Many things happened in my last year there. It was, as I mentioned already, a house of all-sorts, to cop a phrase from Emily Carr. C and I were the sexually dubious ones and others in the house often puzzled over the nature of our relationship, or so in our youthful narcissism, we liked to believe this. The caretaker of the house was an artist living in the front on the main floor. I referred to him as "The Woman Who Lives Down Below", a reference to a character in Margaret Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, which I read during my time here. He was rather a strange, antisocial man whom now I suspect likely suffered from Asperger's Syndrome. We didn't like him. He was an artist producing rather chaotic looking abstracts. He sometimes had a young boy, about six years old visiting. We were not charitable in our suspicions. He also took up the saxophone and was even worse at music than he was at art. Every time he would practice the house would empty out as all the tenants would suddenly have friends to see or shopping to do, or suddenly realized it was after all a perfect day for a walk.
In the large suite behind the "Woman Who Lives Down Below" lived a young woman with her musician boyfriend. He was good and I actually enjoyed hearing him practice his guitar and singing from my room upstairs. We were sort of friendly and even occasionally visited. They broke up and her spanking newly minted Eastern European boyfriend moved in. To my discomfort while trying to get to sleep at night I could hear that either this new one was giving her the orgasms that his predecessor couldn't , either that or she was taking acting lessons. This was one of the reasons I ended up moving out. I remember a conversation she and I had one day downstairs near the front door. Learning that I am a Christian she wanted to know my position on pre-marital sex. I assured her that regardless of what I believed for me I was not going to believe the same thing for her or for anyone else. She was of course a liberated woman and lauded the Sexual Revolution as the best thing to happen since sliced bread and the electric toaster. I gave her my Cheshire Cat smile and said, "That's right, kiddo, once upon a time if you were a good girl you were always expected to say no. Now, to prove that you are a good girl you are always expected to say yes. Progress?" She did not have a ready answer.
Upstairs in the garret lived a hip progressive couple with a cat with an attitude problem. They were the prototypical politically enlightened, cultured and cool boomer young couple of the late seventies. They were well-educated, well-informed, nice looking and not all they appeared to be. One afternoon I heard a loud banging on my ceiling as though they were hurling furniture at each other. Then I heard someone running down the stairs. I went down where I saw her sitting on the front steps crying. I asked her how she was, if I could help. She replied she was okay. She had just thrown a rocking chair at her partner who was being an asshole. I can't recall if she apologized for the disturbance she had made.
Down the hall from me lived the only person who wasn't young, hip and bohemian or at least a fashionable social outsider. He was a man in his late sixties, recently retired, a former labourer who had been a miner. He was quiet, polite and very old fashioned. It was odd but somehow refreshing having him in the house. There was something about the old, quaint and traditional reality that he carried with him that balanced and grounded us. Good Friday I had some friends over particularly for prayer and Holy Communion to observe Our Lord's death on the cross. While we were praying together he knocked on the door, his hand bleeding rather badly. He had cut himself while making dinner. I quickly got him some band-aids and saw that he was okay. My friends and I all agreed that it was like Jesus visiting us in a meaningful way on such a solemn and sacred day.
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