I was going through a pile of papers recently, you know the kind of pile that gets shuffled from one corner of the house to the other, somehow breeding more papers like bunnies, a heady mix of seed catalogues, travel pamphlets, and in this case one lonely unsent letter. It was too funny not to share, especially since I don’t remember anything in it…

May 5, 2014

Dear Betty,

How’s it going? I’m in Montreal at the moment, scribbling on a hotel pad because that’s how much I cared about getting proper stationary. Well, not really, it’s just who has time to shop for stationary when carousing through Toronto and then onto Montreal? No one, that’s who.

This has been a very Betty-friendly trip. Toronto had a condom store wedged between a record shop and a pot shop. If that wasn’t bad enough a shop down the street had a skeleton with wings and an impressive spring-loaded cock hanging from their ceiling. I trust I have sent a photo.

Now that I am in Montreal I have found it to be mostly sex shops, weird graffiti, and strip clubs. Some of these combined to make even more uncomfortable establishments. Had to stop and gawk at one such window where a lovely display of dildos were being tended to by two rubber hands. It’s such a shame that hand from the Adam’s Family had to resort to prostitution. That’s fucked up.

I’m staying here! *arrow points to hotel’s signature at the bottom of the pad* It looks nice – has a shoe buffer and a trouser press from the 1970’s in the room. And they do not talk to the garage they use for customers. AWKWARD!

In Toronto I was approached by three teenagers dressed for the apocalypse. They asked for spare change, saying their family had been kidnapped by Ninjas and they needed karate classes to get them back. Their humor was rewarded with a dollar. I am unsure if beggars in Montreal are as….interesting… as they don’t speak English. This little language barrier has been a source of much frustration, but I suppose!

I spent a great deal of time shoe shopping because the $5 canvas shoes I was wearing were covered in chicken shit and apparently not appropriate for public usage. The shoes in Toronto were outrageously priced – $100-200 a pair, threads already dangling off them, subpar rubber making up their heals. I found a pair of half-ass hot pink galoshes for $160! I’m like, “Dude, I can get rubber boots at Tractor Supply that will last more than one outing and spray paint them pink for less than twenty bucks…” After MANY shoe stores (including Canada’s largest with a whopping fifty pair) I finally found a Pay Less and bought a nice simple pair of dress shoes on sale, with a coupon, for less than $10. Win. Granted $10 is the opposite extreme.

I’m on the 24th floor of the hotel. Under the window is a park. Oh, how disturbed I was to see thirty people sprawled out on the ground like they’d been stepped on by Godzilla. Turns out they were sunbathing. Silly Canadians.

Hope all is well!

Typhani