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.
