The Crisis and The Christ

It seemed like everything was coming apart at the seams again. Like a baseball losing its cover. Amos was like a tire that’s lost its tread - slippery on a wet road. He’d thought that he could see, but all he saw was how blind he was. His plans to recreate himself on the coast were tripped up by his self same old ways. He was tumbling down the mountain side and hitting every rock and hard place on the way down; every soul he’d ever hurt, every selfish turn he’d taken was painfully clear and bruising him all over again.

Trying to slow the fall was as difficult as escaping a schoolyard circle of scorn. Once the circle is formed and the target identified, the anger of the crowd is a contagious fever that infects every child. Whatever the accusation, how it started, and whether it’s true, becomes unimportant. Once a self-righteous momentum of condemnation has begun, the smell of blood pulls back the screen of adult civility and a vein where shame and anger run is opened. Friends and allies are swept up in the blood sport and as you turn, looking for support, their scorn pierces the skin and hits bone deep. The flesh of trust is rent open and self love, love of the other, love of life bleeds out.

But Amos had left all that behind. Out here on the coast he’d cast off the effects of a fearful past, claimed a fresh start – wounds healed - and vowed to reinvent himself. So why was he still haunted by this circle of demons? It was as if all his minor faults and insecurities had got together and conspired to tear him down. Every time he tried to build himself up with memories of accomplishments, they’d turn sour on him. He’d see that what he was trying to take pride in was really just another selfish grabbing for ego-glory. The good that he’d done was really only all about Amos proving once again what a good boy he was. It was all an act.

Where was the backbone? What held his skeleton together? What mattered so deeply to Amos that without it – he’d puddle like jello in his bed – his muscle and will only resulting in a jiggle.

When he’d try to go to his comfort places of imagination, He found a self-absorbed little boy whimpering and complaining in the midst of comfort and wealth. His enemy was stabbing at his newly exposed flesh and he knew that the knives were of his own design – forged in the bowels of deep mountain memories.

You might say that Amos was feeling a little depressed. The Christmas season had descended like a low cloud over Vancouver. As the year’s days were running out, so it seemed, was his sense of humour. This was not a new thing for Amos. Christmas wasn’t spoiled when he found out that Santa Claus wasn’t real. (That was a relief. Knowing that it was only his parents judging whether he’d been good enough for gifts instead of some fat fairy elf made it an even game again. There were only four eyes between them and, if his siblings didn’t turn him in, he could keep his best side facing them most days.) No, his loss of Christmas innocence was more like an unrequested exchange for pubic hair.

It was early December and he’d been flipping through a Life magazine’s review of the year 1972. Along with the heroes of industry and politics and culture, there , in full colour, were the horrors of the year. The pages stopped flipping at a full page colour photo of a Viet Cong soldier holding two severed heads like dead chickens at his side. The heads - upon closer examination - were not American soldiers – that would seem like a horrible, bloodythirsty revenge – ugly but somehow rational. No, the heads were clearly Vietnamese. To Amos that was just crazed. It was an evil hatred turned in upon itself. To hate one’s enemy was a dark and ugly human trait. But to hate one’s self – one’s kin - was a black despair driven from a place even darker than the human soul.

If anyone had asked that twelve year old boy how the photo had affected him, Amos couldn’t have put it into words. But it went deep. It struck a chord in him that had never been struck before. It drummed a last vestige of childhood out of him and a shadow entered where an innocence had dwelt.

He was stung by the false hopes of a Christmas that celebrated “goodwill to all men”. Faced with the stark evil truth of war - naked without a Hollywood good guys/bad guys story – hope for the triumph of the good guys - hope for the redemption of the bad guys - slipped through his grasp like water in cupped hands. He lost a faith in human beings that he didn’t even know he had. He’d taken it for granted that good and bad were different worlds and not two sides of the same street. The bright lights of Christmas now only accentuated just how dark the human soul could be.

For the first time in his life, he wept tears that were not for himself. Those first tears of compassion were for the misery of his brothers and sisters. Sunday school had taught him well that on this small green planet we were all God’s children. The Apollo missions had captured a God’s eye view of our small round home. He’d grown up on the wave of Hippies’ songs of love and peace that were everywhere battling - and overcoming ignorance and fear and war. He’d been to the world Expo ’67 in Montreal and seen with his own eyes how happily all the world’s cultures could come together. He believed. He was a believer.

And then, a single photo had exposed the ugly truth that changed everything. He saw how human beings are their own worst enemy. The photo stayed with him as if he’d clipped it out and carried it around in his wallet.

A Christmas that claimed we were all happy, generous, people was now like eating too much cotton candy before the Wicked Whirlwind ride. Once he’d puked it up - he was off it for life. The sweet smells of Christmas now turned his stomach. Those tears of compassion he’d wept had a few sobs in there for himself too. He cried - knowing it without naming it - for what he’d lost. He was a child no longer.

For the next decade he managed to deal with this unnamed grief over the death of his childhood in a variety of ways. Christmas presents were still welcome. He began the practice of last-minute shopping –delaying the pain as long as possible. He gave presents always fearful that they weren’t good enough because no present he received was ever good enough. It could never fill, or even touch, that dark empty place inside. Nothing out of a box could convince him that he was a “good and deserving” boy.

He now knew the truth. He was a piece of shit just like everyone else. Some were just better at pretending it wasn’t so. It’s only other people’s shit that stinks isn’t it? Christmas – he noticed - really seemed to bring out the bullshit in the culture. Charlie Brown’s sad and unloved Christmas tree came close to naming it. But Amos’ loss went deeper. Cynically pulling the tinsel off of consumer’s spiritual hyprocrisy was fun - but it wasn’t enough. It helped to be “above it all”. But it never took away the shadow left where hope had once lived.

Amos became a fan of whatever could cut through the phony and expose the ugly, or laughable, truth. He was in good company of course. In many ways, Amos was only riding his generation’s wave. From Mad magazines to Monty Python, the Seventies youth culture developed a cynical, mocking sense of humour that slammed into sacred cows at every opportunity. From the Black Panthers to the Sex Pistols cultural tastes turned angry. It was cool to be angry and show it in all kinds of creative, destructive ways.

Self-destruction was Amos’ favourite method. His creativity went into living out a double-life. While maintaining a thick veneer of socially acceptable behaviours (school grades, after school jobs, even volunteer leadership work) he spent the rest of his waking hours destroying brain cells in suburban basements and risking his life in cars tearing around streetlit suburban corners.

After a decade of honing this attitude, Amos had declared himself bored by his cynical self-destruction. It was now time for a change. The power and authority of manhood hung like tools on a basement wall. It was up to him to pick them up and use them to make something of his life. Thing was, as he looked over the parts and pieces of his life, he was dismayed by the raw material he had to work with. It simply wasn’t good enough for what he wanted to do.

The Writer’s pad and pen that he’d been carrying around with him all fall were still empty. The lone artist on a mission, had become the same old party animal in a circle of misfits and funky friends that had gathered like dryer lint in the tumble of days. It was the same old Amos in a new setting.

He had hoped to re-create himself. He saw qualities that he honoured in people all around him. But those qualities seemed beyond his reach. He wanted to find a new way of being. He wanted to shed the old skin and – no not just skin – he was hoping to transform from caterpillar to butterfly. He ached to let his inner writer fly above all the suburban Scarborough mediocrity – especially his own mediocrity - that had suffocated all attempts - but not the desire - for this little worm to soar.

It snowed Christmas day in Vancouver that year. Many Vancouverites were not impressed by their White Christmas. Anyone trying to travel around the city without the aid of snow tires – not to mention skid-control skills – was in for some stress. Amos couldn’t have been more happy with the snow. He’d booked a cab for the day and there were more calls to keep a cabbie busy than cabs to meet the demand. Talk about a kid in a candy store.

The whole day was filled with ferrying merrymakers around the city. While driving was slow going, the generous tips made up for the lost time. It was a good thing that there weren’t too many cars on the road. He slid through more than one stop sign and only narrowly avoided several fender benders with a little gas on the pedal and counter-spin techniques learned in Ontario parking lots. His usually nasty Christmas mood was kept occupied by mostly happy drunks.

He did his share of skid row runs that day too. These were trips to the bootlegger for lonely turkeys trying to kill the day with a quart – lucky if they had friend to share it with. Unless, of course, their friend’s mood was as ugly as the one Amos was nursing.

He put in a shift and a half. By 3 am the calls had finally slowed down to a trickle. Sixteen hours behind the wheel was enough. With a good wad of cash in his jacket pocket, he dropped off the cab and flagged a ride from another cabbie back to his Kitsilano basement. Danny was asleep. Helen was away home for Christmas. He cracked open a beer and put a quiet album on sat on the floor back against the wall beside the stereo.

His parents had mailed out a care package that was still unopened sitting in the corner of his room. He hadn’t opened it partly because he didn’t want to expose himself to Danny’s scorn over his soft and happy family’s past, and partly because he was afraid that the comforts of that family would lull him back to sleep. Amos had gone to great lengths to get his miserable self out here all alone. He was determined to turn his angst into art. Falling back into the arms of his family would spoil his misery for sure.
How does it feelHow does it feelTo be without a homeLike a complete unknownLike a rolling stone?
You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss LonelyBut you know you only used to get juiced in itAnd nobody has ever taught you how to live on the streetAnd now you find out you're gonna have to get used to itYou said you'd never compromiseWith the mystery tramp, but now you realizeHe's not selling any alibisAs you stare into the vacuum of his eyesAnd ask him do you want to make a deal?
Bob Dylan

Still, it was Christmas – or no, it wasn’t any more – he’d made it through Christmas without family comforts and now it was Boxing Day. Okay, he thought, time to open the box. He sat on the floor of the basement beside the stereo and opened up the box. The box was filled with smaller packages wrapped up in colourful paper. There was a card with care-full notes written by his Mom and Dad telling him of their love and faith in him.

When he’d finished opening up all the gifts, he sat for a time in the midst of presents and strewn paper and felt – how did he feel? He tried to feel beneath the anger and cynicism – down there – how did he feel?

Just as empty as the boxes lying all around him. Not sad or lonely or miserable – just empty. Amos felt kind of like you feel after a good cry. After the tears - the way your mind goes through all the reasons you’re crying until you run out of reasons, and the tears slow and you blow your nose and then there’s a final big sigh. Amos didn’t know it then, but the tears that had started flowing ten years before - had finally run out.

He decided to go for a walk. This feeling was too real to waste on sleep. He put on his black Kodiak boots and leather jacket – his urban defiance gear - and walked up into the alley and out to the street. The clouds had cleared finally and there was a full moon shining on the snow covered streets. He walked down the few blocks to the little park at the ocean’s edge. The moon over the English Bay harbour drew him like a moth. Without hesitation he jumped the steel fencing that ran along the little cliff’s edge and scrambled his way down onto the beach. The tide was out and the ocean floor was black and shiny like an oil slick.

Amos stumbled along the stony shore beneath the wealthy homes that lined the million dollar view. In most places the ten to twelve foot cliff provided enough protection for these homes. But when he came across a concrete wall built all the way down to the shore, he truly felt like an intruder in this city. He looked across the bay to the city skyline and knew that there was no place for him here. He would always be an outsider to the people who lived behind such walls. The moon put his shadow against that wall and he stood tall to see his height and breadth. The wall could have his shadow - he thought - but it couldn’t have him. He turned his back to it and began to walk out towards the water.

It was a long walk out across the stony tidal flats. With each stony step it slowly began to sink into his head that he had literally reached the bottom. He was out among the very dregs of the city. These stones were like coffee grains at the bottom of the cup. All his travels, all his searching, all his hopes, all his mistakes, all his ego-driven desires had been sucked out to sea by the pull of the moon – the world’s biggest mirror.

He stopped and looked up at that moon. The light it shared was not its own. It had no fire of its own. It was a rock that became a beacon only because it was in the right place at the right time to reflect the one and only light of the world.

That was when he felt the Presence there just behind and beside him. It was like someone was standing there letting him know, without words, that he had a friend. He felt that the Presence knew him inside and out – maybe even better than he knew himself – definitely knew the real him – without the masks and the lies and the bravado. He knew, somehow, that this friend would never judge or fail him. Amos felt this as truly as a bell sounding somewhere deep in his bowels. The Presence knew him inside and out and – and – and loved him as surely as the sun shone. Amos felt as deeply loved as he knew how to love – and more.

And yet, Amos felt - somehow got the feeling - that it was a meeting of friends – that even though he was in the Presence of an amazing, timeless, source of knowing and love – that Source had chosen to be his friend. For Amos, the only adequate response to such a gift – a response from the heart and the guts and not the polite conniving head – was to choose to call the Presence “LORD”.

The moon was dropping down behind the mountains now. It told Amos that the journey wasn’t over. He still didn’t know what was to come or where he was heading but he had found what he was looking for out here.

He had thought he was looking for a new self. Instead, he discovered that he was looking for someone to serve. Only after he’d emptied out all the possibilities that he’d filled his life with, did he find his Lord and Leader there at the bottom of it all.

You find me
and offer…
grace to forgive
to begin again
spirit to guide steps through self-love’s confusion
receiving as mine the power of Your sacrifice
senseless service as the road to
no tomorrow’s
grace to forgive
to begin again…

Jesus had been patiently waiting for him. The Father’s son. God’s chosen one. The only one who really didn’t give a shit what people thought of him, or did to him, but lived for one purpose only – to reflect the light and love of the only power that mattered. The power of life that turned forever – forgetting the day gone by and always welcoming the new beginning so full of growing, changing, creative possibilities….

Amos baptized himself five days later skinning dipping from Wreck Beach on New Year’s Day. Danny was there to laugh and bless his crazy white ass with hoots from the shore. Amos had tried to explain the experience on the tidal flats to Danny in the best words he could find - but knew were failing him. For once, Dan didn’t argue. He just listened and looked at Amos with a tilted head and quiet smile and nodded. His silence acknowledging that Amos had found something worthy.

The gift he’d received was the message that it wasn’t in changing that Amos would find his purpose. What the Christ had taught him with his friendship was that it was only by becoming more of who he already was that Amos would find his path to follow. He’d been given a touchstone experience that he could return to time and again. It reminded him that his choices, his efforts, his mistakes, his life is not really about “Amos”. He was in service to a far greater power than his small sense of well-being. What Amos would do from that day on is try to reflect - in his own moon-rock way - the light of the world.

Mediocre, silly, selfish, lustful, lazy-ass that he was, God could use even a dull rock like him to shed light in a dark world. Creative, imaginative, intelligent, funny - God can mine and refine what’s good in anyone. And anyone can do their small part to add some food to the table in hungry places.

No matter where I roam
I will find my way back home
I will find a way to return
to the Lord

I was heading for a fall
and I saw the writing on the wall
Like a full force gale
I was lifted up again
I was lifted up again
by the Lord

Van Morrison
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Old friends with new faces

Amos heard his name being called out. He was walking down 4th near home. No one knew him here. Who could be calling his name? He turned to see Dave Andrews just a few steps behind him. They’d passed on the street and Dave had been the one to recognize him. They knew each other from mutual friends at Trent University back in Ontario. “Amos, how the hell are ya? What are you doin here?”
“I live here.”
“No way – where?”
“Just a few blocks from here” he laughed pointing towards the ocean.
“That’s incredible – so do I” Dave pointed in the other direction.

Dave was from Montreal and studied Philosophy like all the other guys from Montreal. They were responsible for a steady supply of black hash into Peterborough and Amos usually found them, while good for a laugh one on one, as a group too deep in thought, or smoke, to get a laugh going. They seemed to take themselves, or life, pretty seriously and that was just too heavy for Amos.

In Amos’ group, playing the fool was quite acceptable and displaying one’s smarts suspect. But in this Montreal crowd there was a stiff judgment-thing happening. He felt in the air between them almost a palpable fear of seeming stupid, or silly, or inconsequential. He’d watched a girl from smalltown Ontario go from happy, friendly, and bouncy to dark, brooding, and suicidal-looking from a year spent in their company. Not that Amos felt particularly welcome in their gatherings anyway – he could carry a sarcasm-riddled conversation spiced heavily with cynicism long enough to establish their tolerance of a Toronto fool among them. And for Amos, enough to keep the sweet black hash in supply.

Now, he was surprised and excited by this chance encounter with Dave. The distance of time and place made their somewhat arms-length, former acquaintance much closer. They quickly ran through each other’s tales – how they’d ended up on this city block of Vancouver. It turned out that Dave was living with another Trent grad – Jake Jefferson. Amos recognized the name, he told Dave, but couldn’t picture a face to go with it. Dave said “Well let’s go do that – Jake’s a t home - have you got other plans? Let’s go.”

Jake was there and he and Amos said they recognized each other from passing in pubs and parties but they’d never really met. Jake was the kind of guy who would actually enjoy dancing at Grade 8 school dances. He was smart and lean - wily even. He had an easy way about him. The way he moved across the room, smoked his cigarettes, and carried a conversation made you think he either didn’t give a damn what you thought of him or else he had his act down very tight, very well rehearsed. For all of Jake’s carefully styled manners, Amos detected also a raw rage that ran close, just beneath the surface.

As a signature story – one that would help Amos learn who he was – Jake told of the time he spit on Thomas J. Bata. Amos knew that the Bata shoe empire was a notorious exploiter of third world child-labour. The library at Trent, the architectural gem and natural meeting place at the centre of the campus, was named the Bata library for the visiting dignitary. Jake had been expelled but allowed back the next year to finish his degree. Trent reputation as the most liberal of the liberal arts school was intact.
“You lost a year for that?” Amos was amazed at the sacrafice “Was it worth it?”
Jake took a long pull on his smoke. “It’s not called the Bata Library any more is it?”

While they shared a toke and a beer, Jake put the latest Talking Heads album on. Jake knew all the words and would sing them, not to himself, but right into your eyes. There was one tune that really seemed to hit home. It had a bouncy, light melody line, that was fun and seemed to be right where they lived. It was called ‘This must be the place”.

Home - is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb, born with glowing heart
guess I must be having fun

The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It's ok I know nothing's wrong . . nothing’s wrong

Hi yo - I got plenty of time
Hi yo - you got light in your eyes

And you're standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money
Always for love
Cover up and say goodnight . . . say goodnight

Home - is where I want to be
But I guess I'm already there
I come home - -she lifted up her wings
Guess that this must be the place

I can't tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this where I'll be . . . where I'll be


The “Speaking in Tongues” album was written just for them. They became more sure of it the more they listened. “They’re coming to Vancouver y’know.” Jake said as if prophesying.
“Who?” asked Amos.
“Talking Heads.”
“Really? Well, we gotta go. You let me know as soon as you hear about tickets on sale will you?” “Definitely” Jake nodded, smiling a knowing smile.

Peter arrived home. It was Peter’s home they were in. It was a very warm, bright, Kitsilano bungalow surrounded by trees and gardens - as they all were. This one though was filled with wondrous, bright and deep colour-filled paintings. Turns out, Peter was the painter. In his fifties now, Peter was making a good living with his art. Peter was as warm and bright as his home. Soft spoken, confident, a gentleman obviously, and attentive to his guest, Amos felt he was in the company of a strong big sister to his young Ontario friends. How the three of them ended up together didn’t come up in conversation and Amos wondered but didn’t feel it was cool to ask.

It was west-coast manners not to ask about work – the reply out here to “what do you do?” was to name your passion; as in “I sail.”. But when Amos announced that he’d have to leave soon to pick up his cab for the 4pm start of the night shift, Jake asked him if he knew “The Underground”. “It’s where I tend bar” explained Jake. Amos recognized the bar. His cab had been to them all by now. It was an electro-funk dance bar - one of the city’s main establishments for gay men. Amos swallowed that shot of information without a flinch. “Yeah, I know it – off Granville right?” He looked straight into Jake’s searching eyes as he passed him the spliff he’d just lit up. When he sat back to focus on the smoke, Amos could feel Jake and Dave and Peter’s eyes carefully watching him, checking him, with glances back and forth, for reactions.

To shift the attention Amos asked David “Are you working man?” In reply, Dave stood up “Let me show you.” The four of them followed Dave past the kitchen into a hallway leading back to the house’s bedrooms. Amos was doing his best not to have a panic attack. His imagination was running ahead of him. Were they going to seduce him into a homosexual orgy? What if he liked it? How would he tell his mother? His heart rate raced. It was very warm in this hallway.

Dave opened the door at the end of the hall and Amos followed the others in. It was a large room with a wall of windows facing east. It was the Master Bedroom but there was no bed. Instead, at its centre stood an easel with an almost life-sized portrait of Dave - hairy, naked and sensual, surrounded by leafy green sun dappled bushes and bright orange, red and blue flowers.

“Oh wow,” Amos exclaimed, letting out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Dave, you look like Adam in the garden of Eden.” Peter seemed pleased with the comment. He was watching Dave. Dave laughed to relieve his own discomfort. “Right before the fall - eh Amos?” Peter added quietly, but for all to hear “Innocent and natural.”

Amos could tell that Dave was loving the attention but at the same time unsure about sharing the intimacy of the portrait beyond the four walls of this room. The painting had a story to tell. As Amos soaked it in, it slowly dawned on him that Dave was taking a big risk here - trusting him with this revelation. And it felt like this was a trial run.

Peter and Jake were coaching – gently encouraging Dave to come out of that dark closet where his sexuality was safely locked up - and live it large in the world. Dave had just put his toe in the water – Amos was the first person from his past that he’d come out to. Jake had a huge grin on his face that said “See, the water’s fine, c’mon in.”

On the walk home, Amos’ mind was doing calisthenics. He realized that these guys were the first gay men that he’d actually known – and he liked them. Knowing Dave from an earlier life caused him to readjust his perceptions. There was more to Dave than he’d originally seen. Like Amos, Dave was out here exploring a wider, deeper, freer, wilder version of himself. That afternoon Dave had crossed a raging river of doubt on a slippery log by trusting him. Amos felt like he had crossed that same river without really thinking about it. The land of homosexuality was no longer a dark continent whose natives he could laugh at and scorn from his ignorant and fearful island of so-called normal sex.

He found that, with some mental exercise, it wasn’t a big deal withholding his judgment of these guys – these friends. His curiosity kept taking him into those bedrooms trying to get his head around what went on there. But he recognized it as the same curiosity he had about everyone’s private sex lives – and what went on in his head wasn’t where he was meeting these guys. They had offered friendship and he had welcomed it. He enjoyed their company and he wasn’t going to let his thoughts get in the way.

In the weeks to come, Dave, Jake and Peter got to meet Danny. Now it was Amos’ turn to watch his friends for their reactions and eye signals. He wondered what they thought of this coaching Amos had signed up for. He knew that the sight of he and Danny strolling down Vancouver streets was probably stranger to most eyes than seeing two men arm in arm in a lover’s embrace. It’s a lot easier to withhold judgment, Amos noted, when you know that you’re being judged and placed on the far side of normal yourself.

While his new friends definitely caused him to wonder about his own sexuality – could he, under the right circumstances be persuaded to open up to homo-erotic love? He decided he was simply a tourist passing through and there was no chance of him staying - even for a visit.

It was decided for him really. It wasn’t like there was a choice or a decision to be made. The amount of time he spent thinking about women - women from his past and women in his future - left a well-worn path in his brain when it came to sex. While he supposed he could leave the path and bush-whack - it would be all uphill work. When it came to spending emotional energy on relationships, he was just plain lazy.

He’d avoided the whole dating scene in high school just because he hated the idea of everyone else knowing and talking about his intimate affairs. He was so acutely aware of himself through other’s eyes, that to see his own awkward attempts at love being the subject of discussion was akin to putting his balls on the altar for public sacrifice. It just wasn’t worth it.

So, he kept himself pure. Or, he kept his own version of sex in a closet of a different kind. He had a Hollywood Playboy, combined with an Archie comic-book - Betty and Veronica - image of women that he’d managed to preserve right through his adolescence. Along with an idealized vision of the perfect woman – the one who would stand by him - or maybe just behind him – trusted, affectionate, understanding – like a good dog - only with a body out of a Playboy magazine.

Porn magazines – soft porn left room for his imagination to work – was much easier than a relationship any day. You could just close the cover with very little mess and put it away until the urge surged again. Minor guilt pangs were easier to live with than demands of a human being who wanted or expected a piece of his attention. The shame of being a boy in the eyes of men was better than risking embarrassment in the hands of a woman.

But it happened anyway. It was closing time and three young, more than tipsy, women climbed into his cab. They were in a good mood and teased Amos with harmless innuendo and flirting. “Hey, he’s cute, look at those shoulders – two of us could curl up in those!” Amos surprised himself by not choking up and turning red. Instead he played along “There’s room for all three of you in these arms ladies.” And they loved it. He thought that maybe he was in for a good tip.

She lived furthest away and was the last to be dropped off. The laughs turned into life stories. Heather didn’t know many people here. She’d grown up on the island – a small town girl in the big city. She and her friends were off-duty hospital nurses. When she invited him up to her apartment for a drink, Amos’ blood pumped a little faster in his veins. He liked her down to earth sense of humour. His sensitive stuck-up meter didn’t register with her at all. She put him at ease with a friendly touch as they met on the sidewalk steering him towards the apartment doorway.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” she laughed, “you’ll be getting the wrong idea about me. Why am I trusting you? You could be a serial killer.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why either. Are you crazy?” he teased “I’m going to have to ask you to give me all your butcher’s knives when we get upstairs.” They laughed and teased each other along these lines in the elevator and down the hall into her apartment. Amos found it as sensible, clean, and maybe just a little cutesy - as its owner. Heather seemed as comfortable in this place as she was in her own body. She had a natural physicality that quietened him - as if he was a skittish horse entering a stable after running wild for a season.

He called her the next week after fully debating the issue with Dan. Dan said it was good for man to have a mistress – the implication being that Amos’ passions needed to stay focused on the training. A woman on the side was okay. Amos thought Danny was maybe just a bit jealous. He liked that. And he didn’t like the way a one-night-stand looked on him. And he definitely liked the way Heather felt – natural and easy like an old pair of jeans. If only he could keep it uncomplicated.

He wouldn’t tell her where he lived – letting her know at dinner that second time that he was too messed up, too self-absorbed for a relationship and she would have to just enjoy his company when she had it and not get any ideas about anything more. Heather agreed with a silent smile – she wasn’t going to scare this stray cat away with a collar. She knew that he was hungry and had come back to her door for more.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


First day’s ski in the Rockies

He was a tourist behind the wheel of a Vancouver cab with one sole aim in life – to ski the Rocky Mountains. A North Van rich kid climbed into his cab and they got talking ski talk and this guy said “ you know that Whistler opens tomorrow eh?”
“No, I hadn’t heard man.”
“Well officially, it’s the day after tomorrow, but the tradition is that they open up the hills for the locals for one day of free skiing before the throngs arrive.”

That was the only invitation Amos needed. Next morning before dawn he had his gear packed in the Fleshmobile and was headed up Highway 99. He’d been there in the summer - stayed at his treeplanting girlfriends’ family condo - so he knew where to find the ski hill and went straight there. The Whistler village was under construction, only a couple of stores and brand new deluxe hotels were open for business. He parked the car and walked past them directly to the ski hill. He was a man on a mission.

Amos was both surprised and delighted when, sure enough, the young, obviously envious, lift operators welcomed his ticket-less butt onto the chair-lift. With a huge grin on his face the chair swung him up into the hills. He was alone on the five person chair. There was hardly anyone there that morning. It might have had something to do with the heavy cloud and mist lying low over the bottom of the mountain. Amos had been waiting months for this day and there was no way that clouds were going to daunt his hopes.

His heart was pounding from excitement and a good dose of fear as the lift took him higher and higher up and over the rock faces and tree tops. He could only see what was directly below and around him the fog was so thick. He was higher than any hill in Ontario within the first ten minutes. In the pit of his stomach a stew of worry stirred in with the excitement and adrenaline in his system and he thought he might puke.

And then, with another sweep up over a cliff face, his chariot broke free from the clouds and he entered paradise. The sun shone bright in a blue, cloudless sky, on a mountain of white, white, white snow! Breaking through into heaven out of the dim mortal reality - for this Ontario lad – truly a dream come true. He couldn’t help but begin bouncing in his seat and whooping it up along with the riders in the chairs in front of him.

This was the dream he’d been pursuing – what he’d given up law school to pursue. This was why he was alive – to live out his adolescent ambition of a Rocky Mountain ski bum – and he was doing it! His heart was soaring like a hawk high over the mountain.

Now, getting back down the mountain was a very different experience for our hero Amos. It was an experience that brought him very quickly back down to earth. He had his long stiff skis - perfect for Ontario’s icy slopes - shipped from home. He’d bought equally stiff boots on sale that fall to cement his ski-bum resolve. Now, he hit the slopes with enthusiasm only to discover that he didn’t have a clue about how to ski in two feet of snow.

Deep snow in Ontario meant you might have snow up to your ankles. Most of the time you were traversing hard packed, machine-groomed snow. Very often you had to deal with large sheets of ice to cross between the edges where hundreds of skiers had pushed the snow before you. Skiing in untouched snow up to his knees was totally different.

Amos took several tumbles before he’d made it down even part of the first slope. His ski tips kept getting pulled this way and that and the more he fought to muscle them together, the more they misbehaved. He was determined to enjoy this though. He kept pulling his legs back under him and struggling, staggering for balance, stabbing his poles deep into the snow looking for something solid to push against.

About half way down the mountain, he wiped out good enough to make him stop and sit After he’d collected his brains and equipment scattered across the hill, he sat and stewed. If breaking through those clouds had been a Rocky Mountain high, then he’d fallen flat on his face the very next thing. This was no dream. This was a nightmare. He couldn’t do this. What a disaster! What seemed at first to be a wonderful gift had turned into an incredible challenge.

As a poet, the metaphor wasn’t lost on him. Just as he’d sought out the freedom and fun of life alone on the west coast, he was finding that what seemed great from far was far from great. Complications and unseen challenges required new skill and insight untested ‘til now.

What was he gonna do? Give up and go home?
Like fuck! Amos answered his own questions. “FUCK THAT!” he said out loud. Hearing his own voice in defiance kindled a resolve in his belly. He could do it. He would do it. It just meant learning how to ski all over again. He learned to ski once, he could do it again. And if that was what it would take to ski the Rockies that winter, then, that’s what he’d do. He had all winter. He had his whole life ahead to learn one lesson at a time – one small step at a time. So, he began.

He managed to get to the bottom of the mountain feeling totally exhausted. His knees were as weak and wobbly as a new born colt’s. His shoulder’s ached as if he’d been carrying bags of cement all day. He was tired and breathing heavy, but he wasn’t totally discouraged. He got back on the lift in spite of his brain’s request for the chalet.

The rest of the day he hacked his way down the slopes – falling often, but with every fall he was learning. Skiing in deep snow was more about sitting back on his skiis and persuading, not pushing, his skiis to shift with his weight. Trying to force his feet around and set his edges hard would get him back into trouble. He had to lighten up. Get lighter on his feet – he laughed thinking of his new gay friends – more west coast swoosh and less Ontario macho man. It would take some time.

Back at the car, Amos packed his skiis and headed out for the little secluded parkette at the end of a street at the edge of the town. He’d spotted it that summer, packing it away in his memory as part of the plan he was cooking up. Out of the trunk, he dragged the canvas six-man tent he’d brought tree-planting. It must have weighed a hundred pounds and somehow in the deep snow he wrestled it up. Lassoing poles and tying the centre rail off to nearby trees took energy from stores he didn’t think he had left in him.

When he had it up though, (just the one side with the door in it) and a pot of soup cooking on the Coleman stove, there couldn’t have been a young man on the planet more satisfied with the choices he’d made. He was proud that the plans he’d crafted were working. Lifting the mug of soup to his lips and feeling the warmth go down through him he decided - living in a dream was a good place to be. His breath raised like smoke from his lips in a satisfied prayer of thanksgiving.

Mastering the Dance

The unspoken deal was sealed. In exchange for the devotion of a student, Danny would share his secrets to life lived large – free of the ties of a petty morality and the restraints of social norms that scared one back into the herd. The call of the true self would always take you beyond the bounds of what’s expected. Boundaries kept sacred by the so-called successful; Bankers, Vice-principals, cops and certain Sunday-school teachers.

Those people were good at being good - they enjoyed snitching on kindergarten mates for colouring outside the lines – and with the wrong colours too! How did they ever become so powerful? What in their threats carried such fear? How long did one have to be an outcast before you discovered that those threats of exclusion and shame could push you no further than you’d already been pushed?

There was another set of rules. Rules made and kept by those who excelled at crossing the line where the rules lie. All the forbidden fruits of violence, sex, and greed were there to be stolen and sold. The outlaw rules were as tough to keep as the others. The keepers of the outlaw codes were as mean-spirited and power-hungry as those who patrolled moral codes – both armed with petty jealousies – chunks, not chips, on their shoulders.

Those without talent for either good, or evil, ended up serving both sets of rules at the same time – caught between the impossible, half-starved, choices of staying straight and doing time in dead-end jobs or being criminal and risk doing time in all-expenses paid government hotels. But serving, always in service, to whoever controlled the payouts and punishments.

The third option was to live with beauty as your Master. These folk danced the road between the two shoulders crossing the centre lines, changing direction with the wind, and enjoying the trip seemingly uninterested in destinations. They could turn the grey pavement between morality and immorality, between the sacred and the profane, between the profound and the silly, into the yellow-brick road. This alchemy was both worthless and priceless - depending on who your patrons were. Do you dance for the Maker creating sidewalk masterpieces washed away with the rain? Or do you deal with the Devil putting trifles on canvas treasured behind locked inner-circle gallery doors?

Commerce was the fourth way. It’s rules marched single-file somewhere between the good and the bad. Commerce took anything that you could pin a price tag to - and flogged it. The value of the endeavor was in the mind of the purchaser. They were simply the a-moral dealers of human hungers. Those with talent for it kept careful track of who ruled who. They could measure it with numbers. They’d never consider that those numbers are simply symbols that stand in for the heartbeats of time.

And if they did slow enough to listen, or feel those heartbeats inside - stargazing with a lover, or alone and exposed to the great emptiness of the impossible symbol zero - they’d be called on cellphones back to the service of downtown cathedral towers whose nameless gods were paid tribute with stories and myths of the “what’s real”. Truths told in select clubs, schools, and vacation retreats. Never ask who keeps the beat. Who first hummed life into rock and water? Who loved them all – good and bad, and artists and busy-ones? They proved how real their gods were with their chequebooks – the only true test of value.

The ocean tides found their way again into English Bay, raising expectations to the moon only to release them and let them slip away again. Grouse Mountain watched over whatever this batch of humans could come up with. It was hard to surprise a mountain. Generations had come and gone from these shores. The numbers of humans and their habitations were increasing. They covered the shorelines and the hills like a thick, leafy, creeping vine that strangled its host and crowded out all competitors for the little sun that shone on Vancouver’s shores. The mountain waited and watched and wondered when this cycle would reach its full turn. The beginning of the end is hard to see even for a mountain. You need a god’s eye view. Humans only get it in retrospect.

Amos had the feeling he wasn’t Danny’s first student. Danny would make certain allusions to folks he’d tutored in the past, but would never talk about them. A direct question would evoke only a chuckle and change of subject. It seemed a subject maybe too sacred to spoil with talk? Maybe Danny was just passing along his own method of self-schooling that had gotten him through the tough times? Maybe someone had taken Dan under their wing and shown him the ropes - the moves - the way?

He would talk about certain individuals who shone in his galaxy brighter than the rest. They were people of imagination and tenacity who had been tested by life and refused to let hardships be anything but lessons. Growing up in an Ontario Housing project in an east-end Ottawa neigbhourhood, he’d become fast friends with Phil Magiman. Impressed first and foremost with physical strength and beauty, Danny would always begin the stories of Phil by reminding Amos that he was a champion wrestler. Then, he would go on, Phil was brilliant – a philosopher, scientist, and engineer – completely self-trained.

Phil had never got caught up in the gang scene like Danny but used his intelligence right away to invent and create. With a trade as a welder supporting him, he and a partner had begun creating and patenting their inventions. Parenthood inspired ingenuity. A large Pharmaceutical company picked up two of their child safety devices – one to keep cupboard doors from opening to prying little hands, and another to keep parents more attentive to their children bouncing away the hours in those doorway jumper swings.

Money had started rolling in. More inventions were spawned and Phil’s family grew to four. Just as he was on the verge of leaving behind a middle-class life, like he’d already left behind his low-income childhood, everything turned around on him. In a series of betrayals; first the Pharmaceutical company, then his partner, and finally his wife took it all away. As Danny described it, Amos pictured an ocean storm with waves stripping the cargo from the decks of a small boat. Finally, a wave swept Phil from the deck of his craft into the sea. He was stripped bare, beaten, and spit out on the beach. If Phil could wrestle himself away from gravity’s pin, then Amos could get off his butt and follow Dan to the gym.

Dan was living off Government Unemployment Insurance cheques from his last stint as a construction labourer. He had to stay in shape for his next gig. He showed Amos how to gain access to the downtown YMCA gym without paying. There was no sneaking or lurking involved. The technique involved assuming an attitude that the world belonged to one’s self and never questioning one’s right to be there - for free. It was all, as far as Amos could tell, in the greeting of the gatekeeper. Dan’s physical presence was intimidating but it was his smile and open, vulnerable, face that would disarm. Being greeted by this guy as an equal; as someone worthy of dignity, was as good as any currency.

Dan would enter singing some tune, calling out “hey Compadre, how’s it hanging?” to the guy handing out the towels at the desk. He’d greet Dan by name, like a local celebrity. Somehow, Amos observed, Dan had paid his way with this guy – met him on a level more valuable than the rules he was paid to keep. Amos was handed a towel with a nod and a grin that said - anyone on this guy’s coat-tails was in for a ride.

There was a routine, a ritual, discipled in the gym. Dan took Amos through the sets he’d designed to keep himself in shape. Most of them involved bending and lifting, bending and lifting, twisting and stretching; maintaining flexibility so that when it came time to sling concrete blocks again, they’d be light as feathers and Dan could whistle through the work day keeping the tempo of the crew dancing – and his bosses smiling. Amos had worked summer construction jobs. He could see how valuable Danny’s energy, strength, and spirit would be on a construction site. He followed the routine and learned it until he could show up in a gym alone and look like he knew what he was doing.

Danny even got him out jogging a couple of times. “C’mon young warrior” he’d coax him “just around the block.” He would prod and push and encourage Amos jogging backwards to Amos’s forwards trudge along each length of city street. But Amos knew that running wasn’t for him. Running wasn’t what saved him from that Grizzly in the mountains. No, he was better at standing his ground. He could walk for hours, shuffle up to any mountaintop, but pounding his feet into concrete for Amos was crossing the line from self-care into self-abuse.

On the days that Amos would join Dan in these rituals, Dan would let Amos treat him to a breakfast afterwards at one of their favourite haunts. The joys of eating well, was another one of the four corners of Dan’s method. Eating well, looking good, working with soul were the three essentials. Keeping it all light with music, humour, beauty, sacred ideas and conversations rounded out those hard corners into a circle that rolled morning into long afternoons, evenings into night into dream-time, mystery-time, time to begin again whistling, wondering, wandering with purpose soaking it all up with a hungry curiosity and an animal instinct that kept you grounded and earthy and hunting.

Sex was what drove Dan into the day. He was always hunting. Nothing; no lesson, no conversation, no meal, was more important than the opportunity to turn a woman’s head his way and test her eyes for hunger. Danny would leap, run, cross the street, jog backwards, whatever it took to meet a single woman. Every woman who passed his way would be greeted with an appreciative remark. “Gorgeous!” he’d say, by way of greeting “Wonderful!” he’d whistle turning to appreciate the curves she cut in passing.

Amos was completely embarrassed and scandalized by this approach to the opposite sex. Amos met woman as if across a great chasm of respect and fear. Danny met them as if across a mattress. What surprised Amos was how many women, while refusing to give Dan the time of day, seemed to soak up the attention and glow a little brighter for it. Sure, maybe most would give him scorn, but there were lots who responded. The saucy ones would swing their hips just a little more – toss their hair – enjoying the power of denial. The straight and skirted ones would reveal nothing - but Amos would often catch the smirk – the glee of being Eve - in their eyes. Sure, Danny would get his share of scorn, but that did little to dampen the fire that was burning hot, as he’d say, “in his savage loins”.



He showed Amos the best shops to pick up second hand clothes. They found a black linen jacket that Amos could pull off with jeans and sneakers. Dan had a brown wool blazer that he’d wear with his leather wingtip shoes when he wanted to be in society. When his cheque would arrive, they’d dine at classy Italian, German, or maybe a favourite Mexican place on West 4th.

When things were lean, they’d travel across the city for what Dan would call a “scoff”. At all you can eat, buffet, restaurants the growing boys would revel in meat and carb feasts washed down with gallons of coffee. A favourite was the Countryman Buffet. Ribs and chicken smothered in a sweet tangy sauce were scoffed down with thick crusts of sourdough bread. Plates of roast beef and potatoes in a brown gravy with green beans and pickles would balance the meal off. Berry pies, cheesecake, and brownies slid down with ice cream and more coffee. Amos couldn’t believe the place could stay in business with customers like them. It was one of those un-real situations that kept occurring as he accompanied Dan around the city.

To Amos, the whole city seemed more than a little unreal. The beauty of the ocean sunsets he’d catch crossing the Granville Island bridge in his cab made him feel like he was living someone else’s life. The sun sparkling on the south face of Grouse Mountain in the morning, the Lion’s Head peaks just beyond, would catch Amos by surprise. The ocean waves pounding; sending its scents into the streets, seemed to come from another time just beyond memory. Even the warm rains welcomed you into them to explore the wet greys the concrete offered. This was much different from the cold stinging rains of Lake Ontario that drove you indoors to watch from windows or turn to TV.

One rainy day Dan showed up with two umbrellas. “Let’s go man” he called to Amos throwing an umbrella at him. “Rain is from the Maker. It’s a chance to be close to God. Don’t miss it.” They’d walk down the lush green sidestreets – every yard had its own variety of tree and flower. Some Amos would recognize, others were unknown, but they all seemed larger and greener than what grew in the East. Even the leaf stems seemed thicker as if every single leaf had a better grip on life out here. They’d always end up down at the ocean. Rain and waves would play with mists and breezes to produce a mist-ical feel that was beyond anything captured in print or imagination. To feel it on your skin was the only way to know it.

On these walks, or over huge pans of lasagna or shepherd’s pie that they’d build for themselves, the talk would always begin and end with authors, artists, musicians. The one thing about his past that Amos could get some credit from Dan about, was his knowledge of literature. He raved to Dan about Dostoyevsky; about his moral authority and the rich colours, both dark and light, that he painted the world with. He couldn’t get him interested in the brainy Camus and Sarte though. Dan couldn’t believe Amos hadn’t read Tolstoy yet. He gave him a biography – as thick as “War and Peace” - and urged him to read it. Amos introduced Danny to Matt Cohen and Al Purdy, eastern Ontario boys grittier than the slick Montreal crowd. Danny opened up the awful, earthy, American trilogy of Henry Miller to Amos’ virgin eyes.

Miller’s descriptions of his journey into author-ity captivated Amos. The world he lived in; hookers and scammers and thieves, was Danny’s home turf. The way Miller found beauty, and the shine of the sacred, in those rooms and streets was entrancing to Amos. Jack Kerouac seemed an innocent romantic to Miller’s dirty-handed portrayal of the light that streaked all the way through the dark tunnel of life’s misery.

Amos secretly took heart in Miller’s story. It had taken him decades of living before he could put the way he saw into words on paper. He spent his best and brightest, youthful, years just learning how to see - before he even dared to try to write anything down. In Miller, Amos learned that the circle could turn and turn and tumble in a jewel’s sanding box before a gem was ready. Turning life over and over and over again. Turning over the lessons with the truth of experience, turning truth on its head with the lessons of time, turning hope upside down with the ugly underside of honesty, would turn, in time, turn out something worth saying.

They’d haunt second-hand book stores and assault music stores. Dan would go through the stacks rapidly pulling albums from their rows growing a pile that he’d take from aisle to aisle. Amos would watch as the store owner’s attention would be drawn to this frenzied all-you-can-eat buffet approach. Finally Dan would heft his stack of maybe twenty albums and drop it on the counter. “Fifty bucks?” he’d offer. If the answer was a “no”, he was out the door. Maybe next time the owner would be hungrier for a sale.

It’s not like he and Danny were attached at the hip. Amos worked the cabbie night shift, four til four, - as many days as he could take at a stretch. He was squirreling away a stash for his ski trips that winter. On a good night he could clear $100. Slow nights he’d cover gas and the cab rate and come home with only enough to lend Dan til the month’s end. Saving money seemed a talent beyond Dan’s reach – or desire. When he had money, he shared it with a generosity that left Amos humbled. When he was without, he lived hand to mouth and looked, without shame, for other hands to help him out.

Amos learned to give up trying to track the loans and trust that it would all come out in the wash between friends. The Union Hall would call Danny up from time to time and he’d have work for a week or two. Their paths would barely cross with Dan working days and Amos nights.

Helen would keep them informed of each other’s health. Amos noticed how Helen was still charmed by Danny’s domestic presence. Dan knew how to keep a place as carefully as his own personal grooming - leaving only a few crumbs for his pet mice in their basement cupboards. Helen was too courteous to complain to Dan about Amos’ habits. But Dan wasn’t.

Every so often, he’d blow off steam in Amos’ direction. He’d confront Amos about the laundry and dishes left where they dropped. Amos would bring up the issue of money’s lent. Dan would push back with a curled lip about Amos’ petty and caustic snide remarks. Amos had a dirty little habit of regular put-downs. He’d try to hide them in unfunny, joking, observations about his companions’ observed weaknesses. It was Amos’ way of asserting authority – letting others know that he could see their ugly sides – trying to make it okay to say such cutting things by making a joke of it.

What Amos didn’t see was how it revealed his own poverty of grace and manners. He was blind to how those little put-downs, that he thought were witty and harmless, were endured by friends who graciously let the comments pass. Danny held the mirror up. He made Amos look at the prickly barbs on his hide – how they were a poor form of protection – keeping others at a safe distance.

In spite of this nasty blind spot, Amos had qualities that would attract. When he was relaxed and natural, his laugh came out strong and easily. His smile would put strangers at ease and was a gentle stroke of fur that his friends would come close for. He was smart and attentive. When his watery eyes were on you, you felt like a thoughtful mind was watching. That is, until you realized that behind the gaze, as often as not, a whole other inner story was being followed while he tuned in and out to your company. For some, it became a challenge to see how long they could hold that mercurial attention. Others would take offence. Most were just as self-absorbed and didn’t even notice Amos’ inner wanderings.

While the smile and eyes were attractive, he had a large, quiet presence that for most was a barrier. He projected a silent shield that strangers sensed was tough to get around. When he tried to get past his own silence with attempts at small talk in social settings - his own distaste for conversations without purpose – people could smell like bad breath. The truth was that while at times Amos longed for companions, he mostly found his own company sufficient. He didn’t consider himself a loner. He was just very good at being alone and often too lazy to put himself out there, in the world, to share.

Sharing, generosity really, was the subject of Danny’s school. It was the only lesson that mattered. Dan would share his dream of gathering musicians and artists to come together for a benefit concert for Mother Earth. He was sure they would do it and that he could pull it off. He’d list off the musicians and bands he’d approach. He knew their hearts from their music. Bruce Coburn would do it he knew. And Neil Young – more gritty Eastern Ontario boys. Carlos Santana was a sure bet. Dexy’s Midnight Runners were near the top of his list. He knew Bob Gandolph had it in him. “We’re here to create; to enjoy what the Creator makes, and to make whatever we’re given even more beautiful.” They talked it over and over. They agreed and elaborated and saw evidence of it in every place and every one.

Amos’ walk with Danny was taking him deeper and deeper into his own soul. Danny was impatiently hurrying him down into Dante’s Inferno. While Amos didn’t get a lot out of that dense old text, he did get this. The sooner you hit bottom rung of hell, the sooner you could crawl up Satan’s leg, get through his asshole, and make it back into the world. Getting past the demons and getting ready to share was Dan’s program.

What mattered was your own sense of style. To be an artist was to be unique. To do what others feared, not for shock value, but to push back the night-terrors that kept people from seeing the beauty all around them; in everything. It was your job to give others courage; to get them to grasp onto the hope waiting to spring up in every broken soul, in every hurting place, where greed and hate leaves fear in its shadows. The trick was – to live it – and to let your living be your canvas.

Amos had pretty much forgotten the whole idea of Danny actually being the Devil. When he thought of it now, knowing what a sweetheart, sincere, artist lay behind that angry exterior, he’d laugh at his crazy notions. How simplistic. How could he have been caught - thinking a tough exterior meant a sinister heart too?

Amos had been yearning out loud for some weed to smoke. He hadn’t really encountered a good source at the cab company. While wishing out loud that he had some, he also kept trying to convince Dan how weed could really add to one’s creative point of view. At first, Danny had ignored the request. But when Amos kept going on about it, Mephistopheles was forced to keep his part of the bargain.

They got into Amos’ car and drove across the city to the eastern edge of the Vancouver suburbs where the city became strung out into long streets of industrial malls interspersed with blocks of houses barren empty of even the shade of a mature tree. They found Danny’s friend Derek at home and soon they were high. It was good weed.

Derek was young. Maybe even younger than Amos. But he was a street cat. Sure his house was a dump, but he had his own place and had been there for a while. Danny and Derek exchanged news in few words. They seemed to have an understanding between them that Amos wondered at. There was a lot unsaid behind the smiles and nods they exchanged as they smoked another reefer.

Feeling unsettled and more than a little uneasy about the focus these two guys were putting on him, Amos announced he wanted to find a party. Danny and Derek looked at each other and shrugged. While Derek went into the other room to get showered and dressed, Danny sat grinning at Amos. Amos became uncomfortable with this fixed attention and said “What?”.

Danny began to spill out a devil’s prophecy. It was like he had been watching all of Amos’ dreams while he mused or slept. He began describing in a flat surly monotone how Amos wanted to become a writer. He went on in a terrible mocking telling of how Amos saw himself writing in a cabin in the woods with a faithful woman at his side like a dog. It terrified Amos. He hadn’t told anyone of these private thoughts. Danny’s eyes pinned him into his chair and his smile made him small and foolish. Danny was channeling an evil, mocking spirit. The drugs had opened his heart to this demon. Danny was gone and now Amos was sitting facing the demon who lived in his own mirror.

It was a cruel and cutting attack on his most cherished self-image. He’d experienced drug-induced paranoia many times. Having a cherished self-image twisted upon itself was part of the attraction of drugs – never letting oneself get too caught up in mental illusions and delusions was almost a spiritual practice. But to go through that in your own head was one thing. To have someone else tap into those secret thoughts and portray them exactly was haunting. The dark part of himself that could twist things was now sitting across from him – laughing at his surprise like a cat with a mouse.
Amos was caught, trapped, exposed, helpless to rescue his hidden heart from the fangs of this devil.

When Derek came back into the room Danny was still going on. With relief Amos saw that Derek wanted no part of it – what would he have done if they’d teamed up on him? Derek seemed to recognize instinctively that Danny had changed personalities. Something he’d seen before.

“You still want to go?” he asked Amos. Amos said “Let’s just get out of here eh?” So they piled out the door and into the Dart, Danny laughing and singing in the back seat. They didn’t make it far before Danny called for a piss stop. Still in a residential neighbourhood, they pulled into a dark lot behind a warehouse. Out of the car, Danny was hooting and hollering. Amos told him to keep it down – he didn’t want to attract cops in this stoned condition. In answer, Dan threw his beer bottle against a wall.

Amos looked at Derek and said “I’m not taking this guy downtown.” Derek said “Why don’t you just take me home?” But Danny would have none of it. He was belligerent and threatening and getting uglier still laughing at the two of them - dancing across the asphalt. So, they left him there in the darkened lot.

Danny showed up the next day about noon. He’d spent the night in prison was all he’d tell. Whether he remembered the episode in the house, Amos was never sure. When he tried to describe it – Dan looked blankly at him – and he felt foolish all over again trying to explain what’s best left unsaid between soul warriors. What Dan remembered was that Amos had betrayed him by leaving him there for the cops. After that, Amos was a lot more careful what he asked Danny to help him with.

The Devil you say?

1Now Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild. For forty wilderness days and nights he was tested by the Devil. He ate nothing during those days, and when the time was up he was hungry.
The Devil, playing on his hunger, gave the first test:
Luke 4 from “The Message”

Amos definitely didn’t feel good about the way things went. He felt really guilty about Helen having to move out of her own place. It wasn’t that they didn’t get along, or got entangled in a love thing. It was just the devil that made him do it. But we’re getting ahead of the story.

As a student of literature in university, Amos had come across many, many, references to Goethe’s classic story of “Faust”. Doctor Faust’s deal with the devil is rooted deep in the anglo-saxon cultural genetics. The idea of cashing in one’s soul for some short term rewards pops up in TV shows and songs and conversations continually. Marlowe retold the Faust story in 17th Century England, and American’s know the story as “The Devil and Daniel Webster. Of course, it’s a retelling of Adam and Eve’s deal with the devil. Neil Young’s “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” was the seventies version of the wartime “Live like there’s no tomorrow”.

Short term, self-destructive decisions, in exchange for the quick payoff, are the shadow side of North American culture. No matter how many times we see – in personal and political stories - how it was tears apart the earth, communities, and our families - and have plenty of angels on our shoulders to point it out - we can’t help picking the devil’s fruit and tasting it. To be human is to deal with the devil.

On the surface, Amos told himself, he was merely continuing his classical education. He found a modern translation of Goethe’s “Faust” –not Marlowe’s later retelling - at the Vancouver Public Library. Now that he had an address, he could get a loan card. He felt good about pursuing his own studies – just for the sake of it. It felt mature and manly like when he smoked stale tobacco in his tortoise shell pipe. But the way his blood pumped in his veins as he carried the text home revealed something more was going on - he was unraveling forbidden treasure. It felt like he was thirteen again, stealing home with his first Playboy magazine. He was playing with Promethean fire, unlocking Pandora’s box, daring to mess around in places where little boys get eaten by witches and only heroes survive with scars to show.

Up in the mountains tree planting that summer He’d worked his way through a good chunk of Nietchze’s attempts to push off God and pump up the human spirit’s potential to achieve god-like status through science and reason. The fact that Neitchze’s journey had ended up in a madhouse only made it more interesting and challenging. The attempt to reach the edges of the human psyche - without falling off the end of the world - seemed a worthy venture for a young romantic with no better plans.

Add to that cocktail, the month on his injured back with Jung and Castenada and Huxley and you might get a taste of the elixir he was concocting for a journey into soul and identity. In other words, he was spending way too much time inside his own head - and the heads of dead white men.

So Dr. Faust’s deal with the Devil – to sell his soul in exchange for a devil’s tour of ultimate earthy experience - was a logical next read for Amos. Faust conjures up the devil Mephistopheles and trades his soul to possess the forbidden knowledge waiting over morality’s high garden walls. His pursuit of truth – as a scientist - drives him to exchange an eternity in hell for a quick trip in the Garden – to taste all of the world’s enticing temptations. To live fully he frees himself – for now - from judgment’s second-guessing that sours the sweet fruit of lusts explored. As Amos ate up the poetry of Goethe’s story, he had to admit that his otherwise worthless English & Philosophy, Bachelor of Arts, University degree did allow him to wade through these dense texts. He was able to discover how hopeless Romantics like himself, in other ages, had told their stories.

He’d discovered a good place to settle in with a book. A diner on the corner of Broadway and Granville offered a large plate glass window view of the bridge downtown with the mountains behind. He could look up from his book, out from the vinyl benched booths, into the - more often than not - wet - Vancouver night and at the same time catch his own reflection - reflecting on his path forward. That was where Amos first met the Devil. The Devil was drunk and giving the mousey little waitress a hard time. He broke through Amos’ concentration - shouting at her across the restaurant with a surly demand for more coffee. That was the bait. The wily master snagged a glance of Amos’ disapproving glare like that was what he’d been fishin for all along – the self-righteous can’t resist scolding evil.

“What’re ya lookin at? Never seen a drunken Indian before?”
Spooked, not expecting to have his challenge confronted, Amos tried to play like it hadn’t happened. He quickly turned his head back down to the pages – ignoring the question. But he could feel the Devil’s glare searing into him – the hook was set. He was caught. “O Shit” he thought - still keeping his head down “here we go.” as the drunk pulled himself to his feet and reeled over to Amos’ booth. He stuck a large, wide, clenched fist between Amos’ nose and the novel and fiercely growled “What gives you the right not to talk to me?”

Up to this point in his life, Amos had avoided conflict by either using a distracting humour, by letting others fight his battles, or by simply running. For some reason that night those choices didn’t seem to be options – or maybe, just maybe, Amos was ready to try something else.

He slowly looked up from the book, doing his best to seem calm and cool. But with a closer look at his antagonist now, the cool turned suddenly hot. The drunken Indian’s chest was thick and square equipped with a pair of heavily muscled, tattooed arms. A shoulder length black mane framed a handsome, still-young, face set with a wide, thick-lipped, angry mouth. Dark eyes, under dark brows, pierced through the alcohol’s haze. It was a sure bet this hombre had been in more than a few street fights. Amos had always had the glass of a TV screen between him and any such action.

“If you wanna fight - let’s take it outside” he heard himself say looking straight into the Devil’s eyes. At the same time, in another part of his head, he was thinking “Amos - are you fucking crazy?” He knew, swallowing the second of silence that hung between him and the Devil’s glare, feeling the blood rush suddenly to his head, that if this Indian took him up on the suggestion, he’d get his clock cleaned. Even drunk, this guy was gonna do him some damage. A picture of himself getting pummeled on the street outside, while angels watched helplessly laughing, flashed through his mind.

To his surprise and relief, the devil withdrew his still clenched fist. His face softened just a bit. His shoulders set back from their hunch forward. With dignity he replied “No, I don’t want to fight. I just want to talk.” Thinking he was off the hook, not realizing he was just being played, Amos jumped at the offer. “S-S-Sit down then” he stuttered trying to reclaim the cool that had flown out the window beside him. The Indian took a seat on the bench across from him. The waitress brought him a fresh coffee and topped Amos’ up, giving him a knowing smirk - another fish in net. And that was the beginning of Amos’ association with the Scottish Indian, Danny Sadler. Over several cups of coffee they told their stories.

They were only halfway through that first cup of coffee when Amos realized who he was talking to. He had just conjured Danny up out of the pages of Faust to present himself, in the flesh, as the devil Mephistopheles. In Amos’ mind’s eye, the conversation at the formica table was mirrored in the plate glass; an ancient story was unfolding on another level, in a bizarre but equally real through-the-looking-glass world.

Danny scoffed at Amos’ descriptions of suburban home and book learning. He took the wind out of Amos’ attempts to be self-critical by quickly stealing away any doubt that there was any value at all in what Amos had to say for himself. He took up the part of Amos’ demons and told him what he already knew about his own life. How a sheltered, comfortable, secure life had done nothing to show him what life was really all about. Satan knows the heart as well as Jesus does. This was the chief of devils to whom Amos’ many familiar little household demons reported. The bargaining had begun. First Mephistopheles would discount the value of what Faust was bringing to the table.

Then the offer was put down. Danny’s story seemed to hold all the rich temptations that Amos had only read, or wondered, about. Danny held the cards that were missing from Amos’ deck. He’d Grown up in an Ottawa ghetto, dropping out of high-school still semi-illiterate. The three years Amos had spent studying literature, politics and philosphy, Danny had spent in prison. While Amos had been taught the lessons of living a good life, Danny had sold weapons swimming deep in the ruthless rivers of violence where sharks would always hunt the soft underbellies of “good” people. To be able to see beauty and meaning, and even purpose, in a life lived from these depths was to be able to take in all of life’s offerings and judge for one’s self beyond childish moralities of good and bad.

Amos’ fear of such deep waters was part of what compelled him – the way Niagara Falls draws you standing at its edge - over and down into the void. Danny’s life story was the dark underbelly of Amos’ privileged walk. To be an artist of any weight, Amos hungered to know the passions; to possess the intimate, dark, secrets of the paths Danny had traveled. And, on cue, just as Mephistopheles had offered Faust all he was missing, Danny dared Amos to try on his world and learn something about life through his eyes.

Danny explained he was on a quest to live clean and pure and taste the fullness of a purpose. He was trying to educate himself about art and literature and philosophy – not to achieve some degree or status or job but to know how great men had harnessed life’s passion and made a difference – helped others suffer the sweet pains and subtle joys of living life fully. He invited Amos along.

When they were ready to part, Danny pulled out a stack of cards held with a thick elastic band and handed one to Amos. They were glossy, head shot, colour photos of Danny in a bandana with a sexy grin. His name and number were scrawled on the back. They agreed to meet the next day.
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5For the second test he led him up and spread out all the kingdoms of the earth on display at once. 6Then the Devil said, “They’re yours in all their splendor to serve your pleasure. I’m in charge of them all and can turn them over to whomever I wish. 7Worship me and they’re yours, the whole works.”

Amos couldn’t resist. In the morning light, Danny’s calling card was obnoxious and conceited. To call that number was obviously just asking for trouble. Still, there was truth in the devil’s telling - that he knew what Amos could never know. What Amos did know, was that if he truly wanted to write as an artist, he’d have to use light and dark and more shades of colour in his portraits than he currently possessed. Danny was offering to add those missing shades of colour to his palette. There’d be a cost of course. That was part of the story. It just seemed too strange a coincidence that a devil would appear at just the right time in his story. The encounter had an unreal feel about it – like there was more going on than what was being said. Subtle clues, like the waitress’ knowing look, Danny’s wink with his offer, was that a whiff of sulphur? The book was off the shelf, it’s cover had opened to the first chapter he needed to live before it could be written. Ready or not, the next page was his to turn.

Of course, it turned out that Danny was a reader of tales also. He was a lover of literature, but unlike Amos, completely self taught. He showed up at the beach just below 2nd and Arbutus by the pool, where they’d agreed to meet, with a dictionary under his left bicep and Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” in his left hand. A rolled umbrella served as a walking stick in his right. “Every time I come to a word I don’t know, I look it up” he explained. “Every time I read about another author or book, I write it down”. And that was his course of study.

Danny’d done time for possession and sale of illegal weapons back in Ontario. He was short on details about that life. He wanted to talk about where he was going. He’d been out here in Vancouver even longer trying to forge a new identity free from the broken chains that still hung from his wrists and ankles. He’d sing out as they strolled “I comb my hair in a different way - but end up lookin just the same”. His sense of his own absurdity was as endearing as his proud peacock routine was maddening.

They walked as they talked. Danny was dressed sharp. Sports jacket, dress shirt, jeans and black leather wingtip shoes to Amos jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. Danny would drop their conversation cold every time a single woman appeared. He’d turn and follow, or cross the street to tell her she was gorgeous or sexy or whatever and hand her one of his photo cards. Rejoining Amos he explained “I got a thousand of these made up. Even if one in a hundred gives me a call, I’ll be rolling in pussy”.

It was the way Danny talked about, and treated, women that would sour their times together. They were either queens or cunts and nothing in between. While Amos didn’t put his women on a pedestal, he set them apart in a holy seclusion from the world of men. He couldn’t stand to have them profaned. Or maybe Danny’s abuse triggered his own undeclared hatred of women’s harsh power over him. They would argue passionately about it until they were both enraged. Of course there’d also be large quantities of alcohol involved and they’d split up wherever they were. Amos would go home and wouldn’t see Danny til sometime the next day - learning about the scuffle and accommodations provided by the boys in blue. But I’m getting ahead of the story again.

That first day together, before their first fights, they got to talking about music. Did Amos know this band and did Amos know that singer and Danny announced that Amos’ first lesson had to be in music. Amos was amused that this strange character had apparently taken him on as a student – he didn’t remember signing up. On the way to Danny’s rooming house on the East Side, Amos shelled out for a bottle of Johnny Walker Red (his idea of a sophisticated drink). The lads said a polite hello to Danny’s German landlady on their way up to the second floor room. Amos had never been in a rooming house and he felt like he was walking into a movie. On a table by the bed was a turntable sitting atop a silver amp. On the floor beside the table, a row of records stood between two speakers. The room was sparse of furniture otherwise. A shared toilet was down the hall.

Danny started with Amos’ first love – the Led Zeppelin of his seventies-suburban-basement youth. From there, Danny took him back into Rock n Roll history. Like a DJ, he’d spin a sampling of the groundbreaking Birds with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck on guitar. From England to New York’s Velvet Underground - John Cale and the roots of punk. Then an obscure sampling from The Band – pre-Dylan. Danny would instruct his charge to listen intently to the drumming, now the bass, this guitar wail – the genius of the artistry so original and so sublime they could only be purchased with blood – no?. By the time they got to Danny’s most soul-ripping favourite, Rory Gallagher, the scotch was gone and the stereo was cranked up to window-rattling loud. They’d already ignored the landlady’s banging on the door, but when the record needle ground to a halt in the middle of a wailing riff - the silence suddenly dropped them from the heights of musical ecstacy into the darkening late afternoon room.

“The ol’ bitch cut the power. Let’s get out of here.” Danny was on his feet and out the door before Amos had a chance to stagger to his feet. They stumbled down the stairs and out, past the screaming threats of the landlady, squinting, into the still bright afternoon sun.

“You have a car right?” Danny said. “We should go to Vancouver Island. I’ll introduce you to some people you need to meet.”
“Let’s go man!” said Faust to the deal. “Take me on your tour!”
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9For the third test the Devil took him to Jerusalem and put him on top of the Temple. He said, “If you are God’s Son, jump. 10It’s written, isn’t it, that ‘he has placed you in the care of angels to protect you; 11they will catch you; you won’t so much as stub your toe on a stone’?”

The next hour was a bit of a blur. Somehow they got into the Dodge Dart, got out of the city, and down to the ferry just in time to drive on and pass out. The second the car stopped, Danny crawled into the back seat. Amos slumped over across the front bench. A ferryman thumped on the car’s hood until Amos sat up and got told to turn off the car’s engine. At least Amos thought it was a ferryman. In fact, it was the angel who had gotten them that far without mishap.

It was night when they got to Victoria and Amos drove them up out of the city. Danny pointed out the sights and spots of his life in that city. He’d lived there for a time and was full of praise for the place. “Why don’t you still live here then?” Amos asked. “It’s a long story.” was all that Danny would say. They drove out of the city. Danny directed Amos to turn here and there until they came to a trailer home set in the woods along a quiet country lane. It was well past midnight and Amos wanted to just sleep in the car. But Danny insisted and knocked and walked through the door and into the trailer with Amos shadowing him. A large bearded man emerged from the back bedroom and at first didn’t seem to recognize Danny, seemed a little hostile about these midnight intruders. Amos was turning to leave when the guy growled “You know where the blankets are.” and turned back to his bed.
They crashed on the bench couches in their clothes.

Amos woke to the smell of coffee. There was a woman with long dark hair standing at the stove cracking eggs into a fry pan. “How do you like your eggs Danny?” she asked in a maternal way – with a mix of endearment and impatience – wisdom that knew the futility of scolding - only adding fuel to the fire - when boys are being boys. She made them breakfast while Danny and her man caught up on news.

Amos slipped outside to pee and try to blow off the worst of his morning farts. He found a small stream down a path and stuck his head in it. He sat back on his haunches and looked around and wondered where the wind that had brought him here was blowing from? If he was on the highway to hell what were these good hospitable people doing here along the way?

He ventured into their company and received a plate of eggs and toast and was passed thick country sausage and homemade raspberry jam and bits of cheese that all were too good to have come from off the island. He could feel his body giving thanks for it. Over cups of strong black coffee with thick rich cream Amos gathered that Danny and Bill had walked together for a time and in a way that had made them brothers. The story wasn’t sung but the fact that Bill and his beautiful wife Gloria couldn’t refuse Dan a bed, told Amos that Danny had shared something valuable with them. Whatever it was, Amos liked what he saw in the simple wealth they so generously shared with him.

They headed for Nanaimo and Danny’s friends’. Amos put his favourite road trip tape into the Fleshmobile’s deck and the adventure was on again. All the way Danny regaled Amos with assurances about how they were journeying to meet a truly spiritual man. Desmond was a true friend – unlike anyone Amos would ever have met in his limited shallow life. Desmond was the older brother of Danny’s love-of-his-life-ex-wife Helene and would greet them as brothers. Helene was the perfect woman. Artistic and wise and street smart and sexy and compassionate and pure. If Amos asked the wrong question, or tried out a joke about her, Danny would ignore it or slap it down quick. Amos had never met such a woman Danny assured him. She would be there at her brother’s home – and Amos would see.

They were more than a bit of a sad sight showing up in yesterday’s clothes, reeking still of yesterday’s alcohol, when they arrived on the doorstep of Desmond’s 5 yr. old daughter’s birthday party.

Amos tried to turn Danny around and get him to come back another day. But Desmond and his wife Sophie and their friends did indeed live up to Danny’s words. A gracious, magical, afternoon opened up to them sitting and chatting with the grown-ups on the front porch of their A-frame home while the children played in the forest’s clearing. Danny was surprisingly quiet. He would speak only to urge Amos and Desmond on into conversation about important things.

These people were practitioners of EST – a behavioural psychology movement that sought to heal and help. They told Amos of “The Hunger Project” that took them proselytizing into urban streets trying to convince people of the fact that there really is more than enough food to feed the world if only humans would cooperate and organize distribution channels.
They were earnest and sincere and interesting people. Amos could see how people in the street could be attracted by such people. They were in possession of a purpose. That purpose gave them an inner light and a confidence that was attractive to anyone who had none of those elusive things.

From bits of conversation over the afternoon, Amos slowly pieced together Danny’s story. These were the people who had tamed the wild beast when he first arrived from Ontario. They became family to him and with EST helped him to do battle with some of the personal demons that had followed him west. Desmond’s younger sister – Helene - was “away” that day. It was the only explanation of her absence given. She had fallen in love with Danny and they had a child; a daughter together. But something had gone wrong. There was something not told. A betrayal or some other broken link in the story had sent Danny out on his own again; banished from island life to begin yet again in Vancouver.

The afternoon was golden and as it turned from bright and sunny to a hazy finish, Amos had the feeling that these faerie creatures in this forest clearing would vanish – taking him with them – when the setting sun released the spell dropping behind the trees. Danny announced that their was not complete. They had to visit Denman and Hornby islands to complete a real taste of Island life. Their hosts, recognizing a quest in the making, urged the boys to carry on their journey. They departed with big slabs of homemade lasagna and cake pressed into Amos’ hands. His heart was as full as his hands. He switched the tape player off as they pulled away letting the afternoon’s song ring on a little longer in the silent appreciation held between them.

A mighty little car ferry took them out to Hornby Island. It seemed like the last refuge of hippies and artists mixed together with the money people. The rich and the creative co-existed in a symbiotic relationship. The artists needed the patrons and the rich need the “look” that the artists gave their groovy little island retreats. Hornby was a short hop across and they just made the last twilight ferry to Denman stars appearing on cue to guide them to the end of the road. Would they find the pot of gold at this rainbow’s end? They stopped into an idyllic English pub in a rustic village. They turned their wallets out and found that their first beer was also to be their last.

But the road had one more turn in it still. Just as they were standing to go, Danny got a slap on the back from a couple of big, middle-aged, Irish rugby type guy. He greeted him as a long lost brother. Turns out that Danny had worked as a labourer in Jack’s construction company. Over a fresh round of beers, a round that turned into two, then three, Amos learned that Danny was a brute for hard work. As the story went, Danny would be the first to show at the construction site and the last to leave. He’d work the day through feeding two skilled bricklayers with brick and block and mortar. Danny was the grease that kept the whole machine going – making money for buddy boy here.

They had a merry time with Jack and his pal Bill and Amos was beginning to hope that they’d give them a bed for the night when he discovered that that was just what was in mind. The boss’s friend followed him into the Men’s room, and standing at the urinal beside Amos, leaned over looking down where his hand was and declared “I’d sure like to give that lovely one a suck!”.

In his sheltered life so far, Amos’d never yet been made such an offer. With a raised eyebrow, Amos simply replied “Yeah? Well, I don’t think so pal.” put it away, zipped it up, and washed his hands of the offer without another word between them. Back at the table, Danny and Jack were into a heated debate about the Hunger Project. Amos sat and listened a bit. The boss was threatened by the idea that he might be responsible for somebody else’s hunger. He was eager to trash any idea that generosity might save the world. Danny was back at him “You can make a difference man. Open your heart. If you don’t open your heart and your clenched fists you’re going to die an ugly mean little man.” That really got Jack excited and he started railing against “do-gooders and bleading hearts and dreamers.”

Amos was disgusted by the cynicism. It was tarnishing the afternoon’s still golden memories. He leaned over and grabbed Dan’s shoulder and said so the other’s could hear. “Let’s go man. We’re wasting our time here.”

Dan stood straight up walked out the door with Amos scrambling to follow. He gave one quick look back at their startled angry looks from the departing boys to the waitress standing beside them with a pretty healthy tab to cover. Danny and Amos were laughing and hooting out to the car. They made a quick escape down the road to who knows where they were going. Amos was still indignant about the bathroom proposition but Danny just shrugged it off “Get used to it man.” Amos had yet to discover that being openly gay was as common as rain in Vancouver. This wasn’t frosty white Ontario. Out here, his sexuality was up for grabs – literally.

The road ended - being an island road - at an ocean beach and they climbed out of the car and threw themselves down on their backs in the sand just listening to the surf and exposing their hearts to the stars. Deep breaths of the warm gentle wind mixed with the beer in their bellies. Amos let go of the day - trusting the stars to keep watch over his bedeviled soul.

A kiss of the first rays of the rising sun brushed Amos’ eyelashes open. He looked over to where Danny lay to find only sand. Had he vanished; a figment of Amos’ overactive imagination; a spirit creature gone home? Amos sat up to see a naked Indian diving into the surf. Returning the “whoop” from the waves he stood and shed clothes as he jogged down and into the icy cold ocean waves – sobering up quick from the last two days of drunken dream.

Climbing back into the Fleshmobile, clothes dampened with seawater, the boys agreed they’d never felt better. Retracing the path back they spoke little of what’d gone between them. Their talk was of the mission ahead. They had good news to bring to the broken-hearted, freedom to share with the captives, manna for the hungry and songs for the sorry, lonely souls the city’s cup was brimming with.

They still had the few bucks they’d never spent on beer money the night before - enough for a cheap breakfast at a diner. They were overjoyed and relieved – laughing at their luck - that all the ferry tickets purchased were return trips. So it was in the company of a sacred laughing hoping spirit that they arrived back to Vancouver’s rain-drenched streets – glistening with sunlight breaking free of clouds to promise a new world begun.

Dropping Danny off at his rooming house they noticed a pile of junk out on the front porch. Upon closer inspection it proved to be Danny’s worldly possessions. It seemed his landlady had trouble recognizing the prophet in her midst and had put out a Room for Rent sign along with Danny’s stuff.

And so back in the basement apartment in Kitsilano, Danny poured on a devilish charm with Helen of Auckland that convinced even Amos that somehow things would all work out between their unholy trinity. Danny became the occupant of the third bedroom in the little apartment with the stairs going up and out into a grassy, shady, backyard off the alley where the Dodge Dart Fleshmobile patiently awaited the next mission...

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Honour Among Drunks

On the Road again
He’d chosen this path and wasn’t at all unhappy about it. He could have bought a plane ticket with the last of his tree-planting stash and made it back to Ontario in time for Law school. He’d spent the fall and winter of the previous year studying for the LSAT exams while driving cab in Toronto. With fair test results, he’d applied and been given a place on the Lawyer’s slow boat to success. It took a spring and a summer in the Rockies to convince himself what a bad idea Law school would be.

It was just too easy. And another four years of uninterrupted study was just too hard. Being a lawyer just seemed way too predictable, and when it came down to it – Amos considered himself too complicated for such a “normal” path. No, he was much happier memorizing street maps, and Vancouver Taxi cab driver regulations. It was a three day course and he was set loose on the road – fresh meat for the Diamond cab company.

He signed up for his first shift at midnight the same day they gave him his cabbie license. Nights on the beach were getting cooler and the Youth Hostel staff were getting tired of him stealing showers. So, he began scratching and scrounging out a living as a tourist behind the wheel of a Vancouver cab.

He could speak English fluently– which was better than about a third of the drivers – new Canadians driving cab nights, practicing English, working day jobs too trying to get a foothold on the slippery slope of the Canadian dream. For $50 a night and the cost of gas you could rent a car and flog your wheels on the streets. Maybe another third of the drivers were young like him and using the wheels as a way of paying the rent until the rest of their life began – acting, writing, studying, pimping, pushing drugs towards any number of dream-lives just over the horizon. The rest of the drivers were career men. They owned their own cars and cab license plates - worth as much as a house. They’d rent their cars out for the night shift to guys like Amos and put in long dayshift hours feeding coffee to, and sharing tips with, the company dispatchers.

There was also the odd middle-aged guy who’d been spit out of a regular job and was trying to keep all the ends of his life still meeting. Everyone knew though, that the longer he spent hours behind the wheel of a cab, the greater the stretch became. Those guys had the wild-eyed look of a drowning man and were just no fun to be around. A few women drove too. They were tough chicks – like they’d grown up in a family of brothers and enjoyed the status of being treated like they had balls.

Amos had his own secret dream. It was maybe more like one of those endless, repetitive nightmares - he was driving, hunting, driving around the city trying to find the address for – “Amos Brown: Author”. He told no one and only admitted it to himself every time his mind turned another phrase or his brain started composing narratives of say - his drive across the Lion’s Head bridge. He carried a note pad around in his jacket pocket to jot down choice inspirations. The words in his head sounded true. He was sure only a mind like his could conjure them up. But the words stayed in his head. They faded away every time he picked up his pen. His dream of being a writer always seemed so profound and real until he picked up his pen - and the dream slipped away like smoke.

He saw himself as unremarkable. He couldn’t see - in the broad glaring light of day - that he had anything new or worthwhile to say. His comments had been covered. His story was common. His observations were only as smart and cynical as the next young poet’s. He wanted to produce something wise and worthwhile. But he was green and hadn’t yet earned his say. In spite of these self-doubts, he saw himself as a heavyweight. He just didn’t want to step into the ring and take the punches - not until his own punches were ready to throw. So, the pages remained blank and he filled hours with quick cab conversations, books between customers, tokes and tunes, and - plans for his season of skiing in the Rockies.

You see, dreamer that he was, Amos had another dream he was pursuing. It was his high-school idea of a successful life. What could be better than the life of a Rocky Mountain ski bum? While being a Lawyer, or a Writer, was miles and miles and years away, in just a few months there’d be snow in the Rockies and Amos planned to be skiing. Not that he was any kind of great skier. Never much of any kind of athlete, skiing for him was closer to dancing and he could dance – sort of. He had just enough rhythm and agility to get down the hill to his own suburban white boy satisfaction. He skied with music in his head and loved it – no team to let down – no pressure to perform for a coach – just him and the hill testing his turns.

So, Amos put the pieces in place to make that teenage dream come true. He needed to know that the things he dreamed up in his head – that he could step into them outside of his head. Before he could write a story, he needed to live a story.

Next step, up at the University, he found an ad - someone named Helen was looking for a female student to share a basement apartment in Kitsilano. He called and must have sounded harmless enough - Helen invited him over for tea. In the kitchen, where you could just barely see sky through the window over the sink – between the top of the back alley’s hedges and the bottom of the first floor apartment’s deck - Helen and Amos worked out an arrangement. She was a third year biology student from New Zealand. She was quiet, and serious, pretty in an old black and white English movie kind of way. She had a good sense of humour. He liked that she wasn’t afraid of him and spunky enough to return his teases with a taunt of her own.

Helen thought Amos seemed pretty normal. He told her about his travels to New Zealand and wandering through the Pacific Islands. He told her about his university days studying poetry and philosophy and his trail out to B.C. where he’d ditched the idea of being of a lawyer and instead - just wanted to ski. She was a little bit charmed by his boyish sense of adventure and she was a little bit worried about the way he tested her with a party-animal story thrown in – watching her for reactions.

But he listened and paid attention to her in a way she hadn’t encountered among many Canadian boys. Amos asked her questions in a gentle kind of big brotherly way. Helen wondered what her folks back in Kiwi-land would think about her shacking up with a strange man. That thought was what sealed the deal. She heard herself agreeing to share the little basement flat with this water-eyed man.

Amos and Helen were both far from home and, for whatever other reasons, were here to cut their own paths beyond the reach of parental approval and protection. For Helen, pushing past her parent’s idea of a proper roommate was proof to herself that she really was her own person and not just a child waiting to grow into her mother’s image.

For Amos, Helen’s respectability offered some ballast to his small sailing craft being tossed about in the ocean’s big, deep, swells. He knew the ocean recognized no names and no credentials and tested every man the same. He wasn’t looking for a lover, or a party, just a place to roost and write and become whatever it was that he was becoming. He knew that winter storms were coming and that a safe harbour – one that would draw out the gentleman in him – just felt right.

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Honour among Drunks
What did he have to lose? Amos tried to calculate the gamble in his head. In exchange for maybe 15 minutes of prime rush hour chances to catch some quick choice cab fares, he was going to follow up on a three week old drunken promise. It was a crazy long shot he concluded. When you’re driving cab, timing is everything. You don’t want to interrupt the flow if it’s happening and Amos had already had a good start to his day. First trip out, a radio call from his zone took him way out across the Lion’s Head bridge to North Vancouver. A nice $18 fare and two buck tip to start the day. So, why was he now considering wasting precious minutes on a lost cause?

Maybe it had something to do with the taste of fate in this coincidence. That first fare took him right to the same street, same spot he’d been just weeks before. He recognized the building across the street as the place he’d dropped those two drunks. Talk about a wild goose chase. He’d played out quite a little game with those characters trying to get his fare from them. It was pretty funny – now - looking back at it. At the time he hadn’t been too amused. They’d told him to come back. They’d sworn that if he came back – they’d give him his money. And now - not only did they waste his time three weeks ago - now Amos was going to waste time again standing there knocking on the door to apartment #112.

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I’d only bin out a week and was makin up for lost time. The pogey cheque they spring you with didn’t last 48 hours. A hundred dollar hooker, a bag of Johnny-pills, a few quarts of whiskey and I had me a comin-out cel-bration. I didn’t have no worries ‘bout spending the $600 they give ya on rent like you’re supposed to. My bud Frank had an apartment in North Van and he owed me. Yeah, he owed me for keepin my yap shut about that other guy the witness saw comin outa the house wit me.

If those damn people had shovelled their walk, I never would’ve felled on me ass with that TV in me arms. Who ever heard of snow in Vancouver in November? Just my fuckin luck. I don’t blame Frank for leavin me there. The alarms were goin like crazy, and a big fuckin German Shepherd was comin round the corner. That was the way we did things – if shit happened – and you had the toilet paper to get a clean break – you took it. That’s the way it goes. That’s the way it went down.

So now Frank owed me. He was puttin me up at his place til we could get some new jobs happenin. Share and share alike – like it or not. Just when my cash ran out, Frank’s pogey cheque arrived and it wasn’t long before we’d worked our way through that too. We spent the last of his cheque drinkin at our fav-rite waterin hole - the ol’ Queensway Hotel. Really, our fav-rite was the Dunsmuir but we’d bin barred from there since ’79 when that waiter got just a little too lippy for his own good.

So anyways, we go strollin out of the Queensway, into the daylight to catch the number 98 bus home, when Frank flags a cab. I’m thinkin –we got no money for that- but Frank’s already climbin in the back seat so who am I to question why?

The driver’s this young pup with curly long hair and beard. He’s the kind to show off his street smarts but you know that his mother still folds his fuckin underwear for him. So I get the jump on him with a little intimidating. Before I put me ass in the seat, I leans over into the front seat. I pins his right shoulder back hard with my right hand while my elbow’s pinning his arm down too. I stick me face into his and the kid pulls back as far as he can – which ain’t too far. I give im my best junk yard dog growl - “I’m the meanest son-of-a-bitch you’re ever gonna meet. I’m so mean – even my mother hates me.”

I could tell he was scared eh? His eyes went wide and for a second there I thought he was gonna cry. But, then he puts this grin on his face and he says to me, he says “Even your Mother?” He’s acting all kinda surprised - but pullin my leg like. And shit - he had me – I had to laugh.

I weren’t expectin this young pup to be pokin fun at me - and that mighta pissed me off but - I could tell he weren’t laughin at me – he was jes jokin wit me. What’re gonna do when yer bluff gets called? He was bettin on my good-natured side. Made me think of me dear old mom - ol’ Evelyn, that drunken bitch who‘d slapped me into this world. So I has to laugh and I says to him, I says “NO - not me mother. Sure she loves me – in her own way.”

When I’m that pissed y’know, I gets all tender-hearted like and sappy and this kid had hit me there where I weren’t expectin it. I could tell eh - the kid had heart. From any other college-smart-ass that remark mighta come across cocky-like and earned him a cuff. But this kid weren’t puttin me down – he was just gettin down wit me - and joinin in on our little party.

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So Amos drove them all the way across the bridge to a run-down little apartment building that’d seen better days. All the way they’re telling Amos tall tales about a cop they’d nearly killed and a bank they’d nearly robbed and how much money they could make robbing houses in West Van where the insurance companies just buy the people newer stuff. These guys are a couple of jokers thought Amos. Eugene, the guy doing all the talking, had an oily Elvis slick three decades old. Frank didn’t have enough hair left for that and had had to settle for a greasy comb-over. They both wore button up patterned polyester shirts over beer guts and under hip length leather–like jackets. They were a real comedy team. Intent on impressing Amos with their gangster status and mostly just coming off like barking dogs who’d lost too many teeth to bite. They were probably dangerous enough in their day, Amos noted. And you still wouldn’t want to push them too far – no telling how deep a mean streak ran in guys like that – what was one more assault charge to them? But as pickled as they were today, it was just a matter of keeping them talking about how bad they were and they’d be as happy as a pair of puppy dogs with old shoes to gnaw on.

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“So, when we gets back to Frank’s place with the kid, I’m honestly feelin pretty bad ‘bout telling this kid that we gots no dough. He was just a workin stiff and here we were stiffing him more. As Frank’s breakin the news to him, I gets an idea. I says “Hey bud, you just wait here and I’ll get some cash from the landlord for ya.”

Well, now the kid’s havin a laugh at me and I can’t blame him eh? How many times has he heard that one eh? So I says to him, I says “Come in wit us then – we’ll get you the cash.” Frank’s lookin at me sideways like, but we all pile out of the cab and in we go.”

The door to Pete’s apartment is never locked. As shitty a landlord as he is, ya gotta give him one thing - at least he’s got an open door policy. In we go shouting out his name, but he’s not around. Frank’s heading for the door but I head for the bedroom and the Cabby, well he’s following me step for step. Sure enough, Pete’s in bed so I gives him a shake and tell im we needs some money.

Well, ol’ Pete was a little less than hospiti-able about the whole thing. After he tells us to fuck off about six times, he gets his ass outa bed and staggers into the kitchen. The cabbie’s lookin at me like “what the fuck?” but I’m on Pete like a dirty shirt – I know he’s always got cash – he’s just tighter than a friggin Scotsman.

Pete gets to his kitchen and he’s in the fridge – it’s empty. He slams the fridge door, looks around, lifts up a quart of whiskey off the counter – it’s empty too. Then he heads out the door and down the hall -the three of us followin along like a bloody Labour Day parade. He goes straight down to #112 and uses his pass key and lets himself right into Frank’s apartment. Franks like “what the fuck?” but by the time we get in the door, Pete’s already got our forty-pounder of C.C. in his paw and he’s pourin himself a tumbler full.

By now, I can see that Pete’s not carin diddely bout payin off our cab fare. Frank’s gets a couple more glasses out and sits at the table with Pete pourin himself a cupful. So, what the hell eh? I takes a seat and pour out one for me and I turns to the kid and says “I’m sorry bud but you can see we ain’t got the cash. Ya wanna a drink?”

It was the least I could do – be a little hospiti-able - and this fuckin kid – y’know what he has the balls to do? He walks over to the table and grabs the bottle and tells us, he says “No, I’ll just take the rest of this and we’ll call it square.” Well, you never seen three old dogs jump faster. You don’t take no bone away from no hungry dog – never mind three of em. That young pup was crossin the line there. He had no idea what he was gettin in fer – whoa baby!.

He takes a coupla steps back towards the door but he smartens up and lets me take the jug back outa his hand - and he’s got this big grin on his face again like he was jes pullin our leg with that little stunt. But I can tell that he’s pretty pissed at us too - bout being jerked around. This kid’s surprisin me. He’s got some spunk. I like him and I tell him so. “Listen, you little fucker - you’re a good kid. You come back here at the end of the month and I’ll have your fare for ya.”

He gives me a look like “what kind of sucker do you take me for?” and that makes me say “Really, I swear on me mother’s grave. You come back at month’s end and I’ll have your cash fer ya. You come back – you’ll see.”

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So Amos knocks on the door. It’s the end of the month. It’s a busy time for cabbies. Folks who can’t afford cars, with pogey cheques to cash, are calling cabs. He waits thirty seconds. Then he gives the door a pound and waits some more. He’s just giving up and leaving when the door opens and there he is. Eugene’s in his underwear and looking like he’s just been washed in with the last tide. It’s five o’clock in the afternoon and he’s obviously sleeping off a drunk so Amos figures – “yup, I’ve wasted my time.”

But right away his drunken friend recognizes him and he says “Jes a minute, jest a minute” and disappears back into the apartment. Amos wonders what new wrinkle he’s gonna pull now but he’s already invested this much time in the mission. So, he gives ol buddy boy yet another precious minute and he comes right back. He’s got a crumpled up ball of toilet paper in his shaking hand and from inside it he pulls out a crumpled twenty dollar bill. He hands it to Amos and says “there you go kid.” and closes the door.

Amos stood there in the hallway looking at that crumpled twenty for an age and a half. He couldn’t believe this guy had actually come through with the cash. But - he had believed in him - just enough to get Amos away from his cab and up to his door – and here that belief had paid off - unbelievably.

Amos wondered what kind of resolve it took for that guy to put that cash away. The toilet paper ball was a stash that he’d hidden away from himself – and from the claims of his brother thieves - so he could keep his word to a cabbie he didn’t even know.

That was one of the best nights Amos ever had driving cab. It was like there was a Big Dispatcher in the sky just lining up fares for him - sidewalk flags that took him out to the suburbs where a few blocks away a customer had called and was waiting to take him right back downtown where bingo, he’d get another flag, then a call, then a flag, then an airport run - and so it flowed all night. He had a ball. The full moon was a coin in his pocket. Everyone was in a good mood and wanting to talk and have conversations that flowed with the music on the radio – gentle and jazzy, staccato and rocky, deep and classy – every time he changed the station the next passenger picked up on the vibe and added to it. When it flows it flows. Some days having faith is just so easy.

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