Matthew was an old high school friend who conveniently happened to need a room. I had recruited housemates Amanda and Warren via an advertisement, simply worded and hastily penned in green biro, and placed in the window of Readings Bookshop, Lygon St Carlton, where it nestled along with many others.
Matthew and I had shared a flat a few years earlier. He was a known quantity although we annoyed each other slightly from time to time.
Amanda had just come off a relationship with a housemate at another shared house. She came with enough neuroses to keep an army of psychologists and maybe the occasional psychiatrist in business. Danger.
Warren was a Canadian university dropout, spending a year in Australia and working at the Kraft Food factory in Port Melbourne. Working on either the peanut butter line or the Vegemite line depending on requirements. Warren came with all the free peanut butter and Vegemite we could eat.
Warren was a mild-mannered bloke, of medium height and build, nondescript long-ish hair, heavy, tortoise-shell-rimmed glasses. He kept to himself mainly. Occupied the smallest room in the house, left home very early in the morning, worked hard all day, and went to bed early most weekday evenings.
After a month or two, I discovered during an evening chat that Warren had played ice hockey back in Canada, and had been almost good enough to crack the professional scene there. I didn't know much about ice hockey except that it was an uncommonly violent game, and it was hard to imagine quiet Warren being much good at it.
Warren played for a local Melbourne team it transpired, and one night I went along to the St Moritz rink in St Kilda to watch him play. I sat up rinkside and watched the two teams file out. Golly, despite all the protective gear, it looked like they could do some damage to each other with those sharp skates and big sticks. And amongst these glacial gladiators, there was Warren, all skated and armoured, looking his usual innocuous self, wheeling out among his teammates, keeping his centre of gravity close to the ice. Sure hope Warren knows what he is doing out there. The players took their positions and the referee blew his whistle to start the game.
It soon became obvious that yes, ice hockey was indeed a rough and violent game, and yes, the sharp skates and big sticks did indeed add an element of danger and personal damage to the sport, but it was Warren doing more than his share of the hitting and hurting. Time and time again, he powered down the rink towards his teams goal net, stick left-right carefully, deftly, guiding the puck ahead of him. But regularly this same hockey stick capable of such gentle and exacting moves with the tiny puck would lash out and fell a member or two of the opposing team, before returning to its gentle usherings.
Once within range of the goal net, with a scowl that looked terrifying even from behind the facemask, Warren would loose a missile of a shot towards the net. If he was fast enough, the opposition goalkeeper would dodge the bullet and the puck passed harmlessly through to the back of the net. But occasionally the goalkeeper wasnt fast enough and there would be a sickening thud that you knew, even with all that padding, had to hurt. Warren was a veritable tornado on ice, scoring goal after goal, and leaving a trail of bloodied and broken members of the opposition scattered about the rink, like smashed and broken trees after a storm.
Steve could bore the legs off a table. After a month or two of moving in, Steve got into the habit of visiting our house often. He had bored the daylights out of his own housemates, and was in need of fresh conversation fodder. We would be sitting around the kitchen and Steve would walk in and start. One by one, we would get up and leave on some preclusion or other. We knew that Warren would stay until last, out of a sense of Canadian solidarity. And he would never complain about Steve. Only the faint, sorry downward glance when Steve arrived gave him away.
One night, Steve walked in as usual, started a conversation as usual, and as usual the rest of us made our excuses and left until only Warren and Steve remained in the kitchen. I was lying in bed asleep when I was woken by the sound of smashing glass. This was followed by the sound of something like a large animal thrashing around in our back yard, smashing things. "Probably a dream" I thought, and went back to sleep.
But next morning I discovered it was no dream. The kitchen window was smashed and the garden in the back yard was thoroughly trampled as if a herd of cattle had stampeded through it. It turns out that after I had gone to bed, and after another hour of so of Steve conversation, Warren had of a sudden leapt to his feet and punched out the kitchen window. He had then ran out of the house through the back door and ran around in circles in the back yard, yelling and trampling. He had then knocked down the back fence, walked past a shocked Steve and gone to bed.
Warren emerged from his bedroom in the morning, offered no explanation for his behaviour, and I did not ask for one. We patched up the fence and Warren paid to have the window fixed and it was never talked about again. And visits from Steve became a thing of the past.
