Journalism 101 or, How I Found A Woman’s Big Toe In My Glass Of Gin And Learned To Love It.

I remember the first journalism class I ever had back in the winter of 1987. Lindsay Chrysler (whose name I’m pretty sure I’ve not spelt correctly once, ever), the head of Concordia’s J school, had a roomful of apple-cheeked wannabe reporters pair up, do a quicky face-to-face interview and show up a couple days later with the results.
I don’t remember how I fared in the young woman’s hands but part of me wishes I’d kept a copy of her story just to be reminded of how easily your reality can be co-opted, bent and mutilated by some gormless hack.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. EVERY story fucks with reality, space and time. But today, we’re talking about my reality.
A guy who spent a couple weeks in my house two years ago has been writing travelogues about his time in Asia and elsewhere from the comfort of his sofa in LA and now, North Carolina. It was mentioned to me quite some time ago but life is short and suffice to say I’d not logged on to http://www.sobsey.com/ .
So I get mail yesterday, an on-pass note from Adam via a mutual friend saying “Tell Paul to have a look.”
I did and, well, now I wish I hadn’t. Let’s just say that the parts of the story where I actually featured bore little resemblance to what I experienced, my best friend, a brave and complicated bear of a man was rendered unrecognizable (and almost hypocritical) and the general tenor of life in The Big Durian reduced to a couple of pithy comments about ex-pats and their relationship with Indonesia and its people. I’m glad he didn’t take a crack at the love of my life because then I might have to actually get angry.
Among other things, Adam tells the story about the funky (well, I think it’s funky) old carved Balinese door holding up a wall in my front yard. The stripped down version is that he, my roomie and I went trolling for old wood at a Madurese guy’s shop down among the overpriced antique wood- yards in Cipute. She’d been down once and fallen in lust with a cool lime green door, frame and shutter set and wanted me to have a boo at it.
These dealers are all cut from the same cloth. Their presence is announced by giant rain-beaten ANTIQUE signs on the side of barns in upper Washington state filled with rusting plows and reconditioned floor-model version of Centipede and Space Invaders. Their toney Westmount “galleries” (‘cause no self-respecting Montreal antique dealer would call it a “shop” or “store”) are frequented by Guatemalan-poncho-wearing BMW owners who’ve left the kids with the English nanny up the hill. And, they use six-year-olds stolen away from their dirt-farmer Hazara to work Kabul’s Chicken Street, hawking burquas to female aid workers and “antique” firearms to bull-necked Dutch gunnery sergeants.
The Madurese was no different, having spent years separating people from their money, laughing all the way to the bank. To cut a long story short he tried to pull a fast one, replacing at time of delivery the fine, solid teak piece I’d negotiated down to $300, with a shiny, crudely wrought piece of particle-board I’d expect to find in some Chinese timber baron’s Burmese border love-shack.
When we met the next day – note to rookies: never pay in advance – he offered me the junk piece in exchange for the one I wanted. Then he offered to sell it to me for half the price we’d agreed for the real McCoy. This was followed by a protracted explanation about how he wasn’t actually allowed to sell the one I wanted for the price we’d agreed upon because it was a consignment job and didn’t meet the minimum price the real owner wanted. There may have been other explanations, I just don’t remember.
The basic message was: “I fucked up. You’re a rich foreigner. So, you should give it back to me so I can turn around and screw someone else.”
Bottom line was that, slippery as he was, the Madurese had no wriggle room. I had a door, albeit the wrong one, he had no money and we’d reached an impasse that could only end one of three ways: I’d keep the cheesy piece of shit in my yard and try and unload it on someone else, Indonesia being ripe with Chinese timber barons I wasn’t expecting any problems in that regard; he could bring a bunch of goons over and reclaim it by force in which case I’d have no recourse whatsoever because, while the Indo legal system screws regular folk a hundred ways before lunch, there is a special place reserved for foreigners with the audacity to try and get justice; finally, he could admit defeat and deliver on our deal. Fortunately for all concerned that’s exactly what happened.
Right now I’m in pondering mode. Ponder, ponder, ponder. Is Adam just foolish (unlikely), lazy (doesn’t fit), and shallow (ditto)? Or is it true that even at our best writers can be relied upon to get details right like 60 per cent of the time, and that even if you get the facts right, distance and dislocation and a different set of eyes doom the project, so why bother pretending?
I did pretty well in communications theory back there at Concordia. I treated it like someone you sleep with because you’ve nothing better to do with your life, which is to say I refused to take it seriously, treated the lecturer with distain and perhaps because I distained it so successfully, I scored well and often: don’t Foucault with me. But, I suppose after years of cocking up in my own very fallible way I was overdue for a reality check. Makes me wonder where the girl from that first J class ended up…
And, by the way and for the record in case you decide to check out the Sobsey piece: I did not pay the Madurese a dime more than what we’d agreed upon.

Finally, an update. Kev, Frank and Andy were scheduled to hit the trail outta Dawson City today, on the first leg of their six-week, 2,100 km bike journey up the Yukon River and across the heart of Alaska. But, Kevin writes at www.bikesonice.com not before they joined the Sour Toe Cocktail Club. When in Newfoundland you kiss the cod: up in Yukon Territory you slam back a jigger of gin containing a leathery big toe, a gift from some unknown woman two years ago. No word as to how she “lost” it. Gonna have to talk to that boy about the fundamentals of journalism…