Vancouver Boat Show 2018

The Vancouver Boat Show is one of my favorite annual traditions.  In years past I outfitted a 40 foot Folkes Cutter Rigged sailboat, sailed her to Mexico and around the Sea of Cortexz, up to Alaska and the Queen Charlottes and eventually solo to Hawaii in winter  and around the Hawaiian islands in summer. I sailed  the boat back to Canada with a friend, but had to jury rig a mast after it broke in a major blow.
 The boat show has been the place where I’ve often learned of new advances in technology and safety. It’s also been the place where I’ve got some incredible deals.  I love looking at what ICOM has each. I love seeing the Cooper booth and remembering years ago taking night classes on Granville Island learning coastal navigation those early years with Sherrie.
Now with my sailboat out east ,where I go to sail the Great Lakes ,making my way slowly to the Atlantic with the dream of another ocean crossing, I don’t have any immediate major needs.  Offshore blue water fair winds and following seas beckons but these days I’m getting real joy from camping on shore and boating on the inland lakes.  I’m not into winter scuba here any more either but would like to get a motor and snorkel arrangement like the one I saw in the US at West Marine. The boat show is full of surprises and often has things I never thought up but come to get later in the year.
I  completely revamped my boat with three generations of advances in technology over the last 30 years. I got the SV Giri  barebones from a fellow who wanted to sail but found being a captain didn’t suit him as much as being crew on other’s boats. I had to outfit the boat completely while coast cruising the Strait and Vancouver Island and Juan de Fuca. Every piece of equipment seemed to come the day after I needed it.
One of the most memorable was was  the “pea soup” fog experience winter sailing and  coming into False Creek following a fishing boat.  My ex wife Sherrie was leaning off the bow trying to keep her eyes on the commercial boat ahead of us, shouting back directions.  I couldn’t see as far as my hand. The next day we got our first radar.  Another time after  a back breaking experience in Desolation Sound trying to anchor in 80 feet and the anchor wouldn’t set,  we got  our first anchor winch.
I’ve even had plates added to the bottom and new sails and rigging.  It’s an ongoing maintenance thing with a boat. The ocean is a harsh environment.  There’s little that compares to anchoring in a isolated beyond Desolation cove and diving for clams to chuck on shore.   Nothing compares to eating fresh caught barbecued fish on deck at anchor.    I’ve so many incredible experiences of sailing the west coast. Big Whales off the Mexican coast. Dolphins and Killer Whales surrounding the boat in Georgia Strait.  One of my favorite trips sailing back and forth among the islands between VAncouver to Victoria. I love the coast islands and their habours and anchorages. The San Juan Islands are especially special.
On the main floor of the exhibit I always look for the Metal Boats where the amazing engineers make Landing Crafts. Today the idea of driving a boat with my Honda ATV up to an island and driving off Rambo style seems so appealing.  I hunt and imagine this would improve my moose hunting which hasn’t been up to standards for years. I got a grouse and a rabbit last year. But if I had that landing craft I’d be back in the game! Sure enough I found it. These guys make such sturdy craft. My sailboat is steel and I love seeing the workmanship in the metal boats.
I also love the luxury coastal cruisers. If I won the lottery I’d buy one tomorrow. They’re so elegant. I always imagined myself in white trousers and a blue blazer. It’s never happened. I’ve always been more like Humphrey Bogart in African Queen.
Recent years I’ve been comparing the amazing Yamaha Wave Riders with Seadoos.  I have a Harley for land but I ‘ve just thought the equivalent on water might be something I ‘need’.    I’m also interested in  the fishing pedal boats that Western Canoe and Kayaking brings. They’re not expensive but I have no room to store them despite loving them so much.   There are so many good things.
Over the years it seems I’ve got everything Honda Centre produces from their amazing generators to their ATV’s and off road motorcycles. I’m loving my side by side Honda 500 Pioneer and loved the CRF off-road 250 before that.
There were even floating house boats that people take to the Okanagan lakes for the summer there.  Lots of rental opportunities and getaways.
I really need to win a ‘lottery’ and go to the Vancouver Boat Show ‘flush’ . It really is the ultimate boy and girl toy store. There were even these new water skiing boats there this year that looked like something Vin Diesel would drive.   I’m more a OO7 sailor because sailing I can go long distance quietly and cheap. But I do like speed.  The Vancouver Boat Show has everything in every price range.
The first person I met walking around the second floor was Selim. I loved seeing him.  He and his brother started Steveston Marina. This guy really talked to the fishermen and boaters and learned what they actually needed. He always has the ‘best’ ,most ‘reliable’ and ‘safest’ products. I outfitted my boat for the trip to Mexico completely at Steveston’s.  Everything worked. When you’re 100 miles from land and can only see rough seas and threatening clouds around you, it’s important that the recommendations you got and equipment you have is right.  I’m forever thankful to Selim and Steveston’s for those early years.
It was all I could do to resist upgrading my Mustang offshore suit this time. Stevestons always have great deals and Mustang folk were there too to show me the improvements in fabric and design. My offshore clothing is nearly as important as the boat stuff especially in winter sailing.  Mustang , the best, has improved greatly on it’s boating wear taking lessons from the Navy Seals learning.   I don’t ‘need’ new gear “now”.  It was with great restraint I resisted. Selim will have it tomorrow.  I wont get boat show prices but if it’s sold out he’ll get more in.  I could always rely on Selina.
Walking around that arena circle with all the vendors was for me la walk through my personal history. I love my North Sails. I just got a new genoa a couple of years back and will need to replace my main sail again soon. It was last repaired in California when I was anchored in Sausalito before heading out under the Golden Gate to sail solo in Winter to the Hawaiian Islands. I’d hit hurricane force winds off the Columbia and taken some chaffing Despite the torture that North Sail took in those ugliest of conditions it really only needed some luff repairs that have last another decade and a couple of ocean crossings. North Sails take a beating.  But like all good things there’s a time to replace them. When I got the new Genoa from them I was amazed at how much closer I could sail to the wind.  My sailboat was so happy feeling.
I stopped to talk to the greatest riggers of all time,  Pro Tech Yacht Services!!! They’ve done all my rigging and do the rigging for the offshore racers as well. Years back I had a new roller furling and was trying it out solo in the North Pacific.  I was going like a bat out of hell in 60 knot winds  only to find that I couldn’t get the sail in.  Sailing solo and trying the new rig out , I was feared pitchpoling as wind and seas increased.  I was considering cutting the sail to slow the out of control speed but an Angel, God watches over solo sailors, reminded me  I did have a hamm radio/SSB.   I got  a phone patch to Pro Tech.   They’ve helped countless offshore racers and they explained really simply what I was doing wrong, knowing I was likely hysterical and probably unable to follow complex instruction.    Solo in the big seas I didn’t want to come about and broach, and was dependent on an autopilot which wasn’t going to hold me in those winds.  I listened to that wise experienced calm voice tell me what  I needed to do. I did it. I  didn’t pitchpole.  I didn’t destroy thousands of dollars of  sail that I would need later to to get to back to land .  That pro tech self furling rig served me on two ocean crossings too.    Pro Tech has done all my off shore rigging even lovingly putting in the guidelines that kept my dog from going overboard. They’re incredible.
The smoked wild salmon display caught me too. It’s called ‘Indian candy’ for a reason.
I loved talking to the folk about the new EPIRBS.  Mine needs to be re stored or recalibrated. It’s a decade old but with new battery should work. The price has come down. An EPIRB is triggered by water pressure and gives off the position the boat goes down.  Major insurance. What I liked this year were  the Personal miniaturized satellite connected wearable devices. Considering my first EPIRB thousands of dollars and 3 feet long,  6 inches wide the advances are amazing.
I have that fun each boat show, seeing the technology improvements.  I’ve a Volvo inboard engine I got to replace my Yanmar that lasted 20 years. It’s half the size and weight of the original ones with better performance and power.  Seeing these advances makes me so proud of the human race making such advances in science and technology.  The boat show is always a high for me in this very positive way.
I was looking for a folding boat to replace my canoe. I simply don’t have storage for my perfect Clipper Kevlar canoe I bought a decade back from Western Canoing and Kayaking in Abbotsford.  So many years ago I started white water canoeing with a Grummon Aluminum. I think of my 40 foot sailboat as a really big canoe.  The actual Kevlar canoe I have now hasn’t seen any white water, just fishing on BC lakes.  It’s the ultimate Skookum canoe . It just takes up too much room in my storage locker. What do I learn when I’m talking to the Western Canoe guys at the boat show , really there to lust after their pedal boat, is that they’re consider a trade in. I love this.  It’s always a hassle upgrading unless I can trade something in as I’ve no time to sell on line even if there’s more profit.  So while I didn’t find a folding boat I found a solution.  So many times I’ve been at the boat show talking with people and learned what I needed to learn in just this way.
I even discussed sailing down the Eerie Canal or up the Lawrence with one of the Blue Water Cruising Association  folk. Laura and I had been on their watch for years helping get the advertising and maintain the Current’s Magazine when Blue Water Sailing Association was only volunteer organization. It was a lot of work maintaining the funding for the magazine, hunting down contributors, getting new folk to advertise.  We learned a lot.
Blue Water Crusing Association really was a great place in those volunteer only years with mostly folk who had been offshore or were going offshore. But organizations get bigger and often better.  I stopped going one year where there seemed to be too much coastal sailing stuff. Everyone has their preferences.  Work always overrides and competes with recreation.   I got more involved with writing too. Living aboard for years, and always sailing.
 I enjoyed talking with the BC Marine writers at their booth.  I really must write another book, I say, seeing such productivity present there.  It’s just that a book takes more time than a blog. I’m really so busy with adventures now I don’t seem to get around to recording them in a form for books and stories. It’s on the bucket lists.  I’ve got miles of film and journals from several offshore trips and whole lots of stories.   I remember when I thought I’d give a presentation but never got around to it. I used to teach offshore wilderness medicine courses to cruisers but even that fell by the wayside.
There just never is enough time to do the things you want to , to quote Jim Croce. When I was docked in San Diego I remember so enjoying eating crayfish in Ingrid Croce’s awesome restaurant.  Those were the days I was playing guitar a lot and singing Jimmy Buffet’s iconic sailing song, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. We sang and playing a lot of music on the back of my boat in Mexico.  Where does the time go?
There are young and old and whole families at the boat show each year.  I laughed at my doctor friends who we sailed with who loved having their small kids in the cabin knowing where they were. They were doing all those family things together that so many land lovers miss out on.  Theres’ a real ‘vacation’  and ‘summer’ feel to the boat show.  People in Vancouver have that ready for summer look in their eyes.  You can almost feel the sand underfoot. Such a contrast to the cold dreary rain outside.
This year I was alone. Other years I’ve gone with so many different people.  In the past I’ve enjoyed the lectures but now it’s like I’m over the hump. I’ve been there, done that, got the t shirt, wear the ball cap and worry I sound like a boring old man. I suppose I can rest on my laurels. It’s a place where I’m truly an authority. I’m part of an elite group.  We know each other when we meet.  It’s good to talk together.  This a few of us reminisced about our silly running aground experiences. I am planning more sailing for sure. It’s too much fun. One day I’ll turn in the offshore sailing boat for a coastal 26 footer and water ballast with 50 hp. I sailed around VAncouver Island with a couple of guys who had these and loved them. Because they’re trailerable they’re not only all round less costly but easier and cheaper to store.
These days I’m mostly interested in inland camping and fishing. I want a folding boat that I can take on top of my new Mini Cooper S.  I’d like to go out for a day, and keep it easily at home without having to go to the completely full storage locker. I have a little Honda 2.5 hp kicker that I want to use more too and a flat bottom boat will be easier on Gilbert the dog now that he’s blind.
I loved truck camping last year and am already preparing for the weekends fishing with Gilbert even if we never seem to catch fish. Hunting in the fall were’ more than lucky.  Sailing I caught so many salmon and ling cod in tidal waters.  I just dragged hooks behind the boat and reeled in supper. Lake and stream fishing requires more patience.  I’m not known for my patience though I keep believing I’m working on it.  Sailing is a lesson in patience.
Another great Vancouver Boat Show year for me.  Thank you all,  you incredible people who make it all happen. Thank you for  those who make the  great stuff, those who  supply the great stuff and those who sell the great stuff.  You’ve made my life so much richer with your incredible equipment and advice.

Positive Memory and a Broken Mind

I have to be active to retrieve positive memories.  My mind’s broken.  Left to it’s own devices it will tend to replay past trauma, old wars, resentments, failures.  It’s not surprising because those were by their nature times of threat and times that my mind had to focus most. In danger we are most alert. After danger passes my mind will tend to be scanning for future threats and reminding me of past dangers. I’ll also sometimes play scenarios again in search of whatever I might think I did that had I done differently would have resulted in a more positive outcome.
Meanwhile most of my life has been exceedingly positive. Every day I’m alive my life is 51% positive.  Yet trauma and failure have tendencies to blast aside the good days and the good experiences.
I had a Corolla. Amazing car. It was something I so enjoyed for it’s workmanship and maneuvering.  I loved the sound system. It was the days I played Steely Dan on the radio. Barbara Fromm was on CBC. Life was good. That little car had magnificent studded snow tires and for a year it carried me in summer and winter to and from my first country general practice.  It was a sweet car.  Yet a dangerous , horrible, incompetent, psychopathic driver hit that car passing in a lane, semi truck barreling towards us, I was doing the correct speed, the other fellow was speeding. The road conditions were black ice. He lost control of his car, hit the front end of mine causing me to barrel and burrow right into the ditch. The car flipped 360 degrees landing upright then rolling sideways 360 degrees and landing upright again.  The seat strap kept me in the car but because of the height of the car, made for Asian market I presumed, it didn’t keep me in my seat but allowed me to be crushed into the ceiling with my head tilted.  I had a cervical spine injury.  I gave the case to a friend to help him, a new lawyer, and he didn’t do so well, so that in the end, a year later, weeks of lost work and a life time of chronic pain and disability, I was severely punished by a psychopath speeding incompetent driver, a friend who was young like me, a tough insurance system. I got the replacement value of the brand new car and immediately bought a Ford Mustang which I truly loved.  But my life flashed before my eyes, It was a near death experience.  I was appalled at the price of the insurance and that in the end there was only punishment in the system for the victim. It changed my outlook on life and was a root cause in my changing my career, my marriage and might well have been an early root cause of the subsequent addiction year that really changed my life further a decade later.
So I don’t think of that car with the joy I can actively seek to remember.  With a little conscious probing I can remember the joy I had driving it. It would also be decades before I bought an Asian made car again.  I’m driving a Mini now, British,but with my head touching the ceiling. It’s got that same attention to detail the Toyota Corolla had. Marvelous workmanship.  But I could well have been driving it when the animal hit the front of my car and the criminal system didn’t castrate him there and then to insure his genetic strain was removed from the genome.
Being a civilized man I actually got out of my brutalized car which the insurance company subsequently insisted was just fine, no reason to be replaced,  never to be trustworthy in my mind again, a source of terror, a centre for ptsd images of life flashing before my eyes, but no , it drove so I should take it home as if nothing happened.  Assholes.  I’d love the ‘new car’ smell of that Corolla. I’d loved the faith I’d put in it. It was my first ‘new car’ as before that I’d only had second hand beaters.  So there was this insurance company insisting all was well and me remember every day for life that as I bounced off the ceiling of the car I thought that I knew no one who had survived a 360 forward turn and then when i rolled again over the ceiling my neck straining again, I thought I’ll never be the same because I don’t know people who survive such a crash.  It was a miracle. Everything about it was a miracle. But at the time I was surrounded by faithless friends who were caught up completely in their own life stories and were annoyed a bit by my ‘drama’.  “You crashed your car, what of it.” And some friend would then talk about a minor fender bender and the conversation would steer into a lot of oohing and aching about stuff people knew about , parking lot crashes and city bumps.  But even today I see that semi and feel that head over heels of the first smash on the roof the world coming round like a roller coaster and then the side ways rolling and the excruciating crunch of my body weight bent up against the ceiling, sustaining me because the strap didn’t hold me in the seat.
The other car was some young guys and girls , party animals in a big beater of an old boat , an Oldsmobile or something indestructible and it had just plowed me into the ditch and continued flat out across the prairie snow drifts.  Both cars would be a trial for tow trucks to get out. The deep snow cushioned the impact.
But when I see crashes on tv and watch the cars rolling, I rarely see something as intense as my own. It’s why I liked the Diesel XXX movies and Fast and Furious. The stunt men really owned their keep.  But I’m not a stunt driver. I was dressed in a suit and survived because the Toyota was such a strongly built car and the seat belt held me. If I was 2 inches shorter I’d not have crunched my neck.  But I survived.  I lived .
My mind is like that.  I was married a few times.  I sometimes have whisps of memories of those glorious days of love and roses, the ultimate romances, the extraorinary, love and lust, the close talks at dusk and dawn, the hours of fun together, the years of best friend relationships, the pride of having a partner so extraordinary in so many ways, beautiful, accomplished, brilliant, confident, successful, admired, and to have them with you, to be able to trust them, to do things together and be so intimate.  Years of that connection. The separation and divorces in my cases seemed to happen over the last year. The negative outweighed the positives. We part and then the courts and the lawyers and the government and friends and counselors and society just makes it all so much uglier.  And the loss is like an explosion dropped into the memory bank. It wipes out the whole amazing love story of two people who felt no other was the ‘one’, who felt they’d found their ‘soul mate’ and lived with love and carefree for years, amazingly, only to find that the indestructible thing of perfection wasn’t up to the task.
Now passively the wounds come back.  I can see the one judge who was as disgusting pig of a man studying my ex’s exposed cleavage and black lace hooker stockings that day of the divorce when her own lawyer looked more like a whore with her buttons undone and cleavage exposed.  I remember that and how later when I talked to other lawyers they told me she would have jockeyed for just that judge because he was such a perverted pig and a real disgusting womanizer in his personal life, a mommy’s boy, with a little dick and a need to win women and a history of consecutively finding against men in all divorce and custody cases because he’s such a loser.  Backstabbing psychopath.  That little weasel jumps right into my passive memory.  Especially learning about him from the lawyers and learning that there’s still a pedophile judge missing and me thinking it’s got to be him because he was such a type, but really, was he.  Yes, he was a 13 year old boy who had a big position and abused it and feared men and treated women as whores but.....and here’s the but...I’ve been divorced three times, 23 years of marriage, two decades of loving the enemy, providing and protecting for all that time and 90% of it was really good for ‘us’ but I left.  I walked out on two while she walked out on one. But the important thing was there three judges and only one was a smegma. The other two were saints. Amazing considerate gentlemen with genius and wisdom and love and care who ended the marriages with the least fan fare. True I was never one to ask for anything except my life back so I walked out without anything essentially, dividing the assets of one house and giving another away but the key is that I don’t dwell on these ‘gentlemen’.  They didn’t look at the women like they were meat and they didn’t talk to me like I was a fool. They were mensch.  They were Skookum men.
My mind passively drifts to the ugly little piece of stinky dog tourd. There is if I am ‘active’ about my memory these two great men who made a bad situation less bad. These two great men did their tough job with kindness and care.
I used to have a resentment against my mother for a thing she did when I was a teen. It wasn’t anything really but I was pimple faced and awkward and tended to be ‘sensitive’ in adolescence. I expect I’m the only such teen of that kind. I had attitude and Mom wasn’t always ‘tolerant’ and ‘enlightened’ about how she should talk to an asshole kid. So we had words and I held this resentment against her.  My mom is a saint. I can go on and on about the accomplishments of my parents which include not killing me but my mind used to go to that argument instead of to the times she held me as a child when I came to her afraid. I remember that now. The adolescent ‘bomb’ memory concealed the feeling of her taking me in her arms and holding me when I was hurt child. I can feel that today.  It was the work of therapy and doing a 12th step that brought home the insanity of the mind and how ‘selective bias’ worked in the brain.
My mind is broken.  I can fix it by remember that it’s going to lie to me about my life and the relationships I had and the people I knew.  I’m blessed and I have to actively remember the truth about my life.  The Toyota Corolla is an awesome car.  I’ve driven more than a half century on on kinds of roads with all kinds of other drivers around, in cars, trucks and on motorcycles.  I drive a lot. I’ve driven desserts and freeways, and across tundra and off road and on road.  So 99.9% of the time the other drivers are incredible. I’ve had a few accidents but statistically I drive about 10x as much as every one I know and I’ve driven in worse conditions and in different countries with a whole lot of my own and rental equipment.  So statistically, and in reality, other drivers are by and large amazing, and the very vast majority actually do have the intelligence to have figured out how to use the ‘turn’ signal for changing lanes.
But I have a broken mind and most people would know my descriptors of the one driver in the morning commute whose causing the traffic jam that day, one driver out of thousands.
Just saying.
I have to be ‘active’ and make my memory remember ‘truly’ and avoid the ‘emotional memory’ of ‘selective bias’ that suffers from such inaccuracy and causes me to have a skewed view of reality.  My life is blessed. I’m really thankful for all the people I’ve known and all the machines I’ve driven.
Thank you.

The Female Physician

The Female Physician

-by William Hay

I was in London at the time. My young wife and I were dancers. We had just bicycled across Europe. Now we were studying dancing in the dance capital of the world, working during the days to pay for night dance classes.  Both our teachers were world champions. Hers was Bill Irvin, world champion  of classic dance. Mine was Doreen Key,  Latin American world champion.  

We were young  athletes then. In top physical shape.   We moved like young animals.  She was a cat. I was more a wolf. Lithe. Powerful. In America we’d appeared on television. Individually, together, and chorus line.  Here the  rumour was dance was the next Olympic sport. We wanted to compete.  

She’d been a ballet dancer all her life . I’d come to dance as a teen ager from gymnastics,  martial arts and theatre stunt work.  Here we were, young,  in love, at the height of Mod.  It was the time of The Beatles and Rolling Stones.We shopped the boutiques on Oxford Street  We drank black and tans in English pubs, house wines in pate bars and cafes.  We didn’t do drugs.  We’d dropped acid in Toronto and smoked hashish in Morocco. The drug scene wasn’t where we were in London.  It was all about the  music and the dance and theatre.  

The  dark side was the IRA.  They were bombing fairly regularly.  The Queen spoke out against them.

We heard her on the radio.  We didn’t have a tv in the flat.  We were living  sparse. Tiny furnished flat, no kitchen, bath, sink and tub,   little table, 2 chairs, bed. The loo outside, across the entrance.   

“My throat hurts something fierce, “ I croaked one morning.

“You should see a doctor.” she said.

“Do you really think so?” I asked, hardly audible.

She put the back of her hand to my head.  

 “You’ve got a bloody fever.  Phone in sick and go to the clinic.”

This exchange happened in the bed.   It was winter.  We had to feed the meter to get heat. Mornings were always coldest.  Feeling sorry for myself I watched her get out of bed, her sweater over her short lingerie.  She fumbled about in the bottom of  her purse,   finding a coin for the meter.  She came back to bed.  I dozed.

There was warmth in the room and she was dressed when I got up  and got ready. We were always pretty quick getting ready. We didn’t like to spend money on heat.  Out on the street we joined the  the throngs of others heading towards the city trains.

I stopped at the telephone booth, hugging and kissing her before she continued on her way.  She looked back once and waved, giving me that incredibly beautiful big mouthed smile photographers loved.  She had on tan high heel boots that enhanced  her strong dancer calves,   dark tights, short  short blue mini skirt.  Above that  she wore the warm white sheep skin coat we'd brought back from Morrocco.  She always looked good.  Heads turned wherever she walked.  Sometimes she stopped traffic.

Now she was gone, lost in the streams of others heading up to London. 

I stepped into the red telephone booth, the kind that Clark Kent changed out of his journalist clothes into his Superman underwear in. I didn’t feel like Superman. I felt punked.  I phoned the office where I worked temporary letting them know I’d not be in today.

The clinic was further along, down a side street.  We passed it on the way to the our local pub.  Many an evening we’d gone there  for a pint.  There was always a crowd of friendly locals glad to hang out, glad to include us, glad to chat.  They served cheese and onion sandwiches or steak and kidney pies. The local pubs closed at 10:30.    I liked guiness.  She liked shanties. The double decker bus stopped across the street. We’d taken it once to a near by  theatre with a local group doing something modern. We preferred the West End. Whenever we could we’d stay after work in the city to take in a play Friday night.

“Can I help you?” the young girl asked me at the desk.  She wore a crisp white uniform and sat at an Olivetti manual type writer.  A couple of others were already in the waiting room. A couple of  old ladies. Frail, sitting together like white haired birds clutching their bags and brollies on their laps.

“I’ve a sore throat,”I croaked.

“And a cough and fever,” I added, to give  substance to my complaint.  

“Do you have identification?” she asked. I’m sure she could tell I was Canadian by my accent. The English were very good at hearing where you were from even in their own country or their own city.  Just by listening to a sentence or two, they seemed to know right off where hailed from, geographically as well as class.  Class was important in England.  We got lumped in the category, “colonials’, up some from ‘foreigners’.

I’d remembered to bring my passport. I gave it to her along with my other papers.    She set it down beside her manual typewriter and began efficiently punching and pounding the keys    She had flax blond hair  and what the English called a ‘peaches and cream complexion.”

“Here,’ she said, giving me back my passport and papers and handing me a  form,  “take this and give it to the doctor when she calls you.”  

“I took a seat beside the old ladies who smelt somewhat “old”. I imagined that if was my normal self it  it might  be an even more distinctive scent.  

I’d also heard the  girl say ‘her’ and thought about that. I’d never seen a female doctor. The doctor I’d had growing up was a man.  I’d not seen a doctor more than once or twice. I was usually very fit and not one to go to the doctor.   That was how sick I was. 

A moment later a mother and her child came out of the inner office at the end of the waiting room.  The  boy was licking  a red lolly pop. The mother thanked the woman doctor.  She followed her  little boy as he made a wide berth around  the old ladies as if fearing they might steal  his candy.

“Come along now,” said the taller than I’d imagined woman doctor. She wore comfortable shoes , black mini skirt, white lab coat.  The old ladies  moved quickly into her office showing more agility and speed  than I’d have thought.  They carried their bags and brollies with them.

Time passed. I  sat there listening to the sound of the traffic outside,  the rat tat tat tat of the girl’s typing. 

Finally the door opened.   The ladies leaving, thanked the doctor, profusely.  They each clasped prescriptions and managed still to carry their  bags and brollys.

“Come in,” she said, looking at me.

I stood and walked in.  A  big cluttered executive oak  desk dominated the room.  A rotating leather cushioned wooden chair sat behind the desk.  A couple of bare wooden chairs in front of it.   To one side was an examining table half hidden by a ceiling hung curtain. A glass and metal cabinet with drawers, some white gauze and stainless steel instruments just visible too. Otherwise the room was bare.  No pictures.  Sterile. Clinical.   

She took the form from my hand sitting behind the big desk and and gesturing for me to sit in one of the wooden chairs in front of the desk.  I felt it still warm from one of the last occupants. 

She looked down at the form, then up at me, 

“Sore throat?” she said. “When did it come on?”

“I think It began last night but it  was really sore  when I woke this morning,” I croaked.

“Nothing else?”  

“A cough?”

“Dry or wet?”

“Dry , I guess, “  I said, not certain.

She was in her late thirties, early 40’s.  Old to me then. Crow’s feet around her eyes.  Slight forehead wrinkles.  A somewhat sallow complexion.  Indoor sort.  A pleasant enough face. Thin lips.  No make up. Sensible looking.  Intelligent. Brown hair. Brown eyes.  

“Stand back there”  she said. I rose and stood where she’d pointed , directly opposite her desk, a few feet back from  the chairs. She remained seated.

“Take off all your clothes.” she said looking directly at me. She had an almost whimsical look in her eyes.  Serious enough enough but different. 

I removed my over coat and sweater. I didn’t know where to put them. There were no hooks apparent.  No coat hanger.  I piled them on the chair I’d just vacated.   I took off my white shirt and put it on top.  I didn’t wear an undershirt.   I stood there then  naked to the waist.

“Take off the rest. The pants and the underwear. I have to examine you.”  she said emphatically,  taking her eyes off me,  looking back at the form on her desk, making a notation with her silver pen. I continued to undress feeling her eyes back on me. I felt  awkward.  Very awkward.  I was glad for my loafers. They’d been easy to kick off.  Getting my tight jeans off had been difficult. I’d had to balance on one leg and pull.   Slipping out of my white briefs had been easier.  I left the socks on. The floor was cold.  

I stood there then.  A neat pile of my things on the chair in front of me.  She was still watching me.  She had glasses and a silver pen in her hand.   She twirled the pen  as she appeared to  study me.  I was completely  naked. I was embarrassed at my exposed genitals.  I hung my hands at my side, awkwardly.   Standing there , sort of at attention. Waiting.  Not knowing what else to do.  I’d never experienced anything like this.   She continued to look me up and down. She put her  pen down and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

Rising very slowly from her desk, leaning forward so her  cleavage showed at it’s best, framed by a touch of black lace bra.  She walked around her desk coming to stand close by my side.  She touched my arm with her hand as she listened with her stethoscope to the front and back of my chest asking me to take deep breaths. She moved  directly in front of me,   very close, her lab coat brushing my naked body.  Taking a wood tongue depressor from the lab coat side pocket she looked in my throat shining a light she’d taken from the  front coat pocket. The buttons on her white blouse were  undone. Her black bra and  cleavage apparent.  She was rather slim and tall. I’m 6 feet and she was almost as tall as I was.   

Her breasts were almost touching me as she put the tongue depressor in my mouth.  She said, ‘say ah “.  I said “ah."  She shone the pen light in my mouth before putting it back in her breast pocket.  She dropped the tongue depressor in a waste basket beside the nearby examining table.   Still very close , her breath sweet on my face, she slowly felt my throat with  fingers of both her hands. All the while she was looking me directly in the eyes.  Her eyes had a kind of twinkle.  It was if she was thinking of a private joke. If there was something funny , I was  missing it.  

She walked around behind  me then and stood for a time looking at my back side. I felt she  was looking   my buttocks and legs.  Then almost suddenly she again came around in front of me.  Looking me in the eyes, her face so close to mine, she reached down, touched my gonads and  stroked the  the underside of my penis with one long finger. She wasn’t wearing gloves.  I became immediately erect.  I’d been just hanging there. Now I was fully upright.. I felt my face go instantly red. 

She smiled smugly then. Up close and personal.

“You can’t control that, can you,” she murmured, tauntingly.  Judgementally.   She was still so close her clothes touched my nakedness. I stood at attention. Hands at my side.  A big boner between us.  My face blushing.  A moment passed. 

She gave me a look of utter disdain.  Then she turned her back on me.  She returned to sitting at her desk, crossing her long bare legs, staring straight at my erection.  I was looking away but felt her eyes studying me. 

“Get dressed, “ she commanded, finally  

I scrambled to do just that, as quickly as I could.  Gangly , awkward. embarrassed.  It was hard to get my feet and legs into my tight jeans standing. I did up my shirt watching her writing out a script.  I didn’t bother putting on my sweater or coat, just tucking them under my arm. 

“Take this,” she said, slipping the script into my hand, standing very close to me as I passed out of that room.   

I was really  glad to get out.  Glad for the prescription.  

It was Amoxicillin.  I pulled on my sweater and put on my coat on the street. A little further along I took the prescription into the apothecary.  I waited as it was filled. I paid for the prescription.   I took the first Amxocillin pill with tea I had at the corner cafe.  I sat there awhile wondering about the visit.  It felt wrong. Not good.

I walked back to the flat still feeling punk.  I put another coin in the meter and climbed  into bed with my clothes on.. I slept the rest of  the day. I don’t remember anything but getting up to pee and taking more antibiotics.

When she came home that evening I was feeling better. My throat wasn’t nearly as sore.  My voice was better too. 

She’d brought along fish and chips wrapped in newspaper bought from a  street seller.  She knew it was my favourite.

“I hoped you’d be able to eat,” she said, handing me the newspaper wrapped bundle.  

I thanked her  hugging her,  enjoying the scent of her.  She only wore perfume going but the natural scent of her never failed to excite me.  She just always smelt so good.  I didn’t kiss her because of my throat.   I hugged her close nestling my face in her neck and hair.  Whenever she was in my arms I felt I was home.

I appreciated it so much that she’d brought back the fish and chips.  I was hungry but hadn’t  paid any attention to it. We were often hungry in London.  Food was expensive. We didn’t have much money and counted every shilling.  With rent,  heat,  train fares, the cost of group and private dance lessons,  and our trying to save every pence to go to theatre on the weekends,  we never anything left over. We livd We both worked in offices temporary during the week. She took whatever overtime she could get. I worked as a bar tender weekends.

“You sound better.” She said.  “You looked so sick this morning I was worried.”    

“Did things go well at the doctor's?”    she asked

“Okay, I guess.” I said. “She gave me amoxicillin. I’m feeling better since I’ve taken it. I slept all day.”

“Did you get anything to eat.”  

“No, just the tea. I really appreciate the fish and chips” I said, eating with my fingers..

“You said, “She”.  Was it a lady doctor? And you said, I guess”. what did you mean.” she asked.

She was always astute. Sensitive, insightful, attuned to any nuance, picking up on every little shift in mood. It was like living with an emotional telepath.  A times it was  annoying.  Right then I appreciated it.

She’d sat down on the bed beside me and waited as I ate the fish and chips. 

I told her the whole story. The old ladies.  The mother. The little boy.  The office. The stripping naked. The doctor looking  in my mouth and then her stroking my penis. My erection.  What she said. My dressing. The apothecary and my coming home.

“Do you think that’s odd?” I said.  

“It’s most peculiar! “ she said.  “Was she good looking?” 

“Okay, Nothing like you.” i said.She smiled.

“Older lady, slim,  tall,  comfortable shoes, not bad looking.”

“Well she certainly was getting off on you.  I think she wanted you to fuck her and when you didn’t she was miffed.  Crazy horny English bitch.  I hope I never become like that.” she said.

“Do you have to go back to see her.” 

“She didn’t say so.”

“Good,” 

After that we settled down to read our books. We loved reading novels together. Made trips weekly to the library.

" Do you think you’ll go to work tomorrow.”  she asked.

“I think so”

I don’t remember when I fell asleep. Early, I think. I do remember her crawling into bed beside me. Her body was something incredible. Every curve and crevice special.  She flowed like warm lava.   Feeling her next to me, the two of us spooning in that little bed, in that chilly  room,  in that foreign city, all was right with the world.  She made me feel like home  wherever she was.  It was indescribable how comfortable and good I felt with her.  My life was perfect when she was with me.

it was many years later. Long after the divorce.  We’d come back to Canada. She danced out east. I’d gone west.  I  spent a life time studying medicine, living in laboratories, surgeries, call rooms  and libraries.  I had learned all the clinical medicine and skills a doctor must learn before it  dawned on me.

I think I was an intern doing a routine examination for a sore throat when it all came painfully tumbling back. I remembered her smug words , the disdainful look. “You can’t control that, can you?"

My skin crawled. For a moment I felt physically ill.  Dirty, humiliated.    Ssed.  It was a sudden.  An exact realization.  The opening of an old wound. An abscess popping. Pus leaking out. I don’t think I cried. Men don’t cry.

There was no way that examination had been ‘normal’. There was no ‘justification’ for what she’d done. There was simply no way in hell that any doctor could consider such an examination when presented with those symptoms. There was no way that was the way anyone was taught to do examinations.  I had to become a doctor myself to know that.  I knew. Beyond any doubt I knew.  All those years I’d given her the benefit of the doubt.  No more. I was angry. Crazy horny English bitch!

More years passed.  I delivered alot of babies, did surgery and examined countless bodies.  I worked in universities, hospitals,  my own  practices.  Another divorce.  The psychiatrist I was seeing for psychoanalytic training asked me in passing. 

“Do you think your marrying a female physician was ‘identification with the aggressor?” I’d told him about England. I’d  told him about my shame.  We’d talked for hours on end for several years about relationships, family,  love, lust,  work. He knew me better than I knew myself in some ways.  

There was no couch. Just comfortable chairs in a low lit room.  He was a soft spoken older man. I’d chose him for his brilliance and wisdom.  I’d admired his work with patients. His compassion. I wanted to be the kind of psychiatrist I knew him to be.

“Identification with the aggressor?” I asked.

“Yes, like in the Stockholm syndrome. You know.”

“I do. But I just never thought about it like that.  It was never that important.  Just a passing thing.  I told you my wives were brilliant and  beautiful.”

“I know. I don’t doubt it.” he went on.     “But there was the shame. The humiliation. You remember it . You talk about it. Not just once. It’s come up again. “ he said, looking at me, 

intently, caringly.

“I guess so.” I said.  There was silence then.

“It wasn’t that big a deal.” I said.

I tried not to think about it again.  I’d already told him my divorces were all my fault.  There were no extenuuating circumstances. I was a man. I was responsible.  I was always to blame.  That’s what being a man was. Being accountable.  Adults were accountable.  Life served lemons. Make lemonade. 

“Are we done for today,” I asked.

“If you wish,” he said.  I left then.  I took my jacket and the sweater I’d taken off  under my arm. I  didn’t put them on  until I  was out in the street.  I didn’t want to think about this anymore.  I didn’t like being reminded of it either.