On Wednesday just before 11:00 I headed
down to the foodbank. The Second Harvest truck was getting unloaded when I
arrived so the line-up was shifted to extend the other way into the driveway.
At the front of the line was an elderly couple that look either Japanese or
Korean. The man looked much older than his wife, as she was looking ready for a
hike with her backpack on, while he was sitting while waiting in his rolator
walker. I noticed that his walker was fitted on the sides with laced raw
leather, that had pockets with zippers added. There was also a hanging case of
the same material fitting perfectly one of his electronic devices. This did not
look like industrial work because too much love had gone into it, so I’m
assuming that either he or his wife had done it. I suspected her though because
she looked like a crafty one. While I was waiting, I asked three people at
three different times not to smoke in line and to various degrees they all
complied. One palsied guy with a walker at first put out his cigarette entirely
but I told him he didn’t have to do that. I said I would hold his place in line
and he could smoke his cigarette farther away. A few minutes later he did light
up, but just backed up a bit to a position that made very little difference in
terms of the second hand smoke that came my way. I didn’t tell him twice as he
might not have had the ability to understand. One of the reception volunteers
came out and stood in front of the door to quickly drink her coffee and smoke a
cigarette before going back inside. I didn’t even bother to say anything to her
because I think there’s an almost impenetrable sense of privilege that the
smoking staff members have about their habit. Something like, “Look at the good
work I’m doing, then shut up and let me have my cigarette!”
While
I was one of five clients lined up inside to get a number, one of the
volunteers came up from the basement where he’d been putting away some of the
stuff they’d just gotten from Second harvest, and told Joe that he’d just
slipped and fallen on the water that’s leaking onto the freezer floor. Joe said
that he’d hurt his back down there a few days ago. The volunteer said, “You’ve
got to do something about that water!” but then he clarified that he didn’t
mean Joe had to personally do something about it. I got number twenty and went
home.
My
next-apartment neighbour was standing in front of my building, and as I was
unlocking the door I told him that my bedbugs might finally be gone, as I
haven’t seen any for a week. He then started offering me his theories about
where the bedbugs could have come from in the first place. He said that the
homeless friend of Sundar the superintendent, that comes to stay with him
sometimes, could have brought them in. I told him that is was my upstairs
neighbour, David, that, last year, first reported having bedbugs. This inspired
him to begin a long list of complaints about David: that the third floor
hallway is lined with junk that he’s brought home but which won’t fit in his
apartment; that he brings people in to stay with him all the time, including
prostitutes. Then my neighbour slightly lowered his voice and said of David, “I
think he’s a little bit …” and then he held out his hand, palm down and twisted
it back and forth. I asked what that meant and he explained that he thinks
David is Gay, adding that one can tell by the way he walks and the way he
talks. Frankly, I’d always thought the guy I was talking to was Gay. In the
eighteen years that we’ve lived in the same building I haven’t even seen him
speak to someone of the same sex. But if David really is Gay, I’m a bit
insulted. Though I’m not interested, he could at least have asked if I was.
What am I, chopped liver?
My
neighbour also surprised me with the report that our superintendent, Sundar,
had moved out and up the street to the West Lodge apartments. Apparently he has
a bad leg and he can’t climb the stairs to his apartment on the third floor
anymore without a lot of pain. I wonder if he’ll continue to manage our place
and collect the rent.
A
couple of hours later when I was back at the foodbank, the friendly male volunteer with the same wool cap he
always wears (I assume there are dreadlocks underneath), called my number. He
said, he’d noticed that I was reading another children’s book. I explained that
I’m taking a Children’s Literature course at U of T and that I’m working on an
essay about the use of talking animals as a literary device. He mentioned in
response that the recent winner of the Giller prize had written a book about
talking dogs and added that writing can help a person get $100,000. I had to
look it up later, but he was talking about Andre Alexis’s “Fifteen Dogs”. I
studied Alexis’s short story, “Kuala Lumpur” last year as part of my Canadian
Short Stories course. It was quite a powerful and funny piece about a boy
trying to deal with his father’s death at a West Indian-Canadian wake.
I
found a box of All Bran Flakes behind a wall of sugared cereal. When I’d made
all my other selections from the first section, my first volunteer called
across to Sue in the cold section, “One adult!” “I know!” she responded. As I
walked up to her, I told her, “I’m an adult, but I’m also a child!” There was a
choice between a litre of chocolate milk and two tubs of flavoured yogourt. Sue
said, “All men are” as she put the chocolate milk into my bag, “but most of
them won’t admit it!” Then she put the yogourt in my bag and said, “I’m going
to give you extra for admitting it!”
According
to imago relationship theory, we all enter into relationships with the unconscious
desire to have our childhood wounding healed by our partner. Sue is a very
outgoing woman, so it seems natural that she would perceive men as children. I
would say though that if we are paying attention we will see both the parent
and the needy child in the other.
There
was also another medium sized whole pizza from Pizza Pizza. This one had a
little more flavour when heated up because it had the added topping of bacon.
When
I got home, I gathered up the empties I’d collected from my two neighbours and
took them to the Beer Store. About ten of the beer bottles had been carried in
from the States, so though they could recycle them, they couldn’t pay me for
them, and so I only got three dollars and change. I wanted coffee and margarine
though, so I went to the bank to get twenty dollars and then went to Freshco.
I started down the
aisle that had the coffee and passed a young guy stocking some diapers, when a
package got out of hand, as diapers do, and tumbled. He caught it just as I was
passing him. Nice catch!” I commented. “Thanks!” he responded proudly.
I stepped into a
very long express checkout line-up, but looked over and saw a very short line a
few counters away, so I stepped over there, only to find of course that there
was a sign indicating that she was going off duty. When I went back to the
express, there was a little white haired elderly woman who asked in a Germanic
accent if I hadn’t just been in line there. I said I had, but she didn’t offer
me her place. She left her basket in her place and went looking for something.
As the line progressed, I kicked her basket forward for her. When she was
checking out her items, she asked that some gourmet sausages she had selected
be left till last. When it was the last item, the counterperson was about to
run it through when the old woman said again to leave it till last. The
checkout girl said, “This is the last item!” I said, “I think she means
separate!” The woman confirmed that that was it. It turned out that she just
wanted to make sure she had enough money to pay for the extra treat. So the
checkout girl told her how much it was, the woman said she’d take it and the
counterperson shook her head in mild annoyance.
I took a siesta in
the afternoon that was interrupted by my vibrating phone. It was someone from
OCADU asking if I could come in that night to replace another model that’d
cancelled. I had planned on staying in and working on my essay but I can’t turn
down work when there’s so little, so I accepted the job. I still had time to go
back to bed for an hour but I was lying there with the kind of taste of burnt
air in my throat that I get when the heat is on too high. The thing was though
that the heat wasn’t on. It wasn’t noticeable on the bike ride to work but as
soon as I was inside again I had the same taste. I was wondering if it was the
symptom of some serious problem.
I worked for
Keiran Brent on the sixth floor. He had me do a reclining pose and there was a
space on the stage set aside for another model that would be coming in the next
week. The students were to leave room in their composition for the other model.
I asked Keiran if he had been a student of Richard Robertson, because that was
something that he often did after the college dropped the budget for hiring two
models for one class. He said he had been one of Richard’s students, and he
really missed those classes of doing large drawings. Richard’s students had
worked on very large drawing boards, doing full figure drawings that were life
size or larger. I commented that Richard’s teaching style was very energetic,
like that of an athletic coach. He said that Richard’s drawings were very
athletic as well. He said that since Richard Robertson retired he seems to have
kept a low profile and doesn’t even show his work in galleries.
When I got home
from work I heated up half of the bacon and cheese pizza and watched the rest
of “Sid Caesar Fan Favourites”. I think the best skit was the game show parody,
“Break Your Brains” in which Carl Reiner played the exuberant host and Caesar
played the returning champion who had won twenty five times in a row. He’d
gotten beaten and robbed several times between shows because they always gave
him his winnings in cash. At one point they brought in another returning
champion who had won a total of one million dollars on the show. When asked if
had changed her she said it hadn’t but for some strange reason all of her
friends have changed, to become poorer and more boring. She and Sid were in
separate soundproof booths but they kept removing the air from Sid’s Booth. At
one point, the host said that, unknown to Sid’s character; they had flown to
the studio his father, who he hadn’t seen in thirty years. If Sid won the next
challenge he would be surprised with a reunion with his father, but if he lost
he would never see his father again.
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