Free The Ravine by Paul Quarrington Page B

“research”), and then around six o’clock I would go out to eat, although I almost always headed directly for the Pig’s Snout, a pseudo-English pub that offered only pickled eggs and potato chips as comestibles. There I would find a table full of my cronies. GigWithers, for example, an actor. Gig was a kindly man, burdened with such a malevolent aspect that he portrayed only serial killers, axe murderers and ghouls risen from the dead. He worked a lot and his face was well-known, although this only served to get him arrested once or twice a week, overly zealous cops leaping upon him as he strolled down the street. And there was Joanne Wenders, a poet, although she now lives in Mississauga and raises children and bull terriers. She had a bull terrier back then, a mangy brute named Kingsley who was allowed his own seat at the table. I was very attracted to Joanne, but never had a physical relationship with her, largely because Kingsley hated me. He glared at me and let it be known that he would be pleased to bite off my balls.
    Then there was Bob Hamel, the most boring man in the universe. I don’t mean that as an insult. Bob Hamel would agree that he was the most boring man in the universe, it was almost a point of pride to him. Bob Hamel worked for one of the big insurance companies, in some capacity that none of us could begin to fathom. He wore blue three-piece suits and hauled around an enormous briefcase everywhere he went.
    Bob Hamel would sit at our table and grin at everything anybody said. He would laugh obediently when he thought something was supposed to be funny. Hamel himself would never state any thoughts or observations, knowing full well how dull he was, but he was vastly appreciative of our collective wit and wisdom. Oh, now that I think of it, Hamel did occasionally have something to offer: knowledge. Whenever our conversation ran aground on the rocks of ignorance (which was frequently), Bob Hamel would save the day by actually knowing something. For example, Hooper and I almost came to blows one evening while discussing the existence or non-existence of God. Bob Hamel interrupted with an apposite point (that Charles Darwin was ignorant of Gregor Mendel’s experiments in genetics,even though they were performed during Darwin’s lifetime) and then proceeded to give us a concise overview of the theory of evolution and its implications re theology. Of course it was dull, but I still remember much of what he said.
    Bob Hamel was a handsome enough fellow, in that his features were regular and everything was about the right size. It was said that he had a huge penis. I have no personal knowledge of this, but Rainie van der Glick told me it was so. Rainie would show up at the Pig’s Snout every now and again, ostensibly to see me, although she would hardly speak to me. She would say that I looked like shit and then she would proceed to insult the other people at the table. She did this with no particular relish, but much of what we said was pretentious tripe of the first water, and Rainie was ever incapable of holding her tongue. On one occasion she hooked up with Bob Hamel, although I can’t remember whether this was after one of his displays of erudition or after an evening Hamel spent grinning like an idiot, toting his briefcase with him when he went to the malodorous head. Rainie referred to herself back then as Our Lady of Perpetual Mercy Fucks, and I suppose either one of these situations might have summoned forth that tarnished angel.
    The most regular of the Pig’s Snout regulars was the young novelist John Hooper, although at the time he had written no novel. He had written only titles. Oh, John implied that in his squalid bedsit there were reams of paper spackled with deathless prose, but we saw no evidence. We only heard that work was progressing well on, say,
They Both Were Naked
, or
Puke.
Hooper was conflicted as to what kind of titler he was, one given to poetry or to effrontery. A very