As if, yeah, it’s gonna shut the fuck up. My mind, that is. I go to bed (finally!) at a decent hour, 2230 in fact! I’m nicely tired and figure sleep will come fairly quickly. Fat chance. The brain goes into overdrive and starts tearing down memory-fucking-lane! The past roars up and my mind grabs it and ricochets madly thru memories of decades ago. Well, I figure that I may as well write ‘em out. Be fair warned, tho’. I’m a-gonna name names here, so don’t get in to too much of a huff if’n y’all see yours mentioned here. And also, this might be a v-e-r-y long post. Probably, more like.
Where to start? Methinks it best to start with my girls, my sisters, my friends of long ago past. The Battison girls. Youngest to oldest – Sandy (Bean), Cathy (Boo), Donna (Duck), and Debby (omg, did she ever have a nickname?? sorry, love…). Four of the bestest gal friends a lonely kid like me could ever have. Oh hey, and they had a younger bro’ name of John, too. And the parents, of course. Betty and Bud. The coolest folks this side of the galaxy. My younger days sometimes had me wishing they was mine. Back to the girls. Again, I’ll go youngest to oldest, as each affected me in greater intensity.
Sandy. Bean. An absolute darling full of energy, piss & vinegar, as my Grandad usta say. She sometimes scared me with the amount of joi de vivre she would exude. It was amazing at times to watch the intensity that flowed from Sandy at times. I could never seem to grab hold of exactly who or what she was, or what she seemed to be. But I can tell ya, I loved to watch her! Just her smile lit up my space with a brilliance. Sandy. Bean. My youngest sister I never had.
Cathy. I never did find out where she got the nick “Boo”, nor any of the other girls (well, Donna “Duck” may be obvious). Cathy was an almost opposite of Sandy. Quite, but radiating a subtle, lord, sexiness about her. It was that smooth sleekness that sometimes gave me the willys. I couldn’t figure her out any more than I could Bean. Cathy had a voice of velvet and mannerisms that matched. Like I said, absolutely smooth. A darlin’, my Cathy.
Donna. Dark haired, subdued, and a truly gorgeous creature. No, hey, creature not in a bad way! Please… Donna had a power around her. One that said “I am. And I know who I am”. I think that Donna was the girl that I felt most at ease to be with, to talk to, to listen to. She made me smile and just be happy with life. A stabilizing force in the mad world I lived in way back when. The surety she displayed was a foreign thing to me, but one that I tried to feed on and integrate. Didn’t work, did it?
Debby. oo, wow, now I remember!! Her nickname was, get this, “Webbert”!! Ha, that just came to me out of the depths of my addled mind! Well now, Debby. Where to start? First, she was the first girl that I ever fell in love with. Mind you, that was probably lust, and not love. Still, to think of Debby causes the chest to ache just a bit (a lot??) somewheres in the region of the heart. She was a tall, slim, girl with long l-o-n-g pin straight blonde hair (dyed, but I sure didn’t care!). A supple body… ah, but goodness, I shan’t go into all that. Debby caught my heart (and I s’pose all those raging hormones) and never really let go. Ok, ok, I never really let go. C’mon, let a guy retain an old fantasy or two, will ya??!!
Those are my girls, women now, hm? I loved, no, love!, each of ‘em dearly. I had Debby as an actual girlfriend for a while there. I think. I do recollect a time where it was a prerequisite that if I was to “go” with Debby, I had to “go” with Cathy, also. Even now, I can’t figure out or remember how that went down, whether it actually was a deal made, or even if the arrangement was ever, errr, consummated, so to speak. Alls I can say, well, damn! having these two bang-on beautiful chicks as girlfriends? At the same time? Heaven, yeah, I musta been in heaven!
All four of ‘em came to my daughter Jenna’s first birthday. All of them! It made me think that, damn!, I must’ve made some sorta impact with those gals. I have a coupla pics of the four from that day. I should drag ‘em out someday, scan & post ‘em up here. When I think of that party, I don’t ever remember Bernie showing any sort of jealousy over it. Ah well, Bernie had me locked tight in love by then, anyhows. Mind you, when the girls were getting ready to leave that day, I recall Debby taking me into the basement of my parent’s house to say good-bye. I honestly don’t know why she did, but I do know that she tried to give me a hug and a kiss good-bye. I backed off, saying that I thought it best -for me, at least- to just say thanks for coming and leave it at that. I know that my heart was beating a crazy tattoo in my chest right then, mainly ’cause, yeah, I wanted to hold her, let alone kiss her. I guess lust does that to guys. Aw shit, it still does, to me. Randy fuck that I am.
Gawd, and all that brings up memories of kissing and holding and petting and all the other fun things a male teenager dreams of. Hm, I never ever did kiss Sandy in any kind of, sort of, what? deep sorta way. heh, I guess that was ’cause she was always attached in some way to Ralphie-boy alla time!! hoo, and that brings up a whole whack of new memories!! On again, off again, drama, even a marriage… Stop it, Robb!
Last I saw of the girls was not long after Bernie died, in ’92? They had actually heard of it thru a co-worker of Cathy’s (I think) who was my aunt by way of my step-mum. Small world. I was just off my painful relapse. I can’t remember how or why I ended up at the old Battison abode in Gatineau. Ten to one, I simply drove out there to try and capture something of the past, something of the wonderful goodness I always found there. I didn’t really care if the girls were home, I’da been happy to sit and talk to Betty and Bud. I think Sandy was the only one not there, that day.
pfft!! T’is time to leave my girls. I can blather on about how I met Debby first at a St. Al’s coffee house (and went “WOW!!), then met the rest of the Battison Clan. I could regale you with drug or drink fueled escapades and heartache. But, no. I tell ya, tho’, I would dearly love to see them again. Or even just to talk over the phone. No, I’d rather see ‘em, and let them see me. Time does things to people, and I’d really like to update my images of them. Yeah, and then again, I’d prolly just end up falling in love with one or all of ‘em, all over again. Yup, I ain’t changed all that much o’er the years, now have I??
Blip! And then we return to the remembers of The Cottage (never did get the Battisons up there, now did I? Shut up on them, Robb, ol’ boy!!). Weekends and vacations with my best bud Jay Roberts, the guy who turned himself and a gang against me in my last year of high school, making me flee school and home in terror. All ’cause I did dope and didn’t like to drink. Ah, but that just drags up a whole buncha new, and verra bad, reminders that need to lay back in their coffin. Man, Jay and I had some fantabulous times up there! The swimming and snorkeling, endless fishing, ah, and the girls that started to catch our attention in our early teens. Yum!! Great fun! Blip, again. The Cottage is gone now. Sadness, loss… let it go. I still have a great whack of mesmerizing reminisces to fly off to. But not here, not now. I got enuff rattling round as it is.
Blip! Bernie. And Bernie. And Bernie. Meeting her on Sparks Street Mall. Hooking up in Edmonton. Finding out she was preggers, and then she cuts out back to Ontario. Going to get her, bring her back, 3 kids, a marriage, the drugs and drugs, the drama……… No, too many there to repeat. Plus, her death, that particular night, still shivers me backbone, it does.
Amber gave me a pic in a frame for Xmas of Bernie and me, sitting on a couch after Jenna was born. Bern in pigtails and me with my long hair slicked back with Vaseline, of all things. I remember setting that shot up. Bernie looked like a fifties sock-hop chick, so I thought, yeah, let’s do it! I had to use the Vaseline ’cause my hair was wild and wouldn’t stay put with water. We were outa conditioner, so what was left? Hm, maybe veggie oil woulda been better because it took 4 or 5 washes to get the thick goop out. Ahhh, but it was a perfect image. Both of us looking cool and aloof. Bern looking off across me as I sat next to her on the left. I had on a pair of dark aviator rim sunglasses as my arm draped over her shoulder and I peer protectively down at her. It was a glorious moment in time!!
You see, my mind rambled thru all those multitude of thoughts and remember whens, picking out minute details until one would send me crashing off on another journey into the past. That is the scourge that I face whenever I am up against this sort of insomnia. And it goes on and on and on and on. Time without end. Amen.
I am hoping that by throwing a few of those memories down here I can purge them all and get some sleep. Shit, but silly me, as I sit here typing furiously away, I’ve been listening to early seventies rock like Humble Pie, Argent, Aerosmith, and Black Sabbath, at the moment. hehe, that really doesn’t help with a purge of the past, not with me. I’m trying to get off Memory Lane, and I bombard my eardrums with old-style rock and metal. Glad I didn’t put up some Alice Cooper or Uriah Heep! Gee, but I is such a silly laddie, aye? Doncha know…
Hope I didna bore you here. It was somewhat cathartic to write all that blah-dee-dah down, anyway. Regardless if it aids in going to sleep. Damn, but I tell ya, those Battison girls………….
Keep The Faith*