You astounded me with your ability to process data into concepts while I worked the other way.  I recalled the young man who invited me to dinner only to open a can of baked beans, push soiled shirts from a chair and wave me into a seat, then later belch.  “Better this end than the other,” you said and offered me a Molson Beer.  I told you the best seductive device was a clean apartment, but you brushed that aside and talked politics, and told me my peaceful image of Canadians was false, for Canada was one of the largest exporters of nuclear-power technology. 

   You grew from that gangly youth into an adventurer who traveled to the Galapagos Islands, then home to me with your stories.  Sex was the issue of our love:  childless when fertility was desired on your part and thought deranged on mine.  Even though you met me shortly before my sterilization, you still returned to my bed as the years passed.  It hurt to hold our love only to have you leave for other women, other countries, other adventures.  

   You were Canada to me:  the War of 1812 which Canadians called the War of the 38th Parallel, with Canada defending its fertile lands from the greedy Yanks; the Royal Air Force bombing for England’s glory long before the States entered WWII; men lost in UN peacekeeping troops in Korea; and the Quebec State of Siege with Trudeau’s War Powers Act.  Canada, “the biggest whore in history” the chairman of the Creative  Writing Department had said, noting the profiteering from American trade, including Kennedy’s liquor-running during Prohibition, while young Canadians screamed nationalism and “Throw out the damn Yankees!” 

   Canada took refugees with less paperwork than the States, yet Canadians used slang for their immigrant groups, while insisting they would never have race riots:  That only happens south of the border. 

   Even in the late Seventies, the Hudson Bay Company recruited hungry youths from England to trade with Eskimos on Baffin Island in the remote Northwest Territories and a young man could still step onto virgin land, up north, counting trees for the government. 

   In “Beautiful British Columbia” as license plates read, Vancouver was the Hawaii of Canada, collecting, along with Asian immigrants and Eastern Canadians, Asian heroin and Thai sticks.  Canadians abhorred American fascination with pills, yet the Vancouver Postal System regularly inspected every package arriving from Hong Kong.  Imported marihuana from South America was excessively potent, and, like heroin, freely available while bowstring drug murders occurred in wooded Stanley Park, but – no pills.   

   Up north Canadians came south to Vancouver wide-eyed, for the pioneer town growing into a metropolitan center was a city to them. But border Canadians couldn’t decide what they were.  They lacked the up north sense of space, communion with nature and rugged pioneer blood.  They belittled their neighbors south of the border, but imported their television and consumerism.  Vancouver was the perfect refuge for my escape from Nixon, Watergate and the bloodscent of Vietnam. 

                               September 1974 
   About twelve of us sit around two wooden tables pushed together, graduate and undergraduate writing students in the same creative writing class at the University of British Columbia. The long, narrow windows, ivy- framed, allows incoming Vancouver light.   

   We introduce ourselves by sharing our writing backgrounds. Pat, the woman on my right, looks disdainfully about the group as if she had stepped from Vogue and thought she would eavesdrop on the proletariat.  You sit across the table, more than six feet tall and lanky, a mop of wavy blond-red hair atop your Scottish face. You look as if you have just rushed from bed, without time to wash your hair, brush your teeth, or find clean, unwrinkled clothes.  You tilt your chair on its hind legs and stare wild-eyed at everyone.  You leer at the introductions when you catch my eye, but then it is your turn.  

    Your bravado-infected voice gives way as you straighten your chair and hunch over your papers. You care less about the hello-business, and more about writing stories and getting on with it. 

   The class gets on with it. You appear and disappear.  When reprimanded by the instructor, you are more regular.  You sit in the same chair across from me and I often wait for your response to people’s writing because your eyes are quick and your comments intelligent.   

   Your own poetry is painful.  I feel you dare me to criticize it, and I do.  My major criticism is that you don’t take the time and care with your writing that your talent deserves. 

   You lower your chair from its rear legs, “That’s not true, Zola,” you say. 

   “I didn’t mean you’re ‘careless’”, I say. 

   “That’s what you said,” as your clear blue eyes penetrate all my walls. 

   Silence. 

   Someone interrupts your glare, agrees with me, but tries to say it more diplomatically, but you tell them, “I want her to explain.” 

   I hate plunging before a group, but I like you too much not to.  “The truth is, I get so angry at you for this,” I say, tossing the papers onto the table as if they were cheap newsprint.  “I get angry because there’s an energy in these poems, even a touch of brilliance, but they sound like you felt you had some poems due for class, so you rattled off this junk, rather than thought and felt about it, worked on it, put some love and energy into it.” 

   People start speaking, perhaps the instructor, saying my criticism isn’t fair, but your eyes remain locked on mine.  One quiet student who rarely speaks, defends your poems and I am astonished with the clichés she uses.  

   I break your gaze, “My criticism is fair.  It’s the feeling these poems give me, and aren’t we suppose to tell the author what his writing evokes?” 

   “Actually,” I say returning to you, “I’d be more interested in seeing your prose.  It seems you want to tell stories and not play with language as poetry demands.” 

   A murmur of protest rises in the classroom but you grin and straighten your spine and papers, “She’s right.” 

   The professor doesn’t like me assuming so much control over the class and returns to nit-picking the edges of your poetry rather than its heart. You flash me another grin and I know we are comrades.  

   Your first story is an adventure-fantasy that you readily admit is juvenile:  how a pilot crashes into the ocean, fights a shark as he plunges with it into the depths and is thrown onto a beach, bloody and ragged, only to be discovered by Amazon women who want only one thing…. 

   During the criticism, your defense wakes you from your lethargy.  You explain how it is possible for a pilot to survive a crash into the ocean, for you are a pilot, but the dive into the depths of the ocean with the man holding onto the shark’s fin is far-fetched because the salt water would totally cut through the fingers so only bone would remain.  You then swivel your chair towards me, “What do you think?” 

   “It’s better written than your poetry,” I say and the class laughs.  “But I keep waiting for something else.  This isn’t finished….” 

   “It’s an opening chapter,” you say quickly. 

    “What other adventures can this man get into that aren’t going to be stereotyped?  Don’t you think you have too much of a macho character in an unreal situation?” 

   You finger your blond moustache as I stare into your clear blue eyes, reddish-blond hair and 6’3” Scottish body. You laugh off my seriousness.  “I’ve thought about that,” you say. “But I’ve got some great ideas up my sleeves.” 

   The class agrees your next story is a vast improvement. It is the tale, from a woman’s point of view, of her romance with her parachute instructor and her first jump.  You sit back in your chair, balanced like Maverick, James Garner’s  cowboy-gambler.   

   You give me direct eye contact when I and others criticize the wordy description of the jeep going up the hill to the take-off site, and how, in places, you write well from a woman’s point of view, but elsewhere, the story becomes chauvinistic and grates against its better parts.  Someone calls you to account for your use of the word ‘wench’ for woman. 

   You apologetically guffaw, lean over your story and question their critique. You are surprised both men and women consider the world choice antiquated and sexist. Many of us assure you we like this first jump story, but again, want more care and precision in the writing. 

   “Re-write,” the professor says and you accept the class criticism. 

   After class, you follow me into the hallway. You have already told me I was deadly accurate about your poetry, and I wondered what more you want me  to say about your prose. You stand a few feet from me so I don’t get the full impact of your body towering over mine.   

   “I heard you were looking for a house for the party,” you say. 

   “I’m still looking, Keith.” 

   “I’ve got a great, big house, and I checked with my roommates.  They say it would be okay.” 

   “Really?” 

   You smile confidently. “It’s big, Zola, and has an upstairs and downstairs, be great for a creative writing party.”  

   Housing is dear in Vancouver so communal living is common.  When students flood the University of British Columbia each August, hundreds must camp on the beaches while TV news reports encourage citizens to house a student.  Students flock to the cheap hotels on Hastings Street, small rooms with hotplates in basements, cramped quarters anywhere. You are fortunate being a native, for you live in a house with four or five other students, renting from someone’s relatives.  

   The night of the party, I arrive early. You greet me with your 20/20 pilot eyes at the door and show me your home with wall-to-wall carpeting, middle-class cleanliness and upper-middle class furniture and gracious space. 

   “Surprised?” you say in your deep voice, embarrassed with itself. 

   “You looked rugged and raggedy in class, so I thought you lived in a hole like I do,” I say. 

   “You can’t live in a hole,” you say. 

   “Compared to this, Keith, my one basement room in Kitsilano with pink carpeting is a hole!” 

   As people arrive, you are awkward with introductions. I rescue you at the door and play hostess, remembering and introducing everyone. You relax and show the newcomers into the kitchen for glasses and drinks.  

   People keep arriving.  What makes the party so successful, is that half the guests are writers and half non-writers, so conversation is constant, but not mired by strictly writing talk. Liquor flows and people compare their experiences, their insights and intimate discourse sprinkles eloquently amid the usual silliness of parties.   

   After I have drunk a bit, I am brave enough to approach Corrine, a woman in our writing class.  She is in the kitchen, sitting with a group at the butcher block table, rolling her own cigarettes. I chat and finally blurt how beautiful she is and how I want to photograph her. Her husky laugh is full and sensuous. Her shoulder-length, blond-brown hair, her strong straight nose and chin, and her powerful brown eyes look so French to me, but are Ukrainian.  I am surprised when she tells me she too wanted to be my friend and didn’t know how to approach me.  I search for you and tell you about my date to photograph her. 

   You smile from your dazzling height and agree she is a great looking broad.  I wish you weren’t twenty-two to my twenty-four, and so damn chauvinistic.  

   The party carouses into another climax, one voice trilling into my mind with its secrets, then another, because as co-host, I have the right to say anything to anyone and with no lover at my side, and you my partner, I am safe from my own desire for debaucheries.   

   Midnight comes and goes.   We find each other and rest on a huge bean-bag cushion in one corner of the living room.  You tell me how you arrived at the university and why you are still an undergraduate, “Biggest drug bust in all of Saskatchewan,” you boast.  

   I nod indulgently.  You drop your voice and hold my arm, “No really, Anais,” you insist.  “It was.  The RCMP thought they had captured an international dealer.” 

    “The what?” 

   “RCMP, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.” 

    “Wasn’t that a TV series?” 

   “Sure was,” you say and lounge into the cushion, letting my body fit close to yours, ready to lecture me.  “That’s all you damn Americans know about Canadians, that dumb show of the RCMP on a horse.  They all act surprised when they come here and get tickets for speeding, from a Mounted Police in a car.” 

   “We’re not all like that, Keith,” I say and snuggle closer to you. 

   “Wanna hear my drug bust story, Zola, or talk politics?” 

   “Your story, but don’t embellish it with your imagination.” 

   “No need to,” you say. “They got me when I landed the small plane, thought I had a load of cocaine from Columbia, the way they pulled their guns and surrounded me.” 

   “They actually surrounded you with their guns pulled?” I ask, sitting up. 

   “Yep, all five of ‘em.” 

   “What kind of plane was it?” 

   “A Cessna, the Volkswagen of the air.” You brush off my next question and are silent, staring into your drink.  “I didn’t always dress like this,” you continue.  “I used to have tailored clothes, an ivy-headed cane I’d twirl on its pure gold base.  Hollow, great for smuggling.  But I lost all that, everything.” You sigh. “It was two kilos, maybe ten… a lot,” you admit, “for Saskatchewan. The biggest bust they ever saw in the Prairies. Made all the newspapers.”  Your eyes light and then darken when I ask what your parents thought. 

   You gulp your drink. 

   “Where’d you fly it in from?” 

   “Colorado. Some people I knew. I was doing well, even importing a little form South America.  I had a good trade until I got busted.  I used to stroll around with hundred dollar bills in my pocket, my ivory and gold cane, good threads…..” 

   “Did you go to jail?” I ask softly. 

   Your voice assumes a clear, direct tone.  “I was young.”  You flash a grin and I am charmed.  “The judge said because I had no previous record, had attended private boarding school and since my parents were so respectable, both professors, I could either return to college or go to jail.”   

   Your eyes dilate, your blond moustache is dashing, your drink finished.  I like your drug smuggler rascal image as much as you do. 

   “I don’t like being in school,” you say. 

   “It shows.”  

   “I was a drama major before, but now I’m into writing because it’s easier and I don’t have to put with all the fags and weirdoes in the theater.  Besides, I still have lawyer’s fees to pay.  Now that’s highway robbery!  You want another drink?”   

   You bring me another beer and excuse yourself to play host to some latecomers.  

   Two a.m. passes, then three and four.  You say I can sleep over on one of the couches, but they have all been claimed so I say good-night and am one of the last to leave.  

   British Columbia is so British, I call you the next afternoon to thank you for hosting the party.  “Would you like to go with me to the symphony tonight?” you ask.  

   “The symphony? Is that what people do around here?” 

   You laugh and your voice relaxes into a rich, clear baritone.  

   “That’s what some of us native Canadians do on a Sunday night when we have free tickets.” 

   You pick me up in your car. It’s cold but the window won’t go up. “It never does,” you tell me.  You curse – catch my eye, then stop. I am cold in the car, but I am with you.   

   We meet your friends in the lobby before going into the auditorium.  I envy the couple’s ease with each other, including their matching blond hair and matching heights as you tower a full foot over me and explain the history of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, and how Bob Dylan once played in this huge space, to an audience of sixty people.  When your friends leave us to buy wine at the bar, I watch their two blond heads and Gatsby-like aura.  

   “They’ve been together for years,” you say, “but they keep breaking it off.” 

   “But why?” 

   You shrug then confide the details of their relationship until they return. I can’t remember those details for I have been staring at your face:  when relaxed, not only does your voice change and gather strength, but your face opens, your tall, lanky body loses its Lincoln-esque awkwardness, its hands and feet so far from its center, your crudeness evaporates and your eyes are so clear that they mold your face into the man I want to know forever.  

   With your friends’ return, you quickly shift gears and squeeze my hand. Your voice is lighthearted as you warn me the symphony will probably be provincial compared to Chicago’s or the Philharmonic’s. You don’t release my hand until we  
find our seats. 

   We say good-night to your friends and you drive to the top of a mountain and park the car in an empty lot.  I wonder where we are.  “You’re never been here before?” you say, then slap your leg.  “I forgot, you’re one of those damn foreigners!”  You are about to open the car door, when you look at me conspiratorially, “Want to smoke some wicked weed?” you ask, distorting your handsome face into a leer by raising your eyebrows and grinning too broadly. 

   “Why not?” I say. 

   “I wasn’t sure you were the type, Zola,” you say and delicately remove the jay from its hiding place beneath the ashtray.  You light it, suck in the air like an old pro, holding your breath, then offer it to me while speaking through a crack in your throat, “Be careful, it’s powerful.” 

   I wonder if you knew how much dope I have smoked.  You don’t like my half-smile. After you exhale, you say, “No shit.  Watch it.  It’s real strong.” 

   “You’re the one who’s driving, Keith, so you should watch it.” 

   We smoke a few more hits before you extinguish it and we leave the car for the view.  The night air is crisp and clear, Vancouver lights spread below our feet like a diamond carpet, sprinkled with rubies and thick, broad necklaces, emeralds smattered here and there among the diamonds.   

   You name the streets, the newly-constructed bridge which claimed several men during its building, the landscapes and monuments.  I know I should listen carefully, that I might learn from you, but I want to be quiet, and enjoy the view without having to think about the names, details.  You like my silence and gush the facts of Vancouver over my head. I ask a few questions and you continue.  Only when you place your large hand on my back and I feel the warmth of it spread throughout my body, do I look from the safety of the view to you. 

   “I wish you weren’t so young, Keith,” I sigh. 

   “I’m twenty-two!” you protest. 

   “I know, but I thought you’d be older.  I feel so much older than you.” 

   “But I fly airplanes, Zola,” you say, eyes gleaming, ready to play this new game. 

   “Yes, but I’m from wild, wicked Chicago,” I volley. 

   “That’s why I asked you out.” 

   “Is that true?” I ask in amazement. 

   “Pardon me?” I say and gently touch your arm. 

   “I’m wasting my youth on drugs, cops and robbers.  Just wasting all my energy with this shit, when I should be out being another Marco Polo, but I’m stuck in this damn provincial town with its damn provincial attitudes.”  You storm towards the car. I call after you. 

   “You’re the one who wanted to go to the symphony, so you must be provincial too.” 

   “You’re fucking right!” you say then stop when you notice I still stand by the edge of the mountain.  The late November night breeze is cold and I shiver, stuff my pockets into my English fireman’s jacket. “I liked going to the symphony with you, Keith.” 

   “What?” you say. 

   “I liked it,” I repeat smugly and saunter towards you.  “I thought it was a grand idea for a first date.  Absolutely marvelous.  Cultural, not provincial.”  I stand next to you.   

   “And this is great too, to be up here with you, a little marihuana, a native guide for my grand tour of Vancouver.” 

   You laugh and we hug.  “This is the wildest it gets in this town, I’m afraid,” you say.  “Must be pretty boring after Chicago, eh Zola?”