The venture, or expedition, got off to a rough start, as Durke made the descent from affluence and assumed the mantle of poverty. Essentially the only form of currency or monetary unit, or anything in the form of money that he allowed himself was subway tokens, which he deposited in various zippered and buttoned compartments of his cargo pants. From the noisy subway, rocketing underground into the suburbs, he boarded a dingy bus, which stank of exhaust and which he decided he would take into the rougher locales. He found himself sitting at the back of the bus, exposed to all kinds of odors he could never remember smelling in the past. He found himself sitting behind a woman who continued to do her eye makeup, and he suddenly experienced difficulty breathing. A chemical taste was left in his mouth, and his eyes watered. He figured he had an allergy to whatever cosmetic she used, or she was unaware the makeup she was using might have an untoward effect or make others ill. In any event, she appeared to be a vain woman, who continued to apply mascara, rouge, eyeliner, and lipstick to her face, cheeks, and lips. By the time he finally stepped off the bus, he thought he would pass out from the fumes.
He walked along Queen Street past the hip clothing stores and small office buildings and studios until his feet were tired, ached, and blistered. Eventually, he stopped and rested on a park bench. But he felt hungry, thirsty, and not incidentally somewhat relieved at having finally found a place to rest. He had shaved his head and completely trimmed his beard, so that nobody would recognize him from the few television appearances and press conferences he had been obliged to make for the lottery corporation after the lucky draw. After scouring a parking lot, he found a piece of cardboard and a marker and he wrote on bold block letters that he was homeless. He wrapped himself in some newspaper, but out of habit and instinct started reading the business section of the newspaper. By around midnight, he found that he had enough in pennies, nickels, and dimes for a coffee and a few doughnut holes. He wondered where he could spend his petty earnings on affordable food and drink, though, and he found himself so tired he couldn’t think straight. Eventually, he found a coffee shop franchise outlet further down Queen Street East and ordered a coffee and doughnut while a bewildered and lean, strong, compact young female police officer stared at him. He ate the pastries voraciously and noisily slurped his coffee. Within twenty minutes, the coffee shop server was asking him to leave. He smelled, farted, belched, and he was tired and weary, so he went to the park and started to sleep beneath a tree whose magnificent branches provided shelter from the rain for dozens of feet around.
He finally managed to get to sleep, to the din of the hallucinations and arguments of homeless people who had found limited shelter in the park. Then he noticed that somebody was going through his the pockets and compartments in his cargo pants. When the figure, whom he couldn’t see clearly, because of the darkness, realized he was awake, he held the muzzle of a revolver to his head. He warned Durke that he wanted all the money he had and would face dire consequences if he didn’t. Durke couldn’t believe what he heard and warned him to leave him alone. The assailant slugged him in the head and pressed the muzzle against his stomach. “You’ll be in pain for the rest of your life.” Durke gave him every subway token he had on his person. His assailant was still not satisfied until he had thoroughly searched him. By the professional manner in which the man spoke and searched him and the bright stripes on what appeared to on the sleeves of a uniform, he realized that the man was a cop, or a security guard. That was the last thing he thought before he was pistol whipped and knocked into unconsciousness.
When he regained consciousness in the morning, Durke had this incredible headache. His consciousness was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness, desolation, and complete disorientation. He didn’t know who he was, or how he had gotten there, or even where he was. He walked around the park anxiously until he regained some sense of direction and purposefulness and the headache had dissipated, but he still didn’t know who he was. He had no sense of identity. He had no desire to satiate any needs except those of hunger, thirst, urination, defecation, and sheer unbridled lust, which he resolved through masturbation. He had the decency to perform these self-stimulatory acts only when concealed in the bushes, though. He began to panhandle using empty jars and paper cups he found littering the boulevard on garbage days and this way he found enough to buy himself a coffee and a muffin or a hamburger. When he couldn’t earn the money for food, he wandered barefoot through the streets, sifting through the garbage for leftovers. Sometimes after he ate the scraps and spoiled food from the trash bins and wastebaskets, he became violently ill, vomited, and had an urgent and uncontrollable diarrhea. He continued to forage downtown. By this time his hair and beard had grown wild, tangled, and scraggly, but some people thought they recognized him as the big-time jackpot lottery winner, but he simply couldn’t be.
Once his stockbroker went downtown to attend the theatre revival of My Fair Lady. He left the lobby of the renovated century-old theatre with his date, a tall, lean, woman, who bore herself with the demeanor of the fashion model she was several years ago. He hoped he had impressed her with the ostentatiousness and splendor of the theatre performance and the members of the banking and investment community with whom he was acquainted and conversed at the intermission. Durke’s stockbroker and his ravishing date walked along a side street and then strolled along a back alley to the parking lot in search for his flashy candy apple red Corvette, which he had bought from his client at what was virtually giveaway price. But his stockbroker stopped when he thought he saw Durke. He stopped dead in his footsteps before the grimy, grungy man. With a sense of incredulity, he thought that he was looking at his wealthiest client, the investor, mostly in equity markets, an aggressive risk taker, and, more recently, a lottery winner, who provided him with his largest source of income. There even seemed a moment of mutual recognition, when he thought that he recognized the wasted figure and the man recognized him. But he was with an extremely hot date. He didn’t want to spoil the evening of a woman wearing a tight thousand dollar designer dress, revealing abundant cleavage and piercings that cost him another several thousand dollars, and perfume for which he had paid several hundred dollars. He wanted to impress this elegant woman to no end, but he found himself attempting to positively identify a man who appeared and smelled as if he hadn’t showered or changed his clothes in weeks. The words that he himself had imparted on his interns echoed through his head: “A stockbroker’s loyalty to his client is of the greatest primacy. A stockbroker should not surrender information about a client to the authorities except under the duress of a subpoena.” But he had made the short speech in an entirely different context, and he had already filed a missing persons report for Durke with the police. And, staring intently at the stockbroker, trying to figure where he had seen this richly dressed person before, Durke suddenly collapsed. “For Christ’s sake,” the stockbroker said. He quickly took his woman by the arm, as he guided her and moved her ahead quickly. “Let’s get the hell out of here. It’s dangerous to be here in this neighborhood at night. I’ll call 911 from my cell phone to send an ambulance.” The stockbroker steered his date far and wide away from the haunting visage, truly, he thought later, a ghost if he had ever encountered one in his lifetime. As he drove north along Yonge Street towards his home, driving the red Corvette over the speed limit, his date realized that he hadn’t yet called for an ambulance and that it appeared he never would.
Durke somehow managed to survive on the streets to the east of Yonge Street, in the back alleys and side streets around Cabbagetown and the downtown campus of George Brown College. He grew even more lean and angry looking. His hair grew long, his beard scraggly. His smell became incredibly rancid and earthy. He started to walk with a stoop and a limp. His face grew lean, haggard, and hairy. His teeth decayed, blackened, and loosened and fell from his gums, and he developed vision problems, twitches, and jerks because of nutritional deficiencies. He found himself giggling and laughing to himself, as if he was privy to some protracted amusing private joke. Meanwhile, he was thoroughly shunned, ostracized, and alienated. Passersby, pedestrians, drivers, security guards, and police officers and even the odd stray raccoon did everything to avoid him.
