Now red-faced, I quickly picked myself up and hurried along to the stage where I was to receive my final instructions. An assistant stage manager in charge of minute details ran me and another padre through our assignment. As the curtain rose, we were to stroll diagonally from down stage left to up stage right (that's from the back of the stage on the audience's right to the front of the stage on the audience's left – everything in show business is mixed up). Then we were to take up a position in a set-piece doorway down stage and watch. It was from this spot that I first saw him. He was standing about ten feet away from me in tights and a sweat shirt. He raised his hands above his head and struck a god-like pose. Then he effortlessly leaped about ten feet into the air, twirled about and landed like a feather. Even though I was only fourteen years old, and had never seen a male ballet dancer in real life, with that one move I knew that this man was the greatest dancer in history. I wanted to say something to express my awe and admiration but I remembered another of the assistant stage managers cautioning us not to speak to Rudolph Nureyev and better yet, not to even look at him directly with the naked eye. The rumour was that he beat the crap out of a waiter in a restaurant the night before for the brazen audacity of offering a compliment to the great man.
I did three performances with the Royal Ballet but, when the company moved on, I wasn't invited to continue. My career in the ballet was over. Good thing I still had a drum set to fall back on.
I turned fifteen that summer. I was over six feet now and had developed a strong physical condition. I ran a lot and got a good workout playing drums. More importantly, my hair was getting longer and was dark and curly.
Bob had turned sixteen and had earned his driver’s license. He had use of his mom’s ’63 Chevy Impala and we cruised all the way to Labour Day.
It was difficult going back to start Grade Ten that fall. There was so much musical excitement in my life that it was tough to concentrate on science and math.
I still had no clue when it came to girls. As much as I fantasized about them, and to the extent that I lusted after them, they scared me. I tried not to be too obvious as I ogled them parading by me in the halls. I pretended to look at the floor as my eyes darted from one to the next, afraid I might miss a pretty one. Fashions were changing rapidly. Skirts were shorter and tops tighter. In their fresh summer tans they all looked so much older, so much more womanly. It was going to be real hard to keep my pen on my desk this year.
Bob met a girl who had just moved to Vancouver from England. He started going steady with her. She loved the British sound and brought with her stories of the Rockers and the Mods and the Hard-Mods; enormous gangs separated by a dress-code that clashed all over the streets of London. Her name was Anne and she was smashing. She came on like a woman of the world with oceans of make-up and sexy short mini-skirts. One Saturday night Bob invited me to join him and Anne and her friend, DeeDee, on a double date. I didn’t have to be asked twice. Any friend of Anne’s had to be luscious and she was.
DeeDee was a walking wet-dream in a blue mini-skirt, white blouse and go-go boots. I was even more intimidated because she looked like Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, Marianne Faithful, who was about the cutest girl on earth at that time. She slipped into the back seat with me and we drove around for a while. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her bare thighs and now, as if I wasn’t nervous enough, I also had to contend with my emerging hard-on. We ended up parking somewhere out by the beach and Bob and Anne started necking in the front seat. I was way too naïve to make any advances on DeeDee and so we sat there in silence suffering the sounds of Bob and Anne slurping, sucking and moaning in the front seat. Just when it became unbearable, I made a move. I lunged at her and planted an awkward kiss in the general area of her mouth. Surprisingly, she responded with raw enthusiasm. We achieved a full-on, sloppy-wet lip-lock. This was accompanied by a flurry of petting and pawing but, in the passion of the moment, I do not believe that I felt-up anything important. We both hung on for as long as we could but she was as inexperienced as I, and had not yet mastered the skill of breathing while kissing, so eventually we burst apart. At that moment Anne also came up for air. She recognized the awkwardness of the situation and decided to take a break. She lit up a cigarette, slid around with her knees on the bench and rested her arms on the back of the seat facing DeeDee.
“All the Mod birds in Chelsea are teasing their hair bigger,” she lectured DeeDee, “and you've got to use more spray. It's all in the spray!”
Bob, suddenly bored, turned on the radio. Barry McQuire's, Eve Of Destruction filled the car.
“But I back-combed until my arms hurt,” DeeDee whined. “Why do I have to do it like they do in Chelsea?”
“'Cos I'm older and I know these things,” said Anne.
“Well I'm almost ...”
Anne turned suddenly to Bob. “How old do you think I am?” she baited him.
Bob was the apotheosis of cool. He was pretending to listen to the song on the radio but, he had told me that he really wanted to find out how old Anne was, so it was great act. “What? Sorry, I was listening to Barry McGuire.”
“You lie!” she laughed and punched his shoulder. “Come on, guess, how old am I?”
“I don't have to guess,” he replied. “I know how old you are.”
“You do not!” she punched his shoulder again. “You don't. You can't ... Can you?”
“Yeah I can. You're fifteen.”
“Hah! You're wrong! I'm thirteen!” she cried.
“Thirteen!” Bob shouted. “You're only thirteen?”
“Oh shit!” Anne said. “You tricked me!”
“Well, it's not fair. You look so much older.”
She smiled, satisfied that she did look older; she was a woman. Then she began to laugh. She turned around and looked at me. “Do you know how old DeeDee is”? She asked.
“Uh, no,” I replied weakly.
“Can you guess?”
I looked over at DeeDee in her false eye-lashes and thick pink lipstick, now being expertly reapplied after I smeared it all over her face (and mine). “Fifteen?” I guessed, “Or, maybe sixteen?”
Anne and DeeDee squealed with glee and collapsed in convulsions of giggling only possible in young girls. Finally, Anne gathered her composure, looked at me and said, “she’s eleven ... DeeDee is in Grade Seven; she’s eleven!”
I sat, stunned, my teenage mind racing frantically evoking the images of what had just happened. Did I have my hand between her legs? God! No! I couldn’t have! She’s only eleven years old!
I went out through the window.
Halloween was approaching and The Aztecs caught a big break. Bob’s mother was on the Committee at the Marpole Community Centre and she convinced them to hire us to play the Halloween Dance. Mark Wosk agreed to play organ with us and Bob found a bass player through an ad in the paper. When he arrived at our first practice we were alarmed to discover that he was an East Side greaser. His name was Neil. He looked like a chubbier version of the fifties rocker, Gene Vincent. The Committee had specified that we play a variety of songs so we could not play all our British 'noise' music anyway. This was my first lesson in compromising artistic integrity for a gig. Neil was helpful here as he knew a lot of songs.
In honour of this significant event we re-renamed the band The Statics.
My first