Then Dennis returned in his far-travelled volkswagon, the lightning rod, the catalyst to any dangerous mix of discontent.
He’d come back to Toronto mainly to get closer to (i.e. in the pants of) a girl named Barbara. She lived with her mother and had invited him to stay a few days at their house. And so he did, bringing Barbara over to meet me, his other Toronto friend. In the evenings they’d visit me at my new lodgings from which we’d sally out to one of the many pubs or restaurants on Bloor street, three friends.
One afternoon I came home to see him standing in the kitchenette, talking to the girl next door to me, Cathy (I remember her name now) cigarette in hand and making a grand impression on her with his impressive flow of talk. She was spellbound. He was quite the ladies’ man. He’d discovered the cubby hole and asked me later if he could spread his sleeping bag there and spend the night. I told him o.k. as long as the landlord didn’t find out. Cathy quickly agreed and the other girl wouldn’t know or dare to speak up if she did. She was too timid. The invite Barbara had given him was used up. But the courtship was only just begun, and he figured with a few more days and a free place to stay he could score.
So there he slept, one day turning into seven, reading by flashlight and smoking cigarettes, filling up a coffee can with butts which he never emptied. When the weekend came we had a party to go to, one of Barbara’s friends. As we arrived, we found a large house full of people and loud music. We each took a hit of acid and gave the rest to the host, delighted with the gift, to give to anyone else who might want some. This got the party rolling. We started drinking beers and then the acid kicked in, much stronger than I expected. This kept us dancing and drinking late into the night. Around three a.m. the party died down and we decided to walk to my place, even though it was about five kilometers away. It was a beautiful, clear night. We were still very high and the air refreshed us. So we set out.
Back at my place, (all of us now very tired from the long walk), Barbara, fearful for her chastity, decided it would be more prudent to sleep with me in my single bed than with Dennis in the cubby hole. She kept her pants on but for some reason took off her shirt and bra. I knew her concerns, she told them to me, so we just snuggled up and fell asleep. Dennis must have stayed up drinking in the kitchen a few more hours, still high on the acid, probably contemplating his love life, from all the beer cans on the counter the next morning.
I awoke to a loud banging on my door. Barbara got up first and answered it, topless, and there stood my landlord, shocked at the sight of Barbara’s exposed chest and enraged at me, yelling in that he wanted to see me in the kitchen right away. We quickly dressed and found Dennis, in his wrinkled clothes and cigarette in hand arguing loudly with the landlord and his obese wife. They’d come up minutes earlier, after hearing our loud entrance the night before, found the cubby room door open, Dennis laying there, his cigarette buts and beer cans everywhere, and were appalled. But Dennis was quick to get up and take the offensive, calling them immigrants that didn’t belong in Canada. They couldn’t even speak proper English; he pointed out and then declared that the only good thing to ever come out of Hungary was the Gabor sisters. Cathy was at her half-open door in her pajamas, woke by all the noise, and snickering uncontrollably when Dennis made this comment. Barbara and I were standing beside her, nodding our heads at all the trouble Dennis could cause and seeing this wasn’t going to end well. Dennis always did have a flair for a great insult when he wanted one. And a good insult is a thing to remember. There’s always some kind of potent truth behind it, perhaps important. That’s what makes it biting.
Insult to injury, Dennis and Barbara were told to leave immediately. I was told I had another two days to get out, to find another place and vacate, which I did.
I found another room not far away the next day and moved in. This time it was on the main floor of a large house filled with students, with no landlord around to check our youthful follies. I liked the place, the company, and even started to make friends. But it was all for naught, too little too late to hold me there. The wheels of fate were in motion for a much more radical change. I lasted only two weeks there.
Three days later Dennis was set to leave. He’d convinced Barbara to give him two more nights at her mother’s house, after all the consternation he’d caused at my place. He told her he had phone calls to make, itineraries to plan and matters to arrange. He probably thought his residence in the cubby hole was good for weeks and with Cathy at hand, already half-smitten, likely a far more comfortable bed to sleep in very soon. He had some money saved up, was between jobs, and his plan was to make this vacation last as long as possible and any motel was out of the question as an exorbitant, ruinous expense. He was driving from friend to friend, all over the continent for free places to stay and I think on some of the longer drives he even slept in his Volkswagen at night. The fact that he found the cubby hole a fine accommodation and constantly ruffled clothes his norm, suggested this. Money was for cigarettes, beer, food and gas, in that order.
Tuesday morning he was knocking loudly on my door in my new lodgings, with Barbara in hand and all aglow. He told me he’d contacted a close friend in downtown Vancouver and had an invitation to stay with him for a month. He also said the nightlife (as his friend described it) was great and we had to come visit him for a week, as there was plenty of room and we too were invited to stay. He said this was a rare opportunity too great to pass up, and his enthusiasm was contagious. I mentioned I had classes in a few hours but he dragged me by the handout of my room, saying they weren’t important, that there was someone we had to meet right away, a girl, Deirdre, where he could score some speed for his long drive West. He told me he’d have me back by ten for all my stupid classes. He lied.
Three minutes later, driving like a maniac, and fifteen blocks away we were at Deirdre’s door. We never asked how they knew each other. In Dennis’ life, any acquaintance was possible. Her door was slightly ajar when we arrived so we all stepped in with the slightest knock. The room was a mess, clothes and shoes strewn everywhere, an open, empty suitcase on the floor, and Deirdre right before our eyes, her backside at least, in a thin white robe, diaphanous, almost see-through in the angle of the morning light, revealing her skimpy underwear and her long, skinny legs. She was bent over and frantically searching through a drawer full of all sorts of pills, talking loudly to herself, complaining she couldn’t recognize them as she pulled out several, holding them up to her eye. She finally found one, ate it, turned to the three of us without any surprise at our presence and in a calm, polite voice invited us in, apologizing, saying she was sorry (for her behavior) but had just lost her job and had to leave town as soon as possible.
Barbara and I couldn’t help but be struck by such a strange scene, her smiling, beautiful face, such familiarity. She didn’t even know our names. She began telling us the details of how she’d just lost her job of two years with the postal service, sorting mail in a room with a dozen others, sitting on a stool, with great pay. She told us she missed a few days and was late sometimes, (probably each week) and maybe that was it, the reason for her termination. But in her long, jumbled, confused account we could easily see it was obviously for drug use and incompetence. Most of the time I wasn’t even listening, just admiring the sight of her, her robe, which I couldn’t tell if it was bed wear or some flower-child, hippy dress to stroll through a park in. Either way it fit her persona perfectly, her slender legs and hips and arms, her height nearly the same as mine, her oval, pale, angelic face with dark eyebrows and long black hair. Her name matched her looks, graced them perfectly as she had a distinctly Irish face, with beautiful eyes, snub nose, and slightly protruding, rounded forehead. She also had a look of innocence and helplessness in her strange dress, so out of place and time, which her barely coherent story only amplified. I decided right then and there I wanted to know this woman of about twenty, such a rarity, an enigma that made you wonder how she was alive.
I had lately spent a night in bed with a very pretty girl, Barbara, the closest I came to sex in my existence so far. Now I was introduced to another mesmerizing female in a see-through robe who held her heart on her sleeve as they say and wanted very much to befriend us. My thinking with these two lightening fast developments was definitely derailed. And in few moments more I would be ingesting a potent methamphetamine for the first time in my life. Talk about a tsunami about to strike my previous, private, sedentary cocoon of a life, all thanks to Dennis.
Dennis interrupted her rambling account, (which seemed to have no end) and asked her for some speed for his long drive West. Then he even said she could hop in his car now as he was leaving right away and would drive her all the way to Vancouver. She was already pulling out a full sandwich bag of pills, looked confused for a moment then told him no, she had banking and organizing her clothes and wasn’t leaving till the rent ran out in two weeks. She sold him twenty pills for that many dollars. I asked for some too. I asked for fifteen, took twelve and gave Barbara three. Deirdre had plenty left. They weren’t the little bennies truck drivers use, but large ones, white and long and strong, Dexedrine. Dennis quickly left. We could easily walk home. He didn’t mention the offer he gave to us just a half-hour before, of visiting Vancouver. I think she was just a little too spaced out for his tastes in companions. But the opposite held true for me, the more intriguing the challenge the more fascinating the allure. I might even have been falling in love.
So the two of us stayed. Barbara and I sat down on her unmade bed and began to chat with her which she seemed to greatly appreciate as she milled around the room, picking up one item of clothing off the floor and depositing it in another spot, on the floor, with two new friends for company. Barbara mentioned her own desire to get out of town, which perked Deirdre’s ears and she turned and said excitedly maybe they could travel together. This put the warmest smile on her lips and a sparkle in her eye, which I couldn’t help but notice. So I said, out of the blue, I would like to go too. I was sick of school here and was thinking of heading back to Berkeley. I also mentioned, teasingly, that Dennis had offered Barb and me a really nice place in Vancouver to stay, and that she could probably stay there too a few days if she were with us. She burst out that she loved Vancouver, it was her favorite city, (she’d been there before) and that it would be a perfect resting point on her way to L.A., where she was going to live with her sister.
In this ecstasy she rushed over to the bed, knelt before us and said: ‘let’s do it, the three of us, let’s go together. This is perfect’. Barbara and I nodded in agreement, to seal the pact. I don’t know what was going through Barbara’s head but I knew she really wanted to get out of town and with me along, and Dennis waiting, probably felt safe in this adventure. For myself, I can say with certainty a multiplicity of complicated unconnected thoughts and feelings were ranging through my head. The base line was my complete and undiluted hatred for Graduate school at Toronto, the courses, school itself in any form. I’d been at it too long, too intensely, without a break, and then my disgust with the place itself. Combining with this was the example of Dennis, whose intelligence I respected, roaming free, from one adventure to the next and supremely happy all along the way, enviable in his freedom. Then the added excitement of this surprise offer and chance to escape, with two beautiful girls, one, Barbara, who’d lately kept me warm in my bed, the first time in my adult life, and maybe with feelings for me. And then Deirdre, just met, who pierced my heart on first sight and within ten minutes of talk with all sorts of charms and fascinations.
