About a week and a half ago, on a Saturday night, I had dinner at Super Roberson’s funky new pad.

I got home...I don’t know....midnight or so, and stayed up for a couple of hours. Feeling good and tired, I went to bed at twoish, but in typical fashion for me I couldn’t sleep. Finally I got fed up, and got out of bed at about 4:30 and decided to go for a walk.

I walked across West 6th Avenue at the Laurel Street overpass, and headed toward Kits beach along the False Creek seawall. I had the whole place to myself until I passed the Burrard Marina, where I encountered at quartet of young people, late teens or so, walking in the opposite direction. I kept going, and encountered a power walking woman, who said good morning to me. A little further, right in front of the Maritime Museum, I passed a young couple.

Now, they weren’t holding hands. They weren’t arm-in-arm. But they were smiling and talking quietly as if they had just discovered something in common. A little further I went down onto the beach itself, not THE Kits beach, but that little piece of sand just to the west of the Museum, kind of around the corner from Kits beach. There was a little driftwood shack, like the one that old Scottish guy had in the movie Local Hero. And there were the remnants of a fire burning beside the shack.

Hmmmm. I surmised that the couple, and perhaps the youthful quartet a ways back, had been hanging out at the shack. After all, it was mid June...grad time.

The first thought that came into my head was the obvious one...

TEENAGE ORGY!!!

Controlling myself and reviewing the facts, however, I came to a different conclusion. There were six grads hanging out at the beach. Four got up and left, but two, maybe lingering over a conversation, got up a few minutes later to leave. I liked the last couple. They seemed nice.

Anyway, I kept going, and soon I get to Kits Beach. It is, of course, littered with debris from the previous Saturday’s volleyball playing, sun bathing, meat marketing, and so on. But I think that maybe I’ll have it to myself while the sun’s coming up.

Or not.

There’s one fucking guy down there, going along the beach with a fucking metal detector.

For Christ’s sake.

I turn around, and head back along the beach toward False Creek, walking close to the water. He’s up higher, near the logs, moving in the same direction. What is he looking for?

Has this fucker gotten himself up at 4:30am on a Sunday to look for a few loonies? I doubt it. What he’s looking for is something better....the lost wedding ring, watch, necklace...something that he can cash in for some real dollars.

I’ll tell you something. I’m prone to loosing things. Through my own negligence I have lost the perfect mate, an excellent pair of sunglasses I got in Los Angeles, a Peavey microphone I got off the superb guy who used to run Burnaby Music, a watch my grandfather gave me, and a very nice celtic cross I brought back from Wales for a girlfriend many years ago.

Well...I guess it was not me who lost the cross, it was her. But if felt like my loss.

I bought it at a little town called Conwy, along the north coast of Wales. The town is enclosed by a wall, built in the 12th century by the English king Edward II, during his campaign against the Welsh. I have my moments of exquisite taste, and this cross--it was on a necklace--was perfect. It was tasteful yet eye-catching, a real find.

My girlfriend was very pleased with it. Shortly after my triumphant return from the old country (as my parents called it) we went to a play. A musical in fact. A friend of hers wanted to see ‘Hair.’ She dressed beautifully for the occasion, and wore the cross around her neck.

Now, I’m going to digress a bit here and tell you that ‘Hair’ is undoubtedly the shittiest fucking piece of theatre you will see anywhere, anytime. It is a crushing, obliterating indictment of the Baby Boom generation.

“We gave the world the Beatles, and all that other great music,” they tell us. Fine. But this fucking musical, by itself, turns their surplus into a deficit faster than you can say ‘Trudeau fiscal policy.’

There’s one decent song; it’s called ‘Age of Aquarius,’ during which the cast take their clothes off. Well that’s great, but if I all I want is to hear an adequate tune accompanied by nudity I may as well go to the Number 5 Orange; I don’t need to sit through two hours of shit.

Anyway, that’s when she lost the neclace. Some time that evening. We got back to her place and she grasped around her neck, and a look of horror came over her face, just like in a movie. It’s painful to recall. We phoned the cab company, they didn’t have it. I went back down to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre at....I guess it might have been around 4:30am. Of course it was hopeless, but I had to look for it. I found nothing but a pair of wine glasses, left outside by some theatre-goers and not collected by the staff. I have them to this day.

The necklace, though, was gone for good.

It was a bad omen, I think. I brought back some other stuff...a broach made of porcelain from Scotland was one thing...but it all sucked compared to the pewter cross.

I thought of that when I thought of the guy with the metal detector. I don’t want this prick finding things. I want the young couple to find some treasure. I wan’t the guy to find some cross in a sand and put it around the girl’s neck. That way, someone’s loss is someone else’s gain; not someone else’s material gain, but someone else’s emotional gain.

As I walked home the sun was coming up. The thing is, it didn’t rise way over in the east, it rose over the North Shore mountains. Is this usual? It seemed odd, but cool. At least that was something. When I got home the day was bright and getting warm. I went back to bed and finally fell asleep.