Staggering back to door 117 one early morning, finally finding my key after searching through an array of assorted coins, receipts, tissues, playing cards and pizza, I enter the digs.

This weeks accommodation isn't as plush as some we have had recently. I don't know how long I have been on the road of late or how long the road is, I don't know exactly anything anymore, the last weeks/months have become a blur. I am at the end of a Canadian tour, days/weeks/months on the road, hours on stage, hours being on, off stage.....and a multitude of nights with assorted vinaigrettes.

Room 117 , 4 paces long by 3 and a half paces wide, single bed tucked under some cupboards and heading towards the venetian covered window . This is one of about 200 rooms situated amongst a maze of concrete halls and tunnels connecting gymnasiums, conference rooms, tennis courts, canteens and students,,,well normally students.

Not this week though, no, this week it is home to 30 or so professional purveyors of personal polished percepticals which to the untrained eye means, street performers, travelling troubadours, vaudevillian vagrants, buskers, techno gypsies.... Unicycles, stilts, make up, trunks, cheese, emotional problems and dirty underwear are their accoutrements.

Inside this concrete maze they are allowed to reside on the proviso they go out and perform in the streets of Waterloo NB, ...the home to the Amish People who could be described as professional purveyors of personal polished percepticals.

Yes here we all are, many have been together on the road for weeks/months, pranks have been played, card games won and lost, gags eaten, stolen and thrown..... there are some newcomers to this merry flock of jokers who can be easily spotted by there inane grins, constant twirling and clean underwear. Now where is all this getting to? you may be saying to yourself mmmmm, back to the beginning I think.

Clambering over my 3 day old kit scroon across the room I declothe. Clothes are off and carefully filed in the floor folder and Iím ready to close another showbiz day, Sleep encompasses me and I enter a mental cloud of skittles, mountains, road signs, turtles, coloured concrete croissants, character clowns, tea leaves, gerbils.....Gerbils!!

I wake up in a fluster with a book on "How to Care for Your Gerbil" stuck to the underside of my head with a mixture of sleepsweat and earwax.

"How to Care for Your Gerbil ?"

Tossing the manual aside I drifted back to the cloud of rainbow tiles and onion bread. Nothing was mentioned about small rodents the next day at breakfast, lunch or dinner in fact there wasn't a hint or flicker about gerbils all day. Everyone seemed to have their attentions waning towards the group of 19 yr old cheerleaders that have taken house. This seems strange amongst this gregarious gang. Shows have been shown and drinks been drunk but not a whisper.. I know I have to be on guard but as of yet there seems to be no tell tale signs from the flock about small mammal instruction manuals. 'Stay stum' 'Keep it all under your hat, say nothing' I think to myself.... thinking that if something is afoot the best tactic is silence, the culprit will then be revealed.......

Sniggers and evasive looks go by the next couple of days amonst the circus chaos the few times I quietly drop the 'G' word but not a whisper of information. The subject has been dropped from the forefront of my thinking as I sit down in a quietish corner with a bottle of Poets beer and a cigarette. It's the wrap party, cheese on sticks, ice in bags, a fridgeful of booze, platefuls of sarnies, bodies dancing and bouncing to the beat of the box attached to the wall, a swirling kaliedofog of egos and talent has filled the room. I take another sip of Poets and look out, the bottle leaves my lips... half full, a shadow makes itself known, entering from the kaliedofog. "Have a seat" I gesture.

"Do you want a Poets?" I'm asked He sits there staring, I sit and stare back, the lighting of cigarettes, breaks the silent tension across the table. "Why didn't you look under the bed ?" He asks....

"What bed ? Who's bed ? My bed ?...What ..!?" I exclaim. The fellow troubadour puts down his beer unzips his jacket and proceeds.

"Okay, I own up, I put the gerbil book in your room last week, had a gerbil hidden in my room for days ready for stage 3, but you didn't even flicker, not even a nibble" he replies.

"Stage 3?" I question He continued

"You could have taken the bait mate I've been through madness the last few days..Look" he says putting the beer down again. "You were meant to react, start freaking out, asking questions making enquires but not even a peep. Then I was going to put the Gerbil into your room for stage 3, a live gerbil in your room what a prank! But that was not meant to be was it ?" He then went on to explain the last few days of his life

"After travelling and searching for a pet shop in this hicksville town I scored a gerbil, keeping it alive in my top drawer feeding and watering it and letting it out for runs around the room under supervision."

" All the time the instruction book was in my room" I jutted in.

"Yeah that as well, then one evening as I went in with it's daily rations of food and water I found that it had gnawed its way out of the drawer and escaped into my room, I searched, man I searched, under, over, in, out, left and right for hours...then in the corner of the skirting board I noticed a hole...a perfect gerbil sized hole in the corner of the fucking floor, the little bastard had escaped into the compound!"

"Then what ?" I query trying to stop beer from exiting my nose.

"Then what! Then What! I had a gerbil loose in the compound, a fucked up gag and a my ego on the line. So I went and told the producer who then told the campus security who then told the rodent catchers, by now everyone knew but you! Eventually the rodent men did what rodent men do and caught our little friend amongst the hysterical cheerleaders, walkie talkies and concrete tunnels." He explained.

"What happened to the gerbil?" I ask, by now giving up on my bodily functions and letting the beer spurt from my nostrils to join the tears of joy exiting my eyes.

"They took him away my friend, took him away" he said sitting in a sullen slump. "Why didn't you look under your bed ?" he again enquired.

"My bed? What's that got to do with gerbils?" I once again ask inquisitively He then concluded

"I left an overturned box of straw and droppings under your bed , that was stage 2. You were meant to find that, freak out more then I was going to release our little friend into room 117 Badaaaaang! badooom! what a prank it was to be."

"But why me? Why gerbils?" I asked drying the mess on my face...

"I don't know. Why? That's the problem I don't know why?" He replied with a inane grin. I couldn't help noticing Martin's fresh clean underwear trying to exit through the tear in his rear his levi's as he twirled off into the kaliedofog in search of a couple more Poets.

 

Nickolas Oct 2002