Yvonne Craig

            Early Sunday morning it took me a long time to get to sleep because I’d taken such a late siesta the previous evening.  Got up to masturbate twice just to try and make myself tired. When I got up at 5:00 I forced myself to stay awake until the early afternoon so I could grab back my regular sleeping pattern.

I spent a lot of time writing about what I did on my birthday and taking self-portraits of me wearing what I’d bought.

            In the late afternoon I took a bike ride. There wasn’t much cycle traffic along Bloor or the Danforth. At Woodbine I stopped to take a pee at the Firkin but when I went to lock my bike I realized I’d forgotten my chain and lock on my kitchen table at home. I remembered seeing it there earlier that day, underneath the clothes that I’d bought the day before and I’d been so sure that I would have time to put everything away that I didn’t think the lock would be hidden from my attention when I was rushing out the door. So, without my lock I couldn’t stop to use the washroom after all. I didn’t have an excruciating urge to urinate and so though I was uncomfortable I continued on to St Clair and Maybourne and then home. The discomfort maintained itself at a tolerable level all the way out and during the whole trip home but it wasn’t all that enjoyable because of the nagging urge that was gently raking at the inside of my bladder.

            On the way back there were two thundering little three-wheeled one-man spaceships in traffic that looked like they could almost slip underneath the cars ahead of them.

            On the Bloor Viaduct there were two guys riding side by side in the bike lane and enjoying their togetherness so much that I had to shout “Excuse me!” two or three times before I finally got their attention and they went into single file so I could pass.

            My plan had been to stop at the supermarket on the way back but without my lock I couldn’t do that so I just went home, peed, grabbed my lock and went back out again. Before hitting the street I ran into my upstairs neighbour David. He said he had some electric guitars for me to either keep or sell.

            I rode up the hill to the No Frills at Dundas and Lansdowne. The main thing I needed was fruit and so I bought four bags of grapes, hoping that these ones were going to be okay. The five bags I’d bought at Freshco on Friday were all rotten. I also got strawberries, some yogourt, a loaf of whole grain sandwich bread and a package of ground pork.

            When I got home there was still enough light to take some pictures in the back with my tripod and the self-timer. While I was doing that the landlord came to take out the garbage and clean the cans. He seemed like he was in a foul mood.

            David came by a little later and took me upstairs to give me the guitars. I’d never been all the way into his place before other than when being in his hallway while Nick was fixing his doorframe. He had lit candles on the floor of his hallway this time. I guess it was meant to be atmospheric. Other than being cluttered with junk, his apartment is fairly clean. At one end of the bachelor he has a single bed at the foot of which is a big screen TV. He gave me a Rocker electric guitar and a First Act electric guitar. I think Rocker guitars are considered to be starter electrics. First Act has some endorsements from well known musicians but music schools have complained that they are low quality and irreparable because it’s so hard to find parts for them. First Act sued a musical instrument distributor for referring to First Act guitars in an ad as “instrument shaped objects”. They won something like $16 million and put the company out of business. David tried to give me a broken bass too but I told him it’s not worth taking. The First Act guitar has a pretty good gig bag that might fit my acoustic.

            David says he’s taking a holiday to go back to Ethiopia for a few weeks and that’s why he wants to get his place in order. I remember that he had bedbugs four years ago. I sure hope he doesn’t have them now.

            I made burgers and had one with a beer while watching two episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. In the first one Dobie declares that he is going on a hunger strike unless Thalia becomes his girl. All the girls at school besides Thalia think it’s very romantic and refuse to date their boyfriends until they go on hunger strikes too. This makes all the boys in school angry at Dobie. Meanwhile, though Dobie’s parents also think he is fasting, at night Maynard sneaks in through his bedroom window to bring him food. Finally, all the guys surround Dobie in the park and gang feed him pizza. When Dobie comes home his father also force-feeds him. Then his mother comes to him in his room and spoon-feeds him an entire casserole. In the end Thalia arrives and says that he’s won and that she will be his girl, then she proceeds to feed him one of her own concoctions consisting of everything she can cook: frankfurters, sauerkraut, chilli and dumplings. After it’s all been fed to him he tells her that if that’s what she can cook he doesn’t want to be with her after all.

            The second story was kind of bizarre. Dobie falls in love with a new girl at school named Aphrodite Millican, who’s only been in town for one day. He takes her to Charlie Wong’s malt shop where she speaks to Charlie in fluent Chinese and refuses to partake of the unhealthy menu, makes Dobie promise that he won’t drink any more milk shakes and then she proceeds to crack nuts with her bare hands. She takes Dobie back to her place and her father has long, curly blonde. Her two brothers have long brown hair and it turns out that the entire family is a troupe of acrobats called The Flying Millicans. Her father is very liberal and keeps on encouraging Dobie to kiss his daughter. When he finally does, Aphrodite declares to her father that Dobie is the one for her. Any future husband of Aphrodite must join the troupe and so they begin to try to train Dobie, but he’s too weak and all the work causes him to change his mind about Aphrodite.

            Aphrodite Millican was played by Yvonne Craig, who later played the role of Barbara Gordon-Batgirl on the Batman TV series.