What I wrote this morning:
Eventually a ‘friend’ of Jim’s came to the truck while I was there alone, and invited me to the park nearby. I went with him. I think he called himself Peter, but he looked a lot like Patrick Swayze. This was before Swayze became famous.
To be continued…
Peter and I used the playground in the park to work out. I remember admiring how his body reminded me of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, as he worked out on the monkey bars. Jim had let me know a number of times, that he felt guilty about having sex, so I went to Peter’s apartment thinking I’d spare Jim further temptation and the ensuing torment. Jim seemed only to see a sexual appetite in me, and nothing else. Who would want a girlfriend that is nothing but a bad influence on him?
Peter’s apartment was a disaster, and I helped him clean it up. Toward the end of the cleaning, I arranged the eggs in his fridge, and he had a fit, yelling “How am I supposed to know which ones are fresh now?” He sent me down to the supermarket for more. On my way back, I took the stairs, to burn off my adrenaline, and get exercise. He lived near the top of a high rise, so it was 23 floors or so up to his apartment. As I came out of the stairwell, I saw him sitting in the public hallway, sulking. He grew very angry, yelling at me “You took the stairs? I’m waiting for you and you take the stairs?”. He grabbed the eggs and threw them. We both cleaned them off the wall.
I don’t remember exactly what the STD test was for, but at one point, I was in and out of a gynecologist’s office to assuage Peter’s demand that I be tested for, I don’t know what, HIV? I’m pretty sure it was HIV. For some reason, the doctor wouldn’t straight out give me the test, and Peter stormed into her office yelling, demanding that I be given the test. He was escorted out by security guards.
I remember working for a day labor agency in factories at that time, and once I ate a lot of apples, went to the factory, was working on a conveyor belt, putting stickers on products, and I had what I imagine to be like birth pain. I’ve never given birth, so I’ll never know for sure what it’s like to have a baby, but that pain was all I could take. At the time, I didn’t know what was wrong with me, just that I rushed to the bathroom umpteen times, sat on the toilet, and pushed, and gas came out, and I’d go back to my station, until the pain cropped up again. Eventually it subsided, and I realized it must have been all those apples I gorged on, giving me gas.
When I got ‘home’, I told Peter how my day went, in tears, and he suggested a relaxing bath. I remember sitting in that bath to this day, because it was an extremely rare few moments of peace, around that guy. Before long, he’d be threatening to throw my clothes out the window for something or other. One time, he had a friend over, and I took that as an opportunity to leave him. I was afraid he might throw me out the window, if I intimated that I wanted to leave him, but I figured, with his friend there, I’d maybe be safer.
I guess I was right, because after I said, in front of his friend, that I was leaving, he gave me $25 and wished me well. I beelined to a shelter. So what if there was a woman waving a knife around at bedtime. It was as safe as it would get, and I definitely preferred the shelter, to the pressure cooker that living with Peter was.
There was a day shelter we women would go to, a house. The night shelters would kick us out during the day, and it gets very cold in the winter in Toronto. Some shelters let you stay in during the day. When I had to go to the day shelter, I would usually go up to the bedroom where a lot of mattresses were on the floor, and veg out, or I would go into the basement, into the disused shower area, and just pass time. I remember masturbating there once, surreptitiously. I felt that I needed to. Just once. I was astonished at myself. I was like a stray animal.
At one night shelter, we were many women in one room, on bunk beds, with no air circulation, and one woman had a horrible cough. That was gross, and then, when I got my duffel bag from lockup, I saw that the staff had stolen my two nice belts. Another shelter I stayed in, was Nellie’s. I don’t remember the names of the other ones. Nellie’s was homey. You didn’t have to be out during the day there, if I’m remembering correctly. There was another one, another house, where they had a clothing room. I think that’s where I got a long insulated coat, that I eventually found out was housing at least one brown recluse spider. I have scars on my left calf, from sores that spider gave me. Colorful volcanic sores.
While I lived in that big house, I got a job, working at a sandwich kiosk called Ruffage, in a mall downtown. On my first day I guess, I see an old woman and what looks like a middle aged man come in to work as staff. The man says that it’s refreshing to see a woman wearing a skirt for a change, referring to the skirt I got from the clothing room at the shelter. Later, I say to the old woman that she’s got a nice son, or something like that. The mistake I made, as it turned out, was calling him her son. She informed me he was her husband, and she was fuming. Later, I saw her in the mall smoking. I don’t remember when smoking was allowed in malls, but I guess it was, because she was, angrily fuming, literally, sucking in smoke.
There was a piece of cheesecake, in a glass display case, with no refrigeration, and I mentioned that it should be kept refrigerated. I was told it didn’t need to be, and my concern was dismissed. One day, on my break, I ate that piece of cake, and let me tell you I didn’t sleep that night. My teeth chattered, in one of the upper bunks in the room at the shelter, and a sweet woman below me made about 8 trips down to fetch me large glasses of water. Then I ended up throwing that water up in a hot shower, like a geyser. I didn’t make it to work the next day I was so jittery. When I made it back, I was fired, and given a cheque.
One shelter I stayed at in Montreal, several times, was Auberge Madeleine. At first, it was a battered women’s shelter. That was how I was introduced to it. Charlie had beaten me, when he discovered that I was packed to leave him, and I’d felt sticky blood in my hair on top of my head. I went to a hospital because I’d heard of people falling unconscious due to concussions, and I wanted to clear it with a doctor. The doctor stood over me, behind where I sat, examining my head, and he very calmly said “You’re boyfriend did this to you, didn’t he?” I had initially lied, about having bumped my head on something, but his manner commanded that I tell it like it really was, and I said yes.
He sent me up to see a social worker on the next floor up, and she got on the phone, set me up with something I’d never heard of – a battered women’s shelter, and then she called the police, who escorted me to get my belongings from Charlie’s (and my) apartment. Charlie sat there in his wheelchair calling “f***ing bitch" over and over, in front of the two police officers, as I gathered my bags. Then they drove me to the shelter, and the following morning, I had a shower, and as I blow dried my hair in front of a mirror, I saw an indigenous Indian chief, in full headdress staring back at me. This lasted a minute or two.
The shelter pampered me for a couple of weeks and then I was off to the agency, to get work stripping, somewhere in Quebec. I danced especially well that time, but someone stole most of my belongings, as often would happen in the strippers’ world. The real trouble though, was that as soon as I felt my life was fruitful and calm again, I would reach out to Charlie to share my good fortune with him. I don’t know how I rationalized that. I have no idea. Stupidity I guess, or some other explanation I’m unaware of. I would end up going back to Auberge Madeleine, after it became a shelter for homeless women.
I hadn’t known homeless shelters existed at one point, when I sought to kill myself because I was homeless, without money or job, and thought I would die or be killed in the Toronto winter. I stumbled upon the fact that homeless shelters existed, in a library, where I looked up ways to die, and found, as the library closing signal flashed (the lights flickered), a listing for a crisis line. I asked a librarian if I could use a phone to call it, and she listened in, heard that I didn’t have a bus ticket or money to get to the shelter, and she opened up her purse and gave me a bus ticket.
Next thing I knew, I was told to help myself to toast, peanut butter, jam, and tea, at the shelter, in the office, as a staff member heard me out on what was happening in my life. I was in heaven. Anne had kicked me out, and was probably happy believing I’d get chewed up and spat out, on the streets, but there I was, safe and warm, much to my surprise.
i sincerely hope he doesnt do that again.
