I don’t know if I can go back and look at the mess. The memories that came out of this time at the end of high school. R. D. Laing wrote a book of poetry and called it “Knots”. He came to Winnipeg but made a joke about psychoanalytic insight and the head of the department of psychiatry’s vanity and his ill fitting ‘rug’ or ‘toupee’. He was never invited back. Money and power. They ran as a parallel to the theme of genius and creativity. Art was the mistress to the establishment.
There was so much talent back then. I was the writer observer. The poet.. The sociopathic friend, I’d thought he was a friend, till he sold me like Judas for a record contract. There’s that time of innoscence. When you’re with people and you think the deal is up front and everyone is being honest but there’s that niggling suspicion. Years later I’d buy an RV from a guy and he knew but didn’t tell me that the brake lights went on but the brake didn’t work. He knew. I knew he knew when I was lying in the ditch on my side, my truck and RV totalled and us nearly killed. Buyer beware. Clever businessman. I remembered the eyes. Eyes lie. I knew but at the time register anything but some peculiarity.
My dad read men. He said of the other friend I’d brought home. The one who turned out to be a drug dealer. “He’s hard,” Bill. “I don’t like him because he’s hard. You shouldn’t be hanging out with him. I don’t know what more I can say.”
There’s a gestalt sense one gets. I’m with several patients now who are ‘hard’. I’ve been searching for their hearts. They’ve been trying to use me in their latest con, working some angle and I’m teasing out the Knots. Picking away slowly. I’m trying to untie them when they’re not looking. When the anger is least. I tease at their knots with my bloody fingers and my teeth. I’ve got free but I want them free. Right now all they are is garden variety psychopaths but they could be much more.
For years I worked with borderlines because no one wanted them. Like the Aids patients and the addicts. I remember the borderlines being the most entertaining. Junkyard dogs. Just as soon begin gnawing there own legs off as attack you. Only two modes of operation. Suicide or homicide. I came up with the emotional ping pong analogy and began riding them like my uncle tamed the wild stallions. Just stay with them while they’d pull all the stops trying to get rid of you. Just hang on and ride the drama through. So many crying in my arms and then walking on without that Bucking broncho business. Becoming great successes, having deeply meaningful loves.
It worked all the time if they didn’t do drugs or alcohol. All those borderlines I treated got better except the one son drugs and alcohol. I taught them new coping strategies. Worked through the trauma. Changed the diagnosis to ptsd then contained the disease in walled off bits. Later I’d takle the drugs and alcohol. Wonder how come the ones with drugs and alcohol could’ve get better. Borderlines became the untreated PTSD and then the addicts and alcoholics because the untreated borderlines. Personality disorders that all began in adolescence though Freud thought it was earlier. Freud always thought it was earlier. He was a genius who hated his father and fantasized about his mother. Karen Horney said he had womb envy.
Like worker ants about the queen ant it sometimes depended on how far down we’d regress. I’d liken the journeys we took together as my following them down the rabbit hole and then turning them around and bringing them back out. Like turning babies in the womb. Psyches. I liked my terrier because that’s what he did. But he just killed the culprit in the tunnel and I was into reforming. Killing was easy. The killers are a dime a dozen. It’s the turning them around in the dark spaces and heading them towards the light that’s interesting. The trick is not getting hurt but now they’re useful idiots and used as weapons.the parasites have moved in on them. The parasites have no hope for the host and only care for more blood for themselves. They live on a different kind of drama. I always liked R. D. Laing’s book, the Knots.
I touched on my own knots. Remembering the sisters. The beautiful young blond, I believed I was in love. We’d all planned the house together but in the end their father didn’t want their daughters near us. It was the drugs and the band. Lonnie would appear and he was a psychopath. He carried that gun in his glove compartment and in his rage attacks he’d pull it out and shove it in some guys face leaving an indentation while I watched aghast at his insaniety. He was the singer. I know now he had his own supply of coke though mostly he was just a garden variety hard core alcoholic. Lots of the musicians were attracted to the scene because of the drugs and alcohol. Lots wanted the life style.
Like the pedophiles who went to work for church. They were just predators and went where the innoscent were. I’ve watched for pools in my later years. There are African watering holes where the predators can get close to the prey. They pick off the weak there. The church was that for the pedophiles.
Lonny was on the music scene for the drugs and alcohol and the teen girls. He could sing. He had a knack and he wanted more money for more teen girls and more booze and drugs. He carried that gun with him. An American in Canada carrying a hand gun.
I watched a guy cut him off in traffick. In road rage he grabbed the gun out of the glove compartment in front of me. He jumped out of the car sprinted up to the one in front reached his hand in and grabbed this unarmed Canadian by the collar half pulling him out of the car and shoving that pistol in his mouth.
“You cut me off, mother fucker, nobody cuts me off.”
Then he walked back in the car and drove on.
“He won’t cut me off again, mother fucker,” .
I was carrying amps and running errands for these guys. They were supposed to be paying me but they never did. The sociopathic friend may have taken the money. We were supposed to be composing a rock opera. My poetry was to go together with his music. Only thing is he couldn’t be original. We’d sit down. I had the words. I had all the words but he’d just come out with elevator music and get fed up with his composition.I thought it was good but he said it wasn’t. Mostly he seemed like he had no focus. I’d write for days. I’d be writing all the time. I’d be sitting watching and writing . He’d never practice. Al, the base player , that’s all he did.
The sociopath was good, obviously had practiced when his mother told him to but after that he just couldn’t do it on his own. Lots of kids like that. Left home. Couldn’t internalize the discipline. Needed the military to gain the discipline and then to internalize it. I ‘d learned it. I was OCD in that way, focused on a goal. I’d pick up something and follow it to the end wondering why everyone else who said they wanted the goal had dropped away.
Robideux would be my room mate later that year and I’d do it to him. We talked of a show and putting it on and I just went off and did my own thing. I know he felt betrayed. I lost faith in the dance group. We seemed to get going nowhere. But even though we’d failed I know Fern kept the dream. He’d make it on his own with his family. I know now I failed him as others failed me. We’d have this dream and plan and then we’d let it go. Like a marriage and a divorce.
I met K D. Laing that night. It was the first time I was offered blow. I tried a line but didn’t do more. K.D. didn’t do drugs. She was there with a tough girl who was all eyes and anger. The manager of the place had invited us back to the office. He knew the sister. She was in promotion. She’d brought a Mickey of Southern Comfort to the dance and carried it in her purse. It was the only time I’d do that but it sure was fun. « Nipping » she called it.
She was crazy fun. Taking nips in the parking lot and going back into the St. Boniface Bar to dance with the crazy French guys.
K.D. Laing had brought out the gay scene as well as the bikers and these crazy French folk.
“It saves on bar costs,” she said as we took another nip of Southern Comfort. Only time I ever drank that stuff.. I ‘d bought us beer. K.D. was incredible. Different but great. We heard her back they way before everyone knew her. It was great being on the bottom floor to later say I knew them when..
I’d sold some photography and written a column in a newspaper. Money was irregular for art. Everyone talked about getting regular jobs but it seemed that if you left this magical flow you might not get another chance. There was a fast lane we were in and the slow lane which everyone else was on.
I remember making love to her slow as molasses with cathedral bells ringing in my head as a thousand feathers brushed my soul. Love was all there was when we were young.
I’d be in New York dancing in the coming year and be invited back to the ‘inner circle’. It was a Canadian formula. I saw it first in St. Boniface. The night I met K.D. Laing. It would be the basis of the famous disco clubs. Millions would be make on the formula. The hoy polloy would all be in the outer circle. We’d be drinking and dancing but the famous people would go through us and everyone would gossip. There was this inner circle. That’s where the semi famous people went. There was one more circle. I was often in the middle circle because I was talented and young and beautiful. The owner of the club would move us in. Mostly I was always with girls who were stunning and extraordinary. The owner would bring me along. The inner circle was the draw. That was where the taboo was.
Like the time I was on stage with Led zeppelin. I was with a gorgeous black girl dancer and a gorgeor white girl dancer and they wanted us to dance. The girls just brought me along. I was then thinking maybe I was eye candy for the gays but later would know I was eye candy for the girls. I wasn’t looking at guys and didn’t think of myself as attractive because I knew all these people I thought were more attractive and more talented, It would be years later I’d hear the term ‘egomaniac with an interiority complex’ and identify that as the way I was back then centre stage.
I’d bombed on a stage in Neepawa. I was performing in an Arts Festival. We’d been dancing with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet but I had this improvisation and this set of lines from a regular show. Only there I was in front of hundreds of people and I just froze. I couldn’t remember the lines. I had a prompter and they were hissing at me. I was stumbling big time. My co star rescued me. Others came on stage to save the day but that meltdown , the longest pause in my life remains with me. I’d never shut down like that. It’s like the first erectile failure or the time the ankle gives out and you fall, you can never be sure after that. Everyone thinks you’re confident and have it but in the back of your mind you’re waiting for the next time.
Now when Anything like this happens I just soldier through. The fear is paralyzing. They call it stage fright but it’s not just that something but any the new experience. It’s a mental glych.. A momentary lapse. I’ve been frozen countless times now. Panic attacks. WAnting to go home to bed. Wanting to get back in the womb. Wanting to live in pyjamas. The prompter hissing lines. Other members of the cast furious. Everyone waiting. The audience beginning to laugh. Then the tunnel opens slowly, the breathing comes back on line and the throat constriction stops or the muscles get blood to them. One step in front of the other. I learned to work through this. To walk across the stage. To make motion. To turn away.
Only that once I stood there. Like I was naked and the kindergarten teacher had my pants down in front of the class and was whaling on my bare bottom with a ruler.
Years later, old, when I let her hit me with a ping pong bat. We were naked and having fun. Old adults. She said she liked it. I said I didn’t. The memories of shame. Of teachers caning me in front of classes. Tears running down my cheeks with pain. The kids in the class looking away while others got excited and stared.
Knots. R.D. Knots. I’d been all knotted up that day and got myself free. The show went on. The hecklers didn’t get any steam up at all but it was close. Give the hecklers even the littlest bit of time and they’re be tearing down the city and destroying the world for the bits of gold and the teen age girls.
Lonny lost an eye in a fight, I learned years later.
There was lots of fights in those bar room days. I don’t know why they came after me. Lonny owed people money as did the other guys. Musicians had their instruments and amplifier on monthly plans from the store. Everyone was poor. Till they got that break.
I remember sitting watching K.D. Lang, not doing drugs. Not drinking. She had these tough broads around her and the beautiful people were there. She was sitting waiting. Part of her contract was to come back stage and mix with the owner and the inner circle of the owner. This brought in the money people. They were touching the outside of the cage. That inner world where we were supposed to feel safe. Where the music was kept like an ark and people like K.D.could borrow it a bit. High priests. And these worshipers all gathering with the owner talking money and cars. I watched her that night. We stared at each other for a while. I didn’t know why I was there. I’d liked the Southern Comfort and enjoyed the smoke. I liked the smoke. I came to know that. But my friend liked the coke. Girls did. I didn’t . But K.D. didn’t do anything. She waited. When it was polite to leave she left.
Everyone was talented back then. She was one of a dozen great gigs but she had something more. I met Neil Young back then. He wasn’t particularly special at first. There were some guys who were simply incredible but would never leave Winnipeg. He wasn’t gifted like that. He seemed to work for everything he got. The audience would melt. Neil was very good but they all were good. People had to have some push or pull outside of the music to move on. Neil would become great. I’d always love »There is a town in North Ontario.... » along with all his more famous songs.
Years later I’d love Dylan’s song,
« What’s a sweetheart like you doing in a dump like this.....you could be known as the most beautiful woman who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal.....you’ve got to be an important person to be here, honey, got to have done some evil deed....got to have your own harem when you come through the door ....got to play your harp until your lips bleed.”
Everyone was good. There were a half dozen magnificent. But only one or two made it and I wondered ever then what evil deed they’d done. Because it wasn’t just talent like everyone wanted to believe or at least wanted you to believe. The money men hung out at the watering hole too looking for the weak just like the drug dealers. I’d just wanted to be with friends and they traded me for gold. I wondered how others got out of the cold.
I had had a coat of many colours but that was stolen too.
I loved learning that Bachman didn’t drink or do drugs back then. He really did like the music. Years later I’d know principal violinists of Russia, famous flautists, trumpets and cello folk of major symphony companies. They were there for the music. Not like the scene in rock and roll, a different scene. but the music came first. It didn’t need to on that other stage. I didn’t have music. Rythymn at first but not music. That came later when Jim Donahue taught me to strum one chord. But that was years later when Jim cycled through my life again.
So much of it is a blur. I unpack my life because we think we know it. In our minds we stumble over the same lies and avoid the truth. It’s only when you take pen to paper that you see the bits of the puzzle don’t fit. When we get the new comer and take him to the accounting sheets. Ask him to ledger his life. Fears and Resentments. No one likes the accountant. The accountant is just a glorified tax collector. He’s been made pretty for the sake of the king. In the old days he was killed by the people before he had big houses and hid behind his blood money. Jesus ate with the accountant, the tax collector. Along side the prositutes and peasants. The bureaucrats , judges and lawyers and priests had Jesus killed. The people screamed for the warrior and wanted the teacher and healer dead.
I think this story runs through all of us. I don’t imagine myself Jesus or even Herod though I do love the song ‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord”. We identified with the protagonist but don’t remember ourselves as silent. The betrayal of Peter was most sordid.
I love the monkey god. I read the Bhagad Gita and the Koran and studied the Mishna. Wisdom texts through the ages. The stories of the various people’s. I sat by mostly back then and watched.
I was so thankful for the girl who said she was a ‘nymphomaniac’.
“I’m a nymphomaniac,’ she said, Pretty black haired browned eye, voluptuous little thing.
“Is Al here.”
“No,” I said, still in bed, waking to this pixie.
“He’s got a gig out of town.”
“Can I fuck you then. I’m a nymphomaniac. Normally Al lets me fuck him.”
“Al’s not here.”
“I know.”
‘Can I fuck you then.”
“Sure”. I remember being dry mouthed whether from fear or awe or not believing this could be happening to me. I felt like I’d been taken a ‘magic carpet ride’ with her. Skill desire, fun, a natural, a professional. I don’t know what to say. But you only remember the falls at Niagara Falls. The suburbs and the city don’t leave any impression.
She came back next day.
This was again at 6 am. We didn’t lock our door. Again I was still in bed.
“Is Al back.”
“No,”.
“I’m a nymphomaniac”.
“Yes, you told me.”
“You really are a sweet man. Can I fuck you again.”
I took it as a compliment that she remembered me. She seemed in her own reality. Floating along on a perpetual orgasm. I got on her magic carpet and went along for another ride.
It was funny when Al came back a week later. They had sex and he got the clap. Screaming from the toilet. Pain and pus.
“It really feels like razor blades.” He said between gritted teeth.
We all went down to the STD clinic at they Winnipeg Hospital. In the first waiting room I announced loudly,
« « Can we get some help here. My friend has the clap. » t
The other guys from the band were there, everyone wanting to along with Al to get his clap treated. Intermittently just to piss off Al even more, we’d start clapping with great synchronization while whispering « the clap, the clap, the clap » Al was suffering and miserable and walking with the wide gait of one with a painful third limb. The nurse were laughing a shushing us. The old people were frowning.
We were directed further in from the emergency and oupatients to this inner station, . We saw a half dozen people we knew from the clubs.
“What are you in for?” We asked.
“Sore throat.” The girls said. « It must be a cold. Something going around »
“Just a check up.”
We were laughing and punching each other in the waiting room because the sign above us said “Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic.” “She has a sore throat.” he whispered. I know. We laughed.
When the girls asked why we were there. We said,
« We’re with him. Al’s got the clap. We think they’re going to amputate, so we came along to provide emotional support. And we broke into our latest clapping song whisper clap clap clap.
We all got tested. Because we were all there. A half dozen guys. Musicians and band. Only Al got the shot. We learned later our nymphomaniac friend had slept with Mark who must have had it and slept with her. That was after me. A public health nurse worked overtime for a few weeks. That was the talk of the time. Who had the clap. Who passed it to who. With the birth control pill no one was using condoms any more. The only disease was gonorrhea and a shot of penicillin cured that. It was the golden years. Sexual revolution.
A day later, Al said, “it’s stop dripping. I can pee without pain. Do you know what’s its like when it hurts to pee.”
No, we all answered. No one wanted to know either.
He went around for days asking people ‘do you know what it’s like when you can’t pee.”
Al was a vegetarian. He also fasted for weeks. “I found out once that I could get high cheap if I didn’t eat.” Al did two things. Smoke weed and play bass guitar. He’d meditate too. Hours at a time. Then smoke weed and play bass guitar. No distractions. Girls would come by and fuck him but then he’d be back to his routine. Last I heard he was famous somewhere. Unbelievable discipline and incredible bass guitar. Funny guy. I liked him. He didn’t like Lonny. Lonny didn’t like Al. Only guy I knew who fasted for weeks to get higher on pot.
Al called Lonny the ‘Bad vibe man.’ He liked Blake and the drummer. “Old guys, okay but too old.” The drummer had learned his craft in the army. He’d mustered out to play rock and roll. Blake played with Burton Cummings. I’d meet all these guys. A nobody. The roadie then. A friend. The poet guy. It wasn’t about words though. It was all about music there. Words were separate. A second thought, I still played five chords. Meaningfully. The musicians were into the rift.
When it all went to shit with the RCMP raids through the city, someone from every band going to jail, our drummer freaked ,
“I smoked dope with the cop just last night. He passed me a joint. He busted his girlfriend too. That’s not right. Busted his friends and his girlfriend and I smoked a joint with him. How do you know he’s a cop when he’s passing you a joint. I’m glad we smoked his stuff. Not mine. Do you think they’re still coming.”
The night of the long knives or rather the morning. Everyone calling everyone from wall phones. Everyone hung over. “Who’s gone to jail. Who got caught.”
The manager saying “I can’t hire you. You’re black listed.”
The RCMP thought I was the dealer.
I’d been watched as these guys in a country town bar tried to stab me and I’d jumped up on the table in the middle of the set and screamed, “if you want a piece of me, come and get it.” If I’d stayed on the floor in that bar I’d have been knifed.
I watched a guy die in a crowd. Right beside me . I was having a coffee. Everyone else was drinking beer. I was under age. Not even supposed to be in the bars. An under age roadie. This guy walked by in one direction. The other guy went by in the other. The guy leaving the bar kept going the other guy staggered and fell. I watched it all. So fast. So many people. Shoulder to shoulder. There was a pool of blood before I could stand and people were down at his side. I was looking over them.He was already dead. I don’t think they ever caught the guy. Rapier to the spleen. I wasn’t a doctor then. Couldn’t have saved him if I’d been.
We needed the police to guard us that night getting our stuff in the back of the station wagon. We’d graduate to a van. It was early. The hit record hadn’t come out. I’d not been fucked. We were all poor. Gigs were few and far between. Country bar in the middle of nowhere. A bunch of locals wanting to beat up the hippy long hair. Lonny had a cow hide jacket. Wanted to look like one of the locals but not be one. Cowboy country. The girls liked the music and most of the guys but these drunks wanted to be the show. The RCMP were already tailing the band but they protected us that night as we got away.
I don’t know why guys wanted to beat me up but they did. Roadies took a lot of flack that the band created. Lonny embarrassed some heckler so the guy came after me. I’m underage in a drunken bar with a drunken guy swinning a chair at me and I ducked. The only redeeming factor was I was drinking coffee. The guy was so drunk when he swung the chair he went down with it and the bouncer carried him outside and threw him down in the parking lot. Fights broke out most nights. I wasn’t getting paid enough. I wasn’t getting paid. I ‘d be told over and over again we’ll pay you when we get a break. I’d have $10 bucks maybe.
I’d learn then everyone wants free but no one wants to pay for it. I was free. I was writing poetry and wondering what to do with my life. How did I get out of this scene. It wasn’t going anywhere. Even when these guys hit the top when the record came out and they had a year of booking the police raids probably helped me. There was nothing there for me. Just sex and drugs and rock and roll. It seemed an endless stagnant merry go round. I did like the sex with the girls not with the man. I liked the smoke, even the occasional booze but I wasn’t making music despite my five chords. I wasn’t going anywhere with poetry. It wasn’t my show. I was a side show to these guys.
When the band collapsed I just went home. I was thankful for my brother. He was big on Billy Graham. I was the prodigal son. He listened. Talked to Dad. Dad and Mom let me back in.
I dont know why I took the job at Ken Matthews. I was still en route to being a screen writer actor. I had music. I had acting. I had improv. I needed dance. When I got money I’d actually take fencing classes and elocution and singing classes. This was all that an actor needed. A well rounded Shakespearean actor. Hence the fencing. I’d beat the Canadian fencing champion in a match because I’d scream as I lunged and no one screamed in fencing. Very bad form. I ran him through with my foil.
I remember thinking if I take this dancing teacher job I can get my dancing training for free. They actually taught us for six weeks. And that’s how I became an Authur Murray Fred Astaire Ken Matthews DAnce instructor. I moved out of my parents home and Fern and I got a place. I’d last sleep in my parents home in the basement a year later after I first dropped acid and couldn’t remember where I lived so told this guy my childhood address. I still remember it though I don’t remember half the other places I lived in. So a year later I’m in my parents basement waking up wondering how I got there and remembering the concert and the acid and thanking mom for the tea and breakfast before going back to my apartment I shared with Fern.
We were dancers then. Latin dancers. All day hoofing and all night dancing. Disco would come in later. But we were ahead of the scene. Santana and Black Magic Woman was all the rage and we did mambo. The floor cleared everywhere when we danced. There came to be 8 of us couples and we’d do exhibitions and compete and go on television. It was heady days. We were making money too. Pittance for the work. 12 and 18 hour days. Early morning calisthenics then dancing all day till 10 then off to the club and in bed at 2 am to start again and all night weekends.
I didn’t drink then. Not Cutty Sark like the old guy who’d done the Ice Capades. He was famous in his day. Now he drank 40 ounces a day. Clarkie was a beautiful sophisticated alcoholic partner who’d been there for the dance too. He certainly could dance when he wasn’t drunk. A functional alcoholic. A somebody once. We were young and looked at his cool. Ken was the owner businessman brains but the manager was a sexy glamorous woman who loved a rich Greek restaurant. He drank champagne out of her high heeled shoes. She told everyone she didn’t wear panties. I had to buy a couple of suits. Ken the owner was the family man with a wife and kids in the suburbrs and his secretary as his mistress. We didn’t know, the dance world was all about gossip. Everyday we’d guess who was getting it. Antonio was the Italian businessman who loved Michelle and saw dance as the means to wealth, a commodity for sale. He’d rather have had cars to sell or real estate. Dance was there. A funny guy. He liked to dance and was good at it but he wasn’t there for the dance.
Not like us. The young Turks. Fern sang and danced. He wanted to win the Canadians. He wanted an empire of dance. His family owned stores. Lots of kids. French Canadian. Handsome, lady’s man, who loved to dance. He had an Mg half the time in the shop. Soft top. Up all winter on blocks but he’d get it out int the summer. A crazy man with a sports car. Omar Shariff. Tom Cruise. He married a fellow dancer. The prettiest brunette imaginable. Sweetness personified. Last I heard they had kids, proabably lots and he was back in the town where his family owned the stores. He was upset with me. I’d left to go to university and he’d wanted us to all go to New York. To dance. But by then I’d learned enough dance and wanted to study theatre at university. I enrolled for that.
I’d had to get my Gr. 12. So rather than redo French I studied economics. A year later I had my gr. 12. But I’d missed the graduation and got my diploma in the mail, a kind of after thought. A let down.
Then I met Baiba. Love at first sight and all the other cliche’s . Jesus had a dove descend on him and the skies open and the father said “This is my son”. In my case I saw Baiba and heard bird songs for the first time and smelled fragrances I’d not smelled since I’d known Nina. It was strange that way having smell return. The lights went up too. It was like the room had been too dark and suddenly the light in the world came on brighter. And her smile cranked it up another couple of notches more till it was too bright. That’s how our loved burned too bright. Too close to the limelight.
The next three years were Baiba. Everything else was an after thought or an addendum. I woke thinking of her, slept dreaming of her and only felt whole in her company. She’d been a ballet dancer. I was doing walk on parts with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.
It was like martial arts. I ‘d learned to kick guys in the head way before anyone else was doing it on the prairies and now I was dancing before guys were doing it. Hockey players were guys. Dancers were gay. Yet there was only one gay guy at the studio and he was flamboyantly so. A sweet man who was loved by the ladies and so satisfied in life just to teach dance.. No further ambition. Not that he shared with us. He wanted love but never met the right guy telling the funniest tales of unrequited love.
Antonio who was definitely homophobic and would have preferred to sell cars would chuckle. Michelle just wanted to marry Antonio and have lots of children. I was reading books. I was always reading and writing. Taking notes. Writing poems. Between dances the girls gossiped and we’d all wait for our next client. The buzzers in the studio on Portage made us work together. When the buzzer sounded the teachers walked their clients to the door then headed into the office for a smoke. There was such comaderie. The staff room. Not a Green Room because it could have been a place where shop girls and drivers took a break. The Green Room wasn’t the union hall but rather a place where we critiqued and dreamed.
But I liked the staff room organization. Ken ran a tight drill. He had had the Arthur Murray franchise before branching out on his own and making this lucrative business then taking us all down to the states to record the weekly television show. We’d go every month or so and spend a day making weeks of half hour shows. He’d have competitions and get us into exhibitions. I was only interested in the dance. The older guys would show us ‘tricks’. They were withholding. Kept their best moves to themselves. We’d beg to learn. We quickly learned all they knew too. I was taking lessons on the side from Canada’s fore most dancer. He’d open the Canada show. I was studying ballet in bits trying to learn lifts. We’d practice late in the nights.
I remember Fern and I with a bottle of whiskey. Fern always drank. We’d be trying to get these lifts and the two of us would be trying it out on each other. I was 6 inches taller and many pounds more and he’d be tottering with me on his shoulder in the mirror. Then I’d be lifting him on my back and we’d both be drunk as skunks but knew the girls wouldn’t do this with us if we didn’t have it down pat first. The girls were smart cowards.
So we struggled because the girls wanted us to do this but they were afraid we’d drop them. We would have but we spent nights dropping each other drunk. I’d fly over Ferns’ back and he’d let go and I’d crash to the floor and he’d fall under the weight or I’d fall under the weight. Obviously the alcohol didn’t help. But we’d get it done. The next day we’d stagger into work and hoof the customers through till the evening when we’d lift the girls over our heads. Clarkie would clap with glee. She was a perpetual child. A little Tiffany with this old thin man who drank liquor hard like her and chuckled. He was all the characters out of a 1930’s detective novel. I never saw him mean but I sure saw Clarke defending her man. Carrying him out of a place when he’d drunk too much.
I took to drinking wine back then. I had the idea that wine and beer were good but hard liquor was bad for me. I actually didn’t like beer but I acquired a taste for wine. I thought it sophisticated. I was smoking a meerschaum pipe back then too.
When Baiba and I stopped hiding our romance we’d sit at her house eating marvellous meals her grandmother prepared and drinking wine as Europeans did. In my house we never drank wine. Baiba was not only beautiful herself but she brought with her this whole other culture and this delightful family. A feast of characters.
Just as I’d become friends with Nina’s younger brother the actor so I became friends with Baiba’s younger brother the artist.
And we danced. We danced. We danced. It was music 24/7 and dance. Interrupted with increasing frequency by love making and laughter.
Years later I’d hear intellectuals talk about sex but they’d never know. It’s an athletic event. There’s the physical thing. There’s the matter of the heart. There’s the soul as well. There’s the mind. But love making in love with another dancer in that whirlwind of Sufi wonder and romantic passion and glorious youth isn’t just an intellectual things. It really is a rose. I’d grieve youth as much as lost love and over the years would be an athlete again and know that taste and smell and sight are all so much richer when the instrument is fine tuned.
But older it’s hard to keep the instrument tuned and I watched the silly people who missed the time looking for it now. It’s like the ladies trying to get pregnant at 40. The old men thinking that if they are with a young woman they will be young. Only the young are young. But we can be young in mind and young in heart and the soul is ever young. But to know all of it at once is only for the young and I feel blessed to have been there. Dancing and feeling like flying in bed and flying on the stage. I was talking with God about gravity and the the need for the mundane when the laughter filled the valley.
It was all because of Baiba. I was glad to be apart of it. To ride with her. To dance with her . To bicycle beside her. Now to have those memories. It’s all good. All the good times that are like castles built before the bombs arrive. The trick is remembering the castles before the bombs. The years of beauty.
Now people come to me and want to talk to me ad inifintum about the wars. They’ve usually seen other women or other men and talked for years about the bad times. They’ve become specialist in bombs. I make them angry at first telling them I don’t want to hear about that again as they’ve spoken about it and would speak to me again and again if I let them. It’s where the money is. Counselors get rich fueling the hate. But I dig for the love. I ssk for the time before the war.
“I never loved him.....I never loved her.”
I ask them to bring in pictures of the wedding.
“I was faking it. It was all a show. I hate them They were only lying. I was taken advantage of. Can’t you see. They were a psychopath. Predators. They have no soul. They had no heart. They just used me. They wanted my momey.”.
Sometimes they did. Rarely. More often than not two babies with fingernails uncut mauled each other when they were alone in the same crib.
More of the the memory has been changed to jive. Retrospective falsification. I say that over and over again, at least once a week. I want the raw footage. I want the uncensored tapes.. Somewhere in the propaganda of the mind I find the truth. Then the tears flow and the heart heals and years lost in rage and fear fall away.
Two children in a sand box. Mostly innoscent. Sometimes living out the dreams of great great grandparents. The scripts written millions of year ago.
Now they can grieve. The beauty wasn’t a lie. The love wasn’t not love. It was all as it was but not anymore. Today is not then. We’re past that.
Life begins again. Like seasons. Grief. So much is grief. Grief. And vanity. But mostly grief. Backaches and heart aches. Pain.
Today I treat pain.
In church one day a very old man climbed slowly up the stairs to the podium. He put the papers he carried on the podium. He looked out at the very large church today full. He was to give the Prayers for the People,he began,
“Thank you for the pain as it reminds me of all the good times and foolish times I had in my youth.”
The congregations was mostly a sea of white hair and laughter took a long time to die down. The young just looked at us. Not knowing. When silence was restored he continued with his long lists of gratitude and prayer.
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