Wanted...

Wanted: Fancy clean apartment.

We are:

Tidy, moderate, attractive. 2 boys, 1 girl. Musically inclined, well read. We travel light in life and in our house. We like long walks, vivid sunsets, romantic games of chess, coffee and laughter. Some of us have been known to unroll the ol' yoga mat now and again. We like to have fun and be ourselves. Our favorite food is pierogis, our favorite dessert is everything and cookies.

You are:

Beautiful inside and out with a warm heart and an open mind. Please be vermin free, as we've been burned before. We love working fire alarms and landlords that don't try to initiate a three way. Our favorite stoves are ones that work. We go crazy for windows in every room of the house. If you don't smell like home cooking from every corner of the world all at once we will melt in your arms. We try not to be picky but in the past, the ones we've loved the most haven't had miscellaneous brown stains on the walls and ceiling and that's something we appreciate in a place.

I know we can't pay much, but we have a lot of love to give.

Hope you're somewhere out there, mystery dream apartment.

xoxo.

Dark days

Last week we found out we have bed bugs and are being evicted within an hour of each other. The reason we've been given for being evicted is renovation and the landlords have family moving in. Guess what? FALSE.

Everyone took a bag of stuff and left the apartment to consider what to do to get rid of the infestation before our slated move out date, November 1st.

The more we researched the worse everything seemed to be, Horror stories of ever adapting bed bugs resilient to plastic and fumigation. I lived in the clothes my dad got me the day I had to do my laundry for 3 days. I've been living out of a plastic bag.

We wanted to leave in October instead then had a mixup and ended up setting the move out date for Sept 1st- like 2 days from now. Our stuff needs to stay in the apartment for a number of weeks while the poison kills the insects so that isn't an option.

Unfortunately, the apartment has already been listen on craigslist here with a move in date set for as soon as September!

So not only do they think we are leaving in 2 days, they expect someone to move in to an apartment untreated for bed bugs, without renovating and no sign of their family taking the place over!

What the fuck?

Day old

Stripped of my possessions I reenter this world anew- raw and uncomfortable. All my shit is temporarily out of commission and the reality of this has just hit me. Autonomy out the window. Goodbye place to hang my hat. I know that material crap does not a whole person make, but as a chronic anxiety sufferer there’s a certain amount of stuff that simply must. be. accessible. My chosen reality has been carefully erected with small totems indicating “safety” i.e, all my DVDs are on a shelf and when I flip a turd, there they be offering precious calm. Having bedbugs is kind of like having all your possessions lit on fire. When grabbing easily washable clothes yesterday I took stock of everything that’s been exposed/is susceptible to bed bugs- the fabric cases holding my guitar pedals and cords, my guitar amp, my shoes, bed, chest of drawers, bags, vinyl, furniture, books-fuck everything. Feels uncomfortable. That’s the best word for it. Uncomfortable.

So to then go buy new clothes and walk around Toronto with nothing to do, nowhere to go holding nothing but a small plastic bag with a cell phone charger and a brand new pair of underwear is pretty bleak. A huge thank you to my parents for their invaluable wisdom, (mom, “spray the apartment, and RUN”) and their help.

And at night I fall asleep sitting up because I just crapped out a panic attack (literally and figuratively) and where's my fucking Ativan keeps racing through my mind and god I have to fucking work in the morning but not like this I won't. You know those nights when there's a phantom vice grip on your chest and you don't know why or how to relax enough for it to slip away and you've just moved out of bed bug farm to find yourself smack dab in the middle of cockroach alley and they are fucking big and how was this such a problem in Toronto and how did I live for 4 years in slum apartments without ever realizing?

Sleep.

Day break

Day out

I have a witness, goddamn it. I have categorical proof of how difficult it is to avoid parkdale hobo propositions without talking. Find Kate and ask her.

Today on the subway a dude in his forties shuffled across the platform to tell me I'm pretty. He then proceeded to tell me to go to school, work hard and get a good job because "now's your time". With every word he advanced till he was within an arms reach, leering toothlessly. I kept Buster Keatoning at him which he didn't respond to (as in he didn't respond to my responses, which leads me to think he was actually coming on to the bench I was sitting on.) and was equally unaware of the general reception his nearness got. One example being when my dear chum interjected with, "Um, we're kind of on our way to a funeral" and was greeted with more smiles from the dude. And equally unaware again when we threw our arms up to keep him from sitting on our laps. Presumably to coo more at the bench/my tits.

Today was a Lynchian nightmare. A homogenous soup of hideous images flashing by. I saw a woman shitting on a restaraunt while a man who worked there forcefully tried to eject her (for the record, she refused to get up until she was done. Atta girl.) I saw the rain refracting off the tears of mourning friends while family bickered over waiting in lines to get in to chapel, dissatisfied with nothing. Unhealthy gums looking to connect with young teeth. The thought that life potentially does not get any easier was discussed over dinner tonight and for some reason that makes shit easier.
Don't you think?

...Don't answer. I'm scared of your reply.

Day in

Concessions have been made, are being made, will continue to be made.
IT all starts with that weird empty feeling that grows in the throat. And that which is at first a manageable inconvenience begins a slow disintegration into a nuisance, then a bore, then a pain, then an agony and soon you're talking at work because you're sick of writing, and you're talking to your mother because you miss her voice sometimes.

And I don't even want to talk I want to fucking SING. I want to sing at work and in the shower and while I'm in the car and at stupid karaoke and when my friends are sad and when my band mates want to rehearse and when people ask me to play shows and when I hear music in my head and when I write a song and when I just want to fucking sing something!

Seeing the specialist on Thursday. They will numb the back of my throat and insert a camera. They also may put a camera down the back of my throat through my sinuses. Not sure which yet. After I find out what the actual problem is (inflammation or callouses or something hazardous and mysterious and unimaginable) I can figure out how to treat it; speech therapy, singing lessons, extended horrific silence...

Please let it be nothing. Blame it on my crappy singing technique and let me carry on.

Day OK

So I started learning sign language. I started learning sign language while watching an indie filipino version of the Step Up franchise starring deaf actor/dancers called Dinig Sana Kita. I had already learned "please" "thank you" "I'm sorry" "stay" "friend" "love" "children" and "is this about the salary" before I realized the futility of learning sign language when no one else actually knows it. Maybe if everyone watches this film we can all be on the same page about it.

...I also learned how to say lesbian. I don't think that will ever come in handy, but you never know.