Roy, Leonard Cohen, Meph and the Hat-Check Girl

I wrote this last week, but am only posting it today because I was waiting for permission from Meph to quote his email message.

Today I had the pleasure of sharing lunch with Roy at the Lord Elgin Hotel. (Excellent restaurant, I recommend it highly.) Roy has packed a lot of life into his 84 years, both professionally and personally. He worked at least two and usually three jobs throughout most of his career, and is still only semi-retired. He was a journalist for much of his career, and a professor for a number of years. Coincidentally, the year I was born he was working as a communications officer for my current employer. Roy has written some plays, too, and a musical revue, and he started a union jazz band and a housing cooperative. He also raised five children, which is how I know him.

Today he told me stories about taking dates to the Standish Hotel back in the 1930s, and how the faucets in the washrooms were gold-plated. The expenses of a date were as follows: 40 cents for beers, a 10-cent tip for the hat-check girl*, a 10-cent tip for the server, and a 10-cent tip for the washroom attendant who held the towel.

We also talked about feminism, politicians in Canadian history, homosexuality, the pursuit of happiness and Roy’s five children. He’s a charming and talented man. We have our points of disagreement, but we’re both diplomatic about those (me because it doesn’t seem respectful to argue with the elderly, and him because it’s not gentlemanly to argue with a lady. We have very civilized disagreements, Roy and I).

I met Roy because I’ve been friends with his son for a long time. We were two of six people sharing a house on McLeod Street when I was in high school and Meph was in university. (Coincidentally I recently learned that our landlord at that house ended up serving time for throwing “a corrosive substance” on the exposed genitals of a man with whom his wife was having an affair. From what I understand, he became an artist in prison and got in touch with his more sensitive side. I don’t know what became of his wife’s lover’s more sensitive side.)

Anyway. Meph lives in a hot third world country most of the year, and is a writer. He makes an annual trek back home in July when the weather’s warm enough. (Being born Canadian was a cruel joke played on him by Mother Nature…he dresses in layers and shivers when the temperature dips below 80 Farenheit).

A few months ago I asked him in an email message what he thought of crack cocaine, as it appeared I was losing a friend to it. (As it turned out, I did lose that friend to crack. Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do or say, so you might as well just get out of the way.) At any rate, this is Meph’s crypic but interesting response to the question about crack:

it is my
understanding that while cocaine is not physically addictive (a medical fact
that has been collecting fungii) it is “psychologically addictive”, which
seems to be an awkward mixing of metephors (what is ‘mental health’, out of
it’s often insane social context, for eg) but then look at those people who
are glued to the slot machines, and also it gets some die-hardy’s to the
stage where they can continue drinking long after they would ‘normally’ have
passed out, which can lead to aberrant behaviours as well and which i can
personally attest is the real reason a couple of otherwise pretty hot bands
never made it out of the garage, and just as well it would seem)- but crack
has the reputation of being, for some, instantly habit forming to the
extreme in my personal experience i have seen a handful of people come
completely undone, and begin to behave in ways that i’d prefer to believe
they would not have been otherwise capable of pretty hard to kick, i’m
told, although i don’t really know anyone personally who’s gone through
that, or even considered trying and when someone like me doesn’t endorse
an altrernative perceptual experience, it’s probably something like one of
those astronaut training pods that make you throw up, or crack (no, that’s
bull, i’m prejudiced against painkillers, uppers, anything that changes you
linearly while leaving you intact laterally is a waste of time for me- i
find the atmosphere on your planet a little too dense, i suppose)

*Hat-check girls are so rarely mentioned nowadays…but whenever they are, I feel compelled to recite, if only in my head, Leonard Cohen’s poem And the Music Crept By Us:

I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance.

— Leonard Cohen