Love in the Time of Sheesha

(more apochryphal narrative from west end Toronto)

Love in the Time of Sheesha

The Taps were full of nogoodniks that night, a few Fitty-soaked hockey fans and a three-legged waitress with split ends and a lazy eye. Her name was Bea and she drooled all over the menus. "I had three doses of novacaine," Bea explained, "and I gotta go back tomorrow to finish the root canal." We looked across the table at each other and sighed. The holidays made people do crazy things, like remove all their teeth. Joe complained his own teeth were giving him trouble, and good thing we were in the Portuguese Dentistry District. "Too bad I don't speak a lick o' Portuguese," Joe said. But I reassured him; "let your booty do the talking," I said while gesturing with some crudite. Joe was a belly dancer, the only male dancer in a troupe of sixty Mideastern belly-quivering beauties. That's how he turned me onto the sheesha: I took my first pull of the wacky weed in the garage of one of the dancers, a certain Aliyah Van Snooten, a half-Dutch half-Persian shemale transvestite with knockers up to Tuesday and a sweet falsetto voice. She couldn't dance a hog's darn, but man could she sing. I mean he. Aliyah was also called Frank, he moonlighted as a plumber to pay for his sheesha habit, which ran over five bucks a week...

(yes!)