Rash Brian, Maybe from Ponoka (2009)

 

(boy, been away from bloggin for a while... have some snippets. Here's an old one I never got around to uploading from way back-- back when I worked in a parkade for easy-money/ suburban-merit / gross acquaintances / peanut-butter toast / lazy routine/ the inside-out, slow-dying of certain relationships, expectations and delusions. Anyway, ran into a lot of wonderful characters like this at the parkade. loved'em all for their courage to be forthright about their pain, even if their words were venomous, their conceptions and recollections, false and self-serving. I guess it's easier for these many to sour and exaggerate history than it is for them to face the reality of innocuous degradation, or seen from another, just as accurate, perspective: the beauty of perpetual change. pow!) - Feb.25.11

Rash Brian, Maybe from Ponoka: 

Scene takes place in the early hours of a Saturday Morning, 2009. Inside the"Tourist Bureau", Edmonton's Library Parkade.

Brian, a 5’5” man with a “Town of Ponoka” something or other ball-cap and salt-and-pepper coloured hair flowing wide from beneath it, over his ears and half-way down his neck. The corners of each outer brow are swollen with large circular bumps. His nose is flat and pressed to the left-side of his face. Old wounds I suspect because of the lack of discolouration. He has an oddly round back pack on and steel-toed boots. In front of him are recently picked purple flowers, slightly wilted, on top of a free weekly-magazine stand. He’s staring out of the glass, past his reflection.

R: Are those flowers you picked for your wife?

Brian: My wife? The fucking whore!

R (cross between a frown and a smirk): she--

Brian: I can’t even get a fucking coffee in this city, the fucking greyhound doesn’t have coffee!. This city. Fuckn’, do you know, Edmonton, this city isn’t even a fucking city!
Brian: Where was the first oil-well in this province?

R: Leduc number 1?

Brian (cutting R off, emphatically): Fucking Blackfalls! This shouldn’t even be a fucking city. Blackfalls! Calgary, everything’s open downtown, here there’s fucking nothing.

Brian: I graduated in Lacombe in fucking 1974. 1974! I’m 52 years old and I’m a certified journeyman carpenter. She fucked the fucking asshole behind my back for three fucking years and now she marries him?! He’s a fucking R.C.!

---silence---

Brian: He killed a kid! The fucking cop. More cops sell crack in this province than fucking Hell’s Angels. You know who told me that? The seven friends of mine that are Hell’s Angels.

Brian: Fucking cops! She fucking married him and fucked him for three years behind my back. We were on the same softball team: "Brian, your up, Go Brian!” Fucking cops!

Brian: He gets me-- Eight of his R.C. buddies follow me, following me around, tailing me and in two weeks I get two impaireds and I’m the fucking criminal? Fucking political! If I could pick between cops and Hell’s Angels who do you think I’d pick?

R (quickly) : Hells Ange---

Brian (cutting R off, again, emphatically) : Fucking Hell’s Angels! I’d pick them, the fuckin’--- I’m 52 years old and I’m a certified journeyman carpenter. $56000 dollars a year she’s making part-time and the fucking lawyer is only seven years. She’s making $56000 a year part-time. I lost my fucking house I built with my own hands to that fucking whore.

---silence---

Brian (stepping close and leaning towards R, pointing out with his hand, gesturing to an imaginary dog beyond the glass): The Cops, you piss, you piss and they charge you, you see that, that fucking German Sheppard, fucking that dog can shit right there and you fucking piss and you know what they’ll charge you?

R: $500

Brian (interrupting): $5000 for pissing on the street!

R: I don’t think it’s that m---

Brian: You fucking,--- the government closes this down and I can’t get a coffee and I’m fucking homeless.

---silence---

R: You could probably go to the Mac’s on 105 street

Brian: I’m not walking another 20 fucking miles!

---silence---

Brian: D’ya have a dollar for a co---

R leaves and shuts the door behind him cutting Brian’s request off.