Durke was not very well liked by Vincent, his coworker, who bought tickets for the lottery pool in the auto parts factory. Durke commuted with Vincent to work, in an industrial park near the frenetically busy expressway. Durke had known Vincent the longest of any coworkers at the factory. But Vincent resented that, instead of joining the rest of his coworkers in chipping in several dollars each week for the lottery ticket pool, Durke abstained, passed. Instead of socializing with Vincent and other coworkers during work breaks and lunch hour, Durke studied the business section of the newspapers. He analyzed stock market trends with a knitted brow, a calculator, a sharpened stubby pencil, and an intensity and fervor that underlined his seriousness as an investor. In fact, he was so astute with his stock market investments and earned so much money from the capital gains on his speculations that Vincent, among other coworkers and supervisors, wondered why he even continued working at the auto parts manufacturing plant.<\/p>\n
Durke\u2019s stockbroker was also puzzled by his client\u2019s behavior. His stockbroker couldn\u2019t comprehend why Durke didn\u2019t join him in working for his investment firm, but Durke said he didn\u2019t feel comfortable handling other people\u2019s money. In his experience, Durke found the higher the risk he was willing to assume, the higher the return, and so he didn\u2019t think he could handle the stress of managing a customer\u2019s retirement savings.<\/p>\n
Before Durke had even won the lottery, his coworker Vincent noticed an envelope and letter from Durke\u2019s stockbroker fall from his boxed lunch of peanut butter sandwiches and an apple. (For lunch, he never joined his coworkers who preferred to patronize the neighborhood bars and grilles and strip clubs for poutine and hamburgers and fries.) His coworker even waited until afternoon coffee break was over and went through his backpack. Vincent noticed that he had a financial statement with transactions worth thousands and thousands of dollars and a check for thirty thousand dollars filed between the pages of a classic book about stock market investing with a preface by Warren Buffet. Vincent, the same worker who bought the lottery tickets for the group each week, whistled softly to himself and again wondered why Durke bothered to work as a machinist in the auto plants factory. In fact, the co-worker who organized the lottery pool was so miffed he told him. \u201cI guess we don\u2019t need to ask you if you\u2019re going to buy a lottery ticket.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since he never participated in the weekly lottery pool, Durke thought the remarks peculiar and could not understand why this co-worker seemed angry with him. Since the provincial lottery, that week was being advertised as the largest jackpot in several years, he laughingly decided during the subway commute home, after Vincent left the factory in his minivan without him, to stop at the lottery stand and bought a ticket for himself on a lark. As widely reported in the national media, that week the jackpot for the lottery reached twenty-four million dollars, not an all-time high, but close, and his numbers matched, and he won.<\/p>\n
A fair amount of publicity had attended his winning the twenty-four million dollar lottery jackpot. The most memorable quote, or sound bite, replayed on radio and television newscasts would have been his mentioning his plans to buy a candy apple red Corvette. Having come into possession of so much cash, there seemed to be little reason for him to continue working. Even though his instincts, nature, and intuition told him otherwise, he quit his position at the auto parts factory, which actually paid him a fairly decent and respectable wage.<\/p>\n
Soon he found he had quite a bit of time on his hands, time which he attempted to utilize in the pursuit of purposeful activity. In fact, he found himself incredibly bored and leading a meaningless and purposeless existence. Downtown, he drove the city streets lively with nightlife, visited nightclubs, hung out in strip clubs, hired the services of sex trade workers, watched serial dramas on a supersized television monitors, and built up a vast collection of Hollywood movies on DVD and his favorite rock and roll music on compact disk.<\/p>\n
\nHe began to encounter downtown\u2014a place he had avoided before his lottery victory\u2014plenty of men who were homeless. They hardly fit the stereotype, the image of the type likely to become so downtrodden, so down and out. He met a former bank manager who reeked of rubbing alcohol, wearing a suit that looked as if it had survived a natural disaster, sleeping on a park bench, with flaking paint, rusting metal bars, and crumpled and crushed beer cans beneath the bench. A young woman who looked as if she should be modeling swimsuits and lingerie slept in the cement doorway of an advertising agency and refused his offer of takeout coffee and a pizza slice. After she shunned him, he decided he would try to figure out this homelessness issue, if that was actually possible, if it was feasible for him to conduct his own brand of ethnographic research. He warned his stockbroker he would be taking a vacation, a sort of anthropological research field trip, and he asked him to look after all his investments while he was gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cWait a minute. What are you doing?\u201d his stockbroker asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sort of a fact finding mission.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t you leave that to the academics?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to go to university.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, we can arrange for you to attend university.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey probably wouldn\u2019t give me admission. I dropped out of high school.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you can apply as a mature student.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI applied as a mature student to university three times before, and they rejected me each time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe they refused you. Did you try business school?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe university business school would accept you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou think?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll write them a letter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I\u2019m interested in doing my own research.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSeriously?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOn homelessness?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t you watch the evening news and a few documentaries on homelessness? It would be a lot safer, probably.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I need to get up close and personal. I mean, I\u2019ve been asked to donate some money, and I\u2019d like to make a few investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can do some in-house research. We can run a background check and financial analysis of any organization, which asked you to donate and determine their reputation as a charity. This firm has the resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
His stockbroker was insistent, but Durke was equally as stubborn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to do my own research. I have a personal interest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cA personal interest? I don\u2019t quite understand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Durke could see his stockbroker was upset. \u201cI\u2019d like to do it\u2014maybe more out of a sense of social responsibility?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial responsibility?\u201d queried his stockbroker, who simply felt uneasy with this type of personal philanthropy and participatory journalism, if that is even what you could these activities, since he thought madness or insanity might be a more appropriate word. He didn\u2019t know what to make of the idea and always thought his client was \u201ctouched.\u201d This time, he thought, his usual inoffensive eccentricities had reached a pathological level. Yes, Durke was his most financially astute client and the most intelligent stock market investor he knew, but, at the same time, he thought he was a little \u201coff.\u201d This idea of going undercover to investigate homelessness in inner city Toronto struck him as definitely over the edge, over the top, irrational. But who was he to tell his client how to spend his money or his time, particularly since he was turning out to be his largest single source of income in commissions and fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial responsibility isn\u2019t a bad way to describe it, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
His stockbroker shrugged and sighed, as he thought his client was intelligent about economics, but na\u00efve about sociology.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, social responsibility. That\u2019s big in the corporate world right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think you understand then.\u201d<\/p>\n
His stockbroker nodded, even though he didn\u2019t comprehend and thought his client was behaving irrationally. Meanwhile, Durke again warned his trusted advisor and stockbroker he wouldn\u2019t be needing any cash or funds. That Durke wouldn\u2019t be requiring any payments from his money market funds when he wasn\u2019t working really made his stockbroker wonder what type of venture his client was planning.<\/p>\n
\nThe 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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\u2019t. Durke couldn\u2019t 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. \u201cYou\u2019ll be in pain for the rest of your life.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019t be.<\/p>\n
Once his stockbroker went downtown to attend the theatre revival of My Fair Lady<\/i>. 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\u2019s 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\u2019t 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\u2019t showered or changed his clothes in weeks. The words that he himself had imparted on his interns echoed through his head: \u201cA stockbroker\u2019s 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.\u201d 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. \u201cFor Christ\u2019s sake,\u201d the stockbroker said. He quickly took his woman by the arm, as he guided her and moved her ahead quickly. \u201cLet\u2019s get the hell out of here. It\u2019s dangerous to be here in this neighborhood at night. I\u2019ll call 911 from my cell phone to send an ambulance.\u201d 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\u2019t yet called for an ambulance and that it appeared he never would.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Candy Apple-Red Corvette Durke was not very well liked by Vincent, his coworker, who bought tickets for the lottery pool in the auto parts factory. Durke commuted with Vincent to work, in an industrial park near the frenetically busy expressway. Durke had known Vincent the longest of any coworkers at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1362,"parent":148,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-577","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/577\/revisions\/1448"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue15\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}