Tag Archives: punches

Visit Exciting Cabbagetown!

The Bad, Toronto, You Stupid Dick

Here is my copy for the local BIA’s upcoming flyer, to drum up interest in the Cabbagetown area. A place in which I live.

rotted-cabbageCabbagetown – Discover It!

Shop Cabbagetown! With over 200+ stores in our village you’ll be sure to find all your Chinese knock off needs! Visit the stores you have to push past cheap crap merchandise to actually get into the store to shop at! It’s quaint! It’s like the shop owners are saying “this is the shit we wish you’d steal!” After the boutiques, why not visit the Frills de Non Food Emporium where the ever beautiful check out staff will berate you for losing your wallet, or ignore your very presence by holding lane crossing conversations over your very head! Duck and cover!

Meet the Locals! Stop in at the hub of activity known as “The Laundromat!” where the sign outside proclaims they expertly handle Jambo sized loads! Feel free to eavesdrop on the colourful twosome from one of the many halfway homes, as they discuss how difficult it is to find “good cigarette butts” these days because everyone is cleaning up after themselves! Laugh at the antics of the Scooter Family as mother, daughter and other daughter try to negotiate the tiny corridor of washers in their three electrified scooters… at the same time! Swear words and hilarity ensue!

Street Performances Nightly! Got your dancing shoes on? Great! Because the night is the best time to evade punches at the streetcar stop as you defend yourself from fat bastards who insist on slurring your sexual orientation (regardless of what it is). Watch as they boozily toss punches like Mardi Gras beads! You’ll get caught up in the fun and become the show as people stop and stare at your street adventure! I hope you like to Tango, because this is going to go on every time the EI cheques come in! If dancing isn’t your forte, why not just people-watch from a safe distance (The Annex?) at the fine establishment that serves up the city’s cheapest draft beer and some chemical enhancements, if you know the right person to ask! Sing along with the decades old songs that get croaked like a liquored up frog, well past the 11pm noise bylaw – Wee! We don’t care if you live near by! You should be partying too!

Cabbagetown Festival Got something to sell fresh of a missing skid from your brother’s uncle in law’s shipping company? Hungry for roasted corn? And more roasted corn? Did we mention roasted corn? You can get it all and more at this yearly community event! Hundreds of homes open up their front lawns to the area’s largest garage sale! Get a scoop on what your neighbour thinks is re-sellable – like an open box of Q-Tips! Or Atari 2600 cartridges of Frogger! (Not open to people who live above stores in the BIA area)

What are you waiting for? Cabbagetown is waiting for you!

The Lesson: First for Everything

Personal Bits

Two upper middle class, housework-shunning, career women sit down to lunch, order martinis and the topic of their children come up. A common complaint is discovered and a plan is hatched.

When I was 13 (ish), my mother announced I would be going out on a date. Imagine the internal spit take that generated. My mother… the matchmaker! I was appalled for a moment at the thought of her talking about my inability to socialize with strangers. And my social ineptitude… Wait… What? With a girl?

Holyshitwaitaminnit… A date with a girl??! Would I have to kiss her?

At this time I had already had sex with a man. I knew it was right, my hard wired brain was just doing what it was genetically told to do. But somewhere in my chest, a voice said “Oh fuck it! Give it a whirl!” So when you hear earfucks saying “Gay is learned!” or “Gay can be behaviorally eradicated from your system!” punch those fuckers in the nuts for me. It makes me physically ill to think that people can “cure” you by rote (or disfiguring electroshock). I digress. I decided to give it a whirl, despite the huge fear that was in my goolies.

She was my age and slightly gangly and while she was not the most popular girl in school, she was smart. Near genius smart for her age. I was more intimidated by that, than her sex. My mom stood just outside of earshot (which, by the way is physically impossible) while I made the call:

“Hello Dorcas…?”

Let’s stop right there. I am sure the reason Dorcas was so intelligent and wise beyond her years was purely based on the need to constantly explain to people her name was not a vehicle for child-like slurs. Get it out of your system now, I’m sure she had heard them all well before she was 5 years old in numerous playground and recess gatherings. Dork Ass; Door Knob; Dork Face; Dumb Ass etc. Years after our date, I had seen her verbally rip the skin off of some drunk fucker who called her out about her name, during a illegal teen drinking party. While her words were venomous, her eyes were dead set and almost blasé. She had her name defense response honed to an art.

Of course, her name was the first thing we talked about on our date. I thought I asked politely but my question still riled her. “It’s from the bible,” she told me, “Not that I’m religious or read it at all.” We then tore into how embarrassing our mothers were: from naming conventions to matchmaking. We were friends then.

But throughout the evening there was a voice in my head. “You gonna kiss her when this is over?”

I admit that the night was a blur. I do know we went to Star Wars. I do remember her telling me that hand holding was not required. I do remember at the end of the evening, after walking her home, standing at her door, (thankfully without any parent in view – we lived in an age when 13 year olds could walk the streets unattended) we did kiss. I think I kissed her teeth.

We became friends after that. Like “holy Christ we will never, EVER talk of this again” kind of friends. When Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back came out, we went on another “date” much to the amazement of our parents. I remember my Mom reeling like being hit by a slap when I mentioned Dorcas and I were going out on another date, three years after the last. We laughed hysterically at the end of the evening when I kissed her hand.

Two upper middle class, housework-shunning, career women sit down to lunch, order martinis and awkwardly avoid talk of their children.

England Pre-Memory – Punch In The Gut

Art, England, Personal Bits

Like George Lucas I’m going to jump back to a time before my move to England with a couple stories that inspired me to travel across the pond. Enjoy!

I’m 18 years old and I’m sitting in line with other hopefuls at OCAD (then The Ontario College of Art). I’ve not decided entirely what I want to do with my life and my father is getting nervous that he’s going to have a live-in son until he shuffles off this mortal coil. I do know I want to stay in the art field but I had not decided exactly where I was going to take my talents. My portfolio, chock full of wildly coloured pastels of muscular torsos I had been drawing for months, sits on my bouncing knee. Compared to the rest of the hopefuls, my manner of dress is utterly “Sears” to their “Queen Street West”: one small girl is decked out entirely in leather in her shock Rough Trade look, her hair teased higher than my hopes. This is 1983, remember. I’m there to sign up for their Fine Arts program and let that take me wherever I wanted to go.

I enter the room and here is where my memory shatters up to a point: The room is narrow, almost another hallway. It’s dark, or I sort of recall that it was dark. There are three people at a desk and two look through my portfolio. I was so nervous that I didn’t catch who everyone behind that desk was. Only now, in my 40s, someone told me that one of the people looking at my work was a student and I assume the one not looking at my portfolio was a teacher or admissions officer. I do remember they asked all the questions.

What were my interests, favorite art period, method, incentives, history, my personal history, more personal history? Suddenly it was over. Fast. They breezed through my work and shut the portfolio. Not a good sign.

Then one of them laid it on the line (and I’m paraphrasing here): I was a privileged middle class white kid who had not experienced anything in life, certainly not enough to create any kind of meaningful art and that I should get out of Ontario and see real art. It was like a punch in the gut. The fact that I was living in my Dad’s basement and working nights at a hotel and had never travelled further than , made the OCAD’s assessment of me sting a little more.

They were right. If I wanted to be a serious artist I had to go see the real thing. Including all life’s little roadbumps that came up getting to those galleries. Of course, for weeks I was utterly crushed and moped around like my life was over.

Then my sister called. She asked how I was and offered words of encouragement and then suggested that I move to England under the Student Work Abroad Program. I can remember vividly how a light came on over my head. This is exactly what I needed to do.

Walter and Perry

Overheard, Queer stuff

Home Movies - Walter and PerryAt my gym, there are two guys who are dressing just as SharkBoy and I are arriving at the locker room. I will call them Walter and Perry, based on the two 8 year old homosexual couple from Brendon Small’s understated cartoon masterpiece: Home Movies. The cartoon Walter and Perry transcend homosexuality. They bring it to a new level of devotion, well into the “creepy” zone. Like couples wearing matching soft focus kitten shirts in Wal Mart.

Our gym Walter and Perry, however, are not as funny.

While I suspect they’re gay, they yammer on about stupid shit that may or may not identify them as being gay, while throwing in vapid “guy talk” that completely destroys their butch facade. They think this is hilarious and have their volume set so that the rest of the locker room can hear how much fun they’re having. Once I saw them outside the gym, throwing punches at each other in a manly, “lookit us be butch!” kind of way. I can think of many other ways to look manly, starting with passive aggressiveness.

Walter, the short 5’5″ muscle guy, obviously overcompensating for his height, actually struts around the locker room with his towel strategically placed just below the start of his ass crack. Hot? Not! This kind of thing might work at a bath house, but in a public gym? Yerk! Perry, an average height guy and the “brains” of the two, creates the suggestive butch-shattering situations to see how far he can push Walter. Like this little gem overheard this morning, two isles over:

Perry: Move your ass. (Pause) I bet you’d do it for money.
Walter: What? Fucked in the ass?
Perry: Yeah! You’d totally go do it for $5000

I have no clue why he chose $5000. I know plenty of straight guys who would not even touch buttsex at 5x that amount, let alone gay guys who would pay that much to have it done to them.

Walter: You wish! Nah man. Not me.
Perry: Come on. You wouldn’t do it for …5 minutes for $5000?
Walter: No man!

There’s a pause. Then some mumbling.

Not sure which: It’s all about girth, not length.