I'm sexy and I'm homeless

What is it that's so damn attractive about hobos? We made a lot of inquiries about our personas that morning, inspired by our group's most recent additions. Two gorgeous housecats (whose names have been lost in the realm of worlds past) had decided to dedicate their early hours to our presence.

Here they were, glowing, freshly showered, and scented like tropical flora.  Here we were: stinky, homeless and drunk. Was it our

Dirty clothes? Probably not. A pair of blue jeans crusted black by hardened train grease doesn't sound particularly attractive. To me, it is: to shamelessly wear such filthy clothes glorifies an individual's confidence and their ability to defy cultural norms. Maybe these girls realized that, too. Or, maybe it was our

Confidence? Most hobos have developed an uncanny and sometimes ridiculous sense of self-assurance. Being stuck on the road with nobody but yourself for backup really helps solidify a person's view of themselves. Confidence is one of the most desired traits for pretty much any individual, but I'm pretty sure the winning factor was

Personality? just as the winning factor for any personal relationship should be. We liked them. They liked us. Nine out of ten hobos have an absolutely bat-shit ridiculous and incredibly unique personality that they've developed through months or years of relying on their own words and creativity to survive.

Fervent pheromones fly forth from our fetid pores

as sweat pours

from the pits

of our hearts.

Spreading smiles can be awful hard work. 

I watched Scrib, Fern and the two girls pass a pipe back and forth while I fiddled with my guitar until Ogre popped around the corner. He waved himself over and checked out my guitar for a moment.

"Hey, can I borrow that?"

Normally, I'd suggest never lending anything to a heroin dealer, but Ogre was more of a friend to me than a dealer. I saw him all the time and he'd never wronged me - he was the kind of guy who'd walk 5 blocks in the pouring rain just to bring a guy a joint, and it was for that reason I said sure. I didn't know I'd be leaving Toronto before I saw him again, but that was just as well because he gave me a bag of speed and a bag of weed as collateral. They didn't last long.

Scrib and I glanced up at each other, then back at the two girls with their glorious smiles and the soft, rhythmic sounds of the guitars they were strumming. They'd been too preoccupied to notice the transaction of two small bags swapping hands. The look me and Scrib exchanged said it wall: we wanted to get high, but we wouldn't disgrace the girls' company by using such a filthy substance in front of them. That shit was immoral!

Things worked out perfectly though. The universe tapped into to our thoughts; our addicted minds willed causality to bend for us. The two girls began packing up their guitars, we hugged goodbye, and once they'd turned their backs the three husbands exchanged some devilishly sly grins. Devilishly sly grins that only recreational drug addicts can seem to muster. Devilishly sly grins that implied that the night was about to get much more interesting. We bounded to the nearest bathroom to smoke up.

Reasons not to eat out with hobos

Fifteen bucks for all you can eat for sushi? Hell yeah, man!

I'd been to this restaurant a year before and it had become an instant icon for me. I'd brought the boys here the week prior and we loved it, but we'd made a total ruckus. The three husbands suck at restaurants. Patience is a  highly recommended virtue for restaurantiers, and the three of us lacked it.

Whilst waiting for our food, we'd fallen into a bored, hungry stupor. Boredom and hunger don't go well together. The combination results in a need to do something - anything - to pass the time between the moment the boredom hits and the time you get your food.

By the time the first course arrived, we'd succeeded in covering the table in the myriad of sauces the table offered, spilled almost a third of our water, and stacked everything that was stackable on top of itself. The waitress was appalled, but she kept her words to herself. We dove into our food.

The restaurant had a rule to prevent idiots like us from coming and over-ordering: if you didn't eat all your food, you had to pay a fee of 50c per remaining piece. The faster we ate, the faster she kept bringing us the rest of our order. Once it became blatantly obvious that we couldn't eat our entire meal, three things happened:

First, we started stuffing handfuls of sushi into paper towels, bundling them up and shoving them into pockets, backpacks and whatever else we could find.

Second, we realized the tremendous expansion of our mess. Mere soy sauce, water and stacked shit now seemed feeble in addition to the conglomeration of rice, fish, wasabi and prawn tails that now oozed all over the table. Nice.

Thirdly, one of our friends had popped into the restaurant to say hey. Her sly, sexy and seductive grin was ill-placed in the presence of our ungodly mess, but she wasn't nearly as disgusted by our "creation" as the waitress was. Our type of people aren't easily grossed out.  Garbed in a studded leather jacket with torn skinny jeans, her punk outfit spoke of rebellion but the genuity that sparkled in her eyes when she smiled did not. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why she spent so much time hanging out with the Traincore kids.

She sat down next to us and we essentially force-fed her sushi while avoiding the prying eyes of the waitress, in hopes that we wouldn't have to pay any additional fees. Our surreptitious efforts failed us.

"You can't do that!" The waitress's abursdly Asian accent floated across the restaurant. She cast us and our mess and our punk friend a look of intense scorn that I thought to be extremely unusual for a member of such a polite culture. I also remembered that the Japanese culture places a huge amount of importance in regards to manners around food. Whoops.

Once the waitress turned around, we pilfered the rest of our food, paid the bill with a pound of freshly spared change, and left feeling satisfied that the waitress now had something to do for the next half hour while she cleaned up our mess. See? We could be good Samaritans!

Anyway, that was last week. This was this week. The same waitress was working. She made to welcome us, then hesitated once she recognized. She shifted her glance side to side, and then mumbled with the accent of one who rarely lies: "We do not do all you can eat, today."

"Uh, yeah you do. The sign's out." we pointed to the sign on the sidewalk that had offered us a warmer welcome than the waitress. We weren't getting kicked out without a fight.

"Not today."

"Okay. Well, we'll just order off the menu then."

"No, we are closed."

"No, you're clearly not closed." Pet peeve number seventy-four: beating around the bush. If you want to kick us out, just kick us out. Don't waste your time dishonouring yourself by fabricating lies. Either way, we realized that the argument wasn't gratifying in any sense, so we bounced and went next door to a Thai restaurant. The service there was better - so fantastic, in fact, that we didn't even feel the need to make a big mess. Lunch was served, and Scrib was beginning to get over the initial shock of being caught with drugs.

Things were moving forward again.

:)

Hippie Core

Words failed me. So did my jaw; it hung open momentarily before I clamped it shut.

There's not much one can say to console a best friend who'd was been potentially sentenced to jail. He hadn't gone to court yet, but we were pretty sure that whatever drugs had been pawned off on us carried a pretty gnarly sentence with them. I suggested two opens to Scrib:

1. Skip the province. Head to Quebec with us. His court date wasn't for another two weeks - plenty of time to escape. This is what a lot of travelers tend to do when they have court dates, skipping from province to province while the number of places in Canada that they're legally allowed to visit dwindles, finally isolating themselves in some back-alley town in the boonies.
2. Come for sushi with me and Fernweh. We'd gone last week for all-you-can-eat sushi on Queen and we figured a rendezvous at our tested and true place would be good for Scrib.

He declined both offers. All he wanted was a pen so he could write rhymes in jail.

After a moment's contemplation, he figured that he'd only get a month or two of jail. This was his first offense in Ontario. Until his court date, he'd go stay with Snooze at her dad's house in Guelph. Solid plan. We kicked back to enjoy one of our last days together.

Observing our surroundings we noticed all the Traincore kids had vacated - save for one. Jorge (whore-hey) remained, a Mexican-Amreican littered with face tattoos with two massive pipes hanging off his torso that served as arms.

"Oh. You kids are still here." His look of disapproval seemed feeble in the absence of his friends. Was he really as much of a douchebag as he claimed to be? Maybe we were on to something..

"My nigga, we were curious: why do you hate hippies?"

"Um, well..." I'd never heard Jorge stutter before - mind you, I'd also never seen him apart from his friends. This really was like high school: these Traincore kids relied on power in numbers. The part certainly is not as powerful as the whole. "I don't really hate hippies."

"So it's just a mask? You're trying to impress your friends?"

"Well, no..." His deep voice, a powerful one at that, had lost its intimidation factor.

"It seems like it."

We'd seen enough. We'd seen through Jorge's thick, confident exterior and prodded the insecurities, we'd discovered a sense of realism that lay deep within. His body language melted as he mumbled "fuck you guys," and wobbled to his feet. He wandered off in search of more booze (probably.)

Our egos had inflated. There was something satisfying about being able to pick apart strong-headed people and reveal, even to them, that there is a person in there. Mind you, we were just as guilty as he was on relying on power in numbers (I doubt the same conversation would have proceeded had it been any of us and him alone.) Either way, we'd seen a new side of things, and there was an added benefit: Scrib's newly acquired confidence assured us that he'd come get lunch with us!

HIPPIE CORE!

Hippie Core

Words failed me. So did my jaw; it hung open momentarily before I clamped it shut.

There's not much one can say to console a best friend who'd was been potentially sentenced to jail. He hadn't gone to court yet, but we were pretty sure that whatever drugs had been pawned off on us carried a pretty gnarly sentence with them. I suggested two opens to Scrib:

1. Skip the province. Head to Quebec with us. His court date wasn't for another two weeks - plenty of time to escape. This is what a lot of travelers tend to do when they have court dates, skipping from province to province while the number of places in Canada that they're legally allowed to visit dwindles, finally isolating themselves in some back-alley town in the boonies.
2. Come for sushi with me and Fernweh. We'd gone last week for all-you-can-eat sushi on Queen and we figured a rendezvous at our tested and true place would be good for Scrib.

He declined both offers. All he wanted was a pen so he could write rhymes in jail.

After a moment's contemplation, he figured that he'd only get a month or two of jail. This was his first offense in Ontario. Until his court date, he'd go stay with Snooze at her dad's house in Guelph. Solid plan. We kicked back to enjoy one of our last days together.

Observing our surroundings we noticed all the Traincore kids had vacated - save for one. Jorge (whore-hey) remained, a Mexican-Amreican littered with face tattoos with two massive pipes hanging off his torso that served as arms.

"Oh. You kids are still here." His look of disapproval seemed feeble in the absence of his friends. Was he really as much of a douchebag as he claimed to be? Maybe we were on to something..

"My nigga, we were curious: why do you hate hippies?"

"Um, well..." I'd never heard Jorge stutter before - mind you, I'd also never seen him apart from his friends. This really was like high school: these Traincore kids relied on power in numbers. The part certainly is not as powerful as the whole. "I don't really hate hippies."

"So it's just a mask? You're trying to impress your friends?"

"Well, no..." His deep voice, a powerful one at that, had lost its intimidation factor.

"It seems like it."

We'd seen enough. We'd seen through Jorge's thick, confident exterior and prodded the insecurities, we'd discovered a sense of realism that lay deep within. His body language melted as he mumbled "fuck you guys," and wobbled to his feet. He wandered off in search of more booze (probably.)

Our egos had inflated. There was something satisfying about being able to pick apart strong-headed people and reveal, even to them, that there is a person in there. Mind you, we were just as guilty as he was on relying on power in numbers (I doubt the same conversation would have proceeded had it been any of us and him alone.) Either way, we'd seen a new side of things, and there was an added benefit: Scrib's newly acquired confidence assured us that he'd come get lunch with us!

HIPPIE CORE!

Jailtime?

"Hey guys - wanna get hit by cars? AUUHOOWAHHEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Scrib's laugh provided a vision of a cackling, bearded baby as he bolted into the heat of Toronto's rush hour traffic. In Toronto, you can usually hear disgruntled drivers at any given time - but not to this degree. Scrib dove, jumped and twisted his way through an accelerating, blaring aluminum onslaught.

He waved to us with a smile from the other side as he caught us breath, while we waited for the flashing white man to wave us onward across the street.

Curb Shame: (n.)
/kəːb ʃeɪm/
The embarrassment and loss of self-worth one feels when other pedestrians ignore the rules of street lights and continue to cross the road unguided. 

 We crossed and deposited ourselves in the liquor store. Amdist staring at the liquor, my hangover decided to team up with the shitty feelings the speed had provided, and the two now grinding nails into my guts. I decided I`d head back to the bridge where we slept and wallow in self-pity for a while. 

I made it back and tried to nap, but instead spent several hours rolling around in self-induced agony. I decided it wasn't really worth it to spend all day there, so I grabbed my pack and dragged my feet towards Queen. I had to force myself not to lose the lunch I hadn't eaten yet. 

I found the boys at Alexandria Park, hanging out with Bear and his Traincore friends - of all people. 

"Fuck. Now there's two didgeridoos?" Bear's deep voice was intimidating, but I couldn't tell if he was joking or not so I nodded and played him a riff on the didge just to irritate him. I still couldn't tell if he was joking or not when he told me he'd break my didge over my head if I didn't stop, so I stopped playing and sat down next to Scrib who hadn't said a word yet. I asked if he was baked.

He looked up at me. "I'm going to jail, man." 

What? Apparently, in the time I'd been taking a nap, the group had been approached by a bunch of cops. Scrib had given the cops a fake name. They hadn't believed him - despite the fact that most of the Traincore kids had either given the cops fake names, or no identification at all. Cops always seemed to have it out for Scrib - why, we couldn't say. He didn't look any more like a criminal than the others sitting at the circle.

Anyway, after a few phone calls and computer searches, somehow the cops had discovered Scrib's real name - Scrib! They searched him for alleged identity fraud and found the flap of drugs that we'd been given by the city worker. The cops hadn't been impressed. His court date was in two weeks.

"I'm going to jail, man!"  

Dumpstercore

The encounter had turned out infinitely better than we could have even hoped. We'd experienced a moment of sheer, hungover terror - fear that we'd fall under the shoe of authority. Were these city workers coming to arrest us? Quite the opposite - instead, they'd passed onto us a packet of so-called MDMA.

We bee-lined towards the nearest dumpster and hopped inside to test the empathogenic waters. Oh, sweet dumpsters - they were little pieces of Home scattered across every city in the country! We settled back into our cardboard recliners and whipped out the drugs.

Inherently drug addicted fiends, as we were, there was much chattering of "Hurry! Where's the lighter? Where's the tinfoil?" (Yes, we smoke our MDMA. If nothing else, it's a method to ensure that we knew what we were smoking, and exactly how strong it was, without having to risk ingesting massive amounts, or wasting an entire day slowly increasing dosage.)

It's a damn good thing we chose to do this. Many people regard smoking any drug off of tinfoil to be in the style of doing drugs like junkies, but many people are stupid. As Scrib flicked the lighter, casting the cardboard around us and our faces into a romantic orange gelow, the "MDMA" began to bubble and turn black. This was our first uh-oh moment. MDMA is supposed to turn into a bloody crimson puddle before vaporizing.

The second uh-oh moment was Scrib's spluttering cough and the following facial expression, reminiscent of one who had just been force-fed their own feces.

"Fuck, that's digusting."

"What is it?"

"I dunno, yet."

As he waited for the effects to settle in, I grabbed the foil, roasted a toke myself, retched, made a similar facial expression as Scrib, and quickly passed the foil to Fernweh.

There's some sense of substance

to substance abuse;

it's a reason to peruse

different sections of truth.

Life's too subjective

not to smoke new perspectives.

I tried to trick myself into feeling a placebo effect, I tried to pretend that what I felt was reminiscent of MDMA, but it certainly wasn't. There was no mind-boggling relaxation, there was no overwhelming sense of appreciation for the mundane, no love for the unlovable. Instead, my muscles had tightened, a sheen of static had subtly settled over my brain and I felt the budding onset of a panic attack. This ain't no MDMA. It was some kind of stimulant - a shitty one, at best - but not MDMA.

Fernweh and Scrib passed the substance back and forth back and forth while I reclined onto my cardboard and tried to combat the anxiety. I saw no reason to continue smoking such a hurtin' substance, so I spent the rest of the toke session identifying the drug. I came to the conclusion that it was speed, not methamphetamine (a drug that, while labelled with a terrible stigma for a good reason, is actually enjoyable when consumed) but amphetamine, which is tremendously similar to methamphetamine in the way that it entails ALL the negative effects with NONE of the positive effects.

Great. I needed beer to combat this anxiety. Once the two had finished smoking, we hopped out of the dumpster and into the day which now seemed excessively bright to our dilated pupils. There was only one thing to do now: hit the liquor store.

No wonder Rob Ford smokes crack

The next morning found our bodies and minds in a state of ambivalence.

Our minds were refreshed, lifted from the curse of racism that had been dispelled by our troop of Afrikaano hip-hoppers the night before. Our bodies, however, had twisted themselves again into an agonized state of animosity, assisted ever-so-often by our alcohol abuse. We stumbled towards the park, a 50 foot mission for me and Scrib, and many miles of a mission for Fernweh.

This park was a terrible sentiment for Fernweh. His experiences in this park from years past could fill books. I'll not dabble too deep into these details, but to Fernweh, this park was not the cheerful vision of kids laughing on swingsets and little Asian men walking dogs that I saw. Alexandria Park, to him, was only a memory of bloodshed, lives lost, screaming children fleeing the park, tears, and lost years. I was truly impressed that he was even able to be here- his determination and perseverance are always to be admired.

We collapsed onto a set of park benches a fair distance away from Bear and his group of provocative traincore retards. We'd been crumpled up for about half an hour before we witnessed a white F150 drive up onto the park grass. He was heading in the direction of the Traincores, who jumped up and vacated quickly. We were too haggard to move, so we maintainde our spot as the truck drove up and parked directly in front of us.

Great. We were going to have to deal with some ignorant wanna-becops.

The first worker got out of the vehicle, blazing with the same glow of the sun in his bright orange construction uniform. He made a beeline straight towards us and stopped in front of the bench. He didn't have the power to make us move. Was he gonna call the cops? Fuck... whatever. Let's hear what he had to say.

"Hey, guys. You want some MDMA?"

We shared surprised glances with each other before exclaiming the obvious "yes!"  and jumping out of our hangovers.

The driver handed us a huge flap, nodded and humbly accepted our thanks before he got back into his truck and drove off. Wow! I'd been worried about getting busted by a rent-a-cop for possessing weed that I didn't even want to smoke - instead, we'd been handed down illegal narcotics from a city-worker. Sweet.

Time to go find a dumpster to do our drugs!

Nignorant

"You guys got didgeridoos? I gotta get the FUCK outta here!"

Grizzly threw his hands in the air and fled the scene with an aura of such prejudiced fear that I had to re-evaluate my entire view of the trainhopping community. Grizzly, and the rest of his friends (some of whom I'd partied with last year in Montreal) were the epitome of traincore. 

Traincore (adj.) /treɪn kɔː/
Niggas who adhere strictly to the following three rules.

1. Your must ink yourself out of society by tattooing your face. This separates you and your crew from any association with the bluecollar grind.
2. You must respect and accept the Traincore Prejudice. Yuppies are unacceptable, "business-suits" are unacceptable, hippies are unacceptable (and didgeridoos, portrayed as "hippie-sticks" are even more unacceptable.) Any clique besides punks and traincore kids are to be disregarded. Any travelers who don't hop trains are also unacceptable.
3. You must hang out with your traincore crew, talking about traincore things, having stupid traincore fights amongst each other.

Anyway, as Grizzly's six-foot-five, massively disproportionate 300 pound body lumbered away in fear of being seen associating with hippies, we frowned as a thick cloud reared its fluffy face and began trudging across the sky towards our sitting spot. Not wanting our backpacks to become moist, soggy piles of must, we soon found ourselves heading towards the nearest shelter - an elementary school where last year, a group of me and my friends had been kicked (and kicked out) by a power-tripping Toronto cop. 

We joined a group of two young negroes. Before I continue writing, I'll care to inform those who are uninformed about the current use of the word nigger in frequent youth standing. 

Nigger originated as a derogatory term that slavers would call their slaves in an effort to undermine their dignity. This would label them not as humans, but as animals. After the slave trade came mostly to an end, the black street culture adopted the word, altering it slightly to become the word nigga. This greatly reduced the impact that the word nigger had and its use declined. In more recent terms, the term nigger has been readopted by most western cultures to reference anyone - black, white, or yellow - who conforms to a certain set of immoral tendencies: disrespect, thievery, belligerence, etc.

That being said, there had been a lot of debate over the "niggers" that we'd seen at the drop in center the week prior. Since the folks that had been called niggers were, indeed, black, the word took on an entirely new level of intesntiy. It was hard to come to a general understanding that they were termed that not because of their skin, but because of their stupidity, their aggression and their inability to be civil.

Anyway, as I whipped out my leatherbound journal, the two boys' eyes widened and I shared some stories that I'd written down about the road. We struck up conversation about travel, and these conversations quickly twisted themselves into freestyles.  These freestyles echoed in the doorway as we rapped about positivity and maintaining good mindsets. I liked these dudes.

Tragically, Toronto has a terrible predisposition in regards to black people. Stereotypes are often there for a reason - and the kids at the drop in center proved that. Though these kids we were with now were indeed confined to the streets, they weren't disrespectful. They were polite, happy, and willing to share their wisdom. Kids like these (and myself, I like to think) are the ones who can change a person's racist viewpoint. Hopefully, we'd have a chance to share these views ourselves.

As the case of beer emptied, so did our drawers of inspiration. The freestyles fell short, and the group came to disperse. Once me and Fernweh had time to ourselves, we laid back and let our new knowledge of prejudice settle into our brains. Fuck a label, man. We're all just people.
 

Jack in the Box

I've always wondered how cops can be so friendly while they're being complete douchebags. This takes ambivalence to an entirely new, authoritarian level. Fuck your laws, and fuck the fact that you could have easily just passed this off as nothing.

"Six up." Fernweh put the weed back into his tobacco pouch and began rolling a cigarette as the cop rolled up.


"Hey boys. Beautiful day! What are doing?" This cop had obviously smoked a lot of weed himself; or perhaps spent a lot of time around stoners. Or maybe he was just a master of masquerade. He seemed really chill.

"Just rolling a cigarette," Fernweh answered with a grin, holding up his rolling paper full of tobacco.

"Oh yeah? Let me see what else you have in that pouch..."


Really!?

The cop took the pouch and dug around in it until he found Fernweh's weed, which he promptly confiscated.  He could have been even more of a douche bag and given us a ticket, but he let us go with only the knowledge that he was so bored that he'd search random kids tobacco pouches on the off-chance of finding weed. This was his lucky day, I guess.

Granted, we weren't in B.C. anymore. We shouldn't have been rolling a doobie in public - though, rolling a doobie out of a pouch of tobacco, filled with tobacco, didn't look suspicious at all. Whatever.


We jumped on a bus - courtesy of Fernweh`s dad, who`d sent him some cash - and had a quiet, hungover bus ride back to Toronto.

I felt a grim sense of satisfaction to be back home. As we've said before, home is where you can hang your hat. Well, I can hang my hat pretty damn well in Toronto, where drugs are more available than smile and a nod. Hell, I can throw my hat on the ground (if I wore one,) pass out next to it and call that home. It was time to do what we'd wanted to do before we left Guelph - get a shit ton of drugs.

It's funny how life seems to work against my intentions. My plans never work. If I want to ensure that I'll get something done, I have to organize a plan to do the exact opposite and begin to execute that plan. Once I start doing the opposite thing, the thing I no longer wanted to get done, will get done. So, naturally, planning to find Ogre resulted in not being able to find Ogre. We wandered around listlessly without luck until we realized that the only way we could find Ogre would be to plan NOT to find him.

So, we did. This created a perpetual paradox of planning not to plan to see people we planned to see, with the end result being that our plans didn't following through. This was probably for the better - nobody needs that much heroin.

We plopped down in the park and promptly grouped up with someone who changed our lives, though neither of us would realize it until a month later. We found ourselves soon sitting with Fernweh's old friend, Jack. We jammed for a few hours; Fernweh was still shredding his mandolin, and I was working on a new method of playing guitar with old sticks. The jam was strangely awesome; the curious notes that Jack puffed through his harmonica mixed well with me and Fernweh's inability to play together at the same rhythm.

Once we'd set our instruments down, Jack brought us back to "his" bridge. It was a few blocks down from the Spadina bridge where we'd slept prior. Jack said that he'd kicked many-a hobo out from under this bridge and had kept it reserved for himself and those he trusted. Why he let me there, I didn't know - he'd just met me - but he said that any friend of Fernweh was a friend of his.

We set up our Hobo Rollup and lay down, contemplating the nature of competition. We collectively decided that one day, the three of us would travel back from the east coast separately in a race across the country. With extremely good luck, it could  be done in four days. Fernweh would obviously win, since he looks like a sexy asian girl. Me and Jack were at a disadvantage, since he was in his thirties and going bald and grey; and I was black (which, as far as I try and convince myself it isn't, is a huge disadvantage for hitchhiking.)

The prize? Nothing. We're hobos. We're too broke to afford prizes, but you'd win the gratification of flying across a country with nothing but a backpack and a sore thumb faster than anyone else who was doing so at the time.

The idea filled our minds with excitement as we spun a bottle of wine between the three of us. Once the wine was finished, our conversations began to hang low like our eyelids and soon we found ourselves sleeping. This bridge was a lot quieter than Spadina; the rumble of tons of steel rushing by above us was too infrequent to bother us as we slumbered.

Ham Slappin' Separation

Scrib howled with gut busting laughter before hanging up the phone and doubling over, clenching his fuzzy stomach. I worried his spleen would pop from over-exertion.

The night before, me and him had been fucking around on Facebook together. We'd been telling each of our contacts to SLAP THE HAM!!!, which had become quite the running joke with us (and was to become even more dangerous and hilarious in the future.) For anyone living under a rock, "slapping the ham" is a term for female masturbation.

We had, indeed, told all of our contacts to slap the ham. Including Scrib's ex-girlfriend's mom.

She'd promptly googled SLAP THE HAM and discovered what it meant. She'd presumably nearly fainted from offense before she vaulted towards the phone called the cops on Scrib for a number of reasons, including sexual assault.  She'd then called Scrib's grandma, who'd waited until the next day to call Scrib and inform him about what a crazy bitch his ex's mom was.

We all had some hearty chuckles and enjoyed the brief uplifted atmosphere before the mood went stagnant. We reluctantly resumed our prior mindsets - irritation, anger, condescension. Lately, our buttons had been getting pushed uncontrollably. Simple sentences would set a spark of livid hatred that would twist itself into an idiotic accusation. We'd spent too much time together - we were now each firmly convinced that ourselves, as individuals, were the only ones able to form a rational view of how our group should behave. In short, we were getting sick of each other.

We came to talk as our relationships about husbands.

"Guys? Maybe it's time we spent some time apart. We know we love each other, but this is stupid."

This is a tricky thing to say to anyone - be it a partner, a best friend or a travel buddy. Considering we were most of these, the conversation was tricky. We'd been together for over 30 days without separation, and we were getting damn close to our destination on the east coast. How could we separate?

The conversation dwindled down as we analyzed our surroundings and we came to realize that we were getting antzy for another reason: we'd been stuck in the same place for too long. We'd been at Snooze's house for 4 days. When you're chock full of wanderlust, 4 days is a long time to stay in a city - let alone a single house. Vagrants don't get stuck in the same spot.

This gave us a perfect opportunity to separate. Scrib had decided to stay with Snooze for the duration of her house-sitting gig, spending some time around Guelph with her. Me and Fern could now make our own way back to Toronto. Elated from the prospect of our separations, the three husbands and Snooze embraced before me and Fernweh hit the road for an hour long walk back to the train station.

Baby Shower

The sun poked its head through the living room window and asked if we were hungover. We weren't, so the sun went back outside and decided to bother someone who was.

We woke ourselves up and pretended that we'd forgotten the arguments of the night before. Sure, the feelings lingered, but we put them behind us. There was no point in holding onto sour memories and pushing blame on one another - especially not this early in the A.M. Today was going to be a good day.

Today, Scrib and Fernweh were going to become parents. They were getting rats! Fernweh had had a rat on our traveling expedition the year prior; Zukuma had been his name. In a tragic turn of events, Zukuma had decided he didn't like the vagrant's lifestyle and decided to disappear into the wilderness one rainy night by Burnaby Lake. Now, it was time for Rat II.

On the way to the pet store, we ran into a group of hippie-assed mothafuckas. We got to talking and discovered that they, too, were from Vancouver Island. We conversed in compraison of Guelph to the Island - the were quite similar. Guelph was a small city with a small-town feel, similar to Nanaimo where we were from. That was probably the reason that the two groups had felt so comfortable there - the vastness of such a small population spread out over such a large area.

We parted ways, hit the rat store, and got a couple cute rodents. They were housed in a nice leather cage - bred to be roommates, whether they liked it or not - and placed on the table at Snooze's. We then proceeded to do what we'd came to do the night before - get absolutely shit-dick wasted.

The next thing I remember was coming to during the middle of the 5th episode of Star Wars. Apparently, during the midst of me tearing all my clothes off and gallivanting around the house with my pecker flapping in the wind, we'd started a Star Wars movie marathon. Awesome! Now that the entire group was conscious, we put the movie on hiatus, smoked a doobie and returned to the couch to be vegetables for a few more hours.

Reunion (7)

We were here! Guelph!

Cool?

I hadn't expected much, and we hadn't received much. We'd made our way onto a bus full of small-town kids, and the mixture on their faces was a mixture of awe and apprehension. Apparently they'd never seen traveling hobos; we were still a breed of homeless fairies that existed only in their imaginations and in ancient doctrines from the early half of the century. They weren't prepared for these dirty back-road, province-hopping rejects.

They warned us about the local gang. We laughed. The gang called themselves the Rats. Really? Any gang that called themselves the Rats clearly didn't understand a thing about terminology - that, or they just wanted to get their ass handed to them.

We ran into a few of these Rats as we got off the bus: saggy-pantsed, backwards hat-wearing Gangsters from Guelph. They stared us down until Fernweh shouted at one of him to pull up his pants and get a belt; the kid's tough-standing posture instantly melted into insecurity. He lifted up his shirt to reveal his belt and muttered something about the fact that he was wearing one. We shrugged the kids off with our laughter and went to go find Snooze.

We promptly forgot our task as a liquor store crested on the horizon and we started to beeline towards it; fortunately Snooze intercepted our path. Her obsession with Scrib had not abated. I'm not opposed to love, lust, even infatuation (though the latter can be dangerous) but when emotions come to such a degree that they  interfere with your relationships amongst friends, I start to get worried. Me and Fernweh stepped back - we knew that in a few minutes, she'd hopefully be able to tear her gaze from Scrib and pass a few words our way. We had our own conversation about similar topics in the meantime.

Still missing some...

An eon passed. Finally, Snooze turned and gave me and Fernweh a much less lustful greeting and led us back towards her house. Along the way, the group made a pact: tonight, we would black out. Tonight, we would get so sloppily slizzered that the very Earth itself would tilt 45 degrees to the side. Tonight, friends, would be a night to forget. There was not to be one wayward memory that weaseled its way into the back of our minds. We stopped at the liquor store and dropped the last of our 70 bucks on the cheapest, strongest beer we could find.

At Snooze's, we felt out of place. The house, her father's, was quite classy: middle class excellence that was pretty much as regal a place as a hobo could be without getting ushered out. Our comfortable mood began to subside in unison with the beers that we drank; our relaxed demeanor melted into varying scopes of immaturity. Me and Fernweh resumed our childish ways - name-calling, in-depth conversations about ass, etc. Scrib had become verbally aggressive; his words took on an intimidating factor and to interrupt him would be an instant confrontation. "Why is it that your speech is more important than mine?"

Naturally, there ensued a whole bunch of stupid arguments; a clash between three faulted points of view. We decided to call it quits - we'd only drank a few beers, and realized where the night would go if we kept it up. Fernweh and I traipsed to the living room, where we took all the blankets and pillows off of the couches and set them on the hardwood floor before we realized that we could have just slept on the couches. Our hobo instincts in full effect, we curled up in our Hobo Rollup and fell fast asleep.

Reasons not to take trains with hobos

Alright, now we were Guelph bound. It was time for us to feel some reprieve from the wretched walls of Toronto.

Sam had taken us out for some decidedly unimpressive "suicide hot" wings after we'd gotten ourselves kicked out of Dickhead's bar. The restaurant we ended up in promised us painfully spicy hot sauce, but after downing 20 wings, me, Fernweh and Scrib had barely broken a sweat. We'd been traveling across the country in search of true spice, and were still yet to find any (though this was bound to change in the next week.)

We walked to the train station with Sam afterwards, bid her a goodbye filled with warm embraces, and then proceeded to make our first mistake of the day: we paid for our Go! train tickets. Only once we were on the train did we realize how easy it would have been to just hop on.

Fortunately, after we'd made out way to the second deck of the Go! train, we recounted our money and realized that we'd vastly overestimated our ability to do math. We still had enough change left over to cover another set of train tickets back... which meant: beer. Now we were over-excited to get to Guelph.

We sat on the train, being our usual belligerently, assly selves. As we were proceeding to fill the air with banter and general ignorance, one of us pondered aloud, "how is it that so many people like us? We suck!"

"Who the fuck knows. Maybe people our overwhelmed by the contrast and the stark difference between our stupidity and our intelligence."

We debated the topic of our undeserved popularity for a while until the guy sitting behind Scrib turned around. He caught my eye, then reached into his bag and pulled out a mickey of vodka. He handed it to Scrib.

After we picked our jaws up off the floor, we thanked him profusely. Was our belligerence really enough reason for people to be so generous? Either way, we drank the mickey right there and proceeded to crank the volume up a few decibels. After chatting up a gorgeous muslim lady sitting across the aisleway, (and after having a few shots) we felt fully confident that our obnoxious demeanor was charming everyone on the train, so we kept it up.

Near the end the train ride, we went downstairs to have a smoke. We wrenched the automatic sliding door open and surreptitiously looked past the "NO SMOKING" sign. Instead we focused on the blur of a treescape that rushed past outside while we lit one up.

A few drags later, a red light blinked on and the train started to slow down, so we jammed the doors shut and bolted back to our seats. Moments after this, Blazer showed up.

We'd met Blazer earlier - he was the train's conductor. He'd disapproved of our playing didgeridoo earlier, and he'd told us not to play any music on the train. This time, when he found us, we were picking some single notes on the guitar out of sedentary boredom to pass time until the train started again. Despite not playing loud enough for the single passenger left on the train to hear, and despite the fact that, earlier, she'd told us she liked our music, Blazer freaked out.

"I told you guys. NO MUSIC!" We stayed silent, impressed at his determination to stay true to his asinine rules. "You guys weren't smoking any cigarettes?"

"No, sir." This wasn't a lie. We'd each taken a drag of a cigarette. Nobody had smoked a whole cigarette at all.

Blazer's warning was useless anyway. By the time we would have finished smoking a cigarette, we would have arrived in Guelph. Once we'd arrived and stepped off the train, we had a moment of train-hopping nostalgia... our cart had been on the end of the train, and the gate towards town was near the front. We hopped onto a pipe that was hanging off the train over the tracks. Holding on for dear amusement, we let the train bring us across the yard towards the gate.

Finally, we left the yard. Welcome to Guelph, boys.