Brass Bed

I got a brass bed from my brother who bought it second hand off someone on the South Shore. I slept in that bed until four in the afternoon, when I would wake up and watch Oprah. After the six o'clock news it was Entertainment Tonight and time to get on my feet. Cups of instant coffee. What to eat? Something cheap and heavy. Buy bread and cretons? Kraft Dinner? Is there any margarine left? Make some calls; somebody is going out drinking for sure. I'd buy a pitcher and sit in on a few rounds hoping it would never come back around to my turn. Maybe a 99 cent slice of pizza, if somebody's buying. A half hour walk home and back into the brass bed. Sleep through the hunger, hangover, the thoughts of disappointing everyone who is doing so much to support me. Wake up and watch Oprah.

When it all finally fell apart as I'm sure I knew, or hoped, it would, my meager belongings dispersed among family and friends, the bed was sold to a blonde girl whose father owned one of the biggest cattle ranches in Canada.

Battle Hymn of the Apartment (5)

Upon moving into my 21st home, I take a moment to long back on some of the places I've lived.

I took a step back. Was I comfortably floating along in a warm pool, enveloped in a protective embrace or was I slowly ,incrementally, unnoticeably being boiled alive frog-style? Had I found an acceptable and lasting happiness or had I just found respite from my usual self? Was I comfortable or just on vacation from discomfort?

Despite some frustrations, loneliness, and the occasional sweaty nightmare (all of which didn't really fall out of the ordinary and while Japan related would very likely have happened at the same frequency and intensity regardless of where I was living) I really had no reason to leave Japan. All the things, places, and some of the people I thought I would miss, I didn't. Most things are very replaceable. I never understood when my coworkers, other foreign teachers, would moan about how they couldn't get the toothpaste they liked, or they missed there favorite granola bar so much that their mom would mail it to them from halfway around the world. Look, I have my preferences like anyone but I've always felt that if I was suddenly barred from using all of those things I could easily find either substitutes that worked just as well, or that I really didn't need them to begin with. 

Although, I often felt this on a deeper level as well. I could go to work or I could drink all day and eventually drop out of society and live in a shack on the side of a rural highway somewhere, going into the village once a month to cash the welfare cheque, buy more beer and food, and maybe use the pay phone. Being single, barely employed and childless provides a staggering amount of freedom but within the freedom spectrum ( I guess at the dark end with the indigos and violets) is the the fuck it all option that is very alluring from time to time, provided you don't think it through.

So the plan was: go home, back to Montreal, and see how much I really missed it. Would it feel like home, a relief? Could I never leave again? Would separating myself from Japan put things in a different light? Would going back home drop me right back into the rut I was in before I left?

Of course the bigger questions were about Yuki. She was planning to visit me just a few weeks after I moved back. I decided that if she could get along in Montreal, if she could get along with my family and friends, if we could get along for a couple of intense weeks, then I would seriously consider her a candidate for marriage. Fair or not, that was my thinking at the time. Anyway, I'm here in Japan and we're married now so it wasn't so stupid.

My brother found me a good and cheap apartment .Because I came back after the magic July 1st deadline for finding a decent place to live, I asked him to pick something, anything out for me. The street was nice, with big old trees and a similar feel to most of the northern part of the Plateau. Like many places I have lived it was one of the uglier buildings on an otherwise nice block.  It was a lot further north, corner of Cremazie, than I ever imagined I would live but I kept telling myself that it was closer than Nagasaki. Friends had spread out a bit and Mile End no longer felt like home base. I had been priced out, and pushed out, and honestly the charm of the neighborhood was long gone.The place was a decent sized four and a half but I found myself spending all of my time camped out in the living room/bedroom and felt that the extra bedroom was an unnecessary extravagance. It was at least three times the size of my place in Japan. The kitchen alone was bigger than my whole apartment. I had gotten used to the limited space and felt lost in my cavernous new home.

The building was a small three story type with one apartment per floor. In Japan I lived in a concrete building and that combined with perhaps a general tendency to be quiet at home by most Japanese made for very peaceful living conditions. In over two years I remember hearing some faint sounds from above once. I never saw any of my neighbors and although I'm sure I made quite a lot of noise at times I never received a complaint. Not even a tap on the floor or ceiling.

On Casgrain it seemed that the floors and ceilings were particularly pervious to sound. The neighbors beneath me were a single mother and a girl around 7 years old. The mother looked very young leading me to guess that she had been a teen mother but she could have been as old as thirty. It was hard to tell. She was skinny and wore childish loose clothes, no make up and had one of those big eyed faces that seem permanently on the verge of tears. The man I assume was the father and ex husband ,or just ongoing boyfriend, was often over but didn't seem to live there. There was a lot of angry yelling, stomping and banging. A couple of time the shouting match spilled over to the front yard with him shouting nonsense and her screeching back through the window. A full volume peek into their sad lives. I always wonder about people who live at the high end of the drama scale. I personally find even the most low key confrontation exhausting. I rehash and second guess, replaying the incident over and over in my mind. Now multiply by a thousand and do it at least once a day. How can they live that way? I would be hairless, toothless, wheel chair bound, unable to speak, living under the dark cloud of a semi-coma before I turned thirty.

The upstairs neighbors, however, were the ones I had more interaction with. The building we lived in was by no means a dump but it was an old and pretty no frills construction. It was a brick and plaster box dressed up with a little red tin facade at the top. It was a good place to live but it was what it was: nice but cheap. If you live there you should adjust your expectations accordingly. If you plan on making it your life long home, well, I feel sorry for you and I fear that it may may not fill that role to your full satisfaction. One obvious problem is that you will be constantly reminded of your neighbour's presence as a loud cough from them is clearly audible. I was aware and fully accepting of this. Everytime they watched a movie it sent a loud bassy muffle through my ceiling. But people watch movies and that's ok with me. They were less forgiving and knocked on my door to complain about the volume of my music, or more specifically, the level of bass. It was usually early evening and it seemed a reasonable time to me for someone to engage in listening to music at a slightly elevated level. They did not agree.

One time, I was in the kitchen and listening to music from the living room via my computer through an amp and stereo speakers. It sounded pretty good. I was listening to some mp3's on random when "Straight Outta Compton" by NWA came on at about three times the volume of the previous song. It seemed rather loud to me but I didn't run over and turn it down. I figured it was one song and the next will be back to normal. Less than a minute into the song the bell rings. Dirty look. Begrudging apology. I guess that one was kind of my fault.

There was something about that woman that just pushed my buttons. She wore little round glasses and her hair in braided pig tails which didn't seem appropriate for someone who I guessed was in her early forties. I could picture a younger version of her ,with same hair and glasses, coming out of her communication class at UQAM with her friends and deciding to go to a small cafe just off St.Denis for lunch where they would eat some kind of lentil salad while one of them told the others all about the three weeks she spent back packing in Guatemala. "They are such warm people." "Their lives are so simple. I envy them."

She was often dressed like she was headed off into the mountains for an extended trek as she carried her mountain bike down the stairs. Like many people who go everywhere by bike she somehow managed to maintain the body shape of someone who rarely did any exercise as strenuous as riding a bike. Very puzzling. Most irritating of all, when she came to tell me to be quiet you could tell that she was barely containing a burning rage that had been building for hours, if not days. I had finally pushed her too far. Even though the music had been playing for an hour, maybe?

Her husband, or partner, was no better. He was a soft, doughy type of guy. You could easily lose your hand inside of his chest if you were to give him a good push. I don't mean to mock his physical fitness but rather mention this because his personality matched his appearance perfectly. You could hardly get mad at him. Any argument would just be absorbed into his blob leaving only a Jello like rippling as evidence that you had said anything to him.

He was charged with delivering the most ridiculous of their complaints. There was a fire escape down the back of the building. Sometimes fire escapes have landings where the stairs turn around, that are large enough to be considered a small balcony but this was not the case here. The landing was big enough for your feet to execute a turn and that was about it. Despite this, it was the only place where I could put my garbage while awaiting garbage day. He claimed on more than one occasion that my garbage was blocking the stairs. It was one bag of garbage that had fallen over or wasn't packed so full that it tended to pool out. Hardly controllable on my part. The difference between the bag being well placed and unobtrusive, or completely blocking the path across the landing was about four inches.

For me to complain to a neighbor about something really requires an exceptional circumstance. When it comes to noise or other small annoyances, I always figure that I must have done something at least as inconsiderate that they let slide so, in the interest  of maintaining that trade balance, I let it pass. But after a couple of months, water began to drip from the ceiling where a stain had been when I moved in. The first time I thought it might be a one time thing. By the third time, a crack was forming. I called the landlord. He seemed less than interested. He called the neighbors, I assume, and that was that. Eventually plaster started to fall making a grey, muddy mess on the top of my fridge. I went up and rang the bell. I asked them if anything was dripping, or running in their kitchen. They were doing the dishes but they said that nothing was leaking and whatever the problem was, they were not the cause. Finally  the ceiling fell in leaving a two foot long gash in the plaster and making a pretty decent mess of the kitchen. The landlord sent his brother-in-law over and he went upstairs to check things out. He came down and told me that the pipes under their kitchen sink were completely blown out and water was gushing out overtime they ran the water. There was so much crap in the cupboards under there that they couldn't even see the pipes so they hadn't noticed for months.

I bumped into the guy on the front steps a couple of days later. I asked him if everything was fixed and he said yes. He offered a feeble, half apology and I narrowed my eyes, curled my top lip in an angry smirk that said without words "You do realize what a stupid fuck you are, don't you?"

Nothing.

Battle Hymn of the Apartment (4b)

"Luminous" Meinohama, Fukuoka, Japan - When you stop caring, you often do your best work. Or at least the most enjoyable work. I remember a hockey game when I was in Bantam. It was either in a tournament or actually more likely a one- off exhibition game. We were playing against St.Bruno and thus were expected to win, being from the big city (Jonquiere) and all. My defensive partner and I decided it would be fun to play the whole game skating like goalies. You know, short, stomping strides. I think we also yelled out ridiculous words or sounds whenever we went into the corner with an opposing player. That worked surprisingly well, throwing them off guard and taking them out of the play. Much more effective than my 110 lbs. body checks. The other guy gave up skating silly after a while but I kept it up for most of the game.I probably enjoyed myself more that game than almost any other I played. I usually couldn't enjoy the games in the moment for reasons including, but not limited to, my over-competetiveness, being surrounded by teenage boys and adult hockey coaches (both members of intersecting sets) who are generally assholes, the pressure of my father watching from the stands, and general teenage unhappiness. I scored a goal and got two assists.

My time in Meinohama was kind of bonus time. After deciding to leave Nagasaki, the company I was working for asked me to fill in for a couple of months in Meinohama, a part of Fukuoka city just on the outer reaches of the center of the city (NDG like?maybe further out than that?Not rich but nice and family oriented while still only 15 minutes on the subway from downtown.). I said I'd do it as long as I could still take a planned trip to Vietnam. They said sure and threw in some extra cash, and a free apartment. Ok! You win!

 Compared to Nagasaki the apartment was huge. The bathroom and the kitchen were nowhere near each other and where I slept and where I ate almost felt like two different rooms. Clean, bright and despite there being no restaurants or bars within walking distance it was a pretty good place to live.

I came back from Vietnam bearded, tanned, and refreshed. At the new school I had no obligations toward or entanglements with the staff or the students and I could just teach unencumbered. It was nice to be in a city again as well. If I could live anywhere, it would be Fukuoka. Perfect size, beaches, weather, conveniences, hot ladies, and good food. Relaxed and happy, I realized I like teaching, quite a bit. I'm good at it. It seems to be a useful thing to do. It makes some difference in people's lives and allows you to do a bit of thinking. Not bad at all.

Battle Hymn of the Apartment (4a)

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived.

So I decided not only to start listening to people's advice but to actually follow it as well. After all, I hadn't exactly guided myself to the promised land. Stop picking apart every suggestion, finding the negative is easy and there are always more reasons not to do something than to do it. I wanted to let go of my argument-counterarguement way of thinking; way of living. My mother suggested I apply to teach English in Japan. My first thought was I don't want to be one of those assholes who goes off to Japan and reads Manga and gets some ugly girl to come back with them and are twits. But really I don't want to be one of those anythings. So where does that leave me? I don't have to be something, I can just do something. I asked my father what I should do and did what he said. Same for my brother and friends. Things were already going better. I got the job.

They asked me where I wanted to live in Japan. I knew only two cities so I said Tokyo or Kyoto. They said Nagasaki. Heard of it. Checked it out on the ol' internet and the thing that struck me was virtually no snow in winter. My brother and I had often discussed, usually in the second or third week of February, what a cruel joke it was that someone had decided to build a city in such a bleak, soul-crushing place as Montreal. Wouldn't it be great to just live one year without this brutal winter? Without taking ten minutes to dress before heading to the corner to get beer? Without the dry, itchy skin, chapped lips, nose rubbed raw from blowing? Without the being deprived of daylight to the point of seriously contemplating ending it all? No snow? Sold.

"Urban Life" Furukawamachi Nagasaki Japan-   Apart from the reoccurring nightmares [I wake up, in my dream, suddenly realizing that I'm still in Japan and years have past without my noticing. I feel like I must rush back home as soon as possible but the usually illogical dream obstacles stand in my way. I am filled with regret as I've let my life pass and there is no way to get the time back. My family and friends have all moved on and I've missed it. I have only recently stopped having this nightmare.] I was glad I had come to Japan. Daily, trivial activities and objects were new and exciting. The air was different. The food was great. The girls were so cute I wanted to cry. 

My apartment was basically a small box meant for sleeping, bathing, and occasionally eating. It was on the sixth floor; the highest I had ever lived. My childhood fear of heights was eventually replaced by my still ongoing love of views from high up. My balcony had a pretty good view because, although not especially tall, the buildings immediately around mine were shorter. To the left was a mountain ( actually the same can be said about any direction you look in Nagasaki, except down). The lower fifth was occupied by a row of temples of various sizes, ages, and designs. They were dwarfed by enormous camphor trees. The next two fifths was cover by graves. Japanese graves are little walled in courtyards with a tall stone pillar at one end. Some were new. Some were older but still maintained by children or maybe grandchildren of the deceased. Others were old and forgotten, no longer being looked after by relatives who had maybe moved to another city or just no longer felt a duty to whoever the distant relative was. Once I am no longer remembered or cared about I sincerely hope my grave falls into a heap of stone and weeds. Of course these ruined old graves were the best to look at. After some trees the top fifth was covered in houses and a few other buildings of unknown use.

My jogging route wound around and ultimately to the top of the mountain and to a small look out spot that allowed you a view of central Nagasaki, the port and ship building yards, and on a clear night (always jog at night unless heat stroke is desired) a view out to the open sea  that eventually hits the shores of Korea. The trip down was via endless stairs of varying heights, widths and states of disrepair that cut a path straight through hundreds and hundreds of densely packed graves. Running past temples, little houses teetering on cliffs, and moss (and snake) covered grave stones never got dull and I made sure I appreciated the journey each and every time.

There was no escape in my tiny room. The familiar places that would provoke all the same feelings of safety, contentment, dissatisfaction and disappointment were no longer a short walk from my front door. The same well worn conversations, had and re-had with close friends, acquaintances and strangers alike were no longer an option that could be counted upon when an effort seemed like too much to ask for. Even half my clothes had been thrown away, some intentionally and some accidentally (the great sweater tragedy of 2001). 30 years old and completely up in the air.

It was like isolating one track on a recording. Suddenly the drums, bass, guitar, dropped out and all I was left with was me. Me without effects or backing tracks. Just me, dry and loud in the earphones, straight into my head. I tried to make some accompanying noise to dull it's harshness. Mostly drinking, smoking, drama, bitching, crushes on girls. But it was hard not to hear myself. I didn't like what I heard and the only thing to do was change because it wasn't going away this time. Either I eventually got used to the tone deaf shouting or I forced it into becoming something I could stand. Which ever it was, I left this place slightly better at living and a little bit happier with the way I am (and with a cute girlfriend).

Battle Hymn of the Apartment (3)

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived. (Sorry, took a bit of a break to get married)

Clark and Bernard - I shared this place with a girl I met at Open Da Night (local hipster cafe). Actually it was her place. I have few distinct memories of this place as I spent a good deal of the time at my girlfriend Catherine's place. I was burgled for the third time. It had a big bathtub, the kind with feet. It was dark and the couch smelled like cat pee.

I headed out to my studio. It was after dark, but it was winter so it could've been 5 just as easily as it could've been 9. I wanted to bring a stack of cardboard or a pile of wood or something to work with. I decided the best way to carry it would be to just hug it to my chest and walk quickly. It wasn't too heavy but it was too big for a bag and had too many loose pieces to be carried on my shoulder or under an arm. I went down the first three steps outside my door that stopped at a landing that allowed the neighbours steps to merge with ours, forming a narrower staircase that went down to the sidewalk. Those unfamiliar with Montreal should take note that most apartments have exterior staircases that generally go from the side walk up to the second floor. Sometimes they spiral or curve but just as often they are straight. These were straight. It saves room inside, providing more living space but are not ideal in the winter months where the constant yo-yoing temperatures, melting and freezing, make for a one way icy death ramp. I guess that could be avoided if you shoveled the snow and slush off of them regularly, but that was never the case anywhere I lived.

I stepped off the landing and onto the first step toward the sidewalk. I was immediately flat on my back. I remember thinking back to another ride down the stairs I had taken a few years back (Park and Bernard) that resulted in a pulled abdominal muscle that drug out into numerous months of mild pain to severe discomfort. My mistake in that case had been that I reached out, grabbed hold of, and held on to the hand rail. My feat flew towards the street while my hand remained anchored on the railing. My abs tried to follow my feet, stretching to the point of snapping. This time grabbing onto something wasn't an option so I hugged my arm load tightly and luged down the stairs. In a blink I was sitting on the sidewalk coming to grips with my little trip. I slowly got back to my feet expecting shooting pain in my back, tailbone or some deeply buried muscle that until now had never registered the slightest electrical impulse. To my surprise and relief, I felt nothing. I may have had snow up a pant leg but no bumps, bruises or contusions. It reminded me of that feeling you get when you wake up from a night out of championship level drinking to make your first trip to the toilet, bracing yourself for the throbbing headache, for the dizzy spins, for the stomach churning, and realise you have none of those symptoms. You feel reborn, having been given a second chance at a healthy and happy life. Live each day to the fullest. Ring the last drop drop from life. Spread your wings and embrace life's gifts. Go back to bed.

St.Urbain and Bernard - I moved one block west and from the south side of Bernard to the north side. Catherine and I had decided to live together. It wasn't the nicest place and this was the first time I felt the changes blowing threw Mile End. Apartments were taken the second a" for rent" sign went up. Rent had jumped considerably from the year before, despite laws to prevent exactly that. I went to see a place on Esplanade that was near the corner of Van Horne (a location barely considered Mile End a year before) and there were about 25 other people visiting it at the same time. We filed up the stairs and once inside I took a quick look around. The kitchen couldn't hold a table, the bathroom door hit against the tub, allowing to open only halfway, and the one bedroom was slightly larger than a bed. By the time my tour ended and I headed towards the door, a girl was handing a her references to the landlord, the first time I had ever seen that, and the landlord had agreed to let her have the place. The end of an era.

A few days after moving in I was severely injured foolishly carrying a hammond organ up the stairs. My lower abdominal, groin, hip, and inner thigh muscles were badly strained. I continued to work which involved a great deal of lifting. I thought I could exercise my way through so I continued roller blading, cycling and running. But things kept getting worse and by the time winter rolled around walking along the icy sidewalks was slow and excruciatingly painful. I would get home from work and sit in front of the TV and drink beer. Sitting wasn't much relief but the alcohol did relax the muscles which had seemingly balled up into a fist sized knot between my legs.

On one particularly icy evening I headed home from work around six thirty. I was already tired out from making my way to the bus stop and having to stand and be tossed around as the awful Montreal city bus jerked and swayed it's way up St.Laurent in rush hour traffic. On the last leg of my trip, the two block walk from the stop to my place, I could barely move my legs enough to take a step. I had no strength left in my thighs and stomach and could barely propel myself forward. Add to this the strength needed to stay upright and keep my footing on the sheer, icy surface and it was grueling. About a block left and I had to piss. Even at the best of times I'm not a good Holder-Inner. There's always the choice to be made between walking fast, or even running, but risking a quicker release of fluids, or keeping a slower steadier pace and focusing on keeping the flood gates closed. In this case speeding up was not an option. Not to get too graphic, but the muscles normally used to hold it in had been severely compromised by my injury.

I somehow managed to get myself safely to the bottom of my, once again, ice covered stairs. I could hardly lift my foot high enough to put it onto the first step and as I attempted to do so I felt all bladder control cease. I put my foot back down and just stared up at my door. Catherine wasn't home. I couldn't get any help. I could either try to keep from pissing, which wouldn't be a permanent solution, or walk up the steps. But I couldn't do both. It was dark. It was cold. I was exhausted from being in pain for months, going to one useless, clueless, seemingly unconcerned doctor after another, living the life of a man in his seventies and getting very little sympathy for it. I couldn't stand it anymore. My muscles were twitching and stabbing me and I started to cry. I just didn't care anymore and I let go. My pants were soaked down both legs and turned freezing cold from the winter night as it took about five minutes to climb the stairs and let myself in. I took a hot shower, changed and took my place in front of the TV with a cold beer. When Catherine came home I wanted to tell her. I thought it might seem too pathetic but a bigger part of me wanted, not only sympathy, but a realization and acknowledgement that, granted I wasn't dying of terminal cancer, but that I was going through a rough patch. I told her what had happened and that it had upset me so much that I had cried for the first time in years. She laughed.Only for a couple of seconds, until she realized that it was not meant as an amusing anecdote. She then changed her tone and consoled me briefly, albeit superficially, and that was that.

I should have realized then it was over. We broke up four months later.

******************************************************************************

Catherine and I broke up maybe a month before the lease was up and I decided not to get tied down with another lease. I wanted to get out of Montreal but I hadn't decided where to go yet. But I had to stay somewhere.

DeLorimier and Sherbrook- First, I spent a couple of months in my brother Mike's laundry room. I got a single futon from the store I was working at and it fit snugly between the washing machine and the wall. I had room to put my dresser at the foot of the bed and that was it. I somehow managed to keep my spirits up despite being 29 and living in a laundry room.

Marianne and Papineau- Next, I moved in with a coworker, his sister, and his friend (or two friends?). It was a nice place near a rejuvenated Mount Royal and a decent tavern for watching hockey. A typical Plateau apartment with the high ceilings, moulding, hardwood and all that. Everyone was five years or more younger than me and that was a bit irritating. I didn't spend too much time at home though. I had decided to move to Japan and had quit my job. Free time galore.

During this period I spent most of my time at my studio. It was on Laurier near St.Urbain. It was small but I never really felt like it was cramped. The windows faced the street so I could waste time watching people walking by if I was so inclined. It was a bit hot in summer but in winter, because of a "heat included" rent policy, it was toasty warm. I remember cranking the heat, listening to the Habs losing on the radio and painting on many a cold February night. It's hard to believe how good I had it. I think it was 150$ a month, it was bright, and within walking distance of my home. As I begin to look for a studio in cramped little, oppressive rental lawed Nagasaki, I tear up thinking about that little room I spent a couple of years working in.

I moved my single Futon in and slept there a couple of times a week. Big windows with no curtain was the only drawback. After a night of drinking I ended up back at my studio. I had a recording session the next day. We were finishing up the vocals on the Motorboats cd. We were supposed to record a song that had yet to be named and had no lyrics. I woke up to a grey morning. One of those cold, wet, heavy days. The snow is sticky and clumps up under your boots as you walk. The heat was cranked up but you could feel it fighting to keep the cold at bay and you could tell that it was just barely winning. I had good idea for a melody. I remembered about how my old roommate used to talk about building a house on sand versus building a house on rock. By which he meant basing your life on God or on some other false belief. I thought about how I've tried to find that person I could rest on, that I could relax with, not worrying which habit or mistake, or personality deficit was going to come back to be used against me. But overtime I realized that I was building on sand. Now, I didn't find God but I did write some o.k. lyrics. And I realized that I had to be the rock. I had to be solid. I had to build my own foundation.

Battle Hymn of the Apartment (2)

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived.

Parthenais- This was one of the worst years of my life so not a lot of funny stories here. I was living alone again and barely keeping it together until I was no longer keeping it together at all. I can remember one incident (actually it's really foggy so bear with me) that was odd, a little sad but I'd say ultimately amusing.

Around late morning or early afternoon on what seems like it was a Sunday, there was a knock on my door. Unexpected knocks are rarely a good thing. I opened the door to a girl who may have been crying but at the very least looked quite distressed. And I say a girl but she was older than me (I was 21). I'd say she was near thirty but not over and looked very Plateau, French, semi-artsy with dark brown hair, a slim build. She was good looking without being exceptional in any way.

She asked to use my phone. It was an emergency. I can't remember what was wrong with her phone. She may have moved in recently and hadn't had her phone connected yet. Not wanting to get involved in the emergency any more than I needed to, I asked no questions and let her in to use the phone. My phone was only a few feet from the door so she stepped in and dialed 911.

She said there's an emergency. Please send an ambulance. Yes. Yes. No. My dog has been electrocuted and is having a seizure. What ?! What do you mean? You won't help a dog?! Just because he's not human you're going to let him die?!?!?! She hung up. She unnecessarily explained the situation to me and said her boyfriend was with the dog now but he didn't know what to do either. She walked out the door and sat on the stairs just outside my apartment and wept. I stood in the doorway looking at her.

I couldn't imagine what skills I had that would make it useful for me to go up to her place and try to resuscitate the dog. There wasn't much I could add. I thought about consoling her but I really doubted that I could do so convincingly. I've never been good at overcoming half-heartedness. I've always felt that people can smell when I'm being insincere and will be insulted while I will just feel shame. Bad all around. So I don't bother. She was fully engrossed in her weeping and didn't even look up. I started to be a little annoyed that ,at a time in my life where the slightest emotional breeze would lay me out flat on my back, I had been dragged into this drama. I closed the door.

A week or so after she came to apologize. Her dog had survived. Apparently it was epileptic. She invited me to eat brunch at her place with her and her boyfriend. I was unable to refuse free food so I went. It was uncomfortable. We ate waffles. I never spoke to them again.

* Brief Interlude*-  I spent two or three months back at my parents' house in Jonquiere. Nothing at all that I care to remember about that time. What would be the point of all the suppression,then? Oh, Habs won the cup!! Lots of beer at Chez Max with Anna and some strange girl. WoooooHoooooo!

Park and Bernard- Back in the city. I decided to live with Andrew and I guess at that time we had known each other through Pat for  three years or more. I wouldn't say we were close friends at the time but we shared friends, sense of humour, and taste in music.

Andrew said that he found an apartment on Park (so far west!!) and Bernard (so far north!!). Near the Rialto he said. I was very skeptical but I knew his girlfriend lived around there so I went along to take a look. The place wasn't bad and it was cheap. It was a strange layout. I swear a third of the area was closets. The place would have been a fair size if you knocked out two or three of the huge, useless closets.

After seeing the apartment we headed out for a bite to eat.We stopped into Zorba's. The walls were covered with dark, thick, porous wood that looked like it had been soaked in oil. It was hard to tell whether The wood walls were the the source or receptacle of the overwhelming scent. It was a pungent mix of slowly roasted, marinated lamb, garlic, onion, warm pita, and cement thick yogurt. The hefty twin waitresses sat at a back table with various friends and/or family members and while they didn't outright welcome you, they made you feel like you could share their space for a while. The curly haired, moustache sporting cook behind the counter always had a smile that seemed to be there because he knew what you were about to experience. I had eaten a fast food souvlaki before. One filled with over cooked chunks of chicken swimming in watery sauce that fell somewhere between thousand island dressing and garlicky mayonnaise. But this was not that.

It had everything your mouth could want: savoury meat, creaminess, tomato, crispy but soft warm roasted pita, thick biting onions... I was speechless. We headed back on our way and I still couldn't quite believe what had just happened in my mouth. We called the landlord and told him we'd be taking the place. Welcome to Mile End.

Park and St.Viateur- This was my first experiment in living with a girlfriend. Melainie and I had been together maybe two years (?) and seeing as we just lived down the street from each other and saw each other everyday, we thought(I thought) we might as well move in together. I took my friend Matt's place in Melanie's apartment at the corner of St.Viateur and Park. Matt and Andrew moved in together in a slightly weird apartment on the first floor, below us.

I mostly remember music when I think of the year spent here. I became aware of a lot of my favorite bands at that time: GBV, Wedding Present, Archers of Loaf, Magnetic Fields and more. But also, it was one of the most productive song writing and recording years of my life. My band, Trevor, had reformed with a new bass player , Flo, (are you happy now?) and a whole new batch of songs that I'm still quite fond of. I started a new band before Trevor were fully back in business, called the Motorboats and we played a successful debut concert.

I had gotten an old Fostex four track from Matt and it was the simplest four track machine I had ever used. Switch it on and go. I recorded hours of electronic instrumentals, experimenting with synths and beats through various broken speakers and cheap pedals. One amp in particular had a punctured speaker and moved around inside the cabinet. If I turned the base up to ten and played a beat on my Radio Shack synth the bass drum was so percussive you could feel the room shake with each thud. The hours spent with headphones on, absorbed in a recording, not being able to stop until it was done, not eating, sometimes staying up so late that I would skip classes, were some of the happiest times in my life. 

I had a cheap tape recorder and a dollar store tape that I would switch on and record myself just playing and singing anything that came to mind. I must have filled a few ninety minute tapes like this. I would often pick up the guitar, press record and without thinking and play the first thing that my hands felt like playing. I wrote most of my favorite songs this way. Some of these songs, in particular The Motorboats songs, got the full live recording treatment downstairs in Andrew and Matt's magic kitchen studio. Something about that kitchen made everything ring and echo. Everything sounded bright and deep with a strange melancholy tinge to it. That might just be me though. Whatever... anyone who has experienced recording in the magic kitchen can attest to it's powers.

Before the year was up Melanie moved out.

St. Urbain and St.Viateur - I came back from working a summer at a camp in New York state and moved in with my university classmate, Jonathan, and his brother. I think I spent two years here and the last few months, as Jonathan had gotten married, I had a replacement roommate. She was a cute eighteen year old whose name I honestly can't remember. Strange bit of trivia for you.

A million things happened while I was living here and narrowing it down has been hard. I did my last year of Painting and Drawing at Concordia while living here and it was a very productive time artistically. But that's boring. My cat died here. But that's too sad. I was robbed. But that's nothing special. I started to date a girl called Catherine. But more on that later.

The woman who lived downstairs was a kind Portuguese lady. She had an impressive garden in the back yard and it was definitely the best view I had ever had from the back of an apartment. She had zucchinis growing on those structures that they build so the vines can stretch out and stay off the ground. Zucchinis were everywhere! One vine even crept it's way onto my balcony up on the second floor. She told me I could eat any zucchinis that grew on my balcony and I think I ended up with two or three. I believe I cooked them intoå a tomato basil sauce. The best zucchinis I have ever eaten. Like candy! Usually they are pretty bland and just soak up the flavours they are surrounded by, but these were the center of attention. Delicious!

Oh, and the living room had ceramic tiles on the floor. The design on the tiles looked a lot like a vagina.

Battle Hymn of the Apartment

As I move into my 21st home, I take a brief moment to look back at the places I've lived.

I am very uncomfortable with nostalgia. Somewhere in my early twenties, maybe after the hundred thousandth hour spent drinking and listening to myself and others rehash stories about our teen years, I made a decision to reject the instant nostalgia and story-i-fication of every event. Listening to 22 year olds swoon as they showered each other with cherished memories from four years ago quickly became one of my most white-hot hatreds. Also I grew uncomfortable with the way I pulled out a set of anecdotes about my past every time I met someone new as if these stories of drunken hi jinx somehow explained who I was, as well as the feeling that everything was a potential story to be retold at a later time to either impress, disgust, thrill or, offend someone.

It took some time to shake the filthy habit but I realise now that I very rarely, if ever, tell stories from my past. I don't package the past into little anecdote bundles. I've paid a bit of a price in that I remember almost no specifics from high school (a good thing?), my twenties are all bunched together in one messy pile, and I may be less fun at parties. In the end I think it has had a positive effect on my memories because instead of remembering stories I remember events ( as unformed as these memories may be). This the same reason why I'm disinclined to take photographs.

That being said, I will now dip my toe in the nostalgia swamp and regale you with some stories from my past. For each place I've lived over the last 20 years I will jot down the first memory that pops up. I will try to keep it snappy ,basted in my trademark wit and stuffed with my much vaunted humour.

St. Hubert - Before I actually lived here I spent a lot of time hanging out here. This may have happened during that time. One of the best things about this place were the four record collections of the four residents. Not that they were of record collectors proportions or all that exceptional, but as a 16 year old who couldn't get enough music and who drank it up skinny-guy-with-long-beard-crawling-in-the-dessert style, it was heavenly. The four, perhaps five, record collections came together one day to form a mighty Voltron-esque mega beast. We decided to play them all chronologically. Of course some albums stank (yeah, you, Rick Wakeman) so ground rules were laid down. One track from each side minimum and at least two members of the household had to be home at the time of the playing. First up was Louis Armstrong (?) and I'm pretty sure he got the minimum. I can't remember if we stuck it out to the end but it gave me a reason to rush home and probably introduced me to a few things I hadn't heard. 

Laurier - This was a busy place and I spent a pretty eventful year there. Not one thing comes to mind. Just a flood. I remember that I had started studying Fine Arts at CEGEP and my father bought me a bunch of wood (plywood and masonite) for me to paint on. I leaned it on the wall of my bedroom and cut it up as needed using a circular saw and painted quite a few paintings using it. All in my bedroom! I love living in a nice place like an adult but I miss having a place where using power tools and painting in my bedroom seemed completely reasonable. Less complicated times.

 I also had an old turntable you could stack records on and it would play the side, let the next record drop and reset the needle for the next go around. You could stack about eight albums. I would pull a speaker into the bathroom and take a bath for as long as there was hot water for refills and nobody needed to pee. This was great seeing as we almost never turned the heat on and even if we did it had little effect.

Verdun - My cat, Jack (greatest cat who ever lived), was not very outdoorsy, although he did occasionally go outside. When he did he usually didn't go too far. Jack was all about keeping his options open, though. His food dish always had to be full, whether he felt like eating or not. All doors and viable windows had to be open just in case he was suddenly struck with the urge to visit a closet, roommate's bedroom, or the balcony.

Through a series of unfortunate events, I found myself living (if barely) in a half basement apartment in Verdun. To keep Jack happy the window in the living room was usually open so he could jump up and get a little fresh air. One night Jack didn't come home before I went to sleep so I left the window open. I was a bit worried because he usually came running home when I called him. I was woken by sounds of him at his food bowl (which was on the corner of my bed due to a situation involving my lack of cleanliness and billions of ants). I looked up from my pillow and when my brain and eyes finally synced up I realised he had a small white mouse in his mouth. I've never liked mice. Unlike any kind of bug that you can squish without a second thought, mice provide a moral dilemma and thus are far more problematic as house guests. My first reaction was to spring out of bed and direct Jack and his mouse back outside. This was working and Jack ran toward the open window, jumped up and through, but hit his enormous head on the frame. This made him drop the mouse back into the apartment but didn't slow him down a bit as he ran off into the alley.

The mouse ran behind something and I started planning how to catch and release. These were paranoid times for me. Living alone didn't suit me and my drinking increased as my eating decreased. Sleep was uneven and my tendency to be self pitying and overly dramatic were in full bloom. I started to think, " The mouse is white. That's not a wild mouse. Where did he find it? Maybe it came from the nearby psychiatric hospital. A lab mouse. What kind of slow,degenerative,excruciating disease is it infected with? I better put on some gloves!"

I cornered the mouse behind a chair or box or something and through some clever tactics that I don't quite remember I scared him out from his hiding place so he ran towards me. The plan was to grab him and quickly release him back to the outdoors,whether or not he found his way back to the lab to continue the Ebola or extra-virulent-AIDS testing was up to him. But, about halfway to my awaiting hands , he took a sharp left turn and disappeared into a hole in the radiator. Where a panel should have been was an opening that led into the wall and down under the floor.

I stood slightly stunned, my heart racing from having almost touched a plague-ridden lab mouse, thinking about my next move. I quickly concluded that my chances of coaxing it back out of the wall were slim and picturing, if successful, the mouse leaping out of the hole and biting my face then escaping, never to be found, so that tests which could determine what had infected me and was causing blood to gush from every orifice could never be performed. I instead found a piece of cardboard and taped it over the hole.

I immediately felt terrible. This would surely lead to the slow painful starvation and eventual death for the poor mouse. This sympathy was quickly replaced with a horrible image (pretty sure from a Stephen King story) of the the mouse, which was surely pregnant, giving birth and eventually ruling a colony of mice under the floor, in the dirt floor basement. The queen mouse would grow to an enormous size evolving into a limbless, eyeless, eating machine. I slept worse than usual for the next couple of days.