looking, maybe reasons why no one else was sitting with him. Another sad looking football player, who just flunked his English exam or had been rejected from Missoula? Don't sit with him, I thought. But for some reason I did. "What are you taking?" "English" he said. "Ya, me too." Then thot, this guy better switch to phys ed and sociology like the rest of the dumbos - then he might pass out of here, or al least cheer up. " I write songs and poetry" he said. " I write poetry", I said. Over the last semester at MRC we'd exchange poetry. I read his with a sense of envy. He was very good despite the football player look. We became an odd bohemian pair: ectomorph and endomorph. ( I was 5' 10", 125 pounds - a lean and hungry chainsmoker. Sid was big - over 6' 2" and l85 pounds). That August we paired up on the CP platform for the train ride east - Sid with duffle bag, guitar, me with a set of drums, suitcase, typewriter and a bag of sandwiches to last us the next few days on the non-stop economy car hurtle to Montreal. ONCE IN MONTREAL Once in Montreal Sid and I had planned to find separate apartments. We'd leave each morning from our dingy downtown hotel just off St. Catharines, and go on a separate search. Later we'd meet over beer and smoked meat sandwiches or hamburgers, to complain about the $65 a month dives, cockroaches and weird Montreal landlords. This was the time of year that hundreds of other students were moving into the downtown. We had to get places and fast. Because of our fear of big city loneliness, and because of our budgets, we decided to apartment-hunt together and found a huge basement room for $100 at 1559 McGregor Ave, across from the American Embassy. For a short while we were happy room-mates, dividing up the space, organizing our books and study desks, partitioning the fridge, and re- aligning beds and furniture. But privacy was impossible until we brainstormed the situation and decided to make a wall between us; we hung a 12 foot stretch of burlap from ceiling to floor dividing the apartment in half. That room smelled of potato sack for a year, and made any sex a public affair. The domestic routines kept us busy, but my overall sense that autumn was one of disbelief that we were actually there in the complex magic of Montreal The city was beautiful with tension and energy. Each street held a surprise of architecture, colour, and history, mixed with language, smells from the restaurants, bistros - and the constant visage of the city's beautiful, perfumed women. Why even bother to write in a place where you could live the poem, and dress up to look the part? PLEASE DON'T HIT ME "Please ... don't hit me " is what I said, according to Sid. We were walking up Cote de Neige, two college boys with bags full of groceries on the way to our basement pad. It was rush hour and the sun melting us in our uniforms: corduroy jacket, patches on elbows, jeans, loafers, JC Penny work shirt, loose knit tie - standard college fare). A guy in a car with 2 other guys, stalled in the rush hour traffic yelled out: "Loookit the faggots!" Sid eye-balled him with a fierce look, and yelled back " GET OUT OF THE CAR AND SAY THAT YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE! They did, all 3 of them. Two guys grabbed me around the neck and pinned me to a stone retaining wall. Sid dumped the groceries, hunched into boxing position, clenched his fists and waved the guy toward him. WHAD YOU SAY ASSHOLE? I was thinking at this point about my jacket, my teeth, my career, my face and instinctively knew that going limp in the arms of these two goons was the smart thing to do, and at 125 lbs,, my fast logic was saying, how the hell could I rescue Sid anyway? Fists flew in a whack and thud of equal exchange until the goon started kicking. Sid kicked back, got him in the testicles, so the fight was quickly over. Cars honked, drivers yelled, and the 2 goons dragged the other whimpering goon hunched in pain to the car. "Sid, you got him in the balls!" Sid was hurting, but his