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October 19th, 1984

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f a bizarre guy

ind you. | always could tell if he was
peaking a heart-felt truth, but was
nsure if any of these random state-

ents were psychologically revealing.
- Once he showed me a postcard with
‘Having a miserable life, wish it was

urs’’ scrawled on the back. Another
ime, he told me that sometimes when
e@ was alone and it was quiet, he
uld break the silence to say:

“I’ve got to stop talking to myself.’’

He claimed to have been born too

te for his proper era.

“‘The Upper Paleolithic. Those were
he good old days. A time of prehistor-
ic prosperity. Lots to eat, and cave art

as the big fad for 8,000 years. That’s

b security.’’

My knowledge of his past was
imited. | couldn’t pin his hometown

wn to any less of a general area than
‘the eastern half of the west‘’, a cold
lat land. He seemed disappointed in

ancouver’s meager annual snowfall.

He told me he had been a satanist
nd a neo-fascist gun nut, both in
rade 8. He once told me about a kid
amed Jeff in his grade 3 class, who
rank Lepage’s glue.

His father told me that the reason he
ad bought smoke detectors was

ause once he had caught 15 year
Id Joe smelting lead in his room at
hree o’clock in the morning. | didn’t

k for details. Joe also told me he had

plied to the CIA, but that they didn’t
eem to need any more junior second-
ry school students at the time.

casionally he would draw an imag-
nary gun (either a .45 automatic or an

Israeli assault rifle), and stalk pedes-
trians. He said he was keeping in
shape in case they needed him.

Joe’s room was an abomination unto
the Lord. Papers, open books, and
plaster figurines of owls were piled all
over every flat surface. Only a thin
patch of carpet led from his bed to the
door and to the walk-in closet. This
very closet, in strong contrast, was
immaculate.

Over sevén years of back issues of
Rolling Stone were filed in order. Five
hundred records were alphabetically

arranged. Four empty beer cases held,

several thousand index cards. All
albums, artists, and songs were cross-
referenced. He told me it had taken

two months to complete, but that he

never used it. It was just something to
do, like his fondness for cost account-
ing.

When | asked him about the
difference in orderliness, he proved he
knew where everything was. Despite
the mess, he could locate anything
quickly, often using the Carbon. 14
method to date a particular level of
clutter. His whole room was arranged
in some obscure master pattern |
couldn’t grasp.

Freud could have spent months
studying the posters that lined three
walls. Donald Duck was above the bed,
next to the coolest picture of Bogart |
have ever seen. Alfred Hitchcock was
beside that, and above all three was a
print of Picasso’s Guernica. Across the
room Groucho, Chico (‘‘pronounced
Chick-0’’), and Harpo were flanked by

two Star Trek posters, remnants from.

an earlier life as a trekkie. He assured
me he was ‘‘all better now.’’ On the
other wall there was only one poster:
Salvador Dali’s Skull of Zarabon. It
was placed so that the hidden skull
could only be seen from the bed. ‘‘It
gives me something to think about
before | go to sleep,’’ he said, while

refusing to further
comment.

When Joe and | went out to eat after
evening rehearsals, we always went to
the same Italian restaurant.

“‘| haven’t had a lasagna all week,
and here it is, already Monday.’’ With
subtle hints like this Joe would
indicate where he wanted to eat. He
claimed to like the food, but | knew the
real reason why he liked to go there.
When you placed your order at the
counter, the cashier would ask for your
name so that when they called you up,
it would have a personal ring. Joe
thought this was tacky, and always

make any

‘adopted a pseudonym.

‘‘My name is Bond. James Bond.’’
or ‘‘Euripedes, same as the famous
classical Greek playwrite,’’ or my
personal favorite: ‘‘Zeus. No last
name, just Zeus.’

While splitting a pizza one day, he
proposed we open a restaurant in an
as-yet-untapped market: a dinner
lounge for single-celled animals, to be
called Amoeba’s Tonight. | dissuaded
him by pointing out that the average
paramecium doesn’t have a lot of:
spare cash after paying the rent.

Soon after this conversation, the
semester ended, and Joe’s family
moved to Botswana. The last thing |
ever received from him was a Christ-
mas card. He must have had access to
a good darkroom, because he made the
card himself. On the cover was a photo
of himself, overlaid with a dotted
pattern that made the picture resem-
ble a blow-up newspaper photo. The
shot was black and white, except for
the large bow tie he was wearing,
which was dyed bright orange. Across
the bottom, in lower case lettering was
the message: ‘‘merry christmas from
me’’.

| opened the card, and written inside
it was the following note: ‘‘glxet blxto
splud gsoyylfy argtop vlimmex.’’

GRAPHIX BY DWAYNE

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