Many of my readers have been clamoring for a brief overview of my creative lifestyle, a few tit-bits of my personal history, the secret of my success, and some words of wisdom that would help them understand what makes me “tick” like a plane hijacker’s attaché case just before detonation.
Well, actually, no.
That’s not entirely correct.
No one’s really asked for any of that. Or anything at all, really.
Thanks, Bank of Montreal small business loans! If you’d spot me for that Ted Baker Jacquard silk evening jacket, maybe people would take me more seriously. But oh, no. You’ve got your trillions to make. I get it.
I do have an extremely random email from MOGO money demanding final payment on that loan they were stupid enough to give me six years ago. I mean, they expect me to keep track of this shit? What a bunch of losers!
I mean, my credit rating—currently held in a turbulent vortex at below absolute zero, at which point loan sharks and TV sets begin popping out of the singularity into your motel room—should have been a warning, right?
When you consider that it took a years-long collaboration between me, the University of Queensland, CuteGuysInJockstraps dot com and that payment processor in Cyprus to confirm I even had a credit rating! Though rumors had been circulating in the blogosphere ever since—well, ever since they took the concept of a free information communication network called the world wide web, postulated that people would eventually be posting digital photos of their meals to this hub three times a day, so, a “web log,” realized that people’s attention spans would shorten like boiled yarn from keeping up with all this distraction, so that “web log” would have to become “blog” or they’d lose interest in you, then tacked “osphere,” onto it, assuming it would mean anything, to be honest.
Ever since then.
But this won’t butter any parsnips! as Henry James used to say to a rapidly emptying room. Your first question is: David! Who the goldarn heck are you, anyway?
I am the old, gay white guy your parents warned you about. When I say “old,” I mean “twice your age,” and as one of the last-gasp baby-boomers you can be sure I’m voting for the upgrade that goes “seventy is the new cryogenically frozen.”
I can be spotted on Thursdays outside Shoppers Drug Mart, with my hoodie hood pulled right up. I’ll probably be studying the weekly flyer, because it’s Ashamed to Be Almost a Senior Day, and wearing my signature size 30 stretch denim, which haven’t really fit me since I was in my twenties. This means I haven’t exhaled completely for over forty years. There’s air in my lungs that’s older than Adele.
If you want to be my friend, please do not use the word “spry” or its cognates in my presence, or scream “I bet you were a looker when you were young!” while staring at your smartphone.
I can still bitch-slap you so hard you’ll be explaining to your grandkids about the permanent, angry red imprint of my hand on your cheek.
Just pray that I remove the clusters of cabuchon-cut emeralds first, and thanks to my very, very, dear, close, ultra-famous, black, female billionaire friend with her own magazine and TV network, whom I’ll just refer to as “the big O” to preserve her anonymity, for that “incident management” tip.
And now for a short commercial break.
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MyWokePOCFriendify!
You think you OK just being white?
Yo bro, that shit don’t mean you’re woke!
Wha do I do, bro, I gotta be woke!
You gotta stand next to a
Person of Color
Don’t change your shit
Give this shit a try
called MyWokePOCFriendify
And stand next to a
Person of Color!
I woke! Hot damn
on Instagram
That’s right muthafucka!
You seen the light!
And all I did was—
Yeah that’s right!
You didn’t change nothin’
You stayed all white, but you
STOOD NEXT TO A
PERSON OF COLOR!
But hold on, bro, yo, listen to me
I live in a gated community
Where the fuck I gotta be
To find some muthafuckin
Person of Color??!
Don’t sweat it, bro, just listen to I
Download
My—Woke—POC—Friend-i-fy!
The app that makes it so easy
To stay in your gated community
You stayed all white
But now hot damn
You woke as fuck on Instagram!
when you
STAND NEXT TO A
PERSON OF COLOR!
(What the fuck, dude, this POC don’t go with my SHOES, yo!)
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I write. Writing is that thing where you put well-considered words one after the other to form coherent ideas and spark intelligent conversations. Sometimes laughter. Because if you can take something as serious as your own life less seriously, you’ll be a whole lot easier to spend time with, and that’s verbatim from the staff at the Summerhill Liquor Store.
So you can drop the plastic nose with moustache and the V for Vendetta mask on alternate days. No one is fooled.
It turns out I can help you with that taking life less seriously thing. In fact, I’m funny so you don’t have to be, though it would be nice if you at least gave it a shot now and then.
À propos my creative journey, it’s like, I was saving up for “Turn Out Better Lane”, but settled for shared accommodation on a mattress for five down “Stuck With It Alley”. Could you please stop hogging the duvet?
I wanted my life to be a work of art, but it’s more like that macramé wall hanging Aunt Zelda crafted back in ’72. It unraveled three years later, dropping a large spider plant and its terracotta pot onto her head just as she was walking from the kitchen to the dining room, bearing a tray filled with vegan dump cakes from her self-published dessert cookbook, “More Sand, Please! High-roughage Treats Even Your Cat Will Find Useful.”
“Life is scratchy,” she used to say, and her cooking certainly reflected that.
Also her most famous gift to womankind, and bless her unshaven insteps for her unwavering self-belief. No one except Zelda ever thought wicker tampons would fly, but sales are off the charts every Burning Man event, where they’re popular as kindling.
Zelda was that rare human: a myopic dead visionary with a spider plant and shards of terracotta embedded in her brain stem.
I know that paying me a monthly stipend is probably like priority number one on your trial version of “WhatEVERRRly” and I have a solution for that as well.
While you’re here, please comment, rate and share my articles; and follow the links at the top to preview, purchase and review my book.
Reviewing my book is so important and means so much, I won’t even mind if you don’t send that cheque you promised. Kidding!
I’m so glad you dropped in for a visit. In fact, I’m going to give you five stars on Gladify.
PS— But please could you still, you know.
Send the cheque.
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