In my college years I was remarkably innocent and naive. Not wanting to be exposed I tried to cover it up with a poser debonair persona that was far from the real me. I discovered alcohol much later than my peers and when I did, I indulged with gusto. A lush would not be an inappropriate label. I joined the Zeta Psi fraternity known on campus as the “drunken Zetes”. I was a stellar model of the Zete frat-boy, eligible for the most drunken zete of the year, if there was such an award. I dressed fastidiously with the latest fashion I obtained at “Perry’s”, a renowned men’s fashion store, noted for clients like Bill Cosby when he was famous, not infamous. On reflection I’m sure my cloths affectation was a strategy to cover up for my feelings of “not ready for prime time”. I thought my black and grey stripped corduroy jacket was “it”. My beige trench coat displayed a bright red MacIntosh clan lining. I wore a tweedy Frank Sinatra fedora. I smoked a knarly black pipe and smoked an expensive specialty tobacco that filled a room with Chanel No 5-like aroma. I acquired the habit of wearing all my shirts with the collars turned up thinking it was so cool and “Bloor Street” -the fashion center of Toronto. ( A habit I unconsciously still wear today. ) At 60, I remember waiting to defend my doctoral thesis and my thesis advisor, Ardra Cole, half my age, turned my collar down, like my mother would and I resisted wanting to say, “Don’t do that!” I drove around town in a red Triumph 2 my father let me use, at will, with my British private school scarf blowing in the wind. Such a poser!
My buddy Butch Powell and I were avid jazz fans and we were regular habitués at the Town Tavern with its regular rotation of well known Jazz musicians. Our favourite singer was Anita O’day. On one of her visits I was seated next to an attractive vivacious woman my age. After 5 years at an all boys high school, with no sisters or female neighbours my age, I was incredibly awkward with women. She helped out by initiating a conversation. By the end of the evening I was smitten. I asked her out for lunch the next day and she accepted. I arrived at her apartment the next day and when she opened the door she was naked! I mean stark naked! I had never seen a naked woman before. “I’m just getting dressed” she said, nonchalantly. In my car she asked me if I would mind driving her to the Don Jail to visit a friend. I parked in the jail lot and she jumped out and said she would just be a minute. An hour later she jumped back in the car all fired up and ecstatic. “I can’t believe it, I just ‘copped’ a joint in the Don jail, How great is that?” She waved a big fat marijuana cigarette almost the size of a cigar in my face as I pulled out onto Dundas street. The top was down on my car and at stoplights we were beside street cars with passenger looking down into my car as she fired up the joint as if it was just an ordinary cigarette. In the 1950s getting caught with any marijuana would end you up in jail. I didn’t have the nerve to tell her to put it out of sight. I drove along nervously, resisting her offers of a toke and glancing up at passengers watching her emitting great clouds of blue smoke. She was in heaven with not a care in the world. I was a man of the world. Ha! She was too much for me. We never dated again.
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