1982 (3 page)

fitting in

red/blue classic Adidas gym bag

sister and parents

drum kit

Theatre Room 213

hockey

Talking Heads

fitting in

Wendy

If you just read that list with care, you might have noticed that “fitting in” appears twice. This is not a typo. And I will explain. But you will also notice that the list is bookended by two names. Bowie and Wendy. And that’s also no mistake. Because amongst all the other characters and events in 1982, this is the story of three people: me, Wendy, and Bowie.

And as much as he was my idol, I never met David Bowie. And as much as she was my dream girl, I’m not sure how well I got to know Wendy. But one thing’s for sure, of the three of us, I probably understood myself less than I did the other two. I was only just developing a sense of who I wanted to be. And it involved a fair bit of hair gel.

1

“OUR HOUSE” – MADNESS

I
n 1982, I lived in Thornhill. That was part of the problem. Don’t get me wrong. Life was quite reasonable in Thornhill. At least, for most people it was. It was nice. It was straight. It was normal. But David Bowie never chose to hang out in Thornhill. And it wasn’t just because he was too busy being an inspirational androgynous musical genius rock star.

You see, in 1982, Bowie couldn’t appear in Thornhill for more profound reasons than simple scheduling. It would have been impossible for Bowie to reside in Thornhill, even though he was white and English and financially secure, like many of its denizens. If Bowie were ever seen in Thornhill, and most especially if he’d fancied it, he wouldn’t be Bowie. He would be a fake. He would be just another victim of homogeneity. And there would be headlines in trendy magazines calling him out.
NME
would do a front-page exposé: “Place Oddity: Thin White Duke Seen Hanging Out in Canadian Suburb! Bowie a Fake!”

But Bowie wasn’t a fake. He was unique. He was Bowie. So he wouldn’t be seen in Thornhill in 1982. He would never
have fit in, for all the right reasons. And that’s why Thornhill was a problem.

Let me be clear. I am not a Thornhill detractor. I was not a self-hating Thornhiller. I had many fine experiences growing up in the suburbs. I met my first real girlfriend, Dana Verner, in Grade 5 in Thornhill. We kissed. Twice. I think. Then she broke up with me. Years later, she told me she would’ve stayed with me had she known I’d one day meet John Cusack. I count that as a win. But anyway, Dana Verner was one of the most desirable girls in my Grade 5 class. And I would never have had the chance to kiss her if I’d not been in Thornhill.

Also, I once scored seven goals in a hockey game in Thornhill. Okay, maybe it was just road hockey. And maybe there were only six kids playing, and one of them, Little Charles, was wearing a cast on his arm and couldn’t hold his stick properly. Little Charles had earned his name at Henderson Avenue Public School because he was small. And unrelated to that, he broke his arm in the summer of 1980. He still had his cast on the day I scored seven goals. I’d totally deked Little Charles and drove straight to the net, Lafleur style, to score my seventh tally. Little Charles later made the case that my excellent deke was only owing to him holding his stick with one hand, and also because the cast on his other hand felt heavy. I think that was a technicality. And I figure the goals still count in Thornhill history, because the word “hockey” is part of “road hockey,” and also because it was a competitive game, and also because I scored them. But look, the point is, there was nothing exactly
wrong
with Thornhill. And that was also part of the problem.

Thornhill is a suburb of Toronto. It is in the province of Ontario in Canada. It is directly to the north of Toronto. If you pass Steeles Avenue, you leave the border of Toronto and enter into “scenic” Thornhill. Scenic Thornhill looks pretty much identical to the area just south of Steeles, with houses and streets and schools and cars, but north of Steeles it’s called scenic. That is, except when it’s called Markham, and parts of it sometimes are. Both Thornhill and Markham are in York Region. And they are also part of the GTA, or Greater Toronto Area. As you can see, it’s all very sophisticated. I could never really keep track of all these names. I just know we called it Thornhill. I used to hang out at the Thornhill Square mall. And I played hockey at the Thornhill Community Centre. And in 1982, I was pretty much the only kid playing an instrument with a bunch of adults in the Thornhill Community Band. So, like it or not, I was deeply entrenched in Thornhill.

I joined the Thornhill Community Band as the new drummer in 1982. The insiders called it the TCB. You might think it was a real honour to be selected as the drummer. You might think it was an indication of my superior level of talent at the time. But the Thornhill Community Band was almost totally volunteer, and there was very little quality control.

I only got involved in the TCB because, in the beginning of Grade 9, Don Margison’s father had inquired if I’d be able to play drums when the old percussionist, a retired gentleman named Reginald who’d been with the TCB since the late ’70s, quit. Don had told his father that I was a very good drummer. This was probably a mistake. Mr. Margison was the lead trombone player in the TCB, and he was quite accomplished. He wore sweaters over collared shirts, and one of his sweaters
had his name inscribed on it, along with a little picture of a trombone. In other words, he was good enough to have his own trombone sweater. Mr. Margison was in his fifties and he was balding. He was usually frustrated that other people weren’t as good at their instruments as he was, and at TCB practices his face and his balding head would get red with irritation. He would also drink at some of the practices, and he would get red then, too. Sometimes it was difficult to tell if Mr. Margison was red from blowing hard into his trombone, or from drinking in excess, or from his mounting frustration over working with amateurs.