Five years ago I was living in Victoria with my husband to be. We lived in this tiny, cramped little apartment right next to the Naval Base in Esquimalt. The building was a two storey walk-up – when J first told me about it he said it was somewhat like the building on Melrose Place…”You know, how they had that big courtyard and all the apartments open straight to the outdoors?” Ya, right. When I asked him recently why he settled on such a shit-hole he said simply that he’d had a bad experience while looking at apartments and that when he walked into that tiny abode he was impressed with how the school-grade linoleum floors had been recently buffed and polished. Jeez. Anyway, after a year of living among all of our belongings crammed into a one-bedroom place (this building had no storage lockers) we decided to move. And, as luck would have it, one of J’s bosses had a house out on the Malahat with an entire lower floor, two bedroom suite for rent…$800 per month for everything. We took it without ever looking at anything else and moved in the weekend after our wedding. Oh, it was glorious. The space…the privacy…the yard. We wasted no time in getting a dog and were soon fully adapted to this new, spacious lifestyle. But, there was one stipulation in our lease that we were casually ignoring. That is, we ignored it until it reared its ugly head in July of the next year. Our landlord was notorious for having outrageously huge and elaborate house parties. He had culled it down to a fine art; a mix of rented hot tubs, inflatable boxing rings, live bands, jello-shooters, contests that encouraged nudity and kegs. Lots of kegs. He had been transferred to Vancouver for a two-year stint and had gladly allowed us to move into the house in his absence, but…he still wanted to keep up the tradition of holding this one particular annual party…**-apalloza.
Preparations for this epic event began in July. One of the **’s best friends flew back form Ontario to spend his vacation planning and partying and we readied our suite to be party grand central. The people who lived upstairs at the time were pardoned from using their portion of the house as a party place due the 18 month old baby they hoped would sleep though the entire event. On the day of the party the hot tub arrived, the inflatable boxing ring was set up, the kegs were tapped, the volley ball net put up, the tents were assembled on the front lawn for the drunkards to come and sleep it all off at the end of the night and the stage, where the most depraved competitions imaginable would take place, was set up. At around 3’clock, the guy who had flown all the way from Ontario to be with us on this special occasion, shows up with t-shirts emblazoned with pictures of seriously twisted porn gathered on the internet, a giant dildo and a bag of 24 goldfish. The t-shirts are for prizes, the dildo is just for…. well, because he’s an idiot and the goldfish? Yep, they’re for eating, alive. It’s going to be one of the contests, he says. It’s going to be great, he says. It’s going to be sick, he says. And then laughs that prickish laugh he has. I remember J saying to me at that moment how this whole thing was a very bad idea – ya, understatement to the power of 100.
The party was bad. We had a few items stolen and I found three separate couples having sex in our bedroom. We didn’t know very many of the “guests” and it was clear that they were happy to be at a house where they didn’t know the residents so that they didn’t have to feel encumbered by the laws of decency. There is no way to describe the chaos of that night really. In the end, the owner of the house was arrested and J and I were left with the task of evacuating all the party goers to their tents or their cars, shutting down the band and then locking ourselves in the bedroom to wait out the rest of the night. It sucked; I hated every minute of it.
I woke up the next morning to find J already awake and staring at the ceiling. He didn’t even turn to look at me, but just said, “Never again”. I agreed wholeheartedly. Emerging from the bedroom I was happy to have my own bathroom until I saw the state of the toilet and, wait a sec…has someone peed in the shower? The whole house was a mess. As people started straggling in to the kitchen looking for breakfast I started to clean. I became like a woman possessed; I just wanted everyone out of my house. The day wore on; the “guests” just wouldn’t leave. Finally around 5pm, J and I had finished cleaning the house and retrieved all our dishes and various other belongings from the yard. We told everyone that the kitchen was closed, locked our doors and pulled the shades. Finally, peace. As we sat in the glow of the television, eating our Subway sandwiches and enjoying the quiet I happened to glance over to the corner of the room and noticed something shiny and smooth reflecting the light. Upon closer inspection it was identified as our soup pot filled with water and holding 23 goldfish. The cops had broken everything up before the contests had a chance to get started and only one unlucky fish had made it down a gullet.
Being unable to kill anything alive, we kept the fish. J bought fish food the next day and we poured all of our new buddies into a working fountain that J and I had built the previous Christmas. I wouldn’t say we were exceptionally great fish owners, but we did try. We kept the fountain relatively clean and remembered to feed the little suckers every couple of days. The fountain was too small for them though, and after a few weeks they began cannibalising each other. Every couple of days there would be another white fish body floating at the surface of the pool until finally there was only one. We named the last fish Bloody Gill after his curiously blood red gills. He lived on for another year and a half. We kept him in a beer pitcher on the counter and when we went away on weekends, would cover the top with Cling Wrap and take him with us. He was probably the best-traveled goldfish around. When he finally did die it was a sad occasion. We were preparing for a six week camping/road trip and had been fretting about what to do with him anyway since six weeks seemed a long time to camp with a goldfish. As if he knew he was becoming a burden he quietly floated to the top of the pitcher and left us with a full bottle of fish food and a scummy pitcher.
Bloody Gill is one of those memories that J and share that doesn’t really make sense to anyone else. We think it’s funny that we had this fish and it reminds us of the life we had back then on Lakehurst Drive. It reminds us of how perfect we are with one another and how we've created this whole separate and partially secret existence away from everyone else. When I think of what my life would be like without J I can't help but feel an emptiness. There is so much that we share that just can't be expressed or explained. I like it.
So, that’s the story of Bloody Gill. Here are some pics that I found
on the internet (the second hit when I googled **'s name) of that ridiculous party. Keep in mind that all these photos are of our yard...not a beer garden. The party, by the way, is still an annual event. J and I have a standing invitation to attend every year. We haven’t gone back for one yet and I don’t think we will. Some things are just better off dead.
