She was at the bar this weekend and it broke my heart.
I remember him at seventeen, the infectious high-energy he filled the Roost with. He shouldn’t have been there, of course, not at that age, but we didn’t know he was seventeen until he celebrated his eighteenth birthday. By that point, the damage was done, and whatever, he’d latched onto our group so he’d been safe anyway.
He was going to be a star, we could see that, the queen that became his mother and I. Even just as that smiling seventeen-year-old, the star power was shining through. It wasn’t long before she was on the stage, riding on a wave of applause.
A few years later, a different bar.
I needed staff, yes, but I needed talent too, talent I knew would deliver a new energy to this new challenge. Of course I thought of her. She was a great fit, and formed a nucleus of the next generation of queens. When the snow began to fall at Buddys, was he in that blizzard? If so, only briefly. It seemed he would be the one that escaped that endless winter.
She was at the bar this weekend and it broke my heart.
She did not escape.
The snow that fell at Buddys is nothing compared to the monster she met, wherever she first met it. Meth is the soul destroyer. It sinks its teeth and claws into the beautiful and the broken and it does not let go. It has taken so many. I have seen people fight it off, only to fall back to it later. And in this case, whether its on or off currently, the damage is done. The talent and the beauty of that long-distant seventeen-year-old has been eroded. Now, all that is left is the permasketch of long-term use, a sketch that shows itself in the sudden outbursts of anger, or enthusiasm, or sadness, none of which are bad by themselves but all that emerge without sense of appropriate or awareness of others. That’s what it does, this soul destroyer, it leaves shadows in the brain that are always there. And her outbursts are at them, more than the people who actually get burst at. But she doesn’t know, she doesn’t see.
I wonder if, inside the shadow-swept sketch of the meth-eaten mind, she is still riding that wave of applause. Maybe she doesn’t see the shadows, just the spotlight. Or maybe it’s even worse, maybe he’s still there, that seventeen-year-old, trapped in a cage, screaming out for help, and no help is coming. The people who might have helped are gone. The people now, they don’t know her. They don’t know who she was or how she was, and maybe they haven’t ever had to watch the soul of a friend be whittled down by addiction. I hope they never do. I understand why they don’t have patience though. Why should they have to tolerate the shadow-swept sketch of someone who means nothing to them? They don’t.
She was at the bar this weekend and it broke my heart.
Because she can’t come back. Somehow, I have to take away from her the remaining tenuous connection to a community she helped to build and one she still needs. Because the gays and theys of today don’t know her, and don’t want to know her, and I can’t blame them. I don’t want to know who she is now. Her behaviour isn’t right, and we all know it. But I still remember the boy she was, and it’s hard to say goodbye.
Today I climbed up the 1048 steps to the top of Koko Head and drank in the views of Waikiki and Hanauma Bay. While there, it occurred to me how amazing things are since 12 steps changed my life.
When I was drinking, my world was very contained. My work was on 106 Street, my home 117 St, same avenue even. I almost never left this eleven block line. Eleven blocks, It’s a big line but a small world. That was my whole world for so long that it had become ingrained in me. This was the whole world, I thought, this eleven block stretch from Boots to Buddys, this two bar gay bar circuit of beer and blow. I’d long since gotten rid of my car; I was never sober enough to drive anyway.
When I got sober in March of 2011, getting a car was one of my first priorities. And it was amazing how that expanded my world. That summer, I spent most of it across the river, exploring the city I had lived in but never truly seen.
And the world just got bigger with the opening of EVO. Yes, there was luck involved, and yes, a great deal of privilege, but also, a great deal of hard work. First, the hard work in becoming sober, and then the hard work of a career I remain passionate about.
But still, when I looked out over the bay from the top of that mountain today, I thought not about the 1048 steps that got me to the top, or the 1048 I would soon have to take to the bottom, but instead, the first 12 steps that made it possible, the first 12 steps that made my world, the whole world.
If you’re reading this and having a hard time taking that first step, let me reassure you that it is SO worth it.
Last Seen: February 2011
What I loved about Ashley was how he’d often enjoy just sitting at the bar, same as me, even as our friends danced and flailed about. I hadn’t enjoyed a dance floor for years at that point, and even though I didn’t mind just sitting there with my beer and watching the club, it was always nice when Ash came and plopped down next to me.
Sometimes, it was to check on me. He had a knack for knowing when people were glum and needed a bit of cheer, and he had cheer to spare. Sometimes, it was the opposite, because with that cheer came the occasional burst of drunken darkness.
Still, more often than not, he shone gold. He was dating my favorite bartender when I met him, and they were relationships goals. They were young and beautiful and I was certainly feeling like neither of those things at the time.
He was a huge part of those years at Buddys, those years when I descended further down a spiral of addiction. I think we were both often searching for a “something else” and sometimes, briefly, we touched on it during those kind of barstool philosophy sessions that only happen after Last Call is called and you’re left only with the beer before you and the boy beside you.
In all the years, through all the beers, and in spite of the fact that he was obviously ridiculously attractive, there’d never been anything more than friendship. Now, one would assume that was of course because he was in a relationship, but that had never stopped me before. In fact, that was usually the last piece of the attraction; the unavailable are, simply, hotter.
But I was happy with our friendship being exactly what it was. Ashley was pure, and I wanted what we had to be pure, too, untainted.
I watched the lows and the highs and the literal highs of his relationship with my beautiful bartender, watched it rise and fall, and eventually, fall apart. Neither of them were happy, together or not together, and even though it had happened before, this time, they said, it was over over.
The last time I saw Ashley was not at Buddys, but at my work. I came in for a shift, and he there, and he was Beautiful. He was all suited up and fancy, and had fit a visit into his day (a wedding, I think?). Just to see me.
This was a time in my life when I was never sober. My days began and ended with drugs and alcohol. I was out of control, there was no doubt, and I was desperate to find something real that would slow my fall. That he was there, right then, so handsome and just there to say hi, I took it as a sign.
I asked him out, and at first, he laughed it off. But I knew this was the moment. Eventually, they’d be back together so if I didn’t carpe the hell out of this diem, I’d lose out. He was light, and I needed light. And even when he wasn’t light, well, our darknesses meshed.
His last words to me were “isn’t just friends good enough?”
My last word to him was “no”.
A few weeks later, I quit all the booze and drugs for good, and a few weeks after that, he died.
He shouldn’t have died. It was stupid and senseless. He’d been at a party, drunk and angry and lashing out, and his friends left him there. I would have been at the party, but my sobriety was new and oh so fragile, and I doubted my ability to resist a party bus of temptations.
Later, and to this day, I would think that if I’d gone, he wouldn’t have been left alone. I’d have stayed there with him, if I hadn’t been able to calm him down. None of it would have happened. He would still be in this world.
But that’s not the way it went.
I didn’t go. He was left behind. And the world is a darker place without him.
In 2007, I started working at Boots, a gay bar here in Edmonton.
This wasn’t the first time I’d worked there. I’d worked there in 2000, but quit to work at The Roost. I’d gone back in 2003, but quit when we started publishing Fresh Magazine and the owners at Boots thought they could control content since I worked for them. Third time’s the charm, right? No, not really, but I was desperate, and beggars can’t be choosers, of course.
In the summer of 2007, I was homeless, and to get un-homeless, I needed work, and Jim Schafer, the owner of Boots, gave me that work. I was a little gunshy, at first, having left there twice, on less than great terms, and I was also just emerging from a year and a half of essential social hibernation, where my life had consisted of getting drunk and high at home, until there was no home left. Luckily, this Boots opportunity came along and changed everything.
Now, I could get drunk and high at work AND at home.
In the end, I wasn’t even there three years, but it was a pivotal three years. Maybe it was the years as a customer, combined with the short lived previous employments that make it feel like I was there so much longer. Or maybe it was because of how it ended, and what we went through together, those of us who gathered around the corner of that little bar on 106 St. The Princess Corner.
By 2007, Boots was not busy. Woodys had opened in 2002, and a lot of Boots’ regular customers had migrated there, in no small part because of Schafer’s shall-we-say curmudgeonness. (Curmudgeonness is a word which here means “cranky, cunty, cantankerous, mixed with an abrasive layer of casual racism and transphobia.” Don’t get me wrong – this was mingled with an incredible generosity of spirit – and spirits!) But there was a core of loyal customers, and they came every day at 4 and we drank our beer and our shooters (fucking sambuca) and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed. Usually, I was nursing a massive hangover, but those happy hours numbed that (hair of the bulldog, and all). That’s how it was though – get drunk all afternoon with Jim, then stay drunk and get high. Many a night became a morning, and I was often there still partying when Jim would come in the morning to start the new day.
(Which is ironic because the first time I got hired, I was replacing someone who had stayed all night partying. I got away with murder)
And then, maybe late 2008, maybe early 2009, Jim changed. He’d always been ornery and antagonistic, but now, that crossed into a new viciousness. But it wasn’t just emotional changes. He would chain smoke until he began to hack (Yes, this is long after non-smoking bylaws. Schafer didn’t care). He would drink until he had to stumble home. And soon, not even that. He would pass out at the bar. And sometimes, even before he had started drinking. Something was very wrong.
We all knew it. We all tried to talk to him about it. Jim wouldn’t listen.
Lorne and Chatty, they could sometimes get through. Ross, Jim’s ex-boyfriend and partner in the business, could sometimes get through. But it got harder and harder, and we watched him fail. And not just watch. His failing was a full sensory experience, as he rotted away from the inside out. He had been an owner of The Roost. He had been an Emperor of the ISCWR. He had navigated the Garage Burger Bar into being an award-winning greasy spoon that dominated local restaurant awards. And he was fading. We all knew it.
If we all knew, why was it so surprising, that day in March, when he left?
You always think there’s more time than there is. Time for another round. But, too often, there isn’t.
I think sometimes about what would have happened if he hadn’t died. Boots would have still closed. How he had juggled finances as long as he did was a mystery Ross and I were never able to solve. If he hadn’t died, I don’t see a world where I’d have ever gotten sober. And yet I would give up so much of what came after for one more round, with that raucous, ragged laugh ringing from the corner of the Princess Bar.
There have been many milestones in my sobriety journey: a day, a week, a month, a year, two years, five years, ten years…and today is another.
June 17, 2016, marked the day I was longer off-coke than on-coke.
October 13, 2022 marks the day I’m longer sober than drunk.
It’s a bit arbitrary. The groundwork for alcohol abuse goes back to 1994 and self-medicating adolescent pain with booze, and then of course along came Uni and weekend benders. But it wasn’t until moving back to Edmonton and starting working in local gay nightlife that those benders became, instead of weekend, daily. By September 1, 1999, I was basically drunk every single night, until the night that it stopped. And that 11 years, 6 months, 22 days of perpetual last call of the soul, has now become 11 years, 6 months, 23 days of being sober.
My complete unwillingness to part with that statistic is sometimes the only thing stopping me from having a drink. Not to become drunk, just because, you know, I’m in Paris and I should be able to enjoy a nice glass of wine, or it’s New Year’s and maybe a flute of champagne would be a nice thing to mark the moment.
Will I ever drink again? Four years ago, I’d have said immediately and emphatically, no, never. I can’t say that anymore. What I can say is that while me ever consuming a drop of alcohol is still very unlikely, it is also very unlikely that I’d ever use drugs or alcohol to medicate or mask my problems. The body count that is attributable to drugs and alcohol in my life continues to grow, and I can’t help but feel that even a glass of wine is betraying the memories of too many of those ghosts.
I recently had the opportunity to have a lengthy conversation with a fellow sober queer person, and we talked about how being in the public eye as we are, being transparent about our sober journeys, also factors into our ongoing decision to remain sober. The truth is, simply, it is no one’s business what “sober” means for someone – if someone says they are sober and you see them holding a can of beer or taking a cannabis edible, no you didn’t. Just mind your business. But that doesn’t change the more complicated truth – that sobriety from drugs and/or alcohol is a daily choice (sometimes even an hourly or minutely) and that choice involves many contributing factors.
Today, I choose to remain sober, in a 100% drug and alcohol free sense of the word, and there’s no day but today.
You’re always going to remember your first time.
You never planned on it happening that night. You never planned on it happening at all really. It wasn’t something you never really thought about doing. Sure, other people did it, and sure, maybe it seemed fun, but you were just happy drinking and dancing.
This is what’s going to happen. It’ll be March 2001, and you’ll walk into that Vancouver hotel room, and they’ll be doing it, there on the bed. They’re the cool drag queens, and you want to be accepted by them. Right then, as they hand you the rolled-up bill, you’ll flashback to every single time in your entire life when you wanted so desperately to be included. It’s not you at 24 having that first time, it’s 8-year-old you, and 14-year-old you, and 19-year-old you. And you will lean down over the hotel bible that they had cut the lines on and you’ll snort it.
WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. RACING. THROUGH. YOUR. BLOOD.
YOU. HAVE. NEVER. FELT. LIKE. THAT.
IT. IS. A. HIGH. YOU. DIDN’T. KNOW. YOU. WERE. CHASING.
Doesn’t sound like I’m talking you out of it, does it? I guess that’s because objects in the cocaine-covered rear view mirror may appear closer than they were. I also guess I know you won’t listen to me, whatever I say. You’ll do that first line, that first night, and then a second line a second night, a month later, and then a third and fourth line a few months after that. And then you’ll stop, and you’ll wonder why I would have reached back through space and time to warn you about it.
Because that WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. is going to take you over.
Edmonton winters are all about the white powder, after all, but in 2005, it’s going to be a very different snow. Snow should be cold, right? But no, this is that other snow. That WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. It’ll burn through you, that week between Christmas and New Years, and it will leave nothing behind.
The blizzard of 2005 will last until 2011.
You won’t listen to me just the same way I didn’t listen to others. We can’t hear until we’re ready. But on the nights when you’ll be laying on your bed, unable to sleep, your heart racing, your mouth dry, the bitter nasal drip making you cough and sneeze, you’ll hear those voices, so let me add mine to the chorus. Stop sooner! Put that fire out.
It will burn down your job, your relationship. Remember when you were the smart kid with the unlimited potential? The WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. Will leave you homeless. I mean, sure, you and I both know we had fun at many a bathhouse, but do you really want to be living in one? Because you will be, so that you can pace the corridors, burning up, horny and unable to do anything about it because oh, you don’t even want to know about the coke-dick. The house music will be blaring over those speakers all night long, and it won’t matter because you couldn’t sleep anyway because of the WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. Coursing through your veins.
And you’ll love it, and you’ll hate it, and you’ll hate yourself, and you’ll try to fix that hate by doing more. You’ll go further down the spiral, because you know that even if or when you hit rock bottom, well, that rock is just made of coke for you to crush and snort.
Who knows what you could have done or been without the WHITE. GOLD. FIRE? Would you still be managing Buddys, that gay bar you loved so frickin’ much you let it dominate everything? Would you be an owner there? Would you still be with Mike, if the fire hadn’t burned you both up, the night he threw you into a Christmas tree, the night he came at you with a hammer? I wish I could tell you what you’d gain, if you listened to my words, but I can’t, and besides, the kids never listen. I didn’t listen when I was you, and they don’t listen now when I talk about how I was / how we were, back then, when the snow piled up and the world was an endless white-out.
Cuz you see, as the snow piled up, you lost sight of everything. You’re a good Alberta boy. You know what the winter is like. That winter was endless. You’d gone through the wardrobe to find the White Witch in a little baggie, and she was in control. When the snow is coming down that hard, that long, you can’t see anyone. You will have never felt so alone, and c’mon, let’s be honest, kid, I’m you. I know how alone we had felt. This was that, but ten times worse. A hundred times worse. You will be alone in the blizzard, because you see, that WHITE. GOLD. FIRE? It burns down bridges too. Friends, family, work. The fire will consume them all, and still, all you will want is to keep feeling that burn.
When you could have been having breakfast in bed with a husband, you’ll be having cocaine for breakfast before even rolling out of bed alone. And you will drink so you can sleep, and you’ll snort to stay awake. And you’ll be living at this intersection of alcohol and cocaine, and only at your highest and most alone will you scribble endlessly into journals the despair and truth eating away at you. But in the morning, and by morning, I mean mid-afternoon because mornings will find you just crawling into bed to hopefully be able to pass out – in the mid-afternoon, you won’t be able to do anything, but later, rinse, repeat, to get through the next night.
You’ll be Icarus, flying high, and the sun will burn you with its WHITE. GOLD. FIRE. and you will crash. And crash. And crash and burn.
Even if you hear me, and walk into that room at 24 and say no to that rolled-up bill, you’ll need to say no again and again. Eventually, I fear, it will get you, the same way it got me. Maybe we needed to burn, eh? That’s what we used to think, right? Better to burn out than fade away. Was it a slow march to the suicide we avoided in high school? At that first time, in 2001, we hadn’t racked up the body count we later would – the friends lost to addiction and depression and suicide. We came so close to just being one of them, but instead, we lived, maybe so we could remember them.
Because you see, the blizzard WILL end. It will last six years, and it will take you down, time and time again. You will live your life in ten city blocks, and you will go days, weeks, months without seeing the sun. You will be a stranger to your family, and a disappointment to yourself. But we’re good Alberta boys, we know that spring will come. And there will come a day, 3657 days after walking into that Vancouver hotel room, when you will be done. You will wake up and just be done.
And you’ll walk outside, and lift your face to the sun and close your eyes. All you will see is white gold, and the sun will be warm on your face, and you will smile, clean and sober.
Just do us both a favour, and get there sooner?