6 Dreams of Travel and Love

                                                                    Isle of Skye, Scotland


If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

– Marcel Proust

Ousted from the Army in June of 1963, I found work at once in the shipping department of Fairfax Bakery in the West End of Winnipeg. Since Winnipeg busses stopped circulating at two in the morning, I was able to take this job only because I owned a car, the very one I'd shared with my friend John in the Army. I'd paid him for his share of it on leaving Shilo.  It turned out that my hours of work in the bakery were seven in the evening to half past three in the morning, ideal for my purpose, since I wouldn't be free in the evenings to spend what money I made.

Fairfax supplied bread, cakes and buns to all the Safeway supermarkets in Manitoba, so that we four shippers had to stack all the orders on trays during the night and load them onto two semi-trailers for delivery to their different destinations in the morning. One of the four was a fellow called Bob from Liverpool, who talked to me a lot about England when he learned of my plan to travel there. Another, Bill, a tall, thin, grey-haired middle-aged man with spectacles, had a strange taste for plain lettuce sandwiches sprinkled with salt, I remember.

The third of the crew was a short affable man with a thick German accent. The other two called him 'Horsy' and ribbed him something terrible, but otherwise took no interest in him. I was too young or too innocent or just too sensitive to take part in any ribbing that I would not want to be visited upon myself. Also, I wanted to gain Horsy's confidence, as I was curious about his past, which I once asked him about. His proper name was Horst, he said, and he claimed to have served in the Wehrmat on the Russian front during World War II, where he had seen, so he said, the lights of Moscow at night.

In those days it was said that everyone remembered exactly where he was and what he was doing at the time when the news of President Kennedy's assassination broke on the night of the 22nd of November 1963. In my case, I was down on my knees in my 'whites' and paper wedge cap packing loaves of bread – Pollyanna, seven for a dollar, on special – into a bakery tray when Bill came racing in from the lunchroom with news of the inconceivable announcement he'd just heard on the radio.



After work, I sometimes headed downtown to get a bite to eat at a café before going home to bed. The only cafés open all night were the Salisbury Houses, a chain of eateries native to the city, so that I was munching a hamburger in the one down on Main Street one night when a middle-aged man came into the place and sat down at my table. Following some small talk he invited me to his hotel room. What did he want? I wondered gullibly. To sell me something? He didn’t look much like a salesman, as his clothing was somewhat dishevelled, and I could imagine the hotel he lodged at – possibly the St. Regis, a nearby doss-house frequented by indigent Winnipegers.

“What for?” I asked, flushing with embarrassment.

“I like to blow a little,” he answered casually.

Blow a little?... blow what?... bubbles?...

Then the penny dropped. My tablemate was a queer!

But what was he doing here – at my table? In those days the question of homosexuality was everywhere suppressed. The idea was either amusing or disgusting. Were there really men that were attracted to other men? Apparently there were, it was whispered and sniggered here and there, but surely they belonged to some secret brotherhood or something, with their own gathering places. I never dreamed for a minute they might frequent bars and cafés in quest of sexual favours just like the rest of us! 

Fortunately I'd finished my burger.

“I’ve got to go,” I babbled, jumping up from the table.

I vacated the place in a daze and rushed up Main Street head down to my car, hoping the homo wasn’t dogging my steps. Swerving from the curb, a burst of frenzied laughter escaped my lips, for I felt I’d just eluded some unutterable peril!



Main Street, Winnipeg, 1962


As my job at Fairfax was an easy one, free from problems or pressure, and as I was able to gad about town in my Chevrolet with a pretty girl at my side, I was quite happy with my lot - despite my lack of any 'career' - so that my dream of visiting Europe began to fade. In fact I'd stored that adventure safely in the future where it wouldn't ruffle my present life.

Yes, I was happy, but not completely, for gallivanting about town offered no prospect of - ah - consummating the relationship with Suzanne, although I had made the effort to - er - equip myself for the blissful union, since those were the days before the advent of 'the pill'.  But that episode had proved to be a bit ticklish, despite my attempt to minimise my embarrassment at having to buy the items I required from a pharmacist who would know precisely what I wanted them for! 

To be sure, I'd done my utmost to soften the awkwardness of the affair by selecting for the scene of its execution a fairly isolated drugstore just as night was falling and choosing a moment when I saw that the place was empty. Summoning the tiny particle of pluck I could muster in those days, I thrust open the door to an ear-piercing jingle that I imagined got half the people of the street dashing to their windows. Then I stepped into the fluorescently lit interior and tiptoed gingerly to the counter.

Silence...

Then a woman emerged  from an adjoining room.

A woman! I was not expecting a woman!  I was expecting a man! Most people who worked anywhere in those days were men.

"Ah, a five-cent stamp, please," I jabbered.

After that encounter, I decided to suffer a lesser indignity, and ask my friend, Willard, who seemed rather more adept in matters of sex, to get a packet for me.

Now all I needed was an opportunity to use the contents. That came one day when my parents were out shopping. Suzanne was not easily persuaded to grant my request, for in those days sexual freedom was frowned upon, but in the end she consented, and I led her upstairs to the bedroom I shared with my brother. 

I sat her down on my bed and then sat beside her, almost trembling with anticipation, for at last I was soon to realise every young man's dream: to undress a pretty girl and smother her naked body with kisses. But how was a clumsy lad to accomplish such a delicate task?

Luckily I'd been given some tips when I'd gone to watch a film starring Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood. I think it was 'The Longest Day', but anyway Robert had begun by taking Natalie in his arms and kissing her. At that point she was already down to her brassier, but never mind. Then he released her and she swung about and came running past the camera with arms spread wide, her bra straps dangling either side. Dam if Robert hadn't undone the thing while he was kissing her! Unfortunately, what happened next, we didn't see. He just looked up with a sort of knowing smile on his face and followed her as the scene faded.

Okay, I would give it a go. I removed Suzanne's shoes first and then, encircling her arms with mine, I kissed her. While I was doing so, I felt for and found the zip of her shift with my right hand and tugged... 

But the damned thing wouldn't come down, so I grasped the neck of the dress with my left hand and held it up while I yanked the zip down with my right. Now I withdrew a little and, trembling with excitement, drew the material down from her smooth shoulders. Then, releasing her arms from the sleeves, I settled her back on the bed and asked her to raise her body while I drew off her dress.

How tempting she looked just lying there in nothing but her undies. I kissed her once more to put her at ease, and then I raised her up to a sitting position to follow the scene in the film. We embraced again while I felt for her bra strap. I fumbled with it and tugged it this way, and tugged it that way, and tugged it up, and tugged it down, and tugged it inside-out, but the damned thing would not come undone! I just couldn't understand how Robert Wagner had managed the task so adeptly. Had he been practising with his mother's washing? He'd done it so calmly too, while here was I in a fever of anticipation.

At that point I was forced to stop the kissing.

'Can you undo it?' I asked.

She undid it. With a sigh, I uncovered her tender girl's breasts and rosebud nipples. Then I settled her back on the bed and drew down her panties.

And then I was just seized by the flames of passion. God knows what Robert Wagner would have thought of me now, for I was no longer able to maintain his smooth assurance! While he seemed a man remarkably calm, confident and self-composed, I was trembling with excitement. Shame on me! Why couldn't I act as impassively as Wagner? A stack of Hollywood films couldn't help me now. I was a lad lost in the landscape of a girl's body and dizzy with the scenes he beheld there!

True, I new what to do now well enough. That was the stuff of many a smutty joke. But the actual mechanics of the matter were as mysterious to me as a Japanese tea ceremony. More, the task of removing my own clothing proved to be such a complicating distraction that it acted as a brake on my passion and stole from me the capacity actually to unite with Suzanne. In short, my first attempt at genuine lovemaking turned out to be a disaster, just as my first attempt at kissing had been. 

Why?

Well, the hypocrisy of the age with regard to sexual questions was partly to blame. At school, girls were taut elementary facts about childbearing, to persuade them, I suppose, to avoid giving birth to unwanted babies. But boys were taught nothing at all about sex or childbearing. They blundered into their first sexual experiences with less preparation than a turkey cock. 

But still, most seemed to manage more successfully  than me.

Again, why?

My suspicion is that I was fundamentally frightened of females. Of course the first female you experience in life, and the one who has the greatest power over you for a long time, is your mother. I think it was my experience of her that caused me to believe unconsciously that females were creatures to be feared. 

I record my feelings about her in a later post, but for now I confine my remarks to her reaction when she uncovered a packet of safes in my bedroom.

“Who are you using these on?” she demanded. 

'On'. Note the word, with its subtle suggestion of victimisation.  It was a mark of my emotional dependence at the time that I felt obliged to answer that impudent question.

“Nobody,” I said anxiously. “I bought them just in case.” In case of what, I didn’t say.

“I hope you’re not using them on Suzanne,” she warned. 

“No, I’m not!” I lied.

She wasn’t convinced, and I had to swear blind that not only had I not used them with Suzanne, but that I had no intention of doing so. God! What rot you had to talk in those days of decomposing Victorian morality.

“Well, you better not have,” she warned.

At the time, I took that merely as a thoughtless form of words to convey her annoyance at what she suspected was ‘loose behaviour’. Not till two years later did the full import of that warning dawn on me.

Anyway, let all of that rest for now. I continue where I left off before this diversion to the subject of a flawed sexual development. I was expressing content with my new girlfriend, and how, as a result, I had put on 'hold' for the moment my plan to visit Europe. However, that plan came zooming back into focus one day when Suzanne told me that her father was to be posted to a Canadian Army base in Germany after the turn of the year. 

Naturally I was shattered to hear that, for it would mean the end of our relationship. Or would it? My dream of seeing Europe suddenly seized me again.  I told her I would visit her in Germany, without much idea of how difficult that might prove to be and what would happen after that.

Now, my acceptance of work in a bakery might suggest that I'd made an easy return to Civvy Street, but time soon proved that the lures of soldierly life were not yet quite dead in my head, for in the autumn I applied to join the Provost militia regiment at McGregor Armouries in North Winnipeg. I was convinced that the C.O. there would be pleased to profit from my soldierly skills. After all, hadn't I had nine months training in the regular army? How many militiamen could boast that? However, when the colonel finally fingered my army course reports (which we dismissed officer cadets had been assured were confidential) he refused to receive me into the regiment.

It was just before this time, while I was with, but not yet officially in, the Provost militia regiment, that I met an old friend called Sandy McClain, a militiaman too, during a rest stop on the way to a Winnipeg militia exercise at Camp Shilo, the scene of my recent regular army misadventure. We had never been close friends, McClain and I, but strangely enough our acquaintanceship was notable as being the longest of my life at that time, for we'd first met in kindergarten. He had a dead-end job at Canada Packers in Winnipeg, he told me, and I was astonished to learn that he, too, had an ambition to visit Europe. Like me, he had relatives in England. We agreed then and there - somewhere by the side of Highway 1 - to make the trip together, and keep in touch to formulate plans.

But he had some odd ideas. At one of these meetings he told me he was going ‘beat’ to Europe.

“Beat? What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know, Bermuda shorts and sweatshirt and all that.”

That ridiculous species of garb was the latest American craze to sweep over the border into Canada, but I lacked the least impulse to join the great American herd. And in any case I’d only lately discarded a uniform as a daily form of dress. Besides, males with bare knees offended my working class instincts. It was effeminate to display your knees. Anyway, I didn’t want to be ‘beat’. I didn’t want to be anything. I just wanted to feel the pulse of life rising inside me again.

“Well, I’m not going beat,” I said. “I’m just going.”

I hoped my frosty response would deter him, for I refused to be seen on an airplane with a fellow beside me displaying his bare knees. But in spite of differences of taste, our idea of an adventure in Europe evolved. We would fly to England and take jobs there to sustain a 'working holiday' of about a year, and then depart for a hitch-hiking tour of 'the Continent', as the greater part of Europe was called in those days, before flying triumphantly back to Canada.

It was a grand plan, but it is a question whether I would ever have taken a single step towards its enactment if my girlfriend's father had not been posted to Germany. And so it was that in January I drove down to the Canadian National Railway station on Main Street to say goodbye to Suzanne before she boarded the train that would steal her away from me.

And the next thing I knew, she was gone.



Canadian National Railway, Manitoba


I remember that Main Street looked uncommonly blurred in my windscreen as I pulled away from the station and headed for home. I like to think that what happened next was an example of what the great psychologist Carl Yung called 'synchronicity', for just then the radio in my car seized my spirit with the words and music of Roy Orbison's lovely song, 'Crying'.

'Then you said "so long".

Left me standing all alone,

Alone and Crying...'

These were emphatically not crocodile tears, but nevertheless honesty compels me to admit that they maybe contained just a tiny reptilian tint, for one evening just a week or two later I was seated at the wheel of my car, facing the screen of a drive-in movie, beside Judy Taylor, a girl I once took to a school dance, but never summoned the nerve to kiss. 

You see, I had planned to use Suzanne’s absence to sample, as it were, a different girl or two, for I hoped to learn by that means whether or not Suzanne was the ‘right’ girl for me. Sadly I knew no other girls, apart from Judy, so I asked her out, wondering, after the passage of several years, if she was still capable of casting the same old spell. And what would she do, I mused, now that I did have the nerve to kiss her?

Now she was seated close beside me, smartly dressed and neatly coiffured and lipsticked for the occasion. You know what? I felt quite indifferent to her! It seemed the magic that had dizzied my head in high school had just vanished in Suzanne’s wake. I failed to perceive even a trace of the feminine form I had formerly adored. You could not say she was plain. No. Far from it. But the beauty was mostly on the surface, so to speak, a careful product of make-up.

Also, she was not at all given to talk, not at all sociable, and when I tried to slip my arm around her shoulders. she pushed it away! Why in heaven's name join a fellow in a car for the evening only to reject his attentions? Just accepting such an invitation surely meant consent at least to a little kissing and cuddling? Maybe I was not fated to kiss those sainted lips after all. 

But I was wrong about that. She consented to a kiss – to several kisses even – to as many kisses as I liked in fact – but rigidly resisted any embrace. This really was kissing like kids, but my protests about that fell on deaf ears. She was determined, she said, to avoid what she called ‘consequences’, and constantly kept me at bay. It was like spending the evening with a painted doll. I never asked her out again.

My feelings for Suzanne grew and glowed warmer as winter turned into spring, and the expression of her feelings for me in her letters fuelled my fancy about our coming reunion in Germany, for I'd bought an airline ticket to fly to London in May.

‘I just can’t believe we’ll be together in just 13 days,’ she wrote in her last letter to me on the second of May. ‘All my love,’ the closing read, ‘as much as an 18 year old female is capable of.’ That confession of feeling was followed by no less than twenty-three printed kisses!  How many times after that in my waking dreams did we embrace once more – swirled in mists of distant lands! Far from thrusting my arm from her shoulders, she would nestle instead against my breast and gaze wistfully into my grateful face.

Oh, you impassioned, romantic, deluded fool!

By that time, I had got a passport for the journey and on Saturday, 9th May 1964, McClain and I flew to London.








No comments:

Post a Comment