David Johnson and the Mysterious Trail of Blood

Current mood: nostalgic

My current living arrangement brings me to mind of an incident in my long long ago past. An incident so heinous I think that I may have even forgot about a few times. Well anyway, it was in my long long ago past, I mean before what I call before my “playtime” which came after my wife, and well, even before my wife… Actually, it would be difficult to give this period in my life a name. Unlike “the Art School Days”, my “Childhood”, or say “The Mackerel Years”… this period had little distinctive qualities.

I had just moved back from Europe after quitting Art School. I still believed I was going to BE an artist, and still tried to live that life style. I bopped from one friends warehouse lofts space to another. Drinking gallons of coffee most nights, beer on others and generally eating off the snack tables at the variety of Art openings we’d get word of. Hey, having a few bo-ho wanna be twenty year olds gorging themselves on the brie, salsa and chips and cheap ol’ wine you set up to woo your friends and family to lay down cash for your shit assed art, never hurt the cache of the moment. Anyhow, that’s for yet, another time.

Hey, why not, just to get kind of romantically plagiaristic, I’ll call this time my “blue period”. I mean, I was sad a lot, well, rather, grumpy in that angst ridden “I hate the world, cause, well the world is evil” mental thing we all seem to go through in or early 20’s. Listen, Art School dropouts go through it in spades, in some of the worst cases, adopting it as a personality and never shaking it…

Again, I had been bopping from loft to loft; the most permanent place I had managed to find in say an 18-month period was a room in a rooming house full of ancient East Side punks. The place was crawling with roaches; the Kitchen was disgusting even by my standard, uninhabitable for the most part… These punks were, well, punks, surly and unfriendly, especially to me who followed a more late sixties, early seventies “style” of punkedness, you know, it keeps resurfacing, straight folks cast away clothing bought from the 50 cent bin at the Sally Ann, or Goodwill [that’s right kids, you did not invent this look, nor did I]. Anyhow, all I remember of my three month there were watching the CBC, the one channel I got, endlessly, and masturbating over and over again to these same five pages of porno I had found ripped out their magazine and blowing down the street one night. Oh ya, it was while there I got my Janitoring job.

The Janitoring Job is a whole other story, I’ll leave it as, this job, was the best paying job I had ever had in Toronto. Although it was a lot of work, I soon became the best paid of my peers. I had the cash to go looking for my own loft space; I had the cash to buy art supplies. Of course, I would always allow any one to come flop at this yet to be found space, as after all, that’s what us post hippie communist did… more on that later.

The Toronto Loft scene, like the North American loft scene started long before I was born [I think]. It’s nothing new, and the weird twisted version of it that persists today is really nothing but the poor mutant retarded inbred child of things that happened on this continent years and years ago.

That said, I love watching the wonder in the eyes of young twenty year olds who are breaking new ground and grinding their own living spaces out of the seemingly never ending supply of tossed out building here, there and everywhere. When I went looking on the market, I wouldn’t say the market was matured, not at all, I mean it was still totally illegal to live in 95% of the building my friends were living in. The problem was that the stock of potential places, that is places where owners and management firms looked the other way had dried up [as it turned out, only momentarily]. I had a pocketful of cash, and I could not find my dive…

Looking back, this inability to get my space was probably based as much upon my lack of a credit history, or any financial history, really, as much as the lack of stock. It was pretty grim for a while, as I had dumped my Punk Palace and had hit the “loft surfing” set again. I honestly have NO clue how I got my place, but I did… Wait, now I remember, I got a place with Patrick. Patrick was a 40 something dude hiding out amongst us bums… he had credit, a car, parents in the burbs, etc. etc. etc… He was a very good pal from my first year group at Art School, and he wanted to share a place with me… I would live there, he’d just set up his togs; come over and paint for a while, and we’d sit, smoke, drink and talk about the deep meanings of what each of us were doing… As an aside, I was painting rather large rather primitive paper and acrylic painting of daisies… I’m probably making this up, but I recall having some theory that art was just fucking wallpaper anyhow, so why not paint shitty wallpaper. Honestly, I don’t have the foggiest recollection what Patrick was doing… probably something fidgety, as he was a pretty fidgety guy… It was at this time, David came back into my life.

David was an old high school friend. More specifically, David was a cubbyhole pal, one of the dudes from Weller Ontario, a small farming town just another hippy from the farms up north. I hung out with more than a few tribes at high school, but I believe I had the most affinity with my cubbyhole crew. I guess I should clear up this cubbyhole business. The Cubbyhole was this recessed door to the Gym, near where the buses dropped us and picked us up. Basically it’s where we smoked and stayed out of the wind while smoking. Obviously, it being a nice recessed door afforded us the opportunity to smoke more than just cigarettes.

The cubbyhole hole crew, well how do you describe them, I mean we’d listen to equal parts The Clash, Patti Smith and Bob Dylan. We/they wore mostly old vintage army jackets and jeans, we scoffed the rockers [many of whom were my very good friends], and we scoffed the preppie, engineer wanna-bees [again, many of whom were my very good friends]. Weekends outside the cubbyhole, were spent, usually in some nearby provincial park, or out in the back forty of one of their parents farms talking to cows, smoking ounces [yes kids, ounces] of weed; or maybe dropping a tab or two and doing something which in hindsight was probably completely dangerous, illegal, or both… David was a cubbyhole kid, he’d finished high school a year after me, he’d floated for a while and finally ended up at the door of Patrick and mine’s loft.

This loft Patrick and I got off the back of Patrick being respectable and all, was in a very respectable building. The Carpet Factory had “renoed” ages ago. It was filled with mostly small businesses, film companies and architects. “Living In” was strictly verboten. I enjoyed playing with this with my neighbors who all thought me a complete workaholic artist… I remember pushing it way too far once, being caught escorting a Parkdale hooker from the building one night, well way too late… Well, anyway… Dave showing up caused the usual friction.

I was required to oblige his staying at least for a while, but Patrick wanted no part. It was all settled eventually when Patrick found his own space in the building and I, somehow miraculously, convinced the management firm was trustworthy enough [hey, I’d been living there illegally for 9 months or so], to allow them to give me, no mention of David, another space in one of there neighboring buildings. I have been known to sweet talk business people from time to time, even sweeter when my rep was some forty year old gal who probably had a soft spot for dirty kids who were just a few years older than her own.

The trail of blood… Well, OK let’s get into the more physical telling of the “trail of blood” story. I mean, the airy fairy metaphorical side of the story might be obvious in so much as David WAS after all a cubbyhole kid. I mean, my friends are my friends and I am always willing to go through whatever tumult with my friends… blah, enough of that, too much sacrin as there is.

So, David and I actually kind of thrived down in the hole… The new space was a semi-basement space in the building next to the carpet factory. Cement floors, brick walls, chopped into a little room and a big room. David and I, still wanting to believe we were artists decided the small room would be home, and the big room would be the space were ‘god like creation’ would take place. OK, I mounted a few sculptures [one of which surviving only in sketch form remains the one piece of art I made that I am still somewhat proud of]… despite that most of my memories of the time David and I spent there are of two idiots, one on an old couch, the other in this makeshift bed I had fashioned out of an old painters scaffolding slept off hangovers from the various “warehouse parties” that had started up as an affront to Toronto’s archaic 1:00am last call…

David painted I sculpted… To be fair, I should describe David’s art, I mean, he did have some pretty unique notions and was extremely passionate about what he was doing. David also had this special approach to art in so much as he never went to art school, wasn’t tainted by the “brain-speak” that haunted every brush stroke I laid down. He was genuinely a painter from the cubbyhole school. I remember once, I think I was sitting at our work bench [which doubled as both kitchen and coffee table] trying to assemble this scale plastic model of an Apollo Space Rocket that I had found at a junk shop somewhere [I’m certain, it was meant to become a very important metaphorically strategic part of some piece of art I was working on that would expose the corruption of America once and for all]… I remember, sitting and listening to David describe one of the last pieces of art he’d “pulled off” at home; David had gone from friend to friends place, scoured their basements, grabbed as many cans of old paint and spray paint as he could find. He’d laid out these cans on top of some old bed sheets on the side of a small hill out back on his fathers farm, kicked back a few and just started firing at them with his .22 rifle. He told me how he enjoyed the patterns made while the spray cans burst, and the paint buckets oozed. In the end he wasn’t happy with the way the sheets looked when it all dried up so he just chucked it out. Come to think of it, I think David threw everything he did out eventually.

So here we were, two old cubbyholers, sharing a bedroom, and a space to make art. We were in one of the most illegal live in spaces in a town that was now full of illegal living spaces. Oh, in order to make this story work, I have to point out one last thing… just down the road from where David and I were living was The Massy Ferguson Factory, The Tractor Factory. A dilapidated one/two story warehouse complex that covered, most likely, 20 square acres. Almost in the middle of what we called the west end fringe, I mean, minutes from down, seconds from the trendiest, hippest neighborhood in the city. Here we were at the junction between lofts being a place for artists to do art, and for hipsters to be hip, literally, physically and historically, my “blue period” indeed.

It would happen one night that David and I ventured off to the bars down on Queen [think East Village, Williamsburg, or whatever down side pre-gentrified bar hood that happens to be in your backyard]. We had got nicely toasted, probably chatted some girlies even though we were both complete dorks more used to drinking and pretending to talk to each other as we though Braque and Picasso may have spoken with each other back in their bo-ho days… We’d found out about an after-hours [pre-rave bitches, pre-rave]…

At this point the Toronto after hours were legendary. This one I had noted for one great architectural highlight. It was held in an eight-floor loft, just east of ours. About 3000 square feet, good DJ, OK beer prices, BUT, there was a crane access door that had been left open to let out smoke leaving a six foot by ten foot gaping hole in the wall, out of which any one of us drunken, foolish, stoned, late night idiots could easily have danced their way over to and fallen out of to their… well, you know… sad end.

I remember flirting with some girl I knew, but was uninterested in, I remember hooking up with Kevin and Rick, Rick who would later be tenant number two at The Hole. I remember David all of a sudden not being there any more.

No, David did NOT fall to his death although he later told us an uncorroborated story of some big dude hanging him over the security rail of the freight elevator by his ankles, threatening to drop him if he did not admit to angling toward this big dudes girlfriend… as said, uncorroborated, but essentially the reason for his sudden departure.

Rick and I finally decided to leave. I had arranged to give Kevin a break and let Rick come to my place in order to free up Kevin’s couch for someone else. Rick was an old friend. He was part of the Saskatoon crowd, and I had known him from parties, coffee talks and many a crossover/sleepover week or two during the days doing the loft bop circuit. As I said, Rick would soon be resident at the hole, had probably already stayed there a few times, so our leaving and heading home after what ever strikeouts we’d both suffered was definitely no surprise.

I remember talking about David with Rick. I think I may even have been complaining, and his sudden disappearance became part of that complaint. Although on the limits of a transit trip, Rick and I, engaged in this conversation, hit it to my place on foot. This despite the near or near under freezing temps and fresh inch of snow on the ground.

As we walked by the Tractor Factory, I recall we both salivated over the idea of some bo-ho reno that would have converted the acres of space into some artistic utopia [fucking hippies]. The place was nothing more than failing brick walls and shards of rock smashed windows. OK, I know you know this is obvious… but honestly, As Rick and I pulled up to one of these windows, we saw a few drops of blood… we also saw that the blood drops seamed to pull away and head in the general direction of where we were heading back to my building next to the carpet factory. A mystery, a story to invent and concoct to ourselves as we walked the last 10/20 blocks back to my place.

Of course David became the central character of this story. I mean, we had no thought based in reality of this, but we laughed and invented some scenario were David may have been mugged, or accosted by some hooker… It was a fun story and a fun walk… a fun walk until we realized the blood drops not only lead to my building, BUT, down the side street and too the alleyway that got me to the back door I used as my front door. When I saw blood all over the half steps leading down to a blood soaked door handle. I panicked, slipped on the ice, could barely get my keys in the doorknob and twist. I ran down the hall not even noticing the continuation of the drips we had followed for the last twenty minutes.

When I open our door, I found David, literally in a pool of blood, hands in pocket unconscious, half form beer, half from blood loss. No cell phones, kids, Rick and I literally picked him up, threw him on my shoulder, headed for the streets and hailed a cab. Rick and I had him to St. Joes in no less than twenty minutes despite the fact we probably had no more than five bucks between us.

The staff at emerge, decided that Dave, although up on their triage list could wait a few patients. By this point, I’d managed to slap him around a bit and get him to at least semi-consciousness… After waiting for what seamed like days, but most likely only firkin hours. I got the story from David. This is when I heard how he was hitting on some chick, how this chicks boy friend had threatened him [the elevator shaft torture, still uncorroborated]; how he’d left in a panic, but had calmed himself wit a pocket beer, and the freshness of the falling of snow and a nice quiet walk home. The danger of getting pounded receded, new danger awaited.

David, like myself, had always been fascinated by the Massy Ferguson Plant, The Tractor Factory. We’d both waded in on those adventurous Saturday mornings, looked around dreaming then leaving to do what ever Saturday chores needed being done. That night, Dave had tried to venture in again, slashed his wrist on a shard in the window and thought better of it. This is where it gets dumb.

Think about this… If you have just slashed your wrist, what have you been taught to do? Wrap it, apply pressure ELIVATE it. David, nope, David stuck his hands in his pockets and headed home. As it turns out, the blood drops Rick and I followed home that night dripped off the cuffs of David’s blood soaked jeans. My good friend, dork of a friend David probably lost a third of his blood that night. Oh, he probably would have regained consciousness and got himself to the hospital on his own, so , no Rick and I are not saviors…BUT it does bring to mind my new roomie, Dylan.

Dylan, you are a DUDE! You have an enormous understanding of your responsibilities to yourself and your pals. That said, after seeing you keyboard face-plant asleep at the desk here, I assume you are capable of a misstep… Trust me! I’m watching for trails of blood, I’ll do my best to cover your back AND if I ever find you in a puddle of blood in the middle of our apartment, you’ll be in the nearest emerge with in minutes! Regardless of what cash I have in the pocket at that moment.