A lengthy and occasionally redacted journal about a very active week
A naked woman walked down the street.
Had I looked out the window a moment earlier or later, I would not have seen her. She moved quickly but seemed "off." My brain took a minute to process what was passing. Was she wearing flesh-coloured tights? Did she have on a bathing suit bottom? It's not illegal for a woman to expose her breasts here, but it's rare, and the weather wasn't that warm.
Why was she carrying shoes?
Was this some side effect of the fentanyl?
My wife immediately felt something was not right about this woman, and called the police. They indicated that they'd already had a report and someone was looking into the matter.
It was going to be a strange week.
It began with a medical procedure and ended with Tegan and Sara.
Monday
Monday I had day surgery. Hence the fentanyl. The histrionic headlines and the Sackler addicts can make us forget the drug has proper medical uses.
The Friday before I'd been downtown. Near the walkway that leads to the market an older man sat on a parked custom Harley. He did not sport a biker beard or gang colours. His jacket and personal styling simulated a 1950s greaser. He felt like an ad for the market: perhaps a new nostalgia-themed store or eatery. A moment later I crossed into a now-seedier stretch of the street, at one lost time the consumer crossroads of the city. A couple of street people were telling their friend or, at least, someone whose name they knew, to stop digging through the trash bin. He pulled out a disposable coffee cup that still contained liquid and drank the remnants.
That's what we think of now when we hear "fentanyl," impure, illicitly-acquired, highly-addictive junk that has destroyed lives and served as an excuse for a certain inbreed of politician to declare war on brown people and sensible trade policy.
But the drug, in proper and measured doses, has medical applications. It formed part of my drip during the procedure. They said that I might nod off, but I did not. After an observation period in a bed behind a privacy curtain, they walked me to the waiting room and my wife picked me up. They told me not to drive, operate machinery, or make important decisions until the following morning. Mostly, I slept.
Tuesday
Mike Hall sports a burly beard and had never heard of the Loveland Frogman until after he finished school. He later co-authored a musical on the subject, which has had two runs, both in Loveland, Ohio. For years, he says, residents felt embarrassed by the local monster. While they have not entirely embraced their mythic beast, as some communities have, that trend has changed, slightly. He notes that one local coffee shop has a beverage named in honour of the amphibian. Our online interview lasts a little over half an hour, during which I learn a number of things about the Frog, the local perspective, and the musical show. All of this will help me shape the final draft of the article from the forthcoming book on lesser-known cryptids.
I also learned of a tentative sale. An anthology has accepted a short piece of mine, but the publication has been delayed until next spring. With their knowledge, I am submitting it to a different and more widely-read market, because I'll know by the end of summer if they've accepted it. If they do not, my place in the anthology remains.
These should have been the most memorable event of a convalescent Tuesday. But it's not every day that a naked woman wanders down the street.
Wednesday
We met in Victoria Park. I waited near the Richmond Gates, perched on one of the shaded side walls. My colleagues consisted of a man in black shirt and dark green pants, clothes out of touch with the warm weather. He left when he finished his smoke. On the other side of the central circular bench from him sat a young couple. She was an animated, Blackish young woman in a string-strapped halter. He was a Brownish young man with a constant smile and a white Coors t.
A shirtless man in a kilt skated through, holding a guitar. Others followed, in and on of the park. A skinny guy with dyed red hair, dressed for Lollapalooza in '92, arrived, on his phone. A black teen on a power wheel breezed through. An old white man carrying a tartan pack. A grey sad looking street person with yellow and blue bags.
My friend arrived a little after 6:30.
And now my build-up leads nowhere, because our conversation contains too many private details of life, and a drop of information about a morbid case involving an obscure local artist known to both of us, though not well.
That would make a great sketch or interview, should it ever become public knowledge.
Thursday
A matter of perspective, really.
We're not really the type for high-price charity gala events, but for the last three years we have attended the banquet in support of the High School Project at the Grand Theatre.
The Grand itself opened in 1901 and has hosted a range of productions and entertainments. The original owner, Ambrose Small, disappeared in 1919 and was never seen again. The case instantly attracted international attention. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle offered his opinion. Charles Fort, noting the disappearances of Ambrose Small and (six years earlier) Ambrose Bierce, wondered if somebody was perhaps collecting Ambroses. Several works of fiction and non-fiction have presented their explanations.
The attention is remarkable, given London, Ontario’s status, at the time, as a provincial backwater of the Commonwealth, overshadowed by the cross-Atlantic capital. Its population in 1912 was fewer than 60,000.
The ghost of Ambrose Small, predictably, haunts the theatre.
The High School Project brings secondary school actors, stagehands, technicians, artists, and promoters together with professional directors and supervisors for a production each year. It's a unique opportunity. The Gala provides necessary finances.
My wife has close friends intimately involved with making the event happen. I worked with teens for more than thirty years and frequently taught students who became involved with the Project. Of course we attend the Gala.
Displays and activities are available during the cocktail hour. We then gather on the stage, this year beneath blue lights and the chandelier from The Phantom of the Opera.
You feel like you're part of an Event.
But the cost per plate is in the hundreds, not the thousands or millions. We see no world-famous celebrities (though Emma Donoghue, has been a regular at the event). Instead, the mayor and the Chief of Police attend. The entertainment does not involve some world-renown or once-popular hit band. A singer of some renown (she will be appearing onstage here next year) performed, and, of course, the newly-selected, fresh-faced cast of next year's High School Project.
The wealthy and affable couple at the next table who donate so very much to this event are millionaires, not billionaires. The Tech Bros have no idea this is happening and wouldn't care if they did. We’re funding a very local cause in a larger but still-provincial city, still very much in the shadow of its far larger eponym.
The present era strongly suggests putting charitable funds elsewhere. Nevertheless, the Project promotes culture and community, and a unique educational opportunity.
Let them grow and nurture talents and hopefully spread something positive.
Friday
A different gala took place in the city in June of 2018.
Afterwards, something else happened in the shadows.
The trial has ended its tortuous path. Complications led to an immediate mistrial, a retrial, a lot of evidence being precluded, and the dismissal of the jury early in the second trial. All parties agreed to proceed with a trial by judge alone.
She will deliver her verdict on July 24.
The alleged perpetrators were five members of the Canadian Junior National Hockey Team. The alleged victim is a young woman who acknowledges that she went to the hotel for consensual sex.... with one of the accused. A text allegedly brought others to the room. These guys soon became NHL players with fat salaries. Money was paid out. Cover-ups are alleged.
I wasn't there and I don't know what happened. Nor can I comment knowledgably on the issues that relate to determining guilt or innocence of the specific charges under the law. I cannot untangle the complications created by the fact that everyone involved was drunk and recall has been subject to questions about consistency.
And I do not want anyone convicted or exonerated on the basis of media reports.
Ultimately, however, we have two versions of the story.
In one, a young drunk woman meets some hockey players at a bar and goes back to the hotel with one of them. He has her make a recording saying that the encounter is consensual. Then a bunch of his teammates turn up once she's naked and also engage her, and she feels intimidated, feels she's being prevented from leaving the room.
In another, she goes back to the bar with one of the hockey players and when other guys show up, she begs them to engage in sexual activities with her and acts shocked when some of them are reluctant, given that she's drunk and the guys themselves were all so young, they'd never been in this situation before. I'm paraphrasing actual testimony here.
Everything happens, no matter how far-fetched. But I cannot help notice that one of these stories sounds remarkably like standard issue douche-bro behaviour of the sort far too common.
The other sounds remarkably like the plot of a bad porno movie.
Saturday
Downtown there's a parade
But I don't think I want to go
--The Tragically Hip, "Born in the Water."
We had a family get-together in the afternoon at my brother's place. This I also have redacted, but not because of anything intimate or scandalous. We had a good time.
We returned in the late afternoon. My wife took a nap. I peddled out to Wortley Village.
The Village has its own little Pride celebration. By the time I arrived, things had settled, though the pubs and dining establishments of the village were crowded. Laura, who lives in the Village, had returned home. I would later drop in for a quick visit.
Near the entrance to the Village Green I saw a different familiar face, busily making badges at a booth set up for this purpose. I stood by for a moment. One of the women running the booth asked if I wanted to make a badge. I said that I did not, and they looked at me with suspicion. Familiar Face looked up upon hearing my voice.
"I'm just waiting for you to notice that I’m standing here."
They laughed, looked taken aback, hugged me. The people running the booth breathed a sigh and smile of relief. I apologized for having momentarily crept them out.
I arrived back home before Trump's military parade started. I've got nothing against a nation, any nation, recognizing those empowered to protect them. But we have here a western leader finally getting the parade he's always wanted, on his birthday, at the costs of tens of millions, after he has cut tens of millions going to service people in his country. He has lied blatantly about the nature of those cuts. He continues to lie blatantly about current protests in Los Angeles. His party, which has taken hardline stances on states' rights and ignored an actual insurrection, approves when he sends an unprecedented number of troops to suppress a handful of violent incidents (repeated endlessly on Fox News) in an otherwise peaceful series of protests in a postage-stamp-sized section of LA. He claims, with absolutely no evidence, that the protesters are paid agents, which is as laughable as the guy who greeted Kanye West outside the P-Diddy trial by asking him if the Illuminati are responsible for creating Diddy's legal troubles.
Those crying about fake news the loudest remain the ones benefiting most from it. This is not a new development in world history.
And America maintains a military for defense, not furthering a president’s domestic agenda.
All of this is a roundabout way to saying that I didn't watch the parade.
I am a student of history.
I've already sat through Triumph of the Will once.
Sunday
If Tegan and Sara had been born forty years earlier, they would have played downtown coffeehouses, migrated to Greenwich Village for a time, and perhaps been viewed by people who didn't know their music so well as a sort of female counterpart to the Smothers Brothers. About that time their music would have grown lysergic, sprouting swirls of psychedelia. Tegan would have studied the sitar.
Ten years earlier, and they would have toured with Lollapalooza in '93 but would have felt more at home when they joined the line-up of Lilith Fair in '97.
In fact, they were born on September 19, 1980. They began their career in earnest in high school, and went from playing friend's parties and local contests to signed indie darlings before they were twenty.
Sunday was no concert. Tegan and Sara gave a ninety-minute discussion/interview moderated by actor/writer Ann-Marie MacDonald and writer/director Alisa Palmer. The far-ranging, fascinating, frank, and frequently funny conversation returned to several themes. One was that more and bigger is not always an improvement. My description in this paragraph, for example, would probably be improved by removing one f.
Tegan recently sent three new songs to Sara. Her sister loved them. But neither feels the initiative right now to develop and sell them. It’s enough, she said to know that Sara loves them.
Some observations:
When they were teens and not yet out to their parents, their mother often rented queer videos from Blockbusters, at least, the ones that existed in the 90s. It made them wonder how she didn't know, but later realized that she associated queer culture with alternative culture, and their family was very much into alternative culture, if not necessarily by that name. They reflect on the body of literature and art that guided and informed them as they came to terms with their identities, and realize that they are now a part of that body of literature and art that other teens now discover. They're thrilled when someone has been influenced by something they did years ago, someone who hitherto had no idea who they are.
You wait. The effects of what we do are not always instantaneous.
Sara's son finds things that are new to him. Tegan compares it to certain drug experiences. (She predicates all of her drug stories by stating emphatically that she does not do drugs). On a couple of occasions, her nephew has mistaken her for his mother.
Divergent qualities. Tegan is slightly edgier. Sara is more matter-of-fact. Sara discusses the very different world that existed when they were signed: social media did not exist, and cells existed for phone calls, if you had one and could get service. Tegan immediately jokes about how they drove around in carriages back then. The bonnets got in the way when they played guitars.
They also discussed what Macdonald called emergent qualities. They have heard better singers (Tegan to Sara: On a scale between "great singers" and "shit," where would you put us?) and encountered more successful songwriters, for example. Success is a combination of factors (including their charisma, of which they are quite aware). Time and place also matter. The whole is greater, as the cliché goes, than the sum of its parts.
They also discussed how the Tegan and Sara Foundation doesn't have to do bigger things, and doesn't necessarily aim to do bigger things. They often assist grassroots organizations and small, local initiatives. In some cases, it's merely providing money to queer spaces so that young people living in remote and sometimes hostile environments can bus in free of charge and experience the fact that those spaces exist.
We met two superfans afterwards, women who'd come, respectively, from Chicago and LA, mainly to hear this talk.
Tegan and Sara have played many concerts. Encounters such as this one are rare.
Epilogue
The naked woman turned the corner. We learned nothing more.
We hope that she’s okay.