Barry Smylie has invited me often to write something to accompany one of his shows. He is a generous man, profligate with his talent for visual expression, eager to include others in his pleasures. But the things he remembers rarely correspond with the history that lives in my head; we apparently went to different schools together. This time, though, I remembered the same 1970's as he. Man, we're old.

I proposed to frame my comments in terms of the loss of innocence, which Barry assured me is never trite. But when I stopped long enough to let the details catch up with me, at times it seems we were so utterly debauched it is scarcely possible that any of us had ever known innocence. But we harmed no one and were hugely creative, juices dripping, women at our feet.

One time Smylie and I crashed a dance in Calgary's inner city. I don't know why they wanted to keep us out - perhaps because we were clearly mad - but the biker bouncers made a mistake that night. Smylie went to the ground and slithered tai-chi snaking movements all around the dance floor, making grunting sounds suggesting sex, while I jumped up and down and screamed like an enraged monkey and ran in pointless circles. Man, we were bad.