| "You’re publishing a book of hockey erotica?" I repeat, unsure I’ve just heard Dave Bidini correctly. It was 7 a.m. after all and I wasn’t quite awake.
"Yeah," laughs the rhythm guitarist for the Rheostatics when we met on a recent morning TV show on which we were both guests.
Bidini is also author of five books on rock ’n’ roll life, being Canadian, and thus, of course, hockey. His newest title, The Best Game You Can Name, recounts Bidini’s experiences both on and off the ice with his own hockey team, the Morningstars, and intersperses them with anecdotes from 1970s NHL players.
It sounds like a great read, but I wanted to know more about the hockey erotica. Sadly, Bidini had to do his TV interview and we couldn’t get into it.
"So, hockey erotica?" I ask, when we finally find time in his busy promotion schedule for a followup phone chat. "Where did that come from?"
"The band used to give out programs at our shows and I wanted to put something other than the usual boring band info," Bidini tells me. "So I wrote a story about an Edmonton Oilers player falling in love with his teammate Wayne Gretzky in the mid-’80s."
Later, the Village Voice published it.
The story was a sexual awakening of sorts for Bidini, who tells me "the time has come for sex and hockey to come together."
It’s a side of hockey that hasn’t been talked about, he explains, "except under the low lights of the Tavern or bar."
Or in jokes: Why do Montrealers do it Doggie Style? So they can watch the game.
Or when players are behaving badly and sexually assaulting women, or coaches their young players.
But there’s a more innocent sexy side to hockey, says Bidini. Heck, when you’ve got a bunch of guys skating around with big sticks shooting and scoring, how can there not be?
Especially during its heyday in the ’70s, a "real wild-and-swinging-guy era for hockey, with the tight trousers and the long hair," says Bidini.
Swinging, quite literally, in some cases.
"It was public knowledge that Bob Nevin and another player were wife-swapping," says Bidini.
And back then, before hockey players were micro-managed and heavily marketed, that fast and hard lifestyle was more celebrated, he adds.
"There was a bit of that sweet, naïve, hoser star hockey player enjoying the banquet of life," he laments. "I just think it’s an amusing era to look at in terms of sexuality."
His homoerotic tale about Wayne Gretzky was inspired by the legions of stories back in the ’80s about what the Edmonton Oilers – a notorious party team at the time – and, er, their equipment got up to.
"There were hazing rituals and all this sexual duplicity going on," Bidini says. "Like most pro sports, it’s a very penis-centric culture."
In fact, Bidini wants to name his collection of hockey erotica "The Five Hole" after the crotch – or fifth – hole of the goalie painted onto the practice mat placed in the net to help players learn to shoot.
Another story he wrote for the collection is based on a tale the legendary Canadian musician Bob Segarini once told Bidini.
"He was playing with the Wackers at a bar called Moustache across from the old Montreal Forum and after the gig he went up to the more exclusive third floor where he found Bobby Hull sitting at a table surrounded by beautiful women and rolling a big hash joint," Bidini retells.
But Bidini’s story "I Am Bobby Wolf" takes things further and incorporates another bit of bizarre hockey trivia about legendary maniac and coach Eddie Shore, who used to string nooses around his goalies necks during practice so they wouldn’t drop to their knees to save pucks.
Apparently, he also concocted a salve he would make his players rub on their testicles before games to give them that extra oomph. In Bidini’s story, "Bobby Wolf" tries to end a losing streak by having a French stripper apply salve to his balls.
"Montreal was paradise in the ’70s for young, rich, good-looking hockey players," he says.
And, since players didn’t have to wear helmets, laughs Bidini, they could actually worry about their hair.
"Guy Lafleur would apply his two dabs of Brylcreem in his hair, and check himself out in the mirror before heading out to the ice every game," he says. "How you looked in the warm-up was very important."
In The Best Game You Can Name, Bidini tells a story about Pat Hickey, who played for the New York Rangers, a team also renowned for its partying – "they were known as the ‘Studio 54 team’ because they were at the club all the time" – meeting Mariel and Margaux Hemingway and inviting them to a game.
"So you have this young kid from Brantford flying across the ice, blond hair flowing, making eye contact with these women and they’re all a titter. He scored two goals and an assist that night. He’d found the secret: he had to have the Hemingways there."
The good life wasn’t without consequences. Especially because helmuts weren’t the only thing players weren’t wearing for protection.
"Bill Goldsworthy, who played on Team Canada during the 1972 Canada-Russia series, died of AIDS," says Bidini. "In his last days, he said it was the result of a lot of indiscriminate sex and not knowing the dangers."
But, because of the "boys will be boys" mentality in pro sports, this kind of thing isn’t talked about much, says Bidini.
Of course, with more women on the ice these days, the boys’ club is getting a few feminine touches.
In fact, not long ago Bidini headed into the dressing room after a game and on the hook next to his was a bra. And it didn’t belong to a sports groupie giving a player a blowjob behind a locker.
"It was a very erotic image," he laughs. |
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