The Lesson

Sometimes Lucas would come into Charlottetown and pick me up on the weekend. Later that night we would go to a dance at the school. Lucas was my beau, although there wasn't much 'beauing' going on between us. But he had a car and he was smitten with me. And what girl doesn't like to be adored. One time I caught the eye of another fellow at the dance. He was tall and handsome and so charming. Melvin was his name. We danced. He drove me home. I'd forgotten all about Lucas. When I got into the house, I was met by mom and her stick. She thrashed me across the back of my legs. Dad had to take the stick off her. 'You come home with the boy that took you to the dance,' she screamed.

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Uncle Willy Brown

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The Television

(excerpt)

3. Television

Drood’s stomach sits like a small pet in his lap. There is a hollow appetite. Edwin raises his head. Like a drowsing watchdog. He rubs his groin. The mechanics of imagination resonate in his head. Like an old rusted out nineteenth century machine. The speculation of pornography. The clash of body parts. Sheila’s voice. Sweet, assured, strong, perfectly articulate. Trousers. Passion. The terrible ache of his lust. A cup of good one-liners. The self is a mob of influences. A compilation of urban nightmares. The late Twentieth Century was populated by disembodied souls. Imprisoned in straw men. Talking to each other like a convention of stand-up comics breaking in new material. The Jungian consciousness is television. God sends angels to do his bidding. The devil sends commercials.

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The Mystery of Edwin Drood

 

Fu, The Man With Three Fingers

(excerpt)

“I used to hang out with Dylan,” Everest said. He waited for a response from the panhandler. When there was none, he continued. “They call that a brush with greatness. When us plebs have a passing relationship with the aristocracy of the world. That’s what famous people are, Fu. They are aristocrats. And we are fascinated by them. Their habits. Their loves. Their addictions. Their passions. Their tragedies. The Greeks started the whole thing. This preoccupation with the gossip of the days. All those gods. Like the folks on Coronation Street. You like soaps, Fu?”

Fu did not respond.

How'd he know that I wasn't famous. Maybe not to him. But what does this giant goof know about famous. Maybe he's gay. He think I'm going to do him?

“Human nature,” Everest continued. “That’s what soaps are about. Oh, how we love their tragedies. I’m talking about the rich and famous. We’re not too interested in each other’s tragedies. That my friend is a downer. No sir. You interested in your neighbours problems? That’s called being nosy. And you better not be interested in your neighbour’s passions. We call that, perversion. Both his passions and your interest. The common man is not interested in other common men. That’s why it took so long to have universal medical coverage. I’m not boring you, am I? I do tend to go on.”

Fu did not respond.

Everest cleared his throat.

Christ, he woke me up.

“But," Everest continued, "you were asking me about Dylan. I mean Bob and not Thomas. I used to handle their gear. Bob and his band. Called the Band. Talk about imagination, eh? My, those boys had a good time. Girls coming out of the woodwork. Covered in butter. Not too many smart ones. But girls nevertheless. Mostly high school drop outs. Girls who couldn’t pass math. Well, who passes math anyway? Beautiful girls. With liberal views on life if you take my meaning. You know what I’m saying?”

There was a certain sadness in Fu’s eyes. Resignation. Defeat.

He's going to go on like this forever. What did I ever do to him?

Everest smiled. “And I got some myself. Like the crumbs from the master’s table. There were a lot of crumbs. Girls would sleep with the hands that served the master, so to speak. You know what I’m saying. Of course you do. I guess I got arrogant. Forgot my place. Figured Bob and I were buds. I don’t know what got into me. I got it in my head to tell him to stop smoking. He was coughing a lot. I didn’t want the world to lose another voice to smoke. That’s what I said afterwards. But truth be told, it just got annoying. Coughing first thing in the morning. Right over your breakfast. Right over your corn flakes. Who's know what could have been fired out of his lungs. And I was eating blue berries with my flakes. And in the middle of your afternoon nap, Bob would start hacking. And there was phlegm. Disgusting. Horking and snorting. Spitting. Well, you get the image. So I told him to quit the fags. And Bob looks at me like I’m from Mars and tells me to fuck off. In front of everyone. Later one of his people told me I was fired. Bob couldn’t do it to my face. Royalty doesn’t do that sort of thing themselves. It’s beneath them. I got other work. Frank Zappa for a while. That was one crazy fucker. He loved motels. Wouldn’t stay in a hotel. Had to be a motel. With a pink Cadillac parked out front. Like he might have to make a getaway. Rented one if he had to. Just to park in front of his motel for the evening. Crazy. The world just ain't big enough for that dude's form of crazy. But, I quit. Couldn’t work for a guy named Zappa. What kind of name is that? Zappa. Like something from a science fiction movie. Flash Gordon. I love the evil guy in those flicks. What was his name? Merlin? Maurice? Mandrake?” Everest scratched his head. “It was Ming. Emperor Ming. A relative of yours?”

Everest looked down at the panhandler. Fu continued to ignore him. To read his book.

I couldn't believe that the guy wasn't picking up on my signals. What did Sun have to say about situations like this? Take off the head and the body would follow. I should cut his balls off.

“I guess the Dubliners must be about people in Dublin? I’d like to write a book about the people around here. In the Six Points. What the hell would you call it? Etobians? Etobicokians? Six Pointers? Just doesn’t have much of a ring to it. Who wrote the Dubliners?”

The panhandler turned his book up.

“James Joyce,” said Everest. “Sounds like a happy name. What is he? Jewish?”

The panhandler shrugged.

The guy was an idiot.

“No, not Jewish. Irish. Sounds Irish. Bob Dylan sounds Welsh. He’s Jewish. Did you know that?”

The panhandler nodded angrily.

“I think he changed his name,” Everest said. “Why do you figure he would do that? Sounds like a cliché in show business. Folks are always changing their name to make them sound more memorable. John Wayne changed his name. Marion Mitchell Morrison. Cary Grant was Archibald Alexander Leach. Bob Dylan. Wonder what Dylan’s name was before he changed it.”

The panhandler looked up at Everest.

“Zappa,” Fu replied and went back to reading his book.

That felt good. Finally I had upstaged him. Or so I thought.

Everest looked down at the panhandler as if his feelings had been hurt. Then he looked around to see if anyone was watching and when he surmised that no one was watching, he grabbed the smaller man, raised him to his feet, off the ground, and putting an arm around Fu, began to dance a Fox Trot.

..................................

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OPEN 24hrs

 

 

When You Wish Upon A Star

Chapter 16: When You Wish Upon A Star

Michael Subloski is being carried up in the elevator by Helen and the hotel detective, Bobby Rousseau, his arms over each of their shoulders.

Michael: “Did you ever look back in your life. Looking back on all those great old memories. I have. And I don't have any.”

Helen: “You don't have any memories.”

Michael: “I have one memory. Every day of my life was exactly the same as the day before.”

The elevator doors open.

The trio are stumbling down the hall. Michael is singing the song, When You Wish Upon a Star.

Writer: Leigh Harline; Lyrics: Ned Washington

When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are
Anything your heart desires will come to you

If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme
When you wish upon a star as dreamers do

Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you thru
When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true

Helen looks at Bobby Rousseau: “He couldn’t lose.”

Rousseau: “If he hadn’t passed out from drinking, he might own the hotel by now.”

They enter Michael’s suite. Michael is laughing to himself.

They put him on his bed.

As Rousseau is taking off Michael’s shoes, Helen takes his jacket off. She puts it over a chair. His wallet falls out of his jacket.

Michael cries out: “My money! I”m going to buy one of those paintings out there. Someone said they were impressionists. I'm pretty impressed.”

Rousseau chuckles as he raises Michael’s legs and puts them on the bed

Rousseau: “We aren’t going to steal it, fella. I’ll put it in the hotel safe.”

Rousseau steps over and checks Michael’s jacket. The wallet has gone. He turns around to find Helen holding the wallet out toward him.

Helen: “It’s a lot of money.”

Rousseau looks at Helen skeptically.

“Yes. I better get it to the hotel quickly. It’s quite a temptation.”

Rousseau leaves the room.

Helen takes a blanket and puts it over Michael.

She looks down at Michael.

Michael: “You look like an angel.”

Michael passes out. Helen steps over to a nearby desk, opens a drawer than closes it quickly. She leaves the room.

................................

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Somewhere: Life Has Its Drawbacks

 

By The Ear

Chapter Three: By The Ear

People are milling around in the large lobby. Vittorio Genova is doing his own brand of milling. Mostly with apologies. A gentleman in a brown two breasted suit is at the desk searching his pockets for his wallet. The desk man is watching him with total indifference. A few kids are running around the lobby making a nuisance of themselves. Their parents, so caught up in the moment, seem quite unaware of their children.

A young boy in shorts runs into a darkened room. It is a bar. The sign outside the room advertises the appearance of Terri Brennan, straight from Broadway. A moment later a waiter with his hand securely grasping the young boy's collar drags him out of the bar. His mother who has been looking around for the boy sees him being escorted from the bar. She wacks the young boy on the back of the head. Then reaches into her purse for a tip. The waiter accepts it indifferently.

A second room is closed to the public. The sign in front reads, “Reserved For The Kelly Wedding”

Cassie and Quinn pass the sign and make their way to the front desk.

An elderly gentleman, Michael Subloski, is standing in front of a painting. A young boy is standing beside the old man.

Young boy: “Whatcha see?”

Michael Subloski glances down at the boy. “Its a painting. Rather peculiar.”

Young boy: “There all over the hotel. My mom says its an exhibition. But not the exhibition with rides and candy floss and house of mirrors. The boring kind. With art.”

Michael Subloski: “You don't like art. I thought all children liked art.”

Young boy: “I like baseball.”

The young boy takes off into the lobby, passed the bar. From the bar can be heard Clarinet Marmalade by Frank Trumbauer and his orchestra.

..................................

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Somewhere: Life Has Its Drawbacks

 

 

There were new rooms. In old hotels. There were men with wallets and guns. And girls with dreams and a hole in their forehead. What is over the rainbow. Somewhere men repent. And women tear off their masks. Words that are spoken. Are heard and meant. Truth is nothing more than not having an alibi. And while the police are looking up your priors the future passes by. Sleep in the Rainbow Hotel. Carry your bride over the threshold. Give her children and then remove the gun from the dresser drawer. She's complaining that she's cold. Pretty soon she'll be reminding you that you're getting old. The mirrors are all suicidal. Fall into the darkness. At the Rainbow Hotel the closets are all taken.

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Somewhere: Life Has Its Drawbacks

 

 

I’m not ready. This is not a good time. I still have payments to make on the house. I was losing weight. I stopped drinking. Not all at once. And I was trying not to think about sex every five minutes. My voting habits were becoming more conservative. I voted for Mayor Anderson and his recent crusade against pornography. I supported the movement to have cats put on leashes and bicycle helmets made mandatory equipment for cyclists. And a women’s rights to choose. I can’t seem to stop talking. Inside my head. Jesus, its like a town counsel meeting.

I’m laying here looking at God straight in the eyes. God has a receding chin. No wonder he’s always wearing a beard. And he has very little personality. God is a chartered accountant. He keeps two sets of books. (He works for the mob as an enforcer. God is the original Murder Incorporated.)

God is a publisher with a musty smelling manuscript getting wet in his lap. Sitting in an Adirondack chair at his cottage. In the rain. The ink is starting to run. And he has to read quickly. I am looking my creator straight in the eyes and I have a story.

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The Death of Lou Grant

 

 

The Writer as a Man

It’s a good place to think. The bench. To mull over ideas. That’s my madness. Everywhere I look I see patterns. Patterns are someone’s idea, someone’s creation. Order is recklessly rearranging the furniture around us. Old buildings being replaced by new buildings. Old people dropping dead at the feet of children. Order giving birth in the ashes of death. Order is my God. Patterns are His skin. I need a universe in which everything makes sense. What else is consciousness for? We were put here as witnesses. But why does God need us as witnesses? Why does God need us at all? When I was a small boy I would wander out into the backyard of my parents suburban home and look up onto the night sky at the stars and ask what all this was about. And just as I finished asking the question, I discovered that I was an old man.
.
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 The Writer as a Man

“Trust me, Father, God hates me. He tried to kill me when I was born. My head was too big and my mother almost died. They had to use clamps on my head but the clamps broke so they cut into my mother’s bones. It was a real mess. The doctors figured I would have brain damage. I was tested. They didn’t find any damage but what does that mean? The way I figure it, I was brain damaged. I mean, I should have been a genius but I’m just average intelligence. It’s been a real disappointment to my parents. My dad is an airline pilot and my mom teaches at Humber College so they’re pretty smart. They figured they should have been set for life with a genius as a child but look what they got to show for everything – me.”
Mackenzie Philips had to deal with all the trials of youth, bullies, school, parents who don't understand him. And God. Who Mackenzie believes is out to get him. God wants revenge. Because Mackenzie has committed a terrible crime. He's killed someone. He's killed two someones.

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Several Incidents in Mackenzie Philip’s Afternoons

 

 

Life at the Rectory

I wanted to believe in something. I prayed. But all I could hear was the echoed clang of a clapper against a bell. The bell ringer was dead. The universe was empty… I was the miserable beggar on the street, my palms slashed red with the cuts from freshly minted coins… I was the bitch, the poor cur whining in the overheated parked car in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of a parking lot in the middle of the suburbs… I waited in the middle earth between paradise and suicide… I studied. I studied with Plato in the coldness of his cave, huddled around the fire as reality played out on the walls. I tried to find the sun but I could never find the entrance to the cave… I argued with Sartre in a room with no doors… I studied. Running along the streets of Copenhagen with Kierkegaard as the Danish brats pelted us with stones and laughter. I wanted to roast the little buggers over an open fire… I wept. Like hills into ditches into an empty sky… I saw a lonely man hanging from a tree and mistook him for Santa Claus. He looked down at me and smiled like a drunk in an alley. ‘Follow me,’ he entreated. ‘Or buy me another glass of wine. Or if you do not have any loose change, cut me down from this tree where I have been abandoned by the wind.’

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LIFE AT THE RECTORY

THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD

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THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD


Edwin Drood dies. But why? His girlfriend never understood him. Though she feared for her life at times. His enemies were numerous. But would they kill one of their best dealers. Did he cheat someone in a drug deal? Or was it something else. About the world. About himself.

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The Box by Matthew Chambers

 

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A Boy’s Life

 

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OPEN 24hrs

 

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The God of Six Points

 

Property

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Property

 

 

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Somewhere: Life Has Its Drawbacks

 

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Fred and Me: How my cat helped me survive divorce

 

A Son's Story: The Remote

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The Moron

(EXCERPT)
My father said that we’d all end up in a box. Buried in memories. Death is no mistake. Life was an explosion that we live in. Everyone was headed in different directions with a common goal. Nothing makes sense in the unexamined life. What counts are the lies you get away with. Father was one of those young men called the baby boomers who never had to prove their metal in war or desperation, and thus remained eternally angry. And their anger ate them up inside, made them hungry and dissatisfied. I hated my father. He never thought I existed.
1.The Remote
I was nine years old standing in the middle of the living room in front of the television.
“Don’t stand so close to the set!” my father barked. He took a seat on the couch. I stood in front of the set.
“You seen my cigars?”
I shrugged. I was nine years old. What did I want with cigars?
“Where are my cigars?”
“I don’t know where your bloody cigars are,” I cried. I just wanted to watch my program.
“I don’t want to hear that kind of language young man. Now I asked you a simple question and I expect a civil response. What are you watching?”
“Heman,” I responded.
“Get back from the couch. You’re going to ruin your eyes.”
I moved back to the couch.
“What else is on?”
“Nothing,” I replied.
“You’re too old for this program. Heman is for little kids. There must be something else on. Where’s the remote?”
“I want to watch Heman,” I said.
“Give me the remote.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Who had it last?”
I shrugged and sat down. My father stood up and fumbled through the cushions looking for the remote. He made me stand up. Unsuccessful he got down on his knees and looked under the couch.
“Where the hell…” he cried.
“Mom said I could watch Heman,” I said taking my place back on the couch.
“Your mom’s not here.”
“I was here first,” I declared.
“On the planet?” he asked then roared with delight as he pulled the remote from beneath the armchair.
He turned and pointed it at the television like it was a laser gun from a sci-fi film. Nothing happened.
“Mom took the batteries out,” I grinned. Mom hated the remote. Said that it was impossible to watch television when father was touring through the stations. It was like watching clothes in a tumble dryer, she said.
He left the room. I knew it was only a matter of time until he returned with batteries. I wished that I had a remote to turn him off.