YUL
1st Draft Wednesday, April 29, 2003
© Patrick McDonnell 2021
Chapter 1 YUL. “With a knick-knack, paddy whack, give that dog a bone”
September 11 will be remembered by many - not for the fall of the towers - but for what could have been the dawning of a new Quebec Nation. Unbeknownst to all, a long dormant cell of true blue separatists were preparing to hold everyone in the twin towers hostage. They had planned it minutely, infiltrating the Quebec New York troupe technicians who had been setting up blue and white projectors what would have lighted up the towers that very night. New York would be assaulted by culture from the north, even greater than the Cirque de Soleil; fashion and song and music from K -BECK would soon take over the Big Apple. In the harbour, their boat had come in, sailing down from Plattsburgh through the canal, a bevy of bodacious bureaucrats were recovering from sampling night life, not as good as Montreal's, they hastened to agree amongst themselves. Their best made plans came apart early in the morning.
Life is not a rehearsal
"Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forward," she had told me when we first started to talk. Or I talked, she listened and she directed me gently like the good skipper she was, taking in rigging, a turn of a few degrees of my mental tiller pointed me on a new course to see places I had not understood, to look down into the limpid water at the fish I had thought were sharks. She asked me to find times in the past when I was happy. So I tried. This morning I tried, because it was the time of year when the sun came right into my bedroom, like it comes into the Egyptian temple or Stone Hedger, once a year, to hit me in the eyes. Today was special.
Sometimes you feel as if you are on top of the world. As if you have pulled the winning number in the lottery and that you are loved by all, or your lover is a top model who everyone wants but only has eyes for you. This fall morning was like that high, it felt like waking up in my grandfather's feather bed on a crisp cold day, with the smell of bacon and eggs in the air, the promise of going out to shoot some cans in the offing. The minor bumps were smoothed over by everyone's smiles and posturing. A young mind doesn't understand why or the why fore, only the good not the bad. A curtain falls over the scene, hiding the nefarious deeds much like a bad theatrical production. The memory of my mother falling back as my father hit her fades quickly, like the image made in an etch a sketch, to be replaced by a trip to grand pa's. A surprise visit - better - a vacation from school.
This particular morning, lying in my bed reminds me of that long lost memory. Traveling in the past is like looking down a telescope the wrong way, it looks distorted and weird, in focus but far away. My mom told me they had to put Spanish moss in between the cracks of the log cabin to keep the cold out, she used twigs to brush her teeth and knew which leaves to use when going to the outhouse. Her life was different from mine yet I some how felt connected to her today, like her ghost walking around my room, picking up my cloths, and saying. "Get out of bed, sleepy head, time to go to class." Just the night before she had sung me to sleep, "time to put away your army toys soldier boy. " A martial tune. Her family was military.
My morning. The humidity gone, summer gone, fall sun out and a cool dryness had swept down from the North, pushing the V's of ducks and geese southward now blew the curtains aside, revealing a blue sky. A perfect Delft sky. A great day to shoot pictures. Turning over I reach for my tickets. Funny how airline tickets feel more substantial than a train ticket or a metro ticket, or even a New York Subway token. A homosexual friend had given me a bunch of old French centimes telling me, "they work just as well as the real thing and no one will know the difference." It seemed to be a metaphor for life.
In my sun filled bedroom, I didn't want to get up, in fact my mind wandered back into the past, trying to recover a memory I had of a similar state of bliss.
Six Forks, outside of Minden Louisiana, where my grandfather had a chicken farm, installed in a delaborated cabins, what travellers stayed in back in those days, a night's rest to clean off the red dust, drink cool water and talk. No place else in my past was warmer and cozier, and come to think about it, it was just a white trash kind of place, no great shakes, just slightly better than what the niggers were living in down the road in their shot gun houses. The only thing that seems to distinguish my grandpa's place was the green paint he had applied to the clapboard. That is where my mom picked up her weird sense of color.
The hens were clucking in the dark, hardly protesting as we stole t heir eggs. A few took pecks at us, flapping wings to stir up dust and loose feathers. The eggs were warm, brown and small, not like store bought grade A; they were grade B or worse. No one had spotted them. We are carnivores eating the young chick embryos. Lots of oil to cook the bacon in, making explosions that almost drowns out the farm news. My mother appears calmer and happier back in the bosom of her family. It all just strange to me, like another planet, with aliens feeding me cooked animals freshly harvested. Later in Europe I would get used to seeing animals hanging up in the butcher shop, even horse meat, now it just disgusts my young taste. Only the prospect of shooting makes me eat.
We walk past the Liberty garden, so called for the cherry tomatoes and corn, grown and eaten here, not packaged in cellophane. My mom tells me milk out of the cow is better than the homogenized stuff we buy. Tastier. Everything is tastier and realer out in the country. It makes me feel queasy and I want to retch. I am not used to real life, but to plastic wrapped food, TV dinners and toy guns.
The rifle is real. Feels heavy to me, my brother holds it without difficulty, but in my small hands it feels like lead. The 22 shells are small, shiny nuggets of power, and are loaded by slipping them down into a rod that is jammed into the rifle - is the safety on? We shoot in a rock quarry, all red and ochre stones, a couple of rusty tin cans for quarry. My grandfather's skin is abrasive, sprouting unshaven white whiskers and his corncob pipe hits me in the face. I squint down the barrel, thinking of my toy rifle at home. I squeeze and boom, it knocks me back, the shot whizzing high into the air. Wow boy, keep it down, he says, the barrel is off line, so you got to compensate. My brother shows me how he can squeeze off a few rounds, hitting dirt, missing the cans. I get it back and hit a can, just like that. It flies off. Yes, this is good.
"Yo got to tech em right, can't point the darn thing at people, even if unloaded." Point it down, don't be a gubber, and don't go hunting mailboxes and signs.
Afterward we drive into town to get haircuts. I hate to be touched by strangers, yet here I am sitting with some good old boys, like a southern Norman Rockwell painting, shooting the breeze at the barbershop. They talk around me and I just blush. I listen.
So yu boys leant to shoot today, how bout that. Doc is about the best shot around, even with a crooked gun.
Hunting season is over, but if yu comes back we can go out and do some deer, maybe bag a buck or two. We strung him good till he was ripe.
We bagged a black buck the other day, ran him up a tree, we did, and he just hung there with his watermelon grin.
Don't go talking about such things in front of them childen; they might get the wrong idea.
Yeah uh, we do some good hunting here, that's why we call it the sport's man paradise. Even shot come crocs at night down south. Hell one had a whole dog and half a nigger in side em. That was Jimmy boy who found him. After he came back from France and Europe, he learned how to jump out of planes with the 101.
Remember how Jimmy used to get together and fight on weekends, just to fight. Not much else to do. He was some tough son of a gun.
"I hit three cans" I hear myself say, something over coming my embarrassment and lack of accent. Why did I have to brag? To fit in? To part of this male gang of rednecks or to make my grandpa proud?
The maleness was everywhere. Men are hairy. Their beards are bristly, they have whiskers and things growing out of their ears and noses, hair pouring out of shirts, hairy knuckles, backs, toes as far as I knew, from my hairless view point of pre adolescence, maybe even on the bottom of their feet.
In the Barber shop, with its panoply of razors, strait edges and clippers soaking in jars of antiseptic, men came to tame their hairiness, to make themselves presentable to the women. A bowl would serve as a template at home, with my mom taking an electric clipper to my head, but she was no pro. Here in this back woods parlor, looking out at the confederate soldier statue standing guard on the lawn of the courthouse, here was the real thing. Men came in with wildness and left tamed and shorn like sweet little lambs. The razor cuts and fallen hair were superfluous, wounds of hair wars, and over them all hung the smell of gook and brill cream.
I can close my eyes and hear them jaw and I see the snuff and tobacco passed around, and smell the smokes and pipes, all lit up hanging from their slack lips. A few of them spit into the brass spittoon their "chaw". This is the all male club, the one I have been admitted to because I can shoot.
Men can kill, men can destroy and they will if allowed. Women talk of life and emotions - men talk of shooting this and how they can do this and did that. No one cares how you feel; instead feelings are translated into another language, one of jokes and knowing looks. Only the strong can survive here, to be weak is to be female. Now when I hear "pecker wood", I know what it means, but then I didn't know how a woodpecker could destroy one's manhood. Hardness was a male thing, to be a hard man was good. Tough but not rough. The genteelness here in the South, a yes mam, no sir kind of cordiality that lacks in the manners of people I have not found elsewhere. Respect too. Rules. You can be mean and a tough son of a bitch but you don't hurt women and children.
It is no wonder the South produces so many soldiers. They can shoot and they follow orders, but they have unwritten rules of engagement. I wonder if there are a group of men talking about the "sand niggers" who did this to the US of A, right now. The cold anger I felt years ago is still there, whenever someone does a wrong, it has to be righted.
The thoughts of the past haunted my mind as I turned on the radio, hear that an airplane has crashed into the WTC tower and then turn on CNN.
Inshala, God wills it, a new terror is born, and revenge is mine sayeth the Lord. What are the good old boys saying down south? Are they taking out their guns and sabres?
Chapter 2 YUL Thanatos
The sky was blue, so blue that it hurt to look at it, knowing what had come out of it. It was like a New Mexico day with dry coolness and a hint of heat stroke hidden in its pristine ness. I sat there stunned, looking at my untouched meal, my stomach turning over and over like a washing machine clogged with too many clothes and not enough nickels. My mind turned over too, replaying the images I had seen this morning, over and over, till I had left my studio apartment, dazed, my retinas burned by explosions and my ears singed by words and then sounds I never wanted to hear nor see again. But like an old 45-vinyl record stuck in a slot, they would play them over and over, in slow motion then from different angles till they became mundane pictures like the old reels of death camps. The human mind shuts down after awhile to save its sanity.
For a moment I thought, what if it was the FLQ, come back to haunt us? They had blown up mailboxes. Why not buildings? There were crackpots galore in Montreal, what if they had infiltrated the show for tonight? Oh my God, what am I thinking?
One day it will be like watching the Hendenberg Zeplin, over and over the grainy black and white images of the Hydrogen fueled flames, the sound of the radio announcer saying, "Oh the humanity, the humanity." Now it was CNN's live feed, the other networks slow to broadcast, all arranged by an unseen puppet master. They had tried already to blow them up, so why the surprise? This time they succeeded, and the images poured out of the idiot box, like an unstoppable diarrhea of horror. Would there ever be a catharsis? A time when we would understand; thank God I was in therapy, I could hold on to a security blanket to stave off insanity. Others would not be so lucky.
"The Americans deserved it." said the skinny blond in the sixties bell bottoms and flowered blouse, denim jacket with buck shot holes, "Maybe not like that, but they were asking for it."
"No one should die like that, " her male companion countered, maybe thinking he could get her in bed tonight if he showed her his caring side, " but the Pentagon, now they got it coming. I can't feel sorry for them." She had those blue eyes, matching the sky, cool and cold, calculating but vapid. The student knew if he agreed with her she might think him weak, but if he disagreed too much she would tell him to bug off. So he treaded carefully. He also looked at me, the old fart sitting in the shade with the glazed eyes of a mental patient, and he saw me either harmless or someone in authority, maybe a CISA, ease dropping on them. He looked as if he couldn't make up his mind. I had my camera and I thought about recording them, a snapshot of youthful confusion, or was it me who was confused?
"God it was terrible, they stopped class, everyone took off to look at the news. The Prof was shaken up. I think she was crying." The blonde's voice was getting hysterical and louder. She also looked like she could cry, her safe Canadian world falling down around her ears. She gasped, "Do you think they will attack here?"
She started to look for her cell phone in her back sack - her electronic pacifier. She really wanted to light up a joint, but the old guy looked creepy, a bit like her dad. He looked at her with disapproval, a look that made her feel like a little girl who had just peed in her pants. Her male friend had promised her some good weed if she came over to his place, and she knew what he wanted. Sex for drugs. Not a bad way to chase away her fears and get some comfort. She felt herself getting wet, thinking of him, thinking maybe he would be the one, he would fill all the blanks on her list. Not like the last guy who had halitosis and a corkscrew member. He felt like he was opening a bottle of wine when he did it, and he wouldn't go down on her.
I listen to them, imagining what they are thinking. Will they remember it like the day President Kennedy was assassinated? What are my thoughts on this September day? I can't help looking at her. She looks stunning, my photographer's eye taking in her wispy long blond hair that frames her head like a halo, even the sun picks up the tiny hairs on the nape of her neck, the freckles she is trying to hide with makeup. And her student look thrown together, the red blouse that rises over her breasts and then stops short of her stomach to reveal the flat stomach, the ring piercing her navel. Her jeans, weathered and tight like the "Buffalo Jeans" add off of Decarie Boulevard. I can almost imagine her unbuttoning them and putting her hand down into them to find what? No underwear? Or the tongs all the young girls are wearing, courtesy of Abercombe? Would she play with herself while I photographed her; women like to do that, they like to show off and be exhibitionist, flashing female flesh to entice men. Flaunt it.
My mind is wandering. Unfortunately I had left my camera at the studio, and her male friend would probably run me off if I asked her to pose. I am suppose to work this afternoon, I am supposed to be in New York City.
In my wallet I have a ticket for New York this afternoon, but after calling the carrier, they tell me the flight canceled. No one is flying, just ashes of dead people. Morbid thought. If I let it go on I know where it would lead. She is there, near the towers, she was taking part in the big do tonight, lights would light up the World Trade Towers in blue and white. The Quebec government was planning on taking New York City by storm using its mighty culture. What lights will shine in the sky tonight? What has happened to her? I leave my cell phone on. The thought crosses my mind that she might be dead.
"I think the old guy is crying."
"Yeah, he seems shook up. So am I. I mean like we had planned this big anti Israeli thing and now look, like it is all shot. No one will notice it." He was a political science student, his homework had been to raise some hackles, drum up support for this big meeting. He also hoped to jump this dumb blond with the nice knockers. Now she was sniffling and trying to call her mommy. If he didn't get his act together, she would jump ship, and he would have to find the pimply Italian girl who had crabs. "You know, I think we should go to my place and regroup, we can watch this thing. I bet it is the Mossad!"
Now that was thinking, use the distraction thing, the slight of hand trick to confuse them, to lead them down the wrong street; a Judas Goat thought.
"Like, I mean, they probably wanted the States to get on their side now that everyone is denouncing them." Leaning forward he looked at her with his sincerest face, the one that exuded confidence. Maybe he should tell her later that he had blue balls and needed her help. The dumb ones fell for that one sometimes.
She looked perplexed. "I think I should go home. Mom is probably going ape shit, she hates flying and this will make her go crazy." Her voice was quavering, maybe too much, maybe she wanted to string this hunk along, to see if he would bite, and then when he did, she wanted to make him crawl. Maybe she should pull the old lost little girl act. If she went back to his place she wondered what kind of line he would pull. She hoped it wouldn't be that old "blue balls" one. If he had a good sense of smell he would know she was already ready.
"Ok, lets clear out of here." And the two students were gone, the guy holding on to her shoulder possessively - giving her reassuring rubs - but not too tightly, as if he was still not too sure that she was his yet.
And I called my shrink, my safety net. She was my life raft in the sea of my emotional turmoil, because I had fallen overboard in my middle age, falling in love. One day the headlines would be splashed with the mess; married photographer humping another man's wife. Would I have to wear a "Scarlet Letter" or would she? Those days are gone in Modern Quebec, where couples no longer marry, they couple and then form other liaisons. I had photographed a multiple partner group for a newspaper article - three women and two men - who knows who was sleeping with whom or when.
Somewhere there is some old biddy, some puritan Protestant who will yap like a little dog smelling a hidden bone, casting aspersions on others. She will stand up pointing with her finger at me to announce my sins. "Men can't keep their zippers zipped," she will proclaim, in her sanctimonious whine, all the while afraid her own man will stray from her. She takes after the vinegar-faced biddies that can't keep their men at home in their beds.
"Sunny, are you free to see me this afternoon? 6 o clock? O.K. No problem."
Of course my shrink was free for me even though she would probably be soon busier with her other patients who were all freaking out with the news. I had jumped the gun and called her first. Thank God. Like oil on water, my emotional roller coaster - such a trite way of thinking about it - stopped running amok. Now to hold on to the golden hours, try to keep my dark dogs at bay, their howling voices telling me what a bad person I am. My trip cancelled; my life turning around a TV image, like a whirlpool sucking me down into depression, what else can go wrong. That was the point, so much could go wrong. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Are you ready to pay the bill sir?"
Even if the world had stopped and started again, you still had to pay. Looking up I perceive an airplane's contrail. Strange, it was making a big U turn in the sky as if it had met a huge invisible obstacle. The new millennium had started. With a bang.
Chapter 3. YUL Postpartum"
Down town Montreal.
An American friend described Saint Catherine Street to me as a "red light district" after he wandered from strip joint to peep show, between the chic department stores, shoe stores and other businesses that co-habited with the sellers of sin. The most beautiful women in the world, naked and ready to caress whatever you paid for, were waiting for men to climb one flight up to join them in dark beer smelling booths. The hawkers of flesh stood outside making their eternal pitch to shoppers.
"Come on in, come see the most beautiful women in the world. Just up these stairs. Ten dollar for a lap dance. Don't be shy. You American? You won't see anything like this back home. "
No takers.
The sun cut Saint Catherine into distinct zones of light and dark that were hard to capture unless you used a neutral density filter. No filter could help disguise the fear on pedestrian faces. Eyes kept going up to the big screen at the intersection, the images played without sound. The power of those images. Images that had replaced the usual advertisements. It struck me that we live and die by images. I made them, then they were published or broadcast where they went out seed-like to be implanted in some consumer's skull, to grow and make them go out and buy some product they didn't need in the first place because my images had made them do it.
Now the greatest images of our time were on every television and outdoor screen; without advertisements! How the advertising agencies must be gnashing their teeth at the lost revenue. Just when everyone was glued to the screen, they yank the ads! These were more powerful images than I could ever conceive of or could create, even with special computer animation software. When they showed falling bodies, the crowds on St. Catherine Street screamed, some women bent over and wept. Others just kept on walking, not looking, and seeing no evil.
I took out my camera and started taking pictures, using the telephoto; my camera was a shield between me and people's emotions. It was like making love with a two condoms, you went through the motions, but it was not real, there was no human contact. No flesh against flesh. It was a vicarious sensation, like watching porno movies late at night. Like taking a tranquilizer to dim the pain. But the voices continued, repeating the same thing, just as the images were repeated.
"They deserved it. Do you think they will jump? They are jumping. I can't believe it. Oh my God, my dear God." They screamed . Women hugged each other. Men jerked around, looking like a punch-drunk prizefighter, which couldn't see his opponent. Children had a glazed look, maybe they thought it was another violent Saturday morning cartoon, but for adults.
"I hope they get the bastards who did this." Yelled a man in a yarmulke, shaking his fist at an Arab in the money exchange store; but he wasn't, he was Armenian, someone I had photographed.
It all seemed to be déjà vu. 1998, I had walked the icy streets in January, photographing stunned passersby slipping by on icy pavements. Then it had been the ice storm, the one that had crippled the city. Now it was a man-made disaster in another city; misery like company.
My throat tightened. I felt like a heavy hand was squeezing my chest, throttling my throat.
"Are you religious Mike?" Sunny had asked me during our first sessions. "Sometimes it helps to ask for higher help. Don't laugh at prayer, especially when you are down."
My eyes on the ground, avoiding the menacing sky, I wandered over to St. Patrick's cathedral, thinking I might see what was happening at the American consul on Rene Lesveque another street renamed for a politician. Was I a fool? I had done this before, at the end of the storm, kneeling on the hard bench, my body temperature low, my knees creaking and my hand came together and asked for help. She had been playing with me for so long, jerk my string, until the ice storm and what I had done. The roller coaster ride. It was starting again.
Saint Patrick's wasn't the biggest church in Montreal, but to me, it was the most beautiful. Wood and stone married in a harmony of religious perfection. My idea of a church. A few other lost souls were there, maybe a few religious nuts, like the ones who hung around Saint Joseph Oratory looking for salvation as they repeated their demented prayers clutching rosaries. It was too big, too presumptuous for me. Photographing it had been a back breaker and it was ugly, any way you looked at it. Some sawed off Quebec priest's idea of a monument. The steps that led up the side of the hill were a back breaker. I had taken enough pictures of the faithful climbing them to know.
"Please God, keep her safe. Don't take her now that I need her." I prayed, forgetting all my other Catholic rigmarole. My Hail Marys were used up on ordering bloody Marys or on blood and flesh Marys with their legs open to me. Joyce's Irish blood ran in my blood - too much whisky and not enough women.
She just looked down at me, her cold gaze faintly amused because so many men had been at her feet before, begging for her attentions. Was it in first grade that I had met her for the first time? In the corner of the classroom, where we were divided into blue birds and cardinals to read our catechism. She looked like our teacher, the nun in her starched habit, without any sexual characteristics, no hair showing, just the face. When I see Muslim women wearing their head coverings, they remind me of the nuns; no one complained when they wore their black burkas.
In the corner of the basilica, St. Patricks had been upgraded to that stature, she stood on her pedestal. Mary, mother of God, pray for our sins, you who gave us the fruit of your womb to eat when we celebrate mass, drinking wine and carrying that wafer in our sinful mouths, the cock suckers as well as the weed smokers, all of them sitting like Philistines in the front row, dressed for mass, having fasted all day to make them feel what Jesus must have felt. What hypocrisy! Jesus was beat to a blood mess and then dragged through the streets while his mother and his lovers looked on. Mary Magdelaine, the other side of women, the whore who gives us pleasure out of the same hole Mary gave us her son. Virgin, whole and mother.
"Mike, when was the first time you felt you loved her?" Was my therapist talking about my mother, my wife or my lover? All of them ran together into one mass of womanhood. I wanted to bugger them all, implant my manhood into them like the astronauts did with the flag. Stick it into the moon mother. I think of Norma Mailer, humping all of his women, hanging onto his crutches as he hangs over the latest Mrs. Mailer or book signer. I dream of him lifting up their skirts with a crutch and they are naked and dead. He takes their putrid corpses into his hands, forces their stiff lips open, rigor mortis has set in, and he stuffs his member in. This is a dream I have had since I photographed him at the book fair. He was surrounded by beautiful adoring women.
"You were jealous of your father making love to your mother? Is that why you have this dream about Norman Mailer? It is a form of Oedipus complex; you want to take the place of your father?"
No, no man will admit it, the lust he feels for the first woman who touches him - his mother. Not that. Deep fears rise up bubbling, memories of a glimpse of mother's breast, a half naked shadow, a hankering to look up her dress. No. No man wants to remember those forbidden thoughts. God will punish you; He will make it drop off.
"How fast does a 757 travel? And how far can it coast if it looses power?"
I asked the flight attendant. This is the first time I had traveled the Atlantic on a two-motored jet. A natural curiosity about my chances of survival if this occurred had hit me just after we took off. The plane was full of Italian peasants returning home to Sicily. "I read somewhere that one of the first flights, a pilot had accidentally turned off the fuel and it had glided to a landing."
She smiled and ignored me. "Tight assed bitch," I thought. I knew the answer of course. They felt that a 757 at 30, 000 feet could glide to land in half an hour. So the over seas flights had been approved, to save costs, with the hope that an airport would be a half hour away. I doubted it. A 757 would probably fit into St. Patrick's church, with a bit to spare. The nose would fit between the spires and the wings would probably stick out. Imagine that, a flying church, the speedy way to travel to heaven.
"You must get on your knees and pray for forgiveness, you must forget we did what we did. God sees everything and he forgives everything" I remember the priest telling my bowed young head, after he did it, " I won't tell Father, promise, just let me go out and play."
"You must confess to me, and don't anyone touch that way again.”
"Yes, father, I mean, no father." Contrition written on my face. The old goat, we all knew he liked young boys and girls. Tell our parents? Go on. What for? Some of the girls giggled when he talked to them, they called him Father Touch-it. They complained of his rough nails and soft hands. I heard them. The guys threatened to tell their dads and got out of extra duty. Every one knew, but our parents who invited him to coffee, happy to bask in his grace.
"When I went to confession the first time, Sunny, I didn't have anything to tell. The priest was pissed. My father had snuck me into first communion, not wanting my protestant mom to know, so I was an ignorant sod. Still am. My wife calls me a "bad Catholic'". This was half way through our second year, when we were on familiar terms. " I saw Father Timothy, the head of discipline, whack this smart aleck who had given him trouble. So you kept your mouth shut."
Was that when I told him about Jane? Father Touch-it had gone to her bedroom where she was sleeping to give her his blessing and instead had felt her up.
"I didn't feel guilty, or nothing. In fact it felt good. I think I had my first orgasm." She had confessed to me in a drunken stupor.
But her brother had found out the Father from reading the papers and had finally put two and two together. He wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, and he had confronted her, spreading it around the family, blaming her, a little girl for having "tempted" the good father. I think her brother wanted to diddle his sister and felt cheated.
"I felt warm all over and he was gentle." Jane had told me after a couple of beers. She never married and I wonder if her religious experiences had been at the root cause. "You know," she continued, "I saw the nuns going down on each other at my convent."
Had she? Men living together turned to each other, or got raped in prison, and why not women who had needs as well? Now the convents were condos and the priests were media stars, with empty churches. Quebec had gone from a fervent Catholic country filling the Vatican's ranks of priests and sisters, to filling strip joints and swinger's parties with just as fervent converts.
Twenty years ago, when I first came to this corner of Canada, the Holy Roman Catholic church still held sway over the lost souls washed up and left to freeze. In the working town south of Montreal Saint Johns, now Saint Jean, the strippers had dressed up as nuns to give the brethren a fulfillment of their wet dreams; think of all those little boys wondering what was hidden under the black and white cloth. Think of them wetting their pants after being whacked on the butt by some ruler welding mother superior. The good people of the province used religious terms to curse - hostie, tabarnac, Christ - it was forbidden therefore desired. How many boys and men dreamed late at night of putting their hands up a hassock, to feel virgin flesh, to climb their fingers up to touch the forbidden fruit, to find out if nuns shaved their heads if not their pubis? How many nuns abused boys and girls both physically if not sexually in turn? God knows! So much repressed lust and sin, just waiting to burst like a lanced boil.
Chapter 4 YUL "Ouroboros"
First the temperature shoots up, like one of those country fair games, where you have to hit the chock with a hammer to send a stone up to the top of a pole to ring a bell. Spring! No one knows what it is, confused looks and strange wardrobes. Too much or too little to wear. Old folks pear out, like nuclear bomb survivors; is it true, is it here? Pot holes appear, frost heaves, birds cheer. Babies cry, what is the sun mama?
You know it is spring in Montreal when the Ferraris come out. They are usually preceded by the bicyclists, the arrival of sea gulls washed inland to uncovered fields wet form snow melt. Winter boots are thrown off, goulashes shoved into the back of closets, summer shoes taken out. Old people appear as if by magic, sniffing the air. But ever present is the danger of a late snowstorm, to damper spirits. The thaw renders the pavement brittle, frost heaves buckle the roads, pot holes appear like craters that put your car out of alignment. The old people drive slow. Drivers drive faster, wait to the last minute to break, no longer wary of ice or snow; life is speeding up again after the long slow winter. Everyone takes off their hats and throw away their scarves, anticipating the mating season.
Eventually the women and girls feel the sap rising and they start to strip, slowly at first, a few brave ones will shuck their parkas, showing a bit more flesh, then the timid ones will follow, until they all blossom like the crocuses that fight their way through the remaining snow. Bugs come out as well, trees bud, life bursts out, in a gigantic orgasm of growing. In a week the trees have leafed, bright green at first, then darkening, to bush out, provide shade from the spring sun.
The café and terraces are taken by assault, as Montrealers wake out of their winter stupor. The chase is on as well, men take on a hungry look, noticing co workers who have been pale imitations of women, and now they are sun tanned after a trip to the sun tan saloon and slimming down. All that has been going on inside all winter, in dark bars, in late night clubs, like grubs and moles, fondling each other by habit with little enthusiasm and now the game is in the open, where they can see what they have been seeking.
Sun light is no longer a pale ghost low on the horizon, instead it feels warm, it entices and liberates life. Life springs up out of the mud and melting snow. Old turds from winter dog walks appear, old tires, lost gloves, trash which has been hiding under snow banks appear. Snow banks turn black and ugly, slowly melting under the spring sun. Some will last for months, like old grumpy men, holding on to the past, imploding into black tarry heaps that ooze water.
Smiles appear, faces relax, walking is no longer a chore and the shoppers appear with bags of summer cloths they will wear even if a cold snap occurs. Spring is short lived, over in a blink of the eye because this is the North where time is short. Summer is rushing in, from one to the next, spring is over in a hour, the blossoms come and go, and temperatures soar over night.
No spring is not gentle here in Montreal, it doesn't take its time like in the South, where everyone can get used to it over months. It is like a second of foreplay before the main event summer. No wonder they all rush around in a frenzy, both humans and animals, plants and insects; no time to loose. The breeding season is short, summer is short, autumn is short but winter is long. The only way you can survive is to have a short memory, to forget winter.
"Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver." Gilles Villenaud crooned years ago, saying his country Quebec was not a country, it was the winter. Like a butterfly, people here survive the cold months, while they are transformed in their warm cocoons into beautiful butterflies that seek the sun and warmth. Men and women burst out of their gray coats and parkas, revealing themselves at last in spring. The earth burst forth, gushing out as well, plants penetrating the permafrost in green erections. In the woods the farmers cut into sugar Maple trees, letting the juice drip down, the maple syrup season starts with the rising of the sap. Sugar shacks serve glutinous portions of ham and eggs; sugar on fat.
Young men and women walk the streets in earnest, eyeing each other. The studs take to racing their souped up cars on down town streets. All of them feel the hunger in their loins.
The final sign of spring was the appearance of prostitutes who serviced men who felt their juices bursting, no need to waist time on necessities or romance, just a wham bam thank you man and here is the cash. Men and women, coupling in the new warmth. Montreal in spring.
It always begins in spring.
"Wow, what a neat camera! Is it digital?" she asked me the first question, an intelligent question, not a bubblehead, dumb question, but one that was informed and curious. She liked new things, she liked to have the latest gadget, cell phone, car and boyfriend.
"Yeah, " I replied continuing to shoot the models coming down the runway, usually I was all business and hated to answer questions, but she was better looking than the models. "I can show you what I shot after the show." Thinking, she will just walk away and I will never see her again. To my surprise she did seek me out, squeezing past a bunch of Ginos, the Italian men who develop the two day beard to look macho and not homo. It didn't work; the two day beard thing. She was not impressed, in fact she looked into my eyes and made me feel like I was it.
"Here, you can review the pictures in this flat screen."
She was good. I admired her red hair and green eyes as she looked at the models I had shot for the summer collection. She licked her lips a couple of times, a gesture I later recognized as a sign of her wanting something, and her nails dug into my arm.
Pushing my luck, I invited her for a drink.
"I have to meet my husband later, but that's OK, he is busy tonight and I am free." She smiled at me. Did I see the headlights just before the crash? I had the impression I was looking at a young girl in a hooker's skin. My heart jumped out of my chest into my throat. What was happening to me?
Chapter 4 YUL Internet Sirens
"You have to look at this one, it has x-rays of things people have put in their orifices."
Marty was panting with excitement. He always did when he was showing me a new URL he had discovered on the Internet, one he promised me that would blow me away. I had seen it all, or almost. The foreign objects in rectums and vagina thing was pushing to the limit when I worked as medical photographer they used to call me down to emergency room to take pictures. The ER staff usually gave me the thumbs up; they were trying not to break out in laughter. Their smirks hid a shared amazement at human foibles. Once they had to cut off the pants of a gay hooker who had
strapped an Italian sausage to his leg, to give himself a bigger "box". It also cut off circulation to his leg. Hence the visit to the hospital. The nurses had all vied to be the one to cut his pants off. They liked looking at guys Johnson, a professional necessity, that risked turning into an obsession. Like Marty.
"Look what she put inside! Can you believe that? Man she must have been drunk or off her rocker."
"Yeah, some of them can get pretty lonely at night."
"No way, you think they are like us? I mean women all have their vibrators, but this is taking it to extremes."
"Marty, I came over to get my head off of weird stuff, especially the towers thing."
"Yeah, tough do do, but you have to take a look at this one, the oldest x- ray in the collection. It belongs to the guy who killed and ate young girls and boys, the real Hannibal Lecture."
A jpeg image came on the screen of a pelvis filled with what looked like needles.
"Look at that will you, this guy Albert Fish used to abuse himself. You should read about what he did, gruesome."
"Marty, you know it just inspires other people to do the same thing. Movies, you know, afterward you find out someone goes out and tries the same stunt. Look at the film where they lie down on the highway in the middle stripe; a bunch of young kids tried it and got run over afterward."
Marty wasn't listening to me, I could tell by the slack look on his face, the one I had seen ever since he got hooked up with high speed internet service. At the beginning he used it for emails, but now he could transfer big files. I got him to send some of my photography prints when they were too big to send on my slow modem.
"You should see the latest stuff on Pamela Anderson and her boy friend, someone put up some real high def video, almost broadcast quality. Man, doesn't it make you proud to be a Canadian when we produce chicks like her?" Marty seem to ask the last with irony, but with him, his Jewish wise cracking was hard to figure out.
I was in no mood to see some silicon and tattoo action. My God, the world was turning around on its head, people were dying right now in New York City, and maybe some one I knew.
"Come on Marty, give me some help here, I have been trying to call down there all morning and I get no answer."
"Of course, the cell emitters came down with the towers." He looked at me as if I was stupid, "Technology is not perfect, you know."
"So what can I do? I need to call her."
Marty looked stunned, he had a hard time connecting to reality sometimes, as if the avatars he used to play with on the internet were not real human beings. I had met Marty through one of my photo shoots on Internet addiction. Living on his parent's allowance, a kind of programming guru who made money on installing local area networks and Information Technology odd jobs that stumped others, he was able to live a life of inverted sociability, amongst his mess of computers and paraphernalia, cables, disks, CDs. He had been one of the first to make copies of music CDs, giving them to his friends and later selling them. When I had met him he had started trading dirty pictures of women he had found on the net, one site he liked was Debby of the web, a Canadian site of armatures who were exhibitionists. Not long after, he started asking me to photograph nudes for him. Marty was not capable of having a conversation with a real woman, in the flesh or even over the telephone. All his fantasies were vicarious.
"I'm like the people in the book Caves of Steel, actually the second book where they live alone and just talk through wall screens." He had admitted to me when we first met. It was true, he probably would love to have a robot woman, one who would just do what he wanted, and have no brain. I wonder if this isn't what all men dream about, the inflatable doll that is always there for them, but says nothing. Maybe they could add a string to pull, which would make the doll say sexy things to them. Most men went to prostitutes for this kind of thing, when I mentioned it to him, he shrank back into his shell, afraid of the prospect of touching real flesh.
"Could you take some pictures of them, I would like that." Was his response? A little like Woody Allen and driving, Marty didn't have a license, but he could look while dreaming of driving.
His cry of excitement jerked me around from looking at the piles of Chinese food containers, a real pack rat. "Wow, Back Bay already has some of the jumpers for sale." He pointed at high-resolution pictures downloading to his machine, people clasping hands and falling, weightless, to their final meeting. I had to turn away, almost losing my cookies. Thankfully I had not eaten much at lunch.
"Man, if you had been there we could have made some money. These are going to go like hot cakes to the BDSM crowd." He was stating the obvious. I knew about the Back Bay, the clandestine network of really horrible images, the David Lynch Crash kind. At one time I had thought about informing the police until I thought, who was taking these pictures of murder victims in the first place? So far Marty had not found any snuff pictures, who knew after the fact anyway.
"I got to going, Marty, but I would appreciate it if you keep trying to get any internet telephone connections for me, give me a ring on my cell." And I was gone from his dark apartment, into the clean fall air. Later I would find blogs on the Internet, people who recounted what they had seen. On a trip to New York, so quiet and sad, I would find the gallery in Soho putting on an exhibition of amateur and professional photos. None of mine were there.
"Man, those firefighters are going to be chick magnets after this, if you find a guy with his equipment, you could get him with the big blond chick with the bazookas. " He yelled after me as I left. Right, even in a disaster he was thinking of money and sex. Maybe I should look her up today. Was I becoming like Marty?
For the first time I noticed that when I left his apartment, my shoes made a different sound. I mainly visited him in winter, or called. In his place, the floor seemed sticky. Squishy. My mind didn't want to go there. Then there was the old spunky smell, the one he remembered from visiting his grandmother, it seemed to come out of her mouth, but this one came from the cave like apartment Marty lived in. Was it ever cleaned?
"Take deep breaths, think good thoughts." I repeat to myself. People must think I am whacko, they look pretty bad too. Some crying, some just frozen faced. My God, the world is no longer the same place! I have to go to St. Denis Street.”
Chapter 5 YUL Latin Quarter
I am lucky. There is a table at the café outside, not far from Sherbrooke, the longest street in the city of Montreal. Next door, the other restaurant is filled with Arabs, and right now I cannot stand their sight. They are swarthy, dark and dangerous. If I look at them, my stomach turns and my head begins to beat - hate is growing in me. News reports say it was an Arab attack; now all of them are suspect. Marty will love that, he is so pro Israel it is not funny. He sends his ill begotten funds to Jewish charities. "Kill all the Arabs!" he shouts at me over the telephone whenever there's a bombing. I tried to point out to him that the peace process was making head way until a Jewish extremist had killed the prime minister. I tried to tell him, Sharon is stirring up hate with the visit to the Mosque. Now look at them, like a stone skipping across the water or like a chain reaction and I loose my train of thought.
I am tired. I am stressed. I need to go to New York; I need to talk to her. I need my shrink. I need a drink. The last thing was what I could do now, right now, so I ordered one from the perky Quebecois waitress. She has a nose ring, an umbilical ring, and lots of tattoos. Ever since the Olympics in Atlanta, I have been seeing more and more blue flowers and butterflies on women's butts. It was a killer to retouch in Photoshop. I could understand men getting them; it was like a rite of passage into macho- hood, but women?
Speaking of women, Saint Denis Street was full of them. Not like the Saint Denis Street in Paris, with its two bit hookers, in Montreal, the women erupted out of the local universities to saunter the streets of the Latin Quarter. Summer brought out the bikers who would hang out below Sherbrook. Above, you had the punks who would shoot up at the local park, the tourists from St. and the spill over from the hip Plateau area farther.
"Hay man, can you spare a dollar?"
Out of my pocket, I fished out a loonie, shining bright in the sunlight, and tossed it to the bum. His face lit up (what a overused expression, but in this case true because the sun hit the dollar coin and it suffused his face with a golden glow.) A loonie for a loonie. He would drink it up, or shoot up. When I asked Sunny, again that glowing term, about vagabond and homeless, she asked me how I felt about them.
"Well my father had been one. So I guess I am both ashamed and sentimental, as if I feel guilty that he went down in the gutter kids feel guilty about parents, you know, responsible. And it makes me sad to see someone like that. I know they probably have some craziness. Yeah, like schizophrenia, like my dad. Maybe I am afraid I will get it, like pick it up from germs they have."
She made me look into the problem, leading me to take pictures of them, for a show, for the newspapers. Trying to right an old wrong, even if my dad was dead. Maybe I could help someone else. That made me feel good. Altruism. That is the word she used. Sunny made me look up words, find new ones. She suggested a write a journal, not like a diary, but something I could keep with me and when the fancy struck me, I could take it out and write down my thoughts as they occurred. Today I was in over drive.
Call. Ring. No answer, or a recorded voice, "we are experiencing difficulties." Oh, yes, big time.
Everyone was talking about it.
Chapter 6 YUL Algolagnia or the pain of love
Sunny - my therapist - tells me in the beginning, "You should keep a journal." Why?
To write down what you think and feel.
Will this help?
Maybe, yes, you need to figure out things and a journal will make you think clearly.
And will I remember her? Do you want to?
Sometimes. It is like a wound, it is healing, but when I move it hurts. I know she is gone, but I still talk to her as if, as if she was a phantom limb. Like they say amputees feel. The ghost limb - ghost love.
Sunny looks at me and as always I look away we don't do the Freudian thing with me lying down on the couch, her behind me, rather it is like the Sopranos. We laughed about it, how I was a mafia don; she was trying to boost my ego. Once I had a dream where I made a statue of a man, out of plaster, then added dildos all over the statue, sticking out. In my dream the children loved it, but adults were horrified. Sunny told me it might be my unconscious telling me that I needed to be a dildo man. I should have a harder exterior, with imaginary dildos sticking out to fight off the people who would harm me. How funny to think a woman would want a man to be more phallic!
Sunny leads me away from the darkness, away from a cruel woman who told me, after I called her and said I was suicidal, "No one has ever killed themselves for me!" She said it with happiness, like a vampire about to kill its victim. I was a victim of love, rather, I was being used and abused in a childish game, one I did not know the rules of, because she made them up as it went along, and she always won. How many men had she left destroyed after playing with them.
Film plots all have a first act, second act and third act and the hero has to overcome something. The audience cheers, everyone goes home happy, unlike life that is filled with loose ends and untidiness. Closure, you have to close the door on this chapter of your life and go on, not stay in the past, like a ghost that walks a house, because they have something to say. You have a ghost and you have to deal with it, face it, say boo to it and go on with your life.
How do I do this?
You will talk to me and tell me your dreams and feelings.
Like Marie Cardinal, I sometimes would pass the hour saying nothing, other times Sunny would take a more direct approach, giving me strategies to overcome the routines engraved on my mind. We took off on an adventure, an inner voyage of discovery, one that held more dangers than I would have ever imagined.
You tell me she looks like your mother.
Yes.
Does that tell you something?
Yes, but what? It was more than skin deep the similarity of her and my mother, it was her mannerism, her way of treating me, the stupid emotional games, the roller coaster ride of her moods and way she played with me. I was a puppet, a doll, and they were pulling my strings. What were these strings? Women think men only think of booze, boobs and babes. They say we can't find our socks or our pants. Yet we can navigate a new city, never asking directions, because all men have this inner 3D world that we can view from different angles.
I put down a pen and then forget where I had put it, spending hours trying to find it. Women have brains that take in all the local items, catagorize them and file it away. Men think in linear terms, women seem to think globally. No wonder men have one track minds. We set ourselves a goal and achieve it no matter what. Women juggle many things at once, knowing that none of them will ever be finished. Women love to play the computer game where blocks keep falling endlessly and they have to place them hectically; their lives are like that.
“Why do you love her?”
I hate her really, but something keeps pulling me toward her. Like a magnet, then it flips around and I'm repelled. She is
Tell me how you met.
Again, I go back to that moment when I knew I had fallen in love. She captured my heart, yet I knew she was evil, someone to flee from. She played innocent, she was seductive, like a little girl, she played coy. My male ego wanted to protect her, while my loins wanted to impale her. Girl woman. Virgin whore. Mother sister. Like a chameleon she would change, before my eyes, attracting men and then playing innocent.
She told me, "my special friends are discreet." Yes, she wanted me and I wanted her, it was so clear. Then I called she and hung up on me, tantalizing me more. Frustrating me. Dick teaser. Bitch. My heart was anchored to her ship, she was keel hauling me and I had no way to escape. Like one of those factory ships in the ocean, her net destroyed everything in its path, leaving a desert. What did my mother tell me? "There are other fish in the ocean." She killed them all with her indifference and cupidity.
To be continued….
