January 13, 1998.
It's really been four years since I began my last semester of high school. Such knowledge makes me kind of confused and scared. It's one thing to say, "Well, four years ago I was eighteen." That makes me feel pretty young, actually. But high school was forever ago. I have another old, dear friend from those by-gone days getting married. As of June, one of my best friends of all time is going to be Mrs. Something or other (her boyfriend is nice; I forget his last name), and they're going to be moving out west because her boyfriend/fiance is getting a big-shot high-paying real career type job. It's terrifying. Real life just sneaks up on you with some soft-soled shoes while you're warm and naked and asleep under five layers of blankets, innocent and unsuspecting creature that you are, and then BAM! Reality just broke your legs with a sledgehammer. I can't say as it's an especially nice way to do things, but people (at least, me) do have a funny way of overlooking the obvious spectres of time and transition until "suddenly" (and nothing is, really, ever all that sudden) you've got a lifestyle disaster on your hands.
It's making me think about my own life, of course, and I'm wondering if I'm not ready for a couple of changes. I'm debating whether or not I should continue dying my hair purple. I keep thinking, well, it's been three years, it's crunchy and nasty and I'm not happy with the way I'm shedding... I should probably let it go fallow for awhile. My hair is protesting the number of times I've had to bleach it out, and that, I can definitely say, is a vice I'm quitting cold turkey. And strangely enough, it's already helping... I'm washing and conditioning every day (versus washing, or conditioning, but never both, such as to keep the dye from rinsing out too quickly) and my hair seems lively and bouncy and less prone to me ripping a comb through nigh-infinite knots every morning while I scream and beg to all sorts of gods I don't normally acknowledge for mercy. I love standing out in a crowd, but I'm sort of examining that love from a "good attention, bad attention" sort of thing, and wondering if I'm not just an exhibitionist. Having purple hair is really neat, and people are always complimenting me on it (I'll miss that terribly... I'll be running after my vanity as it speeds away from the boarding platform on a big old steam train, shouting "I love you, vanity! I loooooove yoooooouuuuu!"), but... but.
I think, if I really want to stand out, it should be for other reasons. Like unavoidable fame. I want highly visible, exceedingly adoring (and therefore woefully irritating) fans to chase after me, offering me all sorts of sexual favours (of which I shall be of too tremendously high a prudishly moral character to accept, earning all the more adoration for myself), home-baked cheesecakes (which I shall accept, as well as share), and whatever else a sqealing (versus screaming) mob/horde can throw together on the average day. I also want to become terribly beautiful, so that even if I'm not all that famous, people can still see me looming, skulking, hovering, gliding, parambulating, or whatever down the street, moisten slightly, gaze longingly, and I can giggle and blush and run away. I don't know... there are many options. But one can be a freak through entirely different mechanisms than obviously being a freak. My friend Burrhus being an example, as is Caira. They're weirdo geniuses to be sure, and for their own reasons they naturally shine and stand out in crowds from their attention-needing energies, but neither of them have to go to particular effort to look good, stand out, and raise eyebrows (though, of course, occasionally they will take great pains to look shockingly, beautifully, weird...).
It's not that I want to look normal... goodness no. I'm just finding that as I age, I want my shocking achievements to speak for me more than my shocking appearance... and as I work, write, knock 'em dead with essays and master the arts of love, I'm taking more pride in who I am, and it matters a little less if I'm as highly visible. And anyways, I'm still giant ant-ishly huge, with big black boots, a big black coat, a big black briefcase and the sweetest dimples. People still notice me, and remember me, for the things I say and do, as well as the way I look. I'm also trying to rationalize it in terms of expenses, the way a smoker trying to quit her filthy habit would. A jar of dye costs at least twelve dollars, and a jar only lasts about two or three months. And once a year, usually twice, I have to bleach it, and that stuff isn't cheap either. So, you figure I have to buy four jars of dye and two Blondissima kits, and wowsers! -- that's fifty dollars! In a year.
Ok, so that's pathetically cheap. But fifty dollars is a whole lot of whores, if you're in the right country.
Besides, the less time I spend in the bathroom with a tint brush, the less time I'll be able to delay in the really important things, that anyone reading this who is sorely owed some e-mail from me can probably appreciate.
Tomorrow you'll get to read about the latest of my house issues, which is actually the same as everyone's house issues, because in a rare bout of festering unity, we've decided (when we discovered that Jaysen's ceiling has a hole in it that the so-called "handyman" fixed by taping a bucket inside between the ceiling and the roof, which overfilled during the ice storm and began to leak, allowing our discovery of it to occur) that our landlord is evil, and shiftless gadabouts that we are, we're still not going to stand for it.
As of now, though, the man wants me to get to work, so off to work I go.
Yay, money.
Initially, though, the reaction was, "No big deal, there must be a way to patch it." And we, being resourceful enough when applying our skills collectively, started yanking down ceiling tiles to get at the tricky situation in the roof above. However, this was done only to discover that, well, the landlord had actually known about the leaky roof, because he'd gotten his so-called "handyman" to patch it up -- and patch it up he did, using some tape, and a bucket, which he'd wedged up inside the ceiling. Said bucket had done its job reasonably well over the years -- holding water whenever it rained or melted, which eventually evaporated, and only recently had begun to overfill. In fact, it was still quite overflowing when we found it, and toppled over, dumping its freezing, scummy contents all over Lesleigh, who'd been heading up our investigation. The fault with this otherwise ingenius (sigh) solution happened to be that over time, as the watery contents of the bucket collected, leaked, and evaporated, it soaked the insulation the ceiling, and the woody structure of the roof, causing everything to rot. At the point of our discovering the situation at hand, the roof was well on its way towards the saggy decline that would result in actually caving in.
What could we do but complain? That's the sort of thing that landlords are there for -- facilitating repairs and dealing with the situations that come when your house falls apart, the stove explodes, the window needs fixing, or your pipes have burst (or whatever else comes in the natural deterioration of your apartment over time). So, our property managers (who in more ways resemble residence fellows) called the landlord, who ultimately sent out his handyman again, who showed up only to empty the bucket, put it back up inside the ceiling space, and seal the hole with some tape. Then he left. Now, the problem is no longer with the simple leak. The problem is that eventually the roof is going to rot and fall apart, and one way or another, the landlord has screwed himself into a situation where, like it or not, he needs a new roof on that part of the house (our house was built in sections... I live in the original, main building, Jaysen lives in Tiny Town, which is only one story, and there are two more different sections as well as the three levels of the main house, for a total of seven including the warehouse). So, we called him back, and asked for some real effort. As much as a bucket kind of fixes the ceiling situation, it isn't really a solution as much as just an obstruction, and we pay something like five thousand dollars a month for the privilege of more than a humble bucket in our ceiling.
The response was less than wonderful. The handyman was promised to us the next morning; an event for which we waited many hours, only for a depressing lack of fix-it guy. He does this a lot, and the landlord knows it... but he's rather a soft touch, and the handyman is his long-time friend, so he doesn't do anything about it (like say, fire the apathetic bastard and hire someone who will, say, do his job properly), so we seldom get anything done properly. We called again, more insistent and angry-like this time, and the response of our landlord was significantly less than reassuring -- in fact, it was absolutely crappy. He told us that Jaysen should be thankful if a leaky roof and damaged property were the worst things he ever experiences in life, and that it was silly of us to be concerned about our ceiling rotting apart when Ottawa was in a state of emergency, and people were suffering far worse hardships. Which was stupid, because it wasn't like the fix-it man was out rescuing the elderly or assisting the hydro crews in repairing fallen power lines -- he was probably somewhere way more comfortable, doing very little more than enjoying himself. And anyway, it is a big problem, and if it has to wait because of the storm, well -- fine. But it has to be dealt with eventually, because as time goes on, it will only become more serious.
Thus rather marks our discontent with the situation at hand. As much as we enjoy living at H'Tog, we certainly understand the situation that, before we moved in, the landlord simply could not rent the building out. Its reputation was so bad because of the spa/brothel and the ravers living downstairs, that no one else would consider it. He was paying taxes on a vacant building for something on the order of a year, couldn't sell it for anything close to what he wanted for it, and he wasn't improving his situation by utterly neglecting the maintenance of his property. We have endless complaints about the house, and nothing's getting done, even though he promised (when we moved in) that he would supply materials, money, and the specialized labour (when we couldn't do it ourselves, although we do have someone quite skilled at electrical work, plumbing, and carpentry living with us) for renovations, so long as we took care of the actual planning and work. This has never happened, and we've done so much work on our own. Still, it remains that a lot of the house is in rotten shape, and from a certain perspective, our landlord is an honest to goodness slumlord. Granted, there are no bugs or rats, but if you plug a power bar of any reputation into the wall, it will immediately light up in warning of the dreadful wiring situation.
The basement has no heat. We're unsure as to why. Our original stove in the kitchen downstairs (which I still will not use), since replaced, was kept on constantly in the winter by the ravers, with the door open, because they were always chilly. I mean, there isn't ice downstairs, but it isn't comfortable. There are two bedrooms down there, one which is warm, and the other which is not. The cold one is vacant, and although the landlord wants to know when we're going to fill it, all we can do is tell him that the temperatures on that floor are illegal, and it was only patience and good-naturedness that kept the person living there in that room as long as he did before he took the warm room (originally the home of Pixiegirl, who has taken up residence in the third floor, vacated by Caira and Mefisto at the beginning of the month). It's getting intolerable, and we're not sure what to do. We're beginning to contemplate legal action, although we want to be fair and reasonable about this. The point may come though, where we have to produce the ultimatum that, frankly, we're sick of the lack of action on his part, and we know for a fact that if we move out, he's not going to get anyone else to rent this building, and he's not going to be able to sell it for anything near the price he'd want. So, it might come to our having to leave, and screw all who oppose us. Even though we love the house, and the cafe is finally coming into fruitful existence in God's Living Room, we have to think about the happiness of everyone living here, and that was the decision of the emergency meeting.
We want this house to be safe, comfortable, and legal. We want to enjoy it, and whatever we have to do, will necessarily be done. Even if he just reduces our rent so that we can afford to fix things ourselves, we'd consider that a major act of reasonable behaviour and actual responsibility. If that doesn't happen, we'll find a home, or some homes, that will be more accomodating.
Be that as it may, I'm delighted by what Caira has decided to do. She feels bad that my birthday was pretty much another average day... I was on a bus to Toronto for most of it, and there really wasn't any opportunity to properly celebrate a Christmas Eve birthday. So, tonight, because she misses me, and because she's a wonderful human being, she's getting us all together for a sort of un-birthday bash. We're going to play NTN, swill down pub fare, have a jolly time, and I even get a present (gads!). I'm giddy with pleasure; Caira, Mefisto, Broken, Charlotte, Burrhus (if he can make it) and Mary are coming out tonight for intimate happiness. So, before I'm cut off from my computer, VCR, civilization and joy, I can at least have a wonderful evening with some of the people I absolutely love best. Caira is amazing (yes, she's reading this) -- I'm a happy boy.
I have to go to work. Hopefully I can update the Snivel tomorrow, assuming somehow we still have electricity.
I have to go out for breakfast, but I needed to reassure anyone who was, say, worried about me freezing to death, and entertain and inform the rest of you.
Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.
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