While driving along Bloor he started to talk about how much things had changed. This, a safe conversational starter for men past a certain age.

What used to be there.

What’s there now.

All the things we had known and lived.

And so we shared our wonder at the velocity of the world overtaking us, of all the businesses popping up on the blocks passing by and the real estate prices that had long since soared beyond our reach. Each aspect of this conversation revealed an unresolved bitterness in the man, a sense of having missed out, and then a car cut him off. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel, “DID YOU SEE THAT ASSHOLE?!”, he shouted as he accelerated into traffic. I tried to say something neutral yet supportive in tone, and then in an attempt to distract him from his rising fury, I asked where he’d most like to live if there were absolutely no limitations.

After some struggle, he offered up San Diego, but this only served as an entry point for a long, detailed story about being on a cruise ship with his ex-wife, getting ripped-off at the bar, and the fist fight that ensued. “They didn’t know who they were dealing with,” he said to me, his voice a cold, flat hiss.

And then we came to a red light and stopped. It felt like the barometric pressure had changed, that some destructive potential was either gathering or dispersing inside the car. And so we sat there quietly, lonely now in ways that could not be acknowledged. And beside us at the red light a beautiful young woman idled on her bicycle. When her eyes accidentally fell upon us, she quickly averted her gaze, just as we knew she would.

And then the light turned green.

She stood up on her bike and pedalled confidently away, into the future, I guess, and there was something so sad and beautiful in this, that neither the driver nor I even thought to speak for the rest of the ride.

(Photo credit to the great Lincoln Clarkes)

He has a piece of gauze over his left eye and sits there wordlessly, his face giving nothing away. His mother looks so warm and concerned, so ready to help. She keeps looking over at him, searching for ways to make him feel better, but he offers no clues as to what she might be able to do. There is such yearning in her eyes–she wants to climb into him and fill him with strength, she wants to absorb all of his pain, she wants to take him to that lake he loved as a child and watch him return to being her limitless and beautiful boy.

Everybody in the waiting room appears weary and drained of confidence on this day. A man of about 60, somebody who looked like he had lived well and confidently in his body for decades, groans when he shifts his weight and tries to cross his legs. As if avoiding one another, even ourselves, all eyes drift to the TV set where a news station, crammed with all manner of banners and crawls, is on. So much news, so many things of the world competing for our attention. And along the bottom of the screen, as random as a dream fragment, “ Prince Harry regrets not talking more to Prince William about his mother’s death.” And suddenly I’m traveling in time and back on Elgin Street in Ottawa 20 years ago. There were perhaps ten of us, huddled together on the sidewalk watching a TV through a window, all staring at a shot of a crumpled, black car in the middle of a tunnel.

Some people were crying, and I remember thinking that was a display of sentiment, and that we couldn’t possibly feel sincere emotion for celebrities who had been so one-dimensionally assembled for our consumption.

And I was wrong in the ways that only a young, single man could be, I was so very, very wrong.

Whenever I’m in one I think of some punitive elementary school. There’s an entire galaxy of largely symbolic rules, and everything associated with us is measured, weighed and timed. And as you stand in line you find yourself worrying about whether you remembered to bring your phone charger. Or your cool sneakers. Or your medicine. And so it goes, and never for a second do you forget that what you are about to do may be the last thing you ever do in your life.

Flying is something of a miracle, and we’re all, at least partially, expecting it to fail. And who can blame us for this suppressed expectation? Any time a plane crashes it’s international news. When the story breaks, people all over the world, those doing dishes or clicking “like,” are wondering just how they would have behaved in their last terrified moments as fire, cloud and sky sped by.

And please don’t forget the terrorists.

They might materialize at any moment. If you forget this, there is a terror alert, like a goal-thermometer on a fundraising marathon, warning you that today, the day you’re to give your first professional speech, the terror alert is ORANGE.

So air transit, even in a best case scenario, is a tense thing.

I imagine that Dr. Dao, the man who was dragged bleeding off a United flight earlier this week, was feeling some of this tension and uncertainty as he waited for his plane to fly him home to Kentucky.

Now we’ve all seen the video, and everybody knows that what took place was wrong.

However, the corporate face of United used the word “re-accommodation” to describe what happened. This is the kind of soft evil that creeps into our lives each day, and then stays there, existing beneath our skin like some sort of bacteria. We know all about over-booking now, and it all reduces to the airline valuing profit over people. This is the corporate way upon which our society functions. What seems to have shocked the microsystem in this case was that nobody would take a material inducement to give up their seat.

And what’s the corporate ethos in such a situation?

And so they dragged him screaming and bleeding from his seat. The law, of course, is behind United. Trapped in this culture where being busy is seen as a sign of status, we’re all so desperate to escape the heaviness of our lives and get to the beach in Veradaro,

that we accept that we might be “re-accommodated” when we buy our tickets. We sign-off on the fact that although we’ve bought a ticket and made all sorts of arrangements contingent on the timing of that flight, we might still lose our seat.

It’s kind of insane. The law allows a corporation to hedge on their services in order for them to maximize profits, even if it’s a ruinous policy for individual consumers. That the law favours corporate growth over human security is nothing new, but this is a particularly vivid example of the amoral structure that pins over our lives.

In the aftermath, Dr. Dao’s was vilified– a tactic minority communities know all too intimately—and the saga, now diffused through late night talk shows, social media and PR flak, is about to replaced by the next meme-worthy event. And still, the corporations will preside over us like gods, and because we believe we need what they offer, we will ignore our own intuition and continue to be subordinate to them, regardless the cost to human dignity and instinct.

A blonde, Russian sex bomb, she has a different bikini for each day. Reclining in the sun he rests his head on her ass as he reads The Wolf of Wall Street, while she, reading what looks like a Russian supernatural thriller, kicks her feet back and forth in attempt to gather attention.

Simultaneously imperious and kittenish, she’s too obviously desirable to make eye contact with anybody else. To look her in the eyes would be an insult, to disrespect royalty. And so even though these two alphas are begging to be watched, everybody is looking away, pretending that they don’t notice them and that they don’t want to be invited to this crazy sex party they’ll never be invited to. No, we all look off at the horizon of water and sky, thinking of other things.

He defines himself as a man of action, and he loves the the ferocity of the ocean, of the power he will master. She prefers to pose by the poolside, stretching her body and tossing her hair, mastering desire. He’s encouraging her into the ocean, but she doesn’t want to get in. She’d have to take off her sunglasses. He sets an example, showing off, really, by diving and rolling easily through a wave as only a pro wake boarder might. He splashes water at her, but more contemptuously than playfully, as if irritated and saying, “C’mon, you’re in the tropics, enjoy it!”

She’s being bullied and she knows it.

Too small to withstand the surfer’s waves, she decides to recline in the breaking water like a calendar girl, shifting attention back to her, but the wave pushes in and knocks her over. Annoyed she stalks up to the resort where she immediately covers her head in a blanket and begins to furiously text. Moments later she goes into the pool with her big floppy hat and sunglasses and stares angrily off in the distance, literally pouting. The wake boarder returns to her, and just stands there not speaking. Posing in the sun is enough, the opportunity to do so all either of them really want from the other.

(Photo by Lynda Hall)

Waiting on the beach was an array of kites billowing in the wind like an assembly of tents pitched at an outdoor concert. The surfers preparing to take them out to the water were all so beautiful, unselfconscious and sincerely indifferent to the world watching them, that they seemed holier, of a different order than the rest of us. Fully alive in their bodies, they had been seized by a passion around which their entire lives were organized. Working jobs where they could, they migrated the world seeking out the best combination of wind and waves. Mostly European, they were a tangle of different languages, their communication physical rather than verbal.

(Photo by Rob Hyndman)

Kite Surfing looks insanely challenging, and the surfer’s bodies, driven by their craft, were lithe, hard and practical. Even their children had a preternatural purity to them. Confident, little water bugs, they were free of tan lines and all shared these seraphic mops of hair, as if creatures from another planet. I don’t want to turn it on too much, but it was striking, even mesmerizing.

By the pool at the resort was an expensive looking black woman with the body of a Playmate. We made eye contact and I nodded toward her, but she gave me a dismissive and imperious look, immediately snapping her sunglasses down and scrolling through her iPhone. Later, when a man with an NFL build came by, she became animated and solicitous, eventually striking cheesecake poses for his camera.

Lying in a beach chair was a woman in her late 40s. She was wearing an intensely white bikini that offset her deeply penetrated, lurid tan, had immense fake breasts and hair that was dyed the kind of blonde that can only be synthesized in a lab. All day she lay alone, inert but for occasionally turning over. Every once in awhile her boyfriend, a man in his 50s who oozed vanity, would come by. Top-heavy like a body builder, he had meticulously attended sideburns that were the star of his face, and he walked about in a way that called for attention, which once gathered, he would lead back to his bronzed trophy who just lay there, waiting for him to need her.

The surfers didn’t seem to care if you saw them. Having fully committed themselves to something that they loved, they became beautiful. It was an accident, a byproduct of a physical and supernal devotion that contrasted sharply with those few there who saw beauty as a destination, something that lived on the surface,  could be acquired and then spent like money. 

And just a little further off, in the pool a woman was delicately immersing herself in the water. Her mother leaned over, speaking softly, “ We had a very tough Christmas, Jane was the nanny of one of the children killed at Sandy Hook and we’re just trying to put it all back together and find some light, you know?”

The ocean is a colour of an unbelievable perfection.

The sun is shining and there is a clarifying breeze off the water.

Confident and pretty girls, each one with a naturally flirty smile, pose for photographs that will soon appear on Facebook. Other girls, with accents as sweet and naïve as a romance movie, have just arrived from England. These girls are so pale and young that they look vulnerable, as if they need somebody there to wrap a towel around their shoulders.

After about 20 minutes an announcement is made that the Captain has an urgent message for one of the passengers, Samara. Looking as if she knows she’s about to be crowned beauty queen, Samara, smiling back at her friends, coyly approaches. It’s her 21^st birthday!  She ‘s given a pink sash and has her photograph taken with her two giggling sisters, a picture of joy and beauty she will return to for the rest of her life.

The boat anchors for lunch and Jet Skis, like predators, circle the boat, the young men beckoning to the girls, “Let me take you for a ride, sister.” There is snorkeling and swimming on offer, and everybody, some swinging off a rope, other diving off a board, splash into the water. As if at the center of dance circle, each one is briefly the focus of all attention, and they are all so young and perfect that they’re practically emitting light.

A pretty German woman with a warm and sweet face has taken her mother on this cruise. The older woman is probably in her mid-70s, and it was clearly difficult for her to get in the water but she did. And when she arose into the throng of 20 year olds, all screaming and laughing and dancing, she, too, became young and luminous, and the look of shared joy, satisfaction and love that passed between daughter and mother stopped time right there in it’s beautiful tracks.

If you are Canadian, bring Canadian money. Don’t pretend you’re somebody you’re not. Your Canadian mediocrity beams out of every one of your pale, bland pores. Nobody is going to believe you come from Brazil. Look at yourself.

Only bring $5, $10 and $20 bills and NO $50 bills. You’re not rich, that’s why you’re going to Cuba. If you were rich, you’d be going somewhere else, everybody knows that. You must convert your Canadian money to Cuban Pesos at the airport money exchange or at your Hotel front desk, and when you do this only get 1, 3, 5 or 10 Peso notes.

Do not bring American money unless you want to be hated and taken advantage of. Bringing American money is like wearing a sandwich board that says, “I am a douche.”

Q. Should I tip the bartenders, waiters and maids?

A. Yes, but only use Cuban Convertible Pesos. Do not use Canadian or American money because the poor people of Cuba have a hard time exchanging it into Communist money. They have to wait in a long line at a Cuban bank in order to exchange your money into their money, so even when you’re trying to be nice you’re being a bit of a dick. This is what it’s like to be a tourist. You will be resented.

Q. How many Cuban convertible Pesos should I tip to get good service?

A. Tip a Cuban driver 1 Peso per day or one small gift like a tin of mixed nuts or a hunting knife. Tip a Cuban waiter 1 Peso per day. Tip a Cuban bartender 8 Pesos a day. You’re likely to be drinking an awful lot—as you’re desperate to take the cheapest trip you could find away from wherever you live—and you’re going to want him on your side. Sometimes you will meet a Hotel employee you really like. If you want to have sex with this Hotel employee, you should give them 4 Pesos or a piece of clothing (clean).

Whenever I visit Cuba I always bring calendars, as they are very hard to obtain in this dictator state. The government believes that all time is equal and that no day/month/year should be accorded special status, but the people like to know when their appointments are. It’s human nature.

Remember that the average Cuban worker earns between $200 and $400 a year.

Q. Can I leave a gift for the maid instead of money?

A. Yes, some items are very expensive and can be hard to find for the average Cuban.

The best gifts to leave should be new. From my experience, the maids prefer tubes of toothpaste, packages of gum, puppets, bottles of aspirin, writing paper or chickens, who are valued for their food yield as well as their income potential as fighters. And if you really want your room to shine, or you really want to have sex with your maid, you can give her some nuts and berries or Lego.