Although I have absolutely no authority over my own dog, Heidi, a Miniature Dachshund, or any dog, I still think that I have an awful lot to offer the canine world. With this in mind, I have started an advice column for dogs, in which I answer questions from animals looking to negotiate the mystifying spaces between the world of men, dogs and nature.
Dear Answer Man:
Yesterday treat, today no treat.
Why today no treat?
Rusty
Rusty:
You ask an excellent question.
Many “masters” operate on a reward system, and will only give out treats if their dog displays some sort of obedience or subservience to them. I know that it’s humiliating and unfair, but if you want that treat, you’re going to have to just lie back and think of Lassie.
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Dear Answer Man:
Cats evil.
Why cats in world?
Banjo
Banjo:
Oh, Banjo, cats are here in the world to remind us of what we could have been.
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Dear Answer Man:
No understand.
Dig all the time.
Go in yard and dig, dig, dig.
Can’t stop myself.
Not know why.
Why dig? What it all about? Where Kiko going?
Kiko
Kiko:
It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. Don’t you worry, just keep digging, you’ll find what you’re looking for!!
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Dear Answer Man:
When dinner!!??
Scooter
Scooter:
Unfortunately, dinner is dependent on your masters, and they will serve it when it’s convenient to them, which is usually around 7:00 pm.
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Dear Answer Man:
What drink go best with chicken treat and what drink go best with meat treat? I think water go good with both, but poodle dog in park say must drink dirty water with meat treat, as it bring out earthy textures.
Dennis
Dennis:
The poodle is wrong and likely just trying to look more important and educated than it really is. Water is an ideal beverage for either meal.
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Dear Answer Man:
Why my fart face master so stupid?
He couldn’t find ball if he were ball.
Think he smart, tell Heidi what to do, but dumb!!
Heidi
Heidi:
I think that your master is actually entirely brilliant and kind. If you were a smart dog, you never would have left your real name and photo, so that he can see that you’re a disloyal and disobedient animal who should have her fetch suspended and not receive any treats for a two-week period!
Bad dog, bad dog!!
On Saturday, while flicking about the TV, I came across the movie The Thin Red Line. When this happens, I’m usually compelled to stop everything and watch it until the end.
It’s an utterly mesmerizing film, and I’m pretty sure it’s my favourite movie of all time.
Made in 1998 by Terrence Malick, the movie charts the fortunes of a US army platoon as they attempt to wrest control of Guadalcanal from the Japanese, but really it’s a three- hour poem.
Ten years ago when I was in hospital getting a stem cell transplant for Hodgkin’s Disease, I used to repeatedly watch scenes from The Thin Red Line on my laptop. Inconceivably small and defeated, I was little more than a pale, gray shadow in a hospital gown, and teetering so precariously between life and death, most people thought it strange that I should choose to watch an epic war film.
But I found the movie majestic, holy, even.
The world that Malick depicted was cruel and indifferent-- a place where pitiless acts of savagery, unbidden and unexplained, could erupt at any time. But still, nature remained beautiful and eternal. The world itself was a cathedral and paradise was implicit. In The Thin Red Line I felt like I could feel and see the animating light that sparks each person, and from my hospital bed, that was something that I cherished, something that filled me with gratitude, hope and awe.
Friday was beautiful, and most everybody you encountered on the street was feeling pretty good about things.
A city worker in blue coveralls stood on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. He was staring at Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund. “ I tell ya,” he began, “ for the life of me I can’t understand how somebody could be cruel to an animal. Just look at her.” And he shook his head, smiling. As he walked away he bent down to pick something up off the street. He held it up for me. “A lucky penny. 1971.”
A car with two young men in baseball hats drove by. The windows were all unrolled, allowing Frank Sinatra singing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown to blare improbably into the street. It was an unexpected moment, and as I watched the car drive away I spotted a bumper sticker that read “Tell Your Boobs To Stop Staring At My Eyes” on the back of their Honda.
At the Leslieville Cheese Market they were giving out tasting samples of cheese, and it didn’t feel like they were hoping to sell you anything, but like they just wanted to share.
In front of the K & S restaurant an old man in a wheelchair sat contemplating the day. He took a deep drag off his cigarette, and then after looking from side to side, he let out a mighty hork that traveled three quarters of the way across Queen Street—his virile affirmation of life. Yes, he could still do it.
Two gay men maneuvered a massive stroller that contained two obviously adopted babies through the doorway of a restaurant. Happy and talkative, they started to chat with me. “Oh, getting this thing around is like driving a tractor!” on said. The other man began to laugh, and then, as if in confidence, he leaned in toward me, “ we had to call all our friends in Europe to make sure we could get this thing through their doorways!”
A man sat lonely on a bench in Jimmy Simpson Park. He had a massive suitcase in front of him, like maybe his life had just changed. A woman with red hair-- a firecracker-- came and joined him, and shortly they were walking down the street. Speaking with her hands, she was telling a variety of stories. “It’s not like Gino to give any compliments, but he says to me that I didn’t need to do nothing, that I looked great, and I tell ya, I just started bawling my face off!” And then both the red head and the man with the suitcase smiled at one another.
Boisterous on a Friday, men stood on ladders, working happily to open new businesses along the strip. They painted and smoked, lifting things off the backs of trucks and into places like macFab Fabrics and Lynn Crawford’s new restaurant, Ruby Watch Company, overjoyed to be creating something new, beautiful and optimistic in the spring.
These are a series of personal ads that I wrote for the Craigslist Missed Connections section. They are all located in my kind of sketchy neigbhourhood in Toronto.
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Corner Store on Queen East
It was Tuesday night and you were in the Green Grocer corner store. You were wearing pink hot pants and a parka, and you were distracting the cashier by telling him a story about how you weren’t going to pay for his stale licorice. As you were doing this, you shoplifted three chocolate bars and some batteries. I was standing in the line behind you and saw that you had excellent technique. I’d like to see you again so I could show you my excellent technique.
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Queen East and Broadview
You were wearing a bright red Don Jail prison jumpsuit and were yelling at a TTC driver for not letting you on the streetcar. You called him a “Paki fart hole.” I laughed so hard I spit out my dental plate! I’d love to get together some time to trade some stories!
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TD Bank at the corner of Logan and Queen
It was about 1:00 in the afternoon and there was a really long line-up waiting for the tellers, which was frustrating to everybody. You, with your long Fabio-like hair, became our Alpha fox and immediately took control of the situation and began to yell, demanding to see the manager and calling the tellers, “lazy, fat job stealing immigrant thieves.” And then you started to poke the security guard in the chest. I was the chick who began to clap, and please don’t worry about my cough, as it’s nothing too serious.
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Beneath the Go-Train overpass on Queen East
It was daylight, and I think it might have been Friday. You had pretty decent teeth, were sporting a big, bushy beard, wearing three toques and talking to yourself. I wanted to know what you were saying, but was too shy to ask. We should meet in the park sometime.
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Queen East in front of the The Value Village
I saw you on Tuesday afternoon getting busted by some undercover Cop. You looked defiant and proud as he pushed you up against the wall, and I thought it was cool the way you made it look like you wanted to get busted. I really wished I had been the one frisking you.
By the way, I really dig short guys.
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Jimmy Simpson Park
Tuesday at around 9:00 pm I was doing my thing in the park when I heard screaming coming from the rink. I went over and saw you fighting with some kid in a Montreal Canadians jersey. You were just pounding him and blood was gushing out from his mouth like it was a movie or something. I banged on the boards and yelled, “Fucken-A, Montreal sucks, Montreal sucks!” I’d like to think that maybe I inspired you a bit, for when the city workers were dragging you off the ice, you made direct eye contact with me and thrust your fist in the air.
I swear, I almost creamed my jeans.
Call me.
Around midnight on Saturday, Rachelle and I heard a sort of pandemonium out in front of our apartment on Queen East. There was the sound of frantic shouting and the pulse of movement and velocity. In short, there was the sound and feeling of a fierce, uncontrollable energy.
We went out to the balcony, which is one floor above the street, and saw a teenaged boy lying unconscious on the curb directly across the street. He was not moving, not even a little. A few people attended to him, but it was clear that they had no idea what to do. An alarm from the public library began to sound and people, in a panic, were running in crazy, pointless directions, as if their circuitry had been broken. Young women covered their faces and wept, while young men with clenched fists, screaming with rage, searched for an enemy.
WHO DID THIS?!
WHO THE FUCK DID THIS?!
And then one of them would take a swing at somebody.
There were perhaps 20 teens on the street, all of them presumably having just left the Lotus concert at The Opera House a block away, and the ungovernable energy that was springing out of their bodies was both awesome and frightening.
Almost instantly the police arrived and began to mediate things. Older, larger and wiser, they intimidated the teens into some semblance of order. With a scowl on his face, a Cop who must have been about 55, pushed a boy up against the wall. And as he did this, and the boy’s spirit just vanished, you could see just how young the boy was. Over his shoulder, the Cop yelled at another boy, “ TAKE FIVE STEPS BACK!! AND NOW, TAKE ANOTHER TWO BACK!! And the teens obeyed, relieved to have found an authority figure to seize control of the terrifying situation.
Streetcars passed slowly by, some passengers staring at the scene, while others, unaware, flipped through the newspaper or sent text messages to friends. Rachelle and I in our housecoats, stood above it, as if in a box in a theatre, where under streetlamps, something utterly crucial and immediate was unfolding.
Rachelle squeezed my arm.
“I can’t stop thinking about that poor boy’s mother. She’s going to get a phone call in an hour or two telling her that her son won’t be coming home.”
And we just stood there, watching until the boy, the last one to leave the scene, was placed in the back of the ambulance and taken away.
I have to admit, when I saw the photographs of the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team celebrating their gold medal victory, I felt a twinge of disapproval. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something that seemed, well, off.
After a bit of reflection, I’ve decided it was the presence of cigars.
In our culture, smoking is seen as a type of evil. It’s the visual antithesis of purity, and obviously, whatever image the Olympics are hoping to project out into the world, we know that’s not it. I honestly can’t recall the last time I saw an Olympic athlete light up after winning gold, so really, it should come as no surprise that there’s been some censorious chatter about the on-ice celebration that included beer guzzling and cigar smoking.
I have no doubt that the fact that it’s women and not men being criticized for this is an essential subtext to the story, but I don’t think it’s the story. Clearly, cigars are obnoxiously masculine, but more than that they’re plutocratic. Cigars are potent symbols of professional entitlement and a visual declaration of Alpha status.
Think of a man, leaning back and confidently lighting his cigar. Think of how much you instinctively hate him.
He’s an asshole, that guy. Emitting a cloud of toxic smoke, he’s only too delighted to seize control of an environment and subjugate those around him to the fallout of his privileges. In fact, that’s probably the point. The cigar says, “ I DON’T CARE IF YOU THINK I’M A DICK. SUCK IT.”
In the context of the warrior culture of sports, a cigar is just as much—if not more—a celebration of your opponent’s loss, as it is your own victory. It’s money and power and sex, the sort of thing a star jock lights with a $100 bill, and it suggests a celebration of the individual rather than the accomplishment.
It’s obnoxious, in short.
What I expect upset some people when they saw the photographs was not so much that the women were “behaving like men,” but that in their celebration they were emulating the spirit of professional athletes rather than amateur ones.
On Wednesday, I received this email from Goran, my Russian bookie.
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Leedle Bug Man:
Is Goran, master bookie and DJ of all of Greater Toronto Area, including Mississauga, bitches!
We know that you no good in betting against Goran. You lose and lose and lose, like leedle Canadian bug! You lose so much money you have to move from house on nice street with classy cars, to east side district where old men get around on crappy kid bikes!
Eediot!
But as Goran have good heart, I offer you one time only deal. Pigeon man, if you have the sufficient manhood between your leedle lady legs to bet on Canada to beat Mother Russia in hockey, I give you crazy odds! I give you 100 to 1!!
100 to 1!!
You understand what that means?
Eet means if world explode and somehow girl Canada beat Russia in hockey, you make all money you lose to Goran over years back! You be rich leedle bug and maybe can buy a few friends and gold toothes!
But ees still stupid bet, for Ovechkin will eat face of your babies and play chess with your teeth! He score on ice and off, party like God of rock! Eess man, you people are coward girl babies! Russia skate all over your maple leaf and take your women home to strip and feed the dog! You people should stick to knitting for national sport, eh?
I own the podium, bitch, and it made of first class solid gold metal!
Goran.
The name Tessa Virtue sounds so artificially pure that you could be forgiven for thinking it belonged to some girl detective or a porn star. But no, she’s a Canadian figure skater who has the wholesome, natural looks of a particularly attractive pioneer or maybe a TV star from a different era. She’s barely 20, and when you look at her, you see a kind of nubile optimism radiating from her, and on Monday night, she and her partner, Scott Moir, won the gold medal in Ice Dancing.
I knew nothing about them, as I’ve paid scant attention to the Olympics. The coverage has been driving me bananas, like I was being force fed some sort of Athletic Telethon packaged to resemble Entertainment Tonight. Honestly, the only way I’ve been able to stomach it is to turn off the volume on the TV, and that makes me feel like some crabby and eccentric shut-in, and so I’ve just been skipping it.
But on Monday night I decided to go to a local pub and see if I could catch the Olympic spirit by sharing the experience of watching with other people. The bar I was in was sparsely populated, and the few staff and customers that were present seemed kind of bored and tired, like they were serving a detention. The volume on the TV was off and nobody was paying any attention to the games that were unfolding on the big screen.
Now, I don’t like figure skating very much, and was frankly kind of embarrassed to find myself alone in a bar, drinking a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and watching Ice Dancing, but there you have it. One of the very funny things about the Winter Olympics is how quickly I feel like I’ve become an expert on whatever featured sport is being broadcast. Within 10 minutes of watching, I imagine myself as expert as a judge. “Oh, she’s losing her form!!” I’ll shout while watching speed skating, as if I actually speed skated or something. And so, as the Ice Dancing was taking place, I began running a little commentary, first to myself, and then, as I noticed people starting to pay attention, out loud.
Even though the sound was off, and the accompanying bar music was Jethro Tull, we could see that they skated a great, even romantic program. It was ridiculous, but we all started to get excited, shouting things like “They nailed it!” And they did, they did nail it.
Breathless and happy, they stood on the podium singing the National Anthem, and they could not have been more innocent or beautiful. They looked as perfect as a couple of kids who had just graduated from high school, who now, flush with confidence and hope, were ready to take on the world. It was, I guess, exactly what those of us sitting in empty bars need the Olympics to project back to us.
Probably everything that you really need to understand about the Tiger Woods press conference/apology can likely be gleaned from the timing of the event.
It was on a Friday, a day of optimism and relief, a day when people are generally felling just a little bit looser and forgiving of the world around them. Just before lunch, just before the Olympic Games began to broadcast from the West to the East, people had not yet taken off from work, and were just hanging around, likely looking for some pop culture fodder to fuel water cooler chat.
But even more germane is that it took place right in the middle of the Winter Olympics, when there was a huge and eager audience of sports fans. It’s entirely probable that the American audience watching, having grown somewhat weary of the eccentric, niche sports of the North, were ready for some REAL sports news, and so, opportunistically, Tiger Woods stepped into the breech.
Presumably, this was not the moment that he felt most compelled, spiritually and personally, to make a declaration to the world, but the time that Team Tiger, as assemblage of the most skilled PR people on the planet, decided would have the greatest impact. It was like one of those military strikes that had been carefully calibrated to have maximum impact.
The speech, which lasted for about 13 minutes, was expertly written, and the whole thing felt oddly Presidential. He pretty much said all the things that we needed him to say, and in he did so in such a way as to conjure a skilled actor in a big budget movie. When he finished his piece, he hugged his mother for a long time and then exited without taking questions, his heart, presumably unburdened.
As with most everything Tiger Woodsy, this prepared speech felt robotic and micromanaged to me. I would love to see a man such as Woods think on his feet, allowing a little bit of sloppy, inarticulate humanity and improvisation to break through, but Woods seems to be the absolute opposite of improvisation. Everything he does, from his golf stroke to his press conference to the crease in his Khaki’s seemed ironed and pressed to the point of mechanical purity. And in this case, as he stood there reading words written and massaged by a team of experts, you saw nothing of his soul, only a reflection of the culture of therapy he now inhabits and the political machinations of an ever-perfecting and ever-reaching business machine.
This is a collection of vignettes that I wrote for the Missed Connections section of Craig’s List, where people who hope to reconnect with somebody that they saw only briefly post about their almost-encounter. All of these compositions are located in my neighbourhood of Riverside.
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Audrey Hepburn girl in The Leslieville Cheesemarket
You were buying Cambozola and wearing a pair of Hunter rain boots. I was pretending to be inspecting a variety of Goat Cheese, but really I was inspecting you.
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In front of Jimmy's Diner
You were driving a mobility scooter with a Hamilton Tiger Cats flag on the back and I was having a butt in front of Jimmy’s diner. I accidentally spit on the sidewalk in front of you, and you called me a whore, but still, there was something tender in your voice.
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Beautiful blonde getting on the Queen Streetcar at Broadview
As I was getting off the back of the streetcar, you were boarding at the front. I just caught a glimpse of you bending down to ruffle the neck of a friendly dog that was standing nearby. You were utterly stunning. I’m not sure why, but I pointed at you. It was all I could think to do. You smiled and shrugged, and then got on the streetcar—your eyes the most beautiful blue.
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Australian Guy
You slammed the cab door and told the driver to go fuck himself. I was watching, impressed.
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Queen East near the park
You were on a bicycle and stopped to pick up some spare change you found on the street. I was near the dumpster, for a second our eyes caught, and then you shoved the coins in your pocket and furiously pedaled off.
I’d love to scavenge with you sometime.
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Cutie who bought a scratch n’ win on impulse at the cash
On Saturday morning on January the 16th, I helped you find some stuff in the drugstore. You said your luggage had been lost on the flight back from Vancouver. You bought a toothbrush, some dental floss, vitamins and hair gel. Although I’ve been out of the dating world for years, I thought you might have been flirting with me. I wish I had done better, and I’d love to chat on-line, if you’d give me a second chance.
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ATM on Logan
The line-up was long and an old person was taking forever to do their transaction. When she finally left, and we were the last two people, you began to act like an elderly person, asking me in a shaky voice if I knew where the penny slot was. You made my day! I’d love to see you again!
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In front of Jilley’s
It was about one in the morning on Sunday, and you were beating the shit out of some Chinese guy on the sidewalk. You had your shirt off and there was a big tattoo of a bull on your chest. It was hot! I’d love to hook-up with you!