Almost killed, Part One She was athletically large and attractively busty.

Her skin tight top, open vest and tights made her all the more sexy. The black bottom and under shirt hid enough to keep her from looking vulgar, but the cling of the sportswear she wore everywhere she went and at all occasions, left little to the imagination. Other than imagining yourself there and the sportswear off. If I know anything about anything, I would assume she was a dyke at one look. And I do know. Her name is Clara and she was as gay as gay can be. Or at least she had been up till that point in her life. It was not worth imagining yourself with her without her sportswear, if you were not a woman yourself. That normal feeling of finding someone attractive, but at the same time being respectfully aware that the attraction was not flowing both ways was muted by the fact that I was dead. Fresh dead. I had jumped to her to save me, she had jumped to me to save me, but the accident happened anyway. As the truck pulled onto the sidewalk it swept me up and I was between the truck and the bank as the truck went through the bank wall. When the accident was over I found myself watching from inside of her standing on the sidewalk right behind where I had been. She was shocked, I was shocked and we both were becoming aware of what had happened. She was hosting me. Channeling me. I was in her and she was willing to have me there seeing out through her eyes, hearing with her ears. I felt her heart pound and her skin feel flush and warm. I sat her down; she was going into a mild shock. It passed after a few moments and we got up and walked to the benches across the street a combined person. Two people with one body and that body belonged to her. I was just a guest. Of course it was an attractive woman; any time I am in trouble it is an attractive woman that bails me out. Women are who I turn to. I turned up at my own funeral as her, and spoke to my son. That was hard. We were close and he was devastated by my death. I told him that I was someone close to his dad and was here to help out. I let him know that I would know a lot about how the business was run and where all the money and stuff was kept. He had notes, but he said he would call on her/me when he needed help. I so wanted to hold him in my arms and comfort him of his loss of me. She gave him an awkward, quick hug. How weird it was to be some kind of spirit inside someone else. It was even stranger to be at my own funeral. people from my different pasts. At that point different parts of my single, linear past, one was not clear to me yet that one had different different sources. I was yet to see the other same time. There was a collection of what I meant by that were past following another. It pasts the way a river has pasts that happened at the

My son did well. His mother came to help out. So did two other ex wives. By the time I got to the funeral, as her, my other ex wife had also arrived. Besides my 4 ex wives, my funeral was attended by some of my family who had flown out for it. My sister was all over it and organizing things beyond

what people had originally thought that they would do. A lot of my friends came from around town and some even came from places I had used to live. The political people came in little groups. There were the local activists, people from my campaign, and one of the candidates running against me came. People from my political past came too. A lot of French and Spanish was spoken. Add to that some of the clients, the odd business and neighborhood friend and there were a lot of people at this funeral. I should have tried to count them And there I was, someone nobody knew, standing at the back of the crowd, getting the odd, interested looks from many of the men and some of the women, but not recognized by anyone. I stayed for the meal afterwards and got complimented by my sister for keeping all the names straight. Funny what you learn about your own sister when attending your own funeral in the body of a lesbian in skin tight sports attire. I was hoping that the good turnout and the drinking and sharing was going to make my death easier on people. More than anything else, I wanted it to be easier on my son. He was very young to be burying a father. He was also young to be taking over a business. Staff helped him. He did call her/me soon enough and I was able to help. My son was surprised to find this good looking, 30 something, lesbian woman knowing so much of my business, but as she was a neighbor and my son lived out of town, it just went down as one of those things in his mind. Since she was not a girlfriend that nobody knew about, she might have been someone who helped with the book keeping. That was my cover story, saying that she/I had been paid under the table. Slowly my son took the business to heart, and to be honest, fixed a lot of stuff that I was letting go to seed. It was her girlfriend that found the things strange. The girlfriend knew that she did not know me or have any work relationship with me. She could not do books. She could not even change out of her gym clothes, and did not know anything about accounting or anything else done in an office other than pick up her paycheck. Her girlfriend thought that there was another reason altogether for her to be hanging with my son and that was because my son was a very good looking man. That became true. At first, when I first was being hosted by her, I was more into men that she was. She only had eyes for women. I was enjoying every second of the ride and she and I both knew that I was more attracted to her girlfriend Eileen than she was anymore. The relationship had gone stale. She had others. Her and I never spoke. We did not have to. When I thought, she heard, and vice versa, and what she knew, I knew, at least when I was channeling through her. When I left and channeled through someone else, some of her memories stayed and others were just not there. She did not tell me she was falling for a man and that the man was my son. I just knew it and she knew that I knew. She now had a need for privacy and I needed to be somewhere else for a while. It was in the political side of my life that I found a way to give her that privacy. She was left leaning enough and totally enjoyed getting politically involved. This was another drift from her girlfriend, one that was coming anyway.

We, she, I went out everywhere. Sometimes Eileen tagged along. Eileen was a good sport and very supportive. After Claras work at the school, we would go out and join almost any meeting available. As Clara, I spoke at the party meeting that followed my death and advocated that someone else step up and run for the same seat for us. A young black man who had been coming to meetings but not saying much stood up. His name is Jake. Jake wanted to know what was involved in running for office and representing the party. I told him, as her, that if he decided to run I would help him out. So Jake and her/I walked the precincts together. The party picked up the support and Clara was accepted as an activist people could trust. More than once Clara was told that she reminded people of me. She figured if you are going to harbor a ghost, well, I was at least an interesting ghost and I was getting her involved in interesting things that she felt she could agree with. Clara? I was Clara when I was her Jake? I answered. You feel like him Jake did not need to say which him. I turned, looked and fell into Jake. I was not Clara any more, I was not Jake, I was in Jake the way I used to be in Clara. The two of them stood there looking into each others eyes all three of us surprised by what had happened. No discussion needed. Jake was happy to have me, I was happy to be in Jake. Clara was happy to be alone again, but wanted to have me back. All this was understood with a wordless glance. My son accepted Jake as a friend. He got a little involved in the campaign and was good at talking about my legacy. His public endorsement of Jake carried more weight than I thought it would. When one is on the left and not trying to pass themselves off as a liberal Democrat, ones electoral chances were quite low. That we had gotten so far was a real tribute to how hard we had worked and how bad the city government was. My son helped as he could, but spent most of his time keeping the business going. Then it became clear that I had been killed. Id like to say that as the ships ghost of a left wing group I had something to do with uncovering the plot. It was really the incompetence of the hit team and an immigration deportation hearing that brought the case to light. Jake (as my host), Clara (who hosted me when she was not around my son) and my son, started spending a lot of time together. I feel him here my son told us bluntly. Things have been weird, it is like you two are harboring his ghost He did not have to say whos ghost. And then I was my son, in my son, welcome to be with my son. Now we were 4 people to know. Soon there would be two more. Some people said we acted like a cult without a guru. I was the guru. After being hosted by my son for a while, I became a traveling spirit hitchhiking from one willing host to another. He, Jake and Clara could pass me back and forth with ease. The other two less. They were both young campaign volunteers, one a woman and one a man. My son and Clara developed a love affair that I stayed away from, but knew everything about down to the most intimate details. The other two hosts were not connected to me personally in any way; that made things easier. I sure got to have a lot of

sex. Campaign volunteers get to have a lot of sex if they want it; these two did. My existence as a spirit did not take away from my bodily desires or emotional feelings. I could not, would not, as Clara, make love to my own son. I could not, would not, as my son make love with Clara either. There was no space for my son not to know that I had fallen for her as deeply as he had, or more. I stayed away from Jakes sex life because once in him, I knew how attracted to me he had been when I was alive and he now knew that I had been attracted to him. I needed to be elsewhere. There was no way to keep secretes from me. As Clara I could be with other women and as her relationship with her girlfriend seemed to be more of a relationship with me, it thrived. Clara became closer to my political life, which was not something Eileen wanted or cared about. I on the other hand, liked Eileen and had good laughs with her. Eileen kept saying that Clara had been possessed. I once told her that it was the ghost of me, passing it off as a joke. The case around my murder was making my name a household word around town to benefit of the Jake campaign. Eileen gave Clara/me a suspicions, coy and seductive look; could be she figured. Part Two The first time I was murdered I did not really feel it. I think I was kicked to death on the floor by the AREANA death squad that had me. Either I died early and did not suffer, or the part of you that remains after death does not remember that kind of pain. Or maybe not. I do remember some other pains. After I was killed I first saw the scene from about a meter above the heads of the killers. My body was on the floor and they were still kicking it. Maybe they shot me, I dont know. Seconds after that I was watching it all from above the roof. That meant seeing it through a very opaque ceiling and roof, but at the time I did not notice it. I had only been dead for few more seconds before I started to rise up away from the world, out of the atmosphere and into space. I remember thinking at the time that it was obvious because the world and all are moving through space. Does that mean if you die on the leading edge you pass through the solid word first? I dont know. The planet is large. It felt like a big wall falling away from me. I was out of the atmosphere and away from it and still had not been dead for over a minute. But it was not blackness or emptiness. There were flows. It felt like I had turned and was being pushed along in one direction and then followed a swirl in another direction. Where was I going? I dont know. I just wanted to go back. So I reversed the flows and flowed back. I knew how to do that the same way I knew why it was obvious that the Earth moved through space. It all just rolled back along the twists and turns like running a movie in reverse. When I did it, I knew why it worked. When I came back I was no longer part of what had that knowledge. How did I come back? I dont know. What I did know was that I was back in the village outside the house where they were still kicking me to death after a short visit to outer space and a decision not to leave. And I was dead. First day on the job as a ghost.

There was nothing for me there. I rose up and started drifting home. I stayed over land cutting left when I got to the Gulf shore. The Mississippi was enough of a landmark to follow North. I moved eastward along the south shore of the lakes and finally followed the St Laurence seaway. This flying part was ever so fun. I came right up from the river, followed the streets to where I used to hang out and brought myself down to my favorite caf called La Galosh on St. Denis street a few doors up from Maisonneuve. I was home. I went in and sat at a table. St. Denis street was the place to be. All through the wars in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Salvador I would chuckle to myself that I wished I was back in Saint Denis Street coffee shops standing up to American Imperialism. Doing so in Central America was a lot less safe and the food and coffee were nowhere near as good. Nowhere in Central American were the girls as nice as the ones on St Denis Street. The section of St. Denis to go for a drink is between Maisonneuve on the south side, where the doors entered the main Metro station and the UQAM, University of Quebec at Montreal and Ontario Street (yes Ontario) where one found the Cgep Du Vieux Montral, Old Montreal Junior College. This was the student district. The old party book store had been on this street. I had started my political life protesting the destruction of a historic church to build UQAM. Yep, the communist students were on strike to preserve a church. (only a couple walls and the presbytery got saved) We also marched from here when the Metro raised its fares to 50 cents. I was never a student, but as a leftist worker and union man, I knew a lot of students and was often a students boyfriend. The last event I went to was an International Womans Day sponsored by my union who rented out the main hall of UQAM for the evening of March 8th. All the different unions and groups had unfurled their banners. Red flags, the 3 chain links of my union, womens power raised fists inside the symbol for female, hammer and sickles, lesbian purple and allthe other good symbols and stuff were out. So it snowed. It snowed so deep that the traffic stopped on Saint Catherines street and me and some friends built a snowman in the middle of the main east-west thoroughfare in the middle of downtown. I tried to keep that in mind when I missed St Denis Street. When living in the tropics it is hard to justify moving back to where the snow clogs the streets downtown on the 8th of March. On my first day as a ghost, I learned that you do not get much service in a coffee shop because most people cannot see you most of the time. It is hard to hold onto your table when someone can walk through you, or sit in the chair you are using without feeling that you are there. So what does a ghost do all day? Haunt I guessed. I set right to it.

Yvon Provencher worked at La Galosh sometimes when he was not taking photos or working for Caf Campus. He and I had been friends and once lovers. He did not work here backwhen I was a regular client. Il ya un spectre he told the owner. Yvon, what is the matter with you? There is no such thing as a ghost He sits over there, sometimes I set Le Devoir out for him, that is his table Les caf terrasse nont pas des specters If coffee shops dont have ghosts, then who is that? pointing at me. They both looked. I looked back. That is called a client Yvon OK, YOU go take his order Vouz voulez? un Mol au tablette (Molson Ale at room temperature) Yvon, bring this man his beer and STOP IT with these stories He put the beer down in front of me. You can talk now? Some He sat down. Yvon knew who the ghost was. You were killed in Nicaragua two weeks ago El Salvador, they must have moved the bodies to Nicaragua afterwards Yvon looked pale, worried, hurt. Did it hurt? The papers say it was .. I was already dead when they did that Why are you back? When did you become able to talk? Did my photos .. ? I looked him straight into the eyes and without opening my mouth told him It is not really talking and no, your photos did not get me interested in going to Nicaragua Yvon was now sitting in the chair opposite and rocked his body forward and back with his right hand on the side of his head. The boss walked up in time to watch me fade from view. My beer was untouched and I had left an old style ten note on the table. It is hard for a ghost to pay, harder to get change. The boss looked at Yvon On a un spectre Yeah we do have a ghost, and he was a friend of mine. They both shuddered.

I know who it was

The ghost business would really be enhanced by some training. After three weeks I only had the smallest bit of control. It is also very boring in a way. Maybe other people can sleep when they are dead, but I sure could not. At night I would prowl. Things were open all night. I haunted a lot more than coffee shops. There were movie theatres, closed museums, night clubs, the airport, the train station, brothels and all kinds of places with people in them all night. By day the city vibrated. I could be in the Metro, the plaza, the market, down interesting streets. I never saw so much of the city before I was dead. From time to time I would hear something. Most of the time, the sounds of the world were faint and far away. It had taken a lot out of me to be visible and audible to Yvon and his boss. I owed it to him. A lot of what? I dont know. Sometimes I could hear a voice clearly. A click. The sounds of motions. This might sound funny, but it was a bit frightening. Ghosts can be scared, or this one could.

Home was always La Galosh. My old apartment had been renovated and rented out. Howards place had no attraction to me. Howard still had his string of young men, was always running about working and being so busy he had no time to notice a ghost. I wanted to warn him about the AIDS, but it did not exist yet. What was I remembering that I would warn him about? I did not know. I was sitting in my chair looking at the paper when she came in. Same old spot Mr. D.? Francine! Great to see you. How are you? About as dead as you are by the looks of it well, of course She sat, we talked, or something akin to talking. Yvon sat at another table. The bar was closed and he sat watching the ghosts of two of his friends chat with one another at a table. The owner sat with him. Theirs was a now a story of sharing witness to the paranormal. It was also the story of an assassination, mine. Yvon would ask me questions and I could shake my head yes or no. Having been one of the photographers to document the Sandinista revolution, the solidarity committees followed up on his information without asking him to reveal his source. Once they knew the truth, they found the proof. The government was not so happy about that. The GRC had been having a frustrating time because all they found was a waiter staying after closing and talking to himself at an empty table. Police surveillance of Yvon was not yielding his sources to them. Both Yvon and the owner were convinced that ridicule was all they would get by telling this story, so they just watched it like a birds nest trying not to scare the birds away. We ignored them. He had been jealous when Francine and I were lovers in life. Francine was supposed to be gay with the Sylvie, who had left Yvon for Francine. I had shown no interest beyond the one time he and I had been together and I preferred women. Both of them (us) preferred women Yvon thought. Yvons haunted coffee shop was turning into something of a rerun of his personal soap operas. If it had not been for others having seen the ghosts too and for the shared sightings with the owner, he would have considered the whole thing his own private delusion. A reserved sign was permanently on my table. Sitting with her I soaked in the pleasure of another persons company. Real company. She had heard about me. I had heard nothing of her. Her lump found too late. Sylvie not being the friend she should be. Their breakup. Howard being away all the time. Yvon never accepting Sylvie back. I told her about what had been happening in Central America. For the very first time I thought about the woman would was calling herself my widow. How strange. We were both ghosts, yet it felt like so little had changed. Her Spanish still sounded like she was the daughter of a diplomat. Her French still sounded like the city. What do you do all the time? Je dance And she took me dancing. I am bored

Ballroom dancing, with a band so loud that we could hear it without straining. I could hear her, but not feel her. We could not touch. We went through the motions of dancing together by guiding ourselves through the dance. It worked. The music, the mind the thoughts all merged. Our emotions soared with the music, our non-bodies swirled through the room together and felt the joy of motion without feeling the motion itself. Others came. Nameless; to me they were people without histories. Many never answered when spoken to. Some had been there so long that the language that they used did not sound anything like modern French. As I danced with one young man who had been dead for a long time, I asked if he could be seen or heard. He came to a complete stop. THAT makes a line unstable, which is why it is so rare what is a line? What is rare? Apparition is rare? There are alternatives, you are here and you are not, everything happened and it did not. One type of a chain of events is a line, but the lines move And then he stepped away and faded. A woman danced with me showing herself nude and young and beautiful. She was erotic, attractive and I found my bodiless self aroused. We crossed and when normally our whips would pass each other like shadows there was a stop, energy, a shock, the pleasure and release. That felt like It was she let me know. Being dead had just gotten better. Why does apparition make the line unstable and what the hell is the line? Francine did not know. She had heard it too. We haunted La Galosh together. At times we danced in the bar after it closed. At times we had this after life kind of orgasm together. At times Yvon could see us and at others he could not. Sometimes it felt like we could almost feel each other. Sometimes we could sort of feel the things around the bar. Sometimes a person walking through us would blow us like opening a door would move a balloon. One day dancing at the ball room I could feel her. Francines hand was in mine, her arm was around my back, we stepped onto the floor, we went around the living and could not see the dead. We fully existed, for a moment. In the joy of it Francine put her head on my shoulder and I stroked her hair. Now I had two lesbians involved in my deaths. And then the memories all became a mix. Just by thinking that there were two women, it also made me see that there were two deaths, and I was two kinds of ghost in two kinds of places in two different times. That first death had to have come years after the second one, many years after. So how did I live to die again? How did I know about AIDS to worry about Howard? A major revelation was coming, but I was still not getting it. Part Three My son had a book about werewolves. Kind of a kids field guide One section was a checklist of questions that will let you know a werewolf. Dad got off on all but one question. Would rather forest You are a werewolf he teased me laughingly. I chased to monsters. if someone is be in the him around

the dining room table and threatened to eat him alive. he beat me at crazy eights.

Then we sat down and

After we had had that laugh together I was on another of my many walks among the trees and thought back about a book by Herman Hess that had influenced me so much. It was not about werewolves, it was about steppe wolves. Steppenwolf was a man of many poles, many thoughts, many a different hunting mind. A man that has spent as much time as I have focused on women, and loving women is accused of being another kind of wolf. One such person made that accusation to me indirectly by handing me another book from Herman Hess: Narcis und Goldmund. I was supposed to be like Goldmund ever chasing after women and never getting the projects of my life done. There may have been some truth to that depending on which of my deaths one would consider the official one. At the time instead of being embarrassed and wanting to change my multiple partner ways, I just became more interested in Herman Hess. Hess, Boll, Brecht and Spiegle magazine were enough reason to learn German if Nina Hagen and Rio Reiser had not done it for you. But before I had, I read Siddhartha by Hess in English. It was just a story. I did not know enough of the story of Buddha to know what was historical, what was Buddhist thinking and what the innovations from the author were. It felt like reading Nikos Kazantzakis Last Temptations of Christ, except I did not know the official story so was missing the controversy. So many good books. At the end of Siddhartha Hess has his title character tell a story of life as a river. The river was a model of time. We think of time as being a sequence, as the water goes down the river in one direction along a sequence of time. But the river is all the river all the time. At the same time it springs from its sources, it runs through its rapids, it winds slowly through the flatlands and it is always pressing its headwaters into the sea. All these things are the river at the same time. This idea stuck with me as important. At times I felt part of the flow. Part of time. Like a leaf on the river that does not move in relationship to the water under it, but moves forward together with the water it floats on. There have been times that this feeling of oneness with the whole flow of life has kept me grounded. When I see the crest of a wave just before it breaks, or when I take in the majesty of ancient forests, I feel like I am in that flow somewhere. I just considered this part of my personal philosophy, not some practical part of science. During re-education I had a course in comparative religion. There I read a bit of real Buddhist text. The ideas seemed familiar. I learned to meditate in a non-denominational way. I found the meditation helpful, the texts interesting, but not so much that I would keep reading them. I met the son of a Buddhist missionary. His understanding of the path was really about his arrogance and sense of being superior to the rest of us. I had no interest to ask him anything. In China I saw a form of Buddhism that was pure superstation. It was fun, incense and bells, and a short moment of meditation. I had learned the walking mediation and the idea of a stupa, walking around, not into a temple and finding a path, meditational space, mindfulness awareness as part of a focus of walking. I walked around the temple. Despite the noise, the

tourists, the Yuan, I found concentration my name. They

photo taking, shouting and all that China can be in the Yi-Hemyself at that spot. Well, for 2/3 of the way around. Then my was broken by two Cantonese women we had met earlier shouting were very nice and we were all on vacation.

You have feelings other people dont have My son told me on one of our walks through the redwoods. He was eight. Other people do not feel what you feel here. Maybe you are a forest sage? Maybe I am just an overweight, middle class, white guy who likes state parks? Yeah, maybe, but being a forest sage is way cooler When my son was in college and taking philosophy and comparative religion, I told him that all I really knew about Buddhism was having read Siddhartha by Herman Hess. He paused, that was his textbook. Did this book have some more meaning than what I had known? Wasnt it just a novel? Suddenly I was thinking about all these things I had learned across the different lives, and the different afterlives I was aware of. A river had many sources, as did time. Time had many roots like a tree, but it also had many branches. It did not have a trunk, it had many lines, convergences, and splits going in both directions. Time was like a weave of rivers going into a weave of a delta. The basic structure was there, but any part of it could change its course a bit. Then. When was that then? Then I was all of it at once. I was me, as a ghost, in the 80s and the me that was a spirit in the 21st century. I was like the river; I was some of the potential roots and some of the potential futures. The different pasts, presents and futures were beyond count, I was only some of them with none of them not being the present. I was all of my lives from beginnings to ends over a few of the possible variations. Not only was I aware of them all, I could act in the all at the same time. I danced with Francine as a ghost, I lectured her on getting herself tested, I wrote her letters as a friend. I lectured Howard on GRID and explained that he had to have protected sex with me and any other man, especially men from New York and asked him to become aware and careful. I stopped at the top of the hill and got outside of my jeep. I told my buddies nos van a emboscar, they are going to ambush us and saved all our lives. I told my engineer to stop taking risks to gather water data and learned that having it to do over again. For an instant there I almost saved my marriage with my sons mother, avoided an eviction, and just did what felt right throughout the scope of my possible lives. The length of my life was like the dots of light on the dome of a planetarium. As I was living it all at once it all changed at once. It felt like the swirl as old fashioned planetarium projector spins to a new display of the stars. There was a dizzying blur as my life realigned itself. Somewhere there is some other kind of time. All my time was glued together and I lived in all of my history together only for a moment. All these things happened at the same time and that time went on for a while and then it ended. I stopped and stepped back into her. She grabbed me and kept pulling me further back and the truck driven by my would be killer crashed into the glass wall of the bank right in front of me.

I stopped and turned, still held in her arms against her large athletic body with the large attractive breasts pressing against my chest. You were almost killed she said.