CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Omnisicent Narrator strolled down Robson Strasse, envying the narrow dead-end lives around hemhir. At the same time, shey was strolling down everywhere, anywhere. Therefore shey was also strolling down the Main Mall (not a shopping centre, campers!) at the University of British Columbia, which would one day grant an Hon D Litt to G - shouldn't that be an Hon G Litt, to D? - So anyway, the O.N. was envying the narrow dead-end lives passing him by on campus, too. So as one particular insouciant young man came abreast of him, the O. N. spiked him with the tip of that redundancy, his Omniscient Umbrella. "Ouch, asshole" muttered D, who kept on going. It stung for a moment and then was forgotten, to do its deadly work in the dark.

D strolled by the Freddy Wood Theatre. The door was open. He peeked in. He had once found a wife here, disguised as an Ugly Sister. He had found a friend at the same time, disguised as Prince Charming. So he peeked again, to see what he might find.

He found G Delsing, dressed in a white floor length dress and wearing bright orange lipstick and a white lace mantilla. He was surrounded by Dekes. The Dekes, the dorkiest frat on campus, had rented the theatre and were rehearsing their spring follies. D knew that G was no Deke - he must have taken money from them to play this role.

G, besides looking absurdly, disturbingly beautiful, was singing to an instrumental version on tape of "I Went to Your Wedding." But the words he was singing had been written by D himself some months ago at a drunken party.

Your mother was boozin'
Your father was boozin'
And I was boozin' too
And why were we boozin'?
Because we were losin' /you.

You walked down the aisle
Wearin' only a smile
A vision of loveliness
You tripped and you fell
You bellowed Oh hell
Drunk as a skunk I guess

Yer brother was usin'
His boyfriend was usin'
And [up two octaves] I was usin' too
And why were we usin'?

Because we were losin' / You.

D resumed his stroll. But the melody had ahold of his mind now and he could get no peace. He recalled the ensuing verses, even though he could no longer hear his friend's surprisingly accomplished falsetto:

The vicar made speeches
I shit in my breeches
And Dean C - was shittin' too
And why were we shittin'?
Because we were gittin'/ Flu.

D fancied now that the words were coming, not from the orange-encircled bouche of his long chum G, but from the darker embouchure of the dulcet-toned Damata Jo, who covered this song in '52:

Yer taxidermist was swannin'
Yer taxi was runnin'
Yer taxman was connin' / You
(ONE two three ONE two three)
Yer toxics were leechin'
Yer tuxedo had come un/glued

Lovely; lovely, lovely, lovely. What power music hath! D had walked all the way from the Freddy Wood to the Caf without once thinking of how G had snatched A from him, of how G had stolen his song and sold it to the Dekes, of what the CIA gangsters had promised/threatened him with, of what Beth had said to him concerning his manhood that morning, or of what K had said Tom told him concerning his marital state the night before. And even on the very brink of further distraction, on the very top step of the descent to Caf Hell, where a place awaited him at the AH's table, the melody still suffused his poor brain, so much so that he needed nothing else to sustain his being, so that he about-faced and went on his way, headed toward true North, with new and yet newer phrases popping into his consciousness on the waves of the sickening tune:

D, M & G

Before they could pee

Saw an amazing flash
It lit up the night
With its staggering sight
From the Burrard Street Brash

And next on the wall
In front of them all
A vision of mystery

Some hieroglyphs stood
Meaning no good
On the wall of the brewery

D's spontaneous non-bop prosody compostion had so preoccupied him that he had walked clear off campus - had damn near toppled off a cliff into the Straits of Georgia. Come to his senses, he found himself in a wooded region steeply banked, which, he now recalled, led down to the Point Grey beach. The time of year being April (although other people might have other impressions as to the season, not to say the year), and the week being exam week, the dizzy trail revealed sporadic knots of "cliff-jumpers," students gone clean out of their gourds with the pressure of cramming after a wastrel winter, scrambling down to put into practice the sentiment, "But best of all, a drunken sleep on the beach." (Rimbaud or Baudelaire? Quick!)

D was on a walking jag. His legs moved of their own accord. His feet automatically found where to walk. They carried the bemused poet while his cranium kept cranking out verses.

Imposters, poseurs
These men friends of hers
And A would be one too
Told true fakes from false
This is a waltz
Felt the pebble inside her / Shoe.

But no more of that
-M 'n D's plans went splat!
D was kidnapped by blackcoated goons
They warn him "Shut up!
And dialogue out of car/ Toons.

G gets the funnies
The a.m is Sunday's
The same goons grab him too

How can this be?
I think we agree
It's fiction, it must be/ True.

D had arrived at the beach. Washed-up logs and washed-up students occupied the sandy strip in like numbers. The sweet, sickly smell of marijuana assailed D's flaring nostrils, but it would be years before D would be able to identify it. So whose is this point-of-view?

D did recognize the beer bottles and the packs of cigarettes, and began to scan the figures that weren't logs, looking for a friend, or an acquaintance, or even an enemy, to bum stuff off. But the only person he knew was some yards out in the water, being attacked by a large dog. It was Eduardo Viejo Pink-Meadow, a large creature himself, but barely a match for the slavering hound at his throat. D plunged in fully clothed and splashed closer.

"Hello, Brahms," said Pink-Meadow, who liked to say that D resembled the Nineteenthth century composer. "Come to frolic with us then, have you?" And one arm went above his head and its hand curled inward above the head in a characteristic gesture.

"This is play, Ed?" D sounded querulous. His pants were wet.

Pink-Meadow had by now struggled to his feet, and laid his other hand upon the dog's muzzle. "This is D-d-d-dog!" he told D. "D-d-d-dog is my new friend. "

"With friends like that, who needs enemies? Goll-ee, Eddie, he fair bid to drown you!"

The friends splashed out of the Straits of Georgia and picked a log to sit on. "He's the kind of dog that has to save people," Pink-Meadow explained. "I can't swim because he's always trying to save me. Would you mind holding him while I go back in?"

D agreed, with some misgiving about his ability to restrain the animal. But D-d-d-dog had had enough for now. He put his head on his stretched-out front paws and rolled a cloudy brown eye up at D.

Pink-Meadow reappeared, and stood shaking his massive, doggy form so that drops of cold, cold water flang themselves all over D. "Wonderfully stimulating, Brahms," he cried loonily, pirouetting with that singular gesture, arm bent up above head, "Why not go in yourself? - You might as well, you're pretty wet already," he added annoyingly.

"You're interrupting my composing," D sniffed huffily.

"Composing? Well, it's better than decomposing. I have some bonehead students from Engineers English down here with me - that's them over there, burning livestock. Mmm, wouldn't I just love to get my tongue on that little one there," he added wistfully drooling. "I love them when they have all those spots on their angelic faces. I suppose if you would sing your latest verses to them, they would beat the living daylights out of you. Too bad. They seem to quite like me, Artsman though I may be."

"You haven't given them their grades yet. Wait till next week."

"Ah, yes, well, I'll be over on the Island by next week. Why don't you come, Brahms. Pick strawbs as you did those many years ago, with that delicious friend of yours, whatsisname? Is he still around? Have him come too."

The sciencemen had given up on the sheep or goat - or Arts and Humanities Professor - they had roasted on a makeshift spit till it was an inedible black mass. Now they were manipulating some largish sheet of shiny metal whose purpose D could not glean. Pink-Meadow was none the wiser, and he was three sheets to the wind. D inadvisably let him know he was setting doggerel to "I Went to Your Wedding."

"Brahms! How splendid!! But you shouldn't reshtrict yourshelf to one song. There are so many others. "

"That's why I restrict myself," D said, mordantly.

"How about something for D-d-d-dog? How about (and he sang it) 'How Much is that Doggy in the Window'? How about 'Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me A Bow-Wow'?? How about - "

"No, Pink-Meadow, frkkzzakes don't! Don't plant another tune in my head. I'm three quarters done and I want to ride the same vehicle throughout!"

But Pink-Meadow had ceased to listen - if he had ever really begun. He was now shouting and waving at someone on a natty little cruiser offshore. His greetings were returned. "Brahms, that's Read Only on that boat! We'll shimply swim out and he'll give us drinkies."

D didn't think this was any great shakes as an idea. The cabin cruiser looked to be at least one hunded yards out. However, activity nearby changed his mind.

The scienceapes while not letting go of their huge piece of tin, had caught the accents of a Professor of Bonehead English and were drunk enough to assault him before he had graded their finals. Besides, wasn't that DB, that loathsome dilettante who edited the Critics Page, standing next to the big faggot? Faggot himself, most like. Fucken eh! Let's get their trousers off for starters!

Picking up the general drift of things, D plunged into the ocean in tandem with his chum. Soon enough, they were being helped into the cruiser by Read Only himself, the anthropologist from North Borneo and Seattle. Read wrapped D in a blanket and set him in the sun with a highly sophisticated cocktail.

Then he and Pink-Meadow went below to smoke some funny stuff. D didn't smoke funny stuff. Funny, eh.

D watched the beach. The Apes of Engineering had given up their quest for Artsman flesh and gone back to their dinkering with the sheet of tin. D hadn't realized that these simians had that much ability to focus. His own mind was wandering once more . . .

D, G, M and A
were on the TV
Ready to talk about sex
Love: Different Things
to Different Genders
Was the topic announced for their text.

"How much is that fellow in the window?
The one with the waggly - tail?
How much is that fellow in the window?

O I do hope that isn't a tail!

But now what was happening to the boat?!

D was living in the present now, at last - leastwise, in the recent past. "Eduardo!"

The big guy came ponderously up the ladder that led below. D was handed at his request the ship-to-shore phone. The cruiser without any helmsman had turned in a big circle and was now headed south, towards the mouths of the Fraser River. Read Only, alerted, took the wheel. D dialed.

D was sitting at a table outside, drinking liquor, and it was legal because at Read's suggestion they had dropped anchor at Point Roberts, a geographical and political anomaly dear to D's heart. On his fifth vodka and orange (for D was ever-mindful of his health) he was becoming expansive. Unfortunately for his companions, however, he had also regressed:

I saw an explosion
Of light o'er the ocean
And G and M were there
We've been painfully muzzled
While Molson's we guzzled
Though I did tell on the /Air.

I never balled Byrna
She only balls Werner
Who creates lampshades out of paste
And M never reached me
Altho' he beseeched me
M's mind is a terrible / Waste.

D's audience was agog. "Get on with it, man!" His neo-discursiveness was the blunt instrument of suspense. It was Read's turn to treat.

M's fanciful scene
From "Duck Soup," I ween
Scrambled in M's mighty mind
We see what drinkin'
Does to you thinking
- O thank you, Read, you're too/ Kind.

It's six-ten already

I'm slightly unsteady

But must get to English Bay

So Read, rent a chopper

We all three can hoppa/Board.