On Friday morning it was so hot during yoga that I felt clammy as a
clam in a bucket of whale sweat.
I worked a lot of
the day on my review of Shab-e She’r and in the late afternoon I drank two tall
glasses of water to prepare myself for a very hot bike ride. Why is it that
when I drink one glass of water I have to stop to pee twice but when I drink
two I only need one washroom break?
I don’t wear a
helmet but in that high temperature I felt like I was wearing one that was made
out of hot porridge.
It was whenever I
stopped at a light that the heat really hit me especially hard.
I timed myself this
time and got to Danforth and Pharmacy in 47 minutes. I explored the three
blocks from Danforth up to Denton and from Pharmacy to Byng, which only took me
eight minutes. It was nice to be concentrating my explorations around the
Danforth and to find some alleys to explore as well. I was on my way home at
least a half an hour earlier than I would have been if I was still riding north
of St Clair like I have been for the last few weeks.
On the way home I
went down Yonge Street and stopped to take some pictures of the clock tower
that used to crown the St Charles Place Tavern, which used to be the crown
jewel of gay bars in Toronto. I remember it as the best place for a
seventeen-year-old boy like me to get free drugs. They had a good jukebox too.
They’ve torn down everything but the clock tower, and I see on looking it up
that the tower has a heritage designation and it will be preserved as part of
the condo that will be built at that location.
At Yonge and Dundas
there was a big crowd surrounding some police cars and taking pictures while
one cop was pushing the face of a woman with long wavy blonde hair into the
hood of the cruiser.
For dinner I boiled
a potato, heated up a piece of chicken and made chicken gravy. I watched two
episodes of Dobie Gillis.
In the first story
the college is planning to bury a time capsule but when Maynard is asked what
he would put in he answers, “Nothin!” He explains that there would be no one
left on the planet to open a time capsule in the future because everything was
going to go “Boom! Boom! Kaboom!” The problem was that Maynard had read a
newspaper for the first time in his life and he is now convinced that there is
no hope for humanity. But on the day of the time capsule burial a time capsule
from 1911 was discovered in the space they’d planned to put theirs. Inside was
a newspaper warning of imminent annihilation for mankind. Maynard realizes now
that everything is going to be all right and writes a letter saying so to put
in their time capsule.
In the second story
Dobie asks a girl named Sally out whose parents have a particular set of rules
for any potential boyfriend to follow. The first rule is no gifts are allowed
of any kind. The second is that she can never go out on dates with one boy at a
time. The reason for these rules is that Sally has an exceptionally tender
heart and so any one boy could play upon her sympathies and influence her even
to the point of marriage and so with two boys competing that won’t happen. Whenever
Sally comes home and declares that she cares for a boy on his own merits and
not because of her tender heart, they will drop the rules. Sally is so tender
hearted that she hates DDT because it destroys millions of cute little insects.
Dobie’s competition on this first date with Sally is Chatsworth Osborn Jr.
Chatsworth is so rich and so capable that Dobie gives up in the middle of the
date. But after the date Sally rejects Chatsworth because she can’t feel sorry
for him. Her parents tell her to have another date with Dobie and another boy
to make sure. The other boy is Maynard. Maynard and Sally have a lot in common
because they both love animals and so Dobie gives up again. Maynard rejects
Sally though because she kisses him. If Dobie Gillis were on today they
wouldn’t be so afraid to admit that the character of Maynard G Krebs is Gay.
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