Hate Leeches

So, this is essentially a part two of what I started here with a fiction piece. This is what happened from my perspective. This is the story of the worst night of my life and a trauma that I can’t shake. While the language will be cleaner than the last piece, the content is no less harmful to the reader and the writer. I do not want your sympathy. I do not want your praise. I just want to get this out of me.

I have read about how some of our more, shall we say, unenlightened yet smart ancestors would use leeches in medicine. The story goes that they felt many diseases were about something bad in the blood. True. In their wisdom the thought leeches could extract the bad. False.

I like the idea though. The thinking was sound at the time. Purge the wrong bad. Sometimes we have to do that with our inner thoughts, or even, as is the case today, memories best left in a box inside our minds.

Sometimes I wish things would stay inside my mental box; however, the lid on that thing does not have a latch to keep it closed. Occasionally, little ghosts pop out. These ghosts haunt me. They often visit me during bouts of something called sleep paralysis. The insidious thing about sleep paralysis in PTSD sufferers is they will often “wake up” while still dreaming about the trauma. Imagine waking up in your own bedroom, unable to move, but seeing your room, hearing the sounds of your room, and not being able to move. Now imagine this happening and a person who you know is dead comes in the room. You see it. Your hear it. You cannot move.

This happens to me a few times a month. The following is what I see.

As you can imagine, some of the details are very fuzzy for me. Whether that is the fault of time, drugs or trauma, who knows. The point is, this is what remains of that day. I had left home a few months earlier, in June of 1990. I know in the earlier piece of fiction this event took place during the school year; but, in reality it was August. I changed the dat to make it more seemless with the idea of would be students marauding instead of learning, and would be marauders learning instead of living.

I had been essentially homeless for some time. For most of July I had slept under park benches and in doorways for warmth. You would be surprised at how cold it can feel in a big city in the hours before dawn in July.

In mid July I had met the Fish family. They were downtown (and jail) regulars. A whole family of street wise youths and young adults. They had begun showing me the ropes. They had also reintroduced me to a dude named Andre. Andre was 16, two years older than me at the time. Andre was black. Andre played guitar. In my mind, Andre was Jimi Hendrix. I honestly don’t know if Andre was any good at playing guitar. It doesn’t really matter. He was so fucking cool. I was also stoned a lot so that may have played a part in it.

I had actually met Andre in late winter or early spring at a party. We had hung out a few times, but not really clicked as I was not yet free of North Toronto.

Andre and I became friends quickly once I was on the streets and could understand where he was coming from. We hung out all the time. In early August we found a squat on Richmond Street in Toronto. It was an abandoned restaurant. Controlled entry through the roof was great for protection, and the water was still on. Power too, though we used that very little. We lived together there for a couple of weeks, and it was great.

I think Andre knew I wasn’t cut out for the streets because he kept trying to get me to go home. A part of me wonders what would have happened if some neo-nazi skin head fucks hadn’t have killed him. Would I have gone home? Would I have lived a normal life?

Rarely do we get a chance to recognize what is likely the day that changed the track of our life. Oh sure, many bad decisions led me to be with Andre that night, but what if, right? Could I have returned home contrite and passive? Would I have become a lawyer or something? It is funny to look back now and realise that I wasn’t gone yet. I could have returned to my life. None of the stuff that came before was a mountain too high

It was August. Mid-late August. It was the middle of the week. I honestly can’t remember what day. I looked it up once, but I can’t be sure. I know it wasn’t the weekend because I didn’t have enough money for drugs from panhandling. I was a regular on Queen west at the time. You might have been able to see me outside across the street when they recorded stuff for Much Music.

Me and Big Bill and Andre were most often at that spot. It was a great spot on the weekend. Lots of shoppers and whatnot. On the weekdays it was mainly city workers and the media. Not great for money. That’s how I know it was a weekday. I could eat, but I needed to find a friend to get high with. I found Andre. He had the guitar. He made money with that. Andre had two possessions. A brown leather jacket and an electric guitar. He had to borrow amps though.

I remember going to “Mom and Dad’s” for dinner. I have no idea what their names were, nor can I remember the name of the restaurant. It was Greek food though. The owners were very nice to us street kids. Hence the name we all called it.

I know there was a practice studio next door, and I remember going there sometimes with friends who were in bands. It was the second floor of the building on the corner of Kensington and Baldwin. You could often hear bands jamming at night if you were walking down the street at 1am. No one walked down the street then though. I laugh sometimes when I hear people talk about the place. They talk about how lovely everything was in the day time. They were never there at night. They always look at me sideways when I talk about a different experience than they had. Fucking weekend warriors.

I know we went there that night. I can still hear the screeching hiss of the guitar and the shitty amps. I remember getting high because I remember staring at Andre as he played. I hope he wasn’t shitty, because I remember him as amazing.

I know in the fiction piece I had these racist fucks following us when we left the jam space. That wasn’t true. Or probably wasn’t true. Again, we were stoned and not paying attention to anything other than our own brilliance, the way you do when you smoke pot and pontificate.

They weren’t following us, because I remember them in front of us. I remember them making fun of us as we approached. I remember them swarming and swearing and saying all sorts of hateful shit. I honestly don’t know the difference between what they say in my dreams and what they said that night. Nightmares have a way of twisting memories and embellishing them with new touches you learn as you age. The vernacular changes, but the hate stays the same.

Thing is, we knew better than to be there at night. We knew what was going on in the area. All of downtown was abuzz with talk of Neo-Nazis. Skinheads were a thing back then. Green pants, bomber jackets, bald heads. I often worry about looking like one now that I am bald. It seems silly to some people but it would injure me deeply if I knew people were looking at me that way. I think most people, especially the young people I work with just see me as super old guy.

The point is, we shouldn’t have been there, but we were young and high. I keep focusing on the high part as if it really mattered. Sober or no, those people would have targeted us. I am not sure I would have reacted any differently. I was 14.

They pushed/pulled us in to an alley between two houses. I was a pussy. I was scared and I thought we could run away. I had never been in a real fight. I had fought kids at school and won, but this was scary. I just wanted to go home at this point. I am not sure I cared which home. That is hindsight talking.

Two of them held me while the other two took turns hitting Andre. One of them had a bat, but the others didn’t. I don’t know if they meant to kill him. They hit and kicked him until he stopped moving though. It was less violent than the movies. So different. So unfluid.

There really wasn’t a lot of blood. I don’t remember blood.

They turned on me. One of them said something about me being a race traitor. They said I could live because I was white, but I needed to learn.

They hit me in the stomach with the bat and once or twice on the back when I was on all fours. My lower back has been shit ever since. There were also punches and kicks. I know I had a black eye and a split lip. The doctors also told me I had bruised ribs.

I don’t know if I blacked out. I don’t know if I hit any of them.

I know I cried and begged for my life. I know I shit my pants. I never told anyone that. Even now I want to erase it.

I eventually fell and laid on the ground crying. I did look at Andre. He was not moving.

I very much doubt that, as if in a movie, I watched the light go out of Andre’s eyes. That seems fake in my head. I know now, during my waking nightmares I see it. In my room, in my comfortable bed in my comfortable small town in my middle class house in my middle class neighbourhood I sometimes watch him die. I don’t think I scream any more.

As identity politics takes over our society, this is what rolls through my mind. That is why I need leeches for my mind like they had back in the day for your blood. That is why I am writing this down. I am not sure why I am hitting the publish button. I think maybe it is because I want the record to reflect all of me, not just the sanitary stuff. I think we all want to be understood, and we all want to be accepted. I struggle with that a lot.

Sometimes I get angry because people call me the problem. They say a White CIS hetero male can’t possibly understand. They say my privilege blinds me. That night is what I remember every time I read that on Facebook or see it on YouTube.

Maybe they are right. My white privilege is apparently why I am alive. They didn’t want to kill a white boy.

Our experiences make us what we are. My experiences formed me. Some good, some ill. Nobody seems to care about individuals and experiences any more. We all seem too focused on generalities and stereotypes. It is so much easier to make enemies than to really look at a person. It is so much easier to form judgments about people based on our own bias than it is to sit and listen to someone’s story. This is especially true when the story is hard to take in.

When people see me, they see a privileged white man living in a middle class neighbourhood. They see me enjoying my gaming computer. They see me eating steak sometimes. They see me as if I got ahead based on nothing but my gender and my skin.

When they say this, I see Andre.

What would Andre think if he saw me today?