At age 8 I was invited to a week-long writing workshop at the Farringdon Hill Enrichment Centre. Ostracized by my elementary classmates for already knowing the difference between pair, pear and pare, I found my people at Farringdon. The first day of the workshop we were buckled into biplanes and flown across the frozen corn fields of Brantford, Ontario and later encouraged to write about our mind-enlarging experience.
The following morning, an eccentric local chef dominated the classroom and demonstrated how to make perfect “Eggs in a Nest” (two slices buttered bread, use wide-mouth glass as a cookie cutter and create a ‘nest’ by pressing top of glass into centre of the bread. Remove buttered bread circle cut-out. Fry bread in pan with Ina Garten-amounts of butter and crack egg in centre of ‘nest.’ Allow egg to poach, salt and pepper accordingly. It’s still my dad’s favourite thing that I make).
On day three, John Lee, a loopy Brantford poet arrived with Hugh Grant –tousled hair, an ascot and Colonel Sanders eye glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He read from his latest published work–quirky poems about shitting in a farmer’s field, and his shit being the colour of black licorice. “The clouds appeared like an old woman’s sagging breasts in the sky.” Protective parents were outraged! He shouldn’t have been reciting poems about shit and breasts!
I loved it.
After that initial plane-ride-fried-eggs-poetry-about-shit stint I was selected to join the full-time enrichment program and was mentored in writing an autobiography over the course of the school year. The secretary transfered our tell-all’s to hard copy (via a typewriter of all things), and was diligent in tabbing and entering enough spaces to allow for family photos to be incorporated into the final work.
My grade 3 autobiography was far from epic, largely chronicling Friday Gigi’s pizza nights and Chinese food Sundays at Nan King (where my siblings and I were high scorers on the 2-man Pac Man arcade game in the bar area). Not surprisingly, my blog, Twitter and Facebook posts are still all about what decadent things I’ve eaten.
I’ve kept diaries since too, although not consistently. But Africa, the Galapagos and a three-month sojourn in the jungles of Costa Rica are as well-documented as my 13-year-old crush on Robert LeBovic.
In those days, I fancied myself to be a professional birdwatcher a la Roger Tory Peterson, with my very own indispensible bird guide. But writing has always been my constant. At times I think that I should drink more scotch, or wear an ascot and have a more miserable demeanour to channel the writer’s life, but I’m content with my edginess (and gin).
At 18, when I was as gay as a peacock and strutting my gay self up and down Davie Street in Vancouver, I actually landed my dream job—freelancing at Cockroach magazine (almost as popular as Chatelaine!). I wrote about grizzly bears being caged and exploited for their bile, about how Barbie kick-started bulimia and raw protest pieces about the deforestation of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island. My poor mother was certain I would be arrested and dragged away from some logging road. I earned $400 a month, and thought I was truly living the bohemian life. I was a freelancer! I lived on buttered garlic bagels from Seagels and skipped dinner to collect sand dollars from Jericho beach. I made arty things from bald eagle feathers and exoskeletons of crabs. I drank coffee that arrived in care packages from my parents, sweetened with melted cinnamon hearts because I refused to spend money on real sugar.
My first real confirmation of writing being in my blood and breath was when I left Vancouver (and that not-so-high-paying dream job)and voluntarily transplanted myself in Costa Rica for three months. I volunteered with Youth Challenge International in the Monteverde Cloud Forest, mapping the trails and illustrating a flora and fauna guide. In the second phase of the project we travelled to a remote village called Alto Cuen, far from any flight path, phone booth, chocolate bars or appliances. I didn’t bother to write home about the drug runners that passed by me on a daily basis with AK-47’s and flour sacks full of marijuana from Panama. I was living in a hut with a palm frond roof, no walls and a tree bark floor. My dreams were coming true faster than I could create them.
What I did write about Costa Rica, was the harrowing rescue at the end of our stay. Relentless February rains had flooded the area and the Cuen River was like a roaring beast. Rocks rolled along the riverbed at night, slamming into each other at such a decibel that we could hear the fury a mile away. The angry river water was the colour of chocolate milk with the skeletons of entire trees floating by. Our group of 12 had to be helicoptered out of the jungle as the footbridges had been washed away and local villages were receiving emergency food supply drop-offs. When the Panama army happened upon us, subsisting on flaccid carrots and marmalade, they promised to return at day’s end to fly us to the naval base as half the group was immobile with malaria.
Despite sitting in my cushy Victorian flat on some fancy Italian stitched-leather bar stool with a glass of merlot beside my laptop in the dead of downtown Toronto—I can still hear the thunder of the Chinook blades as the helicopter landed by the river that evening. The palm trees splayed, the children ran far from the whir and commotion, and we piled in, terrified and grateful, following the commands of the GI Joe-like crew.
In that moment I knew I was having a Reader’s Digest Drama In Real Life moment. It had to be written about. What I did write, oddly, won me a trip back to where I had come from—a return flight to Costa Rica, but the gentler side of it. It was a sparkly resort with a resident sloth in the treetop just an arm’s reach from the balcony, with hot black coffee, pastries and mango in the morning– and all the pleasures that my previous volunteer stint lacked. Like running water, electricity, dubbed Baywatch and appliances.
It’s been 15 years since that double-bladed Chinook pointed northeast and sped like a bullet along the coast of Limon, just like the opening scene of China Beach.
But when I write, the jungle days always present themselves. I am reminded of how words provide vicarious experiences across the miles. It’s a great responsibility when you travel, in how you have to accurately convey a place for those sitting in such a radically different landscape. Like capturing the squelch of the mud as it sucks the boots off your feet, the sting of the blood oranges on chapped lips, and the awe of a dozen toucans landing just above your head in a noisy riot. And what does the jungle smell like? It’s hot and wet, salty and fermenting.
When I returned from Costa Rica I had an insatiable need to write about all that I had seen and felt. I signed up for a course through the Ottawa Writing School that promised a lucrative career and Atwood-esque fame. I thought I wanted to write whimsical children’s books about jungle adventures, but after I submitted a profile to my instructor, he asked, “so you’re gay, do you mind exploiting your sexuality?”
I didn’t mind. I was as gay as Liberace and eager to share all my innards with the world. I went from Jungle Jules Reader’s Digest Drama in Real Life to writing lesbian erotica in a snap. My first published piece was a dirty bedroom scene with Marge Simpson. She let down her tall, blue hair and slipped off her slinky, avocado dress—and I went from there like a Californian forest fire. It was printed in Karen Tulchinsky’s anthology, Hot & Bothered and earned me a huge pay-out of $50 CAD(plus two copies of the book!).When Karen toured in Ontario, she asked if I would like to do a reading with her—of course! Imagine the whole Torti family at the Hamilton Women’s Bookstop. They brought flowers in cellophane and champagne, and stood amongst a crowd of 50 hairy-armpitted dykes while I read about having sex with Marge Simpson. Yes, even my dad was there. And I said a lot of words that don’t normally constitute a father-daughter conversation.
Bravery and pig-headed confidence gets you everywhere. I was so confident with my publishing success in the erotica field, I sent jumbly work to Chatelaine and Maclean’s—the target audience my mom was hoping I would write for. I was rejected flat-out by both for very good reason, but rejection is admirable too. As long as it doesn’t happen at the bar from the foxy girl you buy a drink for.
When I lived in BC, I boldly signed up for writing courses at Douglas College, “to hone my craft.” The first day of class, my instructor, Joe Wiebe, said my verb was doing something I had never heard of. He talked about bildungsromans, and I thought it might be best if I snuck out of the classroom, unnoticed, while I could.
I was transported back to my first day at the Farringdon Enrichment Centre, before boarding the biplane that would inspire my future writing ambitions. Marg Simpson (not to be confused with the same blue-haired lady aforementioned)had asked me to pass her the “acetate marker.” What the hell was an acetate marker? Clearly I didn’t belong. Richard Nott, the smartest person in the world, pointed to the overhead markers and my face stopped from almost catching on fire.
I’ve taken several courses since, even at George Brown in Toronto where I was positive the instructor had it in for me because I didn’t want to write about transsexual druids or zombies. I’ve had minor successes and cocktail bragging rights for book reviews in The Vancouver Sun that I secretly had near Chernobyl melt-downs over. But if you march in to the editor with the confidence of Sidney Crosby with a puck at the blue line, by god, they believe that you have what it takes!
I still don’t know what an “independent clause” is, and don’t particularly care either. That was on the Douglas College program entrance exam. I thought for sure it was a reference to Mrs. Clause on Christmas Eve. My participles probably still dangle, and I have run-on sentences of marathon proportions.
I have blog cheerleaders (thank you!) and the odd naysayer (boo). My favourite comment though? It came from a reader who I will allow to remain anonymous. He responded to my post “Jann Arden Attacks the Architecture of the Human Heart.” In particular, he was up in arms with the sentence “It comes as no surprise that I love well-crafted stories and lyrics that are as layered as Jennifer Aniston’s hair.” Mr. Blog commenter responded: “No offence meant, but that was an awful, awful metaphor.”
Which brings me to this. The audience who (in my imagination at least), waits with unbridled anticipation for my latest blog post. Thank you for reading my ramblings and outpourings which just earned me the feel-good designation as one of the Top 100 Growing Blogs at WordPress.com (even though I come up with awful, awful metaphors. Surely the Aniston hair comment can’t be worse than clouds that look like saggy breasts and shit that resembles black licorice?)
We all have stories, and thank you for taking dedicated interest in mine.
For more on the Robert LeBovic Affair, chronicled in my 13-year-old self’s diary: http://julestorti.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/dear-diary-i-was-a-13-year-old-dork/












I miss the subtle changes in bugs, buds and birds. I used to know the coming and going’s of the birds like my grandmother, but here, in downtown Toronto, the symptoms of fall are witnessed by the changing storefront windows and Starbucks beverages. The pumpkin cream cheese muffins and pumpkin spice lattes are giving way to all things cocoa-ish and peppermint-laden. The Holt Renfrew windows on Bloor are full of darling penguins in tuxes, impeccably dressed swans and mannequins in cocktail dresses with Santa beards.
My sister says it’s snowing in Banff too. I don’t let on that I’ve had lunch outside under a tree the last two days with a fine trickle of sweat running down my back. Kiley’s home has become the mountains, and even though I know she remembers the frogs and redwings too, her deep breath and exhale has become the tall fragrant cedars and even taller peaks of Three Sisters. She runs with elk and bear, and knows the trails that snake into the woods and up the mountains like a genius cartographer.
And with an my shiatsu therapist’s elbow in my back and lightning bolts of pain radiating in a dozen directions, I think of Merryde and her tug of war between Australia and the idyllic bed and breakfast she owns on the Nile in Uganda. And that thinking elicits a homesickness for Africa and the sticky days and cool equator nights that became my being. I see the faces of all the chimps, I hear the crying pitch of the hyrax in the darkness and the hornbills ushering in morning. The redwings, the hornbills, the chimps, the bullfrogs—my home has become a hybrid.
Where The Wild Things Are has given me emotional indigestion. The movie trailer indicated that “Inside all of us is hope,” but the movie left me feeling the weight of the world on my heart and tear ducts, not just my shoulders. Like midnight Chinese food and the electric headache that drinking a vanilla milkshake too fast can elicit, I felt an unusual distress in every part of me after seeing the film.

As I rounded the corner at Yonge and Queen today I saw the chapped hands of men on ladders, hanging garland above the windows of the Hudson Bay Company. ‘Tis the season. I even heard talk of the much-anticipated Toronto Santa Claus parade today. But can we enjoy the magic of Hallowe’en first?
Some dear mother on Mt. Pleasant Road (our coveted childhood Hallowe’en domain)always went to the effort of making dozens of candy apples for us greedy trick-or-treaters with sleeping bags as loot bags. Next to Mrs. Kellam’s buttery as a Butterball turkey Nuts & Bolt, that Candy Apple House was our highlight. (And the lowlight was definitely the dorky dentist who handed out toothbrushes and floss. Boo! Hiss!)
Perfumer Cristophe Raynaud even created a “fruity oriental gourmand” in his “Halloween Kiss” fragrance. I think he would have fared better had he made the scent evoke the Hallowe’en Kisses of our past—who wouldn’t be seduced by a dab of molasses behind someone’s ear? Raynaud’s take is a combination of orange, pear, red fruits, peach, orchid, freesia, peony, violet, teak wood, tonka bean (?)and patchouli (doesn’t patchouli always smell like a root cellar?). Seems like a lot of flowers and wood in one sniff. My Thrills & Kisses fragrance would boast notes of caramel, glucose, food colouring, icing sugar and corny syrup.
By now you must be craving something. And I bet it’s not the stupid box of SunMaid Raisins or the Eat More bar that only makes me want to Eat Less. I bet if we were six again it would be the “Hose Nose” that dispenses liquid candy slime from a nose that you strap on your face. Or how about the Ear Wax candy that you dig out with a plastic swab?
My grocery store visits are turning into museum tours. I walk down every aisle at the pace of an 80-year-old with emphysema and a cane. I linger over pickled shitake mushrooms, rabbit terrines, sour cherry spreads, basil and walnut pestos and jalapeno kettle corn. I contemplate the merit and aftertaste of dried kiwi and an Indian snack mix that looks like it would set my insides on fire. I act like I was born in Africa and am having my first North American grocery shopping experience.
She made us fantastic lunches that were like unwrapping Christmas presents. A Thermos presented so many possibilities. Sometimes Zoodles, often brown beans with a chopped wiener—but best yet? A hot dog in a Thermos! The bun would be as soggy as a diaper, and the boiled wiener resembled a bloated body found in the lake—but what a thrill. It took a few smacks on the bottom end of the Thermos to get the sucker out, but it was the envy (and stink) of the classroom.
We’ve come such a long way since squashed, Saran Wrapped mock baloney sandwiches and chocolate pudding in pull-tab cans (and didn’t it suck when the tab broke off and you had a plastic spoon and no way to get into the pudding inside without lacerating yourself?). Now kids get Lunchables with pizza, crackers, cheese and chocolate bars. It’s like a marijuana munchies snack pack.
When I volunteered in Africa for four months last year, I quickly adapted to not earning a paycheque. When a litre of beer and a goat leg cost less than a dollar, I thought I was playing the greatest game of Monopoly–with all my tiny red plastic houses on Park Place. What was silently transpiring was my mind becoming engaged and stimulated by the experience, and dollars no longer made sense.
I run the risk of entertaining and pampering myself to death, which is probably not a bad thing. I love wedges of cheese that are skinnier than a doorstop and over 10 dollars a bite. I like champagne for no reason and Paco Rabanne. But I’ve raked a lot of gravel and pinecones in my life, I deserve it.
When I started Mitch Albom’s The Five People You Meet in Heaven, I had already convinced myself that the book was going to be as flaky as baklava. I was certain that it would be a tacky spin-off of Michael Landon’s Highway to Heaven with the sap content of Touched by an Angel.