Open Writing

I spent the first couple of days staying at the inner city's YMCA centre. On my first evening there I decided to have a swim in their competition-sized indoor heated pool and was appalled to see a large handwritten sign saying that I had to swim in the nude. Only Lifeguards were permitted to wear bathing suits! I thought that this was rather strange, but being naïve complied with their 'rules'. I was the only person in the pool that evening and was feeling quite exposed and uncomfortable at being watched by a group of men sitting in the glassed-in commentary box overhead. I wonder how many other gullible young men provided amusement for those voyeurs!

I found a room in a war-widow's home in an inner suburb. Another lodger and I occupied the only bedroom upstairs. The landlady slept behind heavy curtains in her dining room downstairs. We ate our meals in her living room. She was a sad but kind person. My roommate however, never once acknowledged my existence.

For the next two weeks I walked many miles into and back from the city looking for work. I soon ran out of money and my landlady, although sympathetically aware of my plight, could not afford to be charitable as she needed my rent money for her own survival.

I was becoming quite anxious, when I fortunately lined up two jobs on the same day. During the daytime I would be employed in a black and white photographic laboratory as an enlarger and in the evenings I ushered in a movie theatre.

My idealized visions of women took a steep dive when more women than men working at the photographic factory asked me to enlarge pornographic material for them.

At the movie theatre I saw MGM’s ”Father’s Little Dividend” more than forty times and, “The Great Caruso”, fifty-odd times. I enjoyed the music from the latter and with my back turned was able to say the actor’s lines word-for-word. However, it was the short films like “Behind the Eight-Ball” that I found excruciating. Corny American comedy repeated many times would have tempted the patience of most calm and long-suffering persons. I was not one of those people.

One night after the film ended, a couple of teenage fellow ushers invited me to join them for a few games at a nearby five-pin bowling alley. The owner allowed us to use one of the alleys. While two of us played a game, the third set up the pins. After playing three games we left the alley and were cheerfully walking along the sidewalk past some shops to the tram depot when a police car suddenly screamed to a halt beside us and a couple of thick-set policemen accosted us. “What are you up to?” one demanded. I calmly explained where we had been and what we had been doing. One of the pugnacious men jabbed his finger at the other two lads and said, “Well! Don’t do it again.” I was livid and was going to complain to police headquarters about the men's unnecessary bullying behaviour. My two friends however begged me not to do so, as they said it would cause them in the future to be harassed even more than they already were. I am certain that we were singled out because of the Zoot-Suit trousers they were wearing. I understood their plight, as I too was familiar with people being stereotyped by their appearance alone.

I soon paid off the rent I owed and moved to another rooming house more convenient to public transport.

In the new residence I tried talking to the two other couples that occupied rooms on either side of mine and again was totally ignored by them. It always struck me as inexplicable that there were at times four or five people standing on the landing on top of the stairs outside the bathroom door in the morning and yet not a single word was spoken by or to anyone. I paid my weekly rent through the letterbox on the landlady's door downstairs and on Monday mornings she put my clean bed linen outside my room.

My stay in Toronto was the loneliest period in my life. Fortunately I was introduced to a family who had come from India and was invited to dinner on a few occasions.

Sundays were particularly isolating as there were no activities allowed at all in the city unless one went to church. After having breakfast I often walked the chilly streets for hours feeling sorry for myself.

I found Toronto quite the opposite to Vancouver, where strangers regularly cheerily bid each other the time of day.

I spent my whole six months in Toronto diligently saving my money to pay for my return bus fare back to Vancouver.

© Clement 2006