Its been a while…

I had a truly indulgent and satisfying start to my day. I made a pot of cheap coffee. I pulled out an old clay mug; it’s small, chipped, and has a grandma’s cupboard vibe to it. It’s old. I’ve had it for 10 years. And when you move around as much as I did, that’s special and old. I bought that stupid old mug when I got my first apartment in this city, at 1499 King St West.

It was the last house on the south side of King Street before a little open space and Roncesvalles marking the edge of gentrification. I was so young. So naive. So raw. Things were so big, so full of feeling, so dramatic, so careless. I made mistakes, and learned, and I didn’t care if I made another.

My rent was $675/month, all bills included, and a parking space too! It was early 2010 and the recent recession kept some apartments cheap, especially when they were in rougher parts of the city.

Now I was on the edge of Parkdale. But my property manager definitely had a drug habit…and I’m not talking about the fun kind. Even then, he was always friendly and in a weird way, he was very cool.

I remember my first few nights there vividly. I had moved into a 400 sq. ft bachelor apartment with grey carpeting and purple tiles in the bathroom. I broke the soap holder in the shower…we don’t need to talk about that though.

There was one thing that I do miss however. I miss the bathroom mirror. It was also a medicine cabinet, the kind you see in the movies.

I was born and raised in the boring suburbs, so I never had one of those before. It was so cool.

The place had no air conditioning though. So as the days and nights got warmer, I would leave my windows open. I was on the third floor and there was only one dude who lived above me, in the attic.

I saw it one night. He also had the roof. And he grew pot on that roof. We would sometimes go up there, and just sit, and look up at the stars. And smoke. He was a very solitary guy. He didn’t talk much. I didn’t either. So we would just enjoy the view.

A few weeks into living there, I heard yelling. It was in the middle of the night and I woke up in a cold sweat. My windows were open. I remembered I didn’t live in my parent’s home anymore. I lived alone, in this big, exciting and busy city of Toronto.

A poorly dressed and awfully distressed woman was shouting at a car in the street. Well, she was shouting at the man in it. Suddenly, it became very clear. She was a hooker.

And she was desperate. The whole block heard her prices and the side dishes of her sloppy menu.

Then her skinny friend joined, with something I would later call the ‘trademark swinging arm’, and she flashed the man her tits.

I couldn’t peel my eyes away. So thankful that I got those blinds installed the day before. I watched. I had never seen anything like this before. Only in movies. But trust me, she was no Julia Roberts, and he was definitely more than seven degrees of separation away from Richard Gere.

After several more insanely loud profanities – of which I was mostly taken aback by the sheer confidence it took to belt out – the man drove off.

I had the words “we’re not in Kansas anymore” cross my mind.

I was still so young, eyes wide open and curious to the tits.

So while I forgoed the usual morning espresso today in exchange for a cheap pot of shit coffee and a smoke on the balcony of my third floor apartment in arguably the most gentrified neighborhood of yuppies…

…I recall that girl, ten years ago who moved to the big city to become a writer.