A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Possibly Do Again

You ever been in one of these?  

It's 5am and you're wired on E, spooning in bed with a petite brunette, after raving at a club all night, and you have a raging hard-on rubbing up suggestively against her backside (with her panties on, of course), and she seems to be responding positively, grinding back, moaning softly, and you take this to be a sign to go further, and so you start to get frisky with your free hand, first fondling a breast, and then moving down to her smooth stomach enroute to her sinful hole, her apex of desire, and then, (then?) she jerks awake, (awhat?) and groggily says, "Hey! What are you doing!?"

My hard-on disappeared faster than a gram of crack in Whitney Houston's glass pipe. Too soon? 

It's amazing how quickly a girl can come out of a booze and drug laden sleep when she's being semi-molested. Or maybe it's not amazing, it's just what you would expect. But, I too, felt like I was being violated and molested in some way. I didn't act maliciously. Perhaps it's amazing what the body will do while unconscious. How it seems awake at first until you catch onto the ruse; like the cold dead eyes of a sleepwalker looking through rather than at you. My heart was in the right place, as it usually is I'd like to think, even with a fog of illicit chemicals coursing through me. Terrible thoughts of a long prison term a in rural Southern Ontario facility hit me, shitting in front of my cellmate, whose name is most likely Slippery Pete or something, and listening to him jerkoff in the bunk above me. I'll probably have to get a tattoo or two, too. I immediately went into damage control mode: "Shit, sorry, sorry. I'm sooo sorry. Oh my god! I thought you were awake."

And I did. Really.

Earlier in the evening, I was on a double date of sorts, but kind of not. My date, Alicia, was for all intents and purposes a platonic friend; I was definitely thinking that if I played my cards right there could be some action to be had but there are no guarantees. We made out once in my kitchen during a party but that was some time ago. Wedding bells were not ringing. It was a kiss devoid of passion. She did it as a display of her party girl ethos. Look how dangerous I can be. Not too say it wasn't nice on a purely physical level--our tongues were pleasantly slithering and flickering in each others' mouth's but we were both quite sure nothing was going to come of it when our embrace came to an end. I didn't pursue her that night and she sure as fuck didn't pursue me. She ended the kiss and I didn't want to be that guy, the one who creepily persists in ogling and groping when it's clearly over. I'm not inclined to put much effort into romantic endeavors. I don't know--I'm just kind of resigned to let the pieces fall where they will. I'm a proponent of subtle romance--a certain look or comment rather than an elaborate, fiscally intensive charade. Who wants to shovel pitch fork loads of their hard earned cash into the bank accounts of Tiffany's executives. I'd love to be the type of guy, like John Cusack in Say Anything, who shows up late one night under my one true love's bedroom window with a ghetto-blaster held high above my head blasting our song.  But I can't. Just like Stephen Hawkings can't do a cartwheel. Or how the GOP nominees can't convince me they're not half-retarded. Take that Republicans! 

Alicia is a great kisser though, and that's hugely important. No one likes a robo tongue or some weirdo who gives you the death stare the whole time. Thankfully, she let me assume the best possible position there is for a man when french kissing a woman: The double handful of ass. I was squeezing those cheeks like they were full of orange juice. Up and down, spreading them from side to side, then one cheek up and one cheek down. She let me do it all.

On this particular night, Alicia and myself were contrasted by the other two in our double date who had been together for years--Long-termers. Because the male half, my friend Marius, loves techno/jungle/drum n'bass/shit we found ourselves at some club full of jacked up kids dancing in a seemingly arbitrary manner, swinging their arms and twirling about in a way that I'm supposed to believe is hip and modern. I hope that if I have kids they don't turn out like these people is my first thought as we're enveloped by the darkness of the club. Glow sticks, like flying radioactive snakes, are whirling around in a blur. Unlike regular citizens on the street, these denizens have all put an inordinately large amount of time into their get-ups, even the males. Haircuts are gelled into asymmetrical shapes and gelled to perfection, beards are shorn down into pencil thin lines along jawlines. If anyone of the guys at this club were somehow plopped down in the middle of Thunder Bay, I have no doubt they'd be labelled either queer, faggot, or homo--maybe all three. The beauty of diversity, I suppose.

Sometimes, a small cluster in the crowd-at-large will part and form a circle around a particularly coordinated dancer, and he'll shred some tile like nobody's business as us lesser humans marvel at the display of dexterity. Being high on Ecstacy heightens the furious activity around me and adds another element of tension to the semi-confusion and fear of being in an unfamiliar environment. In this case a house club, or dub step club,  or drum n' bass club, or whatever the fuck kind of club it is. I'm not fucking Deadmau5 over here. 

I don't even really like the drug Ecstacy, I wouldn't touch the stuff nowadays, but this was years ago; and besides, if you're going to the rodeo shouldn't you wear a cowboy hat? With Ecstacy I'm a light weight. There are ravers out there who can gobble it all night long. Not me--after swallowing one pill I'm fully loaded, a total dancing queen. It's like being fried on speed and lsd at the same time. Not really my cup of tea anymore. It didn't stop me from enjoying myself though. If you are going to do Ecstacy it's definitely best to do it at a club rather than sitting in a house because your body needs to indulge in action of some kind. It distracts from the dread and paranoia. 

I dragged Alicia out into the throng of sweaty young bodies and we danced for hours and hours, with brief interludes of gulping water (her) and beer (me). I ended up swirling two--yes two!--glow sticks, gyrating my hips like a mental patient, and puckering my lips like Jagger for all the other dancers to gaze at in astonishment. I was dancing as if I was on the fastest setting on an elliptical machine designed by Andy Kaufman. I would oscillate between totally selflessly lost in the moment and totally consumed by the wrath of one thousand eyeballs. I had to get innovative and mimic some of the better dancers' moves, and, failing at that, feebily attempted to blend in. When I did lose myself, I was tapping into some larger communal energy, something inter-galactic. It's amazing what the power of drugs music can do.

Alicia seemed more interested in the better looking club kids but I didn't care--I could dance the night away. "Wait until this next guy comes on," Marius yelled into my ear, "you'll go nuts!" I could give a squirt of piss about who was coming on next because I was on another plane. All the DJ's seemed to have the same move--slowly increase the speed of the rhythm, a burgeoning crescendo that lasts forever until, mercifully, the guy with the mike on stage screams in a jibber jabber non-language (I don't think I would give him enough credit to be called a 'singer') and the beat drops explodes into a dancing frenzy. It's like a wave building up, getting bigger and bigger, just about to break, a perfect curl forming, and then it just fucking CRASHES and you ride that fucker as long as possible. Like your parents, I think it all sounds the same and it's no big deal. I've tried, I really have, to find some redeeming qualities, and I like everything from Refused to Bob Dylan so it's not like I'm narrow minded, musically speaking, but the appeal of dance music is lost on me.

We're back at Marius's apartment. Marius and his girlfriend have retired to the master bedroom and with only one smaller bedroom remaining there wasn't really a decision to be made. I could be a gentleman and offer Alicia the bed on her own and I could lay down on the loveseat with my gangly pasty legs hanging over the edge.

I went to the bathroom for a quick pee and when I entered the bedroom Alicia was already tucked under the covers, laying on her side. I mechanically disrobed down to my boxers and climbed into the bed with her. For a brief moment, a deathly silence befell us as we adjusted to the alien situation. I couldn't tell if she was awake or not, so I mustered up the cajones to inch closer to her body in the darkness. Every little movement was a victory, an advancement further into enemy territory, until I could finally inhale the glory of her dried sweaty essence. I cautiously draped my arm in a bracelet over her t-shirt clad waist, and she emitted a soft moan of delight. How delightful: She's awake and is giving me permission to proceed. I pressed my body up snugly to her backside. My cock was a throbbing jackhammer digging up the Ass Crack Expressway. Her body language was screaming at me to keep going, her ass climbing all over my apparatus. We were essentially dry humping our brains out in the spooning position. And speaking of dry humping, I have this nasty habit of doing that to women, especially if it is the first (and of course, most awkward) encounter, where it's improper to take off your clothes right away. Typically, I don't engage in dry humping because there is no need: I end up dry humping her pussy with my cock, the way God intended. After a few minutes of kissing on some couch or bed, I'm known to start humping at the poor girl like a monkey unable to stop from publicly masturbating. I can't control it, it's simply an evolutionary compulsion.  

Not too long ago I had this one HPOA splayed out vertically on her basement couch and our limbs were entwined, my knee digging into her crotch. I uncontrollably, almost imperceptibly at first, started thrusting whilst on top of this lovely specimen. My primal urges took over and there was no getting them back in their cage. I was going slowly at first but the thrusting generated into a furious ground and pound. 

"Are you dry-humping me?" She asked with a hint of mortification.

I was stunned to a halt, mid-thrust. "Oh, uhh, no. I guess I'll stop. If you want."

She kind of laughed and I blushed and rolled off of her, trying to brace for the oncoming psychic slaughter of a shameful self-pitying depression. Memories!

Anyways, Alicia was cooing, throaty uhhh's and hmmm's radiating from deep within her. I was fairly sure at this point that we were going to copulate and it dawned on me that I didn't have any condoms-- this thought, it's worth noting, rarely dawning on me because I don't usually need condoms when I go out. True story: About a year ago, I actually had a pack of condoms that expired. For a couple years the pack sat in my bathroom cabinet, these neatly coiled up rubber donuts, three quarters full (twelve pack). Every morning when I went for the toothpaste, this box of condoms stood there in stoic judgement, relentlessly mocking my manhood. It's not like a carton of milk going bad. There's a lot more shame to it than that. When the expiry date finally came around, June 2011, I had to begrudgingly toss them out. The last thing I would want to do to a women is put a rotten cock in her cunt. Most condoms out by the dumpster are used, but not mine! But I'm a hopeless optimist--my spirit sings to me, things will turn around.  

Anyways (I know, again) my left hand is moving all over Alicia's stomach and breasts, giving the nipples sensuous tweaks and they harden purposefully into nubs like the eraser on top of a No.2 pencil. I press my body ever closer to her and we are like one being under pressure, giving and taking; my hand glides down the length of her fit thigh and grabs a chunk. I want to just eat her at this point, bite into her haunches and rip off a hunk of chuck. Inevitably, as human behaviour is want to do, since time immemorial, from Apes to Neandrethals, to Insects, and a few North Koreans, my hand moves down to the golden chalice of lust hiding between her legs. The moist pink gates thrust themselves open and rays of light beamed out her oval hole and illuminated our under cover bodies, and I think a fawn went strolling by too. I was in heaven. The glory of vagina!

(I really shouldn't even put this in here, it's a total crowbar job, but it's the only mention of the word 'vagina' in the whole piece and there isn't going to be another one, and also because of my recent un-employment, I have decided to include this...I'm thinking of fresh new ways to generate an income, among them managing a hip new all-girl, all-Chinese pop band, called The VaChina Dollz. Just saying).

My left index finger was fondling her clitoris, and it too, became the eraser on a No.2 pencil. No doubt, that's the sweet spot. Alicia's moans became more guttural, more possessed. Busting a nut in my boxers was fast becoming a distinct possibility so I had to lay it all out there. This is the moment--now is the time--carpie diem--just stick it in her hot wet mess. Somebody's gonna get pregnant, Tracy Morgan bellowed through my head (still high, I guess). I whipped it out, and went to say, "Take your panties off," in as sensous a manner as was possible at 5am after screaming all night, when my bed-mate promptly stiffened up, ice in her veins, and bolted upright, and my left hand jolted back like it was on a hot plate. WHA IN THE FAH?

She then uttered the penultimate phrase, a phrase that no man should have to hear while in bed with a knockout, especially with such emphatic concern. It wasn't a "Hey! What are you doing?" like "I'm saying 'no' but I mean 'yes' keep going." It was "Hey! What are you doing!?" as in "Hey, there's a rapist in my house!" 

I apologized profusely, stunned and disappointed at the same time. Stunned because I thought she was awake and disappointed because there was not going to be any sex. But I was relieved that she wasn't  
infuriated with me.

"It's okay, just let me go to sleep," Alicia said wearily and promptly slipped back into still motion unconsciousness. I rolled over on my back and exhaled, staring at the ceiling. What a life. I tried sleeping, maybe dozed off for an hour or two. 

At about 8am, I was summoned into the stark morning light that's decidedly fetal-position inducing with an Ecstacy and booze hangover. Alicia appeared to be sleeping peacefully on her side of the bed, her body heaving softly, almost imperceptibly.

At some point during the night, I became convinced that I had to apologize to Alicia in the morning for last nights debacle, when our heads were straight. I couldn't just leave without saying anything-- hat would be worse Since I just wanted to go home and lay down in my own bed, I had no choice but to wake her up (again). I jostled her shoulder, "Alicia, wake up. I gotta tell you something."

I began to give her one of those apologies that are prefaced with a sigh and a "Listen..."

She was so dismissive about the whole thing and laughed it right off. Probably shouldn't have even woke her up. I put on last nights sweaty clothes, caught a faint whiff of stale tobacco, and walked out into the hallway of the apartment building. 

I walked like a zombie to the elevators. It was silent and I could hear the gentle hum of life in the building, families waking up to another day. I pressed the domed "L" button and it lit up. I looked back and forth a couple times. Empty. There was no one in sight but I could hear life going on around me. Clanking of plates, children using outdoor voices. A guy laughing, ack-ack-ack at his own joke. The elevator opened and I was swallowed whole. "L" again. I stared forward blankly, thousand yard style. Muzak played from an anonymous radio and I slowly descended until I was no longer there.

What It Takes To Get A Modern Man Through The Day

Lord knows it's hard as the day is long hammering away at this game of life, grinding it out in one of North America's infested sprawling metropolises, and sometimes I need to take the edge off. I need something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life; something to chisel down the edge of the blade. So here's to another day! I lift my glass to you, or swallow another pill, or light another cigarette, or maybe all three. At once. Without these crutches you can deal me out--I don't want to be a part of this game any longer.

The tobacco company, Peter Jackson's, should really hire me as a PR guy. I'm passionate about the product. Much to the chagrin of my neighbours, I rarely if ever smoke outside. I want to enjoy a PJ  comfortably and leisurely, inhaling and exhaling luxurious plumes sitting at my computer. A smoker has an inherent mystique, it's undeniably cool in some way thanks to all the cool people who smoke. There is an ancient seductive art to the way a red lipped woman purses her lips and slowly, with lithe fingers, takes a hit, cocks her head and blows a jet stream out into the atmosphere. Can you spell hot? All these anti-smoking groups are teetotaling tittie sucking fools. Look back a generation or two: Were the 1950's-80's not a magnanimous, smoker friendlyepoch in the 20th century? Smoking on airplanes, in malls, in offices. Smokers' freedoms weren't eroded like they are nowadays. Shit, back then you could make out with your girlfriend, a smoke dangling precariously from your lips.

Smoking indoors is best primarily because there's no wind. The cigarette burns symetrically and I'm overcome with a placid calmness, mesmerized by the hot glow of the cigarette, burning down proportionate to the drags, followed by the soothing feeling of a silky mouthful of smoke streaming through my nostrils. What can I say? It's my yoga. 

What it takes to get a modern man through the day (The Morning Regiment [TMR]):

Loratadine...10mgs (allergies.)
Cigarettes...limit of 5 until 5pm.
Coffee...2 cups max.
20mgs of Adderall (not my prescription, never done it before; just experimenting.)
10mgs of Cipralex (anti-depressant, my prescription.)

And to keep the train moving through the evening (The Evening Regiment [TER])...

Cigarettes...5-6.
Beer...3-4 pints.
Finally to top it off...the never ending Glory of God.

I sat down with a pencil tucked behind my ear, drowning in spools of calculator paper with clusters of scribbled out equations, and added it all up: 

Tim Tebow Me.

This cacophany of substances coarses through my blood and I'm facilely transported to the next truck stop on the highway of life where there are decisions to be made and things to get done. Or so I'm told.

I'm thinking of getting a cat. I love cats. I'm a total cat guy. I'm into lazy, snuggly, furry things that require little attention. I have somehow, despite all my pure evil and hatred of the world, still evolved to be overrun by their cuteness. It is a perfect relationship: with minimal effort cats are sustained and happy and gracious with their love, and in return I get an inter-species friend. But I'm having trouble pulling the trigger. I'd take great care of it, of that much I'm sure, but the following through is difficult. I just know that I'll pick a kitten based on it's cuteness, the ahh-shucks factor, and then I'll find out after a week or two of co-habitating, once she's alone with me and her true personality swims to the surface, she's, in fact,  possessed by the devil, hissing and biting me, or is mildly Autistic and hard to read. Well, I'm sure the thing will be okay. My only hope is the animal doesn't mind cigarette smoke. 

"I'll take a smoking cat, please," I proudly declare to the Humane Society person at the desk.

Hey you there, wagging your finger--I had a cat once before. Damn thing inhaled my mother's Du Maurier Milds and my father's Rothman's and occassionally my Du Maurier lights for nineteen years. She probably couldn't run a marathon, but most cats can't. Cigarette smoke isn't really that cruel when you read all the other horrific shit cats, and animals in general, are put through by their owners: physical abuse, neglect, et al. Oh, how I loved my little Ruffy! I would wake up on Sunday afternoon's and wearily stride down the stairs in my boxers to find and pet my kitty. She was always in one of five places, and eventually I'd find her, behind the couch or under a living room table. The longer it took to find her, the nicer our snug-fest would be. I laid down and placed my head on the fluffy lump of her body; not the full weight, that would be too much, of course. I strained my neck and my head was free to snuggle into the white cottony bliss of her belly fur. In this position I could hear Ruffy's inner workings, swampy gurgling's and bubbling's, a factory of organs at work. My cat would purr quietly, regally, a look of satisfaction across her face but eventually Ruffy would grow tired of my face in her fur, hiss and/or swat at me. She was a princess, no doubt. The kind of cat who wouldn't let you touch her paws or rub her belly. If you were a stranger or infrequent guest at my house forget about petting Ruffy! She was no whore! Absolutely not! She was like that skinny golden haired popular girl in high school you could only dream of getting.    

Once Ruffy and myself happened to catch each other while she was about to drop anchor in her litter box, which was like a nice little shit-house complete with roof and all. She looked me right in the eyes as if to say, "you can watch me, but only this once." There was no question--from that day on I would always decidedly walk on, gaze fixed forward (not that I didn't do that before). 

I have a new show idea: Next on A&E: Cat Hoarders. The sad thing is you'd watch it.  

I must admit, somewhere deep inside me, the scientist/experimenter part, I can't help but wonder what it would be like to give a cat some of my Cipralex, or some coffee, or some meth. Now, don't get all righteous on me, all you animal lovers for I am one of you. Even if you're a raging addict, there is some kind of simple pleasure to be taken in denying another sentient being the possibility of addiction. My cat will not become a totally out-of-control, dentally ravaged half-tard meth-head, for I can still control it's intake. I'm the judge and jury. It's rehab for you, Tweaks!

Ahh...me and my cat, lost in a narco-fog, but if we're lost in a fog, we're lost in a fog together. I've already named her: Blixa. I can see her now prancing around my apartment, lithe and goddess-like, but simultaneously I feel sorry for the poor thing. For there is only me to keep it entertained. Me to help it through a tough day, me to be a shoulder to cry on. I don't really need that kind of pressure in my life. I'd always have to be on. I can't be expending all my precious social energy on non-humans. Plus, it can't be that great of a life living with me--can it? 

It must be a female cat. That is imperative! There's no way I'm waking up and cuddling with a male anything. My nightmare is lying there in bed about to wake up, lost in that twilight period before clarity reels my sleepy head in, and I'm thinking about that hot chick at the LCBO giving me a slow, sensual blowjob, taking her time with it, cupping the balls and everything, and then it feels a little rougher and rougher, like sandpaper, "Ohh...Allison...I like it rough," and just when I'm about to reach the point of no return, I look down and there's Ernie licking the head of my penis. Ain't gonna happen to me, pal.

This has nothing to do with anything (I jump around a bit, you'll get used to it). While driving home today from the bookstore, a young light skinned black girl, maybe mulatto, in her cute little jeep, was trying to make a left from a little side street onto Bloor and her stupid jeep was jutting into the road so that myself and the motorists behind me had to slow down. We have a green light and she's forcing us all to come to a screeching halt while she tries to bypass our double lane into a clogged up eastbound lane. I try to switch to the left lane to avoid the front end of her jeep but the cars just keep a comin'. I'm forced to idle and will now miss the light.  

My car's spedometer swung down from sixty to zero and my pyschometer went from zero to sixty all in the matter of a few seconds.

I resort to motioning with my hands to back up a little. I do this condescendingly, like you would to a petulant child, or a half tard. When she looks at me confused, like I don't know how to drive, or live my life by her rules, I yell out, "Move back you dumb fucking cunt! Gee-whiz, lady, back it up a yard or two for pete's sake!" 

And if she couldn't hear me, I made sure to enunciate each syllable, like an enraged Michael Buffer. She looked at me, shocked, unable to fire off a retort of any kind, only a blank stare of incomprehension at the aggressiveness of man, at how wholly putrifying their violent response to provocation is. Indeed, I feel ashamed at what I'm capable of, of what men in general do to the Aphrodites of the earth. I'm so sorry to all the women...mom in particular. This isn't the way I really treat women. It's really not. But she did eventually put the jeep in reverse so I could pass by, whether out of fear or pity or what, the jury's still out.

No matter what it takes to get a modern man through the day, the day invariably gets through with itself. The planet rotates around the sun through space, endlessly blathering about on it's axis, while I whirl through cyberspace, but I could still never commit suicide. My idea of committing suicide is taking an extra anti-depressant pill and waiting to see what happens. Two, three, four pills? Are you kidding me! I'd be waaaay too fucked up. The way to do it, apparently, is to commit suicide like Joe Bodelai--the comedy writer who killed himself recently. A little older and washed up, living out in L.A., he may never have even made it in the Toronto Star, or his death merely reduced to a simple blurb, but he left an intriguing bullet-point suicide note on his blog, detailing the things he was proud of in his life and things he regretted. It was actually quite touching and funny, with the whole macabre angle (this is a suicide note) adding another juicy layer of intrigue. He was Alcoholic. No surprise there. He really did it. Killed himself by drinking Gatorade and anti-freeze. Gatorade and anti-freeze? In our darker moments I'm sure we've all thought of ordering a double G&A from the bar-keep, no doubt, but efffawhh, what's the minute after you chug that down like? Any potential last moments of regret are swiftly rendered obselete by the poison in the belly (why did he choose anti-freeze in particular?).

Any day now, we'll see a commercial from Gatorade, and instead of  the requisite scenes of men behaving athletically, a bunch of ball players dribbling on the court, or hockey players doing some slappers and then gulping down a refreshing mouthful of toxic sugar water Gatorade, it's a man in a robe, sitting alone at his computer in bad need of a shave, with an empty pint glass, first pouring in the gatorade, the camera circling around with lots of quick cuts; it is a blurry mess of action, then he pours in some anti-freeze, and lookout sports fans, it's a stiff one. As the man brings the glass to his lips, a bassy, faceless voice chimes in: Gatorade--It quenches your thirst, and your suicide.

A New Chapter (In My Blog)

I have made a big decision. No, I'm not having gender reassignment surgery...yet. Rather, a new chapter has started in my life while my head is still buzzing from the bells of the new year, like a swarm of angry Africanized bees. My world has been rocked, and if this were the big leagues, my coach, performing a post-mortem for the media scrum would vaguely announce that I have 'concussion-like' symptoms and I'll be out indefinitely, for today I have quit my job of five years.

Everyone always tell me, "You have to have a back up plan before you quit your job." While I understand this concept in theory very well, I failed to implement it. I understand a lot of things in theory but do not implement the knowledge and practicality therein, so I have to listen to people (good naturedly, of course) explain the concept of work. Too much work, I say!

I bought a new pair of shoes the other day (I was still employed), which is no small victory. Must have visited twenty different stores.  A shiny pair of white Lacoste's. When I buy shoes I invariably think to myself, I'm not a -------- kind of guy, am I? My last pair of shoes were Diesel's. Now just going on shoe selection alone, one might think I'm a pumpkin-coloured pumper of fists, but I couldn't be farther away from Tha Shoar, aside from my shoes.  

I'm now sandwiched into a liminal phase, post old job and pre new one; a murky world of endless career potentials. If I can't decide on a pair of shoes, how the hell am I going to decide on a career though? It's a crisis of sorts, no doubt. Figure it out, dummy! That's what your brain is for. Focus on your skill sets. Hmmm...I can say words backwards really well...

rolyaT tibseN. That's me.

asluT. That's Tulsa, OK in case you didn't know. I would tell that to Oklahoman customers on the phone; they usually thought it was funny--if they were younger and male.

"Did you know that 'Tulsa' backwords is 'a slut'?" And we share a little chuckle, and then it's time to get down to business. What are your measurements? Where are your specs? Your shopdrawings? Your photos--they work best. But I won't be telling that to any Oklahomans anytime soon will I? Americans love it when Canadians say, 'No doot aboot it!" Warms the cockles of America's collective beating heart. I don't think it's funny either, but you can't argue with laughs. I'd hyperbolize it, of course. Not too many Canadians really say 'doot' and 'aboot', it's more like a 'boat' sound, but apparently it's funny when hammed up over the phone to a semi-stranger. That's the key, you have to be strangers or it's not funny. If I say, "Noo doot aboot it!" to a fellow Ontarion, they'd look at me like I have a two-headed dick growing out of my ear, but you already know that. 

I had a whole repetoire of stock phrases, phrases which I will never (hopefully) utter again. A part of me will miss my American bretheren. Say what you will about Americans--they're fat, xenophobic, hillbilly rednecks eating McGrittles in their SUV's, but by and large they're good people. Take it from me, I've seen it first hand. I talked to them for hours every day. Shit, I know Americans better than Americans do. Or at least I did. They want to do right by their families and make an honest buck and God bless 'em for that. At first, I was shocked that Americans, mostly in the Southern states deferred to me as 'sir'. The American South is so cordial! I'm no Full Metal Jacket general, I'm just some kid, and now forty year old Americans are deferring to me a 'sir'. I was only sleeping, hard-wired into the dream that is America. But I'm tapped out. I've cut the cord.

One day a locksmith from Florida, West Palm Beach to be exact, lost it on me with almost no provocation. Admittedly, I can be a prick on occasion: Condescending, arrogant, short, patronizing, unhelpful, but this time I was none of those. He just went ape shit because I could not provide a quick, simple answer to his simple question. He couldn't fathom that it wasn't that simple. There are multiple options of which I was trying to politely explain. 

"It will only take a minute," I said.  

"I just want the price of a goddamn gate for a door!" He screamed at me like an axe wielding maniac. I will typically react in one of two ways to difficult people, and I will be so kind as to give you a simple answer: Unfazed or Crazy. You wanna get nuts! Let's get nuts! I can be that guy, but with this particular case I was unfazed. I prefer to match wits or insults, it's very cathartic to call someone a 'dumb motherfucker,' or a 'cock-sucking infidel' but I can't really compete with a seizure-like fit of rage. The guy's filibustering me. I depress my index finger on the volume button until the level descends to a tolerable pitch, and just let him go. I think to myself, as his vitriol spews through my VOIP connection, (that's Voice Over Internet Protocol): America must be really scary with guys like this and easy access to all those guns. That's why Cops will never be cancelled: It is a renewable resource. Whereas sitcoms and reality shows stagnate after a few years, Cops never runs out of material.  

I took out the business card in my wallet, the one I keep in case I lose it, the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency card so that a good samaritan can call me, and tossed it in the trash. The last vestige of my former employer. Where do I go from here?

For a brief while I will enjoy my new found freedom. Wouldn't you? I've celebrated the first week of my unemployment by being a total wastoid. Through the mist on my currently calm seas I'm hoping that I'll see land, or at least an island where I can dock. But I can drift for at least a couple months and live comfortably, with beer in my belly and a warm bed at night. The world is my oyster! I don't like oysters though. I'm the king of the world! Or something like that. I will take a sledge-hammer to the frozen sea of the job market!

Perhaps I'll blow off some semen--I mean steam...go to a strip club, plop myself down on pervert's row, and crane my neck up at the naked women preening about the stage on vertiginous heels. The pleasures of the flesh are always there for you in times of need, like a dog. To sit amongst the sleeze balls with their fixed gazes, silently tuned into their own private thoughts hidden behind their thousand-yard stares, oblivious to the pulsating strobes around them.  

"Baby, you got an hour glass figure," I would coo into the ear of the dutiful stripper on my lap, "and I want to play in the sand."

I would not think about job interviews and office politics with Gia offering me a nibble on her suckle-berry breasts. I'd enjoy her company with a Moosehead in my hand and Kickstart My Heart ringing in my ears. This is an escape. Our very assimilation--commercials, vacations, stripclubs, shopping, etc., relies on the notion of escape. But why do we need to escape so badly? Why is so much effort put forth toward it? What are we escaping from exactly? I can't really stand strib clubs, it's the men not the women. Or maybe it's the sharing of women with the men. Who wants to ogle the same woman as twenty other guys? Forty eyes engaged in the ocular gang-rape of a young woman who happens to be afflicted with beauty and not much else. Thanks, but no thanks. Imagine all those boners she has to sit on every night--Yuckers! 

I must get back to the business of making money for the coach to keep me in the game. What am I doing here typing away, pussyfooting around? There's a lot at stake here. I have to pay the bills. It's all about money and that's what I want...that's what I want. It's more important now than ever. You know, it's kind of exciting--I hoard the pennies in my coin stash, I ration out my soaps, creams and deoderants, I carefully tear two squares of toilet paper at a time for my bottom, I am diligent in turning lights out. I'm fucking Greenpeace over here.  

I haven't eaten the stockpiled cans of Campbell's soups stored in my nether cupboard regions, beyond the easy reach of everyday use, but that day may be coming. I had planned to donate the whole lot, about twenty cans, expiration dates all well into the fall of 2013, (apparently Campbell's doesn't abide by Mayan time) to the Salvation Army, but now I, of all people need them. Precious, precious cans. In a month, like a peasant, the savings account sucked dry, I will painfully slurp at the disfigured vegetable or chicken noodle soup before me, which is imbued with an unearthly orange hue topped with yellowish specks of just-this-side-of-edible detritus floating on the surface. How incredibly unnatural! No wonder there are so many cancers, heart attacks, tumors, respiratory failures, diabetes, BAD JOBS, lurking around every corner. Look at what we eat for Chrissakes! The convenience of efficiency is the king of this land. It just never fucking ends.  Quicker, QUICKER, man! Quickly Nezbit, get back into the relentless machine of economical commerce! It's your duty as a citizen of Ontari-ari-ari-o to contribute, to work those fingers to the bone for it. Or else. Or else what I don't really know. Maybe end up in that dungeon in the old abandoned farmhouse in Pickering that was discovered recently. Did you hear about this? A brand new 'containment' room found in an uninhabited, hundred and fifty year old house. A room, 12' x 8' complete with chains, multiple locks, glass too thick for a crow bar to break, four jugs of water sitting neatly in a row by a white, clinical bench. What was going on, or about to go on there? To quell public fear, I heard on the CBC that the police put forth the notion it might be a movie set. Yeah, right. Saw VIII. Sadly, we may never know because the house burned down sometime during the night of Jan 5-6th of this year. Somebody trying to get rid of forensic evidence? Hiding something?   

So anyways, *cough* please hire me.

Drunk Tanks, Squirrels, and Politics

I haven't been to the drunk tank but once, when I was seventeen years old. I don't have too much authority on the subject, kind of like having sex only once and generalizing from there; you can say you've done it but it sure as fuck doesn't make you some expert.

I was slumped in the lobby of Marcell's building, bitter, alone and drunk. His dad split for the weekend and we did the only logical thing in our pimple brains: Throw a party. We invited these two girls from our high school that we had crushes on and the situation was seemingly perfect...Marcell liked the one I didn't like and I liked the one he didn't. There was no way we could get caught in each others crosshairs, no chance of any cock-blocking friendly fire. The night arrived and there we were drinking and smoking pot, Korn having a tantrum in the stereo speakers.   

Nadia and myself were talking, just filling up time the way two people do when tolerating the friend of the person you're interested in. Have to tolerate them though, make a good impression so inroads can be paved towards the real goal. We got to wondering where Marcell and MY girl, Julia were. I decided to investigate. I sauntered over to Marcell's closed bedroom as Nadia watched from across the room, and opened it. Sometimes when you open a door the sight behind it just sucks the air right of you.  At this particular sight my heart felt like a chisel was being pounded into it. Of course, there was Marcell and Julia, laying underneath the covers, post coital. Marcell looked at me with the expression of a guilty dog who just ate Mom's birthday cake. One of the parties may have uttered a terse 'sorry', I don't really know. I flew off the handle in a drunken rage. Those damn rages! And booze compliments them so very well. There may have been a bottle smashed in the hallway, there may have been yelling AND screaming on my part, the cops may have been called. I was not Taylor Nezbit, Esquire, I was an out of control ape, like the ones in Congo, or like that narco-addled chimp who ripped apart that ladies face. Luckily for Julia, I didn't rip apart her face. See, I don't believe in violence against women. If you look around, however, it appears to be real. 

I stormed out into the hall of the 16th floor. A scrawny, pimple faced monster. 

Party's over!

You're fucking my girl! You're fucking my girl! I screamed to no one in particular, just the closed doors and unimaginably unmemorable walls. Even though I hadn't so much as accidentally brushed up against Julia's shoulder, she was my girl. The closest I ever got to her skin was during lunch one day at my house. We laid down beside each other in my bed, both stiff as a board, our bodies, as they lie planking together, two individual's who seemingly deciding to plank right beside each other in the middle of the day, in the same spot. Skin was not caressed, tongues were not flicked, and my boner, rising like a mushroom in fast forward to the heavens, well his prayers went unasnwered.

Someone popped their head into the staircase and said the cops were coming, that I should split...and fast. Well, eff that, I'm on the verge of cutting my wrists with the protractor set in my backpack, I'm ready to break on through to the other side, man. I may as well greet the new recruits in the lobby. NOTHING MATTERS. I went down the stairs to the 15th floor, one below the party and caught the elevator. In the lobby, I sat my slouchy ass and crooked spine into a seat and waited for the impending showdown with the law.  

Just on time--Cops are never early when you need them and always late when you do. "You Taylor?" Cop #1 said. Surely, the two boys in blue had a little chuckle upon entering the building and eyeing the spaghetti frame before them. Tonight, on this call at least, there is no fear of never seeing the family again, no chance of being felled by some hip gangsta wannabe's bullet. No, tonight is safely tucked in the bed of the routine Harmless Saturday Night Drunks. Now I've joined that exclusive club.

"Who the fuck wants to know?" 

Wrong answer.

Cop #1 picked me up and pasted me against the wall--felt like a dirty hit by Phaenuef, except these boards had no give. He swung my left arm up behind my back like a crank and kept applying pressure until it felt like my twig was about to snap. The only muscles in my arm were those borne of aggressive masturbating and consequently were no match for this beastly man-cop. I yelled out in pain and he relinquished a bit, secure in the knowledge of my breaking point. This is what humans do to each other all the time, whether it's in the bedroom or the lobby: apply pain to the breaking point.

They place me in the back seat of the squad car. My hands were cuffed and angled to the right while my back was angled left. It was actually quite comfy. 

We peeled out onto Steeles and I knew exactly where we were headed--north one kilometre to the big police station in Brampton adjacent to all the courthouses--the main station. I've driven by there hundreds of times, and always a parking lot full of empty cop cars, waiting patiently for some chump without sideburns to dole out street justice.  

On the way to the cop shop I mentioned that I might have some drugs in my A-hole. What a dopey fucking brat, huh? Cop #1 looked me in the eyes through the rearview and poured me a burning shot of comeuppance: "Okay, kid, when we get to the station we're gonna check you out real good."    What have I done! I basically told this hairy armed vet to finger fuck me.

So there we are in the station. I'm being processed: My shoelaces are removed and temporarily confiscated. Will some cop lace them up for me when I leave, or am I going to have to do it, I wondered. I am shamed yet undaunted, this is simply how the night turned out I tell myself. There's no other prisoners around, I seem to be alone as I'm guided towards a wall and told to "Spread 'em." My hands are splayed against the cold concrete. "Take down your pants," the faceless voice said. I unhooked my belt and exposed my tight little ass and pale scrawny legs. I resumed assuming the position. "Umm...You're not gonna, like, rape me or anything are you?"

"No, I'm checking you for contraband," Cop #1 said as the rubber glove snapped against his left wrist.

I was too drunk to be terrified, but I certainly was alarmed. "Be gentle...I'm a virgin."

He took a few steps toward me, hesitated a second, then leaned in close so I could feel his breathing against my neck, and whispered in my ear: "Pull your pants up, kid." It was like a bad episode of Scared Straight. 

Cop #1 took me to the cell where I languished alone and depressed as I sobered up and the reality of my situation unfurled itself before me. Julia, my crush, not only likes Marcell, but had sex with him too. Plus I acted like a total douchebag, throwing a tantrum like a five year old. If only they didn't take out my laces...

Apparently squirrels enjoy chasing each other through graveyards. When I'm standing at my bedroom window watching the world go by, as I often am, I find myself transfixed by two squirrels chasing each other. The leader weaves through the tombstones like the hockey drills I did as a kid, except the coach used pylons, not tombstones. Up a tree, across a branch, jump to another tree and scale that sturdy oak down, and run through the tombstones again. At some points the chaser was close enough to get its nose tickled by the fluffy tail of its tormentor. When I first observed this behaviour, I thought the squirrel being chased was running for his life until I finally realized that, oh in fact, they're just playing. Come on Nezbit! Squirrels aren't cannibals! You dope! Get a grip!

Unless...

They were stranded in the Andes after a plane crash. Then maybe they would be cannibals.

Maybe the MLSE could create a league where squirrels are pinned against each other. A duel to the death! They get jerseys and they move into penthouse suites and mansions in every major city. It's a new sport for the people, like lingerie football. The home town squirrel would get pimped out, matching colours, bobbleheads for your car, billboards around town with the said hometown squirrel shoving Booster Juice in your face. To separate these squirrels from the ordinary, they're claws and teeth would be replaced tiny surgically implanted daggers, and upon finishing his work, the team dentist leans back, cocks his head, a smile crossing his face, and says..." I'd rather get bit by a great white." The team doctor continue over the years to load him up with steroids and later, when he retires after an illustrious career, after many kills (home runs?), when the hall of fame comes a-knockin, there will be an asterik by his name in the books. But who cares what the books say, why they're just words, words, words! Glory is for the living punk. Better to snort coke off the stilleto heel of your favourite stripper and shoot juice, and smoke crack, and crack homers while you're living than when you're dead. Don't think they're are any ball parks in the heaven sports fans.

I noticed recently, like some barely perceptible ache, that I have a bromance crush on the actor Ryan Gosling. I mean, can this guy do anything wrong? I'm praying he doesn't loose his hair. He's from London, ON, if you don't know, and he's a great actor. Blue Valentine? Half Nelson? Have you seen those movies? Did I mention RG dresses absolutely fabulously, and he's smart and funny (mutually exclusive?), and he breaks up street fights between random strangers, and he can make your heart melt without a microwave. Got a permanent twinkle in his eye, that kid. He'll go places--if he hasn't gone to them already. The kind of man that brings his mother to the red carpet instead of his hard body girlfriend. Hubba-fucking-hubba. I only like him for his acting...no really (please believe me). It's not like I'd let Mr. G slap on a rubber glove and probe my nether regions for contraband. No way, Jose.

And now to international politics: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney? America--really? Is this the best you can do? Really? These GOP pricks are so manufactured and souless and unoriginal and banal and uncharasmatic--should I continue? Square jawed automatons who are inexorably intolerant, xenophobic to their vapid cores, hailing from the country of meth-addled-mega-church-preachers--"when I'm out in the bush I hunt queers, I mean deers, *cough*cough*, and I support the troops, even got me a bumper sticker that says so. Can I get a Hell Yeah?"

American culture has always fascinated me. Being Canadian, I am physically close to it's volcanic core and thus, I'm gently warmed by it's magma glow, yet I'm so far away--I could never be American. I don't fill up at a Texaco and I don't have any greenbacks to fritter away. America: It's the best and the worst of both worlds all at the same time. Take a look at all those movies and t.v. shows you like, all those bands, all those books you read. Let's face it: Most of them are goddamn yankees. You ever watch Cops? Great show. Each half hour episode of Cops consists of three ten minute slice of life vignettes, as if ten minutes is a sufficient amount of time to distill the gist. These are the engines of America, the proletariat, the salt of the earth. The kind of people who belong in a Raymond Carver story. These are the people who should be the reality t.v. celebrities of America. My favourite city has got to be Amarillo, Texas. Ama-fucking-Rillo: The Apocalypse is coming any minute. This is God's country, with short fat cops named Caleb Finsterwald who's gone to six and half barbeques in the past month alone. Just look at the shape of America--a rectangle drawn in a blackout drunk.

And now to national politics. It's Oct 6th. Apparently there is some kind of vote today of which I was only recently aware of. Yeah, yeah, I hear the snickers of the intellectuals out there, the upper crust, the uber-hipsters, the elite, the straight shooters, the righteous. This fucking idiot Nezbit doesn't even know there's an election? To that I say, who are these jerkoffs that I should go out of my way and vote for instead of going directly to the LCBO? I put an X or a checkmark by their name and all the voices in my head are supposed to stop? I'd just as soon turn Horwath, Hudak, and McGuinty into the Human Centipede than vote for 'em.  There ya go--all stitched up, now eat each others shit. Oh Taylor! How uncouth.

You there, wagging that finger...eat shit and die. Democracy? Is that what you call it? You're born into a prison, dumbfuck. Albeit a nice prison, with pretty women shopfronts but they got you so young there's no unfucking the program. They got you when you learned the abc's and do re me's. The more you flail around and bang on the cage, the more they laugh at your feeble attempts to break free. Just shut up and keep buying shoes, and eating potatoes, and voting. Oh, oh, who'd you vote for? Ah, fuck buddy, I voted for the Taliban. If you go out to any bars on a Saturday night, you'd ban dancing too.  

My enthusiasm for democratic parcipitation has waned over the years. As soon as I hit eighteen I voted like clockwork: municipal, provincial, federal, I trodded my way down to the local school or church smug with my new found power; I couldn't wait to flex my democratic muscle. My parents usually told me to vote Liberal and I happily abliged. In the later years of my voting career, however, I starting becoming disillusioned and threw my vote away to the Green Party. Ever since I started I was always in a downward spiral, about to commit participatory suicide. It just took a while to get there. Now I would expand my Human Centipede and sew Mike Schreiner right in.

Perhaps if I ever have a child, many years from now, I'll become more involved in the process, when my progeny's at stake. When I'm not just looking out for number one. A real man puts his family first, and you're reading that man's blog. I can see it now: My girl bouncing on my lap..."Daddy, are you gonna vote tomorrow?" 

"Yes, sweetheart, I am." 

"Who are you voting for?"

"Well, I'll be voting for the Scientologists," I say, knowing they always had me, but now they have her too.

One more thing: I did have a suggestion for the Tim Hudak campaign. Sadly, too little too late, I know. But maybe in the future, when he's out at a speaking engagement, he can enter the stage dancing to that Noreaga song--"HudakHudakHudakHudakHudakHudakHudak...."
   

What I Look for in a Woman

Cindy from Dubuque, Iowa wrote me the other day...

"Taylor, I'm a big fan of your writing. Funny guys really turn me on! I was wondering...what do you look for in a woman besides a cock?"

Haha, Cindy, very funny. That's a great question and the answers are seemingly endless. I look for many different qualities in a woman. Since I don't have to quantify my brilliance--it just radiates all around us. I thought I'd let you in on some of the qualities I look for in a woman. As I grow older and my perspectives are refined, I have a deeper appreciation for the little things a woman says and does. How they flip their hair, or smile, or how their haunhes bounce when they walk. I remember when I was little, my daddy propped me up on his knee and said, "Son, in this world you got to be a tit man or an ass man." I'm a self-admitted ass man to the end. A leg and ass man, man. I hate to see you go, baby, but I love to watch you leave.

The barista who made my iced coffee today, Olga, (she had a name tag) was a beautiful young lady with an Eastern European accent. I could listen to her talk all day. Suppose I unzipped my pants right here in Timothy's Coffee of the World and jerked it while I had her say different words, like 'Phantasmagoria' or 'Babylon'? Instead, Olga smiled and handed me the change, her mouth revealing a dental graveyard--jagged pearls going in all directions. Looked like an IED went off in there. Like some jagged wind swept cliffs in Newfoundland. Now, I'm exaggerating slightly here, she wasn't Shane McGowan, but it was bad. And you can talk Women's Lib all day but a guy can get away with it. But here's the thing: This is no criticism--I think it's hot. Maybe she wants to fix her teeth but can't afford it. Poor girls are attractive, it's that I can give you a better life angle. Her eyes would light up with love when I buy her new teeth on our first anniversary. But maybe she has the money to fix them and accepts her genetic fate, values money, spends it wisely...education, health, little brother. It makes her real and I want to flick her damaged teeth with my tongue, locked in an embrace. 

Vomiting is so fucking hot. Nothing better than a girl that drinks too much, or is in opiate withdrawal. I remember some washed up model on Celebrity Rehab a couple years ago who was splayed out in the hallway with a barf bucket in the grips of withdrawal. I didn't even know I liked a vomiting woman until then. I never thought about it before. I do now (but not really).  Come on, I'm not one of those sickos who likes to get vomited ON (definitely not Ontario), I just like to observe a woman who's vomiting. I'm attracted to the reason behind her vomiting, not the vomit itself per se. It was her utter and total powerlessness that grabbed me. She was a woman struggling to make it through. I like the capacity in a woman to be so far gone off the grid; her essence is screaming it's a crazy assbackwards world out there, we're chained down to it, and we all have to pull in our own little direction, so what can you do? Speaking of women caught up in the struggle, I do like single mothers. When we're fucking, late at night, after little Timmy has gone to bed, we have to be so careful not to make a sound, so I give it to you extra hard, trying to make you moan louder and louder. Also, I must clarify that I don't like to see a woman in pain; vomiting is a sign of imperfection and I like damaged women. Beautiful and damaged. Not physically damaged.

Although... 

I went to high school with this girl, Tahnee, and she had no arms or legs. Aside from that she was rather attractive. Nice complexion, perky breasts. I pictured us on a date at the Exhibition and we'd go on all the rides, Tahlee resting safely, hugged tight to my body in a baby carrier, her little nubs barely poking through the leg holes. Then later,  after a successful night at the fair, we're driving home and she has a giant stuffed alligator on her lap. Looked like it was going to eat her right up. Boy, she wouldn't stand a chance if she fell into the Amazon. But she's got a shot at my place, I'm not quite as ugly as an alligator and the way she's looking at me, I'd say she's the maneater. So I bring her back to my place (as if she had a choice!) and we share a bottle of red wine. I was out of breath from lugging her motorized scooter up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. This dame was making me work for it. I sensed a break in the conversation and made a move. I hesitated for a second or two and then just dove in the way one does when presented with jumping into a pool full of beetle dung. No point dipping in the toes. Just go for it. There's no half going for it. She can't get half pregnant.

She acquiesced to my advances and things rapidly became pretty hot. In the heat of our-one-and-a- half-person heap of passion I picked Tahlee up--quite easily, I might add--and made my way to the bedroom. She only weighed about forty five lbs, after all. I dropped her onto my bed and she bounced like a watermelon a couple of times and settled. Even though she was armless and legless she had a winning Crest smile. Great kisser, too. I eased down on top of her, she unbuttoned my shirt and I grinded my knee into her crotch. Her little leg nubs were going up and down like a fallen down wind up toy. I replaced my knee with fingers and Tahlee went over the moon. First my index and then both my index and middle fingers probed her insides in a come hither motion while my tongue flicked her clit. She had a huge bush, but that was reasonable considering her situation, therefore it did not bother me in the least. I imagined that if we actually dated and got into an argument, you know, the kind couples get into, I could always rip her right out of that motorized scooter, throw her down on the bed and tickle her senseless and there wouldn't be a goddamn thing she could do about it. Would that constitute domestic violence I wonder?

She unzipped me and gave my cock a few slow loving strokes. There's nothing like the feel of a new set of hands on your cock and balls. I had enough hose to put out a forest fire. I looked her in the eyes and slid it right in au natural. She was screaming like my shooter was the butcher's favourite knife. After we got as much as we could of each other in the missionary position, we agreed on a change of position. On the spot I invented this new move where I picked Tahlee up, held her in a horizontal position, flush with my cock, and thrusted once into her pussy, withdrew, and spun her quickly around and thrusted once into her mouth, withdrew, and spun back to her pussy, withdrew, etc. She was whirling around and around in a circle of lust, going so fast her features blurring together. She'd never been fucked like this before! That much I was sure. I was so good at this technique Tahlee became dizzy and yelled for me to stop! Stop! Stop! At my fastest speed she was just like the ride at the Ex we were on earlier where we're strapped into a saucer, laying flat on your back, clutching handle bars, and then it spins around really fast and you can barely move due to the centrifugal force.

"What's the matter? I told you we'd go on all the rides," I said, as in I-told-you-so.

"Stop it right now or I'm gonna PUKE!" she screamed.

"Well..."

There's nothing more annoying than a Reese Witherspoon type of girl, all prim and proper and serious, on the fast track to winning in life. Perfect teeth and vacations in the Turks and Caicos. I'd just as soon fart in a box and overnight it than give her the time of day. Give me a woman with track marks and too many horrors hidden behind her eyes. There's so much beauty in her it's deafening; it floods my soul. I'm talking about Olga, the barista. So much sad, sad beauty the world will never know. Her blue eye shadow...blue as the ocean. I picture her in the morning, running that marker across her eyes like she's done a hundred times before. And for what? For me to write about it? Fucked if I know.

Reading. I love walking by a woman with her legs crossed and a book in her lap. With her leisure time she prefers to indulge in ripping life away from reality, trying to escape some how, some way. She has the disposition to accept life and let it just go by. A life just hoardes days until there's nothing left except garbage day. If you think anyone can stop the madness well you're bat shit crazy, it just can't happen. The words are entering her brain, whipping synapses into a frenzy, mind and body temporarily mutually exclusive; her body doesn't even exist at this moment. Unaware of the trappings of her supple flesh, of how a man wants to bite into it, grab and shake it as if guessing at a wrapped Christmas present.

Blonde hair and blue eyes. But more so the blonde hair. If she has brown hair and blue eyes that's not as good as blonde hair and brown eyes. The first thing I notice on a woman is her hair; those billowing strands of heaven. Tickle my cheek with your hair, baby, then I'll run my fingers through and let it slip away. Oh! and the smell! What succulent sun dried peach zuccini infused universe is this? I may be wearing eau de Caucasian Deadbeat Drunk, but baby, I'm your man.

I may be contradicting myself here a little (thumbs down to Reese Witherspoon? Thumbs up to blonde hair and blue eyes?), but I'm a complex man with complex desires, as you can see. Some good/bad combinations are imminently more tolerable than others. For instance, I wouldn't care for a woman sans arms and legs even if she was reading, even if she could read. Ah well, one day, you too, could end up on this list, and wouldn't you be so lucky. Here I come, baby...

Comin ta getcha!

A Day (Or Two) In The Life

Not unsurprisingly, this day started like most others--the hot sweltering July sun creeping up over the horizon, my R2D2esque air conditioner complete with eight foot tube blowing the evil heat outside into the atmosphere. Surely there is no God, or more accurately, surely there was no sense in the gang of explorers, settlers, whoever, who founded this ugly ol' hog shit town. In the winter it's too cold, in the summer it's too hot, and all the people complain that it's too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. Gotta settle somewhere I suppose. I'm sure those settlers I was just talking about were more concerned with primitive matters--hunting, preventing/instigating war, procreating, infrastructure, crops, cuckoldry. Well shit! We figured out a new way of living so only a few select suckers do all that! The rest of us sit back and get fat, try to bed women, learn Al Green songs on guitar, and generally deal with all sorts of urban matters, like dented bumpers and leaky ceilings. 

On most Sundays I make a quick jaunt to the grocery store. I drive the two kilometres through a wealthy suburb that borders the Humber River. Know how you can tell a nice neighbourhood? You can't afford to live there. There's even this one house that has a spiral staircase and I always make sure to look for it. Pi and all that shit; you know how it is--infinity. Whoever owns this house just had to put a spiral staircase in the middle of his house, AND have floor to ceiling glass so everyone can see this oversized piece of Rotini. How I long to climb that staircase! Going up and around and then down and around. I think I'll go around again. I think I found a new hobby: Spiral staircases. The only other one that I can recall was the next door neighbour to the house I was staying at during  I park underground at the Lowblaws and it's a generally uneventful trip. 

I walked out the automatic door to the car with my lemons,  potatoes, chips, steak, etc. I was parked perfectly inside my three-sided rectangle, like a damn glove, and here was this guy nailed right onto my bumper. Not barely touching, I mean it looked like I caught his car raping mine, my bumper was noticably crumpled. How could he not notice his egregious error? Or at the very least, reverse a foot and pretend it wasn't him? Isn't that the move? I would at least drive down a few spaces and park there. Two weeks later and what's really bothering me is this persons thought process. How? How could they not notice? For Chrissakes they should have whiplash. 

An anger, ney--a smoldering rage, boiled up inside me. My first reaction was to write a quick little note, with a big marker, lift up his wiper and snap it to the dash. Something like, "Hi, I'm a jerkoff and I hit people's bumpers in parking lots, and I'm so fucking stupid that I don't even flee the scene and park somewhere else. I just leave my car pushed RIGHT up against the other car. Tonight, when I get home, I'm going to stuff a dildo in my dog's ass, then lick the dildo clean.
Signed,
Driver Of This Car."

Instead, mainly because I didn't have a marker or paper, the tools for the job, I gave his stupid license plate a good kick and got into my car to accelerate a foot and a half to check the damage. Once I separated contact, my bumper must have popped back into place for all that remained was a small nick, a barely perceptible break in the smoothness of the bumper. I was unsatisfied at the lack of damage because the more damge there is the more justified my reaction will be. I was past the point of talking myself out of it and just driving home. Something had to be done. His old white Chrysler sat there mocking me, out of place amongst the nicely cropped rows of cars all flush with each other. Here's one car awkwardly jutting one and a half feet into MY space and one and a half feet is a pretty big number whether you're in porn or parking.

It looked like an old man car, this Chrysler. I gave the license plate another good stomp. Not like a soccer kick--that would be stupid, and painful--a good hard marching stomp. That didn't really do anything and now my foot hurt. Fuck this! I did a quick scan of the parking lot and there didn't seem to be anyone in my immediate vicinity, only a few cartboys huddled together popping pimples, so I reached down and gave the license plate a good yank. Impossibly, the plate acqueisced to my strength. I stumbled back in triumph, like when you're playing tug-of-war and the other team lets go of the rope, the ID of this metal beast clutched in my hands.  

Well, that wasn't very hard. I had the plastic casing around the plate and everything. That's why it came off so easily I suppose. See, I didn't grab the plate directly, I went for the plastic casing and that was the ticket. 

I felt like the Hulk. A goddamn animal. A fucking hurricane and Mike Tyson's just that plastic bag in American Beauty.

Do. Not. Fuck. With. Me.

Should I go for the back plate too? Naw, don't do it Nezbit, you're a nice guy; remember the scale of justice--keep it level. If there was more damage, well then, yes, but as it stands we're now even. Plus, you got enough problems, don't need some psycho in a Chysler coming after you.

I got in my Vibe and got the fuck outta there. I made a right out of the the Loblaws and proceeded south on Jane St. I rolled down the window and like a frisbee tossed the license plate onto the sidewalk, and that was that.

                                                                             ***
                                                                                 
Later that night, around 10:30, I was deeply engrossed in the season premiere of Breaking Bad. Man, I'd like to get a hold of that blue meth Walt and Jesse cooked; it looked like the crystallized formations found in deep caves. A dripping of some sort penetrated  the barrier of my aural sense. At first, I thought it was the window AC unit of the lady above me dripping onto the pavement below. Even though it was humid as hell, I got up and closed the window some more, not all the way. Damn, can still hear that dripping. Is it just in my head or am I really experiencing this? Is Walt going to notice a dripping sound any minute too?

It had been happening for some time now and I could predict the drops with pinpoint accuracy. Walt didn't notice a thing, had more important matters on his mind: Like how to take Gus out of the picture, and purchase a car wash to clean his dirty money, and cars too, I suppose. No, it wasn't part of the show. Merely a gentle dripping, this must be my problem.

A commercial break.

I inadvertently looked up to the ceiling and to my surprise and dismay there were two distinct droplets steadily coming down. Already a sizeable puddle was gathering on my 1950's parquete floor. Ceiling was bubbling out like it was going to give birth. Hmmm....well, first things first. Grab two pans and set them down. Problem solved. I'm a regular fucking Mike Holmes. I sat back down, tried to drown out the Chinese Water Torture my pans were enduring. My attention kept returning to the ceiling and the leaking was getting progressively worse. I could see new drops forming, threatening to jump. I had to move the pan and put my mop bucket down so I could catch two drops for the price of one. I moved that pan to another leak. What the fuck is going on here? This is serious I think. Do I make the phone call to the landlord at 10:45pm on a Sunday night?

The answer came swiftly: Yes. I was goddamn annoyed at this point. Thoughts of self-pity--oh, this just had to happen to me--fought for control and I struggled to put them aside. I waited a fucking year for this new season of Breaking Bad and my anticipation was as high as it gets for a TV show; then it was further enhanced by the sudden realization that I didn't have to wait until Monday to download it--I have the AMC channel. I can watch it Sunday night! I'm saying Yes! to life.

I found the name for the landlord in my phone and begrudgingly pushed the 'talk' button. As it rang, I debated if I was justified for the late night call. I mean, if it was 2pm there would be no question. But I'm stoned and it's late, and I could probably deal with it in the morning. Mmmm...maybe not, though. What if the ceiling collapses? 

"Hallo?" An Eastern European lady's voice said on the other end. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, take your pick, but it wasn't my landlord; thought I had the wrong number. "Hi, this is Taylor from apartment number three, is Angela around?"

"Oh, hi Taylure. My name's Tuuta. I am landlord while Anna's away."

I explained the gist of the problem. Tuuta made me go upstairs to see what number apartment was above me because she didn't know. I went upstairs. It was number seven. I should have deduced that much considering there's four apartments per floor; I could have simply added four to my apartment. I called her back. "It's number seven, Tuuta."

On the screen, Gus, the druglord that Hank cooks for, is slicing the throat of an underling to prove a point. I don't quite get it though because I'm busy talking on the phone with a lady named Tuuta. The only time I want to be talking to a 'Tuuta' is when I call an escort.

"Okay, I call her now."

Momentarily relieved that the ball was rolling, I sat back and honed in on my ten year old Zenith. I just couldn't get into it though--the show, not the TV, that is. I was hot and bothered, a goddamn leak almost directly above me that keeps getting worse by the minute.

The show ended and just sick of it all, cursing my rotten luck, I decided to get ready for bed. Tuned the radio to CBC 1--the show was This American Life. Picked up whatever book I was reading and knocked off a few pages. Instinctively, I checked the leaks a few more times and then turned out the lights.

As you can guess, it wasn't the greatest sleep. Somehow, even in my dream state I woke up every couple hours and wearily checked the leaks, and more importantly dumped the overflowing bucket and pans. I get out to my living room area and flick the light switch to assess the situation. No dice. I flicked the light switch up and down a few more times to confirm the problem just like you would do. I had to settle for the kitchen light. It was enough to illuminate the horror before me. My mop bucket was overflowing and now there was a steady piss stream flowing down from the bulbous grapefruit sized lamp fixture (chandelier?). The floor was absolutely soaked! This had officially been upgraded from a leak to a downpour. 

At 7:30 am the next morning I called Tuuta and let her know, that yes, it was still leaking. Funny, I told her, that the sun was shining outside and it was raining in my apartment. A meterological anomaly of some kind, don't you think?  Her husband would be there in 30 minutes. I sat on my kitchen table and waited for him to show up.

At 8 O'clock my phone rang. It was Tuuta. "Hi Taylure, can you let my husband, Walter, in? He doesn't have a key." I just laughed and said, "Sure." I was kind of pissed off, but really I welcomed the minor catastrophe. A man has to switch up his routines or he goes madder quicker. But it doesn't matter how madder a man gets if it's quicr or not, glacial or hot, the end result is still the same--madness takes over and Klaus Kinski is suddenly in your dreams stalking you through a tropical forest with a macehte.

Walter was a very short man, about five feet tall. Absurdly short, really. We shook hands and he followed me up the stairs. I said, "I hope you brought your bathing suit," but he just smiled sheepishly and followed me inside. Upon entering, he muttered "Oh, fuck," in perfect English. "This is not good," he added, looking at me, or rather, up at me.  "Yeah, I know it's not good," I said, obviously irritated. I felt somewhat unworthy to have this older man look up at me. He's seen more, probably lived under some horrible Communist regime in Poland, waiting for hours in a bread queue; he shouldn't be looking up to a thirty year old part time loser caker like me.  

Walter said he had to shut off the water to the apartment and get Tuuta to call the plumber. She showed up five minutes later and gave me an exasperated look. "I'm sooo sorry, Taylure, this is horrible." I could barely hear her over fucking Niagara Falls. "Yeah, yeah, it's okay, shit happens, ya know?" I don't think she was entirely familiar with that phrase, maybe she hasn't seen Forest Gump, but she must have sensed the solemnity in my voice, no matter the language. I'm sure some of the other tenants would have been roaring mad. There's a facade of bravado and righteousness tenants must uphold in front of the other tenants, like they're tough guys who know their rights. And I use guys loosely, these women who are my neighbours were flipping out when I invited them in to see the damage. Lady number one: "Oh my god! You should move out! Lady number two: "You have to call the health inspector. There's a knock at the door and looky here, it's Lady number three: "Oh you poor thing! I'm soo sorry." Why is she sorry?

The problem turned out to be a radiator leak from the upstairs apartment. She didn't even know it was leaking. I'm now the proud owner of two ten x ten holes in my ceiling. I walked over to the one in the corner of my living room for an inspection. There I stood directly below this hole, my neck cocked back, my eyes beaming to the stars. At first I didn't believe my blinkers. I could see all the way up to the ceiling ABOVE me. Not MY ceiling, but my neighbours. WHA? Anyone out there got a periscope?

Doug Stanhope at the Underground Cinema

I rode back home in a speechless cab that picked me up on a faceless street. Quick Lubes and Moonlight Restaurants scrolled by my eyeballs’ windshield.

I hailed ten cabs before one stopped and picked me up. Shit, I thought, I could just walk home, just about halfway there. Now I know how those hitchhikers felt when I was roller-coasting up and down Airport Road the other day, just wizzing by, laughing at their fate with a Peter Jackson wedged in my lips, air con fanning my face and Tom Waits blasting some hot shit jazz through my speakers . . . "Romeo is bleeding . . ." I had my axe and laundry in the backseat and my dealers number in my phone. All they got is a thumb and a dream. I'm laughing. Ha! Look at his thumbing arm go limp after I roar by and glimpse the stinging pain of rejection on his face in the rearview window. I now know how those hitchhikers feel, neglected by motor transportation and the people who control them.  

I'm off my tits and have been walking for an hour or so. Great walk, however; beautiful vistas of the 2 AM club crowd on Queen St. West. The jackhammers had the streets were dug up, but I wasn't considering the construction in progress, what it might look like when complete. Everywhere I looked there was another gaggle of sevens, eights, and the occasional nine and ten with their painted faces and tube dresses, drunk and ready to go deeper into the night. The whole lot of them would be tens if this was Dundalk on a Saturday night.

They say Toronto has two seasons: Winter and Construction (eat it, Chicago). That's just like my brain I think, taking the steps down to a friend's basement digs, somewhere near Trinity Bellwoods. A steady excitement has built up over the last week anticipating this show. I’m a big comedy fan, yet I’ve never even been to a stand-up comedy show proper. Sure, just like every hipster wannabe I've been to 'loft parties' and 'basement shows' . . . (Hey dude, you should check out our band...The Blah Blah Swank Art Fags--Blah Blah, we're playing tomorrow night at the blah blah--frag-frick-gorph-gorph--club, you should really come see us--gorph). But this, now this was a fucking theatre show with seats and payments and tickets and the whole deal.

I was excited and not thinking straight when I took my three drink tickets and cashed them all out at once. I rationalized that there would be no getting out of my seat until the end of the show so I wanted to have a few beers to last for the duration. I'm not entirely familiar with theatre etiquette.

Doug had his heavily medicated girlfriend, Bingo, running the merch table. She was sitting cross-legged on top of the table in a red bridesmaid dress. CDs and other Doug Stanhope related material encircled her. Bingo seems like a very genuine, unguarded woman, albeit a woman with a child-like personality playing dress up. I’d buy a CD but I’ve heard them all, and I don’t really know what to do with CDs anymore. Maybe CDs will see a renaissance in thirty years similar to the current resurgence of vinyl, so I covet the meagre collection that has survived the years. They sit there year after year collecting dust in boxes. Perhaps the strategic skip on the CD will be the new needle static.

I asked Bingo about the recent Howard Stern interview with her and Doug. I told her she did all the talking; not in a bad way, it was interesting and funny, but Doug had a bug up his ass and was unusually quiet; barely said a word. She said there definitely was something wrong with him but couldn't tell me. Well as a crazed fan that's about as many degrees as I've come to the Stern Show: talking to the blitzed out girlfriend of a semi-regular guest and legendary comedian. How I long to yell 'Baba Booey!' inappropriately while a beat reporter from CityTV is doing some story about racoons breaching bio-hazard waste bins and eating late-term abortions.

By the way, whatever happened to Harold Hussein? He was my favourite weather guy. He had the perfect Caribbean accent. Not too thick as to be parodic, not too light as to be nearly imperceptible. I always wondered . . . any relation? Nah, he's too warm and friendly! And that weather guy in the chopper, Darryl Dahmer? Couldn't possibly be related, right? Nah.  

I wasn't expecting the time of my life. I wasn't expecting a fucking Celine Dion song, but I was excited. We got to the line-up and Mickey and me had to piss like nobody’s business. Anytime I've been drinking and thrust into a socially confined situation, a line-up or a car, I just know I'll have to pee my brains out. There's no seal to break with me. That's an urban myth. I will pee and then in two minutes pee some more. I'm a goddamn pee machine. I came here to do two things: piss endlessly and kick some ass. We sauntered into a nearby alley and whipped our shooters out. Pisssing like rain dogs and sweating like pigs, we stood there and for whatever unknown evolutionary reason I started doing what friends will oft do when peeing together: cross swords.

"Dude, stop!" Mickey exclaimed, like crossing swords was a felony; we're already pissing illegally in an alleyway twenty feet from Spadina Ave, who cares if we're crossing swords? I laughed uproariously at this, like a mad child, and kept disrupting Mickey's even flow, and there was already some rent-a-cop punk in a silly uniform two sizes too big peeking his head out from around the corner. In unison we zipped up, our jean-teeth cutting through the sticky late summer heat like the frantic mating call of a long extinct bird.

Mickey put the vodka (disguised in a Naya watter bottle, naturally) into some exposed pipe jutting out of the theatre. It appeared to be a perfect fit. Save that for later . . .

Now we're waiting in line and it's just about what I suspected a Doug Stanhope line-up would be: two sets and three sets of balding, apathetic thirty-somethings with shirts futilely covering bulging guts and man boobs. The odd dame dragged out of the woodwork, forced to cancel a Friday night out with the girls to see some jerkoff named Doug Stanhope. Doug WHO? All her girlfriends say in a chorus. That was my initial impression, but as time wore on the pattern became more complex and there was a healthy mix of all types of people. A lawyer can laugh at the hypocrisy and madness of the world just like a tattoo artist—especially if a top shelf comic like Stanhope is delivering the product.

I just came into join a crowd, 'cause I had some time to kill. After all we're just the same—Humans! Humans! Humans! They're everywhere nowadays. But to see humans of the feminine variety at a Doug Stanhope show was definitely an aphrodisiac. I like me a woman with a sense of humour and an ass full of jelly and dumplings. Like a woman reading a book, a woman at a Doug Stanhope show signals long term mate potential.

The whole lot of us moved quite swiftly into the seven hundred seat capacity theatre. It was most definitely the Underground Cinema for I had no reception on my cell. That's probably why I never heard any moronic, idiosyncratic cellphone rings at any point in the proceedings. Genius! Put the theatre underground where it belongs. I mean it is supposed to be subversive, no? Unfortunately, the silence of reception-less phones was offset by the endless clanging of bottles barrelling their way down the aisles. It's great that the Underground Cinema provides booze because it puts you in the mood, but when people have nowhere to put their empties—and there're lots of empties at a Doug Stanhope show—they end up rolling around and constantly disrupting the show.

Now that's not to say one has to be slanted to enjoy this man. His flow is sharp and clear, reels you in with his drunken observations about life, laying the absurdity of it out for you in ways that seem so obvious after the fact. He doesn't set up one liners like Mitch Hedberg or Stephen Wright, he tells stories to the audience like a Woody Allen or Richard Pryor, the set punctuated with anecdotal stories of his life in Bisbee, AZ, a small town near the Mexican border. That chunk was particularly good but I was too drunk to remember the particulars. Doug ranted about the hypocrisy of Dr. Drew and the whole celebrity addict genre. The material was engaging and smart, laugh-out-loud funny at times. Doug has this cynical, myopic outlook on popular culture, but it’s never a whiny type of cynicism. It’s more of a let’s-mock-and-humiliate-these-cretins-because-they-deserve-it attitude. No matter how dark the material is, there’s always this undercurrent amongst the fans that we all share a common ground, a loose community of like minds, and that’s a beautiful thing to be a part of.

One of the benefits of drinking too much is that you can enjoy things twice for the first time. I'd love to see footage of the show. It would seem like a long forgotten dream. Gosh darn, I was so damn wasted. Generally I'm a fairly well behaved Joe Citizen. I'll sit there politely and act accordingly. But on this night I was far gone, driven over the line by slamming vodka before the show and keeping the engine going with a total of four beers during it. I think the adrenalin kept the alcohol at bay and I didn’t quite realize how drunk I was getting.

This was the most drunk I've been in some time and I always quietly say to myself not do anything too embarrassing. I'm always getting into trouble with those damn words when I get into the hard stuff. I was yelling out jibberish to Doug and I couldn't give a squirt of piss what anyone had to say about it. Some of my hilarious lines included: "Doug, you can skin my baby!" (a call back to an earlier joke) and, "Doug, when are you going to do Howard again?" (totally random and out of the blue). There was probably more. I shudder at the thought. I'm so cruel to myself. That damn booze. I'll wait until the crowd is oh so quiet and then blurt out my nonsense. Throughout the following week there were surging waves of douche chills crashing through my body. Sometimes an attack just creeps out of nowhere and it hits you. Time . . . only time heals douche chills, my friends, for now, some two weeks after the event I don't really care all that much. Well, beer helps too, my friends, so stay thirsty. 

Doug ended the show to a roaring standing ovation. The show was timed so well—didn’t go on for too long, but it wasn't too short, either. It left you wanting just one more taste.

I was lit up pretty good and headed out for a cigarette. I found myself standing outside amongst my fellow Stanhope fans. Ah . . . a man amongst his peers. The other day I read an interview with DS in LA Weekly and the interviewer put forth the assumption it was common knowledge that Doug Stanhope fans are comprised of 50% educated liberals and 50% complete fucking morons. I straddled the border precariously. One more beer and I could have easily slipped over to one side or the other.

You could feel it in the air—the night was a success with both crowds. It was plain as day that he killed, but you never know, I could have walked outside to a gaggle of indifferent hipsters and haters. I eased myself into a conversation with a few guys and we laughed about some of the jokes. "All new material...." "...Yeah, fucking killed it." After a few minutes I remembered that guys don't look so good when my belly's full of beer, but we enjoyed the built-in camaraderie that naturally exists with a niche performer like Stanhope and his brand of comedy.

I scanned the scene for my future ex-wife. I was having a difficult time standing still, kept wavering to and fro as if there was a roiling sea beneath my feet. I scolded myself for getting so drunk. My mind is sharp but my body is not so my credibility is shot to the moon. Mmmm . . . but what was this before me? A lovely young woman standing alone smoking a cigarette, just like me; we have so much in common already.

I walk up to her and say, "Greaaadd show, huh?" Goddamn stupid brain! Should’ve said something better than that! Even in my addled state I knew that she knew I was off my pisser, that she pegged me as a drunken creep immediately; I was slurring my words and swaying in the breeze. It’s damn near impossible to reverse a first impression when you're trying to reel in a nice catch. Ah well, doesn't matter all that much because in Toronto there's as many women as there are specks of sand on Cherry Beach. 

"Oh, hey there sweet cheeks, boy do I have ants in my pants for you! I'll buy that wine you like and cook that dinner you like, we can watch your show, not mine, and then for dessert I'll marinate my dip stick in your baby factory. Did you know that's what the Mormons do? They found a loophole in their favourite book—a sly way to cheat the system . . . they call it marinating. You just stick your penis in and let it sit there in the pussy juice. No loco motion. We can do that if you want."

She casually walked away, and when I eventually glanced in her direction she seemed to have disappeared. Another mermaid lost to the ebbing tide, and I, invariably, as noted in the beginning, rode home in a speechless cab.