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Fallen Skier

from The Observer by Mecca Normal

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about

Originally released by Kill Rock Stars.
(c) 2006 SOCAN Lester/Smith
(p) 2013 Smarten UP! Records

When you buy this track here, the money goes directly to the artist.

Newsletter: meccanormal.wordpress.com

lyrics

"What about this guy?"
"You can't really see his face."
"But he likes opera. He can't be all bad."
"Here, click on this guy's profile."
I pick the date. I pick the place for date -- a radical bookstore to which he, a forty-seven-year-old English student has never been.
"They have a nice little fiction and poetry section."
Two blocks from where he lives on the downtown eastside. He crosses the street diagonally and runs his fingers splayed through his hair. Question and answer, we tell our life stories over dinner and walking in the tourist sector and out to the pier where cruise ships dock and Americans meander.

Fallen skier, waiter, party guy. His favourite place to work was a well-known Greek restaurant where the staff were encouraged to drink -- half price -- upon arriving for work. The coke dealer shows up and the day begins.

Fallen skier, waiter, party guy owned four Cadillac El Dorados in a row. Self-described waiter slash ski bum until he was thirty-nine, then his parents died. He didn't handle it very well. He didn't handle death very well. He took a room in the creepiest of the crappy skid row hotels and lost his belongings when he couldn't pay the rent. He claims he moved down there "because that's where the services are. You got your rehab, your detox, and counselling. You got your twelve-step, and your food bank."

Warning-warning-warning – red flag. No one moves to skid row to get clean. Will I be playing the part of the woman helping him get his life back on track?

Standing on the pier half-watching the sun go down. A cloud of mist is giving great definition to the trees which should have been flat and invisible. I am thinking of saying something about how the mist is making things clear, but I decide to keep that thought to myself.
I feel I am with a boy, a very young boy -- he's only been away from home twenty-seven years, he’s only had twenty-seven summers, and twenty-seven winters of partying and skiing. I guess that's why he hasn't got anything together yet. I don't think he realizes it, but his life has gotten away from him.

After quitting school in grade eleven he bought a van so he could go on ski trips to Vermont. He didn't leave home until he was twenty.
I ask about his plans. He might like to go backpacking in Europe -- skiing in Switzerland, but not while he's still a student. I cannot make him a forty-seven year old man. He remains a boy -- tall, skinny, boyish features with that faded worried look.

Fallen skier, waiter, party guy slips into an anxious silence. I feel the urge to ask "What's wrong?" Oh god! Let me not start with that! I think we may have run out of things to say. I told my Readers Digest version of my life over dinner.

He gave no indication of being attracted to me -- no compliments, no lingering looks across the table intending to reveal interest. We didn't talk about relationships or dating expectations. It was like being stuck with a visiting friend of a friend getting rooked into going out to dinner our conversation was only kind of OK -- only kind of OK.

Near the end, out on the pier, after the sun has gone down, he asks me about this music of mine, "Is it ever all-out punk?"

He seems concerned that it might be hardcore punk. I stand, a middle aged woman in a fantastically subtle silk jacket all the way from Japan. Hush Puppies. Curly hair blowing in the wind, and this guy is fretting over the possibility that I'm actually Henry Rollins. I try to explain punk, myself, but fail at making an impact here. He never did ask the name of my band. Never tried to touch me.

I ask what sort of music he listens to. He says his taste is eclectic. My least favourite answer to a question meant to increase understanding. Eclectic in this case means that music isn't really important to him. It isn't really important to him. He says his taste 'varies' and he's never been into the live music scene. Never been, never been into the live music scene. After eclectic comes techno. I'm still trying to make him forty-seven; he's stuck in my mind -- a boy. A boy who might backpack around Europe once he finishes school.

Carefully I ask if he does anything you might call creative -- perhaps he finds creative expression making an espresso, a cappuccino. I don't know. He thinks a minute and says he doesn't play music or paint, if that's what I mean, but he does watch TV -- free cable in his creepy-freaky hotel room -- and he likes to go… he likes to go to the movies. To the movies. I can only half-think about being so grey and dispassionate to call watching TV creative. I guess, to him, art is a hobby and his hobby is being entertained.

The sun is down and I blurt out that I have to get back to the other side of town. At my bus stop I ask if I can give him a hug. I mean a hug good-bye.

We hug and he cheers up. He decides to wait with me for the bus.
By the time I get home he's emailed to ask me out again. I should have skipped the hug. I go to bed rather than hit reply.

Perhaps he's on anti-depressants, or anti-psychotic drugs. Could be why he doesn't drink. My internet dating experience. I want to get back to my work.

credits

from The Observer, track released January 1, 2006
Jean Smith vocals. David Lester guitar. Additional instruments by Jean Smith. Recorded by Jordan Koop at The Hive, Vancouver, Canada in 2006.

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Mecca Normal Vancouver, British Columbia

“Empathy for the Evil” (2014, M'lady's Records)

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