One fine morning in August, I walked south on Parc Avenue to a call-centre job I didn’t particularly care for.
It was a beautiful morning despite the destination but I was nervous as all hell. I had recently joined a band and later that night, we would be playing our first show. I’ve played guitar since I was thirteen and I was decent enough as a rhythm player. I enjoyed it greatly but something in me closed up when people asked if I wanted to ‘jam’ and play together. I would make up an excuse, say anything so I wouldn’t be exposed as a mediocre musician.
There’s the rub: you can’t get better unless you play with people and in front of people but I had always been afraid to do this. So, I joined a band and was glad I had and we had been rehearsing and we were sounding good and I was excited but there was still this underlying anxiety, a possibility that the rug would be pulled out from under me and all would see me as the fraud I really was.
But something else in me was firm, I was going to do it just the same. I told myself that it was one of those things where you get the courage after you do the thing and no matter how much doubt and anxiety I was feeling, I was going to do it. My mind was made up.
But I was still worrying that I would screw up, that I didn’t have the songs down. I worried that the tricky breakdown outro part would rear its ugly head again and I’d mess up in front of an audience of my friends and maybe that girl I wanted to make out with. I was hoping she would show. She was friends with my singer and I was pretty sure she knew about the show. I certainly hoped she did.
Down Parc Avenue, the route I always took on weekday mornings and I walked past the breakfast place and someone pushed past me roughly. I didn’t get knocked down but it felt like something done on purpose. The man gave a quick strange look back to me. He wore a dirty winter in the middle of August. I had never seen before in my life.
I gathered myself and kept on my way, thinking about the show coming up and whether I should get a little drunk before to loosen up. We had planned to jam at our jam-space just before to get a little tighter so I would choose to get loose as well while getting tight. Tight and loose. Yeah, that was the idea.
As I hit the corner of Parc and Sherbrooke, the light turned red. I had a little bloom of anxiety that I was late but I really didn’t care too much as I hated my job.
Someone waved to me across the intersection. A man in a red sweater waved wildly and walked out into the intersection and he looked like he was waving in my direction like he wanted to catch my attention. I don’t recognise him. A car honked at him as he walked out into the middle of the intersection and I’m not sure what’s going on at all. He continued to wave at me and point and other people stopped and began waving at me across the intersection as well.
I get annoyed and take my headphones out and he’s motioning for me to turn around and saying to look behind me and to this day I can’t remember whether it was in French or English but I turned around and I saw right behind me and almost over me, the man who pushed his way past me earlier with a cruel look in his wide open eyes and a chunk of concrete in his outstretched arm.
His eyes were wide open and his teeth were clenched. I stared at him and said something but I can’t remember what it was. He dropped the chunk on the sidewalk and stepped back once, twice and ran off down Sherbrooke. The man in the red sweater passed me, running after him, yelling: ‘Call 911!’
I looked at the traffic light. It turned green. I crossed the street. I was going to be late for work and I had a show to play later that I was nervous about.
Oliver Sullivan 