Disappearing Dave

Many moons ago, Dave, Dave and Bob shared an apartment in the Glebe. My friend D was dating one of the Daves, and it was through this connection that I met the other Dave.

We had quite a few adventures during the month we dated, because weirdness seemed to follow Dave around. For example, we went fishing in Brown’s Inlet in the middle of the night one night and saw a body floating in the water. However it was dark and the body disappeared and we weren’t positive, so we didn’t report it. (The next day we heard on the news that a body had been recovered from Browns Inlet.)

Another time we took Dave’s guitar and a coconut head from my place down to Irene’s Pub, and Dave propped the head on the table and played the guitar and sang – both quite badly – until the bartender made him stop. We were then approached by an Aboriginal elder who spoke (and smoked!) through a tube in his throat. He had the freakiest, spookiest mechanical voice.

He asked us where the head had come from. I said I bought it for a quarter at a garage sale on Irving Avenue. He gravely informed us it was originally from a native burial ground and it would bring bad luck to whomever possessed it or touched it, until it was returned. He said three deaths would occur if this did not happen.

Maybe if his voice had been normal it wouldn’t have freaked us out so much, but that spooky voice sounded so ominous that we believed him. We took the head and the guitar and headed out onto Bank Street. Moments later we passed a woman on the street who gasped when she saw the head, and then our eyes locked and she looked petrified.

That did it. The head had to be returned to its sacred burial ground posthaste! But first I had to find out where its sacred burial ground was.

The very next morning I started making phone calls. Eventually I was put in touch with a curator of aboriginal artifacts at the Museum of Civilization. He asked us to bring the head in, which we did.

He tried to maintain his professional demeanor as he told us the head was a decorated coconut from Hawaii, sold as a cheap tourist souvenir.

Dave attracted weirdness because he emitted weird vibes of his own. Half the time I had no idea what he was talking about. He’d chatter incessantly about stuff that made sense only to him, punctuating his monologues frequently with “You know what I mean?” or “You see what I’m getting at?” And I would nod, even though I had no clue. (In retrospect, I think he probably had an untreated mental illness.)

Just one month after we started dating, Dave suddenly vanished, without warning or explanation. He resurfaced a few months later and explained that the reason he had disappeared was that he couldn’t handle my son’s incessant chatter. (James was five years old at the time, and he did talk a lot. But at least he was interesting and I could always follow what he was saying!)

It’s been over twenty years since that month-long relationship ended, but I still hear from Disappearing Dave once in a weird while.