The Story of H - Part Two

Mustique
November 2007
I sat in the Barbados airport anxiously waiting to meet my travel companions. We were to leave in small groups on chartered planes to the tiny island of Mustique. A couple reasons for my anxiety, one I am not a plane person and the thought of getting on a small aircraft made me uneasy but the big fat reason was I had agreed to attend the week -long celebration with an intimate group of complete strangers. H had mentioned her friends throughout the years but with the exception of a short meeting with her only other Canadian friend Heidi that had taken place a good fifteen years ago, I had not met a single one of them. I had met her father over a luncheon in New York, again 15 odd years ago but no one else from her family. This was quite possibly the craziest thing I had ever done and I had a lot to compare it to.

I had received a letter from her sister in law, outlining the accommodations, scheduled plan of events which was fairly loosey goosey except the day of the service on the beach, a rotation of dinners at each villa and a few housekeeping notes. It was suggested to load up on duty free Grey Goose, all else was taken care of. I was to be housed in a villa called Shogun with 9 other of H’s friends and a couple of her cousins. This was an assortment of H’s favourite people from around the globe, an eclectic crew coming from locations such as London, New Mexico, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, New York, Connecticut, Los Cabos, Honduras and St.Catharines Ontario. I can feel you feeling my anxiety right now. I had done a little research on the joint and wasn’t surprised that it was a haven for wealthy rock stars and fashion designers. This was the place Bryan Adams whisked Amy Winehouse to on her first meltdown. Below I have ripped some tourist info that may help paint the picture:

Famous as the bolthole of celebrities and the super-rich, who build their villas here, Mustique is an enclave of around 130 private villas (some 70 of which are for rent) with one hotel, a guest house (stylish and very expensive nonetheless), a bar and a few shops.
Okay, I didn’t have a clue what bolthole meant, but I knew it was big and my anxiety was hitting fever pitch as I sat with my crisp faux Louis Vuitton baggage.

I noticed a small group gathering and timidly went up and introduced myself. Howard, a close family friend who had been their decorator forever was chatting with Heidi the Canadian who had moved to New York many years ago, fallen in love and moved to Connecticut where she was raising two children with her banker husband. The Canadian thing goes a long way and I basically wrapped myself around her ankles until we got on the plane. Some had already been flown over and some were coming after so it was a small crew that boarded the toy airplane to the island. The sun was going down and the pilot had an air of panic about not being able to see the landing strip if we waited any longer so of course count me in! The flight was loud , tumultuous and didn’t lend itself to a getting to know you chat so I quietly white knuckled it and hoped I would at least see a Mint Julep before the plane went down.

Land we did and when we emerged I felt like Dorothy when the house finally crashes to earth and she steps into a technicolor wonderland. We were greeted in the tiny 2 room airport by staff members from our villa, packing Evian bottles and warm towels to freshen up. We were then whisked away in a cross between a jeep and a golf cart, a little thing they like to call mules (no cars on the island) through the tropical surroundings and narrow roadways until we reached our destination, “Shogun”.




We climbed out of the mule to a scene that can only be described as an episode of Fantasy Island. A torch lit path leading to an entrance where waiters in whites and blacks held trays of tropical cocktails. Seriously, I actually took a quick scout around for Tattoo. We were shown to our rooms; mine an airy suite with a bed, private patio, en-suite and library. The bedrooms formed a horseshoe shape around a fully stocked Koi pond and beyond the dining room, a minimalist living room with an open space looking out on a breathtaking view of the ocean. Next, the patio with another dining area, a pool, and waterfall. The property boasted its own golf course on site and a guest house with another pool. I was starting to warm to the idea.
After we all checked out our digs, we gathered in the dining room for a luxurious dinner prepared by the staff. I looked around the table to take stock, starting to feel very Agatha Christie.

The cast:
Sean and Jeff- Cosmopolitan, strikingly handsome couple from L.A , arrived with extra wigs and were instrumental in arranging this whole show.

Erick- Boyishly attractive actor who appeared in an independent film that H made the year before she got sick.

Heidi- As per mentioned fellow Canadian turned Connecticut housewife, extremely organized, energetic, team captain and head cheerleader.

Padma and Boris- Magnetic couple from New Mexico, H went to private school with Padma and they were lifelong friends ever since.

Tara- Divorcee from Upstate New York who H met on an Ashram.

Steven- Cousin of H who lives in Los Cabos. Fit, handsome, understated.

Nedenia- Another cousin and H’s closest friend, boisterous personality, was with H during her final months in Argentina.

Gabriel- British, Ricky Gervais type.

Vickie- middle-aged single mother with an overactive imagination.

So, we ate, we talked about H, exchanged our favourite H stories and talked about H some more. To be fair, most of them had met before so I was one of the only wild cards in the bunch. After the meal, we did what most people do when they are in unusual surroundings getting acquainted. We drank our faces off. Drank at the villa, drank at the local beachside bar “Basils” (where many drunken celebrities have taken the stage spontaneously) and then had a moonlit visit to H’s favourite Macaroni beach. Back to the villa where the wigs were cracked open, pool was christened and by 3am we all felt pretty darn sure that this was all meant to be. The gal had orchestrated the perfect gathering with the perfect mixture of personalities. And why should I ever have doubted that, of course any friend of H’s would be hand-picked from around the world for their unique perspective and open minds. Still a little voice whispered in my ear just before I drifted off to sleep, “What on earth do you think you’re playing at? “

The next morning around 11ish, I staggered out to the blazing sun for breakfast on the patio. The group had mostly assembled and apparently the staff that had been ready and raring to go for an early breakfast was a bit taken aback by the slovenly crew. I’ll pause for a moment here to address my casual use of the word staff. I know it sounds very off-hand like I was completely comfortable tossing out requests, leaving dishes at the table and clothes strewn around my room only to be picked up , laundered and returned with no questions asked but it really was a bit odd and frankly I liked it.

I was slightly afraid of them and craved their approval in the same way we all try to create fantasy friendships with our mechanics.

The following day, we met up with the peeps from the other villas. H’s half –brother Stan, his wife Leah and their 3 beautiful daughters and sophisticated teenage son. Leah, was a former model who had the kind of beauty that looks as though she was born on a piece of driftwood. Her children were inquisitive and well mannered, her son seemed to harken from another era and would have fit seamlessly in a room with Gershwin or Noel Coward. It was quite spectacular to watch him glide elegantly along the beach or tickling the ivories at one of the two cocktail lounges. I took a long walk with Heidi who was able to fill in some of the blanks of H’s decline. She also assured me that H had told her about her trip to Niagara and really got why I moved back there. I was comforted by that. The rapport between the group was intimate and familiar though we had only come together 24 hours before. It was exactly how it had happened with H so many years before and I never underestimate the power of instant connections. They are a rare gift.

After an afternoon at the beach, we stopped in to have refreshments and watch the charter plane descend with H’s father, mother and step-father, the last of the arrivals. We jumped in the mule to meet the plane and it was when I saw her parents appear that the reality of why we were all here really hit me. They greeted us warmly though the weight of the situation wasn’t too far from the surface. H’s father in particular, looked like he’d been side swiped by grief and appeared much frailer than I had remembered. Her mother, still beautiful in her 80’s, was charming and elegant with a slight reserve that likely came with her pedigree. H’s parents had long ago divorced but there was still residual tension, that awkward combination of living separate lives but forever being connected by the child that carried both of their imprints. It was striking to see each of them so clearly embodied in her.

The next day the scheduled afternoon memorial set the tone right out of the gate. We had a sombre late breakfast and then the group seemed to wander off in different directions, each looking for some space to prepare. I went for a walk around the island, so surreal in its perfection. Around 2:30, we gathered in the foyer to make the trip down to the beach. The ride was silent and I looked over to see Erick with quiet tears streaming down his face. This was it, the final goodbye. If we hadn’t gotten to know each other yet, it sure seemed we were getting a crash course now. As we assembled on H’s favourite beach, I watched her parents arrive and in a moment that was so simple yet heartbreaking, H’s mother looked at her ex-husband and said, “It’s our girl.” They took each other’s hand and joined the circle .I don’t think there is anything sadder than witnessing parents saying goodbye to their child.

The ceremony was poignant without being maudlin, just what she would have wanted. Her nephew and nieces sang a beautiful piece of music, we all shared stories about H and when the time came, her ashes were divided between us to take into the ocean. Her father took the ashes and spread some on his cheek as he wept openly. We each took our ashes and waded into the ocean, I kissed my hand and released her.
I went to her mother to express my condolences and she said, “She was my best friend.”

Later at Shogun the festivities began as we re-grouped after we transformed into our wigs and gowns. I attempted a Liza Minnelli on Gabriel's make-up. Heidi looked smashing in her Angie Dickinson best, Jeff and Sean with their haphazard wigs plunked on their heads and H’s nephew who hands down was the most stunning dame in the room. A few surprises, a few Bea Arthurs and me who wished I had spent more than 8 minutes at Value Village as the end result was a cross between Anne of Green Gables and a lounge singer.

There was an air of celebration, a release after the emotional afternoon and note to self; there is no faster way to level the playing field than a mandatory drag order. Dinner was served on the patio and there were toasts and remembrances. H’s father stood up and read a poem he had written that stopped the table with its raw emotion. The gist of it was a lament that she had not needed him more. There was discomfort from some at the table, the mood having turned as it so often does in situations of grief and farewells. But it was honest, touching and painful. I wanted him to know how much she adored him and how she spoke of him and her mother with such pride. A friend of mine once advised that in situations of death and grieving, everyone deserves a get out of jail free card and I’ve adopted that credo. Though I don’t know all the details of their father, daughter relationship, what I witnessed that night was a broken man who couldn’t accept that his child was gone before him.

And then again the tides turned and the soiree turned celebratory with music. dancing and silliness, a party that could only have been better if H herself was in attendance. The patio that lead off the living room held a pedestal under a light holding H’s red wig.

The next day as I wandered out to the patio, I passed a bench holding an array of exhausted wigs piled on top of each other and a few of the kitchen staff sneaking where the hell did you people come from glances.
H wisely made sure the trip didn’t end on that note, not her style so we had a few days afterward to reflect, dig deeper and relax. The staff surrendered to our idea of breakfast which was a truckload of bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches around 11am. We lounged and read ,explored and danced. I had my first snorkelling experience with H’ brother Stan, Leah and their kids and didn’t get hysterical.

I have never completely recovered from the movie JAWS and am tentative at best around the ocean. The day after the service, we went for a swim and I got to a place where I was jumping in waves with total confidence until one of them grabbed me, dragged me down, spun me around and playfully popped me to the surface. Instead of freaking, I actually considered it a nod from H.

We rotated dinners between the villas, highlighted by a spectacular American Thanksgiving orchestrated by Leah. We played games of Sardines where one person hides and each person that finds them must hide with them until there is one lonely soldier. Considering the size of the villa’s this game could potentially take weeks. Each evening usually ended by dragging all the living room cushions out on to the patio where we would all lie gazing at the stars and as Heidi put it evaluate the events of the day. And then an early hour kitchen raid before we turned in.

By the end of the week I knew about Tara’s troubled ex-husband, Erick’s quirks and talent that went deeper than the average L.A actor, Steven’s subtle humour and hysterical recounts of family pets over the years, Sean’s intelligence and sweetness and Jeff’s wide open heart, Heidi’s instinctive nurturing and plans to adopt, Padma’s quiet strength and Boris’s new parent glow, Nedenia’s huge personality and Honduras soul and pretty much everyone knew I was in desperate need of a date.

I was grateful to her generous family who boldly took on her unusual last wishes. How odd it must have been for them to share their daughter/sister/cousin's farewell with a group of strangers but I can only hope we helped give them comfort and an insight into other facets of H's life.

On the final day we left in shifts as we were all departing to various locations. It felt odd leaving H behind though I knew it was a ridiculous concern. I had a final drink at the airport with Sean, Jeff, Erick and Steven and once again felt like Dorothy making the conflicted departure from Oz.

We have kept in touch, I visited Jeff, Sean and Erick in Los Angeles and as we sat late into the night laughing and yakking and evaluating, we all commented on how H would have loved this evolution of friendships that now seemed cemented. I showed Sean around Toronto for a day in late fall. The following year, Leah was diagnosed with breast cancer and after a gruelling course of treatment, thankfully recovered. Shortly after that I received an email from Heidi breaking the news that she too had been diagnosed with breast cancer but not to worry as she was absolutely going to beat it. She apologized for bearing bad news so soon after H’s death. Heidi died in the fall of 2009, after a brave struggle, the cancer being unusually invasive and unrelenting. I have kept in touch with H’s father who still struggles daily with the loss.

I hate when good people leave, I miss H and her fantastic energy but I do feel her presence in each of the people I met on that crazy ride. It has been said that people in our lives are on loan to us and we should enjoy the time we have with them but not expect to have it forever. Energy doesn’t die, it just changes form.

The Story of H

I first met H in the early nineties in Los Angeles California. I was visiting an old pal/sometimes lover from Niagara who had moved to L.A. and was working on the ground breaking David Lynch series, “Twin Peaks.” I was having a horrible time as he spent all day working, I had assumed we would spend the week more on the lover side but arrived to find he had a girlfriend and the clincher, I didn’t drive. The only other people who didn’t drive in L.A. were homeless, criminally insane or both and I met several of them on my daily walks around the Hollywood Hills. My pal Chris did arrange for me to spend a day sightseeing with an Australian friend of his who was working as John Schlesinger’s assistant. Brett picked me up in one of Schlesinger’s sports cars, drove me to Malibu where he basically berated me the entire day. A seasoned misogynist, he yelled at me for getting a sunburn, challenged everything that came out of my mouth and when he dropped me off at the end of the day, said he had a great time and we should do it again. I asked him if I had been in the washroom during the part where he was having a great time and he rolled his eyes and peeled out of the driveway.

The evenings were spent socializing with young industry hipsters that were friendly in a- “I’m pretty sure you can’t advance my career but just in case I’ll talk to you” kind of way. The girlfriend hated me which I totally understood, and Chris spent his time avoiding the whole mess. The Hollywood scene was as creative as a Sears Christmas catalogue and it depressed me that this was the centre of the universe where the majority of our movie watching decisions were made. It depressed me that Arnold Schwarzenegger was considered an actor and that box office numbers translated into industry respect. When Chris told me his friend H from New York was in town and would be coming over for the evening, I braced myself for another soul sucking evening.
H entered the room like a perfect storm. Long wavy blonde hair, no makeup, wearing jeans and sneakers, she dropped her knapsack on the floor and said; “I am here for no more than 48 hours. I can’t stand to be in this shit hole for any longer.” I came out of my trance and perked up a bit but still held back. The night was young; it was L.A., people turn on a dime.

We exchanged pleasantries and she went over to peruse the book shelf. She barked out a guffaw as she pulled a book on EST, California’s latest craze in the personal transformation vein that was sweeping the nation. Chris had attached himself to it and had spent his last visit to Niagara trying unsuccessfully to convert his group of jaded Niagara on the Lake friends to join the movement. I was really warming to this gal as we gathered our things to head out to another evening on the scene. Later that evening as things were getting boisterous, I heard H say, “Who is that Australian asshole, he just yelled at me for 5 minutes!” I looked her in the eye and said, “We gotta talk” And talk we did.

The next day, Brett the misogynist invited H and I over to Schlesinger’s house to swim and hang out while his boss was out of town. Neither of us drove so after he yelled at us about that for a few minutes, it was decided he would pick us up at 11 am sharp the next day. We both detested him but decided that was no reason to deprive ourselves of a day drinking smart cocktails poolside at the famous directors digs. After Brett showed us where the drinks were and advised us not to expect him to be waiting on us, we settled into our lounge chairs. We devised a game where we would talk about Brett using someone else’s name so we could rip him to shreds in his presence without him catching on. It worked beautifully and Brett realizing we weren’t interested in him at all, soon went off to play on his own though occasionally would flex his muscles and dive into the pool to do a series of laps for our benefit. Okay, I can be shallow too!

Throughout the day I discovered the background on H which was pretty remarkable in itself. H was the child of a famous Oscar winning actor who was really at his peak in the 60’s through to the 80’s. Her mother was an actress and corporate heiress who hailed from one of the wealthiest families in America.I mean ridiculously wealthy as in Rockefeller, Getty or Johnson. Her mother had homes in Beverly Hills, New York, Palm Springs, the Hamptons and Colorado. Not just homes, estates that were fully staffed at all times. So basically while I was gob smacked over Schlesinger’s gold plated taps in the bathroom and the original art collection, this was chump change to H. I had heard bits and pieces about this but she divulged slowly and not until we had established an intimacy in our conversation that made her comfortable that we hit it off because of her personality not her pedigree. She was one of those people that have a natural and honest curiosity about life and its inhabitants and though that may not sound unique, it really is rare to find someone who has the time to really do it. She could observe a situation, sum it up, offer advice, seek advice, discuss, dissect, and discourse, all without being preachy, pompous or judgemental. Add a dry sense of humour that doesn’t miss a trick and you have just what the doctor ordered for my sojourn in the city of lost souls.

As the sun was going down, a petulant Brett feeling bruised by our lack of attention, informed us that the rest of the group would all be coming to meet us for dinner. While H was inside, I asked him I could use his shower and he directed me to his bedroom, told me to use his hair products sparingly as they were expensive and shut the door behind him. When I returned downstairs, H was acting a bit odd, suddenly distant to the point where I asked if something was wrong. She said, “I don’t know how to say this but did you just go have sex with Brett??” I burst out laughing and asked why on earth she would think that after we had just spent the last eight hours bonding some of which included Brett bashing in great detail. Well, apparently while I was in the shower; she was calling me unaware that I had gone upstairs to take a shower. As she stood at the bottom of the stairs, Brett opened the door to his room buck naked and said, “She’s up here.” She naturally concluded that this was L.A. and anything was possible though she was disappointed that she had misread me. After we sorted that up and reaffirmed Brett’s biggest asshole in LA status, we carried on as before.

We scrolled through Schlesinger’s rolodex and drank and dialled Michael York’s answering machine. We compared the merits of spokes-model vs. infomercial host and jumped on the bed that Mick Jagger had allegedly had a threesome. We sequestered ourselves in a corner smoking buckets of Marlboro lights, revealing, mocking and judging.
The next day H was scheduled to go back to New York but I was having none of that. I told her she couldn’t in good conscience leave me here for the rest of the week with this emotionally bankrupt crew, my host whose girlfriend had broken up with him due to my presence in his house and four more agonizing days that offered little but a good slap upside the head by Brett. She saw my point, cancelled her flight and stayed on until I made it back to Canada.

A month later she flew to Toronto for my birthday and so began a 17 year friendship , her flying to see me in Toronto most of the time and me flying to see her in New York some of the time. On her first visit to Toronto, I suddenly had host city panic. She hadn’t been to the city before so I wondered what was expected of me. I hated sightseeing almost as much as I hated board games but I braced myself for the inevitable show and tell. When she arrived, I laid out a potential itinerary of local landmarks and she looked at me like I had three heads. “I thought we would just smoke and drink and watch movies in your living room and maybe, maybe go out for cocktails somewhere down the street if we are up to it.” God has created the perfect houseguest I thought to myself.

And vice versa when I went to visit her in New York, though her version was her Mother’s penthouse overlooking the East River in a building on the Upper East Side. It was very easy not to leave the penthouse though we did venture out late at night to some of her favourite haunts. The first morning in New York, I was awakened by a butler in black and whites serving me a breakfast tray in bed. “This feels kinda weird”, I noted but H assured me that we had to let him do this as her mother wasn’t often at the property and he felt like he never got to really do his job. His job also included keeping the kitchen stocked with our favourite food, wine and cartons of Marlboro lights. I could get used to this. But besides this glaringly obvious difference in our lifestyles, I never really felt that money was what made her tick. I know that money can’t buy happiness, but it can sure free the mind and wallet to do what makes you happy!

H travelled extensively and would arrive in Toronto with her impish smile, back pack, jeans and sneakers from exotic locales around the world. She had friends dotted all over the map and would think nothing of hopping on a plane on an hour’s notice to come to Toronto for the weekend or Ireland or Timbuktu if that’s what called her. She was never showy about money though and could smell an opportunist from 50 paces. Though I do remember a night in Toronto as we had some cocktails at a hotel we spontaneously decided we wanted to meet up with some friends in Niagara on the Lake so H went to the concierge and rented the only transportation they had available, a white laser limo. We picked up a friend on the way, took the concierge who was finishing his shift with us and peeled down the QEW. As we pulled up at the quaint Oban Inn Lounge with music pounding and lasers ablaze, one of the bartenders exclaimed, “Holy shit, I think the Temptations have just arrived!”

I remember her once telling me she went to an Irish bar in New York one day and sat beside Gabriel Byrne. She then went to an Irish bar 36 hours later in Ireland and sat beside Gabriel Byrne. She called me from Heathrow airport thrilled by a sighting of Mother Theresa peeling through the airport. “That woman is built for speed!” she stated. These were normal occurrences in her life and she believed that very little was accidental. Once when I was bemoaning about a serious crush I had on a man that wasn’t available, she definitively told me that when we have strong feelings for someone, it is because on some level they are feeling the same way. I loved this theory and I’m sure it would sit well with stalkers around the world as well. She believed in the spirit world, chance meetings and old souls of which she was most definitely one. H was one of those people who make you believe that anything is possible.

Like many kids of the rich and famous, she had a sometimes conflicted family life with a roster of half brothers and sisters from various marriages. She was the only child from her parent’s union and I sometimes felt the fractures of a family life that had so many layers. She adored her father though often butted heads with him and went through phases of non-communication. Her mother, she described as beautiful and one of the kindest, sweetest people on earth though a frosty relationship with her mother’s latest husband sometimes had H keeping her distance. H fell in love many times, even got engaged to a dentist in Dayton Ohio for a while but inevitably she would leave. I could never imagine someone grounding her.

As the years passed and my life settled into marriage and motherhood, we didn’t see each other as often though kept in touch through email and phone calls. I could go 2 years without seeing her and pick up like it was yesterday when we met. When I was pregnant, H sent me a cake from North Carolina because it was something her sister who was also pregnant was craving. When I told her I was getting a divorce, she flew into Toronto and booked us into the Four Seasons where she said we would drink Caesars, order room service, watch a marathon of movies and talk, talk, talk. As we were checking in, the elevator doors opened and a 6 foot 7 inched, Tommy Tune whisked through the lobby in a cape and full masquerade ball feathered mask. This didn’t surprise me at all.

On her last visit, I picked her up at the airport (yes I was driving finally) to take her to my place in Niagara. She emerged, bottle of duty free Grey Goose as per usual though we had long since given up the Marlboro lights. She looked somewhat elegant. The sneakers had been replaced by knee high boots and her hair had been dyed a fabulous shade of red. She met me at the exit and breathlessly said, “We have to wait, Heather Locklear was on my flight and she is just the cutest thing.”

She was coming to visit me at my cottage in Niagara, my landing after my marriage ended.
It was an unseasonably warm November and we sat on my porch drinking Caesars and chewing the fat, analyzing, speculating and commiserating. She had initially thought that moving out of Toronto was a mistake and I was anxious to show her why my little world in Niagara made sense. I started to wonder if her life of so many choices had made it impossible to make choices. Hers was a world of never ending possibilities but also an underlying loneliness. Our friendship at this point had a longevity that had its own short-hand and in a year that had been tumultuous, it calmed me to have her there. We kicked back old school and when she left, I was exhilarated and exhausted just like the old days.

A month later, she called and said, “Are you sitting down?” My god, I thought, she’s really going to get married this time. “I have ovarian cancer, but not to worry because there is no way this is going to take me. It just isn’t going to go that way.” I believed her too because when H put her mind to something, there was no stopping her. In the following months she went through a series of treatments both experimental and traditional. She was always upbeat and flatly refused to acknowledge anything but a mild inconvenience this whole business was causing. She sent pictures of her newly shaved head and told me that she had purchased a series of wigs that made her look like alternatively Cher and a drag queen. I know this is starting to sound very “Beaches” and I apologize profusely for that but she really looked at the whole damn thing as an opportunity to re-evaluate.

After her hysterectomy, she emailed me saying, “Sweetie, the hysterectomy was tough, but they got it all and I am now on the road back” I was elated and frankly not surprised that she had shooed it away.
I wrote her a love letter that every great friend of many years deserves to receive and we shouldn’t wait for the “Big C” to deliver it. The next conversation wasn’t so hopeful. They hadn’t gotten all of it and now there was talk of having to have a colposcopy bag which she refused on no uncertain terms. It was the first time I sensed any panic in her voice as she said, “This is not how my life is supposed to go”

The week after, she told me she was going to Brazil to see a healer named “John of God”. Her specialist in New York had nothing left to offer so who was I to question. I told her I loved her and to keep in close touch. That was the last I heard from her. H went off the radar having travelled to Brazil with her cousin and best friend N. My phone calls and emails went unanswered. A few months later, I received a call on Mother’s Day from N saying that H had spent the last few months in Argentina exhausting all avenues of experimental treatment until she was finally too weak to return to New York. Her family flew out to say their good-byes and N crawled into her bed and held her as she left this world.

H left a letter with very specific instructions when she knew she had lost the battle. I share a few highlights:
“I am writing this to let you know what my wishes are after I have moved onto that Samba line in the sky.
She requested her ashes be scattered on Macaroni Beach on her favourite island of Mustique. She chose a list of close friends and family that she invited to spend a week at her expense celebrating her life on the island. She wrote:
“I’d really like it to be a celebration of a life that I loved, the love, joy and laughter that all of you brought me, and the fact that I have gone happily to the next state of consciousness. Don’t forget energy cannot be destroyed, it just changes.”

In addition to the week-long celebration was an insistence that the spreading of her ashes must without question be followed by a dinner party where everyone must attend in drag, wigs mandatory, no exceptions.
To be continued…

Smoke Drink Sleep

Yesterday was my birthday and as I enter the second act of my life, I thought I would take stock of where I’ve been, where I am and where I want to go for the next 30 odd years. Unfortunately, I don’t have the cash flow to take a trip around the world to figure this out so my backyard in St.Catharines Ontario will have to suffice. As the coffee brews, I ruminate on birthdays of years gone by. Events that were anticipated months ahead and usually involved a week’s worth of pub crawls, brunches, work lunches and a few dinners. Fast forward to 2010 where I sat home, savouring multiple episodes of Millionaire Matchmaker and Flipping Out with 2 complicated poodles by my side and a cheap but earnest bottle of Pinot Grigio. I cast my mind way, way back to my twenties, the “Smoke” years.

After years of confinement at the National Ballet School, I decided to cut loose and embark on a career with ballet’s poorer, black sheep cousin, Modern Dance. Modern dance in the 70’s and 80’s was taking shape covertly in dusty cockroach infested lofts and church basements around the city. Where ballet was an exercise in torturous control, submission and starvation, modern dance was a haven for reckless behaviour and starvation. Modern dance was heavy with importance, angst and ferocity. The first time I walked into Toronto Dance Theatre to take a Martha Graham technique class with Patricia Beatty, I almost puked with fear. This was a fierce crowd; the Graham technique really separates the men from the mice. Ballet is all about the fantasy, swans sleeping with humans, village girls going insane after misguided affection for royalty, Willies, I don’t even know how to start to explain Willies. Tight buns both on the head and in the rear, sparkly short skirts, stop on a dime pirouettes and Cirque de Soleil flexibility. All served up with a saccharine smile that says, “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world right now! My feet are bleeding, I threw up my meal before the show and I will have hip replacements before I’m fifty but just try to stop me! I’m here until someone yanks my 36 year old bones off this stage!”

Over at Modern dance headquarters, Ms. Graham was eating you from the inside out. The work was intense, raw, the slight hint of an insincere movement being called out immediately. The dancers wore ripped, threadbare clothes; hair carelessly tossed on top of the head or even better, shaved off to make way for the art. Modern dance was living out loud and if there was an issue it was vigorously debated, combusted, thrown into the ring to fend for itself. It was not for the faint hearted and I admit that every time I walked into a Graham class, I felt as though there was a Vegas style neon sign on my back that read “IMPOSTER!!" I was a cross over from the trite world of ballet and no matter how hard I tried to rein it in, I’d inevitably start to get giddy when a pirouette was introduced or my leg lifted above knee level. Busted! At one of our post show receptions, an embittered, catty drunken male teacher of mine slurred angrily, “You may be classically trained but you have no control over your glute muscles!” (Translation: ass or as ballet discreetly calls it derriere)

Ouch, thems fighting words but I was still in my Smoke phase and I didn’t have the moxie to tell him he was flat- footed and had limited range in his arabesque. I meekly lit another cigarette to stave off the hunger and sipped my el cheapo glass of white absently wondering if I would ever meet a straight man.
I loved gay men and still do though not in a stalker fag haggy kind of way. I had little choice considering I was ensconced in the world of dance since I was seven years old. I fell madly in love with an assortment of gay men. To me, it was a glass half- full situation, maybe I would be that woman that changed it all but of course my optimism has always tended to be wildly misplaced and this pattern was no exception. I learned to live with unrequited love or at best, science experiments that lasted a few days on average.

Modern dancing wasn’t exactly a lucrative career. You really had to love it, I mean really had to love it because this was before the “So You Think You Can Dance” days and the audience for modern dance was typically about 40 other modern dancers who had to hate it on principal. So you rehearsed your butt off for around 3 months pre- show, performed for little or no money and then danced for an audience of peers in a show that opened and closed the same night. I would emerge after the show to a small group of loyal friends that all wore the same puzzled look on their faces or even worse, my parents with my mother fighting back tears of horror and frustration for a career that had gone so horribly off track. To bankroll my sickness, I spent 4 nights a week bartending at the downtown Holiday Inn ,being serenaded by a roster of lounge singers and drunken businessmen. On slow evenings, I would anonymously send up requests for “Puppy Love” by Donny Osmond but they caught on to me around the third week and would roll their eyes and throw the crumpled request to the floor.

By my late twenties, I decided it was time to hang up my dancing togs when I was offered a full-time job at the trendiest address on Queen St… Citytv. No more bartending, no more slogging my way through dance studios, this was a real job with real people making real money. Or so I thought.
Here comes the “Drink” phase. The transition from starving artist to full time employment was fairly painless because I landed in the one job chocked full of renegade ideas, explosive on- air personalities and the ultimate wizard behind the curtain and more often in front of the camera directing it all. Having grown up at the ballet school, I had never been to high school or university and this was as close as I could get to that experience. Best of all, best of all, it was crawling with single men. I was like a kid in a candy shop. The place was dripping with sex and I was making up for lost time. I still loved my gay men but it was novel to spend time with a guy who wasn’t checking other guys out though they weren’t much good at sharing feelings I soon discovered. These were the golden years of Laurie Brown and Daniel Richler’s “New Music”. The city watched as Erica Ehm learnt the ropes live on air. There was a spontaneity that suggested things weren’t in control because often things weren’t in control. Ideas came from every nook and cranny in the joint not a bunch of suits sitting in a boardroom. It was sometimes volatile, competitive, childish, petty and emotional and I was in heaven. We worked together, we drank after work together, we slept together, some married (myself included) co-workers, divorced co-workers, married other co-workers, we told tales out of school. The cleaning man, a middle aged Italian man named Mike, was suddenly catapulted to local fame as a recurring feature in promotions for the station. Our staff parties started at 6pm in the building and often didn’t wrap up until 6am the next morning. Love it or hate it, there wasn’t any other programming like it anywhere and Toronto finally got to see its multi-cultural community reflected on television. Nothing was off limits. Brona Brown and her camera would tour the halls and pounce on unsuspecting employees to give a vignette summation of the job they were performing. You could always tell she was en route by the sudden surge of people diving into hallways, under editing bays and behind pillars to avoid the on camera assault. Brona, walking the deserted halls, pleading for someone to toss her a break and appear in a segment. And it was always on a day you were hung-over, wearing glorified pyjamas and no make-up.

Public meltdowns were commonplace, drinking at lunch was mandatory and the birth of the videographer, a cheap solution to the traditional full crew marked the dawn of a new era. We made shit money and spent most of it on alcohol, cigarettes and taxicabs. We were given a daily hall pass to leave the building with expensive equipment to make TV for god’s sake! To this day, I haven’t quite replaced that level of creativity in a workplace and I wonder if it’s even possible.

A few production companies later, a few trials at living in different cities, marriage, divorce, death, motherhood, we now settle into the “Sleep” phase though by that I don’t mean to infer that I am going to lie down and die. Not yet anyway. I am older and wiser though let’s not bank too much on the wiser part. The good news is I suspect you don’t ever really figure it out. I and many of my peers have honed skills, active minds (if not bodies) and yet are being cast out in droves to make way for the new generation of upstarts. Fair enough, I don’t need to take on the digital revolution; I’m too tired for that. We will always need upstarts, but I still want to kick some proverbial ass. With the exception of HBO, I find television is looking and feeling more and more like the fifties. Safe, mundane, and inoffensive. Me thinks the upstarts, have some upstarting to do. I don’t want to get my information from Barbie and Ken.

So what is a middle aged gal to do? While many, (in fact all those I mocked for having safe employment choices) are now cashing in on the other end with early retirements, I’m still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Creativity doesn’t fade away; it just goes to bed earlier. I’m still curious, I still give a shit and I know you do too. So to all you old renegades out there, what say you we get together, throw it against a wall and see if it sticks? I’ll watch you if you watch me...