It’s a dream thinking back to those years. All I did was study yet I don’t remember the lectures and studies so well. I believe I could if I focussed .They’re just beyond the veil. The first two years of academic medicine 23 to 25 are mostly a blur.
I believe I was married then. The wedding doesn’t even sit still in my mind. Just glimpses beyond the veil. Maureen was so slender. She had this magnificent white gown that so became her. The perfect bride. The bridesmaid, her identical twin Susan, and Debbie were beautiful. Jon and Fern were great. The song and their singing and guitar amazing. I remember I had tails to my tuxedo. We danced Viennese Waltz after. Straus. I remember a photograph of us dancing and we really are spectacular. Viennese Waltz is. It was all so elegant. My parents were happy. They liked Maureen. There was dancing. Somewhere there’s an album of photos. Photos and mementos stir the memory but I don’t really want the stirred memory .I’m just curious today what surfaces.
I remember the summer we drove out to Banff with Glen and his wife. I don’t know when that was. A year later I’d be an intern I believe. Hiking in the Rockies was a glorious week of comarderie and charm. We had wine skins and climbed all day to the top of mountains, day hikes, then we’d descend at night, faster going down. We had tents and made big fires and barecued hot dogs and steaks. There were barbecued marshmallows too. We drank red wine. I had my pipe. We sat about at night in the glow of the fire. Happy with the exercise. Our friendship, camping, the day hiking. Then we drove home.
Maureen taught me to drive when I was 25. We got an old Pontiac or Buick from a family member of hers, some aunt, a very cheap old car but in good condition. My father had been unable to teach me to drive .That’s a whole story in itself but Maureeen was encouraging. Gentle, intelligent, encouraging. She was a natural teacher. A truly inspiring loving person. I am forever thankful for the formula her father taught her for backing into a parking place. Pull along side the forward vehicle. Turning the wheel of the car backing up watching the driver mirror, stop when you see the inside light of the vehicle behind then go 1 or 2 feet further then spin the wheel the opposite direction. It’s snug. An amazing gift. Her father taught her brother and the sisters. My father was a great driver, especially long distance. He didn’t know how he parked perfectly, never unpacked it. Maureen did. I’ve used that little ‘trick’ ever since. I can park a car anywhere. Not a trailer or something else, that was my father’s forte. I don’t have it. My brother was a safe driver. I wasn’t. I survived my driving. I drove a lot. Everything. Fearlessly.
I remember making love to Baiba one night coming home from the theatre, at Portage and Main. I was in a parka and she was in a long fur coat. We leaned against a building. The wind was blowing. This is the coldest place in the world. 60 degrees below zero windchill. Leaned back against the wall and pulled me towards her opening her coat and lifting her skirt. We made love standing with her moaning into my ear. The great policeman in his beaver coat came around the corner walking his beat.
‘Everything okay there? » I just froze
« Yes sir, Baiba called back her voice silken and smooth and so sensuously aroused
Alright then. » he answered embarrassment tinging his voice as he hurried along.
We completed the act , tidied ourselves up, bundled against the cold, carried on
It’s memories like that which remain and come to mind when I’m with a different wife or girl. It’s like I’m visitting Texas and I think of France. I can’t share these thoughts. ‘What are you thinking? » Well I was having a good time and another moment came to mind.’
I’ve been so punished for my thoughts. I’ve been told over and over again how wrong I am. I’ve been told countless times what not to say. I’m still being told to be quiet and shut up by the young now. I admit I thought there’d come a time when we’d be ‘okay’. But I sometimes long for death to get beyond the constant criticism, usually in the tones, the haughty judgemental expressions, the rolling eyes, the turning away. Never okay. Never good enough. Always a social blunder. Meanwhile the judgemental have rarely the experience or training but ‘just know you’re wrong’. Now it’s more and more junior doctors or people in generally speaking authoritatively about things they know diddly squat about. I usually ask them now how many cases of whatever they’re going about they’ve done or seen. The ignorant are always the most certain. Meanwhile I’m always self questioning and double checking and even when I get it right wonder if I’ll be able to do it again. I thank God a lot.
I know I’m not alone. I know these ‘perfect’ people might not even know how ‘loud’ they are when they are critical of everyone around them. I’m sensitive that way. It took me years to ignore it and just carry on. I see a lot of ‘sensitive’ people who are wielding their sensitivity like a weapon but rather just trying to squeeze by.
Women, like my second wife, and many of those since, have been secretly ‘hostile’. My last wife was outrightly covertly aggressive. A drug addict crazy lady who actually tried to kill me and would have if I hadn’t had a sixth sense for imminent danger. I usually have to assume that I ‘had it coming’. Though often I really don’t know and a lot of people like to « save up revenge, it’s best served cold. » I’m usually operating in the here and now.
I remember the sex after my second wedding suddenly over night mostly going stale. It wasn’t me. We joke among men and say what is the greatest sexual turn off for a woman? Wedding cake. That would be the case then. Not my first marriage. But the second marriage this ‘respectability’ suddenly took hold. She began to act like her mother. Of course when I pointed this out it was the worst thing to do. But I just couldn’t understand where the carefree teenager had disappeared too. Work took it’s toll no doubt but I’d learn from Dr. Talbot years later how common it is for professional women to take their husbands for granted. Female doctors were the worst for putting their husbands as least important. Not just women but a lot of people have this tick box thing going, okay married, tick, next house, tick, next cruise tick etc. My father said I didn’t do the maintenance on my cars and I believe he meant relationships. I’m not alone. We’re a throw a way society. We consume and use people and things up.
On vacations, camping in tents, or in hotel or motel rooms there’d be a rewakening of the passion but it ‘s absence was literally palpable to me . A switch had turned. Sometimes it would turn on again. But it was never the same. I also remember she was totally against oral sex and yet I was hours and days and years between her legs while she tried to orgasm. Before marriage every night. She always orgasmed then. After marriage suddenly I was slave to her desire. Marriage and for the first time I had to beg. « You know I think I’m better looking than you,’ she’d say. « I think more men would want me than women would want you. ‘ she’d say. I’d agree but it was a odd way of thinking to me.
The patients I saw as escorts told me ‘we’d be out of work if married women had sex with their husbands. ». My favourite joke was how ‘Church ladies are the worst. They eat and become obese.. Their men drink and the men come to us for sex. ».
I wonder if my mind is true in this regard. It’s true that when I’m on the peaks I can see all the valleys but when I ‘m in the valley I can see little of the peaks but feel the gloom and darkness all around me. I believe that we had great sex and a great marriage for years. It wouldn’t be till after medical school I became critical. That’s why I wonder about my memory. Because we divorced, like everyone who divorces. I suffer from ‘retrospective falsification »
I’ve had patients bring in their wedding albums and insist they never loved, they were the wrong person, they faked the smiles at the wedding. The fact is we marry the greatest and best love we know today. It’s like buying a car. We might see a Ferrari sport car or a diesel truck but end with a Honda Civic because it’s the right choice after all the considerations. She was right for me. We grew apart. We changed. Perhaps with proper maintenance or time I could have got ‘feeling back’ but I lost it. I’ve been the wife in two marriages to doctors. I’ve cooked, cleaned, and made twice the money and still begged in the bed room. I had resentments. Increasingly all I’d hear is how bad men were. It wears. I was doing as good a job as I could, being as good a man as I could but I was never good enough. I’d learn later a lot about alcoholics and alcoholic families. I began as the untreated al anon and later fit the other group better. The ‘family’ disease model was good. I liked women from alcoholic families, bad girls. My own family wasn’t like that. I was the black sheep there.
I understand now why Christians encourage the marriage of other Christians. I was continuing to pray and meditate and she was until the end of our marriage not interested in anything spiritual. « Girls just want to have fun’ was her anthem while at work she was amazing. A truly gifted doctor. Off work a fun seeking. And I was dull and serious and intellectual and full of myself a lot back then. Perhaps still am. It’s hard to see yourself but I realize I’m not a lot of fun because I’d often be in on these political battlefields.
Like Meditobans. Some Jewish aetheists with classic Marxist design had usurped the student paper and were publishing monthly diatribes against us all. Really bizarre. Their parents were wealthy and they were in medical school and totally into consumerism but doing that ‘dress like refugee’ gig and acting like they cared for the poor and actually published stuff like ‘stop the running dog capitalists’. It was all that was in the paper. I objected so I took it over. Got on the board. Took a vote, Did a survey and became the editor. Everyone hated these assholes but no one did anything about it. Mostly people tolerated a lot of shit and now years later I admire them for their tolerance and gastrointestinal fortitude. Everyone was thankful for my stopping the propaganda pillage and getting a variety of students to write about what was interesting to them. The paper became ‘democratic’. But these communist aetheist nutbars would be rich see no hypocrisy in themselves or their ardent causes. My friends and I would on about this and Maureen was just wanting to have fun and worried someone would be offended and why can’t you just get along, let things go.
There was dance some guys at the lake threw. Everyone was going on about how great these guys were putting together this dance for everyone. They were playing the victim. Getting laid by self sacrificing their time. But my soon to be brother in law was an accountant. I’d organized dances and coffeehouses so did the math. These ‘golden boys ‘ were making thousands off their friends .It was their ‘business’ and I would have not got involved but they want to play like they were a charity. Now I know this is the great scam.So many are doing it. Let’s pick a cause and make a fortune off it. My favourite enemy. I’m like a dog and a postman when I see this happening. So there it was. I checked out my calculations with my soon to be brother in law and he said yea they’re taking thousands for themselves.
So at the next meeting I asked what happened to the thousands made each year in thes ‘for profit’ endeavours. I thought it was great. I didn’t mind but if it was a ‘charity’ shouldn’t it go back into something not the organizers pockets and how was the distributions.
The next day a guy ran me off the road in his black pick up truck. I was bicycling to work 20 miles a day.
I was getting my bike out of the ditch, my knee scraped and bleeding, staggering up onto the road. This guy was swinging a black jack and began hitting his hand with it above me. I’m looking up at him. At a distinct disadvantage. I figured he would take me without the billy club but with it I was likely to lose.
He said to me, « We’ve got a good thing going here each summer. We throw this dance. We make thousands of dollars and split it among ourselves and because we’re such good guys we get fucked by the young ladies. Then you come along and think you’re going to fuck this up. What do you think is going to happen to you. You ride a bicycle to and from work each day along these empty stretches of road. You can have an accident really easy. »
He got back into his truck. Drove away.
I told my friends about the encounter. It wasn’t worth it. I’d encounter these scenarios routinely. Years later I’d see activist thinking they were challenging the system. I’d ask, « Has anyone threatened your life. Have you been shot at or knifed. ». No they’d say. I’d say ‘then you’re working for the man. ». They’d never understand . Useful idiots.
Wives don’t care. Girls just want to have fun. I was ‘heavy’ back when I was learning the way it was. Also getting in trouble with the ‘man’ still believing things could change not believing the lies. I don’t think I was easy to live with not that a female doctor is easy to live with on the best of days.
I’d find in later years I liked to get away from professionals . I liked being in countries where people didn’t speak English. I relaxed when I didn’t have to think. I was always questioning and being questioned married. There’s an expression, stop pulling the plant up to look at the roots. « Live and let live wasn’t an expression I understood back then.
These years of studying with her were overall such joy yet I lost that joy in the later bomb of divorce that took the good feelings in a large crater , like a nuclear explosion that goes out from the centre and kills with the blast and the radiation. I know I loved these years studying. I know we loved being together.
Now see, I tweaked a memory out of the darkness. Here it is.
We had this old apartment by the Red River. It was quaint and had terrific character. We loved it. We were so happy there. We bought furniture. We nested. Our friends came for dinner parties. Dinner parties are what I remember best with Maureen. We had these great friends and had great yuppie dinner parties. They began in that first apartment. Planning meals and shopping and following recipes and having the meal and then discussions and sometimes dancing after but more often sitting around listening to music, sipping wine. I remember with great fondness the importance of the stereos and the album collections and choosing the right selection of music. Ambience.
What was so memorable about our first apartment t was our gay neighbours had their bed above our dining room table. More than once they’d become amorous during a party and we’d laugh and have drinks in the living room. The funniest night was the first time this occurred when her family were visitting. Her mother was quite shocked.
« Oh, my! » she said when the chandelier began to bounce.. « I thought only two men lived upstairs. ».
« They do. ». Maureen said.
« Oh, my. » her mother replied. « They are very loud. »
They really were and the dinner table was silent till the moans and squeals came to an end.
As usual Maureen’s father ignored everything. He was a quiet alcoholic man whose wife spoke. When I’d see the Mrs. Boughet of English humor I ‘d think this did a great job of depicting him. He had a sly wit and my father and I enjoyed him when he was away from his wife. A thoroughly beaten down man. Apparently he’d been loud and violent when younger but now he was the other kind of drunk, after the wars. Self effacing.
The same thing occurred when my parents were over and Dad said nothing but mom kind of clicked her lips and teeth. She had this ‘click’ that rarely appeared. It required severe aggravation to bring it out. Not a’tsshss’ but rather a ‘clisstthsi’. She shook her head. I was glad the neighbours were having a quickie. It didn’t go on that long. Other times it really did go on and on.
We took coffee and tea into the living room.
Fred Penner the famoous Winnipeg children’s folk singer who’d go on to have his own tv show lived next door. I knew him from the folk music days and would always enjoy greeting each other ,coming and going, taking out garbage, brief chats.
As a medical student I had a certain cache. As two medical students we actually had social status. I’d not see this as a doctor and know that I was envied by some and others thought being a doctor came with high social approval. What they didn’t see is that as many took advantage of doctors and treated them abysmally. It was such a curse that most of us avoided sharing we were doctors in Canada. In the US being a doctor was out and out admired but in Canada it was treated like we’d ‘lucked out’ and not that we had worked and saved and got A’s.
There was this existing class system in Canada, the blue collar and the white collar. As middle class we were seen as getting everything on a silver spoon. In fact that simply wasn’t the case for half the class. It was also apparent that people liked to go to the bar and watch tv and do the least work and didn’t get into medical school because they lacked smarts, smarts certainly helped, but most were relatively lazy. We’d all seen this in sports when those who excelled simply put in the hours and time. They had to have the basic ingredients but so many did. What differentiated the top notch was the work. But in Canada the mediocre felt entitled to the rewards of the great and the ‘tall poppy syndrome prevailed’. This lot made themselves taller by cutting off the heads of others.
Yet in medical school there was an edge. People were competing to get in. I was one of a hundred applicants for my spot. I felt it. Maureen and I were ‘different’ in a good way. Being a medical students was socially approved. We were well thought of together.
The owner of the apartment complex was an ass. Later ‘rent evictions’ would become the norm of ‘clever businessmen’. They were uncommon back then. We were late a day getting back from vacation and didn’t get the lease renewal in by one day. He evicted us so he could raise the rent. Young married couple, in medical school, the best of tenants. And for a few shackles this ass evicts us and wouldn’t accept any explanation. We even offered to pay a higher price. But he was intransigent. He’d already rented the place. Moving in the middle of medical school was a huge issue.
Now this is a very fond memory. The place had the most picturesque hand carved bannister leading into the apartment. We were just leaving when the new tenants , a rock and roll band, drunk and stoned arrived. They had a piano. They couldn’t negotiate the turn on the stairs with the bannister. So one big bearded guy simply got an axe from their truck and chopped it down. He then chopped a bigger hole in their door. Now the piano got through. We loved that we got to see that. Loud loud music rocked the place as we drove by in the year to come, police cars flashing lights, it even got into the papers. A regular zoo. Whatever the landlord made evicting us he lost 10 times over.
We laughed at the ‘rent eviction’. But we didn’t find a nice place. We had no time. There was no room for breaks in the study year. This wrench had been thrown into a very tight schedule so we took the first place we could get and lasted there a matter of months. It was a 5th story walk up without character and just a box. I hated it and later would do everything to avoid being in such a cage again. There is so little one can do to make a box appealing. Apartments can be so great with an off side wall or some architectural consideration. But this was just a box.
I remember it because we moved with friends. It was always friends back then. We were always moving each other. We all had heavy brick bookshelves but it was the books. Boxes and boxes of books. All over the world there are professional men with back problems from those years when we moved each other’s textbooks and other books. The library was sacrosanct.
To get a work crew you offered food and wine. The move would last hours on a Saturday but the trouble was that last load after a bottle of wine. Well on this occasion, I just figured carpets and bedding could be thrown out the window on the lawn. It worked well. All the unbreakable stuff that was left for that last move went out the Fifth story window. My male friends and I who’d done hours of heavy lifting thought this was genius and fun. Maureen was not impressed , screaming about the neighbours and worried that some damage to sheets ‘might’ have occurred.
I’ve been condemned all my life for things that ‘might have occured’. The world is full of insane people who criticize others on the basis of their psychotic fears about what ‘could occur’. Nothing occured. Everything was fine. Nothing was broken.I talked nicely to the police who were called by some terrible biddy neighbour who hadn’t liked the noise we’d made moving, feet pounding up and down stairs carrying tons of books but the mattress towels and sheets and carpets and clothing flying out the window had done her in. The Police were satisfied with our explanation. As men we all held our backs and laughed .
I remember too that I took flexeril for the first time the next day and proceeded to drive through a red light completely unaware and would have remained so but for my passenger, who said, ‘you’ve gone through red light, and we’re going through another.’
I never drove on flexeril again, warned everyone about the effects of driving on benzos and flexeril. I get tunnel vision and lost interest in the bigger picture. I simply didn’t see the red lights. I was focused on the road and where I was going. Now that memory is there. But so many are not.
We rented a house after that horrid apartment building. The house was perfect. It would lead to us buying our first house. The rental house had been so enjoyable. We loved the back yard. We loved not having neighbours inches away on the other side of a wall.
This was all going on while we did medical school, studying together, after classes on weekdays and for a requisite number of hours on weekends. In third and fourth years we’d start not seeing each other as clinical rotations took us apart.
1977 was the year that Saturday Night Fever came out. My friend who went on to own the Arthur Murrays franchise called me up. He was always trying to get me to work. If I could get away from my medical clinics I’d swing by the studio and sell some dance lessons. It was a skill and I was highly successful at it. He’d also get us commercial work. We had done the Englebert Humperdinck record. He’d needed four dancers dancing Viennese waltz in the back ground and we each got $100 for an hour of work. I’d brought Maureen insisting she could dance well enough to do the role. It was her first television commercial. We’d love seeing it come on the tv at night and us hardly recognisable in the background of « Les Bicyclettes’. » She was beautiful.
Now Saturday Night Fever was just opening and he wanted me to come see the opening because he’d caught a glimpse of the dance in a preview.
»It’s the best dancing I’ve ever seen on film since Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers. It’s a new dance and it’s going to be big. ». I still love to see Travolta dance.
So there I was Saturday morning, not studying, but watching Saturday Night Live at the theatre with my dance friend. We watched it three times. We did the routine in the aisle. By the third time we had it down. In that moment I became ‘Disco Doc’. Arthur Murray’s got the jump on everyone selling ‘disco dance ‘ lessons way ahead of the curve.
It would be a sensation.
I taught Maureen and sure enough when we went out to the night club the next Friday it was like dancing years with Baiba all over again. Everyone cleared the floor and watched us dance. All our drinks were paid for. The actual disco moves were counter intuitive so not easy to get. Looked far easier than they were at the time. Truly original. Martha Graham dance. People then just couldn’t seem to pick it up unless they were already professional. But even then it was counterintuitive like hula dancing. The difficulty at first gave it it’s powerful appeal. Once you ‘got it’ in the ‘aha’ moment it was there forever.
I’d get asked to teach everyone to do the disco routine and after a night teaching a couples of our friends got the idea to run a class for medical students charging $10 a night. I needed the money. 10 couples and 5 to 10 classes in the next weeks with rent to the hall and Maureen helping. I think we paid off her stethesecope with the proceeds. Everyone was happy and years later the medical school classes would want me to teach them waltz so they could have a proper graduation ceremony. The result really was West Point military grade graduations thanks to my teaching the basics to everyone.
The medical students were all the first doing disco in town. It was great to be a part of the times.
Beer and Skits was a great competition between the Medical school years. The third and fourth years always won. So some of the guys approached me to help us win. I wrote a script called ‘Scar Wars. ».Star Wars came out in 77. Our rock musician got together a veritable orchestra and wrote a series of spectacular songs. Almost all of the class would be involved in some way in the production by the time it went ont.
The pornographer approached me with his camera and wanted to take pictures of the staff and plug them into pornographic films he’d made. The trouble was getting the staff standing, talking and bending in positions which he could splice into his films. He was a professional. It was felt that I could convince the staff to do things for my script. I didn’t mention the pornographic film. We just went around one day with my friend and his highly professional movie camera and I convinced the staff to do ‘things’.
Dr. Naimark was kind enough to jump off his desk and this became a scene where he was jumping into a bed of naked women. The best though was the emergency doctor, our favourite guy who was very New York with three gold chains around his neck. Now I knew nothing of how these shots would be used but my friend wanted him sitting and leaning forward, leaning back and leaning forward. The film ended with this number. He was spliced into a shot between a big breasted naked woman’s legs performing cunninglingus.
It was a great show. I played C-3PO my body painted in gold . Three of the blond beauties in our class, these guys who had gained overnight popularité as the Doc Hollywood characters wanted to do a disco dance half naked so I taught them the dance and they performed. They’d been doing these strip tease dances for the nurse parties and had their whole pop star following. They were really good and really hilarious. It was a great bar scene.
There had been ananatomy professor who did a very fun documentary type discussion of the history of ‘nudity’ in the beer and skits over the year, on stage with his pointer and pictures of previous beer and skits. He described the progression from the quarter moon to the half moon. It turned out the class before us had had a dozen students’ half moon’ on stage, pulling their pants down to show half their butts. I simply said if someone was willing to do a ‘full moon’ on stage we’d definitely ‘win’ that round. The top female student, very reminiscent of Sheldon’s girlfriend on The Big Bang Theory, very serious and not given to frivolity surprised us all and stepped up to take one for the team. With half nude disco dancing, a full moon, great costumes including mine, actual professional choreography, I did the stage movement and had all that training, and this amazing rock orchestra, well we simply blew the competition away and were an unforgettable sensation that raised the level of Beer and Skits for years to come.
I just loved all the humor my colleagues showed and seeing the amazing talents that no one knew about. Our quiet paediatrician to become was a serious violinist. The three blonds dancing stole the show but the ‘full moon’ was the show capper. I was pleased. I liked writing the Scar Wars script. I liked my little C-3PO part and I liked directing such smart talented people. I just had to say what I wanted and everyone did it. No explanation, no herding cats. People just performed the best and it was this organic success. The porn film was a piece de resistance , a great roast of the staff. It was so much fun.
It’s so sad that that was probably one of the last years laughter was allowed in a Canadian medical school. Overnight the front line staff, the doctors and nurses, were pushed aside along with the patients as a whole. The lawyers and bean counters moved in. It was all about administration. The politically correct took over. William Osler had been a great prankster and we’d do funny stuff in following years. I’d write humor for medical journals but the lights were going out. I always thought about McLean’s song, « The day the music died » and equated that with the ‘fun’.
I’d go on to write a national article about the administrators being the only one’s who liked the hospitals because the doctors, nurses and patients were taken down in the years to come. I saw the movie with the evil and the hobbit fighting the evil and the the colour and flowers being burnt out of the countryside. That’s what happened in the hospitals and medical school. The life was snuffed out and the music died. People who had no substance began to ‘act a part’ and put all the emphasis on appearances. Gag orders and white washing would follow.
But that was not then. Dr. Arnie Namark knew a good ship was a happy ship.
I was there when it was fun. I have told younger doctors about those days and they simply can’t believe it.
Being Disco Doc I was approached on my clinical rotation to teach the nurses ‘disco’ all the time. I’d show an individual occasionally but mostly we were too busy. Twice though I gave in. We were waiting around in the OR for deliveries to arrive on helicopter from the north . We had time. It was 3 am and the nurses insisted I teach them disco. To get room, we all gowned up and me with 6 nurses used the sterile theatre to do disco. It’s a memory I will carry happily to the grave. All of us in masks and booties and gowns dancing disco. Staying Alive. The attending arrived with the patients and was so impressed that we were all there and ‘waiting’. The delivery went off without a hitch.
The other most memorable time is in ICU. Again 3 am . The ICU had six resperiators and they were lined down each side. At least 4 had people comatose or semi comatose. The space between was all we needed for the 4 nurses and me to do disco line dancing . In the back ground is the humfing huffing of respirators and me calling out the steps. It’s another macabre happy memory I keep tucked away in my mind. Staying alive.
Medical school really was fun. Maureen was a beautiful companion and we felt like we were in the centre of the universe with only up to come.
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