Aug 3

00

TRANSCRIPT, WITH NEEDLES

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My tirade as delivered this afternoon at Capers on Robson Street to the individual enjoying a complimentary glass of filtered water at the front of the express line (tan and dewy with sweat in name-brand running gear) while the cashier rang in his vast selection of organic vegetables and energy bars (well, well in excess of the posted ten item limit) while the neighbourhood filled with cops and boom cars and teeming thousands who journeyed all the way from Burnaby to enjoy fifteen minutes of pointless pyrotechnics in the sky before letting their food wrappers and Players Lights fall to the ground and buggering off home to their richly satisfying lives, fifteen minutes after a strange and unsettling scene at a drugstore during which an agitated young man was refused a packet of insulin needles by a pharmacist requiring adequate evidence of diabetes, and whose resolve as a licensed caregiver was strengthened when the man whispered he was an addict who did not want to share needles, and had the money to pay, yet was still refused, which made me confused and upset, yet I said nothing, that is, until waiting in a hot grocery store behind a man who, indifferent to the long line of enraged people behind him, waited until hearing the grand total of his purchases before a lengthy search of his layers of Lycra and miracle fabrics that wick moisture away from the skin turned up a credit card, whose approval process delayed the return to what I expect is the dot-com house of cards that is his professional life, where he screams at underlings and lies for money and has his assistant arrange for him to meet women off of whose naked young bodies he hopes to snort cocaine:

“You fuck.”