Paul Noble Bartlet

“We are leaving Paris, sadly, for Lausanne and points beyond,” Paul Noble Bartlet wrote in 1983. “We are happily returning to 13 Rue des Beaux-Arts on the 6th of July. Holiday has been great. ‘A ship-board romance!’ Only now I’ve set my sights higher, an American Embassy official, and a dong to boot! Talk to you soon – Love, P.N.B.”

Another postcard: “Am having a perfect nutty time. Met a man with a big car who drove me around Paris – 37 years old (he, not Paris). Much to do in the Marais district. 14th century apartments with neon lighting. The 6th arrondissement is totally finished like Yorkville in Toronto. Many, many nice, kind people – am I really in Paris? The clothes are boring and too many clones but I’ll cry when I have to leave. Love P.N.B.”

An acquaintance called Bartlet (1955-1988) “a comet shooting across our universe, a flower blooming in our garden and quickly fading.” Short, blond, a little pudgy, he could be very sociable. I never saw him study, although he did graduate from the University of Toronto. I was intrigued by his uninvited friends frequently dropping by his apartment in an old brick house, 98 Madison Avenue. Also any hour of the day an uninvited cat would appear and just as easily disappear. It entered through an open basement window.

Paul surprised me by driving five hours to Sudbury to spend a day with me at Laurentian University. While he drove us back to Toronto for the weekend, I found myself often pressing my foot on the floor of the car as though I had my foot on the break pedal. His car broke down in Toronto. He abandoned it in the middle of the street and just walked home.

As far as I understand, he led a sort of Peter Pan existence. Perhaps his life illustrates the path to graduation that sociologists call the “party” pathway rather than the more hard-working professional pathway. University and students who party expect little of each other. The disadvantage is that it does not give graduates a way of supporting themselves. His final source of income was typesetting.

He established a one-man company called Rhinotype Inc., with offices at 355 King Street West and then at 3 Charles Street West. Rhino was a nickname probably because of his body type. He advertised as the “cheapest typesetter in town,” but I doubt that it was true. His work included typesetting for The Body Politic, the poet Ian Young, and novelist and anthropologist Professor Paul Bouissac. There were many more clients.

Unlike contemporaries who jogged on Toronto sidewalks, he was not a fan of exercise. He pretended to dislike fashionable athletic men who wore tight, revealing Lacoste t-shirts. He was more successful at pursuing “daddies.” For a while, he drank to excess. P.N.B. was a fan of Carol Pope’s band Rough Trade, hard-edged rock music; and of Klaus Nomi, a countertenor who sang popular songs. Countertenors were really rare then. One of his secret acts of charity was to marry so that his wife could claim status as a Canadian.

I typeset a self-published book on his equipment. Computers were still a rarity and this was my first experience typing on a computer. He taught me to delete mistakes by repeatedly pressing the backspace and the delete key. Forty years later when I delete words letters by letter, I often think of P.N.B. When I last saw Paul a few months before his death, he was volunteering with AIDS patients and said he felt happier and more satisfied than ever before in his life. His ashes lie in the Necropolis Chapel, a Gothic Revival building in Toronto’s Cabbagetown. His name was engraved on a stained-glass window there and on the AIDS Memorial in the park behind the 519 Church Street Community Centre.

To quote Brahms’ Requiem, “Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras.”