JOURNALJuly 13 I have always maintained that nostalgia is a form of depression. Sentimental journeys aren't for the likes of me. Maybe my past is too raddled with dark hauntings of demons lurking in the shadows. I have never talked about my past all that much. Not even to my closest friends.
Despite all that during my dark sojourn of gambling days in Vancouver recently I was compelled to return home to Saskatchewan. A place I hardly ever visit anymore. I yearned for it as though homesick. I really wanted to see my friends and family. Visit old haunts...
I have spent five years of my life at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College and the University of Regina. Five long years studying Journalism and Arts and Engish, (where they learned me goood).
I still wander the campus hallways, re-hash old bull sessions, listen in on lectures, re-live the terror of final exams, and re-visit my relationships in my dreams and nightmares, all still in my dreams all these years after.
Those five years have become so much part of me how could I not come back to visit?
Summer session is in so the campus is relatively quiet and serene compared to the fall frenzy of academic earnestness. And as I wander the hallways I remember where I took each class and when and by whom. I remember the Native Studies courses, the Native Art classes taught by Bob Boyer, The Religious Studies taught by Dr. Oh, Media by Professor Hay...
I remember when I knew or recognized every passing face in the hallways; when everyone knew me and waved hello; when I was President of the Native Student's Association. Little Big Man on Campus...I remember the days of sleep deprivation that bled into weeks...I remember the long lonely hours bent over writing tablets and surrounded by stacks of books...the computer labs...passing entire nights in the dark room and the video editing rooms... weeks and weeks when I never stepped a foot off the campus...
My mind is reeling. I feel naked without a heavy backpack and armload of books. I am looking for the cool dark comfort of the student union building and The Lazy Owl Pub, (old joke: "I Heard The Lazy Owl Call My Name") but it is not where I remember it to be. I am lost. New Hallways lead into buildings where there were none before.
This is the first time I have ever walked across this campus in complete anonymity. I don't know if I should feel sad about this.
July 14 I haven't been laid in so long...that I now qualify as a born again virgin. I am so horny I can almost taste my own nuts. And it tastes like chicken.
I remember the good ol' days when I could walk into the Plains Hotel bar, buy a girl a drink, take her home and boink her brains out, and in the morning buy her breakfast, exchange phone numbers and life was sweet. But not no more...
...and yet...I have given up on women. I am tired of all the kinds of women that I have been involved with in the last two years. Why can't I find a woman who doesn't want to own me or change me or discuss spice racks like Marilyn? Why can't I find a woman who is wishy-washy and insecure and one who doesnt' reject the love I have to offer like Julia? Why can't I find a woman who doesn't have a boy friend and impending marriage like Natalie? Why can't I find a woman who let me gamble and drink and fish and runabout the country? I am especially wary of white women. I will never date a white woman for as long as I live and breath.
What I want...what I really really want...
A beautiful intelligent Native woman who likes to discuss art and literature and enjoys travelling on a whim. (Marilyn came close but she rather enjoyed spice racks, and ironing clothes and romantic comedies all too much for my tastes. And one unforgivable sin of hating the music of Van Morrison)
I just want a woman who enjoys life. This is my goal for the rest of my stay in Saskatchewan.
July 15 Heather is the finest boink in the whole world and a might fine speciman of female anatomy too. And it only took me twenty years to find this out...
I first met Heather when she was thirteen...babe-a-licious even then...a real gone heartbreaker...but I was going out with Connie at the time although I remember thinking I should dump her for Heather. Later, I watched her develop into a beautiful young woman during highschool.
I didn't recognize her at first when she stopped me to say hello in the Scarth street mall. (how could I possibly forget such a gorgeous woman?) We had coffee and talked about highschool and university. We talked about sex. for hours...And Then...
I wish I boinked her back then, just to see out it compared to her love-making today, to see what tricks she had acquired over the years... but then again...
Well, so much for not dating white girls...BUT FROM THIS DAY FORWARD...
July 17 I walked through my old neighbourhood today. Met Bonnie when I walked into a Native Arts Store on Dewdney. She told me about all the latest happenings on the kids we knew during grade school. I remember Brent Murdoff had a crush on her. I remember I had a crush on her best friend Paulette, (who incidentally gave me the blue and red albums of the Beatles greatest hits after a long smooching session while she was baby-sitting).I remember Paulette and Bonnie were real gone heartbreakers.
Later, a woman came leaping out of a house on Garnet Street shouting my name. I didn't recognize her. She told me her name. It didn't help. She was insulted. She said we "went out" for a year. She said we worked together at Indian Affairs one summer and shared a class at University. I drew a blank. She walked back into the house furious. I still can't remember our alleged time together and I have already forgotten her name again. Darned shame too because she is kinda cute.
I think maybe we had dated a few times and she was more serious about it then I...oh to be young and foolish and perpetually horny again...
July 18 Saskatchewan is a very racist province. Perhaps even, the most racist in all of Canada. Racism is prevalent all over Canada, but here in Saskatchewan, it is naked and blatant and goes unchecked.
Here, in line-ups at the lottery kiosk, at the coffee shop, around the barbeque, you can still hear quaint little terms like: coon, nigger, spic, nitch, wagonburner, bullhonk, jewboy...ad nauseum...indian jokes, stupid pole and dumb ukranian jokes abound. Then, there are the fags and dykes...
It makes me all so sad to see and hear racism and prejudice thriving in my hometown. In B.C. it is expected, afterall, therein lies the hate capital of Canada and the Reform party...and Alberta is regarded as red-neck country, of term of which they are very proud. So, racism is to be expected there. But here, in Regina, my hometown, where multicultural community is steadily growing and where the largest populace of Native Students attend the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College, racism is alive and well.
Living in Saskatchewan with all this hatred is like visiting a cancerous aunt in the hospital. You love her too much to watch her waste away...
July 20 Out exploring the country side today. The wondrous smell of the prairies is overwhelming. The dusky smell of the alfalfa fields, the rancid odour of the farmer's sloughs and dug-outs, the loamy pitch of summer fallows, manure, ragweed, flax, canola, durum wheat, even the searing heat blanches a stench off the roads, a smell that is dry and gritty with gravel and tar.
the sounds and sights are just as numerous too...the most beautiful is the cry of the meadowlark amidst the rustle of the grasslands and quiet drone of insects gathering in the shade of grass blades under the hot summer sun.
But I can get carried away with it all...I have come looking for tumbleweeds and dried cowpies to mail away to distant friends. A huge tumbleweed for Andy Connors and a dried cowpie for Paul McKinnon.
I was going to send Toby a bucket of crickets to adopt but there are no crickets left in Saskatchewan...they have been eradicated...suffered great collateral damage...Jiminy Cricket is in that big theme park in the sky... he is no more...but then so are the gophers and prairie dogs and grasshoppers.
My quest for tumbleweeds is a train in vain...but only because it is too early in a wet summer. They are still alive as russian thistles and are huge hulking brutes from all the summer rain. I'm going to need a washing- machine box to mail one back to Victoria, British Columbia.
To be walking barefoot in the tall prairie grass is reward enough for the likes of me. Today hasn't been a complete loss.
further adventures...
Week Three
July 21-30
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