If you cross the borders and enter into this swamp-nation, you will instantly be transformed into a pitiless ideological zombie. You will be shouting at everything. You will be angry, sunrise to sunset, and then into the night. Even under your blankets and the ominous, blue glow of your phone, you will still be furious, your brain in terrible flames. Twitter knows this and is now trying to encourage civil behaviour, both by cancelling offensive accounts, and nominating “well-behaved” people for “Sainthood.” Sainthood is nothing more than a halo emoji that appears beside your name, but Twitter is hopeful it might catch on and help put out the still burning swamp fire. Here are a few of the people who recently received a halo emoji:

Trump, even attired that way, commanded the subway like a stern and punctual marshall at a luxury golf course, and people knew not to mess with him.

Normally he would never think to take the subway, as it is a filthy and vulgar mode of transportation, but today he wanted filthy and vulgar. His legs spread out expansively, taking up at least two seats, he looked down at his most recent text from Melania and smiled:

“I am to poo you,” it read.

Melania’s English wasn’t very good, but Donald knew exactly what she meant.

It was their beautiful night together.

Every year on the anniversary on their first sex, Donald bought a fast food restaurant in the New York area, fired everybody, and then made Melania work the counter. This year, it was a Dairy Queen, and Donald, disguised as the Burger King, was going to come in and order Melania off the menu and then make her his fast food sex slave for the night.

It was a great tradition, and they both loved it very much.

As Donald sat there on the subway thinking about whether he should purchase and then and torture some of the homeless and desperate as part of fast food sex slave night, a woman approached him.

“The Burger King?” she said.

“You look low rent,” the Burger Trump retorted, “and let me tell you,” he continued, “I would rather be a king than some low rent subway hen.”

The low rent woman had full lips.

“Subway hen?”

Donald ignored her, Tweeting a threat to France.

The low rent woman looked closely at his fingers, as if figuring something out.

Suddenly, the subway came to a screeching halt. Everything went dark and Donald fell to the floor, his Burger King head spilling off and his phone skittering out of his pocket! When he looked up, he and the subway hen, also on the floor, were facing one another, their lips just inches apart– something unspoken burning between them now.

“You’re Donald Trump,” she whispered, “I knew I recognized those tiny, orange fingers!”

The stranger’s breasts heaved upon the filthy, seductive floor of the subway. He stared at the woman and she stared back, their breath hot and real.

Trump inched toward her and she inched toward him.

At that moment Donald’s phone began to ring, picking up an audible message from Melania, “Donald, it is your Queen Dairy, I have customer, and child wants me to make curl with ice cream that I cannot make. Tell her we close? Give her money? I stand by you, my man, even if ice cream disgusting. I still poo you, my king.”

Donald swept the phone away with certainty, like a Commander-In-Chief. And then the lights came on and the subway started up again. The low rent woman got up and dusted herself off and walked away, shivering, “This is the weirdest, fucking grossest day of my life,” she muttered to herself.

“Rosebud, “Donald Trump mouthed, “Rosebud.”

I am now boycotting all of Trump’s luxury properties and hotels,

and have donated my, “You’re Fired!” t-shirt to charity. I don’t just believe in talking about change, I believe in being the change, and so instead of complaining about fascism on my Facebook page, I’ve started to picket the Trump International Hotel and Tower.

This is my journal:

Day 1:

Too cold. Stayed home and watched A Very Murray Christmas on Netflix. An instant classic.

Day 2:

Still chilly, but realized that the world isn’t going to change itself, so dressed in layers and headed down to Bay Street with my picket sign.

Teenager on subway asked me what my sign said.

“You’re a Chump if you support Trump.” I said, adding, “You’ve got to fight the power, you know? You have to BE the change!”

The teenager said, “Your sign says, “You’re a Trump if you support Chump.”

I looked at the sign and saw that he was right, and then asked him, “Well, if you knew what it said in the first place, why’d you ask me?”

The teenager shrugged.

Stayed on subway until it arrived back at the stop I had started at and went home.

Day 3:

Pleasant day. Maybe 10 degrees.

Took an Uber cab to the hotel and began my protest.

The first person who walked out of the hotel was a woman wearing a beautiful sundress, a winter scarf that must have fallen from heaven and a cowboy hat. She smelled like the most impossible music and was so blindingly gorgeous that I dropped my sign.

As she stepped into a waiting limo, I cried out, “I would build a wall around all of Mexico for you, I would make America strong again!” but I think maybe she was mute, as she did not respond.

I don’t remember much else from that day

Day 4:

Woke up and meditated hoping to receive wisdom and light to become better protestor.

I then went down to hotel committed to be the best protestor I could be.

I began to pace in front of the building chanting, “Dump-Trump, Dump-Trump, Dump-Trump!” Although I got the words mixed-up quite a bit, several cars honked, which I took to be signs of support.

Had lunch.

Feeling in the zone, I began to protest again but then got a text from my wife reminding me to pick up my blood pressure medication, and so I went off to the store to make sure I got there before it closed. Took my blood pressure while waiting. 120/70.

Not bad! Got my pills and a lotto ticket and headed home.

Day 5:

Took Uber down to hotel again. Talked to the driver about fascism. He agreed about its dangers. (I feel I am changing the world one little bit at a time!)Gave him a five star rating.

Today I proved an inspiration. As I believe we have to unite as one against Trump, I was delighted when a street person joined in my protest. She might have had her difficulties, but she was a very spirited, loud and creative chanter! Said her name was Parking Lot, because that’s where she did most of her work, and that Trump was a “Fuck Roach.”

Not only were the bikes like riding something from the 19^th century, but the program struggled financially and has been being rebranded to “Bike Share Toronto,” and is currently looking for a new corporate sponsor.

I have submitted a list of new names for “Bike Share Toronto” hoping that they might prove appealing to the public and sponsorship!

1. Le Dificyle

This name will honour Canada’s bilingual nature, the city of Toronto’s multicultural character and be completely up front about how hard it is to ride the massive bike.

2. World Class Bicycles

This name would highlight Toronto’s status as a World Class City.

3. The Bumbaclot

Inspired by Rob Ford, the world’s greatest Mayor, this name harkens back to his drug fuelled rant in Jamaican patois that was filmed at the Steak Queen. Bumbaclot, as everyone now knows, is Jamaican slang for a cloth or rag used for menstrual blood before tampons were widely available, an accurate reflection of contempt considering how most people feel about the rental bikes after using one.

4. The Film Festival Flash (Triple F)

Tying in with Toronto’s World Class International Film Festival, this name will publicize the great event and all the stars, posers and wannabes who populate the streets during it’s run, and the bikes will also be promoted as a safe and alcohol-friendly conveyance by which to get from party to party!

5. The Velociraptor

Piggybacking on the success of the Toronto Raptors basketball team, and cleverly using the French word for bicycle as a nod to Toronto’s great multicultural personality, the Velociraptor would make for a stellar moniker for the bike rentals! (Suggestion: dinosaur arms holding a basket protruding from handlebars of bike)

6.   The Catapult

Given that the streetcar tracks all over the city streets spell doom for cyclists, especially those (tourists) not familiar with the roads, and typically catapult cyclists into cars and streetlights, the Catapult is a perfect name for the bikes.

7. LAGFPPS’s (Little Above Ground Foot-Powered Private Subways)

In keeping with Rob Ford’s promise to bring more subways to Toronto, this name will revolutionize the public’s perception of just what a subway is and will, as usual, save the taxpayer billions of dollars.

8. The Ton O’ Fun

This playful name will combine the weight of the bike with the joy of cycling, making an adventure on the city streets as much fun as a carnival ride!

9. The Ontarian

A classic homage to this great province in which we live!

10.  The Pussy Wagon

This name, once again inspired by Toronto’s Mayor, references his statement that he “has more than enough pussy to eat at home.”  Gritty, urban and controversial, it gives Toronto the World Class, Tarantinoesque edge it has always sought.

“Oh, I just feel like stretching, really and thought you might like to sit down, and of course, I am a very, very classy man.”

“No, you’re not. I see the way you’ve been looking at that black girl over there.”

This took me aback.

“What?” I asked.

“Don’t give me that,” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about,” she pointed to a young woman sitting about 10 yards away. “Her, the one with the tits. I bet you just wanted to give me your seat so you could get closer to her, get a better look, eh?”

“ Jesus,” I said, “I wasn’t looking at her, I didn’t even know she was there.”

I sat back down in the seat.

“You’re at least twice her age. You could be her FATHER,” the woman declared.

Across from me a woman pulled a Kleenex from her purse and dabbed at the conjunctivitis that had taken hold of her left eye, and just over her shoulder her sat a woman of about 60 who had a look of abject defeat and exhaustion to her. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she had what must have been hundreds of old, cutting scars on them. Her hair was colourless and she seemed so spent on this planet as to be virtually a ghost.

The woman who did not want my seat looked back at me.

“What is it with middle-aged white guys and black girls, anyway? I mean, really? You think you have a chance?

“Look,” I said, “ I wasn’t looking at anybody. I’m happily married. I’m just a guy sitting on a subway, a guy who made the huge, terrible mistake of offering you his seat.”

I gave the woman a hard look, inviting her to say something else.

She looked like she was going to say something, but then she bent down, picked a penny up off the floor, put it in a plastic baggie and then moved along to the next car.

On my way to visit Rachelle at work, I was at the Kennedy subway stop making the transition to the Rapid Transit (above ground light rail) that would see me to my final destination. It was around 2:00 in the afternoon and as I stood in an elevator that was near to packed with women and their strollers, a woman stood outside trying to figure out if she should get in with us or not.

The elevator was crowded, but there was room for one more person and I expansively waved her in, “Come on, there’s room for one more!” She smiled and shook her head, deciding that she’d just as soon wait a minute or two for a less congested ride. I shrugged, looked back at the assembly of people behind me in the elevator and in an exaggerated, Homer Simpson kind of whisper said, “I don’t think she likes the way we look.” The women in the elevator gave me thin, wordless smiles and then continued along with their lives, speaking in languages I could not understand. It was at this moment that I realized the woman who didn’t get on the elevator was white and that everyone inside of it was dark skinned. At some point in their lives, perhaps even at some point during the day, they’d experienced a situation where somebody “didn’t like the way they looked.”

I was a middle-aged white guy, and I was a moron.

Trying to make things better I said, “She thinks we look tough, like a really mean gang,” and then I smiled hopefully, punching at air in an attempt to be cute. At this point, with the elevator doors now closing, I was being completely ignored.

On the car in the next train I was on, there were probably about 50 people, of which I was the only white person. This is typical on this line, but the funny thing about it is that I had never realized that was the case until that day.  Such is my sense of my entitlement and belonging that I can sit in a car full of 50 people who are not white and see them as looking different and not myself.

It was an ugly thing to realize, and I sat there concentrating on the seemingly aimless movements of a butterfly that had accidentally fluttered into our train, instead of this separateness I had never before quite perceived, but now acutely felt.

She looked a little bit like a turtle, and as she stood there on the platform she reached her hand back into the car, which was then received by the hand of a tiny, incredibly ancient Asian man, who also looked a little bit like a turtle. Delicately and with her guidance– his skin as thin as dried paper– he emerged onto the platform like royalty. The woman then let his hand go and hurried off into the day, her lack of sentiment somehow beautiful, even inspiring.

A thin, teenage Indian boy sat beside his mother. Plugged into his iPod, his body language was awkward and secretive, as if attempting to fashion a world that was impenetrable and separate to his square mother. He pulled out a Burger King Whopper from his knapsack and a boyish smile began to accidentally illuminate his face. His mother’s eyes– instinctively falling on her boy– began to smile. He was too skinny and needed to eat more, she thought to herself.

Nearby was a large and pretty young woman in a flesh-coloured dress that she somehow managed to spill both in to and out of. A gold necklace with the name Chloe, written in kind of perfume bottle script, hung from her neck. She had narrow, concentrated eyes and toenails painted the colour of bubble gum. Intensely focused she was playing a game on her iPhone, furiously thumbing the screen, the tip of her tongue protruding just a tad through her teeth.

At Rowe Farms on Bloor Street Rufus Wainwright was idling through the various products they had for sale, lingering on the organic milk. Which one to pick? He couldn’t decide. He couldn’t have seemed any more bored–ennui poured off him like humidity, like song.

An elderly woman was standing in front of me at the cheese shop. I asked her what sort of cheese she thought I should buy. She was utterly thrown by the question, but after she had made her purchase and regained her composure, she took the time to pause before leaving, “ You have a nice cheese, then,” she said to me.

Back on the street a beautiful young woman in a pretty pink dress was being pushed along the sidewalk in a wheelchair. It was so sunny and clear, and the light was catching her hair in ways that made it appear to glow. There was something holy in that moment, and everybody on the sidewalk seemed to understand this. Like pedestrian clutter, we all parted and stepped back as they passed, each one of us smiling and nodding, murmuring our small gratitudes.

They were about the same age and had a host of similarities, none more striking than that they were both deeply engrossed in a book. Held up in their palms right before their faces, their other hand clutching a railing, the books seemed like silver trays from which they could just blow a puff of words into the other’s face.  It was kind of comical, actually, to be so intimate, so open  in posture, to be in the midst of so much ready potential, yet to be willfully oblivious and inward in the face of it.

Buffeted about by this train, I will stand and try to read snatches from my book instead of making eye contact with you.

I found them magnetic. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. They were made for one another! Why couldn’t they see that? Why did they deny it? They were practically in the same sleeping bag!

I could contain myself no longer and said to them, “You two have a lot in common.”

The woman ignored me and the man looked at me the way you’d imagine a man would look at a stranger saying something weird and inappropriate on a subway.

“I just mean the books,” I continued, “you’re both reading so intently, so close together, it looks like you’re sharing the same book. Really, you may as well just hook-up.”

The man looked nervous, shaking his head in the face of a crazy, but the woman seemed amused.

“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” she said.

I shrugged, “ I just call ‘em as I see ‘em.”

The man looked up from his book and at me, “Maybe you should just mind your own business.”

And then from three seats over a guy piped up. “Dudes right, man. It’s like you two are married, just lying back in bed before going to sleep, reading your stories. Shit, you should be together, you won’t find anything better on no eHarmony.”

It was a slightly awkward, if validating situation, and I wasn’t sure what to do so I introduced myself to everyone.

I then asked the man what it was he looked for in a partner. He sighed through his nose.

“I like intelligence and an open-mind. I need loyalty.”

I then asked the woman.

“Oh,” she said, “ I hate those qualities in a person. All I want is somebody who’s a Scorpio!” And then she smiled the smile that would bring the man out of his shell.

“Well that’s funny,” he said, “because I’m a Scorpio!”

The guy from three seats over then said, “Yeah, yeah, and you both listen to CBC radio and like animals. Just go on and fall in love,” and then he motioned to me to come and sit with him and leave them alone, and so I did, and when I got off the subway a few minutes later, they were still talking.

Set against the iPod earphones she’s still plugged into, her bookish attentiveness seems somehow dissonant, like stumbling upon a Canadian television program while living in the United States. As she reads, her fingers unconsciously trace the contours of her face, and when she dusts the tip of her nose with her thumb and forefinger, a smile slowly emerges, her mind sparking and flashing, now moving faster than the train.

The subway stops and the doors open. Suddenly, the smell of band-aids, and then the doors close and we’re propelled forward again through the tunnel. An older woman sits down, rests her head against the windowpane and closes her eyes. Seeking peace, she could be anywhere—remembering the horse she rode as a child, playing with her sister in her parents driveway as a girl,

or maybe that feeling of being asked to dance for the very first time, of Bob Hendry’s hand leading her out to the center of the gymnasium, the dots of light scattering on the dark floor in front of her like the plot to a life she could never imagine– everything unknown and waiting before her, everything leading to now.

In short order he showed up, letting another student out of the car and then waving me in.

Me: Alpas, good to see you! You’re looking well, that’s a spiffy Dashoko you’re wearing!

Alpas: You mean Dashiki, but thank you, my wife bought it for me.

Me: Sorry, Dashiko.

Alpas: Dashiki.

Me: Yes, well it’s way better than that last thing you were wearing, that was ratty. How many wives do you have, anyway? Is it one of those situations where one wife has really good taste in Dashoks and the other doesn’t have a clue?

Alpas: I only have one wife, Michael, just like you. We should start with our lesson now. I will need you to concentrate if you are to improve.

Me: I am focused.

Alpas: Please start. Pull out into the street slowly, remembering to check your rear view mirror and signal.

Me: What?

Alpas: Remember to watch for other cars.

Me: Rachelle and I just got back from Cuba, they’ve got some crazy, beautiful cars there.

Alpas: You are approaching a stop sign, cover your brake.

Me: Yes, sir!

Alpas: It is an All Stop. Do you remember what that means?

Me: All Stop. That sounds like your name, Alpas.

Alpas: No it doesn’t.

Me: Yes it does,

Alpas: Why, because they both start with A?

Me: No, because they both start with AL.

Alpas: Sometimes you are very much like a child, and there is a reason why children are not allowed to drive. They cannot concentrate, that is the reason.

Me: I see.

Alpas: The student I had before you, she has failed the test four times. She cannot concentrate.

Me: So you’re saying I’m like that other student.

Alpas: Yes.

Me: Maybe she’s failed four times because you’re a lousy teacher, have you thought of that?

Alpas: (Sigh) Please watch the speed limit. You are going a little fast.

At this point I glanced down at the speedometer to see how fast I was going and when I looked up a squirrel was darting across the street in front of me. He stood up on his hind legs and stared into my eyes, into my soul.

Me: Sweet Jesus, it’s a squirrel!

There was a little thud.

Alpas: Michael, there are many squirrels in Toronto, do not worry about them. They had a bountiful winter and now some are called home to be with their ancestors. God has a plan for all of us.

And then he put his hand on my shoulder and I knew that our fight was over. Things were different, and I knew that from this point forth things would always be different.