“The Penniless Pensioner: Misaligned, Maligned but Marvellous” : Chapter 21 Hot Shot Lawyer with The United Mutations in New York City

One night at a favourite bar of mine called Marwin’s on Stanley Street in Montreal I met a couple of lively personalities Squid and Willie Montenez. They claimed to have been from other planets and even other dimensions. Initially I thought they were tripping on too much vodka and mescaline but I recalled that Jesus often spoke in parables and this must be the case with Squid and Willie Montenez. They were brilliant and passionate minds at work.

I had heard of their activities in Montreal before I had arrived there. Their enemy Eno Ergot from some far away planet had apparently landed at the campus of McGill University a few years back. They had battled Montreal mayor Jean Droolpoop during Expo 67 and had lead mutant revolts at the Queen Fairy Veterans Hospital and Douglas Psychiatric Institute. You might say they were the grandfathers of mutantism.  Robert K. Stephen, my collaborator on this book, has written a brilliant history of mutantism in his seminal “Mutantism on the March” so I encourage you to read that serialized masterpiece for a complete historical treatise on mutantism.

What I will say is that mutantism involves advocates for the rights of mutants on a global scale. And who are mutants you ask. They are the limbless, the lepers, the deformed, the mentally challenged, some criminals, disadvantaged and exploited populations etc. Luminaries such as Santa Claus and Tarzan had been involved with mutantism so it was no far out pie in the sky irrelevant social and political movement.

I had worked with the United Mutations as a volunteer while a student at McGill University so I developed an excellent working relationship with Squid. Squid had contacted me in Toronto to congratulate me upon being called to the Ontario Bar and offered me a job in New York to help draft the Charter of Mutant Rights. I had written an article on the Canadian Bill of Rights so he thought this and my legal training qualified me for the job. It sure beat an offer for a full-time legal position with Mr. Donut. So here I was on the midnight Greyhound bus full of Amish from Toronto to New York.