The Homeless Millionaire
Synopsis
On the 10th of August, 1972, almost exactly ten months after my eighteenth birthday, I left my home and cut all ties with my family. This is the story of what happened next: to me, to people I knew, and to the world.
NOTE: All of the characters in this story are fictitious; however, many of the events described really took place. One of these, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts robbery in 1972, was the greatest theft of art in Canadian history.
It remains an unsolved mystery to this day, and is the first of many historical events that will involve the hero of this story.
"You're impossible."
"Completely impossible."
"You lied to us, again."
"How can you do this to us? We've worked so hard to give you a good start in life."
"You're so ungrateful."
"Totally ungrateful."
"Look at us! Look at us when we're talking to you."
I looked, as requested. At my parents, standing side by side, their faces full of righteous indignation. I knew that scene only too well. It was played out at least once a month, of late; I didn't really need to look. I didn't need to listen either; I'd heard all that stuff many times before.
They were silent now, glaring at me. I stared at the spot of wall between their heads, specifically at Keith Richards' red thumbnail. I had a cool poster with Keith Richards, the Rolling Stone, on the wall of my room: a head-and-shoulders portrait in which he was supporting his chin with his fist. His thumbnail had been painted scarlet, contrasting nicely with his black hair and a green-and-white floral pattern shirt. He was looking at the camera, and thus at me, with his trademark fuck-you smile. I felt my own lips begin to curl in response, and quickly squeezed them together. This wasn't the right moment to give my parents a fuck-you smile.
Too late; they'd noticed, and they exchanged knowing looks before my father began puffing himself up for his big speech. They invariably followed the same pattern: an intro filled with complaints and accusations, followed by the Big Speech, in which my father summarized my assorted misdeeds and transgressions, and sometimes announced a punishment. The ending was supplied by my mother. She always acted out a short play entitled How You Make Us Suffer, full of dramatic gestures. My mother was a drama queen. She loved making hysterical speeches. I gave her inspiration, I was her male muse. I sometimes thought she should be grateful to me, really.
My father, always the professional diplomat, said:
"What have you got to say for yourself?"
"Yes. We would very much like to hear what you've got to say for yourself. How can you explain... How can you explain all... this."
My mother's final gesture seemed to include the entire universe. I was tempted to tell her I couldn't explain all that because I wasn't a god, but of course I didn't.
But they noticed, they always do, they knew that I wanted to say something. They both leaned forward expectantly, preparing arguments that would destroy anything I said in my defense. I stayed silent. A clever guy called Goethe once said: never get into an argument with fools. They'll drag you down to their own level, and defeat you with experience.
I stayed silent even though I had plenty to say to them. Hell, I could easily keep going for hours if I was allowed a sip of water now and then.
I would start by informing them that they'd lied to me, too. They constantly told me I was wonderful for the first four–five years of my life. There were shrieks of delight whenever I did something: used a spoon to eat my food, took a shit sitting on the toilet, said a new word. Then complaints appeared, more and more as time went on.
For the past couple of years, all I heard were recriminations. At first I took them seriously, and became suicidal. It made me realize that I had only one life, and that I sure as hell didn't want to share it with my parents.
The last time they were nice to me was when I graduated high school. Right after that, we had a big fight: I told them that I wanted to study art at the Ecole des beaux-arts in Montreal. They wouldn't understand why I had to go to Montreal when I could study at the University of Toronto, and live at home.
I couldn't tell them that was the whole point: to move away from home. It resulted in another of those useless family discussions that go nowhere because no one says what's really on their mind. However, this particular talk ended with my father declaring that he didn't support my move, and thus wouldn't help me out financially.
He scored a good hit there, because I needed money for the Montreal move. But I surprised both them and myself by getting a couple of part-time jobs. They were fucking awful.
I spent almost a whole year working in those two jobs, and managed to save just over a thousand dollars. I should have been able to save more, but guess what happened: right after I started work, my dear Dad informed me that since I was making money, I should contribute to the household expenses.
He used the term 'a symbolic contribution' because my monthly payment would be less than what he sometimes spent on single visit to a restaurant. The thing was, he could easily spend the equivalent of my weekly wage on a single visit to a restaurant; he liked good restaurants, and aperitifs and wine and cognac and all that shit.
What really hurt in all this was that my parents had plenty of money. That's why I couldn't get a stipend; I had to provide household income information on the application form, and the woman who took in my papers just laughed in my face.
And so, I spent ten months washing dishes in a scuzzy eatery at lunchtime and serving beer in a rundown bar in the evenings, turning over one of my two weekly paycheques to my father every month. After eight months of this, back in June, I applied to the Ecole des beaux-arts de Montreal and was accepted.
It was August now, and I had already quit both of my jobs. I would be starting my studies in just two months' time. I had to make a trip there first to find a place to stay, and hopefully another part-time job, because almost all of the money I'd saved up would be spent on tuition.
I told my parents about that right after breakfast: it was a Sunday, the traditional day for heavy-duty family conversations. I wanted to leave on Monday—the very next day. That was what led to the fight we were having, though maybe 'fight' was the wrong word. It was like a court session where the accused has been found guilty and condemned before the trial has started.
I was sitting on my bed, silent. They were still pretending to wait for me to speak; pretending, because what they were actually doing was trying to think of a decisive argument that would make me fold, roll over, and tearfully ask for forgiveness. I had no intention of doing that. The silence grew heavier with each passing second. Eventually my father said, somewhat triumphantly:
"So, you have nothing to say for yourself."
I had intended to freeze them out with total silence; I knew from experience that this was the best way to cut the scene short. But I couldn't let that remark go unanswered. I said:
"I've actually got plenty. I would tell you if I knew you would listen, and try to understand. But I know you won't. So why don't we all give ourselves a break here. You're already late for your barbecue." They had been invited to a Sunday barbecue by friends of theirs, and had earlier tried to force me into going along. I'd refused, which made them all the more angry.
I could tell from my father's face that he was about to tell me to go ahead and say whatever I wanted to say, so that he could pick it apart and stomp on the pieces. He was a professional diplomat, and he was good at that kind of thing. But my mother interrupted him with a passionate cry:
"Don't you tell us what to do!"
She had raised her voice, and within seconds we were all shouting at each other. That was how a lot of conversations with my parents ended these days. A minute later, it was all over: they left my room, with my father forgetting that he was a professional diplomat and slamming the door on his way out.
As soon as they were gone, I got out my pack of Rothmans and lit a cigarette. I started smoking when I was fourteen. I fell in love with smoking with my very first cigarette. I'd always liked the smell of tobacco smoke, and I was never sick after smoking the way many kids are.
My smoking didn't improve relations with my parents. They did a lot of shouting and stopped my pocket money, but that didn't stop me. I cadged cigarettes from friends at school who also smoked, and stole the packs my parents' guests left behind in drunken stupor. My parents held dinner parties at least twice a month and I only smoked a couple of cigarettes a day at that time, so I got by.
By the time I finished high school, I'd also smoked pot a few times, and loved it too. It relaxed me. All my worries would just fade away. I kissed a girl for the first time in my life when I was stoned; I would have been too uptight to kiss her otherwise. Had I been straight and sober, I would've probably just sat there, mumbling nonsense.
The problem was that when I was straight and sober, I worried all the time. I worried about all the stupid things I'd done, stretching all the way back to early childhood. I worried about what was happening, and about what would happen next. It drove me fucking crazy.
Cigarettes helped. Cigarettes plus alcohol helped a little more. Cigarettes plus alcohol plus pot helped best. All my worries were gone, at least for a while. Of course I got hit by remorse the next day, but being hungover was shit anyway, so what the hell.
I stood by the window smoking cigarettes until my parents' car finally pulled out of the driveway. I felt a huge relief when it disappeared from sight. The street was empty and silent: a typical Sunday in Toronto.
Living in Toronto was—no, that was the wrong word, it should’ve been dying in Toronto. Toronto was a city where a small part of me seemed to die every day even though physically I was just fine. It happened to many other people, too. They became humanoids instead of humans.
Toronto was a place where back in the fifties, you weren't even allowed to play with a ball in a park on Sundays. The storefronts were all covered up with brown paper, so that people wouldn't commit the sin of shopping with their eyes. People couldn't even go and see a fucking movie, the first Sunday they allowed cinemas to open there were lineups stretching around the block.
If you wanted to buy any liquor, you had to have a doctor's prescription. It’s true. There would be a doctor or two in every liquor store, standing near the entrance with a prescription pad ready. That's how fucked up Toronto used to be, and still was in many ways. I wanted to get the fuck out of there.
And that, really, was the main reason I wanted to study in Montreal. Montreal was in Quebec, and in Quebec things were different. The people there seemed to have a talent for enjoying life, something that I was missing in Toronto.
But then they had to screw it all up with their stupid liberation movement. They actually had martial law there couple of years earlier—soldiers in full combat gear on the streets, armored vehicles, helicopters, the works—because the Front de liberation du Quebec started a bombing campaign. They also kidnapped the Deputy Premier of Quebec and a British diplomat. The diplomat was released later, but they killed the Deputy Premier and a whole lot of shit came crashing down.
This gave my parents one of their best arguments against my studying in Montreal: that it was dangerous over there. It was bullshit, the martial law thing was over after a few months. But I still hated the fucking Front de liberation du Quebec, and hoped that they would all rot in hell.
I waited a few minutes to make sure that my parents were really gone; sometimes they'd find out they'd forgotten something, and return to pick it up. Then I went downstairs and made a beeline for the booze cabinet. I was out of luck: there were only a couple of bottles that I could drink from without fear of discovery. All the others were unopened, nearly empty, or nearly full.
I took a swig of Bacardi rum, then walked out on the backyard deck and smoked another cigarette, waiting for it to hit me. When it did, I had a big swig of Crown Royal; it has this broad-shouldered bottle that makes it possible to steal a lot unnoticed when it's about three–quarters full.
My original plan was to spend the day packing and preparing for my trip the next day, but I didn't feel like it any more. I sat down on the back deck instead, smoking cigarettes, staring at the vegetation, the birds, the sky. I enjoyed the sun on my face, the silence, the peace.
I sat like that for a couple of hours. Then I went back into the house, had more Crown Royal, and realized that I was very hungry. I picked up the phone and ordered a pizza: I didn't feel like mucking around with the frozen dinners in the fridge. When the pizza arrived, I tipped the delivery guy lavishly without worrying that I was spending my savings, then ate the whole thing in one go—it was great.
After that, I didn't feel like packing and preparing at all. I went upstairs to my room and smoked a couple of cigarettes lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling, imagining all sorts of cool things that would happen once I got settled down in Montreal.
Before long, I began feeling sleepy; I didn't sleep well the previous night. It was still early, the sun was just beginning to set. But I said to myself what the hell, pulled the curtains shut, took off my clothes, and got into bed.
I was asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.
To be Continued -