Without Fixed Address 1

It was all nuts.  I was delivered my eviction notice June 6 1999 and I had to be out by the twelfth.  I made arrangements, phone calls.  A friend could put me up for a few days, my father could give me shelter a few days a week for several months and another friend would let me stay with him and his wife a few days a week.  It could have been worse.  I was not turned out on the street.  I not once needed the services of a public shelter and not one night did I have to sleep rough.  I experienced an outpouring of generosity but there were of course limits.  In the meantime I was frightened, exhausted and traumatized.  And I had undiagnosed complex post traumatic stress disorder.

Still, I first had to deal with the practicals.  A stray cat tried to move in with me just after I received notice.  I bundled the poor animal, whom I would have loved to give a loving home, inside a duffle bag and walked two miles to the animal shelter.  There were no options and to this day I fear that a beautiful loving animal was likely put to death because no one wanted him.  I of course felt very much like the poor cat and this of course made the sense of torment all the more bitter to me.

I made phone calls and managed to divvy most of my earthly possessions between Value Village and St. James Community Services.  Various friends agreed to store and hang on their walls my paintings.  A few personal items, such as my favourite mug, I loaned to others.  I did get the mug back eventually, as well as a bedspread and blanket I got many years ago from my late mother.  Everything else I bundled into the same green khaki duffle bag-the one I bought in Ninety-Four for my first trip to Costa Rica, and the same bag that I carried the hapless cat to the SPCA (I had to walk of course, having almost no money to spend on bus fare.)  Most of my many books save for a few precious volumes and my bird books I carried off to various second hand book stores.  I collected fifteen dollars for my troubles.  Every single item with sentimental value, especially that connected me to my mother, I had to part with permanently.

The building manager tried to play tough with me for not paying rent.  I relied to her that this was likely much harder for me than for her.  She backed down.  I spent three days with my photographer friend downtown in his studio loft where he also lived.  I was doing an ongoing art show on the premises, where the opening occurred just three weeks ago.  On the fourth day I took the ferry to the Sunshine Coast where my father waited for me in his two bedroom cabin, waiting for the slow death that had already set in on him and on our relationship.  I knew that I wasn't well.  I also realized that no matter how hard I would try to convey this to my father he would not get it.  I braced myself for the inevitable.

I spent three or four  days with my father in his little coastal community.  It went reasonably well.  I returned to Vancouver to spend the balance of the week with my photographer friend who told me I could no longer stay with him.  He needed his space, he said.  He wanted to be able to shag his girlfriend without anyone around in the next room, he didn't say.