Eat, Drink and Be Mary

Zelda’s is not your average nosh pit: it’s Toronto’s one and only trailer camp. Keeping camp alive is the name of the game. Queer history keeps writing itself, and we’re integrating seamlessly in a progressive post-Will and Grace-culture. But certain ebulliences of bygone days are necessary complements to our life of Starbucks, Ellen, Utne Reader and the urban dog park (where we’ve never had to sit at the back of the bus!) These include rags like Fab- (because tacky journalism must never die), old-time and heavily powdered queens who remember Shirley Bassey, the feather boa, and the penchant for lisping that neither scientists nor theorists can yet explain but which has such a comforting lull. This is the place where it will always be cool to say “work it, girl” and have fussy pink or purple cocktails. This is the place where no one forgets about Erasure. Think of pink flamingoes and beehive wigs and you’re already here.

No matter that no waiter will sashay toward your table in the time it takes you to say “Cher”. Or, in fact, to read the whole menu and the Fab Boy blurb as well: there is no effing hurry, dahhhling. Now lounge! Zeldatinis like Yeehaw, Bitch Slap, and Sugartits will get you off in the right direction. Hopefully they’ll have karaoke somewhere tonight! Expect your ambience to be swaddled in pink and velvet drapery and gauzes, supremely tacky retro wallpaper, and severed mannequin bits glued all higgly piggly in every manner of boa and Fame-set legwarmer. Yeah, baby, of course the festive and the fey didn’t forget those patio lanterns, tiki lights and buoyant bubbling baubles of light and yeah, order another one of those lip smacking…things with those little umbrellas….

If you’re lucky, Donnarama will be headlining tonight. Long live Cher and Shania but the real dame of Church St. is this brilliant female illusionist and her signature performances of Courtney Love. You never know what song or genre or even gender Donnarama will be next: she’s done Barbra, Bjork and Elton John.

Truly, wacky drag shows are staples here, one of the things that make Zelda’s so fabulous. The campiest wait staff don’t work here, they ‘work it’ here, or even ‘work it oouutt!” here. Other great stuff: ten years of bawdy, zany, humour, so much more buoyant than mine but still sufficiently twisted to feel at home with. Ten years of heavy community involvement and all kinds of trampy fundraising marathons. Zelda’s cares. It’s not all just face paint.

And girl, the gift just keeps on giving, ‘cause Zelda’s has pretty good food. It’s really rather yummy. The yam frites are by now a classic- gooey fries with a stellar dose of beta-carotene. The Mac and Cheese- well, that’s just tacky ol’ hilly billy food now iishn’t it, slurred Dolli Parton one night and I had to try it. Brandine, you’re just divine- oven baked and like, a half-dozen cheeses? The Billy Bob BLT is best for hangover breakfasts: it comes with maple-smoked bacon, a luuurvely detail. Goes down luuuurvely too with a nice Bloody Caesar- you know, while we’re having tomatoes. Honestly, just order anything. Zelda’s has pub food, from people who care about pub food. The burgers, the pierogies, all damn delicious and there’s always a detail or twist that stands out and there’s even vitamins in minerals in most of the selections. Groovy. The salads are wonderfully fruity, perfect for patio picnicking here with another two jugs- yes, jugs, you know, pitchers? of Jackie-Ohhhhh. The scrumptious and dutifully named Cala-mary the jalapeño munchers, and the Marvelous Meatloaf are all delightful.

Did I mention the staff loves to dress up? Go hang more often at Zelda’s- you’ll just be happier overall. You’ll be certain to hit a theme night, cause at Zelda’s, every day is gay Halloween. Which means you, too, can head to that lighthouse in the city in any possible getup without fear of being inappropriate. So c’mon over and have some fun.

Zelda’s
542 Church St.
416.922.2526

Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net

Requiem for a Queen

Crazy Paul was a sublet roommate for a friend of a friend. In the early days, barely knowing him, we could already see his insanity, endearing and absolute.

Paul’s blue box overflowed with empty wine and champagne bottles and his door welcomed dozens of friends a day. Popping over to Paul’s always involved a glass of wine, or many more, regardless of the hour. “Breakfast of champions,” often included party favours stronger than wine. No one could keep pace with Crazy Paul.

It was clear he never slept. He wore seven outfits a day. Cowboy boots with a dress were not uncommon. His place was so cluttered with antiques and ribbons and books and glowing candelabra that we all feared for fire as much as we feared not finding a chair. Chairs were occupied with fine china and dried flowers- or vagrants from the gay clubs taking refuge in a safe, friendly apartment to wait off their party excesses.

Paul was never too ripped to look after anyone too ripped to look after himself. But in the end he died young from cirrhosis and very few of the many revelers who made themselves at home spent time with him in his last days in hospital.

Of course, some were already dead. His circle was rife with festivity, but with tragedy as well.

Paul was a bit of a saint and a bit of a nutter, to say the least, and the lifestyle he embraced seems outrageous but isn’t entirely alien to most. Alcohol-related illness is very common. Most people have lost someone to the world of fermented grapes and barley, including my mom. Though ‘drugs for fun’ is not within her own experience, she’s familiar with Paul’s penchant for hoarding baubles. The gaiety of Crazy Paul’s circle is familiar to me and its theatrical electricity was humourous and comforting.

Sadly, Paul’s world eventually submerged him and the risk that I could get lost or caught up in its elements was heavy. You could see the ending coming a mile away. Still, none of this reduces the validity of loving Paul, a complex, intricate human being who battled his sorrows with dignity and infectious laughter. He battled his own darkness with less dignity, but hey, don’t we all.

We can certainly take a lesson in living from Paul no matter where we fit in comfort or familiarity with his story. Paul understood he was ill and would die from his excesses, and he used the time he had left to care for others, encourage and support them, to live in even more outrageous outfits, to express his love out loud to those he cared for, to mourn more fully the dead and their unique imprint on us, to decorate more vividly, to forego banal necessities and take up painting, to read fun things and cook Italian gourmet at midnight, to ask others about their experiences of God.

Crazy Paul was waiting for a new liver, but knew it was unlikely to come in time to save his life. He as a firecracker until dementia set in atop his already eccentric spirit. Even when he was down for the count, weak and bedridden in a palliative care ward, he still roamed the grounds mentally, pointing out the hilarious personality traits of his new roommates.

It’s a simple fact that too many nights with Crazy Paul as a neighbour meant too many nights of missed sleep. I recall one hellish night that the music and laughter kept pumping into the wee hours. I hate to rain on a happy parade, but there were parades 24/7. I’ve never known anything like it. On this particular night I was not able to shut out the happy clomping of a veritable square dance upstairs. I called and called, to no avail. No one could hear the phone.

In desperation, I took a broom and banged it against the ceiling. But mere minutes after an attempted hushing, the Shirley Bassey and Diana Ross marathon was pumping up the volume.

Angry, I got dressed and braved the building halls in the middle of the night. When I knocked, some vaguely familiar queens handed me a beer, and the place was as smoky with cigars and weed as a saloon full of hippies. The floor was littered with frocks and there was a whole lot of flower arranging going on. And Crazy Paul was not even home.

Paul never locked his door or turned anyone away, apparently not even when he wasn’t home! The landlord did, of course, eventually evict him, but I had long moved to a quieter part of town.

Paul was larger than life; a real personality from another era of gay history, one that long preceded my De La Soul-era entry. I relish the lengthy, noiseless, sketch free nights, idling peacefully in front of the TV, loafing about with my cats, no dramas within earshot. But I miss Paul and I wish his demise had been much later. Still, he lived all at once, which his kind of nutter archetype can spur us to do. With healthy boundaries, we’ll find ways to trip the light fantastic in ways that won’t pollute our kidneys and skew our perceptions. But I know I can’t spend all my spare time watching Seinfeld. There are real people, real dramas, real jokes and real magic to be a part of.

It’s a good idea to go a little crazy, fuss about, and bring our friends flowers. Ever wonder about those people in Ed Hopper’s paintings? Well, go and ask them. Exchange stories.

Thomas Moore writes at length about the re-enchantment of everyday life, and he can be a wonderful guide into the magical world around you. The door opens when we open our eyes. There’s a whole vivid tapestry of characters that populate this enchanting planet, and Paul was one of them.

Poor Paul, he became so small and vulnerable as he lay wasting, later, in a hospital bed. Abandoned in the corner of the tiny room was a pile of cowboy boots and a feather boa, never to be worn again. His streaked orange hair was comical in the dull, utilitarian surrounding. It’s one of my last visions of Paul that reassures me that despite the pain he was in, he didn’t die in torment. Surfacing to consciousness after days asleep, he sat up groggily and looked around in confusion. All he said before falling back to rest was, “Darling, the poinsettia would look fabulous over there.”

Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net

The Crinkled Old Bat

Sippin’ whisky from a paper cup, you drown your troubles ‘til you can’t stand up, sang Jesus rocker Larry Norman a long while back. Well, today it makes a week since I’ve sipped from that paper cup. My BFF and I are detoxing our livers this month. It’s not just the hard stuff: no sugars, no chemicals, no nothing. Nothing but milk thistle tea and a bunch of grasses and broths. Yum.

Actually, those who know me know I’m always elated to steer clear of the evil white powder- sugar, that is. They know I love weird vegetables and am apt to serve dandelion greens or curly cabbage soup with my dinners. So a fridge full of leafy wonders is not nearly as challenging as a weekend without gin.

Which is precisely why Al decides it’s a good time to call me up and invite me over for some scum and roke. That’s Allen Dawe lingo for ‘rum and coke’, the man’s only vice besides sausages.

Al is the voice of reason and the elder of our tribe, but he’s a mad hatter, that’s for sure. He speaks in his own backwards language of mish-mashed syllables and it took me a long while to learn it. It didn’t take long, though, to figure out that the crinkled old bat who has seemingly flipped his lid is actually a genius. Though he’s old enough that he can’t figure out how to use the debit card machine, he knows the name of every constellation in the sky, what gases they are made of, how many years they’ve been up there. All this without opening a book- one day Al woke up suddenly knowing stuff only scientists know about the cosmos. Puzzled by this sudden knowledge, he consulted astronomers and mathematicians, who conceded that his information, worth years of specialized study, was correct. I have my own alien abduction theories to explain this, but Al’s a lot more pragmatic than I am. It’s a possibility, though, and if alien abduction was going to happen to someone I know, it would be Al, because everything has happened to Al.

Al’s a private and independent sort who prefers to lay low unless he’s with you in person, throwing phonetic gobbledygook at you until you start to understand. (Soon you start to speak like he does: “I’m going to Chice Propper/Fro Nills/Doppers Shrug Mart.”) He laid low his whole life, and my girly cuddly brand of love is a little overwhelming for the poor old sod. But Al is always there for me, teaching me confidence or accountability, giving adult directions for how to proceed when I feel like a perpetual teenager in torment and need to know what to do. In return, I hope Al can accept my unwavering love and devotion. He may think he doesn’t need a family, and for all intents and purposes, he does not. He has done just fine looking after himself for 65 years, and looking after others, too. But he IS our family. That’s just the way it is. Besides, the day may come when Al actually needs a cane and doesn’t just use it to pretend he’s a crazy old guy, waving it around on the bus and embarrassing us all. And on that day, I will still be there.

Anyhow, as I was mentioning before the predictable tangents set in (“Give her a topic, aaaaaaaaannny topic,” my friend Daniel says), Al prefers to lay low and I will not totally disregard his valued privacy. But he is a magical man who has seen and done everything and some small mention of how much I love him must be made. (Al is not one to gush, but when he says ‘I love you’ he says it by wagging his index finger like a dog tail and saying ‘ree ree ree.’)

Al comes from the UK, where he went to school with the Beatles. He served in the army in some big secret way and never speaks about what he saw in the jungles of Borneo but I suspect that’s partly what made him so hard and soft at the same time. He won the lottery and he also went bankrupt. He has helped groups of thugs and loonies access their feelings. He’s something of a shaman and his Ojibwa friends think so, too. He has a way of letting people be how they are, while supporting the more positive directions they can go in. But he’s seldom so serious, just wise when he is: most of the time, the best medicine is laughter. He likes to say things in the middle of the liquor store or bank, loud things like, “This girdle is killing me.” He speaks no Spanish but spent months in Peru cracking jokes to people who couldn’t understand a word he was saying but loved him regardless. He slept in the jungles and had a close encounter with a big cat, but Al could soothe a rabid grizzly and he lived to tell the tale. He taught me to drive a motorboat. He only complained once in seven years about us staying awake listening to Madonna until the sun came up, with zero regard for our resident senior.

Al’s a big, burly, muscular man with hands like baseball mitts and feet like skateboards and a crop of silver shaggy hair that stands straight up like a freshly mowed lawn. But at any given time, you will see this dude, who dresses like Hunter S. Thompson, with the tiniest, gayest Shih Tzu dog. And he will be speaking to her in a whispery, rustling voice like this: “Ahh, that’s my little tog, my snoggie woggie, ‘ittle toggie, little wiggle, go and tell her, you wanna bickie”. (Bickie is Lola-talk for ‘biscuit’.)

This is what you might see if you pop over unexpectedly: Al laying on the floor with a dog bone in his mouth and the spoiled rotten fluff bomb leaping for it. It’s the sweetest game, but when I tried it with my cats and some dried sardines, I only got a small scar on my lip and no appreciation for my antics whatsoever.

Al’s fun language spills forth like Dr. Seuss. I hang onto every word he says because any elder, especially Al, has much to teach me. Al has watched our circle through thick and thin, living through defeats and celebrating triumphs, and he is always there. He worries that when his time is up, we might have a giant celebration and that is not what he wants. We have had kick-ass funerals for friends who bit the dust too young, but I know that’s not what Al wants and have promised him a humble affair. It will just be the closest friends, a small handful, and Lola the Shih Tzu, and a giant bottle of Appleton’s rum, Coca Cola, and endless amounts of barbecued snidges (that’s Al Dawe for sausages!) And we will BBQ them under the stars. Al is hoping our liver treatment ends before the end is up for him because he’s ready to break out a bottle for Thanksgiving, and so he should- he’s not the one who pickled his innards with bad habits. So I’ll be enjoying a sparse broth and a few carrots with dandelion tea but surely when this month-long fast is over, I’ll pour enough Bombay Sapphire to fill in one of the Great Lakes.

The way things are going, though, Al will likely be planning our funerals before we plan his. Whether Al is actually an alien in our midst or just a brilliant and daffy old bat, we may never know for sure. But one thing is certain- Al says that when he has joined the other pinprick specks of floating gaseous lights up in the sky, if we listen closely, we will hear a still, small voice drifting through the atmosphere. And the voice will say, “This girdle is killing me, but the show must go on.”

visit writer Lorette C. Luzajic at www.thegirlcanwrite.net
buy her book The Astronaut’s Wife: Poems of Eros and Thanatos online through indigo or amazon, or through her site.