I hit the streets some mornings at 5:30am to get to the gym at a decent, non-busy hour.

This morning, I’m approaching the streetcar stop at Sherbourne and Carlton when I spy a young couple kissing in a doorway.

Only, they’re not just kissing.

He’s in a tailored suit. It looks good on him. He’s young and very… energetic. He’s all over her face like he’s just run out of Bath Salts. It’s like her face was a pumpkin pie and he had attended his first vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. It was like he was a clean kitty and she was a dirty kitty…. you get it.

She… wasn’t pretty. I’m being kind. If you think I’m cruel, then I have no other way to say, politely, that she wasn’t attractive.

They were going at it like Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks but without the blinds.

At first glance I noticed all this, then my ex-catholic side kicked in and I averted my eyes. Then I looked back because… there it was in front of me anyway.

Her face was dirty. Like – coal miner dirty.

Now, it’s dark at 5:30am. She may have just been concealed in shadow, or she had actually come off a mining shift somewhere in Downtown Toronto. But she looked dirty.

I averted my eyes again.

In my head I imagined this is what the final scene in Casablanca would look like if filmed today.