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The Nephew's Stream of Consciousness
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1568
When he's bored he just talks. He provokes you with his conversation, telling you things that - while true - he shouldn't be telling you.
Today it's about the "camping" trips in Italy when he was young. Perhaps 12 or so. Where he and his friends rode to an isolated spot in a forest and sat round in a circle and jacked off together.
A "Circle Jerk", as they say.
He brought it up his last trip to Italy, a group of his old friends and their new girlfriends and family, "remember when guys...." there was a discreet coughing and silence.
It just popped into his head.
Now the story doesn't offend me as much as the fact of it does, recalling once vigorous arguments I held with girlfriends about this exact same topic - girlfriends that believed that all men rode to the forest - together - and jacked off.
At this time I'd never heard of this, naive, and I denied it, certainly I knew nothing of it.
But since meeting the Nephew I know better.
***
He's back home on his lunch break, down in Sunalta, he's unable to return to work as the cops have effected a bust in the alley.
A car, 2 black guys, one white, native girl.
They've cordoned off the alley, there's no coming or going for the nephew, and so he sits on his balcony and watches.
The cops haul a dozen, 2 dozen, 50 empty mickeys of Alberta Vodka from the car, then finally one full one. "Is this yours" they ask in turn every member of the car. Everyone denies it.
They keep going through the car. A bag of pills, the nephew can describe it, no one in the car claims it. Same with some loose needles filled with what appears to be blood. Still they go through the car. They find a large rubber dildo - with balls. This pleases the cops endlessly. They start with the native girl ... "Is this yours?" .... she denies it. They move onto the black guys, ....." Is this yours? Are you sure? Look at it....I think it is...." They talk to the nephew..."You ever seen one like this? With balls? He hasn't.....
He's laughing so hard as he tells it to me, he knew some of the cops from his many domestic complaints, invited them in for a coffee but they couldn't, still, it was the funnies thing he's seen and I can well imagine....
***
He has a sympathy for the homeless that I don't possess. There's a native fellow in a wheelchair that pisses every morning on his window, he wakes to see the man's **ck streaming urine down the glass, he doesn't get upset. "Hey" he tells the guy "Could you please... stop...I mean..." he's explaining it to me..."I mean once, OK, twice, OK, three times, OK, but every day and it will start to stink...." He gives him money as a sort of bribe, I know who he's talking about, the wheelchair guy takes it as an invitation to spend the night, the Nephew has to quickly backpedal...."My girlfriend, she'd kill me..."
Of a sudden...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2096
And it's Autumn. Scarce has summer passed - arrived, even, then all the trees have turned and the leaves are rattling down the streets.
I notice it today, too many days in the restaurant, a week is all it takes here, and the seasons have changed, winter is in the air, the cats are no longer dying to go outside, in the air is winter. I don't care, my time is to be served serving people, while I'd love to enjoy the poetry and changing hues, to be going for coffee and tasting - however bitter - life outside, it's not going to be happening. Not this year. This is the year I wrap up every ounce, every last grain of Bad Karma I've accumulated this lifetime - every lifetime - and move on. Already the smile thins, I can in my mind's eye picture the sun setting from Nose Hill, picture walking thoughtfully along creeks and speculating on all that that went before, picture panning for gold (and even picture finding it, so vivid is my imagination).
It's only been 2 years, a light sentence, but when it's done it's done.
Outside, all of a sudden without notice or warning and it's Autumn.
The Casino
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1978
And I visit the casino, with the view to improving my fortunes.
It's hopeless, this, I'm better off buying a lottery ticket, the amount of improving my fortune needs far exceeds any lucky streak this casino can offer.
But I'm looking for opportunity, trying to get out of my box, do different things, and this is one of those things. Never mind that the every fibre of my being resists this, it's where I'm off tonight.
From the moment of entering I'm distracted by the endless rows of VLT's.
I'm not a VLT sort of guy. I'll play them, for a few minutes, but the money goes too quick, the addiction wears thin, the winnings are trivial, the amusement slim and the losses great.
I walk through the dimly-lit maze of VLT's, searching for some games tables. Eventually I find some, but situated, as they are, in the dim light between the forest of VLT's and their attendant zombies I'm not so inspired.
I have a different vision of a Casino, and this isn't it.
I'm picturing, remembering a time when Casinos had a dress code, demanded membership, when the only games were table games - Baccarat, Craps, Roulette, Blackjack, Poker. Where to be there meant you had money to lose. I had a membership in London once, Charlie Chesters, I remember them because they sent me birthday cards, even when I moved back to Canada.
Now, here - and I mean the Alberta Government and the Native Run Casinos - they're all about the VLT's. I know they're great earners, but there's something missing. You follow around the retired people squandering their pensions, or smell them sat in front of their "Lucky" VLT, their pampers on to ensure they don't have to leave, you see the gangsters laundering their drug and other ill-gotten gains - obviously - (and in Victoria they've actually found money stained with dye-packs being laundered in government casinos), you see the single moms squandering their child support and welfare payments, single dads wasting - like me - their EI on the hope that they'll be paid just enough to....
It's bleak. Really bleak. There's no hope here, only despair, and I leave long before my budget's expired.
I have a different vision of a Casino. Where you can only lose money you have to lose, no VLT's, more Croupiers, table games, and everyone is dressed well. Here it's like standing in the welfare-recycling line.
Babushka
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 1936
I'm inline at the Good Samaritan Rummage Sale - Early, this is not one to miss. I was here at 7:15 AM, the sale starts at 9:00 AM, my early arrival guarantees me about position 50 in line, even accounting for the "filling" that goes on as friends join friends ahead of you.
There's no worries today, I know all the dealers in line and only one or two are of any threat to me, the rest are idle treasure hunters who show up at every sale then disappear. I know the competition.
And I've brought the coffee to propitiate the gods, hand one to the book fairy and a couple to random strangers, my karma is secure.
I recognize many of the faces from the preceding rummage sale. This event, it has it's regulars.
At 8:30 I see an old woman, stocky, short, limping, classical Russian Babushka heading towards the sale. She's limping, she marches into the line some 10 people before me and works her way towards the front, then stands at attention, left hand behind her back. I don't see her interacting with the other customers, there's no indication that she's found her granddaughter or grandson or group of seniors friends, she's on her own.
It looks to me for all the world as if she's butted into line, and I'm dead pissed off. Bad enough that people claim "friendship" and butt into line some 10 or 20 places early despite being late, but this woman can't even claim that.
But she's old, maybe late 70's, early 80's, and so I daren't say a thing.
I go for a cigarette, it's implicit that my position will be held by the rest of the line, I meet a vendor I'm familiar with.
"Her? She does that every year. A couple of years I tried to tell her to go to the back of the line, she tells me she's sick, I tell her then she shouldn't be here...."
She's still here. Her age is the antidote to waiting in line like the rest of us, she's used the "sickness" excuse how many years in a row to get pole-position on the best garage sale in the city. But what can you say? Start an argument, try to pitch her to the back of the line and you'll be expelled.
I can't wait until I'm old....
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