A Month Of Unemployed Sundays

Today marks the monthiversary of my unemployment. I’ve had a difficult time adjusting though I do enjoy not working. I have shallower wrinkles and everyday is Friday.

On my first night of freedom, I went to a concert at the Great Hall and considered all the 20 and 30 somethings in attendance who seemed to have enough freedom to rock out until the late hours of a Thursday night. “This new life of mine is pretty rad!” I told myself, co-opting the lexicon of the youth I desperately sought to emulate. “This is the beginning of a brand new me. Who will I be?” I was, that night, a woman who rejected potential suitors due to discoloured front teeth, a stature smaller than my own and a nubby ring finger whose tip had been lost in some industrial accident (truth be told, I don’t place much stock in the ring finger but his self-consciousness about it killed any hope). I was happy to discover that despite the upheaval, my inner asshole was still intact.

Later that night, I played this on repeat for a spell:
Crazytown, right?!

I submitted to the deluge that had been threatening to surge from my tear ducts since that afternoon when I’d been made redundant over cold, albeit BPA free, tofu soup. As I came to terms with the fact that my three-and-a-half year vocational relationship had come to an end, I realized that the time had come to make smarter career choices … soon …ish.

There are definitely some benefits to being unemployed. I’m available to anyone for anything at the drop of a hat. Adventures? And how! The 3 o’clock sun casts a delightful light on the streetscape where I spend much of my time walking since paying for public transit doesn’t quite fit into my new austerity budget. I also enjoy being out late on Sunday night and I was surprised to find a group of people my age who don’t seem to have Monday morning obligations. For example, the folks I see jamming out at the Dakota on a Sunday night are the self-same people stuffing their faces with pie at Wanda’s on a Monday at noon or trawling through Bloorcourt on a Thursday afternoon. And they’re my age, too! Joy of joys, I can camouflage my dirtbaggery among the spotted west end leopards! I’m so happy I changed my spots!

Another bonus is that I’ve had plenty of time to stay up on all the latest YouTube cat/baby/upstart teen pop sensation videos and pretending to be an “artist” has never been easier. “I’m writing this afternoon” is code for “OMG! Friday is a total joke song, right?! I have to watch it again to make sure.” A more pragmatic benefit is that I can do a load or two of nighttime laundry at the local without having to clamour for a machine alongside my fecund neighbours and their acrobatic brood. And, I discovered that the enigmatic 402 Parkdale Community Bus ACTUALLY exists. It’s not just an urban legend as previously thought.

I look back on the month, a pretty destitute one considering the two-job lifestyle I’d grown accustomed to in my former life as an overworked chump, and don’t have much to show for it except maybe for hypersensitivity to the sun at its zenith and the stirrings of a drinking problem. But my skin has never looked better!

Onto the next adventure …

Living La Vida Sola

"Now here you go again

You say you want your freedom

Well who am I to keep you down?"

-Stevie Nicks, Dreams

From the onset of adolescence it has been my dream and driving ambition to live alone, not just independently, but utterly and completely alone, my living space devoid of all sentient beings save me. I can remember holing myself up in my doorless childhood bedroom, waiting out my family members so that I might emerge, a nocturnal creature blinking in the soft light of domesticity, to scrounge for sustenance without being noticed. How I longed for the day when I could return home and sit in silence, having to answer nothing and to no one.

The end of this month marks the fourth glorious and uninterrupted year of me living la vida sola. I was always slated to be the master of my domain: Who used the last of the toilet paper and didn’t see fit to replace it? No sense flying into a psychotic rage. I used the last of it and I’d better boot it to Shopper’s if I know what’s good for me. Coming home after a long day can be stressful and the last thing I want to think about is making dinner. I’ll just reheat last night’s leftovers, I say to myself as I walk through the door. What’s that fridge? They’re exactly where I left them? Nobody ate them? Of course not. Naked house, you say? You bet! I walk around the apartment like a Vegas showgirl morning and night shamelessly on display for the Lebanese Catholic congregants across the street. And so what if I’ve been hogging the computer, watching Steve Perry in tight pants performing Lovin’ Touchin’ Squeezin’* on a three-hour loop? I’ll do it over and over and over … Next up in the guilty pleasure queue, Erasure!**

There is a downside, however, which begins innocently enough. I tend to emote on a grand scale when I walk down the street. People might assume I have a mental health disorder. I talk to myself and praise, admonish and engage inanimate objects in conversation although they are still too reticent to reply. Dirty laundry is scattered across the floor of all rooms of the apartment and I often find the toilet one flush behind. Is this symptomatic of living alone or is this part of a bigger problem? I fear I am losing my civilization and I’ve only just begun. Will I ever be able to live with another person? Do I even want to?

Things get much worse, I’ve been loath to discover.

My father has been living his own version of this glorious dream for nigh on eight years and it seems as though he is regressing to a feral state. He cuts his fingernails in public, sometimes mid-meal in order to achieve ungular “perfection” (the irony being the more he cuts, the worse it gets). He passes gas quite noisily as we pass throngs of the normalized because he feels that keeping the poison inside his body is a health risk. In the darkness of a movie theatre in which he sits, one can often hear the sound of forceful spitting, followed by the clickety-clack of an unpopped kernel bouncing its way down the sloped floor. That’s the noble savage I call Dad dispelling unwanted food from his mouth. What’s worse is that since he started wearing false teeth, he is prone to removing them and blowing and sucking on the plate to remove wayward kernel husks. Horror of horrors! The list of atrocities continues and it’s enough to merit the abusive tirades I lob against him. “Ewww! Can you please not do that in public? Do you see anyone else doing that? What’s wrong with you? Were you raised in a barn?” The re-enculturation of Jenny’s father is proving fruitless.

One of the curse-blessings of being a thirty-year-old woman is the surge in hormones. Not since I was a teenager have a felt these intense highs and lows. My brain and my body are at odds: the former still enjoys its freedom and lebensraum while the latter screams “BREED YOU SELFISH BITCH!!! BREED!!!” My body is working overtime to finalize my enculturation. Without a partner or children, who will be there to keep this wild child in check? The time approaches for me to ask myself to dream again.

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9m_C6jAT7U

** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSMeUPFjQHc

Status Quo 2010

(these are some of my favourite updates of 2010, culled for my enjoyment)

Home

-Who needs birth control when you've got the Duff Mall?

-is racing against time to conceal evidence of her hermetic dirtbaggery.

-Sleep, you are far less riveting than the road flares and sting operation just up the street.

-The sun is shining, the air smells greenish and the sidewalk waterers are in fine form this morning in Azores West. Happy Imperial Day everyone!

-Impromptu Skag fight! (these are my favourite!)


Her: I'm the one who pays the m-f-ing rent! 


Him: Yeah, but I'm the one who's in control the whole time!


 Her: If I had a gun right now I'd blast your ass!


 Him: Why you gotta talk like that?!

-lives almost exclusively in her head. It might be time to move.

-The clinking of bottles outside my window is the musical accompaniment to Garbage Night in Skagsville.

-Skag fights on bikes and then, "I need a pipe!"

-'s kitchen sink is THE romantic hot spot for the local fruit fly population.

-My eye started dripping uncontrollably earlier this evening at the Parkdale library while I was filling out a volunteer application form. Foreshadowing?

-helps teens with their homework in exchange for stories of crime in Skagsville.

-The undercover po, who look unmistakably like po, are mining for rock on my street while the noise of Queen Street traffic is impeding my ability to discern this skag's testimony.

Some words:

... don't have ...

... phone number?

... FUCK!

... swallowed?

I can show you the bag I got it from.

-A broken bottle of Molson Stock Ale and a flock of pigeons feasting on a puddle of vomit. Such are the accoutrements of a Friday morning in Skagsville!

Work

-The child who owned that time is happiness exactly. --Chinglish proverb

-"Pets mess the recycle and leave special swelling at everywhere." Chinglish conjecture on why pets should not be treated like family members.

-and the TOEFL iBT inadvertently tag teamed a delicate Japanese student to the point of tears. The day is now complete. Whoomp! There it is!

-No sense of irony but a whole lotta Seoul.

-Jennifer: Blah blah Neanderthals. Blah blah Homo Sapiens.


 Student: That's not mentioned in our holy book, so I can't believe it.


 Jennifer: Is carbon dating mentioned in your holy book? 


Student: Yes. 


(awkward silence)


Jennifer: Moving on ...

-called in sick for shift #1 citing exhaustion and the inability to face the spectrum of autism.

-Jennifer: Your homework is to go home and research biological determinism and report back tomorrow on how it can be dangerous.

Translation: Your worldview is dangerously akin to that of the Third Reich.

‎-(an hour into today’s class)


 Me: Kang, thank you for joining us at 5:10. What did we talk about yesterday?


 Kang: Phrasal verbs. 


Me: Yes, that's true. We also talked about you coming to class on time.


 Pause. 


Kang: I love you.

Politics

-is the woodsman.

-, Idealist

-is walking softly softly.

-is a stout little despot.

-has always been curious to see what a $1B show looks like. Tear gas and sound cannons and sweeping police power? Giddy up!

-Media coverage of peaceful protest doesn't sell as much Lysol as anarchy and terrorism do.

-would follow Charlie Veitch like a rat to the edge of the River Hamelin just to hear him pipe.

‎-What I lack in diplomacy I make up for in passive aggressiveness!

-Just like a drunken frat boy after hearing the second "NO", the Toronto Rag (a.k.a. Sun) forcefully pushes its agenda (re: today's headline)

No offense to sober, non-rapey frat boys. http://www.torontosun.com/
cover/

‎-... and now a squealing pig takes his throne as the mayor of Hogtown.

Life

-is dancing at ground zero of an American Idol explosion!

-Kafkaesque experiences on offer at Hua-Sheng Supermarket, Chinatown.

-Obeah woman put a hoodoo curse on me near Lansdowne station. The curse and I are now on a wait-and-see basis.

-late-night and erudite

-, outer of and counselor to all the baby 'mos on the dance floor, so my friends tell me.

-: Cockblock Extraordinaire!

-Elusive is the new ubiquitous.

-'s purse is chock-full of the stuff after school specials are made of.

-is having a fireside chat with the teenager inside.

-can't decide what's more dangerous: oxycotin, oxytocin or dyslexia.

-Vampire by night, zombie by day.

-looks forward to being someone's second wife.

-Trying to figure out which of my gay beards suits this outfit best.

-Every time I see a man in uniform I want to talk him out of it ;)

-walked the tightrope tonight between Nuit Blanche and Ennui Blanche.

-prefers the 3am booty call to be dressed up like a Holt Renfrew display window and NOT like a derelict appliance shop on the wrong side of town.

-Waiting in the dentist's reception at Yonge and Davisville wondering what's more likely to bleed first, my gums or my nose at this altitude!

-woke up in an overcoat, a necklace and not much else. What kind of crazy Rolling Stones groupie party was that?! Oh. My. God bless the rescue team whose timeliness prevented my humiliation from becoming abject mortification. Open bar=killer

An Immodest Proposal

Never give your phone number to transients under any circumstances!

Out of the blue one late August day, I received the following text message from an unfamiliar number:

August 22 11:08 am

Hi hope all is well.

I didn’t want to be rude or admit that I had no idea who was texting me so I replied cordially:

Thanks! You too!

I did a little reconnaissance through iPhone’s archive and I pieced together that it was a former student’s number. We had exchanged contact information on our way to lunch one day just in case one of us got lost on the way to the restaurant. I knew she was in Spain at the time of the mysterious text and she informed me that she had passed the phone on to another person who had also been in my class.

This Thursday, I received an unusual text from the same number:

October 7 6:32 pm

I am willing to pay you a small fee every month to meet your costs but i need to know for sure that you still want to help me.

This message intrigued me. Not many people offer me money and being Jenny Donkey, I couldn’t just dismiss it as a wrong number. Also, for all intents and purposes, the English was good. I indulged it:

I would love for you to pay me. How much are we talking and what do I have to do?

7:34

You marry me n i pay you for doing so by you opening a joint bank account into which a monthly fee to be agreed upon shall be deposited.

The last time someone suggested I do them a favour related to finances I ended up on the hook for over $2000. Who was this stranger and what had I allegedly agreed to? There was a message waiting on my phone that I hadn’t noticed until that moment.

Transcript of phone message—Thursday October 7, 7:01 pm

Yeah … (mumble mumble, name?) I was hoping to get you and maybe speak to you. Uh from your reply it seems like you deen’t uh (reempa) that email I sent you previously because uh I was actually waiting for you to reply to that email but you deen’t. I guess we just have to probably meet sometime and have a discussion … so we can be of the same mind at least and know … what we actually talking about. Otherwise if we send messages thissss way and you (ofta mee) a different way we may not be really understanding each other very clearly. So I think probably it’s best that uh we meet sometime and uh have a genuine conversation about this. Give me a call sometime later. Bye for now.

I didn’t recognize the voice and still can’t place the accent though I’ve listened to the voicemail over and over. My guess is the person is from a country where English is the colonial language. I’ve joked in class about marrying someone for money so perhaps my phone number was sent along to this poor sap with the hope that I might accept the gentleman’s proposition. There’s only one problem: How can I marry someone for money when I won’t even do it for love? I responded to the request as appropriately as I could.

8:32 pm

What planet are you from?

8:45

I am an alien on a planet called earth so my ideas n views are not those of earthlings.

9:04

I’ll say!

9:15

No offence meant,i am just different from most people n it takes awhile for others to understand me.

At that point our exchange took on shades of an IM chat on PlentyofPlankton.com and I had to shut it down.

This is my first marriage proposal. What a romantic notion!

Me And You And A Man Named Moo

Last Friday afternoon was typical except for the fact that Ryyyy came to meet me at work. That never happens. He’d had two job interviews in the neighbourhood and stopped by to say hello afterward. We went to the Artful Dodger, site of so much decompression and so many post-work drinks. He sucked back the Heineken while I did an enviable job on the house white.

Somehow we got on the subject of border crossings and racial profiling. I told Ryyyy that he had nothing to worry about at the border because he doesn’t speak with an accent and looks white enough not to be considered a security risk.

“Those people would be questioned,” I said of the pair of men in the opposite corner of the patio whose skin colour was darker than my own fading summer tan.

“Definitely,” Ryyyy replied.

“And I’m pretty sure that person would get harassed,” I speculated of an Asian man two tables away. It wasn’t for the fact that he was Asian but more for his brown fringe jacket, feathered fedora, long hair and day-glo green Reeboks.

I excused myself to use the washroom and when I returned, the fashion question mark was showing Ryyyy a page in his book. On the page there was a pen sketch of me. I was flattered. The sketch was crude but the gentleman promised to add to it, a mermaid tail here, and luscious flowing hair there. In a London accent he asked me for my mailing address so he could send me a hard copy.

“How about I give you my work address?” I asked in the interest of self-preservation.

“That’s the problem with you Toronto people,” the gentleman commented. “You don’t trust your instincts. In Montreal, women I’ve just met offer to pose nude for me.”

The gentleman introduced himself as Moo of Moo Movies. He proceeded to pitch a movie idea based on Hamlet but in which Ophelia lifts herself from the water, proclaims, “Fuck this!”, commits Hamlet to a nunnery then saves Denmark from its fatalistic end.

“I love it!” I admitted. “I’m so tired of movies that focus on the malaise and crisis of the thirty-year-old man. Give me something that’s relevant to me!”

My feminist manifesto pleased Moo who confessed he was starting an army of women that was 65 million strong.

“Count that as 65 million and one,” I told him before he offered me a job as a five-star general. This man was a smooth operator, someone who knew the secret knock to the backdoor of my heart.

Between his discourse on conspiracy theories focusing on his being targeted by the Harper government, and his inflammatory commentary on his ex-wife and her promiscuous lifestyle, he named dropped, of course. Diana, Angelina, Gwyneth and someone I’m ashamed to admit I neither know nor remember. And then, it happened. He pitched me a movie idea so brilliant I nearly creamed my pants. The film is reminiscent of a Wong Kar-Wai/David Lynch hybrid but with a story possessed of astute clarity and universal appeal. I offered my services pro bono as his PA that very minute.

SEGUE: (At some point, it started raining and we ended up under a patio umbrella where a man named Dave sat. He was gracious enough to invite us to stay and I inadvertently outed the closeted queen by suggesting he knew how to grab the bull by the balls and twist just in time. He proceeded to talk about his happy 32-year marriage to a woman, which confused and perplexed me more than Moo. Who knew?)

Now I’m confronted with an ethical dilemma: I want to write the screenplay for the film Moo pitched (with a modified and more cynical ending) but I don’t know what’s fair game. Isn’t it dirty dealings to steal someone else’s idea? Moo does not appear on a Google search; he could be any assortment of nutcase Yonge Street has on offer but something inclines me to believe him. How does one go about locating an enigma? Should I skulk the streets of downtown looking for that fluorescent footwear? Should I write, sell and wait for him to appear out of the woodwork demanding copyright ownership? Maybe at that point we could work out a barter system: one screenplay in exchange for a nude miniature. Help, friends!

Raised On Robbery

I teach a unit on crime once every twelve weeks and it’s coming up again on Monday. It’s not my favourite unit by any stretch but I seize the opportunity to tell the story of my sojourn into the seedy underworld of theft. Simply, I was at the GAP trying to return a Christmas sweater that was too big. It was Boxing Day, the lines were LONG, and I didn’t want to wait. After surveilling the surveillance unit, a rather ineffectual-looking young troglodyte, I slipped the exchange sweater in my shopping bag and made a beeline for the door. I escaped with impunity.

What I fail to mention in class is how it came to pass that a “good girl” like me would do something as antisocial as shoplifting.

Halloween Night, 1987: It was a dark and stormy night, truly. I was afraid the rain would never stop, especially in time for trick-or-treating. Dad had made me a robot costume out of a toilet paper box he’d picked up from Loblaws that I was pretty proud of even though it was a mild pain in the ass to haul around. That afternoon, Dad asked Uncle Dan to drive him to IKEA so he could buy me a bookshelf. I was looking forward to having one but I resented that picking it up was cutting into my and my cousin Melodie’s Halloween time. What was Dad thinking?

We arrived at IKEA and after what seemed like forever, a few workers placed a bookshelf in front of us. As it turned out, the shelf was flawed. The workers scrambled to replace it while Dad and Dan scrambled to stuff the defective unit in Dan’s utility van. Dad paid for the good one, the workers loaded it into Dan’s van, atop the damaged one, and we peeled away just in time to make it home for Halloween’s second round. That was the first night I experienced the thrill of audacity.

The experience of the Halloween heist was soon supplanted in my psyche by what would turn out to be the great annual Christmas tree caper. Since Dad never drove his 1964 Chevy Boat, we always relied on the kindness of one of his shady friends to assist us in our delinquency. I don’t remember how it started but the outcome was always the same: we would go to a local tree seller and through some subterfuge or other, we managed to distract the owner for long enough to tie a tree to the roof of the car and drive away. It worked every time and I started taking it for granted.

“Do you want to get a Christmas tree this weekend,” Dad would ask.

“Can we steal it?” I’d reply, eager for the fun.

“I don’t know this year …”

“Da-aaaaad!!! ”

The answer was always and invariably yes.

I was always an earnest if voracious student; under Papa’s tutelage, I committed all of his theories and practices to memory. His fundamental message was always crystal clear:

“I don’t steal because I have to. I have the money to pay for it. I do it … (pause for dramatic effect, cue full orchestra crescendo as his eyes water with tears) … because I can.” After the tear drying came the ardent addendum, “But don’t you do it!”

In my adolescence, I often boasted to the alternative smoking crowd that I was raised on robbery. I always had confectionary on hand, usually in the form of Werther’s Original, to dole out in exchange for attention and acceptance. “Stolen,” I declared smugly. Candy, clothing and the RENT soundtrack were among the many things my loving caretaker lifted for me. There seemed to be no end to his generosity.

However, under mysterious circumstances Dad couldn’t go into the Bay after the summer of 1997. Eventually, he confessed he had been leaving after “shopping” when a security officer tapped him on the shoulder and led him through a labyrinthine hallway to the security office. Security had been monitoring Papa’s sticky fingers throughout his shopping experience. The police were called and Daddy dearest was banned from the department store for one year. All criminal behaviour ended in the interim.

That was a lesson I never wanted to learn for myself.

I was happy that my vicarious entrée into criminality was spared the actual embarrassment of the inevitable bust. The lust for extreme highs/lows is not something I believe I possess. What I have developed over time, however, is an addiction to speed and efficiency and that has compelled me to do regrettable things.

“I didn’t just steal that Dollarama greeting card because I had to. I had the money to pay for it. I did it … (dramatic pause, smoke coming out my nostrils) …because I didn’t want to wait in a line that was moving like molasses!

“But don’t you do it!”

(the beast resides)

A Defense Celebration Of My Neuroses

A Defense Celebration Of My Neuroses

Let him who is without anxiety cast the first stone.

Radical Agnes: You’re not neurotic, Jenny.

Jenny Donkey: Yes I am. But who isn’t?

The Sisterhood: He’s extremely neurotic.

My neuroses came under attack the other night, the poor dears, in an ambush by a recent date. The question he posed almost rendered me speechless: “Don’t take this the wrong way but why do women have so much more anxiety than men?” I prefer the term neuroses myself. I felt incredibly defensive after he asked me that as though he had slapped me in the face.

I know I’m neurotic; evidence has been pushing itself toward that verdict for some time now. I walk in a hurry, stiff and like I had to be somewhere five minutes before. When jaywalking, I get nervous when a car is approaching from three blocks away where there’s no possible way it can hit me. If I’m a stranger at a party, I tend to bulldoze my way through the various social circles leaving people blindsided in the wake of Hurricane Jenny. I can’t help myself most of the time.

After What’sHisName pointed out how anxious I was, I began to notice just how numerous my ticks are. What’s worse, I began to call myself out on them every time I noticed myself acting a little crazy. “Uh oh,” I declared to him as I hunched my shoulders defensively in preparation for my bob through a sea of hipsters on both Ossington and Queen Streets. “Anxiety.” I’m anxious in those situations because I’m small and drunk people are careless with their blazing cigarettes and behemoth bodies. I hate crowds because I get hurt in them; this aversion, I suppose, is part of what makes me neurotic. That and the fact that I think people I pass outside the bars late at night are all laughing at me.

Needless to say, I felt like a complete head case around my date for the rest of our evening together and nothing kills intimacy quite like the psychological manifestation of an offhand comment. Because I’m a neurotic, it’s mostly all in my head anyway.

The next evening I attended Caro’s 3 Days of Meat Party and indulged my neuroses with people who have known and loved me for longer than they haven’t. We had a giggle over our recent spate of bad luck with the gentlemen, our un-/underemployment, meat and vegetables, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie as perfect complements to a summertime barbeque and the distribution of the African population by country throughout the city. The vino tinto flowed freely and after disclosing the details of my night of disaster, my kindred spirits talked me down from the proverbial ledge. Cackles erupted; it took 24 hours but I was in full celebration of all my foibles again.

“I’m sooooo drunk, Koko.”

“I noticed.”

I don’t ever want to feel that I am a liability. What a horrible way to go through life. I make myself laugh just the way I am and that is enough. What I need is to find someone whose idiosyncrasies go with mine. I have faith that he exists and that the Universe will deliver him. Before she does, however, I must learn never to abandon my instincts vis-à-vis les hommes endommagés and to stop inviting them into my home. God forbid, they might judge my cluttered kitchen counter, my barren white walls, my taste in music or the undusted spider webs that hang in the corners and I can’t have that, can I?