chapter twelve.

last night (of course...) i did something really weird. or at least i experienced something really weird. i was home, i was idle, i was restless. there was nothing good on tv. nothing? hold on. what's that? i know those guys! that's the canadians from the late eighties!

see, the thing is, there's a lockout in the national hockey league this year. not that i care. but i'm not deaf and blind either, so i know it's going on. something about players wanting more money, if you'll believe that. when i hear of daycare workers and mcdonald's employees wanting to go on strike or to unionize to be able to, so they can get better working conditions, i understand, but hockey players? man, if i was paid what they're paid i wouldn't be living in this dump! i'd have a mansion in the slums, at the very least (with a trampoline but no isolation tank, in case you were wondering).

but whatever - i'm not going to launch into a debate i absolutely do not care about. tickets are too expensive, and most games aren't shown on television anymore anyway. that, and i stopped caring about hockey when i found out about real, live, in the flesh boys. or when they became interesting for my needs and wishes, anyway. but there was a time when i was a hockey fanatic. a maniac. i knew everything, i read everything, saw everything, went everywhere, cared for nothing else. i had scrap books, i had tapes, i wrote down summaries of each game based on what i saw (i never cared too much for the announcers on tv or on the radio - the game i saw was better than the game they did. or at least my comments were always relevant to me.) i knew all the stats, all the records, who won what trophy and when. and my particular obsession circled around the canadians. and it was the late eighties.

so last night on tv, it was the stanley cup final game of 1989, calgary flames against the montreal canadians, and calgary is leading 3 to 2 in the game. the series is tied 3-3 and this is the final game. oh yeah, and it is fifteen years later, and all of this is old history that nobody cares about really, but i guess the viewers and fans are so hockey deprived that they're willing to watch fifteen year old reruns. hockey game reruns. the concept baffles me. i was never one to tape a game i missed and watch it later. if i knew or could find out the final score and some of the highlights, why would i do that? the point, after all, the greater purpose, is to win, and get to the playoffs. period. oh, and sometimes, to squish some other team with whose city "we" have a bitter rivalry. why not.

all of this was weird enough. but you know what was even weirder? my memory. my frikkin photographic memory. i knew it was svoboda back there, petr svoboda with the hunched shoulders. i knew brian skrudland was jersey number 39. heck, i remember all their numbers. all of them. craig ludwig, 17. shayne corson, 27. claude lemieux, 32. oh how i liked him. mats naslund, a.k.a. the little viking, at five feet six and number 26. of course it was an important game and some more obscure players weren't around, so i cannot be as impressive as i should be here. but i remember them all. sergio momesso at 36, mike lalor at 38. i even remembered the old trios.

i can't remember why i go to the kitchen half the time. i get there, and i look around. i knew i had something to do there, but what? was i getting something? perhaps if i thought about what i was doind just before coming here i'd know why i came. but i don't even remember what i was doing just now.

so why do i remember a hockey team from twenty years ago, including such fantastic and exciting details as petr svoboda's wife's name was valerie and brian hayward has a business degree from cornell university? his birthday is june 25, 1960. i just remember this, without effort. and actually i often think of him on his birthday. i do, on most years. craig ludwig had twin boys (they were blond). larry robinson played polo (he had an accident which introduced me to the concept of an open fracture - i didn't enjoy it). john kordic drove a red corvette that he bought from the christin dealership (i must admit i've forgotten the plate number... but i knew it at some point). ryan walters was religious enough to add john 3:14 after an autograph, and i looked it up and it became the only bible verse i've ever learned by heart: for god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. a bunch of rubbish, no doubt, but rubbish that was given to me as a message by a hockey player!

i could write the book "confessions of a pre-teen hockey nut". hell, if there was a competition for most ridiculous young hockey obsessed freak, i'd win without contest. don't believe me? have you ever seen the young (very young) girls who wait outside the arena in the cold for hours, in the hope of catching the players when they come out after practice? those girls are dressed in mini skirts in the middle of winter, and they think - or at least hope - they look pretty enough and old enough not to be taken for an obvious case of statutory rape. that was me. i froze my ass off on countless days. the main result was a decent collection of autographs.

there was more. as a young fan, it turns out that you can write to teams and get approximately whatever you want, from autographed pictures to letterhead paper to interviews, to invitations. i'd be a rather disquieting stalker.

there was way more. all i've said so far was about my public life. but i've always been like an iceberg, with most of my essence hidden. well hidden. in fact, i've never talked about this to anyone. well, here goes. i had very vivid and complex fantasies. it all probably started because of my insane insomnia (i like that: it would make for a cool title: insane insomnia... b-movies fame, here i come!). i had nothing to do in bed for hours, so i made stuff up. a lot of stuff. stuff about sex, which was very warped in my pre-teen brain. i thought men wanted it and women didn't, so i'd have, as the "woman", to negotiate this with - well i just jumped ahead. see, my fantasies, at that point (their strongest period), revolved solely, exclusively and obsessively on hockey players. i had a few favorites, and i figured that in my fantasy life, i could have a very complex ménage à quatre with my three favorites. actually i'd date one and cheat on him with another, then dump him for the third. the major advantage of fantasies over real life is that you can do that as often as you want, and there's always ways of patching everything up to keep a nice knot-in-your-stomach feeling of drama, while at the same time keeping yourself entertained and aroused. real life humans are way too sensitive to be played with in such a fashion, but i made my guys perfect. perfect for me, at the time, with my mind and veins being pumped with more and more hormones, yet with my actual knowledge of life stalled in neutral.

i'd write letters to and from them. invent phone calls. put a pillow in bed with me and pretend i was sleeping next to a man. it didn't even occur to me that a twelve year old dreaming of sleeping next to a twenty-five year old might be more than a little gross (when i hit my twenties and realized i was the same age as hockey players, it hit me how old i was. it also hit me how very little those guys interested me anymore!), that perhaps i was retreating a little too far in my own crazy dream. the second i was alone i wasn't. it was like having upgraded my imaginary friends for ones that had a dick (which they couldn't and didn't use... it was, after all, also an imaginary dick...). it was like living in an imaginary hockey-themed soap opera. it was every little hockey freak's dream. and i managed to get a few good things out of it. for one thing, i managed to beat insomnia during the playoffs. see, as a hockey freak who buys all the newspapers and read everything there is and ever was, you know stupid details. such as, sometimes during the playoffs, the players will go off and live in a hotel, without their wives and girlfriends, and then there's a curfew. well i imagined that i snuck in (or sometimes the coach was also in love with me - they were all in love with me - how else would a fantasy world be perfect? - and he let me in even though it was against his own orders - it made a lot of sense...) and i was sleeping next to my pillow of a hockey playign boyfriend. and then the coach would open the door to check that his guys were actually sleeping (it's all oh so logical, right, the man would just open every door and check!), and i'd lie with my head on the man-pillow and i'd pretend to be asleep until he left. well often enough that calmed me down enough to make me actually fall asleep.

looking back, i wonder why i didn't spend my time masturbating instead. i guess i needed the relationship, the human contact pretending more than the sexual pleasure. i don't even think a real masturbation session ever occurred to me when it came to those "guys".

anyway now when i see the little girls waiting for their super hockey star to come off the ice, screaming wildly their pure joy that he brushed their hand as he handed them back their signed paper (probably not just a paper - more likely a heart-shaped, perfumed, multi-colored autograph album...), i worry a little. for them. but also i think about the poor hunk of a young man, who has no clue what craziness can be going on behind the plastic glasses and the metal braces. if he got a glimpse of it he would be disturbed. of we're lucky. a few of them would take the plunge - they already do, knowingly or not. but most would just be grossed out. those poor saps. sure, they're rich and young and popular. they're also often not that bright, not that educated, and they have a rather short career ahead. and young girls throw themselves at them, in an attempt to grow up too fast and crooked. i can see both sides, and they both disturb me, but they also both launch a nostalgic bitter-sweetness. young girls have a passion that can never be matched in later years. and an imagination that is unrivalled.

one day i discovered another's skin, the real thing, flesh that i could touch and bring closer, and lips that would part mine and a tongue that would stroll around in my mouth, and the weight of his body on mine, and the strength of his arms as he hugged me, and the smell of his after-shave that lingered on his clothes and on his pillow the night he stayed over, and i never really had the same interest in hockey again, and nobody made the connection. i never landed a hockey player - or any professional athlete. but i did land that sweet sixteen year old, with his perfect skin and strong tight lean muscles and not yet a hint of chest hair, and he made me jump into what others would call real life.