Sometime during this year, I write Quest for the Silver Virgin, a science fiction musical.
SPRING
I move out on my own once again to an apartment block.
Residence:
North Park Terrace
4 Avenue NE
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Stan, a drummer I meet at a party, comes to my apartment, and persuades me to have sex with him. We have a bit of intimate fondling, but when it comes to any kind of penetration—and just as it happened with Matt at the bowling alley—I find it difficult to let Stan go ‘all the way’ with me. Although disappointed, he doesn’t pursue it any further. He leaves, and I will never see him again.
I go to see a re-release of The Christine Jorgensen Story, and I realize I can identify once again with so much of what s/he went through growing up. I leave the movie feeling that I really need to do something definite about my sexual identity. A few days later, I make an appointment with Dr Stewart Meikle at the Foothills Hospital’s new sex reassignment clinic. I have several appointments with him, and after a battery of tests and interviews, he believes I’m simply a ‘highly sensitive’ straight male because of my assorted creative interests.
Although his conclusions assuaged some of the confusion, I still had—and would continue to have—misgivings about my sexual identity.
SUMMER
I'm let go from my job at Mountain View Bowl because, according to Leigh, I appear to be ‘daydreaming’ too much.
But shortly, I find work in the laundry department at the Calgary General Hospital.
Occasionally, when I tend to daydream while sorting laundry, one of my co-workers throws dirty diapers at me.
During my time working in the laundry, I meet Yvonne, one of the women who work in the linen department.
In Yvonne’s basement suite just kitty-corner to the hospital, her mother—after having met me—privately asks her daughter if I’m gay because, apparently, a lot of my mannerisms are somewhat ‘effeminate’. Yvonne replies that she doesn’t think I am.
Looking back on those days, that might explain why several gay guys propositioned me, even though I didn’t even realize that I was acting ‘effeminate’ until Yvonne later told me.
She inspires me to write the songs Yvonne, and Where Have You Gone.
I later used her middle name, Carlinea, as the basis for the main character in my White Painted Woman novel, A Time to Be Born, a Time to Die.
While I’m working at the hospital, management moves me from sorting dirty laundry on the second floor to running the large washing machines on the first floor. The fellow I work with smokes a pipe. I think it smells so nice that I take up smoking one for a short time. After a few weeks, the fad eventually wears off.
FALL
One afternoon at Yvonne’s apartment, she asks me how many girlfriends I’ve had.
I tell her.
Then she asks how many of them I’ve had sex with.
After a moment’s pause, I tell her the truth —"None. I’m still a virgin…”
She gives me a startled look, and then she says, “Seriously? Oh, this is too good of an opportunity to pass up! Come on!”
She grabs me by the hand and pulls me into her bedroom.
A few minutes later, following her precise instructions and delicious ministrations, the loss of my virginity becomes a mind-blowing and beautiful experience for me, and more than I ever expected.
Yvonne and I continued our sexual relationship — with no real expectations from either of us — on and off for several months until early 1973.
After I do research from library books when I become interested in writing a book about Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, I send letters to a few of the places I know about that treat this anomaly:
■ Clarke Institute of Psychiatry
■ The University of Goteborg Psychiatric Research Centre
■ The Statens Seruminstitut Hormone Department
However, in their replies, they can only point me to other books and pamphlets.
After all that, I lost interest and this writing project never materialized.
I return to my interest in classical music, and devour the operas of Richard Wagner, particularly the Nibelungenlied trilogy.
I write and create storyboards for three short heroic fantasy screenplays—Daughter of Darkness, Sword of the Hunter, and Song of the Siren—all based on Greek mythology, and in the vein of the ‘Hercules’ movies I remember watching back in the mid-sixties.
Although I have photocopies of these screenplays, the originals might still be found in the pamphlet section of the W R Castell Library.
I get an opportunity to participate in another sexual threesome, this time with an Eleanor and her husband whom I meet while playing my guitar and singing at Calgary’s Memorial Park. After the evening of lovemaking at their apartment, she quietly tells me I am a better lover than her husband. I’m flattered but feel sorry for him. When I return home, somehow Mum manages to find out from me what happened.
I do recall, now, Mum really grilled me on my whereabouts the night before and why I didn’t come home. Eventually, I told her. She was shocked, to say the least. “Michael, that’s adultery!” She then went into a tirade of Biblical verses designed to show me the error of my ways.
Another woman I meet, Shannon—with whom I will also reconnect years later—will inspire me to write the song, Shannon.
WINTER
I write and compose a three-act musical fantasy called Island of Children .
After reading some of my older writings for the first time in many, many years, I can really see how much Stan Lee’s [Marvel Comics] storytelling and Shakespeare’s language influenced me. I have since rewritten them somewhat, revised the language, and published them.
As I continue to market my songs to record producers and publishers, I now use the pseudonym ‘Lord Michael Sheehan Wagner’.
The last name was influenced of course by my interest in Richard Wagner; the 'Lord' comes from an interest in swords'n'sorcery, and 'Sheehan' (pronounced 'Shawn') just a name I liked at the time
I have a one-night stand with Vicki who wants to have sex with the lights off because she’s embarrassed about the amount of hair on her body even though I tell her it doesn’t bother me.
NOVEMBER
I have a short sexual relationship with Sandy, a hypersexual woman [colloquially known as a ‘nymphomaniac’].
DECEMBER
I meet and have a short relationship with a woman named Elsie.
23 DECEMBER
Saturday
My sister marries.
Elsie and I attend the wedding.
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