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The four of us had a superstition at the time that you could never clean the van until the tour was over, so by the time we’d sling-shotted around the Golden Horseshoe and crossed the border westward towards home, we were up to our necks in an ocean of garbage. It was the same in our minds as shaving your playoff beard. Stained blankets, liquor bottles, half-eaten bags of potato chips, old rotten food, filthy blankets, sleeping bags, and who knows what else, formed a cemented, solidified wall around your body as you sat in the seat.
Whenever we’d pull up to a venue, a river of beer cans and empty two-sixes would come rushing out of the shotgun side door as it opened, like a sacrilegious baptism. For every cardinal sin we’d commit before, during, or after a show, we’d have that sacred half-hour onstage every night to seek forgiveness. Despite the harrowing feeling of guilt deep inside me, for every poor, desperate gas station attendant running horizontal through the rain, I knew that there’d be countless times I’d be back in Ottawa, and all those cities that we’d passed through to get there, in no time, to be redeemed.
