lezliefaithwade

[lezliefaithwade]

my first very rudimentary attempt at animation.

[lezliefaithwade]

(B)Rats!

At one point in my early twenties, all my girlfriends seemed to collect other people’s children as though they were their own. Every coffee or dinner get-together resulted in listening to them regale me with so-and-so’s adorable child and the incredible excursion they’d just been on. 

“Charlotte and I went to the ROM.” Laurie boasted, “She showed a deep understanding of the Ramapithecus stage of human development,” 

These children always had names like Gwendolyn, Bronte, or Charmaine and invariably spoke two languages fluently as well as being proficient on the piano or violin. Every kid was a genius from what I could tell. My takeaway from these encounters was that my friends were using these experiences to show how grown up and responsible they were. But beyond that, how loved. After all, if children adore you, that’s saying something – right? 

“Look,” Laurie insisted shoving a hand-made card in my face with glued elbow macaroni on the cover. “Bronte made this for me. Inside it says, You are the best!”

Back in my apartment while contemplating whether glue traps were a humane way to handle my overwhelming mice infestation, I thought that perhaps I should try to endear myself to some children. Clearly, this was the next step towards adulthood, and like learning how to drive, I didn’t want to be left out. Also, I figured any child would confirm what I already suspected, that I was the next best thing to Mary Poppins. In no time at all, they would call me “auntie” and beg their parents to spend time with me.

I quickly made a list of all the people I knew with children under the age of seven and the next day reached out to see if anyone was interested in my shepherding their kids around Toronto for a few hours of fun. “I have tickets to see the Nutcracker,” I told my grown-up friends, Eric and Allison. They had a daughter named Mary Jane, whose nanny had to have emergency dental work on the very week they’d planned a romantic getaway, so they were only too thrilled to lend their precocious six-year-old to my cause. This struck me as perfect timing. Their home was beautiful and their fridge was well stocked. Not only would I enjoy spending time with an insightful child, but I’d be well-fed in the process.

“She’s gluten, dairy, and sugar-free,” Allison told me handing me a plastic bag of celery and carrot sticks. “She’s also allergic to peanuts, bandaids, and perfume.“ Here’s the number where we can be reached and the telephone number of her therapist.”

“Your six-year-old has a therapist?” I asked. I imagined myself bragging about Mary Jane’s incredible interpretation of Rorschachs and fascination for dream psychology.

“Speech therapist,” Allison said, as she ushered the youngster into the room.

If it were possible to pour cream of wheat into a mold and have it set, then one might have an impression of Mary Jane. She was pale, thin, and dressed from head to toe in bubble gum pink.

I looked at the child and it crossed my mind that I’d been given a dud. 

“Do you speak two languages?” I asked her

“I can thpeak thom pig Latin.” she volunteered.

What about musical instruments?

“Only the gathoo.”

MJ, why don’t you tell Lezlie about your part in the Christmas Play. Lezlie is a writer, you know.

You’re in a play, I asked, suddenly interested.

“A Chrithmath Carol.”

“She’s Tiny Tim.” Allison volunteered.

Mary Jane seemed like a sweet if not meek six-year-old with a nose that always ran and hair that stayed limp, even after it had been washed. As her mother and father loaded up their Cabriole with a few overnight bags, she sat listlessly colouring a picture of a mouse sitting on top of a pile of presents.

“What a sweet little mousie,” I said doing my best to ingratiate myself. 

“Ith’s not a mouth.” Mary Jane announced in a tone that suggested I was an idiot. “Ith’s a rat.”

Allison interjected, “Ever since the movie Ratatouille, she’s been very excited about rats.”

“Is that so?” I said, all the while wondering how I might be able to parlay this information into something useful. I wonder if she knows anything about extermination, I thought to myself.

“Here’s the number of the Inn we’ll be at,” Eric said. “Call if there is an emergency. Bye Bye MJ” and they were off.

“Well,” I said to Mary Jane, “Shall we get ready to see the Nutcracker?”

“What’s that?” Mary Jane asked

“A ballet.”

“What’s that?”

“A kind of dance piece.”

“I hate danth.”

“But there are pretty costumes and classical music.”

What’s that?”

I looked at the clock. Only 48 hours to go.

At the theatre, Mary Jane informed me in no uncertain terms that I was boring, thtupid, and ugly. I had no idea that little children could be so cruel. I wanted to sink to her level and say, “I know you are, but what am I?” But we had until Sunday and these were early days.

To break the ice I volunteered a little bit about myself in the hopes that it might impress her to like me.

“So your Dad mentioned that I’m a writer?” I asked

“My dad thinks that writerths are just unemployed bums.”

Out of the mouths of babes. 

“Look,” I said handing her a kleenex, “Maybe you’ll like the dancing. Let’s try to have fun.”

“What’s that?” She said as the orchestra tuned up and the lights dimmed.

Here’s what I remembered about the Nutcracker. There’s a little girl and a huge Christmas tree and a Nutcracker Prince and a Rat King.

Here’s what I forgot about the Nutcracker. The Prince defeats the Rat King who is dragged away, unconscious by his minions. At intermission MJ was hysterical.

“Ith he dead?” She started screaming. “Ith the Rat King dead?”

“No!” I said, “Just unconscious. He’s fine.”

“He’s NOT fine,” she screamed. “I hate the Nutcracker. I hate him. I HATE HIM!!!!”

An usher made her way over to us. “Is there anything I can do to help?” 

There are people, and you know them, who naturally assume that in ANY given circumstance they would be more useful than you.  

“We’re fine,” I said doing my best to diffuse the situation.

The usher started talking to Mary Jane directly as though I were her captor and had forced her to the ballet.

“Is that true? Are you okay little girl?”

“I HATE the Nutcracker!” Mary Jane screamed. Now everyone was looking at us.

You have to understand that at this point Mary Jane’s ire had worked its way up from a four to an eight and the more attention she got from the ‘well-meaning’ usher, the more MJ screamed. Front of House was called. 

“Now, now,” he said, “what seems to be the problem?”

“I think I’d better take her home.” I volunteered trying to get Mary Jane's arms into her coat as she flailed about.

“Is this your mommy?” The Usher asked.

“NO!” Mary Jane screamed

“Do you know this lady?”

“NO!” 

All eyes were now on me. 

“I’m babysitting.” I sputtered. “Her parents are away for the weekend and I’m taking care of her.”

“Is that true?” the usher asked Mary Jane who stopped sobbing just long enough to nod. 

The lights in the foyer flickered. 

Act two is about to begin. Please take your seats A disembodied voice announced, and the lobby slowly emptied back into the theatre. 

Mary Jane and I left the building under the watchful eye of the well-meaning usher who was still taking a mental picture of me for the police report she’d be filing later that night. 

Back home Mary Jane was still distressed. Surely I was the worst babysitter on the face of the earth having traumatized a six-year-old for life.

“Look,” I volunteered carefully so as not to set her off, “I’m a writer, as you know, and though you may have an accurate, although brutal opinion of me, occasionally it pays to be able to use the pen as a kind of sword.”

Mary Jane looked up at me from her pillow.

“What do you mean?”

“What if I write a letter to that Nutcracker and insist that he apologize to the Rat King for any wrongdoing and —

“Give him back his crown.” Mary Jane interjected.

“Yes,” I agreed, “Give him back his crown. I’m sure between the two of us, we could come up with a great letter to that phony bologna that would set him straight.”

We worked for the better part of an evening and this is what she came up with:

Nutcracker,

You are a mean, horrible, nasty, sniveling, block of wood. How dare you wound the Rat King that way. Do you have any idea how valuable Rats are? Did you know that rats outperform humans in cognitive tests? They are affectionate, and empathetic and can even laugh when tickled.

Because they drop seeds rats are also great for the environment by planting trees everywhere they go. What do you do? Hmm? You crack nuts. Big deal. I can do that with my shoe. I think you are just jealous of the Rat King. Please consider your behaviour and apologize at once and leave the Rat King alone. 

Sincerely, 

Mary Jane Higgins

“That’ll do the trick,” I lied. “You really told that Nutcracker where to get off.”

“What’s that?” Mary Jane asked

“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s order pizza.”

I wish I could say that from that moment on, Mary Jane and I were friends. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. What actually happened was a week later her grandmother, completely unaware of what had transpired, took Mary Jane to see the Nutcracker again. Of course, MJ went, convinced that her letter had changed the outcome by making the Nutcracker see the error of his ways.  When, of course, it didn’t…she had another meltdown in the lobby of the Hummingbird Center while the well-meaning usher questioned her grandmother’s legitimacy amid Mary Janes screams of, “I hate the Nutcracker. I HATE HIM!!!”

As for me? Since Mary Jane had educated me about the psychology of rodents,  I found myself incapable of ending my mice infestation and eventually had to move. 

[lezliefaithwade]

[lezliefaithwade]

A Breath of Fresh Air

The summer after my first year of theatre school, I was sleeping on the living room floor of my cousin's apartment in Toronto, trying to figure out what to do with my life. My cousin had been an actor before he became a quadriplegic in a car accident, and as I unadvisedly bemoaned my unemployment status, he said something like, "Seriously? You're complaining about your life? Don't make me burst a colostomy bag." He was right, of course. I wasn't in a wheelchair, though I did have a stepmother who had rendered me homeless because of her dislike for me. She was always saying things like, "Your hair can't be as ugly as that hat you're wearing." Or simply refusing to invite me to things like Christmas dinner. I always admired people with families. My boyfriend at the time was one of five kids who were always doing things together. Their house was always full of noise and activities. Even as a shiksa, I felt more at home there than with my stepbrothers and sisters, who never lost an opportunity to point out that I was weird. I wanted to stand up to them, but not wanting to cause my father any grief, I held my tongue and sought refuge elsewhere. It occurred to me that perhaps I was using the theatre as an opportunity to say things through characters that I couldn't find the courage to express myself.

The Toronto Star was still open on the kitchen table, and I rummage through the Want Ads, that dirty part of the newspaper near the back where complete strangers will soon become complete assholes in your life by forcing you to work menial jobs in humiliating uniforms for minimum wage.

"Find anything?" my cousin called from the bedroom, where two attendants helped wash and dress him.

"Social services are advertising for camp councilors to work with emotionally challenged kids."

"Oh yeah," He said. "That might suit you."

I'm not sure I knew what he meant but, I was beginning to think I'd outgrown my welcome. My cousin probably would have encouraged me to join the circus if the option had been available. Knowing my living room days were numbered, I thought it best to make an effort and apply.

I had no experience teaching drama—no experience working with kids and no experience going to or working at a camp. Despite all that, I was hired. It's worth noting that it's probably not a good sign if you get a job with no qualifications whatsoever.

My official position was Drama Councillor, and I prided myself that with only a year and half of theatre training behind me, I was well equipped to help others benefit from the wealth of my experience. I imagined myself, Maria Von Trapp, teaching children how to sing while they looked at me adoringly. Somehow, I conveniently blocked out the rebellious early stages she experienced and skipped straight to the good parts. Also, I might add, forgetting about the Nazis and having to climb over a mountain. Still, visions of me biking around camp with a group of happy campers behind me filled me with a sense of self-satisfaction.

As I packed my knapsack with deet and a secret stash of Twinkies, I thought of how only three weeks earlier I'd been in New York walking through Central Park and savoring Cappuccinos at outdoor cafés on Columbus. Now, here I was, ready for something different. The wilderness, I imagined, would be a welcome change—fresh air and loons instead of smog and sirens. I thought smugly about my classmates sweating behind visors at take-out windows shoveling fries into cardboard cups or wrapping sandwiches in tinfoil. Thumbs up to adventure, I told myself. The fact that I'd never once in my life enjoyed the great outdoors didn't factor into my mind. All of this changed with each accumulated minute of the 391 Kilometer drive north.

It was late afternoon when I arrived at the compound. Overcast, sullen, it was a place so secluded you'd need flares to find it. It had that distinct aura of someplace time forgot. A place left behind and neglected. In the brochure, the sun was shining, flowers filled the meadow, and you could practically hear laughter floating off the page. What I was looking at bore more of a resemblance to a situation in a Stephen King novel where camp councilors discover a pack of hungry teenage zombies have lured them to a seemingly idyllic retreat. Situated right in the heart of black fly country, I spent most of my days swatting insects so big they seem Jurassic.

During our orientation, child care workers warned us that children with mental health needs tend to run away - a lot and to keep strict attendance records and all eyes on them at all times. "These kids are resourceful and clever," they cautioned. I couldn't imagine being so determined you'd risk your life by escaping through the woods that surrounded us, but then again, I'd never been around children who weren't allowed cutlery before either

I shared my cabin with three other women with who I had absolutely nothing in common. Delia, a humorless 27-year-old cooking instructor who answered every question with a monosyllabic grunt, Jennifer, a 26-year old tennis instructor with massive blond ringlets who talked so quickly she sounded like a record on high speed, and an older aboriginal woman named Sunny who made us all dream catchers and offered advice about how to heal ourselves on days when we'd feel spent. "Remember, these kids need us," she said while purifying our cabin with sage. As I glanced around my assigned bunk, taking in the spider webs and loose floorboards, I had that sinking feeling that comes when you know you've made a terrible mistake. Before long, I was eating copious amounts of peanut butter on stale bagels amid a never-ending supply of starch. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to feed children with challenges like anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, and eating disorders copious amounts of sugar and carbs. It certainly did nothing to help them or me.

On the first day of class, I sat everyone in a circle. "Welcome to drama class," I said with a smile. "Let's begin by sharing with everyone a little bit about ourselves. Anything at all you'd like us to know?" A hand went up.

"I'm Tracy, and I hate my stupid ass brother. He can go straight to hell."

"Okay," I said, "That's a start. Who's next?"

Another hand. "I'm Jonathan, and this place sucks so much I wish it would burn to the ground!"

"Fair enough. Anyone else?"

"I'm Jo. I'm schizophrenic. So sometimes I'm Rachel and Julia. You'll know the difference because Rachel has a British dialect, and Julia talks slang."

"O-kay." I glanced at the social workers who sat on the edge of the room and looked at me with an expression that basically said, "We can't wait to see what you do next."

"Let's write a play," I suggested. "Write anything you want. Once you're happy with the work, I'll shape it into a cohesive piece that we'll rehearse and then present at the end of the season talent showcase."

The kids liked this idea. The showcase was a big deal. It was an opportunity for them to blow off some steam and express themselves to friends and family in a creative way. My only stipulation was not to use profanity. As the weeks passed, I was impressed with how well they all threw themselves into this project—all except Eric, the oldest boy in my 12 to 15-year-olds. Eric often wandered around the rehearsal space, unfocused and sullen.

"Any ideas for your piece?" I ask, checking in to see if I could help.

"I'm thinking," he'd say and then pace.

With three weeks left in the summer, I took my well-deserved week off to decompress. My boyfriend came up from Toronto and drove me to his parent's house at Post and Bayview, where caterers were preparing the tennis courts for an outdoor party. I walked into his mother's living room, and she gasped. "What happened to you?"

I didn't blame her. I hadn't spent much time looking at a mirror the past four weeks, but one glance at the large one in their bathroom told the full story. My hair was ratty; I had scabs on my knees, bruises on my arms and legs, and I was sunburnt. I was wearing a vintage skirt and blouse that was probably more Value Village than vintage and a pair of worn, scuffed purple moccasins; in essence, I was wearing slippers on my feet.

"Please take her to the mall and at least buy her a pair of shoes," his mother said, handing me her credit card and then rushing off to make sure the stuffed alligator would float in the pool. That week I ate my way through rugelach, hamantaschen, brisket, and bagels while his family watched me with awe and disgust.

Back at camp, the smell of burning insect repellent greeted me along with the news that the sailing and tennis instructors were sacked for disorderly conduct. Never mind, I had renewed energy and a sense of purpose. There were costumes and props to make. Sound and lighting effects to create. And we needed to rehearse. It was only a tiny stage somewhere on a remote camp in Northern Ontario, but the excitement was palpable. I was excited. This would be the best talent show ever, and my kids were going to blow the socks off everyone there!!!

"Eric," I said, "How's your piece coming along?"

"I finished it," he mentioned casually

"That's great. Can I see it?"

"I want to surprise you. You're going to love it, though. I promise."

I patted myself on the back. Eric had a breakthrough. All my encouragement and patience had paid off. Perhaps I'd helped him have a developmental breakthrough.

"Can you tell me what it's about?" I asked.

"The Beatles."

"Great. Okay," and left it at that.

Talent Night arrived along with parents and family friends. The lights dimmed, the kids performed, and the audience enthusiastically applauded as each "Mighty Mite" or "Spirit of Paradise" breezed across the stage, acting out skits about fairies and monsters and assorted escapades. Finally, it was Eric's turn. Out he came, looking serious and theatrical. He cleared his throat and addressed the audience.

"This is called, The Beatles Last Recording Session. By, Me."

Three of his closest camp friends filed out and took a space on the stage. The audience was silent.

There was a dramatic pause, then the piece began.

"Fuck you, Ringo,"

"Fuck you, Paul."

"Fuck you, George."

"Well fuck you, John."

Then they bowed and left the stage.

Personally, I thought it was kind of brilliant. Needless to say, I wasn't showered with accolades about my teaching methods or the effect I had on kids. I left there having no catharsis about mental health except that giving people the opportunity to express themselves without censor is probably a lot healthier than insisting they stay quiet. I admired the honesty displayed in the kid's work. If only, I thought to myself, I could be half as brave. Wasn't that what I was spending time and money learning how to do?

A week after being home, I found myself packing, once more, for school in New York. Our term letters had arrived with instructions on where to buy character shoes, leotards, copies of The Children's Hour, and Death of a Salesman. The camp already felt like it was 391 kilometers away - soon to be 659. My father drove me to the train station with my stepmother beside him; she was there, no doubt, to ensure I boarded.

"You going to be okay?" my father asked, giving me a hug and slipping a $50 bill into my pocket.

"She'll be fine." Elsie chimed in. "You don't have to worry about her. Let's go."

But I wanted my father to worry about me. Not all the time and to the exclusion of all else, but certainly the appropriate fatherly amount.

As I settled myself on the train, I watched my stepmother pull from father from the platform to the car and thought of Eric's brilliant play. Under my breath, I whispered the immortal words of the Beatles, "Fuck you."

#stepmother #mental health #children #young people #summer camp

[lezliefaithwade]

A Breath of Fresh Air

The summer after my first year of theatre school, I was sleeping on the living room floor of my cousin's apartment in Toronto, trying to figure out what to do with my life. My cousin had been an actor before he became a quadriplegic in a car accident, and as I unadvisedly bemoaned my unemployment status, he said something like, "Seriously? You're complaining about your life? Don't make me burst a colostomy bag." He was right, of course. I wasn't in a wheelchair, though I did have a stepmother who had rendered me homeless because of her dislike for me. She was always saying things like, "Your hair can't be as ugly as that hat you're wearing." Or simply refusing to invite me to things like Christmas dinner. I always admired people with families. My boyfriend at the time was one of five kids who were always doing things together. Their house was always full of noise and activities. Even as a shiksa, I felt more at home there than with my stepbrothers and sisters, who never lost an opportunity to point out that I was weird. I wanted to stand up to them, but not wanting to cause my father any grief, I held my tongue and sought refuge elsewhere. It occurred to me that perhaps I was using the theatre as an opportunity to say things through characters that I couldn't find the courage to express myself.

The Toronto Star was still open on the kitchen table, and I rummage through the Want Ads, that dirty part of the newspaper near the back where complete strangers will soon become complete assholes in your life by forcing you to work menial jobs in humiliating uniforms for minimum wage.

"Find anything?" my cousin called from the bedroom, where two attendants helped wash and dress him.

"Social services are advertising for camp councilors to work with emotionally challenged kids."

"Oh yeah," He said. "That might suit you."

I'm not sure I knew what he meant but, I was beginning to think I'd outgrown my welcome. My cousin probably would have encouraged me to join the circus if the option had been available. Knowing my living room days were numbered, I thought it best to make an effort and apply.

I had no experience teaching drama—no experience working with kids and no experience going to or working at a camp. Despite all that, I was hired. It's worth noting that it's probably not a good sign if you get a job with no qualifications whatsoever.

My official position was Drama Councillor, and I prided myself that with only a year and half of theatre training behind me, I was well equipped to help others benefit from the wealth of my experience. I imagined myself, Maria Von Trapp, teaching children how to sing while they looked at me adoringly. Somehow, I conveniently blocked out the rebellious early stages she experienced and skipped straight to the good parts. Also, I might add, forgetting about the Nazis and having to climb over a mountain. Still, visions of me biking around camp with a group of happy campers behind me filled me with a sense of self-satisfaction.

As I packed my knapsack with deet and a secret stash of Twinkies, I thought of how only three weeks earlier I'd been in New York walking through Central Park and savoring Cappuccinos at outdoor cafés on Columbus. Now, here I was, ready for something different. The wilderness, I imagined, would be a welcome change—fresh air and loons instead of smog and sirens. I thought smugly about my classmates sweating behind visors at take-out windows shoveling fries into cardboard cups or wrapping sandwiches in tinfoil. Thumbs up to adventure, I told myself. The fact that I'd never once in my life enjoyed the great outdoors didn't factor into my mind. All of this changed with each accumulated minute of the 391 Kilometer drive north.

It was late afternoon when I arrived at the compound. Overcast, sullen, it was a place so secluded you'd need flares to find it. It had that distinct aura of someplace time forgot. A place left behind and neglected. In the brochure, the sun was shining, flowers filled the meadow, and you could practically hear laughter floating off the page. What I was looking at bore more of a resemblance to a situation in a Stephen King novel where camp councilors discover a pack of hungry teenage zombies have lured them to a seemingly idyllic retreat. Situated right in the heart of black fly country, I spent most of my days swatting insects so big they seem Jurassic.

During our orientation, child care workers warned us that children with mental health needs tend to run away - a lot and to keep strict attendance records and all eyes on them at all times. "These kids are resourceful and clever," they cautioned. I couldn't imagine being so determined you'd risk your life by escaping through the woods that surrounded us, but then again, I'd never been around children who weren't allowed cutlery before either

I shared my cabin with three other women with who I had absolutely nothing in common. Delia, a humorless 27-year-old cooking instructor who answered every question with a monosyllabic grunt, Jennifer, a 26-year old tennis instructor with massive blond ringlets who talked so quickly she sounded like a record on high speed, and an older aboriginal woman named Sunny who made us all dream catchers and offered advice about how to heal ourselves on days when we'd feel spent. "Remember, these kids need us," she said while purifying our cabin with sage. As I glanced around my assigned bunk, taking in the spider webs and loose floorboards, I had that sinking feeling that comes when you know you've made a terrible mistake. Before long, I was eating copious amounts of peanut butter on stale bagels amid a never-ending supply of starch. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to feed children with challenges like anxiety, depression, hyperactivity, and eating disorders copious amounts of sugar and carbs. It certainly did nothing to help them or me.

On the first day of class, I sat everyone in a circle. "Welcome to drama class," I said with a smile. "Let's begin by sharing with everyone a little bit about ourselves. Anything at all you'd like us to know?" A hand went up.

"I'm Tracy, and I hate my stupid ass brother. He can go straight to hell."

"Okay," I said, "That's a start. Who's next?"

Another hand. "I'm Jonathan, and this place sucks so much I wish it would burn to the ground!"

"Fair enough. Anyone else?"

"I'm Jo. I'm schizophrenic. So sometimes I'm Rachel and Julia. You'll know the difference because Rachel has a British dialect, and Julia talks slang."

"O-kay." I glanced at the social workers who sat on the edge of the room and looked at me with an expression that basically said, "We can't wait to see what you do next."

"Let's write a play," I suggested. "Write anything you want. Once you're happy with the work, I'll shape it into a cohesive piece that we'll rehearse and then present at the end of the season talent showcase."

The kids liked this idea. The showcase was a big deal. It was an opportunity for them to blow off some steam and express themselves to friends and family in a creative way. My only stipulation was not to use profanity. As the weeks passed, I was impressed with how well they all threw themselves into this project—all except Eric, the oldest boy in my 12 to 15-year-olds. Eric often wandered around the rehearsal space, unfocused and sullen.

"Any ideas for your piece?" I ask, checking in to see if I could help.

"I'm thinking," he'd say and then pace.

With three weeks left in the summer, I took my well-deserved week off to decompress. My boyfriend came up from Toronto and drove me to his parent's house at Post and Bayview, where caterers were preparing the tennis courts for an outdoor party. I walked into his mother's living room, and she gasped. "What happened to you?"

I didn't blame her. I hadn't spent much time looking at a mirror the past four weeks, but one glance at the large one in their bathroom told the full story. My hair was ratty; I had scabs on my knees, bruises on my arms and legs, and I was sunburnt. I was wearing a vintage skirt and blouse that was probably more Value Village than vintage and a pair of worn, scuffed purple moccasins; in essence, I was wearing slippers on my feet.

"Please take her to the mall and at least buy her a pair of shoes," his mother said, handing me her credit card and then rushing off to make sure the stuffed alligator would float in the pool. That week I ate my way through rugelach, hamantaschen, brisket, and bagels while his family watched me with awe and disgust.

Back at camp, the smell of burning insect repellent greeted me along with the news that the sailing and tennis instructors were sacked for disorderly conduct. Never mind, I had renewed energy and a sense of purpose. There were costumes and props to make. Sound and lighting effects to create. And we needed to rehearse. It was only a tiny stage somewhere on a remote camp in Northern Ontario, but the excitement was palpable. I was excited. This would be the best talent show ever, and my kids were going to blow the socks off everyone there!!!

"Eric," I said, "How's your piece coming along?"

"I finished it," he mentioned casually

"That's great. Can I see it?"

"I want to surprise you. You're going to love it, though. I promise."

I patted myself on the back. Eric had a breakthrough. All my encouragement and patience had paid off. Perhaps I'd helped him have a developmental breakthrough.

"Can you tell me what it's about?" I asked.

"The Beatles."

"Great. Okay," and left it at that.

Talent Night arrived along with parents and family friends. The lights dimmed, the kids performed, and the audience enthusiastically applauded as each "Mighty Mite" or "Spirit of Paradise" breezed across the stage, acting out skits about fairies and monsters and assorted escapades. Finally, it was Eric's turn. Out he came, looking serious and theatrical. He cleared his throat and addressed the audience.

"This is called, The Beatles Last Recording Session. By, Me."

Three of his closest camp friends filed out and took a space on the stage. The audience was silent.

There was a dramatic pause, then the piece began.

"Fuck you, Ringo,"

"Fuck you, Paul."

"Fuck you, George."

"Well fuck you, John."

Then they bowed and left the stage.

Personally, I thought it was kind of brilliant. Needless to say, I wasn't showered with accolades about my teaching methods or the effect I had on kids. I left there having no catharsis about mental health except that giving people the opportunity to express themselves without censor is probably a lot healthier than insisting they stay quiet. I admired the honesty displayed in the kid's work. If only, I thought to myself, I could be half as brave. Wasn't that what I was spending time and money learning how to do?

A week after being home, I found myself packing, once more, for school in New York. Our term letters had arrived with instructions on where to buy character shoes, leotards, copies of The Children's Hour, and Death of a Salesman. The camp already felt like it was 391 kilometers away - soon to be 659. My father drove me to the train station with my stepmother beside him; she was there, no doubt, to ensure I boarded.

"You going to be okay?" my father asked, giving me a hug and slipping a $50 bill into my pocket.

"She'll be fine." Elsie chimed in. "You don't have to worry about her. Let's go."

But I wanted my father to worry about me. Not all the time and to the exclusion of all else, but certainly the appropriate fatherly amount.

As I settled myself on the train, I watched my stepmother pull from father from the platform to the car and thought of Eric's brilliant play. Under my breath, I whispered the immortal words of the Beatles, "Fuck you."

#stepmother #mental health #children #young people #summer camp

[lezliefaithwade]

Faith, Hope & Charity

At Vatican City, I overheard two American tourists with distinctly southern dialects discussing the beggars asking tourists for change.

“You’d think they would do something about it,” the man said to the woman, who nodded in agreement while admiring her recently purchased crucifix.

Visitors waiting for their designated museum times can sit in the square or stroll through any one of a dozen souvenir shops that sell religious artifacts for exorbitant amounts of money. Things that generally sell on Kijiji or Amazon for next to nothing are priced three or four times higher in the square. And these tourists beside me had opted to give their money to thieves in suites rather than beggars in rags. Interesting. I have to assume they were religious; hence, why the crucifix? True, it could have been a gift for someone else, but even so, it seemed so biblical, me sitting at the Vatican beside two reasonably well-dressed people who were loudly condemning the poor.

I’m not against people with a belief. I’ve known some incredibly kind Christians and some indecent ones too. I’ve dated Jews, Greek Orthodox, Coptics, atheists, and agnostics. Sometimes I meet people who tell me they’re spiritual, and I take that to mean that they believe in a higher power but not an organized religion. The thing about organized religion is how desperate they are to recruit you. I’ve made the mistake a few times of accompanying a friend or boyfriend to their church or temple of choice only to be cross-examined at “friendship hour” afterwards.

“Don’t forget to sign the registry” “Be sure to leave your e-mail?” “How did you like the service?” “

I’m always so tempted to say, “I didn’t like the service at all. I thought the little speech in the middle was boring as hell. In the theatre, you’d never be able to get away with so little effort.” In fact, during a few of those boring lectures, I’ve actually wondered what it would be like to review them. Can a person be a homily critic?

Last Sunday at St. Thomas Episcopalian, Reverend Porter spoke on the story of the Good Samaritan in what can only be described as a futile effort to instill any empathy whatsoever. His monotone delivery showed no sign of excitement or interest in the very subject of which he spoke, and his overuse of gesticulation could be better served as choirmaster. I highly recommend any churchgoer avoid this Liturgical season until Easter, when things will hopefully become a bit livelier.

I’ve often made the mistake of expecting more from those who claim to believe. After all, the general consensus (and I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here) is that someone who follows the word of God is most likely going to practice kindness, love, compassion, forgiveness, and understanding.  It’s like a person who boasts of being a great chef and then serves you store-bought pasta with a lumpy Béchamel. “I don’t wish to offend,” you might say, “But do you really expect me to swallow this crap?” If Catholic school taught me anything, it was how rarely one saw the word of God put into practice. Not that everyone was mean, but the “Do unto others…” doctrine wasn’t generously applied. Sadly, more often than not, I’ve often been disappointed by those who claim to be followers of Christ. I think, if Jesus were around today, He’d be disappointed too. Sometimes I imagine Christ with a Twitter account and millions of followers towards whom He’d constantly have to correct in a never-ending stream of tweets like:

“I cannot be held responsible for everything the prophets said,” or “I didn’t even know Leviticus.”

People who have no religious beliefs whatsoever can also be surprisingly horrible. I’m always slightly taken aback when they denounce religion taking the stance that this makes them somehow better than everyone else. I’m easily tricked into thinking they are, then let down when they behave just as badly. These are the people who fight for climate control while driving an SUV. They’re firmly against bullying, then bully you when you disagree with them. I kind of subscribe to the whole: Let he without sin cast the first stone. As advice goes, it’s pretty good.

My belief system runs somewhere between Spiritual Deism with a side of Christianity and a strong desire to be Jewish.  My Jewish boyfriend for seven years reminded me of what it meant to be part of a family, something I always wanted.  I looked forward to Friday Shabbat dinners where we’d gather over brisket and discuss important issues like the colour of the car Bernie was going to buy.

“It’s red.” He’d nonchalantly say while savouring the dinner.

“Red?” his Mother would announce. Fork down, dinner halted. “You’re not a red car sort of guy.”

“What does that mean?” Bernie would ask, oblivious to where this was going.

“You’re a blue car or a gold car-- not red. You’re brother here; he’s a red car driver. Mr. Flashy. Mr. Look-at-Me. But you…you’re definitely not red.”

“I can be flashy!”

“Never!”

“Sure, I can.”

“Not going to happen.”

“There are plenty of times when I’ve been flashy.”

“Name one?”

“Aunt Zelda’s birthday party?”

“Aunt Zelda’s birthday party? What are you talking about?”

“I did that impersonation of Lenny Bruce.”

“Oy vey. Shut up and eat your brisket. And tomorrow, change the colour of your car.”

My first husband’s father, Ezzat, was completely the opposite. A proud Egyptian, he’d grill me over dinner with questions like, “Do I or do I not ALWAYS ask you about your father?” to which I’d cautiously reply, “Well…I wouldn’t say always.” The next thing I knew, I was being called a liar, and he’d refuse to cross the threshold of my home. Once, while I was still suffering from dry sockets after having my wisdom teeth removed, he blended lamb, lentils and carrots together in what can only be described as vomit. It was a lovely gesture, but he was deeply offended when I couldn’t drink/eat it. I offended him a lot. Looking back on old journals, it strikes me now that no fiancé in the history of the world was more disliked. At night I’d pray, “Dear God, what have I done to make everyone hate me?” And all I heard back was, “Who’s everyone?”

Christian or not, it isn’t easy being a good person. When people run a stop sign, then give me the finger when I honk, I’m apoplectic, ruminating all day on what an asshole they are. If someone cheats me or slights me or makes me the subject of a lie, I brood and stew, giving away too much power to those who wish to hurt me. I aspire to be most like my father, who was always kind and courteous. Walking down the street in his later years, he would say hello to everyone and mean it. He was genuinely interested in people. I was grateful that he didn’t seem to notice women blanch when he called them “dear” or, after exchanging pleasantries, would leave someone with a “God bless you.” As his dementia grew worse, he appeared to become more and more beatific. Whether playing monopoly or eating a sandwich, he relished every moment accepting his fate with grace. As I sat beside his hospital bed and watched him pass from this world to the next, I believed he was embraced by something.

I think about my friends who have been oppressed yet still find the ability to forgive, celebrating at Baptist churches with a kind of joy I rarely see anywhere. I have learned a lot from my Black friends, and colleagues about what it means to be, if not Christian, then Christian like. I’m humbled by the love I’ve received when I probably didn’t deserve it.  

Hollywood would have you believe that Christians are either assholes or saints, and regardless of which category you fall into, you’ll suffer in the end. The assholes are hoisted on their own petard, and the saints are martyred.  I have a famous writer friend in L.A. who once said to me, “It was easier to come out as gay than Christian in Los Angeles.”

When I was seven, I saw the movie Song of Bernadette based on the true story of a young girl visited by the Virgin Mary. As a result of her miraculous visitations, Bernadette is rewarded with tuberculosis of the bone, suffers terrible pain and eventually dies—all while being persecuted by a nun who is jealous of her visions. At seven, I put two and two together. If that’s what happens to you when you’re humble and devout, then count me out. The last thing I wanted was for God or Mary or Angels to appear before me. And it wasn’t just Bernadette. Saint Afra, Saint Aggripina, Saint Basilissa, Saint Cecilia, Saint Dymphna, Saint Eurosia, Saint Susanna, Saint Juthwara, Saint Noyala, and Saint Winifred were all decapitated for their faith. To make matters worse, Faith was my middle name. What was my Mother thinking when she saddled me with a Christian moniker?  From what I could tell, since the basis of sainthood appeared to be suffering under horrible circumstances, I was eager to abandon the idea of being good altogether.  As long as I had a little larceny in me, I could stave off being burned at the stake or decapitated.  When misbehaving, my Mother would ask, “Why are you so bad?” And I would answer, “So I don’t become a saint.” I could see no situation in which becoming pious was worth it.

Back in the Vatican museum, I stood beneath the Sistine Chapel ceiling with hordes of other tourists feeling a bit like I was in purgatory waiting for judgment. Guards constantly chastised us to be quiet as we craned our necks to catch a glimpse of God. “There’s so much nudity,” I heard someone say, “God doesn’t look like that.” I was tempted to say, “It’s not a photograph. It’s an interpretation.” But I wisely kept my mouth shut. As I stared at the Delphic Sibyl, I remembered the legend: …born between man and goddess, daughter of sea monsters and an immortal nymph; she became a wandering voice that brought to the ears of men tidings of the future wrapped in dark riddles. It sounds like Sibyl might be pretty busy these days. Finally herded outside, most of the people around me had already put Michelangelo’s frescos out of mind. It was just one more thing to cross off their bucket list. Instead, their attention was now on the line-up at the Vatican pizzeria where for 10 Euros you could have a slice with cheese. 2 more Euros, and you could have water add an extra Euro and you could have it blessed.

As my time to visit St. Peter’s Basilica drew near, I lined up like a good little pilgrim to enter the “Holy Door” and passed into the atrium. I didn’t feel the presence of God there, just tourists who couldn’t resist a good selfie in front of the Pieta. Michelangelo’s sculpture masterpiece conveys the sorrow of the Virgin Mary, her right hand clutching her dead son while her left-hand falls limp at her side, resigned. I was contemplating the gesture when the woman beside me asked her friend,

“What do you suppose it means?”.

“Maybe she dropped her cellphone,” her companion quipped, and they laughed. It echoed shrilly through the chamber like hyenas. I sometimes feel the same way about women as I do about Christians. I expect them to be better and disappointed when they aren’t. I’m sure they feel the same way about me.

[lezliefaithwade]

Storm clouds ahead at Sea / oil & acrylic

[lezliefaithwade]

A Christmas Story

A few Christmases ago, when in Paris, I happened to become friends with a homeless gentleman who frequented the corner at the end of my street. He sat upon a shocking pink suitcase with his little dog, Lucky, curled up at his feet and wished everyone who passed by a heartfelt “bonne journée.” 

He never asked for money. Not once. He never scorned those who scoffed or worse judged. He simply smiled and greeted every passerby with a sincere greeting of goodwill.  I’d been warned repeatedly about beggars in Paris. “Charlatans,” people said, “they’ll take everything you own if you let them.” So, when I first encountered Nichola, I hurried by shunning eye contact and willing myself NOT to look at the dog.  I can turn a blind eye like the rest of us to things too uncomfortable to deal with and reasoned that since this was my first visit to Europe, I deserved a break from routine considerations. But no matter how much I wished I could ignore them, they were always there, as constant as the Eiffel Tower. After a few days, it became impossible, and frankly tiresome, avoiding him. I began to observe how kind he seemed. Children, in particular, loved Lucky and were always feeding him from the small market at the corner. On the fourth night of my stay, I happened to be returning from a concert at the Chapel in Versailles. Intoxicated by the music of Faure, I was in a particularly good mood when I noticed Nichola and Lucky asleep on the street. It was cold that night and a light wet snow had fallen so they were huddled on a grate for warmth upon the wet pavement. My heart cracked. I made my way to the apartment I was staying in around the corner on Duvivier and laying on my bed, stared at the ceiling unable to sleep. I had no idea how I could help or what comfort I could offer, but pretending they didn’t exist was now impossible.

If you learn one thing in Paris it’s about man’s inhumanity to man. Art galleries, of which there are a plethora, boast painting after painting of retribution, judgment, mercy, benevolence, and grace. Who knows more about these things than artists? The lesson from nearly every painting is how downtrodden the poor are, how much God loves the unfortunate, and the cautionary tale of revolt. No matter where I went, or what I saw, it was always Nichola and the dog. Van Gogh stared at me from his self-portrait and whispered, “What are you going to do about Nichola and the dog?” The Raft of Medusa by Théodore Géricault became a depiction of the homeless people piled on a barge with nowhere to go.  Gustave Courbet’s self-portrait with a dog was none other than Nichola himself with Lucky tucked into his side. And no, it wasn’t lost on me that Nichola (namesake of Christmas) was sleeping on St. Dominque street. Dominique - the patron saint of astronomers; a man who selected the worst accommodations and the meanest clothes, and never allowed himself the luxury of a bed. What was the universe trying to tell me?

The following morning, I had breakfast with Nichola and Lucky. I brought croissants, dog food, and coffee, and for an hour I sat cross-legged on the sidewalk as we made our first attempt to converse. My French is, très mauvais, which didn’t matter as I soon discovered that Nichola's native tongue was Romani. With the help of a translation app, I learned that Romania and Bulgaria, where the majority of Roma originate, became full members of the European Union in 2007. But “transitional arrangements” in their accession to the EU mean that citizens of these former communist bloc states did not enjoy complete freedom of employment in France until December 31, 2013. Even now only certain Roma are able to be hired for certain work.  He showed me a photograph of his daughter in Czechoslovakia and he gleaned that I was in theatre visiting Paris on a bursary I’d won from the Stratford Festival. Breakfast over, I waved goodbye and headed to D’Orsay or Versailles, or the Louvre, but I always came back to Nichola and Lucky for dinner between 5:30 – 6:00. On nights when the weather was bad, I gave him money for a shelter or would return home to find that he’d already earned enough for a bed somewhere. Those nights I slept better than others. Nights when I knew he wasn’t on the street, I imagined (probably somewhat naively) that he and the dog were at least safe.

It occurred to me that it was possible I was being bamboozled. It’s conceivable that my friend had a stash of money somewhere, coaxed from emotional tourists like me. Truth be told, nothing would have pleased me more than to find out that Nichola had a fine apartment in a good arrondissement and dined well with Lucky curled up on Egyptian cotton sheets. If I was being fleeced then so be it. Anyone who begs deserves money, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not a noble profession. It’s not gratifying. It’s demoralizing, tedious, work brought to light even more so during the holiday season.

What is it about Christmas that always brings us back to the issue of money? We spend so much on the creature comforts of the season, investing in commercialism and forgetting that the whole Christmas story revolves around a couple about to give birth with no roof over their head. And how often do we watch A Christmas Carol forever reminded that Ebenezer Scrooge’s relationship with money makes him as hollow as the apartments he keeps: void of life and colour. The first time I saw A Christmas Carol I was terrified. (I’m referring in particular to the black and white Alistair Sim version) Marley’s ghost in particular haunted, not only Scrooge but me for days afterward. I half expected to see the shimmering outline of some long lost relative at the end of my bed reprimanding me for stealing cookies or stepping on flowers. In my childlike brain, Marley and Santa Claus merged into some kind of specter sent to judge whether I’d been good, or not. I was forever trying to figure out how good was good? How bad was bad? If found wanting, would I be sentenced to walk the earth with the chains I’d forged? Even as a child I imagined the cord was extensive. I marveled at Charles Dicken's imagination. I didn’t believe Ebenezer Scrooge was real. No one, I reasoned, was that stingy or that greedy; but over time I’ve met a lot of Scrooges and I’ll bet you have too. We use money to ascertain a person’s value and to hold sway over others. It’s the most mysterious entity because it’s only valuable if we think it is. I learned this lesson long ago when studying in New York. I happened to hand a Canadian quarter to a subway attendant who shoved it back at me saying, “I can’t take your funny money.” Perfectly good in one place and absolutely worthless somewhere else.

It’s embarrassing asking for money when you need it and difficult for people being asked. I know a lot about this awkward relationship with money. My father, for a time, was a bank manager and finances were something we simply did not discuss. Not ever. To borrow, even a few hundred dollars was unheard of. Worse, in my family, you were shamed for asking. And if anyone took pity on you with a few bucks here or there, it was always accompanied with the directive, “…don’t tell your mother, or brother, or step-mother.” It was even worse being in the arts, a profession that carried with it the stigma of irresponsibility.  The only exception I knew of was my Nana on my Mother’s side who loved nothing more than to give people things. I inherited this one trait from her. Money has never been something I hoarded (probably to my demise). Instead, I’ve seen it as simply an opportunity to help. In Paris, I became the newly converted Ebenezer Scrooge. Instead of eating at the most expensive restaurant, I ate at moderately fine establishments and saved the difference for Nichola. I bought day-old croissants and gave the difference I saved to Nichola. And when my departure date drew near I bought him a care package of food, blankets, socks, dog food, and treats.

My last night in Paris, I met a friend for a quick coffee and found myself getting emotional as I talked about the street beggars. Could it be that in getting to know Nichola, I realized that so much of my life was about luck? I live in a town where it’s not unheard of for people to have more than one home, and there was a perfectly nice person living on the streets. Our lives are so vastly different, our circumstances so varied simply for the fact of our birth. There but for the grace of God…

When my friend and I parted I made my way in the dark to Notre Dame and listened to a Christmas concert in an overflowing cathedral filled to the brim with parents and children all there to sing Sante Maria and Joy to the World. How fortunate for me that I was able to experience Notre Dame before the fire. Even an atheist would be hard-pressed to admit that there wasn’t something spiritual about that cathedral. And sitting there amongst the Parisians I felt a kind of peace. “What will happen to Nichola?” I asked the rafters and what came back was the sound of children singing:

Angels we have heard on high

Sweetly singing o'er the plains

And the mountains in reply

Echoing their joyous strains

Gloria, in Excelsis Deo

Gloria, in excelsis Deo

As I was walked home after the concert I happened by the famous bookstore: Shakespeare & Co. and was stopped in my tracks by the store’s motto, "Be Not Inhospitable to Strangers Lest They Be Angels in Disguise."

That night I wrote a letter to Nichola and left him enough money for him and his dog to return to his daughter. I sealed the envelope and, in the morning, before I left for the airport, I gave it to him.

I mention this, dear reader, not to draw any attention on me whatsoever. It’s our job to help our fellow man…at least Charles Dickens thought so when he penned,

“At this festive time of the year… it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at present. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts.”

Three months later, I received a letter from Czechoslovakia. Enclosed was a thank you and photos of Lucky, Nichola, and his daughter in the backyard of a home set against the hills.

If I can help someone, then so can you.

[lezliefaithwade]

Being Seen

I was sitting in a movie theatre waiting to see Inception or Perception or Deception, some movie with a title that sounded similar when a woman entered my isle and then abruptly stopped right in front of me as I stood up to let her pass - like literally in front of me to have a conversation with someone she recognized two rows ahead. It wasn’t one of those quick exchanges like, “Oh, hi Joan. We missed you last week at line dancing.” It was a full-blown conversation that started something like, “Hey, Joan! Over here!! What’s up? Do you have wedding jitters yet? I remember when I got married…”

Being invisible is not new to me. I’ve been invisible pretty much my whole life, first, as a girl, then as a short teenager, and finally as a petit woman. I’ve noticed that no matter what I do – fancy outfits, crazy jewellery, changes to my hair, no one notices. Or if they do, they certainly never comment. At this point, I don’t even see the use in paying for plastic surgery as it wouldn’t likely produce anything more than, “Did you get new glasses?”

In this particular instance, after flattening myself to the cinema chair for what seemed like a good four minutes, I finally said, “Excuse me, but could you please move over so I can sit down.” Granted, my tone may have been less than polite, but I don’t think it warranted her “Get over yourself” response.

Once, at a play, an artistic director and his wife sat directly in front of me. When they turned around (as invariably people in the entertainment industry usually do) to see who they might recognize in the audience, I waved, and they didn’t notice me. I looked them directly in the eyes and …nothing. They could not see the tree for the forest. I had to leave at intermission because I thought if they eventually DID notice me, it would just be too embarrassing to explain that I’d been behind them all the time.

At a prestigious event for the theatre industry, a woman from Theatre Ontario shoved me out of the way to talk to someone. No kidding. She swiped me clear off the map with a dramatic swooping motion and left me in the dust. My husband, who was with me at the time, couldn’t believe his eyes.

I frequently find myself talking about something to a group of people only to suddenly discover the circle has closed and I’m monologuing in a corner. I’ve even been at a dinner party when someone quoted me and didn’t even remember.

Being invisible is not the best characteristic for an actress in a profession where being noticed is a prerequisite. I once auditioned for someone who said afterwards, “Where have you been hiding?” I had auditioned for that same director and that same panel five times before. Still, you notice a lot when you are invisible, like how some people need adoration while others need validation. Who is having an affair with whom? Who is jealous? Who is hurt? Who is desperate? Who is stealing the cutlery? Eventually, it all finds its way into a play…or a blog.

In our family, my brother was the only boy. Between my mother’s sister and her brother, there were five girls, and I made six. My brother was special simply by virtue of his sex. I was a dime a dozen. A video at the time shows me trying desperately to get attention by throwing myself into a hammock only to be shoved out by everyone, including my brother. The final shot is all four of them swinging merrily, having the time of their life while I sit alone at a picnic table. My cousins didn’t even like me. Whenever they would visit, they’d take out my toys and play without asking permission or even inviting me to join them. Once, they told me they weren’t supposed to play with me because I was “…different natured than everyone else.” My cousins were, in truth, horrible children who stole my Christmas carolling money earmarked for charity, but that’s another story.

The thing about being invisible is that when someone eventually sees you, it feels like a miracle. The simple act of acknowledgement is not only proof that you exist, but depending on the person, it can be a real boost to one’s self-esteem.  When on occasion, I’ve been offered work at prestigious theatre companies, my first response is usually shock. Not because I don’t think I’m deserving, but more often because I’ve been noticed. I know Sally Field was parodied for saying, “You like me. You really like me,” after her second Academy Award, but perhaps what she actually meant was, “You see me. You really see me.” And when Ruth Gordon finally won her first Oscar at the age of seventy-two, she said, “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is…” She’d been in the business for fifty years. What she was really saying was, “Gee, thanks for finally noticing.”

I’m not entirely blameless. For the most part, I grew up not wanting to be noticed and learned the fine art of camouflage early on. Left to my own devices, I would wander around whatever city I lived in, pretending to be an international spy by using toenail clippers as my state-of-the-art transponder. If anyone noticed, they certainly never commented. At school, I hid behind people in photos and made my way, Ninja-like through hallways and classrooms. The family dog, Lema, probably knew more about me than any of my friends. She would listen, without judgement, to anything I said and even showed some interest when there was food. The only time I was noticed was when I was playing someone else on stage. Only then did I feel comfortable coming out of my shell.  But arguably, being noticed isn’t the same as being seen.

The summer before I left home to study at the Neighborhood Playhouse in NYC, I was performing in a show I had written with a group of actors about the history of Niagara Falls. We thought we were exceptional as we sang (often flat or sharp) our fifteen original songs on weekend evenings at Oaks park amphitheatre at the base of Clifton Hill. My solo number (and the first song I’d ever written) was about Annie Taylor, who in 1901 was the first person and only woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and live. Ironically, Annie Taylor died in the poor house, barely recognized for her daredevil feat.

Early morning shadows tell me,

That it’s time to rise.

Step into my costume.

Put on my disguise.

Pause before the looking glass.

Is my mask on well?

So convincing in my role,

That nobody can tell,

Underneath a piece is missing,

Left upon the shelf.

Though I teach the children words

I can’t define myself.

Five verses later, it ends…

Later, when I’m rescued

Will they even try to see?

The reason I have done this

Is to set my spirit free?

Or will they choose to say,

When they are mentioning my name,

That what I did was foolish

And was, therefore, all in vain?

Right now, it doesn’t matter,

For my stunt has been the key.

I’ve unlocked all the doors.

At last, I’m who I’m meant to be.

I loved how dark and mysterious this song was. I thought singing it made me mysterious too, but did anyone notice?

“I think Neal likes you,” my friend Tom told me one weekend in August as we were striking the set. We had just finished singing our “Disaster Medley.” Behind us, an ambulance was attempting to rescue yet another “Great Gorge” suicide attempt, and the five or six members of our audience had abruptly left our performance to join a crowd of curious onlookers. It was a regular occurrence that we had grown cynically accustomed to.  

“Who is Neal?” I asked.

“Neal,” Tom replied, “The musician visiting from Eastman. The guy over there.”  And he pointed to a lean young man sitting in the shadows by the wall.

The summer had been lovely, and we had two weeks of shows left before it would all end; before we all parted for other towns and other people.  The air was filled with the scent of moonflowers and nostalgia.

“He likes me?” I asked. “He doesn’t even know me.”

“Well, he likes your song,” Tom said, “The one about the woman who goes over the falls in a barrel. He thinks you have talent.”

“What would he know?” I smirked as we headed to the shores of Lake Erie with guitars and firewood.

That evening, Neal followed me about interested in what motivated my song, or just me. He may have different recollections of this event, but to my mind, he pretty much monopolized my time. I had no real interest in dating. I was about to go to the Big Apple, and a boyfriend was not in the plan. So, when he departed for Rochester the following day, I didn’t think much more about him.

“He left you a song,” Tom reported the following Monday.

“A song?”

“Yeah, he wanted you to hear this song he wrote. Can you come over?”

I grabbed my bike and headed to his house.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” I said, not meaning to be rude but fairly certain that I was about to hear something amateurish and sentimental.

Tom had been my best friend for several years. I trusted him with my life.

“Is this guy for real?” I asked as Tom opened the cover of his Piano. “Tell me now, is he weird?”

“Are you?” he countered, “Am I?”

Tom had a way of putting things.

In truth, I was shocked at how good the piece was. Confident and self-assured, it showed far more sophistication than anything I was doing at the time.  This guy had talent, and more importantly, he thought I did as well. He noticed something in me. I was smitten. “If music be the food of love, play on!”

In the few short months that the relationship lasted (that portion of the relationship, because we are still friends to this day), I can’t remember anyone being more honest with me or more interested in me, with the exception of my husband. One particularly long phone call from Philadelphia to Niagara must have cost him a small fortune since we talked for nearly four hours. So, when Neal broke up with me the following Thanksgiving, I was crushed. I remember it was a rainy damp, cold weekend in New York. Instead of celebrating with my boyfriend and his family, I was sitting in my brownstone alone. I kept walking around the block, expecting him to be in front of my stoop when I returned. That was the year I discovered Haagan Dazs, thanks to my room-mates who had no choice on the holiday weekend but to leave me alone crying my eyes out.

“There is nothing that can’t be cured with ice cream,” Ron suggested as he packed the freezer with Butter Pecan. And for good measure, they left me with the cat who sat on the cushion beside me as I cried.

“I don’t understand,” I sobbed into her fur. “What did I do?”

“Meow,” she replied in perfect understanding. Perhaps she’d had her share of breakups too. Quite possibly, she just had her eye on the dessert.

What hurts the most about being dumped is the sudden and immediate chasm that comes from no longer being seen. The one person who spent hours listening to you talk about your life on the phone, who was curious about what makes you tick, is now no longer a part of your life. They no longer exist to reflect yourself back to you because let’s face it, our friends and family are a mirror that we rely on to show us our good and bad points. Without them, we sometimes lose perspective.

The cat was polishing off the last bit of ice cream from the bowl as I petted her. She didn’t need any confirmation of who she was. In fact, she was more than happy to be noticed only when it was time to eat. Nevertheless, she indulged me as I sang along to Leonard Cohen.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm

Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm

Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new

In city and in forest they smiled like me and you,

But now it’s come to distances and both of us must try,

Your eyes are soft with sorrow

Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

She was a patient cat, but eventually, when the ice cream was gone, she jumped off the couch and disappeared, completely ignoring me as though I’d never been there at all.

[lezliefaithwade]

Sex Education

My parents had the “talk” with me when I was in grade four. I came home from school one day armed with the knowledge that I knew how babies were made. One of the grade six girls confided in me that a woman had to drink male urine in order to conceive. I couldn’t imagine a circumstance that would make me want to do this, regardless of how much I loved the guy.  I supposed that was why my mother always talked about all the sacrifices parents make for their kids. I didn’t want to think about my mother drinking my father’s urine or that I was somehow the bi-product of pee. My grandmother always said that God had a sense of humour, but I didn’t find this funny.

“What did you say?” my mother asked me when I looked to her for confirmation. She seemed amused or shocked. It was difficult to tell. “Maybe it’s time your dad and I answered a few of your questions.” And so, after dinner, they sat me down and launched into a version of the birds and the bees that they thought a nine-year old would understand. They explained things pretty well, as far as I recall, and though it still all sounded weird, I was relieved to discover that urine was not involved. The funny thing about that conversation was that weeks later I had completely forgotten it. I mean I got the gist of the whole thing, and even though their explanation was clinically sound, it just went in one ear and out the other. By the time I was in grade six, I couldn’t remember what they had told me and there was no way I was going to ask them again.

We had a lot of books in our house, so it didn’t take much sleuthing to find bits of information here and there and piece it all together. In this respect, my sex education became much more salacious than the matter of fact explanation of two years earlier. D. H. Lawrence, Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller supplied me with much more interesting words and phrases than Dr. Spock. One day I discovered a book with illustrations of barnyard animals copulating (no doubt strategically placed amongst the literature by a well-meaning parent) and my sex education was complete.

‘Remember,” my mother would say, “sex should be with someone you love.”

“What if it isn’t?” I asked, curious to know the consequences of sex with someone you maybe liked.

“Imagine the most depressing Christmas ever, with no toys and only soup for dinner,” she said. Then to really drive her point home she added, “Celery soup! That’s sex with someone you don’t love.”

Point taken. Must love your sexual partner.

“Does it hurt?” I asked my mother.

“Not as much as your heart when he breaks it,” she sighed as she sipped a gin and tonic and flipped through the pages of Cosmo.

Honestly, so far, I couldn’t figure out why anyone bothered, especially as I was always hearing people say, that such and such was better than sex.

“Did you have a good time at the spa?”

“It was better than sex.”

“You went on a shopping spree?”

“It was better than sex.”

“How was the chocolate mousse?”

“It was better than sex.”

What was better than sex? To hear most people talk, you’d think almost everything.

In grade six a sexual predator showed up at our school. Like the bogeyman from a scary story he made his way through the woods on the other side of the fence, and exposed himself to children in the school yard during recess. I never saw him, but the general upheaval and lock down was enough to scare the crap out of me. Whatever he was exposing was dangerous and shocking. We were told to avert our eyes and run inside if he appeared again. Eventually the police arrived, drapes were drawn and they carted him away. Note to self: Male anatomy shocking and dangerous.

In grade eight I had to go over this whole sex education thing yet again, this time with a classroom of my peers. No matter how many times it was explained to me, it always sounded messy and uncomfortable. When I was little, my brother and I used to refer to kissing on film as “mushy ketchup” and the label felt appropriate. As far as I was concerned the whole idea of bodily fluids getting mixed up together just made me sick to my stomach. A fact that would prove prophetic when I finally had sex. Moreover, all the boys in my class were disgusting. I couldn’t imagine them touching me let alone having sex.

“Do you have hairy armpits?” Tony Bianco asked in English class one day. He and his friends laughed amongst themselves in this all knowing, deprecating kind of way. It didn’t help that I was an early developer either. I never needed a training bra. It was just undershirt to real bra for the girl who wasn’t even a little bit interested in boys. God certainly does have a sense of humour. It turned out that sex wasn’t just about copulating. It was also about being objectified and humiliated by boys.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “Jane Eyre didn’t have sex with Mr. Rochester. I see no reason why I should be any different. I will hide behind words with wit as my weapon.” And so purposely made myself unattractive while everyone else was going out of their way to show off any and every positive attribute.

Needless to say, I never dated in high school. I was the weird girl with hair to her waist who did up the top button of her blouse and wore jumpers. For birth control, I used my personality. The only boys who seemed interested in me were the ones who occupied the other side of weird. The misfits who skipped class or were always being sent to the principal’s office for detention. One boy named Rob, sat in front of me in the “dumb” math class. He was the kind of guy that looked like he should have graduated three years earlier. He had facial hair and a deep voice and reeked of cigarette smoke. In every other class I was smart, but in “dumb math” I slid behind my desk and disappeared into the vast expanse of ineptitude. There I was just a dumb girl with boobs who had no future. THIS was apparently attractive. When Rob asked me out I simply said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m the girl you think I am.” And that was that.

It was easy to tell which kids in school were doing it. They sauntered through the hallways in tight jeans and tee shirts showing off their prowess in art class by drawing perfectly proportioned female nudes. I sat at the table with these cool guys. They were musicians, and political activists. They shunned authority and had a kind of worldliness about them. Girls hung around them like flies. Girls who had sophistication and confidence tattooed to their backsides. Seriously…it was in the drawings. They didn’t take art because it was easy. They were actually talented…more talented than I, which gave them substance in spite of their rebellious nature. One boy, Dave, asked me one day. “Hey, you! Glasses!”

I looked up from my sweet little drawing of a girl on a swing. “Me?”

“What kind of music do you listen to?” he asked. His friends smiled and stopped what they were doing. All eyes were on me. It was a crucial moment. Should I lie? Should I recite the names of cool bands and popular music?

“Stan Getz,” I replied. “Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Sarah Vaughan.” I was deep into it. I waited. Then he simply said, “Cool.”  I was in. I didn’t lose my virginity but I lost a little bit of my innocence that day. By the time I graduated public high school I was the nerdy girl that no one picked on. Not in bathrooms. Not in hallways. Not in classrooms. I was nominated for Queen of the Prom and I didn’t even have a date.

It didn’t help that my girlfriends were vastly superior in the art of love. One of my best friends got married when she was just nineteen. I sat under the tent at her wedding thinking to myself that I’d missed a gene or chromosome somewhere. It wasn’t that I preferred women to men. I simply didn’t care one bit about sex. “What’s it like?” I would ask Vicki at sleep-overs. But most of what she described wasn’t the act of sex but the embellishments of romance. Picnics and moonlit nights under the stars, candlelit dinners, flowers…Her family was incredibly wealthy and their house was spectacular. In almost every way, she had the life I wanted. How, I thought to myself, could she give all of this up for a skinny, bow legged opera singer?

I didn’t sleep with anyone until I was twenty. There were a few opportunities and a couple of close calls, but for one reason or another (partially the fear of buying condoms), it just never happened. Then I went away to school and met a guy at a party and fate intervened.

We immediately started hanging out together; having dinner and catching the occasional film. Days turned into weeks and then a month. Things were starting to get awkward. We were on the verge of settling into that friendship zone from which no one ever recovers. Some things can only be delayed for so long before psychologists need to be brought in. It was Oscar night…what could possibly be more romantic? We were in a celebratory mood. There was alcohol and take-out from Balducci’s and dessert, as I recall. The best picture of the year award was announced and I gathered my tote bag. As I began to head out he simply said, “Stay.” And I did.

That year the awards were in March and I remember the window of his bedroom was open. The drapes billowed every now and then as voices from the sidewalk below drifted up to the room. I don’t think nervous does justice to what I was feeling that night. I tried to block it from my mind, but that stupid sexual predator from grade six kept showing up behind the fence. Did I love this guy? Sure. At least it was easy enough to convince myself that I did.  And so, I surrendered to the whole enterprise. The usual questions playing around in my head, “What if I’m awful? What if he hates me? What if he’s awful?”

I wore a housecoat and thought about how many calories I was burning.

It was fine. I was fine. He was fine. But afterwards -- I threw up. I don’t think throwing up after sex is recommended. It’s not something people brag about.

“Gee, it was so good, I threw up.”

No one says that.

To my great relief the next time was better. I dated that guy for six years. It turned out I did love him after all. My mother would have been so proud.

In the end, when it comes to sex, maybe W.C. Fields said it best:

Some things are better than sex and some things are worse but there’s nothing exactly like it.

[lezliefaithwade]

The Power of Poetry

When I was growing up, my father would often refer to my mother’s side of the family as though he were speaking in parenthesis. “Your mother’s sister…” or “Your mother’s aunt…” and to be fair, my mother did the same with my dad. Even as a child, the differences between their two worlds were shocking. My mother, nicknamed “Showboat” by my fraternal Grandmother, was both a breath of fresh air and shocking to the strong British stock my father heralded from. There was nothing capricious about the Wadley’s. My grandfather was a train engineer. My grandmother raised five boys during the Depression. They attended Anglican church regularly, played bridge, and ate their meals every night together around the dining room table.   My mother’s family was another story. My paternal grandmother, after having already been widowed twice, lived in “sin” with an Italian cook who worked for my great-grandmother in her restaurant. She had flaming red hair, wore tight dresses, and loved a good time. I can’t ever remember a year my Nana wasn’t on a diet. I never saw her read a book, or cook a single meal – ever. I think she lived for trips to Florida where she and my grandfather would spend days at the pool and nights at the bar.

My parents were a kind of Romeo and Juliet, defying their parent’s wishes for the sake of love. One glance at their wedding pictures tells the whole story. A happy bride and groom stand with their arms entwined while decidedly unhappy in-laws, barely cracking a smile, are photographed outside of the church.

By the time my brother and I were born, we had become the branch on both sides of the family tree that didn’t really belong to either. We were the odd ones out. My mother’s family couldn’t figure out how Anglican children had penetrated their ranks, and my father’s family were apoplectic when they discovered that my brother and I had been enrolled in Catholic school. At Christmas as we opened our gifts inside the home my father grew up in, my grandmother could be heard to comment on the amount, the cost and the suitability of every item. By dinner time, my mother was counting the minutes until we would leave.

The disparity between the two families was never more evident than when my parents would ship us off to a relative when they were going through a particularly difficult rough patch. Most often a relative I didn’t know. Usually a childless female or lonely widow who at a party said in passing something like, “Lezlie is so precocious. I’d love to know what goes on in her mind.”

“Really?” my mother would ask and the next thing I knew I was at my cousin Cheryl’s or my Aunt Gwen’s.  

Cheryl was an attractive woman with wispy blond hair and fine features. A staunch Catholic, she insisted I put a doily on my head then dragged me off to church where I became nauseous from heat and incense. Like many such relatives, Cheryl saw the weekend with me as an opportunity for indoctrination and spent hours reading bible stories about Jonah in the whale and Noah’s ark. Somewhere she missed the memo that I was already reading A Wrinkle in Time and had moved beyond the old Testament to Madeleine L’Engle. I came home insisting my parents never subject me to her good intentions again. Cheryl, now having proven my father’s point about how crazy my mother’s relatives were, would cause him to simply smile and say, “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Aunt Gwen was another story altogether. Universally considered “weird” by all my relatives, Gwen lived in a rather nice apartment in the Beaches. She wasn’t religious at all, but an alcoholic who kept her apartment dark and sombre. She’d serve me processes food, that I didn’t like, and once, when I was three, she took me to a funeral parlour. About a month later as my parents were driving past the establishment I blurted out, “I saw a man sleeping in there.” My mother just looked at my father and rolled her eyes. Over time they started keeping score against each other and the points were racking up.

By the time I was in Grade 5 my parent’s marriage was, not surprisingly, on rocky ground. It was probably even before that, but it was Grade 5 when I noticed it for the first time. Both sides of the family were poised for what seemed an inevitable split as I began a new school and a new classroom with my first male teacher, Mr. Koerner. Mr. Koerner didn’t like me. Or maybe to put it more accurately, he preferred the other girls in my class and most notably my best friend, Trinka. Trinka was beautiful, and poised and loved to colour code her notebooks. She cared about her clothes and her nails and had perfect posture. When she started a Greek Mythology card catalogue, she shot up in Mr. Koerner’s estimation as practically perfect. In terms of rank, there was Trinka, Anila, Diane, and then me. I was (before the term had even been coined) the “Duff”.  I wore glasses, spilled food on my clothes, and was a decidedly bad influence on my best friend.  When Trinka and I wrote a radio play about a murderer who chopped up his victims and flushed them down the toilet only to back up the entire city’s sewer system, it was my parents, not Trinka’s who got the call about how disturbing it was. My mother and father knew full well that I was influenced by Creepy Magazine (a series of comic books I loved reading) and thought nothing more of it.

Mr. Koerner did not like my mother, most notably because of two incidents that went all the way to the Superintendent of the school board. The first one occurred one morning when I mentioned in class that she had allowed me to watch the movie “Gypsy.” Never overly concerned with our ability to process movies, my parents frequently watched sophisticated films with my brother and me. They were always available for questions if there was something we didn’t understand and they never subjected us to anything we didn’t want to watch. So, when I happily explained the plot to my classroom one Monday morning during current events, Mr. Koerner was aghast. In front of my class-mates he publicly castigated my parents and humiliated me for what he deemed to be an inappropriate movie for a child of my age to watch (He clearly took issue with strippers). The second incident and probably much worse was the way he insinuated himself into my life when I got my first pair of contact lenses. I’d been wearing glasses since I was two, and by the time I got into grade 5 wearing contact lenses became a viable option…one recommended by my optometrist. Mr. Koerner was shocked the first day I arrived without my spectacles. He told me I was vain and blamed my mother for a decision he thought was not in my best interest. At this point my father got involved. He stormed down to the school and, as I understand it, scared the bejeezus out of Mr. Koerner. For the first time in a long while, my parents were getting along. At night I’d hear them as they shared their common dislike for the man my mother referred to as, “Larry”. I suddenly felt like I was in a version of Disney’s The Parent Trap. What began as me dreading school, turned into me hoping “Larry” would put his foot in his mouth yet again so my parents would come together as a team.

Mr. Koerner had, among his many idiosyncrasies, a penchant for keeping scrapbooks. They weren’t for public consumption, but rather books compiled of our work for his personal pleasure. One day for an assignment, I turned in the following poem:

They’ve all left now

Gone their separate ways

This house once filled with laughter

Must now face empty days

A cold breeze taps my shoulder

And I blink and turn around

I only hope I’ll have such love

For the new home that I’ve found.

Mr. Koerner gave me 90% for the poem with instructions to have it signed by a parent and then returned.

“Returned.” my mother said, “What for?”

“His scrapbook.” I replied between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes.

“What scrapbook?” my father asked.

“The one he keeps our stuff in.” I nonchalantly replied.

“For what purpose?” my father queried.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Beats me. He’s got tons of Trinka’s stuff in there is all I know.”

“Well,” said my mother, “He’s not getting this back.”

I choked. “What do you mean? Everyone has to return their work once it’s been signed.”

“Not this time.” My father chimed in. And that was that.

I loved that my parents were taking a stand as a united front. I did not like being the messenger.

The next day I turned up for school without the poem, hoping Mr. Koerner wouldn’t notice. At the end of the day he stopped me before I could sneak out.

“Lezlie, do you have your poem signed by your parents?”

“Oh, gee, I forgot it. I’ll bring it tomorrow,” I said and left for home.

The next day it was the same. And the day after that. By the end of the week Mr. Koerner was getting wise that something was up.

“Lezlie,” he asked, “What’s going on with the poem? I gave it to you to have signed and then returned. If you don’t bring it back, I’ll have to dock you your mark.”

When I told my parents that I was perilously close to losing my grade if they didn’t return the poem, they were furious.

“He knows what the mark is,” my mother exclaimed.

“Surely he’s recorded your grade already,” my father stated. “What the heck’s up?

In the meantime, my mother had copied the poem and sent it to every member of both her side and my father’s side of the family, selecting to tell them that I had written it and that my teacher was threatening to dock me my mark if I didn’t return it to him. Could they believe the injustice of it all?

For the first time that I can ever remember, there was a universal uproar from both sides.  Even my cousin Cheryl and my Aunt Gwen called to tell my mother how unfair it all was. And the following week, when he threatened once more to dock me my grade, both my mother and my father went to the school to visit him. It was one of those pivotal moments when you know that things will either be better or worse for you, but will definitely not remain as they have been. An hour later when they returned, my father simply said, “Well, that’s that.” Apparently, my dad told Mr. Koerner that if he ever threatened me again about anything, he’d make it his mission in life to have him transferred.  After that, my teacher pretty much ignored me and never asked for a single item of mine for his “scrapbook” ever again.

That year my parents seemed to be closer than ever and the day I found out I had Mr. Koerner for grade 6, I was secretly thrilled.

When my parent’s marriage did, in fact, dissolve a few years later, there was no villain left to unite them.  Lines were drawn in the sand and sides were picked.  Our weird family of four that had never really belonged to either side of the family, were now a family of three and even more conspicuously out of step.

Still, for two brief years I enjoyed the unification of my parents as they fought to protect me against a terrible teacher. And somehow throughout it all, I learned about the incredible power of the written word along with a new found love of poetry.

[lezliefaithwade]

Being An Actress

I remember the moment I decided I wanted to be an actress. I was walking across the parking lot of my high school after an undoubtedly stellar performance as Portia in an all-girl production of The Merchant of Venice when my father turned to me and said, "Do you think you might want to do this for a living?" At the time I remembered feeling a little insulted. My grades were excellent. Didn't my father think I could be a lawyer or a veterinarian or a psychologist? It wasn't that I didn't love to act, but everyone I knew who wanted to be an actress was either egotistical or unstable. Not that one was mutually exclusive of the other. What did this say about me? No one in my family acted, although my Grandmother often hinted of an unsubstantiated family connection to Hermoine Gingold. Occasionally my parents would take us to see a play or listen to a concert, but only to help make us well-rounded individuals. When someone would go on about the Sound of Music my father would roll his eyes and say, “How can I take a nun singing on hilltops seriously?” And I found myself admitting that he had a point.

When I was four I appeared on Romper Room for an unprecedented two weeks. At the time my best friend, Mary Lou, had been selected for the local cable network but her incredibly shy demeanor had her mother worried.

“She’s gonna sit there like a sack of potatoes.” Mrs. Dean told my Mother who quickly suggested that I accompany Mary Lou for moral support.

“What do I have to do?” I asked my mother as she was tucking me into bed.

“Just be yourself,” she replied. My mother knew exactly what that meant. Naturally loquacious I kept things hopping on the set by constantly commenting on the camera man kissing the teacher. When asked what my father had in his garage, I remarked that it was presumptuous to even assume we had one. There was some discussion about a third week, but Miss Dawson put her foot down and said I was stealing the show.

Soon I was taking dance classes and skating lessons. My first stage appearance was as a rabbit in the famous ballet, Bugs Bunny's Birthday Party. I was excited because we second tiered rabbits were going to eat sandwiches on stage. Then disaster struck. The sandwiches were going to be peanut butter and I hated peanut butter. Teary eyed I complained to my mother who told me to grin and bear it. “That’s acting,” she said.

In grade four I wrote a play about a pair of motorcycle lovers and sang Baby Driver while they straddled their desks and rode off into the sunset.

“Hit the road and I’m gone.

What’s your number?

I wonder how your engine feels?”

“Okay,” Mrs. Orcutt interrupted, “I think that’s all the time we have for that today.”

After my father gave me his blessing to pursue a career on the stage, I decided to explore all of my options. I auditioned for an amateur theatre company and played bird #4 in Aristophanes’ The Birds, and a milk maid in Galt MacDermot’s musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona. Not exactly earth-shattering roles, but I knew there was a pecking order (no pun intended) and that dues must be paid. In Niagara Falls, where I lived as a teenager, there were two amateur companies. The youth group that took over the Firehall Theatre in the summer months of July and August, and the adult group that staked their claim the rest of the year. The youth company was run entirely by a handful of 18 to 20-year-olds who took themselves very seriously. We stretched ourselves artistically, which is really just another way of saying that were out of our depth. I remember as Bertha in Pippin I had to say, "Men raise flags when they can't get anything else up." At the time I had no idea what that meant but I certainly enjoyed the response I got every time I said it.  

The amateur theatre company in the neighbouring city of St. Catharines were doing large scale musicals with professional directors and a cast of a thousand. Even I could tell the difference between Garden City’s production of West Side Story and the Niagara Falls Music Theatre Production of A Shadow Box. We told ourselves that we were doing something significant for the five or six audience members who sat in the dark to watch us perform. “At least they can appreciate art.” we told ourselves, ignoring the occasional snore beyond the footlights.  When someone who had seen our production complained in the paper that “…smut didn’t belong on stage.” I was devasted. “Some people just don’t know a good thing when they see it,” I ranted, “It’s a Pulitzer award winning play.”  I forgot that we weren’t Tony award winning actors.

Anxious to spread my wings and get a taste of the real thing, I auditioned for a one-act play festival at the nearby University and managed to get the part of an uptight bible thumper in an original musical called A Hundred Bucks a Week. It was the story of a topless shampoo parlourist who castrates a guy with her teeth. Did I mention that it was narrated by a cat? I still remember singing:

“We all must be as babies in the garden.

Smiling with our mouths all bright and new.

Innocently smelling lovely roses.

Not prying with our fingers in dog doo.”

Needless to say, my father was a little shocked when an actress appeared on stage topless while I sang my heart out in a futile effort to convert her. This time as he walked me across the parking lot to the car he suggested that perhaps I should seriously consider journalism at Carleton. “Impossible!” I stated dramatically, “I’m an actress.” And I actually believed it.

I arrived at University wearing vintage clothes with frizzy hair and John Lennon glasses. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to be Doris Finsecker from Fame or Janice Joplin. My dorm room-mate was an engineering student who was the first to know of a kegger and had never seen a play in her life. She often returned to our room late at night reeking of booze and sludge water after spontaneous dips in the Detroit River.

At theatre school I was told I couldn’t dance, I couldn’t sing, I had speech impediments and a wandering left eye that would completely destroy any hopes of a career in film “Too bad you didn’t have it looked at when you were a kid,”one professor told me, “It’s easily treatable if caught when you are young.” At the age of five I was a frequent visitor to Sick Kids Hospital for my eye and wore a patch over my glasses for a year. It didn’t cure me. So much for trusting the knowledge of my professors. Strike one!

I began to sink under the pressure of looks and expectations. While the rest of the women in my class wasted away proclaiming to have eaten nothing but broccoli over Thanksgiving, I gained seven pounds over a new found love of peanut butter and developed a bad attitude towards anyone who encouraged me to “feel space”. When my teacher overheard me mutter under my breath one day that I hated improve she called a class meeting to discuss why I hated her. Everyone stared at me shocked and disappointed. Why was I resisting the pu-pu platter of techniques spread out before me? “You’re a very stubborn actress,” the teacher announced, “but I’m going to break you.” That was strike two.

At my first semester tutorial I was told that I had talent, but I wasn’t tall, thin or pretty enough. “You have the face of Sally Field,” the department head told me, “but the body of Kathy Bates.” Strike three.  I went home for Christmas and announced to my father that I was dropping out to focus, instead, on getting into a proper theatre school in New York. After all, I reasoned, it’s where I really wanted to be anyway.

There is probably nothing quite as depressing as returning to your hometown in the middle of winter when all of your friends are away at school having the time of their lives. The overall perception is that you have failed. It didn’t help to think that I had willfully brought myself to this point in time. The phrase, “small fish in a big pond” kept going around in my head. While my best friends were acing all of their classes and dating interesting freshmen, I was eating cookies, and counting the days until everyone would return to amuse me. In the meantime, I moped around the apartment, wrote letters to theatre schools and read a lot of plays.

“You have to get a job.” My father announced and for the first time I was forced to slog my way through the want ads in a half assed attempt to find work at either a wax museum or a fudge shop. Completely unqualified for anything except theatre, I was forced to become a chamber maid at a tacky little hotel near Clifton Hill. Picking up after the kind of clientele that honeymoon in tacky hotels in Niagara Falls is enough to get one thinking seriously about their life choices. Maybe Dad had been right. A career in the theatre wasn’t looking so good anymore. Something had been tarnished from University and I couldn’t pretend that my trajectory to success was going to be one clear straight line to the top. I’d hit rock bottom and was picking up the condom rappers and dirty Kleenex to show it.

There have been many times in my career when I’ve been very close to throwing in the towel and becoming a real-estate agent or a tour guide.  At each one of those moments of genuine universal surrender something miraculous always happens. That year it was a letter of acceptance from the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. By now my father, less convinced that I could make a go of it, made me a deal. If I could find a place to live in Manhattan within a week, he would allow me to go. So, I boarded the train in Buffalo and headed for the Big Apple.

I arrived in New York at around 2:00 PM on a very, very hot day in August. I walked straight to the library, took out the Village Voice, circled an advertisement seeking a room-mate for a four-bedroom brownstone on the Upper West Side, was interviewed at 7:00 PM and secured my living accommodations within twenty-four hours. It didn’t matter to me that I had no idea who the three men I’d be living with were. The place was nice and the price was right. I think I heard my father drop the phone when I called to tell him that I had accomplished the impossible. Studying in New York proved to be the best and possibly the worst thing that ever happened to me. I developed a philosophy of acting that has served me in every way, but it also created a high standard that hasn’t always been easy to live up to.

_________________________________________________________

A few years ago, I was invited to direct a production of Blue Stockings at the same University I had so unceremoniously departed from those many years ago. Parallel universes collided as images of my past kept imposing themselves on the present. There was the quad I had been initiated in. There was the building where I’d slept and laughed and cried. There was my window with the view of the cemetery and McDonalds. There was the library where I looked up the address of every theatre school in New York. There was the theatre I did my practicum in, all pretty much the same as the day I left it. The walls, hallways, buildings hadn’t changed, but I had. I didn’t need reassurance anymore. I didn’t need someone to tell me what I wasn’t or couldn’t be. If only we could teach students the value of tenacity and resilience.

I enjoyed directing that class. I hope I encouraged and inspired them. I was happy when they came to rehearsals in sweats and tee shirts, less concerned about how they looked than we had been. More confident in their choices. More involved. On Opening night after the cheers and flowers and the congratulations, it felt good to climb into the car and head for home. I’m not cut out for institutions. I don’t like the brick and the neon and the bureaucracy. Still, it was good to make my peace with that time in my life. On the four-hour drive to Niagara I was thinking about the young people I had just worked with making the transition from student to actor. Maybe some of them will end up in New York. Maybe not. The thing about acting is it can take you anywhere…from Romper Room to the stars with a few tacky hotels in between.

[lezliefaithwade]

Hitchhikers and Horror Movies

I was living in New York when one Sunday afternoon in late August a boyfriend suggested we go and see the newly remastered, Texas Chainsaw Massacre at a movie theatre on 42nd Street. It had recently been heralded as one of the most influential horror movies of all time, and as he was in the process of writing his own horror screenplay, it seemed only right to see what all the fuss was about.

It was a very hot day as we slipped into the darkened theatre. It smelled like wet pavement, stale popcorn and forgotten dreams. The floor was sticky from neglect. The whole interior reeked of resignation as though any minute the wrecking ball would tear through the ceiling and replace a bygone era with a GAP or a McDonalds.  There were probably no more than 20 of us oddballs sitting in the damp, musky building. I wondered what kind of person spends a Sunday afternoon watching slasher films? My boyfriend was a nice Jewish USC graduate currently studying playwrighting at Juilliard. He was the kind of guy who laughed easily and rarely lost his temper. I felt safe and at ease with him. A quick glance at the other patrons painted a somewhat different picture. It was obvious that I was the only female in an audience of men sitting alone waiting ominously for a slasher film to begin. I shifted uneasily in my seat.

“Did I mention I don’t really like horror movies?” I whispered to Bernie. “I scare easily.”

“No worries,” he said, “Just close your eyes over the gory bits.”

For anyone who has not seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, suffice it to say that the entire film is gory. It’s pretty implicit by the title words “chainsaw massacre”.

It’s been noted that the experience of watching a horror movie with someone from the opposite sex can become a catalyst for romantic bonding. Was that what Bernie had in mind that afternoon?

The lights dimmed, the movie began and within minutes I was on the floor with my head in the seat of the chair, mindless of whatever gross concoction I was kneeling upon. All I can tell you about plot is that some kids pick up a hitchhiker who cuts his hand with a switchblade. That was all I saw.

“I have to leave,” I said to Bernie. And being the great guy that he was, he escorted me out of the theatre and back into the real world. I breathed a sigh of relief, and spent the better part of the next week doing everything I could to forget what I had seen.

Horror movies and slasher films have always appealed to a broad audience. Consumers expect to be scared, disturbed, creeped out, disgusted, terrified. This is just the undesirable price one has to pay in anticipation of some other reward, such as the ultimate triumph over evil or the smug satisfaction of feeling safe while being afraid. Slasher films make strong commentaries on societal expectations. In other words, young women in particular are usually targeted by male antagonists with puritanical opinions on sexuality. That is, when any kind of motivation can even be found. The set-up goes something like this:

1. Some past event sets (the killer) upon a homicidal trajectory.

2. The killer targets a group of hedonistic youth.

3. Youths interact recreationally in an insular quotidian location.

4. The killer tracks the youths.

5. The antagonist kills some of the youths.

6. The remaining character(s) challenge(s) the killer.

7. The immediate threat posed by the killer is eliminated.

Bernie’s movie as I recall was titled Summer Stalk, or Hammer Slammer (something like that) and he had a passing relationship with the director Abel Ferrara who I recall meeting briefly and being unimpressed by at a party in New York. Bernie was a good writer, and it seemed entirely possible that he might actually sell this screenplay, so when school was finished we moved to Los Angeles.  Hollywood was a place so foreign to me and so at odds with my sensibilities that you may as well have dropped me onto the moon without a spacesuit and ordered me to survive. Even to this day my memories of L.A. are a compilation of avocado sandwiches, shark steaks, workout rooms, convertibles and endless conversations around film. I went from being a productive, enterprising intellectual young woman, to what can only be described as a “bimbo”. Glasses were replaced with contact lenses, hair was coiffed, clothes were fitted and shoes had a heel. Gone was the architecture, the history, the parks, the subway, convenient neighbourhoods with great second-hand book stores. Instead it had all been replaced by freeways, concrete, Stepford wives, alfalfa sprouts and sales pitches. I thought of going home, but I loved my boyfriend and wanted to be supportive. So, I sat on the sidelines in tightfitting Lycra and cheered him on.

On weekends, Bernie and I would drive to his father’s house in La Costa, Ca.  where I could swim, bike, catch a movie, or just go for a walk. The house was a welcome refuge from the hustle and bustle of tinsel town. It was large, (large by my standards) with great, comfortable furnishings and a spectacular view of the valley. Bernie’s family were wealthy. My family was not. This disparity in our lifestyles was, to my knowledge, the only thing we ever fought about. Things were easier for him than they were for me, and while I was certainly benefiting from orbiting in his world, I could never quite forget where I had come from and how difficult it was for me to obtain even the smallest of opportunities. As a brief example: at school in New York, before I met Bernie, I would resort to heating up tomato juice for dinner. Bernie’s family were the sort of people who own the tomato juice company.

So, it was on one dark and stormy night enroute to La Costa that a particular argument erupted over privilege.

“You have no idea what the real world lives like,” I shouted, nearly in tears. “I’m always one step from poverty and the only thing that separates me from the homeless man on the street is you.”

“So,” he shouted back, “Get a job!”

He knew this was impossible as I was an illegal alien.

By now the storm had become positively Spielberg like. Low hanging dark clouds, lightning, thunder and us in a small car wending our way to our destination. Windshield wipers on high we stewed for several minutes both of us in our own worlds thinking up clever rebuttals for the next wave of attack when I saw a hitchhiker on the side of the road. It’s important to note at this point in my story that I had NEVER picked up a hitchhiker in my life, nor did I advocate such a thing. But the weather, and the bedraggled look of the man somehow destroyed all my reason. Bernie saw him too.

“Should we give him a ride?” he asked, probably to show that he was still a generous and compassionate person in spite of his wealth.

“It’s pouring out,” I said, “I think we should.”

Bernie pulled over and the man ran to the car. Even before he climbed into the back seat we realized our lack of good sense, but once we were stopped it just seemed like bad manners to drive away.  

“Where you going?” Bernie asked turning to get a good look at our passenger.

“Where you heading?” he responded with a slight drawl.

“La Costa.” Bernie replied

“You can drop me off anywhere near the cut off.” The stranger said as he settled back in his seat.

From the mirror over my visor I had a really good look at the man who identified himself as Hank. He was lean and dirty with a long unkempt beard and equally unkempt hair.  His features were sharp and angular. Hank carried a large knapsack and frankly smelled a little. Had this been a Disney animation, he would have been drawn to represent an anthropomorphic rat.

“Where are you from?” I asked trying to be polite.

“Texas,” he replied.

It wasn’t my imagination. I could see Bernie’s knuckles turn white as he gripped the steering wheel. Neither of us needed to say a thing. We were now the protagonists in a horror movie. It was that simple.  An unmarried couple headed for a week end of debauchery in a car with a stranger while a storm raged outside. We ticked off several of the essential criteria in the Horror movie genre and without saying a thing, we both immediately regretted our act of charity. Every moment in that car was leaden. As we sped our way through the dark I was counting the minutes and the miles thinking to myself, “We’re still alive. We’re still alive. We’re still alive.” I wondered what would happen if I insisted we make an exit to use a restroom? I imagined running for help while Bernie fought off an attack or perhaps I’d be able to fight off our assailant with a crowbar in the trunk. Hank was silent. Then, out of the blue he began to tell us about the corpse recently discovered at LAX. “They found it in pieces,” he volunteered, “The head, the arms, the torso in different places around the airport.”

Hank didn’t look like a guy who read the newspapers or listened to the news. He looked like someone who knew things first hand. “The hands were in a sink at the washroom.”

How does one respond to information like this? “Oh, how interesting,” seems inappropriate when what you really want to do is slam on the brakes and say, “Get the fuck out of this car.”

While writing his screenplay, Bernie had once mentioned to me that monsters like their victims to be afraid.  So, I muttered a half-hearted “Really?” hoping my nonplussed attitude would dampen his interest in killing us.  At this point Bernie was fixed, zombie like on getting us as quickly to the drop off point as possible. I glanced at the speedometer. We were over the speed limit on wet roads. Nothing about this adventure felt like it was going to end well. I could feel Hank staring at the back of my head. I slid down in my seat and wondered if a knife could penetrate the upholstery. The closer we got to the cut-off point, the more nervous I became. I reasoned that an assailant wouldn’t attack us while driving and risk being killed in a car accident. No. An assailant would kill us the moment we pulled over to let him out. He’d slash our throats, dump the bodies and take the car.

“What do you do for a living?” Hank asked

“I’m a writer,” Bernie said

“Oh yeah? What do you write?

“Horror movies.”

Hank seemed interested, “You don’t say?”

To be fair, it’s possible Hank wasn’t the least bit interested. He may have been as bored as toast and just eager to get out of the car. He may have interpreted our tension as residual anger from a lover’s spat, or thought we were good Samaritans with dull lives and little to say.

All I know is that when we saw the sign for the turn off, I blurted out, “I have to pee.” At least if Hank was going to kill us, it would be under bright neon lights and in clear view of a gas station attendant and several patrons.

Bernie pulled into the Mobil station and exclaimed a little too eagerly, “Here you go. End of the road.”

Hank opened his door, grabbed his belongings and piled out of the car. From the overhead lights I could see for the first time that he looked old. Here was a man for whom things did not come easily and I suddenly afforded myself a bit of pity.

“Thanks for the lift.” He said shaking Bernie’s hand.

“No problem.” He replied as we climbed back inside and locked the doors.  I realized that I hadn’t used the bathroom and was a little ashamed of myself.

As the car sped out of the station and back onto dark roads we exhaled a collective sigh of relief and laughed. “What were we thinking?” I asked “Oh my God. What was all that about a body at LAX?”

By the time we reached the house, I had convinced myself that I had over-reacted.

“Isn’t that how all horror movies work?” Bernie said “The protagonists are always being attacked the moment they let down their guard.” I admit, he had a point. How many times had I commented on how stupid the victims in horror movies behaved? I mean, what kind of idiot would pick up a hitchhiker on a dark and stormy night knowing full well the kind of risk they were taking?

We unlocked the front door of the house, and before locking it again, were sure to search the dark for bogeymen. There was no way Hank could have followed us, but still…

“Let’s get on dry clothes and watch a movie,” Bernie suggested, turning on as many lights as we could find.

“Sounds like a great idea,” I said, “Something funny, please.”

As we settled down with hot chocolate, safe and sound to watch Mel Brooks, I briefly thought about Hank out there in the dark making his way towards Mexico. I wondered what was in his knapsack and then let the thought slip from my mind as the storm continued to rage on outside.

[lezliefaithwade]

Autumn on the island.

[lezliefaithwade]

Sometimes the world looks like wallpaper.

[lezliefaithwade]

The F-word!

I was 19 years-old the first time I ever said the F-word. I remember it distinctly. I was sitting on the bleachers at the ball park not far from my home thinking about a boy who had kissed me, on that very spot a week earlier. I was writing in my journal when two guys, a bit younger than I, started harassing me. “Nice tits,” the slighty chubby one yelled. “Yeah,” his side-kick mimicked, “Nice tits.” I was and remain to this day a very modest person. I don’t enjoy being somewhat well endowed. I wanted to be flat chested my entire life drawing absolutely no attention to any part of my body whatsoever. My dream was always that people would like me for my sizable brain and witty banter. My breasts were the last thing I cared about. In fact, they betrayed me. Women with breasts were naturally thought of as stupid, whereas flat chested women were smart. But I had just graduated from high school with a 92% average. It had to be because I hid my breasts constantly behind sweaters, jumpers, blazers.

“Come suck my dick,” one boy yelled at me. I tried to ignore them, but they kept at it obviously enjoying their efforts to denigrate me.

“What’s the matter? Your tits too big for your brain?” one of them asked while the other one snickered. And that was when the f-word came out of my mouth. It came out without thought and without apology. It sounded like artillery in my mouth and it did the trick. They F-d off and I was once again left alone, stewing. The moment for writing was lost. My reverie had been completely destroyed. I was livid. Never in a million years would I or any of my girlfriends have tried to humiliate a boy the way I had just been humiliated. It simply wouldn’t happen. And the more I thought about it, the more I hated the way I looked, and the way they had made me feel.

A month later I was living in New York, attending theatre school in midtown Manhattan and enjoying my first taste of independence. I had a modest amount of money inherited from my mother’s insurance after her death four years earlier, and I parceled it out carefully for my studies. New Yorkers, I soon discovered, had no problem using the f-word as a noun, an adjective, a verb and an adverb. In a month’s time I heard it used often and to great effect. Cab drivers, cyclists, even men at food carts. In acting class, there was hardly an improv that didn’t end with a good F-you! By the time I returned home for Thanksgiving it was part of my regular vocabulary.  While happily enjoying the dinner, my father had lovingly prepared, I nonchalantly said, “Pass the f-ing turkey, please and thank you.” Thus, assuring my father that all his fears of my going to New York were completely founded. That was the first and last time I ever swore in front of my him, with the exception of possibly blurting out something when I’d hit my thumb accidentally with a hammer or burned myself while cooking.

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that most men don’t like women who swear. In particular, older men feel as though a curse word coming from the mouth of a woman is demeaning. But even younger men, I’ve noticed, can get pretty pissy when women level the playing field by swearing. I recently re-read Terrence McNally’s play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. When Frankie tells Johnny he’s full of shit after he professes his love during a one-night stand, he responds: “Hey, come on, don’t. One of the things I like about you, Frankie, is that you talk nice.”

She responds by using the F-word six times. I might have used it seven.

When I think of the times I’m most likely to swear, it’s usually around men. I feel like a junk yard dog warning anyone who crosses the line that I mean business. It’s not something I resort to naturally. It’s usually reserved for the guy on the subway whose legs are so wide he’s taking up two seats and rubbing his thigh up against me. The man on the bus who won’t take his eyes off my breasts. The one who says, “Smile. You look so much better when you smile.” I hate when I get driven to the point of expletive no return. I was raised to be polite. My parents grew up with the reasonable expectation that people would be mutually respectful of one and other. Sometimes when men cross the line they cover it up by saying things like, “Lighten up. I’m just joking,” or worse, accuse me of taking things too seriously. I once told an actor to F-off when he wouldn’t stop poking me in rehearsal. I asked politely. I asked again. And then I just didn’t care. No way was I going to perform that one scene for two months on the road with him poking me every F-ing day.

There have been times when I didn’t use the word and I wished I had. Once in New York on a lunch break I went to a park to learn lines and a wealthy older man sat down by me and thought it was perfectly okay to regale me on the virtues of wearing high heels instead of running shoes (which at the time was kind of my signature look.) He was creepy and his comments were intrusive. No one asked him. Men who think it’s perfectly okay to give unsolicited fashion advice to women deserve to be told off.

According to scientists, swearing appears to be a feature of language that an articulate speaker can use in order to communicate with maximum effectiveness. A collection of studies concluded that there is more to swearing than simply causing offence, or a lack of verbal hygiene. Language is a sophisticated toolkit, and swearing is a part of it. Once, it may well have saved my life.

I was still in New York enjoying my first real relationship with a guy who was a playwright at the Julliard School when, for some reason, a conversation about a play we had seen turned sour and the next thing I knew I was storming out of the apartment. On this particular occasion, I thought a walk along the beach at Coney Island would be just the thing to clear my head. I’d been there a few times to see the beloved Beluga’s and I always came back the better for having come in contact with nature. I boarded the F train at Washington Square and took it all the way to the 8th Street New York City Aquarium stop. It was late afternoon, and just beginning to get dark. I reasoned that I had at least an hour’s worth of light to walk around in before I’d need to return home. It didn’t faze me that I was the only person on the subway at that point.  And it didn’t bother me that I was alone as I passed through the turnstile and out onto walkway towards the beach. As I took in a deep breath of salty air I began to feel better. I was smiling to myself, thinking about the argument with my boyfriend and realizing how ridiculous I had been when I suddenly became aware of a man walking behind me. I was irritated. Here was a whole bridge for the two of us to share, and this jerk was crowding me. “Why doesn’t he pass,” I thought, “and leave me alone?”  I kept walking. He kept walking. I moved to the other side of the bridge. He moved to the other side of the bridge. Completely unaware of his intentions I muttered under my breath something about spatial awareness when I suddenly realized that he was getting closer. I could almost feel his breath on the back of my neck. “That’s it,” I said to myself, “Enough is enough!”  I turned around to confront him and saw to my shock that he had his pants down.  Somewhere in the back of my mind two things became crystal clear. One was that I was probably seconds from being raped, and the other was that while his pants were around his ankles he wouldn’t be able to run. A voice somewhere in my head told me not to let him see that I was afraid and so, as he stood there about to move towards me I said, “F-off!” I said it like I belonged. I said it with as much power as I could muster. I said it with attitude and gumption. It was a bullet and it hit my target squarely between the eyes because for a moment, he stopped, stepped half an inch back and fell. It was just enough time for me to walk past him and return to the subway. Just enough time to get about a 20 ft. head start while he pulled his pants up and started in pursuit. I began to run. He began to run. I could see the subway entrance up ahead. I knew there was an attendant inside the toll booth. Just a few feet more. He was gaining on me and then, suddenly out of nowhere, a policeman showed up and the man turned around and ran away. I’m sure the officer meant well but the first thing he did was yell at me.  “What are you doing here?” He shouted. “You shouldn’t be here alone. What are you thinking? You’re lucky to be alive.” I felt ashamed, and relieved, and terrified all at the same time. He ushered me back to the station where he waited with me on the platform until the train arrived and I was safely shoved on board.

I sat on the subway car going over what had just happened and then I started to laugh hysterically for nearly ten minutes.  To this day I have no recollection of what the man on the bridge looked like except that he had long black hair, and was wearing blue jeans with gray underwear. I’ve never have been able to identify a single thing about him, except that.

For nearly a month afterwards I found myself completely at a loss whenever any man was within two inches of me. On subways I cowered in corners and was afraid to be alone in public. If a man startled me coming around a corner, my pulse raced, my breath quickened and I wanted to run. I never told anyone what had happened. The police officer had made me feel so ashamed at myself for being so stupid that I thought people would think less of me if I told them how careless I had been. I don’t know exactly when I stopped feeling fully responsible for the predicament I had found myself in, but somewhere in my late 30’s I started to shift my thinking. It’s true, there are places that aren’t safe for women to be at alone, and in hindsight, Coney Island at dusk was one of them, but at the same time a woman should be able to go for a walk a night without fear of being attacked. A woman should be able to walk home alone from a movie, a play, a concert. She shouldn’t be afraid in a parking lot, or worry about being followed from the subway station. People are always telling me to be safe as if I have any control over the matter. I don’t want men to be the hero or the villain of my story.  I want to be able to go out alone, travel by myself, stay up late and not have to spend money on a cab to get home. Freedom of movement is a right for all people, and being afraid that you will be attacked at night jogging or walking to your house from a library because you’re female is…well…fucked.

[lezliefaithwade]

Thin Ice

Before I read “Harriet The Spy” I used to carry around a small notebook into which I wrote little tidbits about people I saw on street corners or at the mall. I was, and still am, obsessed with watching people. I’ve always been curious about their lives and how they tick.  City buses were particularly good hunting grounds for quirky characters. Every day on my way to school I would wait to see what group of misfits the bus would collect and then in detail I’d write things like:

Friday -

The lady with the strange hat gets on at Ferry Street with her large mesh bag and shuffles to her regular seat behind the driver. Even though she’s four seats away from me, I can smell garlic and rose petals. She wears stockings that sag at her ankles and reminds me of elephants. I wish I could follow her. I wonder where she goes and what she puts inside that large mesh bag. 

This habit of documenting events and people soon found its way into everyday life. It was, I see now, the equivalent of the cell phone. As long as I was engaged in my little book, I was safe from being noticed. Inherently introverted, I was never comfortable in large groups of people. High school parties were just painful reminders that I wasn’t pretty enough, or funny enough, or tall enough, or skinny enough and so I learned to hide. My notebook and pen became my shield of armour protecting me from engaging with the world.  But even Superman has his kryptonite and mine was a boy named Richard. 

Richard figure skated every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at the same arena where I took lessons. Inspired by the artistry of Toller Cranston, and Oksana Baiul I was obsessed with the idea of speed and grace on ice. I wasn’t a great figure skater, but I was good enough to manage basic skills. No one paid much attention to me as I attempted camel spins and axels and spread eagles.  The arena divas who shouted at you to “MOVE!” as they came flying into the corners got all the attention and I was just fine with that. I didn’t skate for anyone but myself. 

My father, who paid for classes from his small paycheck, told me that I could only take lessons if I agreed to pass the CFSA (Canadian Figure Skating Association) tests. He figured that the acquisition of badges justified the expenditure. Perhaps he also thought that failing to achieve the badges might convince me that I didn’t have a future in skating. Either way, that was the deal. So, along with three lessons a week on jumps, spins and flips, I spent an hour every Wednesday on what was known in the skating world as compulsory figures practiced on a piece of clean and shiny ice called a Patch. I hated patch. It was dull, boring, useless work trying to trace circles and curly cues going forward and backward using the different edges of your skate blade. I was horrible at it. Impatient and bored I counted the minutes until it was over; and so it was that on one particular Wednesday, while attempting to trace a circle…I fell. It’s one thing to fall attempting a lutz or an axel. That signals a certain amount of intestinal fortitude.  Falling on patch is practically unheard of. Imagine a stack of books falling in a library? Or a tin pot crashing onto the floor in a monastery where the monks have taken a vow of silence? That is what my crash landing was like at patch. Everyone stopped, stared and laughed. This was the ultimate humiliation for someone who did not want to be noticed. What was I to do but pick myself up and continue.

The rest of my session was agony. I couldn’t go home. Wasting hard earned cash was unheard of in my family. But I didn’t have the heart to skate. All my confidence had been sucked out of me. I imagined everyone wondering what I was doing at the rink. I didn’t belong. I set a bad example for the club. I didn’t even have a mother who could help me stake my claim on the ice, like all the other girls. Even in the change room, I only took up as much space as was absolutely necessary. Without my notebook to hide behind, I was vulnerable and afraid.  As I shoved my skates into my bag and grabbed my coat for the long walk home, Richard stopped me. 

“Nice fall on patch,” he said, not unkindly.

“Whatever,” I mumbled attempting to squeeze past him to the door.

“No,” he said, “I mean it. I hate patch. I always think I’m going to fall and now, I don’t have to worry. You’ve broken the stigma. Thanks.”

“Glad to be of service,” I smirked.

Richard was an excellent skater. He was strong and lean and his lines on the ice were lovely. Being only one of three male skaters at our club, it was hard not to notice him. He had ginger coloured hair, not unlike mine, and freckles. He had that boy next door look that reminded me of a less popular Ron Howard.  I was not in his league. 

“Listen,” he added, “I was wondering if you would be interested in going with me to my grade 12 formal?”

To this day I will never quite understand what Richard saw in me or why my disastrous fall inspired a guy I didn’t know to ask me out for the first time in my life. I was so in shock that before I knew it, I had said “yes.” Later I would come to realize that Richard had actually seen me before. The only female chess member in the Niagara region, I had beat my male opponent during a match at his school.  

As the formal grew closer and closer, I began to have second thoughts. I’d never been on a date in my life but I had some idea of what might be expected, especially at a formal. I didn’t go to his school. I barely knew him. What if he tried to hold my hand? What if he tried to kiss me? What about dancing? What about slow dancing? I was overwhelmed with fear. This would not be the first time in my life that I said “yes” when I wanted to say “no”. It would take me many years to gain that kind of courage. 

As the formal grew closer and closer it began to consume me. I took up an entire English class with my dilemma, soliciting the advice of my teacher and fellow students. I summoned up the courage to call Richard on the phone with the plan to cancel, but he insisted he’d spent a lot of money and guilted me into going through with it. With each passing day, I found myself disliking him more and more. At one point he called to make sure I was still going. 

“Do I have a choice?” I asked him.

“Not really,” he said. And that was that.

Back at my own high school, I was becoming the centre of unwanted attention as everyone started to weigh in on my dilemma. One classmate took it upon himself to warn me of all the things Richard might try to do. 

“If he reaches over to do up your seat belt, look out,” he warned. “If he locks your door, be careful.”

My head was spinning. 

On the day of the formal I got dressed and was ready by 6:30. Richard picked me up at 8:00. In my journal I wrote: He brought me a corsage of roses. I don’t really like roses, but of course if he’d taken the time to get to know me, he would have discovered that. The moment I got into his car he did up my seat belt and locked my door. I swallowed hard, held my housekeys in my fist and girded my loins.

There was a dance, and dinner and more dancing. Richard was not particularly popular but he was respected. I don’t remember a lot of kids talking to him. Mostly he was just congratulated for winning every award at his school and a scholarship to McMaster. We did have one thing hugely in common – we were both nerds. 

The thing I dislike about parties is that I never get to do what I really want, which is to talk. School dances were always an excuse to test sexual waters under half lit gymnasiums with mirror balls.  If Richard and I had gone off to a stairwell to discuss current events, I think the evening might have been a huge success. But the pressure to be romantic was palpable.  At one point he tried to hold my hand and I said I needed it to hold up my dress. I wrote in my journal that he danced so close to me that I could feel his knee in my stomach. THAT is how naïve I was. He tried to kiss me but I wouldn’t let him and eventually, finally, the night came to an end and he drove me home. I was almost out of the car when to my utter amazement he asked me out again. In so many words, I said, “No.” Not an actual “no” but one in so many words.

Richard wasn’t a bad guy. He just hadn’t paid attention to the fact that we were better suited as friends than something more. I would have liked it if we could have occasionally competed at chess. Intellectually matched, we could have discussed Turgenev or world religion or shared our adolescent poems in the park or songs on the guitar sitting cross-legged in a family room. And if I’d been better adjusted, more confident, I might have been able to suggest this alternative. But I wasn’t. I spent a long time feeling very guilty about how I’d behaved. I felt mean and selfish for having ruined his prom. I wondered if at any point he understood how terrified I had been?

The following Monday as I boarded the city bus, relieved that the ordeal of dating was over, I pulled out my little notebook ready to remark on the misfits on the bus when I realized that I was one of them. I wasn’t like everyone else, but then again – who is? Sooner or later I would have to face the music and dance and notebooks, skating lessons and chess club, no matter how solitary was not going to protect me forever from being noticed. This was not a bad thing, just something new to consider.