Sandcastles Guarded by Seahorses

There is a public school nestled in downtown Toronto's Regent Park district, an area my sister won't yet drive her BMW Z3 through because she thinks it's too dangerous. Regent Park is subject to the city's latest stab of gentrification. Once in place, she and all her neighbours will likely practice their retail therapy there. By guess of architecture, my method of carbon dating, the school's conception was in the 1920's, an era I imagine to have been prosperous, full of flapper girls and mid-level Capone wannabe's. History is written by Hollywood.

The school yard can't exactly be described as a concrete jungle. A jungle would suggest areas to swing from; high precipices in which to lob objects, be reigned the title King of the Castle, All Else Dirty Rascals. The city block sized area, which I'm sure once had a playground, is presently poured concrete with giant, trench-like cracks which nearly every child hurdles in order to save their mother's lower lumbar. In one small area there is a mowed but never watered thatch of once green grass.

There are:
No colourful tubes to burn thighs itching to slide.
No monkey bars to consider life from a different angle.
No swings to give a child the excitement of flight.
No opportunity to escape or dream of a better life.

Fatty: I don't know if you'll want to come, but...

My darling Fatty, the sweet love of my life, was asked by his mother to come along on a field trip with her class of combined Junior and Senior kindergarten kids. It wasn't a request to be a watchful grown-up or surrogate parent. The design was to take photographs of these kids, later creating a sort of card or commemorative item they could take home. A passing year with physical evidence that at least one good thing had happened to them.



Whether you're trying out your best Bob Fosse inspired Frankenstein routine, or delighted by the first blown bubble you ever tried to capture, but discovered was a little too elusive, it's important to have someone photodocument your life.

I love photographing children. They are the only sect with whom a documenter stands a chance in capturing unabashed fun.

The lessons of guilt, shame and self-consciousness haven't sunk in yet.

Fatty and I went armed with 2 256MB media cards in our respective cameras.



No extra weight was carried home in my bike's basket, but both memory cards were full by day's end.



The field trip's destination was the Beach. The Beach is capitalised because it is not only a habitually raked, sandy oasis reminiscent of tanning stations in one of the Florida's Keys, but it is also a district around town. The area is not exclusive, but the residents are mostly white, fairly affluent and tend never to leave their neighbourhood. The general idiom is We have everything here. Why would we leave? Many people, including the natives, call it The Bubble. Once you're in... urine.

The children Fatty's mom teaches are Regent Park area residents. No parents outside the district request an out-of-district transfer to her school. Fatty's mom could have had her pick of any number of schools in better areas with less occurrences of crime, reported or otherwise. Throughout her career she has chosen inner-city schools because they are where attention is needed the most; where the lack of funding is at best frustrating especially if one is prone to want to help. To make a difference.

Some of the kids have never been to the beach. Have never seen the water.

The children's parents work multiple jobs to try to keep their heads afloat. Try to keep the tax simian off their back. Try to keep their habits and rage unknown, or at least manageable. Many parents send these children off to school with nothing in their bellies, or more insidous, they make their child clutch a dry piece of toast, bitten once, as evidence that they are being provided for. That things are swell at home. That they are fit parents.

Fatty's mom had a created list of requirements pinned to every child's shirt to take home days prior to prepare for the field trip. To stress the importance, all the required supplies were in bold caps:

HAT
SUNSCREEN
EXTRA JACKET
TOWEL
KNAPSACK
LUNCH
WATER

At the long, green, outdoor lunch table there was at least one child whose parent neglected Item #6.

Parent/ Volunteer: Does anyone have an extra sandwich for Moosa?

Moosa, whose imaginary world is incredibly rich and rewarding to make up for the neglect he receives at home.

Moosa: I have a Seahorse in my knapsack.
Fatty's Mom: You do? May I see it?
Moosa: No, not right now.
Fatty's Mom: Well, you know, with Seahorses they need food and water.
Moosa: Oh, there's food and water and a LIGHT!
Fatty's Mom: Oh, well, that's wonderful, then.

Fatty loved Moosa.

Fatty is a natural with children. Particularly with boys. A boy could be 2 or 92 years old. It doesn't matter. They all have a very special affinity towards him. With 4-6 year old kindergarten kids, the affinity is demonstrated by Jet Li high flying kicks and punches and, when thought particularly highly of, the occasional hocking of a lugie is launched.

For 15 years I was scared to death of children. I masked this fear by saying aloud that kids bugged me. They were little irritants, little monsters. But really, I didn't know how to behave around them anymore. I did once. But then I received a local anesthetic at 17 years old. Alone. Shaken. The most violated I'd ever felt. I had life sucked out of me. And an egg salad sandwich afterwards, recompensing my sacrifice.

For a long time I couldn't look at my 18 year old niece because she was a constant reminder of what could have been. What I gave up. What I couldn't possibly have. Beyond not receiving any support, I would have instead received further emotional vanquishment, greater banishment and armfuls more ostracism at home. 17 years old. I couldn't have done it on my own. Not very well, anyway. The strength of my familial web? One sweeping hand could have demolished the clinging trappings of a creature's final imprisonment.

To be accepted and loved by a child feels like the kind of ultimate purity and goodness redolent of God smiling upon me. But how could I be accepted? It wasn't really me I was presenting. It was Me-Trying-Too-Hard. Children, true seers, are repellant of insincerity and exaggerated feeble attempts. Tail between legs, I hung out with the parents more. The consolation prize. And hated every minute of it. And then I was given 8 year old Megan, whom I had a week to get comfortable with. Who fell in love with me as much as I did her. Megan. Daughter of Walter, my second eldest brother who has completely estranged himself from the family.

Walter and his then new family were living in the Rocky mountains. While in Toronto, according to our father, Walter would never make much out of his life. He was a born loser, an embarrassment. Walter was the apple of my eye. Post post-secondary school, Walter made his way west. Clean living to compensate for a filthy past. But it wasn't the memory of the harsh, immobilizing words; it wasn't the repeated physical fights that would often lead to broken glass doors and tissue invisibly scarred for life that caused the final act of divorcing himself from his immediate family. For decades he tried to understand my father and his ways. He too had become a father. He forgave him his injustices and flagrant abusive behaviour in favour of a father's acceptance of a son. Of paternal love. He gained it for a while, too. Until he stopped trying too hard.

Actually, he just stopped trying altogether. All the instances of his father never being there for him, or rather being there but shooting down his every effort, came as a culminated realisation, one in which entailed Walter to give up any false hopes of hearing, just once, "Son, I'm proud of you."

Pride.
It's just a reflection back.
An opportunity for self-congratulation.


Most of the people I am close with grew up not having everything. They were secretly want for many things, but their family's income-predisposition didn't allow for trips to Disneyland or the best shoes or birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese. I think kids that don't have everything, but do have more than just the basic requirements (healthy food, decent shelter, clean clothes and an occasional glance from the parents), can grow up with more of a sense of wonder, potential joy and far more general appreciation than kids who had everything.



When Fatty was doing one of his astounding magic tricks for a couple of >4' lads, though delighted, they never pestered him to do it again. Do it again! They didn't ask. They were simply happy with what he gave them.

I'd asked my future mother-in-law if she had favourites in her classroom. Yes, she had. I don't think it's right to choose favourites, mostly because I hate the idea of a parent being more partial to one child over another, but I suppose it's human. That's how we distinguish best friends from mere acquaintances, I guess. I honestly thought I could like all the children equally.



This is Heron.
She will grow to be tall and languid like the bird.
She considers everything.
And if she doesn't like it, she'll let you know.
After we rolled around on a grassy slope, she came around and hugged my neck from behind.
At the swings, she got dinged in the head.
She came to me.
I knew I probably shouldn't have done it. It probably wasn't the correct thing to do. Like how you don't see kids riding on bicycle handlebars very much these days, I couldn't help myself.

I hugged her.
And kissed her boo boo.

Heron was my favourite.
She made my ovaries hurt.

I watched Fatty's mom throughout the day. Darting eyes to make sure everyone was safe. Individual attention was given to every child. She is a deeply caring crusader, a child's rights supporter, a musician, a wonderful storyteller who reduced both myself and her son to tears, one hell of an educator and she takes shit from no parent. I haven't met someone this extraordinary for a very long time. She is my newest hero.



And she's always been Fatty's.

I learned that with further cut-backs, Fatty's mom has been rendered assistant-free. In addition to a lack of funding for books, toys and other learning materials, she is reliant on volunteers for anything they could possibly spare. Her home's basement is filled with teaching materials she's purchased out of her own pocket.

She was once scared of children too. But she learned just to be herself. And, to me, she made it into the top percentile of mothers just by keeping Santa Claus real until Fatty was about 12.

Don't worry, the world will dispel any myth. Any magic.

Fatty and I are bringing in our new $50 DVD player with a prepared photo slide show for the kids to watch on their last class before school's out for summer. Our fine collection of smiling faces and diligent sandcastle makers.

It will mark the beginning of my volunteer work with my newest hero.

The Things We Deserve

During a Mutual Admiration Society tangent between my future mother-in-law and myself, she expressed her fear of the world while admiring what seemed to be my fearlessness.

My mother looks at it as foolishness.
Language.
Perspective.
Always interesting to me.

"I remember you! You called me out!"
This was spoken by a 275 lbs, 6'3", hulking mass of ebony flesh.

At the time, I was working at the restaurant where I was fired for blogging about a Disgusting Pig of a Man. Outside, enjoying a cigarette with Kissy, my darling ex-work comrade, this, I suppose, intimidating man was approaching from the west.

I looked into eyes which did not meet mine. Eyes are the best barometer for mental stability. His eyes registered a sort of guilt. I say sort of because unlike the Germans, we do not have a word for that feeling of we've-done-something-wrong-even-though-we-didn't-do-anything we often feel when a police cruiser is in our relative proximity.

I blame society and media whom I suspect have burned this onto his brain.
You're a big, black man. You should be ashamed of yourself.

He looked safe to me.

Months later the same young man came into my once a week place of employ, remembering that interaction.

The Shamed Man: I could have been dangerous.
The Comrade: Dangerous? With sweetie-pie eyes? I think not.

Calling one out.
It's a thing.

I remember shoe shopping with my mother when I was 10 years old. The shoe salesman and I were having a very nice conversation, though not poignant enough for me to remember what was discussed. Upon leaving, an induced insistence by my nervous mother, she said, "You really shouldn't talk to strangers. Why do you do that?"

I can't help it.

I don't talk to everyone, but I have an urgent need to talk to most. My body is the best gauge of other's inherent sincerity, sociopathy, goodness or false sense of entitlement. I observe, test and direct my findings to nearly all of my subjects. The only ones who don't receive a full report are the ones from whom I detect more than a modicum of violence or mental instability.

I am crudely honest. Strike that. I am crudely subjectively honest.
I wouldn't be honest if I didn't put that last part in.

Last Monday, at my once a week engagement at the Cheer's Equivalent bar, slinging colourful cocktails with equally festive paper umbrellas leaning against funnel shaped baths that aphids would have wet dreams languidly back crawling through, I accused a 23 year old young man of being, among other things, charmless, shallow and stupid.

Grant.
Young, tattooed, muscular, cute in a Dylan McDermott sort of way.
I met him the week prior.

Grant: I need some advice.
The Comrade: You've come to the right place.
[she said as she gained the attention of all who were sitting at the bar]

I believe in at least a second opinion.

Grant: So I've met this girl. She's really a nice girl. I like her. I think she's someone I could see myself with.
The Comrade: That's great.
[she said as she thought how great it is when you're 23 and you're not thinking about forever... or The One]
Grant: Yeah, but the problem is... she's got really bad breath.
The Comrade: Is this a one off? Because all of us can have those days.
Grant: No. I've met her a couple of times.
The Comrade: Is this a hygiene or a gastro-intestinal issue?
Grant: I DON'T KNOW!
The Comrade: Both times you met, each time was skanky?
Grant: Yep. The second time I met her? We were playing video games on a laptop? And her breath was bouncing off the screen.
The Comrade: Jesus.
Grant: So what do I do?
The Comrade: You really like her?
Grant: Yes. She's really nice.
The Comrade: You have to tell her. In the quickest most direct way possible. She has to know.

Grant came back last Monday for the debrief.

The Comrade: How was her breath?
Grant: Still bad.
The Comrade: Did you tell her?
Grant: I couldn't. I'm going to break up with her.
The Comrade: You're an asshole.
Grant: I don't think we have that much in common.
The Comrade: She was really nice last week.
Grant: Well, she's Persian, right?
The Comrade: Okay.
Grant: And Muslim. And 19. And a virgin.
The Comrade: So far, so good.
Grant: But she can't kiss. She's not experienced.
The Comrade: You are in the perfect position to mentor!
Grant: I don't want to do the work.
The Comrade: Allow me to add lazy in front of asshole.
Grant: I don't know. I was going to break up with her today, but something happened.
The Comrade: What?
Grant: She let me feel her boobs.

Which apparently were quite a set of fun bags.
And who cares about breath when you're eye to eye with those.

Grant: I can only see her on Mondays and Wednesdays anyway. Maybe I can handle it.
The Comrade: Dude, the only thing you handle are those.

The Doyenne, my lovely boss/ friend perked up when she heard the combination Persian/Muslim/ virgin.

The Doyenne: End it! Nothing good will come of this. She's looking for a way to get out of her parental home.
Her advice fell on deaf ears.

Visions of a beautiful, fat, cooing baby with olive skin and almond eyes, like a Teletubby in the sky, danced in my mind's eye.
I always wanted to be a Teletubby.

The Comrade: You know, Grant, you're going to get everything you deserve coming to you.

He didn't think that was very nice.

But, I think we all have what we deserve coming to us.


The attention didn't stay on Grant forever. The hotseat never remains piping for too long.
The attention rod wavered towards me. No amount of ducking made any difference.

The Doyenne: You are still married.
The Comrade: Not really.
The Doyenne: If you haven't a divorce decree, yes, you are still married. You need to get a divorce.
The Comrade: Why?
The Doyenne: Because you can't go on with your life until you take care of the shit from your past.
The Comrade: Oh, you projecting bitch!
The Doyenne: I think you're using Ack as a safety net.
The Comrade: I am not! And anyway, it's just a piece of paper.
The Doyenne: Exactly! And what about Fatty?

Three other souls agreed.
Damn, my committee meetings.

I did think about it.

The circumstances regarding Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend, are extraordinary. We don't hate each other. We quite love each other. We count on each other like functional families do. Ack is my chosen family. My brother. My best friend. Before Fatty and I got together romantically, he asked me what I'd do if I got married again.

Round 3.

The Comrade: I'd keep Ack's name.
Fatty: And if the guy didn't understand, that would be his problem.

Boy-o-boy, I'm a lucky, lucky girl.

Admittedly, the idea of divorcing Ack made me feel a bit nervous inside. My best thought processes happen when I'm lying in bed, pre-coffee, in the morning. It's not that Ack and I will ever be married again. There is no chance of a reconciliation. We don't have that kind of relationship. I thought if I divorced him, maybe he wouldn't be my family anymore. Maybe I would feel orphaned again.


Sunday night, probably around the time I was having a 3 hour conversation with my future mother-in-law, my darling Fatty was gathering some troops to crash the Much Music Video Awards ceremony. It was held at the upper level nightclub of the restaurant we'd both worked, met and honed our wonderful friendship. He went to this party with a tiny personal test mission. There wasn't a shortage of beautiful women there. As Fatty is not shy, and quite cute, he spoke to many of them, trying extra hard to be very charming. His pursuit was to try to find someone who made him feel remotely the way I make him feel.

Fatty: It's not from a lack of trying. I spoke to dozens of beautiful, stupid women.
The Comrade: But that party was a just a pinprick of the population of the world.
Fatty: No, you don't understand. There's no one in the world like you. I adore you. And it sounds cliché, but I mean it when I say I'm nothing without you.

He is now exempt from doing dishes all week.

It took me 36 years for me to able to say I deserve Fatty.
And I will be getting a divorce proper.

Maybe one day he'll say he deserves me.

Forgotten Legacies

There are things I’d forgotten while cohabitating with another. Listening to music when I don’t want to hear it is one. It falls into the camp I really just want silence, or it could be as simple as the tempo, the syncopation, the singer. I never know until there's a pressing of play.

I was once accused of only listening to white music. This was an accusation flung by one of those white girls trying to pull off modified, feminized hip-hop gear. The statement concerned me as much as my inability to fully understand, and when I say understand I really mean appreciate, rap music. I don't want to grow into one of those old crotchety girls that don't understand today's youth. Looking through my music library I understood that it had nothing to do with the colour spectrum. There was plenty of Stevie Wonder and Nina Simone. It was bad music of all denominations that was the issue.

The Applier was telling me about a woman he was seeing more than dating. Dating involves conversation, something he never really encouraged her to do. She's the type of person that calls during business hours, launches a tale mid-stream, yammers non-stop and gives no background on any of her characters. To be fair(ish), she is from Belgium so it could be an issue of cultural differences. My darling Fatty and I will be heading there in the fall, so more to report then.

Belgian Waffler: So I was out wit Carmen and Peetah and they went to the zoo! And who was zere? Frank! Wit Werner! And they all fell down! Hahahahaha!

Okay admittedly that was a bit Lebowskian in description, but it's not that far removed. In addition, it wasn't unusual for her to perform these non sequitur monologues for 3 continuous hours.

So, Issue #1 was constant mind-numbing chatter. Issue #2 was in the wee, small hours of the morning, post reputedly incredible engulfing of bits (apparently she has mastered Kegel to point of conducting lectures), she would dazzle him with her ability to create fruit smoothies of exotica, but annihilate him by cranking Kid Rock. The Issues 1-2 were things he couldn't live with, but tolerated for a spell by reasons of tasty beverages and Super Snatch. In that order.

What my darling Fatty has either induced, introduced or reintroduced are:
John Coltrane
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
Mr. Bungle
Nina Simone
Ennio Morricone
Pink Floyd

All of which are righteous and good.

What I have to learn now is how to gently express to him that there are many moments that I want to hear nothing more than the flapping of our created nylon canopy which bridges the corporeal from the heavenly.



Why do these things irritate me anyway?
I suspect it’s an issue of an altered landscape, something this production designer (née Control Freak) didn’t envision for herself.

It's been over a year since I self induced a partial media ban. Specially selected movies, yes. Cable television, no. In the removal of excessive noise, I discovered I require quite a bit of silence.

Now the trick for me is to be able to ask for this silence without a feeling of abandonment, selfishness or self-consciousness.
He makes it easy to ask.
It's just me who makes it difficult.

I look at the iced latte that Fatty brought out to me on the deck. It’s a layered confection; cold, dark, sweetened espresso on the bottom. Frothy cream rests as gentle as a seasoned Italian mezzo soprano in this deep, narrow pool destined only for my lips. Perched on the rim is a 1.5” gummy bear whose danger zone has been sliced to accommodate its final balancing act. Its appendages are outstretched to embrace the world. Its head is angled to gaze at me. A fine dusting of sour flavour crystals create the illusion of light and shadow, distinguishing its child’s nighttime sleeping companion’s soft, friendly features. I occasionally pick the bear up by its ears and chewy cranium and lick its wound.

Good God!
It fell in.

[quick change into a lab coat]

Today’s experiment yielded two results:
1. A gummy bear is more dense than an iced latte.
2. Sour flavour crystals do not curdle milk products.

After trying to rescue the drowning bear, I looked at my foot.

If floors had eyes they would recoil in horror from the sight of my one foot. I will not show any other living soul the sole of my left foot. Well... there are exceptions of course.

Exception #1: My non-sadistic, greedy dermatologist who is hellbent on only administering the minimum in liquid nitrogen, thus forcing me to repeatedly wait in his goddamned sardine packed waiting room with other fungal victims.
Exception #2: My male pedicurist.
Exceptions #1-2 have seen worse apparently.

Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend: What the hell is a Planter’s Wart anyway?
The Comrade: It’s a goddamned virus one picks up from other skanky footed girls while having a shower after sweaty yoga sessions.

I learned that the bacteria in urine kills viral fungi that grow à pied. I tend to save any bladder action for the shower as I love peeing while standing up anyway and find it rather messy if I do it with clothes on. Peeing in the shower is natural to me. What is unnatural/ offensive is the dislodging of nasal passage material without the use of paper products. In the streets of Chinatown or in the shower, this is fucking gross. I try to pee prior to communally showering mostly because not everyone goes for the public peeing thing. Some people, I won't name any names, find shower peeing just as offensive as I do paperless nose blowing. In addition, much of what I ingest has highly scented flavour crystals that come out of my urethra. Chiefly: coffee and asparagus. I also tend to forget that I’ve ingested these things, so like in the spirit of eating a lot of beets the night prior, I do my morning business and just before sending my birthed creatures down the waterslide I think I’m dying.

I learned that one of the questions asked, as part of a stringent series of tests to determine one's honesty prior to procuring a police badge, is: Do you look at your poop before you flush?

Fatty asked me.

The Comrade: Every... single... time.

[ring ring]
I often don't answer the phone.
I often retrieve messages, though.

Even though Fatty and I live together now, Fatty's mom called me and left me a message. It completely concerned Fatty, but she addressed me anyway.

[ring ring]
[This is me calling her back]

Fatty had gone over to a birthday party co-hosted by one of his old girlfriends. She is two things: 1) lovely 2) gifted with the biggest set of bajungas I've ever seen. I was invited to go but opted out because I didn't know the guy or girl who was going to be blowing 55 candles out. I may be projecting but who would want someone they don't know or love to commemorate my birth? I mean their birth.

So instead I stayed home, brought my guaranteed for 25 years Sears sewing machine and a 100' extension cord out to the deck to sew long enough to receive a deep mottled tan on my back (a place not prone to strange sun reactive apparitions), then eventually serging by candle and moonlight until the clock struck twelve.

Golly it looks full.
"Two more days," says my lunar calendar.

I talked to Fatty's mom for over 2 hours. We like each other very much.

The Comrade: I didn't think she liked me.
Fatty: She's always liked you.
The Comrade: She didn't seem too pleased when I knew all the family secrets years before we got together.
Fatty: She had to accept you first. They all have.

And now she tells me so much that it kind of makes me uncomfortable at times.

We visited Fatty's familial home yesterday. I wanted to talk to his parents about the legacies they passed onto him.
Daddy gave him subcutaneous fibrous lumps which lie dormant and allegedly harmless beneath every 3rd pass of my opened palm.
Mother gave him night-terrors which leave me almost as shaken and horrified as they do him.

The Comrade: You gave him the night-terrors!
Fatty's very British Mom: Well I also gave him all that hair and I don't hear you complaining about that!

The other thing I had forgotten, which comes along with another person who shares your life, is their family. In this case they are all uniquely individual, thoughtful, hilarious and deeply caring creatures. Along with the lumps, the night-terrors and the hair, they also passed on to their first born child an amazing propensity to love properly.

I always knew I was lucky.

The Masquerade

Twenty years ago I was living my hell, residing in the familial home, alone. Christmas was the only time where I was guaranteed extra inmates in the mess hall; siblings back from university, temporarily distracting the wardens from my behaviour. Coming home meant off-site socialising for my brothers. It meant a bags in hands, nose-up, determined march straight for the not quite memorialized, but occasionally dusted bedroom for my sister.

SLAM
[usual elapsed reemergence: 2 weeks]

My sister was the only little girl for the first 6 years of her life. According to her, life was very good until I came around.

She did slip out of her room early Christmas morning. Before our father (who art shrill among us; hallowed does he think his name is) had risen, my sister had carefully wrapped a special gift which she had previously accepted back at her Western University dorm. She placed it in foreground under our seasonal some-assembly-required synthetic tannenbaum. Saving the best for last, casting aside the socks and long underwear my mother took great care to purchase, gently tucking the rolled wad of cash our father begrudgingly whipped at us (his show of t'is the season), she ripped the packaging open and feigned a Scarlett O'Hara cotillion surprise. My o' my! I never expected this! Quelle surprise!

Approaching our father in Vanna White fashion, she allowed him to examine it and all it represented for a few fleeting seconds, eyeing him as she gingerly walked backwards to the seat she had chosen for the gift exchange portion of the day. I sat with head angled at 78˙as our father made his conclusions. Each year he painstakingly chose just the right elastic band which cinched the wads of 20's he thoughtfully threw at his individual offspring. Enlisting his usual gentle exchange from bearer to recipient, he whipped the little box and its polished solitary occupant straight at my sister's head.

23 years old. She was getting married anyway. She chose well.

At a very young age, my sister wanted to marry rich. She felt she'd suffered enough relative poverty. She'd had enough of chipped and mismatched plates. She couldn't bear clashing separates anymore. She was going to leave the embarrassment everyone else called family. She would be schooled, effectively an insurance policy against the life my mother has. As additional insurance, she was going to find a winner. If he wasn't silver spoon fed, he had to at least have the promise of providing her a lifestyle which her mind had grown accustomed to.

She hit the jackpot with Jimmy.

Near where I currently reside there is an forked intersection where if one ain't from around these parts, one might not see the stop sign. One might lurch into oncoming traffic and hit the Comrade squarely in the passenger panel of her once beloved Jeep YJ. Years ago, travelling in tandem, Jimmy and my sister behind me, this nearly happened. I stopped short, allowing the driver anti-killing space. Jimmy saw what could have potentially happened, sped past myself and the rented car occupied by said near-killing-foreigner. Jimmy cut him off, Starsky and Hutch style. Putting his car in park he got out, grabbed the vacationer by the shirt and directed a series of index finger button pushes 2" away from the poor bastard's eye.

Jimmy: Do you see that woman behind you? I care about that woman very much and you nearly killed her.
I: Burst into tears.

Jimmy also gave Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend, an aggressive "brother talk" before we were married. His questions were those fueled with concern of Ack's intentionality. I didn't have the privacy of a sealed car that time. We were all sitting on a very public patio for dinner as I was bawling into my pasta.

A few years ago my sister thought it would be a great and generous gesture to provide an all-expense paid trip to NYC for my mother, myself and herself. In our shared suite in the boutique Mark Hotel, one which cost $800/night, though my apartment is nicer (I still scratch my head over this phenomena), we girls were just getting settled in when room service rapped on the door. Jimmy had called from Toronto to have a luscious cheese plate and a bottle of the Widow Cliquot's finest sent up for us to gossip over.

Ack: Yeah, well, if I had all the money in the world I would have done that too.
The Comrade: No you wouldn't have. And you know it.

Jimmy has always epitomized greatness in husbandry.
Jimmy is a better brother than either of the two I was gifted.


I don't see my sister or Jimmy very often. I feel most guilty because I don't see their adopted girls subsequently. The girls who were found on the steps of a theatre in China. Twin girls in a cardboard box, screaming, covered in placenta with umbilical cords still attached. I think about them all the time, but I can't manage to see them very often.

I'll apologise to them as I did to my 18 year old niece.

After a series of emails which Jimmy had initiated by forwarding a professional portrait of the girls, riddled with guilt, I asked him if he'd care to join me for a drink soon. A drink for me or any of my friends either involve a home's deck or a location close-by, just in case one can't see very well by drink's end. The proximity factor allows the subsequent cab ride home to cost considerably less than one's arm, leg and first-born child combined. Jimmy, however, had already created an itinerary. Out of district. Crap.

5:30pm: Cocktails at the Royal York Hotel's Epic bar.
7:00pm: Charitable fundraiser at the Steamwhistle Brewery.
10:00pm: Late supper at Chiado.


I was early to arrive at the hotel bar. My good company was notepad and Japanese pen. I made notes on the old world bartenders who moved a hair faster than snail's pace, but with incredible grace. I love old world service. Men from once exotic places. Charming, avuncular, quick to smile displaying carved eloquent laugh lines. Stoli was going down very well at that bar. I ordered 2 triple vodka martinis before my hosts were to arrive.

I've been told that the reason women continue to have babies, even though it is the greatest pain most anyone will ever survive, is because the body cannot recall pain. It can, however, readily recall the euphoria from the resulting child.

Every time I see my sister I am earnestly happy. 5 minutes into a conversation I remember why I don't see her very often.

She wears exactly 4 different masks throughout her day. The quick change is dependent on to whom she's speaking.
Mask #1: charming, bubbly, slight airhead, innocent to the point of naïve, effusive
Mask #2: condescending, cunt-like behaviour, judges everyone
Mask #3: business, business all business; omnipotent know-it-all; Miss Manners
Mask #4: martyr, tortured mother/housewife, grave concern for her husband and children's well being; schoolmarmish prefect.

It had been too long since I'd seen her last. She usually remains mask-free in the company of her husband and myself. She was volleying between Masks #1 and #4 with the deftness of a geisha doing a provocative fan dance.

The Masked Sister: I'm going into Round 5 with a company who's wooing me.
The Comrade: Really? I didn't know you were going back to work. Is this just part-time or full?
The Masked Sister: This is really big. I'm doing this for Jimmy. Jimmy's really tired.
[I look over at Jimmy who is slowly gorging himself on pre-prepared sushi with a peaceful expression]
The Comrade: He doesn't look tired.
The Masked Sister: Well, he is.
The Comrade: Jimmy? Are you tired? Do you need some time off?
Jimmy: Nope.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Roll projection.

Popular (partially adopted) catch-phrases of my sister's:
Time is money.
Money is power.
You are useless (usually directed at her husband).
I am not having my mother's life.

She wants to go back to work because the title wife and mother don't bode well with her concept of self. She wants to again hobnob with Bay Street's elite, having her own identity, not just that of the wife. She wants to move, shake and share stories of victories won. How Martha Stewart was really guilty of insider trading. To me, the whole business of stock trade or how they define what is legal and what is not is usary, dubious and laden with unethical practice.

25 Year Old New Bay Street Hotshot: I guess you're not in this business.

The young hotshot, Bay Street's newest darling, is Adam. 6'5", Charles Atlas body, vacant expression, good looking in an Ivy League sense. Jimmy tried to introduce me to Adam exactly 5 times that night.

The Comrade: Darling, you know I'm living with a man whom I'm very happy with.

Jimmy's faculties in hearing and comprehension went to the wayside by the shrillness of the charity event's stampede theme. Bay Street Buckaroos were all donning modified 5 gallon straw Stetson knock-offs imported from Mexico. Jimmy bought 2 basketball player arm lengths of drink tickets. My sister was stone cold sober. Adam was 6'5"; drink hadn't hit his kneecaps yet. I was right properly sauced. Jimmy was completely shitfaced.

After a wagon pulling event (for charity), in which my sister lost it because her team didn't win, my sister, Jimmy, Too Tall Undrunk Adam and I cabbed to the west end for dinner at Chiado. This has been my sister's favourite restaurant for 5 years running.

Success of this restaurant is formulaic:
Old world service is coupled with younger flirtatious European front men.
Fish is good and abundant in choice.
Excellent overpriced wine list.
Clientele is made up of one or all of the following: rich, celebrity, persuasive, political.

I was briefly made to sit with Adam alone as both my sister and Jimmy had wormed their way to Ben Mulroney's table. My sister was enlisting Mask #1. Very expensive wine was poured down the gullets of the son of a bastard and his girlfriend, whom he of course met on a ski slope. Thinking about it now, there must have been an agreement drawn up for this obvious fabrication. It's a little too perfect to be real.

I am blaming the obvious ill combination of vodka, beer and very expensive red wine on the barrage of arm punches I issued out to the son of a Halliburton whore.

Jimmy: Do you two know each other?
The Comrade & On His Way to Lantern Jaw, just like his dad: Nope.

After our starters of mixed grille, I needed a repose. Jimmy came out to smoke with me, though he has no penchant for the weed.

Jimmy: You know, I hate your brothers.
The Comrade: No you don't.
Jimmy: Yes I do. I fucking hate them.
The Comrade: Why?
Jimmy: Because they never once made an effort.
The Comrade: Yeah.
Jimmy: I just want us to be a family. I would love for you to come over all the time, have some cocktails, some laughs. It'd be great. But I know you don't come because you're sick of your sister's judgment.
The Comrade: No.
Jimmy: Yes.

I can handle my sister's judgment because it's something I've dealt with for a very long time. I reason I can take it. I'm strong. Jimmy has the same reasoning for himself. But it's the directing at him that I can't abide by. And the gospel she speaks repeats out the mouths of their babes. That is the reason I cannot visit a beautiful home nestled in Rosedale. They're turning into her. And cycle repeats itself. And the snake eats its own tail.

From nowhere I received a rather long confessional. He was loveless. He was fat. My sister is beautiful. He is not. He is fat. Therefore he is ugly. And horrible.

And gay.

My world spun.

Everything I thought a man should be to a wife, Jimmy was. For 20 years of a loveless, sexless façade, replete with a dressing room full of masks, he's been living a lie. He's a hotshot on Bay Street to please his wife, his mother. Both of which are overbearing, abusive. Both of which are a constant reminder of his internal failings. I am bad. I should be punished, his constant mantra.

I, The Enabler, continued to raise a glass with Jimmy. Neither of us ate our $70/plate dinners laid before us, a something that induced my sister to hot-swap a mask that previous to our interruption was giving young Too Tall New Hotshot Adam helpful little Bay Street etiquette pointers on how to get ahead and achieve, achieve, achieve.

The Masked Sister: [in hushed tones in front of Too Tall Adam] This is disgraceful. They worked very hard on your dinners and you don't even have the decency to finish it.
I blinked at her for 20 seconds before I asked Carlos the Waiter to wrap up my monkfish.

I was rendered speechless as my brother-in-law signed an American Express credit card slip totalling $990.00. For 4 diners.

The Masked Sister: How are you getting home?
The Comrade: I'll probably take the streetcar.

I don't know what she was more appalled about: not touching my dinner or the mode of transport I'd suggested.

As she would have sat disgustedly beside her husband hurling insults and general learned home banter, I suggested to Jimmy we go to Boy's Town. The fucking Enabler strikes again. 3 doormen did not allow us passage to their clubs. Though we teetered, we found one place who would serve us. We nearly got our asses kicked because my not quite out brother-in-law had become an octopus whose tentacles solely heat sought posteriors of all denominations. And as a capper, while escorting said octopus to the washroom, a precarious journey, someone lifted Jimmy's wallet from his Armani suit jacket.

Please don't tell your sister.

As I've done a dozen times in my lifetime, I kissed a forehead and tucked another into a handsome cab home.

The next day he had no memory of leaving the restaurant. He was riddled with guilt in leaving my sister alone as we went off on an adventure.

The Comrade: She wasn't alone. She was still with Adam.
Jimmy: Oh?

I told Jimmy how much he means to me, how much I love him and how concerned I am for his well being. I know how much he must shoulder on any given day. He thanked me for my concern. But always concerned for others and never for himself he asked:

Jimmy: But did we have fun?
The Comrade: Of course, darling. We always have fun.

She said while masking her tears.

A Census Amendment

The pronoun Stupid, my first husband and I met when I was about to turn 21. Our first date was at the then very fabulous, now simply ostentatious restaurant, Scaramouche. It was at this restaurant that I discovered savoury Jello could have the pseudonym palate cleanser; a little Ajax for the tastebuds. I effectively moved in with Stupid after that first date. The chief reason being: the only platonic roommate I'd ever had, still to this date, had driven me absolutely, passive aggressively... bonkers.

Ack, the second ex-husband/ best friend, and I waited until we were married before he moved in with me. We wanted to keep things pure and sweetly old fashioned. After 5 1/2 months of our first date, our courtship was ended by a notarized decree. And on a late August day I was carried over the threshold I'd walked over thousands of times before.

Smack dab in the middle of one day and 5 1/2 months, I find myself in love again, sharing a life, a bed and a home with another man.

Fatty moved in a couple of weeks ago.
And then there were three.
If we were Russian dolls, from biggest to smallest, it would be Fatty, the Comrade and Chicken.

It wasn't planned. It was more a circumstantial thing. Initially I was scared to death. Yikes! Someone else! Lack of sufficient cartwheel space in my 1400 sq. ft. apartment! Though I carry the fantasy tucked within my right buttcheek, the bizarre prudishness I'm prone to has prevented me from walking around naked in my own apartment. What if the fantasy was quashed by another's existence?

Much of my reticence was the old fears of having to put up with another creature who makes messes, who breaks things, who occasionally smells, who is human.

Irrationally, the breaking of objects seem more forgivable if I am at the helm of its demise. I reason that I am more than likely the one who chose or made the thing in the first place. I correlate this sensation with the thoughts of any honest mother while gazing upon her little bundle of hell spawn: I gave you life... and I can take it away. Broken, marred or stained objects feel like a waste of time and energy. I am a Virgo, cursedly. I like my garage sale items just so.

My real problem in the past has been looking at men simply as liabilities. Historically, I was the one who fixed things, then bitched later about the lack of help. It is difficult to ask for help as there's always the possibility of a "no" answer.

Both Fatty and I are working on the simply asking without the existence of either pure aggression (me), or passive aggression (him). Just plain asking doesn't come just plain naturally to either of us.

It is interesting when 2 people, both gifted in service arenas, find themselves in love, sharing a life. We both seem to know what to do. We both seem to know where to pick up if the other's fallen off the map, or veered off course for a while. We made a very good discovery the other day while working on the deck. We learned that we're best when we're working together, but not on the same set of duties. One project requires many facets of responsibility and skill, so as neophyte tacticians, after many failed attempts at performing the same task, we learned to heatseek the things we find fun in, understanding that those are the things that we're more than likely better suited to perform. Luckily he finds fun in what I find taxing. Over a day and a half we turned our once ghetto deck into a lovely outdoor room, a place where if one of us is feeling the need for momentary solitude, we can take leave to our new created retreat.

I now sit al fresco, with 60 SPF smeared elegantly above my lip to reduce the very manly looking effects of my unique hyperpigmentation. I don my cap with the Comrade sewn Che Guevara emblem masquing the one time corporate swoosh that lay immediately north of my third eye. It gives me balance to see in super three dimensions. Most people just use their 2 standard issue ocular implements. I need the aid of the 3rd as I’m now playing warden to the raccoon who lives under my deck. I keep in mind something a former prison guard once told me.

There’s a pub down the road that upon first inspection might not be a decent draw. Uninteresting signage. Bar not quite visible from the street. Oak and brass elements throughout. It has the aesthetic of sherry sipping Grandmas in one corner, while in others overworked dads in their late 30's, descendants of the largest per capita consumers of potatoes, double-fist pints and whiskey as they regale themselves with jaunty folk songs their Ma's used to lull them to sleep with. In the back, young post punks wail down mics set at American standards; high and terrifying. Screaming mouths large enough to envelop crowds full of fauxhawks are tilted at an angle set on Venus, while accusatory eyes correct the crowd, keeping them squarely within their assigned real estate. Post apocalyptic manicured clothing too expensive to mosh with. In short, this bar doesn't really know what it wants to be when it grows up. I like this bar a lot.

Manning all that brass, oak and confusion is a middle aged couple. Both bear the kind of guts I occasionally imagine in mental medical cross-section. Organs gently nestled in slippery, yellow tinged fat. Prior to working as a bar owner/maid, the woman, I discovered, had for 20 years - the years of stolen youth - a career, 1 km due North of my humble H.Q., as a prison guard in Toronto's Don Jail. From jailer to booze slinger, this to me is a natural transition in career choices. She taught me how to calm the savage beast.

Prison Guard cum Bartender: Wait until they get in your face, keep an oh yeah? expression, and with the butt of your hand, fully extended arm, smash them straight up the nose.

okay...

Fatty’s named the small and painfully cute raccoon Percy, short for persistent. He has a brother, Rather Mangy, a scrawny, gnawed tailed, despondant looking guy who’s the 4 legged, masked equivalent of a crackhead. He doesn't give us any trouble, which is great because Fatty is convinced he's rabid. He seems quite disinterested in our deck. His frying fish is on one of the other decks that create a M.C. Escher style pattern if viewed from the south. Though mangy, he knows there's nothing for him here. All of our household waste is kept in a not-so-sanitary environment indoors next to my winter boots and in close proximity to Chicken’s bidet.

Percy? Well, he wouldn’t have attained his name if he gave up so quickly. And he really does have a strange penchant for dirt.

The Doyenne, my enchanting boss from my one night a week engagement at the Cheer's Equivalent, suggested bloodmeal, a dried, ground blood and bone mixture which not only promotes luscious growth, but she'd heard it was a safe, humane deterrent to both squirrels and raccoons. I swear to God, I sprinkled liberally and within 15 minutes, in broad daylight, Percy was going apeshit on one of the inground planters. I have no idea what he’s looking for in there. It’s not as if there is a giant horned vessel filled with freshly hacked pieces of poultry or half a sow or anything else that might be contained within a beige 25L cornucopia made by Rubbermaid. Believe me; I looked. Fatty and I dug until the spade thunked the planter’s end.

Even when he came perilously close to attacking me,
Little and lunging with bared teeth...
Admittedly he was not as cute then.
But he’s just trying to make a living.
Trying to live his dream.
And I can respect that.

But the little fucker is still lifting my delphiniums.
If only I could reach the initial stage of giving him the oh yeah? expression.
Fatty doesn't think it's helpful that I talk to Percy in the same manner in which I converse with Chicken.

This morning, with coffee not sitting well as it was a bad corner store varietal, I was making egg salad.

Fatty: Chicken and Egg had just finished having sex. Egg was smoking a cigarette. I guess that answers that question.

20 minutes of continuous laughter tends to make me feel better.
When I told Ack, he was secretly rooting for the cat to come in first.

Things get broken all the time.
Uprooted by a force outside one's self, momentarily cast off.
But it's just stuff.
Stuff can be replaced.
People can't.
The statement If it ain't broke, don't fix it never really appealed to me anyway.
Plus, there's an excellent opportunity to ask someone to help you fix something.
And when my gorgeous young man tells me how sexy I am walking around naked, a little of the prudishness goes.

And one more thing gets fixed.

14 Hour Daze

One of my sister's greatest fears is not having any money, thus subsequently forcing her back into waitressing. My sister and her husband have been Bay Street tycoons for their entire professional careers.

Give me your biggest arachnid.
Your girthiest anaconda.
Your most lethal sea urchin.

My greatest fear is moving back in with my parents.

When Fatty was 16 he was kicked out of his family home. He wasn't living up to his potential. The shaping up portion of development wasn't happening as quickly as they would have liked, so a subsequent ship-out was issued forth. When one is 16 there are not many friends one has that have self-contained bachelor dens or any sort of couch surfing or basement dwelling scenarios that can be provided for household dropouts for prolonged durations. Even though Fatty had a girlfriend at the time a calvary of horsed men never lined a boulevard with flowing regal flags welcoming the lad to at least the familial sofa.

Fatty was forced into a halfway house.
Where he learned full abandonment.
And how nothing really matters anyway.

Years later I look at his family, who through regret in parental decision making, had made great attempts in pulling closer, making up for lost time with British guilt as their petrol. They laugh together like they used to, poke fun of one another amicably and at the end of every conversation, via phone or in person, they always cap it with reciprocated professions of familial, unconditional love.

[The Comrade scratches her head]

A few months ago Fatty moved back in with his entire family. It was designed as an opportunity to get closer. Nightly there were handwritten notes on 8 1/2x11" paper addressing mother's 2 sons as her treasures, listing everything deliciously edible in the refrigerator. Sunday nights were family nights. Everything was tickyboo.

I'd never seen parents more proud of a son as when I'd first met Fatty when he was hired as a manager at the restaurant I'd worked in, then quit on the night of Blackout 2003. They were proud because he went to work in a suit. They were proud because he was management. They were proud because the restaurant was quite grand and once gorgeous in design. It wasn't a roadhouse. It wasn't a pub. It wasn't a Chuck E. Cheese. It reflected nicely back at them.

I remember meeting his parents for the first time. They'd come into the restaurant after Fatty had been working there for about a week. Fatty and I had quickly established our relationship, the kind when 2 kindred kid spirits meet. I sat with the parents and chatted easily with animation and enthusiasm over this new creature who had been hired to smooth out the operation. After I left the table...

Mom of Fatty: Is that your girlfriend?
Fatty: No, Mom. She's married.
Mom of Fatty: Hm. She seems like your girlfriend.

3 years later, over the phone, she said, "I told you so."
Typical mother.

Fatty didn't stay at the restaurant where I'd said, "Fuck you, fuck this place, I'm outta here" to the general manager. He moved to be part of the umbrella corporation's flagship events facility to be part of the management team there. He was working 14 hour days in succession. Though he was making lots of money, rarely had he felt as miserable as he had back then. His parents were so proud.

14 hours out of 24 allows 10 hours to do whatever you want to do.
Like sleep... the only thing a person could do.


I had a very busy week last week. Juggling two jobs and cramming in power writing sessions with my 2 new writing partners was taking up all of my waking hours. The once a week night of employ, the Cheer's Equivalent, felt nearly like a day off. The power writing sessions, something that was instigated by one of the other writers as she had received an email for a writing contest calling for short film submissions - deadline yesterday - was nothing short of inspirational. The new job... well, it was nothing short of the Comrade's Inferno.

Saturday looked like this:
Clocked in at 10 am for a brunch shift I had been begged to work the night prior. I don't remember the last time I worked a brunch. I like to, instead, sit with several stemmed vessels filled with freshly squeezed juice tainted prosecco accompanying my breakfast of champions.
I actually wasn't needed to work. But wasn't asked to go home either.
For this favour I made exactly $35 for my effort.
I was given a 1/2 hour break which I used to unlock my bike, ride home as quickly as possible and chug exactly 1 full Grolsch beer.
I was asked to train a new bartender on an unfamiliar bar, something we two had difficulty working as neither of us knew where anything was. And because the bar is not manned nightly, it is one that goes without full stock on most nights. Much time was wasted trying to look for shit that didn't exist, while being simultaneously slammed busy.
My day ended at midnight. 14 hours after I clocked in.

During that time I wasn't given an opportunity to sit down and eat. There was always something else to do. The food that was begrudgingly provided was the castoffs from the buffet brunch; wet scrambled eggs and eggs benedict, where flinging the ham off, were the 2 partially solid things I ate within that 14 hour period. Coupling a lack of sustenance with the physical stress of being constantly busy left my body feeling like there were 4 severed live wires flailing around in my body. It is a disgusting feeling. To this day I have no idea what I made during that shift. My brain couldn't function properly to do even simple math at the end of the night. I left my cash register along with all the tips I made that evening with the general manager. I rode my bike home with the weight of my sore legs propelling me.

Sunday, my day off, felt too short.
Sunday, all I wanted to do was sleep.
But I had a life to catch up on.
I wanted to drink beer and have Mexican food with Ack, the ex-husband/ best friend.
Which I did.
But then got tired and had to have a nap.
Which I did.
And got up feeling like my life was slipping away.
I wasn't writing for me anymore.
My eyes refused to remain open for longer than 2 pages for my darling Tom Robbins and his Jitterbug Perfume.
I was snapping at my loved one.
I had 3 days worth of inescapable shit matter lodged within.
I was miserable.

Monday evening, after my shift at the Cheer's Equivalent, Fatty and I went to blows. He was trying in vain to help me see that he wasn't the root of my dissatisfaction. I was simply too exhausted and subsequently too touchy to be able to see clearly. He was being irrationally rational and unreasonably reasonable. I couldn't understand any of the R's.

After the last power-writing session with my new partners on Tuesday, I was filled with a sense of accomplishment ladened with weariness. Under my belt I had 1 shift down, 6 to go for the week. I rode with anxiety home to Fatty whom I'd hoped had forgiven me for my outburst from the preceding evening. But I couldn't properly rectify anything because I had to dash off to work again, to a place I was beyond beginning to feel resentment towards.

All I really wanted was to have a little section in a pretty restaurant. To serve nice people, mostly travellers. To work with others. I got everything but the little section. Instead, I got more than I bargained for.

The little restaurant is huge and it is masquerading as an event space. Large, deep pocketed corporate types often book the entire restaurant out. The staff become underpaid furniture movers. Yesterday, beneath a beating sun, my fellow comrades - clad in regulation black - fought underarm salt stains and dripping brows while moving 1000's of pieces of furniture around in preparation. Oh, yes. Preparation H, please. No one knows what to expect when they enter the front doors. I was expecting to at least have a few laughs.

I didn't crack a smile once in the hour I stayed there.

Instead I quietly listened to my body as it screamed GET OUT.

It wasn't an environment fit for humans. There were plenty of human shapes working there. Plenty who worked without complaint. 14 hours was like a badge of honour to these people.

The Comrade: How can you do this?
Random 14 hour Worker: I like the money.


Fatty was asked back by our old employer to work another 14 hour shift. After sleeping for 12 hours the next day, he wondered how he ever did it before. These hours that steal our life away. These hours gifted to other people that take us away from ourselves, that can only bring out the worst in us. Why is it, in this culture, that the status quo think that there is a significant pay off for all this time rendered for acts of mindless, soulless work activity?

This Girl Scout ripped the work badge off her shoulder. Yesterday, having worked for an hour, scoping the work that was ahead of her, this girl walked out.

This morning I officially tendered my resignation. No amount of money is enough to replace my life. No amount of money can justify the toll it takes on my body and the ones I hold dearest.

My greatest fear of having to move back in with my parents will not be actualised today or any other day. I am too much of a survivor. Years prior I would have stayed staid at a place that mistreated their staff routinely, while they did the insidious business of occasionally providing cheap beers, which undoubtedly a client had paid for, at the end of a corporately profitable day's end. This practice is designed to be that little bit of incentive for their busy little unfed and underappreciated bees to come back in the next day; 10 minutes early with shined shoes and pressed collars.

Today I will don open toed sandals. I will get on my bike and ride. Fatty and I are getting pedicures today. A 45 minute pampering of feet for 14 hours worked. Finally a compensation commensurate with exploit.