Still waiting in Windsor for our Residency Visas to arrive.  This is what is happening.

Insidious boredom is creeping in.  All the bad habits of the homeless and unemployed are taking over my identity.  Last Saturday I was scavenging in the parking lot of the Future Shop: I found a cordless phone and brought it home.  I traded it to my brother-in-law for a couple of swigs of hooch.  I have been hanging out in the local libraries, reading newspapers and books, just to stay warm.  I have developed a strange affection for walking near railroad tracks.  I seem drawn to open boxcars.  My face appears on every Tim Horton’s security camera in the city.  I have been known to break the twenty-minute loitering rule.  The donut police might be watching me.  Every morning, I rummage through someone's mailbox and I read all the interesting magazines.   I don't got my own mailbox no more. 

Yesterday I hit a new low.  I had crept into the mall, to see how long I would last.  I was in Chapters, the used to be great bookstore.  I wasn't there to buy anything I hardly ever buy anything.  The literati were suspicious, so I lingered near the magazines, in front of Starbucks.  I was flipping through a copy of New Hobo.  A double Latte started to come at me; I quickly picked up a copy Recipes for Roasting Pigeon.  The double Latte veered off, but then a suspicious Caramel Machiato sidled up to me.  I had to run. 

They know when you haven't got the five dollars for a decent cup of coffee in your pocket.  Not like the old days, I tell you.  I was the king of the coffee shops.  I could speak the obtuse languages of every coffee shop around.  "I'll have a malted smoothie Java infusion, please." I would say.  "Let me try your double Vente, Americanno, Esoterica with goats milk froth and a philo dipper."  The words would just roll off my tongue.  "Here's your twelve dollars, my good man and toss those pennies in your tip jar."  I was a citizen, a true coffee-drinking consumer.  

Now, look how far things have gone.  I had to run into the Philosophy Section, muttering "sanctuary, sanctuary" under my breath.  Coffee-heads usually won't follow you there.  They are a magazine crowd; the caffeine shortens their attention span.  I picked up Drisicel's copy of Hegel and started to scan the index for references to my favourite philosopher. Wait a minute, what is his name?  I know I know his name.  I paused to thank God that at least my meta-memory was still intact.  But, what was his name. It's a name I always know, heck, I can pontificate about his books, his interpretations of the formation of Identity and Individualism until even the Stoics nod off with boredom.  Now I can't even remember his name.  I'm in trouble.  Trouble with a capital T and not even change in my pocket to buy a soothing Camomile Chia Oblongata Relaxifier.  In my despair, I head down to the Detroit River to seek my own kind.

Time was, a man in my position could feel at home down here.  Feeding the pigeons crumbs while watching the train ferries load and unload the oversized boxcars that couldn’t fit through the train tunnel under the river.  You could listen to the sound of the horns on the lakers and dream about all the booty that might be in those boxcars: television remote controls, no scald shower heads, deluxe vegomatic carrot choppers.  The boys would hang out all day and sometimes into the evening discussing what might be in those cars.  It was sort of a vagabond’s cargo cult.  The Pigeons would go off to roost and the boys would curl up with a good bottle of bad wine under the Ambassador Bridge and dream about getting inside one of those cars. 

Not any more sister.  Windsor’s waterfront has been transformed.  No longer do trains belch diesel fumes and the ear splitting shrill of steel wheels on track force the city back from the water.  No longer does the dusty old Holiday Inn perch over the shore and tilt precariously towards the toxic flow.  No longer do the boys and me have to slip through a hole in a chain fence to get down to the chemically fragrant water.  It’s beautiful now.  They pulled up the asphalt of the parking lots to reveal the old cobblestone access paths. They paved a bike path.  They have built proper bathrooms so the cops no longer accept the excuse of watering the civic gardens.   The place is transformed.

I was safer in Chapters.  Thirty-something mommy’s pushing off-road strollers at speeds not even Swedish women could achieve zip by me, spinning me around.  Obsession overpowers the heady malt smoke from the distillery.  They sneer at my shoes.  A pack of jogging co-eds in every colour of Lycra rush towards me, I try to suck my gut in, but it won’t move.  A sophomore clips her tanned forearm on my protruding reserve and spins out.  She’s down.  I am still dreamy-eyed at the sense of young co-ed sweat splashing over me, when her friends help her back onto her Nike double-air, shock resister, jog multipliers.  “Get him,” they yell, “he committed violence against wymankind.”  My God!  It’s the Wyman’s Centre jogging park patrol pack!  I’m doomed; I’ll never out run them. 

My mind, in its rather dilapidated state was not reeling solutions like I hoped it would.  My first thought, of course, was for my personal safety.  I wondered if I was Gay, I might get off, maybe even make some good friends, get phone calls in the evening, be asked all matter of questions of taste, be favourably compared to every hetro-male they ever met.  Could I pull it off? -- In these clothes, not a chance.  Something clicked.  Finally, something I could do.  I yell towards the glare of the polished teeth heading at me.  I yell, “Look, a dead white European male, over there, get him.”  The ruse is successful.  They can’t resist the idea of capturing the source of all of Modernity’s problems.  I lunge over a dogwood hedge and duck behind the oversized designer grass.  The kind with the delicate lavender edges that makes such a nice shimmer in the midday light.

I hung my head.  I hung my head the way every man does when he makes this decision.  I hung my head and started to walk the walk.  I started to walk the walk to go see the new girl in town.  My hanging head went though the scenario, as it does with every man whose head is hanging like this.  She would sparkle.  She will look entertaining and colourful.  The unspoken contract would be in place.  I wouldn’t look too closely or ask too much of her. I would give her the money.  I would promise not to stay long. She would whisper unimaginable promises in my ear.  I would pretend to believe them.  She would offer herself to me.  I would push her buttons.  She would tell me what a great man I am and what great time she had. I would leave with empty pockets and residual Catholic guilt.  I would feel dirty and smell like cheap cigarettes.  She would go on, richer and giddy.  Yes, I went to the Casino. 

I was in her full embrace, playing all the tricks I know.  Like every man, I thought, if I am just good enough and I massage her the right way, like only the best men can, she would at least give me my money back.  If I’m lucky and she really does have a heart of gold like they all say, she’ll give me all the money.  Yes, if I do it right, she will be Grateful!   “Well, honey, how’d you like that one?  Here, let me slip another quarter in.  Oh good, do you like that, I can see your wheels are spinning. Bar, Bar. . .Banana.  Damn!  What do I have to do?  You were so close.  I can’t keep this up all day.  Okay, maybe if we change the game on your screen.  Don’t worry, I won’t get fingerprints on you.”   I was doing my best, talking my best talk and trying to look really attentive.  I think she could sense my boredom.  I’m more of a jackpot, jackpot, jackpot, and latter honey, kind of guy I guess.

“Oh my Gawd!  Could it be?  It is, why yes it is.  It’s Kenno.  What are YOU doing here, Kenno.”  Her voice pierced the blips and bells of the room.  The colophony of machine pleasures faded behind that terrible voice.  It was Marge Anthrax, reporter for the Windsor Star.  “It is you, I can not believe it.  You of all people caught with your quarters hanging out.  I can see the headline now, Kenno caught playing Caveman Keno at the Casino.” 

“Hi Marge,” I muttered, trying to avoid her eyes.  “Well heaping hypocrites, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do boy!  You almost cost me my job after that interview you forced me to do.  “Look Marge, this is not what it seems, you have to understand, it’s a guy thing, not a good guy thing, but somehow, it must be genetically determined, right?” 

“Enough Kenno, don’t you give me that blue pockets gobbledegook. Where do you thing I’m from?  I’m a worldly gal and I’ve heard this all before.  You men, you’re all the same.  By the way, your socks don’t match.  Wait until my editor hears of this, your name will be toast in this town.  New Zealand won’t be far enough for you to run off to.  How could you?  After you duped me into running that column and that ridiculous headline:  Kenno renames Casino: Windsor Obsceno.”  You tried to hurt this old girl.  Look at what she has done for the waterfront.  You’re a chauvinist of the first order.  You just can’t stand it when a working girl does something good for the community.  I bet you have never even visited the macrobiotic salad gardens where the old diesel fuel dump used to be.  No, you wouldn’t go there, but your happy to pull your quarters out and try to be a great man in here. Then, just as soon as you are out the door, you trash this beauty for having no morals.  You are insufferable.”

“Listen Marge, I got go now, my wife is waiting for me at home.”

“Your wife?  You left your wife alone to come here?  You cad!  Just where does she think you are, buster?  What did you tell her?”

“Well, Marge, I sort of lied.  I mentioned to her that I was going to the Future Shop, but I promised her that I wouldn’t buy any new electronic toys for our trip.” 

 “And you think she bought that, Kenno?  You underestimate women even worse than your hero, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.  Kenno, I got a newsflash for you.  Every woman in the world knows that you can’t walk into a Future Shop and not come away without a new gadget.  Do you think we are all stupid?”

“No Marge, listen, I’m just a guy.  I try to be good, but I’m just a guy.”

It was not a good day but for a few moments there, I forgot my boredom.

Yours very truly,

Kenno.