Jogging…part I.

 

Weekly street fair, Defensa Avenue, San Telmo District, Buenos Aires

I am out for a jog and I am passing other aging Lotharios who exchange with me knowing glances through our sweat and our crow’s feet – sharing the knowledge of a not-so-secret secret of a life that is now more than half-way done.

Circling the block I also pass a few middle-aged women out for a run but they share no glance, knowingly or otherwise, for this is Toronto and they look at nothing and see no one; eyes averted, distracted – I assume –  by the endless to-do lists that forever seem to run through their heads.

I find that most women in Toronto, if they see me at all, view me as little more than an obstacle to maneuver around as they hurry about their day. I long-ago realized that women are not, in fact, interested in me anymore, and I do not remember the last time a woman in Toronto has made eye contact with me in public – for any reason. I have long stopped trying to chat up baristas and bookstore girls.

I don’t know why most Toronto women are like this, but I know it isn’t simply because most men are bastards.

There’s something about the dominant Toronto culture. It makes us reserved, slightly fearful; we avert our gaze, are deferential (and confuse this with politeness), and are generally cold towards each other.

As an outsider, when you first come to Toronto you notice it most accutely. Newcomers always complain that Torontonians are cold, reserved, stand-0ffish. My Latin American and African friends – coming as they do from warm and open cultures – wax nostalgic for the cafés and evening sidewalk chatter that they once knew in Santiago, San Salvador, and Accra.

But after a while you acquiesce, curtail your social enthusiasms, stop initiating conversations, become part of the norm. I went to visit my Cuban friend in Miami a couple of years ago, whom I hadn’t seen in a few years. She was shocked at my change of character. A friend came from New York for Pride and found Torontonians’ reserved-ness tedious and off-putting (and this was at Pride!).

And it is a “Toronto” thing – this reserved-ness, this “don’t look people in the eye” thing that we do. People who have visited or moved here from Halifax or Montreal will tell you the same thing. Torontonians are uptight, anal, haughty even. 

 

I wasn’t in a New York café fifteen minutes last year when a woman commented on a story she saw me reading in the New York Times and someone else from across the table picked up on the comment and a full conversation ensued. I didn’t know what to do. I was flustered. Random people (women!) don’t talk to me in a café in Toronto. Ever! It’s so rude! It took me an hour to disengage from the conversation and all but run from the café in fear and confusion!

I want to tell Torontonians to take all their little tensions and their random anxieties and stuff them in their bike helmets and in their yogawear. I want to tell everyone that it is okay to greet your neighbour, have a conversation in your local café, nod to your passing jogger, dance when the mood hits you.

But it is Toronto afterall. So I keep my thoughts to myself and I try not to look women in the eye.

Lest I offend them.