The Breakup

Montréal is a worldly city, attracting tens of thousands of tourists each year. My French ancestors had settled in Ville-Marie - Montréal's olden-times name - in the 1600s and our history is visible across the Island. In order to satisfy visitors' insatiable appetite for "things to see", our Leaders have set up a network of museums and exhibitions to toy with those wanting to have "something to do" and "something to photograph to show to the people back home that the vacation was actually in Montréal and not some sleazy sex convention in the Midwest".

One of the more interesting attractions our city offers is our Botanical Gardens/Insectarium. The Insectarium is a unique place where bugs of all strains are set up on display, and many of the multi-legged creatures have NOT been impaled on pins, but are rather allowed to continue on with their hockey-fan-like-intellect's lives spent under glass. Having been there (forcibly, and having been thoroughly disgusted by the experience. THAT was a bad first date), I understand it to be the kind of place where children scream and run around and old people are allowed to roam freely, spreading their spoiled corporal aromas around people who have taken a shower since the John Turner Prime Ministership.

...though SOME things will get you thrown out of there.

My gargoyle returned in tears from his three-dozenth date with his British breakfast pastry in four days. As usual, he sprawled on the couch. As usual, Annie used her forepaws to rub Gargy's neck in some feline interpretation of shiatsu. Unusually, he did not dunk his masculine appendage in ice in order to keep its friction-induced swelling down. He was bawling like an infant who just saw his parents French kiss to Abba's "Fernando" (ok, we all have our personal traumas and I didn't need to put mine on display. Though any ex-girlfriend who was wondering why I curl up and stick my fingers in my mouth when I hear popular Scandinavian music now has a better understanding of my psyche).

As I was taught modern management theory, which indicates that it is better to try to empathise with one's profit-generators rather than to bring out the Taylorian caning box, I tried to figure out what happened in order to get hemp production back on track. This - and I reemphasise that I can't make these things up - is what I was able to ascertain between ghoulish gargoyle sobs:

Apparently, Gargy's bitter half was somatically triggered by the sight of creepy little arthropods. She was found in the ladies' WC - once again, my imagination isn't fertile enough to come up with these things. Please don't have me locked up. Again. Mommy. - trying to procreate with roughly a dozen of the world's rarest entomologist's delights.

Now, while this behaviour vaguely explains her attraction to the Thing Staining My Velour Furniture With Greasy Nasolacrimal Duct Waste, it does NOT pass muster with the authorities tasked with protecting our nation from itself and its baser impulses. She has been deported back to her homeland, where our Majesty will no doubt have her cast in irons and whipped in the finest tradition of English morality policing.

Gargy is devastated. He now has learned that fateful lesson that all good men have: never trust a vile, libidinous woman with your heart. Feminine chastity is a disappearing virtue in today's society, which will make it evermore prized among those men who truly deserve it.

I've got a gargoyle to flog back to his kitchen. Dammit.