For all the pain the pandemic ushered in, I feel like an element of introspection and a larger lean towards care for our mental health has been introduced. If you haven’t yet, I recommend you at least dip a toe into these waters. Dive in head first if you like, but fair warning: Should you proceed, you’re likely to encounter more than a few phrases and buzzwords that will appear in readings and discussions around the world of well being. “My authentic self” and “Standing in my truth” come to mind. I’d hear someone say that and my brown eyes would rollll back white. These phrases just seemed like a collection of words thrown together and they would trigger me. “Trigger”. I still don’t love that word.Its nestled itself nicely in the wellness lexicon. I use it here because that term is important to this tale. And this is just that, a tale. I’m not here to go on about the path I’m shuffling down towards a better brain, body and being or the understanding about myself I’ve gained by just sitting across from a therapist talking. No, I’m gonna tell you about a situation that was just one of many that landed me in that chair. It all began about a year ago when I was “TRIGGERED“.

Last fall, I dragged My Rotten Kid to the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. “Ooh, an aristocrat!”, you might think. Ha! Picture The Child and I up in the balcony peering through tiny binoculars, poo-pooing performances under powdered wigs. For those unfamiliar, a few times a year the orchestra will perform the musical accompaniment to a suitably symphonic film that plays behind them on a massive screen. I learned that the VSO was putting on a production of “Jurassic Park”. I knew it would be a real thrill to see this movie on the big screen again and a great way for My Rotten Kid to experience it in a space outside of the living room, neither of us dicking around on our phones. I was not wrong.

Much of the wonder we feel from film is owed in a large part to the soundtrack. Spielberg’s amazing stories are often buoyed by a specific score from John Williams. Unseen for well over an hour and into the film JAWS, that fish might seem toothless absent the accompaniment of the six basses, four trombones, a tuba and eight celli that herald the Great White menace just below the waterline. You know the bit I’m talking about. 12 year old girls are less than eager to roll with their loser dads ANYWHERE, so without letting her know the destination, I dragged her downtown. I hauled her across Saturday Night city streets fresh of rain. Yanked her through the lineup and still up sweeping staircase past ornate fixtures and sat us both in the Orpheum’s wondrous domed auditorium in downtown Vancouver. And man, she loved it. Its easy to forget how amazing that first island scene is. Sam Neill and Laura Dern are awed by the sight of several thunderous Brontosaurs, and we’re awed with them. Jurassic Park premiered in 1995, almost 30 years ago. Time files on leathery wings, no? During the kitchen scene, my daughter shot me a look of legitimate fear. She stared at Dad wide-eyed if only to avoid witnessing what looked to be the bloody and carnivorous death of two children, one of them right around her age. I held her arm and smiled at her with my mouth closed. I didn’t want her to know I was clenching dealing with my own shit from a single shot on screen only moments earlier. I had been TRIGGERED.

The year was 1984. I was close to the age my daughter is now, around 13, and I kissed a girl. This wasn’t the first girl I’d kissed, just the first one I wanted to. It happened at a summer camp dance amid plastic chairs that rung out in concentric circles facing a wide and open mess hall floor. This girl was about four seats down from me to my left. She leaned her chair back on two legs like you do in class ’til you learn better. She caught my eye with a smile that was unmistakably for me. Oof. A heat began in my pants and coursed up to roil around my tummy. I took a deep breath and my throat began to close up. Too late. The warmth shot north and came rest in my cheeks. Were I a white boy, I’d have blushed. She had those heavy-lidded eyes that suggest at once both wanton desire and remote indifference. My wife has the same countenance and I’ll be damned if a look from her across a room doesn’t make me feel feelings. Camp Dance Girl these had rosy cheeks and wavy brown hair. I had an afro. Both of us had hearts just roaring with an indelible fever, a byproduct of the combined chemicals of adolescence. There is a wild promise that youth can bring. Of what, you can’t quite put your finger on until its gone. That evening two sparkly souls untrammelled by the doubt, wine or weight that fifty summers can bring made out on the dance floor. I kissed her like a babysitter had taught me. I kissed her like I’d seen them do on the daytime soaps. Kissed her as if All My Children in all of The Days of our Lives depended on it.

Six days earlier, ten or fifteen busloads of kids from across the southern slab of a western Canadian province converged in one space. I remember the straight shot of a journey out from my prairie town the bus cresting a hill, hurtling downward then slowing to make a wide turn into a driveway on the right. Crunching gravel and dust plumes abound as the bus came to rest. It was here that they buses barfed out hundreds of teens suddenly beset upon all sides by wide, sloping yellow hills emanating waves of heat under an open, living Saskatchewan sky. We’d arrived in the heart of the Qu’apelle Valley. It was new and weirdly exciting to this young rube, and whenever I hear The Tragically Hip’s Born in the Water, I’m just stepping off of that bus.

Rollin’ hills all covered in suede
I’m heat nervous and out of road

How they mapped it out and selected what kid was going to what cabin, I cannot remember., but we lined up and they figured something out. All of us were desperate to keep our hometown or local connections but were separated nonetheless by some analog algorithm like even/odd numbers or first/last names shouted out by the King of Camp Counsellors from his perch on a ramshackle porch hanging off of Counsellor HQ. Each cabin was named for a tribe of what we now call First Nations. There was Kiowa, Sioux, Seneca just to name a few. A number of others come to mind but I’m unsure how beholden to the local region they were. This was a way, I guess, to honour the people who were here before and traversed the plains chasing buffalo e’re treaties were made and summarily broken. In the same way that  I acknowledge that the district  in which I write this is on the shared, unceded, traditional territory of the Katzie, Semiahmoo and Kwantlen Nations. It is the absolute LEEEEEEEEEEEAST I can do.

Hundreds of kids were to spread out across these badlands from Sunday to Sunday and, for me, It was a week fraught with peril. Since my arrival, I’d been caught ‘dancing with myself’ by my cabin counsellor who, in enough ways resembled Billy Idol (so that’s what we called him). I got into my first fistfight with a dude named Corey. I witnessed a near drowning and the subsequent first-aid applied. I’d been left (I assumed) to die in the pitch black of night with only the stars to guide me. Camped out overnight in front of what we were told was AN ABANDONED INSANE ASYLUM but what I now know to be the Church’s bloody thumbprint left on this blasted land. We scrambled through poison ivy and thorn. Suffered injury and certain doom atop rocky, ruddy cliffs. There was blood and there were gopher guts and archery emergencies. It was all kid’s stuff and it was great. Oh yeah, I also engaged in an egregious display of racism.

Our cabin was named for the Pawnee. Broadly speaking, we didn’t learn shit about the First Nations people, locally or otherwise. Mid-week, Pawnee and a few other cabins went on a two-day/overnight hike. It was on this hike that I learned fairly sharply that I was not white. I was not like white boys. I don’t get to play white boy games. There were some local native boys we ran into during day one of the overnight. We all exchanged words and peacocked like boys will at that age. A few of my cabin mates leaned into some more derisive terms. Terms that isolate and separate and can cut right to the bone. And I joined in.

I can speak my mother tongue

Every racial epithet that ever came my way has came from the chest. There is a deep breath that allows space before a slur is uttered. In that moment before the whole dynamic changes, the breath is taken. The lips curl back unnaturally. The eyebrows attempt to meet in the middle of the forehead and the eyes can become slits.

For example, if you’re going to say “N****r”, the tip of your tongue has to find the roof of your mouth just behind the teeth in order to form the first letter. The lips curl into a snarl and out it comes.

There is a common slur cast to denigrate females. C**t. Here, the back of your tongue must meet the upper part of mouth’s roof just before the throat to utter a hard “K” sound. The lips curl back into a snarl then out it flies.

Gay people somehow making your life miserable by simply existing? Why not yelll “F****t”? Ok, here, the bottom lip comes up to meet the top row of teeth. Breath is ushered forth to form the initial “F” sound. The lips curl back into a snarl and out it goes.

The snarl is our face’s default position when uttering words like these and it has to be! The lips have gotta get there first and that snarl is our face giving away the game, letting everyone around the card table know we’re just about to make a terrible mistake. It might seem like it is coming from a place of hatred. Hatred is only a byproduct of fear, doubt and misunderstanding. That snarl is why openly hateful folk often look like sad, wrinkled wretches well before their time.

Writing this, I remember the slur I snarled not quietly. I won’t share it here.

A heartbeat after the poison passed my lips at the boys across the creek, a counsellor from one of the other cabins, a white guy, came down on us like a drill sergeant. He told us to shut our fucking mouths and line up. Six of us stood shoulder to shoulder. We could do naught but gaze at our shoes as he laced into us. He told us what everybody on earth should know.The tone in his voice had an edge that told me he would way rather smack the shit out of us, but was bound by camp regulations and no less, the law.

“Nobody is better or worth anymore or any less than another in this world or even entitled to think that way. Some people have it easier and some people have it harder and some people are lucky barely have a fucking shot at all at happiness, so fuck you for trying to take that away. If you choose make someone feel less than you because of their colour, upbringing or current station in life, well that’s about the worst trait a person can have, and you should be lucky to call yourself ‘human’ if that is how you choose to use your voice.”

Not sure about my fellow fine young cannibals, but I felt the kind of sick a kick in the balls makes you. He was not finished. He then came to me, the only person of colour in the cabin, camp (and really, at that point, my life) He grabbed my chin with his thumb and forefinger like a frustrated father. Yanked my head up so I couldn’t avoid his gaze. I’ve written here about a piece of graphite in my palm. There is a jagged piece of calcified stone near my heart. Bound in orbit there by the thin transparent membrane I’m certain envelops all the heart’s sacs, veins and valves. Wraps it all up like Saran and keeps the volatile machine in my chest from falling to pieces. It is a small white rock that spins on an unpredictable axis. It is that man’s words manifest…

“… And you of all fucking people should know that…”

How could you do it?
How could you even try
When you were born in the water
And raised up in the sky?

When I tell folks I was raised in Saskatchewan, Canada, they often ask “Bro were you like, the only like, black person in your school?” Picture me taking a belt of scotch, drawing on a cigarette. I hold the smoke in and I’m all like, “BRO.” in that creaky-holding-smoke-in-voice… “I was the only black person in my HOUSE…” Picture me then exhaling the smoke while stubbing the cigarette out in a dirty ashtray. Picture me tossing a wrinkled American twenty on the bar and picture me heading out of the dimly lit bar into the sharp and indifferent Vegas sunlight. early on a Wednesday afternoon. 

Despite being adopted and raised by a loving (white) mother and loving (white) father, having two spectacular (white) brothers… Despite growing up and navigating this (white) world to the best of my ability… Under no circumstances do I get to play by white boy rules. I am reminded of that daily and in no uncertain terms. One day I’ll write about the games I need to play just to get through the day.

Camp Ta-Wa-Si holy shit what a week. We come to it at last. Ten wild and dirty boys, initially at odds and unfamiliar, have now bonded over team building war canoe trips, campfire indiscretions, scorching hot hill climbs, nascent sexual proclivities and near-death experiences. It was time for us to show the rest of the cabins, kids and counsellors how we’d perform as a team.

Boys of Pawnee Cabin! Eschew petty grievances! Cast off troubling thoughts or doubt! Forget whatever wars you are waging with acne and each other! Under the righteous tutelage and blessed hand of Billy Idol, come together as one to perform a piece of theatre at the gathering of the tribes held in Ta-Wa-Si’s Great (mess) Hall!

Pawnee’s trusted counsellor and the second coolest guy in the world (Bob Basu uber alles), broke our performance down for us. I’m paraphrasing here but the stage direction we got went something like this;

The setup:

There are 10 of you.

6 of you are a firing squad. You will stand shoulder to shoulder and hold brooms as rifles.

3 of you are world leaders: Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Pierre Trudeau

Each of you is accused of crimes punishable by death. 

10 feet away, facing the firing squad, you will stand with your hands behind your back, bound by invisible rope.

1 of you is the Captain. You will hold a sword (broom) aloft and decide when each of the 3 die by announcing READY. AIM. On “FIRE”, you’ll bring down your sword.

The turn:

Just before the Captain shouts “FIRE”, the first politician set to die, Ronald Reagan, will loudly proclaim, “EARTHQUAKE!”

The Captain and all members of the firing squad will squeal like the pigs they are and head for the hills, allowing Ronnie Raygun to scurry away into the night (through the kitchen saloon door). What a clever politician!

Regaining some composure, the firing squad will reassemble, this time dead set on sending criminal politician number two, Mikhail Gorbachev, straight to hell in a hail of lead.  

Just before the Captain shouts FIRE, the dirty Commie will loudly exclaim, 

“TORNADO!”

Similarly, this sends all parties into a similar panic and they head for similar hills. Gorby then fucks off sharply (through the kitchen saloon door). 

Feeling not a little foolish, the firing squad returns to their original positions. One target left, they raise rifles and train their iron sights on The Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. 

Realizing the ease with which the previous politicians dodged their coffins, ol’ P.E.T. gives a wry grin and thinks he’ll pull the same trick and escape unscathed. “Just watch me.”

READY… 

The captain raises his wicked blade…

AIM…

Being a veteran political animal, Mr. Trudeau understands that EARTHQUAKES and TORNADO are unlikely to elicit the same cowardly response from his executioners as before, so Pierre chooses a different type of disaster…

And the prestige:

FIRE, he exclaims.

Cue the sharp report of rifle fire and all watch as Trudeau crumbles

AND SCENE

Seems simple enough, right?

Whether I was chosen or volunteered be Ronald Reagan, I do not recall. Nevertheless, I’d be first up on the proverbial chopping block and first outta there. This should present NO conceivable problem. My BRAIN goes through the steps we’d rehearsed maybe twice on the porch of Pawnee’s cabin.

1. Be Ronald Reagan
2. Yell Earthquake
3. Run through Saloon Door 
4. You’re done
5. Wait for Gorbachev to do the same
6. Wait for Trudeau’s cosmic blunder
7. Head out the kitchen saloon door to warm accolades and garlands of roses for your performance

Two cabins were up before us, giving me ample time to gird my loins. 

One up. One down, we were on deck. Remember Chris;

1. Ronald Reagan. 
2. Earthquake. 
3. Run through Saloon Door. 
4. You’re done.

My mind raced. How soon would the crowd fall in love with me? How wide would my basso profundo carry o’er the wind and wild talk of hundreds of kids? Certainly they’d weep as this skinny black boy and his awkward afro embody the affable, addled countenance of a wrinkly and worm-brained Ronald Reagan? Last cabin before us and my debut was fast approaching. I surveyed the area we’d be standing on and took a sidelong glance at the saloon door to the kitchen, where I’d soon abscond.

When I write SALOON door, you might have an image of those bat-wing waist high double doors that cowboys get tossed out of in westerns. In this case, the saloon door is a large but strangely light steel surfaced door separating the back of house (kitchen) from front of house (serving floor, bar, etc). This door is mounted on a double hinge that enables it to swing both ways, allowing serving staff to move in between the disparate realms of front and back of house, free from the impediment of reaching for a handle and pulling or pushing. Commonly there is a rubber strip or neoprene bumper on the long jamb edge from top to bottom that, while at rest keeps you, the diner, from hearing the colourful banter and egregious expletives that can be the common tongue of kitchen staff. In most cases you’ll find a circular window maybe eight or ten inches in diameter around eyeball height like the porthole on a boat. This allows parties on either side of it to see and anticipate what is charging through the respective areas avoiding the mess of collisions with hot plates or tempers. This portal can go a long way towards unifying both front and back of house teams in a common goal. There is a tacit understanding that this borderline must be shared and worked with, it’s movement and timing enabling all parties engaged to move between both crucial spaces with the alacrity that the smooth running of a restaurant, bar or mess hall requires.

NEXT UP, PAWNEE

Cheers erupt as our cabin assembles. Our motley crew was ready to use it or lose it.

Six boys stand shoulder to shoulder facing the three seemingly doomed politicians. My BRAIN does its thing.

BRAIN:      Here we go Christian, you’re first up.

CAPTAIN:  DOOM, GLOOM, ET AL.

BRAIN:      Are you ready, Chris, you lonely little tool?

CAPTAIN:  READY!

BRAIN:      Be ready Chris

CAPTAIN:  AIM

BRAIN:      They’re taking aim, Chris

BRAIN:      Think of an emergency Chris 

BRAIN:      Think of a disaster Chris

CAPTAIN:  [RAISES IMAGINARY SWORD]

BRAIN:      Don’t panic, Chris. Just think of absolutely ANY instance that has the potential for       wanton, indiscriminate destruction

BRAIN:      I CAN’T

BRAIN:     OKAY THEN YOU SHOULD FOR SURE PANIC

I brought my bottom lip up to meet the top row of my teeth. My lips curled back and out it came…

“FIRE”

I knew in an instant I’d fucked up, and in the parlance of my parents, “Right Royally!”, too. I scrunched my face up to the gathering storm as flop sweat gathered on my eyelids.

But lo, what absence of sound is this? No peals of laughter? No pointing fingers? No jeering faces? Just stony silence and confused looks from the firing squad as they perceptibly slump. Maybe I pulled it off–Oh. Wait. The crowd doesn’t KNOW I fucked up. The LAST guy is the FIRE guy. I’m the FIIRST guy. The EARTHQUAKE guy. My head swims and I knew it was time to head for the saloon door. Seven or eight steps to get to the kitchen. Had to escape before the truth was realized. BAM, saloon door swings open and I crumple on the floor. I was still hoping that it would be ok, but I knew what I’d done. “You fucking ruined everything…” I muttered to myself, “you fucking idiot.”

Laying down on the floor, I wished each surface in that kitchen a silvery tombstone around me and that I was long dead. A thought hit me and said, “I can fix this”. So I set about doing so.

All I’d need to do is WISH. Just wish and wish with all of my young and sparkling soul that I could inhale deep and long enough to swallow all of my brown skin, tearing it wide away from the seam down my spine and ingest it. I’d then be unrecognizable to my cabin mates when they stormed the room. I’d only exist as a heaving mass of shameful muscle and sinew undulating on the kitchen floor. My sickening form would then collapse in on itself further allowing my tiny soul to follow the path of least resistance, out through my own ass hole, my essence personified into its purest and loneliest shape, that of a worm. My sparkle fading, I’d then wish myself along the dark trough between the red/brown floor tiles sloping and slick, and make for nearest filthy drain. Slipping through its grill, I’d hang down for a moment until gravity takes me. I’ll fall towards a rugged bend in a lower pipe where I’ll hear a cacophony of cheers. Could it be the crowd of kids I’ve left so far behind? No. It will be a writhing kingdom of grimy, ancient bacteria waiting and welcoming me into their fold. My soul-worm will somehow sneer as I fall past them and reflect upon a Groucho Marx line that I haven’t even heard yet about refusing to respect any club or organization that would have me as a member. I’ll wish myself on past them into a long refuse pipe sloping downward. I’ll then find a crack in the plastic and wish myself through the spaces in the concrete beneath. I’ll wish myself in and through another fissure and still further down. Passing at last through a layers of clay, shale and Jurassic bone from eons past, I’ll break from all earthly materials into free fall. I have an idea what’s coming so I’ll curl up like when you’re older brother tries to drag or move you somewhere and you somehow will yourself heavier. I’ll tumble for what will seem like days until I feel the warming glowing warming glow of magma surrounding the earth’s core. Almost home, I’ll think, then stretch out like a skydiver and rocket downward. My wishes will all come true and I’ll open my dumb stupid soul-worm mouth and the white-hot heat of a welcome Oblivion will burn me into ash from inside out.

But y’know, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.

Highway horses laugh but of course
When they don't know where the hell they are

The crowd had by now caught on to my blunder and the crashing thunder of laughter that should have been reserved for the skit’s end had come just a little early. I heard it in patches as the saloon door swung inward then outward. Raucous laughter fading into silence as the door swung towards its jamb only to be presented again as it reached its zenith, swinging back to its rubber flange dimming the roar if only for a moment. Again the roar. Understanding now that the sweet release of death was not in the mail, I jammed my foot against the door to stop its swing and dim the howls. Good thing I did too, ‘cause just then Corey, he of the aforementioned fistfight, threw a shoulder into it. I held fast. Nobody was getting in here because I’m not dead yet. I looked up from my place on the floor to the circular window above. There I saw Corey, eyes lolling like a dolls eyes in an effort to clap on to the source of his anger, ME. His breath fogged the glass and I heard his muted shout over the din of the crowd:  YOU FUCKING  RUINED EVERYTHING YOU FUCKING IDIOT!

Sweet magma. Why hast thou forsaken me?

I don’t clearly remember what had happened as I came out of that kitchen. My heart tells me that these boys and girls all as equally prone to blunder as I, roared with applause. I choose to remember it that way and I don’t think I’m wrong. It was OK. It wasn’t the end of the world. The other cabins all went up and did their thing. We laughed and for a time, I suffered the slings and arrows of my cabin mates. It only really amounted to good natured ribbing and laughter.

The dance began and I sat stone-faced, the electricity of failure still crackling about me. Stacy leaned back on that chair and smiled. It was not the heat of Oblivion I was feeling. Not sure who asked who to dance (probably her) and we had the first kiss I’d ever wanted. I’ll never forget it.

In writing this, I’ve answered many of my own questions. The answers to questions we have about ourselves only present themselves when we choose to shine a light that burns away the shadow of the days, memories or moments we choose to secret away.The trauma and pain many of us have experienced can rot inside of us if they’re not brought into the light. I used to take old, cold memories and pack em tight like a prairie ice-ball. I’d then confidently rip sidearms into targets that had neither understanding nor blame for my pain. As we age and our circle of friends and family grow smaller, the only ones in range now are the ones we love . How wildly unfair has it been for me to visit my pain on those who care the most about me… Or anyone at all?

I could not have shared this without someone I love suggesting that I talk to an objective professional. Our talks are not just pain. I share my successes and wonders and joy too. Talking to someone might not “fix” you, but it took sitting and talking to J_______ to realize I’m not REALLY broken. I’m just learning to manage my heart, mind and the misgivings of a boy who still lives in my chest and comes is with me wherever I go. I’m finally able to hold that kid’s hand and let him know it’s OK. Both of us exist and at this point and our goal is to move through the world together with love and, on my best days, empty of ill intent.

*Apologies to Robert Heinlein for stealing the title. I stole it from a pocketbook I keep tucked up under my fifty-mission cap.