Tunesday : Creep

Creep

Written and Performed by Radiohead

When you were here before
Couldn't look you in the eye
You're just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so very special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here

I don't care if it hurts
I want to have control
I want a perfect body
I want a perfect soul
I want you to notice
When I'm not around
You're so very special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here

Oh, oh

She's running out again
She's running out
She run run run run
Run

Whatever makes you happy
Whatever you want
You're so very special
I wish I was special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don't belong here
I don't belong here

I have one more "important" Edmonton story before I move on with Kennedy's birth and our move back to Ontario, and this is the first "Tunesday" post for which choosing a background song feels flippant and borderline disrespectful to the past and its players; and especially because I am only peripheral to this story (though I was obviously affected in my own way; we all were.) This is the story of a creep, a weirdo, and while on the one hand I think that this is such a beautiful song when listened to as intended (as an anthem for all who feel inadequate in the face of aching desire), I am using it literally - as the themesong of a creep who could fall off the Earth and the world would be better off for it. Written with the best of intentions of honouring the past, I am bullishly following my gimmicky format for memoir here because I can't reckon how else to fit this in.

I've written several times about my friend Delight, and while in my early days as a cocktail waitress the two of us saw each other five or six times a week - at work and play; always having a hilarious time together - this was one of those solid friendships that didn't necessarily require us to be in constant contact; after I left Sha Na Na's and we weren't working together anymore, there were still lunches together, dinners at each other's houses, phone calls, etc. But unlike me, Delight had lots of friends, and sometimes she preferred their company, and sometimes mine, and there was a comfortable ebb and flow to our friendship; we knew we'd always be there for each other, so there was no need to confirm anything day to day.

Among Delight's friends were some guys that she had known since she was a teenager, and who she had lived with off and on over the years. When I first knew Delight, she and her young daughter Cara (she was five or six when we met) lived with Delight's brother Dean (an oilfield worker who worked away for long stretches but kept a room in their shared house), "Duckie" (I think he was a tow truck driver and he owned the Bouvier who was the mama to our puppy, Moe), and "Cuzzie" (another oilfield worker who was often away and who once wistfully said to Delight when they were wasted teenagers, "You know, it's too bad we're cousins" - which they weren't; no one remembered where her nickname for him came from, and Delight had always found that to be a hilarious story, retold often). These were Delight's rocks, and over the years I knew her, as boyfriends came and went, these were the guys who provided a stable male presence for both Delight and Cara. 

For most of the years I knew her, Delight was with Dennis - the father of her second daughter, Haley - and together they bought a beautiful house with a bit of property outside Edmonton. Dave and I went out there for dinner many times, but since I no longer worked with Delight and it was quite a drive to go see her, this was an ebbing period in our friendship; and besides, Delight was upgrading her high school education with a view to going to university and she was making new friends all the time. (And as I wrote about last week, this was a time when I was also busy in school and Dave and I spent most of our free time playing cards with other friends; particularly Marg and Mike.) Eventually, Delight and Dennis broke up, and because she wanted to keep her house, Delight asked Dean and Cuzzie if they wanted to buy into her mortgage; and being oil workers who paid rent on usually empty apartments anyway (Cuzzie actually rented the basement suite in the house Dave and I rented for a while), it made sense to both of them to have that rent money diverted to an actual investment instead. They moved in when Dennis moved out, and as a bonus for Delight, she now had live-in babysitters whenever the guys were home from the oilfields.

All of this is background for a horrible phone call I received one evening: Delight called me in hysterics and asked if she could drop off Cara to stay with me for a few days - her Mom would be taking Haley, but she couldn't handle both kids, and she didn't know what else to do, and without any clue about what was going on, I said, "Of course, bring Cara over any time." And then the story came out - Cuzzie had been molesting Cara for her entire life, and it would have still been a secret if he hadn't tried to get a kiss from the daughter of one of Delight's new school friends while he was babysitting them both one evening. This other little girl didn't know if he was joking or not, but she had said no, and when she was acting weird at home, she told her Mom what had happened. When she told Delight and Delight asked Cara if anything had ever happened to her, the whole story came out: that Cuzzie would put her on his lap and grind her against him as he French-kissed her, and that Cara couldn't remember a time that this didn't happen. I remember Cara staying in our basement with Cuzzie one weekend while Delight was away, and even though at the time I asked her if she wouldn't rather stay upstairs with us (we hadn't known of this arrangement until Cara was suddenly there, but we would have offered beforehand if we had known she needed a place to stay), Cara said she had been looking forward to "camping" downstairs with Cuzzie. It came out afterwards that this had been a molester's dream weekend of fondling and stroking and having a little girl all to himself while Dave and I went about our business upstairs unaware. Cara told Delight that Cuzzie had tried it with Haley once (who was maybe four when this came out), but she had screamed in his face and wasn't having any of it. Cara felt guilty and ashamed for keeping the secret for all these years and this revelation explained to Delight why, ever since Cuzzie had moved in with them, Cara (now ten years old) had started wetting the bed and refusing to bathe and walking around dirty and smelly; she just wanted to be left alone.

So, after an interview with the police and a trip to the hospital (where a hysterical Cara had to be knocked out for a rape exam; confirming her insistence that the molestation had all been external) Delight brought Cara to our house, needing time alone to figure out what happened next. Delight was raving - as any mother would be - and she blamed herself for trusting Cuzzie (one of her oldest friends, how could she have known?), and she was scared because Dennis and Dean were out looking for Cuzzie and she was pretty sure they would have killed him if they found him (which wouldn't have been a loss for humanity, but she didn't want her brother or ex-boyfriend to suffer legal consequences for, you know, murder), and she swore that neither of her daughters would ever be left alone with a man - not her brother, not a teacher, no man - ever again, that she would live alone until they were grown. Meanwhile, Dave was furious and helplessly pacing; wishing that Dennis and Dean had thought to pick him up to join in the manhunt; wondering if he should go out looking for Cuzzie by himself (as if Dave would know where this man we barely knew might be), and when he was out of earshot, I pointed out to Delight that she had my complete support in everything, that I would help her any way I could, and while I didn't know how uncomfortable Cara was going to be around men from then on, I couldn't exactly ask Dave to leave his own house; I couldn't guarantee that they wouldn't be left alone together. This pretty much stopped Delight in her rant and she smiled and said, "I'm not talking about Dave. Cara loves Dave and if you can't trust Dave, it just wouldn't be worth living in this world anymore."

Cara stayed with us for about a week - mostly laying on the couch and watching movies - and as I had no idea what to say to her in this situation, I didn't talk about what was going on, and neither did she. Dave was careful with her - he had always teased and tickled, but was obviously not going to be rough like that again - and Cara enjoyed his attention like she always had. During this week, Delight found a house in town to rent and had her brother bring over what belongings he could; they both walked away from the house and its mortgage in the country. Dave and I helped Delight with some cleaning and some painting in the new place - it was a bit of a dive, but cheap enough for a single mother/student to handle on her own - and she had her girls squared away within no time; Delight is one of the most efficient and effective people I know when she has a goal (and she always has a goal; she got that university degree, too.)

Meanwhile, it turns out that Cuzzie had immediately checked himself into the psychiatric hospital for "treatment". Whether this was on the advice of a lawyer or was always his plan for when the truth came out, he went there so quickly that it prevented the police from picking him up right away (also preventing a couple of homicidal hotheads from finding him). And when the case was eventually brought to trial, this apparent remorse and plea for "help" was enough to sway the judge towards leniency - Delight says that the most punitive part of that trial (which didn't happen until after Dave and I had moved away) was her family reliving the pain. Because Cara would have a panic attack every time she happened to see Cuzzie on the streets of Edmonton, Delight eventually agreed to move to the other side of the country with the man who would become her husband. And Cara would suffer the effects of this abuse for years - running off the rails as a teenager, abusing drugs and not trusting anyone; not caring if she lived or died. Thankfully, Cara seems settled now with her own little family.

Again, I mean nothing flippant about tying this tragedy to a song; Cuzzie was a creep and a weirdo in the truest sense of the words; a monster and a subhuman. He don't belong here, and instead of checking himself into a hospital, I wouldn't have minded if he had driven himself off a cliff.