enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Roommates entry: This is LOOOOOONNNNNGGG. My apologies to those who don't like an excess of words! You might want to skim.

Postscript: I didn't expect this entry to occur. I just started writing and it came out. This explains the length. I am actually pleasantly surprised by it, because I've felt sort of *dead* lately. I thought I had completely lost my memory. Today I discovered that it's all still there. I've just been shutting it off, perhaps because I don't want to be reminded of how *small* is my current life. :) Anyhow. A good learning experience, and a good use of a sick afternoon. :)

*****

You know, I was just thinking that instead of writing about being sick and guilty, I should at least attempt a "roommates" entry such as that by teranika.

I'm not sure that I can do it justice. You really have no idea how many roommates I have had. I don't think that I can even remember all of their names. Truly. :)

My first roommates were at camp and at the jobs that I took in the summers once I reached sixteen. Inevitably they were girls who gossiped about me -and about everyone else in sight, and who also stole my clothes. For some reason, people always steal my clothes.

So let's start with university.

1988 DONNA

Living with Donna was interesting. Living in a dorm room with Donna really meant living with Donna's boyfriend Tom, Donna's best friend Norah, and even occasionally whomever Norah was shagging at the moment.

That year was my first year of university. Believe it or not I actually didn't *dislike* Donna. She is the daughter of the former mayor of this fair city in which I live, and in general is an intelligent and interesting person. Her boyfriend, too, was rather nice. Unfortunately he died in a car accident a couple of years later. Even Norah wasn't a bad person, but my goodness was she ever a sloppy drunk. Oh and I didn't really like sleeping in a dorm room with four other people. They weren't designed for that. Let me note though that I was living in Saugeen-Ma!tland Hall at the University of W3stern Ontario at the time, a dormitory of more than 1200 students that made the top five or maybe even top three of one of L3tterman's top ten places to go to to get laid. So you get the picture.

When I think about it I must say that that year was pretty cool, since I spent most of the year studying math in the library or in the cafeteria that they turned into a study hall at night, revealing myself to be the geek that I was at heart. When not studying I would hang out either in the room of my friend Judy, a self-confessed Jewish Princess (though I prefer to think of her as a brilliant diva), or with my next door neighbours Sean and Keith. Sean and Keith were both sophomores, and I was fascinated by them. Keith was obviously gay but not yet out of the closet. He dropped out at the end of that year, moved to NYC, and started fashion school. Go Keith! Sean was a spoiled private school boy who still to this day reminds me of Phillip Seymour Hoffm@n in The Tal3nted Mr. R!pley. When I think of Sean I think of martinis and sports cars and skinny jeans worn with B@ss weejun penny loafers (anyone remember those? I had blue ones AND brown ones). Well meaning guy, though.

1989 CINDY

Don't worry - I won't belabour ALL Of these descriptions. This is rather fun. Cindy always tells the story that I showed up at her place one windy night. I had answered an ad that she had posted in the university centre. As much as I had enjoyed my year in the screw-a-frosh dormitory :), I needed to get out of residence. If I'd been smart I would have moved to one of the girl dormitories, but there were always gigantic waiting lists for those.

And as much as I am loath to admit this, I also enjoyed a pint or two. Cindy's place was just a block away from THE pub in town. I spent every Thursday there pretty much for the remainder of my university days.

Living with Cindy was crazy, because she was a rich, rich, rich 23-year-old who was on her fifth year of attempting to finish a 3-year B.A. in the softest of arts courses she could find. Academic she was not. She had a boyfriend who was on the farm team for a professional baseball team. She had already had a nose job and had been frying her hair blonde for so long that she honestly BELIEVED (and still believes, I must say) that she is a NATURAL BLONDE.

During that year in that house we had four different additional roommates come and go. We had a wall on which we wrote all of the favourite words and expressions that we came across. (SERENDIPITY was the one in the largest hand.) One of our roommates was a trust-fund guy with a dog who was in a fraternity (the guy, not the dog. Although come to think of it...). We would come home from school at least one day a week to see him sprawled out face down on the living room couch, moaning with hangover, in a bathrobe that Cindy dubbed "the coat of many colours." Nice guy but again not exactly an academic. He had a poor old dog called Konan whom he'd let out and forget whilst drunk. Poor Konan would wander the neighbourhood until Brian remembered to go out and yell in his booming voice, waking up the whole neighbourhood, "KOOOOOOOONNNNNAAAANNN.":)

Oh. I forgot to mention that the rent was cheap but I lived in that house in an illegal room that had been built in the basement. It didn't have any windows and was too close to the furnace. I was on scholarship and didn't have much money. :)

**
OK. I can tell that this is going to get WAAAAY too long very quickly.

1990 and 1991-2 I will skip, mostly, I think. They were not very memorable. 1990-1991 I had HORRIBLE roommates. Cindy had finally graduated after that summer and we had lost the house. I moved into an apartment with a guy who was in the military. He was actually not bad. But again, two other roommates moved out over the summer and whilst I was away working he selected two more. Both of them were horrible. I had made the mistake of putting the utility bills in my name and the one girl never paid. The other girl - and I kid not - when I introduced her to my boyfriend at that time leaned in and French-kissed him. The rest of the time she would do weird things like take my ice cream out of the freezer and leave it out on the counter to melt. Scary. She was an opera singer, which initially I had thought was cool. There was something really wrong with her brain. KARLENE.

1992 must be mentioned, actually, I think.

In 1992 I moved in with LISA. This was interesting for a number of reasons. I had gone to school with Lisa when I was 12 and we were living in Niagara Falls. Lisa was and is a very nice girl. (Oddly, she currently has a high-level position in my department, and she's always hassling me to meet her for coffee.) At the same time, Lisa was a VERY, VERY spoiled only child. When we moved in together her parents automatically took all of her stuff to the master suite, leaving me with the little room. There was no discussion. I was telling this story this other day as an example of how I have never learned to stand up for myself or to ask for anything that I want. It's interesting. Lisa had the bad habit of picking up the strangest men. Nothing ever happened with them but she would invite them back to our apartment. One of them was her taxi driver coming back from a club. I hope that she doesn't still do that. :)

1992-1993 WASHINGTON - Women's residence in a former convent.

Yeah. It was as interesting as it sounds. I actually met the most wonderful group of girls from all over the U.S. Most were working as interns. I was working at the Cdn embassy. Their work and their lives were quite interesting. I'll never forget two of the southern belles - Kirkandahl Ava Horne and Celeste Farmer. Truly lovely girls. Kirk's mom flew up biscuits and other treats for us to try. Celeste got me invited to a party for the commencement of the Southeast Conference football season. Kirk got me into the Veteran's Affairs chambers - her uncle was a Senator from Miss. - during the night of Cl!nton's first election win. It was fantastic. Well except for my love life. My love life was screwed up. My boyfriend in Toronto cheated on me and so we broke up, and I commenced a series of ill-fated affairs with a set of men that included some doctor who had been Barbar@ Bush's doctor on a trip to Bosnia. If you want to know the truth, I dated him because he looked like Dr. Bricker from the L0ve Bo@t.

Told you I was pathetic. :) Hmm..that was an interesting year.

1993: Returned to Canada and decided to go to grad school. Grad residence. Lived across the hall from Rocco.

Rocco loved me. Unfortunately I broke his heart. Honestly, he is just about the only guy I actually feel I mistreated during my dating life. He took me to his MBA formal and I got drunk and cried over the rotten guy who had recently used me and dumped me (who was also at the formal, with his latest young thing, incidentally). Very bad scene. I'm utterly ashamed when I think of it. This guy was really grown up. I just wasn't grown up at the time. He even used to make me cookies when he could see that I was stressed or sad, but I never would formally date him because he was not hip or cute, i.e. challenging. Ugh. I was AWFUL.

1994 GAR3TH. Stayed on at Queen's to write a more comprehensive thesis on equalization payments, if you can believe my lameness (transfer of tax points and the like to regions within a federation). (??!!!) Met boyfriend Andrew, who was really cool. Mostly spent the year dawdling and running and lived with SEVEN roommates in a big old house. All of them were interesting and nice in a different way. I'm glad to have known them. My favourite was GAR3TH. Gar3th was the sweetest boy ever. He was in second year and very, very smart. He loved literature and he loved physics. We would sit for hour after hour in his room, talking about philosophy and poetry and, well, life. His dad was a diplomat. I say was because his dad was the Canadian diplomat who was killed in Afghanistan last year. I've tried to contact him in the past and we've been out of touch for a while, but I keep on wanting - without interfering - to let him know that I've been thinking of him. I believe that he now lives in the UK.

1995 Martin, Ottawa

I had moved to Ottawa to start a job at Foreign Affairs. To save money I subleased a room in an old house. I took over a girl called Stephanie's room. It was a cheap place and the people were really nice. The roommate on my floor was a lovely French Canadian girl called Nathalie. She was studying theatre, I think. Charming and fun.

It's really Martin, however, who sticks in my mind. Martin was a Franco-Ontarien carpenter from Sudbury. He was on welfare at the time. For some reason he was living in the upstairs of the house with a bunch of university students, inclusive of Stephanie's brother Ben.

The first day that I was living in the house I went upstairs to ask a question, and I found Martin with a door open to a giant closet that was functioning as his grow-op. I'd never seen anything like this - rather naive - and was kind of shocked when he wrote my name down in his special little book.

At any rate, over time, I basically figured out that Martin was a scared little boy. He was actually a really good carpenter, and wasn't working because he couldn't afford his tools. So I helped him to get some contacts for a couple of jobs, and helped him to buy some tools. I'm not sure if he ever stayed completely off welfare or away from selling pot, but I thought he was a really sweet guy and I had the sense from him that he wanted to work. He was proud of the trade that he had learned from his dad. He just needed a push.

Oh...the years roll on...there are so many.

1995-1997. Mostly I was in S. Korea and in Australia, partly with my boyfriend Andrew. You don't want to know the roommates I had, especially on the cane farm. (I was a bit frightened at times, actually.) I'll never forget the town in which there were many poor, abused aboriginal people (just like here), and watching a neighbour drag his wife down the stairs of the house by her hair (both drunk). There was also that older half-Chinese, half-Italian mafioso businessman landlord in Melbourne who was in his fifties, had thee most HIDEOUS curly rat tail, and who continually tried to seduce me. (He was the first, I guess, of my older man landlord not-a-chance-in-hell would-be seducers.)

In S. Korea I lived with a woman who spoke not a WORD of English. This is how I learned that people can communicate only with their hearts. I felt that we were friends, in spite of the language barrier. She would cook me lovely food, take me to visit her mother's restaurant, and otherwise was a sweet woman. She wanted to be an esthetician, and her boyfriend was putting her through beauty school. She would walk around in a pink robe with fur edging, and had two little Shi-Tzus. I've always loved dogs but I must say that yappy little things that continually pooed on the floor and who only understood Korean commands were not really my cup of tea. :) The woman and I used to get drunk on really bad Korean alcohol and beer - always poured very delicately by my companion, of course - eat an excess of these great Korean shrimp-flavoured cheesy-like things (or these AWESOME melon-flavoured popsicles that they have there - it is very humid there, after all), and pour out our lovelorn hearts in a language the other couldn't understand.

There's so much more there, of course, but that would make this even LONGER. :)

1997 DANNO

The ill-fated Danno. Dan was one of the sweetest boyfriends I have ever had. He was lovely and kind and a wonderful cook. He was also a pushover. We had two of his friends living with us and let me tell you that when you're lying in bed and your boyfriend is talking like a girl on the phone as yet another of his girl pals spills out her heartbreak to him - I mean this was EVERY night - it wears on you. Dan was really the perfect half gay man. I kind of wish that that one had worked. Oh! I almost forgot to mention that one of Dan's friends who lived with us was Jen, who worked as a private eye. She did dectective work for a national law enforcement agency and used to regale us with tales of crouching low in her car all day on stakeouts and peeing into these plastic pop bottle receptacles that she had fashioned. Uh...colourful girl. I liked her a great deal. :)

1997-1999 SHAUN

Well we all know how this one turned out. At the end of my relationship with Dan I had decided to become a "professional" marathon runner. Really on a whim. And I had gone off to London and met Shaun, and also then moved to Vancouver to both run and go to law school. Yeah, I know. THAT was yet another of my brilliant plans. Shaun joined me shortly after.

Over the period when I was in and out of Vancouver and Aus. I had a bunch of roommates. The first set was a group inclusive of Patrick, a Hong Kong ex-pat with a great sense of humour. Unfortunately Patrick splattered grease from his cooking EVERYWHERE. He also never brushed his teeth. Eew. Kylie was also there for a while. She was my wonderful, wonderful Zimbabwean/South African literature grad student friend. She wrote the best poems. She sadly fell in love with a complete jackass and moved in with him, leaving us to find a roommate at a bad time. Ah well.

After that house my best girl friend from university NICOLA had moved out to Vancouver to start her teaching career. She had quite a history so I knew that living with her was going to be a trial...and it was. Before she had moved out I had lived for two months with some runner guys whose whole house SMELLED of dirty running shoes and whose furniture consisted of a BIG ASS tv, however, so Nicola looked good.

Nicola fortunately was not at home often, so when Shaun came over from Aus it was not a problem. Nicola had a rich doctor boyfriend. Only problem was that Dr. Jim was a hypochondriac. Whenever he'd fly somewhere a couple of hours away he'd complain of jetlag for weeks. We started to call him JETLAG JIM. This name stuck forever. Nic is no longer with him. She also no longer lives in that apartment that we painted in all sorts of bright colours whilst drinking lots of wine as I agonized over my decision to move to Australia to live with Shaun. I miss Nic, even though she's still living in Van, and our lives have really diverged. She had a kid with sperm bank sperm two years ago. It was an interesting process.

I almost forgot...Before Nic there had also been the house of seven with English Kate and that crazy French-Canadian girl who again stole my clothes and lied about it (can't remember her name; felt sorry for her). And in that house also was Ross, the comedian. I still love Ross. What's not to like about a comedian? Comedians I've found are often deep-down sad people, and sad people are often very smart. Ross and I used to watch films together, sprawled out over the living room floor.

AUSTRALIA: SHAUN, Tim, Trevor, and then VANDA

I can't really fault Shaun. Well, except for the fact that it turns out that he is a bit of a SLEAZE.

I moved over there. Things weren't so rosy between us. It ended. For a while we had the best running enclave in his house with his two best pals. If I'd met Trevor first for sure Trevor and I would have been a match. But that was before I had the sense to realize that the guys who chase are not usually the best catches. I still think fondly of those days and nights of cooking and eating and laughing together. And of course there was my great job at the High Commission and the great people whom I met there, inclusive of one of my dear friends - Alan.

Sooo...Here's where it gets interesting. After Shaun and I broke up I HAD to move. Vanda was this older woman who looks like L@dy Heather from CSI, only with red hair. She had a son from an early marriage and a house and was actually whip-smart. She worked at the university as a scientist.

Tim also had a Ph.D. in biology and I believe was working in the same lab at the Austr@lian National University. He and Vanda seemed to love each other, but their relationship was kind of weird.

As it turns out, Vanda was kind of weird. She offered for me to rent out the garage bedroom that she had constructed for her son who was away at school. Since it was close to work and close to the running trails I was eager. She became very controlling over the bathroom and the kitchen, however, and I never felt comfortable there. She also did ecstasy regularly, and since I'm not a drugs person I'm really not too "down" with that. To each his own on that one, though. A student, Claire, from France and from Vanda's lab came to live with us for a while and that made things better. It also turned out - I found out later - that Shaun had had an affair with Vanda at one point. It seemed that there was a certain possessiveness of Shaun on Vanda's part, and in a weird way I almost felt as though she wanted me to be there so that she could be a part of the demise of our relationship. At first I thought she was a girlfriend, but pretty quickly I felt that she was prying and intrusive during a period of heartbreak for me. (Honestly, I hate to tell you this but there really were not many people with whom Shaun had NOT had affairs. Unfortunately he did this on at least three occasions of which I am aware, with women who were then the partners of three of his best friends.)

Anyhow...moving on..

Well there's much more to tell but you must be sooooooo bored by now, if you've even continued reading. And of course the last eight years or so were mostly spent either with C. in self-imposed study exile and attendant depression (witness the early entries of this diary), or by myself (major sigh of relief!). I haven't even told you about my two favourites apart from C., but maybe a few fond memories need to be held close right now. I'm talking about my theatre, amnesty international, depressive Andrew, and also of my artist friend Katinka.

So yes, I've lived with shi-tzus and comics and Olympian sex addicts (or something), and Natchez Belles/homecoming queens and pot-dealing men on pogey. And I haven't even told you about the alcoholic in Toronto when I had moved to live near to my boyfriend Andrew (and make my first try at the private sector), who was so crazy and mean (the alcoholic) that I was forced to move temporarily into a rooming house with REALLY old welfare dudes who brought home things like ENTIRE DEER to put in the freezer. (Funny what you can learn from old welfare dudes, if you are willing to listen. Each man, however humble, has his story. :-) I mean that. I liked them and they were nice to me once they knew that I accepted them as they were.)

Really, as I write this, EVEN MORE memories start to erupt. I think that maybe this explains why I've started to RECOIL from other human beings. I've just lived with too many of them. But my GOD though did I ever have fun. So many nights of good conversations getting to know someone equally new and complex and crazily human. Like Leslie, the older woman (probably the age that I am now) from the southwest who used to sing and play guitar in the rose garden behind the convent residence in Washington whilst we smoked cigarette after cigarette together. She had nursed her sister through MS and had raised her kids young and her husband had told her to go off and do what she wanted to do: it was her time. So she became an intern in Washington. She was beautiful. She used to say, "EB, I predict for you that there will be many men all over the world who will love you. You might have a difficult time settling down, but you will live." Well, she was correct at least about the second part. :)

It all kinda reminds me of what a beautiful life it can be. Now I'm thinking that this might be why I needed a sick day during which to reflect and write. My mind has been feeling so compressed lately. My memory has felt weak or at least inaccessible, and my heart quite empty. When I started to write all of this down I was surprised by its existence. I feel a bit like a half person these days. I don't know where I got to. Not thinking and suppression are good sometimes - even essential - but I realize that remembering can also light such a spark! (Not to mention make it very clear as to why I quit men. :)) I think that ELizabeth Barr2tt can be credited with the following: Light tomorrow with today! This exercise was good for that. :) I recommend it. Thanks, T (and whoever started this)!

12:35 p.m. - 2008-07-23

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