quiet in the city

mrs. kim’s: when the weasel and i first moved in together, at ages seventeen (me) and eighteen (her), we shared a dark basement apartment, illegal, beneath mr. and mrs. kim’s house. two bedrooms, bathroom and a kitchen with three windows all about half a foot over our heads. it was dark most of the time, and our lights were flourescents, harsh in the 8-foot ceilings. i had headaches often, hating the flickering bright glare that dominated our rooms. at around the time we moved in, a man was breaking into apartments in the area to watch women sleep. i used to come home from work and check the apartment over, clutching an empty wine bottle at its neck, looking for him. although we lived there for four months, we saw mr. kim only once, when i came home for work to find him fixing our sink, having just wandered in without warning. when we left, mrs. kim stole my favorite sweater and a scarf and refused to give them back.

cogswell st.: the second halifax apartment was weasel’s boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s ex-apartment. she kept it dark and it smelled like cat pee. on one wall was a charcoal mural of a cow’s skull and runes, though we never asked her their meaning. it was a one bedroom, cramped and a mistake emotionally, but cheaper and not mrs. kim’s, a distinction we felt was important. it was dually less and more inviting than our old place. one day as i reached down to pull my up underwear while sitting on the toilet, i saw tubular fungus stretching toward me from a moldy spot behind the basin. at that time, stupid enough to disrespect mushrooms, i killed it with spray stain-remover. it wasn’t a shit hole, it felt like a shit hole, but it was alright until our downstairs neighbour came back from vacation (we never could figure out where he would have gone on vacation.) this man hated us passionately and aggressively through the floorboards. we walked too heavily, spoke too loudly, were stupid fucking bitches he would kill at the first opportunity. he would show up outside our front door and scream. dude was huge, heavy muscly arms, long blonde hair like a viking, thick ring in his septum piercing. our landlord made jokes about his death threats and suggested we move out to avoid physical violence. i didn’t know what victim blaming was then, and since weasel and i were having problems, we broke our lease three months early in april and i flew back to the west coast.

the camper: my parents’ house was full of kids (homeless, kicked-out, visiting and both Side A and Side B) the spring i went back home (slightly heart-broken and definitely head-broken) so i moved into a camper-trailer on our neighbour’s land. i decked it out in pirate flags and the kids used to sneak over in the evening and smoke pot at the cramped fold-out table. my bed was inches from the ceiling and the ceiling was full of spiders, which are really the only bugs i have issues with (i don’t kill them.) i used to coccoon myself in a sheet pulled over a rattling old fan until it billowed out like a sail and i slipped into a blissful airy rest. the camper was stifling by the time i went to bed, the metal of its structure having baked everything into a warm haze, but it felt good to be out of the over-crowded house.

the bus: this always makes me sound cooler than i am. the second summer i spent back home on the island, i lived in a white bus on my parents’ land, again because the house was full of kids and my old bedroom had a couple living in it (notably, Side B and her boyfriend at the time.) my favorite home, i fit a single mattress into it and grew plants, kept my clothes in mesh shelves and my books on the built-in counters. my rats lived with me until it grew too hot for them, gnawing everything they could reach. the dog slept with me most of the time, but he was a collie and nervously stared out the windows, barking so frequently that i often wondered what was outside, despite my common sense. but it was beautiful while it lasted.