On Monday in the late morning I had my last
booking of the year at OCADU. As usual, I took Dundas to get there and
everything was going fine until just before Bathurst when some idiot with
parcels in his arms came running out in front of me. My bike slammed into him
and tipped over hard, slamming me onto the asphalt in front of oncoming
traffic. The first thing that hit was my right knee, then a lot of the impact
was taken up by my right arm which just stopped my face from hitting the
pavement. Fortunately the car behind me stopped in time. I struggled to my
feet, picked up my bike and limped to the sidewalk. I noticed that the wheels
were dragging because something had been knocked out of alignment. The idiot
I’d hit was apologizing and telling me it was totally his fault. No kidding! He
asked if I was okay. I told him that I’d landed on my knee. He said that his
knee was hurting too and I was thinking, “Really? Who gives a fuck about your
knee? Your knee and my knee are both your fault!” While I was examining my bike
to see what was wrong, he and his precious parcels slipped away. I was probably
injured by the Christmas rush. Both wheels seemed to be catching, but I rode
them to work anyway.
When
I arrived at Zorica Vasic’s classroom, she was there talking to another
instructor, Diane Pugen. They were both surprised to see me. Zorica hadn’t been
told that a model had been booked, but she said it was great. Diane though,
thinking that the stage wouldn’t be needed for Zorica’s class had left an
elaborate still life display left over from her class that was obviously meant
to be used for her next. Zorica offered to help her dismantle it and they set
about the task. Zorica told me though that she wouldn’t need me for the first
hour of class. I decided then that I would take back a book to the library of
the Faculty of Information, but first I took the book out to show to Diane. It
was Thomas King’s short story, “A Coyote Columbus Story” as illustrated by
William Kent Monkman and I showed it to her because we had been discussing
Monkman the last time I’d seen her. Zorica photographed the cover because it
tied in with a project she was having her class work on.
I
rode up to Robarts with my sticking wheels. The other aches and pains from my
collision with the spirit of Christmas putz were starting to creep in. My upper
right arm and my right wrist were both beginning to bother me. I was back in
Zorica’s class with still half of the free hour left. I sat in the models
dressing room and did some writing.
The
class started seventy minutes late. Zorica wanted me to start with gestures and
then said that after that I could pose with my clothing on. I told her I would
need an extension chord for the heater. She seemed surprised. “You’re cold?” she
asked. I answered, “Ah, yes, I’m quite often cold when I’m naked.” I began with
a series of two minute poses. She spent about five minutes looking for a chord
and then gave up, because, I guess she figured it didn’t matter if I was cold
for twenty minutes if afterwards I’d be clothed.
After
the twenty minutes I took the five-minute break that my union allows and spent
that time getting dressed and getting ready to do the long pose for her. After
getting everything ready and sitting on the stage, I picked up my phone and
started looking for my countdown timer, but the phone was displaying something
else, so it was taking longer than the usual ten seconds, though it wouldn’t
have taken more than half a minute, but suddenly Zorica said impatiently, “Excuse
me! Can we start? We don’t have a lot of time now!” I put the phone down and
posed, timing myself with my watch, but she really pissed me off with her
attitude, as if I’d somehow been ripping her off for time, even though I’d
sacrificed my break to get ready. I found my countdown timer on the next break
but she had put me in a bad mood for the rest of the class, plus my injuries
were starting to ache more and more as time went on.
After
work I rode home. I thought about taking my ride to Bike Pirates when they
opened at 17:00 but I anticipated that it might take much longer than half an
hour to do the repairs, and I had to leave at 17:30 to go and meet my friend
Ivy Reiss for a beer.
We
were scheduled to meet in front of the Jackman Humanities Building at St George
and Bloor for 18:00, but she called me while I was waiting and said she’d be
five minutes late and for me to meet her at the corner of St George and Bloor.
I sat on the cushioned bench in front of Brooks Brothers Flatiron Shop for
about ten minutes, then thinking that Ivy might not see me there, I went and
stood right on the corner. She arrived about ten minutes later.
She
was very stressed over the course she’s taking. The entire syllabus is taken up
with the study of one novel, Thomas Fielding’s “Tom Jones”. She had just met
the deadline for her term essay, but she said the essay wasn’t finished and she
wanted to get an extension from her professor but he was out of town until the
fifteenth. She had already failed a test and so she needed this essay to pass
the course and graduate.
We
walked west on Bloor, and when we got to the next block she pointed up the
street to The Madison. So, coincidentally, two nights in a row, I drank at the
Madison when I haven’t been there since 2008.
We
talked some more about her course and then about mine, which she also took and
loved. I brought up the subject of the story of Lilith being Adam’s first wife.
She said something about Adam and Eve that I hadn’t thought before. Since Eve
was made from Adam’s body, she’s essentially his daughter, which makes the
entire lineage of humanity in Judaism, Christianity and Islam based on incest.
I
also learned that Ivy’s parents were born in Germany. I know she speaks
Hungarian and so that’s what I thought her ethnic background was, but she said
that her parents were both forced into the Hitler youth until they escaped to
Hungary in the early 1940s.
We
each had a pint and a half and had a pleasant get together, which only tends to
happen about once a year.
That
night I watched a couple more episodes of Radar Men from the Moon, taking me up
to episode seven. Setting up storylines to correspond to cliffhanger endings
makes the series as a whole seem very slow. The acting is pretty bad and
Commando Cody’s boss looks like a young mobster and his speaking is more wooden
than that of a porn star, no pun intended. The Commando Cody series that was
made later based on this one uses many of the same basic plotlines but there’s
better acting and a more interesting back-story, although calling him “Sky
Marshal of the Universe” is pretty damn pretentious. It’s like calling the
United States of America, “America”.
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