Taxi, bus, car, 500 km from Ottawa to Toronto.
John, coming from a weekend wedding, took a flight from Thunder Bay to pick me up. We spent the first three days at the house of John’s parents. Circumstances like these always put me on edge; with adults around, we tend to behave, and I’m generally obnoxious when I’m with John.
The step-mother rules the house with an iron fist. No noise after ten. No noise before seven. No using the guest towels or soap.
One morning, I was having toast with some marmalade when I realized that the orange, unlabeled spread in the back of the fridge had a rather sharp taste, signifying that it was either offal or expired. John stopped me as I opened the kitchen garbage bin.
“You can’t throw that out”
“Why not?”
“It’s food. Food smells.” John pointed to the dish drying rack. It was filled with milk bags which were used, emptied, washed, and dried before being thrown out.
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“We’ll throw it in the back yard for the birds”
“What if the birds won’t eat it? A piece of toast covered with marmalade would be harder to explain than food in the garbage.”
Eventually, we put the toast in a Zip-Loc bag and disposed of it in a public trash bin four blocks away from the house.
The beautiful garden in the back presented some great photo opportunities.
Toronto was our chance to relax. We just hung around and rented movies. When I’m with John I get to see the classics that I’ve missed — every time it’s mentioned that I haven’t seen a certain title in the store, it’s always met with his button-pushing, “You haven’t seen that?!”. He already has of course, but his memory is so bad that it’s like he never watched them in the first place. This time it was The Shawshank Redemption (very satisfying), Diner (a great coming-of-age film for guys), Four Weddings and a Funeral (ruined by Andie MacDowell’s delivery of “Is it raining — I hadn’t noticed”), and Sideways (fucking amazing). We also saw Out On Bail, which garned many an excruciating reaction.
I still laugh my ass off every time I watch this.
