Well, Laura thought it was funny at midnight, but then she’d had nothing since a breakfast of meagre toast and had immediately slammed two ciders back upon entering the party, round about nine.

So.

She wanted me to tell you this story.

The reason I told her the story in the first place was that, upon getting out of the cab, I’d stepped right on a squashed, damp pair of house slippers someone had discarded in the gutter.

I hate that. There’s no comedown from a party quite as bad as stepping out of a cab and onto a rather pathetic, squashed, and unquestionably moist pair of slippers so far gone that not even the junkies wanted them.

Well, I can think of one but it involves persons who shall remain nameless, and therefore I shall not name them but instead shall move on.

So I looked down at the Willy Loman on Skid Row slippers, the kind made out of thick, fingery bathroom mat fabric, chenille-y stuff, the kind that once had been white but now were simply the undefinable colour of the toxic sludge that sticks to the bottom of your new shoes after a long walk down East Hastings.

And I said:

You see the weirdest combinations around here. It worries me. You’ll be walking along, minding your own business or maybe someone else’s, particularly if they’d asked if you minded, and you’ll see a pair of shoes on the sidewalk. You think: I guess the laces rotted through and they fell off the Hydro lines, and you move on.

And not too long after that, you see a pair of socks, just lying there.

And then, you see a pair of pants…

And, a bit farther along, a flannel shirt.

And then, but you’ll have anticipated this, for lo, our readership hath a half a brain in theyrre heddes, some tighty-not-so-whiteys.

And you look at the state of them and you extrapolate and form some mental picture of the body they formerly enclosed and you think: maaaaaan, I’m so glad I only saw the aftershocks.

And one day, and this is my best-ever sidewalk found object, I was walking across the bridge at the Eastern end of Terminal Avenue. I’m sure it has some official name, like the Flea Market Gate Viaduct or the Home Depot Memorial Overpass or whatever, but who gives a rat’s ass, that’s not what the story is about, is it?

This is a story about really gross and disgusting intimate objects found on Vancouver sidewalks. Let’s try to retain focus here.

SO I was walking across the bridge or maybe it’s better to say Along it, as I was not doing any ridiculous Tacoma Narrows-fleeing-dude criss-crossing but instead moving in a direction parallel to the vehicular traffic, as, indeed, one is supposed to do unless one is crossing both AT and WITH a light.

For as I explained to someone only this morning, I am neither a tourist nor a junkie and therefore I do not jaywalk.

So there I was, walking in a bridge-along fashion, when I spied this forgotten treasure. In fact and in actuality I was almost exactly half way along this actually-quite-lengthy-and-therefore-taking-some-time-to-cross/along bridge or viaduct-type structure. Someone, it seems, overcome with an ecstasy of anticipation, simply could not wait to try out their new toy and thus, had removed it from and then discarded the box, either in a leisurely pedestrian or speedily out the window of passing car manner.

I don’t think you can take things like that out of their boxes while operating a motorcycle, and possibly not even passenging on one. The Sister will, no doubt, clear up the confusion at a later period.

So there it was, right there on the sidewalk: the discarded container of an item so pulsing with potential that someone out there could no longer wait, but had to take it out of the box and try it out right there on the Terminal Street Viaduct.

I thought about picking the box up and taking it with me. I mean, it’s material. But then I thought about how I would look walking the remaining two miles home carrying an empty box for a butt plug and I dropped the idea.