Thanks to Valerie, I have two of my cartoons published in Furniture & Furnishings magazine.
While in Toronto, I contact various record companies again to see if I can garner any interest in my songs. Now, however, I grow so discouraged with not being able to do anything with my songs that I finally give up.
During this time, while I was away in Toronto [and unbeknownst to me], Mum decided to sell, give away, or get rid of not only my LP and 45rpm record collections [of unknown value], but also my Marvel comics collection [remember that?] which was worth approximately $250,000 by today's collecting standards. And I just read lately that the comic Amazing Fantasy #15 with the first appearance of Spider-Man [which I had] sold for over $3 million!
Valerie gets me a job in a small aluminum chair production factory run by her ex-husband.
A couple of memories I have from this place:
■ I was using a forklift to carry a bundle of pipes to another area. In my nervousness, I got confused about the pedal—to give it gas, you ease the pedal out; to reduce the amount of gas, push it in. After putting the forklift into reverse, I accidentally let the pedal out fast. The vehicle jerked backwards, and the whole bundle of pipes flew off the forklift blades and crashed to the floor, all of them bouncing and tumbling all over the place.
■ The tiny bathroom was filthy. Not with dirt or poop, but with smears of grease and oil—along with various graffiti—all over the walls, the sink, and the toilet.
Since the apartment is on the penthouse [12th] floor, it often gets quite hot inside the living-room, and many’s the time we close the window because the breeze blows the rank smell from the garbage bins on the main floor up the side of the building and into the apartment.
I come home from work one day, open the closet door to get some fresh sheets for the bed, and the corpse of Valerie’s cat tumbles out.
Apparently, it must have jumped in there the night before and had somehow smothered between the blankets.
I don’t really know what to do with it, so I put the stiff body of the cat into a pillowcase and send it thump-thump-thumping down the garbage chute. When she returns home and learns what happened, Valerie is not a happy woman.
Despite how much I love Valerie, nevertheless I feel very awkward living with her in her ex’s apartment and working for him as well.
Not only that, despite Valerie's love, support, and encouragement, I still feel extremely inadequate as a person especially since she has a job and I don’t.
Consequently, one day when she’s at work, I leave her an apologetic note and then I catch a Greyhound bus to Calgary.
A short while later, when the bus stops for a rest break in Barrie, Valerie pulls up in her car and begs me to return with her.
Hoping things will be better for us both, I do.
Nevertheless, a week later, still struggling with my fears and insecurities, I leave on the bus again.
This time, Valerie doesn't come after me.
I learned a good twenty-odd years after the fact that Valerie died in 1990. I haven’t yet found out the cause.
During this time, Valerie wrote Is It You or Is It Me? After reading the words to this again so many years later, I can see that she had a lot of [unspoken] insight into my personality and character.
AUGUST
I return to my parents’ new place in Calgary.
Residence:
9a Street NE
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Inspired by the title of another Robert A Heinlein book, I write and compose the song, Glory Road.
Inspired by Marvel Comics' Sgt Fury & the Howling Commandos, I write an action-adventure novella called The Female Commandoes in which I write some rather lurid sex scenes. Somehow, mum manages to find a copy. She reads it and the explicitness shocks her. She can’t believe I could write such things. As a result, I don't get any encouragement as a writer from either of my parents.
Although I no longer have the original manuscript, I did later write a movie script based on the same idea. I called it, Amazon Squad.
SEPTEMBER
I find work as a shipper-receiver in the warehouse of Treck Photographic.
I enjoyed my time working there but got annoyed several times because the front desk never ordered enough 35mm film stock to fill photographers’ back-orders as well as enough for the new orders that came in. Consequently, new orders always become one- to two-week back-orders.
During the time I'm there, I meet a woman next door at Phoenix Press, and she inspires me to write the song, Anneke.
One day, once we get to know each other, Anneke gives me a Danish pornographic magazine called Color Climax.
Sexually excited by the explicit contents of this periodical, I send away to Denmark for further issues.
After the first one arrives and it more than meets my expectations, I feel confident enough to order another.
A couple of weeks later, I’m asked to come down to Canada Customs where the clerk confiscates the incoming booklet because ‘Canadian pornography laws won’t allow them in the country’.
Yet, somehow, the first one I ordered managed to make it through the postal system without any problems.
Exasperated at the laws, embarrassed by having the clerk flip through the explicit pages, and the fact that I wasted money on the magazine [and secretly believing the clerk will 'confiscate' it for himself], I don’t bother ordering anything else.
6 DECEMBER
Thursday
I appear as the 'Young Man' in the Factory Theatre West production of The Trial.
From the Friday, December 7th review by Jamie Portman
I befriend Debby, an actress in The Kidnappers play in which she performed the same night.
With me in the cast of The Trial is the young woman named Enid, whom I haven't seen for about two years. She originally auditioned for ‘The Silver Virgin’ singing group that Mary Ann and I tried to form.
Enid takes me to see several of her ‘Jesus People’ Christian roommates [DeDe, Sheryl, Ingrid, and Sandi], and their spirituality inspires me to write and compose Keep Your Eyes on Jesus .
A few days later, when I sing and play it for them, they can’t believe that I was able to write a song like that when I’m not even a Christian.
One night, when I go to visit them, only Ingrid is in the apartment. After we chat for a while, she suddenly asks me if I would fondle and squeeze her breasts. Although I more than gladly acquiesce to the invitation, I find her request a little difficult to comprehend since she's a Christian and, apparently from what I’ve heard and read, Christians aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. This causes still more confusion for me.
23 DECEMBER
Sunday
In a service at the Full Gospel Church downtown, the youth pastor, 'Buster' Kennedy, abruptly comes down from behind the pulpit, lays his hand on my shoulder, and prays for me. I find it rather odd that he would do such a thing.
When I leave the church after the service, I suddenly experience an emptiness, a hollowness, a virtual void where my heart should be.
At a get-together afterwards, Enid asks me what's wrong with me since I don’t look very happy. I tell her how I feel, and she responds that I need to fill the emptiness with Jesus.
Consequently, following her helpful instructions, I pray and ask Jesus Christ to fill my heart and my life.
I become a Christian.
26 DECEMBER
Wednesday
During a Boxing Day service at Immanuel Church, pastor John Lucas asks those who would like to have more of what God has to offer to come forward.
I decide I would like that, and then I suddenly feel a gentle hand on my back pushing me out of the pew and up to the front of the church. I look quickly back and see no one behind me. Since I was sitting alone, there wasn’t anybody physically around me who could have nudged me like that.
Nevertheless, I let the pastor pray for me.
A moment later, I feel a surge of energy flood my body from my head to my feet and I begin speaking in tongues as I experience the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
Following this, the pastor baptizes me in water.
After my baptisms, I and my new Christian friends often attended services at both the Full Gospel and Immanuel churches—Full Gospel on Sunday mornings for the preaching and teaching by pastor Frank Kosick, and Immanuel Church on Sunday nights for the singing and dancing in the Spirit.
Pastor Frank Kosick
When I arrive home and tell dad and mum that I've accepted Christ into my heart, they're very happy to hear the news. However, since they’re Baptists, they're not pleased to hear that I’m going to a church aligned with the Pentecostal denomination—that's just too ‘emotional’ for them. So, it seems, Christian or non-Christian, I still feel like I’m the 'black sheep' of the family.
