Marnie's Gesture

            I had to work on Tuesday morning in what would be my last gig at OCADU at least until the summer and possibly until September. It was raining so I wrapped up my laptop in a garbage bag before putting it in my backpack. I brought it along just in case I had time to tweak my poetry manuscript before I had to hand it in later that night.

            I worked for Marie Charbonneau and she gave me another hug like last time when I arrived. I apologetically said that I was wet and she shared that she’d gotten wet as well, which led to me saying that it was supposed to rain all week, to which she added that it was predicted to snow on Friday. She informed me that she knows about that through her husband, who keeps a close watch on the weather because he's a postman. I remembered meeting her spouse back in the 80s but I'd thought that he worked in the wood shop at OCADU. When I asked her about that she confirmed that he'd once worked there, but that had been when he was a student.

            Marie wanted me to do a three-hour pose and that it was up to me whether I wanted to work naked of clothed. I told her that I didn’t mind modeling in the nude but that it is a lot less work just to keep my duds on. She decided that a fully draped figure would be too much of a challenged for her students so she had me sit with only my shirt removed. She wanted my motorcycle jacket to be part of the set though and so she draped it over one of the other furnishings. Then she brought from the prop room a child’s bicycle and told me she was putting it in, “because you’re a biker”. I think that she thought that I ride a motorcycle.

            During the break I only had time to type a few lines into my journal. An attractive young, mixed-race Black woman, who looked at least ten years older than her art school colleagues and wearing green plaid pants, came to the wide-open door of my dressing room to ask me if I’d been in the punk scene. I meant to answer that since I’m the same age as the people who were figureheads in the punk movement I couldn’t have been “in” the punk scene, but I just said that I hadn’t. She inquired as to whether I knew Colin Brunton but it didn’t ring a bell. She explained that he is making a documentary about the Toronto punk scene. I mentioned that my former landlord used to manage the Viletones and she confirmed that they would also be in the film. Later on I looked the name up and found that Colin Brunton is a fairly well known Canadian filmmaker and producer and that he already made a movie about the Toronto punk scene called “The Last Pogo”. Maybe he’s putting together another flick as well.

            At the end as I was packing up, the young woman I’d spoken to as the only other person left in the studio. She asked me if I wanted the last sketch of me that she’d done and added that she’d drawn it in one minute. I answered that I would like to have it but warned that I would be on my bike and so I’d probably have to fold it. She then rolled up her new sprint gesture, slipped it into a cylindrical plastic bag and handed it over, guaranteeing me that it was going to be worth something some day. I assured her that it was worth something now. I had noticed her signature at the bottom of her drawing but couldn’t quite make it out. I asked if it was Marian. She corrected me that it’s Marnie and supplemented, “Like in the Hitchcock film. I thought for a minute and then remembered that she meant the one with Tippi Hedron in which she plays a crazy con artist. Marnie asserted that Sean Connery played the part of an asshole. We discussed a few other Hitchcock movies. She shared that her favourite was the one with Grace Kelly about looking into the backyards and I recognized that she was referring to “Rear Window”. I stated that my favourite was one of his silent pictures called “The Lodger”. This led to a conversation about great silent films and I mentioned as well those of Buster Keaton.

As Marnie was leaving I thanked her again for the gift of her sketch. She said to me earnestly that if she’d been posing for the class she would have wanted someone to give her one of their drawings.

I rode straight home with Marnie’s rolled up gesture drawing of me sticking out of my mostly zipped up backpack, so it was a good thing it had stopped raining. I had about five hours before I needed to leave for class, so the plan was that I’d work a bit on my manuscript before finally printing it up, and that I’d have time for a siesta as well.

When modelling earlier I’d used my phone for a countdown timer as usual, which drains the battery faster than anything else I do with it. I checked and saw that it was at 36% and went to get my recharger, but it wasn’t in my backpack. I realized that it must have fallen out in the studio when I was taking my computer cord out to plug that in. That meant that I would have to go back to the art college to look for it before going to class and I also had to consider the possibility that it might not be there and alternatively go to Staples to buy another, since my phone is useless without a charger. That meant that I’d have to leave early, which would cut in to any tweaking I might have had time to do on my project. Since I also planned on bringing my guitar and playing for the class my translation of “Un Canadien Errant”, I practiced it a few times in both English and French to make sure I wouldn’t embarrass myself by fumbling the words and chords. I decided that I definitely could use a siesta, so I lay down for a while, but I had trouble sleeping because I was worried about my charger. I did doze off a bit but after less that 45 minutes I got up and started getting ready to go. After putting my guitar in two garbage bags to waterproof it in case it started raining again and printing up my project, I was only ready to leave about half an hour earlier than usual. I figured that if I hadn’t forgotten my charger I wouldn’t have been worried about it and so I would have stayed in bed longer and so I wouldn’t have gotten much more work done on the project anyway.

When I got to the studio there were only two students there working on something and so I wasn’t disturbing a class. I was relieved to find my charger in the first place that I looked. I was early for my final class but there were still the same three loud students in the back giggling and gossiping with one another. I wondered how early I’d have to arrive for them not to be there. I tuned my guitar and quietly practiced the song a few more times.

Our professor, George Elliot Clarke was a few minutes late. We handed in our essays and projects, and then he urged people to stick around to read a poem each if they wanted. He asked who wanted to do something but I was the only one to raise a hand, so George said I could do a couple. I explained to everyone the origin of “Un Canadien Errant” by Antoine Gérin-Lajoie and how it was from the point of view of one of the dissidents that had been exiled to the United States and Australia after the Lower Canada rebellion almost two hundred years ago. I think that I did an adequate job and George declared, “Excellent!”

Before starting my second piece, I pushed my denture in and tuned my guitar. George asked if I had any books featuring my own poetry. I answered that I’ve done a couple of chapbooks and I have a book that’s ready to go but I’ve been working on the cover for years. He asked the embarrassing question as to how far I am from finishing the cover. I told him that it depends on how motivated I am. As soon as I began my own “The Next State of Grace”, George started rocking to the beat. As soon as I got to the first chorus I started to feel that my false tooth was coming loose. I paused to push it back in. George laughed appreciatively at the line, “I can’t drive a girl home with wheels that won’t turn”. I felt my denture coming loose again and sang as best as I could while it was wobbling in there but by the time I got to the third verse it dropped down from the gap and onto my tongue. I had to stop to take it out, put it quickly onto the desk in front of me and to finish the song. All of this was very distracting and so I think it caused me to fumble some chords near the end. I think that my vocals were pretty good despite everything. After the finale George declared that the students would not soon forget my performance. I hoped it wasn’t my embarrassing struggle with my denture that they would never forget.

I had hoped to finish the course by knocking everybody’s socks off. I play my songs every morning and the denture stays in without getting that loose. I guess that I just put more behind my voice when I’m performing in front of an audience. That meant that I wouldn’t be able to sing live with the acrylic tooth unless it could be somehow refitted. The whole fiasco kind of put a damper on the rest of the night but I tried to make the best of it.

George then read the poem called “Discourse on Pleasure” in the voice of Alexander Pushkin from his latest book, “Canticles I”. He informed us that in addition to being the greatest Russian poet, George was particularly interested in Pushkin because he was part Black. George hesitated and explained that he was shy reading in front of his students, but then he lit into it passionately in a manner that only George Elliot Clarke can – “ … smoking salmon … scores of iced vodka … reason with her incremental dementia … violently violet, looking like eggplant I hate to eat … My luxuries become liabilities … Convulsive blaze in the veins … Cantankerous hanky panky … Prickle legged crone … Poets cry torrents of ink … Tumbling cadences … Palpitating opiates … jittering tits a’ shakin in the bed … I take my muse … sopping my generative fluid … earth smearing her thighs … immeasurable pleasure …” Then the next five short lines were repeated several times as a chant – “The wine/ the idylls / the Georgiks / and kisses / each night” concluding with the line, “and then the prize!”

If other students had brought poems to read, I think George would have read more of his own work, but since they didn’t he started the movie that he’d rented. We watched “Days of Darkness”, which is the final film of a trilogy by Denys Arcand. I had already seen the first film, “The Decline of the American Empire”, but not the sequel, “The Barbarian Invasions”. The movie was both funny and depressing but I was leaning for towards the depressing side of it as I sat there watching and realized that I could now remove my denture with my tongue. The story was centred on a Quebec government employee named Jean-Marc whose job it is to listen to the horrible stories of people asking for financial help and having to calmly offer them advice after turning them down for help. One example is a guy that lost both his legs in an accident when he go slammed into a pole and then received a bill for the pole. Jean Marc confirmed that he does have to pay. Another person came to complain that her husband had been imprisoned without trial on charges of terrorism. Jean Marc asked her if she knew any rock stars. Her response was, “I’m an immigrant!” He simply told her that her only hope might be if some rock stars became interested in her husband’s case and gave it some publicity. Otherwise he would be screwed.

Jean Marc has a wife who is obsessed with her job in real estate and two daughters who spend all their time either with headphones on or playing video games. Because of this he doesn’t have any contact with his family and doesn’t have sex with his wife. He has however a very vivid fantasy life and imagines several different successful lifestyles for himself along with certain regular fantasy women who worship the ground he walks on.

He comes home one day to see his wife is packing up and leaving him to move to Toronto. His daughters don’t seem to care one way or the other. He tries speed dating, which is a failure, and then he quits his job the same day that his mother dies in the retirement home. His wife comes back and he immediately starts walking away, down the street, catches a bus to the country on the shores of the St Lawrence river where he opens up the cottage that he inherited from his father. He meets a woman his age that is living a simple life and they are just coming together at the end of the film.

There were about four students in the room, including me, at the end. Two of them came up to get George to sign his book for them before they left. Julia wanted to know what makes good poetry. He gave her a long list of things, but the main word that stood out for me was “surprise”.  They also discussed Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. She said that she dreads taking the course. George said that he hated it at first but grew to love Milton’s blank verse.  He said the key is to read it aloud since he dictated it when he was blind to his daughters for them to transcribe. I told him that I read James Joyce’s “Ulysses” out loud to my ex-girlfriend. He thought that would be a good one to orate as well. Patrick arrived out of breath with his project but no envelope, so George wrote his address down.

After Patrick and Julia left I stayed with George for a while. He said that he would be staying a little longer because he had to kill some time before being interviewed on the Howl radio show later that night by Valentino Assenza. I told George that Valentino doesn’t like me and then I told him the story about how I got barred from the rat Bar Reading Series because I told Rudy Feron to go fuck himself.  I’d brought my guitar to sing a poem and he told the audience that it was against the rules to play songs at a poetry reading. It wasn’t against the Rat Bar rules at all, because if it had suddenly been made non kosher I would have been notified by my friends (now ex-friends) that were on the Rat Bar committee since they knew that I brought my guitar sometimes.

George talked about how Bob Dylan receiving a Nobel Prize for literature for song writing is a hallmark and well deserved because he’s the best at what he does. I countered that Dylan is only arguably the best in English. I told him that both Serge Gainsbourg and Boris Vian were better lyricists in French than Dylan in English. I was only slightly surprised that George knew who Gainsbourg was but I was quite taken aback that he was familiar with Boris Vian. Interestingly though he knew him from his novels and had no idea that he had been a songwriter as well.

I told George that I would be performing on June 3 and asked if he was going to be in town. He declared, “I hope not!” but quickly added that it wasn’t because I had a gig, but rather due to the fact that he was planning a tour of Italy through the whole month of June. I have suspected for a while that he and Giovanna Riccio are a couple but it didn’t feel entirely appropriate to bluntly ask him if that was the case. But hearing about him taking a trip to Italy provided a good way to inquire, so I asked, “Is Giovanna going with you?” He confirmed that she would be, so now I know. I think they might have gotten together after they both featured at Shab-e She’r in 2014.
            George and I left together and he went to put some more money in the meter, since he was going to go over to Hart House to kill some more time.

When I got home I was still depressed about my denture falling out while I was singing. I went to bed almost wishing that I’d never wake up.