Werewolf with a Pen in Hand
6.26.25
People talk to me constantly. I like to think I am very cool and butch and offputting. But the frequency that random people talk to me would prove otherwise.
This week I helped an older African lady with short pink hair who just moved to Toronto get to the Art Gallery of Ontario. We chatted as we walked from St. Patrick station towards McCaul. I told her as long as I can see the Tower, I know where I am. She asked me where the Tower is? And I said, it's south-central. If you look towards the lake and see it to your right, you are on the eastern side of the city. If you see it to your left, you are on the western side of the city. I am only pretty sure I am correct on that. I told her I only moved here five years ago. She didn't ask me where from. I didn't ask her either.
Today a very drunk Iraq veteran at Union station told me he liked my long board. My long board is a blessing and a curse. It means men and boys of varying blood-alchohol levels will regularly tell me something to the effect of "Coool long board!" It also means I can move swiftly and with relative ease through the hot city.
The veteran talked to me for a long time, as I'd missed my westbound train by one minute, and he had an hour till his eastbound train. He apologized to me for being a bother, told me nobody ever talks to him, and said if I wanted to be mean to him or tell him to go away I could, and he would leave. There was something strangely familiar about him though, and I realized over our conversation that we both are of the country persuasion to sit and talk with strangers a while. We connected about joyful fainting goats, proud chickens, green copper flame, and the oddity of names. I asked about the tattoos that criss-crossed every inch of his skin, and he relented embarassment at having done them all himself. He showed me (apropos of nothing) a terrible war scar, where his stomach was blown completely away. White twisting mounds of flesh were held together with velcro, and an opaque plastic bag with a bit of brown liquid was screwed into the tissue. He told me he killed nine people in Iraq (not women), and that he's okay with killing people but cannot do it anymore. I said yeah, that would be bad. I said, remember where we are, and he gently slapped his scarred stomach a few times before pulling his shirt back down.
I didn't tell him he had my father's name. I didn't tell him my mother was also a tattoo artist. I didn't tell him my uncle was in the navy. I did tell him I'm also the youngest with a ten year age gap between my siblings. He said his mother was a slut, but that it's okay, he fucks with that. I laughed. I didn't tell him I had at times felt similarly. He asked me why I was so chill. I told him I'm just not bothered by people. He asked me if I was a lady. I said, I don't think so, not usually. He said it didn't matter, one of his sisters dates a woman he used to go drinking with. He asked me why I was depressed. I don't know exactly why he asked me that. I'm not depressed these days. Sometimes, when I'm overwhelmed by anxious memories, my brain tells me over and over to kill myself. But it's not like it was. Not at all.
In some ways, he reminded me of home. Slow slurred speech. Absurdity of strangers. My father could talk to anybody. There was an intensity about my dad that allowed him to freely talk with anyone regardless of circumstance. He always had control over a situation, and could flip from kind and goofy to severe and violent within moments. He was never afraid to tell a stranger a joke, or to be subtly rude and threatening to someone in need of a kick. I think he took equal delight in making someone confused as he did making someone laugh or quiver. There were just no boundaries between him and the public in that way. And my mom, she just had a lot of punk friends over to do art with in the backyard pretty regularly. Drunk dudes covered head to toe in tattoos telling me circular non-sequential stories was pretty standard for me.
The vet also didn't ask me where I was from. I was grateful to him for that. I'm so tired of not being from Toronto. In my mind I was preparing for him to ask me, and I was preparing to lie, I'm from here. I saw a bald guy sitting on the steps of a western train station wearing a grey Nashville, Tennessee shirt. It even said Music City on it. I wanted to ask him why he was wearing that shirt. To tell him I'm from there. Then a short woman passed in a tight white Barbados crop top and the feeling passed.
Tomorrow is the last day of my summer classes. Originally, I'd signed up for both summer semesters, but I dropped the second half of classes in favor of job searching and saving a bit of money. Now that the second semester would be approaching, and we've had several 35 celcius days, and the people of the city are waking up and walking around and talking and drinking, I am utterly relieved I dropped that second semester. There is a level of excitement that must be maintained when downtown in the summer. And I don't know how to really be mean to someone. So I give the overwhelmingly sad young dude who was being a little too nosy at me on the bus a hug when he asks for one at the Landsdowne stop. And I look the beggar in the eyes who suddenly speaks to me after only silently gesturing at the line of folks passing. His eyes are wide and clear and white and wet. They are a stark contrast to his black mask and dark hair. I don't want to apologize to him for not having cash. I want to walk him over to the lunch hall and let him pick whatever he wants, like I did when I was lost in Chicago and an old black dude begged me to get him lunch. But I just don't carry change. And I have to get to class. And I have to, and I have to, and there's something, something we all have to do, keep moving, don't bother with it, don't look anybody in the eyes, hate this city, hate these people, do your business, run home, look cool.
I recluse. Back into my house which is not my home on the edge of the city. Where the screams echoing the streets in the cool hours of the morning cannot touch me. The tower fan my landlord left here as an excuse for not having AC pushes cold air over my skin, and I light a Nag Champa to cover up the damp smell permeating the neighborhood from the hot lake 300 meters south of me. Maybe someday my talking to strangers will get me in trouble, but I like to think the huge piece of wood and metal I carry everywhere will protect me, and that I'm cool and butch enough to be able to handle whatever weirdness this city can throw at me.
4.21.25
Things move and glisten under the surface. Visibility is limited to the plaster construct
held over running water by social structures built to keep us in check.
They keep our tools on 24 hour loans so that we may not travel far with them. So that we may not
think too hard about the ground under our feet, or the walls at our sides.
We trust that our construct is stable. That if a God force exists, it is beyond our
reach. It is too painful to imagine the potential in our hands should we decide to claw beyond
the aging plaster and dip our hands into the wet God thing and bring that cool water to our lips.
Sometimes I wish I had never seen the beyond.
I carry the weight of Knowing. It is all I can do to write about it.