The Daisy Chain: The Daisy Chain series, #2

By Julie Johnson

At the heart of THE DAISY CHAIN are Geoff and Marcus, who, in 2018, are partners in love and business, and own and manage a vegan restaurant, The Daisy Chain. 

 

With Winona, their part time employee, they endeavour to make the world a better place by offering locally sourced, organic vegan meals that appeal to even the most adamant meat eater.

 

But Marcus wants more — more compassionate and ecologically minded people creating societal change now. 

 

Getting impatient with their 'slow conversion rate' he decides to extend their reach and, with the help of two college students and a hippy dippy tarot reader, he decrees they will make a documentary series about the restaurant, publish it on YouTube and promote it heavily on their social media accounts. 

 

This bold act tests all of their relationships, their resolve as activists and puts the future of the restaurant, and even their lives, at risk. 

 

Told from the rotating perspectives of Geoff, Marcus and Winona, as they star in, watch and interact with the media they have created, THE DAISY CHAIN is a comedic, heartfelt exploration of what it means to be an activist and tackle some of the pressing issues of our time using social media as an imperfect platform. 

(please note, some swearing and sexual references)

 

Cover created by J. Johnson using Canva stock images.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Julie Johnson
• Release date: May 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393856146

Julie Johnson

Julie Johnson has been writing all through elementary school, middle school, high school, university, motherhood, career as an educator...and is still writing. She prefers warm-hearted comedy. Several comedic short stories exploring the interactions between climate action activists and climate deniers  have been published on the Commuter Lit site. She has been blogging about the writing life since 2010 at busywriting.net. You can find her on Twitter @julieejohnsonn. She lives with her family in Ontario, Canada. Over the years she has been involved in numerous environmental and social justice groups. Her activism continues. 

Book preview

PART ONE

EPISODES ONE TO SIX

EPISODE ONE

GEOFF

I THINK IT'S GREAT that you want to showcase The Daisy Chain in a video  project, Marcus says into the camera, the first shot of the first video.

We want to make it a series, Irene explains, off side.  To reveal your inner workings over time. 

Right, Marcus nods in the direction of her disembodied voice. So we’ve discussed before. Great.

Anthony's hyped it up on his social media, she adds. So the world is aware. We anticipate many views, given his high number of followers. The first episode will be posted tonight at six pm Eastern Standard Time.

That means he has less than two hours until official ‘Show Time’.

Sure, he smiles. No pressure.

We want it to be real, she adds. So we will do minor editing only. You're doing great so far, by the way.

Sure. No problem. This reminds me of my improv days. I can do it.

He grins.

Right. Hmmm. Any chance you could stress your accent?

What?

Your accent, Marcus. It's charming. Can you amp it up a bit?

Uh, I guess so. How's this? Marcus quotes Robbie Burns, rolling his r's and stretching his ee’s in true Scottish style:

"O my Luve's like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June:

O my Luve's like the melodie,

That's sweetly play'd in tune."

Marcus finishes with his arms wide, an air of dramatic accomplishment.

Irene's response?

Charming but a bit much.

Ha! Geoff, watching this video unfold on his phone in his living room, laughs to himself. Well done, Irene! That sums up Marcus perfectly: charming but a bit much!

Marcus is outgoing and fun, the comedian to Geoff’s ‘straight man act’ (straight meaning ‘serious’ not, you know: straight.)

If Geoff has a type, Marcus is it—a clever, soulful, risky man who keeps him on his emotional toes. Han Solo to his Princess Leia. Marcus exemplifies everything he ever wanted in a man.

So why is he thinking of leaving him? Why?

Geoff keeps watching.

Stick with your regular voice, Irene decides.

Sure, Marcus shrugs. His eye catches the phone that has been filming him, the one Jackson Pine is holding. Hey, are you filming already? I thought we were only practicing...

Cut to the next scene.

GEOFF IS IN THIS ONE. He looks flabby, he thinks. He needs to work out more. 

Also: he's too pale. It's July, high summer and he looks like a silverfish. He needs to get out in the sun more.

Plus: his hair is constantly in his eyes. He needs to get his hair cut shorter—though Marcus will tell him not to. Marcus likes his longer, laid back ‘surfer locks’.

None of this is relevant, he reminds himself. Just watch the damn video.

Geoff, what are you doing?

Hi, Irene. I'm putting the finishing touches on one of our customer favourites: tofu cheesecake.

Tofu cheesecake? What's in it?

"Well, tofu, for starters—ha! Ha! Ha! The rest I won't say. It’s kind of a trade secret. Just know that it's all vegan and all good for you. And all delicious!"

That sounds great! Can I try some?

Uh—, he's hesitant and looks off camera. He looks like he is thinking: wait, what? No one said anything about giving free food away. Is this part of the agreement?

Marcus, off camera, coaxes him: Go ahead.

So Geoff enthuses: Sure, Irene! And with unsteady hands he cuts a piece of tofu cheesecake for her.

Geoff doesn't like being on camera. He looks exactly how he feels: awkward and uncomfortable. He can't fake it.

Jackson zooms in on the slicing process like this is some kind of food porn shot and Geoff, feeling the pressure, fumbles and plops the slice on a plate in a very clumsy way. This is not very Martha Stewart of him. It now looks like a pile of tofu mush. He dribbles some blueberry sauce on it, making a thorough mess.

Here! He hands it to Irene, hoping she'll be able to sell it better. She should. She's a drama student, for God's sake.

Jackson zeros in on her mouth as she takes in a bite. The porn theme continues as her mouth puckers and she moans.

Oh my god! She moans again: cheesecake orgasm. That's delicious!

Cut! Yells Jackson.

But he keeps filming—the rat!

Geoff watches the video, amazed. He did not know this at the time, that he was still being filmed!

How was that? The Geoff On Screen is anxious to please. Did I do okay? The Geoff On Screen is relieved that it's over.

The Geoff On Screen doesn't realize the truth: it's not over.

You weren't faking it, were you? He asks Irene. You really liked it, right?

Considering she's eaten it all and is trying to pick up any remaining crumbs from her plate with the flat bottom of her fork, this strikes the viewer as a ridiculous question.

It's clear to Geoff now, viewing this, that he’s been cast as the bumbling fool. He’s the comic relief.

Marcus is the alpha male. Geoff is the beta.

It's a documentary, after all! It’s supposed to be a representation of real life. Fact not fiction. What else did he expect?

Irene responds by moaning some more and then setting the plate down with finality.

That was fantastic, she says. "Utterly superb—and I was not faking it." 

Can I try some? Jackson also wants to experience a tofu cheesecake orgasm. Of course he does.

In the video, Geoff's thoughts are as clear as a blue sky on his face. He's wondering if this documentary idea of theirs is really just a pretence to scoring some free food. Irene and Jackson are college students—film and drama majors. Aren't their lives all about beer, weed, sex and food—and about scoring beer, weed, sex and food?

Go for it, urges Marcus again, off camera.

Uh. Ok. You'd think having done this once before on camera that Geoff would be better at it the second time around—but no. He is uncomfortable being watched by Jackson and Irene. The slice ends up a crumpled mess on the plate—again.

Geoff looks around this time, searching for Winona, the waitress. She's better at this. She's better at serving people. Why isn't she doing this segment?

Jackson sets down his phone in such a way that they're all still in frame: Geoff, Irene, Jackson.

Well, that takes skill, thinks Geoff, watching the video. It isn't easy to set down one's phone and still film correctly, all on the first try.

Geoff watches as Jackson takes the plate and scarfs up the tofu cake. No time for moaning—it just gets shovelled in and goes right down the gullet.

My face should just come with subtitles, Geoff thinks. You can read it like a book. It says: I knew it! They are trying to score free food!

But to be fair, if he were them, he'd probably do the same.

Doesn't he remember what it's like to be young, hungry, trying to score, succeed, rise up and above—trying to make it, prove oneself, identify? Or has too many years passed?

Next to them he looks exactly as he is: old.

Old, old, old.

That surfer hair is butterscotch mixed with grey. A lot of grey.

Perhaps only Geoff can see it: how old his hair makes him look. He certainly hopes no one watching these videos notices how unflattering it is. But to dye it now would be embarrassing. Nothing says mid-life crisis like an old man with a ken-doll dye job.

On camera, he is losing patience with their youthful exuberance. He is coming across as old in the worst sense of the word. Old as in annoyed, crotchety, the kind of old that yells at the kids to get off the lawn.

Wow! Jackson says, when he's done. That's really good. What else is a customer favourite?

Geoff looks like he's going to say something, like: that's enough free food for now.

At that point, Winona enters the frame. Geoff is relieved to see her.

Winona has her hair in braids, as usual, and is wearing one of her 'statement tees' that she likes to make. This one is in imitation of those old FRANKIE SAYS RELAX t- shirts from the 1980s. But hers says, in the same big black font: TAKE CARE OF THE EARTH.

Jackson picks up his phone and says: action like he hasn't been filming surreptitiously all this time. But maybe he hasn't? Maybe Jackson didn't know the camera was still on?

Geoff has a tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt. It's a tendency that has bit him in the ass more than once. He is too nice. Marcus is simultaneously praising/mocking whenever he calls Geoff: Mr. Nice Guy.

Winona sends the camera—or Jackson—an odd look. Then she tells Geoff—and Marcus, who is watching all of this unfold off camera through the office doorway:

It's getting busy. I could use some help out front.

Marcus and Geoff spring into action, leave the back kitchen area and the camera follows. It's all bustle and rush, as Jackson and Irene respond to this shift in energy—as if this were an episode of Cops and they just caught sight of the suspect darting past a back alley and leaping over the fence—

Hurry up everyone! It's a vegan emergency!

But before they show the video of the front room, the image cuts to a sign they've posted on the counter, which says: we are filming a documentary. If you DO NOT want to be included, please let your server know and we will be sure you are NOT represented in the video.

MARCUS

MARCUS REMEMBERS WHEN he first saw that ‘we are filming a documentary’ warning sign on the restaurant’s counter. He'd pointed and laughed and asked Geoff:

Who is seriously going to say no in this day and age? When everyone wants to be captured, and digitized, Instagrammed, Facebooked and Twittered?

People are entitled to their privacy if they want it, Geoff had sniffly responded, all uptight—and right on cue. It can be so easy to get Geoff riled up. It makes for good fun, sometimes.

People who want privacy usually have something to hide, Marcus had replied. Like if you're a criminal on the run. Or a person having an affair. Then maybe you don't want your image bandied about on the internet willy nilly.

Having an affair? A criminal on the run? Geoff had been incredulous. Oh, it was too easy to wind him up, sometimes. "And they come to our restaurant?"

Well, yes. Philandering spouses and criminals can be vegan, too, you know.

That's unlikely. Classic Geoff dour face. Classic Geoff!

How so?

As was often the case with Marcus, Geoff ended up entering an argument-netherworld where he became ridiculous, trying to prove something absurd...for instance, googling the statistical likelihood of whether criminals and philanderers were vegan. (Google, this time, had nothing to say on the subject. Marcus had been supremely satisfied about that. He had one-upped Google—again. How fabulous!)

That's how Marcus loves to be: challenging. Challenging Google, challenging Geoff, challenging everyone.  He likes to argue another person upside down and inside out and all around. Marcus wants to wear a person out so they’ll give up. It's his main strategy. And he is damn good at it, too.

As his mama often says, proudly: he could’ve been a lawyer.

MARCUS WATCHES AS THE camera now tracks to a busy restaurant area, ‘the front’, where tables are paced out with chairs in groups of two and four—and most of them are full.

Geoff, Marcus and Winona hustle about gathering tea, coffee, smoothies, cakes, muffins and veggie wraps, taking care of this sudden influx of customers, or, it should be said, those customers willing to appear on camera, those who don't mind if their image shuttles out to all areas of the internet, which is, essentially: all of them.

Marcus knows all of these customers by name. The restaurant has a dedicated fan base, repeat customers, and there's so many of them tonight, on a Monday night, for their first video—what a happy coincidence!

In truth, this is no coincidence—Marcus had leaked information about the video to his favourites, hoping they might come by and give the film some good material.

What kind of businessman would he be if he let his beloved restaurant be empty or anything less than robust during Episode One?

A shit businessman, that's who.

Irene and Jackson specifically interview a couple of customers: Nadine. Amelia. Alanna. Tara. Tommy. Adire and Michel. They ask them: why do you come here to The Daisy Chain?

Some come to The Daisy Chain because of ethical reasons: eating vegan jibes with their philosophy. Usually, these are environmental or compassionate considerations. Veganism is considerably less damaging environmentally than meat eating and of course better for animals because nobody has to kill them in order to feed you.

Some people eat at The Daisy Chain for the health benefits. It's well documented that a plant based diet is good for one's health.

If you don't believe me, says Nadine, on camera. Just google it.

Others work in the local industrial park and have chosen The Daisy Chain primarily due to proximity but, bless their hearts, as Adire explains:  The food is so good, we come here even when we are not at work.

Isn't that a grand statement? And it's true. There is no doubt about it. His product is of the finest quality. It keeps people around, those who might otherwise give vegan a try but then a pass.

Marcus, through Geoff, hooks them with their taste buds. It happens all the time that some skeptical meat and dairy eater tries vegan and exclaims: wow, I didn't expect that to be so delicious!

Marcus wants anyone and everyone to come to his restaurant and become hooked. And he means everyone. Not just the hippy dippy types or the granola crunchers or the local folks. Everyone of all faiths, colours and creeds.

Yes, of course their establishment leans toward the left. As a gay man, he himself is progressive. It would be irrational to be otherwise. But he also knows that for veganism to really count, to really have an impact on the world, it must move on down the line, it must grow, it must embrace the center...and beyond.

Marcus remembers telling Geoff once:

If a neo-Nazi group comes to town, I want to give them all a discount coupon.

That had put Geoff's knickers in a knot, alright.

That's outrageous! We can't have that! I refuse!  For god's sake, we have a pink triangle poster on the wall!  They had us exterminated! And so many others! That's abhorrent! I won't allow it!

I'm only joking. And he had been. Of course Marcus doesn't want The Daisy Chain affiliated with Nazis. Nazis are evil.

And consorting with evil would be bad for business.

But he does want to prove a point: that Veganism needs to become everyone's default setting. And he means everyone. It needs to become as pervasive as McDonalds and KFC. Don't Nazis eat at Mcdonalds? Don’t they eat at KFC? Of course they do! Maybe it's not advertised by Mcdonalds and KFC but it's statistically appropriate—because almost everyone eats at Mcdonalds or KFC at one point or another! (Even Marcus, in his high school and university years, ate there.)

If Marcus can get the Nazis to eat vegan he would feel he'd 'won'.

But he had pushed Geoff far enough in that conversation. So he’d smiled (adorably) and said.

I'm only doing what I do best—being a shit stirrer. Taking the piss, as they say. And he'd given dear Geoff a peck on the cheek to mollify him.

Oh, his Puckish Byronic charm gets him in trouble sometimes! He has charisma in spades and he likes to flaunt it shamelessly. Not always publicly. There's a fine line between impish cheekiness and being an asshole.

And it is not good business sense to be an asshole.

But sometimes he can't help it: ‘Charming Bastard’ is his default setting.

And Geoff seems to like it, most of the time.

Indeed, Geoff is his best and most preferred audience. He saves his best material for him. And it works, as long as Marcus doesn't push him too far or cross the line too much.

It is a Fine Art all its own to know when to push—and when to stop pushing. He has learned where this line is through practice.

But he knows he must watch his mouth during this online video making process—no mentioning the Nazis when he's talking, though if you think about it, if he could get them to eat vegan, at his restaurant, he might be able to alter other aspects of their ideology.

It’s not just the vegan food that would do it, he thinks, it’s the company, the people at the restaurant. The food would draw them initially, oh yes, but through that they would experience the community. The comradery.

There were the pamphlets on their notice board, for instance, notifying everyone of their vast potential for healing — notices for art groups, chakra healing, identity discussion groups, spoken word poetry, urban gardening, pagan festivals, improv and stand up, interfaith study, peace meditation.  These notices are always rotating, but always there, in the corner of your eye, confirming opportunity. Confirming your potential for transformation.

Eating at The Daisy Chain could be the very thing that shakes their genocidal, cult-like rigidity, the thing that awakens their compassion, that brings forth a sense of shared humanity, along with a new environmental and political consciousness. Marcus is certain that in coming regularly to his restaurant, he could diffuse their misogyny, homophobia, racial hatred, their woundedness, their rabid eagerness for power, their need to do so much harm, so that their vileness leaks from them like air from a balloon...

It would just deflate until, sitting there, suddenly, is a reformed man, a healed man, sipping his soy milk Chai latte and eating a slice of tofu cheesecake, contemplating the possibility of taking a pottery class to awaken his divine feminine. All hatred gone from his heart!

Poof! Ta-dah! No more Nazi!

Marcus is convinced The Daisy Chain could work such magic.

But for god's sake, he shouldn't say any of that on film! He must be careful not to get too Byronic while on camera. He must keep the ‘Charming’ part to the forefront and save the ‘Bastard’ part for another time.

He does a good job, he thinks, watching himself in Episode One. He especially likes that bit when Irene asks him:

Why did you choose to start this restaurant?

And he gives his wonderful, noble spiel, the one that starts with:

I wanted to live my life with integrity, so that when I die I will lie on my deathbed, feeling as though I have contributed to the betterment of the world...

Damn, he thinks, watching himself on screen, I sure look good.

He is forty nine and still lean and lithe, thanks to all that running he does. His silver hair makes him look vibrant.

Everyone thinks when you get older it all goes to shit—but that's not true, not true at all. He is forty nine and yet he is the sexiest, most handsome version of himself. Marcus has no fears of growing older, if this is how the trend is going to be.

He can imagine the sighs and flutters of the audience, all those other watchers, the people staring at their phone screens, watching Episode One on YouTube, taking him in.

This is not egotistical aggrandizement. He knows it to be true. It's just a fact. People respond to him.

He's had lots of opportunities for infidelity but he hasn't taken up a single one. Ever. For the truth of it is that he loves Geoff, heart and soul. There is no other man for him.

Though he sometimes plays the standoff rogue, he is utterly devoted. He knows Geoff knows this and it's why Geoff puts up with Marcus’ shenanigans, which, even Marcus can admit, can get very irritating and taxing to the nerves sometimes.

But Geoff puts up with it because he knows Marcus is