My Soul Mate

Today we are celebrating, in our own quiet way, 46 years of being a couple. I wondered what more could be said about my better half that 8 haven’t already said many times.

Also, why is it important for me to say anything at all?

Certainly, I’ve said it all before. Is it really 46 years? Time melts into routine and but at the same something new every day.

How long ago was it? When do we start the count? Clearly, I am wanting to acknowledge the 13 unwed years, but those faraway years are almost five decades. What did forget?

We met 50 years ago in the fall at an acting class at Capilano College. I was 17.

Our first date was 46 years ago on July 27, 1979. I remember the specific date because we went to at a Pere Ubu concert at Robson Square. We are fortunate that David Thomas deemed the board tape to be worthy after all these years for release. If you wish to relive the music, you can listen to it on Bandcamp. What kind of weirdo takes a girl to see Pere Ubu as a romantic date? This one.

how did I decide to invite her? I remember looking at my little black book, yes I had a little black book, and came to the M’s. I had never invited her on any kind of date before.

My normal first date move was to invite a girl to watch Annie Hall. Why the change from neurotic Jewish heart felt comedy to surrealistic music from Cleveland, with the bigger than life David Thomas, Mr. Pere Ubu.

They were named after Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry.

As S. Flannagan writes in Grunge:

“Jarry became one of the most influential artists of the French symbolist movement…. his writing, (includied) such strange novels as "Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician" and "The Supermale" are some of the strangest of all time, while his Ubu plays have been identified by literary critics as influential forerunners of the Theater of the Absurd, prefiguring the work of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco and both the Dadaist and Surrealist movements.”

But did I think that much in those days? Frankly, no. She was very attractive, and had a quiet ease about her. She was very funny, and of all the acting students, she was actually good.

Her name started with an M, right in the middle of the book. It was Fate, the unseen hands of the market. The Pere Ubu show went well, so she decided to come with me the very next day, the very next day on July 28, to see my band AKA perform at the Rock Against Prisons show at the Ukrainian Hall. I had forgotten all about that detail.

That show is well documented with video by Lenore Herb. If I remember, toward the end of the 6 band bill, things were getting ugly, as shows often did, with some bikers crashing the party. So we left. She lived at the time across the inlet in North Van in her Dad’s house. I gallantly accompanied her home, and she invited me to stay and share her bed. Actually it was her Dad’s big bed, as he was out of town. Which of course made it that much sexier.

We lived together for thirteen years before we married in 1992. She went to Art School, and I played music, working in restaurants and bakeries. She is so funny, creative, kind, inspiring—-and still, after 46 years, as beautiful and sexy as hell.

My first band AKA broke up in December of 1980, but got back together to open for Captain Beefheart in January 1981.

We also had broken up in 1979, as she thought I was too Intense. How she thought that, I don’t have a clue. I told her about a room coming up in our communal house, so with no strings, she moved into the room next to me.

I could say it was all part of my long strategic plan, but I was too dense and intense for that kind of logic. My goal was to open my senses like Rimbaud, and explore life, music, sex, drugs. Whatever. She took photos of me coming home on peyote one night.

But she as in the next room, so before you could say location location location, we eventually hooked up again, as the kids say, although that didn’t last long, as I fucked it up by going home with another girl to her apartment in the West End for two days. Everyone in the communal house quite rightly hated me. In January of 1980 we got back together, joking that we would stay together forever or until something better came along.

Nothing better came along.

We moved from the communal house to our own our little 3 bedroom firetrap house in East Van.

We only used one of the rooms as a bedroom. The middle bedroom had a hole in the ceiling that leaked. In the 3rd room, she kept her artwork.

We had many great times in that house. I have many stories about the fire trap it was, the oil heat and running out of the oil ( and heat) in winter, and the landlord Clayton and his son Warren, who came over and asked me for a coat hanger to test an electrical outlet.

Yes he did stick the coat hanger in the socket and ZAP! It did work after all.

Seriously. Clayton had about five houses in that block, and Lynn, one of our friends, found dynamite stored next to their heater in the crawl space. We only had stacks of newspapers next to our heater.

The landlord said, “Gosh, I had forgotten all about that dynamite.”

We had so many fun times in that house. I was playing with AKA and Michelle was going to art school.

In 1981, AKA broke up, and we added Scott Harding and Lee Kelsey to the Ashes and Hunters of AkA, to form Rhythm Mission.

In 1982, Michelle and I moved to the Manhattan Building in downtown Vancouver.

In 1983, I formed the Jazzmanian Devils.

She had many art shows. Our friends were artists and musicians. I worked at the Lazy Gourmet, and then Isadoras. Then Uprising Breads.

Here are some drawing my friend Heather did of me:

There are more for another time.

On July 4, 1992, we got married in her Dad’s backyard in White Rock, he had moved there after North Van. We called that house the White House. We laughed at the irony of being married on Independence Day ( as they call it in the land across the border. We enjoyed the fireworks on our wedding day (and night). We chose our own vows so it may have been the shortest ceremony on record. We made all the food ourselves, and there were probably 60 people-perhaps I exaggerate at the wedding-then more at the party in our apartment in the Manhattan.

Here is a photo from the pre wedding dinner

:I love the look on her face. She really looks like she loves me. And I was still crazy about her. Or just crazy.

This is our wedding day.

About 9 months later Michelle gave birth to our love child.

We moved to the White House in September of 2004, buying half the house from your Dad’s ex-wife. We took care of him while cancer did its best to take him from us. In the end, cancer won, as it often does, but your father was a brave man who carried himself with a strength of character and dignity until his last day.

The day before he died, I asked him the most stupid question, “How are you doing?”

To which he quickly replied, “ How the hell do you think I am doing? I’m dying here.”The next day, in the early morning hours, he left us.

Our daughter is now 31. She is the pearl of our love oyster. She has a new dog.

We’ve had 4 dogs over the last 20 years. Petey, Max, Toodles, and Maisy.

You have always been there for me. Through all the dogs, all the births and deaths, all of my health challenges. We still laugh and love each other. I am a better guy now than I have ever been. We survived my depressions and my drinking. I have never loved anyone the way I love you. One time, when we were very young, you said we had been lovers in a former life. Except I was the woman in that life.

Life has not always been easy.

But you have given me the best life that this lucky guy could ever have had or wanted.

You are my beautiful and beloved wife, my bewitching lover, my life partner.

My best friend.

My soul mate.

Happy Anniversary. One of them anyway.