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Estrangement
A thought had been plaguing me for a number of months, the contours of which were difficult to define. It had been brought on by a banal event - a visit to my native city of Vancouver. My return coincided with readings from The Flagship of Eternal Stupidity. The readings went all right, then we moved south, spending time on the Oregon coast, Mount Shasta, and onwards to Frisco. Rudy was in Frisco, and had been for thirty plus years. The last time I had spoken to him was from Hugh's bed right after his death.
We don't like to talk about death where I come from and the taboo on a pretty obvious topic has made the lot of us idiots in some very crucial zones. From where I sit, at the age of 54, with my teeth falling out due to a clenching problem, the ancestors don't seem far, and since they weren't all that keen on receiving me during life, I can't see how the big reunion will necessary be a warm one.
A few years before Hugh, a defrocked Jesuit priest as it happens, was strangled in Mexico city, I ran into him in London's West End, where he had scored a condominium for the fall theatre season, and was taking a sabbatical from his now pretty limited ecumenical duties. When I entered the restaurant, he was shouting at a waiter that his truite amandine had not been properly deboned, roman collar and all.
He was an obnoxious son of a bitch, no doubt, but he left memories engraved on ye old mental template. Later that night, we finished proceedings at his apartment after a pint at a seedy trannie bar he favoured, drinking Chivas while he railed against me for being a long-haired non-believer. He was a chintzy bastard, true to the family tradition, and swore I'd not get a second swig of his whisky, but his bladder was bad, and I topped up my glass every time he got up to relieve himself.
"How dare you attack the tenets of the Catholic church," he'd bellow at me before bragging he was a murder suspect, or knew Kim Philby, or in relation to his triple vow "one out of three isn't bad". Gall up the yin yang, and chock full of trick questions: Was tsarist Russia a feudal state? Was the treaty of Waitangi signed because the Maori believed the English were goblins with eyes in the back of their heads, because they rowed backwards? Who knows, pour me a glass of Chivas and I'll give you the cure for hemophilia.
Say where they are, and cause that I may know them;For great desire constraineth me to learnIf Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom
More on all of this later...
A thought had been plaguing me for a number of months, the contours of which were difficult to define. It had been brought on by a banal event - a visit to my native city of Vancouver. My return coincided with readings from The Flagship of Eternal Stupidity. The readings went all right, then we moved south, spending time on the Oregon coast, Mount Shasta, and onwards to Frisco. Rudy was in Frisco, and had been for thirty plus years. The last time I had spoken to him was from Hugh's bed right after his death.
We don't like to talk about death where I come from and the taboo on a pretty obvious topic has made the lot of us idiots in some very crucial zones. From where I sit, at the age of 54, with my teeth falling out due to a clenching problem, the ancestors don't seem far, and since they weren't all that keen on receiving me during life, I can't see how the big reunion will necessary be a warm one.
A few years before Hugh, a defrocked Jesuit priest as it happens, was strangled in Mexico city, I ran into him in London's West End, where he had scored a condominium for the fall theatre season, and was taking a sabbatical from his now pretty limited ecumenical duties. When I entered the restaurant, he was shouting at a waiter that his truite amandine had not been properly deboned, roman collar and all.
He was an obnoxious son of a bitch, no doubt, but he left memories engraved on ye old mental template. Later that night, we finished proceedings at his apartment after a pint at a seedy trannie bar he favoured, drinking Chivas while he railed against me for being a long-haired non-believer. He was a chintzy bastard, true to the family tradition, and swore I'd not get a second swig of his whisky, but his bladder was bad, and I topped up my glass every time he got up to relieve himself.
"How dare you attack the tenets of the Catholic church," he'd bellow at me before bragging he was a murder suspect, or knew Kim Philby, or in relation to his triple vow "one out of three isn't bad". Gall up the yin yang, and chock full of trick questions: Was tsarist Russia a feudal state? Was the treaty of Waitangi signed because the Maori believed the English were goblins with eyes in the back of their heads, because they rowed backwards? Who knows, pour me a glass of Chivas and I'll give you the cure for hemophilia.
Say where they are, and cause that I may know them;For great desire constraineth me to learnIf Heaven doth sweeten them, or Hell envenom
More on all of this later...
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