

"She was so quiet. I never thought she'd be on drugs!"

"My mother says those are the ones you can always expect that of."

"Well, people change. I guess I'm not that surprised."

"My mother wasn't either."

"If I ever turned out like that, my mother would kill me!"

With the arrival of Coates, the two boyfriends came out of their lethargy and soon the three of them were off and running down memory lane, dribbling a basketball all the way and beer off their chins in the process. Nothing bores the hell out of me more than than sort of stuff and so I opened a window, felt the cool air from the river a few feet away, nursed my beer and thought of that girl being orally dissected across the table from me. She had escaped by moving out of town and her reward upon returning as the prodigal daughter was to have her two former best friends talk about her as if she was an article in the National Enquirer. I guess it's true what they say - you can't go home again. Because why would you want to. "Well, people change. I guess I'm not that surprised."

Using a trip to the washroom as an excuse to leave, I got up and took a tour of the place. It was packed more than usual and a great number of people seemed to be in the same restless mood I was.

In the ballroom, I came across Mugs sitting with Hays, churning out stories fortified with bullshit to a couple of young skeptics when I joined them. They had heard the same story probably at least three times at that point and were getting tired of hearing the variables change. Hays called me over with this story about Mugs' baseball game that night, the anecdote culminating with Hays, his face as red as his hair from holding back laughter, suddenly forcing out in a quick stream - "I almost pissed myself laughing!" before collapsing into a fit of giggles, while all this time Mugs endured all this with a passive stoicism, refusing to give the story any dignity or merit by even commenting on it. Just the same, it struck me as a great story and had brightened my evening and so when Coates wandered by, I called him over so he could hear it for himself.

"Hey Wes, we missed a good game tonight. Mugs was up, hit a triple and then tripped over second base."

Mugs wasn't going to keep quiet this time. "Oh fuck off, Howie, you weren't even there!"

"I wish I was. Tripped over second base and landed on his ass! Damn, I wish I could have seen that. They tagged him out at third."

"Okay Howie. You don't have to tell the whole world, you stud!"

'Stud.' That was one of Mug's favorite putdowns at the time. Like calling someone a jerk or an asshole. For some reason, Mugs took a word which would be considered a compliment in most social circles and turned it into a form of derision.

Mugs quickly changed the topic. "What are you made up for anyway Coates? You get paid today or something. What's with the white pants? You turning queer or something? Geez, look at this guy. All dressed up and wearing a jacket with the sleeves half ripped off. You oughta let your mother finish the job once she's started it. Eh, Howie? He oughta let his mother finish, eh?"

"Well, I won't be living with her much longer Mugs," Coates says.

"Oh yeah? Mister Working Man. Hey, why don't you buy Howie's old man's place? It's only one street over from you, ya stud."

"Nah. I don't want to move that far away from home. Actually, I'm going to California."

"Yeah? Maybe I'll come with you. I wouldn't mind seeing a few Dodgers games."

"I can see you tripping over second base as we speak. No Mugs, I'm not going for the ballgames. What I had in mind was the beach, Sunset Strip, California Girls. Just thinking about it makes me screw up my words at times. Tonight at dinner I was telling my old lady about these small sea animals I saw on the news the other day and they come out on the beach only one night a year to 'procreate.' And so I'm giving her this Jacques Cousteau type report, straight out of National Geographic, only instead of calling them 'organisms,' I fuck my words up and say 'these orgasms on the beach.' Bit of a Freudian slip. I didn't bother to correct myself."

"Shit-snowflakes, Coates! Take me with you! I wouldn't mind some of those orgasms on the beach! Eh, Howie? In between Dodgers games of course. Say, how 'bout that Kofax, eh?"

And I left them to their talk about California, although we all knew that Mugs didn't have the least intention of going. Something like that would interfere with his way of life - which for the most part consisted of sitting around coffee shops, high-school cafeterias, pool halls and neighbourhood taverns and just shooting the bull, making fun of immigrants, the Prime Minister and smearing the reputations of people he didn't like with his all-inclusive "Whatta *stud*."

Mugs had been playing organized baseball all his life and truth be told, wasn't the worst pitcher to ever be put into rotation. His big dream in life was to be spotted by a major league scout, signed to a million-dollar contract, not be good enough to be the starter or even the second or third string pitcher and so spend all his time sitting on the bench and thinking of all the money he was earning for only having to change his clothes and sit on his ass doing absolutely nothing.

Whatta stud. And I mean that as a compliment.