Toronto’s Seventh-Oldest Paperboy

In 2017, I started delivering the West End Phoenix . . . because at 56, all I really wanted was the simplicity again of being nothing more than a paperboy. Eight years later, I’m still at it. In fact, just last Saturday, I collected a pile of 2026 calendars from the office; but I’ve been sitting on them, because I think it’ll be a lot more fun to present my forty-six subscribers with brand-new calendars tomorrow, on New Year’s Day.

     Today, however, I’m supposed to be writing about some eccentric I’ve encountered in the neighbourhood, but damned if I can think of one.

Inspired by Subway Encounter and Microneedled. Photo by the author.

Microneedled

Skiz and I were having pedicures when we were invaded.  By one of those trendy sleeping-bag/bedspread tarps. It wore a lady. A Mini Her alongside, fresh nails a-sparkling.
     “Excuse me . . .” she said, “. . . but you two are sooooooo cute! Would you like me to take your picture?”
     Now, usually my intrepid bestie can immediately sniff out an ageist remark, but she just chirped, “Yes!! We’ve been friends for 45 years!”
     I recovered and managed, “can we take your picture?” Phones exchanged and dispatched, the pair lumbered out onto Roncesvalles, stuffed with Yuletide rapture and Oeko-Tex certified, 100% Post-consumer Recycled Polyester.

Inspired by Subway Encounter. Photo by Some Rando in a Sittingsuit.

Subway Encounter

I glanced up and noticed the woman slathering Nivea onto her chin. The seats around her were empty. Next time I looked, she’d worked it in and spread more onto her forehead. Was she okay? Or disturbed? She stood abruptly, lurched towards me in the doorway, and used the window as a 3/4-length mirror to massage Nivea into her hair with her fingertips. She made fleeting eye contact. “It’s really good gel.”

      “Wow,” I said. “Amazing. Who knew?”

      “This is me,” I said as we rolled to a stop. 

      “You’re a nice gentleman.”

      “You’re nice too,” I said, and fled.

Inspired by life. AI image by Putra.

Rant

I remember when all I had to remember was my home address and my seven-digit land-line telephone number. Now I’ve got hundreds of online accounts each one needing a unique password—because heaven forbid I use the same one. That’s just asking to be hacked. And don’t forget to change the passwords occasionally and to include random characters—letters (capital and non), numbers and specials. And then there’s all the card numbers and PINs and expiry dates and CVCs. Sometimes I so long to go back to an analogue world. Sometimes I want to talk to an actual bank teller. 

Inspired by Saturdays, Sundays and Holidays.

Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays

On July 28, 1972, you might’ve seen a full-page ad in the paper that read, “Tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. the Royal Bank will open and never close again.” That particular tomorrow was a Saturday, way back when most banks closed at 3:00 p.m. (maybe 5:00 on a Friday) and were most certainly locked up tight on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. Twenty-four-hour push-button banking had come to Toronto, and that summer at the CNE, if you didn’t mind waiting in line, you might even have tried it for free at the Better Living Centre, maybe even won a five-dollar coupon!

Now, this was supposed to be the story of an 11-year-old boy—brand-new to the big city—who one Sunday afternoon that September, just happened across the Bankette they’d installed at the east end of the Colonnade on the south side of Bloor. I don’t know how long he stood there watching one person after another just doing their push-button banking, but I do remember he did not want to leave. It was like watching an episode of Star Trek—a glimpse of a future where you could get all the money you ever wanted just by pushing some buttons.

But then, after all that time I’d spent checking the Might’s Directory to verify the exact location of that particular machine, digging through the Toronto Star archives to confirm the date, then searching for images of what those ATMs actually looked like back then, and of course rebuilding the Bankette logo from the small fuzzy photo someone had posted online, I began to feel badly for that weird scrawny kid, who wouldn’t realize just how weird he has been all his life, didn’t realize it until more than 50 years later when he came here to write it all down.

Inspired by Saturday Afternoon and Sunday Morning. Bankette logo based on a photo from this page. Keypad photo by Alina Kushnarenko. Money slot based on a photo by Andrzej Rostek.

I was born with a plastic tree in my house

Pip the Cat came from a hoarding situation in North Bay. That’s all we knew until this week, when a pal told me that in a six-degrees-of-separation way, she may have a personal connection to that very house. When I volunteered for a dog rescue, I did a home visit to a hoarder. The adoption failed, but I still can’t unsee her situation. Yet addictions come in many forms. I personally fight my Bowerbird tendencies: Artisanal pottery, vintage Christmas bulbs, festive garlands, quarter-sawn oak.  It stems from my trailer park roots and a longing for a pedigree that isn’t mine.

Inspired by Sunday Morning and Substitute by The Who. Photo by the author.

Sunday Morning

Inside my skull, every heartbeat strikes like a timpani mallet. Outside, it is blindingly bright. Sunlight pierces my eyeballs with the force of a rapier thrust. I close them in repentance. Whose idea was the tequila? I am shaky, clammy with crapulence. My stomach rumbles, portending rebellion, a traitorous uprising. The dog whimpers, wanting to go out. I breathe in. I breathe out. On the air, there is evidence of canine flatulence. Eyes still shut, I reach for the Tylenol, fingers scrabbling with the child-proof lid. I breathe in. I breathe out. If I remain perfectly still, it doesn’t hurt. 

Inspired by Saturday Afternoon. Photo by And-One.

Saturday Afternoon

Outside the tiniest of snowflakes float. Inside, sunlight from the window hits the dust motes hovering above the hot air vent. The furnace has kicked in, rumbling melodically from the basement. The fridge hums. The cat on my lap purrs. I flip a page in my book. I notice the soft sound of my rough fingertips moving over paper. I breathe in. I breathe out. A gust of wind outside now. The snow scatters—the last of the autumn leaves dance. The cat shifts her weight, resettling on me. I breathe in. I breathe out. I turn the next page.

Inspired by the afternoon. Photo by NetPix.

Close Enough

By the time I decided to shave off my first real beard, I’d pretty much forgotten how—mostly because I’d started growing it not long after I started shaving at all, and years after my father had left, taking with him any benefit I might’ve gained from his example of proper technique.

Without that, I attacked my face with an ignorance fed mostly by advertising that emphasized the importance of closeness, shaving this way and that, until all trace of stubble was gone, leaving me with a painful appreciation of how some things are better when they’re just close enough.

Inspired by Leda and the Pelican. Image by Gemini, proving that the AI doesn't know how human males shave any better than I did back then.

Leda and the Pelican

Some women have good legs. Others have nice hair. I have a beautiful décolletage. Despite a decade of sunny seasons as an archaeologist. Not a line nor wrinkle. I slather sunscreen and cosset it in silk scarves, serum it, and gua sha it. But here’s something: I've just been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. So now I take a pill every morning for the rest of my life. Because if my dead thyroid was left to moulder, it would be replaced by a goitre. A FUCKING GOITRE. I’m sure there’s a Greek or German cautionary tale about vanity in this somewhere.

Inspired by Let’s Not Talk. Image of my 63-year-old neck. No filter, no goitre.

Game Day Rituals

In pursuit of sporting greatness, I could not rely on talent, of which, the evidence demonstrated, I had little. Luck, then. To attract it, I employed intricately constructed stratagems. Example: I pulled my left skate on, then the right. Then I laced the left one up, then the right. 

      This never led to athletic stardom, but it did leave me with life-long rituals to follow during championship runs—like wearing the team jersey, t-shirt, and fan socks. And never laundering them during a win streak. These necessary measures have led to repeated tensions in the household at otherwise joyous moments. 

Inspired by an epic playoff and World Series run (thank you, Blue Jays). Image posted by the Toronto Blue Jays.

Whose Home Turf is it?

One drizzly March day, laden with shopping bags, I reached my street corner when I noticed a group of women gabbing on the sidewalk across from me—totally oblivious to anything around them including their dogs barking furiously and pulling on their leads. I vaguely wondered at this, then rounded the corner and saw the reason: a large stray—no, my mind registered—a coyote, looking wet, pissed off and bedraggled. I froze, but it took no notice of me. The light turned green. The cars stopped. And it sauntered across the intersection towards High Park and out of sight.

Inspired by Oooh, Ahhh. Photo by Harry Collins.

Ooooh, Ahhhh

At an intersection in the hood, people are mesmerized. Jaws are dropping. Arms straightened out, fingers pointing. They are halting their cars, scooters and strollers to get viral photos.
     Standing in the street in clusters, gazing and smiling, in wonderment and disbelief. A site for their eyes to behold.
     It’s not the moon, a glorious pink cloud sunset or the incredible rich colours of the changing leaves. No, it’s a giant inflatable pumpkin. A Costco limited-edition private stock. Engulfing a corner lot and causing a seemingly stirring of the soul.
     Wake up from brain rot. Forget 67. Join a luddite renaissance movement.

Inspired by this week’s events. Illustration by Ross Hendrick.

Midsommar

How lucky was she to have a boyfriend so cool and so confident that he didn’t care what the dullards around him might think, who had such a body that looked good in whatever he wore, and who wasn’t afraid to show it off now and then?

So, to hell with Shakespeare in the Park, and to hell with everyone staring as he picked his way down the crowded hillside. But most of all, to hell with her having to explain all the time why her boyfriend was wearing a skirt.
     “It’s not a skirt,” she sneered. “It’s a sarong.”

Inspired by Lifelong Pals. Image by Bing.

Lifelong Pals

A band of rogues, were they, everything a ribald brag or pun-ish diss. Fact or fiction, it mattered not. Lewd mockery and exaggeration were their tools of discourse. This, they would always be: lusty, with no time for foolish love. They’d never waste time on feelings.

       They married, divorced, retired. Eventually they did discuss feelings—in their knees, backs and hips, which hurt. Harkening back to carnal conquests, Mercutio deemed these “war wounds.” Over beers, they gabbed about their ailments, though never about ED or male pattern baldness. It went entirely unremarked that Benvolio had an impressive set of man-breasts.

Inspired by Let’s Not Talk. Image from Baz Lurhman’s 1996 film, Romeo + Juliet, Act 2 Scene 4.

Like, I’m Going To Tell You

Once, when I worked at a hospital Charitable Foundation drafting fundraising reports with impossible deadlines, I found in the break room a box of buttons left there by HR. It was an employee wellness initiative. On each button was a different mood statement: “Grateful,” “Grumpy,” “I need a hug.” We were to pin on a button to share how we felt that day. I laughed, eyeing the one that said “Overwhelmed.” No one wore any of the buttons and a month later when I asked to work remotely so I could take care of my ailing mother, they let me go.

Inspired by Let’s Not Talk. Image based on a blank button by PhotoStockImage.

Let’s Not Talk

My workplace wants to start a dialogue about menopause. Why? Purportedly because we need to de-stigmatize it. For fuck’s sake it’s not an EDI issue. I get it on one hand, but do I really want to talk about menopause and my vagina at work? Not particularly. Nor do I want my male colleagues evaluating my thermodynamics at the office or worse, thinking there is a cohort of us running around with brain fog unable to perform. Should we next talk about andropause and shrivelling penises? I can see the headline, TSE crashes in the wake of shrinking confidence.

Inspired by Pricks and Stones. Image by Marysol Ra.

Because it Might be his Nickname.

If you’ve even heard of Nelson Algren, it’s likely because of his Three Rules of Life: “Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom’s. Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.”

I can certainly understand—if not relate to—One and Three, but I’d like everyone to know that Mom’s Restaurant in Midland was one of the high points of my last visit to cottage country.
     Still, having invalidated Rule Two, allow me to humbly offer a replacement: “Never sit for a shave from a barber named Nick.”

Inspired by Pricks and Stones. Photo by the author.

Pricks and Stones

We all had nicknames growing up. Mine was Peanut Head, mercifully truncated to Peanut by about grade four. Through Rich I’ve realized that nobody does nicknames like the Brits. He went to Sir Montgomery of Alamein, an all-boys school, so you can imagine. His soubriquet was Liam, a Delphic reference to a particular left-legged play-hogging footballer. There was also a kid who had a plummy voice. He’d been christened John Simpson, but Monty’d Nom Nimnom. Apparently, he did not care as he was a popular chap. He was also the fastest runner at the school. Fortissimus Quisque Tantum Superstes, dear boy.

Inspired by Such Potential. Painting—Harrow School Football Field—by Thomas M. Henry, 1887.

Such Potential

Roger often thought about the band, and what they could have been, if creative differences hadn’t derailed them. They always argued over everything. Even their name. At the very beginning, Johnny inexplicably insisted on “The Cuddles,” but that sucked for a bad-boy thrash metal band. The other guys came up with some great ideas. One Eyed Snake. The Hairy Reems. Wank. The Wad. Spunk. Spunkwad. Peter and the Pud Pullers. But they just couldn’t decide. If only they’d settled on one, and got on with the music. They peaked one Saturday in ’84, playing air guitar down in Eric’s basement.

Inspired by Star Bright. Image by Virginia Turbett.