Heroes in My Head

by Judy Rebick

  After Patrick wrote a particularly nasty editorial criticizing right-wing student leaders, there was a campaign to fire him as editor of the Daily on the grounds that he did not represent the students. The charge against him was “consistent use of the Daily for extreme political purposes” and “lack of coverage of traditional student activities.”

  Patrick responded, “It is the job of the Daily to speak to students, not to speak for them.”

  He was fired. Some of the radicals on council held an open meeting for students, who almost unanimously opposed the decision. Patrick was reinstated within two days. I learned a lot from him, including how to stand up to attack.

  Patrick’s reinstatement was the first sign that the majority of the students were on our side against the conservative forces at McGill that had dominated the campus for years. In the early and mid-sixties the student council resisted the changes that were sweeping North America. The Daily represented the new forces of change, so we were often at loggerheads.

  It was also in 1965 that the anti-war movement took off. I went to a demonstration protesting the war in Vietnam sponsored by the Quebec student union, UGEQ. More than four thousand students showed up. In the past, activism at McGill had consisted of a small cabal of radicals at the Daily. Now McGill erupted with activism, as did many other campuses across Quebec and Canada. Student Union for Peace Action (SUPA) emerged from a national conference in Saskatchewan in 1965 and went on to lead the anti-war movement for the next couple of years.

  Free love was the prevailing ideology on the Daily. While I doubt anyone but Patrick practised it, we all thought we should be completely free about our sexuality. That fall they showed a pornographic film at a party in the Daily office. I had never seen such a film and found it deeply disturbing. I didn’t say anything for fear of seeming like I wasn’t hip, but I was really upset. I left and so did a couple of other women. The objection was likely more about how inappropriate it was to show the film in mixed company rather than to show it at all. A lot of the guys thought it was a problem, too, especially once the women left, so it never happened again.

  By that time, Patrick was pressuring me to sleep with him. But I had a problem. I was still a virgin. While radicals and bohemians were promoting free love, the mores of the 1950s were still with us. Single women couldn’t get birth control and most men wouldn’t use a condom. I was embarrassed to be a virgin, so I pretended I wasn’t.

  In Canada disseminating information about birth control was still illegal. The famous McGill Birth Control Handbook, published in 1968, was the first information any of us had about birth control from a female perspective. Our ignorance about sex was monumental. Perhaps some of us had read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, or if we were really bold Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, but these were descriptions of sex from a decidedly masculine perspective.

  For me, Patrick was the perfect solution. He was easy about sex, interested, and available. I told him I was a virgin and asked him to promise not to tell anyone. We did it in the tiny dorm-like room he had as editor in the McGill Student Union. It didn’t hurt that much but there was a lot of blood, and he just stuffed the sheets in the cupboard. Afterward he asked me if I had had an orgasm. When I said I hadn’t, he suggested something might be wrong with me. Patrick did me the favour of taking my virginity, but he also gave me a complex about my sexuality. I worried that maybe I was frigid, in the language of the time.

  Then one of the Daily staffers found the sheets.

  “Jesus, Judy, you were a virgin and you slept with Patrick?” he said with a look of what I took to be pity but was probably real concern. I denied it. Everyone knew that I had slept with Patrick and everyone knew that Patrick had sex with every woman he could. The guys thought he was a real ass to have seduced me, since sex was so meaningless to him.

  “No, I am not a virgin,” I answered. “I just have a problem that means I sometimes bleed when I have sex.” I hated being treated like a girl, someone to be protected and sheltered. So I lied. I doubt anyone believed me, but they stopped treating me that way.

  While I was ignorant about sex, I did know that birth control was important. I knew too many girls whose life or health was ruined by having a baby when they weren’t ready or having a backstreet abortion out of desperation. Why should a woman pay the price of an unwanted pregnancy? In those days it was rare for a man to take responsibility for getting a girl pregnant. When a friend asked if I knew about how to get in touch with a doctor in town that was doing abortions, I made it my business to find out and became part of an underground network referring women to safe illegal abortions.

  This was also the year I started smoking. Pretty well everyone smoked cigarettes in those days but because both of my parents smoked, I didn’t. Whatever they did, I didn’t want to do. But I was often nervous. I’d be sitting with a crowd of Daily staffers drinking beer and peeling the labels off the bottles. Someone would say, “For Christ’s sake, Judy, take a cigarette and cut that out.” The Surgeon General’s report linking smoking and lung cancer came out in early 1964, but no one took it seriously. I resisted for a while but then one fateful day, I took the offered cigarette. At first it made me sick but I kept trying. Within a couple of years I was chain-smoking. I’ve since learned through my own attempts to quit that in addition to being powerfully addictive, cigarettes are a drug that help keep your feelings down. And during this time in my life I was powerfully emotional in ways that came dangerously close to exposing my hidden memories.

  Six

  Love Lost

  Over the summer of 1965, a lot changed in my household, too. My father’s business went bankrupt. He blamed his younger brother Frank, who he had brought in to manage the place.

  “Frank turned that place into a shit factory.” He would pause for effect. “Frank has always had a talent for turning money into shit,” ending with a wry smile. And Frank was his favourite brother. He had been anxious to put some distance between himself and the rest of his family but that attempt had failed. I think it was probably his gambling that actually wrecked the business. He seemed to always be in court. But nothing was ever my father’s fault. Both he and my mother always put the blame elsewhere.

  I don’t know what his connections were to the Montreal mob, which was deeply involved in the construction industry, but he was good friends with Johnny Sacco, a famous gangster from Buffalo who a couple of decades later became an informant for the FBI. My father’s amicable relationship with him must have meant he was much more involved with the mob than I realized, though not enough to save his business.

  One Friday night during my second year at McGill, Johnny Sacco brought his girlfriend to our house. She looked very much the part of a gangster’s moll, which is exactly what she was. She was loud, funny, a little racy, and had a cleavage that seemed to jump out at you. We loved her but my mother was not so enthusiastic. My father’s escapades could be amusing and that night he was in great form. Sacco loved him and entertained us all. A couple of weeks later, we saw him being led away in handcuffs on Buffalo TV news.

  “Don’t worry,” my father said. “He always gets out.” My mother was not amused.

  The bankruptcy meant my parents would be moving back to Toronto, and I would stay in Montreal to finish my studies at McGill. Alvin, who was still in high school, went to Toronto before my parents in time for the beginning of the school year. For the same reason I moved out before school started. Leonard and his new wife, Maureen O’Donnell, also moved to Toronto to their own apartment. It was the first time I’d be living apart from my family.

  I moved into a Park Avenue studio at the end of August 1966, and in October I met a man named Roger. I was at a house party on Milton Avenue with some friends, when this older guy started talking to me. He had a handlebar moustache and a bit of a beer belly, and he was very British. His eyes crinkled up when he smiled, making him look like the kindest person you might ever m
eet. Roger was, to say the least, persistent. He came back to my apartment with me, even though I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go to bed with him. We made love that night.

  At thirty-four Roger was a renaissance man who read a book a day and remembered everything he read. He could talk intelligently about almost any subject, although he was obsessed with some. He made me feel beautiful, smart, and desirable. He also introduced me to sex and drugs. I had tried both before, but Roger was the full-spectrum experience.

  Roger loved women — all women. When he was drinking, he would hit on and have sex with almost every woman he met if she was willing. We had sex several times a day, whether or not he was sleeping with other women. I had an inkling that this was unusual behaviour, but it took a few years before I realized how hypersexual he really was. He said it was fine for me to sleep with others, too, although he always found a reason why one guy or another was no good for me.

  Once Roger moved in, my apartment on Park Avenue became a social centre. He was plugged into Montreal’s bohemian scene: artists, writers, poets, and drug dealers. Even in those exotic circles, Roger stood out as the one willing to break all the rules. For my friends, just coming out of their teenage years, Roger and his friends were spellbinding.

  My friends loved Roger almost as much as I did. He was more than ten years older than most of us and had a million stories. But more than that, he was kind and caring. One of my friends who hung out with us a lot was Bob Chodos. He was smart and a great writer but very insecure socially. He used a cane, which drew attention to his disability. Roger, in his usual direct fashion, told Bob he was certain he could walk without it. Then he took it away and challenged Bob to walk. From that day on, Bob walked without his cane. Roger was like that: he gave you confidence that you didn’t know you had.

  Roger believed in absolute honesty in relationships — or so he said. It pained him that I was lying to my parents about being with him. I knew my father would go crazy if he ever met Roger, but Roger wouldn’t let up about meeting my parents. Then one weekend my parents decided to go to Toronto to get ready for the move. Roger insisted that I show him my house in Côte-Saint-Luc.

  When Roger saw the house he said, “You told me your father was a businessman, but you didn’t say you lived in a mansion.”

  “It’s not really a mansion,” I replied. “It looks bigger than it is.”

  Within a few minutes, Roger got into my father’s liquor cabinet. After a few drinks, he decided to put on a yarmulke and take off everything else. He sat rabbi-like, in his mind, at the dining-room table, facing the picture window. He started making a speech about the military brilliance of the Israeli army generals, his current obsession. It was just after the Six-Day War, in which Israel had captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. My obsession was to get him to stop drinking and get dressed.

  To allay my anxiety, I called the hotel where my parents were staying to make sure they weren’t coming back early. Sure enough, they were on their way home. I phoned Sam, Roger’s boss at the motel where he worked as a designer. In those days drive-in movies were illegal in Quebec. Roger had the idea of designing a geodesic dome to house a movie theatre at this motel, which was a hangout for artists and druggies just outside of Montreal. I asked Sam to come and pick up Roger. All the while I was begging Roger to get dressed.

  He put on his clothes just before my parents walked in the door. I went to greet them and tried to introduce Roger from a distance so they wouldn’t notice how drunk he was. Detecting my father’s rising anger, my mother suggested some coffee and cake. We stood in the kitchen, my father with his back to the refrigerator, my mother busying herself making coffee, and me standing between the two men, trying to keep Roger at some kind of distance from Jack.

  It didn’t take long for the storm of my father’s anger to break.

  “Get that man out of my house!” he shouted.

  I quietly tried to talk Roger into waiting outside the front door. Roger puffed out his chest, walked military-style around me, marched up to my father, and said, “Sir, are you aware of the brilliance of the Israeli generals?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Jack replied.

  “They learned those manoeuvres from British generals,” Roger continued. “There is an important alliance between the Jews and the British, sir.”

  I feared what was coming next.

  “Let’s all just calm down,” my mother said with a familiar look of dismay. “I’m sure we can work this out. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

  “Are you out of your goddamn mind?” my father thundered. “I don’t want him here another minute!”

  Just then the doorbell rang. “Please, Roger,” I said, dragging him by the arm. “Sam is here to pick you up. Please come with me.”

  “I’m going to take you away from this terrible man,” Roger said as I pushed him out the door. Finally rid of him, I slumped against the door, his words reverberating in my mind, running up against his actions.

  “If you keep seeing that man, you are no longer my daughter!” my father shouted from the kitchen. Predictably, the storm was turning against me now. As much as I hated to admit it, I could see his point. Roger was great, but I had never seen him so drunk and out of control. My family was still important to me and I didn’t doubt my father’s threat.

  “Okay,” I said, “I won’t see him anymore.” That didn’t stop the tide of invective. By the end of it my father was satisfied that I was not going to see “that man” again.

  I told Roger that I just couldn’t handle this kind of confrontation with my father and it would be better to end the relationship. What I didn’t say was that maybe I couldn’t handle him either. I don’t remember what he said in response, but he kept coming over, and after a week or so we were back together again.

  A few weeks later my parents moved to Toronto.

  * * *

  The winter got more and more intense. I became entrenched in Roger’s bohemian lifestyle. In addition to the non-stop visitors, we were doing a lot of drugs. LSD had been flowing into Montreal for about a year. Roger and I had taken it a couple of times with a friend who acted as our guide. An acid trip was considered a spiritual experience and the drug was very strong, so it was a good idea to do it with someone who could help you through it.

  In February 1967, in my tiny Park Avenue apartment, we dropped what turned out to be very strong LSD with my friends Alan and Diane, whom I had met that summer in an amateur theatre group. It was the middle of a snowstorm so we were planning on staying indoors. Acid comes on slowly. It takes about an hour before your perception of the world is completely transformed. I’d taken it a couple of times before and mostly saw pretty moving colours. Solid objects turned into viscous liquids and sometimes I felt like I was floating in space. But this time was different. Suddenly I was looking up at everyone. I had turned into a child. The closer I got to Roger, the smaller I got. When I was next to him, I felt as if I were five years old.

  Panic set in. At first I went into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. If I could see myself in the mirror, I couldn’t have turned into a child. The face looking back at me was distorted, but it was me. My heart slowed a bit and I walked back into the living room. As soon as I saw Roger I became a child again. I had to get out of there. Panicked, I decided the best route was the fire escape. Roger would follow me down the stairs, but not onto the fire escape. We were five floors up.

  “Stop!” Alan yelled. “Judy, stop.”

  But I didn’t. I opened the door. Alan grabbed my arm.

  “I have to get out of here,” I cried. Alan looked at Roger for help.

  “Keep him away from me,” I cried. “I can’t be near him.”

  “It’s okay, Judy,” Roger said in his warm, loving voice. “I won’t hurt you. It’s me, Roger. You know me. We’ll go ou
tside but let’s go down the stairs. It’s safer.”

  “You go first, then,” I said, not wanting to risk being near him.

  Alan helped me down the stairs and onto the street. Once we were outside, I became myself again.

  I was deeply disturbed by this experience. At the time I didn’t understand I was experiencing some form of dissociation or a split into another personality, but I did sense my psyche was showing me something that I didn’t want to see. Unwilling to look inward, I looked at how I was living. Roger was getting harder to handle. I was working less and less on the Daily and not going to school at all. Once I came down from the trip, I knew we had to talk.

  “I felt like a little girl around you,” I explained. “I couldn’t be myself when I was near you. I don’t know what to do. I love being with you but I have to live my own life and I feel like being with you is stopping me from doing that.”

  “I want you to live your own life, too,” he replied lovingly. “I don’t want you to be my wife. It’s because you are so strong and independent that I love you. I don’t want you to change. I want you to be your own person.”

  That was the last time I took LSD. I liked being high but I couldn’t stand losing control. Something stopped me from going further down this self-destructive path. It might have been Simon, the guardian personality, but of course I knew nothing about that at the time.