BAD MAN JAN

(Awakening the bad kid)

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So there I was, a young man...

I was six and we were on the run from my Dad...

A trifecta of bad things had hit our family unit, which was composed of my Mother, myself, and my 4-year-old sister...

I was being taken care of by my mother’s friends, Jan, and his wife for a weekend. They were nice enough...

I was on an island off the coast of British Columbia while my mother and sister were on the island of Vancouver, in a town called Nanaimo.

It was a horrendous snowy winter.

An 80s Canada, it was a “homeless people frozen dead on the sidewalks while uncaring rich 80s stock-market fat-cats stepped over the bodies, sort of winter…”

My sister was in the car of our babysitter, Noni—A large, older woman with big hair and a high squeaky voice... Her little dog, Tippy, jumped up and got in the way of the driving...

The car crashed…

My 4-year-old sister is now in hospital with a broken leg. We have no money... And my mum has to somehow work her minimum-wage hairdressing job at “Fantastic Sam’s,” in the town of Nanaimo, between running to the hospital every day while staying at a friend’s house.

The ferries also started a weeks-long strike that day as part of Operation Solidarity—a huge British Columbia worker’s strike in 1983.

In short, I was now trapped on an island with Jan and his family.

I was stuck there for about two weeks... which of course is the equivalent of nine years in the mind of a six-year-old.

I recall Jan explaining that my sister had been in a crash and had a broken leg, and that I would be staying with them for a bit longer, because the ferries were on strike, and so Mum couldn’t get back.

No problem! They ate three real meals, had a warm house and a big TV. Something that my family, at that time, didn’t have any of...Remember this was 80s TV too—Quality.

I was in the daughter’s room, on a mattress on the floor. She had a record player and I was hooked on the first three songs on one of the records she had— “HIT WAVE 82.”

Check out this track list!:

In the first 24 hours of Jan being called up by my mother and him happily telling her that taking care of me was no problem at all, I experienced the following awesome shocks:

The next morning, I went to my school on the school bus with the daughter... all seemed fine... but really, dark clouds were gathering...

In class, everyone was told to get out their crayons and glue for our art project. All the other parents had supplied their kids with crayons and glue, as instructed by the newsletter we brought home.

Out came the tower-shaped, turntable Crayola Caddies... (look those beauties up if you don’t know what they are—boxes of super nice crayons with built-in sharpeners in the base and the silver, gold and bronze crayons), and out came the nice, white, sweet smelling glue in clean, white bottles with easily dispensing nozzles.

I got my crayons and glue out... but within a minute...

I heard, “Pooooo! What’s that stinky smell!”

“OH gross! It’s HIS glue.”

I looked at my glue...

My glue was in a weird gunky snotty glass pot... with the lid on crooked... and a weird old wild bristly brush jammed down into a mostly-dried, stinking, gray mass. It was most likely made up of mashed-up, rotten horse testicles.

The teacher came over... and looked at my glue... then picked up my crayons.

My crayons were not the special Crayola ones... my crayons were the four-pack from that greasy Italian restaurant our uncle took us and our mum out to... where mum started crying and talking about Dad taking off... and we had to go sit in the car...

Tiny red, blue, yellow, and green paper-wrapped sticks that drew about as good as a lightly-colored candle.

Gently putting down my crayons and looking at me with sad, kind eyes, she picked up my glue pot and said, “I’m just going to put this outside for now ok? And, you can take it home with you later. I have some other spare glue you can use.”

I said nothing... but I observed the other kids laughing as they watched her take my glue outside the class.

I looked at my crayons... I looked at the other kids’ crayons... I looked at their glue... I looked at their awesome 80s backpacks over on the wall... I looked at my weird, old-woman’s 70s vinyl handbag... that I had for a backpack...

I had a shattering moment of clarity... We were as poor as fuck.

It sort of all lined up suddenly... the weird meals, the fact the other kid’s rooms were always filled with toys, while I had only a few toys in a paper bag—wack toys that were mostly from Cracker Jack boxes or happy meals.

Our car broke down a lot and was shitty and we moved around a lot and kind of always lived in weird places... or with “Aunt someone” or “Uncle someone else”.

It sank in, and I started to feel a small but painful and growing sting of unfairness...

So, I get off the bus back to Jan’s big flash house and, stepping off the bus into the knee-deep snow, there is giant, bearded Jan... looking stern, and kind of angry.

He sent his kid inside and bade me go with him over to his workshop where, among the sawdust and oil smells, he crouched down to face me with his freaky skinny but big, bearded face and beery breath...

He told me that I had gone into his shed and broken many of his expensive tools, and that I would have to work off the damage every day after school now.

I just stared at him at first. This was the first time in my life an adult had suddenly become an evil liar. It was hard to take in...

I protested that I had never been into his shed and had broken none of his expensive tools.

He looked gleefully angry, in a fake way, and insisted that I had indeed broken his expensive tools and that the only way to pay for them was for me to do jobs after school, as my mum had no money and would not be able to buy him new ones.

The glue. He must somehow have known about the stinky glue.

It was a setup.

I believe, even though I was only six, my mind worked very well.

I was intelligent, but of course not wise in the ways of the world... yet.

I resigned myself to my fate... and just said “OK.”

Not the first time, or the last, that I would agree to some sort of bullshit in order to survive.

So every day after school I would work until dark. He had a truck full of chopped wood and I was to climb up on the truck bed, throw a piece of wood off and roll it through the snow over to the wood stack against the wall, and stack it all up.

Every day for about two weeks, as soon as one load was complete, the next day there would be another.

After I finished the first truckload, he said “You’re working so well, if you keep this up I’ll have to give you a raise,” and laughed heartily and meanly.

I didn’t even know what he meant. But as I looked at him, a new concept formed.

Hurt Bad Man Jan.

How could I hurt Bad Man Jan?

Jan was big and strong, and my mum was gone.

But at a precise moment, while rolling a log through snow with frozen, numb, little six-year-old hands, I decided I was going to get big and strong—and one day, find Bad Man Jan and hurt him real bad.

Then, I just pushed that thought away and kept rolling and stacking the wood.

There were other injustices I added to the list of painful paybacks that would be coming Bad Man Jan’s way, one day.

He spanked the shit out of his daughter one day for knocking over a bunch of beer bottles that were in the hall.

Due to the fact that I had started to hate her, and because she got to go inside and watch ELECTRIC COMPANY and other cool shows and eat food after school, she had started to hate me too.

I’d see her watching me through the window as I worked in the snow, her eyes sad. I’d stare back, and then she’d turn back to the TV, the snacks, and the warm fire.

She had Survivor guilt.

Also, I’m sure her dad told her that I broke all his expensive tools...

But any time she was bad, she was spanked till she was screaming like her arms were being ripped off.

The early 80s over the knee, POW POW POW full adult-anger, bare-arse hand spanks.

I laughed in glee and happiness. That’s how demented I had become.

“Think it’s funny do ya?!”

I was grabbed and spanked viciously.

I did not make a sound—I was too tough and numb for that.

His wife yelled “Jan! You will leave marks!” And he stopped.

When my mother would call every few days he would tell her I was very happy and doing great and we were all having a great time, then hand the phone to me and stand right over me to make sure I didn’t say anything bad.

When the family had dinner I had to get my own food from what was left in the kitchen, I wasn’t given a place at the table and had to eat in the lounge by myself.

I was not allowed any of the nice desserts they had.

But he would cheerily yell out how good they were from over at the table, while I sat with my empty plate in the lounge.

Your modern mind might like to think the wife would say something—but you can’t imagine the isolation of island life in 80s Canada, or how Stockholm-syndromed to fuck his crushed-down family was.

After what seemed like a year of living in a frozen, half-starved slavery hell, my mother finally showed up in her rusty, little white car.

She was met with hugs and love by them. A glazed 1000-yard stare by me. I watched their fake display of friendship, as if looking through a fun-house mirror. A huge part of me changed that day... and I decided that I was going to have to be a SURVIVOR.

If that meant being a “Bad Kid,” then maybe that’s what it meant.

Fuck... The... World.

That was how I saw it. As soon as I decided this, I saw that I didn’t have to play by the bullshit “Good Kid” rules anymore, and this was very freeing.

I went straight over to their daughter’s Advent calendar, which had only the 1st through 8th of December eaten, and systematically opened up each little door and ate the 9th through Christmas.

Like a chocolate-eating boss.

I felt happier and more fulfilled with each swallow.

I walked out of there, guts full of plasticy, Advent-calendar chocolate, and went and sat in the car, without saying goodbye.

Life went on...

STAR-WIPE TO 20 YEARS LATER

I’m a man grown. Lithe and strong. About 8 years of martial arts training. Years of weight lifting on top of working very physical jobs from the age of 16. Logging, Roofing, Demolition. Seasons of hunting and killing living things... cutting throats, slicing up animals.

Training to bring death.

Black leather jacket. Long black hair. Black steel-capped boots. Hands covered in hard silver rings. I’ve trained and brainwashed myself into a barbaric relic from an earlier time. A time when someone would have no qualms about hurting someone really badly. An avenging angel for a small child.

How much of my life, my look, my mindset had I dedicated to this moment? Only about 85% of it—super mentally healthy.

Justice had come for Bad Man Jan.

I had traveled across the world to Canada and traveled back to this tiny island. I had a balaclava in my backpack and I had a very calm, vicious silent beating planned, with a good amount of hard stomping—something Bad Man Jan would not walk away from. I didn’t want to kill him. I wanted him to live out the rest of his life crippled and broken. But I didn’t even know if he was still there, or alive. I thought maybe I would just go to the spot itself... and maybe some healing would take place. But on the off chance he WAS there... the balaclava to prevent identification was needed.

While on the ferry across to the island I asked a guy who looked like a local if he knew of a guy called Jan, who lived with his family on the island in the 80s. Not only did the guy know him, he hated him, and apparently so did everyone else on the island. Jan was a horrid man who had crossed everyone at one time or another.

The local gleefully told me that about ten years back, his wife had left him, taken the kids, and they all hated him. I guess he had another kid or two later on. Not long after that he rolled his truck while drunk and broke his back. Now he lives, on the welfare, by himself... miserable and in pain in his rotting, old house. I said that was sad to hear as my mother was friends with him in the 80s, and moved quickly to the back of the ferry before the guy got a good look at me.

That was interesting to hear. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

It was early winter, with no snow yet, and I stood at the top of the driveway, looking down at Bad Man Jan’s dilapidated house. I saw the shed, now sagging and crumbling... I saw a woodpile in exactly the same place. I saw a truck with wood in the back, parked right where he used to leave it for me to unload in the snow, twenty years ago. I saw Jan hunched, gray-bearded, old, wheezing, and ragged... Standing head down, leaning on his truck, looking at the wood in the back.

He grabs a piece and starts carrying it over to the wood pile... With a cry of pain, he drops it and almost goes down.

He stands there, clutching his back. I turned and walked away... As simple as that, I had decided to forgive him.

Within a few months, the rings were off, the muscles slowly going, the leather fighting jacket put away and the kicking boots replaced with soft shoes.

“Pain or damage don’t end the world.

Or despair. Or fucking beatings.

The world ends when you’re dead.

Until then, you’ve got more punishment in store.

Stand it like a man…

And give some back.”

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