The guy drinks too much.  Smokes dope on the job and is ‘under the influence’ way more than not.  He’s a bit less than attractive, too.  His work is excellent despite that, and he could drywall a scarecrow to look like a supermodel.  Admittedly, he looks a bit anti-social and, being in such a trade, he is always dusty, unkempt, down at the heels and looks like something the cat wouldn’t even drag in.  I met him a few years ago.  He was a good guy to me and Sally.  And we liked him.

After a shift at a job he was on a few days ago, he left late in the morning.  The reason for that is that he starts very early or sometimes works through the night.  Drywalling work is not compatible with other trades work. Contractors and other subtrades prefer the drywallers to be unseen, unheard and yet do perfect work – somehow magically.  That usually means working weird hours.  Drywallers try to work around the other trades.

His job at this time was in an expensive penthouse in Downtown.  After work, he walked to his car, stayed in it for a few extra minutes, maybe making a call and then, driving less than perfectly, made his way out of the lot.  I know this because his actions were caught on the security tape and also because the security tape was soon being reviewed.

An outraged woman told security that her laptop had been stolen from her car.  She had arrived at the building early and left before noon, shortly after the departure of the drywaller. The cameras showed only him walking in the area during this time.  They did not show that he broke into her car and they did not show him carrying a laptop.  But she concluded that he was the thief.  She called the chair of the strata building, they called the police and they also called the general contractor who had let the drywall contract to the fellow being accused. The two women demanded that the drywaller return the computer and they demanded the contractor fire the guy and that the general also do extra credential checking to ensure that his other tradespeople were not criminals.

The general contractor apologized to the drywaller but said he had no choice but to fire him a few days before Christmas because that was the alleged victim’s and the strata council’s chair’s demand.  The contractor also offered to replace the missing laptop, even though he did not believe his subtrade worker had taken it.  It is worth noting that the owner of the penthouse – the one who hired the contractor – was not involved. The person making the accusation was simply a woman claiming to have been keeping an early appointment in the building. She was supported in that contention by the chair with whom the meeting had occurred.

The drywaller denied the allegation but had no choice but to stop work.  He would lose a large portion of his December income since he had set aside the time to do this job and had no other contract to continue with.  Given his proclivities, he might be excused if he had simply given up on December and was planning on spending even more time less conscious.

After all the running around and firing and the setting of hair-on-fire had played out the woman called the building manager. She called to inform him that she had erred.  She had left her computer at home.

A new drywalling firm had already been hired.  The contractor had spent the day running one way and then the other. The previous drywaller had his reputation impugned.  The building manager was embarrassed and offered the drywaller $100 from his own pocket as an apology. The chair of the strata board was not heard from.  She ducked away. Neither has the woman who made the accusation apologized or made good any type of compensation.

Now imagine this story playing out a bit differently.  In this version it is the drywaller who’s computer is missing from the front seat of his car. In this fantasy version it is the smartly dressed business woman who is caught on the security tape walking to her car and getting into it. In this version the drywaller views the video with the building manager and concludes the woman is a thief.  The police are called. The outraged drywaller insists that this woman’s employer be called and that she be fired on the strength of his allegation. And that her co-workers and boss are informed of this misdeed and their backgrounds are also re-checked.

Do you see that ever happening? Of course not.  So why is it happening here?  Is it the clothes?  Is it the type of work they do?  Could it be a gender bias?  Is it perceived social status?

And, given the example set of ‘trying to do the right thing’ by the general contractor and the building manager, why, if the two women learn of their error are they not falling all over themselves trying to fix it?

Can anyone explain that to me?

We were patrolling the park one night.  The kids were drinking and doing drugs.  We passed a few words.  They invited us to partake.  We declined. They said, “You guys think you are better than us, dontcha?”

“No”, I said, “We do not THINK we are better than you, we KNOW we are better than you.  You guys are total dorks!”

A heated discussion ensued wherein they asked. “So, like, what can we do that is better than this?”  And we answered with a litany of alternatives to wasting their time doing petty crimes and getting high.  One of the options was going to Expo 67 despite it being two years too late.

“We don’t have the money for that kind of thing!”

“Neither did I.  I hitched across Canada, spent 9 months in Europe and hitched back last year and I only spent $275 total with most of that going to airfare from Gander.  You don’t need money to travel.  I can teach you how to go across the country, stay for the summer and come back on $20.00.”

Six kids took me up on the deal.  $10.00 from me to ‘get going’ and then, when they are in Montreal and stayed for at least two months, they could call and I’d send them $10.00 to get home.  Two kids got to Penticton together, bought beer and stayed two weeks with a cousin.  Two kids did much the same as far as Calgary.  One made it to Manitoba.  Only Wayne made it all the way to Montreal.

“Find an older, semi-homely female student or teacher and attend her class.  After class, tell her of your quest.  If she doesn’t take you home, do another class later that day.  Keep it up til you have a place to stay and someone to feed you.  You be the best boyfriend ever. Take care of chores, make dinner, provide any other service she requires and go to classes.   You can audit them.  Don’t pay, just go from class to class until you find something you like.  Come back before school starts here and if you ever say I put you up to this, I’ll deny it!”

Wayne followed the formula and ate well, slept well and learned a lot.  In late August, he called for his ten bucks.  He called collect.  I took the call and informed him that he had just used the money promised to call collect.  Told him I was proud of him and looked forward to seeing him in a week or so.  Then I hung up.

Wayne came back.  He dropped out of the gang.  He enrolled in City College.  And he did well.  I would like to report that Wayne went on to become a professor and wrote books or something but he did not.  He did two years and dropped out to get married.   I saw him a few years later, father of two, driving a Chevy ll and looking happy.  He had a full time, good job and lived not far from the old neighbourhood but he had plans, he had a vision, he had a future.

Travel can do that for a kid.

And that may be the essence of his story, really.  Thug goes bad and OD’s.  But I knew him differently.  I liked him.  Mostly.

And, after our set-to, he came to like me, too.  We were friends in a different-side-of-some-kind-of-line way.  As he became even more delinquent, he got arrested more often.  When that happened, he ended up in Juvy (Juvenile Court) and they kept threatening to do something but, of course, they never did.  Finally, It looked like Jerry was going to be ‘sent up’ to adult court and that would likely mean serious incarceration.  He asked me to speak on his behalf.

I did.

But I didn’t sugarcoat anything.  I told the judge all the bad stuff Jerry was doing and all the bad stuff he had done.  I even threw in the story of the beer bottles when I was asked to explain why I was there in the first place.  The judge said, “So, you beat him up and he asked you to speak for him and this is the best you can do?”

“Pretty much.  Jerry is well on his way to becoming a criminal and the sad part is that he doesn’t really see it.  He is not a bad kid.  Just completely uncontrollable and his mom is an addict and a prostitute, he doesn’t know his father and, basically, the only life he knows is delinquent and bad…soon to get worse, probably.”

“Can you control him?”

“No.  Of course not.  No one can.  I live in a city-park caretaker’s cottage.  I go to school.  All I could do is make sure he is in at night and out the door to school in the morning…if they will take him back.”

Jerry piped up and said, “I’ll live with Dave and Ted and go to school every day.”

The judge looked at me and said, “Are you willing to do that for him?”

When Ted heard that we had a new roommate, he was not happy.  I was not happy.  Even Jerry was not entirely happy after we told him the way things were going to be.  He had to do dishes, sleep on the floor, obey some rules and be in before ten at night or else we’d turn him back in.  And he knew we would.

He did OK for a year or so.  We all did.  No more trouble.  He kept his side of the deal, that is for sure.  But, when we left the park after almost two years, he had no place to go so Ted took him to the house he was living at.  That lasted awhile but, by then, Jerry was a legal adult and Children’s Aid was not helping and Ted was soon to find his wife and I had met Sally and so I was gone.  At 19, Jerry went out to live on his own.

I heard from him now and again and my prediction was right.  He eventually became a ‘collector’ for a loan shark and drug dealer and gained a reputation for using a wrecking bar to make the client pay up. Typically, he just smashed a leg but he once hit a guy so hard on the head that he was pretty sure he killed him.  And that didn’t stop him.

One day, when Sal and I were living on our boat, Jerry showed up in a yellow Corvette with a beautiful but ditzy blond.  After the pleasantries, he told me he wanted to leave a package with me because he was pretty sure he was being followed.

“Why would anyone follow you, Jerry?”

“Well, I am on a weekend pass from Oakalla and I am in for dangerous driving and driving without a license.  Plus I am carrying a few ounces of coke.  I am pretty sure someone is watching.”

“I didn’t know they put people in jail for driving offences like that.  You must have some record.  And I am pretty sure you don’t have a license now.  Of course you are being watched.  Give me the keys and I’ll drive the car to where you want me to.  You’ll have to carry your own dope.”

“Well, I ran over a guy trying to collect a debt but they couldn’t pin that on me so they threw the book at me for dangerous driving.  That’s not right, is it?  Anyway, I am not too concerned about the car.  What are they going to do, send me to jail?  I have to go back on Monday anyway. No, I need you to take the dope.”

“Jerry, I’ll take the dope and flush it down the toilet.  Seriously.  Like within the next minute after you give it to me.  Is that what you want?”

“Whatever, man, I just need to get rid of it.”

I took it.  I flushed it.  And off he went.  Then he really went off the rails.  For over a decade.  Ran with harder criminals.  Moved up the list of the damned-all-to-hell and, last I heard, he had overdosed and was dead.

And, of the 20 or so kids in the gang, that plot-line played out for over a dozen of them…give or take an offense or two or jail-time duration.  I know of a few who escaped the dark side but they are very much in the minority.

I didn’t have a place to live.  Neither did my friend, Ted.  We were both twenty and attending school and, after tuition, didn’t have a cent to our name. In fact, we were living off of student loans and, until recently, I had been living with my live-in-her-apartment-girlfriend, Cheryl. Which is another great story.

Our professor of Something 101 started the class one day by asking if anyone knew of two, huge football players who would consider living rent free in a caretaker’s suite in a city park on the wrong side of town.  Seems Clark Park was the resident stomping ground of a gang of delinquent youth who had been running roughshod for so long the city had closed the caretaker’s suite and was considering selling the land to developers. The last two caretakers had been beaten severely and the cottage had been set on fire more than a few times.

Ted was 5’7″ in his mother’s heels.  Plus he spoke with a lisp and fancied himself a poet. Despite this, Ted was the toughest guy in his and our neighbourhood.  He was legendary after a half hour donnybrook at Wally’s drive-in on Kingsway one night.  He eventually walked away under his own power and his opponent, feared city wide,  had to be carried off.  KD was much older, much bigger than Ted and much more feared prior to his dethronement.  His reputation was such that he remained a major threat even after the loss to everyone except, of course, Ted.

We drove over to the park before saying anything and made a point to go on a Friday night when the gang was said to gather.  We met about a dozen teens in cut-off jean jackets over leather, sporting tattoos before it was fashionable and showing up for the Friday night debauchery in cars just stolen.  There was a lot of beer, a lot of dope and a lot of testosterone.  It was weird in a cheap B horror-cum-slasher flick kind of way but mostly because of the dark, the park setting, the still partially-burned cottage and cars strewn around the park beside trees, water fountains and even on the playing field.  The park was clearly their turf and it showed.  Not a cop in sight.

But, honestly?  Not one of the kids was as tough as I was and they would need six of them to take on Ted and they’d still lose.  After a bit of socializing, we told them that we were considering moving into the cottage, mostly because we had no place to live but, if we did, we’d have to act like caretakers and we might have a problem with them if they objected.  They assured us that there would be no problem.  They could just as easily park their temporary rides on the street for appearances sake and, so long as we didn’t disturb their gatherings, we’d all be fine.

We took the job, the cottage was repaired once again and we had to report monthly to Emery Barnes who was then the director of the community centre a few blocks away. Emery was about 6’6″, black, huge and had hands so big that when holding basketballs they looked like they were holding cantaloupes. He had been a pro football player with the BC Lions and eventually went on to become a member of parliament in Victoria. Emery was a great guy but he said, “Don’t take the job.  It’s too dangerous.  You’ll get hurt.”

That Emery would say that kind of sobered us up but free rent is a seductive concept and we would even be provided with $60 a month for food.  We really had no choice.

After we moved in we discovered that the gang was twice the size of the group we had met that first night.  The older guys only showed up after nine o’clock.  There were maybe a half dozen or so older than we were.  Just about everybody was bigger than Ted.

We patrolled the park every night.  Things seemed to go okay.  Stolen cars were left on the street. Citizens of the area started to walk through the park again, but still only in the daylight hours. We started to get comfortable.

But it was not a walk in the park for us.  Especially in the beginning. Within a few weeks of our arrival a large group came up to the cottage and the biggest, Jerry, called out my name.  Ted was not there.  I went out. “One of your rules is no broken beer bottles, right?”

“Yes, Jerry.  I don’t care that you drink or not. I just don’t want to clean up the mess.”

He looked at me, raised the half sack of bottles he was carrying and, with some drama, smashed the flimsy box and it’s contents onto the asphalt sidewalk he was standing on.

“Geez, Jerry.  Those bottles must have slipped from your hand.  You want a broom?”

“Nope.  And I want to know what you are going to do about it.”

“Jerry, I have no option but to beat you up.  You know that.  I suggest you reconsider and pick it all up.  It would be for the best.”

Jerry just took a battle ready stance and waved two hands at me inviting me to join him.

“OK, Jer, I’ll just be a sec.  I am going to put on my boxing gloves.  They are just so I don’t hurt you.  You don’t need a pair. You can do whatever you want.  Just a minute.”

I put on a pair of 10-12 oz gloves, the size I used when boxing.  We generally used bigger, softer gloves when sparring but the competitive matches were with slightly lighter, faster and harder gloves.  I went out and asked Jerry if he was ready.  He said that he was.  I said, “Now, before this begins, I need you to be absolutely ready not only to get hit but also to pick up the bottles afterwards.  Are you sure you are ready?”

He nodded, said yes and so I hit him.  Hard.  Right on the nose. When you know how to throw a punch and you know exactly the distance you can reach, a fast left jab can take down anyone the size of the person throwing it.  Bigger guys often aren’t affected so much but Jerry was about my weight and a couple of inches taller but he was also a few years younger. He was one of the young toughs.  Not one of the older ones.  He went down like he was dead.

But he wasn’t.  Just stunned.

I rolled him over on his stomach and sat on his shoulders facing the back of his feet.  And I did this like it was the most normal thing in the world.  It wasn’t.  I was making it up as I went along.  I proceeded to punch him on the bum as hard and as often as I could before I thought my arms might fall off.  Jerry got what came to be called by the ‘guys’ an East-side spanking. That was a lot of pummeling and, after the first few punches, Jerry yelled, “What the hell are you doing?  Get off me!”

I just pushed his face back down hard into the ground and kept it up.  He stayed quiet.

When I was done, I helped Jerry up, told him to go home and told a few of the other guys to help their friend out by cleaning up the bottles for him.  They did.

I never planned it.  I really had no idea what I was doing.  I just knew that I couldn’t hurt him.  Not in a bloody or broken way.  But I had to win that challenge or move out and the rest of it just fell into place.  I had no idea how effective it would be.

It turned out to be great.  Seems pounding on his butt, even with gloves on, bruised him considerably. So much so that he could hardly walk except stiff legged for a week and couldn’t sit for several days.  He walked in school and throughout the neighbourhood for a long time with a noticeably stiff-legged gait.  The ‘beating’ became public.  Jerry had been defeated.  The gang saw enforcement meted out fairly.  And everyone knew that Ted was even tougher.

We had very few face-offs after that.  None from the gang.  Occasionally some other idiot would come to the park looking for trouble but no one else ever got hit.  Usually such a confrontation got sorted by simply looking like you were prepared to fight and only once did it come down to me picking up a baseball bat.  And Ted standing beside the lead miscreant lisping warnings at him didn’t hurt the effect either. That little act of bravado proved intimidation enough for one guy and his friends to reconsider their plans for the evening.  They turned their motorcycles around and left the park.

Basically, it was all great for almost two years and Ted and I still have many friends from the old Clark Park gang.   Those that lived, anyway.  More than just a few stories, too.

….there was that time Death showed up at the door…………..

NB – I am doing some stuff from my past at my wife’s behest.  Some commentators like it. But the numbers are down so I don’t know whether to keep it up.  I think it too dated.  Please let me know what you think.  A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will suffice.

He was a small, gentle man.  German or Dutch descent.  Pleasant. I am reminded of him whenever I see David Suchet play Hercule Poirot.  He was a doctor recently arrived at the clinic just before I was hired. He should not have been there.

If I had to hire a janitor or a van driver, I could advertise and take almost any one of the first ten applicants.  Maybe one would be really bad, one would be good enough to search through the pile for but, generally speaking, eight or nine of the applicants could do the job and get along with everyone.  Of course, they brought the usual litany of quirks and weaknesses that accompany all employees but the key word is ‘usual’.  You pretty much knew what you were getting.

Not so, the professionals.

The higher you went up the professional ladder the less likely was the chance that the applicant was one hundred percent and it was almost a guarantee that their quirks and weaknesses were not, in the least, of the usual and normal variant.  Many of the applicants revolving through the doctor’s offices were completely nuts.  Some were addicts.  Many were romantics who saw themselves as heroes — but not for very long.  I always had to hire the least crazy doctor rather than being able to choose the best from a capable bunch.  Doctors Wang, Watterman and a couple of others being very rare exceptions.

Dr. A had been on staff only a month or so when he went off on sick leave.  Fair enough. But pretty quickly that seemed to become a pattern.  Dr. A was only at work maybe two-thirds of the time and it started to become a problem.

“Doc, you okay?  You seem to be missing a lot of time.  Do you want me to help out in some way?”

“No. I’ll be fine.  It’s just nerves.  I am getting more and more anxious.”

“About working here?”

“No.  Yes.  Well, no.  Everything, really.”

I made some more inquiries but he said he was seeing a shrink, on meds and presented well when talking to me.  I felt sorry for him but concluded that he needed a place to come to, his work was generally acknowledged by the other two doctors as good.  They did not complain.  I decided to live with it and take a wait and see approach.

Until one day when the receptionist came in and said, “Dave, Dr. A. came in this morning but has not seen a single patient.  I tried knocking on his door but he won’t answer.  I’m getting worried.  I think you’d better go see him.”

So I went.  I knocked.  Nothing.  I knocked again.  And I repeated that a few times, finally adding my voice and raising it enough to be sure he heard me.

The door opened and there he stood.  Shaking almost uncontrollably. He looked like he had been crying.  As I came in, he recoiled and retreated to his chair.

“Doc, you’re not looking so good.  What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this.  I have to go.  They are all here because of me.  It’s all my fault.  I have to go.  I have been giving them whatever they want. They threaten me.  They have knives. They are going to hurt me.  I can’t do this anymore.”

The receptionist and I got him calmed down and the story eventually came out.  It seems that he was more than meek, he was a victim walking.  He had ‘kick me’ virtually written all over his face.  I hadn’t seen that.  Neither had the receptionist.  We just saw a small, gentle presence who kind of disappeared.  To be honest, he was there for a few months and, except for that one day of reckoning, I had never really noticed him.

But the local bad guys had seen it like hungry lions see a gazelle. He was just meat to them. They booked appointments specifically with him just because he was so easily intimidated that they could make him write a prescription for whatever they wanted. He was not part of the solution, he was a key part of the problem and he knew it from the start.  In effect, they had turned him into a drug dealer and it was eating him up.

He left, of course.  He went to the hospital to work.  I was hopeful that such a place was secure and supportive enough for him.  I saw him a few years later and he seemed fine but, then again, he had seemed almost fine shortly before his departure from the clinic.

The amazing thing for me, at the time, was firstly how apparent his victimhood was to those whose lives themselves were so immersed in victimhood.  Of course, that may have been the reason I didn’t see it and they did.  It was their culture, not mine.  I began to see the lowest rung of the victim-bully hierarchy in the area.  I could eventually see it just walking down the street.  It was bizarre.  Each person in Skidrow seemed to have a place on the strength/weakness continuum and their status or position was determined by that. And, when you knew how to look, you could see it.  It really was a jungle out there and there were local predators but all were prey to the larger, healthier society that was just a notch up.

If I walked on the Downtown Eastside on a Friday night all alone and even dressed poorly, I would not have been harmed in the least.  I might have been approached but my position would have been immediately deferred to.  Like Pariahs would to Brahmins in the Indian caste system.  I was healthy.  I was young.  And I was clearly not a victim.  I probably could have walked naked and bleeding and still not been seen as a target so long as I had not been weakened too severely.

But some people give off vibes that are somehow attractive to the vultures.  It is all being played out at a primal level and most of us who are not at the bottom do not see it.  And that doctor, despite his credentials, his so-called status, his car, and nice clothes, somehow conveyed a signal that only the lowest of the carrion-eaters could see.  He was roadkill to them.  They hit him hard and apparently they hit him practically from day one. The guy had been intimidated like a sensitive child in a tough neighborhood’s school.

It was a credit to his inner lion, however weak that was, that he would try as long as he did.  But Skidrow is a bona fide dystopia and he wouldn’t have survived it.  In fact, it was killing him.  It was uglier, meaner and stronger than he was. Right across the hall from me, they had almost finished him off in less than a few months and none of us even saw the attack.

In the Seventies gender was pretty much fixed.  Not like now where it can be dialed in, changed up and altered.  Back in the Seventies men were men and women were women and there were very few who could not distinguish the difference.  A transgender person was simply NOT seen very often and especially not in Skidrow.

Until Alan.

Alan was pretty messed up.  Drugs, schizophrenia, malnutrition and an ongoing conversation with someone not evident to me or others.  It later turned out that Alan also had AIDS.  We’d never even heard of that disease in those days. When Doctor Daniel and I went to see him in his room, there was a crucifix on the wall, a bottle of hard liquor, a recently burnt mattress and a small bar fridge filled with plastic bags containing feces, presumably his own.

We intervened.

Over time, with regular street nurse visits and regularly administered medications, Alan stabilized and it was then that he admitted that he was really a woman trapped in a man’s body.  His real name was Alena.  I was surprised to say the least.  “How does that happen, Alan, uh, Alena?  By the way, which name do you want me to use?”

“I am still adjusting to the news myself, Dave.  Have been for a long time.  So, if I am dressed like Alan, then please use his name and, of course, if I have something prettier on, I am Alena that day.  I am not so sure it just happened, Dave.  I think I have always known.  I’m on drug therapy and counseling now and I hope to be a woman soon.”

“It takes more than drugs and counseling to be a woman, Alan.  There are some fundamental plumbing issues and other weird stuff to get familiar with.  Frankly, I think this may be just another bad life choice you are making. What’s wrong with being both for awhile?  Why commit?”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Dave, because that is exactly what my counselor is saying and we have decided that I need to spend more time as a woman to be sure of my decision before I remove my options, if you know what I mean?  I will be living as Alena more and more.  And I need a job.  I want to work here at the Clinic.  I want to be a receptionist.”

“Sounds like a good idea.  You do need a job.  I agree with that.  But, I cannot see you being a receptionist here, Alan.  We have the big unit and she is probably the best receptionist Skidrow has ever had.  And I don’t have room in the budget for two.”

“That’s okay.  I could volunteer.  I need the work experience.  And I was thinking that I could volunteer as support for the street nurses.  They need someone to take their messages and keep their supplies up, right?”

As crazy as it sounded, I thought it might work.  The nurses could use the help, Alan/Alena would not have to deal with the general public and I could see no valid reason to say no.  So, I said yes.

After a while I thought things were working out pretty well. No initial complaints. The street nurses really appreciated having help with their kits and having someone take messages was a Godsend.  Mostly.

“Dave, you may have to have a word with Alena.  She’s kind of getting into the role and making it more than it is.  She’s getting weird and it’s freaking us out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, imagine a very skinny, sick man in his late thirties dressed in an old Forties style low cut cocktail dress and heavily made up, but with short hair and stubble.  He swings his high heels off the end of his feet, fer Gawd’s sake.  That’s more than a bit odd, but that is not the worst part.  The worst part is that Alena thinks a receptionist speaks like an exaggerated drag queen sucking helium and making extreme female gestures while doing so.  And her phone voice is completely insane.  Seriously crazy.  I’m telling you, it’s just getting weird up there.”

So, I called Alena down.

“So, Alena, how are you doing?  It’s been two weeks now.  I notice that you are always on time and never leave until the end of the day.  You OK?”

Squealing and hand gesturing like an epileptic in mid seizure Alena gushed, “I love this job, Dave.  I just love it!”

“Well,  I’m glad to hear that. But, you know, part of learning a new job is learning how to get along with others and that includes the telephone public.  I feel that I have to teach you a few things if you are going to do well in this line of work.  You know, careers have been lost for minor faux pas.  Ya gotta fit in, right?  Like the counselor said?”

“Absolutely (squeal, giggle, shoulder roll).  I’m all ears, Dave.” This was followed with an extremely wide smile and then a rapid and lengthy batting of eyelids and a forward tilt of her head.  It was weirder than weird.

“Well, it is hard for you.  I know that. You are also learning how to be a woman.  Two big challenges.  Female-ness.  Receptionist.  Tall order.  I admit that the two functions are compatible but the easiest way to fail at both is to lay it on too thick in either role.  Real femininity is subtle.  The gestures, the smiling, the eyes…all that stuff. That has to be doled out in very small doses or it loses it’s effect.  Same with being a receptionist.  You have to speak on the phone in almost a neutral voice.  Less is more.  Still feminine, of course, but like a female accountant rather than a girly-girl hostess, ya know?  This is a medical clinic.  We are professional.  You are not a waitress. You are not a cheerleader.  We just don’t squeal with delight or giggle all the time.  That would be weird in any office, Alena, but little Miss Sunshine is completely out of place in Skidrow, you understand?  She shouldn’t even be in the neighbourhood.”

“Too much?”

“Much too much.”

“Thanks, Dave.  I’ll tone it down. Thanks for the input.”

Much to my surprise, and to the absolute amazement of the rest of the staff, Alena not only toned it down but became a somewhat good receptionist.  She was working well by our standards which were not entirely normal, I admit.  But she was dependable and, after almost a year, I managed to find some money so the Clinic could afford to pay her a small stipend.  Alan dropped away, so to speak, and Alena took over full time.

Soon after the change Alena weakened and died. The last time I saw her I was helping a walking bag of bones get into a cab at the front door to the clinic.  She was headed for St. Paul’s hospice.  AIDS took all of it’s victims back then.

We shared a building with the Catholic church.  Actually, they rented half of their building to the clinic but we were as separate as each unit in a large duplex.  The Church housed a proper nave or worship-place, a residence for the brothers and the priest and a convent for the ‘sisters’.  Even though we were very separate in our work, I liked the brothers and I particularly liked the last grouchy, old, plain-speaking, hard-drinking Irish priest. We got along well.

On one occasion I noticed that one of the brothers had not been seen doing his normal brotherly thing recently in the area and I asked the priest, “Hey, where’s ol’ Bob-the-brother.  He OK?”

“Oh, yeah.  Helluva thing that.  But he’s fine.”

But I never saw Bob there again.  NOT in the DE anyway…..

A few years (decade) later I bumped into him in an office building uptown.  He told me his story.

“I fell in love with one of the sisters.  She fell in love with me.  We did what loving people do and then we felt real guilty about it and went to confession.  A lot.  We were forgiven but we found that we kept doing what we should not and finally the priest suggested that maybe confession was not enough to get the sin out.  So, I went to a doctor.  A Catholic doctor. He knew what to do and did it.  I started taking estrogen.  After I week or so, I doubled my dose. Every time I saw Sister Sue, I swallowed another handful of pills.  But we both had to keep going to confession despite that.  This might have continued on for a long time except, after about a year, my boobs were bigger than Sue’s.  It was then I decided that neither drugs nor abstinence was gonna do the job.  I quit the church, proposed to Sue and we have been together ever since.”

Drugs and sex  – Vatican style.

I once asked one of the other elderly priests (really old at 65!) about God and religion and all the foofarah associated with it and he said, “Oh, Hell, don’t believe all that nonsense. That’s just story. None of it is true. Just crap”.

“Geez, that doesn’t sound quite right coming from a priest.  Are you sure you wanna say stuff like that, having committed your life and all to it.”

“Oh yeah.  I really committed my life to telling the truth, actually.  Being honest.  And then I committed it to helping people. Then I went down to basic general goodness, day to day, kinda.  And then I kinda committed to scotch for awhile.  But I am back to truth right now. Things change, eh?  Go with the flow, man.”

I liked him.  He seemed to be telling the truth.

We had more than a few religiously motivated workers in the DE.  They were all pretty good. Pretty nice.  Very brave.  One old guy was a real hell-raiser.  He’d get into it now and again with the locals.  Regular punch-ups.  That was always good PR for the local United church.  I liked him, too, but he was a little whacked.

Probably the best of the bunch was May Gutteridge.  Saint James Social service.  She was in her fifties when I was in my twenties and she had been there for decades.  She would last a few more decades after I left.  May was the mother Teresa of skid row (“If you judge people, you have no time to love them”) but she was also a tough person.  She and another old woman, Margaret (Chisolm, I think), ran their ‘services’ like drill sergeants.

These two old ladies would yell at and manhandle big, dirty, bad guys all day long.  Some of the guys were crazy, most of them were angry, drunk or stoned, some of them were armed. Made no difference to them.  Either of them would push Shaquille O’Neal out the door if they were ticked.  And they were always ticked.

I had a few problems with some guys myself now and then.  One story would curl your hair.  But I would never mess with the two old ladies.  No one sane would.  Somehow they conveyed more power and fury, more threat and malevolence, more strength and commitment to do battle than anyone they ran into.  Like Sun Tzu, they always won by simply showing off that they possessed a much greater force and were ready to use it.

The odd thing was that there were likely more women than men doing social work down there at any one time, in any one service.  And, if the numbers were even, the positions weren’t.  The women were always in charge.  There was me, and maybe two or three other operations run by guys but the majority were run by grey-haired old women (15+).

Even most of my clinic staff (37) were women.  When you think of skid row, you generally tend to think of danger, madness, violence, drugs and being amongst the walking dead. And you would not be far off.  But when you think that the majority of the workers down there were old women, it is sobering and illuminating.

….and none in the media are saying it.

Harper’s oil-centric and Scrooge-like economics is the root cause of our current economic problems.

The economy does not really ‘run’ on 3-months quarters.  Everyone knows that.  The economy really runs on a rolling five year or longer cycle.  Government policy IMPLEMENTED in year one has it’s major effects by year five if we are lucky.  The reports are quarterly but they are reporting on actions taken years prior.

So, there we had our idiot past prime minister campaigning on his party’s business acumen that too-soon saw our economy plunge into the toilet mere weeks after the election that ousted the ten plus year Conservative reign.  Why isn’t the media reporting on that?  Why aren’t fingers being pointed?

I know, I know, I was NOT going to do politics for awhile.  And that nauseating Trudeau posing and speaking in cliches has beckoned me frequently to do so but I resisted.  Even that puke-inducing Vogue photo shoot will go largely uncommented on because, well, it speaks volumes in itself.  But Harper was wrong.  Harper was destructive.  Harper was a bad economist and his gang of thieves and liars are likely to STILL claim that they ran the country well and “look at it now!”

They haven’t even said it yet (well, Ambrose implied it in the House of Commons last week) and I am mad just in anticipation of what they will say as soon as they get up the chutzpah.  So, for the record: our economic woes are a direct result of Harpernomics and don’t forget it.  The voting public has a tendency to short memory and that has resulted in the Cons getting re-elected now and again.  And they screw up every time because their basic economic philosophy is wrong.

“Dave, that battle has been fought and won!  Give it a rest, old boy.  Calm yourself.” 

You  are right.  I am sorry.  I should go back to #@$%! whales and ravens.  But part of the reason for my anger is that I do not see much of a change in the business as usual model even though Harper has been sent to the showers.  “Just-in, get your head out of the Vogue centrefold and get it into the game!”

Canada needs a built-in-Canada approach to the economy.  NOT a built-by-trade agreements version modeled on a global economy, the world bank policies and other major corporate-backed shill organizations like the World Trade Organization.

Of course, we have to trade internationally. And, of course, we will adjust to common practices.  But we need not be bound by their system.  We can trade when it suits us and we should be able to NOT trade when it suits us.  So far, these trade pacts are like bondage and servitude to us and they are NOT serving Canadians.  They are not in our overall best interests.

But that is not my main complaint.  I know corruption is part of the system and systemic corruption is what we have.  My main complaint is that we do not trade within our own borders as if we were friends and neighbours.  We do not have a domestic plan.  We have accepted the modern and international interpretation of Capitalism as our own and we are simply not in a position to do so.  We need a built-in-Canada plan.

Put in a way that everyone understands: gasoline in the US is $2.00 a gallon.  Yes, there is a currency adjustment.  Yes, there is difference in the measured gallon.  But, here in BC, we pay C$5.00 a gallon or $3.60 cents for a US gallon.  Almost TWICE as much.  And the irony to this observation is that most of US imported oil comes from Canada (a bit more than OPEC) and it is all SUPPOSED to be somehow equalized under trade agreements.  Really?  It should NOT be equalized.  Canadians (since we live greater distances) should pay less for OUR OWN resources than do those we export to.

Just-in?  Are you listening?

I am kinda messing around here….playing with a part of book 2….your indulgence, please….

Typically, the fresh-start OTG’er has made some kind of conscious choice to exercise conscious choice.  Like I did.  They want more of a role in deciding how their lives are lived.  They want some real freedom.  And, after reading about living off the grid and making the un-plug decision, they decide to ‘go for it’ and, in our society, that means paying for it.  Somehow.

Think about that….first concrete decision to achieving a freely chosen life is to get some money and buy something!  (or conversely, buy your way OUT of something!).  Harry Brown once wrote a book about that called, HOW I FOUND FREEDOM IN AN UN-FREE WORLD.

And, for many, that first fiscal act is to buy a piece of land in the great hairy outback.

And, perhaps we should talk about that.

There is so much to know.  So little time. 

Let’s start with the dream of wide open spaces.  Isn’t that what first comes to mind? Doesn’t off the grid imply that?  Not every one needs wide open spaces but everyone I have ever met off the grid seems to think they do.  I did.  They may not have to own all that they can survey but they do not want anyone else to, either.  So, the idea of living off the grid quickly takes on the almost un-doable task of personal, mini nation-building.  You need acres.  Hundreds of them.  Maybe square miles.  How else are you going to get your remoteness on and your grid off?

Start by giving your head a shake.

First off, not everyone who lives OTG and can see forever without glimpsing other people owns the land under their feet. Not everyone even needs to own the land under their feet.  In fact, many just own the boat they are on or, in a liberal definition of OTG, the vehicle they are driving.  Some own nothing.  Off the grid does not mean having to own land.  In fact, when you think about it, owning land is almost antithetical to living freely and off the grid.  It just doesn’t have to be that way although, if you have the money, it is made a smidge easier if you buy some.

But the point is: most of us do not even think there might be another way.  I didn’t.

There are many other ways.  There are reputedly not just a few non-owners of the land they are on squatting illegally in BC and Canada.  In the USA, they have vast tracts of land that fall to the Bureau of Land Management and these BLM tracts are somewhat notorious for comforting and welcoming the poor, itinerant, landless and the wandering.  You don’t need title to land to exist.

But, let’s just say you do – just for fun.  Anarchy does not yet rule your perception of freedom.  Land title still means something to you.  You have decided that you want to own some land even though it is a ridiculous concept. It will not be the first ridiculous concept you will subscribe to.  Or the last.

For the record: It is impossible to own land.  You are encouraged in this mad, societal delusion and mass agreement because so many people think they own land, so many people make a living off people who think they own land and you want to delude yourself along with all the others.  Great.

Call a realtor, a banker, an accountant, a shrink, a marriage counselor and a financial planner.  Propose marriage to all of them.  They’ll accept.  Kiss freedom goodbye.

But, seriously; you can never own land.  If you are over 35, you should know that by now.  I will admit that you can buy and sell land.  You can live on land and hand it to your kids when you die.  You can borrow against it, log it, farm it, mine it and build on it.  You can even make money in the land game.  You can do a helluva lot of stuff to the giant ball on which you reside but you can never own it.  And that is because, they tax you on it all the live long day.  And in so many ways.

Don’t pay your taxes and they take it away from you.  Lose a lawsuit and they take it away from you.  Carve out a piece of that giant pie that happens to be where the government wants to build a prison or garbage dump and, you guessed it, they take it away from you.  And, if that wasn’t enough to erase your make-believe faith in ownership, you DO know you are mortal, right?  You do not live forever.  You might ‘rent’ that dirt, borrow that dirt or otherwise think that dirt is yours but, once you are dead, it is no longer yours.  It goes to someone else.

You never own land. Maybe the great undead (corporations and government) can own land but the mortal never can.

Once you have wrapped your mind around the truth of that great lie, you might wish to reconsider just how much of your limited life’s blood – as measured in the money you have earned – that you want to give away to claim your right to the delusion.  I am going to suggest that you spend whatever is required to get whatever you need to build on and have a garden on it but no more.  Buy that two to five acres next to a national forest, monument, park or so far from hell and gone that no one can or will build near you.  That’s not so bad.  You will only own a small piece but, for all intents and purposes, you have a large space around you.  That should be the goal.  NOT ownership.

I have a friend who owns a piece of land surrounded by Provincial Park.  There is one small bit of freehold, he has it and yet all around him is nothing but miles and miles of forests.  He has trespassers all the time, of course, but they are of the wildlife kind and they don’t respect the Land Titles Registry anyway.  He thinks he owns half the world.

That is the feeling we are after.

And there is more than one way to skin that cat.  I have more than a few friends who just own boats.  No land.  Just boat, engine, anchor and chain.  They go where they want to go, drop the hook and stay there until they desire a change of scenery and then they move.  They think they own half the world, too.

So, living off the grid is not that hard of an entry.  You can do it.  You can even do it poor.

It’s more fun with some money but not by much.  Most of the fun in living freely and by choice is that you ‘do’ stuff.  You ‘experience’.  You learn.  You feel alive.  Money can facilitate that but it also can and does buffer the experience.  It’s a judgment call not just a little influenced by the time you have left.  If you are young, you can spend time instead of dollars.

You are, as they say, what you eat.  But you are also what you do and the sum of those experiences.  If the sum of your experience is gazing at video screens or pressing buttons all day, then that is who you become.  A drone.  A cog in a machine, a living battery in the Matrix.  But, if your life is full of solving problems, meeting challenges, inventing solutions and being curious about the natural world around you, then you become the sum of that experience and it is so much more fun at the very least.

I met a guy the other day who, upon learning I lived off the grid, exclaimed, “Wow!  That’s great!  My wife and I are planning to do that, too.  We are building a house.  It is all green technology and has panels and stuff.  It is going to be so cool.”  But he was not building it.  His wife was not helping him work on it side by side except by working for money to pay the contractor.  He did not really know about alternative energy except that it was cool and all the rage so he was ‘into that’.  The real joke was that he was building his OTG, green home in the city so that they both could still go to work.  And shop.  The house was a status symbol.  New green house technology with granite counter tops is not cheap.

He will miss the best part.

He was a doctor.  She was a teacher.  And they weren’t going anywhere.  They were going green to be hip, to follow the trend, to look good.  They couldn’t really go OTG because they were specialists in a culture that valued specialists.  Gone were the role models who could do everything and do it anywhere.  Now the role model is he or she who can make money in one demanding field located in a licensed, restricted, urban centre which requires huge up front buy-in and life allegiance to the system.

They may have missed the concept.

The average price of a modest home in world-class Vancouver is almost two million dollars.  Get a job there.  Buy a house there.  Where you gonna go after that?  How much real freedom can you afford to exercise every day? How much of your life have you pledged in advance?  And to which bank?  Twenty years?  Go the extra distance and have a child and you can double that answer. Getting accepted into that exclusive club is very, very restricting.  You are not free to do as you please at the Vancouver Club.

Ironically, the other special private club in Vancouver is the Terminal City club.  That name accidentally says even more!

People incarcerated in a federal prison for forty years do not feel comfortable outside of the prison.  They can’t handle the freedom.  They want to go back.  Think about that.

…get up at 7:00.  Brave the stormy seas.  Make the 10:00 ferry.  Do the shopping (Sal is at a quilting bee).  See the doctor.  He’s South African.  Seems good.  We talk.  “I love it here.  Can’t see why people want to live in Vancouver.  Too expensive.  No quality of life. This is great.  I live five minutes from the office.  I see the ocean from my house and from the office.  Why do Canadians want to live in the city like that?  It costs way too much!”

“No idea.  I did it.  But now that I have done this, I have no idea why I did what I did.  Just didn’t look up, I guess.”

“Down there in the lower mainland, you have no time to look up!”

Side note: my salivary gland is OK.  No worries.  One side seemed a bit dry.  It is. But it still rates a 7 out of ten according to the ear, nose and throat guy.  I am good to go. So, I go.

I buy some wiring from the electrical supply store.  35 year old guy at the counter just moved up from Victoria.  Couldn’t stand the pace.  “Man, I was spending over half an hour in traffic.  The cost of living was crazy.  I love the forest.  We came here.”

“But you still live in the city, albeit  smaller.  Still town.”

“You are right.  I gotta get away further.  But, for now, this is like heaven.”

Go to the next place.  The guy asks for my address.  I explain. “Oh, God, I am 100% onside, man.  Gotta get out!  My wife and I are building an all-green house.  Going off the grid although we will stay in town, you know, she likes shopping.”

“Off the grid means no roads, no power, no water, no sewer.  And no services.  But you are doing alternative energy and that is 90% of it.  Good on ya.  Do you know what you are doing?”

“Our contractor does.  He knows that stuff.  He’s a real green-guy, eh?  All solar and compost and all that.”

“Well, I’ll give you a small tip: do not spend too much on your first set of batteries.  We all seem to kill our first set and most of us manage to kill our second set, too.  So, buy 8Ds or L-16s first.  Maybe ten years from now, they will have Li-ion worked out or better.  Don’t spend a lot on your first set of batteries.”

“Batteries, eh?  Hmmm….I’ll have to talk to Jack about that.  He’s our contractor, ya know?  All green, he is.  This is great!  We’re going green and you have already done that. Cool.  Was that D-16’s?”

Did I mention the doctor was an hour behind schedule?

Did I mention that Home Depot did NOT have the three things on my list?  Did I mention that………….?

……………never mind.  The world is mad.  I keep thinking it is all getting crazier and crazier out there every day and then I see who is running for the US presidency and all of a sudden, it all looks sane by comparison.

Perspective is everything.