Links to other sites on the Web
Chapter Page
Previous Chapter
Character Page
A/N: Thanks to Jad for her ideas!
Disclaimer: None of the hazing rituals described below are precise, this is fiction of course, and I’m just describing tidbits of stuff that’s true on the whole but maybe not for the team in question. Oh yeah and I reinforce my apologies to the Tremblay, Trepeniar clan.
Chapter 18: Tangers III or The Affair of the Gift Baskets—Epilogue
I was finally dressed and actually decent looking by seven that evening. Joe had disappeared somewhere with Coach Hartley, I think they were going out to dinner with Monsieur Lacroix. Either way, I wasn’t invited and I think that I was fine with that. I really didn’t want to be near Joe at that time. Besides, I had gotten a call from Footer, and he had invited me over to his room, he said all the guys were gonna be there and it would be fun.
I balked a bit at that too. "All the guys there and it was gonna be fun," was the code phrase the veteran players used on the puppies. What it really meant was, "Come on over rookie so we can strip ya naked, get ya sodding drunk, watch ya try to do a hooker, pin ya in the shower, shave your ass if it’s hairy, and use India Ink to draw pretty pictures on each cheek."
I shivered. I don’t know why the guys thought it was funny to do that kind of thing to the kids. I mean we trusted them! As far as I was concerned it was abuse, and no one was gonna change my mind on that one. I was the only Avs rookie that had escaped that hazing, mostly because I went through some tough times mentally in my rookie year and I think Patty kept the hounds of me. I will always be grateful to him for that.
Abby and Denis weren’t so lucky I don’t think. Neither of them told me what they had to do to be initiated but it was supervised by Patty and they were under a code of silence from the Union—as goaltender’s called themselves.
The other thing the rookies had to do was foot up the bill for a team dinner. Now if you don’t think that that doesn’t sound too bad then you’ve never seen a hockey player eat. They told me after the Stanley Cup win in ’96, that the restaurant owner said the food was on the house, and the whole team promptly bankrupted him with a thirty-thousand dollar bill.
I asked Patty once what he had to do to get initiated, and Patty didn’t really answer me. He just said that rookies nowadays got it really easy compared to rookies when he was a pup. Montreal was a real archaic place, he said, and there was a strict code to hazing there, one that I wouldn’t want to know. He was more open with his hazing in Granby though, the only hazing there was getting your head shaved and then having to do a girl on the practice ice.
Peter McNabb, an old Bosten Bruin and one of the guys who did like game analysis for the televised games, he told me that Phil Esposito had a bee inked on his butt when he was a rookie and it never came off! I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
Either way, all I knew was that in my rookie year I had managed to escape any form of hazing, and that weighed on my mind a lot. Of course I was accepted within the team, no one seemed to hold anything against me, but I felt like maybe I had chickened out of something. On the other hand, I didn’t really want to go through anything, and what if the guys were waiting in Footer’s hotel room now, ready to pounce and make me pay for my years of innocence!
I shivered as I stood outside the room, my hand poised to knock, I might as well take my medicine if it were coming. If I could take what just transpired between me and Joe in the shower, then I can take anything!
I knocked and the door almost immediately blasted open. Blake was standing at the door, that goofy grin on his face, and there was a pair of boxers on his head.
"Hey!" he giggled, "Ya made it! Another stomach to fill!"
"Stomach?" I asked as I stepped in the room. I smiled instantly when I looked around, all the guys were here, well all except Joe. And it definitely looked like a party, all the gift baskets were strewn all over the room, and everyone was digging in! With all the wrappers and bows strewn about, it looked like Christmas! I could feel my cheeks reddening with happiness, and not to mention my tummy relaxing with relief.
Ooooh I was hungry! And I could see that the basket with the sausages was disappearing fast! I immediately snatched one and ripped open the plastic.
Kaspar was sitting gleefully on one of the beds, chattering loudly about something with Forsberg and they were both cracking lollipops in their teeth and sucking on them. They were those old fashioned, round flat lollipops too! Ooooh I wanted one of those! And there was muffins, and cookies, and pastries, and breads, and meats and cheeses and candy! It was all here, it was like a biblical feast! And I remind you again, we’re hockey players, a sight like that would bring any one of us to our knees. Patty, of course, had a bottle of wine in his lap, it looked like a good red brand too. He and Keaner were giggling and taking turns tossing jelly-beans in each other’s mouth. I wanted jelly beans too!
A few of the gift baskets were bath products and night clothes, hence the boxers on Blakie’s head. It looked like he had called dibs on the boxers, he had them all over the place, but I really doubted that his fat ass would be able to fit into them.
All of the guys were laughing and barking stuff at each other, no one was making any sense and everyone was just eating! I larked around the room, not really listening when guys greeted me and I can’t quite remember what I answered back to them. I was just snatching goodies and tossing em down the hatch.
As I rounded the corner of one of the beds to grab some jelly beans, I noticed that the bathroom was wide open and there was hot steam pouring out. Deciding that it couldn’t get any weirder, I peeked inside. I was wrong, it was weirder.
Hejduk, Skoula, Vrbata, Hahl, deVries, and Trepanier were all crowded in the bathroom, the tub was full of hot water and some of them were actually sitting in the tub and some were standing at the sink which also had hot water running. Vrbata, Hahl and Hejduk were all crowded in the tub which was a foot high with bath bubbles and I didn’t even want to know if they were naked or not! They were all chattering in Czech, and I could see the floor and tub littered with those tiny containers of bath salts, and bubbles and beads. They were trying all of the gift bath products at the same time! It smelled nice actually......nah, it was too floral. Skoula was mostly dressed but he was wearing no pants, and he was sitting at the end of the tub with his feet soaking in the water.
My mouth dropped open but I really didn’t know what to say! What could I say? And after what happened this afternoon, could I really say anything?
I instead looked at Trepanier and deVries, they were both standing at the sink using the different hand soaps and lotions. Pascal Trepanier noticed me first and he turned around, looking at me with his huge, round eyes. "Hey!" he said to me, "Try out this Cucumber Melon! It’s beautiful, it smells like a woman’s neck!"
I smiled. "Uh, no thanks," I said, "Um....I don’t want to smell like a woman’s neck!"
Pascal grinned, showing tiny, perfect teeth. "Better not, you’d give me a hard on then."
I laughed politely, Pascal laughed wildly, and I tried not to make too much eye contact with him as I slowly backed out of the bathroom and then out of the twilight zone.
"Woah," I muttered to myself, "Note to self, drop no soap around Pascal in team showers and stop being his back-scrub buddy."
"Hey," a voice barked at my ear.
I jumped. "Aaah!" I screamed.
Footer, the one who had approached me laughed. "Jumpy?"
I shrugged. "What can I say?" I said. "That bathroom bleeds homoerotica, no?"
Foote raised his eyebrows. "Really?" he asked.
I nodded and with a grin that reminded me vaguely of a dirty old man’s, Foote puttered over to the bathroom and looked inside. He quickly came back over to me, his eyes wide. "Pascal just asked me if I wanted to smell like the back of a nubile virgin’s knee!"
I held out my hands. "Modo musta put his mojo into the baskets," I said as I noticed with some worry that Patty and Keaner were no longer throwing jelly beans into each other’s mouth, but just placing jelly beans in each other’s mouths.
Foote laughed. "Nah," he said, "Mario Tremblay is Pascal’s uncle."
I frowned. "And?"
"Nevermind," Foote said, "Hey kid, I’ve been meaning to ask you, how did ya keep Joey occupied in the shower for so long?"
I stood still for a moment....did I want to think about it?
Well, I’ll tell you, unknown reader, because none of you will tell Footie, right?
I was terrified when Foote ordered me into the bathroom with Joe. For one thing, he was the captain and one never, ever disturbs the captain’s shower lest terrible, unspeakable ills befall them. I was about to intrude on that sanctity.
I had to come up with a good reason, and fast to explain to Joe why I was in there and then keep him there....hmmmmmmm, terrible, unspeakable ills?
Only one thing came to mind at that moment, and I took a deep breath as I stepped into the bathroom and listened to Joe crooning a James Bond song. I closed my eyes and dropped my boxers onto the bathroom floor. Taking a deep breath, I darted forward across the bathroom and hopped into the steaming hot shower.
"Hey!" Joe yelled. "What the hell are you doing have you gone mad!"
I did my best to look only at moi capitain’s face, and nowhere else. Jeez, I thought, my childhood dream was to play on a line with Joe Sakic.......not invade his shower!
"I’m sorry Joe!" I did my best to put on a whiny kid face, "but someone put itchy powder in my boxes while I slept! What do I do! My ass is gonna fall off I know it! I’m gonna die!"
The anger melted almost instantly off Joe’s face, he just looked a little bit concerned and a helluva lot annoyed.
He sighed and wiped the rest of the soap and shampoo off his face, blinking through the streaming shower water. "I’m doing this only because I think itch powder is the dirtiest trick to be done in a locker room and if I find out who did this I’ll wring him dry, no one’s supposed to be doing it! Now turn around!"
What followed was the most humiliating experience of my entire life. I had to whimper and holler and cry and ham it all up that my ass was burning from itch powder. And Joe Sakic, my captain, my idol, my....well my everything, he proceeded to lather up shampoo in his hands and scrub my ass! And not only did I have to keep whimpering and crying that I was still hurting until I heard Footer’s knock at the door, I had to stand there and listen to Joe humming tunes from West Side Story!
It was just unnatural! I mean everything that we were trying to protect our captain from, and he was scrubbing my butt cheeks! Talk about trauma right there.
When I heard the quick knock on the bathroom door I recovered and burst into tears, thanking Joe for saving my ass....inwardly I swore to pin down Mike Modano and flay him for this. Joe, who looked unmoved and as business like as a mother who’s changed many a diaper before, just slapped me really hard on my butt, hopped out of the shower and yelled over his shoulder, his thick Vancouver accent that he always tried to tame coming out, "Yah, yah kid, eh don’t expect me to clean your ass regularly, and don’t ever go to anyone else with that kind of request again! Other men aren’t as nice as I am. And I don’t want you to have to find out the hard way."
"So kid! Hellooooo!"
I was snapped out of my reverie and Foote was waving his hand in front of my face. "Come on!" Foote said, "What did you do?"
"Oh!" I said, glancing over at Patty and Keaner again, I really didn’t like that eye contact they were maintaining over the jelly beans. "Um...well...you know, I just told Joe that I was really, really depressed about not having scored a goal in like five games and that I was thinking of ending it all. You know, the old need a veteran’s help story."
Foote smiled. "You’re a smart kid!"
I looked back at Keaner and Patty. Keane had squished a jelly-bean over Patty’s right eyebrow and it stuck. They both were laughing like kids. Out of the blue, Blakie swooped in like a hawk and promptly licked the bean right off, sending all of us into fits of laughter. At first Patty didn’t seem to notice, and Blakie was already strutting into the bathroom and then slinking out of it with a spooked look on his face, before Patty sat up and said quietly, "Did Blakie just lick my eye?"
Links to other sites on the Web
Chapter Page
Previous Chapter
Character Page