Tonight I went for a walk along Eglinton East to avoid going half an hour with the sun in my eyes. I reach Bayview and rather than go straight south through a residential area, I keep heading southeast through a winding ravine, because there’s a station called Bayview on the Bloor line and I just have to keep heading south until I hit it, but it turns out it was my mistake, the station is Broadview.
I reach the Castle Frank station where I end up doing the “L” and “R” gesture trying to figure out which direction I go to hit the Yonge line. I dash across the platform for the westbound, which is remarkably easy in jogging attire, and take a place in the well of the opposing door. After the train is in motion again (and this is how you know you’re a captive audience) someone comes up to me and motions for me to take my earphones out.
“You are wan of the most elegant women I hev seen.” Standing there in my sunglasses, jogging pants, tank top and runners, my hair and the rest of me covered in sweat, my bullshit detector is dubious. He’s another one of the middle aged, homely and deperate Eastern European men who seem to have pegged me as homely and desperate that have been cropping up on the TTC and elsewhere ever since I got back to Toronto. Usually the fact that I’m listening to T. Rex’s Electric Warrior is enough to summon them, but this time it was Barenaked Ladies’ Gordon as I’m on something of a rock kick because that’s the only type of music that sounds passable on these miserable Skullcandys that I am soon to strangle myself with.
He hands me his card as I drip sweat from my chin onto my wifebeater.
“I hope to hear from you soon.” I immediately recognize the handle on the card as a variant on Canada’s own inferior-but-infinitely-sleazier copy of “master pick-up artist” Mystery from that VH1 show or shows, halfheartedly fail to stifle a laugh and go to put my canal earphones back in, which involves an overhead lift of the opposite ear when I’m not feeling charitable. It’s Friday, and my usual schedule is to shave on Saturdays. There’s no mistaking naturally black body hair contrasted against the fourth generation-Irish great Canadian tan, and I’m still sweating has he’s standing at the opposite end of the door well.
The Sherbourne station comes and goes without incident. As we’re pulling into Yonge-Bloor he gestures at me again, leans in and says “You hev no idea how desirable you are” before exiting the train. I mumble something about his instructor and move into the opposite door well. Once again I hit the Bay station in Yorkville before doubling back into Yonge-Bloor so I can be sure I’m not being followed.
Out of curiosity I visited Inferior Canuck Mystery’s Web site, and find out that this pinhead paid the princely sum of thirty bucks Canadian to attend a class to learn how to “quickly seduce cold, uptight and sexually repressed local sluts” and rereading that I’m still not sure if that statement makes sense. If I ever succeed in getting the replacement pair of earphones for my custom ear moulds which are remarkably easy to pass off as hearing aids when such things matter, I really, really do have to learn “Hi, I just sat on your duck” in American sign language.
