Red

"The big market, these days, is in Downers. Reds and smack - Seconal and heroin - and a hellbroth of domestic grass sprayed with everything from arsenic to horse tranquilizers." Hunter Thompson, 1971

The realtor who found the house Sonja and I live in showed up at my mom's annual Christmas booze festival. My mom ran into him as he was being ejected from one of her city's increasingly seedy drinking establishments. "Rose!" he slurred, "How the fuck are you? Come here and give daddy a Christmas kiss." My mom said, "That was the drooliest Christmas kiss anyone had given me since my kids stopped teething. But I invited him over for drinks anyway. He might be a drunk but he's a good drunk."

When pubs started being introduced to the neighbourhoods around here, maybe thirty years ago, most all of them were class joints trying to emulate the best British drinking holes. Now just about all the pubs are shitholes you are more likely to get hit in the head with a pint glass in than have a friendly drink and a chat with your neighbours.

Our realtor's name is Red. There's a lot of Reds in Canada. He picked up his nickname back in the '60s when seconal, a pill known as reds, was popular with the Dope City biker community. Red saved up the money he made as a street pharmacist to take university courses, where he made even more money selling pills, and later got into the Dope City real estate scam before anyone dreamed people would be willing to pay half a million dollars for a rat hole in the East End.

"When are you two going to move out of that shack in Steepleton I found you all those years ago?" Red asked me as we leaned on my mom's much leaned on bar. "When the two of us are ready to retire Sonja and I will give you a call Red." People around Dope City move around a lot. They think if they move around enough they will find a neighbourhood more suitable, less crime-ridden, to bring up their children or retire in. There is no such thing. We are all in the same boat motherfuckers and the captain has been drinking.

"Fuck!" said Red. "I'll be dead by the time you two retire. Maybe you're smart to stay put. If the fucking Hindoos don't drive up the crime rates out there too high everybody is going to want out move out to the motherfucking sticks one day."