#gridto

In the biggest, richest city in Canada—in the biggest province in one of the world’s most affluent countries—people are forced to sleep outside in the February cold. Many more are offered shelter in unsafe, bedbug-plagued warehouses, where they line up for entry and are kicked out in the morning. Our fellow citizens are sleeping in the street, and dying there.

Edward Keenan

I was at Sunnyside Beach on the weekend with my wife and our two kids. We’d been skipping rocks and my son Colum and daughter Irene were practicing their bike-riding on the concrete of the drained wading pool when a six-year-old boy came over from a nearby picnic table and asked if I had a lighter. He and his family needed it to light the candles on an immense birthday cake they had prepared for his 12-year-old brother. I went over and helped them light the candles, and the kids and I joined in as they sang “Happy Birthday.”

Then we were all invited to join the party—the mother supervising the crowd of about eight kids (four of them her own offspring) insisted they had too much cake (and pop, and chips) and didn’t want to haul it all back to their apartment on Jameson Avenue. I was offered a beer and Colum and Irene had cream soda, even though they normally aren’t allowed to drink pop. Our kids admired the pink-princess tent the other kids had set up nearby, and my wife Rebecca, who is pregnant with our third child, shared notes with the other Mom, whose oldest is 18 and whose youngest is four. I ate cake and talked about the bike trails along the lake with one of her teenagers.

There’s not really much significance to this story: we had an unexpectedly good time with a bunch of friendly strangers in downtown Toronto. What else is new?

It fills me with so much pride when American friends come to visit and are astonished that people on the street, in stores, on the TTC, strike up conversation with you. And not only that, but that these people are pleasant. My American friends sit/stand there unsure of what to do, how to react; if this happened in their city... well, it wouldn't.

I love this aspect of Toronto. I love that you're never really alone. You can go places by yourself but there is always somebody to talk to, and the best part is, it excludes any fear for your life which is something I hear Americans feel quite frequently.

While I'm not opposed to The GridTO's Dating Diaries series, some of these people really need to stop splaying their tales of fail out in the pages of an alt-weekly. And so, in a fit of pique, I thought I'd let "Tom" know where he failed at his date, and how he's failing (just a little bit!) as a person. 

Everything in quotes is actually from the article in question, which you can check out here.

This is an image of Sun News Network anchor Theo Caldwell, and not Tom. But all red heads look the same, amirite (no, I'm not right.)

Meet Tom. A 28-year-old red-headed, moustachioed gentleman who has "been described as a hipster." In other words: he wants to be thought of as a hipster, but doesn't want to come out and say it. He likes "plaid, Vans and indie rock" which means he's totally hip and cool and could totally yak on about all the hip and cool things out there. Like plaid. And Vans shoes. And indie rock. 

Now, duder readily admits that "I've been single for over five years" but that's okay! It's important that we know "his friends say he’s a nice guy, sarcastic, funny and a bit of a mama's boy" 'cuz that means he's probably one of scores of jilted indie rock-loving lover boys getting their tears on their original pressing Smiths LPs.

Morrissey crying. 

On the other hand, his dating diary shows something else entirely: a boorish turd with an obsession over some vaguely-defined "hipster girl." He proves himself, in the actual text of his diary, as someone who couldn't catch a social cue if it punched him in his face and then took a dump in his mouth. 

Immediately, we see this Tom fellow fetishizing Lindsay and her manic pixie dream girl qualities. She's different from other ladies, as he describes her thusly: "She looks like a pixie, very petite, very fashion forward. Her style is to put a lot of unexpected colours together . . . She was also interesting because she seemed different from any other girl I knew. She mostly kept to herself." When they start their date, he says she "looked good" with her "tight pants, a tiny cardigan with sparkles on it, a lot of shiny makeup and her hair done. Total hipster, more cute than sexy."

Now, he admits that the two haven ever spoken before. Fair enough. But how does he know she's different from other people if they've never spoken to one another before...?

Maybe Tom would prefer the uber-cool Ramona Flowers as his hipster chick du jour. 

Yeuch, we see something dudes need to stop doing: fetishizing ladies images over their appearance before getting to know them as a person. Putting women on a pedestal makes it harder for both the man and woman to interact honestly. And this poor Lindsay girl was meant to be Tom's cool hipster girlfriend -- and not who she actually is.

But when the date gets on the go -- with a movie, specifically "a chick flick, unfortunately" -- we see what happens when someone's idealized image, the statue on a pedestal, clashes with that person's actual personality. And Tom's inflexibility there is a leading reason why he's on the wood anniversary of singledom.

One of the most amazing things about this article is how much he criticizes this poor girl, someone who he was attracted because SHE KEPT TO HERSELF, because she doesn't spend the date responding to his yakking. Case in point:

"She wasn’t very friendly at the theatre, though. I kept trying to talk to her during the previews, but she looked straight ahead and didn’t say much.

And, right afterwards in a new paragraph

Over coffee, she was very soft-spoken and timid.

Yes, this entrancing girl who kept to herself... kept to herself during the date. It's like the dude didn't even have the self-reflective abilities to maybe realize that this lady is SHY. Maybe it's not in Tom's perfect, fetishized image that this beautiful cutesy hipster chick could actually be SHY, but hey, that's who she seems to be. 

Now, let's find some of the things that ol' Tom finds boner shrinking. 

She likes pink, glittery things

Only liking music people haven't heard of (which can either be self-deprecating or completely arrogant, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there)

Making clothes (for her own personal use)

Now, I doubt that she was giving off waves of crazy bitch here. She very may well could have been, but the text seems to indicate she was just a shy and it was a struggle to get her to talk. Fair 'nuff, I've been there. It's not the best. Buuuuuut:

Finally, I suggested we check out some magazines at the newsstand. Justin Bieber was on the cover of one of the teen magazines. I asked Lindsay if she liked him. Her face changed and she looked at me like I’d asked her if she was into anal. She said, “Um, no. I’m not that immature.”

 This is kind of astounding. It's the most pitch-perfect way of showing this Tom fellow's amazing abilities being tone deaf during a date. She likes pink glittery things and unicorns... So she must love the Biebz. 

Yeesh, for someone you thought at one point was some "cool hipster girl" you certainly seem to have come back around and think her some idiot woman-child lusting after some preteen pop tart. 

No wonder this happened: 

 After the date, I found out she was much more chatty behind my back, talking about me to the people we know. What a bitch.

She was probably letting her friends know that the dude described as a "nice, sarcastic, funny, bit of a mama's boy" was a huge turd sandwich.  And the last sentence of the article -- the always-classy "what a bitch" -- really shows the reason why Tom is five years single: