Today I'm going to try something a little different. Normally, the
beginning of any entry I make is a funny (
to me at least) diatribe having very little to do with what follows it. Today all I'll say is that if you, dear reader, do not want to know what has been filling my days over the last two years, STOP READING NOW!! Seriously. Everything following this paragraph is true (
by my memory at least) and I'm fairly certain that not every eye is going to like what it sees. So read on if you must, and enjoy. If you're able.
"Why the
fuck did I move to Chilliwack? I didn't mean to, it was just one of those things. I'd love to be able to tell
anyone that I didn't have any fun, but..." - Fishbait
Chapter One
I met her, or rather, I met her in person on June 6, 2009. In order to tell this story properly though, I need to start a week earlier when I jumped in a car heading west with a woman I'd met only once before, three days prior.
Her name was Stephanie, she lived in
Abbotsford, and she offered to drive me coastal. I had twelve dollars, a half pack of cigarettes, and only a
vague idea of where I would stay once I got to wherever it was I was going. But as
Steph and I had enjoyed each other's company while ignoring a movie the night that we'd met, I was really looking forward to this
road trip. I had it in my mind that the tedium of the drive would be relieved by frequent rest stops involving
animalistic carnal rituals. It wasn't. In fact, we made the drive in less than ten hours.
When we had reached Hope, I finally managed to get a hold of my good friend Darcy. And when
Steph dropped me in
Chilliwack, there he stood, guitar in hand, looking like a worn out, ragged, taller version of Kurt Cobain, whom he claimed to hate, but couldn't and didn't seem to want to stop resembling. Darcy and I had met a few years earlier while I was living in
Nanaimo. Our friendship was based on a shared love of good books, great music, cold beer and hard drugs.
We wandered to the closest bar to have ourselves a reunion drink. Between the two of us, we had enough cash for one each and after denying a woman "D" later told me was a hooker a drink of her own, we left. As it turned out, Darcy had "borrowed" his mother's Visa so our next stop was to the liquor store to procure a bottle of Vodka. Then, and only then could we continue the walk to his place. By "his place" I mean of course, his parents' house.
About half a block from the bar Darcy stopped walking and asked if I was still using cocaine. I said I wasn't, which I didn't view as a lie because I'd been out of work for three months and couldn't afford groceries much less cocaine. That's when he decided to tell me that he wasn't either. He'd "
graduated", as he put it, to crack. By week's end I'd discover that he was also shooting heroin, thankfully he never offered any. He did however offer a blast of the rock he'd just packed his straight shooter with. I accepted and that was about as much catching up as we seemed to need.
It took nearly an hour to get to his folks' place, though the walk shouldn't have taken more than twenty minutes. But between stopping to get high every ten or twenty steps, and me having to drag my
enormous travel bag, things took a wee bit longer than normal.
D's parents were cool enough, even offering me a bed to use until I could find a job and a place. Darcy later told me that I was the first friend he'd introduced them to that they liked. He said they thought all of his friends were manipulative, drug head losers. And they were. So was I for that matter, I think I just played it down a little better than most.
I tried to help out around the house the best I could. One thing I am, at first at least, is a lovely house guest. So I'd cook dinner every night, help out in the garden and try my
damnedest to get Darcy out of bed. I think one of the reasons D's parents let me stay for as long as I did, was that they were hoping, and not so secretly, that I'd be taking Darcy with me once I found a place.
On top of wanting to show Darcy's folks that I wasn't a fuck-up like the other people he normally hung out with, I had another reason for wanting to help out: Darcy's mother had been the victim of a horrible accident years earlier that had left her blind and disfigured.
From what I understand, she'd been trying to clear a sewage drain at work and when the industrial grade Drain-O didn't do the trick, she'd decided to pour Lye into the drain as a chaser. The reacting chemicals blew up and basically erased her face. Years of skin grafts later, she was left with little more than a skull with patch work skin pulled tight enough to snap. She had no lips to speak of and her eyes had been eaten entirely, so the doctors had grafted skin over the sockets. While this woman cooked, washed the dishes by hand and went as far as to clean D's room when he was out, Darcy and I spent the little time we were awake drinking or driving around (
without insurance) looking for crack or coke or anything else to kill the boredom.
As thankful as I was D's parents for letting me stay, we all knew it wasn't going to be a permanent situation so I started looking for a job and a girl. Thankfully it seemed easy enough to find both online, and over the next few days, I made contact with two women. One, Lani, lived on the Island. The other,
Cylena, lived in
Chilliwack. I talked with both of them on the phone a few times and when I mentioned to
Cylena that
I was looking for a job, she offered to buy me lunch if I wanted to meet up with her at Earl's. She had told me that she was a
massage therapist and not being one to say "no" to a free lunch, I gladly accepted.
Well folks, that's what I've got so far. There's a helluva lot more and it only gets darker and more depraved, so I'll only be sending out following posts to those that request them. Take care everyone,
Fishbait.
