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Brief Biography of Antoine DeCessile (1947-2001).
Antoine DeCessile was born in 1947 in the mill town of Lewiston, Maine to Jean-Claude DeCessile and Mary Margaret Callahan. He was their seventh child and only boy. Prior to her marriage to Jean-Claude, Mary Margaret was known to the locals as "Margaret Mayhem" due to her rebellious nature and the fact that she preferred to wear pants, spit with accuracy up to several yards and, in the words of her own mother Julia, "cursed like a sailor on the sabbath."
Jean-Claude had grown up in rural Quebec and, following in the footsteps of his father, became a logger, traveling up and down the Kennebec River, bringing the logs to saw mills in Maine. It was on one of these trips that Jean-Claude suffered a near fatal accident that left the left side of his face paralyzed and sagging. Mary Margaret met him, and considered him quite handsome in spite of his disfigurement (she always sat on his right side), and after a brief courtship, they were wed. John Callahan, it was rumored, came to the wedding with his shotgun, to insure the betrothal of the bride, who was pregnant with Antoine's eldest sister, Jeanne Decessile.
In the late forties, life wasn't easy for the Decessiles. All of the children, after the age of 15 worked alongside their mother in the textile mill, the heart of Lewiston's economy. Jean-Claude was away for nine to eleven months out of the year in various logging camps in Quebec. During young Antoine's sixth year, his first in Sister Bernadine's class at St. Jude's Catholic School, Jean-Claude did not return from Quebec, nor was his fate ever discovered.
Antoine was ruled mercilessly by his older sisters, with the exception of Jeanne, who adored him utterly and doted on him continuously, protecting him from the cruel taunting of his sisters and the often bewlidering discipline of their teachers. Their mother had little time to interfere in the behavior of her children, and so it was up to Antoine to save himself with the aid of Jeanne.
With the purchase of the family's first black and white television set, Antoine finally found his true savior. As he himself remarked on many occasions, "It was television that saved me, provided an escape from the dreary terrors of daily life, and gave wings to my imagination. It opened the doors to my intellect and I turned my attention from it only to devise ever more diabolical practical jokes on that coven of bitches, my siblings."
After a great deal of troubled conferences, it as decided that Antoine could remain home from school and be tutored privately, much to the relief of both Antoine and the nuns at St. Jude's. At the tender age of nine, he was left daily with Hamm Jackett, an immense, though well-read, man who had finally grown too large to continue his career with the merchant marines.
Over the next seven years, Hamm read aloud to young Antoine everything from the the essays of Emerson to Henry Miller's then-banned Tropic of Capricorn, presumably in an effort to round off young Antoine's education in sexual matters. (There weren't any brothels or saloons in Lewiston in the fifties, much to Hamm and Antoine's chagrin).
After hearing Hamm's passionate rendition of Jack Kerouac's "On The Road," and the works of beat generation poet Allen Ginsburg, Antoine conceived the notion of seeking out Neal Cassady and hit the road to find what he hoped would be similar minds.
It can only be surmised that young Antoine found life on the road far less romantic, requiring more work than he had ever dreamed, as no references to DeCessile ever appear in the writings of any of the Beats or their many hangers-on. Little is known of this short period in Antoine's life and the next documented reference to his existence is the discovery by Portia Ramos, later to become his lover, pupil, and secretary/editor that she was living in the same boardinghouse with Antoine in 1969 in Des Moines.
It was in Prudence Lovejoy's boardinghouse that Antoine's genius was to flower, for he found that he would not have to lift a finger on his own behalf for the rest of his natural born days. Mrs. Lovejoy found Antoine handsome and thoroughly charming. He paid his rent, not in cash, but in ever increasingly sentimental love poetry, all dedicated to Prudence, though it is debatable that their relationship ever stepped beyond the bounds of platonic frienship. Portia, on the other hand, was often found by Antoine's side, and in his bed, when she was not at work as a receptionist, or purchasing Guiness Stout for him at the local grocery store. Portia introduced several local literary figures to Antoine, often bringing them to witness Antoine's drunken and highly entertaining dissertations on every subject from modern art ("Of course, Jackson Pollock was drinking when he slung the first paint on that canvass. Only the critics mistook his self-loathing for genius, which in fact it was") to the energy-crisis ("It's only a crisis for those who feel the need of energy. I myself find it easier and easier to exist using as little energy as possible").
Portia soon discovered that she could support her meager income and continue to feed Antoine's voracious appetites for beer and pork products by publishing his impromptu lectures and selling them, first as pamphlets and then later to a university press. His works gained little attention outside the local literati, who considered him a genius. This was perhaps due more to Antoine's hefty charisma than to any internal logic to his discourse. However, money is money, and Portia needed it badly, as Antoine soon passed the 300 lb. mark, and finally gave up leaving his sofa even to go to bed.
At last, on August 23rd of 2001, Antoine DeCessile died of a myocardial infarction complicated by gout and cirrhosis of the liver on his beloved sofa at the age of 53. His wit and wisdom will be sorely missed by those who knew him, and perhaps, forever ignored by those who did not.
The Wisdom of Antoine Decessile
Quebec South (French Canadian Immigration)
Kennebec-Chaudier International Corridor
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Copyright © 2004 David Farthing. All Rights Reserved