No One's Special at the Hot Dog Cart: delicious de-escalation

16 Mar 2024 - Photos by Nika Belianina

"Like so many queer and trans youth, I was very troubled and left home," says Charlie Petch of the genesis of No One's Special at the Hot Dog Cart. "I tried to get hired for other jobs, but being a high school dropout who paid rent really works against the hopes for legal employment. I actually went from handing out flyers, to selling flowers on street corners. Then Mansour saw me school a street preacher who was trying to steal my customers, and he offered me the hot dog vending job. It was hourly and I was desperate. But truly, I liked being a street worker. The action, the danger, all fed my ADD. In looking back. I didn’t grow up with queer education in schools or even proper diagnosing for how distracted I always was, so this is also a story about how important it is to speak about mental health, as well as gender and sexuality."

Petch learned a lot working the hot dog cart circuit and that information is to be shared, theatrically and through workshops. "No One’s Special at the Hot Dog Cart is a full theatrical show filled with story, music and poetry and some beautiful staging elements from lighting designer Steph Raposo, set design by Joel Richardson and the wonderful direction of Autumn Smith," says Petch distinguishing the show from his workshops. "It’s a theatre show that just so happens to demonstrate five de-escalation techniques. While you would learn some skills from the show, taking more time with them and going through more discussion and demonstration is what makes the workshop more effective for honing these. It's really in using phrases that don’t blame people for the emotions they are having. Phrases like 'That sounds stressful' land differently than 'Calm down,' or even expecting that they should have a different response. I don’t think anyone can create empathy in another person, but we can reflect and think, 'If my worst moment happens in public, how would I like to be treated?' I actually have helpful phrases for de-escalation technique written out on the wallet cards I distribute after the show, so it’s easy to access them when in a panicked moment. It also has the steps as well as a QR code that would take the person to different non-police related services that may be helpful."

Petch notes that "Queer people are often excellent de-escalators. So many of us grew up with bullies, and homes where there is little safety. I don’t believe de-escalation is an evolution, rather it’s emergency health care and is different, but very much a sibling to self-defence. It’s more geared at managing emotions, for both the person who is escalated and the person who is attempting to de-escalate.  It’s really asking people to get used to managing their responses to perceived danger. De-escalation asks us to really consider both the person who needs de-escalating as well as being able to do this for ourselves in stressful moments. I really want to help people move through the city with respect and compassion towards those in mental crisis. It is a form of acute health care to witness someone in crisis and help them bring their adrenaline and heart rate down. I want people to have more tools than accessing a police response when they are having fear."

Petch is, as well as a renowned spoken word artist and theatre maker, a poet. Reviews of his published work tend to focus on his "quirky sense of humour." Petch wears that with pride. "We all need levity. There’s the term 'gallows humour' that is often attributed to those who work in health care. We witness so much tragedy and finding a balance with humour is needed. I am a funny person so it’s pretty available to me, which is such a gift as it helps me not hold too tightly to tragedy. Humour is a coping mechanism, so I have it in my work. I find it actually opens up people in ways just staying in tragedy would never access. It’s so much easier to land a message when someone has had a moment to laugh and have that little escape of their own feelings. There’s also a huge difference in laughing at, and laughing with. So much of my humour comes from trying to deal with systems that don’t reflect the realities of being queer and trans. I don’t poke fun at the marginalized, rather laugh with them in how they are forced to adapt and accept."

An example of that humour is a line Petch uses in press releases “A poet so good at drag they had everyone convinced that they were a woman for the first forty years of their life.” Beyond being a one-liner, Petch has thoughts. "When I used to try to be femme, I was always calling it drag as a joke. I grew up in a time where there was no access to 2SLGBTQPIA+ information, or even LGBT, information. When I did finally let the little boy I was grow up, I really reflected on how often I was 'in drag' onstage playing male roles, but how I only felt I had drag on when it was a dress or femme makeup. For so many of us, drag can be a door that opens and we see who we truly are the more we get into drag. I always felt more comfortable in male roles, and appearing male. Drag is such a wonderful vehicle to our true gender(s). When I was writing and now with the help of Autumn Smith’s direction, I really am seeing how much impact being closeted had on me. I don’t think I would have been a hot dog vendor or even have left home if I'd had access to trans health and education. I remember being six years old and almost throwing up when a crossing guard kept asking me if I was a 'boy or a girl.' I felt anything I said would be a lie and I truly didn’t know what that meant, and just carried that question until 2015 when so many of us heard who we are for the first time."

Petch is unconcerned about whether he/him or they/them pronouns are used, he defines himself as "transmasculine," a term they is happy to explain. "Once I allowed myself to start coming out, I really shifted and almost overnight I started to really feel almost hurt when people said 'she.' I started my journey as a genderqueer person for the first year of coming out, and once I read what 'transmasculine' was, it was like my whole life suddenly was clear. I am a masculine person who doesn’t absolutely feel like a man. Transmasculine is who I have always been. I also feel like I am non binary and, as a 40 year old person who grew up only hearing about the AIDS crisis instead of how gay people are normal, I was afraid to really come out because it felt like something for the youth. But once I couldn’t hear 'she' without pain, I knew there was no going back and I really had to break out of all the rhetoric that would keep me from being able to feel comfortable in my body after having to cope for decades."

While the hot dog cart job was a job, it did result in No One's Special at the Hot Dog Cart and Petch's workshops. "It’s actually very nostalgic," Petch says of those days. "I really love the smell of it and I honestly thought my job would put me off of hot dogs, but they are dang perfect. If you really want to think about the body and the long-term effects of ingesting grade D beef, you should probably avoid it altogether. But I have a lot of affection for meat practices that use every part of the animal, food should not be wasted. I just had one from a vendor at Dundas and Yonge last month. They are delicious." And Petch has one more bit of advice. "Tip your vendors!"