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!