Pale Rider

The humidifier burbled away in the corner and I stamped the sticky February slush off my desert boots and onto her Chat Noir doormat. It was the oddest place for a reading, an albino’s dorm room.  I met her in Anthro and rumour had it that this enormous blancmange of a woman had the power, a peaked seventh daughter of a seventh daughter.  She settled back onto her tiny bed and peeled bits of skin off her cankle. I handed her $20 and cut the cards. Holding them nose-distance from her eyes she told me that I would die young.

Image taken from Echostains.

Lemonade

Times were getting tough, honing wit and innovation. Sighting the NYC food truck invasion coupled with peoples blind faith, lotto and their relentless quest for answers through air, inspired. The lady rode around town with a bicycle basket full of fortune cookies. She sold them for a buck a piece . It was her way of making a living in a world gone mad with taking chances, chancing a glimpse to see their future. Let’s face it, it's a lot cheaper than calling one’s own personal professional psychic as seen on TV and a hell of lot more accurate.

Image from Lawsagna.

Half-hearted

That was the year I baked her a batch of gingerbread men, each with a cinnamon heart where their real hearts would be, back when I had yet to run out of ideas for Valentine’s Day and too often had way more time than money. That was my excuse, but I can’t remember hers.
     “I’m really sorry,” she said. “I didn’t have the time to get you anything, but I did think about buying a box of kid’s valentines and addressing them all to you.”
     That’s a cute idea, I thought.
     Maybe I can use it for my next girlfriend.

Photo by Debbi Smirnoff

Snake Charmer

We were poor undergraduates so our gifts were always handmade.  Once I substituted Harrison Ford’s face for his in a pastel version of the Raiders of the Lost Ark poster. He liked the Lescaux cave paintings so I created huge canvases for him.  In return he crafted me some lovely things. Plaster figurines, jewelry, carvings. When we broke up I packed up all his efforts in a Zellers bag and returned them. He kept all my drawings. It was a wrench because his work was beautiful. Gil may have been a psychopath, but he was also an artist. Like Hitler.

Image: Los Angeles Times

Generosity or Pay to Play

I stopped inhaling your kind words long ago. Those spoken, written in gifted books or greeting cards. But every very so often the evidence resurfaces. Now numb to their loving messages. Once beautiful, to merely black ink incisions on cream colored parchment leaving only indentations. Scars, really. As though written in a foreign language, this script was given to another who no longer exists. Erased, by the violent sweep of your lacerating tongue.
     I’ve scrubbed clean most traces of you. Sometimes wearing the bestowed jewels, loosing the elaborate story of your generosity when admired. A quick “thanks” replaced that illusion.

Image by: Cec LePage

The Bad Father

My dad was okay, I guess; but I never really did see him much. He went in on the train every morning before I got up and usually came home after bedtime. He did tell me once about his office building and promised to take me there and buy me lunch in the fancy restaurant at the top for my birthday, but he never did. And you know what? I thought those explosions were really cool, but one of the big kids at recess said to shut up, and I told him to shut up because my father was dead.
Frame grab from this forbidden trailer.

Gentrify This

In the Stone Age when we bought our crumbling houses Roncesvalles was cozily plebey with nary a douchie barbeque nor Thuet baguette to be had. But things change. Except Aris Place. The Strollertariat may go there for their ironic brunches, but this place belongs to that dying breed of Torontonian: The Old and Trashy White Guy. These Spongemonsters soak up beer and unabashedly order fries and gravy ’cause that’s what they ate when the Leafs were winning, eh?
     They are the forgotten souls who limped out of Mimico for greener pastures. But at least their heads aren’t up their arses.

Photo by Roy Schulze