Read An Excerpt

Here are two complete chapters / excerpts from my quirky classic. Enjoy!

Facebook Life Event: Sensual Discovery

this morning, while tidying

the kitchen, I dropped a two-pound (900 g) tub of President’s Choice Blue Ribbon Margarine, which broke in half and spewed its contents onto my just-mopped floor. As I started to clean up the mess, I heard the phone ring; this, of course, meant I had to race around the apartment to find it.

(For the record, it was in my knapsack, which I’d thrown on top of a pile of dirty clothes in the bedroom. And I know what you’re thinking, and it doesn’t matter because I have no sex life even without the pile of dirty clothes in the bedroom, so stop interrupting with your snippy, condescending judgments. OK?

(Now, if you’ve finished the victory lap with your Nobel Prize in High Maintenance, may I resume? Thank you!)

The caller was a friend of mine who wanted to sound off about his unfaithful scumbag whore of a boyfriend. After I’d tut-tutted and there-there’d for about half an hour he seemed in better spirits, and I was, to be honest, thrilled right up to the elasticized waistband of my dollar-store boxer shorts and beyond—there’s nothing I like better than a good bitch session with someone who goes the snarky, spiteful mile with nasty details and character assassination, and doesn’t suddenly get all “Cherry Ames, Student Nurse” on me.

I mean, don’t tell me what a two-timing asshole he is, then suddenly get all reasonable with me about wanting to be fair and tell me his good points, like how he takes out the garbage when you remind him five times, or how he always cries and apologizes after he hits you. Jeezus!

In a similar vein, I don’t care if Idi Amin enjoyed a moderately-priced yet nicely oaked glass of Chardonnay of an evening with, perhaps, a simple amuse-gueule of Archbishop’s Liver, followed by a good cigar; or that he served as President of the Kiwanis Lawn Bowling Club until his heavy workload of overseeing the death-by-torture of his political enemies necessitated cutting back on his well-deserved leisure.

You know?

After I finished the call, I worked in Photoshop for a couple of hours, then, feeling peckish, I headed to the kitchen for a snack (No-Name Earl Grey Tea; chocolate chip cookie).

As I entered the kitchen, I stepped right into the pile of margarine—which I had completely forgotten about.

The soft, cool squish of the margarine around my toes was surprisingly sensual…

Takin’ a Spin On a Gigolo

you may have discovered, as you

sloshed in your Canadian Tire galoshes through that flooded serial-killer’s basement we call the Internet, a European-based hook-up site for gay men called Recon:

Recon as in reconnaissance, as in gay men meeting up online to do offline, and sometimes even online, what only we can do; and if you examine the links closely you will soon find an invitation to visit their online store. (“Shop till you pop?”)

Follow that link, Murgatroyd McGraw, and once in their store you’ll find, among the jock straps and cock rings and puppy costumes made of rubber—I know—and lube, and ball gags fit for a queen, a product called, with that certain European flair, “F‑Machine Gigolo,” and I’m just guessing that “The One and Only Acme Butt Bandit” didn’t make it through the branding brainstorm.

Please remove your unoccupied hand from your eyes to see the image on this page, an image which you will, by the way, never be able to forget, ever.

This is when “je ne sais quoi” becomes “je sais very well indeed quoi! Tabar-NAK !!”

The F-Machine Gigolo sells for three hundred ninety-nine Euros—not including the probably helpful F-Machine Anchor, and the obviously almost stupidly important F-Machine Suction Base Universal Adapter with USB port.

Can’t you just hear them over at “Fred’s Garage and Live Bait Open 24/7 Closed Sunday”?

JIM: Sweet F-Machine Gigolo, dude!

FRED: Babe magnet all the way!

BERT: Sweet ride, man!

You know, and can I just say, seriously. I was trying to come up with a way to describe the year 2017, to distill its essence; to find solace, as does a sub under the bull-whip, in a metaphor that would encompass its sleazily impersonal yet obnoxiously persistent modus operandi; then I casually clicked on that store link and—! Eureka!

Two thousand seventeen was a lean, mean, bend-you-over-against-your-will, spread-those-cheeks-and-prepare-to-die Gigolo machine!

(And the back-up girls sing: Oh yes it was, uh-huh, uh-huh, oh yes it was.)

Take America. Please. Shoved face first to the sawdust-strewn floor of the bar, pants yanked down. Any last words, America? I hereby declare you Korean bar-b-q with extra kimchi! Crank that Gigolo up to high!

Two thousand seventeen was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, first and foremost, the year of Trump.

T-R-R-R-R-UMP! The name rolls off the tongue like that unchewable wad of gristle from a cheap cut of steak that you can’t swallow, but still can’t bring yourself to spit into your napkin.

Well. At least he survived the second disaster of his Presidency. The first being, you know. His Presidency.

Hurricane Harvey strikes, answering the Satanic chants of every gay male in every coven from Salem to Esalen; Melania, ever devout, petitions Saint Manolo of Blahnik to intercede.

And while we’re on that topic: Was there a conversation before their departure for Texas? Something along these lines?

“Hey Mel. Mel?”
“Yeah, what?”
“It’s the shoes. The six-inch stilettos, The hooker heels. With the Capri pants. I’m just wondering—”
“Yeah, what?”
“How much did I spend on that.”
“You like, baby?”
“They’re frickin’ awesome.”
“This I am also thinking.”

Admirably suppressing any pesky brain cells that might get in the way of his being irrelevant, Trump rhapsodizes about hurricane water: “This is big water! The biggest water ever! So much water! It’s like frickin’ ten infinity pools at Mar-a-Lago! This is just—so much the biggest water! Than was ever seen! Ya know? Like, check out this water! Lotsa water! WOW!”

Gettysburg Address, I Have a Dream, Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You?

Keep your Lincoln Memorial, I see in its place Donald’s Water Speech carved on a plinth, topped with an inflatable Trump, as if there were any other kind, rendered by Jeff Koons in 24-carat gold.

As in art, so in politics.

If you’re a hideous and hideously expensive joke, a 24-carat balloon, everything depends on how many people you can fool, and viewed from north of the forty-ninth parallel it seems there’s a helluva lot of fools in the U. S. of A.

But back to me [heaves audible sigh of relief] and my insular yet glamorous Toronto life of rent tribunals, NSF charges that are bigger than the actual payment I missed, and being the hostage in home invasions.

How I find the time to fist myself on X-Tube and weave those garlands of daisies, I’ll never know!

I’m seriously post-trauma. At least, I will be when I figure out where one trauma ends and the next begins.

The sound of the bedroom door chunking open like a missile silo at Cape Canaveral to blast Roommate # 335a into my face, and the metallic slap of the mail slot against my front door after it vomits another unpayable bill on to my porte-cochère set my heart to pounding and my blood pressure spiking like Oprah’s weight, but without the soothing mud mask that helps her forget.

“Let me guess, Apartment 805?” snarls my super to my buddy, caught walking while black, who has decided to follow another tenant inside instead of ringing up. I realize that, to Timbercreek Property Management, I am a chip off the old living Christ: Their personal put-upon scapegoat in cheap sandals that taketh on the sins of the world. I can just about live with it as a final phase.

The next day, a car jumps the concrete barrier to the underground parking at my building and crashes; I contemplate sending a note to management apologizing just in case I actually did cause it.

It feels quite possible. I’m looking a lot like Carrie White these days, all drab hair and ringworm, cardboard shoes and unchanged incontinence pads. Ashtrays vibrate on the corners of desks at my approach.

There’s more. The rental office tells a prospective roommate that my apartment is the source of cockroaches for the building. The source! I am forced to write to them stating in no uncertain terms that I’m far too busy dealing with my own roaches to supply the other tenants. They will unfortunately have to provide their own. Score: Dave, 1.

Forging bravely ahead, we top the Danish open-faced sandwich of public life with yet another steaming-hot curlicue of horror, this being the announcement by Doug Ford that he has decided not to spare us the inevitable. Yes, he will run for Mayor of Toronto!

Well, puncture my toe with a rusty nail at Hanlan’s Point, he never!

Seriously, is there no respite? How many, oh lord, how many more zombieFords still float in their tanks of formaldehyde like so many Damien Hirst prototypes, awaiting reanimation in that festering Fordlab littered with empty buckets o’ chicken and Labatt’s 50 cans?

It feels, here in the City Without a Soul, like we barely managed to kill off Rob the Crackhead—and just in time, too, before he tore down Margaret Atwood and replaced her with a casino.

Nine P.M. A strapping young lad decides to make my online day. “Hey, Gramps!” he chirps.

Yeah. Shoulda stuck with the pics from ‘85. They got a great response, perfect if you’re into bondage, long walks on the beach and door shock (as a bottom). I reckon, or Recon, he’s German. He probably meant to say “How Grand!” Or “gnädige.”

I decide to tackle those Christmas cards from last year I never sent out.

Things just might be looking up.

If you enjoyed these excerpts, please support my work and

BUY THE E-BOOK

for just $1.99 + tax for immediate download.