elephant
Ronovan Queen
After a weekend of playing Dungeons & Dragons (yes, I still play at nearly age 40) I'm nostalgic for the old days of gaming, with the friend who introduced me to D&D when I was an innocent young Mama's Boy of 13.
Here's a short piece from years ago, written during a similar moment of nostalgia.
Ronovan Queen
The first time I saw an elephant up close, I was walking by the carnival set up in front of the Zellers in Pointe Claire. He was standing there, pissing out a gushing yellow flood, and looking forlorn. I walked by him on my way to Ron’s dad’s house. My parents had a fair idea of where I was, and what I was up to.
Ronovan Queen was a large, yellow-toothed extrovert with a vast collection of baubles and beads in his filthy room. Often we would wrestle, and he smelt strange. I would visit Ron principally to play Labyrinths and Liches. He was the Gamesmaster. He had created his own world for the game. His prolific creativity and flair for the macabre made the role-playing seem unearthly—arcane. We would descend, from his room full of treasures, to the dingy basement where the game took place. White candles were lit, polyhedral dice of ivory were fired up, and imaginations were ignited. The boys would sit around the table considering all of the marvellous things Ronovan presented them, including attacking monsters, spiked pit traps, intriguing puzzles, and chests full of gemstones, potions, and assorted magicks.
Ronovan and his friends (“Gurny” Mills and “Faust” Nesbit) were waiting for me when I arrived at the Queen household. Ronovan’s father was never, ever home. The boys were drinking from a bottle of Irish Cream.
“You must choose,” Ronovan said to me in his sepulchral, Gamesmaster voice. “Irish Cream or ginger ale?”
“Ginger ale,” I said unflinchingly. Faust handed me the green plastic 2L bottle and encouraged me to drink up. I took a sip. They stared at me anxiously.
It tasted funny. “This isn’t ginger ale,” I said.
Immediately the three imps burst into malicious laughter.
“You just drank Gurny’s piss,” exclaimed Ronovan, laughing.
I ran to the bathroom sink and spit up into it. There was no denying that I had swallowed most of the urine. I was humiliated.
Returning to the living room, the boys were in hysterics.
“Why did you do that?” I pleaded. “Why?”
“You should have had the Irish Cream,” said Faust admonishingly. This sent the others into even greater fits of delight.
I turned around and walked out of the house. I walked for ages; past Athens Restaurant, past Spring Garden Road where Ron’s mom lived, past the Zellers and the lonely elephant. Reaching a payphone, I called home. My stepfather Jacques came to collect me at the shopping centre. I was sombre in the car.
“What happened?” Jacques inquired.
“Nothing,” I replied.
I never told anyone what had taken place; the very thought of it fills me to this day with a crushing shame.
Two years later it was autumn, when the desire to play L&L is most keenly felt. Having no cohorts or friends with whom to play the enchanting game, I decided to bury my pride and give Ronovan a call. I still knew his number off by heart.
“Just so you know,” I said. “I didn’t appreciate your prank at all.”
“I know,” Ron answered.
I continued my purge. “There was a reason why I didn’t speak to you for two years.”
He hesitated. “They did it back to me.”
“Who did?”
“Gurny and Faust,” Ronovan stated bleakly. “They tied me up in a chair with a thick rope, and then hit me with the other end of it.”
A smile crept onto my face as I imagined the poor, lumbering giant being bound and beaten with a limp hunk of cord.
“I’m sorry that happened to you, man.”
“So,” he changed the subject. “You want to come over and do some gaming?”
At Ron’s dad’s house, over the next few weeks, I took my brand-new character (a wizard named Mathgen Airioch Feabhruadh) on a series of heroic escapades. They were some of the most memorable of my illustrious gaming career. Ronovan had not been idle over the two missing years. He had developed his fantasy world into a veritable universe of campaign possibilities. He had invented a multitude of thrilling scenarios, as well as entire populaces of fascinating beings to encounter. We would sip tea in the Fall twilight, pet his scummy cats and roll the dice.L&L is a social game, and after a while it became necessary to recruit some new friends to play, to add to the fun. We called on our mutual high school acquaintances and managed to round up Gaston “Darche” Pierre, and Pat “Hen-Wen” Wendel. With wicks aflame and adventure in our hearts, we set out on the beginning of a long series of awesome gaming nights.
Within a year we had all begun drinking. By then I was fourteen, and despite having already consumed my first beer at age eleven or thereabouts, it was only at Ron’s that I really started. It began with California Peach Wine Fizzers. They tasted sweet and infinitely more drinkable than beer, albeit twice as expensive. Eventually, drinking beer just became too economical to refuse.
We began pounding back cases of Carling Cougar every weekend. Our drunkenness was even more exhilarating than L&L. Girls entered our entourage. There were parties at Ron’s dad’s at every opportunity. Ron’s dad occasionally showed up himself, drunk from the local tavern. Darche once flew into a ghastly rage and smashed three windows before throwing up.
We decided to use our creative energies in a less destructive capacity and formed the Yahoo Theatre Company, named after a sound that Gurny used to make long before I had ever tasted his urine. For our productions we performed in several church basements and even borrowed the drama classroom at our old high school. We were wildly successful on the Pointe Claire circuit.
When it came time to apply to universities, I confronted Ronovan about my decision to leave the world of theatre and pursue a Biology degree.
He was nonplussed. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Because I want to know how things work,” I said meekly.
“I don’t,” he announced. “I prefer to live in the mystery of the unknown.”
I thought about it for a long time, and had no reply.
Not long after that I lost my virginity with my maiden girlfriend Sarah in Ronovan’s cellar. Upon returning as a group from a covert, drunken dip in the public swimming pool, Sarah and I lay down on a large piece of wrinkled, grey foam (covered with a rust-stained bed sheet) and pressed our way into young adulthood.
Sarah then pressed me to move out of my parents’ house and move into an apartment with her. I did. Ronovan and our friends became regular visitors, and we even played L&L in our new digs, leaving Ron to his father—and to his aging felines.
Summer came, and with it came Ronovan and Hen-Wen’s decision to travel in Europe for an indefinite period. I felt left out of the fun. Our goodbye gathering, which took place at the Queen homestead, included the consumption of some extremely potent dope to compliment the Cougars. I hallucinated the slowing down of time: looking at Ronovan across the well-worn dining room table he looked venerable and wise. I felt simply old. Our adventures were coming to an end.
In Europe, Hen-Wen and Ronovan parted ways, due to irreconcilable Ronovanisms. Sarah and I broke up due to irreconcilable me. She moved out of the apartment, all the way to Calgary. I moved into a smaller pad, located not far from Ronovan’s dad’s house; I would walk past the place every now and again, recalling our treacherous nights, our saucy misadventures. The memories are locked away like a dark, secret space in my mind, along with sapphires and swords.
Eventually, I returned to the theatre. Ronovan ended up somewhere in Africa. I doubt I’ll see him again, though I can almost see him with my imagination; he’s bathing in the savannah, diving for topaz and azure stones—the grassland trees swaying in his splash.
© Adam Kelly Morton, 2009
Comments