The Meaning of Hockey, Chapter 17

Bobby entered the six-year-old team bus, which had cost $250,000 in a deal over the summer with an old teammate who was now a part owner of the Western Professional League, and took a seat in the second row. He placed a pile of books by Noam Chomsky and some others about feminism, anarchism and socialism, borrowed the previous night from Frida, on the seat beside him, the equivalent of a “Do Not Disturb” sign. This was probably unnecessary, because everyone but Troy was avoiding him like he was a pitcher taking a perfect game into the ninth inning. But, even the thought of talking caused a throbbing pain.

Just like the times his bell had been rung, Bobby knew the only way through the pain was to float in the lake alongside the thoughts and images of his damaged brain. Bits and pieces of his conversation with Mike, with Frida, with Troy and more distant memories surrounded him in the slightly cool, but calm water. He could not see the shore. It was dark or maybe the sun was blinding him. The light blurred the distinction between past, present and future.

Frida. Sure, the goodbye kiss had been more sisterly than loverly, but her lips did press against his skin.

Imagine their mouths had come together, tongues touching, exploring. Feel the smoothness of her skin. Caress her shoulders. Run the back of his fingers down to feel the hardness of the nape of her neck give way to the softness of her breasts.

Bobby rearranged himself in his seat as the bus drove in the HOV lane past stop-and-go afternoon traffic on the eastbound freeway in Burnaby. There was a rustling in his pants that proved he still had some sexuality abilities, even without the aid of a prescription. It felt good but it made him think about doing it, really doing it with a woman, and the fact that it was just possible he might never be able to, ever again.

Of course, he didn’t believe that.

He needed to reflect upon matters less stimulating if he was to survive the fourteen or more hours through the mountains to Cowtown.

Concentrate on Frida’s first political lesson.

What did she say? “Class is the key concept to understand how the world works. Always ask yourself: In whose interest is this law being made or this tax being lowered?”

He repeated her words to himself and then his mind wandered.

What had he said to Mike? Did he tell the story? What did Frida mean by that “cousins” kiss? That she was no longer interested in him in a sexual way? That she would settle for being friends? What did they talk about? First about his practice, then about relationships between fathers and sons and finally about anarchism, Noam Chomsky and other political philosophies. She certainly was a smart person and much better educated than he was. All those smart-ass comments he had made over the years about feminists and now he was in love with one.

A revelation? He was. In love.

Most of the women he had had relationships with were less concerned with matters of the mind. Or had it really been them? Maybe he was the one who had only been interested in their bodies. Perhaps if he had given them a chance they would have been interesting in other ways.

Mary-Beth, she may have been smart. She was a student at some kind of university. Where did he meet her? Boston? While he was playing for the Blackhawks? Or was it in Chicago while he was playing for the Canucks? It was definitely at an away game because he could remember staying in a hotel. He had to pay his roommate — who was that? — to move into a different room for the night. Mary-Beth, she was the one who would only do it when she was on top. Some kind of 1970s women’s lib thing. Nice breasts, although she had this thing about one being smaller than the other. He never noticed until she brought it up. Nice nipples is what he remembered. A little stimulation and they grew like Pinocchio’s nose. Nipples and she was the first woman, other than that hooker at Gilles Tremblay’s stag party, who was into oral sex. Never had to be asked. How long did that relationship last? It was maybe a month that she followed the team around. All they ever did together was spend time in bed. Great head and this ability to squeeze and then let go while he was inside her — that’s what he remembered best about Mary-Beth.

Why had he been able to get it up with her and not with Frida? A question of age? Or was it because she always made him hard with her mouth?

Oral sex, had he become addicted to that? It wouldn’t help anymore. No way. His feeling of panic had been so strong his penis had probably shriveled up and disappeared inside him. How could she suck something that wasn’t there?

That’s a strange image.

How long had it been since he had sex? He had to stop thinking about it.

Where were they now? Damn, the bus was only crossing the Port Mann Bridge. There was still almost another hour of suburbs. A hundred kilometres until they reached Hope and climbed out of the Fraser Valley and into the mountains. How to survive? Bus travel was going to be the toughest part of junior hockey. He already loathed it and that was after one three-hour trip to Seattle and a half-hour into the ride to Calgary. He must have bused and flown a couple of million miles in junior and then the pros. How did he survive all those years? Playing cards and telling stories. What a life.

Stories. Had he told the story to Mike? Frida and Mike. That’s all that really mattered. Hockey? Did it matter? How about politics? If he learned Frida’s lessons well it would help him win over his son. Did Mike say he’d play again?

Sitting in his office. Mike looked like a hockey player. Uncomfortable off his skates. Legs splayed off the couch.

“What have you got to lose by playing for the Totems?”

“I don’t fit in.”

“Fit in? You mean here, on my team? In Vancouver?”

“I don’t fit in hockey. The whole macho, authoritarian culture — it’s just not the way I was brought up. I hate it. It’s so mindless.”

“I understand.”

Why would he believe this?

I should introduce him to Frida. He’d like her. They would fit.

Bobby looked out the window at some Surrey tract housing beside the freeway. There were a couple hundred identical roofs.

Frida. Never used to think about women. Except that way. Sexist. Objectification. What did that mean again? It was so clear when Frida explained it to him. Right. Thinking of a woman solely as an object that could provide sexual pleasure. Judging women solely by their sexual desirability. He had definitely been guilty of objectifying women.

Why was that wrong again? Women are people, not just sexual objects.

The Surrey housing tracts had become Langley hobby farms. Bobby remembered when parts of Burnaby and most of Richmond looked like this.

Bobby was fairly certain that it was okay for women to be sexually desirable to men. How did Frida put it again? After he said he was sorry. Sorry for not being able to get it up. Well, sort of said it. They talked about sex. She said part of being a person is being sexual. Part of being a woman is being sexual. Part of being a man is being sexual. Sex was good. The thought that Frida said sex was good pleased him. Scared him. Offered hope.

Damn, I’ve returned to adolescence, thought Bobby. I’m like the sniveling, pimple-faced, hormone ridden, fifteen-year-old bantam players at summer hockey camps who can’t think about anything except the ever-expanding appendages dangling between their legs. Only I think about the absence of sex and my appendage shrivels up in fear.

Is this what a mid-life crisis is all about: A return to the mindset of adolescence, but without the ability to get it up?

Stop it. Hard-ons are a depressing subject. Think of something else.

Then Troy rescued him from his torment.

“Guys are talking,” whispered his loyal assistant as he sat down.

Bobby shrugged.

“Saying you’ve fucking gone ‘loony tunes’ and more.”

“Hockey can be cruel,” said Bobby and although the words seemed to be an appropriate response, he didn’t know what they meant.

Troy nodded.

“Even at the top, life isn’t all glamour and glory. Airports, planes, hotels, reporters, autographs. It can be pretty damn boring, even lonely. You got your time between breakfast and morning skate. You got your time between pre-game meal and showing up at the rink. You got your couple of hours before game time. Sometimes you don’t even like the guys on the team.”

As Bobby rambled, Troy looked concerned.

“I was on teams where I didn’t have a single friend. Guys I could talk to, like you.”

That elicited a smile.

“Or maybe you’re just shy. Maybe you’re afraid to make friends just in case the guy you like gets traded.”

Troy nodded at that.

“You make the money, but it can be hard. Most guys do a lot of talking or watching TV or playing cards, but there’s always some who pick up strange hobbies and even a few who go stark raving loony.”

A perfect setup.

“I ever tell you about Larry Hunt?”

Not that it mattered.

“This guy I knew back in the AHL. A pretty decent defenceman who if he’d been twenty pounds heavier and two inches taller, probably would have had a good career in the NHL. As it was, Huntsy knew the best he could hope for was a cup of hot chocolate in the show and ten, maybe a dozen years kicking around the minors, making a little better money than he could back at the mill in his home town. When I knew him he was over thirty and had dressed for nineteen games with Boston. Huntsy was a real quiet guy. To pass the time, he made lampshades out of playing cards. He’d get these really fancy or unusual decks of cards — maybe something from Outer Mongolia or an antique porno pack from Paris — and with string and glue and some wire he’d make a really pretty lampshade. He got so good that stores in towns all over the league would buy these things from him. I heard he made his living from those damn lampshades after he retired. Collectors from all over the world were buying them. Apparently, they were very popular in England; especially the ones made with those 3D cards of naked women. You know the kind? Tilt the card or look at it from another angle and the clothes come off. Imagine a lampshade made with several packs of those. Quite a show! I heard one of them sold in London for seven thousand pounds.”

“Wow,” said Troy.

“But the guy with the craziest hobby ever was the Popsicle Man. Never played with him, but I played against him. Alfie Strand was his real name, but everyone called him Popsicle Man. A third string goalie for Los Angeles when I ran into him. Spent most games in the press box. Pretty much only got on the ice in practice. He was twenty-eight, twenty-nine, and had already been in fourteen different organizations. You know the type. He was always getting traded because he was good enough as an insurance goalie, but then once a team’s number-one guy got back from injury or whatever, Alfie was expendable. Well, the way this guy dealt with life was to build things out of Popsicle sticks. Cats, dogs, boats, tractors, people — he’d build something every road trip. A really long trip and it might be a life-sized model of Frank Mahovolich. But that wasn’t the weirdest part. It was what he did to them after these things were finished. Never kept a one. Always burned them. Damn guy was a pyromaniac. Not a word of a lie. I know this for a fact: The Popsicle Man was put on waivers and then released by the Kings because he burned down a model of the Victoria Bridge in his bathtub at the Chateau Champlain. Set a wall on fire, got the sprinklers going on the entire sixteenth floor and turned out two squads of Montreal firefighters.”

“I like that story,” said Troy smiling. “Fucking Popsicle-stick pyromaniac. That’s fucking funny.”

What did Frida say about story telling? Human beings are hard-wired to do it — whatever that means. It was the very first art form, because it fulfills a basic need.

I am an artist.

Or maybe I tell stories to avoid dealing with reality.

The latter was more likely to be true than the former.

Next Chapter: Monday

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