One Night in Cambridge

It was late spring 1995 when Dano and I traveled to Québec with our friend Martin Gagnon. It was a two week road trip that began in Montreal then Trios Riviera, on through old Québec city where the natives did not speak English and further still, heading north along the huge St Lawrence River; we rested on L’ Isle-aux Coudres and crossed on ferries until our whirlwind tour stopped along the surrounding towns on Lac St Jean. In those ten days of freedom and travel, I fell in love with Québec and decided I was going to move there. I would find an apartment and a job. I had Martin who lived in Montreal as my main connection but I met others too who would help me find my way to living north of the border. I had nothing to keep me tied down. I was single and living with my parents. I worked piss ant jobs or as a helper with my construction friends. So I grabbed a bunch of Canadian papers and news letters (this was before the internet explosion that would soon break out globally) and got to work, reading and digesting all I could. I had a plan and was targeting a temporary place in Montréal as my starting point.

 

But then, one summer day changed it all, maybe changed my whole life for all I know. The morning started out with promise of a wonderful summer day. My drinking buddy, Gary, came by with Red Sox tickets for an afternoon game. Perfect. It couldn’t get any better than this I thought, chucking down a beer on a Saturday afternoon.

 

We had right field bleacher seats and the sun was hot. I knew we had a long day ahead and paced my drinking. I stayed away from mixed drinks because it was much too early and Gary, under the right circumstance could become Jekyll and Hyde in a flash. Well it didn’t matter. He soon got loud, obnoxious and feisty with a group of Indians fans and we were escorted out of Fenway Park.

 

I followed him from one Cambridge bar to the next. He worked in Cambridge and knew all the spots and all the short cuts thru back streets. Towards dusk we found ourselves walking through Harvard square. At this point, I’m not drunk but merrily buzzed, coherent but flirty. We were heading into the train station near Out Of Town News where I saw a group of people hanging out, young kids a little younger than me and a mixture of boys and girls. I stopped to talk with one of the girls.

“Hey, how ya doing?” I called out.

She looked at me with a smirk but said nothing.

“You sure are a pretty girl,” I said. “You wanna hang and have a few beers?”

Her smirk morphed into a blank dead panned expression.

“Ok,” I said with a short giggle. “Maybe some other time.”

Gary stood a few feet behind me. He stepped forward and grabbed my shoulder.

“Come on. Let’s go,” he said.

 We headed down the stairs into subway. Then out of nowhere I was blindsided, pushed down from behind. I lay on the platform absorbing kick after kick, punch after punch by what seemed like at least four people, including the girl. Gary wailed one kid until he ran off and Gary pulled another off me, finished him and well, methodically pried them all away until all the attackers ran back up the stairs. Gary picked me up and hustled us on to the train, bloody and scratched. But at the next stop, the police were waiting— to arrest me.

 

As the fight went on, police were called to the scene having arrived just after we had left. To avoid arrest, the girl (and the attackers) fabricated a wonderful story how I sexually assaulted her, straddled her and apparently had asked, “How deep do you think I can go?” I was charged with assault and battery, the dangerous weapon being a shod foot. Well this whole mess dragged on for a year. I was put on probation. The court ordered me to go to AA classes and random piss testing. I couldn’t leave the state. I was stuck. Trapped. My little Québécoise adventure was over before it started. The whole thing sickened me. I recall, driving over the Tobin Bridge to work, observing the Cambridge court house from afar and my stomach turned queasy, every time. It scared me how close I came to going to jail for a crime I never committed. It wasn’t until over year later that I would get a small measure of payback, well at least in my mind anyway.

 

The courts, the AA classes were finished. I had moved on. On my way to class at Umass Boston, I grabbed the new edition of Boston Phoenix like I did every week. The cover story was about those very kids—those homeless drug users who lived and hung out at Harvard Square. The story followed a man named Shannon (who was one of my attackers and named in the police report) and reported of his fighting heroics, his leadership qualities in “the pit” as it was called. For some odd reason the story writer sided with these kids as if it were cool to be homeless and addicted to drugs and alcohol (I still have the article). The payback I suppose was that the story justified my innocence.

 

I wonder looking back how things might have been different. Because I stayed here I wound up meeting my future wife some seven months later. Had I gone would I have met someone else? Would I ever have kids? Would I be living the crazy single life? Maybe nothing would have been different and the idea of moving to Canada was mere fantasy. Still, it is a strange road we follow and stranger still those roads not taken or discovered. I have no regrets of course. We got two beautiful kids that I never in my remotest dreams would ever think possible. Anyway, the sudden death of my old friend Gary sort of brought back a flood of memories, this one included. Not that this was one of our best times together. But it was definitely a crossroads time for me in my life.

Sometimes, when he took me out drinking to a bar, it wasn't so much that I half expected a fight; it was more that, I fully expected a brawl.  

 

And lastly, I hope those kids got everything they deserved, every last drop.