SUZANNA: You guys have to, have to go to Milano’s. The food is so good there. Order the salad, the salads are sooooo good there.

ME: I dunno, man. Buncha guys sitting in a restaurant ordering salads?

LAM: Maybe afterwards we can talk about our feelings.


Suzanna’s a sweet one, gamely putting up with our kneejerk sarcasm. I’m tempted to tone it down in front of her but I can’t get Lam and Tony to stop using the word “whore” in regular conversation.

Spadina Avenue. At first I was pronouncing it “Spe-deena” like Funky Cold Medina, but it’s actually pronounced “Spa-dyna” like funky old vagina.

On Saturday Alex, Ed and Howard are planning on going to some “sex convention.” Lam, Tony and I decline, because hey, every day for us is a sex convention. Ahahahaha.

On Suzanna’s recommendation, Saturday morning us three New Yorkers head to Eaton Center, a shopping mall, where we see an absurd amount of hot Asian females of the bootylicious variety. They don’t make ‘em like this in New York, that’s for sure. The problem is you can’t tell who’s 16 and who’s 26.

Next Suzanna accompanies us up to Markham, an Asian enclave Tony had heard about located north of the city. We stop off at this enormous Asian mall up there to eat killer Chinese and shop for illicit DVDs. The structure is basically a nicer, more polished version of the gargantuan indoor street markets of Vietnam or Hong Kong.

They have this machine up there called the Aqua Massage. It looks like a tanning bed or a huge sandwich press, except the top half of the press is transparent and contains water nozzles. Basically you lie in the sandwich press, face down. They close the top and the nozzles shoot massaging streams of water onto your back. A rubber membrane covers your body completely so you don’t actually get wet, you just feel the water pressure.

I’m big on massages so I had to try the thing out, and for some reason Suzanna offered to pay! I had to wait my turn ‘cause there was a woman already in the machine. Lam and I made jokes about how I should have climbed in on top of her, ignoring the operator’s protests and closing the lid. The machine would start massaging me while I talked to the back of the woman’s neck.


ME: How you doin’.

SHE: Aaaaaaaagh! Get offa me!

ME: Whoa, lady, you’re totally ruining my massage. Jesus, try to relax.

SHE: Stop the machine, stop the machine!

ME: Do you have something sharp in your back pocket? Something’s chafing me.

SHE: When I get out of this thing my boyfriend is going to beat you into a bloody pulp!

ME: I doubt it; Lam’s gonna get in the machine with him. Guess who’s going to be on the bottom.

In the evening something very, very bad almost happened.

I’m in the car with Lam, Tony and Suzanna, with Alex’s Korean Caveman frame stuffed in the back seat for good measure. Anyways we’re on a two-lane city street and the left lane is jammed up, so I hit the right lane and get heavy with the gas.

To my left is a wall of moving cars; to my right is a stationary wall of parked cars. I’m passing everyone, basically flying.

Out of nowhere, this guy steps out from between the parked cars--directly in front of my right headlight. I must’ve been doing at least forty or fifty. In that split-second, I was sure he was about to get dead.

He somehow shifts a fraction of an inch out of the way, like a Canadian ninja, and I hear my rearview mirror (breakaways, thank god) slap against his hip.

I slam on the brakes, though at this point it’s more of a gesture than anything. I look in my rearview mirror, and get this--the guy is giving me a fucking wave, as if to say Hey, I’m okay! and he keeps walking.

In New York the expected response from him would have been at the very least emphatic cursing, and at the very worst accurate gunfire. My hands were practically shaking; I almost just killed a guy.

In addition to nearly changing this guy’s life forever (by putting a period on it) I nearly altered my trip into something very different. As nice of a country as Canada might be, I can just about guarantee that Canadian jail sucks.


CELLMATE: You’re my bitch, eh?

ME: Fuck off. Hey, what’s this tunnel leading out of our cell?

CELLMATE: Oh, that leads to the ‘States. We like it better in here though.


No one seemed to be as shook up by this whole thing as I was, probably because I was the one driving. I still feel it was the pedestrian’s fault for stepping out into traffic in the middle of the block, but I know Alex secretly thought I was trying to kill the guy on purpose. Right, like my whole plan is to commit Canadian genocide one moving violation at a time.

Somewhere along the way, it became settled: We like Toronto. We like Canada. (We’re still too ignorant to separate the two.) Lam even discussed the possibility of moving up here, but I suppose that’s not surprising.

See, ‘cause most New Yorkers have a love/hate relationship with their hometown, in the same way that Luke Skywalker feels about his father. Lately Lam’s relationship with New York has just got to the part where the city hacks Lam’s hand off in a vicious lightsaber battle.

I can’t place exactly what it is we like about Toronto--the clean streets, the cute girls, the cchow, the multi-ethnicity, or something else.

One thing we’ve definitely noticed is the absolute absence of the underlying threat of violence that permeates a lot of experiences back home. I don’t mean that you walk out of your door in New York and get shot at, it’s much more subtle than that. It’s a weariness that comes with double-checking locks, or touching your wallet every time someone bumps into you, or keeping an eye on the other guy in the ATM vestibule.

It’s about the filters you put up to understand when screaming people are just fucking around and when there’s an actual threat. It’s the ugly racial slurs you hear every race utter about every other race. It’s about making jokes about anal rape so you don’t have to feel anything for the real rapes you read about in the paper. It seems like they don’t have to sweat this crap here, but they’ve still got the good things about a city. Things that places like Albuquerque, Boston and Austin lack. Toronto feels like a world city, even if it is a small one.

After I almost killed the pedestrian we went to a pub for dinner. It was karaoke night and some yahoo was up there singing Marilyn Manson, not exactly dinner music but what can you do.

Following dinner we went next door to Aura, a club/lounge, and I got to watch Alex pick up some chicks. He literally picked them up, like they were barbells.

Suzanna introduced me to a cute acquaintance of hers and we talked for a bit, though it was difficult for me to get a read on the situation because she “knew” me from my web writings. The downside of people having read your work over a period of time is that they have some background on you but you’ve got nothing on them. There’s also the worry that people’s perception of your life far supercedes the reality.

If you’re reading this right now, don’t supercede my reality! You get to visit and leave but I have to live here.

Anyways here are some pictures of the trip.