His Name was Mu'nis

By Andrew Tibbetts

I went to a reading last night- my first Toronto Event since moving here. I felt socially rusty. I don’t know what to say, where to look, what to think, how to feel. Everyone seemed nice, and things were funny and charming. Surely that can’t be right? I was going to blog about it, but I sat with the authors and organizers afterwards and everyone kept joking about who was going to blog about this, and nobody was. I’m unsure of the etiquette of these things. And besides I’m worried that there might have been several metaconversations going on that I was oblivious too. Being a rube. Fresh off the bus. From the provinces. An innocent. Adrift. In the complicated urban sociojungle.

So: I won’t tell you that Pasha Malla, Melissa Bell, John MacFarlane and Michelle Orange were funny and smart. I won’t encourage you to search out their writings. Instead I’ll make something up. Just as the event was about to begin the cure for cancer occurred to me so I rushed out to purchase a professional-looking notebook and fancy pen. I found a quiet café where I could jot it down. I procured a cab. “The New England Journal of Medicine on the double, Cabbie!” I said, offending my taxi driver who "had a name." He muttered, sulked and drove so slowly that we were easily intercepted by agents from BigPharm who stole my cure and wiped my memory. All this happened in a much more amusing way than I have conveyed here. Please imagine that and respond accordingly.