The Fun Vampires

We used to take our son to Bat Nights at High Park. These were lovely, under marketed events where a specialist from the ROM acted as our guide and we all walked around in silence, watching as the bats flew along the tree line and listening to their distinctive click-clicking. That was until Parents Magazine advertized it as a kids’ activity and set up a marquee in the middle of the field. After that the only nocturnal beasties to show themselves were screaming babies, petrified by the dark, their older siblings Jonesing for ice cream and frustrated parents. No bats.

It’s worth it.

Don’t get me started on organic food; because really, like every other remotely worthwhile idea, it too has been hijacked by marketing in an effort to squeeze as much money as possible from an industry’s flagging product lines. Of course, there’s every chance it might actually be better for you in spite of everything they say; but it still takes a shitload of marketing to convince most people that the “organic” version of anything is really worth three times more than the familiar alternative sitting there on the shelf right next to it. But you know what? It’s worth it.

Reaping Bonus

After Dad died, Mom decided to move to Toronto. The big house was a lot of work, and she wanted to be closer to urban cultural activity. Although we were sad to give up our get-away destination on Georgian Bay, the change has mostly been good. It is this time of year when I miss that place most – Mom and all her neighbours had very productive vegetable gardens and at fall harvest they were always looking to unload their produce. We would be the beneficiaries of excess tomatoes, beans and zucchinis. Seems you cannot grow those things in small numbers.

Mrs. Bondy's Organic Owl-Pellets

“You’ve lost all perspective on how much things cost. ” Rich admonished me as I showed him the $6 packet of crackers I’d just bought at our local, extremely earnest Farmers' Market. And really, he’s right. When I was growing up in Tecumseh we had farmers' markets, but we called them ‘vegetable stands’. My friend Kathy still has one. No pinched-faced matrons buying their spawn $5 carob cookies, no ersatz hippies or reflexologists, just Mrs. Maitre waiting for Jeff to bring in the afternoon pick. I might buy stupidly expensive bread, but I won’t buy corn from a grocery store.

Priced Accordingly

There’s a tiny supermarket right up the street with narrow isles and tiny carts. For years it was a homely old IGA happily catering to all the little old ladies that live up and down Roncesvalles . . . until one day it closed, rebranded, and reopened as a shiny new Sobey’s Express pushing its “Ready Meals,” salads, and other food to go . . . all priced accordingly. So, now, if you’re considering cooking your own dinner, even from a can, for the money you’ll be spending for something as basic as carton of milk, you might as well be shopping at a convenience store.

The Price of Love

They met at a party and went out to a dance club from there. He showed her his co-op on Park Avenue, loaded with antiques. The following week they went out for dinner and the proposition was made. All that could be yours, he said, along with my influential connections in the crème of New York society. She said, let me think. They had another date a few days later. He called first – what do you think? I’m still thinking, she replied. Answer now, or the date is off, he told her. No, the price was too steep, she thought.

Cheap at Twice the Price

Either G. Gordon Liddy or Timothy Leary said that the difference between Western and arranged marriages is that Western society may marry for love but spouses in successful arranged marriages love who they marry. Regardless which knucklehead said this, I’m sure he heard it from someone else. Still, wouldn’t we all like to hand pick our children’s spouses? Think of it: no tarts, no harridans, no thickies. Secretly, we’ve chosen one for Dan. And in keeping with tradition we will request the same bride price Gerry wanted for me: A Molson Canadian Pleasure Pack and a packet of El Productos.

Disco Bob

In my last year of high school, perms were all the rage, but Robert Cheung was one of the few guys who actually got one . . . so we started calling him Disco Bob. Every February, the Girls’ Athletic Association would sell carnations to be delivered on Valentine’s Day, and that year Bob purchased one for every girl in our grade so that no one would feel left out. Style and charm, but it did him no good, because the next year he invited us all to a banquet to announce his marriage to a nice Chinese girl his parents had found.

Cupid’s Arrow

Parents got a class list and instructions that no child should be left out. It is hard to convince a grade one girl that she has to sign Valentines cards for boys who torment her and she hates. Back in my day it was an exercise in humiliation. The cards were inserted into a decorated box with a slot on top. Then the teacher drew them out, announcing the names of the person on each card. Some kids made many trips and had a huge stack piling up on their desks. Others sat at their desks with a paltry few.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre

Scott was my first bonafide boyfriend. I bought his Valentine’s Day card weeks in advance and filled it with romantic messages, all in a tiny crabbed hand so as to pour as much teenaged emotion as I could onto the space provided. Then I baked him a giant heart-shaped cookie festooned with M&Ms that read “I love you.” I presented him with the gifts and sat back, awaiting mine. Nothing. “Oh wait” he said and ran home. In his haste he stepped on the cookie crushing it to bits. He returned with a Ding Dong from his mother’s kitchen. Git.

Will you be my Valentine, or you?

My career as a Casanova began and ended on the Valentine’s Day I sent a card each to two particular young ladies I fancied. One card was forward enough, but two felt a tad promiscuous, and sending both girls the same card, even if I had made each by hand, seemed just a little bit tacky. But you know what? It worked! A fifty per cent response rate, which, although I was happy with what I got, left me thinking that maybe I should have cast a wider net . . . and wondering what I’d have done had they all said yes.

The Rotation

Being handsome, cultured and wealthy, he got away with it. He had a different woman for every night of the week except Monday, when he took a break. He told women right up front when he met them. When he lost one woman, he would find another. The newest acquisitions got Tuesday, and the others moved up the rotation. If a woman stuck around long enough she could end up in the coveted Saturday spot. After three dates without sleeping with him, women would be eliminated.
Sleeping with him would be like sleeping with all the others, I told him.

Puppy Love

Rich calls it American-style dating—where someone has a Friday night date with one person, and then spends Saturday with another. Who does this? Maybe if you’re Mary Richards or The Fonz, but really? Most of us dog paddle our way through the stream of serial monogamy and we’re damn happy to have that. In fact, we are downright grateful. Ride on any form of mass transit and you’ll see that the uglier the couple, the more publically demonstrative. There they are, fresh from a Medieval-fair clinging to each other like their own perfume ad for really smelly people.

Just Dating

After we’d been going out for a while, Alison sat me down quite seriously and suggested we cool things down a bit and go back to just dating, which is what I thought we’d been doing all along . . . certainly not in the same way the Happy Days gang all wanted a date with Mary Lou Milligan, but neither particularly close to picking out our silver pattern. The problem, I think, was that I was just one of the many young men who’d responded to her personal ad, and she was starting to worry about all those great leads getting cold.

Self Love

Oscar was one of the most confident guys Joan had ever dated. They met when he simply started dancing with her at a pub night at college. He just assumed she would fall for him, and Joan could not help herself; he was strangely beguiling. After awhile, though, his self-centred behavior brought her to tears. During the relationship post-mortem with Sandy, Joan happened to mention how Oscar oddly had the only mirror in his bathroom perched on the back of his toilet. “Now there’s a man who loves himself,” said Sandy. “Oh,” Joan gasped, in realization of the truth.

Buttacelli's Venus

We have a beautiful new bathroom with heated slate floors and a large shower enclosed in glass. It’s an airy space filled with reflective surfaces. But, I’ve since discovered it’s really a venue for masochists. If properly positioned in the stall I can see my reflection from three sides. If I look away, another triptych of chub greets me in the huge mirror that runs the length of the counter. Before this, when staying in hotels I used to wonder what sort of sadistic design freak sticks a mirror on the wall immediately next to the toilet. Now I know.

Unlike Any Other

Having cornered the market on the most popular synthetic emotions, the cybernetic division at Sony decided to investigate the commercial possibilities of antisocial behaviour. Sure, most people wanted a robot that was happy and well adjusted, but hadn’t a fine-tuned misanthropy, to choose just one example, resulted in some of the most outstanding philosophy ever considered? The first models, unfortunately, immediately upon realizing how much they despised mankind, would logically and methodically set about putting as much space as possible between themselves and the consumer . . . until the development of a simple masochistic upgrade forced the poor things to stick around.

The Hen or the Egg?

You have to be a bit of a misanthrope to be able to properly observe the human condition. Those who live comfortably within mainstream society often do not notice the foibles and faults of humanity – it is all just normal to them. It is the misfits who exist on the fringes who are able to identify the irony of life and the hypocrisy of human behavior. And it takes a certain amount of guts to point such things out. Guts and gall that most ‘nice’ people do not possess. I wonder. What comes first? Living on the fringes, or misanthropy?

I like you, I really, really, like you

I was a huge fan of Mordecai Richler’s work until I watched a biography of the writer and thought he sounded like a real asshole. It’s not that he stopped writing brilliant books, I just couldn’t stick him anymore. The same thing happened after I learned that P. G. Wodehouse was a misanthrope. It ruined Bertie Wooster, and seemed as though Plum was laughing at me rather than with me. It is childish to want to like the people who provide us with our entertainment, but I can’t help it. I still wish I’d never heard Margaret Atwood read aloud.

One More Solitude

I was born in Montréal, within walking distance of the very best bagels in the country, but I must’ve been nine, on a long bus trip home from New York, before I saw my first Hasidic Jew. For all I know, back in the ’60s, Mount Royal Protestants didn’t even eat bagels and probably never mixed with the Outremont Jews, and I was already scared of the French, so when confronted with two boys—my age, even—with their little beanies and those odd curly sideburns, I chose instead to spend the trip playing cards with a couple of . . . girls!