Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 29-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
Continued from November 16
“We do it for the smiles on the faces,” he said, motioning to my decidedly unsmiling face.
“It’s hard to smile when my mouth is so full,” I said, tipping my head back so the chicken wouldn’t fall out when I spoke.
A Native woman with grey hair came over, and Bite Me introduced me to her.
“Martha, this is Jean. Jean lives at First and Nanaimo.”
I sort of lost the gist of where this was all heading because rather a lot of aggressive wasps were bothering me, touching the bare skin at my wrists, flying up onto my face, landing on my chicken. I was doing those lurch-and-twirl moves to get away from them, and so I became freakishly disengaged from the formality of introductions. The woman that Bite Me would have introduced me to next was watching me deal with the wasps. I said, “At first I thought it was the garbage cans they were after, but now I think it’s me.”
The yet-to-be introduced lady, bless her chicken-administering valley heart, said, “It’s not you, it’s the chicken.”
I don’t mind wasps and wet grass, but god-talk? No.
To be continued
“It’s Called Rock ‘N Roll,” from Janis Zeppelin (Smarten UP! 2003) (download):
