"Do you mind if I draw a star in the mist?" Mary asked, stepping into the light of the foggy window. The star she drew spiraled out like a spider's web. From across the street the amber glow of the huge Plexiglas sign of the Oriental Palace filled the room with artificial light. The amber light added a mysterious luster to the tiny dark flowers on Mary's red blouse. As the water dripped through the lines an eerie glow illuminated her auburn hair with gold. Two candles burned behind us, in the center of the floor as the party droned on. There were two cards on the floor the magician left behind, as the star reached the edge of the window.
When an artist finishes a work, their heart is vulnerable. To some artists every breath is a work in progress, for they live for art. I could have commented on the star, saying it was pure poetry, but I had to ask, "Have you heard from Melissa lately?" Mary just shook her head.
The following evening I went to the Fingerboard Cafe to see Paul Nash and Alcatrash. Alcatrash said "I hear you waited outside Grand and Toy this morning to buy a pen." I told him all about it in the tune up room. I asked Paul if the Earth Movers were breaking up. He said people keep asking him that. Everyone saw Katrina playing solo and thought the group was breaking up. "You have to ask her that question."
With one's back to the painting of the Honey Bee Revue in my living room, sitting on the green speckled couch, one would have a good vantage to see everything in the apartment. Flanking the bay window and the little oak desk were two framed pictures. The poster on the left above the steamer trunk was from the Canadian Opera; a lady with a white face with seashell ears, her rouge lips opening in song. This poster could be seen from the kitchen, all the way through the huge hall. To the left of the little oak desk a hardcover Webster's dictionary rested on a music stand. On the other side of the window hung a poster of The Europeans' Vision of America;' an Indian with a parrot on her shoulder. The wall opposite the couch showcased twelve antique song sheets, in cheap black Woolworth frames. In front of the couch, on the coffee table there was an assortment of picks and harmonicas. On the wall facing the bay window was the ugly framed poster of Queen Victoria that cost sixty dollars. Hanging from the ceiling in front of the Queen was a spider plant; below it a terrarium with a plastic pig in it. Off the living room was a small room with French folding double doors, and the army cot I used for a bed. At night the room was lit by a tacky lamp, which twirled inside, making a lifelike image of Niagara Falls cast rippled light on the walls.
Bought the Times and a copy of Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. I was in my element till I heard that Alcatrash had just played a set at the Elbow Room with a lawn mower beside him on the stage. Paul and I met at Mars and discussed the first chapter of Bound For Glory in Woody Guthries' book, about a boxcar fight. I told Paul about the time I hopped a freight train from Edmonton to Jasper and how I slept under a pile of logs to protect myself from the bears.
Paul showed me a Time Magazine; the cover featured an artists' rendition of a test tube baby on it. "Science is going to take all the fun out of procreation," he said.
Took the Go Train to Milton where I joined two carloads of des Lauriers on their way to Crystal Beach. Went on four rides; Jungle Land, Laff in the Dark, Magic Palace and the Scooter Cars. The Laughing Lady was still there after all these years. I missed her hideous laugh, which was absent in all the home movies we were forced to watch.
On Father's day Ma was sitting on her white French Provincial bed talking on the phone. Danny walked in and showed me his new suit. Ma gave me gifts that came all the way from London: a mug, two posters, one pennant, a tin box of coffee candies, and a cheap Jubilee key chain.
Rick arrived with Maureen and we had steak for dinner. My father talked about his leftover macaroni and Danny said, "Dere den, because of the balls." The secret of the macaroni is in the meatballs. "Da meatballs are as big as your fist. No one can argue with meatballs like dat." Rick took us out to see his powder blue Corvette, just as his friends arrived to go to Kelso Conservation Park. Danny and I went with them. They had a cooler of beer. When it came time to return the four of us had to squeeze into the Corvette, so Rick had Danny and me sit on the trunk, with our feet in the tiny space behind the two seats. It was precarious indeed. At first I had sat in the passengers seat but Rick said that was "not chivalrous," because Maureen should sit there. We drove about 120 miles per hour along the back roads. Steve McQueen nearly lost control at Steeles Avenue and Bronte Road. My stomach was in knots, my glasses were almost blown off.
Back in Toronto Sam walked in and I showed him the risque postcard Danny sent me from England. As I poured the tea a big cement truck went by just out the window. Sam opened the cheap champagne and Mary, wearing a blue denim maternity dress, tossed the salad. I threatened to throw in the story of the Greek Tomato Salad.
"I was in Greece and had been singing The Tree in The Wind at every stop of the way. Finally at a little cafe in Greece some one said that they had heard me singing the song in Vienna. I ordered a Greek Tomato Salad. I had expected something exotic, but when it arrived at my table I was dismayed to see that all that it was a tomato that had been cut in quarters. I looked at it with a very sad face and said, "At least now I know how to make Greek Tomato Salad."
Sam's group put on a final concert at Cinema Lumiere. Sam realized that being a rock star was not conducive to wholesome family life and wanted the band to go out with a bang. All I remember of the concert was that I lost my cowboy belt. And come to think of it, a conversation with Alcatrash: Alcatrash tried to pick up a girl at the punch bowl. She was telling him that she was a waitress in Banff when a cowboy came in and spent three hours drinking coffee. I interrupted and said, "That must have been me."
"What happened then?" she asked.
"You taught me how to yodel."
"No, I took him to my shack and all he owned was a cowboy belt." I showed her my cowboy belt buckle that I had on under my sweater. I had hand painted the background blue for effect. "His belt was bronze." I told them the story of Boston Creme Pie:
Boston Cream Pie
Out side of Calgary I stood for the whole night outside a truck-stop trying to hitch a ride. Had an irresistible urge to return home. I went inside and asked the waitress what kind of pie they had. The waitress said, "We have coconut creme, Boston creme, lemon meringue, pumpkin, blueberry, cherry, raison and apple."
"What do you recommend?"
"Coconut creme"
"I'll have a coffee — and Boston creme pie." Went outside and hitchhiked some more. No rides. Went back into the restaurant and sat at the same stool at the counter. The waitress came over. "What kind of pie do you have."
"We have coconut creme, Boston creme, lemon meringue, pumpkin blueberry cherry raison and apple."
"What do you recommend?"
"I told you already."
"Well I don't like coconut creme pie."
"Why don't you try the Boston Creme pie."
"I'll have a coffee — and Boston creme pie." I would have returned and gone over the routine again, but I got a ride in a Volkswagen to the next small town. I ended up sleeping in the ditch. After a long ride in a red van with three hippies I stood about forty miles outside of Kenora until about eight o'clock.
I saw a bus coming in the distance and was about to flag it down, when a passenger van pulled over. There were eight people in the van, six of them hitchhikers with backpacks. "We pick up everyone," they said. They played bluegrass music all night, and stopped for gas at a general store.
We were just on the other side of Sault Saint Marie, when it was beginning to dawn. We pulled over to the shoulder and the van got stuck. It was foggy. There was a heavy dew on the thick foliage. I walked down a lane of two car tracks and came to an abandoned farmhouse. The windows were all gone, and the rooms were empty. From inside the house the pink dawn seemed like a series of paintings that told a beautiful sad story. Through one window the barn was half fallen down. Through another weeds overtook a rusty tractor and the plow. Through yet another window the remains of a maroon 1950 Dodge could be seen. Beyond the front windows you could see weeds growing on the unused lane to the superhighway. I walked back to the van just as it was being freed, and drove with them through the night. Outside, the moon was bright on a river, and I started writing a short story in my mind, called the flight of the last eagle. When I got home I found out my mother was in the hospital, after having a stroke.
The story Boston Cream Pie had it’s origins in a gag I did every week after Sunday school. On Sundays mother would dress Kim and I up and send us off to the Grace Anglican Sunday school. We would wear Blue blazers and gray flannel pants. Both of us would have a bath first and our hair would part perfectly. My brother Bob’s fiancée was Kim’s Sunday school teacher. Kim was fond of Bonny and would refuse to be taught if she wasn’t there. He would sit underneath the table if Bonny wasn’t teaching that week. At the beginning of class the words to hymns would be projected on a screen. We would stand in the dimly lit hall singing “Onward Christian Soldiers. My favorite song was God Sees The Little Sparrow Fall. After Sunday school Bonny would take us to Marg’s Restaurant to have milk and toast. Sometimes I would buy ice cream at the counter with the round spinning stools. As I got older I would get the waitress to tell me every flavor as well as the special of the month. I would do this every time, and always ask for vanilla. I thought that was hilarious, deliberating on the many flavors and then picking the most boring flavor. There was a calendar on the wall with a hunting scene with ducks flying over a pond on it. It must have been like a Norman Rockwell painting, Bonny in her Sunday dress and Kim and I in our blazers. One time Kim was at home and Bonny bought a cone for Kim. As she walked towards our home it started dripping so she licked it. I thought it was wrong for her to be licking Kim’s ice cream cone.
I have come to realize that perhaps I was not as golden as I thought. One time I falsely accused an older boy of stealing my tuque, when I had lost it. Although I did manage to learn much in Sunday school class, I was asked to leave permanently, due to my mischievous habit of burping incessantly. This was the first and last time I met the minister of our church. I am certainly not proud of my behavior, and my agnostic life that ensued. As I grew up, I always tried to be honest and basically good.
One of my friends, Kirk Brush got me interested in Boy Scouts. Kirk was of Scottish descent, and his mother trained him to be a famous highland dancer. Kirk lived in the farmland just beyond the tracks a quarter mile from my house on Given Road. One night he called me up and invited me to a weekend scouting jamboree. (Kirk’s father might have been a scoutmaster because he was there when a fly was discovered in a big metal jug of milk. I was surprised that the whole jug of milk had to be discarded because it had been contaminated.) The Jamboree was tremendous fun, running a huge obstacle race, and sleeping in tents. On the last day of the Jamboree some kids from the other side of town created a disturbance, and I got caught up in their rebellious activity. For that I was banished from the scouts. The last time I saw Kirk was on January 20, 1976 when I was returning from visiting my friend Bruce and some classmates at the student center at Waterloo. “While the bus stopped at Guelph, Kirk Brush got on the bus. He didn't see me at first because his glasses were fogged up, and I wasn't sure that it was him. We both got off the bus in Toronto, and chatted on the subway to Spadina. I hadn't seen him since for years when he asked me to play guitar at his wedding with Celeste Scoffield, whose mother was my grade two teacher. I never sang at his wedding. We traded addresses. Many years later when I visited what was once Marg’s restaurant the waitress told me that Kirk had come into some hard times and perished in a house fire.
I went to Fatal Bert’s to hear Alcatrash do a set and walked out with Mary and Paul. Alcatrash's poster was plastered everywhere, advertising his performance at the Boardwalk. On the broadside he was photographed with just his eyes peering through a torn hole in a French Newspaper. Went to Ontario Place and observed the happy birthday tail of the "Mild Isn't It?" airplane. Had hot-dog and pizza. Looked at the moon and the CN Tower through a telescope. As the sunset was silhouetted behind the Wild Mouse ride I thought for a moment to write a parody of the poem "I knew a lady lovely in her bones," by Theodore Roedke. Met Paul in front of the Oriental Palace, he was on his way to work.
On July 4th Alcatrash, Paul and I went to see Star Wars. We laughed it up. Alcatrash was attracting the attention of every child within ten rows. "Had a teacher once who had six toes. You know what I mean and we'd stay after school to look at them, they'd all go Sproing." Stayed through a second showing and Alcatrash made laser noises. I left with Paul when they went into the Death Star. It was at that time that I realized that I had lost my cowboy belt at the Cowbirds concert.
I met Mary on the way home, and went to Woolworth's to get plastic Champagne glasses for an impromptu party with her and Sam and a couple others. As we passed the photo booth Mary admitted having four for a quarters done in Niagara Falls, "but they were awful." Sam made the salad, Mary heated up some quiche she had brought and I threatened to add some broccoli. While Mary poured the cheap Champagne I told Sam about the star on the window. You could still see the faint lines. Sam said, "Now you have to rent this apartment forever."
While walking East on Bloor late one day, three mischievous kids blatantly hid behind telephone poles, every time I turned around to look at them. When I entered the Royal Ontario Museum, they were hiding behind the popcorn vendor. Paul Nash was on duty wearing a 'Ban the Bomb' button on the back of his tie. He revealed it with mock secrecy as he showed me an article about germ warfare from the Toronto Star. As I waited for him to get off duty I went in to view the Chinese Calligraphy Exhibit.
When Paul finished his shift we went to Molly's party. We arrived just as Alcatrash was leaving. We talked briefly while the baker sat on a crate taking a break by the donut factory. "I've had enough, it's the same old folkies jamming on C, G and F."
Not long into the party I met Miriam who was sitting on the couch doing a reading with Tarot Cards. I went with her to the park past the Green's place on Summerhill. She said she was in the Society of Creative Anachronisms. Speculative glances greeted us at the end of our four hour walk.
The next evening I went to a Mid Summer's Eve party after seeing Blue Champagne at Theater in The Dell. The party was close to the CN tower, so that the full moon moved behind the observation deck of the tower, it created a halo. I was wearing my Frog City Tee Shirt which I hadn't worn since the winter solstice of Michael and Mary's wedding. Paul was there wearing white pants, a blue denim jacket and white shirt. "Time," he said, "is only a fluctuation of the spectrum and has nothing to do with numbers."
As we went downstairs we passed Alcatrash wearing his red guilty T-shirt, sweating profusely and playing frenetic rock and roll. Accompanying him was a drummer and an amplifier.
I left the party with Alcatrash and Paul in Molly's car. It was the only time I drove with Molly and she didn't threaten to throw me out of the car. Paul said, "I only drive in cars once a year, and every year they come out with a new model."
Driving along Alcatrash did his "One Measly Obsequious Petunia" routine while taking swigs from a bottle. "Ahhh, the hostess was really upset that I stepped on her only petunia. She should have put an end table around it. One measly, obsequious petunia." Then he carried on with a story he had started at the screening of Star Wars. In the popcorn line Alcatrash told an obstreperous story about inventing a bath tub with a door. "Forgot that if you opened the door when the tub was full, the water would spill out." Then, in walking to his seat Alcatrash yelled, "This is the strangest Woolworth's store I've ever been in."
That evening we walked through the Annex with Alcatrash repeating, in a wry, megaphone-like voice, "Attention Washington Avenue. There are five Troglodytes walking down your street. The one in the red hat is the most dangerous! If you hear loud alien noises don't hesitate to call the police. I wouldn't put up with it, would you?" He repeated the message, varying it with the name for the street inserted, adding the additional information about whoever happened to be looking. "The man looking out the north window of the house on Sussex Avenue is too late. The Troglodytes have already passed."
Alcatrash was known for his zany posters. The first was a picture of only his eyes, seen through a hole ripped out of a foreign newspaper. At the bottom was written, 'Fut Klang Hotel, Rangoon, 1922. 'Other posters had pictures of men wearing jungle hats, trails of camels going over a bridge with a stage coach beneath, or pictures of floating outhouses and Volkswagens in the water, with exasperated expressions on their faces.
In the early hours of Saturday, when the lights of the Oriental Palace still flooded the window above the grocery store, I'd sit at the little oak desk looking out at Bloor Street writing. The star on the window had long since faded, along with my hopes to see Melissa. The amber glow of the Oriental Palace would permeate the front room enhancing the painting of the Honey Bee Revue, which depicted the dancers from across the street. The Plexiglas sign had a red pagoda in the blue rectangle of neon and the huge red oriental palace on a yellow background. The sign would flicker randomly throughout the night, long past the departure of the final dancing girl.
Sometimes in those flickering moments I would walk the block east to the pinball arcade at the corner of Borden to look inside to see if anyone was there. Usually Paul Nash, Molly, and sometimes Alcatrash would be in the billiard parlor. It had taken me a while to get into playing pool again. I had bleak boyhood memories of shooting pool with my brother Kim. With Kim it was not winning the game it was how many balls you could knock off the table.
Paul Nash played pool with a piece of aluminum in his back pocket. He had been protesting at a coffee house that had charged him admission when he performed. He had dropped it incessantly on the floor. No one took the game seriously. Alcatrash made unbridled wild pokes. I knocked balls off the table, used my toes to cradle the cue, wore the triangle as a hat and put chalk on the long cue by holding it vertical while standing on a chair.
Alcatrash started rambling between shots. "I just got the booking of my life. Bud Rose had me booked at the Palmerston Library for one and a half songs and up to ten dollars but told me he'd overdosed on Rainbow Bridge. I went down to the gig and the librarians told me it must be at the Parliament Street Library, so I went there and waited for my one and a half songs. But that was the wrong place too. Finally I heard from Bud — he had gone down to Cinema Lumierre to tell me about the cancellation and someone had kicked him down the stairs of the subway — the other day at the Eaton Center; every time I go near there he pops out from behind a tree. I think he must circle around that tree waiting to tell some unsuspecting artist he had another booking and then tell them the story of his life before disappearing behind a tree."
The following day I went to a screening of The Magic Flute with Miriam. The flags in the courtyard were whipped stiff by the wind, as we went underground. Afterwards we had Chinese food, then went to my place and made a deal: I'd write a song for her if she would buy me some cheap bath tub boats. She bought me a little red and a little green plastic tugboat. The song I came up with was called Leading Man Gets Lost. At the time she worked as a bank teller at the CNE. Miriam dropped in with a plastic flower broach and squirted me in the eye.
On Friday, August 29, Mary gave birth to the little bunny. I went to see her with Mrs. Green. While peering through the looking glass, another woman pointed to Mary's baby as if it were her own. Mary could have been angry had it not been additional proof that it was "A perfect bunny."
Later that day I was riding my bicycle towards Yonge and met Melissa by chance. She had just had her hair done in tight curls and was on her way to meet her mother. We talked for a few minutes as she bit her nails. Then I remembered the nasty letter I had sent after she stood me up at the zoo. So I apologized. We arranged to meet again the following day.
When I arrived at Trinity Square that Saturday afternoon, Melissa was running away from Bud Rose, yelling, "Death and destruction, death and destruction..." She calmed down and said, "Everyone is upset with me for leaving behind a trail of broken hearts. No one cares about mine." I sang a few bars of my parody of the Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze to prove how much I cared. Then we headed for Philosopher's Walk. All the way Melissa talked about how she'd been hanging around the singles bars.
When first entering Philosopher's Walk from Bloor, the south end the CN tower appeared to be at the end of the path, as Oz was at the end of the yellow brick road. I played In The Sparkling Waters and a few other songs.
While I made dinner Melissa sat in the study and browsed through my books. Books had been an important to Melissa since her father started buying her volumes when she was a little girl. When we finished our rice, boiled sausage and corn on the cob, Melissa lit some matches. She showed me the matchbook she had picked up at Sherlock's. "Do you go to singles bars?" she asked. I nodded as she said, "Oh. I just wanted to see if they'd burn all the way down."
Melissa looked at Godfrey's painting of The Honey Bee Revue and talked of the six dancing girls in different day-glow colors. The painting had a florescent glow about it, which was rare for an oil painting. "I like the green one with the blue on her breast." I told Melissa how the painting was financed; how my dad handed me the hundred dollar bill and said, "Use this for a life preserver."
"Just before leaving Melissa looked into the back room and saw the inflatable skeleton I had hanging in the closet. "I should have stayed in Ottawa," she said, "One of these days I'm going to write you a poem called, Dark Frog."
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