HUMAN WRECKAGE

How She Reminds Me

Have you ever noticed a mystery doppelganger? A stranger who reminds you of somebody else? Who are you to me? I get frustrated in these aging days of mine when I can’t put my finger on them, mostly because that’s a criminal offense. They’re ghostly figures on a sort of l’esprit d’escalier - those witty afterthought replies that have long surpassed their original repartees’ best-before dates.

Across the street from the Crooked 9, about three doors down, there’s an epic renovation going on. I’ve been monitoring years of painfully slow progress from the front porch. Should the work ever be completed, I’m pretty sure it’ll resemble Johnny Cash’s stolen car, a scrounged mishmash of miscellaneous materials. My eyes are already tired from observing and maybe one day they’ll be really sore.

I’m accustomed to the turquoise portable toilet and the dump truck on the lawn. Used to those highlights of the local scenery. Madame has been lately visiting her previous, present yet future home. I can’t imagine the finishing touches are anywhere close to being touched up. Anyway, she’s reminded me of someone with her electric bottle blonde long hair and severe straight-cut bangs. I’ve been watching; her look’s been niggling at me.

My first thought was maybe Madame personified the competing publican in my second novel Duke Street Kings. As with all fictional people, that character was a composite, albeit largely based on S., the hilarious and gregarious bartender who presided over the workaday lunch rush in Calgary’s downtown Unicorn Pub when it still occupied the basement of the elegant and historic Lancaster Building. No.

There’s an 80s vibe about Madame. Maybe Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, but she hasn’t filed her incisors into fangs nor does she wear her makeup like warpaint; Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott’s mullet during the height of hysteria over Pyromania? No, but closer.

Ian Hunter post-Mott? Oh God, oh God, I was so close to knowing this blonde – not in the biblical sense. And then coincidence, serendipity and synchronicity all kicked in at once, like mushrooms, pot and alcohol. There had been a small item in the entertainment news: Michael Caine allowed that his lengthy acting career was probably over, not many roles for a man his age. That was it! Madame reminded me of Michael Caine in drag! A Brian De Palma film, Dressed to Kill, 1980. Yes! My relief was cathartic, what the French might describe as le petit mort.      

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of snippy neighbourhood gossip since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is available. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.