I befriended a monkey. You used to be able to catch him sitting on an orange
milk crate at the corner of College and Spadina by the
Burger King. Look for the monkey that always has a
cigarette hanging from the strings on the
guitar headstock when he needs both hands to strum folk songs about the
government and the sick sick world inbetween evolution this side of
Toronto and the Western seaboard of
Vancouver Island. Look. When the traffic is busy he hides his tail in between two short legs and hides his eyes under a top hat made of black velvet. I like this monkey. The monkey is dirty. At times he'll scratch his head and dead flies and lice fall out; it makes me laugh so hard like I've never done it before. Well, I haven't really. The monkey, his eyes are beady red and painted in black
eyeliner.
We took the Yonge subway line to Davisville and met with an old gentleman that must have been about twenty nine years senior to both of our ages combined, the monkey and I. You're a silly one, he said. He wore a beard that trailed inbetween his legs on the ground and a back so hunched like you wouldn't believe he could've made love to a nighttime girl for at least twenty nine years. I noticed that he wore cigarettes in a holster at the bottom of his leg and I guess you could say that somehow we have something in common. Of course, there is a difference between old age and solitude, sanity and disclipline. On our way to find a cheap slice of pizza (we were hungry and hadn't eaten for days), his heart stopped ticking so he fell to the side of the street. It happens. He must have been at least over a hundred years old, if you can believe that. He's not living no more. This fellow wearing a business suit with a briefcase as brown as dirt tossed him a couple of quarters. The monkey and I took the money and bought cartons of milk that we used to pour onto cars from the bridge over the Gardiner Expressway. At the end of the night the monkey turned to stone and I walked home thinking that the world is crazy but there are ways we can deal with it. So I thought about that, and I still think about that.