the dead over the undead. Literally. Back in April one of my friends said, jokingly: ‘It’s here, The Zombie Apocalypse!" and we laughed -- oh how we laughed. (Little did we know.) Who are the dead? Well when I was young it was clearly my father -- expressionless -- saying little, and telling me to be careful when I folded the American flag. And my mother was clearly alive, as there were red roses on her dress, and she was always 'going through' something or other, and I used to sing songs from The Sound of Music to her (“I Am Sixteen…”). And later, of course, she drank. Being dead was being expressionless and careful, and being alive was singing and drinking. It was all pretty clear; anyone could understand. History, if you look at it, has been a continuous war between the dead and the undead. In certain periods the dead win -- the lights go out for awhile, sometimes for a very long time, like in the Dark Ages. But then the light comes back -- and people are dancing — like in the 20s — and women are flashing their you-know-whats and riding bicycles, and things are on the up and up. But how long oh Lord, how long? And why are the dead so intent on silencing us? It’s clear that we are an affront to them. COVID has never made it any clearer. Even the bandit kerchief with the skulls on it I wear as a mask is a trigger to some; it’s obvious I am too cavalier about ‘infection.’ And the other day when they started to ask me the ‘five questions’ on my way into the gym, I just said: ‘No no no no no!” which made me sound — for the first time in a long while — like a virgin. But why don’t they like us? Is there something about me that has always been evidently ‘alive,’ that the dead ones always hated? I think so. When I was a boy they used to ask “why do you always talk with your hands?” It was a gay thing, but also part of me being 'not dead.' And then many years ago when I walked past Woody’s bar (will it ever open again?) on Church street, some guy turned to his friend and said “If Sky Gilbert can walk by, then you can dance!” which was somewhat about me being alive too. But that still doesn’t tell us why they resent us so. It’s probably because, deep down somewhere, the dead understand that people are meant to be alive, and if they aren’t alive, they are somehow betraying their humanity. After all, it's not 'reason' that makes us human. You'll find scant evidence of reason nowadays -- what with COVID and all. Why yesterday apparently two people in England got headaches or whatever (I could care less) from the vaccine and everyone went hysterical: “Oh no, not side effects! What’s going to happen? Are people going to have to stop taking the vaccine?” Well it turns out those two people were allergic to vaccines. So why did they take the bloody thing? (It’s like when you go to the doctor and say ‘oh doctor when I do this it hurts’ and the doctor says ‘well then don’t do it!') “Don't be so COVID!’”-- is what they will say, hopefully -- after this passes. Because being 'so COVID' will just mean not facing the facts. Because the undead actually know this fact: we all die, and we are more likely to die if we are 90 years old and/ or are already seriously ill. Is that rocket science? No, but suddenly to the 'COVID mind' this salient fact has become a ‘tragic situation.’ Well, when I see a photo of a 90 year old married couple on TV dying of COVID in their hospital beds, it’s simply not tragic (except for the fact that the COVID police made them die in separate rooms.) Of course it will get worse before it gets better. And I don’t mean the COVID (that will go away). I mean the judgement and the approbation, the clicking of tongues, the shaking of heads. I remember when I was dating (that’s a euphemism) Christopher (Newton) a thousand years ago, he told me that we would never ever walk down the street of Niagara-on-the-Lake together. I was wounded and shocked of course (though it did have the the allure of turning me into the ‘other woman’ which I sort of was, because of Duncan MacIntosh — who is now the First Lady of Prince Edward Island — but that’s another story….). So anyway I was shocked. And I asked him why, and he said “The twitch of a curtain means a ruined reputation in this town!” Eventually we broke up, but he still came to visit me in Toronto. And when he was walking up the sidewalk to my flat on Robert Street (it was right across from the Morgentaler Clinic, I used to sit at my desk and write plays every day — and there would be the dead and the undead quarreling right in front of my window — because the Evangelists used to accost poor innocent young women and try to stop them from having abortions). Well as he approached the lawn Christopher saw the ugly plants my landlord had planted instead of grass, and he made an ugly face. ‘Oh spurge,’ he said. “What do you mean?” I asked -- (as I am definitely not a gardener). “He’s planted spurge instead of grass, but it’s not working.” “Oh, is that what that stuff is?” “Yes,” said Christopher (ever the gardener). And then he sighed, wistfully: ‘Spurge never works.” And then later when we hadn’t dated each other for awhile — and we were both seeing other men — Christopher had met a beautiful boy who lived on Church Street, and he was having a gay old time with him (so to speak). But then he had to break it off. (I think the boys name was Bobbi.) I said “Oh no, what happened? Why did you have to break it off with Bobbi?” He said: “Bobbi kissed the cat.” “Ah," I said. “Yes,” he said wistfully. (Christopher was often wistful.) "I couldn’t take it after that.” If all this sounds like Greek to you, then you are probably dead, and you don’t approve of me. And when it comes down to it, you never have approved of me, and you know — it’s just envy. It’s just bloody envy. The undead don’t want to be dead you see, but the dead want to be undead. But they know that for some reason they can never be. (Why?) So they will lock us up and take away our fun. It’s particularly bad now. If you are one of the undead, you kinda wish you were dead right now. But it won’t last for ever. Because you see there is….well, life. And that’s something the dead can never understand.
