Last night was

an adventure for sure -- perhaps what I’ve been missing for so long. Someone responded to a ‘hi’ I put out on a hookup app (that app shall remain nameless here). He was good-looking — lean, with long hair. He seemed nice enough, and when I told him I couldn’t ‘host,’ but could meet him for a walk, he seemed amenable. The one disturbing thing was that in one of his messages he said "I’m Christian.” This put the fear of God in me — quite literally. I asked him why it was necessary for him to mention that he was a Christian, and said: "LOL — Christian is my name." So I skirted that particular catastrophe. Christian said he might have a place we could go. He was coming from Jane and Finch so I wasted some time drinking with my friend the conspiracy theorist. I do enjoy my friend. He’s incredibly smart, an ex-concert pianist, and a bit of sex fiend like me. He’s also an anti-masker (which I don’t disapprove of) but he does go on about his various ‘theories.’ This time it was: Is Biden really president? Apparently he does not ride on Air Force One. The last president to ride on Air Force One was — you guessed it —  Donald Trump. So maybe Donald Trump is actually still president? It’s just a theory, of course. But what I did notice was the way conspiracy theorists always say, quite innocently:  ‘I’m just asking…there are some questions, that’s all. That’s all I’m saying.” Hm. Anyway we had a nice time and Christian phoned me (I had given him my number). We found a place to meet on the street as it was a lovely, unseasonably warm March night; a rarity. By the time he appeared I was very drunk, and not at all prepared for the spectacle. Or should I say the lack of it? My oh my, but Christian didn’t look much like his photo, tho I’m pretty sure it was the same person. He had  gained about 30 pounds (Covid weight?). ‘But shouldn’t you’ —  I thought — ‘update your picture?’ And I have to say there was something shabby about him, but I tried to ignore it. We started on our way to his friend’s place. Right away there was an interesting dilemma at hand — or at least it was a dilemma for me. You must understand that when guys come all the way from Jane and Finch to meet me on a downtown corner without hesitation or complaint, it arouses my suspicions. I mean perhaps they have another reason for coming downtown? One they are not telling me? Anyway, Christian said: “I have to go to a friend’s house — he will give me my stool medicine.” Wow. ‘Stool medicine’ is not phrase I have heard — ever, actually, before, and it certainly had an ominous ring to it. Now Christian’s profile did say he was HIV positive — but ‘undetectable,’ which usually means not actually ill, at least not ill from HIV. But was he talking about diahrrea? That could be an AIDS symptom, and certainly not sexy. However, I was drunk on adventure. It is at this point that you may disagree somewhat with my existential choices at the time—I may seem to resemble a little too much the cute blonde girl who says “Gee — why don’t go explore that creepy old house!” in a horror movie. At any rate Christian started telling me about his friend, and found it important to mention — for some reason — that his friend was only 5 feet tall. I have no problem with people 5 feet tall, in fact, I’ve always been attracted to short men (who are sometimes attracted to me because I’m tall). We got to an apartment building near Gerrard and Mutual and there was a lot of buzzer ringing and phone fiddling until we were finally buzzed in. When we got to the apartment, the door was locked, and his friend was nowhere in sight. Sure enough, he turned up tho. He was, indeed, five feet tall. When we got inside the apartment Christian immediately entered the bathroom. The apartment was exceedingly small; the living room was the size of a hallway, there was a tiny sun room, a tiny bedroom and a tiny kitchen. It was kind of the size of a postage stamp, apartment wise. There were plants everywhere, it was sort of a jungle. While Christian was in the bathroom his friend (I can’t for the life of me remember his name) started talking about dying cats. It really was quite the monologue—  Shakespearean in it’s scope, length, and in the range of its metaphysical speculation. There was one story after another about dying cats — with a plethora of hand gestures and acting out. There were almost tears, as the gist of it was that cats were dying at an alarming rate in his apartment building — and he had become the designated veterinary health care worker, and evidently — practicing eulogist. He went on and on about the dying cats until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked him: “Why are so many cats in your building dying?” He said: “Oh, because they’re old.” This didn’t quite invoke the tragic mode he had tried to conjured up, in fact the whole speech kind of reminded me of Covid-19. Then Christian came out of the bathroom (after quite a while I might add) and his 5 foot tall friend held forth on another subject. This time he was on about the drug addict who had died in his apartment recently, and how it had been an unfortunate incident, one he definitely did not wish to see repeated again. For some reason he seemed to direct his remarks at Christian. Christian sat down on the couch beside me. Then Christian asked: ‘Would you like some ice cream?” I wasn’t sure. He said “it’s the three flavoured ice-cream — chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.” I said yes. But I really don’t know at that point what I wanted. When Christian showed me the bowl, a wave of nausea and fear overtook me. I said. “I have to go.” Christian said “So soon?” But I did need to go, really. Was Christian’s ‘stool medicine’ perhaps another kind of medicine? Now I’ll never know. But life is certainly an adventure with many twists and turns. Or it can be. That is, unless you are staying home watching your life being eaten away by the Covid-19 lock down. And that is all I have to say. Besides — wow! It takes a whole lot of very different people to make up a world. I think John Steinbeck said that. But he was perhaps not the only one to say it.