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“I’m not crazy,” she says in a crazed sort of way. “I’m not. I’m not crazy. Do you believe I’m not crazy?” She’s not speaking to me. She’s speaking to a guy standing beside her at the bus stop. I’m a few feet away from them on the corner, listening while waiting to cross. I’m still trying to decide if she’s crazy and, if so, what sort of crazy she is, but his mind is evidently already made up. His two steps toward me, and away from her, tell both of us that, yes, she’s crazy. And that crazy was not in his evening plans. I cross the road. I’m headed to the ByTowne Cinema. Not for a movie but for their movie guide, which has a 15 percent off coupon for the Horn of Africa restaurant. That’s where my two roommates and their two girlfriends are waiting for me. The queers are gonna share two vegetarian platters and some curried lamb before heading a block down, where there’s a dance party put on by Agitate, the local queer women of colour collective. I grab the guide and find the coupon, ripping it out right there as cars whiz by on one of Ottawa’s busiest streets, smack in the middle of Lowertown, a neighbourhood formerly characterized by the down-and-out, who are now being replaced by the up-and-coming. The up-and-coming don’t like the down-andout , and especially don’t like it when the down-and-out circle the block endlessly, around and around, looking for game. So the up-and-coming altered the downand -out’s streets to create a maze of one-ways that make it hard to circle and harder yet to eke out a living, slowly pushing the down-and-out altogether under. I look up to see how it’s going across the street. Two guys in their twenties are headed towards her and I can tell she’s asking them how their night’s going, Chapter One Speaking Out Down, Out, Crazy! Nicholas Little 8 Stigma Revisited where they’re headed, if they’re looking for fun. They pass by and she looks down the street and then back up the other way where she spots a cop car coming. She steps back from the curb and into the bushes at the side of the sidewalk. I can hear her cursing as the cop car passes. I zip through traffic to get back to the other side, coupon in hand. Stuck at the meridian, I see her retreat through the bushes and into the coffee shop parking lot behind, but I can’t tell why. One eye on four lanes of traffic and the other on the darkness she disappeared into, I see something sail through the air in her direction. What was that? I weave through and make it to the sidewalk to see three young bodies emerge from the parking lot, looking back over their shoulders, laughing, fearful. Something sails through the air again. What was that? And a fourth body emerges from the lot: running, laughing, defiant, proud, and afraid. He stoops beside an iced-up snow bank to pack a third snowball hard and tight, looks back into the dark lot and launches. She’s in there somewhere, getting nailed by ice in the dark. What do I do? Who am I right now? In Ottawa, in 2009, both rich yet somehow tied to these streets by a shared occupation; both queer yet somehow tied to the hyper-hetero world of street sex and married-with-children johns; both a wanted man and a hated man—feminine, queer, bottom, submissive; both her brother and a total stranger; both under attack when she is and also detached, not responsible, out with lesbian pals for beer and dancing. What do I do? What if that was my boyfriend, if it was an HIV+ lover, if it was one of the teens who come to me for fresh crack pipes and to shoot the shit, if it was my buddy with cancer of the mouth and quickly expiring hope, if it was my mother in her wheelchair, if it was my two-spirit cranky-ass crush. I choose quickly and I choose quickly on purpose. I do nothing. I figure she’d brush me off. I figure this sense of solidarity is all in...

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