Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 26-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
At my mother’s 90th birthday party, I was telling my father that a woman I’d met used to go to The Cave, a long-running supper club in Vancouver, a venue my parents went to regularly to listen to jazz. This reminded me of a story my mother told me about my father dancing with Josephine Baker at The Cave, however unlikely that seemed. I wanted to know how this came to be. My mother hadn’t wanted to talk about it. I was pretty sure alcohol was involved.
My father was delighted to tell the story. Yes, he had in fact gotten onstage with Josephine Baker and started dancing. “Wow, onstage?” I said, having thought it was on the floor, in the audience, but no, my father went onstage to dance with Josephine Baker.
“One minute I was dancing with Josephine Baker, and the next minute, with a flick of her wrist, I was no longer dancing with Josephine Baker.”
“What happened?”
“She sent me on my way, that’s what happened.”
We laughed about this, and I was reminded of a similar situation at another club in Vancouver many years later. I didn’t mention the name of the band; I just couldn’t bring myself to say Butthole Surfers at my mother’s 90th birthday party, hosted by my gay brother and his partner.
I walked through the club in a man’s cream-colored, three-piece polyester suit—an all-access guest pass around my neck. During the Butthole’s set, I went to the bar—yes, alcohol was involved—and the next time Dave saw me, I was walking quickly to the mic at center stage.
I guess I’d been waiting to get served at the bar, checking out the band, noticing that Butthole singer Gibby was busy playing a synth at the side of the stage, facing the other way. It was perhaps somewhat tedious at that point in the show, and I started fiddling with my all-access pass. I looked over at the stairs leading up to the stage guarded by a smug-looking bouncer with a headset on, burly arms folded over his chest.
My father was laughing pretty hard by this point.
I took off the pass to show it to the bouncer, then, anticipating possible grabbing and yanking to come, I tucked it away in a pocket.
I started singing a Mecca Normal song, “I Walk Alone,’ and nothing happened. Gibby didn’t seem to notice. The band continued playing. “This city’s my home, and I’m not alone in my home. In my home. I’m not alone.” Checking over my shoulder, I could see the bouncer on his headset, trying to figure out if I was supposed to be there or not. I sang on. “Because it’s my right to walk in any city, at any time of day, wearing whatever the fuck I want to.”
Right about this time, two bouncers grabbed me by the arms. I went totally rigid and they carried me off horizontally, like a piece of lumber, down the stairs, detaining me near the bar. I told them I had an all-access pass, but with all the pockets in my suit, I couldn’t find it.
My father was really enjoying this.
I searched through the suit pockets and when I finally found the plastic pass, I flipped it quickly, back and forth, across the bouncer’s nose saying, “Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee? I told you I had a pass.
“I think that’s what got me thrown out,” I said, basically to my father, who was still laughing. I wasn’t too concerned about what my brother might think. My mother—a first-time wearer of hearing aids—basically missed it all. For years, she’s simply tuned out because she hasn’t been able to hear properly. Now I think she’s entrenched in habitual non-listening mode, regardless of the settings on her new amplification equipment. Anyway, I don’t think she would have liked these stories. At all.
Without missing a beat, my brother says he has a story, too, and I’m thinking, “Oh, no—this won’t cut it.” Whatever his story is, this is not going to add to the exchange of drunken nights-on-the-town by Jean and John. My father and I are probably two peas in a pod when it comes to carousing.
My brother starts telling a story of disco night on a cruise ship with his partner and his partner’s family: a bunch of sisters and the mother and father. They are all dancing, doing the YMCA song, and then it’s only my brother doing the YMCA song and everyone else is standing there looking at him. He carries on, having a great time, until people start to look uncomfortable. Finally he turns around and the Village People stage show has begun and basically he’s the only one still dancing around like a jackass. In front of the stage, facing the audience. I thought his story was hilarious.
