This little apartment was a kind of springboard for me where I could really get my life started. So I believed and I think there is some truth to this, uh, truism. The first few months were very routine. I would be up at six thirty in the morning, breakfast on home made granola and fruit then get on the Main Street bus that would take me as far as Union Street. From there I walked along Union Street in the vintage Strathcona neighbourhood, a nearly twenty minute stroll surrounded by Victorian era houses, to the leather factory. It was a stultifying dull job involving standing at a machine with a handle that would punch shapes into pieces of leather and suede. Monotonous and boring. I quickly lost interest in the work. The horrible old man supervising me was not helpful either. The staff was an eclectic mix of people who would never mix anywhere except on a public bus: there was the South Asian family guy, the not quite working class hippy gal, and then there was the fat middle aged hard assed woman with a slightly sour attitude and not much in the way of an IQ with her nose in a Harlequin romance while stuffing herself with junk food during breaks.
My social life was only a little lacklustre. As I mentioned my boundaries were nonexistent and I tended to attract a whole range of bizarre and unusual or not particularly nice people and sometimes my apartment became a testing ground for how much I could take from others. There was also a Christian household in the neighbourhood. They were people associated with St. Margaret's the charismatic church I had been involved in. A young couple with two toddlers and three other young adults occupying different bedrooms. I was frequently invited for dinner. They thought of me as a kind of lost boy even though I was actually doing very well. I was working, eating well (for them being vegetarian and eating well were a contradiction in terms) looking after myself and pursuing friendships if not necessarily healthy relationships. They also seemed to have an unhealthy fascination with my dubious sexuality. I really wanted their friendship more than their pity. Instead I got pity disguised as friendship.
I would sometimes while the weather was still warm during our very prolonged summer in autumn enjoy a walk downtown and into the West End following work. I seemed to be always meeting people. Being both friendly and attractive seemed to make me particularly alluring. I was suddenly, at English Bay Beach, befriended by an attractive hippy couple. The young man rather disappeared but the young woman, whom I will call Willow, became a fast and close friend, for a few months anyway.
I was in this stage of life trying to figure out what I should be reading. I was working on two very gripping books, one was Sybil, the book about the famous multiple personality case. The other was The Primal Scream which was about primal therapy. I cannot deny that both books had a strong influence on me in my vulnerable stage of life. I was also seeing a lot of foreign, vintage and art house movies at the famous City Nights Cinema on Hastings and Main. I became quite hooked on Ingmar Bergman and the Marx Brothers (now there's a collaboration!)
In October I got my ear pierced. A mistake. I was under slept that Saturday following a rather regrettable night out that ended up following me home. I went downtown and into the back room of a curio shop named Persian Arts and Crafts where a mature Iranian gentleman did the piercing for me. Feeling tired I wandered into the chapel of St. Andrews-Wesley Church, which was usually open in those days. I approached the altar then lay down on the soft moss-green carpet where I fell asleep for an hour. No one walked in or saw me. I woke up, feeling rested, and somehow knowing that my piercing would get infected (it did, eventually swelling up like a red flame grape. I tossed out the ring and let it heal naturally.)
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