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| Skating Over My Heart |
| By Terry Woo - Toronto, Ontario |
Today marked the first day in the annals of history that I weighed more than my dad. This wouldn’t be so bad if I was a 6’ 2” power forward for the U of T Varsity Hockey team. But I was merely a 5’ 10” unemployed software developer. So it’s bad.
“Well, at least you’re taller than me,” he said, slurping down his pho.
I shrugged, tossing some raw bean sprouts into my own bowl. “Not by much, though.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much fast food,” he suggested.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have passed on the lousy genetics, dad.”
“Hey,” he said, leaning back in his seat, “I got them from my father, so there’s not much I could do about it, either.” I laughed, and we ordered a few more beers.
Dad had come downtown from The Sausage to take me out for dinner and a Leafs game – Game #4 in the Quarter Final series against the New Jersey Devils. Our first playoff game at the criminally overpriced Air Canada Centre. After twenty-five years of faithful service at the same profit-laden corporate behemoth, they decided to give him this retirement gift: two Gold’s (face value: $350, street value: something pretty fucking insane.) Two tickets for twenty-five years of service. I don’t know whether to be pissed at the behemoth for being cheap, or grateful because Leafs tickets are currently priced beyond regular Toronto peasantry like us. Probably a little of both.
Funny thing, though. Dad actually gave me the tickets in the expectation that I was going to go with someone else.
“So, who are you going to take? Kenny?” he asked.
I looked at him, furrowing my brow. “Uh, dad? What’s wrong with going with you?”
He looked kind of surprised. Odd. I don’t think he understands that I’ve totally grown out of the whole “parents are uncool” stage years ago. My parents are pretty fucking cool – they’re still Asian parents, but they’re still pretty cool.
Dad is fairly laid back for an Asian parent… a decent compliment to a loving, but psychotically over-protective mother. Over the years, we’ve gotten a lot closer – he used to be just this big guy in a suit and tie who left before I got up for school, who came home and took a nap and had dinner and said little to nothing. Who liked barbequing chicken wings and sausages on Saturdays, watching football on Sundays, who never nagged, but yelled at me maybe once every two years.
My mom was worried about my health, unemployment, the latent homicidal rage inherent in me and most other Asian males – mothers always worry about everything, right? But my dad has always been surprisingly supportive of all the choices I’ve made. Well, the one’s he knows about, anyway.
“If you need any help,” he said, putting a beefy hand on my shoulder, “just ask.”
“Thanks dad. I appreciate it.”
And I did.
No matter how cool they are, they’re still undoubtedly Asian parents, and will presumably always do that Crazy Asian Parent thing to you… nagging, worrying, more nagging, and wishing that you’ll marry a nice Chinese girl and birth a whole new generation of little Chu’s. Love it or hate it. Again, like a lot of things in life, it’s probably a little of both.
*****
After punching in at the gate, we grabbed some eleven-dollar beers from the vendor, and then headed for our seats in time for the national anthem. The seats were totally kick-ass – right behind the Jersey goaltender, hopefully in view of a torrent of Leaf goals.
Truth be told, I didn’t much like the Trap-happy Devils. But I liked them far more than the Calgary Flames. Fuck, I hated that team. They were, of course, The Evil One’sTM favourite team. Hating your ex-girlfriends hockey team is a uniquely Canadian way of dealing with the pain of one’s breakup, I think.
My sociopathy was evidenced the next day, when I went out to catch Game #5 with my best friend, Kenny Lee. We decided to watch it upstairs at the world famous Madison Avenue Pub – a regular playoff congregation spot for Torontonians, featuring lots of beer, mediocre wings, and incredibly hot women wearing low-rider jeans and carrying LV bags.
Kenny looked around, shaking his head. “I can’t believe this.”
“You’re complaining. Why?”
“Dude, these chicks are wearing perfume to watch a simple hockey game. It’s a bloody bar, fer chrissake.”
“Get with the times, Lee. Myself, I’m wearing Curious – Britney’s fragrance – as we speak. It makes me feel like a nat-ur-al wo-man.”
I leapt up and sat back down after bellowing in joy (much to the puzzlement of many around me) at TSN’s score ticker: Calgary 3, Dallas 4 (OT).
“Geez, that’s really kind of pathetic,” tisked Kenny.
“Why, pray tell?”
“I never would’ve thought that you were the schadenfreude-type”
“I never would’ve thought so, either. But here we are.”
Kenny chuckled. “I bet you cheer at rain for Calgary when you’re watching the Weather Channel…”
“You know me too well.” I downed the rest of my pint and ordered another pitcher. “Not my fault, though. Didja know The Evil OneTM started rooting for the Flames Calgary because she thought Joey Johnson was cute? I mean, what kind of stupid reason is that? This is hockey, not American Idol.”
“Chicks are like that.”
\"Chicks are stupid, then.”
I love hockey. Most Canadians do. Hockey truly is the Canadian passion, the national unifier, our covenant on ice. Forget politics, government, laws, foreign policy, constitutional issues. Hockey supersedes all of these at a conscious and subconscious level, it really is what Canada revolves around. It’s where our Id congeals.
I think our aggressive fan-ship towards our sport – and towards our teams like the Flames or the Maple Leafs – is a focused concentration of latent frustration we feel as Canadians as a whole. Cockeyed nationalists may talk of Canada as a viable middle power in the world, champion of a set of fair and humanistic principles as opposed to, say, our neighbours to the south of us. But they’re wrong. In reality, we have little standing, almost no influence. Canada is classic Type B.
Mom wanted to immigrate to the US instead of Canada… everyone loves a winner, baby. She half-jokingly says that we’re a nation of losers. “Chyeah!” she snorted derisively. “Ga-na-dai yun pah see lah [Canadians have no pride; they’re scared of everything.] Moh myet yeh lek [Canadians don’t have much to brag about.] Mei-gwok yun yau meen jee [Now Americans… there’s a people with a lot pride.]” Blunt, but true. Canadians are used to feeling second-class in everything. We’re the perpetual underdogs, or, as Trudeau said, mice – timid and weak, at least compared to the Type A imperial monster next door. And we vest that frustration in our love of hockey, in our fierce loyalty to the game… and our despair at how our game is being broken by money, greed, ego, and the Trap.
Broken. Just like me.
My Christmas gift to The Evil OneTM was a pair of tickets to a Leafs game I’d mortgaged my heart and liver to get. Leafs vs. Flames, a year and a half ago. Ironic foreshadowing, but I of course didn’t know that at the time.
She turned to me, a soft smile on her face.
“You know what?”
“What?”
“This,” she said, giving me a peck on the cheek, “is my dream date.”
“Wow. Mine too.”
“Want another beer?” she asked.
I was very, very happy.
We both cheered when the Flames scored… me cheering because she was happy and cheering – she was so damned cute when she was cheering. I sat down, flush red at the glares we were receiving from the Leaf faithful, my brethren, irritated at my betrayal of sacrament for the love of a woman.
A year or so later, I looked back on it with a sense of embarrassment and loathing.
The insane thing is that Calgary is a Canadian team: therefore, I must love Calgary. But I didn’t. These days, I even rooted for teams in cities that have no business having a hockey team – San Jose, Tampa Bay, Dallas, even Pheonix – all with teams that belonged in Winnipeg, Hamilton, Quebec City, Newfoundland. That’s kind of fucked up… overcompensation, I guess. Love turns to hate, cheers to jeers, that sort of thing. My “hockey equilibrium” has been screwed up… for the love of a woman.
And I resented her for it. Deeply.
I don’t want to. I really don’t. It’s merely a product of emotional evisceration. As I hefted yet another beer to my lips, the sweet taste of Molson’s Canadian mingling with the scent of suicide chicken wings and perfume, its stupefying effects carried to my brain via blood flow, hoping desperately to forget it, to forget her, to feel little to nothing, I could only sum it up with what my dad always says: it is what it is.
Background Information: Terry Woo is a Banana Boy. He was born in Hamilton, Ontario, and currently resides in Toronto, Ontario. His first novel, Banana Boys (www.bananaboys.com), was published in October 2000 by Cormorant Books. His stories have also appeared in such anthologies as "Millenium Messages: An Anthology of New Asian Canadian Expressions", and "Strike The Wok: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Canadian Fiction". He is currently in Journalism school at Ryerson University, and is kind of working on his second novel.
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