Number Two (11 page)

And just like that, without warning, the doctor entered the room.

He might have been eighty. He might have been
ninety
. He was definitely well past retirement age and had probably come back to work here because the money was just too good to pass up. He was about five-foot-seven, with grey, thinning hair, and wore glasses that would not have been out of place on Bubbles from
Trailer Park Boys
.
Thick, round, and plastic, they were more like magnifying glasses, and his eyes were so huge behind them I thought for a second he might be a Muppet. He wore a sports jacket made of heavy wool, with patches on the elbows, like a professor who had just landed his first postgraduate teaching job at a Midwestern college and was trying to look the part. Then there were the pants. In my brief time in Los Angeles I had never seen a single person wear corduroy pants, not even in the deepest hipster pockets of Highland Park and Los Feliz. The weather was simply too warm for such a thick and durable garment. This did not deter this particular doctor, however, who was wearing perhaps the thickest pair of corduroys I had ever seen in my life. I could only imagine how sweaty his undercarriage must have been. His shoes were black and chunky, and he walked with a cane. The whole look screamed: “I'm not from these parts.”

I was in temporary shock when he opened his mouth to speak.

“Hi,” he said plainly. He didn't bother to ask me my name. He likely didn't bother to ask anyone's name. This was an assembly line and the work needed to be completed quickly.

He walked around me as I sat in the room's only other chair directly across from the empty desk. He walked—slowly—around
the desk and with a heavy sigh collapsed into his chair and looked up at me. The whole process likely took as much as forty seconds.

“So, you would like to begin receiving medicine?” he asked. The dour girl at the front desk had corrected me when I had called it “medical marijuana.”

“We call it
medicine
around here. This is a doctor's office,” she'd said.

Right, right
, I thought.
Wink, wink
. I got it. I could play along. No problem.

“Yes, I would like to begin receiving
medicine
. New to the state, just moved here.” I had no idea what I was saying. I was really, truly awful at small talk—always have been. Why was I so nervous? I paid forty hard-earned dollars to sit here! I was fidgeting in my seat, and in the sweltering office I was beginning to sweat where I always did: above my upper lip. The sweat 'stache. How exactly was this doctor not passing out from heat exhaustion in those heavy corduroys?

The doctor took a second to look over the sheets I'd filled out. I thought for a moment he might actually just fall asleep right in front of me, but then he looked up again.

“Insomnia, right?'

“That's right. I've always struggled with it. I've found that mari—sorry—the
medicine
has really helped me get a better night's sleep over the years.” That was technically true, but it wasn't before I watched four or five episodes of
Seinfeld
and scarfed down a whole container of olives and maybe played a few Steely Dan records and wondered why I didn't play my Steely Dan records more often. After all of that nonsense I would sleep great, sure.

The doctor paused and then looked down at my sheets of paper again.

“What about stomach pain? Do you ever have stomach pain?” he asked.

That was a weirdly specific question.

I thought about it for a few seconds, then answered somewhat sheepishly, “Uh, yeah, as a matter of fact, I've always had a bad stomach.” This was
very
true. Why didn't I put
that
down as my reason for needing
medicine
?

He looked back down at the papers.

“What about back pain? Ever have any back pain?” he inquired.

“You know what? I do. I do suffer from occasional back pain. I guess it's a product of being tall. I've always had a stiff back.” I don't know why I was extrapolating at this point as the doctor was already ignoring me and jotting down notes.

What was going on here? It was almost as if this doctor wasn't a
doctor
at all but my lawyer who was building a case to defend my reasoning for needing medical marijuana. It was as if this doctor's office was not
entirely
on the up and up. At that moment, all I wanted was to get out of there so I could take a long cold shower and wash away the smell of freshman dorm that had started to permeate my clothes.

“Okay, stand up,” he said. “I need to examine you.”

Oh, no. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this. Was the doctor turning on me? Was he about to argue for the prosecution and come up with reasons why I shouldn't be given a medical marijuana card? Or was I about to get a greased-up wrinkly old finger in my ass? This day was certainly turning out to be interesting, that's for sure.

I stood up, and out of the desk drawer the doctor retrieved . . . a
stethoscope
.
A real live medical instrument. I suddenly felt at ease. This guy was legit! The doctor instructed me to stand by the side of the desk and he pressed the stethoscope against my chest through my T-shirt. I could hardly blame him. I wasn't exactly wild about the idea of exchanging bodily fluids with the skateboarding couple
who had been called into the office just before me. After checking my heartbeat, the doctor asked me to breathe in and out while still holding the stethoscope to the centre of my chest. Then he turned around and sat down.

I was expecting an examination a bit more thorough than the kind Dan O'Toole's three-year-old daughter might perform on me with her playtime doctor's kit, but I was also thankful that I would clearly not be getting a wrinkled finger up my ass. He looked down again at the papers and started writing. Finally, after another minute of silent confusion, he spoke.

“I approve you for the use of medical marijuana,” he said. And that was that.

He told me to return to the waiting room where I expected to have another chat with ol' dour puss at the front desk. I suspected I would probably have to hand her some hidden fee of twenty or thirty bucks—grease the palms if you will. But as soon as I walked up to her she told me to “sit down” because someone named Tania had just stepped out and would be right back to see me. Who the hell was Tania? What was going on here? I had filled out the entirely unofficial and institutionally suspect medical forms. I had been examined by a doctor who had probably been sued for malpractice back in the '70s and had very likely just returned from some Mexican exile where he performed discount appendix operations until his eyes gave out. Now, I had to wait for some woman named Tania?

The wait was longer than my patience was able to tolerate. The skateboarding couple and the mom from Colorado were long gone. I suspected the mom just gave up and left, while the skateboarding couple were probably at the dispensary choosing between Cheeba
Chews THC gummies and cookies laced with sativa. Meanwhile, a real douchebag-type wearing baggy cargo shorts and a muscle shirt, about fifteen pounds overweight, sat next to me and began talking on his phone, loudly telling the guy at the other end that “he had just landed and he was getting his card so they would be set for Saturday.”
Subtle, dude, real subtle.
Maybe think about the people like me who need this medicine to fall asleep, settle my stomach, and fix my back before you shoot your mouth off about your bong party, okay?

When I was just about at my wit's end, Tania finally sauntered in.

Her sartorial sense could be best described as “Eastern European gypsy” mixed with a dash of Mrs. Roper from
Three's Company
. She was probably in her late forties or early fifties with long blond hair. She made a quick stop at the front desk to tell dour girl about the lunch she had just consumed down the beach and then after some back and forth turned around to me and said, “Jay?”

“Yep,” I replied.

“Come with me.” And with that she walked into the other office next to the waiting room. Perhaps now I was going to get that finger in my ass I had been daydreaming about.

I entered Tania's office and was not at all surprised to find a similar desk and two chairs like those in the doctor's office. But there was another piece of furniture there that did surprise me, if only for a second. At that point, I came to the very quick and correct conclusion that I was about to be ripped off.

“Why do you have an ATM machine in here?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Well, you know,” she started—her accent was
thick
.
Maybe she really was a gypsy. She was most definitely Eastern European. “Many of our customers don't want to use their credit cards. Do you know
what I am saying? I want to make it convenient for them to pay for their cards, so it's simple. I have machine put in here and it's simple.”
Simple
. It was really very difficult to argue with that logic.

“So you have different choices,” said Tania, as she showed me a laminated sheet of paper with several different options. I could buy a licence for six months for $200, nine months for $250, or get an entire year of access to the green stuff for the tidy sum of $300.

This was the moment when most patrons would likely have shown themselves out. There was very little question I was getting ripped off here, but there was another question at hand that often presents itself in situations like this: Do I really feel like going somewhere and doing this all over again? On this particular day, the extra expense was worth it to me, and I didn't even have to use that dirty ATM machine that was staring back at me as I pondered my decision. I had just signed a big new contract with Fox, and this was one of those times when I was going to make a very foolish financial decision for convenience's sake. Because, hey, maybe I wanted to use this licence at some point in the next year, and because I happened to have $300 cash on me at that very moment.

“I'll take the $300 year-long licence, please.” For Tania, hearing that sentence was probably better than sex.

“Wonderful,” she said with a smile. I was happy to make her day. Tania then turned back to her desk to fill out the official documents. The first would be best described as a certificate, the kind of certificate a five-year-old might get for graduating kindergarten. It consisted of one thick sheet of paper with an official-looking handwritten font that declared me eligible to receive medicine thanks to the thorough medical examination given to me by this very shady doctor. The sheet of paper even featured an embossed gold star in the top corner to make it look properly official. I wondered aloud how many potheads had it framed above their beds.

Tania then went to work on putting together my official California medical marijuana card. She appeared to be deep in concentration. After a minute or so, she turned around and handed me my card. It was the size of a regular business card, but it had two sides and folded like a menu. It was also made of cheap, cheap Bristol board, the kind used to make posters for high school dances and student council election campaigns. It was so cheap I thought it might fall apart in my fingertips. On the front of the card she had simply written, in ball point pen, my name and the date the card expired. On the back there was the same embossed gold star and the doctor's website. She then stood up and took the card from me.

“I'm just going to get the doctor's signature on the card. I will be right back, honey,” she said with a smile, as if she had just made all my dreams come true with the cheapest looking piece of “official” medical stationery since the instructions to the
Operation!
board game.

Two minutes later she returned with the card now adorned with the doctor's signature. I left the office like I was leaving a strip club. I felt like I needed a shower to wash off the stench of being ripped off so terribly. Still, I had to admit that I got what I came for. I had managed to secure a medical marijuana card in the great state of California with only a driver's licence, $300, and a bit of charm. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo had been right.

The next day, I showed up at the Fox studios proud of myself for actually accomplishing my mission without the assistance of my handler, Susan, or my wife, Chobi. As I recounted my adventure to the
Fox Sports Live
crew, I reached into my wallet to show off my fancy new medical marijuana card, but it was nowhere to be found.

I'd lost it.

Somewhere between that shady doctor's office on the Venice Beach strip and my beachfront condo in Santa Monica, I must have tried to pay for a pupusa from a food truck, and my beautiful, almost completely legit medical marijuana card had fallen to the ground. The whole adventure had been for nothing—not to mention the $300 I'd paid to Gypsy Tania. What a waste!

As the crew laughed at my bad luck and complete incompetence, I couldn't help but wonder if some poor insomniac, who also suffered from stomach and back pain, had found my card on the sidewalk and was right this minute walking into a medical marijuana dispensary to buy some much needed “medicine” using the name Jay Onrait. Hopefully he'd appreciate all the time, money, and hard work I'd put into getting that card but he was likely too stoned to care.

I
f you purchased this book it's safe to say you probably read
Anchorboy
. Finishing that book was the culmination of a lifelong dream for me. I'd always considered myself a writer first and a broadcaster second, and I had always wanted to be a published writer and have my work available in bookstores. If I never had the chance to publish another book I knew I could live with myself for having accomplished the task at least once.

As exciting as the idea of finishing a book was to me, one of the other things I used to dream about extensively was embarking on an elaborate and lavish press tour to promote said book. Being that I was in the corps of the Canadian media, and that in
Anchorboy
I wrote about the shortcomings and overall lack of
dollars available to Canadian media and how it led to other shortcomings and downfalls in my career, you would have thought I might have been prepared for what was to come. Having said that, I had never published a book before and had no idea how the process worked in this day and age.

Like most people who love to read, I love to browse the local bookstores (those bookstores that are still open, anyway) any time I get the opportunity. And like most people I have wandered around a bookstore when an author has made an in-store appearance to promote his or her new book, perhaps to read a chapter or two and sign autographs for fans of their work. And like most people I have witnessed such authors sitting there, lonely, sad, and desperate, like a twelve-year-old girl at a junior high school prom waiting for someone to ask her to dance. There may be nothing more devastating in this world than seeing someone so proud of the art they've created sit there and come to the startling realization that absolutely no one else gives a shit.

My friend and
NHL on TSN
host James Duthie embarked on a small version of a press tour for his 2011 book
The Day I (Almost) Killed Two Gretzkys
(a book we would often promote on our old show using the improved and modified title
The Day I Tried to Murder Wayne Gretzky
, under the guise that sensationalism always sells). James regaled me with tales of a dozen or so people showing up at the downtown Chapters in Vancouver. Twitter had just started to sink its claws into the collective consciousness of the sports media world, so getting the word out on his heavily followed Twitter account was really the only way
to
get the word out. The truth is there are very few Jonathan Franzens and Michael Chabons out there who can draw big crowds to bookstores to hear them read their books and answer a few questions. Still, walking past the Barnes and Noble on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa
Monica just a few blocks from where I now live, I still see a long roster of authors coming to speak and ply their trade for the reading public. The book tour still exists, but like all of book publishing it has been modified to adapt to the times we live in. So, for
Anchorboy
, instead of my dreamed-of two-week trek across the country, I did a two-day media blitz in Toronto, participating in a series of interviews on local and national shows, all culminating in a couple of bookstore appearances and signings.

My first stop on Day One was
Canada AM
with my former
Olympic Morning
partner Beverly Thomson at the CTV studios at 9 Channel Nine Court in Scarborough, the same studios where Dan and I hosted
SportsCentre
for ten years. It felt somewhat like showing up at your ex-girlfriend's house, a little uncomfortable and weird but at the same time familiar. The interview with Bev could not have gone any better, and she even allowed her son to take the morning off school just so he could come in and meet me.

In a way it is always bittersweet when I run into Bev now. I wonder what might have happened had we been paired together on a show long-term. The chemistry between us is always there right away, but more than that it's the fact that Beverly is such a true professional, so kind and warm, the exact type of person you would want hosting your morning show.

After a few goodbye hugs it was a quick stroll down the hall for an interview on CTV News Channel with Jacqueline Milczarek. I remember seeing Jacquie hosting the late-night news on Global Toronto in the late '90s and early aughts and thinking she was a stone-cold fox. I got the distinct impression that Jacquie had not read my book and barely had any help with potential questions. In fact, judging by the questions Jacquie asked me, I came to the quick realization that she had pulled an old trick I used back at
The Big Breakfast
during my A-Channel Manitoba days. She read
the book description on the cover and made up the questions from there. Clever girl, that Jacquie. And besides, what author could ever expect an interviewer to read their entire book before an interview? Sure, it would have been nice, but I certainly didn't do it when I was interviewing authors.

While hosting
The Big Breakfast
in Winnipeg back in 1999, I was scheduled to do an interview with Booker prize–winning Australian author Peter Carey of
Oscar and Lucinda
fame. Carey had just completed and was promoting his new novel, a work of historical fiction called
True History of the Kelly Gang
. I was a twenty-five-year-old morning host who was given the book two days in advance. The chances of me tearing through that tome in forty-eight hours were somewhere between slim and none. So I pulled some questions from the jacket copy, and since Carey's a pretty affable guy and a veteran of a million interviews, the eight-minute segment ended up being pretty fun and more than adequate.

The exact opposite would likely have occurred had Margaret Atwood showed up to promote her newly published novel,
The Blind Assassin
, on our show
.
Atwood was on a major book tour across Canada at the time, and we had managed to secure her for four minutes on our little morning show, leading our main entertainment news host, David J. Roberts, to regale me with horror stories of himself and others who had been charged with interviewing the venerable Canadian titan of arts and letters in the past. The underlying message of interviewing Ms. Atwood: She did not suffer fools gladly and you'd best be prepared. So, just as I had read the entirety of
Moby Dick
in forty-eight bleary-eyed, coffee-fuelled hours leading up to a written exam in first-year English at the University of Alberta, I dove headfirst into her book, took notes, and wrote down the most intelligent set of questions I could muster. With sweat beading on my upper lip the morning Atwood was set
to arrive, we received a call at the last minute saying she had run late at a previous interview and with sincere apologies could not make it to our show. I don't know if I have ever felt more relieved to have something
not
work out in my life.

Following the interview with Jacquie I made my way downtown to 299 Queen Street West, the MuchMusic building. En route, my HarperCollins publicist was dispatched to the Burger's Priest a few blocks down Queen Street, just past Spadina Avenue, to grab us both a quick bite of lunch. The Burger's Priest has without a doubt the finest burgers in the city of Toronto and even a secret menu ordering system akin to the famous secret menu at the American In-N-Out Burger chain. I requested a “High Priest,” their take on a Big Mac complete with special sauce, and made my way over to the CP24 newsroom where I would be interviewed by Stephen LeDrew.

I had been interviewed by Stephen once before, while promoting the Kraft Celebration Tour with Dan, and found him to be just a delight. I love men who have their own sartorial style, and Stephen has it in droves: shaved pate, well-cut suits, and most importantly a requisite bow tie and signature red eyeglasses. He is well versed in Ontario provincial politics and Toronto city politics and has been kicking around CityTV for a few years as a commentator and host of their noon show. I figured this would be one of the easier interviews of the day, and my good relationship with everyone at CP24 meant I might be able to try something different and fun.

I was to be given a three-minute segment right around 12:15, just when my publicist got back with my burger from Burger's Priest. Therefore, I thought it might be fun if I brought the burger out on set with me for the interview and scarfed it down right in front of Stephen while he asked me questions. Now that I think
about it, the whole thing kind of sounds disgusting, but it sure seemed funny when Jay Leno used to bring gyros onto the set of
Late Night with David Letterman
and eat them while Dave asked Jay about life on the road as a comic. At the very least, it might make people stop and take a closer look, which was important on the CP24 News Channel because the screen is always jammed full of clutter—an ongoing traffic and news scroll, a five-day weather forecast, an ad or two jammed in there, and finally up in the top corner a small window with the actual newscast.

I waited patiently in the CP24 green room, where former Canadian Olympic bike racer and Pert shampoo commercial star Curt Harnett was waiting to be on the show to promote a charity event that weekend. Curt is famous both for being an Olympian and for possessing Olympic-worthy locks of curly blond hair that he often holds back from his head with a pair of Oakley sunglasses. I found him to be a genuinely nice guy and was having a delightful conversation with the man when I was suddenly summoned from the green room by a producer with a headset and informed that I would be on in three minutes.

Stephen greeted me warmly and cracked a few jokes about whether or not I had actually written the book myself. He had a warm and friendly nature about him and was pretty amused by my little burger prank. I offered Stephen some fries and asked him how his family was doing, but he was more interested in hearing about Los Angeles and life at Fox. We made some small talk and before I knew it the three-minute commercial break was up. “Here we go!” said Stephen.

STEPHEN: Jay Onrait is here to discuss his new book,
Anchorboy
, and to eat his lunch as well . . .

JAY: Have you ever been to the Burger's Priest down the street, Stephen?

STEPHEN: Yeah, what is that you have there?

JAY: Why don't you try one of these fries? This is a High Priest. Have you heard of their secret menu, Ste—

STEPHEN (interrupting): Jay, I'm going to have to cut you off there. It appears Toronto mayor Rob Ford is speaking to the media. Let's go live to Queen's Park . . .

I was a little startled.

By now you probably know the incredibly bizarre tale of Toronto's overindulgent mayor and part-time crack aficionado, Rob Ford. To put the timeline in perspective:
Toronto Star
reporter Robyn Doolittle and the website Gawker
had claimed to have seen Ford in a crudely shot video that took place at the house of a drug dealer near the city's Jane and Finch area. In it, they claimed the mayor smoked crack cocaine out of a pipe with at least two other men who were known criminals, one of whom had been killed just three months previously. To that point, no actual footage of the video had been made public, just a still shot of Ford standing with the two men. Doolittle and other reporters who claimed to have seen it staked their reputations on the fact that it was indeed Ford in the video. Up until that point, the embattled mayor had denied all allegations. That particular day, however, something changed in the mayor's strategy for dealing with the scandal. Either he or someone in his camp had clearly seen the tape and determined the footage was real, or his lawyer had decided that a more open strategy needed to be taken. That morning, Rob Ford was about to shock the shit out of the city of Toronto and most of North America.

CP24 cut away from me and Stephen directly to a swarm of reporters surrounding Mayor Ford just outside Toronto's City Hall. The questions had already begun, but there was a strange tone to the proceedings. I tried to listen as I stuffed french fry after
french fry into my big mouth. The entire newsroom was practically silent—a very unusual situation.

“What was that question you asked me back in May?” said Ford to no reporter in particular. The reporter and his fellow press corps thought for a second to try to determine exactly what the mayor was getting at.

“What did you ask me back in May? You can ask me again,” repeated Ford.

Finally one of the reporters went for it: “Have you ever smoked crack cocaine?”

“There you go,” said Ford, and then paused. “Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine.”

Well, there goes my interview
, I thought to myself.

I have never in my life heard an entire working television newsroom make a collective audible gasp like they did when Ford uttered those six words. Imagine everything that these people had been privy to in their lifetimes covering the news on a daily basis: murder, rape, various types of injustice both at home and abroad. Someone who has to cover this kind of horrifying behaviour and its consequences every single day will eventually start to become numb. Sending an entire television newsroom into a state of shock would take a truly significant event. This was that significant event.

Everyone looked at each other with mouths agape. About two full seconds went by before the news director took charge of the situation and began to bark out orders to her assignment editors and writers. To a veteran news director this was like winning the lottery. Before this, most people just speculated that the Rob Ford crack tape existed but they would likely never see it. News and gossip website Gawker had raised enough money to purchase the tape through a Kickstarter fund, but they had lost contact with the reported owner of the video and donated the funds to charity
instead. But clearly, someone in the Ford camp had seen the tape or at least decided it was a real thing, and now they had chosen to get ahead of the story by issuing a public
mea culpa
. The mayor of Toronto, fourth largest city in North America, was telling a group of gathered reporters that he had smoked crack cocaine.