Once Bitten

Apparently the current vampire craze is not just a teenage phenomenon.

According to media reports, women in their 30s and 40s are getting hot under the collar for the likes of Pattinson, Lautner and Lutz—which explains why, on Saturday night last while I was readying myself for a night of passion with my nearest and dearest, she insisted not on handcuffs or a whip but a set of fangs, big fat plastic ones that she had picked up at the local drug store.

Her insistence on my wearing the ill-fitting teeth for an entire session of lovemaking suddenly made asphyxiation, distemper or just plain death by misadventure a likely outcome to the evening.

Alas, the growling sounds, caused by my desperate efforts to breathe through a mouthful of plastic had the desired effect. When the session finally commenced, I looked like Bela Lugosi on Wreck Beach. When it was over, eighteen minutes later, I looked like Bela Lugosi, on Wreck Beach, with rabies.

Until this current craze has passed I'm left with no choice but to bide my time till the next full moon or consider having myself neutered.

Brief but Brilliant

I was a top athlete—the envy of my peers. On race day, townsfolk would turn out to cheer me on. I was a local hero, unbeaten in three years—that's one hundred and eighty five races to you. I lost count of the number of trophies and medals that I accumulated over that period. My uncle Al, not known for his carpentry skills, handcrafted two cupboards—one for my silverware, the other for my ego.

Then, on my eleventh birthday everything changed.

I can trace the start of my prolific yet brief career to an occasion when I ran a mile in eight minutes while being chased through a forest by a celibate Jesuit. Though he was persistent in a way that only celibates can be, he never caught me—for him it was all about the chase. I knew this because he had made it virtually impossible for himself—negotiating a forest floor in four inch heels is tricky. So it wasn't a shock when I heard one day that he'd broke his heel, fell down an embankment and drowned in a swamp. At his autopsy the coroner put the cause of death down to a combination of misadventure and ruptured bunions. He was eighty two.

After three months of these not so trivial pursuits I had broken the six minute mile and had grown nine inches taller. When sports day came around, I swept the boards, winning every race I entered. Winning became an addiction—I wasn't winning often enough so I quit the long distance stuff and concentrated instead on sprinting. Sprinting meant that I could win more races more often.

I knew my days at the top were numbered at a community race day in Larry McCrudden's field on a balmy Sunday evening in the fall of 1974. On the day that I was planning to show off my new sideburns, Charles "Crunchie" McCormack emerged from the pack and pushed me all the way to the finish line in the 100 yard dash. Crunchie had gone from runt to antelope in a matter of weeks and though he still made farmyard noises—suddenly he was heir to my throne. Yes, I had won but something died that day.

And so it transpired, the growth spurt that I had experienced three years previous had a hidden non-exclusivity clause. All of a sudden everyone was five feet ten with pubes. And they could run as fast as me.

Rather than be considered a mere mortal and suffer the ignominy of defeat I decided to quit while I was ahead. On the eve of my thirteenth birthday I retired from athletics, my pride intact, my reputation preserved, forever.

FOR SALE: Flashlight (with batteries), Compass, Snorkel and a Short Wave Radio...

I was thrilled, and not a little relieved to hear scientists claim recently that the fabled G-spot does not exist.

Unhappy Baby

I was paralysed with trepidation, crippled by fear. "You'll fart," they warned. That didn't worry me, I'd been practicing sphincter control for weeks—doing push-ups with my legs spread apart while downing litre bottles of Pellegrino. Breaking wind was the least of my worries, breaking my back was more of a concern as I wandered sheepishly into my first yoga class.

The first thing I noticed was the nondescript New Age music that filled the studio. For some strange reason it reminded me of my father. Despite his love of Strauss, Mendelssohn and Mahler he always warned me about music without verses and choruses believing strongly that it was a gateway to narcotics addiction, or self publishing.

There were five others in the room, all female, all focused. They were folding like paper and the class hadn't even started. I felt intimidated—it reminded me of those gloriously agile women who appeared in the early Bond flicks—you know, the ones who cart-wheeled and high-kicked Connery's ass while the guy with the cat escaped in the pod.

Looking as inconspicuous as a red wine stain on a white rug I wandered around, waving my arms, limbering up, trying to look impressive while taking a mental note of first aid box in the corner of the room.

Finally the class started. Like a team of synchronized swimmers we got into our stride almost immediately. There was something intensely erotic about watching my new yoga buddies going through their paces but sex was the last thing on my mind, I was too busy dealing with my first hernia of the day. I had attempted a move which I hadn't tried since I was three months old.

As near death experiences go it was the closest I'd come. I can't recall the final fifty two minutes of the hour-long class—I wasn't conscious, I had passed out, or fallen asleep but it didn't matter because I had done so in a relaxed state, the tail of my spine firmly rooted to the earth.

City Lights

On and off for the last three months I've been sharing a bed with eminent environmentalist, Doctor David Suzuki. I didn't recognize him at first—he just lies there, naked, asleep, smelling of seaweed. I thought I'd picked up a sushi chef. He has a wicked snore, that of a deep sea mammal.

Suddenly he wakes and hands me an energy-saving light bulb—I don't know where he produces it from, I'm too embarrassed to ask. Following a brief chat about the Tar Sands, hurricane Katrina and the benefits of a dolphin-friendly bed mattress he slips out, still naked, through my half opened bedroom window. I hold my breath for fear that the neighbors might see him.

Then I wake up.

A dream like this wouldn't be so bad if I was a crusading environmentalist, a fearless eco-warrior or even female but as I lie in a pool of my own sweat, or is it sea water, it suddenly occurs to me—maybe it's a sign, maybe it's a message—is my attitude towards the state of the environment too lax, should I hit the high seas and scream abuse at Japanese whalers, am I gay? I never really recovered from my first trip to Las Vegas.

I stayed at the Wynn Hotel—how could I possibly lose? There was enough light bulbs in my bathroom to power Bolivia. If I unscrewed half of them I'd still need sunscreen. Someone on the street tried to sell me their mother.

There's a disarming honesty about Vegas—a child-like innocence, an unbridled pomposity. It doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not, except, maybe London, Paris or New York but as a city, it's a single-minded proposition—oblivious to the concerns and hang-ups that paralyze the rest of the world and it's that that makes it the envy of most other cities. Everything is a commercial venture—from having lunch to taking a dump because time is money and taking time out to sit on the toilet is time you can ill-afford to waste.

I understand how someone might consider going without eating, sleeping, pooping because when I'm finally ensconced among stetson-clad oil millionaires and gold-digging divorcees, witnessing my chips disappearing faster than the polar ice cap, I'm not thinking about the street kids in Mumbai, the starving nomads in famine-ravished sub-Saharan Africa or my ozone-killing bathroom. I'm thinking—how the f**k can I re-mortgage my house, remotely, without my wife knowing; what's the likelihood of selling my car on eBay in the next ten minutes, or why the hell didn't I get fitted with a colostomy bag?

Meals on Wheels

This captivating part of the world has served up some pretty amazing experiences since I arrived here a few short years ago—from the majesty of the sun setting over the Pacific to my first encounter with Ranch Dressing but nothing prepared me for my most memorable and surprising experience to date—a ride in a clean cab.

I've used cabs in cities all over the world but my senses have always been challenged in Vancouver cabs. At best, it's an unpleasant variation on the multi-ethnic experience—like being verbally assaulted by a group of Peruvians at the Bangladeshi celebration for Welsh war vets. At worse, it's proof that aromatherapy works both ways. Close your eyes and inhale, it's like a game of Name that Flavour—chicken tikka, Marlboro Lights or armpits—armpits that haven't had any meaningful interaction with soap since The Beatles.

Cab companies should offer a choice when a customer calls. "Hello, I'd like to order a cab". "Very good sir. We have beef burrito, lamb korma or this week's special—stale beer and Yorkshire pudding..." Marketing companies could use cabs to launch new product lines by simply flooding the back of the cab with an aroma, accompanied by appetizing background music.

Longer trips can be hell. The judicial system should take a look at introducing a custodial sentence that involves incarcerating suspects in cabs and driving them back and forward across town until they confess. Pilot schemes have been in operation for years—notorious murderer Elmer Laidlaw, interrogated for months in a police cell suddenly confessed to multiple homicides when he was threatened with a cab ride to Vancouver Airport. When he heard that the car was a hybrid, he confessed to murders that hadn't yet been committed.

When I finally reached my destination, I complimented my driver on the cleanliness of his cab but stopped short of telling him he smelled nice.

Doctor Hu

Forty years of smoking, drinking and gnawing on the carcass of unfulfilled ambition had taken its toll on my teeth but like the true professional that he was, Doctor Raymond Hu simply shook my hand and guided me towards the chair.

This was my first visit to a Canadian dentist, in fact, my first visit to any dentist in sixteen years. I was excited by the thought of having teeth that wouldn't bar me from working with children but my fear of dentists was deep rooted.

Growing up on an island on the western fringes of Europe, a land ravaged by poverty, starvation and Shane McGowan lookalikes, straight teeth were a long way down the list of life's priorities, while white ones were seen as a birth defect. According to my grandmother, who lost her teeth in a fight with a badger, "milky-whites," a polite term for yellow teeth, were considered stronger and far more robust when dealing with gale force winds, sub-zero temperatures or the occasional box in the jaw–all regular occurrences on the way home from the pub late at night.

When I was a lad, dental appointments resembled exorcisms—molars, like demons, were cast out, banished from the Earth. Dentists recited passages from the Old Testament while flicking mouthwash at the hapless, terrified patient. The appointment reached a climax when the receptionist and other administrative staff entered the surgery in a procession, holding candles and shouting insults and abuse at the patient, in Gaelic.

Doctor Hu (an easy name to grunt when your mouth is packed with blood-soaked cotton pads) never stopped smiling. Maybe he was advertising his own handiwork but that was allowed.

As he put on his surgical gloves, handpicked his weapons of choice and raised his mask over the bridge of his nose I suddenly felt compelled to prepare him by giving him a very quick fifteen second biography of my teeth, from early childhood to my most recent meal—a sashimi combo with a side of crab. By the time I'd got around to describing the trauma of being breast fed till the age of five the prodding and probing had already started.

I held my breath and looked into his eyes, longing for a reaction to what he was witnessing—disgust, distress, even an acknowledgement that 1993 wasn't such a long time ago in "teeth" years.

He probed and poked a little more. Suddenly, I saw a sign, in fact I saw lots of signs—dollar signs. Hu had struck gold, he pulled back, removed his mask and exhaled. "Cancel all my appointments," he shouted in broken English to his dumbstruck assistant who hadn't heard him utter a word in eighteen years.

He rushed to the far side of the room, opened a cupboard and took out a container. I was nervous. Childhood memories came flooding back—readings from the Book of Jeremiah, the Gaelic chants, the smell of incense. Was he rummaging for a scepter, fumbling for a crucifix? No. He was looking for his pocket calculator. Reappearing with a broad smile on his face, he handed me a bunch of his business cards. Hu had switched from dentist to marketer.

"You give these to your friends," he beamed.

"But wait," I pleaded, "what about my teeth, what's the prognosis, have I passed the point of...?"

He looked at me as only a Chinese dentist can—"your teeth are fine." I was astonished. "—but your gums are f**ked." Muttering to himself, he went to leave the room then he stopped, looked around and smiled–"milky whites are good."