The warm, fuzzy feeling you get while acting as a good samaritan can quickly be overshadowed by threat of death.
Or so my good friend C and I discovered the other morning while having coffee on my porch in Parkdale.
A slight woman with a large dog appeared in my driveway and called for help.
A- "Can you guys help me? I'm leaving my boyfriend because I think he's going to beat me! Help me!"
B & C- "Certainly!"
A- "I'm waiting for a cab. Just stay with me while I wait for a cab--he doesn't like other people around."
We dropped our coffee and went to her aid streetside, though I felt no self-respecting abuser would try to hit a woman with such a big, man-hungry dog like hers.
B- "Where's your boyfriend?"
A- "He's in my apartment--I'm afraid he's going to do something to me--he's got a tomahawk!"
C- ". . .a what?!"
A- "You know, it's like an axe on one side, and a hammer on the other--"
B- "A tomahawk?!"
A- "Yeah."
I felt a sinking feeling. A feeling I get, in the pit of my stomach, that reminds me of all the times my mother told me Toronto was a big, dangerous, scary place in which I would surely have my life taken from me in a violent, un-Godly way.
C- "What's your boyfriend's name?"
Good. We would at least have something to scream while he removed our scalps.
A- "Gord."
Gord? Gord:The Last of the Mohican? Gord sounds more like some dude who would be carrying a rolled up copy of the Toronto Sun as a weapon.
I made a quick glance at my recycling bin to take stock of wine bottles that could possibly be used to slow Gord's progress on his tomahawk rampage. As usual, there were plenty.
A- "I'm leaving him today. I don't have any homework due tomorrow, so I'm leaving him today. Can I have a smoke?"
C- "Sure."
As C passed her a smoke, she grabbed his hand, looked at it, and said:
A- "You're an actor."
She grabbed my hand, while C stood dumbstruck, and said:
A- "You're an actor, too. He's the successful one."
Dead on. We stood completely speechless. C is an actor. C is much more successful than I.
C- "How did you know that? From our soft hands?"
A- "I just felt it."
In Parkdale it may not seem like too grand a leap of faith to identify two handsome-ish, well-groomed young men as actors; I would, if playing mystic, be more likely to guess 'singer-songwriter' more often than actor, mind you.
The first taxi pulled tentatively towards us, wound his window down, and told our friend that he would not accept the dog in his car. Her response was quite out-of-step with the occupation she had just told us she was training to enter: social worker.
A- (to the cabbie as he sped away)"Fuck you, you Muslim asshole! My dog is likely cleaner than your dirty cock!"(to us)"It's likely true, too, Bastard."
The second taxi wasn't far behind, and as our mystic friend who was taking the first step to safety, she turned to C and told him that she would see him later--paused, with a glance skyward--and said, "Christmas. She you at Christmas." Then, in an effort to help her dog get in the taxi she kicked him in the ass, and rode out of our lives as quickly as she had entered. No sign of Gord and his tomahawk; but a little unsettled by her show of some 6th sense.
For the record, neither of us were wearing 'Les Mis' tee shirts.
Monday, October 31, 2005
Sunday, October 23, 2005
Romance is Dead.
Two nights ago I attended a fundraiser for this fella who goes to Nepal each year and teaches literacy to women--excellent cause. Though worthy as the cause was, the evening was overshadowed by a budding romance which exploded into bloom mid dance floor. . .but I should back up a bit.
There was a burly, bow-legged bulldog strutting around the loft we were mingling in, shoving his under-bite into as many plates of pate as were left at knee height. He was being whored out at $5 a pop for novelty photos taken before a giant painting of a dog house ($6.50 if you wanted him to 'slip you the tongue').
There was also a young baby, curious as a kitten, who was trucking around on all fours, inspecting every nook and cranny.
The bulldog had noted Mr. Baby earlier in the evening, but it wasn't until our young friend had crawled well out of his mother's reach, and onto the "dance floor", that the bulldog took any real interest in his quadruped comrade. The dog's interest developed into an unhealthy infatuation quickly, and before anyone could intervene, the bulldog had mounted the baby, and was humping away to beat the band; the baby's head was banging off the floor in rhythm to the pelvic thrusts his diapered ass was receiving. Baby didn't seem to mind so much. Of course, the bulldog had about 20lbs on the baby, and prison etiquette tells you that once cornered, let the larger aggressor finish his business "the easy way" rather than "the hard way" because it's going to happen "anyway".
The inter-species love overture continued, mother unawares, for what seemed like years--I was impressed by the bulldog's stamina, and was glad that my lovely wife wasn't there to draw comparisons--and was eating up every delicious minute of it. This spectacle was better than all of the leg-locks I've seen dogs put on unsuspecting guests over the years, and I didn't want it to end.
The mother, however, did not share my enthusiasm for nature's beautiful ballet, and clutched baby away from his sinful enbrace. Even after all the bum-banging and head-banging the baby endured, he didn't seem to register what had happened, and was still wearing the same stupid grin he'd had on after upseting the garbage can. Baby was full of a love for living that most others have long ago lost; and a giant leap ahead of his peers, who will have to wait until prom night for someone to dry hump them on the dance floor.
The baby was left humming Sir Elton John's Circle of Life; the bulldog, Tina Turner's What's Love Got to Do With It?.
There was a burly, bow-legged bulldog strutting around the loft we were mingling in, shoving his under-bite into as many plates of pate as were left at knee height. He was being whored out at $5 a pop for novelty photos taken before a giant painting of a dog house ($6.50 if you wanted him to 'slip you the tongue').
There was also a young baby, curious as a kitten, who was trucking around on all fours, inspecting every nook and cranny.
The bulldog had noted Mr. Baby earlier in the evening, but it wasn't until our young friend had crawled well out of his mother's reach, and onto the "dance floor", that the bulldog took any real interest in his quadruped comrade. The dog's interest developed into an unhealthy infatuation quickly, and before anyone could intervene, the bulldog had mounted the baby, and was humping away to beat the band; the baby's head was banging off the floor in rhythm to the pelvic thrusts his diapered ass was receiving. Baby didn't seem to mind so much. Of course, the bulldog had about 20lbs on the baby, and prison etiquette tells you that once cornered, let the larger aggressor finish his business "the easy way" rather than "the hard way" because it's going to happen "anyway".
The inter-species love overture continued, mother unawares, for what seemed like years--I was impressed by the bulldog's stamina, and was glad that my lovely wife wasn't there to draw comparisons--and was eating up every delicious minute of it. This spectacle was better than all of the leg-locks I've seen dogs put on unsuspecting guests over the years, and I didn't want it to end.
The mother, however, did not share my enthusiasm for nature's beautiful ballet, and clutched baby away from his sinful enbrace. Even after all the bum-banging and head-banging the baby endured, he didn't seem to register what had happened, and was still wearing the same stupid grin he'd had on after upseting the garbage can. Baby was full of a love for living that most others have long ago lost; and a giant leap ahead of his peers, who will have to wait until prom night for someone to dry hump them on the dance floor.
The baby was left humming Sir Elton John's Circle of Life; the bulldog, Tina Turner's What's Love Got to Do With It?.
Monday, October 17, 2005
Athenian Hospitality.
What on earth possessed Athenian airport interior designers to hang images of Amelia Earhart and failed early designs for personal flight systems in their cafeteria I'll never know. My lovely wife, E, who is already an anxious flyer, did not need the cold comfort of seeing a photograph of another woman who flew AND NEVER SAW HER FAMILY AGAIN. And let's face it: the pilots of those early flying machines likely had their fair share neighbours and friends saying, "Are you fucking nuts? You're going to jump off Butler's Hill with that on your back?"; the concepts inspire even less confidence today than they did 100 years ago.
Athens International Airport should have just hung a photo of the Hindenburg and been done with it.
My lovely wife also has the unsettling habit of loudly discussing the safety records of airlines once we've boarded. She became certain, once on board our 737 Agean Airlines flight to Santorini, that Agean had operated the plane that recently crashed outside Athens. She was equally suspicious of our Olympic Airlines flight to Rhodes; a suspicion which became more acute once we had started across the tarmac--on foot--and she realised that she would be taking her first propeller plane ride. Thankfully, all the souvlaki stayed where it belonged: hammering away on her colon.
More to follow.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
It's all Greek to me.
To my faithful friends,
I am happy to report that my little buddy, my long-suffering fiancee E, has finally changed her monogram, as well as her status as a Miss.
Knowing her well, I am assuming that she will now be known as a Ms., and begin pulling her hair back in tight little buns, and chasing children off our Parkdale lawn with a broom.
The short and long is this: we are, and have been for over a week, in Greece. My lack of posting, though no surprise to frequent vistors, should be excused on account of the fact that Greece isn't very internet-friendly.
To whet your palette for my return, I say simply this: I gained one more mortal enemey during our travels, and will likely never be welcome to let a car from Drossos Moto Rental on Santorini ever again. If the exchange of blows, or, more accurately the dispensation of blows by one, and reception of them by another, be any gauge for the quality of the tale, then this one will be a doozie.
I have it from a reliable source that I am a "Stupid man!"--he's an expert in the field, I assure you.
My warmest.
B
I am happy to report that my little buddy, my long-suffering fiancee E, has finally changed her monogram, as well as her status as a Miss.
Knowing her well, I am assuming that she will now be known as a Ms., and begin pulling her hair back in tight little buns, and chasing children off our Parkdale lawn with a broom.
The short and long is this: we are, and have been for over a week, in Greece. My lack of posting, though no surprise to frequent vistors, should be excused on account of the fact that Greece isn't very internet-friendly.
To whet your palette for my return, I say simply this: I gained one more mortal enemey during our travels, and will likely never be welcome to let a car from Drossos Moto Rental on Santorini ever again. If the exchange of blows, or, more accurately the dispensation of blows by one, and reception of them by another, be any gauge for the quality of the tale, then this one will be a doozie.
I have it from a reliable source that I am a "Stupid man!"--he's an expert in the field, I assure you.
My warmest.
B
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