Are you gay or do you like my tits?


Last night, El Dorado and I were on our way to a bookstore called Seeker's, after eating a wonderful dinner at Bloor Street Diner (I had gnocchi, minus the bacon, in a gorgonzola cream sauce and El Dorado had curried lamb on bismati rice; both of us skipped dessert!). We were heading off to the subway stop when a woman asked El Dorado, "How do I get to the subway station?" El Dorado offered that we were going there ourselves right now, and to walk with us. This was Serena, although we wouldn't find out her name for probably 30 minutes, and she was capital-F-R-I-E-N-D-L-Y.

I advised her as we were walking that we were visitors to Toronto, and couldn't give her too much in the way of directions if she was looking for somewhere, and she replied that she actually lived in Toronto, but almost never came downtown, and so didn't know her way around very well. She is a hairstylist in some far-flung suburb and had come downtown to go shopping. We were heading to a bookstore, so she brought out all of the books that she had purchased that day. A couple of versions of the "Things You're Not Supposed To Know" series, a book on drawing Fantasy and Science Fiction figures, etc. By the time we passed the subway stop she said she needed to get off on to catch her transfer, she was telling us about the graffiti art she made on the wall of her apartment. She did not seem too alarmed to miss her stop. Her landlord is offering her a better apartment in same building, upstairs, for only $50 more, but she would have to leave the graffiti installation behind. Which reminded me of an exhibit that is going on in the Royal Ontario Gallery right now which asks questions like this, what is the nature of wall art? What are the implications of designing it so it is mobile, versus creating it knowing that when the wall is gone, the art is gone (the very temporality of our existence as reflected in the art on our habitation or workspace, etc.)? I advised her to go check it out, and she said that she needed new friends, because her friends didn't have any of the same interests she had (nobody to go to the museum with?).

She got off the train with us and followed us to Seekers, and continued to talk to us as we browsed for books (I selected Globalizing Rights, edited by Matthew J. Gibney, and The New Pearl Harbor (Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11), by David Ray Griffin; I suggested The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen for El Dorado, which Dan had given to me for my birthday when I turned 19 OMG that was 19 years ago!!!). It may be a good time to describe Serena. She was about five feet five inches, with very thick dark hair and olive skin. She had an interesting cadence to her speech, which definitely included the classic Canadian accents, but also hinted at something from the Middle East, perhaps. The dark hair on her arms was very apparent, and she volunteered that she had to address the same hair on her face at least once a week so her customers wouldn't freak out. She had a very Rubinesque figure, and would use her hands along her body to accentuate her point when she was talking about bodacious tits. And she would talk about bodacious tits. And her voice was loud. In a bookstore. A bookstore called Seekers. Which you may not know, but may have guessed from the name, is a bookstore that is primarily, although not exclusively, dedicated to literature of a spiritual nature.

You may wonder how Serena would steer the topic to bodacious tits in a spiritual bookstore. Well, at one point, she drew my attention to a book with a Lichtenstein cover, and she described a Lichtenstein painting she wanted to buy for her boss (a female, beautiful blonde) that had a woman with "bodacious tits" (and yes, this is when she curved her body and rubbed her hands along her chest) who was saying "Don't think you're going to get a raise!" Serena also talked about how she will go up to anybody and talk, she does not think that you should be shy (we had figured this out for ourselves by now, of course) and she illustrated this point by describing how there is a male co-worker at her beauty salon, and none of the girls there knew if he was gay or not, so she asked him, "Are you gay or do you like my tits?" Of course, as she is describing this, she is looking right at El Dorado, and again firming up her "bodacious" friends with her hands, and poor El Dorado is so flustered that he blurts out the answer to a question that was only used as an illustrative element in a story. The other bookstore patrons looked over with interest as he revealed his preferences.

Serena was telling us that she is now very extroverted because of rough treatment from an ex-boyfriend of four years. She had lost her virginity to him at the age of 21, had dated him (and presumably, continued to grace him with the pleasures of her body) for four years, and at the end of this period, he had called her a "slut." So, now she spends her time meeting new people (not sure where the connection was with this, but by this time we were approaching the hour by which we had to leave the bookstore in order to meet people for an 8:00 gathering, and besides, we were exhausted, so I did not ask). I pointed her to Anäis Nin (she also had told us that she likes reading diary books, as in Bridget Jones), which she purchased and left to get back on the subway.

I want to point out that my mother and I, in fact my entire family, have a penchant for drawing people like Serena into our paths, especially when traveling. I love it. But this was an interesting case. I can not claim credit for Serena. She asked El Dorado how to get to the subway, and he invited her to join us in walking to the station. She was his encounter, not mine.

For that, I am grateful. For there is a message for one of us in what she was saying, and I am glad that today I don't have to look for it!

Posted: Mon - July 4, 2005 at 07:09 AM        

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