Ballerina daze

My mother enrolled me in ballet when I was 7 and in Second Grade. She said it wasn't so I would become a dancer, just to improve my posture and develop “grace and poise.”

I was all for it but I only attended one or two classes which I recall very clearly. Our teacher was named Miss Midge - a petite blonde with a singsongy voice. I remember she stood at the bar and demonstrated first position, second position, third position- etc. We all copied her steps. I practiced them at home in front of my mom and still remember them to this day.

But after that first class it's all just a blank. I never learned anything else in ballet. I never even danced.

At the end of the year, for some reason they put me in the recital. We had a routine in which we were "little French pastries" -- they gave me a tutu and a pair of ballet shoes but I had missed all the classes.

I had no clue what was happening. I was the tallest, of course. We were on stage and I was in the back row of dancers. I kept going the wrong way. I was trying to imitate the other  girls' moves which I hadn't ever learned.

My mom was in the audience. Mortified. She said "Next year you can take piano lessons."

It was one of the times I disappointed her badly but she never talked about it. It was not mentioned ever again. Otherwise my mother might have found out what I know now: I wasn't learning ballet. I was being programmed as a child asset in Subproject 68 of the MKULTRA program. Some of this involved spending time in flotation tanks and sensory isolation experiments. Sometimes I was out in the field.

They used to take me out of school ahead of ballet class and bring me downtown. "They" being people who worked for McGill, under Dr Cameron who in those days was in danger of having his funding cut off.

I was having sex with politicians in mansions. It was all for political blackmail. That's how I met Leonard Cohen.

My mother had no idea - she thought I was taking ballet lessons one afternoon a week after school.

I think I was often drugged. I was seven. I don’t remember the parties. It was the year I spent a lot of time in bed teaching myself to read.

All this stopped in 1960 when they sent me to a new elementary school closer to home in our suburb, less accessible to downtown than the other school where I had been like a ghost, coming and going.

I stopped missing so much school and my health improved. I made friends. I started winning prizes: like the annual book prize for the top student in Grade 4, 5, 6 and 7.

I became a "brain.” Until one day …