13: L'esprit de l'escalier

       "This would make an interesting picture of you," Melissa said, "Sitting here strumming your guitar with the sunset out the window." She giggled as I played L'esprit de l'escalier. "I think you use the guitar sometimes as a defense." Earlier that day, August 6th, 1976, to be precise, I had met Melissa at the Blood Donor Clinic, where she worked as an assistant. We stopped to eat at a vegetarian restaurant.
              In Mr. Gameways we shopped for Sam's birthday gift. Melissa giggled when the clerk winced at my, "Have you The Profit by Kellogg All Bran." She knew people who had read from The Prophet at their weddings, and thought it a disgusting practice. But they didn't have the parody, so I purchased a Fokker Triplane, the same small plastic model my brother Kim had so rudely demolished in Canada's Centennial year.
             Rounding Queen's Park, Melissa remarked, "Did you know that you're duck-footed?”
             "No but if you hum a few bars..." We splurged on some icecream on the way to my place. Before discussing frog lore I read a passage from a book entitled, The Sex Life of the Animals. A passage describing the rituals of frogs procreating had Melissa in stitches. Katrina called to ask what she should get for Sam, interrupting Melissa's laughter. I suggested a Swiss Army knife. Then Mary called asking me to come over to ready the surprise, so we rode to her place at the end of Howland Street.
             The first to arrive at Sam's surprise party was Katrina, then a girl dressed in an old curtain. They sat on the living room floor while Melissa and I sat on the couch, having a private conversation. "Katrina has a nice giggle," Melissa whispered. I told her how Mary and Sam had introduced me to Katrina.
             "She does seem kind of young," said Melissa. Across the room, the girls were giggling as they lit a corncob pipe. "That's why I hated going to an all-girl Anglican school. Too much giggling... Her dress is made out of a curtain — she obviously didn't use a pattern. It depresses me to them smoke that pipe. It's just a defense. I see that so often in people.”
              "Well, we shouldn't be whispering these things," I said, as more people arrived.       

               Alcatrash was plugged in when Sam popped in and broke into, You Say It's Your Birthday, a song by The Beatles.  At strategic points Alcatrash would toss the guitar in mid twang sustaining notes and levitating his instrument simultaneously. Melissa had to leave at eleven o'clock and borrowed my bicycle light. I stayed a while longer. Someone placed tiger balm on my head; as I had developed a headache from the pills I was taking for my nervous stomach, the drinking, and the smoke in the air.

I did not see Melissa for eleven days as she went to a Blood Donor Clinic in Sault St. Marie. She sent me a postcard from the Empress Hotel. On the 13th of August she returned and called me from a phone booth in Yorkville. Melissa said that the 'Soo' was dreary; that the girl she shared the room with was ugly and insulted her incessantly. Finally she called the girl, 'A Macho; is that too many syllables for you?' She went on to say that Bud was coming to celebrate her birthday, that the 'Soo' was so full of sulfur that there were  a dozen pimples on her face. "Call me tomorrow at supper time."
       I went out for a walk by Yorkville where Paul Nash and Mary were busking. They sang, Soft Shoe with the cutesy mannerisms of teddy bears, kicking their feet gently to the beat.
             I called Melissa from a phone booth at Spadina and College as it was drizzling. Melissa said that she wouldn't be able see me because Bud Rose was on his way. I told her the story of how Paul had been at work when the song I Like Little Baby Ducks came on the radio. Paul was just about to say that the song appealed to 'The emotional level of a thirteen year-old,' when the Manager said that it was his favorite song. Paul had to bite his hand to keep from laughing. Then Melissa sang the whole song which she knew because the rock station in Ottawa also played country music.
On Melissa's birthday I wrote what was to become Vision of Victory. Between the writing of the song, and not being able to sing it to her for a few days, I became anxious. When Melissa finally called me at work, she said she'd had a great birthday party at Noodle's where she had received two necklaces, one from her best friend, Julie, the platinum haired poet, the other from Bud Rose. She said that she would meet me at Fatal Bert's. When she didn't show up and I called her in a 'tizzy,' she said 'sorry' seven times.
              This was when the phone calls began. It was not unusual when I called the Sternwood's to hear Melissa's brother yelling in the background, 'Is that one of your poet friends,' or 'Stefan is a such a dilettante.' Finally I met Melissa at the Manulife Center. We picked up my guitar at work and walked west on Bloor Street. She guessed we headed to Philosopher's Walk. Seated with our backs against the walls of The Museum, I played the new song.
      Melissa did not look at me when I sang. "That's a marvelous song." Actually the song was terrible, and the title of it at the time was embarrassing. In later years I learned that Folk Disc Jockeys had a term for this kind of nonsense, they called it “Navel Gazing.” I had a case of Acute Navel Gazing.
             I took my guitar home; we rode our bikes to the Continental for Navy Bean Soup before going to Bourbon Street. On the way happened to fart and Melissa laughed and told me about a fellow in summer camp who made blue flames by igniting his farts. We rode our bikes through the streets south of Bloor, where a lot of the gardens have cosmos, the purple, white and pink daisies growing on nebulous filaments of long green stems. We stopped in to see her father's bluegrass band, The Trillium Pluckers. A fan, who was at another table winked at me. Melissa to said, "She thinks you're important, because you're with me."
              On the long ride to the heart of Rosedale we sang Tour de Farce. Melissa tried to hold my hand as we raced along. She told me how Bud Rose could play pinball all afternoon on the same quarter. Then I told her the story behind Sugar Heart, just before she went in, and I rode my bike to work. We made plans to meet for a picnic the next day.
After a wretched breakfast, only three hours sleep and a million sheep counted since seeing Melissa I walked into the bright sunshine with my guitar. I was to meet her on the southbound platform of the Yonge-Bloor subway station. It was the 22nd of August 1976. With my Frog City T-shirt and Jean cutoffs, I thought it would be pleasant to have the first train pull up with Melissa standing in its doorway, and that's just what happened.
             During the ferry ride to Toronto Islands I told her of the many ferry rides I'd been on, and the one I took every day while I worked at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club. Melissa was surprised that I had worked there on the grounds. Walking a ways through grass still shiny with dew, she told me a story about how she had gone out with a guy who'd played in a band at the R.C.Y.C. And how no one had asked her to the formal. "I thought, 'I'm a good kid...why doesn't anyone take me?'"
             We walked through the grass where tiny frogs were hopping along, came to the beach; and waded in the water. We passed a sand castle, spread a blanket and began our picnic. I played Maze of Metaphors and Walking on Air. I told her how Sam had backed me up at Fatal Berts where we billed ourselves as, St. Pierre and Michelon. Sam played bass on Charlie Rogers and his Tap Dancing Dawg and Dying Cow Blues. That was the first and last time I played electric kazoo.
             When I mentioned that I had not finished playing some of my songs the other night because her brother was in the other room listening, Melissa said, "That's what I thought." I had played some of my older songs, while her brother was engrossed in Red Lights On the Prairies. This led to a discussion about my grade twelve trip to New York. Melissa told me that Julie had said she had not liked me having seen me at a poetry reading standing right in the doorway, trying to pick up girls. I was about to explain when Melissa said, "You don't have to defend yourself."
             It was difficult for me to digest the chicken as Melissa read two of Theodore Roethke's poems, I knew a Woman Lovely in her Bones and The Waking, which she said was close to her actual feelings. She gave me the Roethke book as well as Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn.
             I peeled an orange in one piece and said, "This is a little trick I learned in the circus when I used to feed the lions Wintergreen Breath mints."
             Melissa told me far too many times that I was, "Lion through my teeth."
             "If you don't cease and desist I'll throw you in the lake.
             "OK, throw me in the lake," she challenged. I hesitated and she said, "You're irresolute." Melissa walked barefoot to the edge. I picked her up and dropped her so that she would get her feet wet.
             Melissa was wearing a light-colored shirt and kept sucking her finger, where it was blistered from sanding the pine chest her mother had given her. She had asked for a double bed but her mother bought her a single, hoping to keep her that way, at least for a while. Then Melissa talked about the twenty friends she had who used to drink on a yacht when she was fifteen because the police couldn't touch them as a yacht is classed as a residence. She talked about the man with the Mercedes she dated a year before, and how he tried to have his way with her. This inspired one of her famous poems. Then about how she had met Bud Rose after spending nights alone in her room in Ottawa, writing strange things. Bud Rose followed her home and wouldn't leave so she made a drink for him, “because that's a good thing to do when you want some to take their mind off things...”
        Crossing the harbor Melissa talked about how she went sailing at her cottage by herself and their neighbors had a power boat and expected bathers to swim out of their way. She pointed out a lions-head necklace around a man's neck. As I looked into her eyes, which were a rainbow of the harbor with flecks of white ships sailing in them I thought of what Mary had once said: 'You're not really enamored with some one until you can look their eyes and see stars.' But Mary had also said, "Come the revolution the only stars you will see will be red."
             We went to a poetry reading after at the Art Gallery, and arrived in time to hear the budding poet read his bloody poems. I told Melissa I'd like to see her as much as possible before she left for Ottawa as we stood beside Andy Wharhol's Elvis and said good-bye.

L'esprit de l'escalier

I might have been the juggler who left things up in the air
I might have flown from my trapeze and found nobody's there
I might have been the tight rope guy whose slip was Freudian
But I was just ambitious climbing one too many rungs

Cause I feel just like the big top when the hurricane hits town
And I wonder will the show go on before it's off the ground

I might have been the sad eyed clown who couldn't get a laugh
The masochist magician who sawed himself in half
Or the all too human cannonball who jumped the gun
But I was just ambitious climbing one too many rungs

I might have been a fire eater a hellish breath inside
I might have been a swollower of daggers not my pride
I might have been a tattooed man with words on tip of tongue
But I was just ambitious climbing one too many rungs

I might have been an acrobat a pretzel out of shape
I might have been Houdini who didn't quite escape
I might have left the circus and had a lot more fun
But I was just ambitious climbing one too many rungs

The Equestrian Director stopped this song and said
You might have been the lion tamer who lost his head
"It's better to be a word tamer and make a slip of the lip
Than to be a lion tamer and forget to bring your whip"

When I was a budding poet I had a summer job working in the circus with the lion tamer. My duties entailed cleaning the cage floor and putting Wintergreen Breath Mints in the lions' mouths.

It so happened that one day I neglected my duty to clean the cage floor where the lions did their routine. I had been struck by the sudden urge to write a sonnet, and neglected to clean the cage where the kions did their routune

The lion tamer came in to the cage, right in the middle of my poetic inspiration, slipped on something and soiled his bright red silk pants. He got quite upset about that and said, "Put your head in here," referring a one particular lion.. Now I've done all kinds of things to get inspirations for poetry, songs and so forth so I put my head in that lion's mouth. I didn't hesitate because the Lion Tamer had a whip and a chair in each hand and I'm not inclined to argue with someone holding a revolver to my head.

I put my head in the lion's mouth. It was at that instant I realized that I had neglected my duty of inserting Wintergreen Breath Mints. And while my head was in that lion I heard the phone ring in the distance as the lion tamer was paged.

Then I heard the pathetic sound of a whip being dragged across the sawdust as the fearless one left the cage. It turned out to be quite a long call. So I had time to think about that sonnet I had just written. I wondered, with my head still in that lion's mouth, was it worth it to risk one's life, just for the sake of literature. After all, it wasn't a very good sonnet.

Well that was the summer I learned the importance of literary criticism. What stuck in my mind most though was the esprit de l'escalier from the Equestrian Director. He was the one who pulled me out of the lions' jaws; after reading the sonnet that I had dropped on the cage floor. He said: "It is better to be a poet and make a slip of the lip than to be a lion tamer and forget to bring your wits" Or is it wit, No, it's: "forget to bring your revolver."