Abstract
A funny thing happened across from Byzantium, the moderately upscale, vaguely nouvelle cuisinerie located on Toronto's Church Street corridor, at which I enjoyed a leisurely dinner with my friend and colleague, Ricardo Ortíz, during the Modern Language Association convention in December 1997. Earlier that same day I had delivered a paper in which I pondered the sociocultural significances of my exchange with a panhandler on a Manhattan sidewalk in the fall of 1996, shoehorning the presentation amid a welter of interviews with candidates for a faculty position in my home department. 1 Thus finished with the stereotypically hectic official portion of my MLA experience, I was ready and eager for the debauch of sophistication that the "Byzantium" rubric would lead one to expect. Having exited the establishment at about 11:00 with my desires in this vein reasonably well satisfied (the food was delicious though the service was poor, the drinks rather meager but the company divine), I left my dinner partner at the nearest street corner and traversed the road to use the ATM in the bank opposite the restaurant--situated squarely "in the gay section" of town, as Ricardo had so helpfully informed our cab driver when asked to provide directions to the place.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
