KEEP ARMS IN (transit tales)

Here is a picture of my favorite subway train... Toronto's own H4.
This is what I imagine myself riding up to heaven in.
Right up to heaven in the clouds, with a great big gold fence around it...
Heaven's like a big gated community with only dead comedians
and dead English bulldogs and HBO on demand.
(The dead comedians aren't like, laying around decomposing.
They tell jokes and stories and everything, and same with the bulldogs.)

Tonight I opened the window of the streetcar to get a little air and see what would happen. What happened was someone in a line outside Big Bop called me a dog, then barked. There's a small silver plated sign on the frame of the windows in streetcars that reads "KEEP ARMS IN" in a beautiful font. Truly, it's like something from a Wes Anderson movie. But it doesn't say anything about keeping your head in... or barking back.

I saw a guy I went to high school with earlier tonight on another streetcar (Well, it WAS the Bathurst Streetcar, but it was southbound and the whole open window dog thing was more of a northbound type of experience.) and he introduced me to his brother, whose name is Keirell. This is not ok with me, this name. It's embarrassing for everyone involved when I'm forced to go "Keiran? Kira? Purell?" It's not his fault. I guess I'm projecting. But after I knew his name, the guy I know asked me if I'm still doing theatre which always makes me really tense and panicky, like I have to explain myself and defend my life, cause apparently everyone else's revolves around me doing the thing my high school yearbook said I was gonna do. So I launched into this horribly overenthusiastic pitch about my writing and songs and performing and referred to my show as "evolving" into sort of a "part-standup, part-songs, comedy/concert" brilliance-fest, and just generally smiled alot and swung back and forth on the silver bar by the back door of the streetcar, hoping no one I knew would get on at the next stop, so I wouldn't have to introduce his brother, whose name was lost in space at this point. But they got off at Dundas and I was left alone, with a streetcar full of people who had just heard me big-up myself like I was at a reunion, from Bloor to Dundas. No one asked for an autograph, but I didn't have a pen on me anyway...

I noticed the other day that if you're blind, you can ride transit for free in Mississauga, but you need a card that proves you're blind. I was thinking though, of just standing at the door of the bus pretending to be blind and rifling through my bag being like, "No, no, I'm gonna show you the card, I insist... just let me find it... it's just gonna take a second, it feels like all my other cards..." I'm almost positive they'd cave and let me on.

It's a 40 minute bus ride from the Living Arts Centre, (where I get to hang out with 20-30 different kids each day, teaching them stuff that pops into my head, and also some required drama basics) to the subway station (where I... get on the subway) then another 15 to Ossington Station (where I catch ye ole 63 Northbounde) then another 15 to Earlsdale, Earlsdale, Memphis, St. Clair West (where I live) and one day I had to pee when I left the Living Arts Centre. I decided that if the bar on the corner of Earlsdale and Oakwood, where the bus stops, was closed, I would just pee in my pants, borrow some money and do laundry at Bruno's Laundromat, later that night, like after dinner. But if it was open, I'd pee in there. I started devising this plan at Square One, Mississauga's answer to the West Edmonton Mall, so I was plotting this pee for over an hour by the time I got off the bus and walked into the bar. It WAS open, so I peed in the basement of Fuoco, in a real toilet. You may have seen this bar, or you may see it in the future. You'll know it by the sign that is made of vinyl, like you'd see on a beer tent at an outdoor concert. It'll be the one with flames on it and the word FUOCO, and the...nope, just that sign will be enough.

Maybe I'll see you soon on public transit. Good things seem to happen there, so don't be scared. If you're too warm, just crack a window. That's what they're there for!