Difficult Men

“Don’t get sidetracked,” Barns said, “we got a long way to go.”

          I smelled something funny in the air. “It’s Joe,” I said, “he’s coming.” Barns looked at me like I was mad and continued walking.

          Sure enough, Joe appeared over a rise in the road wearing a camo jacket and cargo shorts, and moved quickly toward us. “All things considered,” he panted, “I think I’ll keep an eye on you clowns.”

          “We don’t need supervision,” Barns said, his face doughy and inscrutable.

          Joe chuckled, perhaps uncomfortably. He’d been adamant about not coming. He eyeballed me and asked if I minded that he join us.

          “It’s a free country,” I said.

          Joe frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

          “Enough chatter,” Barns said, “I’m jetting. You guys wanna join me, cool. If not, sayonara.”

          He walked with what could only be described as an angry gait and I didn’t know if the anger was directed at me for some reason or at Joe for tagging along last minute. I guess it wasn’t a biggie. We’d been friends for just over a year. That’s not very long when it comes to adult male bonds. The stakes weren’t that high yet. We’d all met at a stag for a mutual friend and wound up playing poker at the same table. After a few orbits, we vibed and realized we had a lot in common: love of poker, football, pretty ladies, good food—but especially on the count that the three of us were considered difficult men. With that foundation, we started hanging out together and going on little adventures.

          “You wore your broughams,” Joe said, struggling not to smile.

          Was that funny? They were the most comfortable shoes I owned, but I felt it unnecessary to spell this out to him. Joe would be a little prick sometimes. I stared hard at him until any glimmer of a smile disappeared.

          We hiked up the hill that Joe had just descended. We were on our way to Rosario’s Dogs, considered the premium hot dog joint in southern Ontario. They sold sausage and pepper sandwiches there, too, and bratwurst. But the hot dogs were the thing according to food bloggers and Yelp reviews. Barns and I had decided to walk the three kilometers to Rosario’s from our meeting spot on the Danforth in front of a 7-Eleven. Joe wasn’t going to join us as he had been on a date the night before with a woman he met on Tinder, with expectations of it lasting into the next day. “Haven’t been with a lady for months,” he’d explained. Understood. But here he was, walking with us.

          “Quick date?” Barns asked Joe.

          Joe shot him a dirty look that I thought had gone unnoticed.

          Barns stopped in his tracks. “What was that?” he said.

          “What was what?”

          “Is there something you wanna say?”

          Joe blinked and swallowed. “Uh, no, guy. I’m good.”

          Joe was a smallish man with large feet and hands and a unibrow that gave him a perpetually angry or disgruntled appearance. I knew little of his back story. He was in his forties, claimed to work in collections, but I didn’t know what that meant exactly and had no desire to press him on it.

          On the other hand, Barns, a paramedic, was a lumbering big galoot of a man, with a bland face, no neck, and elephantine legs and feet. He reminded me of certain offensive linemen I had played with in high school football. How would I describe myself? Average. Average height and weight. Working at a nothing job. Nondescript. Just a guy with the other two guys, the small angry one and the big dude. We passed a tree with three baby raccoons clinging to a bough.

          “Hey,” Joe said, “those guys are like us.”

          “How are they like us, Joe?” Barns asked.

          “You know—a three amigos kind of thing.”

          “That’s cute,” Barns said without smiling.

          The analogy flew by me. I felt no connection to these raccoons or wildlife in general. I wondered where the mom was, but only briefly.

          We continued walking, covering about two kilometers. It was an overcast but warm September day. The stiff broughams had been a mistake. My feet ached.

          “I’m chafing,” Barns said.

          “I use borotalco on my nuts,” Joe said. “Keeps ‘em nice and dry and tight. Nothing worse than loose, wet nuts.”

          “We do what we can in this life,” Barns said. “We do what we can to pass the time, make friends, enjoy good eats, and pray we don’t get nailed in a drive-by shooting or a by sudden bolt of lightning or a rampaging moose or some shit.”

          I burst out laughing but Barns didn’t share the laugh. He was being serious.

          “How far is it?” Joe asked.

          “Just up the road,” Barns said, his upper lip mizzled, armpits squelching.

          “Those broughams holding up?” Joe asked with a sneer.

          “Blow me,” I said.

          This caused both he and Barns to laugh, which hadn’t been my intent.

          In a word, stark described the neighbourhood we encountered. Lots of boarded up houses and storefronts, a scorched white van with the windows blown out, heaps of debris and indefinable junk strewn about. I’d never ventured through these parts of town on foot. I felt okay, though.

          “So, is Rosario’s really the shit?” Joe inquired.

          “That’s what they say,” Barns said. “Supposed to be the best dogs in town, maybe in this part of the country.”

          I liked a good hot dog. A throwback to childhood. My mother worked at a meat-processing plant that made hot dogs. Even after working there for twenty years, and knowing what went into a hot dog, she didn’t mind one herself now and again, with a little squirt of mustard. 

          “That term the best,” Joe said, “the best hot dog. We talking artisanal dogs made from prime cuts of meat? Fancy buns? Specialty condiments?”

          “I don’t know,” Barns said.

          “Or what if none of these conditions apply and the place has achieved notoriety for serving up a simple, no frills frank harkening back to a bygone era?”

          “We’ll soon find out,” Barns said.

          It’s a fucking hot dog, I thought.

          “What was that?” Joe asked.

          I glanced at him and sniffed.

          “Thought you said something.”

          “You must be hearing things, Joe.”

          “I notice you’re limping. It’s the shoes, isn’t it?”

          “I’m thinking of kicking you in the nuts with one of these shoes.”

          “Let’s be civil, boys,” Barns said.

          A vintage silver Cadillac double-honked as it passed us. I knew no one with that car. It appeared to be driven by a blonde woman of an indiscernible age. I  glanced at Barns and he shrugged.

          “That was my lady friend from last night,” Joe said without inflection.

          I stared at his face and couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting or not. I’d learned over the year or so I’d known him that while not an out-and-out liar, he tended to spice up his stories or pad them a little, or sometimes spin them into something they were not. But I couldn’t say I was faultless in this regard: we’re all bullshitters to one degree or another.

          “We’re almost there,” Barns said.

          Indeed, the red-and-white sign, Rosario’s Dogs, complete with a cartoonish bulldog collared with a thick neck chain, came into view. The breeze carried a fragrance of frying onions and sauerkraut that made my mouth water. My companions’ nostrils flared and they wetted their lips as the smell intensified.

          Nestled before a stand of pine woods, the place was no more than a shed with a grill and guy in a soiled undershirt and hairy arms and shoulders manning it, clacking and snapping a pair of long, metal tongs like a mad percussionist. A few people sat at the wooden tables loosely arrayed in front of the shed, eating hot dogs and drinking sodas or shakes. It was after lunch and the line up wasn’t too long. We waited for about ten minutes to place our order. A girl in braces with acne and glass-bottom glasses scribbled our order on a pad, ripped off the sheet, and clipped it to what resembled a nylon clothesline, which she pulled and sent the order fluttering to the grill master. I glanced at Barns and Joe but judging from their lack of affect, they seemed to think that none of this was unusual, and maybe it wasn’t. I rarely went out anymore.

          I ordered a hot dog with bacon and cheese and a Coke; Joe a chili-dog and a Coke; and Barns ordered a chili-dog, a Bratwurst with sauerkraut, and a Coke. I asked the girl if the grill master was Rosario.

          “No,” she said. “That’s Lenny. Rosario died last year.”

          That information disturbed me more than it should have, perhaps. I wondered if Rosario had died a happy man. Likely not. Who dies happy?

          We sat at a table near a dying pine tree—or a seriously sick one as the needles were chlorotic. My hot dog qualified, I’ll admit. And it was a premium dog, for sure, with a nice meaty taste and perfect snap. But I suspected that while the new owner had retained the original hot dog supplier, he’d replaced the buns with a cheaper, generic product.

          Joe and Barns devoured their food. “Good?” I asked. They both nodded, scarcely breathing. Was it the best hot dog in town, in the county, or the province? Who knows. But it hit the spot.

          “An eight, all told, out of ten,” Joe said, backhanding crumbs from his lips.

          “More like a nine point one or two,” Barns said, starting on his brat.

          “What do you think?” Joe asked me.

          “I’d give it a nine,” I said, “but the bun sucks.”

          “He’s right,” Joe said.

          “I don’t disagree,” Barns said. “But I still think it’s a nine something compared to most dogs I’ve tried recently.”          

          As we finished eating, Joe leaned over with an earnest look in his beady eyes. “So listen, guys,” he said. “We’ve only known each other for what, a year? A year. Man, that’s a heartbeat in geological time haha. But we’ve become tight, right? We like and want to spend as much time with each other as possible. It’s natural. It’s a good thing.”

          I thought he was getting a little carried away and glanced at Barns. But his face revealed nothing.

          “So, seriously,” Joe continued. “I have a proposal. And I don’t want you to think it’s weird. I’ve read about these things online, you know. We’re all divorced men—Barns I know you never officially tied the knot with Lisa, but you were with her for ten years—and we’re not getting any younger. I think it’s safe to say that the likelihood of us getting remarried is remote—I mean, who the hell wants to go through that again? Right?”

          Barns nodded, but my curiosity swelled as I tried to figure out what Joe was driving at. He wiped off the table with a serviette, pulled out a white envelope from his inner jacket pocket, and removed from it a series of documents that he smoothed out on the table.

          “What are those?” Barns asked.

          “These, my friends, are contracts,” Joe said. “Had my lawyer Sid draw them up for us.”

          I was puzzled, but a funky intuition lurked the back of my mind. Something in the jeweled twinkle of Joe’s eyes and his breathiness alarmed me. I’d not seen this side of him before.        

          “What I propose, gentlemen,” he said with a big smile and open nostrils, “is that we formalize our friendship.”

          Barns looked baffled. “How’s that?” he said.

          “Formalize the friendship,” Joe repeated.

          My intuition banged a gong: I knew this was going south now.

          “You’ve heard of marriage contracts, right?” Joe asked.

          Barnes nodded. I stared at Joe, hoping he was pranking us.

          “Well, this is a contract for bros,” he said. “This will make it all legal and square and solidify our commitment to one another. Doesn’t that sound great?”

          Barns looked to me for guidance but I could scarcely repress my severe embarrassment, if not horror.

          “Sounds kind of weird, Joe,” Barns said.

          “No, no,” Joe said, realizing he may have just made an utterly absurd faux pas. “This a legit thing,” he continued. “Dudes in California—look, I heard they’ve been doing it down there for some time. It’s cool, man. It just puts things down on paper, see, memorializes them—or whatever you want to call it. Makes things all legal-like.”

          “What if I want a divorce?” I asked.

          “Come on,” Joe said, his eyebrows arching. “It’s nothing like that, man. Divorce, ha, that’s funny. Divorce. No. It’s just saying, we’re friends, pals for life. We’re not like women. They’re opportunists, catty, silly, no loyalties whatsoever. I don’t have to tell you this. You know what I’m talking about, ha. Women fuck everything up. Right? We’re dudes. We’re men. So why not make it legit, you know, why not make real vows to each other?”

          I glanced at Barns. He just stared at the documents—hands clasped before him, his breathing steady—without saying anything. A long moment passed. Something told me Joe had a shot of getting him to sign the documents. I abruptly stood up and announced I had to take a leak.

          The shack had no washroom, but an army-green Porta-Potty sat stinking behind it. Frankly, I didn’t have to pee. I walked around the Porta-Potty and headed off into the woods. I’m not kidding. I walked and walked for a good hour until I came out near the highway. I stood by the side of road catching my breath with my hands on my hips, my feet throbbing. After a minute or two I saw a vehicle coming and stuck out my thumb.

♡

August 7, 2024