LIVING PROOF

There’s a chalk outline where they’re going to widen the sidewalks at Thurlow and Burnaby in an attempt to get people to stop driving through the intersection. The island on the west side of Thurlow just isn’t doing the trick. As a pedestrian, I get a little ticked off when people blatantly ignore the signs and drive around the island, but not enough to lose sleep on it, if for no other reason, I’ve been in a car trying to get to my place and felt perfectly justified driving through. But I live here damn it.

Is it me, or are there more homeless people on the streets since the Safe Streets Act passed? This morning a guy wrapped in a blanket honed in on me as soon as I put the key in the lock of The Shop. “S’cuse me, S’cuse me,” he half said.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry…” I said, trying to block out his demands, his requests, and his needs. “There’s nothing I can do to help you right now.”

He was up in my face as I turned the key in the lock. “I need to go to the bathroom,” he said. His hair was wiry, springing from his head like plugs; his face, white and clammy. Who knew what the fuck he was on, or why he was wrapped in a blanket at four-thirty in the morning in front of the PayMo. The Catholic in me said I should draw him an Americano from the espresso machine or grab him a slice of banana bread. But you can’t fuck around that early in the morning. Who knew what was concealed beneath that blanket.

“Sorry dude. There’s nothing I can do to help you this early in the morning.” I opened the door just a crack and slid in, locking it behind me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye as I walked into the recesses of the shop, his face against the door, trying to stare me into letting him. I turned on the oven and threw off my outer garments. He had given up by the time I was done putting some music into the CD player.

I was deep into egg washing the croissants when I heard someone banging on the door. At first I thought it was the homeless guy come back for round two, but it was Kermit, on his way home from work at the call center. “Can I have a coffee?” he asked.

“So did you hear I’m moving to Toronto at the end of the month?” Kermit said.

“What?”

“Yeah. I got offered a job there and I took it.”

“Why do I find that unsettling?”

“I understand why don’t you don’t use that green card of yours and move back to the States. I would. Fuck Bush. He can’t stay in power forever.”

“It has nothing to do with Bush.”

“What then?”

“Where ever you go, there you are.”

“Why do I find that unsettling?”

I picked up my new passport from the post office this afternoon. I used my old one for I.D. I took one last look at my old passport before shoving it in a drawer to be shredded. Ironically, I‘m wearing the shirt I had on in my old passport photo. The smile on my face is of a successful person. I had done what I had set out to do – with the exception of a couple things. This was someone who picked up dinner, and bought rounds of drinks; someone who got on planes at regular intervals. Fuck, I really miss that person.

Slowly, the things I brought with me from the States are falling apart or being replaced with new “Canadian” things. Last week I gave my Discman to a girl who works nights at The Shop; she had been reduced to listening to cassettes because she couldn’t afford a new one. Mine has been collecting dust since Craig Valentine gave me his old iPod; how could I let her go without? Soon the only thing left will be the dog.

There’s a part of me that wants to sell what little I have and migrate south with the dog. Right now the idea of being poor in San Francisco appeals to me way more than being poor in Vancouver. At least in San Francisco, you can be poor and anonymous.

“You’ll be back,” I told Kermit as I let him back out onto the street.

“You say to that to everyone.”

“I’m living proof of it.”

GarpinBC