Squids

It had been over a year since I'd awoken under this bridge. This time, instead of being cuddled up with a fine lass, I found myself cuddled up with my two homies and one of their girlfriend.

This was much more awesome.

We scrubbed the sleep from our eyes and decided it was best to go squeegee. We had been awake for five minutes already and had discovered no effective way to get beer, so we figured we'd hit the street corners and wash some windows.

Toronto's well known for its massively popular and massively efficient streets where gangs of squeegee kids take to the road and clean the fuck out of anyone's car that happens to be driving by.

Fortunately, while packing our bags, we found three beers leftover from the night before. We took them to a corner on Queen and sipped our sunrise beers while we orchestrated the soft slip and slide of our squeegees.

There's a ton of controversy about squeegeeing. Some drivers may consider squeegee kids respectful, in a sense, because they work for their money as opposed to panhandling. Other drivers consider squeegee kids (hereon referred to as squids) rude and invasive. These drivers aren't asking for their windows to be washed. Maybe their window was already clean?

Yeah, my fly's open. I give this many fucks:

We figured people shouldn't get so damn offended.

I understand if you don't want your car touched by a stranger, but I'm not touching your car. My squeegee is. The same damn squeegee that you probably use to wash your own window.

You don't have to be scared, either. Nobody's going to beat your windshield in for not paying us. We're used to not getting paid. If you do have a donation, though, we won't say no.

Everyone's gotta eat. And drink. Drink, mostly.

We washed away for about an hour before the cops rolled up as per usual. A fairly normal conversation ensued.

"Do you know this is illegal?"

"Ye."

"So, you can't do this anymore."

"Of course not."

The cop whipped out his ticket book and asked for my name.

I told him my name was Jamal Kingston and he left me a ticket inscribed with that identity. Sweet! This would make things easier. If you tell a cop that you haven't got any ID, you can use an old ticket instead.

Once you gain a repertoire of squeegeeing tickets, cops won't even question you. Hell, some businesses accept tickets as ID. Thus began my new life as Jamal Kingston.

In a normal situation, with normal cops, the encounter ends here, but as I bent over to pick up my squeegee, a gargantuan uniformed douchebag stomped his oppressive, steel-toed boot down onto my squeegee.

"Where'd you get this, kid?" Supposedly he wasn't an idiot. Supposedly he knew all the squids in Toronto steal their squeegees from the gas station down the road.

"I bought it. I brought it from B.C."

"It's a Mallory." (Mallory's a brand of squeegee.) "I can prove you're lying."

I hesitated, expecting to be ushered down to the gas station in a pair of cuffs.

"Whatever. Keep your squeegee. I know you're just going to steal another one." He left it on the ground, got into his cruiser and left.

Sweet. Now that the four of us were still here, we weren't apprehended, and we had money in our pockets, we decided it was time to go to the liquor store. We were gonna pick up a bottle of whiskey to truly celebrate our arrival in Toronto.

This was a bad idea. It's sad to say that getting ticketed was the happiest moment of our day, but it definitely was. Soon after we'd picked up the bottle, we stepped into some dark times.