Vancouver Love Letter

I would like to start off this letter by giving ode to my one-hundred-and-fifty square foot apartment for inspiring this belligerent piece of writing. Thank you, Apartment, for being the thousand-dollar-per-month reminder of my overweight state, when my mother’s daily Weight Watchers emails don’t quite cut it. Thank you for providing me with a too small of closet, inadvertently giving me a reality check every time I buy a new - slightly larger - pair of jeans. For forcing me to sort through your shrunken shelves to decipher which items of clothing no longer fit, so together we can make room for your larger replacements. I appreciate having to then store these little whispers of obesity into my carry-on luggage. A piece that I usually stuff under my desk but because it’s filled with my too-skinny-of-clothes, it has made the suitcase too fat to fit beneath the desk. Irony is a bitter bitch, isn’t it Apartment? Furthermore, thank you for being too small a space to hold a real bed, forcing me to do a motion that reeks of poverty as I fold up my futon every morning. Then allowing me to avoid further humiliation by getting across the room without doing the sideways walk of shame. Three steps later – or one big moon step if I’m feeling adventurous – and I am in the kitchen. Thank you, Kitchen, for providing me with a mini fridge incapable of keeping ice cream frozen. I appreciate your hum of approval as I slurp down a full pint of melted Häagen Dazs while pretending to enjoy Downton Abbey. Leaving you to belligerently frost the top two inches of my low-fat Greek yoghurt and turning my asparagus into guilt-free popsicles. Your walls hold no room for an oven, forcing me to reheat my takeout in the microwave like a damn peasant. Passed the kitchen area, there’s a bathroom. To my darling Bathroom, thank you for being home to the smallest, most anti-ergonomic shower I have ever had the pleasure of bathing in. As I slide your two doors shut behind me, I feel as if I am encompassing myself in a humid, glass coffin. Practically Disneyland for the dead. Thank you for the purple patches on my elbows; some choose to call them bruises but I prefer to think of them as little kisses from the jagged edges that adorn your interior. I applaud you, Shower, for keeping intact despite my arse threatening to push your glass door out of its brackets every time I bend to shave my legs. Finally, thank you Apartment 310 for being so small, I often forget that even if I had friends, they’d be too big to fit in you.

Now, while the ‘no friends’ conundrum is a work in progress, it still remains to be an unsolved problem. A real low point being last week when I joined a website, which is presumably filled with other sad, lonely people bopping around Vancouver also looking for friendship. Thanks to Meetup.com for providing a list of potential interests that further my spiral of self-pity, as a I dwell in the sadness of being as uninteresting as I am interest-less. I appreciate your close attention to detail, Meetup. You start off broad but get more and more minute as the process progresses. I didn’t know that when I checked “Art” on that drizzly Thursday night, it would lead to my inbox being filled with invites to attend “Nighttime Watercolour Workshops” in Blood Alley. What an adventure! I almost considered joining Bumble BFF, however, being a semi-experienced Tinder user, I know that the quality to quantity ratio would make my Bumble experience not so friendly. Let’s face it, while I thank you Bumble for acknowledging the people who aren’t asking to find love, but for plain-old, platonic human interaction, I know that by using your app, there are only two sure outcomes. Either I am going to be catfished, stalked, and killed, or worse, I’ll be forced to sit through a forty-five-minute coffee chat with a girl who refuses to keep her moustache regularly threaded. Slim pickings, Bumble.

Lastly, to the homeless man that stands outside the Mac’s convenience store, holding the door open for every person that enters and exits: fuck off. I already feel bad enough entering the store to buy my family size bag of salt & vinegar chips without your sad, puppy-dog gaze burning a hole into my curvaceous back. When asking me for spare change, know that the answer is once again: no. Do I look the like the type of person who is responsible enough to go to the bank, take out an appropriate amount of cash, use said cash responsibly as to acquire such change, then have the feasibility to give this hard earned change to you? Of course not. Don’t believe me? By all means, feel free to browse through the torn facets of my wallet. Caress the Menchies membership card, let your fingers roam the hidden pockets that store my maxed out Visas and empty mall gift cards. Underneath the pile of faded and slightly greasy receipts, you will see a black, pottery molding of a thumb: a going away gift from a friend that always leads to a string of questions when bag-checked at security. When you finally peel back that centre zipper, stow your excitement, for that jangle is not from the sound of loonies and toonies. No, my unwashed friend. That is the minty scream of tic-tacs gone wild. So next time you hold the door for me - and trust me there will be a next time as my belly cannot be filled even by the likes of a Mormon-family sized bag of chips – please remember that while you may be sleeping on the street in a puddle of your own urine, at least you fall asleep feeling like a model size two lying on that massive stretch of concrete.

Previous
Previous

The Enforcers: Continued

Next
Next

Gamer’s Guild