Faded Youth and Wrinkles in Time

Somewhere in the cold months of 1987, the following star-crossed events occurred, all of them true yet subject to the imperfections of my recollections. 

We were four teammates from the varsity volleyball team at the University of Waterloo. Strident student athletes, we were,  tall and virile and young — drinking our share of alcohol and chasing our share of girls. 

On this night, we’d ventured far from campus, drinking draft pints at the storied Heuther Hotel pub in downtown Waterloo, a brass-and-stained-glass tavern, frequented by all the locals Waterloo offered.

We were, in line with our volleyball team nicknames:

Spidey, the elder, most committed carouser, and ringleader.

Dambo, tall and awkward with a dry and acute sense of humour that earned the most laughs (think Kramer from Seinfeld).

Viper, broad-shouldered, the most wise-cracking and fast-talking.

And me, Duke, the youngest, the team rookie, and the most innocent, aged just 19.

We sat at a round table, mostly drinking, maybe eating, talking shit and looking around at the people before us. We noticed a beautiful blonde woman walking around. She looked at least a decade older than us.

At some point, Spidey ventured afield and managed to converse long enough with the woman to learn her name. Then, every time Cathy appeared within our view, we’d bellow out “Cathy!”

Strangely, she seemed to enjoy the cat calls, as crude as they were.

Shortly thereafter, Spidey announced that Cathy and her table had issued an invitation. Would we like to continue our merriment at a house party?

Indeed, we would. We flung on our coats and hopped into a cab, not much contemplating the oddness of the invite

We arrived shortly at a nondescript high rise and bundled into the elevator. Grinning and jostling, we were welcomed inside Cathy’s apartment where we met her husband, an older and affable fellow with gray hair and gray beard and a smile of amusement on his lined face. 

Cathy gave us a beer and a tour. Two or three large walls were full of framed black-and-white photos of the bearded husband with various celebrities, most of them Canadian. The photos were all decades-old but we marveled at the scope of the collection and recognized a good many famous people posing with the dude, politicians and entertainers and the like. Think Pierre Trudeau, Farley Mowat, and Anne Murray.

What exactly the husband had done to find himself among this stratum of society is now lost to memory. To his credit, while we were gawking, he was demure. He smiled and told a few anecdotes to bring the photos to life. His ego seemed stroked, just slightly. We were not, I assume, the type of people whom he would ordinarily care to impress.

Still just kids immersed in student culture, we respected the husband’s real-world accomplishments. The images felt like vestiges of his crowning achievements, still somewhat relevant but curling at the edges.

In sharp contrast, Cathy was not demure. She soon reappeared, proffering a handful of black-and-white glamour shots of herself from slightly younger days. Perhaps she’d done some acting. She’d posed dutifully for the pictures, back arched, smile present on the lips but absent from the eyes. 

With an encouraging look, Cathy announced that she would autograph the prints for each of us, some kind of prize or memento to mark the experience of meeting her.

“And I’ll write anything you want on it,” she added, mischievously.

Although it had started to fade, Cathy’s beauty was genuine. It was also generic. She was like a Barbie doll with no distinguishing features. Not tall enough to be a fashion model, Cathy was probably just attractive enough to qualify as a trophy wife. Her eyelash-fluttering attempts to flirt were practiced and hollow, as if she were preening for an unseen camera, not for us.

I remember my young brain being vaguely puzzled by her behaviour, wondering what she was hoping to achieve. Why, exactly, was Cathy expressing this canned tawdriness toward a foursome of very young men she’d invited home to socialize with her and her semi-distinguished husband? 

An answer would soon arrive.

Very discreetly, Cathy began ushering us, one by one, into a chambre at the rear of the apartment. I was only vaguely aware of this until Spidey and Dambo had each promptly reappeared and my turn came. 

Cathy gently steered me into what must have been the master bedroom, because it had both a bed and a couch.

Sitting on the couch was another woman of approximately Cathy’s age, a brunette. I don’t recall this second woman’s name but for the sake of the tale let’s call her Sheryl. She looked like a Sheryl.

Cathy sat me down beside Sheryl and performed a quick introduction, then closed the door behind her as she left. I had no idea why I was suddenly alone with Sheryl, but I was curious enough to find out while also trying to be polite, I suppose. 

Sheryl was modestly attractive but not sexy. She did not have any of the radiance of Cathy. She appeared sunk into the couch as if she’d been sitting there for weeks.

After some small talk, Sheryl began to bemoan that fact that she was recently divorced from her husband. I attempted to console her, I think, but, really, what could I hope to accomplish? Me, a still-teenaged greenhorn fully out of his element. Divorce was utterly adult territory.

Then came the moment of truth. While sadly listing some of the drawbacks of being a divorcée, Sheryl said — and I can quote her verbatim because the words remain crystal clear in my mind’s eye — “I’ve also lost my supply of sex.”

Ohhh. 

The pieces of the puzzle came together now with startling efficiency within my alcohol-impaired young brain.

Sheryl, not Cathy, was the one looking to get laid. There were no swipe-right-for-sex apps or even smart phones back then, so good friend Cathy had taken matters into her own hands, luring us in the hope that one (or more?) of us would feel like helping out.

I knew immediately that I would not be helping out. I felt vaguely exploited and also incredulous. I’ve never been the type to leap at any opportunity for casual sex, especially if abruptly thrown at me in this manner. The scene in the apartment now seemed more surreal than ever.

In a few more exchanges, I made it clear to Sheryl that I was not about to act on her invitation. Soon thereafter, I was gone from the room, although I don’t remember any details of how that happened.

What I do remember of the rest of the night is scattered and episodic and, well, anti-climactic.

Not long after, I found myself back in the living room, ringleader Spidey decided that it was time for us to immediately depart. With timing both horrible and heroic, Spidey had barged into the bedroom looking for Viper and found him reclined in the dimmed light on the couch, receiving oral sex from Sheryl. Spidey was a storied partier, but it seems that he retained something of a moral core or perhaps a need to protect the younglings from depravity.

With Spidey’s intervention, the spell was broken. Viper hastily zipped up. We all found our jackets and our autographed glamour shots of Cathy. Sheryl, I suppose, remained in the darkened bedroom.

A cab awaited as we shuffled back onto the elevator. The genial Cathy had mostly failed in her mission to entrance and arouse us for Sheryl’s benefit, yet she maintained the charade to the very last, shamelessly flirting with us until the elevator doors closed and our collided worlds were freed and rendered mostly silent.

Now the mismatched groups would return to markedly different celestial paths, progressing with our own cadence through time and space.