Random Encouters of the Perverted Kind

I think by now it's well-documented that either my pheromones are putting forth a big stink or someone taped a sign to my back, but either way, I'm getting stopped on the street like crazy.

At first I thought it was just a fluke of my neighbourhood - either all the horndogs live on my block, or there was a blonde shortage, or they're all a bunch of lascivious drunks - but the truth is, as long as I'm alone, I will get stopped no matter where I am. Not just my flirty men, but primarily by flirty men.

Actually, on the weekend I was with Jason, walking up my street at night, when a cheerily drunken fellow us bid us good evening, and I wished him one back, which put Jason's panties in a bunch. "Don't encourage them!" he hissed, as if being polite is somehow a bad thing. But then he was distracted - the red blotches we were following were almost certainly blood, and we began to wonder where this trail would lead us. However, when the drips of blood ended, there was a very large pool of blood, which means it was the beginning, not the end. The shattered plate glass door seemed to be to blame. We had just missed a bar brawl, and whoever got cup up during the smashing had obviously fled the scene. Jason grabbed me tighter and insisted I not walk at night anymore (not that I ever listen).

• A man stopped me on Davenport to ask me where my dog was. Apparently the only reason anyone ever walks in Toronto is to let their pet crap.
• Walking down Ellesmere a guy wearing a wife beater looked me up and down, licked his lips (this happens in real life!?!?!) and said Why don't you take me home with you? , except with way worse grammar that I will not stoop to copy.
• Waiting for a bus on Dundas, the little old lady who was waiting beside me noticed a hand-written sign saying we should head "2 poles north" for a detour bus. Crossing the intersection, a man walking by said "You look very beautiful this morning" to which the little old lady replied "WHAT?!?!?!", and he repeated "Um, she looks very beautiful this morning." And the lady turned to me and said, "You really do." And then we saw a really big plush horse, discarded in the middle of the sidewalk.
• Catching a street car on St. Clair, this really old couple came over to me and told me all of their problems - they haven't been in this end of the city in 40 years, and they're very lost, and they just want to get back on the Yonge-University line. I assured them that I could get them there, and they stood flanking me, so encroached upon my personal space that anyone walking by would assume that I was a beloved granddaughter, and not a complete stranger with a rudimentary knowledge of the subway system.
• Last week I walked to Dufferin Mall on a day it was supposed to rain - I figured the rain would alleviate the heat and make the walk more bearable. But it never did rain. So when I got to my destination I made a beeline for the vending machine, where some dude bought his beverage and then offered to buy mine so gallantly that you'd swear he'd just offered me a bottle of Dom instead of flat Pepsi.
• On the walk back, a guy dismounted from his bike, panting, and sheepishly admitted how hot it was. He walked his bike beside me for several blocks, asking me all the standard pre-asking-out-on-a-date questions, and while I felt somewhat relieved (because he was cute, and my age, whereas a good many of the flirters are not), I mostly felt grossed out, because what the hell is he doing picking me up when I look like this? (note: "like this"= walking "shorts" that used to be ugly pants that I shortened myself, a shirt the colour of cantaloupe flesh, which usually only attracts bees, unwashed hair in a scrappy ponytail, nothing on my face except sunscreen and sweat. Not hot.
• A man with white chest hair peaking out from between the strained buttons of his denim shirt tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that I was a classy and refined kind of woman. "Know how I can tell?" he asked, and I wrinkled my nose instead of answering, but he told me anyway: "It's because you have such delicate ankles. You can tell a lot from a woman's ankles." I'm not sure if this line used to work in 1957, but I wasn't buying it. In fact, I do not even have particularly delicate ankles. Get a clue.
• Not two blocks later another man came running up behind me, and I moved over so he could run by, but instead he slowed down and said "Whew, I caught you" which I pretended not to hear. "You look like you could use some company" he said, which I pretended not to hear. "Do you maybe want to sit and talk" which I also ignored. And then I made yet another last-minute, unplanned turned down an unknown street to ditch a guy I don't know.
• I was sitting on a park bench reading Death of the Heart, and a guy in a suit sat down beside me, close. And he bumped my leg with his leg. And then he did it again. And then he kind of rubbed them together, which prompted me to say "Don't touch me", which I thought was clear. Until he rubbed some more. So I said "If you do that again, I'm going to yell PERVERT!", and I kind of yelled it then a bit too, so he got up and left.
• I was having a little stroll around the neighbourhood after the sun went down, and an older woman in a shawl was waiting for the light to change. "I like to walk at night time" she told me. "Me too", I said "it's so much less hot." "Oh yes, the heat, all day I take ice baths. But me, I walk at night because it's quiet and too many people make me wobble. I wear the special pantyhose, but still I wobble on the swelled ankles. I eat many apples a day but it never stops." We passed by a house that lots of birdcages hanging from the porch, and she said "Some people are so strange."

This is true.

Postal Ponderings

Last week, I accidentally bought air-mail envelopes, and I've been surprisingly hard on myself about it.

I ducked into a "dollar store" because I'd had one of those lightning bolt moments - usually I write my shopping list on my forearm with a sharpie - but for some reason I remembered all on my own.

And I remember standing in front of the shelf, mulling between 25 business sized envelopes for $2.00 or 50 square envelopes for $1.50. I remember bristling over the fact that very little in the store seemed to actually cost one dollar. I remember grabbing the $1.50 box, not so much out of cheapness as out of principle, because these damned grifters had lured me in with the promise of 4 quarters and were now trying to strip me of 6, at least.

Oh, that really puts the lump in my mashed potato.

As fate would have it (is it still fate when the event largely inconsequential?), I did not notice the tacky red and blue border on the envelopes until my dollar-induced stupor wore off at home.

I don't know the rules about air-mail envelopes. If I drop one into the mailbox addressed to, say, myself, will the post office note the postal code and keep it on the ground, or are the blue and red stripes some sort of trump? Will they put that envelope on a plane out of some sort of professional obligation, let my letter wrack up a few frequent flier miles, and have it take the scenic route back to my front door? Or does the most direct route win? I mean, how much credit can we give our postal workers when they are, by definition, pretty unstable to begin with?

Just what is the point of the air-mail envelope? Ostensibly mail is routed according to the address affixed to it, and also by the postage paid. Common sense seems to indicate that if a piece of mail is to be delivered within the same city where it was posted, planes are pretty excessive, but if it is to be mailed overseas, then perhaps a truck is insufficient. But it is a FACT that this air-mail envelope does exist - does its existence prove that postal workers cannot be trusted? Or just that they have poor geography skills? And what if a postal worker is colour blind? My god, just think of all the pornography that might get lost in the shuffle!

So yes, I have been contemplating the fate of mail a lot recently, and while I may test out some of my theories in the future, I thought it prudent to get some regular envelopes in the meantime.

This time I went to the Dollarama, which is worth the extra walk when I need some piece of crap that I am unwilling to pay more than a dollar for. It makes me wonder what we ever did before these dollar-meccas sprang up everywhere. I mean, I don't know about your shopping habits, but there are a few things that I consider to be strictly dollar store purchases. Now that I know I can get it for dirt cheap, I am unwilling to pay more than a loonie. But it made me wonder - how much would a box of envelopes cost anywhere else?

I suppose it's possible that I could get them for 77 cents at Walmart, and equally possible to pay $4.99 at Shopper's Drug Mart.

Anyway, you'll be glad to know that this time I didn't cheap out. I even got the self-sealing kind. I stood in line to pay, and at the dollar store, I always like to have my money in hand. Ever since I can remember, taxes where I live were 15% - 15 cents for every dollar. So if I bought one box of envelopes, my purchase would total $1.15, and I don't have to wait for the cashier to tell me so, I could get rid of some nickels and dimes, have the money ready even before it was rung up, and keep the line moving quickly. And I'm particularly good at knowing my intervals of 15 because I used to work at a bar in a trailer park where Wednesday was "wing nite" , 15 cents each (with the purchase of a beverage).

But ever since the dumbest Canadians conspired against me and elected a crappy conservative to government, taxes are down to 14%.

That really puts a dent in my fender.

Because, you see, today when I bought my envelopes, I did not celebrate the penny in my pocket. As we all know, pennies are meaningless. Totally irrelevant. There is not a single Canadian who is walking around feeling richer because of this 1%. Even on larger purchases, the savings are not noticeable because even if you did save a chunk of change, chances are you didn't actually "save" it, chances are you spent it. That's the way it goes with money.

But while my penny is insignificant, and even the collection of pennies in the bottom of my purse, and the pennies that spill out into the car, and the pennies that fall out of pockets into the couch cushions...even all of those pennies combined are chump change, but when the government collects all the chump change in Canada, well, that's a lot of chumps.

And I'm sad to say that while I am not benefiting from this 1% "savings", I worry about those who will suffer. We all love to bitch about taxes, but at the end of the day, we do like our roads to be smooth and our hospitals to cure us. And if the worst should befall us, we as Canadians do have that expectation that the government will step in and save us. Single mothers still need housing subsidies, and hungry kids need breakfast programs, and disabled people need the means to support themselves, and the underemployed need resources, and deserving students need grants, and important research needs funding. And how will we pay for those things if not with our taxes? Because between you and me, I haven't exactly been saving my pennies to donate to charity. So the bottom line is, someone somewhere is going without.

I have seen firsthand what a difference our tax dollars can make, whether it's shelters for battered women in our own country, or dollars to end AIDS in Africa. The government expected this 1% decrease to cost them $5 billion dollars this year. Who will pay? The cities? The farmers? The next generation?

It's funny how the Dollarama has made me nostalgic for Chretien.
How a dime and 4 pennies seems tragic compared to a dime and a nickel.
How a box of envelopes can cost so little, and yet so much.

A Love Letter to Great Friends

A toast to all the friends who have helped and who continue to help me pick up the pieces:

To Cynthia, who cooked me chana masala and distracted me with her gory knee and offered me "the good tissues" when I finally let some tears fall;

To Karl who bought food for my fridge and was the only reason I couldn't call myself penniless;

To Vics who sent me tea and chocolate and an addition to my Sparkle Wall and inspiration via karaoke, and to K. who continues to send me postcards that make me smile;

To Katie who lets me jiggle her baby;

To Joy who sent me a symbolic picture to hang, and who somehow knew that I would also need a hammer to hang it with;

To Kim who literally offered to adopt me, and would have sent me the plane ticket and official membership into her crazy family had I only given the word, and who did it all while making me feel like her "Augusten Burroughs" instead of "charity case";

To Alex who believes in the healing powers of a Bollywood night;

To Caroline who heard it all before anyone else, and didn't even wince;

To Tug who introduced me to Sark;

To Silvia who has a big heart, and who would drive 1000km round-trip and put me up in her own apartment just to remind me that I have people who love me in Ottawa;

To Ms. Mac and Antipo who cheered me with their creative swear-words;

To Stella & Ewan & Napoleon, who sent me worldly postcards;

To Helen who was immediately generous, and then sent sweets and whatever happiness could fit into an envelope;

To Miss Great Dane, who sent me a lovely hand-made card and some desperately-needed posters for my glaringly white bedroom wall;

To the Handsome Man in Yellow who has been both confider and confidant;

To Moxey who sent watercolours and love;

To Deeleea who sent me courage in the post, and better yet, has continued to foster it during our many time-warped chats;

To Vince and to Serendipity who sent speedy kind words;

To Rod who is my self-appointed superman and will be here when I need him;

To Colleen and Beth who both sent their own amazing photography to adorn my walls and combat the ugly in my room;

To Kat E who sent me Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo Good Luck (bad luck) egg and took my subsequent ribbing good-naturedly;

To Van who sent me my very own Kill the Goat CD;

To Jude and Moogie who keep me sane with their emails;

To Rhys who keeps me grounded;

To Eclecta who loaned me books and gave me treasured photos and told me that I would survive;

To the many I've surely forgotten (please, let me know);

And to all of you, who come and read despite the fact that being internet-less has meant less frequent posting and less frequent visiting of all my favourite blogs, and who click on ads to put pennies in my pockets and leave me comments that assure me I'm not half as crazy as I think -

A big thank you, to friends in many forms, who remind me that I am not alone.

Because of you, I count blessings instead of tears.

xx

Spying on the Neighbours, Part 2: Return of the Limp

This time the weather was much nicer, so I headed south east for about 2.5 km and no matter how many times I walk the same route, it never gets boring.

FYI: between this walk and this one, there are
27 barber shops\beauty salons
48 places where you can be served alcohol

Does this not seem excessive to anyone else?

1. Besides the mice @ work seen on my previous outing, this particular walk yielded: internet c@fe, web st@tion, and web fusi@n.

2. A bar\eatery that advertises "pub and grub" - not sure if this is honest, or unappetizing, or both.

3. The first of many murals, this one oddly depicting a bank vault that is raining money into the waiting people's hands. There are 3 banks within spitting distance of this mural. Does this not make them nervous? Do we really need enormous artwork to incite lawlessness? And why this particular building? It houses a Mac's Milk convenience store (for all your slurpee and cigarette needs) and Curves, one of those pussy "gyms" wherein you never break a sweat.


4. This neighbourhood is lined with tiny, family-owned stores that seem to sell nothing and everything all at once. One such store advertises: helium balloons, satellite installation, fresh kiwis, change watch batteries. It's closed on Sundays and Mondays, never open before 10 or after 5. Kind of makes me feel like I should get into the helium\kiwi\battery business.

5. As usual a bunch of old men have brought rusting vinyl-covered chairs from ancient dinette sets into the middle of the sidewalk, and they all sit there, congregated, always finding something to gesture madly about. Not only do you have to step around this mass of pot-bellied men, you have to step out into oncoming traffic just to give them a wide enough berth - these men are spitters, and the area around them is a no-walk zone.

6. Another store that sells: cleaning supplies, antique handicrafts, baked ham and raw almonds. I like that. Sounds almost poetic, until I note the other sign that says Indian groceries upstairs, Mexican groceries in basement, and I feel bad for the segregated food, the salsa and tortillas that are made to hide in shame downstairs, victims of culinary prejuidice. I rage against the injustice until I can justify it: mexican food has a lot more cheese and beans, high fat content, so having to go up and down stairs to retrieve it is probably just heart-healthy. Right?

7. Then, another mural, this one depicting movie scenes. At first I think it's just as random as the first, but then I see more clearly. This one is cleverly placed between a grocery store and a blockbuster. When you come out of the grocery store, glad to be alive despite the tomato-squeezers, you look at the mural and think it might be nice to treat yourself to a movie. But once you get the movie, you realize that you won't want to watch it snacking on the arugala in your shopping back, so you go back to the grocery store and buy a vat of chip dip and a family-size bag of ruffles, which is enough food for at least 2 movies, so you go back to the video store and rent a second one. So you see the mural is a conspiracy to get you to consume, driving the economy but emptying your wallet, and all you wanted to do was make a nice salad and maybe hit the gym, but now you're bound to go home and sit on your fat ass, shovelling well-seasoned lard into your mouth via deep-fried carbohydrates, and pretty soon you have no energy to go to the gym, even if you could get your wobbly thighs into your yoga pants, so instead you rent more movies and swallow more salty snacks, and the Evil Mural People cackle greedily to themselves.


8. Anyway. The next store I hit sells blinds, draperies, and bras. But mostly bras. They were having a sidewalk sale, but bra sales always make me depressed. The A-cup bin overflows with pretty bras, all lace and eyelets and bows. The B-cup bin does likewise, not needing to bother with support straps and underwires. But by the time I get to my bin, the C-cup, the bras in there are dowdy in comparison. The vast majority of them come in white or beige. And don't even get me started on the sorry contents of the D bin. But, in the back of the store, in a dusty pile, sat a tangled mass of mini blinds. This made me absurdly happy.

9. Another human obstacle: an old lady who stood pointing towards the sound of a piano. She pointed very fiercely, but I'm not sure exactly what she expected me to do about it. Did she want me to enjoy it? Hate it? Investigate it? Or was she just looking for confirmation that she wasn't crazy and someone else could hear it too? I kept walking, and for all I know she might still be there now.

10. A store called Lit - I look inside and it appears to sell clothing. I am confused. "Lit" is the french word for bed. Why would a clothing store be named Bed? Not for another 3 blocks do I remember that Lit is also an english word, as in "to light", which makes me embarrassed for a minute, but then, it's still a rubbish name.

11. An aging couple stops me for directions, but clearly no one has told them they're getting on in their years. They're both dressed in their version of "hip" clothes - skin tight, of course, that seems obligatory when you're fat and over 60 but in denial about both. Absurdly, they are both wearing matching belts that dip below their matching bellies. They ask me for the Boom Boom room, and I wonder if they've recently escaped from the 60s, and all I can do is shrug. Much later I recall a breakfasty place simply called Boom, but it's wayyyy down the street so I feel confident that I won't have to sheepishly run into them again.

12. This happy place usually has dozens of warm bodies lined up outside of hit on the sultry summer evenings. You can tell it's happy just by looking at it, but I think anything you can put sprinkles on top of is happy by default. I've never been in there myself, but I delight in it just by ice creamy osmosis. On the other side of it is a Tibetan buddhist temple, so I believe this corner has a lot of good karma going for it.


13. Walking by a restaurant that makes "Seoul Food", I walk by a green van with an elderly man in the driver seat who yells something mangled at me, and my earphones firmly in place, I pretend not to hear. So he follows me. Of course. The van pulls up beside me and slows to match my walking pace. The driver yells at me, asks if I want a ride. It's a gorgeous, if melty, kind of day, and I tell him so and move on. But he follows. And yells So you like exercise? By which point the many cars stuck behind him are now honking impatiently. He beckons me over, and I shake my head no. I am grateful there is a lane of traffic between us. He won't give up, though. He wants me to come talk. He wants to go out for coffee. He wants me to get in his van. What the hell is an old man in a mini van doing chasing 20somethings? This man could be my grandfather. And then it hits me: my grandfather has recently purchased a minivan. So this guy keeps following me and I'm getting to really not like it, and I decide that rudeness be damned, I'm cutting through someone's backyard, where vans cannot follow because I need another stalker like I need for my eyebrows to catch fire. I decide to get home before van man can find me again, but all the way home I think of the letter I should compose to my grandmother along the lines of Pa might be trolling for more than just fish.

14. Safe at home, but bothered by the heat, I take off my pants and sit in front of the fan until I feel I've cooled down. I stay inside for at least half an hour, wanting to hide from van man, but the sun is irresistible and I have some errands to run. So I head out towards the grocery store and I don't see any green vans, but a guy on a bike does stop me and mentions something about me and a man and almost causing an accident...I assume he is referring to van man, but I don't care to hear anymore so I wave as if I'm an idiot and move my feet in a hurry. I pass the movie mural again, and this time I concede that the conspiracy to have me in front of the television might not be such a bad idea after all.

Neighbourhood Watch

When I left my front door, I walked a little over a kilometre in a north-westerly direction.
Here's what I saw:


1. A cocky restaurant.
Can a restaurant, or indeed, any inanimate object, be cocky? Well, if it festoons itself with banners claiming not only to have the best shish kebab in town, not only the best roasted pork in town, but also the best "potatoe omelette" in town. And frankly, it's a hole in the wall, and I can't help but wonder if it does so many things so wonderfully, how come the tables are all empty?

2. A cop on a motorcycle.
Hummana-hummana.

3. The cat in the picture belongs to the store. No word on if the cat is Russian, or for sale, for that matter. Every time I walk by the store is closed, and finally I noticed a hand-written sign that states that it opens by appointment only, so I guess you have to be pretty serious about your Russian Stuff.



4. A church asking for "young hearts" (18 months to 5 years) to be signed up for classes early. They like to get ahold of their souls while they're still young and impressionable. Brain washing, ahem, I mean, religious instruction is most effective then.

5. A plaza where you can get body waxing and fight your traffic tickets all in one convenient location!

6. A convenience store selling "dinning tables" that look like they fell off the back of a truck (literally) for $95.

7. The first of many internet cafes that cleverly and uncleverly use the @ symbol in their name - mice @ work.

8. The St. Simon religious supply store - which, according to fancy stencilling on the front window, sells: books, oils, power (power?), incense, and floor wash.

9. A billboard for Bud Light that says "1970s pimp smooth"...which is a good thing?

10A bar called U DRUNK.

11. A restaurant I mistakenly thought was Italian, and I mistakenly thought was a restaurant (check the sign), and that guarantees "niceness", which I think is an excellent thing to guarantee, but hard to measure.



By this point I had gotten to the library, thrown my books down the slot and finally noticed that rain clouds had blotted out the sun. In a matter of minutes it was almost completely dark, and the wind picked up street dirt and tried to deposit it in my eye or mouth, or both, and everyone else had the common sense to run for cover, but I kept on my merry way.

I was somewhere between the waxing\traffic ticket place and the mice @ work when it started to rain, which is not an adequately wet word for what actually took place. Oh sure I could have stood under the bus shelter and caught a ride home, but what's the fun of that. My sandals were already slippy and my shirt was already see-through, so what the hell? On I walked, seeing everything in reverse (except the russian cat, who had been let in). An old man leaned out his door to beckon me inside, which I thought was really sweet, but I waved and kept going, although when lightning was sizzle in the air around me, I sort of rethought it, but too late, so I sloshed my way home through instant puddles where I rung litres of water out of my bra and hair and so forth.

So my walk was cut short, as is this post, but believe me, it's not for lack of material but for fear of electrocution.

My Boyfriend is a Singer in a Rock&Roll Band.

Well, I don't know what you losers did last night, but I got to see my boyfriend live in concert!!!

Seriously, if you don't know him, shame on you: Hawksley Workman is a rock god, one of the most exciting, talented, quirky, and incredible singer\songwriters to come out of any woman's vagina, ever. I'd like to lock him in a closet with Joni Mitchell and a bottle of scotch just to see what would come out.

And it was my profound honour to be able to sit in the Harbourfront audience last night and enjoy him, because indeed, his live performance is among the best. He's got a swagger and an energy that are a thrill to watch, and I have rarely seen any musician connect so fully with his audience.

The event host kicked off the night by asking the audience who they were there to see - this was stupid of her. Of course hundreds of voices roared back Hawksley, the obviously answer, so if she wanted to alienate and embarrass the opening act, she did that quite well, I think.

The Stills are a newish band from Montreal and probably they didn't need to be reminded that they weren't the main event. I'm not a complete Stills neophyte, I do know a couple of their tunes, and it's decent stuff, although filling an hour's set seemed to be a stretch for them, and a couple of the songs seemed a bit derivative. I was, however, pleasantly surprised that they managed to sneak a french song in there. Plus, they eagerly convinced us of their hardcore-ness by drinking beer and saying 'fuck' onstage, and yet, I couldn't help but notice that their act started on time (to the minute) and really, what the hell kind of rock and roll show starts on time?



Now for the important part, which I know you're all waiting for:

Coolest haircuts, in ascending order:
1. drummer
2. guitarist\vocalist guy in the middle
3. keyboardist (I know he's wearing a hat, but still...I always like the keyboards guy, they're always so much more eclectic and untortured looking...and they rarely wear skinny jeans)

Also, one of the dudes seemed to struggle with the "talking to the audience" bits between songs - at one point he seemed to have forgotten what city he was in, and referred to us as "beach people" (the other guy corrected him - it's a harbour, not a beach) - and it's not like this is some sort of whirlwind U2 tour they're on.

At one point the drummer put down his sticks and picked up the maracas. It was a cool sound, but I think if I were a drummer, I'd be above playing the maracas - they just seem like the pussy of percussion, don't they? It's probably much harder to get laid from playing the maracas.

Anyways, as The Stills finished up, so did the sun. And while it set, the roadies got busy setting up for Mr. Workman, who had the self-respect not to start on time. That's how it's done. I mean, how else can you get an entire audience to start chanting your name? Nobody chanted for The Stills (though one guy kept waving his crutch and yelling Stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiills...I think he was the bassist's little brother). Oh, and during the intermission, this dude from Degrassi: The Crap Generation showed up, and it was funny how no one cared or hassled him, which is so Canadian (either that we're laid back, or that no one watches the shitty TV we make, you pick).

So Hawksley finally makes his appearance and he opens with Paper Shoes - excellent choice - always start off by informing the audience that "singing is about sexual confidence" (and better yet to let the audience fill that part in for you). And when he gets to the part about letting the "berry juice just slide out from in between your legs", some guy whooped his appreciation and I smiled the small smile I always do when I hear that part on my mp3.


At the end of the song he sniffed the air and said "I smell drugs" which was true, someone was bathing in eau de cannabis, and most were partaking in whatever the beer tent was selling, and I thought: I am among my people. And then it started to rain. No, it started to pour. I was among the lucky, the few closest to the stage who were under the canopy, and I think we all said a little prayer that no lightning would strike our huge metal structure as we all danced happily and wetly to the music we love so much.

And then we all booed the evil condo-dwellers who "hate rock and roll" and wanted to limit the concert to a pathetic 90 decibels. Instead of cranking the amp, we endeavoured the break the decibel barrier by singing along "like church" to You, Me and the Weather (fittingly, although the rain did stop and it was a beautiful night).

By this time it was fully dark outside (which is why I have no good pictures) and the light sculpture Pulse, also part of the Luminato festival, was sending spotlights up into the dark sky all schizo-like (apparently to the timing of the heartbeats of the people walking by), and Hawksley made some comment that Batman was being summoned to help us get louder, and then he slipped into a little SuperTramp and I guarantee you that we rattled the panes on those prissy condo-fuckers' windows.

And then he played one of my favourite songs, You and The Candles, his "political" contribution, apparently, and he prefaced it with the warning that he may forget the words (not that we'd let him), but that he didn't want to be Axl Rose (who used a teleprompter), but maybe envied his hairband collection. I can't even tell you how beautiful it was, and then Anger as Beauty...I've never heard it sound so ethereal, and then he morphed Jealous of Your Cigarette (Matt, I thought of you!) into The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again. It was awesome, as in, a sight to behold.

And when we all sang Smoke Baby together, I got shivers, and not just from the cool breeze coming off the harbour. No, it was magic, like a big group orgasm and no one could get enough. And when he sang Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off, I danced on a bench like no one was watching, not even the man who inspired it all.

So yes, it was a great concert. And in the end, I wasn't even disappointed that he left out a few of my favouritest songs because the set list was perfect as it was. And as the crowd left in one big mass, headed for a subway tunnel that's always too small for the crush of people trying to fit in it, we didn't even feel the claustrophobia because we were all still vibrating with the goodness.

And if I've inspired you to check out this Canadian icon (and for fuck's sake, I should have), check out:
-Even An Ugly Man (there is not a person on the face of this earth who won't fall in love with this song)
-No Sissies (the song I love to bounce around to; infectious in the good way)
-We Will Still Need a Song (this song + chilled white wine = the greatest inspiration I know, it's invigorating...and if you see me dancing down a sidewalk, chances are, it's this song making me do it)
-Smoke Baby (still one of the sexiest songs I know)
-Your Beauty Must Be Rubbing Off (feels good in the soul)


Happy music making.
Don't be a stranger to the danger that is kissing you.

Bullets and Butterfly Wings

(or what I did this weekend, in no particular order:)

• Learned what partially-digested, regurgitated feta looks like (fyi: pretty much the same).
• Was asked by a man on the subway if I was part of the Rocky Horror Picture Show cast on Bloor. When I said that I wasn't he insisted that we "could be twins!" and I prayed that he wasn't talking about the transvestite.
• Went bra shopping. Couldn't find what I wanted (invisible straps) so I bought one in "neon watermelon" instead because I figure if I can't hide it, I may as well show it like I mean it.
• And this bra doesn't just show straps, either. Was told that my cleavage was "bordering on nipple" but when I readjusted I heard a disappointed "oh, no, that wasn't a complaint."
• Took the time to caramelize some onions and was quite pleased with myself.
• Hugged a friend who really needed it, and felt better myself.
• Met an old man who likes to talk - heard about his illustrious night life bartending on Yonge, and how he once did lighting for Nat King Cole, and saw the mob dump a body with a chicken head in its mouth and piano wire around its neck, and was tipped a hundred dollar bill by Louis Armstrong for dry-cleaning his "costume" and once appeared in an Ann Margaret movie.
• Discovered that it is entirely possible to drink a 750mL bottle of Ketel One in 3 hours, but quite inadvisable.
• Dropped a phone on my foot, leaving a bump and a bruise shaped like Madonna in profile.
• While the bread may very well be the freshest you've ever tasted, by the 5th or 6th time you gush about it, people start to wonder about you.
• Suffered more hair-related-harassment.
• Took hubby to a new doctor, whose receptionist\wife\amazon woman inspired confidence by being unable to "spell" our postal code, by repeatedly stamping upside down, then turning the stamp 360 degrees only to find, shocked, that it was still upside down, and by marking Jason as "female" on his chart.
• Passed out on my porch around 2am.
• Saw a man exit the Jehovah church, tip a box he was carrying, scattering hundreds of crayon-coloured butterfly wings to the wind (it was the most beautiful litter I've ever seen).
  

Turn Up the Funny, Turn Down the Suck

Remember when I used to be funny?

Yeah, me neither, actually, but if you look in the sidebar, there is a little-used button there that confirms someone once thought I was funny enough to nominate me in a humour category. Of course, I also seem to have been nominated in a 'freaky' category, so I maybe I should just strike the nominator off my Christmas-card list and retire to Boca Raton.

You've all been wonderfully indulgent as I've whined and moaned and made an ass out of myself, and I wish I could say: the end is nigh! But the truth is, this post is not going to be funny, either. Sorry. All of you funny-enthusiasts can just take your raisinettes and please file quietly out the back door. There will be no killing of the goat today; we might poke it with sharp sticks, or call it fat, or make fun its orthodonture, but no goats have been killed in the making of this blog.

Skunks, on the other hand, were not so lucky.

The other day I happened to mention that I liked the smell of skunk. This is true. It's not that I don't mind it, I actually think it's kind of nice. And there were a couple of brave bloggers who also stood and confessed that they too are as retarded as I am.

Yes, yes, retarded is a harsh word, but the thing is, a skunk's spray is such an effective deterrent that even bears will leave the lowly skunk alone. In fact, of all the animals that would willingly eat its meat, only the horned owl actually preys on skunks because horned owls apparently have little sense of smell. All the others think he's just too stinky to take the risk. Kind of like my Uncle Roger. He always offered $1 and a Tootsie Roll to any kid who would hug him, but his boiled-cabbage, overpowering-armpit, steeped-in-cheap-rye, just-finished-shovelling-out-the-styes scent proved too much. No takers.

So yes, it does seem kind of odd that I should like the smell of skunk. I feel I should use this gift to my advantage, but hunting skunk just seems a little pointless, although I'm told that in certain states (and I won't name names, but you know who you are...coincidentally, many of the same states where it's legal to marry a first cousin), skunks are kept as pets. Of course, in that case the anal glands (the ones that contain the spray) are first removed. I wonder who's job that is? And can they possibly be paid enough?

And what is a skunk without his anal glands? I mean, the word skunk literally means "one who squirts", which makes me glad that my parents called me Jamie, which, if a little boring (Scottish pet form of James, which is biblical), at least doesn't refer to what I may or may not do with any of my orifices. The species of skunks found in Indonesia are called "stink badgers", and while that's not exactly the pretty kind of name you get engraved into 14K gold, I do find it highly amusing.

Anyway, I just think that the anal gland approach to self-defense is both practical and ingenious - and far more convenient than carrying mase! And isn't it impressive that they've also developed strong ass muscles so that the spray will shoot out a good 7-10 feet? I mean, I think Glade should study skunk butt. Every time I buy one of those air fresheners, it promises to make the whole room smell good, but usually you have to stand right next to it to pick up the scent. Skunks get the job done right!

However, I find their baby-making to be a little less romantic than the suave and debonair Pepe le Peu might have led you to believe. In fact, after mounting the she-skunk from behind (ahem), he repeatedly bites her in the back and the neck to induce ovulation. Then he loves her and leaves her, no child support or anything, and if she should happen across her baby daddy again, watch out because the boy-skunk is likely to snub or even try to kill his offspring. But oddly, though skunks might claw or bite each other to death, they will never ever spray each other. I guess that's their equivalent of hitting below the belt.

I realize this is a lot of skunk talk, probably more than you wanted to know, but the thing is, I was walking down the street trying to think of what to make for dinner. There's a little butcher shop near my house, and generally speaking, I love to buy food this way: cheese from the cheeserie, bread from the bakery, fruit from the fruitery...it's all so much more fresh and wonderful. But I'd noticed that this butcher sells strange things, such as ox-tail, and yes, goat. Goat!

Now, I realize that lots of people eat goat. Curry goat seems to be a real favourite around here. I'm not a goat snob, but basically we're all born thinking that some animals are food and others are not - me, I think cow = yum, cats, not so much. So I worried about going in and finding that large sections of goat are actually fairly unappetizing, but then fate once again stepped in, because as luck would have it, I didn't have to enter the shop to be grossed out.

There in the window, hanging for all to see, was not a goat, but a skunk, still in its skin (or I might not have recognized it), freshly dead by god knows what means, trussed up by its hind legs and with a price tag hanging from its snout.

Now, I had worried over goat which I acknowledged was food, just not for me, but I had never even considered that skunk might be considered a meal. But then I looked it up on the internet, and sure enough: "Skunk meat untainted with musk is tender and good eating." Good eating.

Can this be true? And who could confirm or deny such a thing - for surely to admit to having eaten skunk is tantamount to...well...well...well there's just no precedent! But I'd certainly have to strike them off my Christmas card list as well. Feeling somewhat faint, I came across a recipe for Baked Skunk, which claims that when seasoned with paprika and sage, the meat is quite tasty.

Now I'm a bit afraid to leave my house. I'm afraid to see either a skinned skunk or a slightly-decaying skunk hanging from the same noose....or worse, to see that the skunk is gone, has been purchased, and is roasting in one of my neighbours' ovens as we speak...the question is: WHICH ONE?

How Not To Drown

I learned how to swim by the unrecommended method of throwing a kid into a pool and seeing what happens.

Here's what happened:

My first “swimming” lesson was when I was 3, and consisted not so much of swimming but of the “superman” maneuver. It was practiced at the municipal kiddie puddle (7 inches does not a pool make!), where us kids were encouraged to push off from the sides and “glide” with arms outstretched until momentum prevented us from going any further. My mother paid $45 to have a gum-chewing 17 year old “teach” me how to do this.

By the time I was 5, my mother had added 3 other girls to the family, and facing another hot summer, I guess she finally realized that the little plastic tubs we generously called pools were just not going to be enough for her pack of little mermaids.

For some reason, I remember pool shopping. I remember the showroom where the above-ground pools we were perusing were displayed – you could choose between faux wood-paneling and slightly darker faux wood paneling, and between a blue pool liner and a blue pool liner with an indistinguishable pattern on it. Most of the pool shopping was lost on me, being too short to see over the sides of any of these gems, but the thing that really stands out in my memory is the saleswoman, who wore sandals, and no nails on her big toes. The lack of toenails meant her toes had no depressions, they were just these fat, round, bulbous things, and I knew it was not polite to swear, yet I couldn't take my eyes off of her freaky deaky toes.

Back in the day, above-ground pools spread like a rash in my neighbourhood, and instead of barn raisings, we had pool raisings. Many friends and relatives had come to help, but the day our pool was installed was still the longest day of my young life. But just when it seemed like it would never be ready, it was, or ready enough, anyway. The walls were up and the water was in, and though the pool had no access point or ladder, my father figured it didn't matter much because he could stand at the side and lift me over the edge.

Not yet being a swimmer, someone blew up an inner tube for me, and tossed it in the pool. Then my father swung me over and tossed me at the tube. His aim was good, but remember that I was small, and I passed neatly through the donut hole and was quickly sinking towards the bottom.

The adults, gathered around for what promised to be the first jubilant splash, looked on, horrified, as little Jamie seemed to drown before their eyes. And, there being no ladder yet installed, and me being out of arm's length, there was no way to reach me. So they just stood there and watched.

I flailed my limbs but they just sliced through the non-resistance of the water. My little round body in its pink frilly bikini went down, down, down, and though too young to understand the mechanism of breathing, I felt the burning of water in my lungs, which seemed to scream up! up! Up! Somehow I managed to reverse my sinking body and I broke the surface of the water, spluttering and coughing like I was a 5 year old who smoked 6 packs a day. When I had sufficient breath, I yelled to the grownups “Did you see me? I swam! I swam!” and they muttered their praise while looking at each other guiltily out of the corners of their eyes. I should have been a little pink blob on the bottom of the pool but instead I was clinging to the siding imploring others to join me in my newfound splashy freedom. A smarter kid might have clutched to the inflated tube, but once I had defied death that first time, I wanted to go deeper, faster, longer.

Many years later, many swimming lessons later, I consider myself to be a strong swimmer, which is a good thing because this time I have been tossed into the metaphorical deep end, and once again, the flotation device is just out of reach.

Life throws you into these sink-or-swim situations and it's amazing how powerful our sense of preservation is. We paddle on, no matter how many waves crash over our heads, no matter how many stitches we have in our sides or how tired we get. But what happens when you are thrown into the dark and forbidding water not alone, but with a weaker swimmer?

These are the moments in life that are infinitely hard: the days when we've just been treading water; the days when we've been slipping under; the days when we can barely keep our heads above the water line. I don't want to drown while trying to save someone else, some days I don't even know that I can save myself, and yet I can't not try, I can't. So I'm trying not to drown, not to let either of us drown, but it's hard. It's hard enough to fight the current on your own, but with the extra burden, progress is slow, and sometimes the undertow is stronger than I, and I feel us both being pulled back out toward the uninviting expanse and I think how nice it would be to relax my muscles, take a few deep gulps of water and let swirling water suck me under. But other days I see the shore, or I think I see it, on the horizon, if I squint real hard and ignore the burning sun. I stroke through the water like crazy, hoping to feel the sand between my toes before long, and I tell myself to just keep swimming.

I am trying hard not to drown. Oh yes, life's a beach.

Sunny Afternoon

When the grass gets greener and the sidewalk is decorated with brightly coloured chalks, I know summer must be right around the corner. The tinkling sounds of the ice cream truck has a pied-piper effect on the children and open patios turn busy adults on to frosted glass delights.

The summer reminds me of my Pa (my mother's father). Around Easter, my Pa takes advantage of having his granddaughters' strapping young boyfriends around his table eating his ham to haul them all outside for the annual taking-the-boat-out-of-storage dance (note: they don't actually dance). Meanwhile, us ladies, left inside, bristle at being thought too weak to overturn an old tin fishing boat. Poo poo. From Easter on (until Thanksgiving, where the ritual is repeated in reverse), Pa gets up at some ungodly hour and goes fishing on the mighty St Lawrence River. Okay, it's not mighty. But the river part was true. And when I was young, he used to take me along. I remember...being strongly encouraged to dress in layers...it being freezing at 5 am and scorching by noon...I remember waving at every single boat that passed us by....I remember the old plaque that he hung over his bar that said "Old Fishermen never die, they just smell that way".... I remember being slapped in the face with a fish when my younger sister finally reeled one in and then didn't know what to do with it....I remember peeing in a margarine container, then throwing it overboard....I remember the fishy smell and the wind on my face, and the thump of the waves against the boat, and the feel of a bamboo pole in my hands and the sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper that my Nanny would send for lunch. I also remember getting up on the mornings it had rained to hunt for worms, the only kind of bait my Pa ever used. I would throw them into a coffee can, and my Pa paid me 5 cents each!

Summer reminds me of sautons en coeur (jump rope for heart). When the weather started turning nice, each classroom would get a box of old skipping ropes, though they were not rope at all but that nasty plastic that would leave welts on all the kids who got too close. I went to a french catholic school that had almost no funds to speak of, so the skipping ropes were like treasures, and there were never enough for all the students, so when the recess bell rang you ran like heck to the vestibule to try to claim one. I remember the naughty french poems we used to recite while skipping, and the way our skirts would flutter over our heads, showing off little girl panties everywhere you looked, and the whizzing sound they made slicing through the air once you got a fast enough pace going, and the feeling of adrenaline that pulsed through our young veins when we waited in line to be pushed into the torturous double-dutch jump! And my left knee still bears a scar from when I was purposely tripped during double ditch by a mean older boy named Chris (who I later found out was punched by my husband during a game of hockey...so the universe has a way of making things even, I suppose).

Summer reminds of what it feels like to burn the soles of your feet. The deck attached to the back of our house would reach impossible temperatures, it seemed, and I remember chancing the heat while I made a run for the pool, a run that consisted of : scorch, scorch, scorch, jump, splash, ahhhhhh, and all the laundry hung out to dry on the line would be soaked with chlorine-smelling water and my mother would have to pretend to be mad even though her mad dash to the pool was usually very similar. I would spend hours floating around in the too-blue water, a t-shirt over my bathing suit, protecting the sunburn blisters that I had despite my best efforts and the strongest spf known to humankind, my hair plastered to my head and freckles sprouting out over every exposed piece of skin. It was bliss...until my baby sister decided to join, thereby effectively emptying the pool in record time...she was a known pool-pee-er, and only the sight of her in her floaties making her watery entry could entice us to exit our refreshing oasis.

Summer makes me think of green onions (usually known as scallions to the rest of the world, though I never even heard the word til I was 19 or so). Everyone grew green onions in their garden, and at my grandmother's table, a water tumbler would save as a sort of onion-vase, where the green onions would be cleaned and trimmed, and placed in whole and raw, and people would take one, then reach for the salt shaker, get a little pool of salt going in the corner of their vinyl placemat, then they'd swirl the onion in the salt, and eat it just like that.

Summer makes me think of the butterfly nets and frog-catching-kits that used to amuse us to no end. Our neighbourhood was filled with creeks and ditches and the kind of standing water that nowadays screams "west nile" but back then used to mean "adventure!". I remember once, when I was old enough to be busy catching warm-blooded males instead of cold-blooded amphibians, my sisters raced home with tales of "giant rats" that had apparently taken up residence in the ditch a few doors down. The "giant rats" turned out to be beavers, and they seemed to follow my sisters home and take up residence in our backyard for a while, where we also saw rabbits (which our dog took to imitating, hop hop hopping around, the first documented case of canine identity crisis), and foxes, and many others.

Summer reminds me of nights too hot to cook, and relatives stopping by with buckets of chicken and beach towels, hoping this is a fair exchange for a dip in our pool, and how the fried chicken place always had a beach ball giveaway and by the end of summer, we'd go to the beach and toss around the 37 of them that we'd accumulated, only they were the kind that you blew up and then added some water to, so when you tossed them they were oddly weighted and wonky and they'd blow all over the beach, and we'd run around, toes in sand and bathing suits like second skin.

I remember getting on the riding lawn mower and putting in the several hours that it took to mow our big back yard...the backyard was fine though, because it was straight forward once you got used to the uncomfortable angle of mowing on a hill (I developed great ass muscles!) and I could listen to Vanilla Ice on my walkman as much as I liked. The front yard was trickier. The front yard was where I would run over the young trees my mother had planted (and ringed with a pie plate for an ineffectual warning), and where I'd ding the blades on the stone of our walkway, and where worst of all, I would often get stuck in the ditch. The mower was just the right size to get wedged right in there, and I would sit on the screaming mower and yell for help, would would go unheard for sometimes 30 minutes...but I'd heard stories about getting off a mower and losing a toe or a foot or god knows what else...and each time my mother would come out, scowl, and then mime at me to turn the thing off...why of why did I never think of that simple solution when I get stuck? But I never did, I just sat there terrified each time, never thinking to just turn off the engine. Eventually a few neighbours would see the mower in the ditch and they'd help us push it out...as we would help push out theirs as well, because mowers got stuck in ditches, that's just what happened in the summer.

Summer is running around in the backyard barefoot and eventually stepping on one of those prickly weeds.

Summer is eating outside, corn on the cob and steaks from the barbecue, and shooing flies all the while.

Summer is driving with the windows down, big shad flies going splat on the windshield, and either exposed skin sticking to burning hot leather seats, or else sweaty backs making shirts damp on the upholstered ones.

Summer is eating a popsicle quickly, quickly before it melts, trying to catch the drips as they invariably form sticky rivulets down your wrists, trying not to let it break apart, carrying the stain of it on your tongue for the rest of the day.

Summer is picking a buttercup, twirling it under someone's chin, and, if it reflects yellow, accusing them of being a "butter-lover"!

Summer is mosquito bites and camp fires and swing sets in need of oil and squeaky pool noodles and impromptu baseball games and broken sunglasses and coolers full of beer and grass stained knees and humidity ruining our hairdos and throwing pebbles for hopscotch and mothers yelling "close the screen door!" as the kids run out of the house.

I love me some summer, and I'm glad it's almost here, and I hope you'll tell me why you love it too.

Kill the Goat Case 436: Tito v. The People

(A Stalker Update)

As you might recall, I did not call my stalker on Thursday as promised.
Back when I was dating, the whole not calling thing was a pretty clear indicator.
Apparently they have different rules in Chicago, because Tito didn't get the hint.

Instead, he came looking for me, and obsessively combed my neighbourhood until "fate" crossed our paths, because when a girl fails to call him he doesn't think "hmm, maybe she's not interested" but rather thinks "something terrible must have happened to her for her not to call, and therefore, even though I've only met her once and don't know her last name or her address or really anything about her since I mostly just enjoy talking about myself and how suave I am, I should go in search for her because chicks really love when creepy dudes invade their privacy".

So when he found me (can you believe he found me? that's the part that really makes me mad!), he scheduled another pre-arranged call, this time for Friday morning.

I felt that this time, I WOULD call, because not calling had not worked so brilliantly the day before. I would call and tell him in no uncertain terms to back the fuck off and leave me the hell alone.

But I'm glad I posted, because thanks to the many readers who took the time to laugh with me, flinch with me, and share their own stalker experiences, I did heed the advice and decided NOT to call after all.

And I didn't hide in my house, either. I took to the streets (albeit with a man who asked "well, is he bigger than me?" to which I replied, truthfully, not) and spent a nice day stalker-less.

I sincerely hope the story ends there. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, guys. And yes: if he shows up again, I will head to the nearest public place and request that the police be called.


And what became of the egg?

Well, it made a brief appearance in my left pocket on Friday morning, during which I had an alarming incident involving blood and puss and the untimely demise of my beautiful cream bed linens and my new capris.

The egg has not been pocketed since (although, to be fair, when I discarded my capris I put on a skirt, which had no pockets). However, I think it's fair to say that over the course of this summer, the egg just might make another appearance or two. I'm going to suck some bloody luck out of that thing if it kills me (and me thinks it just might).

What the FUCK was I Thinking?

First of all, let me just say: I blame Kat for what has happened. The kind-hearted Kat was in New Orleans recently where she saw a small glass egg that's meant to bring luck and good fortune when kept in your left pocket, and she sent it to me, because she thought I needed some of both.

I went for a longish, leisurely, 11k walk yesterday (blister count: 7) (foot blisters, not sunburn). My good luck egg was nestled in my left pocket, but I wasn't going to put undue faith in it. In an effort not to get lost or fall down any rabbit holes, I usually walk in really big squares. Don't laugh. It's better than bread crumbs, and I've always come back, haven't I?

So this is what I did yesterday, and I chose Yonge as the far side of my square. I had my earphones in of course, as this is how I protect myself from unwanted advances. When men start hollering, as they do, I either don't hear them, or I pretend not to hear them. I feel bad occasionally, since I'm sure every once in a while some poor schmuck is only asking for directions (but hello! I'm a square-walker! the LAST person on earth you should ask for directions), but on the whole this technique has worked well for me.

Except at some point on Yonge, I saw some guy gesture at me out of the corner of my eye. I kept going, but for a while he matched my pace, then he fell behind, to check out the goods, I assumed, then he caught up with me again, and I slowed down to let him get ahead, at which point he stopped, tapped me on the shoulder, and I was forced to take the buds out of my ears and face the world head on.

Excuse me Miss, can I talk to you?

Talk to me? I stammered...oh great, the only thing worse than some guy hitting on you is some guy trying to convert you to his religion.

Yes, he said. When I saw you walk by, I thought to myself, now there's an attractive young woman...

Oh great. So I am being picked up on the street after all.

He fell into step beside me as I continued on, and he blabbered about how fate had put him on Yonge street since it was the first day of his vacation and he wasn't normally in this part of the city, and how I could call him Prospector and I was his gold mine.

Yes, really, that's what he said. And for the rest of the story, I will refer to him as Tito, because that should conjure up a pretty accurate image for you.

At this point, Tito has asked me to sit down on a picnic bench with him, and I've told him that I'm married, so I don't see much harm in listening to an exceptional character make a fool out of himself for a little while. The weather is gorgeous, and I haven't met any funny, mildly deranged people in a while.

But while we're sitting across from the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, a cyclist is hit and does a face plant on the road before him. He does not get up. People, good people, rush to his aid. I am very upset by this, of course, but feel compelled to move on because the accident-gawking thing doesn't sit well with me.

Tito's reaction? He would like to treat me to a polish sausage.
A bit relieved, I find that he has no polish ancestry, and he's merely hungry.
Still. Polish sausage.

I decline, obviously, but let him buy me a bottle of water because he insists, and because otherwise I was about to get an orange crush, which is one of the least refreshing beverages I can think of.

As he masticates, he expounds on his theory that god has sent him to me, me being variously a "classy young lady", "a lady of very high calibre", "the prettiest thing on Yonge", and so many other cornball lines that I just stop listening.

The fourth time he asks me if I'm sure I wouldn't like a bite of his sausage, I thank him for the company and get up to go. I head up St Clair toward home, and find that Tito is following me.

We can't part yet, he tells me, surely I've noticed how the sparks are flying between us?

Really? I thought that was just gobs of your spit.

Unwilling to lead this man to my house, I sit down in a park, where he tells me I've not only made his day, but his "whole view of the universe", whatever the hell that means. He also tells me that he's the "romantickest" guy I'll ever meet, a true gentleman, would like to see me in a skirt and heels, wants very badly to cook me spaghetti, his specialty (he puts ground beef into a jar of ragu), and that our "first time" would be earth-shattering.

Uh huh.

Probably my fault for using a word as vague as "married". Next time I will arm myself with more concrete phrases such as "my husband has a large gun collection", "the nunnery doesn't like me to be late", "my genitalia are ambiguous", "scorching case of herpes", etc, etc.

I tell him I really have to go, and he tells me that he'll buy my subway ride home if it means I can stay even 10 minutes more. I tell him that I practically have this medical condition that forces me to walk. He says he'll walk me home. I can't think of a good reason why not, so I don't give him one, and just flat-out say no. He asks for my phone number. I tell him I don't have a phone. He gives me his instead, tells me to call at exactly 10 am the next day. He asks where I live, and I point vaguely in the direction (still some 5km away, luckily). I tell him goodbye, and he grabs my hand.

Don't let any guys pick you up on the rest of your way home, he pleads. Give our love a chance.

In answer, I make a splorting noise that is mostly choking with a some suppressed laughter and unavoidable groaning mixed in. As I make my getaway, I walk very quickly, without looking back, and I have to tell myself not to run. I hold it in until Spadina, where I unleash a fit of giggles that actually stops traffic momentarily as the first 3 cars at a green light watch me instead of making their left turns.

The next day (today, Thursday), 10am comes and goes. I do not call Tito.

I poke up my blisters and judge that I can make a trip to the library, the grocery store, the pharmacy. I put on my music and make a firm resolution that even taps on the shoulder will forever more be ignored. Make no eye contact, smile at no one, I tell myself. Before heading out, I grab the egg of dubious luck and give it a second chance. I slip it into my left pocket (note: this is what we call "foreshadowing").

As I walk down the street, a very cute old man is standing on the corner, trying to entice the passers-by into taking his pamphlets. Although the city has issued a "heat warning", he is wearing a suit, with his belted pants riding just below his nipples. He's so sweet looking that I almost want to convert for him, but I am firm in my resolution, so I nod slightly but don't pause.

I keep my music on in the grocery store, pick up my things, and remove my headphones only when I'm standing in front of the cashier. They are luckily replaced by the time I leave, because a man standing outside the door badly wants me to sign up for a credit card, I think. I shrug at him, indicate my music, and just keep moving.

I head for Shopper's Drug Mart because the grocery store sells only Coke products, which is a sin, and I must have my diet Pepsi. I stop for a moment to help an elderly woman who is carrying a heavy load. Her plastic bag has forsaken her, so I throw her groceries into my backpack and walk them home for her. She is grateful and tries to pay me, but instead I give her my number and offer to come help anytime she needs it. I have made a new friend.

At the drugstore, I walk up the foot care aisle and surmise that there isn't a cure on the planet for my many blisters, but since I'm still upright and mobile anyway, I guess I'm tough enough to do without. I head for the heavenly display of Pepsi, but I feel a tap on my shoulder. Don't turn around, don't turn around, don't turn around.

Actually, it's hard to pretend you haven't felt a tap on your shoulder. Not wanting to, I turned around, and there was Tito.

Apparently, he'd grown concerned by 10:08 and resolved to try to track me down. Not knowing my address, he'd spent the past 4 hours walking around the neighbourhood, and lo and behold, he'd actually spotted my blonde head bobbing along.

I ask you, dear readers, does this ring of stalker to you?

Because frankly, I was astonished to see him. And not happy astonished, creeped-out astonished.

I plastered a phony smile on my face while he droned on about how he already feels like my knight in shining armour, and it was his sworn duty to make sure that I was okay since clearly something tragic must have happened for me not to call. Meanwhile, in my head, I was thinking: how the fuck do I get out of this?

I told him I was in a big hurry to get home, and no, he couldn't join me. He wanted very badly for me to get to a payphone so I could prove my ability to correctly dial his phone number (which he'd re-given to me), and I told him that was "crazy", asked him which way he was headed, and said that I happened to be going the exact opposite way, which naturally was the exact opposite direction of my house, but I thought, blisters be damned, I will get down on my belly and squirm my way home, but I will not let this man find out where I live.

So, now I have a "date" to call him tomorrow at 10.
This time I think I will call.
Any choice words that you'd recommend? I intend to be brutal, to make sure that there is no room for misinterpretation.

And as for Kat, giver of the worst luck talisman in the universe, I strongly encourage you to visit her site and boo her into infinity :)

Kiss Your Past Goodbye

He wasn't my Pacey, or even my Dawson, he was just a guy I fucked around with.

Well, that might be selling him short a bit.

The attraction is still pretty much a mystery to me. I mean, he was blond, and a hockey player, and he had a tattoo of a snake on his bicep, heaven help me. Not my type at all. And we were together during a time in my life when I thought looking good meant wearing my corduroy overalls. True story.

We had no pretense of friendship. We probably wouldn't have liked each other very much, if we had bothered to get to know the slightest thing about one another, but ignorance is bliss, or so they say, and my god were we blissful.

I was probably 16 or 17, and I didn't believe in dating. Well, I believed it existed, but I believed it existed only for evil. As far as I could see, it turned reasonable girls into mindless dolts, and prohibited you from ever seeing the ending to the movies you'd paid to see.

While I didn't have boyfriends, I did have lovers, though I suspect that word is a bit too gracious for some of the eager yet inexperienced fumblings that some boys called sex (it's no wonder that I quickly acquired a taste for older men). And for the most part, this worked out well for me.

Not to say that Trevor was an exception, because he wasn't. Just that our "relationship" consisted solely of sex, with an occasional pre-bed drink or snack. The only time we spent out of bed, we watched a videotape of Eddie Murphy doing stand-up...and frankly, I'm still trying to figure that one out. Luckily, we filled in the awkward silences with mind-blowing sex, practicing feats of strength, endurance, and acrobatics that still give me shivers to think about almost 10 years later. Afterward we were too tired and sated to chat, so we'd doze on our separate corners of bed, until it was time for him to drive me home. In the car, I'd turn on the radio just loud enough to make attempts at conversation a foregone impossibility.

Eventually I stopped answering his phone calls, and we parted without saying so because break-ups aren't necessary when you were never together.

Why, then, when I was admiring the crisp redness of some sweet peppers at a local veggie stand and looked up to see him, did I feel an immediate need to duck into the shop and not be seen?

Hiding wasn't necessary, in the end, because he was walking on the other side of the street, and in fact, from that distance I couldn't even be sure that it was him. Just that it sure looked like him. But why hadn't I wanted to say hello?

The closest I could come to a good guess was that since we hadn't had anything to talk about while we were fucking 10 years ago, we'd probably have even less to say to each other now. And I hate the artifice of small talk, I hate being forced to ask How've you been doing? when the truth is, in all this time, I have seldom wondered what or how he'd been doing.

I was quite happy to leave Trevor in the past.

But it got me thinking, because a friend of mine has badgered me into joining Facebook, and even after 6 months of pestering, I'm still not sure why I opened the account. Maybe there are a lot of people out there thinking about lost connections, old flames, and friends who have faded away, but I'm not one of them. For the most part, I've kept in touch with all the people I've cared about keeping in touch with. I don't believe that all friendships are meant to last the ages. I think some are designed for a specific time in your life, and trying to rekindle them later on is almost always a mistake. People change, circumstances change. If you stopped talking to a friend, whether due to falling out, or neglect, they can't have been a great friend to begin with. And as for all the forgotten acquaintances - people who shared the halls of my high school, colleagues who used the copier after me, friends of old boyfriends whom I never should have dated in the first place...well, I have very little curiosity. The past is past, and I'd like it to stay that way.

But now it seems that either Facebook will drag these people back into my present, or, even more alarmingly, they might just move into my neighbourhood and catch me feeling up my vegetables.

So what's a girl who hasn't a nostalgic bone in her body to do when the past catches up with her? Invite it back to her place for cocktails?
Wear dark glasses and stop answering to her own name?
Pull up the pegs and run?

I mean, it's not that I don't love my life. I'm proud of who I am and what I've done. I've got a few twisted stories, but I'm sure I could boil it down to a saccharine story suitable to be divulged within the hallowed halls of Horton's. I guess it's mostly that I don't want to. Sorry Trevor, I guess my horny-meathead days are over.

Operation Wipe Out Farmer Tan

Generally speaking, my complexion being somewhere between the spectrum of Julianne Moore and albinoism, I am not a tanner.

When the good weather hits, I live outside, but I do it under a generous slathering of SPF 45, at least. Despite precautions, I get burned a few times a year, and I'm not talking reddened skin and peeling here. Me, I know burns. I know burns from splashing big pots of boiling pasta on myself, and from grabbing roasting pans without oven mitts and from making friends with the wrong end of a curling iron and from turning on the wrong burner and from trying to catch candles that are on fire. The sun is still trumps. Of course the skin will turn an impossible shade of red, a shade so shocking and magnificent that even Crayola would have a hard time coming up with an appropriate name. Then, overnight, it develops this slimy yellow coating. Some of this puckers into crusty, crinkled skin, and other patches become giant blisters oozing with puss and other fun things. Then you spend the next 6-10 days crying every time you move or breathe or think of moving or think of breathing. And don't even talk to me about bra straps digging into sunburned blisters, or the way water feels like needles with you turn the shower on (I have to shower with wet towels on my shoulders just to dull the pain a bit). It's ridiculous, but for a pale girl, it's life.

And this year I got started on the process early - before summer has even officially arrived. Only mid-May and already I burned, peeled, and found underneath the makings of an actual tan (a rarity for me). But the problem is, I was wearing a scoop-neck t-shirt at the time and now I've got 2 brown arms and an oval of brown on my chest, and a whole lot of blinding whiteness in between.

And as you may know, no matter how many cute camis or tank tops or spaghetti-strapped shirts I wear this summer, IT WILL NEVER EVEN OUT! The white can never catch up because the brown just keeps getting browner. I will be two-toned for the next 4 months! Pretty soon people will be asking me about my crops, how the beets are looking and if the corn's as high as an elephant's eye. I'll be so farmer-like I'll have to start wearing overalls and adopt 37 barn cats. It's going to be a bad summer, I can just tell.

Do you know what a dickie is? A dickie is this ridiculous thing that should have died in the 80s and mostly did, if you don't count my mother's wardrobe. A dickie is just the turtle part of a turtle neck sweater. It's just the part that covers your neck, and a small circle of fabric at the base so you can wear it under a sweater and fool people into thinking you're wearing 2 shirts when really you're wearing only one! Oh, they're horrible things. But I'm thinking that if I wear one, and then tear the sleeves of a sweater and wear them (I guess I'd need some rubber bands to make sure they didn't slide down), I could protect the brown parts and let the white parts (shoulders, lower chest) play catch up.

However, this would neither be a flattering nor a very respectable get-up (notice how nothing would be covering the breasts). So I suppose I could also sport a tube top for modesty's sake (I bet you never heard the words 'tube top' and 'modesty' in the same sentence before!) but this is quickly becoming a fashion revival that I want nothing to do with.

I thought briefly about wearing SPF 50 on the brown parts and 25 on the white parts, but I figure, I've spent almost my whole life buying into this skin cancer thing, why stop now? I mean, every time that I visit my grandmother and she points out all her various "possible melanomas", I make a very firm resolution to be kind to my skin, and to also stop visiting my grandmother. And I've made good on at least one of those promises (and every time my grandmother points to my arm and yells MELANOMA!, and I tell her No, Nanny, that's just a freckle, or a birth mark, or my eye, stop poking me in the eye, Nanny!, my resolve for the second bit gets just a wee bit stronger).

So what's a girl to do? I have this lovely sundress hanging in my closet, dying to be worn, but I know if I slip it on now, it'll look like I'm wearing a white undershirt underneath from far away, and from up close the effect of my two-toned skin is likely to cause traffic accidents and canine insanity and the accelerated melting of ice cream. Not to mention that I will only be giving the sun the chance to burn yet another unsavoury pattern into my flesh - this time with a sweetheart neckline and skinny little shoulder straps, and then I'll have tri-toned skin which we all know is the leading cause of satellites falling out of orbit and childhood obesity and male pattern baldness. And it only gets worse from there!

There's got to be some other way.
Maybe I'll take some high-grade sandpaper into the shower and "exfoliate" until most of my skin falls off. Of course, that would probably clog the pipes and plumbers can be very judgmental.

When I was in high school we had a car was to raise money, and I was wearing a tankini and got a funny burn with prom (and a strapless dress) just days away. My mother suggested I seek the tanning bed and I came out looking like a ketchup chip. I didn't tan, I just burned in a way that my entire body was covered in pinpricks of red, like an allergic reaction (which it probably was). So I've learned my lesson there: sunburns are not a hip accessory, but if you wear your strapless dress without a bra, no one really notices the burn.

Maybe there's nothing left to do but buy stock in aloe vera and call it a day.

Window Pain

This morning I was woken up by a sound that I would have guessed was a robotic lamb bleating loudly for its mommy.

Turned out, one of my neighbours was doing her laundry (her clothes line is in desperate need of some WD-40).

It was 5:47am and the sun was just pink enough in the sky for me to make out other eyes such as mine peaking from between the slits of horizontal blinds, all of them beaming rays of unkindness upon the woman who dared disturb our last (and therefore most precious) moments of peace before another day begins.

I feel back asleep only to be wakened again, this time by what sounded like someone using a screwdriver and various cans of half-filled, half-spilled paint as a percussion instrument, and it turns out, that's exactly what it was. The musician was a 2 year old kid in a diaper, who must have been freezing in the cool temperatures that still cling to the dewy grass before 7am.

I was personally a little happy to have cooler temperatures prevail - not only was my sunburn soothed, but it allowed me to wear my Feel Good Sweater, something I have longed to do for 2 whole weeks but because of fevers in the body and stuffiness in the room, I could not.

Feel Good Sweater is a short hoodie, gray knit with silver strands throughout that are like pieces of tinsel from a Christmas tree. There's a little bunny pouch to keep my hands warm and long strings to keep me entertained while talking on the phone. It becomes part of my pj ensemble, and to me, it's like wearing a hug. I'm not much of a cuddler, and I don't care for the person-to-person contact, but Feel Good Sweater is all the affection with none of the pressure.

Perfection.

So I'm sitting in bed in Feel Good Sweater and some fuzzy slippers, and watching the things that happen outside of my window when it rains (I mentioned it's raining, right? Because it is, and not softly, either).

The raindrops tap tap tap on the shingles of the roof, and also ping ping ping on the piece of corrugated iron below and slap slap slap on the cracked window pane lifted above my head. Through the magic of window screens, I can smell the wet earth, and the scent is rich because it's spring and the earth is dark and recently churned where people have started to garden.

The yard below me is a narrow mess. There is no lawn, it's mostly rocks and patches of ground, and a few intrepid weeds that have managed to poke through the obstacles.

The yard to my left is much nicer. I wish that yard was mine. The grass, though only slightly larger than the proverbial postage stamp, is actually green and grows in one blade at a time, and has been uniformly cut. There's a neat patch in the back that could be a garden if only someone spared the time. I would spare mine. I would love to sink my hands in the wet dirt, dig holes and leave behind seeds, watch the earthworms filter through.

The yard to my right is an embarrassment. There is a white minivan up on cinder blocks. It has clearly been left there to die an undignified death, slowly rusting away, showing its sickness in bright orange patches for all the world to see and pity. Beside it, comically, is a white jeep, the plastic battery-powered kind that kids can drive around, but this one too has been relegated to junk, and it sits not on cinder blocks but a battered old folding table that looks ready to collapse.

Other yards are harder to see, although we are only separated by low chain-link fences. One appears to have been paved over. Another is obscured by the 3 satellite dishes attached to the house. One yard is completely full of...something. Stakes? Posts? I like to think that some sort of inventor-type person lives there, and creates these elaborate contraptions, and in the morning when the sun hits the sundial, a little ball starts rolling, which opens the gate, which drops the weight that's holding a bar that releases the mechanism that flushes the upstairs toilet. Or something. I like that house because there's a tiny window up on the upper floor that's been framed by electric-blue paint. Electric-blue for no apparent reason on an otherwise sedately bricked and sided home. I hope it's there for a whimsical reason, and not because electric-blue happened to be on sale that week.

In the yard beside that one are four tall wooden posts holding up a thatched covering of some sort. It kind of reminds of me of a chuppah, but that can't be what it is. But right now, it's just a free-standing thing, and I hope that as summer approaches its usefulness might become apparent.

Two houses over there's the bare metallic bones of a car port that houses no cars. On top there's a pile of dead leaves, only I can't decide if they're last year's garbage or this year's attempt at having vines grow over an otherwise incredi-ugly structure.

And beside that, a house which has its upper windows boarded over with plywood. I hope sincerely that no one lives in those quarters.

Beyond, there are several low-rise apartment buildings, all sitting squatly in their uniformly boring brownness. Why so much brown? The brown that reeks of cost-saving bleakness. If I ever have a million dollars, I will buy myself yards and yards of fabric and wrap those buildings up like presents in pinks and oranges and maybe even electric-blues.

But I don't have a million dollars, so for now I am content to sit in my Feel Good Sweater and gaze out at the wet, wet world, and wonder who, if anyone, is gazing back.