It was like a scene from a movie, but there was a certain sense of insincerity that would manifest only hours later. The movie part involves me rolling out of the Burlington train station heading off to Western Canada with my 16 year old girlfriend Laura crying in her daddy's convertible in the parking lot. We loved each other in many ways, but had broken up weeks before, only to find that we had a hard time staying away from each other. In the five or six months we were together, there had been tons of love and respect but I was almost five years older and there's no way I was going to ask beautiful young Laura to wait for my return.
The insincere part was within me, for even if she had been saddened by my departure, I was ecstatic to be escaping the numbness of suburbia, and less than twelve hours later I was hanging with a gorgeous brunette named Ellen whom I met on the train. If you ever get the chance I suggest you try it, for the rocking and rolling motion of the train means that it feels wickedly good even when the two of you are resting. I had met Ellen and some other dudes in the bar car hours earlier and El and I had smoked some of her hash oil in the washroom that afternoon, but a couple of beers later when we returned to the washroom and I was expecting her to light up again, she said "not until we're ready to come out of here, so people won't smell it" and I started hardening and kissing her right away.
The necking seemed incredibly passionate right from the start, and I was being drawn into the aroma and moistness of a woman on fire. Everything was happening fast, and the intensity of the moment signaled there was more action desired. I started massaging her breasts from over her shirt and she almost instantly pulled her top up to reveal two perfectly round perky tits, and I was off to the races. It was probably only five minutes later when I was thrusting deep inside her embracing womanhood, while her beautiful butt was propped up against the sink. The added sexual stimulus of a rockin' train rollin' through the Ontario northlands, and the danger of being only feet from passengers and train officials walking past in the hallway, meant that this incredible nirvana had to be experienced in almost total silence, though Ellen's soft moans and fast breaths made me drive harder and deeper.
I'm sure I didn't last more than a few minutes as the act was like running up Mount Everest and then finding it's a volcano, but it was other-worldly and I reveled in the moment. Then we sat down and smoked a bit more oil, I returned to sit beside her in her section of the train and fell asleep on her shoulder. When I woke up a couple of hours later it was the middle of the night and we had already passed her stop in North Bay, and I was painfully yet dreamily alone. I didn't get to say a real goodbye but Ellen, the five hours or so we spent on that train were a lot of fun, and that session in the washroom was an ecstatic sensual coupling I have remembered for a lifetime, so good on you!
I had been in Dawson Creek BC a couple of years before, and my friends there were happy to see me, Giselle, Vince, Steve and all the good folks. There was almost trouble between myself and another guy who was interested in dating Giselle, but one night at a barn party after G had said she couldn't go out with either of us because she didn't want to disappoint one guy, Giselle was on acid and not really talking to either of us, and we started speaking with each other. After I told him I'd likely be leaving town in a few weeks so he would win out in the end, he relaxed and we enjoyed a couple of beers and even laughed about our predicament. Dawson Creek was a wild and fun place, but I could hear Vancouver calling.
Two friends from Burlington Central High School, Sylvia Livingstone and Gina Farrauto, were living in a rented house in Point Grey, and one day while I was street-singing on Granville or anyway on the street where the Ballroom is, who walks by but Sylvia, and she needs someone to accompany her to her friend's "New Wave" gig at the Ballroom that night. I found a place to stash my guitar and backpack and joined Sylvia for the show. We had done projects together in high school but had never been boyfriend and girlfriend, so we had a relaxed vibe together and became very close friends in the months following that night. Her boyfriend's band were shoegazers (her beau played the entire show with his back to the audience, barely moving) but there were other bands on the bill that weren't too bad, including the Pointed Sticks, whose members mostly came from heavier local groups that i would come to know and love later that year.
I ended up moving in with Sylvia and Gina, and then another friend from Burlington, Danny DePasquale, moved in with us as well. The Point Grey area has awesome waterside parks, with the wild UBC Endowment Lands mere blocks away. The summer of 1979 saw 58 straight days of sunshine, so I was able to get a lot of street-singing in, and swim at the beach, and party hearty.
When we moved from 3rd Street up to 10th, we were then near a great park with free tennis courts, and I remember playing in the sun against Danny, Sylvia and Gina, and it was also the glorious summer when I met Lorraine P, my love goddess girlfriend from the Blackpool area of England. Lorraine was both classy and rootsy, a full-figured strong goddess, and provided the grounding and foundational healing a young lost soul like myself really needed at the time. It wasn't until after she left Canada some months later that I truly realized how fortunate I was to have had such a gal for my girlfriend, and even after moving to Toronto in 1980, I still worshiped and longed for Lorraine, particularly on lonely nights.
Lorraine's older sister had lived with Denny Laine of the Moody Blues, who went on to be a founding and crucial member of McCartney's Wings. She knew the British punk scene (her fave dance was the "standing still,", very cool), and gave me crucial insights by telling me about her grade school days, where most of her classmates listened to The Beatles and Herman's Hermits, but the hip kids dug the Stones and the Doors. That reminded me of Burlington, where the richer areas enjoyed Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Strawbs and many other progressive rock bands, yet the downtown region I hung out gravitated to Dylan, Hendrix, The Who, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin etc. though there were many bands and artists we all valued. For myself it was a matter of angst, and punk was to manifest and propel angst at and to audiences in some of the greatest musical shows in the history of the earth. Having been there for the early days of the Dead Boys, The Clash, and especially DOA, gave focus to the social anger building within me.
Lorraine and I got to spend a lot of time together in Vancouver, and time off from her nanny job allowed us emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical intimacy, and I loved her like I had never loved a woman before. The hitchhiking trip we took to Banff basically meant we were married for ten days or so, and though we had some difficult moments, the days were mostly yin and yang basking in unconditional love and the presence of a true partner. If my girlfriend Colleen in Quebec represented my first enduring adult relationship, then Lorraine was my first true love as a young man, and though marriage crossed our minds, we were both soul-seeking wanderers, and that seemingly static state of living appeared distant and unreachable for us.
Lovemaking with Lorraine was genuine and profound, as we each sought ways to please the other, and found our unions to be so deliciously private in the quiet and the darkness of the night. We made love under the stars, and six became nine in the tent, when moist saliva slickened the pole, as nose, lips and tongue were sliding and slithering around the foyer of the aromatic pink palace. Big Mama Gaia was shaking the earth underneath Us, while Jesus Jah Allah and all the angels were murmuring and humming harmonic universal approval from the heavens above.
A month or so before L was due to leave for a journey through the Western USA, Central and South America, my move to the punk side from the folk protest arena was sealed with the shearing of my long, slightly wavy but mostly straight hair at a local barber shop. I emerged with something similar to a brushcut and remember vividly Lorraine's reaction when she saw that I had moved beyond my folksinger image and was now sporting a short punk style. She was wildly happy, jumped immediately onto my lap and started running her fingers over and over through my now short locks, and I was a renewed man: Joey Power, young punk.
Blistering shows by DOA, The Subhumans, Young Canadians (still known as K-Tels at that time) and The Modernettes drew me into the scene, and soon I was rehearsing new material with my own band, The Reactors.
