In the blazes of June, I flirt

After the kitchen dance on the eve before
yesterday, I faced another blazing day here
in the Near East of Toronto's East End,
whereupon I went joyfully to Gerrard Square
Mall, as the dietician had ordered me to do,
for my daily walk (it's only a block or so from
my cell). Inside the Mall, there were a
benches lined up against the huge windows
revealing the Basic Foods store's insides.
Unfortunately, the benches were all occupied
by old-timers like myself. Me? I was about
to collapse just from the walk in the scorch,
dripping wet with sweat so that my shirt was
soaked thru. And breathing hard, very hard
to catch my breath. I had to get off my feet.

So, I trudged my way to thru the labyrinth
of the first-floor of the Mall all the way over
to the hidden-from view Food Court where
I had had my first visitor for conversation on
a more hospitable day (there's no room in my
cell for such amenities). In the court at one
of its uncomfortable tables to each of which
two opposite-facing seats are fixedm and thus
people of girth have to wedge themselves in,
and then later, out. A hi discourtesy to the Fats
who give these food courts a significant margin
of their total business. So I sat in my chair
facing out, with my legs turned out into the
aisle, side-saddle-style, and reached my arm
overto grasp the far edge of the piece which
binds two these tables for two, each table with
its own two chairs joined into one unit by this
piece, the fixed structure to no customer's good
or pleasure. We see that these Food Courts are
not designed for customers but to bilk money
from them amidst the discomfort they so
generously offer. I held my self steady in this
manner, clutching the binding piece of the two
forever joined tables. Waiting in this manner
for the flow of sweat to stop and the burning
of the cheeks to subside and the breathing
heavy to ease, and lo!, after a long time I was
sufficiently relieved to arise and go to the
washroom. In the washroom, I removed my
straw hat and left it on a clean clear counter.

Then I removed the twine cord from my
shoulder, the cord that ties onto one of my
belt loops on the right side of my jeans,
crosses my back and then loops thru a series
of loops to my the front left loop of my
jeans, the loop closest to my zipper. In this
way, I wear my jeans, no belt, and they droop
a bit, vaguely reminiscent of hiphop style. I
couldn't bear today to wear this device (no
suspenders) on the inside of my shirt as I most
always do. Where it functions then as a kind
of monastic hairshirt or penitential thorn that
some monks rig from a single barb of a barbed
wire, but mine is just the cheap imitation, tho
under the shirt it weighs on and irritates the
skin from shoulder to belly and also down the
back. A slight annoyance I have learned to
endure for the sake of a more sitely decorum.

But today, in making the trip from my cell to the
Mall, I couldn't bear to have it under the shirt,
and wore it instead in plain view on the outside.
But now, to negotiate the Mall without this low-
class self-advertisement of poverty, and return
to a slightly hi-er degree of possible middle-
class appearance, I am in the Men's Room,
dropping my twine cord, removing my soaked
shirt, and exposing my vast belly so enormously
pale in its impertinence, then replacing my twine
now to my bare shoulder which allows the
readjustment of my jeans which all the time I had
held from falling to the floor by widening the gap
between my legs at the knee. Now, cord in
pentitential place, I slip my soaked shirt back on
over my head, adjusting it to cover from outside
my jeans and the whole belt line - and now my
low-class is invisible, more or less, not so severe.

I go to the urinals and take a piss, all the while
trying to sense over my shoulder how much traffic
into and out of the pisseria is taking place, and
hoping no one steals my hat from the clean clear
counter I can no longer see. Relief complete, I go
to a basin to wash my hands and then dry them,
and now I can cock my eye on my hat. It's there.
I rescue it, and place it back on my head, my dark
glasses still hiding my eyes from all.

Out in the Food Mall, again, I quickly find another
ridiculous extortionist place for us among the fat
contortionists to try to sit. But I don't feel so
exhausted anymore. There's a slight air
conditioning effect at work here, very slight, due to
the a BrownOut alert today, an alert that's hovering
over the city with the pollution and the heat, as the
folks with home air-conditioning and the hi-rise
offices and the Malls and factories could use so
much electricity that the whole grid collapses and
leaves us all electricldess for dark nites and roasting
days ahead. That's when some folks go and live in
their air-conditioned automobiles and increase the
filth quotient in the air. But I'm feeling better.

I go into the new huge Home Depot store that's
replaced Sears in the Mall, now for some months.
It takes much time to explore such a store, but
suddenly at the front checkout, I find I have no
energy to tramp randomly into the depths and just
wander around looking for what I'm interested in.0
I finally persuade the checkout lady to summons to
the front someone to help me, and there arrives in
fine demeanor a sturdy young man, the Manager of
the Day, to assist me. Modest in his speech and
stance, but straitforward and courteous, so different
from what I get daily at home in the shared kitchen
of the three tenants from the sneaky would-be
Lord of the Manor. And, Manager, he is so sitely.
Sitely walks me into the depths a couple of feet
ahead but not outpacing me, not tiring me before
we even get to the sawt-for treasure. Finally, we
arrive at the free-standing air-conditioner that
conceivably I could set up in my room, with two
six-inch diameter accordion tubes, one to bring in
fresh air, the other to expel stale air from my cell,
conceivably. The very thawt of such fresh air
dehumidized and cooled, a trick, a trick of hi-tech
to be sure. And the tubes are six feet long; there's
a panel with two appropriate vents that fits into
the gap between the sliding panel of my window,
and vertical window=frame for maximal efficiency.
Sitely Manager explains the detials in answer to
my questions - some figure for BTUs, and some
other for electrical measurement - that one slips
by me. So I'll have to check. I ask where it's
made - USA. Good, not China, as my guilt over
buying cheapo slave-labour products from China
increases daily. And price, I ask. Seven hundred
and with tax eight hundred three dollars and
change. A major probelm of financing, surely.

Now, it's time to move on to fans. I must replace
Merton, since there's no air-conditioner for any
foreseeable future. Ah, a stand-up hi-rise fan is
exhibited in a demo model. The real for-sales
are all packed in large long narrow boxes, and I'd
have to assemble the dang thang. Price? Thirty
dollars! Business complete, Sitely Manager walks
me back thru the labyrinth to put me on the path
to the exit / entrance / checkout. I tell him I'm
going to be back for that stand-up, so that I can
lay naked on the bed in the blazes of a June nite
and let the air flow over my whole body. He turns
and gives me a sweetly wry smile, and I think I said
more than a propositional analysis could yield. I
feel good. I feel I have flirted.

But I needed to get some dietician-required green
vegetables of certain specific kinds (no peas, too
much sugar even when fresh off the peapod vine).
I buy my stuff, fussily, but successfully. And walk
home, wondering how I'd carry the hi-fan package
once I buy it tomorrow - that is, today. Did I
mention the way the orange thin straps of his
Home Depot orange work-apron crisscrossed over
the back of his shirt, and then double twined around
his waste in a most sitely design. Or how his shirt
above the top of the apron in front was open in a
V two or three buttons down and revealed a triangle
of fine, spaced, not curly, not dark hairs evenly
distributed in the field of notice.