To borrow from an old, bad advertisement about the perils of drugs, Jackson Sherwin Taylor is your brain on booze.
He is magnificently self-involved, the way addicts are. He thrums with low-level, unfocussed aggression that is mostly harmless, but which can rise sharply, depending upon the level of injury he feels. He has a formidable criminal record going back to 1975, but he keeps it nicely current, the most recent conviction in 2009 for assault with a weapon.
He is a multiple times convicted thief, a repeat drunk driver, a regular utterer of threats and on occasion violent.
A self-described alcoholic from the age of 7 who drank all his life "except for the times I was in jail, but you can still get that in jail," he is driven entirely by his need for beer.
On trial now for the alleged sexual abuse of a boy who was his then-girlfriend's youngest son, Mr. Taylor Thursday took the witness box before Ontario Superior Court Judge Nancy Spies to testify in his own defence.
"Did you ever sexually abuse X?" Stephen Ford, Mr. Taylor's lawyer, asked him, finally.
'No, I didn't," Mr. Taylor said.
He made a similar denial when prosecutor Ken Lockhart asked a similar question in his cross-examination.
Neither protestation is worth a fig.
After a lifetime of alcohol abuse, Mr. Taylor, now 52, has virtually no memory left - except of not doing the terrible thing he is accused of doing.
He couldn't remember when he first met the mother of the boy he allegedly molested, once placing it in 1997, once a decade earlier. He said he was the woman's on-again, off-again boyfriend for about 14 years, which, taking that first date, would have meant he continued to see her for several years after her death in 2007.
He barely remembers where he lived; he and the mother of the boy, and his brother, crashed at various places throughout Ontario, with relatives, with fellow drinkers, on their home reserve, at numerous locations in Toronto, in several other small towns.
At one point, when Mr. Lockhart asked if he remembered anything at all from 1999, 2000 or 2001 - the years the alleged sexual abuse took place - Mr. Taylor replied that he didn't.
He admitted the eight pages of his criminal record, but would quibble on the specifics, saying, "I don't remember getting convicted of all this," or, "And I didn't escape custody; the guard let me right out the front door!"
Memorably, when Mr. Lockhart mentioned a conviction for assault, Mr. Taylor bellowed, "Assault, for hitting someone with a half a ham sandwich! Where did you grow up? A 9mm is a weapon, not a ham sandwich!" and formed his hand into the shape of a gun.
Mr. Lockhart asked if he was pointing it at him.
"It's not pointed at you," Mr. Taylor snapped, "it's pointed. A weapon is a 9mm, or a .38, or a .45 or a submachine gun or a shotgun. That's a weapon, bro."
Occasionally, he would attempt to paint himself as a caregiver for the boys - "I didn't just drink," he said, "I went out to make money help us survive!" - but what rang truer was when, pestered about his purported care of the children, he told Mr. Lockhart, "They're not my kids! They were okay with X and their mother was there. What do I gotta worry about a little kid for!"
He was alternately yawning with boredom and flushed with impatience with the prosecutor.
"Obviously, I got a memory," he said, "but my mind ain't there, it's on my health.
"And this court is driving me nuts. I shouldn't even be here." He then launched a vicious diatribe against the boy's stepmother and blamed her for pressuring the boy to claim abuse.
When Mr. Lockhart attempted to steer him back to the questions, Mr. Taylor explained his world view.
"I don't pay attention to that," he said.
"You know what I care about? I pay attention to having enough money in the morning to go to the beer store and get a beer…. I don't care, you could be killing each other and I'd walk right past."
When the boy, now a quiet 16, testified before Judge Spies, he had some difficulty with his memory. After all, he was just 5 or 6 when Mr. Taylor allegedly took him for walks, pulled down his pants and masturbated him, warning him not to tell anyone. But the remembered the places, by name, where the abuse allegedly took place; he remembered how lonely he felt, and another witness, unrelated to either the boy or Mr. Taylor, has testified to the child's terror of Mr. Taylor.
The gaps in the boy's memory seem born of tender years, innocence, the awful sights and sounds to which he and his brother were routinely exposed in childhood - adults always drinking, fighting, yelling. (Another potential key witness in the case can't testify, basically, court has heard, because he suffers from alcohol-induced dementia.)
Mr. Taylor doesn't have gaps in his memory. He has no memory. If, as Neil Young once sang, every junkie is a setting sun, you could practically see this one dipping towards the horizon.
The evidence at the judge-alone trial is complete, with the lawyers set to address her Friday.
cblatchford@globeandmail.com