Sweet Juice

Unlike Percy who grew up in a small town west of Grey Grove, Ontario, Bash was a ‘lifer’. The midsized city was home to four major penitentiaries, so long-term residents were called lifers. His parents owned and operated Ashbarrow Drugs, an independent pharmacy in the downtown core, established during the first year of their marriage. They met while completing their Doctor of Pharmacy degrees at GGU (Grey Grove University) and were wed on the day of their mutual graduation. Both were avid theatre goers, so when the building next to the Guild Theatre (where their eldest son would one day become the LD) came up for sale, they combined their savings, issued a down payment, and opened their own business.

Being the eldest child meant Bash was the first to help out in the pharmacy. Initially, his responsibilities were confined to basic custodial tasks like sweeping the floor, however, his quick learning advanced him rapidly and within a year, he was performing the odd managerial duty. From the ages of fourteen to seventeen he remained in his parents’ employ, but the pull of the theatre next door proved irresistible after graduating high school. Becoming an apprentice within the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) was natural for someone who grew up accompanying his parents to plays, ballets, and operas, all of which inspired his dream of becoming a playwright.  

As a child from an upper-middle class family, he never wanted for anything. The newest toys were always under the Christmas tree. Birthdays were equally lavish affairs. But material things didn’t substitute for love. Bash got all the nurturing a boy could want, and probably would’ve become spoiled had it not been for weekend shifts at the drugstore, dragging on mercilessly while friends stayed footloose and fancy free, wringing drops of sweet juice from the fast-drying cloth of youth. Holding down a job at a young age set him apart from his peer group. This lent him a precocious gravitas, yet he wasn’t nearly as serious as Percy when her costume came off and Brittany appeared, squint-eyed, and a little confused.

Percy and Bash had nothing in common whereas Brittany and Bash were similar, but Brittany’s affections stayed hidden until such a time as he’d earned her trust. Eventually, she decided he could be trusted and that’s when Brittany and Percy became his Melpomene and Thalia, the two masks of theatre. From then on, they served as secret muses, inspiring him to write the play he’d always wanted to write.

The final touches to Brittany’s alter ego weren’t applied during the six months she spent at The Clown Academy in Toronto. In fact, they were never fully applied because she subscribed to Paul Valéry’s idea that art is never finished, merely abandoned. Indeed, she took the French poet’s aphorism to heart, staying in character for as long as possible, adding more and more nuance to her creation. The boards of the world were almost exclusively tread by Percy the Clown About Town while Brittany remained in the wings, a willing onlooker with a backstage pass. Brittany, the sober, sensitive one, wasn’t able, nor did she want to take stage time away from Percy, who happily endured life’s onslaught, provided the drugs were available and working.

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