Beast

Alex was everywhere that summer.

Panhandling on Queen Street with the gutter punks, though not one himself – lacking their cynicism and bravado; bearing a darker and frenetic energy. All of 5’3”, but nicknamed ‘Beast’, something that suited him wholly and unironically.

Dragging us through Chinatown, past two perfectly fine McDonald’s, so that we could visit the two-story restaurant on Yonge.

The fries taste better when you eat them on the second floor.

I wanted to argue with him, but didn’t people dine at the top of the CN tower for the view? So maybe there was a small kernel of validity in his logic.

Alex, introducing us to LeAnn with such a gentle reverence, completely at odds with the rest of his character.

Sitting in the Eaton Centre food court. Collin had given him the choice to eat anything he wanted, anything in the city, and Alex picked poutine from the mall A&W – not even good poutine, but cottage cheese and reconstituted gravy over soggy fries. He said it was his favorite meal, but I suspect he was too afraid to ask for something better.

Alex, telling us about his time as a rodeo clown in Texas. He described the Mesquite Rodeo, a place I’d visited as a child, in such great detail that I knew he wasn’t lying, at least not in that moment. But a short time later he told us he’d once ridden a bucking bull, not for eight seconds, but for a full eight minutes. A bull that could jump 11 feet high, straight up, all four hooves almost a story off the ground. His description was something akin to levitation – a giant animal hovering up in the air.

Dancing in line at the Centre Island docks while waited to board the ferry. Raising his arms to the sky and howling.

I am the Beast, after all.

Alex, explaining how he had a second stomach in his shoulder, one that he used nightly to store panhandled change. In the mornings he would regurgitate the coins. By that point, he’d grown more volatile, and I didn’t trust he would react well if we called him out on his obvious lie.

Alex, attempting to attack a busker, some poor soul wearing a kilt and playing the bagpipes for loose change. Once calmed, and with sufficient distance placed between ourselves and the bagpiper, we asked Alex what had provoked him.

Easy. I’m Irish. He was Scottish. He had it coming if you ask me.

He was not Irish, a fact LeAnn later confirmed.

Alex, for the last time – the four of us at lunch. LeAnn and I stepped away for a few minutes, a quick run to the drugstore to secure some necessities. I’ll never be sure what transpired while I was gone, but when I returned to the table Collin was visibly shaken. He wouldn’t share what Alex had said, only that it had been very violent and made him feel physically ill.

Years later, while sitting at a bar and reminiscing about that summer, I asked about what Alex had said. Collin pursed his lips and tilted the top of his beer bottle towards me, a gesture I took to mean that he was about to speak, but then he thought better of it and stopped himself. I received no response, only a wan smile before he changed the subject.