2
"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
"Cockroaches," Marty Goldman muttered, taking the first
sip of his double-double coffee. The familiar flavour cheered
him up slightly as he lit up his joint.
The park along Vine Avenue, a few streets down from Marty's new
place, looked decent, a slightly big space to hang out. Behind him
on the bench was the familiar metallic brown barrier that ran
alongside the south part of the railway. On the north side of the train tracks
were the Stockyard stores that were built less than a decade before.
Just north of them was St. Clair Avenue. Marty wasn't too familiar
with that part of town, had only walked or biked through it a few
times. The railroad cut it off from the Junction. The characters of
both places were fundamentally different.
As the joint and coffee simultaneously reached their halfway points,
Marty noticed some people entering the park, a woman and two little
kids. He put the joint out. He always thought it was rude to smoke
when kids were around, even if they mistook the smell for a literal
skunk, it was always awkward for their parents.
Marty put the joint in his pocket. He had had enough for now. The
coffee high was starting to hit him too. He felt pretty good.
Despite the news of his multiple insectoid room-mates, he had a lot to be
thankful for.
"Finally away from there," he said in his mind as
he made his way down to the next street. It was a quiet residential
area, home largely to families and middle-aged people from what he
had seen so far. Two new neighbours had already smiled at him when
he had been making his way to the park originally. The place seemed
friendly. "Not like back home where they look at you funny
for even nodding to them."
Only a few neighbours ever said "hi" to Marty back then, only a select few that the family knew. These
people were friendly but Marty didn't particularly like them, not
because they were ever rude or disrepectful, but more because Marty
found that he had nothing to say to them. When he was a child they were
the adults, and by default they were smarter than him. As
he grew to adulthood himself he gradually stopped seeing them this
way. Once he went to University and started expanding his knowledge
he started realizing how little these older people actually knew
about the world. Aside from his father he had very few people he
could have a discussion with on topics that required some amount of
critical thought. It was in this environment that Marty had started
smoking weed. He knew people at University and some other local people in his
neighbourhood who did it a lot. In high school, even though he grew
up in the general Jane and Finch area where weed was plentiful, he
never got into it. It was only later in his college years. Being
active in student activism and local politics had taken a lot out of
him. He felt immense stress from the various battles and struggles
he had taken part in. Readily available was the herb that calmed him
down, made him think clearer at times, and helped him deal with the
daily isolation that he had encountered after graduation. He needed out,
he needed somewhere else, but the free food and bed in his dad's
house made things too easy.
On the way back to his house Marty took in the unfamiliar sights around him. He wandered through a back alleyway that was wide enough to fit one car at a time. A bunch of the houses had their garages in the back near their yards facing these back alleys. Grafitti, both crude and beautiful, graced the walls of the backs and sides of buildings and garages. A bunch of signs and signatures that Marty didn't recognize ran from one end of this alley to the other. Morning Glory climbing vines ran through some of the fences, their vines twisting around everything they could grab at, and their flowers of white, pink, purple and blue blooming in the daylight. At Marty's street he turned a corner from the old synagouge, admiring the Star of David that was set at the top like how crosses are usually on church steeples. In front of one house was a Canadian flag, a Scottish one on another; a Maltese one, a Polish one, a Ukranian one, and on one house was a painting on the door that resembled something aboriginal.
"Individuality," thought Marty, sighing in
contentment. "No, here there is no crime, no
by-law, against those who express themselves."
When Marty arrived back in the house, this time noticing that the
door at the top of the small stairs, the door to the kitchen area had no knob on it, just an empty hole where
the knob should be. Through that hole he saw his new room-mate, Richard, sitting at the
table.
Richard nodded at him as he came in.
"Hey," Marty replied, raising his coffee cup. "I
found Tim's."
"Ah, good work!"
Marty went into his room and started unpacking. He only had a few
clothes. He was going to go back to his dad's and get more stuff in
the following week. His closet was filled up with the few items he
had brought in only a few minutes. Marty put on some music on
youtube to help him out. The whole time he was frantically turning
about to look for cockroaches. Every now and then he thought he saw
something from the corner of his sight, but whenever he turned it was
gone, either had run off or had never been there to start with.
The last thing Marty unpacked from his hiker's backpack was his work
uniform, a black security uniform, a sort of mock tuxedo with a
clip-on tie. He hated working at that condo on Bay Street, but now
more than ever he had to keep the job. It had been only two months
since he first got the job, lucky enough to be hired by the building
itself. Currently he worked four nights (overnights) a week and
then had three days off. The first day off was spent trying to
re-orient his sleeping schedule by staying awake for half the day and
then sleeping until the next morning. This was usually his own free
time where he would work on his writing.
Marty had been working on a novel. It had started out as a single
short story of less than twenty pages, but Marty's imagination was on
a role, and the short story was tacked on as the introduction to a
grand epic about a modern North America that had never been
colonized by Europeans, a sort of alternate history. His story was called Windigos and told the tale of
native Indians (never called Indians though since Columbus never came along to make that misidentification) who had kept their land and transformed into new kinds
of societies. Marty had a lot of creative leeway. The narrative
switched multiple times between various characters, men and woman
(but mostly men since Marty always had a hard time writing female
characters), over thousands of miles of distance, from the advanced
oligarchs of the Pacific Coast, to the Five Nations Empire in the
Eastern woodlands, and the refugee people from the Southwest, the Hopi,
who flee from an unknown power in the South (will be revealed to be
the Aztec in one of the later chapters).
"Being here will give me the time and space to finish this
book," Marty thought to himself as he looked up from his
desk.
Someone messaged him online.
Jimmy: Yo marty, want to come over and have some beers and
bong?
"Shit," he said, checking the time on the computer. It
was already almost six.
Marty: Kind of late? I was out, went to the bank, then went
for a walk.
Jimmy: So? We can order a pizza or something.
Marty: hmmmm...no, I don't think so. I just moved into the
new place. Pretty tired right now. Maybe this coming Tuesday?
Jimmy: Ah right, you moved. Forgot. Why didn't you call me?
I could've helped.
Marty: There was one bag. I'm going back to get more at my
dad's in a week. I am going to buy some new stuff soon.
Jimmy: K.
Marty:
Just
found out...I have cockroaches.
There was a pause before Jimmy replied.
There was a pause before Jimmy replied.
Jimmy:
Ah
shit. You know what helps with that?
Marty:
An
exterminator? I don't have money for that right now.
Jimmy:
Vinegar,
mop with vinegar and wipe your tabletops with it. Do it once a week.
We did it all the time when I was a kid. Also, catnip is good for
keeping them away.
Marty:
Ah,
alright. I'm going shopping soon. Thanks!
Jimmy:
No
prob. I gotta jet, ttyl.
Marty:
Later.
Marty sighed. It was going to be much harder to hang out with
Jimmy. Friendships were always hard to keep the further the
distance. This was especially true for Jimmy since he was more a
friend of convenience to Marty than anything else. It wasn't that
Marty didn't like Jimmy, just that they only ended up being friends
because they were practically neighbours and they both liked to
drink, smoke weed, and watch old movies. Jimmy and Marty only
started hanging out regularly since less than two years earlier.
"And how often am I going to be even be up there?" he
asked himself, sighing again. A thought came to mind that nearly
instantly made him feel better. "He can come down here."
"Yeah, what are you thinking? You have your own place to
chill now."
Some tiny little brown thing by his laptop's keyboard tore him out of his good feelings. When Marty moved his hand to the right it scurried away.
Some tiny little brown thing by his laptop's keyboard tore him out of his good feelings. When Marty moved his hand to the right it scurried away.
"Yuck!" he cried, jumping up from his chair. "Fucking nasty!"
Without thinking he snatched his jacket off from the back of the
chair and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He
paused for a second, catching his breath and looking around to the
sink. It too looked nasty. There was a pot of brown water in the left
sink basin and blank gunk was all over the right sink's drain.
Marty locked the door to his room and opened the fridge. His
stomach, despite what he had just seen, was rumbling like a bag pipe. Marty saw
an empty ziplock bag in a crisper at the bottom, a packet of ketchup
on one of the side ledges, and a tiny brown speck at the uppermost
floor. Marty zoomed his eyes in on the speck.
"Ah!" he yelled, shoving the door shut. "Fucking
disgusting!"
The image of the middle-aged British guy flashed in his mind.
"Cockroaches," he said over and over. "This place
is disgusting! This is like living in a warehouse!" He had
to go outside and buy something for dinner.
All the way down the road he was thinking about how he would keep
the cockroaches away from his food. There was no way he was going to
put a pest killer chemical anywhere near his food. Vinegar and
catnip were most likely going to have to do, although Marty wasn't so
sure he could douse his food in vinegar to keep it in the fridge.
As he turned onto Dundas Street West he came across a store with
jugs, tupperware and other random storage things in it's front
window. Next to it was an antique store with old furniture and
appliances crammed in the front. From what Marty had read about the
Junction, the area was known for it's odd little stores, particularly
in the realm of antiques. The place was both practical and
charactered. He kept moving along until he reached a street heading
south and followed it until he reached a big grocery store, the
only large store he had seen yet.
Inside it was bright and cool. Marty went through the fruit and
veggie sections first, grabbing baby carrots, red delicious apples,
some brocolli and some peppers. He wanted to start eating healthier
now that he was always buying his own food. Next he got some cereal
and some organic milk. He also got some soap, shampoo, laundry
detergent and some floor cleaner. Of course he also got vinegar and
catnip. The total was less than forty dollars. He had about five
bills ($500) in his bank account at the present, but the coming
paycheque next Friday would be an estimated seven bills. Budgeting
was going to be hard and he knew it would prove to be the
first major challenge to overcome.
"Okay, so I got the thousand dollars from Dad deposited and
pulled out of the bank already, just have to give that to Ivan
tonight, then I got to watch my money from now on."
On the way back, carrying two plastic bags, Marty noticed a grafitti
sign on one of the back alley walls. It read: Decolonize.
"When
would you ever see such a thing in North York?" he
asked himself as he turned back onto his street. He wasn't thinking
of the roaches anymore. He felt happier having both food and the
good feeling of living in such a vibrant place.
Before he got home he came by the variety store with the plastic
jugs and tupperware. He looked down to his groceries. Minutes
later he came out of the store, carrying a container and two tiny plastic cups. He put his food inside it once he was standing in the kichen.
With the tiny cups he filled with captnip, placed one in the fridge,
and another on the floor near his room's door. Bachelor life was on
it's way.
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