It is the evening of the day

In 1975 I had moved back to Montreal where cheap apartments were abundant, and served almost as portals to a lifestyle consisting of parties and all kinds of events involving an ever shifting and enthusiastic, sometimes bilingual crowd. It was like Soho or any other seedy downtown scene and there were geniuses around- like Leonard Cohen or choreographer Edouard Lock and his troupe LaLaLa Human Steps, and numerous painters, poets, singers, bands- a kind of excitement permeated the Main, also a hub for drugs and prostitution, which gave the neighborhood its slightly dangerous edge. I had missed it during my 18 month exile in southern Ontario and quickly found a very cheap flat behind.Barin Byng HS, on the second floor above a store which burned down the following year, the summer of the Olympics. I was away in Vancouver for the fire which consumed my few belongjngs. Upon my return my mother fell and broke her hip and I moved in with her as her caregiver. As she lived across the river in a quiet suburb I felt exiled from my combustible world on the Main which I would often visit -- just to stay in touch with all that was magical in my old haunt.

On March 4 and 5, 1977, the Rolling Stones played Toronto's tight, grungy El Mocambo club. The shows were sneaky and secret – the room was booked for April Wine, who were a great rock 'n' roll band but not the World's Greatest…

I also remember the Jim Jones story making blood curdling headlines -- but that was later in November 1978

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#cite_note-off-3

While our First Lady Margaret Trudeau parties with the Stones at nightclubs in Toronto and NY creating a scandal I am living with my mother at her apartment in a Montreal suburb. I am subsisting on sprouts and seeds either having just written or being about to write my first book of poetry which will be called LIL.

It is 12 years since Mick came to our house and proposed marriage. I have no memory of this incident at age 14 . None whatsoever. My mother has never mentioned it to me either -- either because it never happened (Occam's Razor) or because the psychiatrists have completely erased it from my consciousness. The second option is just too farfetched, in March 1977, several months ahead of disturbing news regarding doctors at McGill who knew my father and subjected him and hundreds of others to brainwashing experiments in the early 60s.

So Mick Jagger coming to our house in 1965 was an impossibility that could not have occurred and to suggest otherwise is an absurdity that never even crossed my mind even in high school when girls as tall as I was are prone to fantasy.

However after leaving home at age 19 and moving downtown to the Bohemian Lunapark that was life east of McGill I once heard a distinct message inside my head out of nowhere stating “you were meant to have married Mick Jagger". The clarity of the audible voice to my conscious mind gave it more weight than any normal idle thought just popping in. It had an effect - I carried it around with me like a private puzzle. Later on I would tell potential suitors: "Sorry, but you're not Mick Jagger."

Meanwhile as far as I knew Mick was still married to Bianca - I didn't care enough to follow his real relationships but felt a kind of futile ache when I thought about him sometimes.

It was more than that really - part of me was a little obsessed with him. It was my secret, shared with millions. I would go to a certain neighborhood bar just to gaze at a regular there who resembled him. But I must say my feelings were mixed. Since the first days of witnessing him on the Ed Sullivan Show I was torn between his beautiful/ ugly sides- he manifested both and could appear almost repulsive at times, almost negating my first impression of him singing Time Is On My Side - a performance that seared itself into my memory at least the part of it I could access.

Being well into my twenties I had grown jaded and detached from the hopeful amusements of my teens. Rock music, music in general, having declined into something predictable almost moribund.

In 1977 Keith Richards had been arrested and charged for heroin possession and was awaiting trial. And Mick had moved to New York and hung out at Studio 54. As my story begins, that mad March, he had recently met Jerry Hall through her boyfriend Brian Ferry. I know this only through reading years later after I nearly met him. Only whem they hit the headlines as in the scandal over Margaret Trudeau dancing among them in her underwear at the El Mocambo, did I notice what the Stones were up to.

I was pursuing my quest for real life in between taking care of my sick widowed mother, attending dowsing conferences with my friend Charlotte -- she who had introduced me to the writings of Tibetan guru Chogyam Trungpa in the early 70s, and had an older sister in Vermont who had studied with the venerated Kalu Rinpoche -- now lived on the Main next door to a tombstone factory. She had recently befriended an odd neighbor named Ken Hertz who inhabited a tiny place whose front door opened onto their shared back alley.

Somehow over the winter  I must have run into Ken whose pal Bozo (whom I had briefly dated in 1972) had moved to NY and was busy networking with the film world including Stones' producer Robert Stigwood, a name I heard tossed around.

In one of our street corner chats which just have been in March, Ken proposed to take me to New York on my birthday, which was a month away in April. This was not just some vague idea that he floated at me, it sounded more like a definite plan with a hidden motive in the background that I was not party to. I was naturally somewhat suspicious of Ken, whom Charlotte had described as a  eccentric genius who designed chemistry sets for a living. At 32 he was already half bald with small beady eyes and one of those Alexander Solzhenytsin type beards that that left his upper lip naked and bare while encircling his jaw with a colorless fringe. Almost like a halo that had slipped down his face. Conversation with him was more of an interrogation - he would fire off questions or lists of names demanding whether you knew this or that person-.most of whom I had never heard of. His face was often expressionless and blank, and if Charlotte had not insisted so much on his having a well-hidden heart of gold, I would probably have avoided him after one or two encounters.

As for going with him to NY on my birthday which was still weeks off in April, I couldn't see the point of traveling with him to a place I had never been and where I didn't know anyone. He said "And that's why you have to go."

I pleaded my mother's injury and slow convalescence and how she would worry. The next time I saw him he upped the ante. "There's something very important that could happen for you in NY on your birthday. You have to come." His normally emotionless features seemed sharpened by anxiety. What could be waiting for me in NY? "I cant tell you," he said.

A few days later as if under duress or against his own better judgment, the hint got dropped. "If.you come with me to New York you could meet Mick Jagger."

This seemed highly unlikely, but it also rhymed with my memory of the voice that spoke in my head years before.

"Okay, I'll come."

…

Kenny and I boarded the Greyhound for the 8 hour ride to Port Authority station and a quick visit to Times Square. Maybe we walked the 5 km to Annie's 5th Floor walkup on east 6th Street or maybe we took the subway to Houston. I remember arriving after dark and someone throwing down the keys, someone greeting us and showing us the room with mattresses on the floor.

The next day it was rainy, cold and foggy but Ken insisted on taking me to the top of the Empire State Building where visibility was almost nil due to the weather. We gazed through a telescope at nearby buildings then took the elevator back down. Ken wore a look of peeved embarrassment. Next on our agenda for the day was a trip to the Met. I wish I could remember more of that experience but the years have washed it away -- almost as if none of it happened.

It was the weekend of my birthday and also (I learned later) of a total solar eclipse which I think we somehow missed, probably due to the terrible weather. Kind of a double negative, an eclipse on your birthday and not getting to see it. It was becoming clear that we were not having fun - Ken was tense and distracted, muttering incomprehensible excuses and making phone calls to various numbers in his tiny phone book. Dropping me back at Annie's he left for a few hours.

What I most remember is sitting in her living room in late afternoon, talking with a teenaged black kid who was also from out of town, and seemed strangely disoriented -  the more we talked the more concerned I became for his welfare. He was in New York for the first time and seemed not to know what he was doing here. It was probably why we bonded so easily. We were both in limbo waiting for instructions, news, an appointment or address to materialize. In my case it came when Kenny showed up with Bozo and I joined them down in the street-- I was hungry and we were going to dinner someplace or so I thought or was led to believe.

Bozo seemed happy to see me - enthusiastically taking my hand. His enthusiasm was the most infectious thing about him. How long had it been since I had last seen him? Possibly the last time had been on the set of his second film, The Rubber Gun Show, a film about a crook, shot in Montreal. I had briefly dated him while I was finishing university, and had gone to a party or two at painter Steve Lack's where people did cocaine and downers sometime in the summer of 1975. It was not my scene at all but I liked him because he seemed genuine. His real name was not Bozo, everyone just called him that -- his real name was Allan Moyle and that spring he was raising funds under that name for his next feature film Times Square. "About two sick little girls who run away from a mental hospital," he told me, as if it were still a secret.

We were walking two abreast, with Kenny bringing up the rear while Bozo and I caught up. New York was in the second week of a garbage strike and mountains of black plastic bags were piled on sidewalks making it hard to proceed as a threesome. A stench hung in the air but Bozo acted elated perhaps because he loved playing off Kenny. Come to think of it I had hung out with them not that long ago listening into their intense conversations- they were opposite personalities who completed each other. Ken was the brains, Bozo the all-embracing actor, but clearly they were both very calculating, quick to analyze and grab opportunity.

As we hurried along, Bozo talked of how much he loved New York. You could do anything here, he shouted, spreading his arms and leaping off the sidewalk. He landed in his stomach in the middle of a wet mountain of garbage bags.

This took me by surprise. I could barely believe he had done that. There could be broken glass in those bags, I remember thinking, but I laughed out loud as he stood back up. And here my memory of the evening comes to a complete dead end. Whatever came next is a total blank. As if nothing happened. No dinner (to which I'd been looking forward, having eaten perhaps a hot dog or two with Ken in Times Square). I don't remember a taxi, either getting in or getting out of one, or entering a restaurant, or club, or even greasy spoon. My first real night on the town in the Big Apple is completely gone, until 2 am when I find myself lying next to Bozo back at Annie's, on separate pallets on her floor, with Ken in the next room -- Bozo and I are quietly talking and our fingertips are just touching. A powerful tingling force never felt before is flowing through us - we are fully dressed. We both feel ecstatic for some reason, as we keep telling each other. Perhaps we have taken a drug, although I dont remember any such thing. It feels very pure and light and I ask Bozo if he has ever felt anything like this and he says no. Neither have I.

I don't see the black kid again. He seems to be gone. This might be his mattress i am lying on, opposite Bozo.

The next afternoon Kenny, Bozo and I board the afternoon Greyhound for Montreal. Its Sunday morning, April 10. Kenny is sullen, silent, angry and I don't care because I am in love with no one in particular although Bozo has taken charge of me. I dont know why he's coming back to Montreal with us- he has something to do there. It's my birthday and I've just turned 26, having spent two days in New York during which nothing happened. For the next 8 hours Bozo and I share a seat, while Kenny grumbles and groans in the seat behind us. I assume he is the loser in some mysterious struggle for my affections, although this makes no sense whatsoever, and is never explained or even mentioned, ever again.