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?

On The Edge Of Twenty-Ten

I was no more than a baby then

Well I seemed broken-hearted

Something within me

But the moment that you first laid

Eyes on me all alone

On the edge of twenty-ten

-Stevie Nicks-ish

I am two weeks away from my twenty-tenth birthday and I’m growing up too fast! I’m getting on top of my finances. I’m asking myself what the next step on my journey is. My worst nightmare is coming true: I’m developing an affinity for babies. I hope this last one is fleeting. I’m still very much a late adolescent at heart; I’m an unopened flower that’s sprouting roots in the most stagnant water imaginable while the rest of humanity is spiraling out of control.

There has been a curious absence of police presence in Skagsville lately. I blame the G20 Summit. It's a $1B scapegoat. On my ride home on Monday night police cruisers lined a substantial stretch of Little Italy. The charming and disarming Agnes Dei encountered an elevated presence outside her downtown high rise. The popo are everywhere to serve and protect … but who, I wonder? I’m still on the fence as to whether I’m going to submit myself to the sound canons in the name of democracy. Ryyyyyy and I discussed attending the protest but from a safe distance. We’re both pretty small people and could be easily crushed by hordes of militant radicals upon their flight from brutality.

Adding to the doom and gloom, the ground shook under my feet today as I was sitting in my classroom decompressing after an arduous test day. Probably just some lead-footed bull in a china shop who’s running late to class, I thought to myself. The tremors didn’t stop. Oh, that’s most likely the subway rumbling through, I rationalized. But in the nearly three years I’ve worked in the building, I’ve never felt the vibrations of the subway. What is this? I wondered. Giant serpentine creatures coming to consume us? Where’s Fred Ward when you need him to save the day?

I love iPhone because iPhone informs me of everything I ever need to know. Within mere minutes my Facebook friends confirmed that there had been an earthquake and that it had been felt as far as Montreal. Great Scott! My ride home tonight was a windy gal on all the east/west thoroughfares and I feel as though trouble’s a-brewin’ here, there and everywhere. And to top it off, there’s a full moon this weekend and all three of you who visit this site know how exhaustively I speak about full moons.

I’ma sceared. The universe is speaking and we’re not listening. When do we get to return to simpler times when the end of June marked the beginning of my birthday fortnight of fun and not the end of the world? This weekend I’m manifesting safety and caution and I’ll postpone reveling in bacchanalia until the madness ebbs. In these desperate times, I feel that’s the greatest gift of all.

Addendum: If anyone would like to give me a gift in honour of my milestone birthday, I am accepting magnets, button pins, questionable kitsch, Grey Goose and Johnnie Walker Blue.

There's No Place Like Skagsville

I’m so happy that summer is back and that life vibrates on the streets of my hometown. The sights, the smells, the pheromones … I’m closing the circle on a year that I’ve lived here and I’m still very much in love. I am home. For all its problems and pathologies, be it ever so humble, there’s no place like Skagsville.

Things are batty in the state of Skagsville tonight under a full moon. To the chagrin of the skeptic in me, I’ve decided to go for the idea that the moon does have an effect on people. This certainly proved itself to be a compelling notion on my walk home when I saw some of my beloved neighbours accusing each other of some transgression or other from across the street. Three steps later, a notorious charmer complimented me in my divorcée sunglasses:

Notorious Charmer: Hey there, beautiful eyes.

Jenny Donkey: Go on, you.

Tonight in Skagsville, I try to talk myself into going to bed. Just like my best friend Sling Shot * always says, “The worst part about going to bed is waking up” and I just don’t wanna. This hasn’t been the best week for sleep. Sunday night’s rest was interrupted by impetuous pyromaniacs shooting their load of fireworks in the street and while I’m all for the carnival spirit, the noise startled me and set me on edge. Pop pop pop/crack crack crack/bang bang bang! Three cheers for imperialism! Food poisoning got the better of me early Tuesday morning and the extreme heat of Tuesday and Wednesday overnight have made me toss and turn like the neurotic I am perpetually asking the universe, What time is it? Is it time to get up? Did I sleep through the alarm? How much time do I have left? Again, this kind of obsessive compulsion might just be the result of the moon’s pull.

I hope tonight’s sleep is restful. My reluctance to sleep is easing as I perch atop the gargoyle’s stoop that doubles as a kitchen nook and observe the goings-on below. Bosley Skags (Boz for short), the mayor of Beaty, is on his endless patrol of the street and I’m half tempted to bay at the moon through open window, serenading the gentleman on his nocturnal watch. He probably wouldn’t notice anyway being half asleep himself. And thus, my destiny …

*Alias

Pop Goes The Swede

I’m reaching an age when my biological clock is beginning to tick. I don’t have the financial wherewithal to respond to its call and I’m not sure I would even if I did. My stance on breeding is that there are enough ecological rapists in the world; I want to be part of the solution, not the problem. Hats off to those who have babies because without you humanity wouldn’t have a future.

Recently, some of my detractors, citizens of a once colonized nation whose government is now offering financial incentives for couples to conceive, asked me who would take care of me in my retirement years. Isn’t that a selfish reason to repopulate? Besides, there’s no guarantee that feeding someone for twenty years will make them feel any sense of obligation to you.

A wee little one by whom I would attempt to do right might instill me with a sense of purpose but the truth is the doldrums of my childhood soured me against conventional family life.

If I were to have a child, God help it, I would be tempted not to reinforce stereotypical gender roles. There would be no Barbies or G.I. Joes in the house and though I love them, there would be no fairy tales either. I would clothe my child in gender-neutral, traffic light colours such as yellow and green and red and allow their tresses to grow long and Mormonesque, just like Céline has done with her little gender bender. By doing this, I would hope against hope that my child, my beloved Orlando, would turn out to be a progressive human being, a free spirit in the purest form. Orlando would learn to relate to the world as a person first and not as a pretty girl or a strong boy. S/he would learn to make hir own decisions vis-à-vis gender identity, society be damned.

To my chagrin, I discovered this thinking is not as radical as I had initially believed. A Swedish couple actually beat me to the punch and is currently raising a genderless child known as Pop (Sweden, go figure). * I realize such parenting, although well intended, might border on abuse; a child raised such as this is destined to become a best-selling author at the very least, not to mention the main attraction of multiple television specials and autograph sideshows at local malls throughout the land.

While I like that my genderless child would astound and perplex the masses, I’m not sure I would want to force hirm to face the loaded existential question of “What are you?” on the school playground. How does one answer such a query without the benefit of gender stereotyping? Other people’s children can be so cruel, so bullish, so obtuse and so narrowly defined.

Age six would be the logical time for the child to realize hirs biological identity and would thus be allowed to use gender specific washroom and change room facilities. By that time my good work will already have been done and no one can take that away from me. At long last, my little one will help me conquer the normative Alphas of the world, and that’s definitely worth two decades of room and board in my book.

*http://www.thelocal.se/20232/20090623/

The Year Of The Tiger, The Thrill Of The Fight

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests if the night

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

-William Blake, Songs of Experience

The Year of the White Tiger is upon us and it does not bode well for Jennykins, Tiger’s opposite, the Monkey. Call me flaky, but I decided to consult Chinese astrology to see what it had to say about this year in my cycle of change. This year promises radical change, instability and social upheaval. I am fearful and skeptical of this change though I need it desperately. I’ve reached the end of another 3-year cycle, a time when changing my life is essential. Something’s gotta give. The last change came three years ago when a crisis of faith prompted my decision to teach. The change before that came six years ago when I transitioned from student to quarterlife crisis in a four-month anxiety-riddled smokefest.

From what I could glean from the many Chinglish websites,* the metal Monkey’s cleverness, skill and creativity will help me out of whatever jams I’m going to get into. “Monkey will lose something old while at the same time gain something new.” Sounds like a marriage superstition. What of the borrowed and the blue? I’ll be revisited by past problems and I’ll need to deal with them immediately. TAXES!!! Backlog? And how! One website suggested if I engage in water sports, I risk becoming paraplegic. Good grief! Monkey is destined to spend a lot of time travelling—World Tour 2010!!!— the first bit of good news I’ve heard about the next twelve months so far. Eventually, however, my reputation will suffer and my ambitions will be temporarily disrupted. Jenny Donkey is staying clear of the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica this year in an effort to abstain from sex tourism.

Tiger is said to thwart fire, thieves and ghosts. This is good news since I don’t have content insurance at the time of this writing. For some reason, the mere smell of fire evokes feelings of guilt deep in the pit of my stomach. I’m convinced I was an arsonist in a past life. Or a burn victim. And though I have nothing of value to steal, I worry because my upstairs neighbour has a tendency to leave the front door open. At these times, I could sure use Tiger’s power to foil the band of marauding skags indigenous to my beloved neighbourhood who would spirit up to my unit and bereave me of all my coveted kitsch. As for ghosts, I’ve had plenty, but I’m currently being haunted by the spirit of my twelve-year-old self. It’s a downright possession and girlfriend needs to take her tweenage shyness, awkwardness and lack of hair product awareness back to middle school quickly before I sick Tiger on her.

The take home message is for me to work on what I’m already doing rather than venturing into the unknown. How boring. So while other astrological signs suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, I’ll be sitting home on Saturday nights balancing the chequebook and watching the Platonic shadow puppets dance on the wall. Good times!

Kung Hei Fat Choy everyone! Good luck. I really mean that. Now let’s hug it out.

* Find Your Love Today! And make happy someone special … orientbrides.com

Even Donkeys Come Of Age

Of all the days to come into my apartment to fix the leaky bathtub faucet, my landlord picked the day after I cleaned the shit out of the place. What are the odds? The last vestige of dirtbaggery lies in my kitchen sink, a mountain of dishes that refuse to clean themselves. Jenny Donkey’s secret to appearing adult is to invite people over and clean for them. Even if they cancel on you, at least you’ll no longer have mold in the cracks.

So Happy New Year already (eighteen days late)! My motto for 2010 (which I’m pronouncing twenty-ten and so should you): Going with the flow. So far, it’s worked out great. At the moment, I’m heating the apartment with the stove and taking time outs from writing this to stand in front of my open oven to melt the icicles from my fingers. The fridge makes noise because it doesn’t close properly and until this afternoon, the bathtub faucet leaked. Last week, a mouse crawled to its death along my living room floor while I was confirming plans online. I had my back to this grandiose death procession the whole time. But I’m just taking everything in stride and going with the flow because that’s been my motto since 2010.

Recently, I was talking with an old friend (same birth year) who had just returned from travelling and I noted how manly and philosophical he was becoming. Listening to him talk about his experience struck a chord in me and I’ve decided not to downplay my own spiritual metamorphosis. I’ve begun the count down to my adulthood having just passed the half way mark between twenty-nine and thirty (which I’m pronouncing twenty-ten and so should you). I’ve noticed subtle changes since I moved above ground and purchased the European Vacation. My taste in food, clothing and furniture is different. I’m eating better and I’ve steered clear of the food items on my list of banned substances. * Though I can still get down with a hoodie, nothing churns my butter quite like power shoulders and pencil skirts. On nights at home, I fantasize about purchasing an antique wooden cabinet in which to display deco kitsch figurines and liquor in abundant supply. The time has come for Jenny Donkey to come of age!

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the first dress-up and dance party of 2010, the official Year of the Dress-up and Dance Party, was a time-themed dance party at my favourite Finnish sweat lodge, where David Carradine and Lady Godiva’s son guards the portal. Mel and I tore up the floor as the decades rolled by. By the mid-90s, I was ready for a break. A nagging, time-conscious voice reminded me that I was running out of time, that the night was ending and by extension, so was my life. Just as quickly, my Dionysian counterpart plied my neuroses with alcohol but was no less disconcerted after overhearing a dance fellow comment that the current song was so grade 7 when in reality it was so second year university. What’s worse for me was a visit from Jenny Old Bones, a malevolent spirit that inhabits my body for days after I fail to stretch before shaking my shimmy. My paralysis was so bad I had to stop wearing long johns. Good thing the weather is so mild for this time of year.

There it is again: time. By my estimation, I’ve got just over five months to prove that this decade wasn’t a total bust. Perhaps I should go swimming in a bowl of alphabet soup (GIC, RSP, LLB). Perhaps I should start lying about my age. Perhaps I should finally get out of my own way and get things done. One thing’s for sure. I’m not getting any younger.

*With one exception involving a giant milk chocolate Toblerone bar. It was a Christmas gift. Leave me alone.

Appendix I

List of banned substances:

1. Refined sugar in anything not homemade.

2. Prepared food from the freezer section of the grocery store

3. Milk- or espresso-based drinks made with syrup or from powder

4. Anything with ingredients greater than four syllables in length

5. Beer

6. Reddish meat