The time I’ve been able to devote to my real work—blogging—has been limited lately thanks to my editing duties, researching a potential politics story for the fall, and studying for a course I’m taking on modern drama.*Which will, next time some Hollywood-approved star shows up in Ottawa to decry Bill C-10, prompt some seriously trenchant comparisons with Lord Chamberlain’s censorship of George Bernard Shaw’s Miss Warren’s Profession. I recommend checking in early and often. As such, in the grand tradition of starving freelance writers everywhere, I’m recycling some content created for another forum in hopes no one will care.
In this case, following is the text of a eulogy I delivered for Bigfoot last Thursday at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel, a launch for Walrus contributing artist Graham Roumieu’s Bigfoot: I Not Dead (which you can purchase here) that was part of the This Is Not a Reading Series put on by Pages Books. You can also read managing editor Jared Bland’s interview with Bigfoot for more.
I should note that I was forced to deliver this right after comedian and writer Seán Cullen had seemingly drawn out every laugh a hundred or so human bodies are capable of expelling in a single evening*Calculated by eminent guffologists to be exactly 1,753. with his largely improvised take on how we should all learn from Bigfoot’s ability to live in the now. But no pressure.
Warning: could be viewed as vulgar by human standards, though it will seem profoundly commonplace to most sasquatches.*And to Michael Winter, whose scatalogical eulogy stretched the boundaries of good, bad, and awful taste—and we are all the better for having heard it.
Bigfoot was a supple, graceful writer…
…
I’m sorry. This isn’t the eulogy I wrote. It’s the one I edited. My first attempt told a different story, but I had second thoughts because, well…
Fuck it. Fuck. It. “First thought, best thought,” as Biggie liked to say. Well, actually, that was Allen Ginsberg… first thought, only thought was more Biggie’s style.
Bigfoot was a supple, gentle lover.
Please, don’t laugh. The story gets harrowing very, very quickly.
We never told anyone how we met. I insisted he keep it out of his books—unprofessional, I told him. Conflict of interest. But now, as we gather, drinking liquor from glasses ground from his bones, in keeping with Bigfoot tradition, I’d like to share with you all the story of our great romance.
I was an intern at the time, only a week from debuting as a junior editor. A query arrived in the post. It bore all the markings we now associate with the Bigfoot style: the resonant simplicity of Emily Dickinson, the wordplay of James Joyce, the urine stench of Martin Amis. We accepted the story immediately. I was assigned to work on it—my first piece as a handling editor. You can understand, working with someone of Bigfoot’s stature and sheer mandibular power, I was nervous.
Still, as an overeager young word-wrangler, I wanted to put my stamp on the piece. The submission wasn’t long. It consisted of the title, “Bigfoot angry sex with walrus?” and the words, “Me think so.” For a story in our magazine, this wouldn’t do. I set to work padding it out to an acceptable length: 7,000 words, or maybe it was 70,000. Same difference. In any case, Bigfoot reacted… poorly when I sent him the return draft. Basically, well, there’s no way to soft sell this: over the Christmas break, he emerged from the backwoods of Alberta, tracked down my family, and ate my sister.
But he did it so elegantly, pausing occasionally to wipe his mouth with a monogrammed handkerchief. Such a horrific attack, yet so genteel. Here was a beast I could tame.
Tame, I would later learn, was too optimistic a word. There was no taming Bigfoot. There was only bareback. Far, far too much bareback.
We had an understanding: I would bring home the bacon—four live pigs each evening, or punishment of the most brutal kind would ensue—he would stay at home, pursuing his writing career. Except, that is, those days when he was off gallivanting with Santa.
Standing by my sasquatch during his on-again, off-again pursuit of that fat coquette was the greatest test of our relationship. When we fought, it was usually about that. Sometimes the results weren’t easy to explain at work. That time I came in with 112 stitches on my face? Not incurred, as I claimed, in a switchblade fight with Margaret Atwood outside the Bloor and Spadina 7-Eleven.
I know, totally implausible right? Everyone knows Peggy packs a switch.
None of you would have understood though. Bigfoot was a good beast at heart. He didn’t mean it when he hurt me. You weren’t there afterward, when he would tell me “Me very sorry. You wounds look cute. I call you Stitchface.” Or Stitchback, or Stitchknee, or Stitchtaint. Then we would laugh and make love. One time I let Santa join in. It was awkward.
When it was good though, it was really good. Oh Biggie, I just don’t know how I’ll get along without you. I don’t know how we’ll get along without you.
Of course, if I find out this was all a ruse, and you’ve run off with Santa again, I’ll track you down and cut you. I don’t care if it’s hunting season or not, I’ll cut you and bury you, then I’ll dig you up and cut you again, just to make sure you’re dead.
Next, on the Bironist: I stop an East Coast/West Coast gang war using only my bironic powers.
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