It might be a long boring
story but I think it might need to be told so here it is brace yourselves.
August 1976: I am 20 years old, homeless, freshly out of a
detox centre, more than likely highly bipolar but undiagnosed yet for another
25 years.
I spent May 1976 at Domremy in Ste-Genevieve…ended there not so much because I needed detox but more because I
needed a place to live. My dad did not
want me. My mum did not want me and my mom’s boyfriend at the time suggested
Domremy as his son had just been there so I applied and was accepted.
It was supposed to last 3 months but
it only lasted one month for reasons I have yet to really understand. Other ‘inmates’ had a proper psychologist
assigned to them as their counsellor, me and my usual ‘luck’ ended up with
nurse Radched, a RN named Monique Gravel.
Even though I kind of liked her, it
seems to me she took a profound dislike for yours truly, a bit a la nurse
Radched really.
She had read this tiny tiny little
comic book about people carrying a façade and all of a sudden she had become an
absolute expert in the dark recess of the minds, a professional psychologist in
12 pages with an honorary cartoon certificate.
I did have some good times though at
Domremy I have to say. I won the ping-pong A tournament, the badmindton B
tournament and I lost 35 lbs in 30 days eating gravy and ham all you can eat. That running around the compound and intense
ping pong training must have had something to do with it. I went from 225 lbs
down to 190. The trainer took a special
attention to check my pulse everyday as I ran 6 times around the place with a dreadful
look on his face that said not on my shift I hope.
So back to Radched here, and my
lifetime fear of group therapy to this day, one experience I vividly remember
is one of those therapies where Radched was in charge and she decided that my façade
was going to fall off today come hell or high water. So she lead the charge and they all took turn
battering my soul to the very core. I
hug my pillow in silence all along and
after the longest hour ever and only after the last one had left and closed the
door behind him, I wept the warmest bitterest tears of my life buried in my
pillow to muffle the sound of my bawling.
Why me? What the fuck have I done? What is happening here?
So long story short after a month of
this Radched sent my ass back home saying something like IIRC that I had become
too dependent on them. And again IIRC she kind of applied her own projection
and called ME manipulative
So here I am out in the world, got
myself a place with a mate from Domremy on Darling Street near Sherbrooke free
just before the Montreal Olympics.
Dumped the apartment in no time and
took off in a wild and dangerous adventure on a whim after hearing Supertramp’s
Dreamer. Hitched hiked 1400 miles with
one extra pair of underwear and one extra t-shirt for total baggage, nearly
died and cried and what not but wait am ahead of myself here
While I was on Darling I saw the
Olympic marathon running on Sherbrooke, The Montreal Olympic stadium was just a
few blocks away, and I used to visit this other girl from Domremy, I’d walked
through the Olympic parking and go see her for a couple of beer and a
chat. Once on my way there I met this 14
year old kid called Eric Wingender.
Stopping to bum a cigarette I got a three hours sermon instead and
somehow through a ‘series of unfortunate events’ which to my great dismay I
mistook for fortunate I ended up praying on the hood of a car becoming “born
again”. Let’s keep going with this story
while we’re at it.
Feeling somewhat elated I joined the
central Baptist church, one of the suggested choices of my new friend, and my
first sermon was on one of my fav books to this day, Ecclesiastes Chapter 12.
A very poetic passage in fact and one
that also mentions a SILVER CORD with which I was really impressed having just
finished a series of books by Lobsang Rampa speaking of astral bodies and
silver cords and all.
So here I am in my new life ready to
move in with friends on the condition that I quit smoking of course which is
primordial we all know in a good pharisaic life, that and booze have to go.
Trying to recollect all this in time
now I was quite familiar by then with “La Maison du Pere”, the only homeless
shelter I would trust and to whom I almost belong too, even though at the time
I was a bit of an illegal alien as one had to be 25 to be a legal proper
homeless hobo.
So when La maison du pere offered a $2
weekend somewhere with horse rides, board rides, bus fares and all I gladly
accepted.
That encounter in the parkink lot was
Thursday August the 21st, 1976 so that weekend must have been August
21st-22nd IIRC again.
So here is one of the stories I
remember vividly and a very interesting one at least to me, still not
completely understood to this day.
Here I am at 190 lbs I assume, 20
years old, had one girlfriend in my whole life so far and it was well over
with. Sitting on the bus, minding my own
business, and this girl got my attention as she was well errrrr right up my alley, dark hair, petite and that’s
about all I remember, faceless and nameless for ever … She stares at me and walks
to me and says your name is Leo Caissy. I am quite impressed so far, I would
have loved to think that I would certainly have remembered such a face but
apparently not. She says she was a
friend of Manon D., my first girlfriend and she met me once at another friend
of hers, called Claudette?, and she thought I was the cat’s meow, the kindest
man on earth, for loving and caring for
a pregnant 16 year old girl when I wasn’t even the father of the child. (Manon
and I went out together during her whole pregnancy, and I got dumped shortly
after the baby arrived mainly due to a drunken MIL who hated my guts
tremendously in her delirium tremens, we got back together shortly after that
but it didn’t last and this time I ended it, there is a pattern here btw)
So back to my bus ride, we get off the
bus and all the others go their way and all I remember is hours of being lost
in each other’s eyes but there was a hick.
It had been two years since we met and in the meanwhile, she feeling a
little low self-esteem (on the fact that she was a little flat chested
according to her) she picked up the first good man with a job that wanted her
and married him but if and if and if blah blah blah life could have been
absolutely awesome.
So at the end of a long day, we
exchanged phone numbers and parted. I
had quit smoking for 10 days by then. So I spent the longest 2-3 days of my
life in some sort of a gigantic dilemma and “spiritual” battle. I had been attracted to her first because of
that little brown wooden cross she was wearing or at least it sure was a good
conversation opener but to my mind she wasn’t Christian and moreover she was
definitely married. So my three days in
the desert even though there was no sweating of blood here there was actual
physical pain chest over the huge dilemma and temptation..
Having asked my new friends in vain
(Jean O. and Cie) I somehow thought that I had won this battle and came to the
very hard and I mean very hard decision that it was NOT going to happen and
that it was not right and I should tell her so too.
By the time we met I felt pretty proud
of myself and smug and let’s say it self-righteous too but I never had time to
show off like I planned because SHE TOLD ME.
She had been reproved by all of her friends, what are you doing talking
to this man all day, neglecting your husband, don’t you remember you ARE a
married woman and blah blah blah so she sent me away asking me never to contact
her again before I could say a single
word and I was absolutely floored and devastated.
Having prepared myself for a front
attack on my balls and lust and feeling proud for winning it I got hit in the
back right in my pride that took a huge hit and I said “well if that is how
cunning the devil is, Christianity is a little too much for me” and out the window it went and into my mouth
popped the next cigarette.
It does sound childish in hindsight
but back then it was extremely serious.
It was much more than lust too, so much more. In fact lust wasn’t really
in the mind, just a very silly romantic notion of love I had been carrying all
my life with me and that was much too often unreturned, unrequited.
So cig and tshirt and knickers in hand,
well the last two in a very small plastic Cojana bag, here I am 700 miles away
from home lost and crying, that story is written once or twice somewhere.
Finally got back home, we are now in
September 1976 or so and I got a new job and a new room to live in, in Ville St
Laurent. I lost that boring job at Trans
Canada Music in two weeks, wasting way too much time in the bathroom, having
too much time on my hands if you know what I mean. J
I had my room paid for 2 more weeks
but I had no money for food so since it was the same 50 cents that covered the
meal and the bed at La maison du pere I often staid in while I was there
anyway, being used to the place by now and lining up with hobos who were having
long conversations with their invisible mates. (I always wished I could have
heard the other half of the convo too).
One night on the 12th of
October 1976, an infamous Tuesday, I had my meal and was ready for bed but the
authorities came to me and told me they could not keep me for that night since
there were visited by city inspectors and the law said no one under 25, so they
kindly kicked me out. I was going to go back to my room in Ville St-Laurent but
this other young bloke, a redhead, who also had been kicked out said, I heard
of this place called La Porte Ouverte would you like to come? I thought well I
do have a room but in two weeks it won’t be there anymore and if they start
tightening the noose here I better start hunting for a new acceptable place
soon, so there I went.
There was a yellow bright sign and
some verses on it which I quickly checked.
A fat sleepy man opened the door and send us on the second floor in the
men’s dormitory where I ended up in a somewhat special bed all surrounded by
curtains for privacy, from an eccentric Alain Pelletier I heard, the only one
with privacy on this whole floor.
We got there late but I remember
vividly being wide awake and full of energy at 7 AM (a certain sign of absolute
mania, hindsight is 20/20) and I had to ‘convince’ these guys that I belong
there.
The rest might be too boring for now,
a long tug of war of cult tactics and
mind breaking that lasted for years.
So here it is for now I threw my last
cig for the next 12 years in that toilet on Adam Street, 4488.
Richard Bujold, Alain Pelletier, Elaine
Durocher, Yves Alarie you were all there.
I still am not close to the part where
‘he’ became a ‘she’ but that is another long story.
Léo Caissy met Léo Caissie on October
12th, 1976
Ecc
12:1 Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy
youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt
say, I have no pleasure in them;
Ecc
12:2 While
the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the
clouds return after the rain:
Ecc
12:3 In
the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall
bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that
look out of the windows be darkened,
Ecc
12:4 And
the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low,
and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick
shall be brought low;
Ecc
12:5
Also when
they shall be afraid of that
which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the
grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his
long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
Ecc
12:6 Or
ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be
broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Ecc
12:7
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall
return unto God who gave it.
