David Ker Thomson

What I’m mostly up for this morning by way of taxing your half-million earballs is this virgin I nearly did the nasty on a few minutes ago. Sweet thing, legal eighteen I guess but looks like my dad used to say, ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’.

Well, I’m no prude, but I have to say that the level of offense this advertisement (alas, an ad it is, and the girl’s putting out for the West Toronto Kia at 2445 St. Clair West) generated in me is so intense that my outrage is—and here I wish to be very precise—literally inexpressible.

I mean that in a legal sense. I’m not even allowed to hint at what I think an appropriate response would be for people who run an ad depicting a virgin, a Rio automobile, and a price in such filthy juxtaposition here in the midst of the killing fields. And I’m committed to non-violence. “You never forget YOUR FIRST,” says the ad, which is how we know that, until the deal is sealed, virginity’s for sale. “Why settle for used? Drive new for the same price. 2008 RIO5. We have a fresh one for you…just call us for a pick-up.” Turns out that we don’t have to settle for a “beater,” since the new Rio is “sweet.”

For my part, I’ve never forgotten my first. Guy swerved right and caught me between his car and a parked one. Luckily I’d been doing that proto-parkour stuff and I leapt up and over and landed on the sidewalk. My bike didn’t fare so well. The guy stopped and prostrated himself with apologies and all, but I couldn’t help thinking that without that bit of self rapture I’d have been between a rock and a hard place.

Rio, eh? I live in ’rio, a province of small rivers and big lakes, so the name kind of stands out. These Rios are one of the many eco-friendly cars friendly for the backside of cyclists in the killing fields of the city. We are the cyclists killed every year by eco-friendly cars, hybrid “electric” buses with not one but two powerplants (echo, echo: both powerplants running on energy from fossil fuel), fuckers in leanly carbureted Volvos and their all-wheel-drive brethren, and so on. All the ‘good’ drivers and their clean green killing machines. Leprechaun terrorists.

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