Going Home Again by Dennis Bock Read Free Book Online Page B

de Bullion. I recognized it from his bedroom and knew its bottom left drawer as the place he’d stored his copies of
Hustler
and
Penthouse
. He didn’tneed to rely on those magazines anymore, though I still did. That was my first thought when I saw the desk, that he was miles ahead of me when it came to knowing anything about women.
    “Welcome to the garret,” he said.
    I had already noticed the poem he was referring to, ten or fifteen lines called “The Garret” by Ezra Pound, scribbled out on a slip of brown paper taped to the wall beside a Pink Floyd poster. I imagined the handwriting was Holly’s.
    We started drinking early that afternoon. We smoked a joint Miles had pulled from a jar he kept in the freezer and listened to some of the records he kept in milk cartons stacked in a corner. We listened to the Buzzcocks and New Order and The Jam and later made a big pot of spaghetti and ate it sitting on the pullout couch that had been designated mine for the weekend. I told them I didn’t have any fake ID when Miles mentioned going out to the bars. He was turning a ball of pasta on his fork. “Not to worry. This, my friend, is Montreal.”
    We ventured from one end of downtown to the other, the city lights shining down over our faces and leather jackets as we passed old-time taverns and flashy new clubs along Saint-Laurent. In my memory I see a kid I barely recognize now—a tall, skinny boy at the beginning edge of his life, obviously underage, full of nervous expectation. The doormen and bouncers that night didn’t care at all that I looked so young,just waved us through as if we’d been there a hundred times before. Each doorway was a portal leading into a world of beautiful girls. Of course I didn’t know the names of any of the streets or bars or clubs we visited that night, but these would soon become familiar to me after I moved to Montreal the following year. Nor do I remember much about the band we saw at a club that night. I’d heard them on the radio once or twice playing a catchy song about life in the suburbs. What I do remember clearly is watching Miles kissing his new girlfriend as they danced next to the small stage and feeling happy that my best friend had everything you could ever want.
    We finished the leftover spaghetti and tried to keep the fun going when we got home; but we couldn’t drink anything more, and five minutes later I was passed out on the pullout couch. I don’t know if I’d been asleep a few minutes or a few hours, but I woke up when I heard footsteps cross the apartment floor. I was disoriented. My head was pounding, and my ears were ringing after a night of loud bars and music. For a moment I didn’t know where I was, and then when everything came clear again—that I was lying on Miles’s couch in Montreal—I felt that something was going to happen. What I was hoping for surprised me. I hoped it was Holly standing there on the other side of that flimsy bamboo curtain and that she wouldn’t go back into the bedroom she shared with my best friend. I wanted her to silently slip in beside me on the couch. I imagined her warm legs against mine and the taste of her lips and the feel of her hand reaching for my cock. I heldmy eyes closed and wished with all my heart that it was her and that she knew something about me before I knew it myself.
    “You asleep?” Miles said.
    “Yes.”
    He sat down on the floor, his back up against the pullout. “Come on. Wake up.”
    I ignored him.
    “I’m too wired to sleep. My head’s on fire.…”
    After he didn’t say anything for a few minutes, I began to think he’d fallen asleep propped up right there against the couch. I saw a faint light shining in the window when I opened my eyes.
    He turned and looked at me over his shoulder. “You were walking with a cute girl last week. I talked to Anne a few days ago. She told me she saw you.”
    I used to call on Miles every morning on my way to school before he went off to Montreal. His