WHAT would i do IF i wasn't afraid?

After a week of basement-flooding, subway-car-stranding summer rain, the air is heavy, the heat is oppressive, and I need a break from my questionable room-painting project—fumes and fruit flies drive me to seek the air-conditioned comfort of Jimmy’s Coffee, my new favorite coffee shop, located deep in the heart of Toronto’s Kensington Market. Passing refurbished Victorian houses, wildflowers overtaking derelict yards, old men watering carefully culled rose plants, and boys blowing the skunk smell of pot at me from their porch, I walk the few blocks from my house to the market.

As I enter the market, salsa dancers greet me with stamping heels and swinging skirts. A capoeira group dance-parades its way through the streets to the beat of atabaque and pandeiro drums. To my left, the head of a giant blue extraterrestrial glares down from the front of 299 Gallery Market; to my right, a graffiti-inspired Art Nouveau lady delicately towers over the street.

Stopping at a Mexican pastry store, I bite into a just-baked churro filled with chocolate syrup, and proceed to drip my way through the streets: A hippie van boasting a Godzilla-esque cityscape terrorized by neon dinosaurs vends cheap t-shirts. White smoke rises from the grill of a Tiki-torch shack. Native Torontonians shop for weekly groceries at open air produce stalls and specialty food stores. Full-bearded young fathers push strollers. Teenage girls in fairy-couture and hipsters in vintage browse second-hand clothing stores. Tourists stand on tip-toe with DSLRs to capture a troop of bare-foot belly dancers jingling in the street, hands raised and fingers snapping under streams of Buddhist peace flags. A few blocks deeper into the market, twenty feet up in the air, a tattooed street entertainer juggles fire on a stilt-unicycle.

The blaring Carribean music and burning incense of Tribal Eye, an African-Canadian art gallery and craft store, catches my attention. I sneak in to peruse the shelves, while the middle aged shopkeeper entertains a group of teens. As I’m eyeing a canister of shea butter, he interrupts himself and calls me over, “Would you like a sample?” I enthusiastically respond, “Of course!” He scoops some lotion into his palm, grabs my right hand, and begins a deep two-handed massage. Despite the obvious skill of this stranger, my reaction is automatic and involuntary, I jerk my hand away. His response? He firms his grip, and assures me, “I’m married. Don’t worry I’d never cheat on my wife!”