1982 (19 page)

other members of the Sex Pistols

Forbes

One thing I was sure of: Bowie would not have pelted my prized possession. Can you imagine Bowie throwing a kid’s carrying sack? No. You can’t. Bowie would not have thrown my Adidas bag, because Bowie would have had more important things on his mind, like writing lyrics that are difficult to deconstruct, or the perfection of a synth sound, or trendsetting ways to hold his cigarette. And you see, the wondrous magic of Bowie was that while he was more elegant than the Adidasthrowing punks, he still had their respect and admiration. All of these things were possible in one person. The goal was, as ever, to be Bowie.

After the initial shock of my loss, I’ve often contemplated what happened to my red-and-blue Adidas bag. You probably think it was disposed of in the garbage. That’s likely what you’ve decided. But sometimes I imagine other possibilities. I imagine that Joan Jett spotted my stray Adidas bag and decided to keep it. Maybe it would be her consolation for getting booed by the New Wavers at the Police Picnic. The more I think about it, the more I believe she did keep it. That Joan Jett. She probably ripped the name tag off it and adopted it. Maybe she still has it. Maybe she uses it to store old VHS copies of her videos, like the one for “I Love Rock ’n Roll,” which was a number-one hit in 1981 and got her booed at the Police Picnic. Maybe she has it labelled the way I used to have it labelled, but now with her own words: “JOAN JETT’S BAG OF VIDEOS.”

Or maybe she takes it to the gym and stores her workout clothing in it. And maybe now, when Joan Jett takes it to the gym, she gets compliments for having that shiny fake-leather bag:
Random gym member #1: “Hey, Joan Jett, nice bag!” Joan Jett: “Thanks!”

Random gym member #2: “Hey, wow, where did you get that vintage fake-leather bag, Joan Jett?”

Joan Jett: “Oh … I got it back in ’82.”

Random gym member #2: “Sweet. I’ve always known you were the coolest. Especially because of your red-and-blue Adidas bag, Joan Jett!”

You will note that people call Joan Jett by her full name. Both words. I’m quite sure that’s because it seems wrong to call Joan Jett anything other than Joan Jett. “Joan” cannot sufficiently communicate her rock star value. And “Jett” alone is just weird. Her name is like Boy George. You have to use both parts. And now Joan Jett has cool cred because of the Adidas bag that she earned by getting angrily received by a Toronto crowd that included Forbes the punk. And she has me to thank.

Of course, all of this is speculation that has occupied my mind in the years after that day at the Police Picnic with Wendy in 1982. I didn’t think of these things at the time. At the moment that my Adidas bag was thrown at Joan Jett, events occurred in slow motion the way they do in the movies when someone is taking a big fall or getting shot. As my bag sailed through the air, I looked at Wendy and then at the bag, and I experienced a zillion flashback thoughts which will be played in soft focus in the movie version of this story. Most significantly, I came upon an image of my friend Toke. He and I had gotten our Adidas bags around the same time in the summer before Grade 9. The loss of my bag was like a final chapter in my relationship with Toke. In the hours after the Adidas bag incident, I would have
a tremendous revelation and a coming of age with Wendy. But long before my infatuation with Wendy, my comrade-in-arms had been Toke. Toke was nothing like Bowie. But I secretly wondered if Wendy could ever really replace him.

6

“DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP – AC/DC

T
he tennis ball came flying at Toke’s face off the stick of Rick Bolton, who was shooting from the middle of his driveway. Toke was taking his turn in net just in front of Rick’s garage door. It was a slapshot from little more than a car length away. Rick was far too good a hockey player for this to be anything other than precisely aimed. He was four years older than us, and he had a mean streak when it came to playing with kids on the road.

It was the fall of 1982, and it was late afternoon on a cold day. Tennis balls absorb the cold in Canada. They get hard. This was less of a friendly green Dunlop and more of a missile. Toke never really stood a chance. He was a little chubby and slow to move as it was. And on this day he was bundled up in his regular green duffle coat with his hood on over a Habs toque. His clothing usually looked a size too small on him. It was probably restricting his movement.

The impact of the shot was inevitable. And when it hit, it hit hard. Road hockey had always been one of the meeting
points for Toke and me. This is the last time we would play together. We had been drifting apart anyway as a result of us heading to different high schools and pursuing new interests. We shared an unspoken bond that couldn’t be extinguished when Mitch came to seek justice in Toke’s name. But it did feel like the end of an era.

BETWEEN GRADE 5
and Grade 9, Ron Toker was my best friend. That was his name, but this is the first and last time I will refer to him that way. From the moment I first met him at the age of ten, I called him Toke. It was a term of neither disrespect nor endearment. And it didn’t have anything to do with drugs. Many people would make that mistake later on. But that reference was beyond me in Grade 5. It was simply his name. Toke. Most people ended up calling him Toke in junior high. I’m convinced I started it.

Toke was a bit of an oddball. Well, most kids are oddballs in one way or another. But Toke was unique. He had brown curly hair that morphed into something of an Afro when it grew long. Toke spoke with a very precise and slow rhythm. And he was generally prone to periods of silence followed by grand and polemical statements like, “The players on the Boston Bruins are all WEASELS!” Toke gravitated towards competitive wrestling in high school, and he would later become a body builder. But that was years after he had been my best friend. In 1982, Toke was still my accomplice.

Toke and I spent a lot of time together. He was the same age as me. We both went to Henderson Avenue Public School after my family moved to Thornhill in Grade 4, and then we went to
the same junior high. We played road hockey, we watched TV, we made regular trips to the Golden Star burger joint at the top of Doncaster Avenue, and as we hit our early teens, we increasingly kept each other apprised of events happening around the world. Toke was a source for me. On some occasions, Toke was such a good source that I’d pretend to others that I’d witnessed things based on his detailed accounts—like when Toke went to see Ozzy. The only problem was that I probably didn’t smell enough like smoke for people to believe I’d gone to the concert. That was often the problem. But in the early 1980s, you needed human sources to know what was going on. As a kid, these sources often took the form of other kids.

The ’80s may not seem like that long ago to some of you, but they were prehistoric if you’re counting in technology years. As I’ve explained, in 1982 there was no internet, or Facebook, or texting, or even email. You would have to actually receive breaking news verbally from your friends if you hadn’t caught the story on TV or radio. And even on TV or radio, you’d have to catch the news at the appointed time. There were no PVRs or PDAs or any of the fancy gizmos with three letters. And if
you
were the source, you would have to track down your friends to personally communicate news of big things that had occurred. Years later, we would refer to the popular points of discussion on Twitter as items that were “trending.” But in 1982 we called it “talking with your friends.” This was only done in person or sometimes on the telephone.

It was a Tuesday morning in the middle of Grade 7 when I found out on 1050 CHUM that John Lennon had been killed the previous night in New York City. The man on the radio who made the announcement was very sombre, and between
his announcements they were playing John Lennon music continuously. Within a heartbeat of finding out, I rushed to call Toke to see if he’d heard. It was at least an hour before we were to go to school, and that he’d want to hear this info right away. I was his source. I anticipated that he’d be surprised to hear my voice at this hour and that he’d know something was up. His older brother, Mitch, answered the phone when I called.

“Hello?” It was early. That’s probably why he sounded a bit angry. But then, Mitchell Toker was always a bit angry, because he was tough. He wore a brown, tight-fitting leather jacket. And tough guys were not supposed to be too friendly.

“Oh … hi, Mitch. It’s Jian. Is Toke there? I mean … is your brother there? I mean … Ron?”

Mitch dropped the phone. I could hear him shouting Toke’s name. He sounded annoyed that he had to summon his brother on my behalf. Mitch was not very friendly sometimes. Perhaps he was wearing his leather jacket.

Toke picked up the line. “Hallo?”

“Toke! John Lennon got shot! Did you hear? John Lennon got killed by a guy!”

I shouted this into our rotary phone at the top of the stairs in the main hallway of our house. The receiver was army green and had a curly green phone cord attached to a green phone box. I’m not sure why my parents had decided to get a greencoloured phone. I breathlessly delivered the news about John Lennon before Toke could say anything.

Toke was silent. Sometimes he would pause before reacting to things. But maybe he hadn’t heard me properly.

I raised my voice even louder to let Toke know this was important. “A guy killed John Lennon! Did you hear me?
Toke! John Lennon, who used to be in the Beatles!” Now I was really out of breath.

I could hear Toke processing the information on the other end of the line. Finally, he spoke. His words came out quite softly.

“Wow. Dat John Lennon. Ee’s great,” Toke said.

Oh, yeah, I should explain another thing. Toke would never say the
h
in “he’s.” It wasn’t really that he had an accent, because Toke would comfortably use the
h
when saying other words, like “health” or “happy” or “heap.” But not with “he’s.” It was just something Toke did. Toke would also say “dat” instead of “that” and “hallo” instead of “hello.” Again, these were Toke-isms that had little consistency with the rest of his speech patterns. Toke was unique this way. And when Toke didn’t like a guy, he would call him a “weasel.” It was just like the name he had given all the players on the Boston Bruins hockey team. Toke was a Montreal Canadiens fan and had a toque with the Habs logo on it.

Often, when Toke was in the process of calling a guy a weasel, especially if he was agitated, all of his verbal idiosyncrasies would conspire together in one sentence: “Dat guy … I don’t like dat guy … ee’s a weasel!” This was one of the things that made Toke lovable and strange. But it also made him the target of some less-than-kind impressions. When other kids in our circle imitated Toke, they would simply say, “Dat guy … ee’s a weasel.”

Toke had said “ee’s great” about John Lennon as if John Lennon was not dead. But he was dead. And it was big news. Neither of us truly knew the cultural implications of John Lennon’s murder in 1980, but we had a sense that this was
essential information we needed to share, because adults were taking it very seriously. We knew how epic the Beatles had been, and I had seen a Beatles movie on TV way back when my family lived in England. Besides, I already had two Paul McCartney and Wings albums on vinyl, including
Wings Greatest
. I also had
Back to the Egg
on eight-track. Eggs were cool in the ’70s and early ’80s. And I had a Paul McCartney poster in my room that I had gotten with the greatest hits album.

As you might conclude from the contents of my fledgling record collection and the poster, I was more of a Paul guy as a kid. That is, in the inevitable question of “Who’s your favourite Beatle?”—a question that was still being asked in the ’80s—I would side with Paul. I remember wishing I could look like Paul McCartney when I saw him singing “With a Little Luck” on TV. But this predilection for Paul would not endure. By the end of high school—and forever after—John Lennon had emerged as my favourite Beatle. It was all about his facility for songwriting, his gorgeous, yearning melodies, and his darker-themed lyrics. Besides, cool girls would more likely be fond of guys who were into John Lennon, even though they secretly preferred George Harrison, because he was “the quiet one.” I would later go back and discover all of John Lennon’s solo records from the 1970s. They would occupy a special place in my collection. Not that I didn’t love Paul. I still love Paul. But now he’s number two in my Beatle affections. Here is a short list of my favourite Beatles, in descending order, when John died, followed by a short list of my favourite Beatles now: