He was so nervous about the ghosts that he wanted us to sleep in his bed with him.

T


he day had all the makings to be unexciting. Originally I'd planned to go to Roanoke with John Zawacki to pick up my painting Solo Viola, but with no way to contact him and his not contacting me, that plan quickly dissolved. I lay on the couch in the living room and, while watching teevee, drank some beers left over from the night before. At some point I just fell asleep. The evening was still young.

I


  awoke when Matthew Hart appeared, apparently just getting back from work. Then Rory the British waiter arrived. He was expressing unease about his new house on JPA, saying it was haunted. He wanted Matthew and I to come over and spend the night. He was so nervous about the ghosts that he wanted us to sleep in his bed with him. The whole concept that his house might be haunted had us intrigued, so we walked down there with him to check out the situation.

There's no doubt that Rory's house is a creepy place. It's a Victorian structure, like a less extravagant version of the famous house in Amityville. It's painted a grim dark grey colour and is situated among several dead or nearly dead Canadian Hemlock trees (dying, no doubt, of the Wooly Adelgid, a tiny insect parasite which is wiping out Hemlocks throughout the east). The house is surrounded incongruously by cheap brick apartments designed as low rent student housing, and the contrast makes it stand out as an apparent locus of evil.

And Leah says that when she was looking through a record collection in the house last night, she could clearly hear a ghost whispering his opinions of the records over her shoulder.

Inside, the house has harsh lighting which rains down from white ceilings onto walls painted in saturated primary colours. On the first floor, there's a red room and a blue room. Something about the lighting and the colours and the way ones eyes never acclimate to the lighting gives one the feeling that one has been drinking tussin or eating small amounts LSD.

Creepy looks, however, do not a haunted house make. It needs to have a creepy history and there needs to be evidence of present-day haunting. Apparently, this particular house is known to have been the scene of at least one suicide. And Leah says that when she was looking through a record collection in the house last night, she could clearly hear a ghost whispering his opinions of the records over her shoulder. And Rory hears footsteps throughout the house when he knows no one is home. I find all this very amusing, because I'm too big of a rationalist to take anything like this seriously. I want to believe in ghosts; the world would be more interesting if they existed. I have to give lots of credit to the human imagination.

Tyler, Rory's housemate, was there, along with a couple of chums who work at Plan 9 Music. One of these wears a mullet, the sort that hasn't been in fashion since 1985. It's the kind aging rock stars get when they realize they can no longer grow the thick hair of their youth but at least they can afford a stylist. You see, there's a strong mid-thirties classic-rock geek element at Plan 9 in addition to the trendy Generation X indy rock scene.

She wears lots of black and metallic things, but for the most part she strives to look beautiful and sophisticated in the conventional sense.

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Matthew and I found an unlikely assemblage of people, including a couple strangers. Primarily, there was Ray Roebuck and his plump crazy brother Troy (mostly friends of Monster Boy's, but also well known to us). But there was also a tall thin blond guy and what I took to be his girlfriend. She's a sort of glamourous semi-goth who I've seen around on a few occasions. She wears lots of black and metallic things, but for the most part she strives to look beautiful and sophisticated in the conventional sense. I think she works some nights at Lucky Seven, the 24 hour convenience store on the Corner.

Evidently they'd been discussing my brutal new hand-held security system. Ray wondered in a seemingly serious way if it was such a good thing to have obtained it without the approval of my housemates, but then he said his wondering was in jest, and he started laughing. I most definitely do not have that guy figured out yet. I explained that I'd had death threats from skinheads (which is a bit of an exaggeration) and that I needed a higher level of security. The blond guy asked why the skinheads were upset with me and I said I'd been publishing uncomplementary things about them on the internet. He shook my hand: support in meatspace.

But it also reminds me of the fine old days at the tail end of Big Fun when Matthew Hart would roll joints filled with a concoction consisting of Pow Wow blend and marijuana.

He then went on to call me a genius for the quality and quantity of my paintings. What could I say to that?

I packed a bowl with some of Leah's American Spirit Pow-Wow blend (it contains a variety of natural herbs and a bit of organic tobbacco) and passed it around. That stuff makes me light headed in a very pleasant and completely legal way. But it also reminds me of the fine old days at the tail end of Big Fun when Matthew Hart would roll joints filled with a concoction consisting of Pow Wow blend and marijuana. So I ran off and raided my dwindling marijuana stash and prepared a bowl with just such a mix.

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