Places Where I've Lived: My First One Bedroom Apartment

I moved there in mid-April, 1977, age twenty-one.  The drab grey stucco wall of the building façade was beautified by freshly blooming bluebells.  My mother had obtained a dresser for me.  I succeeded in buying other furniture cheap in various second hand havens.  The building was very old with perhaps eight one bedroom suits.  The hall stank of stale cabbage and other cooking odours.  There was no elevator.  Mom helped me clean the apartment and move in.  We both found the process enjoyable and more than ever she felt like my friend as well as my mom.

The building was managed by two thirty-something sisters and their brother, each living in one of the four units on the second floor.  I occupied the fourth apartment.  They had dogs, two aggressive Belgian Shepherds that would fiercely bark from the open upper windows as I returned home.  One of the sisters had a long haired cat named Tripper who often visited me.

I was so used to living with people that I welcomed three separate strangers to stay with me for the short-term.  This created strain for me and I was glad to get them all out of there.  Ten days into my first month there I finally had the place to myself.  I put up new art posters:

and

I still had one of my exotic Indian bedspreads, all golden-yellow paisley, and it covered a foam mattress that acted as a simple couch.   Two tatami mats covered the bare wooden floor.  It was quiet and I was happy living in a sense of holy solitude.  I had neither TV nor radio and this was in the olden days before the internet.  I read copiously: the works of Dostoevsky,  Virgina Woolf, CS Lewis, George Macdonald and others.  I worked casually in construction in the early summer for only ten days then enjoyed some free weeks, while looking for work and surviving rather well on Unemployment Insurance.  I was always meeting new and fascinating people.  It was just so difficult forming solid reliable friendships.

Every day I went on long walks.  I would sometimes visit friends but usually I was alone, walking along Tenth Avenue from where I lived on Prince Albert Street, one block east of Fraser Street in Vancouver's East End, to Alma Street on the border of West Point Grey then down to Jericho Beach.  I almost always stopped in the same mom and pop shop at Fourth and Alma where I would buy a giant oatmeal cookie.  I always took the bus home.

This contemplative joy of walking, resting, reading, praying and meeting people came to an abrupt end in September when I started a new job in a florist warehouse.  By the end of the month I was moving yet again.

Places Where I've Lived: Strange Little House 2 (Dec. 1976-Apr. 1977)

I already wrote fairly extensively about the four eccentric Christians who lived here all sharing the same bedroom.  I moved in with the Bucolic One for the second time shortly before Christmas.  I knew it would be a bit challenging but I liked these people and they reflected to me the same kind of spontaneous freedom that was precious to me.  The church hated us.  I had been involved in the stifling network of house fellowships and home Bible and prayer groups that made me somehow marginally legitimate to the evolving status quo of St Margaret's Community Church.  They had gone from being a crowded church full of people from all walks of life enjoying the presence of God together to a bunch of middle brow middle class dullards.  They were becoming frighteningly fundamentalist and seemed obsessed with keeping out and throwing out anyone who didn't adhere to the letter.

I had been particularly vexed by an upwardly mobile Newfie, previously known as Hallelujah Dave (his real name.  So sue me!).  He had no respect for boundaries and one morning as I was just waking up at eight marched into my bedroom to shout me out of bed.  He was under the assumption that I would be sleeping till noon (and I really ought to be out pounding the pavement looking for a job), though I was really five minutes from getting up.  I let him have it afterward.  His wife, Sylvia, had gone from being a beautiful self-possessed woman to his fawning slave.  A submissive Christian wife, or a dog used to being beaten and still loving unconditionally her boorish master. They, like everyone else at St. Margaret's, were decidedly anti-feminist, as well as anti-gay, and the took the Bible to the letter, especially some of St. Paul's more questionable teachings.  Women had no rights and they all more or less happily lived as though the Sixties never happened.  I don't know what happened to them since.  Either she had a mental breakdown from being married to the idiot or she woke up one day and divorced his sorry ass.

They lived across the street from us.  One day I knocked on the front door to say hi.  Sylvia eyed me suspiciously, would not let me in and told me we couldn't be friends.  I had not contacted them in the six weeks I had been living across the street (because I anticipated this rejection) and besides, I was living with the presumed enemies of the church.  "Look at their lives", she hissed, and before closing the door in my face she warned me that I would end up falling on my ass (though she used a much politer word)

I really didn't know what she meant by "look at their lives."  Perhaps she was referring to the Bucolic One's casual grooming (though his hygiene was impeccable), or that D., the Bob Dylan wannabe smoked cigarettes (agreed, not a good thing), and drove taxi at night.  Maybe she meant all the various foreign cars in our front yard, including the Bentley, that the Bucolic One fixed for a living.  She might have also taken offense at the stream of visitors we would entertain with the warmest hospitality, mostly Christian souls from a variety of dominations including those dreaded Catholics (the Bucolic One was an ecumenical Catholic).

We had our differences in the Strange Little House and sometimes we were too harsh on one another and at times to laughable extremes (D., the Bob Dylan wannabe tried to scold me for looking sexually attractive.  Like, I mean, HUH!!!?)

We were also involved in weekend Christian retreats, ecumenical, called Live-In, where we prayerfully spent a weekend together, up to forty adults from diverse backgrounds and Christian denominations) would dwell together in an atmosphere soaked in the love and joy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, revelling together in the Holy Spirit's healing, restoring love.

While living in the Strange Little House I left St. Margaret's.  I have never regretted this and I have never gone back.

In April I left the Strange Little House.  I was feeling increasingly shut out from the tight little two person clique that my housemates had turned into.  I was also anxious to live alone, to get on with my life and find out for myself just where God was taking me.

Places Where I've Lived: The Boys' House

This is the worst place I have ever lived.  I was in a house run by the church and filled with four young single homophobic Christian males.  I was the fifth one.  I didn't know this was waiting for me, otherwise I would never have considered living there.  They were fundamentalist fascists, every one of them.  I was the cook and cleaner.

My room was okay for a basement.  They gave me the worst room of the house, not only because it was the only one available at the time but because of their irrational fear and loathing of me.  I got to work at making it beautiful.  There was already a vintage armchair in the corner.  So far, so good.  I put art prints on the fake wood paneled wall:

  They were lovely images that provoked a lot of innocent fantasy.  The nasty jailhouse closet case who lived in the house thought they were both perverted images.  He also yelled at me for wearing a T shirt that came from the days when I worked briefly at an espresso bar on Davie Street.  The place was called Iggy's and it was a red T shirt with the logo tastefully located on the upper left side of the shirt.  He railed that the place was a homosexual hangout (it wasn't, but really why would I care?), and I had no right displaying its sordid logo in a Christian houselhold. What didn't help matters was he was infatuated with me, in complete denial and became all the more hostile, especially given that I didn't reciprocate the affections.

I covered a wall with an Indian bedspread and against another wall assembled a bookcase with boards, bricks and of course books.  I adorned it with ornamental squash and candles.  The overhead lightbulb I covered with a vintage scarf with parrots on it and I covered the window with an Indonesian batik print.  There was no door so I covered the doorway with a vintage curtain covered in deco era palm leaves and flowers.  My bedroom was an aesthetic retreat from a very drab house inhabited by hostile roommates.

I dd the cooking and cleaning.  They did love my cooking.  I had a Joy of Cooking and for the fun of it and to test my creative forces turned out an impressive Duck a l'Orange and other goodies.  I also did a lot of the grocery shopping often crisscrossing the city to get the right cheese at the right price.  They put me under a lot of pressure to get a fulltime job, not because we needed the money (the rent was very cheap) but because this fit their backward and conservative image of manhood.  I had during this stage in my life tremendous difficulty landing decent employment.  Later in life a couple of employment counsellors informed me that I was too intelligent and too original a thinker to be tolerable to a lot of employers and that I should not blame myself for being a victim of publicly sanctioned mediocrity.

The house had a new leader, another closet case, in love with me, and more or less admitting it.  Talk about creepy!  His discomfort with his sexuality and with me made him at times comical, otherwise frightening.  I never knew what he would try to do to me next.  Fortunately he never laid a finger on me.  When I could find only temporary part-time work (for the summer a downtown food truck, for the autumn a bussing position in a steakhouse from where I was fired only for not having "enough zip.") I was told to leave, immediately. 

Fortunately, my mother took me in again.  The day after I was kicked out of the Boys' House I received a phone call from a shoe warehouse in Gastown.  They liked me and wanted to hire me.  I accepted the job.

While I don't hold a grudge against the Boys' House I can't say that I've actually forgiven them nor that I ever intend to.  They are worth neither grudge nor absolution and I have been very happy to move on.  The closet case leader did track me down more than a year later to apologize for the way I was treated.  I sort of accepted and have been very glad to see or hear absolutely nothing of any of those clowns in all the almost forty years that have since passed.

I continued to produce sumptuous meals and kept the house spic-and-span.  Not good enough.  The pastor's wife, an absolutely horrid British woman let herself in one afternoon.  I was tired from job-hunting and housework, and was on the couch for a half hour nap.  She saw me there and reported me to the house leader.  I really got shit for that one.  Then a hundred dollars went missing from the household kitty.  Even though my honesty and integrity were flawless I was still blamed for it and only half-heartedly exonerated.

During that summer the snotty British pastor and his horrid British wife took me shopping for clothes.  They detested my "Bohemian

Places Where I've Lived: Strange Little House 1

The Bucolic One invited me to live with him in his strange little house down the street from the church where I first met him.  We were introduced by a mutual friend, a young woman I had known for four years, or since we were respectively sixteen and seventeen.  I already mentioned in another post that I didn't feel particularly impressed.  I simply looked to my friend and said, "Who's the behemoth?"  He had a large beard, long hair in a pony tail and was wearing a crimson velvet waistcoat two sizes two small.

I badly needed to get away from my mother.  I loved her dearly but I did not want to lose the independence or the maturity that I had gained in almost two years of living on my own.  I did not much like the idea of sharing a bedroom with a Christian hippy with a bushy beard but at least we were going to sleep in separate beds, or on separate mattresses on the floor.  I consented.  Things were a bit different in those days.  Roommates were more likely to share bedrooms and no one batted an eye about it.  It was more in the eighties and nineties that the concept of privacy, personal space, and boundaries really developed.  Now, I certainly couldn't imagine sharing a bedroom or even a bathroom. 

The house was tiny: a kitchen heated by a wood stove with a bathroom in the back and a bedroom.
And old.  I wanted to beautify it somehow so I bought two vintage armchairs, one red and one green.  The rent was very cheap and the Bucolic One to my surprise was clean and didn't snore.  He listened to bluegrass music and was actually a warm and engaging raconteur.  He was a university graduate with strong opinions but a great laugh and a wonderful sense of humour.  It was also, as far as he was concerned, his house, and I was but a boarder.  But I didn't mind chopping firewood.

I worked for three weeks as a furniture swamper.  The driver didn't seem to like me.  I don't think I was a bad worker but his small-minded hostility made him difficult to work with.  He must have told his boss some lies about me since I can think of no legitimate reason for him firing me on the spot for arriving five minutes late and only once and only because the busses were running late that morning.  But the boss was an equally small minded ignoramus and I was actually happy to be rid of such reptiles.

The Bucolic One drove down to the US, where he was from, for a week.  He brought back with him some beautiful hand made glass by a friend of his and an obnoxious little dog that wouldn't give me the time of day.  I was feeling increasingly alienated regardless of the enjoyment I took in hanging out with the Bucolic One.  He was territorial.  I lived in his house.  He was older than me and somehow he seemed a little threatened by me, since I did not, do not, never did and never will fit into any of the stereotypical  male garbage that typifies our toxic post-patriarchal culture.

Or it might also be because I allowed an idiot I met downtown to crash for a week in the house while the Bucolic One was gone.  This was a fellow about my age who seemed unpleasantly attracted to me and whom I was trying to help out since he didn't have a place to stay in.  He took over the house and when the Bucolic One returned from his trip he found him lounging in the front yard listening to heavy metal music on his amped-up ghetto blaster.  The Bucolic One promptly kicked him out but didn't give me a scolding.  I suppose that I let him down somehow. 

At the end of the month another living situation opened for me.  The pastors of the church we were attending down the street were intent on rescuing me from the Bucolic One and his disordered lifestyle.  I went promptly from the frying pan into the fire in the communal house and this I will document in my next post, gentle reader.

Places Where I've Lived: My Mom's Apartment

After my early claim on independence I found myself staying with my mother temporarily on five separate occasions, or over the span of three years between my twentieth and twenty-third birthdays.  The first time I stayed with her I had just turned twenty and was fresh back from six rather strange months spent in Toronto.  I at first tried to reconcile with my father who met me at the airport.  I stayed in his family room for three nights then he shipped me off to my mother.  She had less room since she was in a one bedroom apartment but unlike my father she loved me and cared about me so it was a worthy trade-off.

While couch surfing at my mom's in Richmond I studiously avoided contact with my father and looked for employment with the objective of finding a place to live in Vancouver as soon as possible.  Mom's friend had found her apartment for her a year and a half a go when she was fleeing from her abusive Fat Studly Romeo on Vancouver Island.  It was a class act.  After dispatching me to my premature independence upon leaving high school Mom then focussed on getting away from the idiot she was lovers with for over the past year of so.  Her friend helped find her a job in addition to the apartment.  She secretly packed and sorted everything she could and Fat Studly Romeo was usually too drunk to notice.  Everything was ready and she got some friends on board who took him off on a fishing trip early on a Sunday morning in August.  As soon as the rubber hit the road the moving van rolled in and within an hour Mom was on her way to her new life in Richmond leaving behind Fat Studly Romeo's two sole pieces of furniture: a TV and a telephone table (remember those?)

She phoned me the same day and asked me to help her unpack.  A couple of friends from church joined me and we were only too glad to help.  Two months later Fat Studly Romeo found her and tried to kill her.  I'm sure Mom didn't tell me everything but she did mention that he tried to strangle her and for some reason decided to not kill her.  We never saw or heard of him since and I imagine he must be dead now.

What galled me most about living with Mom again was her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that I was already an adult.  The breaking point was when she threw out a shirt that I liked because she didn't like it.  That was the only time that I nearly punched my own mother.  I also was less than fond of the idea of losing my cherished independence and was determined that I would be out of there as soon as possible.

I eventually found a job (furniture swamping) and a place to live at the end of April.  Even if my new living conditions were less than ideal and less comfortable than Mom's sofa and living room at least I was on my own again.  She was oppressive and controlling and as much as I loved her I had no intention of living with her again.

Places Where I Have Lived: Toronto

What happened in Toronto stays in Toronto.  I will say a little bit, just to tease and torment you gentle reader.  We arrived August 30, 1975 and spent the first month in a northern suburb with K's mother.  We then found an apartment not far from the downtown core.  We moved in, K went away for the weekend and I bought and got high on a hit of mescaline that I bought in a bar downtown.  That was my first night in my new digs.  I had some wild hallucinations and ended up hitch-hiking on Yonge Street in the hope that someone would pick me up and talk me out of the urge I had to slash my wrists.  I did get a ride with a very compassionate individual who drove around with me for two hours.  We talked about life, philosophy, values and what makes suicide the "cardinal sin."  I will never forget this man or his kindness.

I wandered everywhere in Toronto and worked at various waitering jobs before spending December in the downtown post office.  I enjoyed the ravines which provided a fascinating network of hidden parks and often spent hours wandering from one to other.  Thus I was able to see a great swath of the city.  Kensington Market with its wildly random street side stalls of produce and cheese and bake shops was the place to shop.  I often wandered the streets of the Annex, Forest Hill, Rosedale, Cabbage Town and Roncesvalles.  I spent time in High Park and on the Toronto Islands.  We often smoked pot with a friend in her small garret apartment in the Annex.  I bought a bag from her supplier then realized it was way more than I could or wanted to smoke.  I ended up sitting in a back table of the Ritz Café, a hip basement café where I rolled joints and individually sold them.

I could write more.  I am not going to.  I experienced a profound re-encounter with my Christian faith from which I have since never deviated, not in forty years.  I got sick of Toronto, the winter was brutal and come February 29 I gave myself a birthday present and flew back to Vancouver.

Plasces Where I've Lived: The Magic Rooms ( Acid Trip Number Three, Or, Kids, Don't Try This Anywhere!)

Ah, yes, learn from my mistakes.  But also like me, please enjoy the making of them.  I came across another little supply of Magic Postage Stamps thanks to...well, this blogger has a few secrets that will be accompanying him to the crematorium. 

It was the Summer Solstice and a full moon in 1975.  K and I took the acid together and then happily went off to take care of the daily errands.  We had some business to take care of at the local Unemployment Insurance office.  We walked through the cemetery and walked on a high narrow trail over the sidewalk on East Thirty-Third Avenue.  It was a narrow high little trail that required a little courage to walk up on but we were already quite high and didn't really notice.  At the Unemployment Insurance office I ran into a girl I knew in high school.  Her legendary long hair now went down almost past her knees and she was quite amused to hear that the high school Jesus freak was now whacked out of his sweet little head on acid.

We somehow got through our errands then walked as far as Queen Elizabeth Park where I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of the life force.  The cirrus clouds overhead in the blue sky throbbed and flowed with rainbow edges.  I suddenly sensed the life force, of which I had never before even heard, running through us all, through every blade of grass, every tree, flower, bird, insect, human being, everything.  I whirled around in a euphoric joyous ecstasy and then we both fell in the grass where I was suddenly overwhelmed by the most penetrating and acute sorrow.  I wept inconsolably. 

I soon pulled out of it.  We resumed our walk across Vancouver, higher than proverbial kites.  We wandered down into Kitsilano and stopped in the Naam for a bite to eat.  There was a friendly long haired cat who stopped by to be petted.  Somehow from there we made it to Wreck Beach for the sunset where we sat on a log staring out at the water.  A man with long hair and beard was playing a wooden flute.  He was wearing an Andean poncho. 

We bussed into East Vancouver where we visited the Dandy and his friend the Goddess (one of the Remarkable People I Have Known).  We somehow stumbled home at five in the morning.  That was my third and last acid trip.

I still had some left over.  I had already concluded that I wasn't going to do this any more.  It was just too intense.  I also suspected that there were some lessons I had learned and was still needing to absorb while on acid that would somehow be forgotten from overuse of the drug.  A day or two later on the bus I chatted up two young men, an apparent gay couple.  They bought the acid from me.  I never saw them again and I hope they had fun.  I did.  Sort of.

Forty years later I still feel at times the impact of the drug.  It has altered and enhanced my vision, my way of seeing, absorbing and enjoying colour and light.  To this very day things in nature still take on an otherworldly radiance.  Can I blame it all on LSD?  Perhaps some of this has been spiritually generated.  I may never know the answer but I am eternally grateful for this vision, this new vision made real and sublime with each new day.