Barbed Wire 03
BARBED WIRE
Vancouver's only FREE webzine with a COMPLETE money-back guarantee
(contact paull@istar.ca)
also available at http://home.istar.ca/~paull/wire
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C O N T E N T S
ISSUE 3
IN BOX
Readers write: high praise received, unfathomable poetry proffered and "wank" defined.
The Unbearable Lightness of Colonoscopy
Paul Levine has a 5 foot long flexible tube inserted into his ass - almost exclusively for medical reasons.
Letter from New York
Lyn Chick goes apartment hunting in the Big Apple.
Boys are Dumb
Laurie Drukier has had some bad dates with people who like to talk about ostriches.
How We Buggered Radiohead
Adrian Mack attends an acoustic concert with a group of soft-focus sociopaths.
Lost and Found
Alex MacKenzie risks his life for an ambiguous Polariod.
In an Ivy League of Her Own
There must be some mistake - Meredith Low has been invited to attend Yale University.
Honey, Ed Fucked the Dog!
Ed Wrench wastes away the working day.
Genki desu ka? - Part 3
Chuck Blade is forced to pay for his own incarceration in a privatized Japanese prison.
Message From the Editor
The Bottom Line - Not in the Mood
In the first issue of this magazine, anticipating an invasive medical procedure fate had ensured I'd have to endure, I made the somewhat spurious claim that this magazine is all about my ass. This was a impetuous, premature outburst - and readers who have been paying close attention will have noticed the contents of Issues 1 and 2 are suspiciously ass-free. While I wish the same were true for Issue 3, the facts are indisputable. After weeks of anticipation, this month I had a long, flexible tube inserted into my ass, a claim I hope not to be able to make an excessive number of times in the course of my life. My piece entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Colonoscopy will help you realize why you might want to strike this procedure off your list of life ambitions.
My constant ramblings about having a medically sanctioned prod into the last great taboo point of entry of the human body seem to have quelled the worrisome instinct of most of the writers for this zine to pen articles dealing with sexual content, a trend I admittedly set with Honey, I fucked the Dog. While moist and engorged organs littered the pages of Issue 2, it appears that the writers for this issue were, for their own peculiar reasons, just not in the mood.
Canadian expat US correspondent Lyn Chick is far too busy (and hungry) to consider prurient matters as she sweeps through the lower east side on a hunt for an apartment in her Letter from New York. And while Laurie Drukier is "certainly not against sex as an activity", she's tells us she's tired of stupid guys who just want to get laid in Boys are Dumb. Adrian Mack is wrapped up with rioting in How We Buggered Radiohead and Meredith Low is exclusively focused on academic pursuits in An Ivy League of her Own. Ed Wrench's Honey, Ed Fucked the Dog promises far more actual sex than it delivers, and Chuck Blade's conclusion to the Genki desu ka? trilogy finds him jailed, broke, and deported to decidedly unsexy Canada.
We welcome contributions for future issues to paull@istar.ca as long as you keep in mind that we have low standards and if you don't meet them your submission will not be published. Feel free to throw your story ideas in our direction if you're uncertain about their suitability.
We also welcome your feedback. Please address all correspondence to paull@istar.ca
Paul Levine
Vancouver, Canada
July 1997
IN BOX
WARM FUZZY
Great issue! Love the direction (or, well, lack thereof) in which you're headed. Very ecclectic. Gave me a warm fuzzy all over.
Keep it coming,
R.W. Luck
Editor - Pif
http://www.dimax.com/pif
Literary Fiction Guide
The Mining Co.
http://literaryfiction.miningco.com
NO WEBFLUFF
Hard to believe that in this age of WebFluff, an absolute gem of a site
like yours exists! Keep the articles coming, and kudos to the entertaining prose and wit of your contributors.
nexus6@postoffice.pacbell.net
DESPERATE FOR MORE
That magazine is fantastic reading.. Is it still produced? And is there only one?!
fuller@bekkers.com.au
THE GOLDEN RULE
Here are some subs. feel free to publish my e-mail address as well.
thank you!!!!
follow the golden rule
I would _love_ to!
except
I cannot locate
any woman
who'll let me
suck her cock
till her nose bleeds.
snack thought
the
tuna of truth
in your eyes,
hides ground-up
dolphins of lies.
from Ben La Rosa
worthit@megabytecoffee.com
WHAT'S A WANK?
Just read your press release for the premiere issue of Barbed Wire. Quite
impressive.
By the way - what's a *wank* ?
Best regards,
Steve Bain
Canada Computes/Toronto Computes
FROM Merriam-Webster's
wank n: slang terms for masturbation [syn: jacking off; jerking off; hand job] v: beat the meat [syn: masturbate; she-bop; jack off; jerk off]
The Unbearable Lightness of Colonoscopy
By Paul Levine
Some people have pet names for parts of their bodies and while I find this notion quite ridiculous, I have to admit that I'm more that just physically attached to some elements of my anatomy. Me and my ass, for instance, have had a particularly rich relationship over the past 32 years. Back in the early days, when it had no assistance from properly honed sphincter muscles, we could luxuriate together in the pure bliss of crapping on demand without giving a second thought to where we were or what we were doing, and with the only potential party pooper being the threat of backlash from a diaper. As the years have passed, and I've watched my ass grow from a lazy, leaking hole to a finely tuned shitting machine, I've protected my fragile orifice, for the most part, from the multitude of intrusions that the outside world has to offer. In return, my ass has become rather, er, anal, rewarding me with regular, uniformly tapered, perfectly cylindrical shits worthy of bronzing.
So it was with some trepidation that I informed my ass that it would be providing the gateway for the insertion of a five foot long flexible tube administered not, as my ass had secretly hoped, by a dominatrix dressed as my mother, but by a medical professional dressed as a doctor. The abundance of indignities that medical science has to offer usually visit themselves on those old enough to forget instantaneously what horrors they've been through and mentally inept enough to guarantee against any harried reflection. Why pick on an obsessive thirty-two year old with an excellent memory for trauma and an ass that should be in the Smithsonian? The answer, the doctors tell me, is because I may have inherited a defective gene that has sent a disproportionate amount of my relatives to early graves and the rest of them to facilities that shove long flexible tubes up people's asses.
Colonoscopy is the scientific name for this procedure and its purpose is to seek out and destroy pre-cancerous "polyps", which are small growths that attach themselves to the inner lining of the colon. Too many polyps in the lower part of your colon and a surgeon will cut out the affected portion and taper it off into the unfortunately named "rectal stump". Too many polyps everywhere and your ass becomes something merely to sit on as you spend the rest of your life evacuating into a plastic asshole, a "colostomy bag", attached Walkman style to your waist. Many of my more unfortunate relatives have not had the opportunity to entertain these cheerless options; they've simply died unannounced, their colons savaged by thousands of cancer cells, their asses tragically unfamiliar with the touch of the colonoscope.
Even after extensive corroborating research and numerous frank discussions, my ass wasn't too happy about the notion of being touched by a colonoscope, despite the potential dangers of avoidance. I tried to rationalize with it but it insisted on a second opinion. To placate it, I presented my research to my family doctor who rewarded my independent efforts with a spontaneous digital rectal examination. My doctor's a small man and I doubt his entire arm up my ass would have had the reach of a colonoscope. I wanted to mention this to him but my ass told me to be silent as I sat on the examining table, my quivering sphincter threatening to unload its contents in protest. I asked my doctor his opinion. He had none. "I'm sending you to a specialist," he said. Since then, my ass rarely questions my judgment.
The Gastroenterologist whose office I found myself sitting in a few weeks later had the bemused look of a man who's come to terms with the years he's spent inserting long flexible tubes into people's rectums. After a short discussion, he escorted me into an examination room where he asked me take off my clothes and put on a gown. I had an almost tangible, telepathic sense that my ass was going to be visited by yet another latex covered finger but instead the doctor poked at my stomach, pointed at my balls ("you really should examine them yourself regularly" - I gave him a reassuring nod) and asked me to get dressed. "So when can we get you in for a scoping?" he asked. Wanting to convert this experience into a distant memory as soon as possible I opted for the first available appointment, about 5 days later.
Over and above the psychological preparations necessary to propel one into the clutches of the colonoscopist is the colonic-cleansing necessary to provide the little camera attached to the end of the scope a clear view. While I'm sure I could have paid some west-side Swedish naturopath $100 for a peach-grapefruit enema, I opted for the self-administered home-colon-emptying kit: a four litre bottle of bitter tasting, crap-inducing chemicals, to be consumed in its entirety over the span of four hours. I resolved to pass the time watching my cable-less television, two channels of shit to accompany the flurry of shitting. I set the bathroom up as a shrine to my ass: soft lighting, a radio, a telephone, and an overabundance of bathroom tissue. Some canned goods would have rounded out preparations for a nuclear holocaust, but I had a lot on my mind that night. What troubled me most of all was the silence of my ass.
Two hours after I started downing the cleansing liquid I decided to re-read the instructions on the package. One hour of drinking, the label said, should guarantee the most enthusiastic evacuation from the most reticent of bowels. So far the only reaction I was getting was a terrible bloating which was killing my efforts to properly answer Jeopardy questions. "The preparation one drinks in advance of a Colonoscopy" was the statement I was hoping Alex Trebeck would utter as I doubled over with a terrifyingly life-affirming stomach cramp.
Upon reaching the bathroom, and immediately on making contact with the cold plastic seat, I experienced a transcendent relief only approximated by the time I decapitated someone whose severed head looked up at me from the floor and said simply, "you are dreaming". Even my ass was excited about the flurry of activity, rolling enthusiastically with the flow, and emitting a baritone belch worthy of a porpoise. At that moment the phone rang - a friend from Australia, in town for a few days. "How's life treating you?" she asked. "Er, fine," I replied, placing my hand on the mouth piece at carefully hand-picked moments, muffling the sound of the translucent liquid rushing out of me as it splashed back against my giddy ass.
That night was not a restful sleep and the next morning - tired, hungry, emptied and anticipating tortures reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition - I barely had the energy to pull open the giant doors at the entrance to the hospital. At the admitting desk my ass wanted me to scream: "I'm the one who's going to have a long, flexible tube inserted into his ass." I knew I had to say something but I could barely wrap my mind around any idea more complex than "my ass; long tube".
"I'm here," I said to the nurse, after some thought.
"And who exactly are you and why are you here?" she said impatiently.
I handed her my medical card, uttered the word "colonoscopy", which induced in her a sympathetic smirk, and settled into the rigors of hospital bureaucracy - unmatched by standards set by pre-collapse Soviet Union. I spent the next hour and a half in three different waiting rooms in three separate areas of the hospitals answering an identical series of questions. The redundancy, I imagined, was set up to avoid giving a lobotomy to an in-growing toenail patient, an amputation to a pregnant mother. As I started to dream up the image of a legless woman giving birth, I was steered through a ward to a bed, given the requisite gown and told to make myself comfortable. I peered around at my "Day-Bed" peers. Judging by the apparatus attached to many of them - breathing machines, monitors, intravenous liquid dispensers - and their general lack of consciousness, I predicted that many of them would be soon moved up a notch, to "Week-Beds" perhaps. Across from me, lay a couple of older patients, lifeless to the naked eye but still living according to the machines. Shriveled, twisted and fragile, I wondered how many visits to daybeds they'd made in the span of their lives to cheat the death that so obviously haunted them now. Just as I started to feel alienated for being in such perfect health, a nurse grabbed the end of my bed and started wheeling me and my bed down the hallway.
We stopped at the entrance to the Colonoscopy unit where I was parked next to an unconscious young woman decorated with an assortment of invasive tubes hooked up to an enviable range of beeping machines. I started to suspect that I was the only conscious patient in the entire hospital. My mind took to fantasizing a scenario. They'd fed most of the tube into this poor woman when it suddenly came alive, writhing savagely of its own accord, breaking through the wall of her colon and randomly mashing her other organs before they pulled it out, threw it on the floor and hit it with a fire extinguisher in a vain attempt to save the rest of humanity. The doctor was dead, strangled, and the rest of the staff were involved in searching for this renegade colonoscope that had made its escape through one of the heating ducts.
A nurse approached and some part of me knew that she was going to give me a story about having to wait, about how the heating system was undergoing "repair". Instead, she said, "we're ready for you now", and wheeled me into an operating room sufficiently decked out in high tech surveillance gadgetry to approximate a mobile CIA outpost. A couple of large television monitors stood at the end of the bed in a tangle of wires, a smaller one to my left at the side. I had made attempts to prepare myself for what was to come by questioning some of my relatives. They're all English and, after extensive probing about their probing, the most useful counsel I got was, "it's not very dignified". Wanting a little more clarity on the events to follow I did a search on the Internet. Wouldn't you know it: there's a web page called "My First Colonoscopy", a forum for first-time and long-time probees to share their anxieties, their experiences, to examine whether the prospect of having a long flexible tube inserted into your ass is a cause for distress or celebration.
The most significant thing I learned was that there's a split in the medical community concerning whether colonoscopy patients should be in full possession of their mental facilities during the process, passing the time by watching the procedure on the TV monitor besides the bed, or drugged into a blissful stupor, passing the time by being totally fucking unconscious. One contributor to the Colonoscopy web page suggested that if you're awake you should "just think of something very peaceful like canoeing across a lake." Fearing that my overactive imagination would eventually have the canoe leave the lake, enter the operating room, and make a b-line for my butt, I started to pray that my doctor fell on the side of the debate that encouraged large doses of heavy drugs.
The nurse, who had been fiddling with some of the equipment while I ruminated on my fate, turned to me and asked in a Mary Poppins voice, "have you had this procedure before?" I told her I hadn't, a response she decided to interpret as "I'm blithely unaware of what is about to happen to me".
"Well," she said pointing to a long black hose coiled on a bench beside my bed, "we're going to stick that into your bottom."
Just as I was about to congratulate her on her confirmation of the obvious and berate her, on behalf of my ass, for referring to it in such trivial terms, the doctor appeared at my side. "We're going to give you a sedative to help you relax. It has an effect on your memory so you won't remember most of the procedure."
Now this troubled me as much as it reassured me. Didn't this sound like some interrogation procedure used on spies to elicit classified information without the knowledge that they'd spilled the beans? Was I to be questioned by Canada's spy agency about my supposed clandestine activities? Or worse, were they going to bring in a market researcher during the procedure and probe me about my spending habits? The philosophical questions, too, started to irk me. Was I to experience agonizing pain in real time but have no memory of it later? Would I spend the rest of my life dogged by repressed memories of anal invasion? I wanted to put all this to the doctor but when I told my regular GP that I'd been having problems sleeping, he sighed and said, "Paul, you think too much", so I decided to remain silent.
I felt a needle enter the back of my hand. "This is very fast acting," I heard the doctor say as I drifted off into a buoyant whiteness, the echoes of a thousand ideas lightly floating in and out of the mix. What seemed like hours passed in this vague emptiness, then an image came at me: I saw myself lying on my stomach, my back suddenly arching like a seal, my mouth wide open in a prolonged silent scream.
"It's over," I heard the doctor say as the nurse wheeled me out to a recovery station. There I slept for half an hour ruminating on that one small moment of clarity: a drug-induced dream or some seepage from my blotted memories?
Fate has ensured that there are many more memories of this procedure awaiting me. About 20cm into my colon the surgeon removed a single, tiny, benign polyp, a harbinger of more polyps to come and confirmation that I'll have to endure a roster of colonoscopies through my lifetime until either medical science develops a less intrusive safeguard or I drop dead from something else.
I wonder how many visits to day-beds I'll be making over the upcoming years as I become an involuntary expert on this procedure. I'm not very happy about it, and my ass is sore.
Letter from New York
By Lyn Chick
So, I'm fasting. Doing a fast fast, not a slow fast. I'm afraid my delicate system would not withstand the 2 week version, hence the 2 day one. And how could I live without some form of fermented vegetable, grain, grape, for that long? I couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't. It's not really a true fast though. I, you, can eat as much fresh fruit (except bananas) as you like, and of course, don't forget plenty of that H two O. The second day promises more of the same, with the addition of raw veggies, yum. The impetus for this madness? - apartment hunting in New York city.
There is like a half a percent vacancy rate and gaggles of coolies who want to be where the actions at. Me too please. Sure, I enjoy a challenge, that's why I threw a dog into the equation. Something I didn't realize when I wanted a cutie to call my own (unconditional love and all that, which, by the way is not all it's cracked up to be, unless, of course, cracks are actually involved) was that it would be next to impossible to secure digs in the city. There are, apparently (and obvious to everyone but me until now), two kinds of dog owners in the city. The filthy richies, and the pit bull armed drug dealer, squatter, general unsavory types; lets call them the bad ass mo'fo's. "Excuse me, where do I fit in?" Exactly. There doesn't seem to be a category for young 30 somethings who bought a warm mammal to try to fill a void in their life.
Okay, makes sense in retrospect; there aren't any bored suburban housewives who have no friends, no job, no life, who need something (i.e. dog) to occupy their time in NYC. Are there? And if there are, they have $$$, and we all know that money can and does buy happiness, and dog walkers. Consequently, the apartments that we are interested in, and can afford are no pet buildings. Even alphabet city isn't down with the dogs anymore. The east village is crazy gentrified now and Guiliani really has forced the drug dealers out (where to is yet unknown); so the landlords there don't want to rent to anyone with dogs. Because if you're young, hip (if you're looking for a place in the East Village or lower east-side, hip is a given, as previously alluded to) and have a dog you must be a bad assmo'fo, no? Hence, a lot of time and energy was expended on looking at butt ugly, sterile, over-priced puny apartments in boring neighborhoods in elevator/doorman (a strong selling point) buildings that are dog-friendly. Buildings I wouldn't even waste my time pissing on - if I were a guy and could piss standing up. I hate having to make these gender distinctions, but I didn't want you to imagine the urine sadly trickling down my legs.
My sentiment has a much more forceful stream than I am capable of as a girl in said position. I, personally, was ready to pin an ad up at our vet's. My partner just looked at me like I was a really bad mother and said it was my decision. Yeah... right. I never asked to be a mother and I loath being put in that position. Yes, I have an attachment to my dog, but it was never by an umbilical cord. When we did come across a building in the area we wanted to live there was always a catch. We jumped through all the necessary hoops- supplying bank statements, letters of employment, tax returns, references from previous landlords, a credit check and a fecal sample - to one fella I'll call Dough. When we entered the building, we were intrigued by all the doors which were pad-locked from the outside. Very interesting and how amusing, I thought to myself as I impishly bounded into what I hoped would be my new digs. The apartment was the biggest and the coolest we had seen thus far - for the money. Yes, we're interested. So, Dough wants a kickback from our Realtor; our Realtor who is already going to get 15% of the annual rent from us for his services. Hey, that's ok, what's another $800 on top of that 2 grand, and the 1 months security deposit that we're never going to see again and the 3 months rent in advance that we have to offer in order to even be in the running? Did I mention that kickbacks are illegal? No matter, its a small price to pay to get to live in a building in which most of the occupants are junkies who have been or are in the process of being evicted for not paying their rent. No wonder Dough is being so picky about who his new improved tenants will be. Gee, I hope he didn't notice my track marks. And the dogs okay to boot.
We were, surprisingly, accepted; but nonetheless declined Dough's offer to join his building's happy family. My partner was concerned about the absence of natural light in the apartment - go figure? - but my concerns were more heady. What if something broke? Would Dough need his palms greased to fix it?; or even worse, would he corner me in the poorly lit hallway and ask me to suck his hammer if I wanted him to use his hammer? No thank you, not even so my doggie has a home.
All this anxiety caused me to break out in hives, zits and any other blemish you care to think of. I felt like I had all these poisonous toxins bottled up inside of me screaming to get out, and that my pores were the inhospitable barrier. Thus, the fast. I'm determined to flush out my system; to reenter the NY market renewed, rejuvenated and relaxed (if possible) but, most importantly, with clear skin. I keep waiting for the high to kick in. I remember feeling strangely giddy at the wake-a-thon that I did in junior high. Shouldn't food deprivation have a similar effect? All I have so far is a bad headache and I've had to get up to piss three times during the course of this discourse. And what about the spiritual enlightenment that is supposed to accompany this cleansing exercise? I'll keep climbing and let you know when I've reached the summit...
Lyn Chick has tried to urinate while standing up.
Boys are Dumb
By Laurie Drukier
There's a difference between men and boys, and it's not just age. No matter how old they are, there's a boy mind set, boy behaviour -- boy attitude even -- that once displayed, allows women to identify them and run screaming in the opposite direction. Unfortunately for them, this is indirect conflict with the ends they are trying to achieve.
A boy is any post-pubescent male whose prime motivating force is sex. He is usually found in public places where alcohol is served, like bars, clubs and your friends' parties. He'll say anything, do anything and be anything if he thinks it'll get him laid. Women run because we've seen the performance that goes on in the attempt to fulfill all their desires and none of ours.
Boys think all they have to do is say the right thing and the object of their attention will drop their panties. They don't realize that women can see through the flattery and flirting, posing and posturing. We've heard it all before; we know what they're doing and it's up to us to decide if we're interested or horny enough to sign up for the private show. Sometimes though, we let them perform until we get bored and finally walk away. The next day we tell our female friends and we all laugh. We know that no matter how mature they appear, most guys are just dicks in costumes.
Drunk or sober, educated or simple, no matter where he comes from, a boy does not understand that we know what he's up to and that it is our choice to say yes or no. I used to be a bartender so I saw a lot of this. A friend of mine with a happy home life -- partner, baby, house -- was visiting me on a slow afternoon shift one day. There was one guy sitting at the bar who chatted to her while I worked. He had been there for a while and had had a few drinks, so I kept one ear on their conversation. It didn't take long. "You're really cool. We should go out sometime. Why don't you give me your phone number?" he tried, smooth as sandpaper. "Uh, I don't *think* so. I have a boyfriend," she repeated. "C'mon. Whatsa matter? It'll be fun," he insisted. She looked at him as if he had just said his dick was made of gold: with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. "I have a boyfriend. And a house and a baby." And then the clincher: "Quit talking to me!"
I heard the whole exchange and couldn't believe my ears. Except that I could. Boys seem unable to take no for an answer, even when you make it *that* clear. It's like they're missing some essential clue. They think we're lying, or kidding, or stalling, or will eventually change our minds. How dumb is that?
Women, in important matters, tell the truth: "I'm a writer." "I have a cat." "I don't want to dance." We expect the same. Boys say, "I work for the city." "I have a roommate." "I'm really attracted to you." We may not realize at first that he doesn't work, he lives off his girlfriend, and he's pissed and wants to get laid but doesn't want to go home because they had a fight and he knows he won't get any there.
These dumb boys don't seem to understand that their actions are clues to what they're really thinking. Clues nothing! -- how about bright shafts of pulsing white light, illuminating the landscape for miles? Like the guy who phoned me every day for a week after we met, not being able to wait 'til our date on the weekend to talk to me. But on Saturday he called to tell me he was watching a movie with his roommate and was going to be a few minutes late. Before you defend the guy for calling (he sounds pretty courteous, doesn't he?), I should tell you he arrived a full two hours late, grinning like nothing was wrong, probably expecting to get lucky. Two hours? Isn't that the length of the average movie? Du-uh! Guess he didn't want to see me as much as he said, or he wouldn't have started watching it! I sent him home (this may seem harsh, but I couldn't get over what a dumb thing it was to do on a first date. I wasn't going to wait to see if he got dumber!).
Boys are dumb," is the only thing I can think of to say when the boy I danced with once can't understand why I don't want him to kiss me. It's the only thing I can think of when I hear stories about bozos who are cheating on their girlfriends, who try to justify their actions by comparing sex to tennis: "So you see, it doesn't matter who your partner is."
Then there's the guy who forgot to tell me about his girlfriend until our third date. And the one who didn't know my last name after several evenings, but I knew enough about him to write a family history about his stupid farm and the ridiculous ostriches. Dumb boys, all of them. Did they really think I would find sex with them an attraction after they failed to interest me in a simple conversation?
I'm not saying that I'm perfect and that all men are stupid boys. On the contrary. I think I've made some incredibly bad choices, but at least I've learned from my experiences. I'll no longer be fooled by the thin, decorative veneer of man-ness covering up the fundamental boy I eventually discovered. I didn't recognize that under all the paint and varnish the underlying motivation of these assholes was to get fucked, while mine was to meet someone new, make a friend, perhaps begin a meaningful, adult relationship based on genuine feeling, mutual respect and shared interests, as well as physical attraction. Quit laughing. It happens.
And I'm certainly not against sex as an activity. I think sometimes a meaningless, physical encounter is the perfect answer for when the batteries run out and you want to work up a really good sweat. When I want it that way though, I'll do the choosing and you can bet it'll be the guy I think can fulfill my needs first, then maybe a couple of his. I must point out however, the best sex I've ever had was with a caring partner, a man with whom I was sharing more than mere physical intimacy. He knew me so well that when our skin touched and slid together and the sweat slipped beneath us I was certain he was a man, not a boy -- maybe the smartest man I'd ever met.
It was this ex who made me believe, for a short time anyway, that there are men out there, that stupidity is not a universal male trait any more than right-handedness. So far though, not one of these other guys has turned into someone I want in my life anymore. It turns out that the hand I couldn't see is the one they used to jerk off the dumb boy inside.
If you're a dumb boy, I've got news for you: the world is bigger than a locker room. There's more to life than getting laid and the truth isn't just for losers. Take a look around boys. One day you'll have nobody to fuck but each other. Then we'll see who feels dumb.
Laurie Drukier doesn't like guys who forget to tell her about their girlfriends.
How We Buggered Radiohead
By Adrian Mack
1995 was an excellent year for pissing-off Rock Stars. My dear friend Shep was caught urinating on Noel Gallagher's amp in the alley behind the Commodore by Gallagher himself. A lynch mob of Roadies, Bouncers, lesser Oasites and fans managed to convene around us with impressive speed and it was only the Just-in-Time Taxi that pulled up at the end of the alley that saved us from a dark side of the mirror, inverse Hard Day's Night style killing.
All good fun, I assure you, but nothing compared to the beano that unfolded at Vancouver's celebrated Railway Club a few weeks previously.
The Railway Club has enjoyed a reputation as one of Vancouver's more venerable establishments for a period that far exceeds its worth. It is, in fact, a narcotic lifeboat for ageing punks, lost heroes and Betty Page fixated groupies spinning endless tales of woe to the next generation of torpid no-hopers. And this is where Radiohead, in the pre-amble to the release of their second album "The Bends", chose to perform a one-off acoustic set for those of us lucky enough to receive word.
Like all bad ideas this one came disguised as a very good one although the band and its highly paid cadre of advisors should have clocked the palpable sense of violence in the club that night, not mitigated by the presence of the regulars who seemed unsettled by the prospect of anything interesting happening in their half-way crypt. The rest of us - fans, musicians, scenesters-on-the-slide and irritating television personalities - responded to the affair with springtime exuberance that turned, eventually, to hot-box alcoholic psychosis. This could be explained by the coinciding of a number of factors, I think. The tension between the regulars and the rest of us notwithstanding, there was the heat and the crowd giving rise to certain theories of mob behaviour; there was the obscene arrogance of the band itself who, by taking the stage a full hour later than expected, lost their audience to a further four or five pints; there was that ineffable thing that some call fate, or vibe, or whatever that saw the evening pitching under its own transgressive momentum. Finally and most importantly, though, there was the group of soft-focus sociopaths that I was sitting with, front and centre, drunk and drunker.
Of these six people, the principal agitator was Jeff who set the tone early with his transcendental oddness. To this end, I suppose that Jeff actually set the tone sometime in the early eighties when his transcendental oddness first began to alarm family, teachers, Social Workers and psychologists alike. And so it was not the case that we were orbiting Radiohead on that night, I believe - Radiohead and the rest of us, quite impotently, were orbiting Jeff.
Jeff looks like the prettiest twelve year old girl you've ever seen. Now imagine that twelve year old girl in an oversized merkin and a little smiley-face sticker instead of a cock and you will have a fairly accurate impression of Jeff in the nude. I've seen Jeff naked more times than I could count because Jeff insisted on accompanying me to the toilet whenever he could. He took comfort in co-pissing for reasons that only barely suggest at his otherwise incomprehensible sexuality. His beauty and charisma, though charged with paraesthesia, was such that he was constantly faced with bizarre propositions from the people, usually women, who would drift into his powerful actuality. I once watched a beautiful model beg Jeff to take an all-expenses paid trip to New York for some Big City Rogering and, of course, Jeff put impossible conditions on the project - human contact for Jeff required a far more convoluted trajectory than that. He found sex very difficult if his friends weren't there to support him, in the room if not the bed itself. The model, clearly devastated, couldn't bring herself to pay for me and a couple of others to come and watch her lock toilet parts with Jeff. Like the rest of us, her own madness had been illuminated by Jeff but only so far.
Naturally, Jeff was a musician and a prodigiously talented one at that. He was incompetent at everything else - eating, drinking, walking...the ephemera of human life on planet earth eluded the boy but he could match Hendrix' "All Along the Watchtower" note for note in his troubled sleep. His band, Wicked Swimming Dog, were undoubtedly the most glorious failure that this town ever produced. Their genius for bad timing and miscalculation, not to mention a talent for provoking violence in the crowd, was the stuff of underbelly legend. They were destined to sail right off the edge of the world because they put a madman at the helm.
So, here we were, all of us at the mercy of Rock Star-manque, reality-shifting, dipsomaniac quantum-hexer androgyne Jeff - who was now running around the Railway Club with Much Music goon Sook Yin-Lee in tow. She looked simultaneously enchanted and terrified.
"Hey Adrian," he started in a voice that contrived to be both gravelly and high-pitched, "this is my friend Sook Yin-Lee...she used to be in that band, Uncle Bobby."
"Actually, we were called Bob's Yer Unc..."
"Hey! D'you wanna make out? I can't - I think my girlfriend's here. Let me introduce you to some more of my friends."
We were at an altitude of twelve thousand feet and still climbing when the band, or rather, pointy-headed guitarist Jonny and pre-fab enigma Thom the singer took the stage. An ear-splittingly raucous hush fell, if you know what I mean.
Jonny bore down on the opening lick from "My Iron Lung" - a song spectacularly unsuited to an acoustic format. Thom piled in with some rhythm guitar and then - NOTHING. I examined the surface of the table with my forehead, wondering if that's where the furious clap of Brit-Pop thunder I was expecting to hear might have gone by accident but no, it wasn't there. Looking up, I saw Thom strike an exagerrated attitude of mid-period Jagger-like insolence: his eyes closed, his chin raised, one hand on his extended hip and the other dangling his guitar for a humiliated tech to replace with another, more finely tuned version.
Back then, there was only one thing guaranteed to entertain us more than acting like haughty, aristocratic Rock Stars on the fag and that was the privilege of actually seeing one up close. A knicker-rumbling sized cheer erupted from our table that clearly took Thom by surprise. If I were to ever receive such spontaneous and ferocious acclaim in my lifetime for merely putting my hand on my hip then I would construe this as evidence of a God that loves me but Thom...Thom just seemed even more pissed off.
"My Iron Lung" gave way to "Fake Plastic Trees" - a beautiful ballad in any voice but in Thom's voice, it's like a kick in the chest from a faith healer. Thom may look like Jackie Rodgers Jr. after a bout of Bells-Palsy but he sings like a Siren weeping. In another club, in another time, with different people it would have incited a rapture but here, alas, it only seemed to incite two more rounds of Pale and the accelerating dispute one experiences between the floor, the chair, the ass and the head after serial pints and spirits that have cleared the ionosphere. Sensing that radio contact between my mind and body had been interrupted, I tried to make my way to the bog for a refreshing vomit but I was prevented by Jeff, standing behind me on a chair, a bouncer standing behind him. This is a fairly common place to find a bouncer - behind Jeff.
"Sit down!" demanded Jeff, echoing the sentiments, one person removed, of the doorman on his shoulder.
The miniature Radiohead then moved into "High and Dry" - another gem, I'll be bound - but again the crowd were negligent on the uptake. Thom was discovering that his incomparable hymns to post-teenie anguish were not so much falling on deaf ears as being consumed by terrifyingly huge mouths. In the wild, the prospect of being eaten is far less attractive than that of simply being ignored and Thom, quite correctly I think, succumbed to adrenaline.
"I've been all around the world," he spat, "and this is the rudest fucking audience I've ever seen!"
This precipitated a split-second of silence - just enough time, in fact, for me to swing round and observe Jeff, now standing on a table in the midst of a private dance performance and bathed in the golden light of the hour between dog and wolf, bellowing with impressive might:
"Then get off the fuckin' stage, cocksuckers!"
That was it. Game, set, match to the freaky little fucker in the purple hipsters and fur coat. Jonny Guitar fixed his stare on Jeff and I wondered momentarily if he might jump off the stage and stab him with his face but he continued gamely, if disconsolately, into "Nice Dream" instead. Not that you could hear it, at this point. Since Jeff's standoff the noise had escalated past all good sense. On top of that, a bizarre waveform anomaly had developed whereby all of the G, S, F and A sounds in the swelling discord were mingling to create the impression that we were chanting "FAGS, FAGS, FAGS..." Either that or we were chanting "FAGS, FAGS, FAGS..." - at any rate, it seemed unlikely that anything would drive the performance any further into the ground until a table beside the window broke out in a four-fisted brawl. And this being no ordinary evening, I was pleased to note that at the centre of this particular storm was a woman who was now being strangled on the floor by her Scrabble partner, of all fucking things. The entire room lurched in their direction and I spotted my friend Graham planting the wife-beating word-gamer in the temple. I started across two tables, feeling that if punches were being given away like that then I wanted one but I fell off the damn table and into Thom, who had stormed off the stage and into, presumably, early retirement.
Jonny, meanwhile, had gone straight for Jeff. Waving one tiny, white Brit-Pop fist in Jeff's face while picking him up off the ground with the other, Jonny laced into him with surprising vigour. I've never seen Jeff dumbstruck before - I've seen him bizarre, unfathomable and unearthly...I've even seen him change shape - but Jeff at a loss for words was a new one for me. Finally, he gathered himself enough to protest, "Hey man, I fuckin' love your band. I've seen you four times, you guys rock...uh...but you should try driving around America in a stinky van with two assholes for a month playing to empty shitholes for nothing, ya' fuckin' Nazi. Don't touch me."
A point well made, I thought, before leaving the two to square off in the most pansy way imaginable.
Somewhere down the bar, Thom was brooding very publicly with Sook Yin-Lee.
"Hi," I said, "that was pretty interesting, wasn't it?"
Thom scowled at me, "What was so fucking interesting about it?"
"Well...You know...er..."
Fuck me, he's short, I thought. What is it with all these midgets? Jeff, Jonny, Thom. These people have to bend down just to comb their hair.
Turning to Sook Yin, I offered, "Hasn't this been a fun night?"
"I don't think there's anything fun about seeing a woman get strangled in a bar, right at my very feet."
"You don't?" I asked, genuinely surprised, "...Jesus."
The woman in question, incidentally, was skipping towards us with a Mai-Tai, wearing a grin and a cute Betsy Johnson summer dress. Her boyfriend was lying on Dunsmuir St. in a pool of his own blood, clutching a Q and two Ms (16 points).
"Well," I continued, "I mean at least it was lively. You're never going to forget this, right?" Then, getting a bit carried away, I added, "it's art! Kind of."
Sook Yin-Lee squinted, pursed her lips and landed a shoulder-chuck on me.
"Right..." she said, before moving off.
Wow. A Much Music Blow Off. I stood there and contemplated this for a while, concluded that she wanted to fuck me, had another five beers and went home in a great mood.
A year later, Radiohead came back to play at The Rage. By now they had become what they deserved: authentic fuck-off Rock Stars. "The Bends" turned out to be a hell of a record and I remain a devoted fan. Even better than that was the track that they contributed to the "Help: Bosnia" album. "Lucky" is a song of epic sadness with a guitar lead from Tiny White Fists that makes your colon shrink and a vocal performance that makes it puff back up again.
The day before the show, I attended a dinner party with Radiohead's soundman - a lovely fella by the name of Jim - and to my delight, he brought Jonny Guitar with him. Inevitably, after an excellent meal and a few bottles of red, the question came up.
"What was the name of that place," Jonny began, "that place we played where the riot broke out?"
"The Railway Club," I answered uneasily. "I was there."
"You were there?"
"Yeah," I smiled as malevolent possession took hold, "I was one of the Assassins!"
Observers later reported that the trembling guitarist's face turned seven different shades of red, perhaps in some weird reflection of the seven shades of shit that I expect he wanted to kick out of me at that moment.
I had contended with Sook Yin-Lee that the Railway Club debacle would never be forgotten. This was already borne out in high style when the band discussed the incident in Melody Maker. And now, a year later, I was presented with more proof that the whole thing had a majestically painful quality that neither time nor home-made Gnocchi would ever salve. Vancouver, noted generally for its stillness and quiet, had enjoyed a Mad Season.
Jonny didn't talk to me for a while but after a few drinks, we manfully bonded on the topic of Scott Walker and the next day, Radiohead put on a fucking killer show.
Happily, Jeff has found a measure of peace in Oregon, where he lives with his wife. He is now confident enough to have sex all on his own.
Many Canadian celebrities find Adrian Mack to be quite charming.
In an Ivy League of Her Own
By Meredith Low
It's official. I have the documents to prove it. I am Ivy League material. Not only is that my doting mother's opinion, it is objective fact. I have received a letter, on official stationery and all, inviting me to avail myself of the educational produce of Yale University, alma mater of George Bush and Jodie Foster.
It feels like some sort of accident. Mere mortals like me don't actually attend such illustrious institutions, do they? Well, apparently all that's standing in the way of me joining the ranks of the educational elite is a mere US $24,000 tuition fees. It would seem that I am made of The Right Stuff.
Money was my first concern - after all, I could get the same two-year degree in Canada for the price of one year's tuition alone at Yale. But having decided that this is too good an opportunity to forgo, and having convinced various family member of this as well, it looks like the money is borrowable. The amounts are frightening, but hey - it's Yale.
So what's the problem now? I am petrified. The idea of the Ivy League and the Eastern Seaboard and the Big Leagues intimidates the hell out of me. People I run into ask where I'm going to school and I can't tell them without feeling faintly ridiculous, even though everyone so far from the travel agent to my grandparents has been excited and impressed.
I'm sure that one of these days I'll tell someone who will say "Who, you? Yale? BWAH HAHAHAHA!" Silly but true.
It's not that I have lived a risk-free life to date, either - I've done any number of ridiculous things in my career: hitch-hiked through three deserts; thrashed a poisonous snake with a stick; been charged by an elephant; surfed the mosh pit at ska concerts; taken juvenile delinquents snowshoeing. I have ridden tuk-tuks in Bangkok, motorcycle taxis in Jakarta, rickshaws in Rangoon, tomato trucks in Namibia and minivan-buses in Johannesburg. (What's more, I have given my phone number to guys I have met in bars in Canada.)
Why does big, bad Yale scare me so much? The more I talk to people, the more overwhelmed I get...
"You'll bump into Nobel laureates in the yard..." says the Esteemed Academic, whom I contact for a learned opinion. Having gone to a Canadian school fondly known as "Last Chance U" for my undergrad, I must say I find this idea gives me a tingly feeling. It's all so swanky. It starts with the huge glossy brochures, sent upon request. I look at them and think about how much they must have cost to print... How could they possible justify a photo essay for a business school brochure, for chrissake? More to the point, are they really courting me with all this grandeur?
Martha Stewart was there to speak last year, presumable about how to build a business empire by making people enjoy feeling like klutzy philistines. The President of the World Bank also came by. And the President of Toyota. Not the president of the Canadian subsidiary, but of the whole company. And they come there to talk to the Leaders of Tomorrow (of whom I will be one...).
"You'll take the train to NYC to see the opera, go to museums.." says the Newly-Minted Alumni who calls me to "answer your questions and twist your arm a little." (Just in case I am juggling similar offers of admission from Harvard, Stanford and the like.) Little does this eager voice realize that the proximity to NYC is part of the anxiety factor. I've never been backpacking in Europe or seen the major cities of North America (Spokane, WA doesn't count). I haven't had the experience of being scruffy and broke in the first world... I'm not sure I'll like it.
In my travels so far, despite my protestations to the contrary, I have in fact had quite a bit of money compared to those around me. I'm afraid my classmates will either be the Sweater and Pearls set or Riot Grrls wearing Rolexes, jetting off to Aruba for Christmas and Cancun for spring break while I debate whether I can afford to see a movie. Will they ask me my favorite brandy and a good bistro in Paris at the gates of Yale?
"You're going away and never come back to see us any more," wails my Small Cousin, using the occasion to have a small snit and show me her Sailor Moon poster and Pocahontas pillow. Then again, she has just become a big sister so her current emotional responses are suspect - anything that will get her more attention, she'll do.
Unfortunately, my aunt echoes this plaint and makes me feel like an extended-family home-wrecker. She's proud, but ... Just about everyone with whom I share any genetic material at all lives in Canada, and almost all in BC. Making the jump to the US of A really rocks the family boat.
"I was trying to fix my front door and I was so frustrated I was on the point of tears, but I thought that if my daughter can get into Yale, I can install a damn Yale lock!" says my Intrepid Mother who, after initial caution, is really on side. Despite a number of ups and downs in her personal life, she remains the optimist she was born to be. She figures I should go because I have the opportunity and - presumably - the brains and that my life will take the right turns from there.
The problem is, optimism is not genetic. I will be a very small fish in a huge pond. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to do that. Do I have it?
I worry about where would I go from there? Having cracked the mystique of the Ivy League, what do I do then? What if I don't become some sort of World or Industry Leader - what if I just Get a Job? If I make the average starting salary for grads I can pay back my student loan OK, but what if, in that crowd, I'm below average?
"Coming out of Yale you'll get a signing bonus just for taking a job," says my friend the Management Consultant on Sabbatical. I guess my waitressing days are probably over now. The option any more of not taking my career seriously will no longer be possible. I'll have a Career for good.
Yale keeps sending me mail, and I am about to send them a cheque to retain my spot in the class. If they let me in through a bureaucratic error, they haven't figured it out yet. I'll send them the deposit so it's sealed.
While I waffle about all this, I find I spend an inordinate amount of time playing Tetris and reading old magazines (I'm not sure how the Cosmopolitan got into my house, but hey - why waste it?). And I ask myself: Would an Ivy Leaguer waste their time doing this? Watching Rosie O'Donnell, renting Jerry Maguire, aimlessly surfing the net?
"Not that it's not a great place to live, but Vancouver cultivates a really provincial attitude in people and you are being sucked into it. Get the hell out of here and go for it!" says my friend the Risk-Taking Advocate. She's got a point. Maybe I am a bit lulled by Lotusland and have forgotten the rest of the world. Time to hit the road again. I never planned to live here and I never planned to stay in the social services field very long. If I'm gonna make a change I might as well grab the brass ring and go for broke.
* * * * * * * * ** * *
Things are looking up. I actually told someone the other day where I was going to school and stood on both feet and looked them in the eye while saying it.
Also, the other day, I received a letter from a student's special interest group on women in management. It included summaries of the members' undergrad degrees, their interests, and past and future jobs.
I scan it, wondering how padded these mini-resumes are, and feeling, you guessed it, intimidated by the plethora of high-charged Career Women on the list, when I see it. One student was a Starbuck's store manager. Hmmm...
Not that it isn't a challenging job and all, and call me superficial and catty if you like, but somehow I feel better. As if there will be a place for me too.
Tomorrow I'm mailing my cheque, and buying a copy of the Wall Street Journal. And maybe even Cosmo, just for the hell of it. Even Ivy Leaguers are entitled to their guilty pleasures.
Meredith Low is currently researching good Paris bistros.
Honey, Ed Fucked the Dog!
By Ed Wrench
For those of you click happy voyeurs that bothered to check out the back issues you'll notice that an almost identically titled article headlined the premier issue of this webzine. It is the most accessed article to date of all the articles regardless of which issue. We know this because we are sick enough to put a counter on the page of each article, or perhaps it's just vanity and ego, but whatever the case it has generated statistics. And the statistics are bearing out the age old infamous advertising slogan that sex sells, thus the title, again. But while the aforementioned article is about having sex with various animals and is a good read in its own right, this story is just about plain old dogfucking.
It goes like this...
I get home from work about 2:30 in the afternoon, and when I open the door my dog is waiting for me. As usual he gets all excited like and jumps up and down and up and down and up and down, and I lovingly greet him by name and pat his little head. My wife is in the TV room.
"Wilma, I'm home" I say and she giggles.
I promptly strip out of my work gear and go to the bathroom to wash up, etc. The dog follows.
I wash my face and feet and sit down on the john. The dog is sitting on the floor in front of me, looking at me, and he is so fucking cute! My wife asks if I want coffee as she enters the kitchen. I reply yes gleefully, then I suggest we have it on the roof deck {see HOME IMPROVEMENT}.
Gurgle gurgle gurgle goes...the coffee maker?
The coffee gets made and I get dressed in yesterday's afternoon clothes and we, wife and dog, go up to the roof deck...to relax. It's a beautiful day, warm, but we're in the shade so it doesn't bother us as we sink into our cape cod chairs and suck back the warm creamy coffee and the utter beauty of the day.
It is so god damn beautiful that I suddenly find I've lost myself, I'm mind altered, it's weird, its beautiful. My head rolls around and I see my dog looking up at me longingly, lovingly, and then I think to myself, "I love my dog"
BUT I'M NOT GOING TO FUCK IT! Hey, this was supposed to be a story about how I fucked the dog all right, but I meant while I was at work, get it. You guys into dog fucking are sick!
For those of you looking for a story I am sorry to disappoint you all, and I mean all, because this isn't a sex story up to and including dogs, and truthfully, I never really had a story in mind for this article. It was just, and thanks to the internet--is still, an experiment to test the age old infamous advertising slogan that I referred to in the first paragraph of this blather here, remember...that sex sells. You are now a statistic.
Thanks for your participation, now piss off you creepy animal fucker types.
Ed Wrench only fucks metaphorical dogs.
Genki Desu Ka? - Part 3
By Chuck Blade
Suzuki's sudden burst of determination broke me out of my Thailand reverie. "Not only you a bad foreigner," he said as he swiveled back around from his filing cabinets with a handful of forms, " you a liar! " He seemed to be taking it all a bit too personally and calling me a liar was out of line since I hadn't yet been asked the obvious question, whether I had worked illegally or not in Tokyo; and there was no way he could have figured out my lie about Osaka with one phone call. "What did she say ?" No answer. He busied himself imposing some order upon a stack of faded official photocopied documents. "I have a right to know what is happening to me." Smirking to himself he replied. " I am sending you back to Canada." It was over. Checkmate. Devious Japanese civil servant takes desperate Canadian tourist. Not knowing what to say I did what any desperate man would do: I begged. I begged for time. Nope. I begged to be allowed to return to my apartment to put some things in order. No way. I begged for a phone call. Surprisingly it was granted. All I could think about was my girlfriend so I called our apartment to tell her the sad news but she wasn't there.
As I hung up the phone Suzuki was ready for my signature. His expedience was impressive but he knew he had me from the start. If the possession of the contents of my journal wasn't enough to bust me on then the hacked phone card was. Stunned, I mechanically began to sign the papers. The voice of someone I didn't particularly like echoed in my ears: 'He'll be back in three months', and I made a mental note not to talk to him again. I was making my last big mistake here because I wasn't even paying attention to what I was signing. Later I would learn that I had signed away my right to appeal but at the time all I could feel was a sense of defeat and humiliation not unlike the time I was threatened with expulsion by a professor I admired on the semifinal senior basketball game when after I ran out the last ten seconds of the clock confused, thinking we were ahead by a point when actually we were behind a point.
I was led back to the waiting room. Twice as many people were there now. The day's catch. More arrived as I was left to wait for an hour or more. I managed another phone call but still couldn't reach her. My depression deepened. Someone tried striking up a conversation but I wasn't interested. I was told there wasn't a flight out that day so I was to be moved to a larger holding area until the first available one the next day. I scanned the room for the first time and saw a deep sense of dejection and fear everywhere. Most of these people would become cell-mates later as we waited for our departures out of Japan, but we would speak little even then, all of us turned cold to the other's anguish, selfishly cradling our private miseries and contempt. My mind raced through images of my girlfriend sitting alone in our apartment crying, wearing a shirt of mine to comfort her, my private students, confused about my sudden disappearance, feeling betrayed by yet another foreigner, my various employers angry that I did not return as promised and lastly to the people I knew back home who I would eventually have to face and relate yet another failure in what seemed like a life revolving around taking long shots at the slightest opportunity and missing. I watched half a dozen people leave to confront Suzuki, their last station in the day's deportation odyssey, returning with their heads bowed: defeated.
This cold efficiency in the handling of humans beings, the systematic assessment of desirability and its eventual shattering of hope cast a morbid shadow. My mind's eye reshaping the scene, distressing it completely, to a remote outpost at some less traveled border crossing waiting for my entry to be approved. My name is called and I am led out under armed guard. I am hearing the voices of the teenage soldiers in broken English admiring my running shoes, 'Converse cool', as I am walked out to a field. Told to kneel down one of my teenage executioners is saying something, demanding money, his chubby well fed face...
"You must pay three hundred dollars for one night." I was sitting now in the offices of I'M Security, the company responsible with handling deportees after Customs and Immigration are finished with your processing, my death-trip daydream interrupted by an overstuffed, uniformed man whose fat face bulged out from his tight collar looking absurdly large under his tiny blue hat. I was being coerced into paying for my own confinement. "No I won't do that." Not really being convinced of the effectiveness of a defiant stand at this stage I was nevertheless fucked if I would pay for the right to spend a night in jail. It was half past three and I had been detained since my arrival at one. Things weren't looking very good for me. The chances of getting back into Japan seemed pretty slim. It occurred to me that matters had rushed along and I hadn't exactly presented any strong opposition so, without having much to lose, I began to stall the proceedings. "I want to speak to someone from the Canadian Embassy!" His previous look of disbelief returned. The Japanese are not known for dealing well with confrontational behavior.
"There is no point. Give up. It is over." I barely heard him. I decided not to say or do anything until I spoke to someone from the consulate. I leaned back in my chair and lit a cigarette. "This is extortion. I want to speak to someone from the Embassy." I was beginning to enjoy myself. The stooge left the room. I would just have to keep agitating and refusing until my demands were met. I was a Canadian citizen being shaken down by foreign officials! So as I waited for a Canadian representative I tried to relax as best as I could. I remembered how in Bangkok my day would start with a traditional Thai massage in the lobby of the guest house I eventually stayed in. A beautiful Thai girl firmly caressing my sore neck and shoulders, her strong hands deftly drawing out any pain or tension in my muscles. Now I had wished I made Bangkok my original destination, not Tokyo, and vowed that if I somehow got out of this mess I would relocate there as quickly as possible.
Nobody from the embassy ever arrived nor was I allowed to use the phone again. After three hours of pleading, yelling, and pounding the table my stall tactics were becoming hard to justify. It was almost 8p.m. and doubtful that anyone would be at the embassy even if I was granted a phone call. So finally, after being threatened with arrest over the illegal phone card, I paid and spent the night in jail with about two dozen other people who were also refused entry into Japan that day. If this was an average daily catch of illegal aliens then the annual revenues in this profitable trade exceeded two million dollars. Perhaps the final indignity was to discover that my connecting flight from LA hadn't been arranged at all.
So now I am barred from Japan for a year and will be scrutinized carefully even if I chose to go back in the future.
Back in Vancouver I was relating my story to some friends saying that I was particularly bummed because, had I gotten back in, I could have watched some of the Olympics live that winter in Nagano. "But the Winter Olympics aren't until 1998," someone pointed out. I guess I never was good at lying.
PROLOGUE:
Chuck Blade had this letter slipped under his door in Japan. Author unknown.
I'm very sorry to come here this time too. I'm very sorry to enter this letter to the post. I wanted to talk the next matters. I had said a few days ago my heart is chrischan. It's meaning is the next. My heart and my idea resemble to the reliegeon of the Christ. And... I'm very busy now and I have no leisure of going to the church. By the way... other topics of mine... I had written the story of the end of the Japanese alient kingdom's story. I had written the story by my all soul and if everyone would utelize the story unless telling to me about the matters, very bad destiny would come. By the way I think to the next. Everybody exist in this place, I can live. Thank you... I'll present the story about the Peter Pan (other story)... (a little)... Peter Pan was a fairly of the music in the leaves. In the world of the imagenation I became to the fairly of the water and I talked to him. On the other hand Peter Pan had had the friend with Donald Dack and sleeping queen.
Chuck Blade sold his ten year old pair of Converse to a second hand clothing store in Tokyo for $100.00.
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