Into the Witness Protection Program © by adrian

Well, not exactly. I mean after all, would I really be writing a public blog if I was in the witness protection program? Actually I ended up not quite in and not quite out (a not unfamiliar position for me).

What I actually went into was a mostly unknown plan in Canada that is quaintly named the Voluntary Disclosure Program. For some strange reason the many government tax ladies and gents I eventually ended up dealing with (they called themselves my handlers) just seemed to think it was thigh slappingly funny whenever talking to them I referred to the program they let me into as the witness protection program, so I'm sticking with that name. Believe me; making government tax officials laugh and slap their thighs is a lot of fun...

I've mentioned previously that I was a hermit. I more or less dropped out of society many years ago and have lived a Spartan life by choice ever since.

Here's how it all came about.

Around 1975 or so in my career, I worked as a personnel manager for a large chain of camera stores and was paid oodles of money (see my story In praise of Bill Gates). When I quit that job I just bummed around and took it easy for a year and didn't work at all. I vaguely remember something about smoking a lot of dope, but I could be wrong on that one. I guess if I could remember that part, it wouldn't be true at all...

The year after that, the government of Canada noticed I hadn't filed any tax return for the missing year and so they assessed me for taxes owed based on what I earned earlier. I didn't notice this though because next to answering phones and responding to doorbells, opening mail has never been high on my list of things I must do.

So, I found out about the assessment when it was too late to file an appeal. Even though they eventually did acknowledge that I was unemployed and had no income that year, they still insisted that the incorrect tax assessment had to be paid in full because I had missed the appeal deadline.

There were letters back and forth, threats and demands made, but nothing that made any sense to me so I ignored it all. Then they started randomly garnisheeing my bank account. Government garnishees stay in effect for ninety days, so even if you have no money in the bank when they hit it, any deposits made in the next ninety days after that get automatically sucked up by them too. This presents a rather difficult obstacle in meeting other financial obligations like mortgage and car payments.

I started making visits to their office which was on Front Street in Toronto. That didn't produce any more results than the mail did and they just insisted I had to pay even though everybody agreed I technically shouldn't owe any money. Appeal filing deadline rules were unshakable. So, at my last appointment with them I explained that I was leaving now. I told the rather shocked tax agent that I would happily hang around in the laneway downstairs for five minutes. If they wanted to send the guys with baseball bats down to talk to me that was fine, but after five minutes I would be gone and they would never find me again.

Just like that, just like in the movies! All balls and bravado, nothing frightened me when I was in my thirties. So I dropped out and became invisible. Hiding, as is said, in plain sight.

I ordered a phone in my dog's name and used that to start building an identity. I almost tripped up when the Bell person taking the phone order unexpectedly wanted to know my first name. I quickly thought "Furry" but stopped myself in time and chose "Harry" instead, (I also resisted the temptation to spell it Hairy). I became a new man (or puppy, as the case may be) and quickly disappeared from the tax records.

Now, for all you moralists out there who may think it's atrocious and unpatriotic not to pay the tax man (person?), try getting hit with a tax bill for a few thousand dollars you don't owe and then let me know how moral you feel about it.

I'd also like to clear up a potential misunderstanding. It is definitely illegal to file a false tax return, but there is nothing illegal in simply not filing a return. The tax people will get mad at you, but no laws have been broken; lie in a return you file though, and you're in trouble. I always filed and paid my business Retail Sales tax every month and even though I used my real name for that (not my dog's) nobody ever noticed that I didn't file anything else.

From that day more than thirty years ago till now I've kept all my receipts, T4 slips and miscellaneous tax information in what has now grown to be many, many large boxes. I always felt if they kicked my door in I would be able to point to the boxes and insist I had all my records available. Pick any day or year from the past thirty and in no time I will be able to produce a receipt of how much I earned or spent that day.

When it finally came time for me to apply for my old age pension I thought the jig was up. I just knew that as soon as my forms arrived on some official's desk they would reach for the red phone they all must have and let the guys with the baseball bats know that they had finally found me. Surely they have been driving around Toronto night and day looking for me for the past thirty or so years. This was finally the big chance they'd been waiting for to get their revenge.

Well, it didn't happen.

Instead, a few months later I got a lovely letter from the government thanking me for living such a long life and promising to send me five hundred dollars a month from then until I fell over dead. They even said that I was going to also receive a second cheque from the Canada Pension Plan. I had applied for CPP but seeing as I had contributed such a small sum in my documented working career I thought I would be lucky if I got anything more than $1.69 a month (I thought old Harry the dog was entitled to more than me). As it turned out though, once again they put me on the fast track to riches and hooked me into an additional monthly cheque.

I was curious as to how they arrived at the number they had for the CPP amount, so I went over to their office to inquire. I explained I didn't object, in fact I loved what they were going to send me, I just wanted to know how they got to that number. Was a scientific formula used or did someone simply throw darts at a board with numbers on it? The clerk took my information and went to one of their office machines. A moment or so after punching in my data a printout was discharged from the beast. She stared at it for a minute and then she came back and handed me a printout of all the money I had paid into the system, (not much, as it was). She leaned over the counter and whispered to me "If I were you I would just shut up and go back home, I have no idea how they decided to even give you a penny." So, I shut up and went back home.

I was rich, the money just started pouring in and all I had to do was stay alive. Then in 2007 the government decided that they would now allow income splitting to apply between spouses (one of which I am). However, seeing as I still hadn't filed any tax returns since 1976 my bride Linda thought it best if I just "shut up and went back home."

By 2008 the potential savings for Linda's taxes if we split our incomes was just too large to ignore, so I decided to turn myself in.

The Voluntary Disclosure Program is set up so that the only way in is to write a confession to the government listing your tax crimes, declaring why you did it, and get this... you also need to tell them what you think would be the appropriate penalty they should impose on you for your wrongdoing. If they like your submission they will let you in and if you're honest and disclose everything you did that was bad, they potentially might forgive you. If they don't like your confession, now that they know everything about you, I guess we get back to the guys with the baseball bats (I mean after all, they need to earn a living too).

Linda and everybody I knew insisted I shouldn't do it. When I looked up information on the Web every opinion available also insisted that if I did it without legal assistance, I was a fool and would loose everything I ever owned and spend the rest of my life behind bars. Of course, all those opinions came from lawyers. So, what the hell, with that much encouragement, I just couldn't resist writing up my confession and sending it in.

Now, it may come as a surprise to you my treasured readers, but I'm not very respectful when I get presented with idiotic things and this struck me as very idiotic indeed. So I wrote my confession and extensive list of crimes with the light touch of insanity I felt was befitting such silliness. How could I not?

About two months later I got my welcome aboard the Voluntary Disclosure Program admission letter.

My composition had been accepted. I had supplicated myself in a manner that was deemed worthy. My confession was adequate and I had passed! I now had my own ID number and was given temporary government immunity and the names of my handlers in the St. Catherines tax office to which all future communication was to be directed.

Seeing as I now had government immunity, I filed my 2008 return, the first in thirty years and we split Linda's income. The tax office promptly thanked me and sent me a large tax refund cheque. I convinced Linda that she should re-file an amended return for 2007, I would also file and we would again split our incomes. Sure enough, I got another thank you and a larger tax refund cheque this time. I had tapped into the mother lode. Life is good!

Eventually my handlers decided that just filing the past ten years was more than enough... oddly, they were starting to loose patience with the sarcastic new nutbar they had inherited.

I phoned the Ottawa tax office and ordered up fifteen years of tax forms prior to 2007. I felt filing the extra five years would be an extravagance worthy of my effort. While I was waiting their arrival I got all my old receipt boxes together. After taking them outdoors and cleaning the mouse droppings and spiders out of them I started sorting fifteen years of T4 slips and related stuff.

Originally I had been granted ninety days immunity from any prosecution. I thought that was not enough, so I wrote them explaining that I was an old addled man that needed more time, so they gave me an additional sixty days to complete my class assignment.

When everything arrived from Ottawa we tossed all the boxes in the car and drove to the Laurentians where I sat naked in Linda's cottage and had an extremely sacrilegious and fun time filling out my tax forms. In fact it went so smoothly, we both started to feel disappointed I wasn't doing them all the way back to 1975.

When I had them finally completed I put them all together and mailed them in a large priority post box to my St. Catherines handlers.

About a month later I got a terse official notice from the team leader of the enforcement branch of their office stating they found from my recent tax filings that I had not been bad enough to be punished. I quote from their letter:" therefore a penalty would not be appropriate in your situation" (I detected a note of disappointment) and they had decided to just send all my crap on to "the appropriate taxation centre for regular processing".

So, my stay in the witness protection program was terminated. Linda and I are still waiting for the letter that says I can finally throw away all those old receipts.

Ah, but it was all worth it. I have finally redeemed myself and am now an upstanding and up to date, I might add, member of society.

Getting into the swing of things © by adrian

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice

I swear this is how it happened. I still insist I was totally innocent...

Up till the mid eighty's I lived a quiet monkish life in my studio without much regard for the outside world. During that time there were about a half dozen or so lovers who would occasionally drop by. Some white, but mostly black women. Long time holdouts from the black period of my life, (see my story Accidently black) who still liked to drop in for what my ego referred to as tune-ups. There were also new ladies along the way who would become interested in me and start dropping by. Just enough sex so that I was always able to keep my nose in other peoples business, as it were. Overall though, nothing too complicated.

As usual, it all started with a simple photo session. When she came in I had no idea this was the beginning of a new phase in my life. I thought she was good looking, but she didn't arouse me much at all. She had a delightful girl next door charm and that was about all I felt about her during the photo session. Until then I had been mostly drawn to dark, mysterious and exotic women. Yet somehow, that casual photo session managed to turn into twelve years of almost constant sexual arousal.

Every person I've ever dealt with had a story to tell me, some explanation or reason for why they ended up in my studio instead of the Sears portrait studios. Hers was a little different but not unique. She was leaving her husband and the fellow she was leaving him for was getting nervous. She wanted some sexy pictures to help remind the new fellow of her charms.

After the session I gave her my standard impersonal hug and told her I was sure we had made some great shots in the sitting.

I always phoned my clients the day after a sitting. This call served more or less as an "I still respect them in the morning" sort of call in case by the next day they felt they may have gone a little too far during the shoot. As a bonus, of course, this also kept the client firmly connected to the excitement of the sitting.

So, as was my fashion, I called her the next day to let her know how delighted I was with the way her session had gone. This was just a brief call, but I knew immediately that there was something a little different happening here. A nervous tremor in her voice suggested some future promise. Some excitement I hadn't noticed or paid any attention to the night before.

I should mention that I never made a sexual pass at anybody who interested me until the business end of our transaction was completely finished. Not necessarily out of any moral principles, simply that I find it difficult to extract money from someone I'm carnally involved with (unless we're role playing some game that involves my partner leaving money on the dresser to pay me for my services). My landlord, to whom I needed to pay my rent every month, totally endorsed this very practical business approach.

Her photos were ready a few weeks after the shoot and she arranged to come in and pick them up. I thought when she came by I would make my move and ask if she had any interest in getting together. Disappointingly, I had to scuttle my plan when she looked through the shots and decided to order a couple of 16 x 20 enlargements from the sitting. She gave me a deposit for this new order and went on her way.

I had my own colour lab so I immediately went down to the darkroom and started to print them. I was becoming quite interested in the possibility of getting some more of her and the sooner I could get our financial dealings out of the way I would be able to find out if she had considered or would consider exploring any future contact with me.

When she came to pick them up the following week I suggested that if she needed a temporary refuge from the demands the current changes in her life were making, she was more than welcome to call me and we could have a quiet dinner together if she wanted. As it turned out, she wanted! A few weeks later she came over for dinner and ignited the beginning of a long, new chapter in my life.

For the next few months or so, whenever she found the time she would call me and drop over to the studio if I was available. We would spend a few hours exploring each others bodies and then she would go back to work or disappear into the night. During this time she was still looking for a place to move to with her young daughter so they could start living on their own and she could make the final break from her husband. I had seen some photos of him and he was a big burly bear of a guy who drove a Harley Davidson bike. She was also still seeing the boyfriend who was now becoming less important to her.

As luck would have it, the apartment above my studio became available to rent. At the time we both thought it would be great fun to have a fuck buddy nearby and would be kind of neat to have an available lover living upstairs or in her case downstairs, so she decided to move into the apartment.

During this time my lifelong friend Bill did his best to convince me that there must be an easier way to commit suicide than the path I seemed to have chosen. He was sure the biker dude who was twice my size would inevitably try to kill me. Rational thinking has rarely gotten in the way of mankind's sexual interests, so naturally I helped her move.

After moving in she continued to see her husband. They hadn't become enemies, they just didn't want to live together anymore. He never presented any difficulty to our relationship and in fact turned out to be a gentle prince of a guy who I got to know a bit over the next dozen years.

During this time her boyfriend set up a threesome for her with another girl and himself. This was more about his fantasy than anything else and although it didn't excite her much, it did pique her interest. So we started talking about trying out things she and I could do together that would interest her more.

After months of talk and debate about what we wanted and might like to try, as well as exploring how we felt about the concept of jealousy, we joined "Club Eros" which was the only swingers club in town at the time.

As far as jealousy is concerned, that part for me was easy. I simply have never felt jealous about any companion I've been with. I always enjoy that the woman I am with is coveted by other men. I also never compare myself to others; I know there will always be many smarter or richer men with bigger dicks or more adept tongues than mine, so I just don't care. On the other hand, it has always proved to be much more of a challenge for my companions... I dealt on a daily basis with gorgeous women that were scampering around my studio with their clothes off, so the women that sign on for a trip with me have to be pretty sure of themselves to be comfortable with that.

Anyway, the club ran weekly theme party dances at a private bar that many people would frequent. It's not quite as archaic as the old "key clubs" from the seventies, but swinging is certainly a unique and alternative approach to sexual activity. At the bar people mostly swim around each other (just like singles bars I would imagine) and zero in on couples that appeal to them for whatever reason. If interest proves mutual then arrangements are made to meet somewhere "off premises" for those that are in a hurry or to get together at another time for the more patient in the crowd.

I have this theory that your partner can actually be thought of as additional bait in the swinging culture. If that's true, then it's no wonder that I was originally an extremely useless piece of bait. I can't dance, am totally tone deaf, couldn't find a beat if my life depended on it. I hardly drink at all, and hadn't been in a bar in about thirty years. So I sat there rather somberly trying without success to look cool and casual. There's little doubt that I was not exactly viewed from across the room as the most comfortable choice to get together with. My features are fairly angular and I have deep set dark eyes, so even at the best of times when I'm my playful child self, I look pretty severe. I eventually learned from people I got to know that many were surprised I didn't have a chainsaw resting on my lap. The overall consensus was that I just didn't look very inviting. So after a few unsuccessful visits we tried ads in adult newspapers instead.

When you run an ad with unusual requests, this is what you can expect to get in the way of replies... About one third will be thigh slapping funny and utterly impossible to consider, one third can be put in a pile that you will call if nothing else works out and a third can be considered possible. We started with about sixty replies, so initially we had about twenty potential victims, ah, I mean couples, to meet with and sniff out whether we wanted to get together on a more intimate level.

We started filtering what we could by phone and had a few casual meetings at coffee shops and bars, but nothing really clicked for us. We were getting pretty fed up with it all when we finally met with a couple who seemed to be exactly what we had set out to find in the first place. They were novice swingers and because we were too, nobody felt intimidated. We all decided this would be the ideal way to start off and satisfy our curiosity. We set a date for dinner at their place a few weeks down the road.

The whole idea was very exciting for us and thinking and talking about it for the next few weeks proved very horny indeed.

This could be where I interject some anecdote about how the evening went awry, but it didn't go wrong at all. The whole evening turned out to be a spectacular success. We got together and sat around on the floor in the living room chatting about everything and nothing. This was late nineteen eighty but it was just like being in the sixty's or seventy's again, the only thing missing (fortunately) was disco music and the fondue pot. We then had a comfortable dinner and talked about everybody's expectations and needs. After dinner we returned to the living room floor and continued with a lot of verbal foreplay.

I don't know which one of us proposed the obvious, but I think it was probably me. I'm generally the first one in any crowd to remind everybody why they got together and in this case I suggested that this would be a really good time for everybody to get naked and start exploring the possibilities. Well we did, and everything was far better than we had hoped it could be. The experience was very exciting, sensual and exploratory. It would not be misleading to call the whole evening intensely exotic.

I found it extremely horny to watch my companion blow our new found friend and she too was turned on watching me explore his partner. There were some confused amateur moments when nobody knew what to do... it was sort of like being in a candy store that you owned. It seemed the choices were unlimited and sometimes it was very difficult to decide what to do (and to whom) next. Although we were lost in the excitement of these new people, we also remained very aware of our own partner's needs. We both had agreed before we got there that we would not abandon each other, no matter how much fun we were having with the others.

Fatigue eventually got the best of all of us and by about four in the morning we decided we were satiated and couldn't take (or give) anymore. When we went home that night we talked about how we were so used up that we would probably need a month to recover before we could be able to enjoy each other again.

Well, were we ever wrong about that! It turned out that evening of exploration made us so horny that we couldn't stop talking about it or keep our hands off each other over the following months. Over the next year or so we continued to have dates with that first couple. In the next dozen years we made many new intimate longtime friends as we became converts and proponents of the swinging lifestyle. We eventually even held seminars at some Club Eros and other swinger conventions.

Last I heard she and her new partner were still very involved in swinging and although I now live monogamously I still advocate for the lifestyle. I don't miss it, but still think it is a great alternative for those who have strong relationships and are willing to be more adventurous in expanding their circle of friends in such an intimate way.

There's litter everywhere © by adrian

The squirrel whisperer Episode #4

I assumed when I started writing this blog that I would regale my hoped for audience with many titillating stories of travels behind the spotlights and in the darkrooms of the world. I foresaw lust and sexuality dripping from as many pages as possible. A few readers who have written me with comments have suggested they also looked forward to that very same thing.

Alas, this photographer and current writer-poser has become stuck in the rodent trap, as it were. What I am serving up for now is another visit with Rusty and her six baby squirrels from my previous story A lot of litter The squirrel whisperer Episode #3. This will be more along the lines of what used to be called a photo essay, with a lot of pictures and not much, as the squirrels would say, squawking.

Like juveniles and adolescents everywhere, the squirrels already seem very independent and quite full of themselves. At the same time they have developed an extremely affectionate and apparently loving relationship with each other. Whenever they meet up with another of their siblings they poke noses and hug as they pass each other on their travels. It's not uncommon to look out and see one with their arm around another.

They occasionally tumble and wrestle briefly together and then go on their own way.

Sometimes brushing noses seems so boring and commonplace so the only sensible thing to do is just grab the other guy and plant a big sloppy kiss on them.

Once in awhile they follow another to see what treasure they might find together, but mostly they move about on their own now.

As we watch the squirrels lay about in a pack on their house porch it's apparent they have perfected the art of hanging about and doing nothing. Their porch sometimes looks like someone from the prop department of Walt Disney's studio has come by and sprinkled a bag of miniature squirrels all over it. More like caricatures of squirrels rather than the ones we're used to seeing scurrying about everywhere.

The laying out is always punctuated with one of the crowd starting to groom another.

Judging by the look on mom's face, she seems to be a big fan of having her ears chewed. I have occasionally suggested that her and I get behind the tree and give it a go, but so far she has declined. When I remind her I used to scratch her dad's ears and he loved it, (see my story The squirrel whisperer, Episode one: Lurch) she insists that as far as she's concerned that would be carrying this cross species thing way too far. I think she's just playing hard to get, so I will persist.

Ear chewing and cleaning is certainly a favorite, but occasionally one will roll over on his back so the groomer can give his feet a good going over.

Leaping to and from the bush is also great fun and they never miss an opportunity to experience the thrill of flying through the air.

The raccoon I mentioned in my previous story did manage a mini raid on the house one night but she must have been driven off quickly by the activity of so many bodies and she didn't get to inflict too much damage. The children were able to immediately turn the pulled out bedding into a new toy.

Rusty spent all the next day moving everybody out to somewhere else, sometimes carrying the children on her back.

The baby that I mentioned in episode three who I thought might want to eventually stay living in the house refused to leave, really pissing mom off. She tried dragging, pushing and pulling but the baby has a mind of his own and refused to go with the rest of them. He ended up sleeping over in the damaged house by himself that night.

The next morning we watched as the little one who wouldn't leave made up with mom when she came by for a visit and all was forgiven.

Rusty then moved all the others back to the house. They spent the rest of the day tidying up the remaining mess (overturned lamps and end tables I would guess) and have been living together in the house ever since.

The children are now quite comfortable coming to our porch to get a drink of water from the dish we leave out for them.

Occasionally they do stop to ask if this is also the peanut house, and if so, would it be too much trouble for us to get them one.

Anyway, that's about all I can tell you for now, but the children did want to send out a big high five from the rodent clan to all you two legs.

A lot of litter © by adrian

The squirrel whisperer Episode #3

I've never heard the Mermaids sing, but I have talked to the baby squirrels.

Rusty has finally begun to display her litter to us. She is now allowing her infants out of the drey (a squirrel house) so they can start hesitantly exploring life on their own.

Rusty, you should understand, comes from the finest rodent stock in our valley, so we are very excited to see her reproduce. She is the progeny of Lurch (see my story; The squirrel whisperer © by adrian Episode one: Lurch) and Missy who was the squirrel that lived with Lurch and helped care for him after his accident with the big wheels.

Squirrels have very pragmatic names in general and because of her colour, she insisted on being called "Rusty". I remember one of our visiting squirrels who was the most adorable rodent we had ever seen. His name was "Tiny Perfect", but after he had an accident and most of his tail was ripped off he quickly explained to us that he had decided to change his name to "Almost Perfect".

Most two legs don't realize that squirrels lead very tragic lives. Not only must they remember not to play in the street with the big wheels, but they are constantly pursued by a myriad of predators. As well as dealing with the children who love to chase them, they need to stay alert for dogs, cats, raccoons and large birds that all seem to be constantly on the lookout for inattentive squirrels. They are also not averse to having some fairly serious squabbles among themselves.

We knew she was pregnant at the beginning of the year when she started hanging out for hours on her porch. At the time she seemed very reflective and rarely left the drey. She always had a look that seemed to suggest she didn't quite understand how this had happened to her. A sure sign to a squirrel whisperer that there is definitely something in the wind.

She is living in our backyard in the same house she grew up in a few short years ago. She was just an infant and now she has become the grande dame of the valley.

During the past few months we would occasionally see her stagger out the door onto her porch where she would then spend the next twenty minutes trying to clean the spittle from her belly and now huge teats. As soon as she was finished, she would lie down exhausted and doze off to sleep.

Until just the other day we had seen no other signs of life. And now the infants are everywhere.

A tiny face and then a small body emerged hesitantly from the opening one day. A bird chirped and the tiny ball of fur threw itself back inside immediately. A few minutes later the face slowly started to push out onto the porch again but a gust of wind startled her and she was back inside in a flash. This was repeated over and over... slowly emerging and then running back inside in an instant. She was determined to get out and look around and apparently filled with wonder, but at the same time everything she saw or heard terrified her. Every time she emerged a bird would fly overhead or a car could be heard on the street below and she would scramble back inside. Now of course, she would be armed with scary stories about the outside world she could share with the others in the house.

Soon another face and tiny body joined the first on the porch. Immediately a third stepped forth and they began to frolic with each other, then a gust of wind resulted in a flurry of tails disappearing into the house. Hours later we looked up and saw another we had not known was there. Rusty had been hiding four babies from us, and today was the day for them to start their squirrel journey.

The tree house I built many years ago is wide, deep and very long, so we knew it could easily accommodate such a crowd, but it still amazed us that Rusty had been inside nursing four babies for almost ten weeks before we knew positively how many were in there. During that first day they would venture as far as the porch and only for the briefest bit of time. Anytime there were more than two on the porch, they would play wrestle with each other, but mostly the top order of the day was to pull and play with the others tails. If mom showed up she was groomed constantly by the infants. She would lie down on the porch and one would lick her ears as another sat on her back and a third would pull at her foot.

Suddenly Linda and I realized we were now watching the antics of five babies, another had added himself to the pack without us noticing.

It wasn't too long before we realized that the five had become six and it was now impossible to keep track of them or the constant flurry of motion... At times the tree was a beehive of activity with baby rodents constantly running everywhere in different directions. Rusty had been nursing a total of six babies during the past ten weeks! She produced one grey, three golden greys, and two black. Surprisingly, it's not unusual for black or grey squirrels to have black and grey in the same litter.

I've grown into the role of Jimmy Stewart in the movie Rear Window. I sit at our bedroom window with my camera and binoculars at the ready, minutely examining every move the infant rodents make, squealing to Linda to come quick and look at the cute things they are doing. This is how I spend my dotage now. Linda spends her time down the hall in her office on the internet. I hope she's looking for some place where we can rent an intravenous feeding setup for me so I won't need to leave the window area to eat.

There are long periods with no activity at all, and then all of a sudden they come out of the house and start running everywhere on the tree again. There is almost non stop activity for about a half hour or so and then they pile back inside for nap time. All of this is mixed with periodic bottlenecks at the door as they flee to safety if anything startles them. On a rainy day like today Rusty comes down for her handout but we don't see the babies at all. We assume mom keeps them inside and explains to them that days like these are craft days.

As far as predators go, raccoons are the worst. Since building the house it has been a constant struggle to outsmart them and at the same time let the squirrels have easy access to the tree. If a raccoon can get up the tree it will pull out all the stuffing (think pillows) that is in the house and kill the babies if it can get to them. Adult squirrels can easily get away, but of course the babies can't.

The latest invention that has successfully deterred the raccoons has been surrounding the tree trunk in those slippery flat plastic sheets that kids use for sleighs. The raccoons haven't been able to get past the plastic apron yet, but sooner or later they may, so our only hope is that we can hold them off until the babies can fend for themselves.

Grown squirrels and even the juveniles can easily leap to the hedge or back to the tree, but the infants have to be taught to do that. They haven't gotten to the ground yet, but they are practicing their leaping, something they will need to master before they can get off or back onto the tree. You have no idea how the neighbours carry on when they see me throwing myself off the tree to the bushes below yelling all the while, "follow me, follow me!"

Squirrels are just a nuisance to many people, but I find them full of excitement and curiosity. If you get to know a bit about them you can easily see they also often display a great deal of empathy to each other, (as long as it isn't feeding time). I've certainly had a lot to do with squirrels in my day, but I've rarely seen anything as fascinating as watching this litter develop in such an accelerated time frame. Over the years we've had other juveniles grow up in the house. Rusty, as mentioned, grew up there, but this is the first litter that was actually born there. All the others were brought from some secret place and moved in once they were large enough to travel on their own.

In another week or two they will start to go their separate ways and set up their own living quarters somewhere else. Some will make our back yard a stop along the way in their daily travels and we will see them every now and then. Sadly a few may not even make it past the juvenile stage, but they are here now and will be in this story forever. Rusty will probably move on soon too and maybe she will come back to live here next winter. Inevitably one of the litter will stay on to live in the house, usually the philosopher of the bunch chooses to stay. The porch lends itself to lying out and contemplating the world and being able to watch it go by from a safe distance.

After Rusty and her siblings grew up and went their separate ways, Rusty's brother Smudge decided to stay on and he lived in the house for about six months after the others left. We see him every once in awhile now, but don't know where he lives anymore. Occasionally we see him coming across the wires from the big Condo in the trees further down the valley, but we're not sure if he has an apartment there or not. Generally squirrels live communal lives in the winter; there is something fundamentally practical about a lot of warm bodies snuggled on top of each other in the cold. We did see Smudge up in Rusty's house about the same time we realized Rusty was pregnant, and we assumed he had just dropped by to pay his respects to his sister.

Anyway, I have my money on the greyest one of the group staying on, so far he seems to be the most reflective of the bunch. We often notice him just sitting there away from the others, daydreaming. It's still a bit early to tell yet, we don't know their names, but I suppose when they come down to formally introduce themselves the one who might be named Socrates will tell us he's decided to stay on for awhile.

Thank you, Leonard Cohen © by adrian

Linda and I started to watch an edited version of "Leonard Cohen Live in London" on television the other night.

Leonard probably wasn't even half way through his first song before we both realized that if he ever showed up at our front door, there would be an enormous skirmish in the hallway as we jostled each other to see who would get to him first.

This man has dramatically and single handedly raised the bar for those who would never have previously considered being intimate with an old guy.

As soon as we started watching the show it was obvious that he owned the crowd. Lord, I can barely imagine how many women later that night in bed must have accidently screamed out "Give it to me, Lenny!" For that matter, I'm sure even the occasional man (much to his own surprise) let bellow the same refrain.

I can picture younger guys rushing to make appointments at the dermatologist to have extra wrinkles injected into their face lines so they will have a chance to be able to compete with us old wrinkled up guys. As they stand waiting in long lineups going around the block they can work on trying to perfect his elegant stoop. His studied caressing of a microphone or anything else he touches.

I'm a mere sixty nine, (see my story; I'm a 69er © by adrian) and old Leonard has set a new benchmark for us all... He's five years older than me, so at least as far as age is concerned, I know I'm good now until I'm at least seventy four.

I've certainly got the wrinkles. I think if I scream out "Give it to me, Lenny!" often and loud enough, I may even be able to get a tiny bit of the raspy voice the man continues to delight us with.

Anyways, I must rush off and get to my vocal lessons. Oh, and by the way "Give it to me, Lenny!"

A little boxed in © by adrian

The re-construction of our house has finally been completed since the disastrous flood we had six months ago. (see my story; From the dumper to the dumpster © Part 1 of 2 and From the dumper to the dumpster © Part 2)

All the items that had been stored in the cube in our driveway were recently brought back into the house. The last construction worker left and we have been unpacking and sorting ever since.

If I ever find the box my computer is in I will get back to some writing. Come to think of it, have you seen which box the desk is in yet?

I will be back as soon as possible.

In praise of Bill Gates © by adrian

Back in the late seventies I was the operations and personnel manager of a large chain of camera stores. No, really I was.

Dun and Bradstreet, among others, would often hold seminars and training sessions for personnel managers that usually cost three to four hundred dollars a pop and I just loved going to them. Other attendees would generally be personnel managers that looked after a staff of three to a half dozen employees. In those days with my long hair, goatee (don't forget the earrings) and wearing a suit I was certainly an incongruous sight at any Dun and Bradstreet function. The other much neater and shorter haired clean shaven suits (male or female) that were in attendance would always slide away from me as I sat down with them in any of their groups. Eventually, whoever was the bravest, had lost the bet, got the shortest straw or whatever would ask why I had come to a function like this, as I didn't quite look like I was in personnel. I always assumed that as far as they were concerned, I didn't quite look like I was even employable.

What, you may ask, has this got to do with Bill Gates? Well,

you just keep watching and I promise you I will manage to slip him into this fluffy little story before I'm finished with it. In fact, you stick with it and I promise I will even slip in a cute little squirrel picture.

I would explain that I ran forty-five stores and managed a staff of over one hundred and twenty people and five supervisors to operate them. I was responsible for hiring all the store staff and then would personally run a five day training class to get them up to speed. I would oversee all the staff operations, salaries, appraisals and eventually termination if that was necessary. We used to call it firing in the good old days, somehow that still sounds more humane to me than termination. Termination always suggests someone strapped to a gurney waiting for an injection whereas firing is mostly just a case of "I'm sorry, but this is not working out, give me your keys to the store, get your belongings, and get out." I appreciate that to the person being fired it can pretty well feel just like the gurney experience, but that's what I worked at for a period of my life.

These were all large walk in stores that had same day photo finishing. They were double staffed and open twelve hours a day, so there was quite a lot involved in the administration of all this. My lifelong friend Bill ran the photo-finishing lab, and I ran the stores. We both made an obscene amount of money for the times, but we also earned every penny of it. Whenever I've worked for other people I always made oodles of money (far more than I ever came close to when working for myself) but there was always something missing, let me think for a moment... Oh yes, I remember now, it was my soul that was missing! That business about owing your soul to the company store fits doubly when you are the upper management of the company store.

Part of my administrative duties was being keeper of the keys. With one hundred and twenty people, the staff often rotated around to various locations as they traded shifts and sometimes stores. On occasion we would also get a call at head office from a customer wondering why a particular store wasn't open and then we would discover that some disgruntled staff member had quit and forgot to mention it to us. I would locate an available employee and dispatch them to the store and then usually go there to meet them. I would open up the store and then be the counter clerk until the replacement arrived or just stay and work the shift if no one else was available.

One of the keys to making this all work successfully was in fact, the keys. We used a numbered security key system in the stores that had locks with an interchangeable key core made by the Best Lock Company. The keys could not be copied by regular locksmiths and could only be duplicated by the Best Lock Company using special security codes. I could change the lock in a store in moments by simply inserting a special key, pulling out the core and then slipping a new core with a different security key code number into the lock cylinder. Whoever then had legitimate right to be in the store would be issued keys with the new code number.

Somewhere along the line a maintenance company we hired lost a complete set of keys and so every lock in all the stores needed to be replaced with new cores and key codes. The replaced cores and remaining keys came back to head office and all their corresponding key codes were cancelled. About thirty years ago the photo-finishing company Bill and I worked for went out of business and I inherited the discarded keys and cores and have used them in my various studios ever since.

So, enough with the background already, I will now finally get to the point of this little meander...

A few stories back I wrote about the cottage my bride and her sister bought from their parents (Little Adri’s big adventure © by adrian) and that I had inherited the maintenance of said cottage. During the forty years their parents owned it everybody in the local area as well as friends and many people no longer remembered had ended up with keys to the cottage. It also seemed that anybody that had ever gotten a key had made a copy and given it to somebody else. So I decided that the easiest way to regain control of the "key situation" was to switch the locks at the cottage to the Best Lock Company system, get a bunch of extra keys made and distribute them as needed. This way we would always know who had a key and we would also be the only people able to have copies made.

I soon discovered there was just one tiny flaw to my plan. The Best lock Company was no longer in business (lord, you just look away for thirty or so years and the moment you look back, everything is different). So I started that web searching thing on my computer that many of us seem to spend a lot of time doing these days. I found out that what was left of that company had been acquired by the Stanley Lock and Tool Company many years ago.

I now needed to find out if the new company (Stanley Tools) had records of the secret key codes for cores that had been cancelled and completely removed from service thirty five years ago, for a company that was no longer in business, from a company that was no longer in business. Oh yah, they would also need to be able to verify or have on record somewhere that I had the authority to get the codes and new keys cut.

I couldn't imagine a more bizarre and potentially ridiculous communication. So I couldn't wait to give it a try.

I phoned them up and was switched to the security section and within a minute or so of answering a few questions only I would know the answers to, the helpful lady I was talking to had everything I needed up on her computer screen.

If you're still awake, this is where I get to the Bill Gates part. It seems lots of people can't wait to denigrate Bill Gates, are envious of his success and angry at how pushy Microsoft is. As far as I'm concerned if it wasn't for Bill Gates' driving ambition we could potentially still be using punch cards in big mainframes instead of everybody with computers on their desks and laps.

Imagine that within thirty seconds or so a stranger who likely wasn't even born when both those companies closed down is able to punch up codes and information about me and others she named that could have access to this information. Think of how long this could have taken if she needed to search various scraps of paper to find this. Would anyone have bothered to keep slips of paper recording codes from a key system no longer in use, for a company no longer in business? Somewhere along the line thanks to Bill Gates and of course many others the codes were entered into a computer and were still sitting there available for use, casually waiting to be called upon. A couple of keystrokes later and I had an order for a few hundred dollars worth of new keys paid for and I could pick them up in three days or have them shipped out if I wanted.

Now old Bill Gates didn't personally have a hand in my saga, and I realize he's not likely to invite me to his house for dinner and dancing, but if he ever gets down on his luck and needs a vote of confidence, he's sure got mine!

By the way, remember that cute little squirrel picture I promised to slip in this story? Well, what I really meant to say was that I would slip in a picture of cute little squirrels.

I'm a 69er © by adrian

I've been waiting since I was a giggling teenager to be able to legitimately say that to anybody who asks. Up till now whenever I've said I was a 69er it was always, how should I put this, tongue in cheek? So go ahead, ask me how old I am. Please?

I'm a 69er. Lord knows that's the truth. Let's go down in this laneway and I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Actually, I really don't care if you show me yours, but if you want we could do it together. I'll pull out mine and if you like what you see you could let me see yours and then we can put them together to see how they match up. Trust me, this could be a lot of fun.

What is your problem? I'm talking birth certificates here.

I'm a 69er. Don't worry about the raincoat I'm wearing, you can never be too careful these days. It could start raining at any moment, so I leave it on just in case. That's how come I wear it so loose, in case I need to open it (sorry, I mean take it off) in a flash.

The boots? That's just so I can run fast. You get really good traction when you have rubber on your soles. It's always best to keep your rubbers on you know, it's so much safer. Again, these days you can never be too careful. Seeing as I'm a 69er I love to do a lot of exercises and I love to run fast. Running is an exercise, isn't it?

That drool running down my chin? Nah, that's nothing either. Almost all of us 69ers drool a little bit just thinking about it. Me? I like thinking about it when I'm standing in line very close behind you at a checkout counter in the grocery store. I guess it must be all that edible stuff hanging about and sitting on the shelves I keep thinking about that makes me drool. I just love the fact that if I pick up almost anything I can usually start eating it right away.

I mostly think of the drooling as pre lube, just in case you turn around and ask me how old I am. I want everything to be really moist in there so there will be no hesitation as I move my tongue around in my mouth to form the words "I'm a 69er." I want to make sure you get the point. I don't believe there's such a thing as overkill when it cums to making an important point and I want to be sure my lips won't get stuck together if you give me the opportunity to interact with you. That would be very bad form for a professional like me. After all, you should have confidence that if you invite me to engage in communicating with you you're going to enjoy what you get in return.

If you don't want to go down with me in this lane we could go over to the park. There's a really nice bench there we could stretch out on. Us 69ers call the bench over there the G Spot because as you enter the park it's right near the big Gate. If you don't know where the G Spot is I would be more than happy to show it to you. It's really very delightful there and it's surrounded by a beautiful huge bush. Whenever I get the opportunity I just love to forage about in that bush. I did some photos of Linda Lovelace once and she told me she had heard about the G Spot, but I think she was confused because she said it wasn't by the big Gate in the park at all, but it was in her throat.

When I was involved in the swinging world I belonged to a couple of 69er clubs. I even ran some seminars at international conventions of swingers a few times but I assure you those 69er clubs were something totally different. They definitely didn't have anything at all to do with age. I did get connected (as it were) to a lot of really nice people though, regardless of their age. We mostly hung out a lot and sort of just chewed the fat.

Wait a minute; I think I hear a police car siren coming this way. This might be a really good time to show you how fast I can run. Would you like to see me run?

Just before I run off though I hope you won't think it too cheeky of me if I mention that I sure hope all you other 69ers out there have an enjoyably tasty year too...

Happy birthday you old 69er... Now that's a mouthful, isn't it? A bit of a tongue twister, really.

Whoever would have guessed I'd still be daydreaming about the joys of being a 69er after all these years.

Some oldsters collect stamps but not me, not yet. As long as you all keep saying "Why not?" whenever I ask, it still looks like I will continue to have something else to chew on. Hey, we all need some kind of hobby to keep us active and alert. You know what I mean don't you? We should all have something to do that helps keep the juices flowing.

At your age you better rest up boy... this may take the better part of a full year.

So go ahead; ask me how old I am. Please?

Big Sur revisited © by adrian

Forty years ago I lived in this spectacularly beautiful area. I had very short hair then, but overcompensated for that by living with a very tall woman (see my story Of Nomads and Amazons). I'm back here now because my new and much shorter wife wants to meet my family before they go to the happy hunting ground. What's left of my family consists of a couple of sisters and a fellow who claims he is my father (at various times he has also claimed he is god, so I think the man is not to be trusted). I haven't seen or talked to any of them for about ten years, so I think I may be up to the task. They are scattered about in various parts of California. Linda has a brother also scattered in these parts so we thought we would make a huge "meet the family" junket and explore some of my old haunts as well.

Added to this was our mutual interest in visiting and soaking nude in the famous hot springs at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur. The Esalen Institute is sort of the home of Gestalt Therapy in North America. Psychotherapist Fritz Perls, of whom I am a fan, was a resident and teacher there during the time I lived in California in the mid sixties and my bride Linda is a Gestalt Therapist.

Among other things, Fritz is known by many for the quote, "I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine." Down Big Sur way he also used to hang out nude in the hot springs and was frequently quoted then as saying to his young nubile devotees who were crowded in the hot tub with him, "Who vants to suck my cock?" Either quote would have been delivered in his thick European accent and even if paraphrased sets him up as my kind of guy.

Now, the Esalen Institute is not just a place you can stroll into. It is a cloistered community that does allow the public in at two a.m. for a one hour visit to the hot springs if you pay twenty bucks a person and arrange for it in advance. I thought that seeing as Linda was a distant associate someone here could arrange for them to cut us some slack and let us visit in the daytime... This was a delusion and I was wrong.

So I didn't tell Linda and went ahead and wrote Esalen a "To whom it may concern" letter. I explained Linda's connection to Gestalt and thus the institute. I explained that I used to be involved with the printer (actually, the very same aforementioned man who currently claims he is my father) and I used to make all their pamphlets forty years ago. I did the camera and darkroom work that was a necessary part of publishing in those days. I also explained that the only time people our age were up at two in the morning was on one of the many necessary pee breaks we take during the night.

Amazingly, one week later I got an email with a contact name and phone number and was told to phone them and they would see what they could do. A bit of conversation and airline schedule checking later and the next thing I knew we had a pass for us to visit and stay a full day. The pass came complete with free meals and as much hot springs as our wrinkly skin could tolerate. Linda cried with joy when I told her what I had pulled off, but I felt it was the least I could do if she was really prepared to go through the ordeal of meeting my family.

I will fill you in more on that part of the trip and the family stuff at another time, but for now I thought I would indulge myself (as usual) by mentioning a few remembered experiences from our trip.

We have arrived at the Henry Miller library and museum in Big Sur, California and are walking about looking at some of the artifacts and treasures from this man's lustful life and writings. We are chatting to each other about some of the things we're looking at while moving through a few small rooms. There are other individuals and couples quietly mingling about on this sacred ground doing pretty much the same as us.

An open book in a display case in an adjacent small cove off the room we're in has caught my eye and I mention to Linda that I will be back in a moment as I amble over to check it out.

I walk up beside a very attractive middle aged lady who is presently looking at the book that has called me to this room. It's warm today and I'm wearing a short sleeve shirt. This lady has not glanced my way as I end up standing beside her.

In a moment, without saying a word she reaches over and takes my hand in hers. She brings my exposed arm up and while holding my hand she slowly and seductively starts to rub my arm with her other hand. She says something to me in German while she gently caresses my bare arm.

She's speaking slowly and although I've never thought of the German language as sexy, this is unmistakably full of lust. She's speaking in a low tone, with a guttural animal sound coming from her that is full of passion and promise. I know this sound well! While she continues to gently caress my arm I lean over to her and move my mouth an inch from her ear. I know when I speak she will be able to feel my warm breath on her hair. I whisper to her, "I have absolutely no idea what you've just said, but the answer is yes!"

Still absentmindedly caressing my arm and not letting go of my hand she now looks my way and screams out "Oh my god!" She drops my arm and we both break into fits of laughter and shatter the somber silence of this place.

Everybody is now staring at us. We both continue to giggle and scurry away to our respective mates to explain what just happened. Always the observer, I realized what was happening from the moment she touched my hand. She thought her husband had arrived beside her and in this house of lust she was telling him how much at that moment she wanted him. Of course I was delighted to be the proxy receiver of her passion.

Later, the four of us end up in the same room together and as we're leaving I mention to the other couple that I think the Henry Miller library is perhaps the finest place imaginable to share such intimacy with a stranger.

Further along Highway 1 as we travel through Big Sur we pull into a gas station to fill up the car. The attendant comes over and grabs the nozzle from the pump. As she walks toward the car I get out to retrieve something from the trunk. Just as she is about to squeeze the handle she looks up at me and exclaims, "Oh good grief, I'm so sorry!" I do not respond as is my fashion and wait to see what will unfold.

She walks back to the pump and reinserts the nozzle in its cradle. She goes to a different pump that has no price of the gas or any other markings on it and takes its nozzle. She comes back and while filling up the tank now says to me, "I really am sorry, I didn't notice at first that you are one of us." I say, "That's ok, it's no big deal". I have no idea what she's talking about or what's going on.

When finished she goes inside to get the bill and then comes over to me for payment. Getting back in the car after paying, I realize we've just been charged fifty cents a gallon less than we would have paid had I not been "one of them". One gas price for the "touristas" and a much lower price for the "regulars".

My long hair and used hippy look has finally paid off... I am now officially recognized as a Big Sur resident. Life is good!

Later in the week we did indeed get to the Esalen Institute and enjoyed the hot springs. Sitting naked on a California cliff top overlooking the coast in a hot mineral bath with a bunch of other nude strangers was quite an experience. Not surprisingly, I was certainly tempted to scream out "Who vants to suck my cock?" but I knew no one would believe me if I said I was just quoting old Fritz Perls. On helping me edit this story my bride was surprised to discover that there are actually times that I don't want to shout that out, wherever I am.

Something I've always noticed when groups of strangers are naked is that everybody tries not to be too blatant about staring at each other when the clothes are off (even true with the "swingers" set). As soon as it's time to get dressed though, the type and style of underwear a person puts on seems to be the moment of sexual excitement for everybody. I wear what are called string bikinis for those who want to know. I love the snug tight feel and warm genital embrace I get from them. Anyway, they sure do have some fine looking underwear out there in California.

From the dumper to the dumpster © by adrian Part 1 of 2

It's Sunday night and this has been a very long day in our effort to get the dumper at the cottage cleaned out and properly set up. Linda and I have gone from cleaning the composter pit to me on the roof fixing the vent stack. I am (if you will pardon the thought) wiped.

It's eleven p.m., we're in bed and just starting to drift off to sleep. There will be no sex tonight. Even though, as previously stated (in my story on smells and odors I'll be home soon, don't wash), I'm a big fan of odor and things of that nature I must confess I have always regarded the fact that the sex organs are also involved with elimination to be a design flaw. This would definitely not have been my choice if I had been consulted. For those of us who like to forage and rut about in the bedchamber, toilets are not held in particularly high regard. There are body fluids, and then there are body fluids. So for me and fortunately for my companion, a day in the dumper does not exactly fan the flames of lust. Tonight it will just be sleepy byes.

Then the phone rings and our lives begin an uncharted course.

A bit of background: the phone at our house in Toronto had been busy for a day and a half, so we thought perhaps it had been left askew by the last person who checked our house while we were away. We phoned the person who has cleaned our house for many years and asked her to please go by and check the phone and house. We thought she would do that in the early afternoon. Seeing as we hadn't heard back from her yet we just assumed she was going to stop by the next morning instead.

I'm a little foggy as I answer the phone and all I can hear from it is hysterical excitement and yelling. As I focus, I realize it's the person who cleans our house but I can't make any sense out of what she's trying to say. I turn on the bedroom light and as I hand the phone to Linda with a shrug I finally get it. Water... there is water running everywhere in our house. Lisa has come in the front door and like all those funny movies we've seen over the years, water has poured out the door as she opened it. Needless to say she is beside herself and after many unsuccessful tries to phone us from her cell phone, she finally gets the taxi driver who brought her there to dial our number for her.

Linda's soothing voice starts to calm Lisa down and then I'm handed the phone again. I slowly begin a series of questions so I can try to decide what to do next. Lisa continues to excitedly explain to me that water is running everywhere (she must be Catholic, because she immediately wonders aloud if it's because of something she did wrong). Water is pouring down the stairs above her and she is standing in about two inches of water at the doorway. Not surprisingly, she doesn't know what to do and we are seven and a half hours away in Montfort, Quebec.

I learn that some lights are still on in the house, so I determine the electricity has not been compromised so it will be ok to move around without many safety issues. I ask Lisa to go downstairs and I will try to describe where the main shut off for the water is. She gets downstairs and immediately sees the shut off valve. It's not easily accessible but she agrees to go through the water and climb over some boxes to try to shut it off, which she does. Unfortunately nothing much changes and water continues to flow down the stairwell and through the ceiling.

I hear another voice in the background. A neighbor from across the street was sitting on his porch and when he heard the commotion he decided to come over and see if he could help. Lisa hands the phone to him and we simply confirm that he also thinks the water is successfully shut off. I ask him who he is and he mentions that our only contact has been that I always wave to him if I see him out having a cigarette. There is much concern on both their parts about whether they should turn the electricity off. I'm convinced it should stay on because among other things I can't imagine standing in two inches of water and touching the main power supply box, so I finally convince them to leave the electricity alone.

I get Lisa back on the phone and after thanking her and my new found friend from across the street I tell her there's not much more can be done and to carefully lock up and we will let her know when we know what happens next.

I now need to convince Linda that the next step should be me getting in the car and heading to Toronto. She can catch up with me later by train once we know more about the extent of the damage. Even though I've had a long day, I love night driving so I don't think the trip will be that challenging. I'm also not a hero, so if I get too tired I will get a motel room or simply sleep at a gas station along the way.

There are many advantages to night driving, it's easy to see oncoming traffic and there are far fewer cars on the road so you can make great time. The only potential disadvantage to night driving is car breakdown, which is a little scary. I drive a 1991 Subaru wagon. What could possibly go wrong in a seven and a half hour non stop drive with a beat up tired eighteen year old car?

My bride realizes that we just can't ignore this and go back to sleep, so it's agreed that I should mount my horse and begin a charge west. I think the electrical system will need constant checking in a house full of water so I quickly throw together a kit of electrical tools. I get to the car and as the clock strikes twelve (do digital clocks strike?) begin my drive into the unknown.

The first two hours of the trip are daunting indeed as I drive through pea soup fog. Visibility is less than fifty feet in some areas. Not an encouraging start. The fog finally breaks about the same time I start to run out of gas at Cornwall. I drive into Cornwall expecting to find a gas station open but apparently at two a.m. this is a foolish belief. I drive around for about ten minutes and don't see any sign of life, not even a raccoon to chat up about how life is always full of surprises.

I remember there is a huge diesel truck stop at the cutoff of Highway 138 and the 401 so I head over to it. I know they don't have regular gas, but maybe I can convince the attendant to look the other way as I siphon gas out of some car parked there. As I approach his counter he looks at me with the steely glare of someone who has already explained twenty-seven times today they don't sell gas. I beat him to it and tell him I know he doesn't, but I must get to my house before it floats away and I want to know if there's any way we can make a deal? He is amused by a tale he's never heard before and tells me that on the other side of the overpass there is a station that even if closed leaves a pump on that I will be able to fill up from if I have a cash card. He rejects the bodily favours I offer him in return for this valuable information and I aim for the overpass. I fill up the tank and continue on my crusade.

I speed along to my destination but not aggressively so. I stay about twenty or so clicks above the speed limit. I reason that if I'm not being reckless even the most jaded cop would let me off with a warning after he hears my sad tale. I stop to rest and gas up occasionally but I'm not fatigued so I just keep going.

Overall I'm a pretty relaxed individual. I'm certainly capable of the odd Italian operatic outburst (Linda sometimes calls me "Sparky") but she envies that I have the blood pressure of an 18 year old. I never fret or worry about the unknown and seeing as I have no idea what's in store for me my mission barely even crosses my mind.

I slide into the mayhem that begins on highway 401 at Port Hope just about 5:30 a.m. I am astonished to discover the 5:30 morning rush hour is just as horrifying as the 5:30 evening rush hour. The only advantage is that the sun is behind me instead of in my line of vision. I finally pull into our driveway at 6:30. I have turned a seven and a half hour drive into six and a half hours. Take that, Andretti!

I brace myself and swing open the door.

From the dumper to the dumpster © by adrian Part 2 of 2

The house is a disaster. Walls and parts of the ceiling have caved in and broken drywall is lying about on various areas of the floor. There is about two inches of water over all the visible floors. Even though the water was turned off the night before it's still dripping down the stairs and through the ceiling. I quickly go downstairs and reconfirm that the water is indeed turned off. The water that's still dripping is just what has saturated the walls and carpets from a two day onslaught of running water. The phone is still dead and I guess it shorted out from the water, thus precipitating the unscheduled house check.

Thirty minutes later the front doorbell goes. Linda has phoned the next door neighbor and wants to talk to me. She has already arranged for the insurance adjuster to start the recovery process, and at eleven a.m. someone will be here to inspect the damage and determine what needs to be done. I let her know what to expect when she returns home.

I return and slog through water continuing to look for some explanation of what happened. This house has always had a slight shift toward the front so I discover the back areas of the house are untouched. The bedroom and my computer/hobby room which is filled to the brim with electronics and camera equipment on the second floor are completely dry. The kitchen and living room at the back of the house on the first floor are also mostly dry.

The tank in the second floor toilet is empty, so I reason it may have cracked and started this whole mess. If the toilet tank breaks the water will just continue to run full blast. I turn off its supply line and go downstairs and hesitantly turn the main water back on. I quickly run back upstairs to see or hear if water is leaking from anywhere else. I also check if there is hot water and everything seems fine.

We have a toilet in the basement that still works so with some heavy boots on, this place is actually more or less habitable. Already I start to daydream that we may reach a new plateau of personal exploration. I envision Linda running around in something flimsy with big work boots on. Some new unexplored sexual fantasy may emerge. Life is good.

We brought home an antique outhouse toilet from the cottage and set it up in the garden a few weeks ago so we would also be able to use that.

Well, maybe not.

I picture Linda waking me in the middle of each night asking me where we left the flashlight so she can find her way outside.

I finally find the source of the leak. It turns out to be the coiled supply line that connects the toilet tank to the water line. It didn't come undone; it simply fell apart in the middle and water poured out of the hole for two days. I decide that as soon as I get a chance I will go back to solid copper supply lines to the toilet tank. Next time we go away we will also be sure to turn the water off.

I disconnect wires in a few of the phone connection boxes that I see have been waterlogged and hope that if they dry out the phone may start working again.

At eleven on the button the door bell signals the arrival of an estimator from a company named Burke's Restoration. Tony and I do a walk through (more like a slosh through actually) and he fills out forms with as much information as he can get. He says that tomorrow he will have a dumpster delivered and his crew will be here to start ripping out the affected areas and drying out what's left. He carries himself with the air of a man who appears totally unflappable but he briefly loses it when I ask if I should dress in formal black tie for the occasion.

I collect up any carpets that are loose and throw them over the banister on the back porch and then get out the wet/dry vacuum cleaner and start mopping up. About two in the afternoon the phone begins to reluctantly work again. The line is full of static, but it works. I phone Linda and update her on what is happening here. She lets me know her stepsister is arriving in Montfort soon, will stay overnight and then drive her back to Toronto the next day. Later, the phone returns to normal as the line dries out.

Tuesday morning brings a crew of workers who set up huge dehumidifiers and fans and then start cutting up carpet and ripping it off the floor. In the afternoon the dumpster arrives. I had pictured a small dainty apartment size dumpster but now lodged in our driveway is a no nonsense big grown up man sized dumpster.

Linda and I have a lot of stuff (well had, anyway). Once upon a time in a memory far away, I owned a house and rented the studio I also lived and worked in, so I had two of almost everything, stoves, fridges, dishes, beds, tools. When I sold the house much of it ended up at the studio. When we got married and I later closed the studio it all ended up here so we now had three of many things. We did garage sales, took lots to Goodwill and places like that, but the piles never seemed to get smaller.

Between the two of us we also have easily over a thousand books.

As I said we have a lot of stuff and now parked in our driveway is the very dumpster we had for years said we needed to help extricate us from this excess. I have the ten foot fluorescent sign out back that overhung my former studio. I have useless "Passport photos in five minutes" signs. Ornate pieces of banister railing, fur bits, lamps, all waiting for use in some undiscovered photo I will someday want to make. All of it horded in the off chance I will one day open another studio to play in. We now have the opportunity to get rid of as much excess baggage as we want. The gods have brought spring cleaning to us by way of a flood and a dumpster (fortunately no pestilence yet). I sense some of what's to come will be very cathartic.

The crew of workers starts tearing at the walls and floors like a pack of hungry Rottweilers. There is urgency to get it into the dumpster before the dreaded mold sets in. Whenever they come up for air I can hear them mutter to each other about the amount of stuff in the house. Before they leave for the day I ask if I can continue to add to the dumpster and they encourage me to fill it if I can. Little do they know!

Linda and her stepsister arrive later in the day and after they tour the devastation we go out for dinner. I've been here for a few days now so I'm a bit more cavalier about it all, but it certainly takes a bit of getting used to. Even though the dehumidifiers and fans have been going non stop there are still drenched carpets and walls full of water everywhere. We still come upon areas of the ceiling that are dripping. One saving grace is that it's all clean water. After seeing this I can't imagine what a drain backing up with sewage could be like.

The noise here is almost unbearable. We must leave the fans and dehumidifiers on twenty four hours a day and there are two on each floor, even right outside the bedroom door. I personally think this is a lot better than living in a motel until it's over; Linda is not so sure about that.

The next day brings the Rottweilers back (sorry Steve and Ryan, I'm sure you know we think you were both great) and the dumpster starts to fill up.

Other days bring different crews of people packaging dry books and other items into boxes. Another crew lists destroyed books and other items and takes them to the dumpster. As the hardwood floor starts to dry out it buckles insanely and so it is ripped up and tossed as well. During all this more pieces of wall and ceiling are added to the pile. We learn to navigate around the house on the beams and subfloor as we miss nails sticking up here and there. We don't wear hardhats, but shoes are a must everywhere we go. Eventually I go over the floors and all the nails get pulled but we stay with shoes anyway.

In the meantime we fill more than a dozen garbage bags of dry books and drop them off at Goodwill. All the book shelves are ruined and get tossed in the dumpster as well. I keep adding to the dumpster with as much dredge as we can find.

The house is now filling with boxes and we can barely move around in what was the remaining sanctuary. We are promised a "Cube" storage bin that everything will be moved to. It shows up after everybody goes home one day and the driver can't place it in the space left in the driveway. Next day the dumpster is picked up and moved further back into the driveway and one day later the Cube comes back and gets dropped in the driveway as well.

Our neighbors are thrilled for us because they think we decided to redecorate and then many offer to help when they hear our sad tale.

For the next five days new crews of workers return and while some fill boxes others fill the Cube with anything that isn't nailed down. A few days later Ryan returns with new assistants and tears apart what's left of the basement walls and ceiling.

It's been over three Months since this all began and we are managing to live in what we now refer to as our new "Squat". The dumpster has been taken away, but almost everything we own is still in the Cube in the driveway. There has been no word from the insurance company on what to do to get it all put back together, but so far they have been magnificent in arranging to take it all apart.

Overall not too bad, except for deductibles, most everything is insured. The house needs major repairs but it was all clean water (a breath of fresh air after fooling around that damn composter for weeks), we lost hundreds of books but they were due to be culled anyway. Some precious things and many old negatives gone... don't know yet what was saved or wrecked. Everything was packed so quickly it was impossible to keep track of what was going into the dumpster or what was aiming for the storage Cube, but done is done. A lot of photo equipment was wrecked, but again, nothing that I can't live without and amazingly as mentioned the computer hobby room and most of my current camera stuff didn't get a drop of water on any of it.

The big difficulty now seems to be getting it all put back together again. There have been huge rain storms in Toronto this summer and basements in hundreds of homes have been flooded, so there are no contractors available to do reconstruction work. We want to use the company that took the place apart as they have been unbelievably reliable, but that will mean waiting for a few extra months and continuing to live in our deconstructed house.

Who knows what's next. The other day I did come across a Home Improvement and Restoration Company that looks pretty good from the outside. I'm looking forward to getting into their showroom someday to see samples of the work they do, but they never seem to be around to answer their doorbell. I guess I will just have to keep trying.

Bulletproof © by adrian

I just came back from my uncle Rocco's

one hundred and first birthday party.
To have lived this long the man must be bulletproof.

One hundred and one years old – extraordinary!

I thought I would write a little about him in this chapter of my memoirs. I’m almost seventy and he’s lived close to half again as long as me. We have the same genes and he was one of the people who saved my life by giving me a direct blood transfusion when I was a baby (see my story; My Mother, the Sister) so maybe some of it will rub off on me and I can look forward (or dread, depending on the mood of the day) to living another thirty years or so.

He attributes his longevity to eating three bananas a day and never having gotten married. I could have tolerated three bananas a day I guess but I enjoy the company of women too much to ever have attempted the latter.

Rocco stayed at home almost all his life and then became the caregiver of his parents as they aged and died. He lived alone for the next twenty years in a three storey house until he was ninety five years old. Then came "the fall" it seems all active elderly people are destined to have. He lay on the floor for a day and a half because he couldn’t get up. Since being found he has lived in his own apartment in an assisted care facility.

Each year after Rocco turned eighty-five my cousin and I would get in touch to talk about going to uncle Rocco’s probable last birthday party. We don’t bother with that anymore, now it’s simply, "I’ll see you at the birthday party this year."

When he was going on ninety-four he announced to anybody who would listen that what he really wanted for his birthday was one of those long garden hose extension poles so he could clean the eavestrough on his three story house easier because he was now starting to find it a bit difficult to get up the ladder.

The extended family took him to a restaurant for his hundredth birthday and when the cake came (yes, with a hundred candles, anything less would have insulted him) he broke into operatic song to prove to all present that his lungs were easily up to the job of blowing the candles out.

It seems fashionable to always say the elderly are still sharp, but in his case I swear the man is as sharp as a tack. He still reads the paper everyday. You can start a conversation on almost any current subject and he will join in. Linda and I had a major house disaster a few months ago that has disrupted our lives tremendously (the reason I’ve been off line recently, a story will follow) and as soon as he saw us he called us over and commiserated with us about our difficulty and related details he had been told about the event that even we had forgotten.

All his life he was an avid photo hobbyist and among other things he used to make his own emulsion to coat paper for making prints. Up to a couple of years ago he always said that as soon as he could get some spare time he was going to set up his darkroom again. He still has one of those old Omega enlargers that uses four by five inch negative film (good grief, I just realized I still have one of those in my basement too). Nowadays he is fully knowledgeable about digital equipment and when I showed him the first professional digital camera I bought he ran around the residence he lives in like a kid excitedly showing it to anybody he could find. While I was shooting some digital photos today he joked about how amazing it was that all this happens without any chemicals and then reminded me that we used to cart around cameras that used single sheets of four by five inch film just to get one or two shots. He and I have both used cameras whose film size is eight by ten inches.

He's not always in top form and sometimes he gets into conversational loops that are a little tedious. Reminds me of my old stoner days when you would listen to someone talk for twenty minutes (sometimes yourself) before you realized you had no idea what anybody was talking about. If you've read any of my previous stories you will notice I have a bit of the same approach to communication. Anyway, I can get him to refocus by simply telling him he's in a loop and he should change the subject or I will pass out. He just smiles and starts on a different thought. Maybe he's faking it, but it sure always impresses the hell out of me. I should be so lucid when I'm over a hundred years old.

At one point in today’s festivities as my cousin and I were helping Rocco get to a different chair, he explained to us that as soon as he gets back to his house he will start exercising again and then be able to get around without needing any help.

I tell you, the man is bulletproof.

I’m busy at the composter © by adrian

But I will be back soon.

Cleaning out the composting toilet at the cottage. As soon as I hose down, I’ll get back to some more writing.

Little Adri’s big adventure © by adrian

“Thank you so much, you just saved me a trip into town.” Oh my god, what have I just heard myself say. I forgot to check the marquee outside the theater when I came in. Have I ended up in another western movie? Can’t be, her name isn’t Clementine, and anyway I didn’t finish my sentence with “little lady” but if I had, I bet it would have passed unnoticed. She saved me a trip to town because she just faxed an important document for me and I know they definitely don’t have fax machines in westerns.

I’ve been here three days.

You’d think by now I would have a firm grip on where here is. I quickly scan the horizon to get my bearings. No help at all. Rolling hills covered in snow. One hundred yards away, a lake, covered in melting ice with shimmering patches of water pushing through. The Alps maybe?

This can’t be an Acid flashback, that was way too long ago.

I remember now, and if you knew me like I thought I knew me, you would understand why being in this place is incomprehensible to me. I am in the Laurentiens, it’s late April now, and I’m on a big adventure.

I think this is how it happened.

About nine years ago I ran an ad in the Toronto Star companion section. It’s title was, “Bohemian hermit stuck in the 60’s seeks companion and lover.” I gave my age and a few important details, then went on to write cute and clever things about myself. I could walk and chew gum at the same time, that sort of stuff. If someone is interested in an ad they phone your box number and then listen to any message you choose to put in a voice mail, and if they’re still interested, they leave you their contact information.

During the next six weeks or so, I talked to many women. A few came to my studio for dinner, but nothing really came of those meetings, no sparks. In the voice mail replies I had gotten, only one person sounded like she had any idea of who I might be, and what I hoped to find. She didn’t say much about herself, but I liked her voice and what she did say. She also said she was a school teacher and away on vacation, and I should contact her when she returned in six weeks if I was interested.

So, six and a half weeks later, I phoned her.

Our first conversation was very comfortable and casual as we each described a few small details about ourselves. She mentioned that she was a widow, her 21 year old gay son lived with her, and she didn’t shave her armpits. I mentioned that I earned my living taking provocative photos that some people regarded as pornography. That the lady who had been my partner in the swinging lifestyle for the past twelve years lived in an apartment above my studio and still used my shower everyday because hers didn’t work.

Nothing too substantial really, just some minor details you’d like to get out of the way before you actually bothered to meet up.

One thing we both definitely had in common was that neither of us was interested in a binding or committed relationship, we both abhorred the concept of anything “domestic”.

A little over a year after that first conversation, Linda and I got married.

Now, nine years later, I’m in the Laurentiens. Temporarily on my own, “starting up” the cottage that Linda and her step-sister bought from their parents last fall.

Before I met Linda, I’d been to cottages maybe half dozen times in my life. Cottage life had never appealed to me whatsoever. To begin with, I discovered long ago that I am incapable of walking on water. About three seconds after I learned that, I found out that I’m also incapable of swimming in water. It’s always damp. In this case, we’re fifteen feet from the lake, so it’s really damp. It’s always cold at night. Those that love this call it “crisp”, those of us that know better call it “cold”.

Then there is the province of Quebec. Regardless of the number of cereal boxes I’ve read, or messages from Bell Canada in French and English I’ve heard, I never picked up the language. I also look French. I look mostly old and used now, but if you wanted to identify my background, you would probably pick French. When I am in Quebec, I am often mistaken for Quebecois, and seeing as I can only communicate in English this confuses people.

Half my manufacturing plant was Italian, but I don’t look Italian. I know from a reliable source I shouldn’t claim myself as Italian. About twenty years ago I had an Italian girlfriend who briefly passed through my bedchamber. When she got mad at me (which was often) she would scream out (didn’t matter where we were) “You, you’re not an Italian, you’re a manga cake!” She would then turn slightly sideways and pantomime a huge spit that she would direct to the ground. Ah, Stephania, what a delightfully insane firecracker she was. Anyways, I don’t look Italian.

Buying this cottage was not an easy task. It’s part of two separate deeds, one property is the main house and the other a small cottage. During the past forty years they have intertwined themselves in an elaborate encroachment on each other. Some of the electrical comes from the other place, the septic system is on this property, but services the other house. A water line runs through the middle of this landscape, but is used by the other place. It’s all very baroque.

Her parents could no longer manage the physical maintenance and needed to sell them both and move to more suitable accommodations. They were convinced that because both properties depended on each other, they would have to be sold as one unit and were not prepared to compromise.

I encouraged my bride to make an offer to buy the cottage separately anyway. It was rejected. Her step-sister got briefly interested but then decided it was financially risky and far too difficult to separate the two properties and backed off. I continued working on Linda to keep trying to buy it. Over the years other members of the family had also stayed at the cottage, but it was always Linda’s special place. Of course, I had the advantage of not being discouraged by a fifty year history of dealing with her family. I’m also pretty relentless and not usually swayed by obstacles (a delightful trait in good times, really irritating in bad).

Somewhere along the line her step-sister got reinvigorated and signed on again. A campaign was launched. Linda was in school (learning, not teaching) and was not available so I was dispatched to Quebec to help her step-sister with negotiations. We had been friends since I first appeared in Linda’s life, but had never been involved in anything this complicated before. Our styles are enormously different and sometimes we each wanted to kill the other, and at other times we were a spectacular team together. Linda’s step-sister is inclined to examine everything in miniscule detail, I have more of a put your head down, run across the street and hope there are no cars coming approach to life. One of Linda’s step-brothers also got briefly involved and somehow it all came about, the cottage was co-bought, with half the time allocated to Linda, and the other to her step-sister.

And here I am on my big adventure.

Cottage life seems to revolve around getting water in, septic systems, and getting waste out. Very elemental. The task at hand right now is getting lake water in for washing, and getting what is pleasantly referred to as the “grey water” out. This is achieved here by an elaborate array of holding tanks and pumps (that may or may not still work). As an added bit of silliness the kitchen hot water tap runs cold and vice versa. There are drainage taps that can only be reached by crawling in a semi basement past a very unpleasantly odored composting toilet. The plumbing definitely needs some work. Electrical that previously came from the other house needs to be re-wired. Now that the cottage is owned rather than borrowed, I have been dispatched to fix all these inconveniences and any others I find before anybody stays here.


I have so far completed the re-plumbing tasks and am now working on the pump that brings water in from the lake. Having worked with many pumps in various darkrooms in my career I know it needs to be primed (simply add a bit of water to the intake pipe) and start it up. Any pump I ever primed needed a cup at most of liquid to work. So far I have added a gallon of water and all I’m getting is concerned.

I discover we still have an extension phone connected to the other property that has now been sold to someone else, so I steal their phone line and use my portable computer to dial up and go online to do a search of cottage water pumps. I get pages of information about the best things to buy to prime water pumps. I quickly reason that if someone is prepared to spend $75.00 to buy something to accomplish this task then this sucker probably needs a lot of water in it’s throat to remind it of it’s destiny. I have brought a few five gallon jugs of precious clean drinking water for my stay here, and must now give them up to the pump to get it to work. I’m convinced the pump will work, but saddened to know I will be found dead, having died of thirst because I had no more drinking water. Sigh...

I pour in five more gallons, and it finally starts to gurgle. I pour some more, seal it up and start it. I get water running out the taps and nothing is leaking!

It’s midnight now and the plumbing is completed, I fill the hot water tank and go to bed full of myself.

The next morning I steal the phone line again and send an email to my bride. The subject line is: Wood. The message reads:

Lord, I had a woody the size of a monkey wrench almost all night long that would have made everybody delirious with joy.

I got the shower & wash basin working, and I am full of man testosterone...

Prepare your body for a ravenous feast when I regain ground. You could stop washing anytime now. (see my story on smells and odors I'll be home soon, don't wash)

Love,

MAN

Eventually I get two of the outdoor “grey water” exit tanks and pumps working but the third will need some serious repairs and re-wiring to get it working. The black ABS pipe has broken away from it’s tank and will take some time to deal with and it’s still way too cold to work outside comfortably. As everything sits now this place is fully habitable for about two weeks before the third tank must be online and functional. I decide to leave and will make that fix when Linda and I return in May.

What’s special about this place for me is this is where my lovely bride always came to for a retreat on her vacations before we met.

Every time I come here I learn new things about this place and often new things about myself. Everything about this place reminds me of Linda. Almost every day while I am away from her, I discover things about this place that explain why she loves it and thus after nine years of being together I still discover something new and exciting about her.

While I'm here I find I can do things I never dreamt I was capable of, and can no longer do things I always thought I could. It’s just like when I first met Linda, this place is open and yielding, challenging and hesitant. Full of mystery and mischievousness.

When I return home I am full of the newness and discovery of the cottage. The cottage has magically become my mistress, and my mistress is my wife.

The long drive home © by adrian

We’re driving east from Little Rock, Arkansas, along highway 40. It's early evening, just past seven o'clock, and this has been a beautiful, sunny spring day. We are just a few miles from our planned stopover for this leg of the trip. We're going to stay at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, tonight. We picked the Lorraine simply because that's the name of one of my sisters, and we thought it would be cute to stay there.

After three years of living in the United States, a land seemingly full of contradictions for us, we're finally moving back home to Canada. Our last residence had been Houston, Texas. In Houston, among other things, they had what was called “the brown bag” law. If you wanted any booze to drink with your dinner in a restaurant, you had to bring it yourself in a “brown bag”. In some restaurants, they would serve you liquor only if you signed a membership card, so that you could be a “club member” during your dinner. At the same time in Houston, it was legal to carry around a pistol anywhere, as long as it was visible.

We've also had our fill of America's social difficulties and racial tension. We will never have to deal with any of that stuff again. It's clear sailing now, we feel good, and know we have an easy drive ahead of us.

"We" is myself, the girl I just married after four years of us living together, (you can check out my blog story Of Nomads and Amazons © by adrian) and the Lab/Shepherd mix dog "Brutus" we acquired a few years ago in California. We're in a large window van we bought a few weeks ago. We're travelling with everything in the world we own in it and tied on it. Every time we exit the van, we need to keep pushing items that tumble out back in. Stuffed to the gills is the descriptor that comes to mind. I also have eleven hundred dollars cash in my pocket. Eleven hundred dollars is the grub stake you needed back then to move to a different city. That way you had enough to pay rent and supplies for a few months until you got resettled in your new place.

Further down the highway, as we comfortably cruise along, we begin to see signs of some kind of commotion ahead. Can't quite figure it out yet, but flashing lights abound, perhaps, we reason, there's been an accident.

As we get closer, we can see the road ahead is barricaded in both directions, and state troopers are everywhere. As we come to a stop, a trooper comes to our van and excitedly tells us that we must turn back, we will not be allowed to go any further forward. We are instructed to make a U turn across the median and drive back in the direction we came. No explanation is, or will, be given. "Go back!" is the order. Memphis has been sealed off, and no one will be allowed in or out.

We drive back and find a small motel in a little place called Mound City. The clerk has no idea what the problem in Memphis is, and would like twenty seven dollars for the nights lodging, please.

We start getting settled in our room and turn on the television. The date is April 4th, 1968, and we now find out that one hour ago, Martin Luther King had been assassinated at the Lorraine hotel, in Memphis. If we had been one hour earlier, we would have been in that tragic place.

We watch the news for a few hours, this is long before the days of CNN and their ilk, and mostly all we get is confused reporting. The one thing that is consistent is that the icon of Americas' civil rights has been assassinated. Memphis is sealed off, and no one will be allowed in or out.

As a Canadian, I was never able to make much sense of the difficulties that plagued the southern states and much of the U.S. Certainly not because I felt pure or better than them, I would say naivety was the main reason. I grew up in a decidedly different environment, and simply was never affected by the racial divide.

My very first contact with segregation and what it meant was during a time that I did a lot of hitch-hiking while I was young. Occasionally, if I could afford it, I would take a bus as part of my trip so that I could relax and use the shower facilities that were available for passengers in bus stations in those days.

On one of my bus rides, going south into Georgia, I had been talking to a black kid who was about my age (seventeen) in the seat next to me. When we got off the bus at one rest stop, I suggested we get a drink at the lunch counter. He pointed to the signs above two separate doors and said that would not be possible. Not this far south. I was dumbfounded. Talk about naive, I truly had never encountered such a thing, and had never heard any hint of anything like this discussed in any schools I ever attended. I knew I had blinkers on as I was growing up. That was one of the reasons I went hitch-hiking in the first place, so I could learn more about the world, but at that moment I realized how little I understood about what was around me. At that time, I suggested that we should both get what we wanted at our designated places, and if he wanted, we would have our snack at the side of the road, which we did.

The next morning at our motel the news was bleak. America had started a slow burn, and riots were engulfing many cities. Like it or not, we were in for a difficult ride ahead.

Needless to say, we bypassed Memphis and headed north along highway 55 to St. Louis.

During the remainder of our trip, we literally drove around and through bigger cities listening to our car radio for instructions on which areas were and were not safe to drive in. That information was always very race specific, with information on where whites were thought to be in danger, as well as where blacks were in danger.

We went east on highway 70 to Indianapolis, and then on to Columbus, Ohio. There was serious tension everywhere. In coffee shops along the highway, if black people came into the restaurant, everyone would stop what they were doing, to wait to see if there was going to be an incident. We travelled up highway 71 to Cleveland, and at all times were mindful of the danger that was mostly in larger cities. Our trip was scary but apart from the tension of all the burning and rioting in the large cities our trip was uneventful and we were never confronted with personal hostility. However, this was anything but a comfortable trip. Definitely not the way to travel.

As we went further north and east, we began to feel some comfort in the fact that we were getting closer to Canada. We travelled across highway 90 and bypassed Buffalo, then went on to Niagara Falls. We drove overnight so that we were able to cross the Peace Bridge into Canada in the morning, just a few days after the dreadful event that had started the rioting.

I vowed to never return to The U.S., but of course over the years that has proved to be a false vow. When I now travel to the States, I'm always mindful of what I perceive as the edginess in the way the races deal with each other there. I don't suggest that Canadians are exempt from racial tension, but so far, we have managed to deal with our differences a little more subtly than in the States.

It seemed that this past April, everybody had a story about the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King. This is mine.

Going digital with Dr. Sternfinger © by adrian

Becoming married, as I did after a long and comfortable life of semi bachelorhood, has allowed me many adventures I could never have imagined. Fortunately for me, marriage is continuing to be an extremely successful experience. My bride, Linda, has the courtesy of also frequently expressing pleasure that we mixed our lives together.

There are however, a few things that I deal with now that I never expected I would need to face.

I can't say for sure what I am about to describe is endemic in all marriages, but with mine, and my research suggests many others, it seems wives don't have much faith in their husbands' ability or interest to look after their own medical needs.

After getting married, I found out that asking Bill in the back lane if he thinks that new growth on my arm is anything I should worry about, is no longer an acceptable approach to my well being.

Not only that, but get this. I discovered quite by accident one day, that asking one of my former girlfriends to check out my hemorrhoids for me is also apparently frowned on. Who knew?

I hadn't really noticed it in all the excitement of the wedding day, nor during the vows we exchanged, but apparently there was some promise made that, from that time on, I would need to have a doctor look after things along this line.

I learned how this was expected to play out, about two years into our marriage.

Let me first explain why I would prefer to get Bill's input on the state of my health, and not go to a doctor...

More than forty years ago, while I was still a puppy, I had a vasectomy. Forty years in medical terms is prehistoric by today's standard, and finding someone to perform that procedure was a real challenge. To do such a thing on someone who didn't already have children was unheard of. Many doctors at the time thought it was extremely unethical, and I was actually physically escorted out of one doctor's office when I inquired about having this done (those Catholics are everywhere, it seems). Eventually, after a two year search, I did find one, and although this wasn't exactly done on a kitchen table, it was pretty close to it.

The procedure was not covered by any medical insurance, so I needed to pay him with a bunch of ten dollar bills stuffed in an envelope; this added to the ambiance of the doctor's house/operating room.

After signing as many forms as the good doctor could find where I promised to never hold him, his children, grandchildren, or any of his friends (by now I was beginning to suspect he probably didn't have too many friends) responsible for anything that was about to happen, we began. I went into an office at the back of his house and disrobed. I sat down in what under different circumstances would be described as an easy chair and was told to "Just relax" as my legs were spread and strapped into stirrups. I now noticed there was no nurse available to assist. Not even a kindly old grandmother to offer me soup or a blankie if I became more uncomfortable, it was just him and me.

After that, things did not go well. There was no local anesthetic. He produced a can of something that he spayed on my testes with the intention of freezing everything. I did feel a slight chill, but really, not much more than one feels as they read an Edgar Allan Poe story on a stormy night. Nothing froze, and the pain was excruciating. The fine doctor did his best to distract me from concentrating on my pain by carefully choosing to make as much small talk as he could think of about sports. Even today, I can't think of a subject that would be of less interest to me.

I soon convinced myself that I had made a very bad choice, and continued to scream in pain. He explained to me that he was sorry, but the freezing just doesn't seem to work in one out of every twenty cases. Apparently I was number twenty. Once this procedure is started, it's pretty difficult to tuck everything back inside and explain to your body you were just joking, so, even though I was convinced by now that he was really putting a light switch in my scrotum, there was, as they say, no way to turn back.

Eventually he finished, and I was un-shackled. After a short rest I was sent on my way. Not only my "vas deferens" was severed, but as far as I was concerned, from that moment on, so was any future contact with the medical profession.

The following year was very difficult, none of that "you'll be back to work in a few hours, and ready to service a Harem in a week," stuff. I suffered. It took a few years for me to reconcile it all, but I definitely feel it was well worth it. I could never have lived the life I have if I had spent any of it producing replicants.

I need to add another point to my story.

One of the things that some women find really charming about me (I must confess, some have also found really tedious), is that I don't care much about having a climax while I'm exploring the pleasures of sex. I phoned around to a few old girlfriends just to make sure I had this part of my story right, and everybody agreed. It seems that I only bother climaxing on average about one out of ten times that I have sex. We're not talking Bill Clinton "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" kind if sex here. I've always felt that if I had my nose or any other part of my body in someone's crotch, butt or mouth, (or vise versa) that pretty well constitutes sex.

This, however, led to one little unexpected side effect because of my vasectomy.

I now have an extra build up of fluid that creates a blockage and occasionally I end up with what is called a "hydrocele". Every once in a while this dormant hydrocele grows to about the size of a baseball. There is no pattern to when this will happen, but I have determined it's not influenced by how much sex I'm having at any particular time. Sometimes it shows up every few years, sometimes the gap is six or seven years.

Prior to marriage, whenever this happened, I would take a lot of aspirin, and the pain, discomfort and swelling would be gone in about two days. Anyways, it was always great fun to pull out my bonus large testicle if I was given the opportunity to play "Show and Tell" in any group setting. This time though, my new bride insisted that I go to a doctor to have it looked at properly.

During the following month there were extended visits to four different specialists, as well as regular doctors. I was given various shots, had three ultra sounds complete with pictures, graphs, charts and explanations. The medical profession managed to turn an event which had always given me discomfort two or three days at most into a marathon than lasted for one full month of pain and suffering. When it was over, nobody had anything to offer other than the next time it happens, I should maybe just try taking some aspirins. I once again pledged to never go back to a doctor.

A few years later, when Linda assumed I had forgotten about all of this, she pointed out that as an old man, I was long overdue for a colonoscopy and needed to get one done.

I immediately phoned Bill and asked if he would help me out. After all, we had spent many years working together in the photography business. Surely between the two of us we could throw together some kind of small camera that he could help guide up my butt and look around. He, on the other hand felt that forty years of friendship was not enough to earn that kind of assistance, and fell in line with Linda's "I should go to the doctor" suggestion. It was further decided for me, that while I was at it, I would also get my hemorrhoids tended to.

I went to a well know colorectal clinic in downtown Toronto.

There had been normal but minor preparations made for my first visit. I had taken an enema and done other reasonable things one would expect to do in preparing for someone to shove a camera up their butt. The doctor I was assigned to, who became affectionately known to me, my lover and friends as Dr. Sternfinger, took me to his office. I immediately sensed this was not going to be the fun time I had pretended it would be.

It had been decided we would start with a sigmoidoscopy, which for lack of a better explanation, is a mini colonoscopy. They just go in a bit and peek around, nothing too invasive. I took my pants off and bent over a bench so that my flank was exposed to him and his young female assistant. He was very charming (dare I say, gentle) and all the while he patiently explained to me what he was doing, or was about to do.

I tried to concentrate on what he was saying while he started lubricating my butt with his greased, gloved finger. As he spread the opening and I apprehensively waited for the camera's tube to enter, all I could hear was the echoed distant voices of every women I had ever been with, screaming out, "You want to put THAT!, in WHERE?". The gods had found me, and I knew I wasn't going to get off easy, this was definitely payback time.

I wondered if I should write Oprah Winfrey and tell her about this "Aha!" moment I was having. Would I ever be able to suggest anal sex to another woman again? Should I smile for the camera? Most importantly, how will I be able to explain this, if I really, really, like it?

I decided to flee to my happy place, and eventually heard him announce that everything looked fine, he was finished, and I could get dressed and go home now. I made an appointment for the following week, so that he could start attacking my hemorrhoids.

When I met Dr. Sternfinger the following week, he looked a little jollier than he had the week before. I felt he was perhaps a little too excited about the prospect of destroying the hemorrhoids I had spent so many years developing. I felt a touch of sadness knowing my personal relationship with them was about to come to an end. But, they had to go.

I should point out for the technically minded that the procedure they use involves injecting the hemorrhoid with a chemical that forces it to dry up and eventually fall off. Again, there was the pulling down my pants and bending over the bench. Dr. Sternfinger's assistant this time was another young female who was in training so that she too would one day be able to earn a living exploring the underside of mankind. He explained to both of us along the way what he was doing, and I stayed hidden in my happy place, humming silently to myself. When he was finished, he explained there may be a bit of blood spotting, but nothing to worry about. We made an appointment for three weeks down the road to do some more "Work" as he called it.

That night while I was explaining to my bride how easy it was, and what a hero I had been, I got up from my easy chair to get something from the kitchen. As I turned around, Linda screamed in horror. I didn't know it at the time, but while I was sitting there I had been seriously bleeding. The chair, and I, were covered in blood. With the aid of some ice packs and a sitz bath, we were able to stop the flow.

I phoned the clinic the next day, and was instructed not to worry about it.

I bled on and off for two full weeks, and when I went back for my next appointment, I was again told not to worry about it. We attacked more hemorrhoids in a similar manner as before.

This time I bled for almost three weeks straight, and even Linda was beginning to agree with me that a colonoscopy at this time in my life no longer looked like a good idea.

Four sessions, and almost three months of non stop bleeding later I called Dr. Sternfinger and cancelled the colonoscopy and all my future appointments. My ass and I looked forward to a well deserved rest.

Last year, which was four years after the good Dr. Sternfinger had had his way with me, I was ready for another try at getting my colonoscopy and I went to a different clinic in north east Toronto. I was tended to by a Dr. Byrne, and a magnificent and caring staff. Everything went very easily and my comfort was obviously important to all of them. As an added bonus, I got a gold star and passed my test. They didn't even need to do any of that horrifying "we'll cut off this little bit and send it away for testing" that I had dreaded might happen.

Before I got there, I had assumed that I would not be interested in watching anything on the video screen they use, it just seemed too weird. But I did watch, and in hindsight, if you will pardon the pun, I must confess it was an amazing view of my world.

Lord, the pictures I could have made in my studio if I had that camera available to me. It brings a whole new meaning to the expression, "Intimate Photography".

The Squirrel Whisperer © by adrian Episode two: Peanuts

I get on the subway car, sit down and put my hand into my jacket pocket. Just another kid, really. I’m almost thirteen years old and no one has even noticed me come into the car. Not yet, anyway. I reach further into my pocket and scoop my hand underneath the warm little fur ball I find there. I pull it out of my pocket and the ball of fur I’m now holding in my hand begins to stir. The little grey squirrel I’ve named Peanuts, who accompanies me almost everywhere, drowsily looks up at me and yawns.

We met a year and a half ago, and have been inseparable ever since.

I'm playing on my porch one day in early Spring, and across the street from me I hear a commotion and know something is definitely wrong in the local animal kingdom. Just down the street I locate the cause of the ruckus.

Three baby squirrels are huddled together in the corner of a porch roof, and a large grey squirrel with huge teats is fighting with a fourth baby squirrel. She's chasing him off the roof, squawking and being very aggressive towards him. He crawls back up, wailing all the while, and she attacks him again. It seems that she's trying to kill him.

If you have read my story titled, "My Mother, the Sister © by adrian", you will understand how easy it was for me to immediately identify with this baby squirrel. What I saw happening was not a mystery to me. This squirrel's mother, for whatever reason, did not want the little fellow around anymore. The others were obviously not being threatened by her right now, this was exclusively between him and her, and the others knew it. After his fourth time of being chased and thrown from the roof by his mother, I intervened. I went over and hesitantly picked him up off the ground. I had no idea if he would bite me, or if the mother would attack me now. She was in a hysterical rage, and I realized very unpredictable. Well, the mother instantly stopped squawking, calmly walked over to the remaining litter, called at them, and they followed her around the corner of the roof, and out of sight. The little guy just stared at me. I didn't know if he was frightened or not, but at the time I felt he definitely knew that whatever was going to happen, was going to be a hell of a lot better than what had just happened.

I decided immediately that he would be my pet, we would be motherless buddies together. From this moment on, it was going to be him and me behind the tree. I would teach him to be strong, and he would teach me the squirrels' secret ways. He would show me the proper way to bury and hoard, so that everywhere we went all we would need to do is scratch the ground and there would be the possibility of discovering buried treasure under our feet. We would fly from tree to tree together, and take on the world...

Then I remembered I was late for dinner.

This realization presented itself rather urgently, because with that thought, I remembered that I also had a set of parents. I knew it would be pretty hard to sneak to the dinner table without someone noticing this new addition, and that they were probably going to play a figural role in any possibility of my being able to keep and care for this guy. There was something else I couldn't quite put my finger on, and then it dawned on me. I already had a pet. I was currently responsible for a five year old beagle dog named Towser whose full time hobby, (I'm sure he thought of it as a vocation,) was chasing squirrels.

I figured through stealth, cajoling, or promising to put out the coal furnace ashes for a month next winter, I might be able to sway the parents. I did, however, have some misgiving about my ability to convince Towser that this squirrel was not to be chased, and would be living in the house, just like him. I felt that no matter how upbeat and positively I tried to explain that to him, it was going to be a tough sell. I foresaw that I had a long night ahead of me.

As soon as I entered the house, Towser knew my secret. He ran towards me and jumped up, gaily barking. He knew I had brought him a treat that was better than anything I had ever given him before. Finally, he would have his very own squirrel to maul. He knew the other dogs on the block would be so envious of him.

I held my new ward above my head and called for someone to help pull Towser off me. One of my sisters rushed to my aid and pulled Towser back. The hallway we were in quickly filled, because added to this mix of dog, sister, squirrel and me, the parents rushed into the hallway to see what the commotion was. Their hysterical yelling along with the barking of the dog was quite a combination. I had single handedly pulled off the biggest family shit disturb of this month, and I wondered if the little fellow I was still holding above my head was reconsidering his options.

It didn't come about easily, but eventually the parents forgo their determined resistance and agree to let me try to look after him. We acknowledge that Towser will be a huge disadvantage to the squirrels well being, but I convince them I will be able to train him to look the other way when the squirrel is around.

I am the youngest in the family, but because I am a boy and must be kept away from my three older sisters as much as possible in order to protect my morals, I have always had my own bedroom. It's negotiated that as long as I keep my bedroom door closed whenever I'm at school or not at home, the squirrel can live in my room with me until he is old enough to fend for himself and be set free.

I name my new companion Peanuts.

Checking at the library determines that Peanuts is probably between six to eight weeks old. He did have his fur, but not a full coat yet. He still didn't know what to do with solid food, (nuts or whatever,) so I mostly fed him from an eyedropper or gave him mashed up food or peanut butter I would spread on the end of my finger. He would lick it off, or gently nibble my finger to get at it.

I got a huge box and placed tree branches, bits of cloth and hamster wood shavings in it so that he would have a room of his own. After a few days he dismissed the idea of his own area and decided to always get on the bed with me whenever I was in my room. I would put him in his box at night when it was time for lights out, but in a few minutes I would feel him crawling up the side of the bed and then he would snuggle up to me. He quickly got into the habit of curling up at my neck and sleeping in bed with me every night.

After a few weeks, we started to stumble through a form of semi satisfactory communication. Peanuts would make little grunting or what sounded like chirping noises when he wanted or needed any attention, and he started to come to me when I called him. Towser, of course was not amused by any of this. Amazingly though, Towser did quickly soften to Peanut's presence. Sometimes when Towser would go and lie down on his doggie bed Peanuts would march over to him and curl up on Towser's stomach and go to sleep. If Towser had ever been able to learn how to use a can opener, so that he could feed himself, I'm sure he would never have put up with such indignity. Peanuts simply became part of the household.

I soon started to take Peanuts outside to the backyard. He was still too young to look after himself, but I wanted him to at least have a sense of the outdoors. I never had any intention of keeping him permanently as an indoor pet, and felt he would go free as soon as he was more mature. I always assumed that when he was free to roam, he would drop by for visits on occasion if he felt like it.

About a month after I started living with him, he had his first attack. I realized he was sick, and at the time, I thought he was dying. Perhaps this explained why his mother had been trying to get rid of him.

Some squirrels have an illness with symptoms that seem to be similar to epilepsy. They occasionally have seizures where they go completely rigid and/or tremble, and stay in that state for a few minutes whenever this occurs. Peanuts was afflicted with this illness.

The Secord Animal Clinic was near Ramsden Park on Yonge Street in Toronto, close to where I lived. The doctor's name was Alan Secord, and over time I became very indebted to him. I took Peanuts there right after his first attack. Naturally I was scared and had no idea what was wrong with him. Because I was eleven years old, I had no money. When I explained that to Dr. Alan, as he became known to me, he said it didn't matter, and he would do what he could to help. I don't remember if he gave Peanuts any medication, but he certainly gave me hope that Peanuts was generally healthy, except for this flaw. During the year and a half that Peanuts and I were together, he had about six more seizures, and Dr. Alan ministered to him without ever charging me a penny.

Back on the home front, on one of our ventures in the back yard, his mother came into the yard. Of course, I had no idea what to expect (that seems to be a constant theme in my life, even back then).

If you don't know much about squirrels, you might find it hard to believe they are individually identifiable, but they definitely are. In a city environment as they run frantically about, that fact might be hard to accept, but they all do have their very own discernable personality traits. Apart from looks they definitely interact with the world as individuals. The way they forage, approach, squawk or even flick their tail, makes them easy to identify.

I offered his mother a nut and she came closer to us. She totally ignored Peanuts, and he ignored her. Of course I was relieved. When I first saw her I thought she would either attack him again, or he would go off with her. Over the next few months, whenever she came by, I would stand in the middle of the yard with Peanuts on my shoulder, and I trained her to jump from the fence to my other shoulder to get a treat. She would sit there and eat it and then the two of them would run up and down my back and around my torso and sort of play with each other. In those interludes, I was their scratching post and tree trunk.

At various times during the next year and a half I would leave Peanuts alone in the yard in the belief that he was ready to go out on his own. He would run and play in the trees, sometimes even with his mother and then when he had enough, he would come to the back door and lie down or just sit there until I let him in. He would scamper in, and run past me up to our room. Towser would watch, and I'm sure he wondered how everything could have gone so wrong in his life.

If I took him to the park and put him down, he would follow along, just like we were going for a walk together. When he got tired, he would squawk and I would wait for him to jump up on my leg and then I would pick him up and put him in my jacket pocket where he would curl up and go to sleep.

Back in the Subway car, I put Peanuts on the window sill behind us and he romps back and forth while a crowd gathers around. Not surprisingly, people are excited, amazed, and have many questions. When we arrive near our stop I call him to come to me and pick him up and slip him back in my pocket. He will quickly nod off to sleep, and I leave the car full of childhood feelings of importance.

About a year and a half after I rescued him, Peanuts had a final seizure and died. I was devastated, but I had always known that sooner or later he would be gone. It's the price you have to pay if you befriend animals from the wild. We had a wondrous and magical time together, and I learned almost all the secrets of the squirrels from him. Little did I know then that I would need to call on those secrets later on as other squirrels passed through my life.

I'll be home soon, don't wash © by Adrian

I'm attending an online writers workshop with other oldsters, and one of the assignments given is to write about smells and odors. In deference to the age of the others in the group I try to sanitize what I write, so as not to offend them. I don't know why, but have you ever noticed how really square old people tend to be. You'd think with all the living they'd done they would be open and flexible, but sadly that's rarely the case.

Good grief though, smells? How can any self respecting libertine be expected to behave themselves with that as the topic? My repeated attempts to sanitize what I'm writing proves unsuccessful, so I present to you this meandering and previously unpublished manuscript.

I call out to lovely Linda, who is down the hall in her home office, "Oh Lord, this time they want me to write about smells. I smell a class expulsion in the air on this one."

I've tried a number of times to make a list of odors I like, but every time I sanitize the list, it mysteriously disappears. I don't seem able to do it successfully, so I will summarize how I feel about odor, discuss some smells that excite me, and then mention a few I don't much care for.

The Good:
I just threw together a mincemeat pie (hey, it's the season). When I started cooking it I was quickly reminded of the joyful smell of food simmering on the stove or baking in the oven. I would be hard pressed though, to find a difference between food and sex. For me, they are very interchangeable.

Somewhere along the line I discovered that my analytical, intellectual self was a hindrance to my life's enjoyment. With that discovery, I relinquished as much control of my senses as I could to my animal nature. Smell, not surprisingly, has ended up very high on my list of important senses.

The incredible smells that can emanate from a woman influence me far more than looks ever have. My visual disinterest stems from the fact that everybody always shows up for their photo sessions at their finest, so I have always tried not to let the way a person looks rule my sensations. Armpits, crotch, sweat, (we're talking fresh odor here, not old and stale). Odors from all of the places you think you can imagine someone full of lust would crave, but so much more. I love to inhale flesh. Odor has always been paramount to my sexual enjoyment, I am an animal.

I believe Napoleon definitely had it right when he wrote to his wife Josephine, "I'll be home soon, don't wash." I envy a dog's approach to meeting and getting to know each other; a nose up the butt seems to be so much more sensible than a sudden look in the eyes and a hesitant handshake. Anyway, think of all the dreadful germs you can get from a handshake. Disgusting! Definitely not for me, thanks just the same.

Some of my photographic assignments are extremely intimate affairs, which occasionally involve some form of sex between the subjects. After a session I am often reminded of actor Robert Duvall's memorable speech while standing on the beach in the movie Apocalypse Now. He begins with, "You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning." After a bit more, he finishes with "The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like... victory." Well, to paraphrase, I love the smell of sex, nothing else in the world smells like that. I used to love relaxing on my own in the studio after a photo session and re-discovering the odor in the air of what had just transpired. Do you smell that? The studio. The whole studio, smelled like... intimacy.

The Bad:
Then, of course, there are the bad smells. I am horrified by the smell of perfumes, colognes, after shave, scented soaps and the like. Apart from the fact that many are just plain dreadful, I am offended that anyone would want to mask their naturalness. I feel robbed of the opportunity to take in and experience the smell of that person.

Flowers? You won't get any bouquets from me. Almost all flowers just plain reek as far as I'm concerned, and once picked, it's all downhill from there. People are forever shoving flowers in my face as they exclaim, "smell that, it's just so lovely!". Well, I don't agree.

The Ugly:
I am allergic to garlic, so naturally the smell of garlic distresses me greatly. It's beyond me how garlic ended up being attributed to the Italians. I am a lapsed Italian myself, and have spent my life explaining to people that there was never a hint of garlic at our house, or any of the Italian relatives we ever visited.

The list of things that most people never consider have garlic in them is endless, including almost every commercial condiment or sauce. There are some brands that don't use garlic, so I use them exclusively.

If I am out shopping, you will see me with my pocket magnifying glass carefully scrutinizing the small print list of ingredients on tins or packages of food. I assume that anybody who sees me these days thinks that funny looking old hippie is probably checking for healthy ingredients, but all I'm looking for is the dreaded word "garlic", I don't care a wit about what else is in the product. If you see me in a restaurant I can often be found hunched over a plate of food, very animal like, sniffing for traces of garlic to see if I should risk eating it. Asking in restaurants if there is garlic in food is rarely enlightening, although I have noticed lately they take the question much more seriously. I guess they are afraid of lawsuits these days.

I rely on my sense of smell to alert me to the possibility of potential pleasure nearby, and I count on it to let me know if I should or shouldn't eat what is being offered me. Whether I'm in the bedroom or a restaurant.

Of Nomads and Amazons © by adrian

I want you to know right off, I'm about 5 feet 9½ inches tall, I have no idea what that translates to in those other measurement number thingies that Prime Minister Trudeau bequeathed to us Canadians, but let's just say, I'm average height. I've pretty well stayed that height since my teens. When I bend over I'm a bit shorter, but when I stand up straight, I don't get any taller. I have a slim build, and since my teens I've weighed in at about 150 pounds. When I bend over, my weight doesn't change a bit.

There's something else I need to explain, but I want your help on this. You don't need to get up or anything, I'll get it myself, but I need you to believe me on this one (if not, for the sake of my story, just pretend you do). Women in general, are taller now than they used to be. In the fifties, sixties and seventies, if a woman was tall, she often stooped to minimize the impact of her height. It was rare indeed to find a woman who carried herself with the full grandeur her height would allow.

Damn, I just remembered something else. Cigarette Girls. If you're older, you might remember them. Some of you young whippersnappers might know them from old movies, or even parties. They became quite campy a few years back, so you may have seen them, or at least pictures of them. These women did tend to be a little taller than average, and often wore brightly coloured tight tunics with black fishnet stockings. Inevitably, high heeled spike shoes were added for more effect. They carried, and balanced in front of them, huge trays of cigarettes and cigars that hung from large straps that went around their necks and came down to their waists. They were hired to walk around in fancier bars selling, you guessed it, cigars and cigarettes.

When I was a puppy, I used to hang around in a bar called The Regency Towers, on Avenue Road near Bloor Street in Toronto. The legal drinking age in Ontario was twenty-one at the time. I was only twenty, but as long as you acted civilized no one ever questioned you or asked for ID in classy joints. This was a classy joint.

At that time, I was going out with my former brother-in-law's housemate. I met her when he invited me to a party at their place. She had a voracious sexual appetite and was driving him crazy with what he felt were unreasonable sexual demands. He reasoned that she might find me attractive, and I probably wouldn't think her enormous sexual appetite was something that needed to be avoided. Well, he got that right on both counts. She lived across the street from the Regency Towers and was fifteen years older than me. There is no question that lady was certainly a great experience in my life, but this is not her story. This is the story of me and my first wife, the beautiful nomadic Amazon I married.

I was sitting at a table in the Regency waiting for my girlfriend, when from behind my chair I heard a young lady walking towards me with the familiar chant of "Cigars? Cigarettes?", "Cigars? Cigarettes?".

I turned around in my chair to buy a pack (yes, I did smoke back then), and all I could see were legs. Above my head and obstructing my view of the rest of her, was the tray full of cigarettes. I could see nothing else, just legs and thighs. Unbelievably long legs, in black fishnet stockings and high heels, asking me if I wanted to buy any cigars or cigarettes. Now, I want you to know, I was a leg man back then, a true connoisseur of legs. I favour rear ends now, but at that time, I thought legs were the most beautiful body part that any women had (that was before I understood about minds). My present wife, Linda, occasionally reminds me that she doubts I've ever met a female body part I didn't think was my favourite. She does have a valid point. This though, was the most spectacular set of legs and thighs I had ever seen; lord forgive me, we called them "gams" in those days.

I remember asking those legs if they could step back a bit so I could have the pleasure of meeting their owner, and they did. She was gorgeous! Fine lovely features, slim, with long hair flowing almost to her waist, and she was about my age. I fell instantly in lust. If you have read any of my previous ruminations, you may have noticed I don't have much hesitation in being direct, and didn't back then either.

I told her I was in lust with her, that I would like to marry her, but if she couldn't make up her mind right away, then maybe we could do something else in the meantime. She said she was sorry, but she didn't go out with her customers, and if she ever did, the bar would fire her. So I explained that if that was the case, then I would never buy any cigarettes from her. I didn't, and we left it at that.

Over the next few months while we flirted with each other in the bar, I learned quite a bit about her and we became playfully friendly with each other. I discovered she was single, and didn't often have much success with men. You see, she was six feet three and one half inches tall, and also extremely independent. Most men, even the tall ones, were intimidated by her height. It seemed that everybody she met didn't quite know how to treat her. Female independence was not usually enjoyed or encouraged in days of yore either.

I have always been a great fan of strong, independent women. Among other things, it's always seemed obvious to me that if I was with a capable women, on the occasions that my brain stops working (which it does from time to time) my capable companion could guide our ship for us. I'm also fearless and not prone to intimidation. I don't mean to give you the impression that my thoughts were pure though. My god, when I was twenty I couldn't possibly ignore how good it would look on my resume if I was able to bed the tallest chick on the block. Well, I didn't bed her, but the flirting continued.

One day when I dropped into the bar she announced she was going to Europe in a few days. She planned on buying a scooter when she got there, and was going to travel around the country for a year or so. She gave me a forwarding address to write her if I wanted, and I gave her my address. We kissed each other goodbye hesitantly. This was our first kiss, and I don't think either of us thought we would ever see the other again.

A few months later I received a letter from her. She wrote that she missed me! I wrote back immediately, and we began an ongoing, increasingly intimate, communication. Seduction by mail is an easy road to travel, you don't even need to get up and wash afterwards. You can write majestic things, and they slide into the body with far more ease than the mechanics of sex allows. On the strength of our one kiss we became lovers by mail. It was extremely horny and exciting and went on until her return a year and a half later.

We got together as soon as she came back and acted like inexperienced teenagers with each other. We had consummated our relationship a hundred different ways by mail, and yet had only kissed each other once.

There was much fumbling about. It was so bad and amateurish that at one point we joked that perhaps we would have more success if we went to separate rooms and just slipped notes back and forth under the door. Eventually our bodies found their own way of communicating and we glided together. We were both very proud of ourselves, and became, as they used to say "an item".

Lord, we were a sight! As I said, women were rarely as tall as her, so when people saw us together it was cognitively difficult to understand that I was average height, and she was very tall. We were always referred to as "that lady with the really short man." I used to occasionally wear a beret, and if we were out together, I have to admit that standing beside her, with my beret on, I looked like I was about four feet tall. It was great fun; it added to our individuality as a couple, and we always enjoyed the gaping stares of others. I was way too young to be a sugar daddy, so others were forced to imagine all sorts of reasons what this gorgeous creature could see in a perceived little runt like me. It added immensely to what others thought must be my enormous sexual prowess.

We continued to enjoy being with each other, and a year or so later, we moved in together.

In 1965 we decided to move to California and look for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We also hated the cold Canadian winters. As soon as we got our American immigration papers, we shipped our belongings to Monterey, California, got in our little British two-seater MGA convertible and drove off to greener pastures. Upon arrival, we rented a house in Pacific Grove, California and settled in. I started a photo-finishing company for other photographers, shot weddings and did jobs for the local Chamber of Commerce. She got a job as a switchboard operator.

California dreaming: At that time the singing duo of Sonny and Cher were just becoming famous. Cher has an average female height of about five foot six inches, but because she wore heels all the time, she always appeared to be much taller than Sonny. Whenever we went out, because of our height differences, people often mistook us for Sonny and Cher and wanted our autographs. Initially we protested and insisted we weren't them, but that just pissed people off and they would become verbally abusive. It didn't take long to figure out it was just easier to reach for our pens and get ready to sign away whenever we saw people running toward us. If you're a collector of autographs, I'd recommend you check the authenticity of any Sonny and Cher ones you might be interested in buying.

California was good for us, but that "it's cold, and it's damp" line from the Frank Sinatra song rings true. We went to be warm, and ended up unhappy with the mid California climate. After a year, it was time to move on. We still wanted warmth, so Houston, Texas became our next target. We didn't understand that although Texas is indeed warm, someone forgot to add air flow to the State, so unfortunately, breathing is rather difficult. I was also just beginning to notice that the nomadic life didn't appeal to me as much as I thought it might.

We hated Houston when we got there. It was a city that was intolerant of almost everything unusual, and we were certainly unusual. Among other oddities, I was probably one of only four people in the whole state who had a goatee. Eventually I got a job with Gittings Studios, a very upscale high society photographer. I soon became a novelty item for the rich and famous and started getting many requests to attend and photograph important functions. I was always encouraged to bring my girlfriend along. We weren't signing autographs, but we were once again in demand. During this high rolling period of success we decided it was time to make plans for marriage.

We had wedding rings inscribed with a Latin expression that roughly translates into "We can, because we think we can". In San Antonio, we found an accommodating United Church minister who agreed to remove the U.S. flag that was flown in his chapel, and he let us write our own words for the service (unusual in those days). We were married in a delightful and very private ceremony. A couple we knew joined us at the church to act as witnesses, and I had a friend from work join in to take pictures. After the service they left and we drove to Mexico for a two week honeymoon.

We eventually tired of America. In the States, it seemed that we constantly needed to explain ourselves, whereas in Canada, we found that people generally didn't care what you did as long as it didn't hinder them. Longing for this ideological freedom, we moved back to Toronto.

We didn't live happily ever after though, but we did have a great time that spanned ten exciting and wonderful years together. Over those years we both changed dramatically, me certainly more than her, (check my Image in the mirror © by adrian story) and we became incompatible. We still occasionally see each other, but long ago decided being good friends was a better deal for us than marriage.

Through all of the years that we shared a wanderlust together, her need to travel was much greater than mine, and she often went away on her own to exotic places to explore new experiences. She has spent her life searching for something. I found what I was looking for a long time ago.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that she always went out looking to find life, and I always preferred to wait and let life come and find me. It certainly always has!

Image in the mirror © by adrian

It's early morning, Linda and I are at the table, reacquainting ourselves with each other and the new day. For the past six months or so, since we bought a decent nineteen hundred dollar bed we mostly chat about the dreadful sleep we each had last night. During the two years before that, we mostly chatted about how, as soon as we got a decent bed, we would finally be able to get a good sleep. Prior to that, we slept comfortably on a seventy five dollar waterbed which I put together in 1967 and brought to Linda's house as part of my dowry when we were married. Apart from the occasional bag change over the years, it had never cost me any loss of sleep. Inexplicably one day, we both decided it was time to change to a regular bed, and neither of us has slept properly since.

I am drinking my first of two cups of instant coffee which will glide me through the day until late afternoon when I will begin to consider whether I am ready to ingest some food. I occasionally graze in the daytime, but for most of my life, my first food of any day starts at dinnertime. Linda, on the other hand, is busy doing things that she and other devotees of breakfast often do. Cooking oats, sometimes eggs, cutting apples, squeezing oranges, making coffee using complicated filter systems, and general preparations for her morning feast. With luck, whatever she does now will get her as far as noon before she challenges her stomach to once again get into action. For myself, and I assume many others that don't eat in the morning, it is a sight full of mystery.

In our current conversation, I mention that I have not heard back from the naked pregnant lady I photographed last week, nor have I heard back from the older Chinese lady that was interested in some sexy photos of herself before, as she put it "she fell apart anymore". I wonder aloud that I may have offended each of them in some of last week's emails. Linda looks up from the orange she is squeezing and smiles that delicious wry smile she displays when she has another insight into who I am and says, "So you think you offended another two people. I guess you would say last week was a pretty good week for you then."

It wasn't always like that for me. From adolescence to my thirties, I was extremely conservative in thought, dress, manner and deportment. I always saw to it that I was impeccably dressed whenever I went out. I always wore a suit and tie or ascot. The most casual I could accept of myself was if I was in the darkroom developing prints, I would occasionally take my suit jacket off, but never my tie. If I felt like really slumming, I would roll my sleeves up. I was, as they say, a tight ass. I was over thirty before I put on my first pair of jeans.

I was also in turmoil. I considered myself an intellectual, but I was filled with never ending lust. I could not accept that someone as intelligent as I could be so base and animalistic in my desires. I can't explain why I thought the two could not co-exist, I just did. I felt someone as smart as me should be able to control their instincts. I believed that life could only be appreciated fully as an intellectual experience, to be reasoned with, and not felt. I lived in dreadful fear of my inner self. I was convinced I harbored a monster that was determined to escape and overpower my intellect. I continually waged a war against my instincts to prevent this from happening.

Near the end of the sixties, when I was about to turn thirty, the rest of the world was busy going crazy on drugs and many people were trying to "find themselves". I decided it was time for me to try to face my monster. In those days, the road most easily traveled for insight was the drug LSD. So I took it. Without a doubt, that became one of the pivotal experiences of my life.

What LSD essentially does is temporarily modify the way one can process information. At the same time, you are given conscious access to immensely more information than you normally have. The information you get when under the influence of LSD is not reliably true information, but it is far more than we normally perceive. It overwhelms the senses and produces a very dreamlike state, but you are generally aware that you are the conductor of your own dreams and perceptions. Anyway, in a hallucinogenic state, filled with fear, literally trembling, I stared into a mirror and demanded that I should see my true self. I prepared myself as best I could for the most hideous vision possible, I braced myself, expecting to see the horrible monster I had hidden inside me come forth. Instead, I roared with laughter and ended up with me.

In that hallucination, I appeared to age very quickly, and among other things, my short dark hair grew out very long and white. I liked what I saw. I realized my internal engine was calm, and I was full of humour. I also realized that the animal I had been so afraid of was definitely harmless, and I decided at that moment if that was who I was, I better stop trying not to be that. Thirty eight years ago, in a mirror, I saw the guy that's in this picture here. I immediately decided that I would not do anything to create what I saw, I would simply stop doing things that might prevent me from being what I now realized was far more honest. So, for example, I didn't decide to grow my hair long, I simply decided to stop cutting it. I became determined to stop getting in the way of my own life's experience. I had "gone clear" without the need of Scientology. I was stunned that I had previously been so fearful of such a delightful and comfortable human.

I don't suggest that we should all march over to Wal-Mart, buy a tab of LSD from the drug counter and drop it. I know there is much urban myth about the dreadful things that drugs do, and I have no doubt that some of it is true. For me though, it was a life giver. Over time, I became free of my own self imposed shackles and realized that I could be sane and at the same time truly enjoy my insanity as much as I wanted. I no longer needed to care what the world thought about me. I understood that my fulfillment was completely my responsibility, no one else's. I was no longer dependent on what others wanted me to be or do. Finally free to experience life on it's own terms, beholden to no preconceived notions.