After that, I need a nap.

Yesterday, I joked with Regina that, "I stake all my faith in filipinos upon this interaction." We laughed. What I was talking about was this filipino dude named Sean* from Scarghetto who was supposed to come and look at a 5 month old puppy. He called me and said, “Oh, man. I’m sorry, I can’t come today. I got in an accident.” I thought, “yea yea, bullshit. You just don’t want to come.” Then he said, “Maybe I can come on Saturday?” And I was all, “Sure, just call me when you’re on your way.”

I get a call this morning around 9 am. “Hello, it’s Sean. Can I come today?” My brain goes through the checklist:

• Do I have other more pressing shit to do today? No.
• Is the dog ready? No, needs to have a delousing bath.
• Do I have the energy to do it? For 500 bucks I do.

I quickly tell Sean to come on up, and I give him the directions.

After I get off the phone I rush to the barn and grab the puppy. I've been calling the puppy Rascal for the past couple of weeks because he always seems to get my hopes up of selling him. He's cute, mostly black, beautiful dog. He's also BIG. Bathing him was a joke. He splashed a lot and I think I got some Malathion in my eye. (Malathion is used for delousing sheep, but it’s all good for dogs too.) When he’s clean, I start drying him.

4 towels and 20 minutes of blow drying later, he’s ready to be sold. Sean still hasn’t arrived, but "he’s coming from Scarborough," I tell myself, "and it’s snowing a little." I decide to clean the tub while I wait. Finished the tub, Sean still hasn’t arrived. "Must be taking his time, I’ll do the dishes." I say. Dishes are done and Sean still isn’t at the gate. "Well, he’s Filipino," I think, "he’s on Filipino time." Which we all know means 1 hour late for everything. "I’ll start putting together the news papers for recycling next week." I tell myself. After I'm done and the bundle of reincarnation-anxious newspapers are sitting in the basement I check the gate. No car. I decide, "Well, I’ll get the papers together, all the forms for selling a dog, as well as all the food if he decides to take the dog." After all that, no sign of Sean.

By this point I'm fucking exhausted. I plop down on my chair and start reading the flyers.

Finally, Sean arrives. He’s shorter than I imagined. He’s 28 and already has a partial denture. His teeth are slanted and he drives a slammed Dodge Neon.

At first he seemed cool. Talked to me about the Philippines, talked to me about the dogs, talked to me about how he should go about caring for the dogs, asks me about myself, what I do, do I work, yada-yada, and all that other jazz. Then he gets serious on me.

“You do drugs?”
“I used to, but not any more.”
“what did you used to do?”
“Just smoked a little weed.”
“Ahh… I never liked weed. I used to do crack a lot.”
“…”
“Yah, this one time I spent 400 dollars on crack for one night. I had to stop that though, I couldn’t save any money.”
“Yea, cracks bad shit, y0.”
“Yea, and it makes you skinny.”
“Yea, I heard that.”
“Stopped it like… two years ago. It got too expensive. I started smoking shaboo.”

For those of you who don’t know, Shaboo is what Filipinos call crystal meth.

“I heard of that stuff too.”
"That's how I quit crack. I started smoking Shaboo."
"..."
“Yea, it was cheaper and like it… how do you say… ummm... fuck, it like… I can still do stuff while on it. I can go to work and have lots of energy! If I smoke crack here, I’d be in this room all day. ALL NIGHT! Maybe 2 DAYS! I wouldn’t be able to do shit!” At this point the car crash excuse started to hold more weight. He started laughing, really, really hard. I laughed with him. Didn’t want to rock the crystal meth boat.

“Yah, but I stopped smoking shaboo too. Like.. 2.. no… 1 month ago?”

Keep in mind that he told me he has a 7 year old boy and 2 year old girl. Do the math. He was probably playing with his kids while he was on crack and meth. DADDY IS SO MUCH FUN!

Then he started telling me how he went to jail for stabbing a guy in the head. That’s when I started looking around the room for shit to hit him with if wanted to get all froggy on me. I think I talked to that guy for two hours straight. And the worst part was, he didn’t buy the dog. He said, “I have to talk to my wife.” I didn’t argue. I was glad to see him go. Said he'd call me to let me know though.

Man, and I thought I’d be safe putting my ad in the Toronto Star. Imagine the kinds of people I’d meet if I put my shit in the Sun? Shiver.

*Name changed