I’ll tell you what I did when he died. Do you want to hear that misery? I took sleeping pills. I drank, like my father. I shut everything off. And then I was in Grand Central, waiting for the train. I had a beer. I was at the stand at Track 106. There’s a stand there. It’s called Bar Car. I had a can of Budweiser, a 16-ounce can.
I took that 16-ounce can to that old marble counter against the wall, with the brass railing, working guys talking about their wives and installers, checking their phones, and all of these people walking past, old men racing to catch their trains, little trolleys wheeled around with broken wheels, the tabloids arriving in stacks, the shoeshine girl staring out.
I had another beer, another 16-ounce can. I stood and watched. There was this crazed guy with a perfectly trimmed beard and then these lost ladies from Japan, a woman floating by, her portfolio tucked at her breast. I was completely still, drinking my beer. That was it, the moment I knew he wasn’t there. That’s when I understood, or I should say pretended to understand that he wasn’t coming back.
The Young Chronicles details my 1983 hitchhiking trip across Canada. Having completed the Toronto-Newfoundland leg, I continue west into Ontario.
June 26, 1983 Mileage 226 miles
Ride One: Metis Beach to Levi, PQ. Beige Subaru with a dashboard like a cockpit. Jane (forceful, elitist), Daphne (said little) and their dog Rocky (stunk of sea water).
Walked a few kilometers and took ferry into Quebec City. Sat on the boardwalk and watched a juggler get all of the attention while the flautist was ignored.
June 27, 1983 Mileage 268 miles
Ride One: Quebec City to Pont du Quebec (just across the damn bridge). Blue Rabbit.
Ride Two: Pont du Quebec to St. Georges. Beige Subaru (same as Jane’s). French anesthetist. Colt cigarettes, moose hunter. “The separation meant nothing.”
Ride Three: St. Georges to East Montreal. Brown Honda. Young Quebecois.
Ride Four: East Montreal to West Montreal. White Fury. Wore sunglasses, was stopped for speeding and played “Judge’s Card”. Gave me a pack of smokes. “We’re on this earth to help each other, man.” Gave me a soul shake.
Ride Five: East Montreal to Hawkesbury. Brown Rabbit. Old guy with sideburns and woman. Misdirected them so that I could get closer to Ottawa. (They were going to Lachute.)
Ride Six: Hawkesbury to Ottawa, Ontario. Fancy sports car. French guy with bushy mustache. Smoked a spliff. “All right, all right.”
Stayed with Tara (friend from Queen’s University) and George.
June 29, 1983 Mileage 268 miles
Ride One: Ottawa to Carleton Place Turnoff. White Cadillac with digital read-outs. Clean-shaven, curly haired guy. Took scenic route along the river. From a small German village.
Ride Two: Carleton Place Turnoff to Pembroke. Dark red Rabbit. Liked The Who, The Dead and David Bowie, but not a fan of “peace and love shit”. Owns a VCR and apartment.
Stayed two night with Rene Zwiegle (friend from 1982 Europe Bike Trip) and her family. Her mother (Japanese) taught in Africa and broke her family ties temporarily to marry Rene who is German. He encouraged Rene and I to go on ‘midnight walks’. Mouse turd on my desk.
July 1, 1983 Mileage 181 miles
Waited for 3 1/2 hours.
Ride One: Pembroke to North Bay. Grey sports car. Guy in his 50s who had just retired and had worked on the Trans Canada Pipeline. Daughter going to Western University.
Ride Two: North Bay to Ahmic Habour. Brown Rabbit. Tanned guy with mustache, very well travelled because of his work in telecommunications. Constantly talked about all of “the twats he had snatched.” Hung around while I waited for my father to pick me up in the boat.
Zina was our cleaning lady throughout my childhood and teenage years. She was from a Portugal and had a family to which my mother gave hand-me-downs and other extra and leftover things. She was kind and caring, and I am sure that I was a jerk to her.
I came home one day to find my bed changed and nicely made, as Zina always did, and then suddenly realized that I had left a Playboy magazine under the pillow. I figured that Zina would have thrown it out and probably told my mother, and removed the pillow to find it still there, neatly replaced.
And of course Zina never said anything to me about it.
Zina was also the only person I remember crying at my father’s funeral. She wrapped her arms around me and sobbed. Nobody else did that. We were a stoic family and didn’t do such things.
It was earnest at best, but mostly trite, like the feeling. And yet, oddly enough, the feeling has seeped back. I am older now, 30 years hence, and so it seems that may be the real issue. Vain and dumb, all I know is that I’m still writing
The apocalypse isn’t a gloriously massive event, although that’s what we would like to think, with colossal tidal waves, mountains collapsing into valleys, cities vanishing into dust, the wicked witch waving her squadrons of monkeys over all.
It’s more of the hiding in a wooden teepee without walls (Lars von Trier’s Melancholia), a face buried in the dirt (Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line) or the burning of a solitary house (Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice).
I have been on a sentimental journey of late, going through old images – photographs, slides and negatives – to give visual support for the Young Chronicles section of this blog.
While some shots work, like the one above, I now realize that most do not because I was trying too hard to be arty with landscapes and the like.
It’s a lot of emptiness, which does reflect my feelings of much of that summer, but comes across today as repetitive and unengaging.
The process of searching through my images and notes is the journey now; and the aim is to make it so for others.
Given the popularity of the Sex Meanings of Animal Emojis, many wondered when the second installment would come. After all, you need to know what your emojis really mean!
The Young Chronicles details my 1983 hitchhiking trip across Canada. Having completed the Toronto-Newfoundland leg, I continue west through New Brunswick into Quebec.
June 21, 1983 Mileage 174 miles
Ride One: Kouchibouguac National Park to 20 miles down the road. Pick-up Camper. Middle-aged couple who gave me Jiff Peanut Butter.
Ride Two: 2 miles down the road to gas station (after one hour wait). Pickup truck. In the back with some kind of acid in barrels. Old squat guy with younger guy and two girls.
Ride Three: To Chatham. Car n/a. 43-year-old guy with mustache named Murphy. Considered himself a philosopher, believes in ESP and living life by moving around. Owner of a chain of furniture stores. Loved Pavarotti.
Ride Four: To Bathurst. Beige Phoenix. Old couple. Man said that hitchhiking today is a picnic compared to his days as a ‘hobo’ when he couldn’t find anything to eat for 5 days.
Ride Five: To Nigadoo. Car n/a. Radio station promotional guy. Offered to take me to an Acadian Fishing Village tomorrow morning.
Ride Six: To Quebec border. Pickup truck with dirt in back. Middle-aged guy with mustache. Worked hard and loved beer.
Ride Seven: To Chateau Hostel (outside Carleton Sur Mer). Pickup truck. Army guy. Very quiet. Bought lunch at McDonald’s. Recommended Elie Wiesel.
June 22: Worked for the day (construction of addition to Chateau Hostel) for food and lodging. Owned by Jean, an ardent separatist, his word is law. Had an annoying tendency to talk about me to others in French. Jean’s father worked non-stop, deep tan, called me “Herc”. Sven, a carpenter from Norway, very good-natured; told story of running through field of oats on acid.
Sylvie, the cook and Jean’s daughter, very nice, smoked hash. Dominic, petite, gorgeous, no English, always reading. Went to the lake with her. Nothing happened.
June 23, 1983 Mileage 120 miles
Ride One: Chateau Auberge to Saint Fleure. 1969 Mercedes. Excessively nice man named Michel Valley. Apologized for his poor English. Cameraman for Radio Canada and electrician for Rimouski radio station. Very proud of his car – 250 safety features – although there was a hole in the floor.
Ride Two: Saint Fleure to Metis. Custom Deluxe Camper. French guy in his 50s, missing a tooth. Little English.
Ride Three: Metis to Metis Sur Mer. White pickup truck. Local guy with a big white furry dog. Staying with my Aunt Margery in her house on the St. Lawrence.
The writing process can be hard, especially in what is left behind. I had to remove another scene from Anori. The dialogue was strong but it didn’t move the story. And so…expunged.
The set-up: Dee has just arrived in Greenland (where the space ships are being launched) and has dinner with Val, one of the pilots, who confesses a dark moment from her past.
“Yeah, this, I don’t know, trapped in a prison from cradle to…what?” Dee laughed. “What do you die in?”
“Death bed, I guess.”
“Grave! Cradle to grave. Trapped in this existence.”
“Try not to think about it and then move on.”
“Better than thinking about being raped.”
Dee waited.
“It was someone I had known for years. The whole thing, I mean, the whole thing was such a nightmare. We were friends. He was laid back, a decent guy. And then, I don’t know, he just turned into this asshole Mr. Hyde.”
“He was drunk?”
Val shook her head violently like she was trying to not be drunk. “Everybody drank. I had too much. But not pass-out drunk, nothing like that. Just hanging out, relaxed. And then he was on me. He had me pinned, with my arm behind my back.” She half acted it out. “He was going to break my arm. I could feel it. He pushed me backward and tore my dress. He fucked me like that on the floor. I kept trying to move my arm but I couldn’t. he pushed down on that side of me like he had practiced it or something. It lasted two minutes, if that.”
Dee gripped her chopsticks tightly.
“He actually called me with this bullshit confession later, fucking crying on the phone. I don’t know why I listened. He wanted to stay friends. He kept saying that.” Val ground a chopstick into the wasabi. “I left my dress under the table in the living room floor. I came home and threw it there. I didn’t touch it. It sat balled up there for weeks. I couldn’t look at it. I would veer to the other side of the room when I walked through, all of that.”
“You don’t talk to people about any of this?” Dee asked.
This Covid Pandemic is carving pieces of people away. In an attempt to maintain a semblance of normalcy through posting images, completing puzzles and asserting that all will be well, a feeling of identity loss dominates instead. Or thinking that anyway.
The need to belong somewhere – friends, family, a team or bar – has been eroded by life being moved onto the screen. This has created a sense of mutation, a half-shell of selves turned sideways into paper-thin abstractions with cartoon broken arms, modules and warts sloping out in disturbing and hopeless directions.
This isn’t a one-dimensional thing, but a sputtering prick into the bubble of self-awareness where one thinks of being half-asleep in a dream, shruggling (shrugging & struggling) with the accusations and denials of one’s most obvious flaws made obscene and dull. And it’s only getting louder.