Whose parents are they?
No, not parents, older though, than the rest of the crowd. They look like they shouldn�t be there, but they are trying hard to fool everyone, even themselves. She�s a redhead, but too pale. She has very brown roots. For a while, they look married, which was a puzzle. He was, is, by far, too ugly to be with her. He hates the music too. She doesn�t much care for him, either, but she knows all the words. Now it�s clear. Neither wears a wedding ring, no engagement either. They don�t hold hands, or even lean against each other. First date? Yeah�last date too. There, then, all is right with the world again. The chorus of an easy to learn song comes up, and he sings along. He misses a change in the words, falls flat. Not worth a look.
Young girl in the front row with the piercing eyes. She�s been here before, every time just stares at the lead singer. Last time, the band called her and a dozen others up on stage. Her ring is set far back on her tongue, it only shines when she lets out a monotone yell, the same drawn breath as at every concert. She looks very young, 12 maybe, but we don�t let 12 year olds in. She�s 18 at least. She�s is someone�s little girl, but tonight she goes backstage with the band, or maybe it was the opening act. None of the floor crew saw her again that night, but she was back for the next concert.
The night started slow. They gave out 200 free tickets to boost the crowd. Wonderful idea, that was. Students bought tickets for the university show, then the promoters drive from bar to bar, and give out 200 tickets? How many drunks do you think will show? And tables. They put tables in the audience, to make it more intimate. That�s what they call �taking up space�.
But it�s easy work. Drunk twenty something�s, all of them wimps, or bullies. Wimps leave when you ask them to, bullies leave when you outnumber them. And a barricade. Thousands of pounds of steel, cannot be pushed over from the front. Safe, solid steel.
That�s why it�s a good job. Catching crowd surfers is light lifting. The crowd won�t put up anyone over 200 pounds. Doesn�t happen. Usually it�s short pudgy guys, or very beautiful girls who almost always wind up sorry they did it.
We found a shirt for one of them, who was bare chested under the top that was now making the rounds of the moshpit. The rest usually wear bras, so they stay, embarrassed but not enough to flee the building. Sometimes, we take longer than others to find an extra shirt, but what do you expect?
Barricade staff is always male, always large. I wouldn�t want it any other way. Neither would you, if you were in the crowd.
First time to the Underground is an experience. It�s the lower half of a warehouse-- it�s above ground, but it�s still a hole. Up a flight of bright white steps, and then it�s concrete and cinder block walls, but not so much walls as piled bricks. I�ve seen one fall, knocked out in the middle by a thrown body. They don�t support the ceiling, nothing does. It�s concrete too, like a bomb shelter. Occupancy by the door counter is 1750. At 1500, they are instructed to count every third head, so the number is closer to 2250. Fire regulations say 2000, but forget that: at twenty five a person, we�d cram 3000 in, and have. Security to people is reaching about a 1:300 ratio at that point, and 1:200 is dangerous enough.
The organizers screwed the manager, manager has less to pay for security he says. Send ten home, or cut the wages to cover. I know it�s bullshit, because it�s coming from our employer. He�s depending on a quiet night so he can drop an extra thousand into his own pocket. If he has a busy night with only 20 staff on, someone�s going to hurt. I�m not working a 12 hour shift for 66 bucks and I�m sure as hell not going to work 10 people short on an all night rave. I�m number five to do the math in my head, so the fastest nine and I go home.
The next week, we all asked for our pay at the door, and we all got it.
Someone stabbed one of our temps, he was in for one shift and frisked the wrong guy. He pulled him out of line for having an aspirin bottle filled with ecstasy, turned around to call another guard and caught one between the shoulder blades. He�s fine. We�re all big, all men. Takes more than one stab wound. At least it would for me, I�m sure. Week after that, I called in sick.
That was the weekend that someone called the police on the rave, said security was making coin dealing to the patrons. Bullshit, as far as I knew. Cops came in anyway, stripped searched the prettier female workers on that night, then went away with 2 aspirin and a factory sealed package of Excedrin. Go figure. I knew we ran a clean party, cause it was our asses if we didn�t.
Found out later that one of the side door guys was dealing on the side, but he wasn�t stupid enough to bring it in on him. He would let a few of his friends in the side door and they�d split the money afterward. He was making five times what he�d normally take home, easily. We only caught him because he collected in front of me one night. He offered me half, somewhere like fifteen hundred, to shut up about it. The guys and I beat him and split three grand 29 ways instead. Nice bonus, and we gave him to the cops with enough of what we�d taken at the door that night to leave an impression.
Back door is the power, you give it to your biggest. Some nights, you put two people on it, and wonder if you have enough. They were lucky to get me on staff. I�m not the brightest, but I breathe through my nose and I know things.
And I was the biggest. They used to joke, call me anorexic because I weighed 350 pounds, but mostly they just told me to work the door. When I said �no� people understood it was final. Once when the police came to the door, they asked if it was ok for them to come in. I told them they�d have to use the front door just like everyone else. One looked like I shot him, but the other four laughed and said it was alright. I wouldn�t have stopped them, but they knew I was just doing my job. Besides, no warrant. If I�d invited, or allowed them to come in, they�d have reign inside. Lucky they had me on staff. Not the brightest, but I know things.
When the music stops before 9 am, something is wrong. The crowd always lets me pass. I plunge in like they aren�t there, and as I move through them they aren�t. Some stay in the way, but anyone under 250 pounds I can dead lift out of my way, gently. It�s a nice feeling, or it was, the night someone almost killed me, I quit.
We were an underground party, but we didn�t move the way the real undergrounders do. We were officially unofficial. The cops knew we ran clean, so we got noise violations, but nothing else. We served water, not booze, pizza not candy. We ran the house 500 people, 1000 people over capacity and we did it better than some ran their clubs for 200. No deaths, no major injuries. 2 broken arms and 600 stitches over a year and a half. Some parties would do that in a weekend. Not ours.
The best weekend I ever had started at 4am on Sunday. The party had five hours left, but four people from New Brunswick, who borrowed their friend�s car were leaving. It was almost dawn, and cold. They walked out my door, and their car that wasn�t their car, was gone. The two girls were crying and so was one of the guys. Their friend didn�t know the car was 500 kilometers from home. Didn�t know it was stolen. What do you do at 5am, scared and 500 kilometers from home? You meet me.
Sometimes my boss was a real ass, but he was human. I told him I was going to bail early, if that was cool. He waved and I was back to where I�d left them crying. �Gas to Fredericton is going to be about seventy bucks, guys, but you can owe me.� They didn�t get it, but when I pointed to my car and said �Come on, I�m driving you home. Report the car stolen there. Your friend doesn�t miss a thing.� They looked at me like angels were singing behind me, and I couldn�t hear it. I didn�t get home until Friday. We partied, drank and partied. But home is where I live, so home is where I went.
Not that it wasn�t good to be home again, back to school five days a week and raves on the weekend. At four am, you can just see the sky brighten outside the backdoor. Some mornings were so cold and the rave air so hot and humid that there would be waves of rolling fog and noise spilling out and over the street, against my back. Nothing every happened at 4 am on Sunday mornings, it was the quietest time the rave had. Usually a good DJ would spin at 4am, my favorites would wind a pattern of sound light and bird songs to stimulate�something no one ever understood but that everyone needed. You are never as tired as you are working rave security at 4am.
The crowd would be thinning of the people that came to enjoy themselves with 2000 other people at 4 am, and start to get the real scum intermixed. The 12 year olds that had fooled their parents had damn well better be gone by now.
Drunks from the bars that just closed wandered up, pissed off they couldn�t get in for free. Homeless guys would argue with me. They just wanted to be warm. Couple of the not so shifty ones, I�d sneak in, put them in a room somewhere. It stopped when I had to pay for a coat that one of them stole from coat check. I couldn�t drop a night�s pay because he was cold.
We had a brawl one night, that was the night we racked up our two broken arms and about half of those stitches we got in the year and a half I was there. It was, by all accounts, a very controlled fight. 10 security, in a ring facing outward, and probably 30 opponents, all facing inward. Controlled, but not by us. I was always the back door for that reason. The backdoor was in the middle of the front wall, it was only called the backdoor because people left through it. Standing there, I was as close to all points in the room as anyone could be without ignoring more than half of the room. I wasn�t in that ring of 10 people, but it was my job to get there. I had to fight my way in, suited me fine. I wore a leather duster to work, always. It was cold; I wanted warm. It was thick and heavy leather, and I knew it took two slash wounds for me that night. Knives, I didn�t care about. I just hoped, as I grabbed the hood of the first person, that no one had a gun. I am not a subtle individual. For me, �down� at a rave means you are out. 50 people will walk on you, trying to help you up. It�s not hard for me to put someone onto the floor, face first into the rave gravy. Backs of the knees were best, you could put a person down on their backs as gently as possible. So grabbing hoods and pulling people face first into the floor it was, that night. Once we got a rhythm going, we knew how to fight as a pack. Took about an hour, and I had twenty bruises from my face to my chest, but none of us were rolling on the ground and five or six of our attackers were. Four got arrested, including one of us, but released. Everyone else got away with being thrown out. That rave ended with the fight, at 3 am. My leather duster was retired when I got home that night, and I bought a new one, a rough leather, almost burlap material, and floor length. I had a slash across the back of my calf, that four inches higher would have been my hamstring. It was superficial, and healed without any major scarring, but I wanted thick leather there from then on.
My girlfriend at the time broke up with me when I told her I was still working there. I don�t think I blame her at all. I sometimes wonder myself. At that point, I had been slashed once, and nearly stabbed three times, and almost stomped to death. The reason I stayed, was the formula.
It was a mathematical principle. Owner, organizer, DJ�s, everyone got all the money they wanted when the place hit 2400 people. Deal was, anyone paying to get in after the �real� count was 2400 (around 1900 on the fake counter), all their admission got split between the security guards. At between 25 and 30 bucks a person, we�d stuff 600 more people in, and make an extra 500 to 600 bucks, free and clear. We couldn�t do it every weekend, but we�d do it twice a month, sometimes. I�d make a fifth of my tuition in one night, some guys would pay their rent in a weekend. Damn right I�d do it.
I worked the rave where a guy died. I was a temp guard, someone called in sick, and the promoter worked with me before. He called me himself, had a jam, needed a floater for this party, could I do it for 200. Floaters got more because once in a very long while, the floater would be in the crowd, alone, when something happened. Usually it meant fighting out to get help, or occasionally running away. In any event, this promoter ran quiet shows, and this was a normal run for him. But then this stupid fuck shows up. He�s been drinking like mad, and looks really high. He decides that it would be good to do ecstasy, and does four times as much as anyone should, his first time doing it. So his heart exploded, or stopped, or whatever. I don�t see him until he�s being lifted up, piss and shit already flowing. I know enough to know he�s dead. Cut to the front door: Ambulance guys are trying to fight in against the crowd going out. Not working. I tell them that he�s around the backdoor, but they can walk if they want, he�s dead. After that, the rave scene around here got a reputation that it didn�t deserve, for the most part. Cops started coming around more, more parents said �no� in a louder voice than before.
The night I quit they had me on the front door, bastards. Front door makes no friends, only enemies. No, you can�t bring 200 pills in with you. No, the knife goes. No, you can�t pay half and I don�t care how many of your friends will be mad at me for keeping you out.
So front door opens, and I am always behind it, right behind it. The door opens on a pissed off guy with the 200 pills that I took from him in the drug bin behind me. He pulls a gun, and I slam the door on his arm and lean into it with all my weight. His three friends are trying to push the door open, and they're winning, while I am just trying to keep the gun pointed up, for fucks sake, up. I have my thumb behind the trigger, because I know things, and he�s crushing my finger. I finally twist his wrist until he�s forced to let go, and I have the gun. He pulls his mangled arm out of the door, and I flip the safety on while four guards and I slam the door shut. I�m not breathing. I shout for someone to call the cops, and I throw the door wide open, he�s still right there, pissed. I put the barrel to his forehead, and push him back into the street a little. I hope he doesn�t notice the safety on. He freezes, so do his friends. This gun is heavy, and it would bore a hole in his head, and he knows. His friends don�t have guns, and I know. I thumb the safety off, and he gets scared. I tell him if he moves, he�s dead. His friends move, he�s dead. We stand there, silently, for 11 minutes, until the cops come, take them and the gun. Right after they left, so did I. Not a word to anyone, just got in my car, and left.
That�s why steel is so much safer. Barricade is easy, light work. I wear a dresshirt and jeans, sometimes khakis. We found a joint on one girl, and she cried and left. I was going to let her in, but she felt guilty. What a job.
Bands play here, not DJ�s, who spin pulses, but singers and drums and music. When I know the words, I�m allowed to sing along, and if the crowd is calm, I am allowed to turn around and watch the bands play. I�ve seen a lot of shows I liked, and they pay alright for someone like me. I haven�t been in a fight for at least three years. Haven�t� seen a knife except when I do dishes. And I can see the people finally.
Am I watching him because he picked up a bag and moved away quickly? Hiding it behind him as he sits down, is that why I am watching him? Or am I watching him because he�s black and looks out of place? He looks wrong, glancing nervously left and right. But eventually, it becomes obvious that it�s his baggage, it becomes obvious that it�s my baggage too.
Now, I�m on a train, my fianc�e getting farther and farther away. She is in the military, and I don�t know what to make of my life. Maybe I�ll keep working some kind of security job, something where I�d be a protector. I�d be a bad cop, bad for sure.
It�s been a flood of people for the afternoon, steady but never a rush. I�m just standing in line, waiting for my train. Foot traffic runs at angles to each other, so people just flow through. They part around me, they have to. I watch them casually, just watching, nothing major. One lady, older but attractive, makes eye contact. My eyes flicker to her luggage: a tiny bag from LeSenza. I grin for half a second, and she turns red. She knows it was obvious and was hoping for people to not notice. But where�s the fun in that?
It�s as dark as I remember it ever being at night. There�s a full moon, but I am in the ally between the Underground and the next shack of a building. I�m stomping after a scrawny little shit, he was rooting through people�s bags and dropping stuff into their waterbottles. There�s no way we could keep track of everyone�s bags and bottles on a night like tonight, it was 2 am and we had easily a 2700 real count already. Security was pissed: our regular bonus for being over capacity was cancelled, new management, new rules, all for him and screw his employee�s. Some of the guys just opened for business then: side door man was charging 15 bucks to sneak you in, tickets were 30 a pop that night. He had a line about as long as the front door, and no searches either.
I was about a block and a half off my post when I tackled the bastard. I am a slow, gallumping brute of a man, if he wasn�t high on something, he wouldn�t have been slow enough for me. As it was, I was sweating, dripping in my leather coat. I bounced his face off the pavement and dragged him by the belt back to the rave. Security called the cops. The manager said he�d fire me if I left the door again. I told him to smarten the fuck up, in front of the cop, told him that if he wanted to condone putting drugs in the drinks, that he should be arrested too. The cop laughed. Owner of the warehouse laughed. Management changed soon again.
That was me on the backdoor. I knew everyone. People would come to the door and say �let me in, I�m your electrician.� Bullshit, I�d say. �I know the electrician and you�re not him.� Some nights, we�d have people saying that their brother got shot, that their car keys were with their friend inside, all kinds of crap. One night, someone banged on the door, and I opened it. �I�m the promoter�, a little rake of a guy says to me, and tries to push past me. Promoter eh? I don�t know you, and I know everyone. Front door is �that- way. I close the door again. He knocks, again, really loud, and says that I�m fired. I tell him that as soon as he comes back with anyone who can verify that he is the promoter, that I�m good as gone. He comes back with a couple of the organizers and they tell me that I�m not fired. I figure that�s a life lesson for me and the promoter, eh?
Sometime in 2001
The night air is clear, cold, but not as cold as the earth. The fog clouds roll out of the underground, as I stand in front of the door, letting the pulse of sound roll over my back, encompass me and then move into the street. Technically I am violating the noise ordinance by opening the back door for no reason, but the police have been by already tonight, and they won't come back at five am. I feel as if I could sit down against the pressure of the voluminous clouds that push against my back, sit in them as if they were an easy chair carved from human humidity and heated by the steady, rhythmic breathing of two thousand people. I could fall back against the sound and the sweat, and be lifted on it. I stood away from the door, almost in the street. Had I been paying attention, I could have stopped anyone from going in behind me. But I wasn�t paying attention. Tonight didn�t matter; the overwhelming force of the crowd inside had pushed me outside, seeking relief and solitude. The empty street was enough.
We were running under capacity, the bitter cold and ice storm that had covered the early evening the night before kept all but the most serious ravers away. There would be no fights tonight, no shoving matches between drunks from downtown. No, this was the culture of the rave that I liked. The music was almost enough of an intoxicant, almost, for the people in the building. Whatever they were doing, these would be the ones to be calm. Even at five am it was still purely night, in the middle of December. This far above the equator, a December night starts at 4pm and ends at 7am. They could be left alone, inside, until daylight was actually bearing down on the door.
It hung open behind me on the hinges, people walking out slowly, often stopping and going back in for a short time. I may have let people in without knowing, I may have let people in for free. Tonight, though, no one would care. Five am, barely two thousand real count, no matter what happened, it would be a slow night.
The music would shift and change, just as I would tune out one throbbing beat, another would whirl up to assault me. I�d taken out the earplugs for the night, our DJ�s lowered the volume after 4am, to bring the night down a notch, and to introduce sounds they believed best played as quietly as they�d ever get.
I often wonder where I was on those nights, the nights when I�d consider tilting myself backwards into a cloud of steam and mist, recline and lose myself in the murk and damp of human sweat, and be swept away by it. I often wonder if I�ve ever come back from that. Would ever the all too frivolous afterbirth of a rave like this ever hold comfort for me? The huddle of ravers leaving at nine in the morning, tired and sore, cold, almost purple sometimes from the dawn�s chill. Where was I on those nights that I would walk ten feet away from the back door and feel like I was standing on another planet, looking up at the same starts and dreaming of a sound filled life, a pulse that no one else could feel.
Sometime in 2002
The air was tainted with the smell, not overpowering, but lingering just the same. Dried sweat, like a gymnasium. They�d closed the underground, weeks ago, left the doors open and hanging on the hinges. There was a time when this giant concrete room was packed so full that I couldn�t move, couldn�t get from where I was to where I needed to be for the press of small bodies, small people, dancing and gyrating in seizures, small circles of blur and movement, all intermingling with the people next to them.
The floor was as I�d always remembered it before a busy night. Stained in places, but clear of any surface dirt or debris. I looked around, the concrete blocks still standing where they had always been, though rattled and shaken on several occasions. The DJ booth still stood in the back corner of the room, wire mesh and steel siding a makeshift barrier against the crowd. The room oppressed me, with the silence and dullness of the air. No one moving, not even me now, as I surveyed the room, silently. Coming back to this place, again, at this time in my life, closed off feelings that I didn�t know were still open.
I�d never been here alone. No matter how often I�d worked, I�d always arrived after the crew to set up had started their work, always come in at the middle of the speakers coming together and the pop bar stocking for the night. Tonight, the main lights were not hooked up, and the eerie brightness of the emergency lighting was all that made the shadows around the room. Normally, blues and golds, greens and red lights would dance around the room, reflect off the hangings that were not on the ceiling tonight. They�d hang old CD�s and let the lights reflect off them in the strangest ways. Everything tonight was sterile. So blank and unforgiving in the light, like an operating room. The concrete under my feet was familiar, but so strangely cold now that I could hardly find the strength to move, let alone to walk the old borders of the room, now bare, and stripped down to nothing. Even the posters, the fliers that always heralded the next show, the next weekend, were down, cleaned off the wall, even the years old staples and pins were removed, the paint fresh.
The quiet room was closed, padlocked from the outside, since it had shelves large enough to be bunks that were not removable. After the building closed, people broke in to see if there was anything to steal, but they�d be looking for a place to sleep if they�d find one. Just as well, my home was not the quiet room.
The backdoor stairwell, boards missing, is now even more of a death trap than it ever was before. The backdoor looks to be chained shut from the inside, loops of chain wrapped around the old steel oil tank that held the fuel that once kept this area of the building warm in the winter. The pipes on the tank had been disconnected, and the only thing keeping the door from swinging open was the bulk of the now useless tank. The boards that were inexplicably missing made it impossible to walk down the stairs, and made coming back up at least equally challenging. It wasn�t important enough to me to risk it anyway, and so my tour was over, for the most part. I found myself lingering, just a few moments, over the feeling of the place, now so empty and barren.
If there were a ghost to this place, I would suppose I was it. I rode the wave of the popularity, I was the back door man, and knew everyone, everyone knew me. Now, all that is known is the cold concrete and gray of the paint on the walls. Not long after I walked off the job, there was a falling out, the building ceased to see use, people stopped coming, other places opened that were better, more comfortable, cheaper, in better parts of town. I felt, looking back at this place now, that as I walked, I�d pulled the color away from it, as I left, it all trailed behind me, every step away making the air stale, taking the memories with me as I did.
I spun on my heels, angry all of a sudden, at the barren fate that this place has before it. The owner sold it, the new owner wants to tear it down, rebuild something different on the old foundations. It will stand, empty inside and strong against the outside, the doors broken and forgotten, ready to be used again, until the day that it is deconstructed. When it is torn down, all at once.
It was once a place of pounding bass and pulse, heartbeats and breathing, alive, and living. Now, it stands empty, and slipping long from the memory of everyone who�d ever been here. And more than anything else I�ve ever known, I can sympathize with this building. Being here, in the shades of all that happened to me in this place, all the crush of bodies I�ve seen, and been in the middle of, flesh to flesh, bone on bone, the pain and the laughter, I can feel the emptiness creep from the walls and floor of this barren building. I can absorb it, and welcome it, as I take my steps deliberately from this place, I know that I am again taking a part of it with me, removing from it as I go, the parts that the building wants me to remember, that it wants me to feel. The emptiness shadows my feet, each echoing footstep growing softer and softer until I step onto the sidewalk with a crunch of loose pebble on pavement, and slide into my car. The door slamming rings against the building, a final breath of sound. My car stereo now makes the noise, as I roll away into the night, I know that the building will never again be filled with the frantic pace of drumming, the electronic blasts that once drove people into a frenzy of arms, legs, chest to chest, breathing in and out together, the air from each others lungs.
Just as I know that the empty follows with me, I know that the building has already died.
I wished there was a place like it again, a home for me, that felt quite as real as ever this one did.
Jan 22, 2003
There is a name I can�t forget. If I do, I think I will be the last person to forget her, that no one else in the world may remember her. Her name is Dawn Wynters, though I suspect quite strongly that it is a fake name, given to strangers who want to be helpful, or who want to be hurtful. I didn�t find out until the next day that she was 14, though I suspect that too, is a lie, to get a better fare on the bus. But they aren�t lies. I suspect they are, because I don�t want to believe they aren�t.
This is the wrong way to begin, isn�t it?
I was working the Sum 41 concert last night. All ages meant a busy night on the barricade, but that is a story for later, mostly.
She was my front row girl: the girl who got there early and who stayed in the front row center all night, in the middle of the pushing and the shoving, she held her ground. She was also the most attractive there that night. Blonde, and gentle eyes, almond face. She had that punk look to her that some guys don�t like, and some guys do. She looked like she was having a good time. She�s got a little metal in her face, nothing much, but a nose ring, a lip ring, and a few earrings in each ear. She wears a homemade safety pin necklace, but it all looks good on her.
Flash forward a few hours, and I�m working an upstairs hallway, babysitting our marketing director as she tries to evict the band from the building by herself. That same girl is upstairs, and I�m chatting with her, passing the time, and, in all honesty, trying to pick up. She looks really upset, more than most people were tonight. I ask what�s wrong, because if I can solve a problem, I�m feeling good about myself.
She says that she has no way home tonight. The gears turn a little in my head, and I offer to drive her home, and ask where she lives. The answer shuts me up a little. She lives in Toronto, a solid sixteen-hour drive away, nonstop. I�d be late for work in 2 days if I drove her home. She�s got a timid voice, like she�s talking to someone who has just hit her, very hard, and wants nothing more than to not be hit again. She tells me that she thought she could get a ride back with the band on their bus, but they were offering her a ride of a kind she didn�t want to take.
I ask her if she�s got a place to stay for the night, and I know the answer before I ask. I offer to let her stay at my place, on the couch, I add a second later, though with enough weight to let her understand there�s a bit of an opportunity if she wants it. She hesitated long enough that I knew she didn�t, so I also suggested a youth hostel downtown, and a bus station tomorrow. She nodded, and before I could discuss it further, the marketing director stopped in front of her, and asked what she was still doing in the building. Dawn stammered a little, which opened her up for the characteristic �Sorry, you have to leave now�. I jumped in, said I was driving her home, she�s with me. When I say �with me� at work, it means �leave them the hell alone�. At least Dawn wasn�t getting kicked out. After we were alone again, I asked her name, in case I had to tell anyone who I was driving home. We shook hands, and I told her it was a pleasure to meet her.
I drove her to the youth hostel after I got off work, to set her up with a room. She filled out a personal form, a whole lot of the information missing. She didn�t fill in an address, or phone number. Just her name, and my name as an emergency contact. My name. I�d known the girl for 3 hours, at the outside, and I was her emergency contact. We chatted before she went up to her room, women only accommodations. I gave her my phone number written on a piece of paper, wrapped around a quarter in case she needed a pay phone. I glanced at the sheet she was filling out, and saw her last name for the first time.
I went back to work for the after party, and met up with some friends, had a few drinks, caught up with everyone having a good time. Made a date with a friend to go out for drinks sometime, just the two of us. I drove home with a grin and a light buzz on, from the concert and the date.
The next morning, she called. She needed someone over 18 to sign for her to get on the bus home. I figured she had to be 17 at least, she looked 18 easily, I would have said 20. I shrugged into my clothes, and put on an old jacket, in case it was cold or rainy, I was going to give the jacket to Dawn for the trip home. I got to the bus station, and saw her sitting on a bench, looking worried. I was late, about half an hour. I knew she thought I wasn�t going to show. We went up to the teller together, and filled out some forms, promising that she would not require more care than an adult on the same trip, that I�d pay for the cost of her safe travel if it was more than she�d paid for the ticket. Before I signed, I read that I had to be her parent or legal guardian to sign. I didn�t hesitate, and added my signature, invalidating the contract, or the ability of the bus line to collect from me. The attendant nodded, and processed her ticket. As he did so, he said, looking at her identification card, �since you�re 14, you qualify for the youth rate, so it�s only 159.00 to Toronto�. As I tried to not look floored, she pulled out the money to pay, two fifties and a hundred. As we walked away, I whispered to her, in amazement �I had no idea you were that young Dawn. Are you sure Toronto is where you want to go back to? Do you have a place you could go where you have an address?� She put her head down, and told me that she hadn�t had a place like that since she was twelve. She was looking for work in Toronto, but couldn�t find any.
I almost vomited. Here was a fourteen year old girl, standing in front of me, telling me that she�s been looking for work for two years, but she looks reasonably well fed, she�s not thin or sickly looking. She�s attractive, and easily able to pass for twenty. I know that, because I wouldn�t ask her for identification if she came to my door. And she�s got a wallet with fifties and hundreds in it. I didn�t want to think about it. I couldn�t say anything. All I could do was put her on a bus back to a city that I don�t think she should have gone to. I regret trying to help her get back now. So I can�t forget her name, I don�t want to be the last person that forgets her. What else can I do?
I used to sit with an egg timer, close my eyes and let time pass quietly, not watching the time, just letting it pass as I knew it would. I�d not open my eyes until the timer had passed an hour, sometimes two hours. I�d lose myself in thought, sometimes I�d sleep, other times I�d tell stories or replay events in my mind.
When I close my eyes tonight, I worry about Dawn. I know that will pass, that my memory won�t paint a picture of her for long, now that she�s gone. I can�t forget her name, but I guess I don�t know much about myself after all.
Before I left the bus station, she sat down and I started to walk away. She turned her head up at me, and the noon sunlight through the windows made her squint at me. She said, in a stronger voice, �maybe I�ll see you around some time?�
I didn�t know what to say, so I opened my arms a little at my waist, in a gesture of futility, and half bowed, tilted my head toward her, and said �I don�t know Dawn, that I will ever see you again. But I wish you well, just the same.� She nodded, and turned back to watching for her bus.
I left, and hated every step I took.
*END*
The above story is true, told with as much attention to detail as I could muster the next day.
I wish I'd imagined it all.