Part One

You Are Young

I headed to the bathhouse nearest to my home, hoping to find some good company. In case I couldn’t, I brought a book, though once I took my place in the empty sauna, it sat unopened in my lap. I leaned back and felt sweat develop on my forehead. It was late in the autumn, which in Montreal meant that the air outside was always cold, even on days of bright sun. The heat of the sauna was novel and welcome.

Another man came in a few minutes after I did. He carried a paper cup and took a seat on the lower row, beside my feet. From behind, I looked at his shoulders and the back of his neck, and the little drops of sweat instantly blooming from his skin. Though I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was very young, maybe twenty; his body had that easy beauty, unearned and unwitting. After a few seconds, he held the cup up and poured water over his head. In a frisky voice, he went, “Aah.” The water darkened and flattened his shaggy blond hair. “Feels great in a hot room,” he said without turning around.

I wanted to put my hand in his hair, and my mouth over the little divot between his collarbone and neck, before the water collecting there lost all of its cold. “I’ll try that sometime,” I said.

He leapt from his seat and out the door, returning moments later with a big grin and his cup once again full of water. “Close your eyes,” he said, dumping the water on my head. He asked if I liked the feeling. I said I did, and I offered my name. “I’m John,” he replied.

John remained standing as we talked about Scandinavia, where the people often ran out of their saunas, over and over, to roll in the snow. Neither of us had ever travelled as far as that, and he, in fact, had never left the country, not even to visit the States. He was on a work trip from Ottawa. His job, like mine, was too boring to bother explaining.

So much of him was on display—like me, he wore only a towel—but I still wanted more information, about the most remote details of his body. What his face and breathing were like when he was coming, what his cum exactly smelled like, what white thing from nature its colour most closely resembled. How close he was to falling asleep when he closed his eyes while lying still, on a soft surface, in a dark place. He knocked on the book that sat in my lap. Knock, knock. Then he read the title out loud.

“The Death of the Heart. The pages will warp in here, you know.”

“That’s all right. I’m not really enjoying it.”

He kept his hand in a fist and rested it against the book, putting his weight into it. The paper cup was in that fist, all crumpled up. “What’s the story?” he asked.

“An old friend wrote me about it. It was hard to find. He told me the title was Broken Hearts. He’d read it in French, but it’s an English book, and I guess when they translated it, that’s what they called it. Broken Hearts. Anyway, eventually I found it.”

“The story,” he said, laughing. “What happens in the book? That’s what I meant.”

“Oh. Hard to explain.”

Before I could say more, the lights turned off, then turned back on, over and over for a few seconds. John made a confused face.

“That’s on purpose,” I said. “They’re telling us that cops have come to a different bathhouse. Not this one. But it’s still a good idea to leave now.”

I could hear in my own voice a fleck of panic. This warning had happened weeks earlier, at this same bathhouse, and at that time I had felt a strong rush of gratitude that I was not at the wrong one, followed by an equally strong rush of terror, because I could have been. John did not look scared—only annoyed about having to leave. In the humid air between our faces, I could feel the breaking apart of our sexual charge.

“I live nearby,” I said hopefully. “Come over for a beer. I have a dog. She loves guests.”

I could hear, on the other side of the door, men scurrying out of the other rooms.

“Dachshund,” I added. “Short-haired. Very sweet. Name is Dorothy.”

“Let’s go dancing somewhere first,” said John.

In the locker room, I took much longer to dress than John, who slid into a burgundy jumpsuit without donning any underwear, cinched a thick yellow belt around his waist, and was done. “See you outside,” he said. He glided through the crowd of men who were quickly getting their clothes on. He was an odd duck in that room. No one else spoke, or made eye contact, or moved without urgency. I had worn to the bathhouse my usual daily outfit—a suit, this one light blue and windowpane-plaid, with a thin tie, also blue. Now I kept the tie off, and the top shirt button undone.

When I met him by the entrance, John said Truxx—his favourite dancing spot in Montreal—would be our destination. “With two X’s,” he said. “Not like the vehicle.”

I couldn’t remember if I had been there before. Years had passed since I had last kept track of which bars had what vibrations, which were for dancing and which were for chatting, which had a true mix of patrons and which had informal policies to keep out women and straights.

“I have to warn you, I’m not much for dancing,” I said.

“I have a cash stipend all weekend,” he said, smiling cheekily. “I’ll buy our beers and loosen you up. Tax dollars at work.”

“So long as you don’t pour any over my head.”

Once we were moving, the cause of his odd-duck behaviour occurred to me easily. All I had to do was watch him walk beside me, in his stylish tight clothes, with his long, gorgeous hair, in his confident strut. He wasn’t dumb, he wasn’t newly out, he wasn’t pretentious or especially arrogant. He was simply young—truly young—and aware that the world was his. His to possess, his to squander. His to make a strong impression on. He was going to share it with me that night—he was going to share all his possessions, the dark streets and the cool air, the promise of dancing and booze, as well as the promise of his own bright and slender body. Knowing that a single layer of fabric concealed it, I was preoccupied by this last promise—I who had moments before enjoyed a complete, prolonged view.

“Do raids happen a lot?” he asked.

“They started last year with the bathhouses. Sometimes the bars. It began just before the Olympics, but it didn’t stop when the games ended. One more thing to hate about the games. It was all such a shambles. They were just trying to recapture the glory, if you ask me.”

“The glory of Expo ’67, you mean.”

I nodded.

***I Remember Lights*** by Ben Ladouceur. Published by Book*hug Press.

More about I Remember Lights :

The first novel from award-winning poet Ben Ladouceur, I Remember Lights depicts a time when the world promised everything to everyone, however irresponsibly.

In summer 1967, love is all you need… but some forms of love are criminal. As the spectacular Expo ’67 celebrations take shape, a young man new to Montreal learns about gay life from cruising partners, one-night stands, live-in lovers, and friends. Once Expo begins, he finds romance with a charismatic visitor, but their time is limited. When the fireworks wither into smoke, so do their options.

A decade later, during the notorious 1977 police raid on a gay bar called Truxx, he comes to understand even more about the bitter choice, so often made by men like him, between happiness and safety.

I Remember Lights is a vital reminder of forgotten history and a visceral exploration of the details of queer life: tribulation and joy, exile and solidarity, cruelty and fortitude.

About Ben Ladouceur:

BEN LADOUCEUR is the author of Otter, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Prize, finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and a National Post best book of the year, and Mad Long Emotion, winner of the Archibald Lampman Award. He is a recipient of the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers and the National Magazine Award for Poetry. His short fiction has been featured in the Journey Prize Stories anthology and awarded the Thomas Morton Prize. He lives in Ottawa.