What Roller Derby is Like

In May, when at long last the weather has turned, like a wise seaman away from an imperfect storm, Sonja and I like to get ourselves into the woods, the lakes - into postcard Canada. This weekend's weather forecast looked so promising Hunky Z and Kitty packed their truck up and joined us on our camping trip.

You should see all the shit Hunky and Kitty bring camping. Whoever the fuck it is who owns Canadian Tire can thank Hunky and Kitty for at least one of the billions of dollars in their tax scam Caribbean bank accounts.

We did not go camping up to 69 Mile House; the Cariboo is our first preference when we choose to escape city life. There were two roller derby bouts on Saturday night and Hunky and I were not about to miss five dozen roller girls knocking each other onto their asses for all the creek cooled beer in the world. We chose a park close to home.

The fucking pigs set up a roadblock on the way into camp on a lot of Friday nights so we keep it clean until we get past their nosy checkpoint. Sure enough, the taser-happy motherfuckers were set up at the same place they always are. The roadblock was not set up for old timers like us. Canada's largest gang are forever on the lookout for teenage punks raising Hell because they are graduating into a life of work, early in the morning. Just the same, when we were stopped, one of the roadblockers shined his head-beater flashlight into my car's every orifice looking for contraband.

"That's a lot of beer you got back there. There's no way you are going to drink all that between the two of you." Cops figure anyone with more than a case of beer is going to set up a backwoods beer store and sell it all to underage teenagers. What an asshole.

"You guessed right constable," I told him, looking as guilty as possible. "I'm going to set up a backwoods beerstore and sell my beer to underage teenagers for five bucks a pop. You must have been the only guy paying attention back in Regina. Got to keep up the teenage pregnancy rates somehow, and besides, a man has a right to make a living pretty much any way he can in times like this."

"Funny guy are you then?" asked the cop, his moustache twitching like an innocent Polish immigrant with a pre-disposition to dying after more than four applications of a taser followed with the combined weight of four cops leaning on his back while face down on a freshly swept airport floor.

Before I could dig myself a deeper hole, Sonja leaned over from her side of the car and flashed the cop her camping titties. "Don't mind Beer officer," she jiggled, "He hasn't had a beer yet tonight. Not having a beer by 4:30 on a Friday night makes him kind of owly. And believe me - those beer are all for him. There's half a case of wine back there somewhere for me. We're hopeless alcoholics, like half the other people in this park. I'll make sure he behaves. If he doesn't, he won't get near these all weekend." Sonja leaned over a little more, giggle-jiggled, and the cop's attitude changed faster than those airport cops could change their story to cover their asses when they found themselves with a deadman and his pissed off mother on their hands.

"You keep an eye on him then, ma'am. Every year we get teenagers getting too drunk and hurting themselves up here. Go on then."

If I had jiggly-jiggly titties like Sonja's I would have spent a lot less nights in jail than I have.

Hunky and Kitty, with their bags and bags of dope they would soon sell to dope-starved teenage campers, were waved right through the roadblock because traffic had backed up because of all the time the cops had spent eyeballing my cavernous car. We all cracked open beers as soon as we were out of sight of the police and their power to fuck up our weekend. Before long we were telling stories and laughing by a bonfire like Nicholson, Hopper and Fonda in Easy Rider.

On Saturday Hunky and I spent a luckless morning on the lake fishing. The beer tasted good though and it tasted even better when the sun beamed over the snow-crest mountains and made our country sparkle the way it sparkled when the Vikings first set foot here over 1000 years ago.

After a troutless lunch of beans and burned toast washed down with yet more beer Hunky and I went far into the forest with the Hammer to do a little shooting. The smell of burned gun powder made me think of all the people we are killing in Afghanistan. I sure hope most of them are Muslim loons. Being Canadian is not all about hockey, beer, fishing and growing the best dope in the world any more.

"You're not your usual crack shot today are you Beer?" Hunky was kind enough to point out as I missed yet another beer can balanced on a fallen, shattered old hemlock.

My excuse? "Guess my mind is off target and on roller derby this afternoon."

Hunky understood. He is pretty smart for a Jamaican-Ukrainian-Canadian. "I've been thinking about derby all day too. What do you say we pack away the guns and head back to town before we get too bombed?"

If Hunky and I thought any more alike we would be a political party.

We left the Hammer to look out for the girls and drove back to the city. On the way Hunky asked me, "How's my driving?"

"Have we hit anything yet?" I asked back.

"Not yet."

"Then your driving is better than usual."

I tossed an empty out the window and opened a fresh one as Hunky covered an eye to cure his double vision as he struggled to keep us between ditches brimming with with broken bottles, fast food wrappers and cigarette butts.

We got back into town in time to get some Chinese before derby time. All that driving in the hotter than Andi sun had made us thirsty as hard run dogs. Hunky told our waitress, "If you see either of our beers get half empty bring us two more." He then guzzled half his beer. The waitress hustled us up two more faster than a Canuck fan can scream, "Riot!" DrinkSafe be fucked.

Next thing I remember, and I remember none of the rest of the night too clearly, I was in the arena doors and supporting my local roller girls by lining up repeatedly for cheap beer in the crowded beer garden. The derby that followed the national anthems was well meant and vicious as the Canuck justice of Todd Bertuzzi. The girls laying their bodies upon one another as heroic as an honest policeman. Andi as determined, dazzling and athletic as Mine That Bird.

In a striking contrast, as the sore losers, who are are really just plain losers, who call themselves Canuck fans were pelting their heroes with garbage after their hockey team had lost badly to the Black Hawks, four teams worth of roller girls were laying five on their fans as they circled the blood-stained track after their two bouts were finished.

No one gave a shit who won. No one gave a shit who lost. Everyone had paid $20 for $250 worth of entertainment - exactly the fucking opposite of what had happened at the big hockey rink full of shitheads across town.

After the show Hunky drove aimlessly for an hour before he found the highway that would take us back to camp. I would have taken the wheel if I was not painting a Chinese flame down the side of Hunky's truck.

When I woke the next day I felt like I had had consensually violent sex with an insatiable she-devil.

That is roller derby, motherfuckers. It felt that good and it felt that bad.