cNutgroist

Saturday

I wake at 11am with an aching fuzz in my head and gripping clogged lungs. My apartment stinks of burnt newspaper. I can’t close my door for fear of not being able to get out again.

My landlord calls again, he's coming round to replace the door handles. At 5am he was standing in my apartment telling me what a good tenant I was. He still doesn’t think I should leave and anyway, he needs two months notice. I politely tell him to go fuck himself, in words that leave him in no doubt that I will break the contract and he will not argue. He is lucky I haven't screwed the old door knob into his face. And then my neighbour comes by and confirms it was my mailbox and mine alone that was stuffed with burning paper. So I must conclude that somebody doesn’t like me.

He’s a good guy, my landlord, I appreciate him telling me that I shouldn’t have to worry about anything. He’ll take care of extra security and in the meantime, I shouldn’t be paranoid because it would make no sense for someone to be victimising me. So please, don’t leave good tenant who always pays on time.

But somebody doesn’t like me so much they’re prepared to commit arson. Somebody hates me. Sure, they probably chose the mailbox because it's contained enough to only cause a big nuisance. The building probably was not in any real danger, nor intended to be. But I have no wish to fight this out. It’s a big city and I’d been thinking of moving further downtown anyway. I enjoy the impermanence of my life most days. It's a big change from the stability I craved and perceived to have had before. But what is the virtue in learning to live with the uncertain threat of danger? If you can comfortably leave it behind, then is it wrong just because you're not facing up to your fear?

I haven’t had more than a passing angry word with anyone in the 6 months I’ve been here. Certainly I have done nothing spectacularly wrong to anyone. I don’t buy drugs from anyone, I don’t get outrageously drunk and fight people, I don’t campaign for or against anything.

All the flimsy excuses I can think of don’t add up. My landlord did suggest that being Jewish could be the reason, my full beard and hair growth do make me look a little more Jew-ish than usual. But I am writing this in a café in the Jewish Cultural Centre down the street. There are more Jews in this city than just about any other minority. If someone's got a problem with the Jews, they’re going to be very busy and very arrested very quickly. There is an Israeli-owned coffee shop opening up down the other side and it’s true that they should’ve opened up a year ago or so but have had too much flak from activists determined not to let them. But I have shown no visible signs of oppressing Palestinians and nor will I.

Serious theories from friends and family range from:

-It's something the previous tenant did to someone and they're getting revenge without a forwarding address.
-It's a pissed-off eco-warrior who hates to see someone too lazy to recycle.
-It's a complete coincidence.

All the homeless in the area know me, just as they know all the residents here. I give money and cigarettes to some on occasion – and none to others. I have my own rules and I don’t stop to explain them. I have been more generous of late, even paying a guy who sometimes sits in a nearby doorway ten dollars to help me carry a bit of discarded furniture down the street and up into my apartment.

Is it a disgruntled garbageman, pathologically obsessed with everything in the system having to be done just so or it sends him into a paroxysm of hate? He ought to know I got the message 2 weeks ago and that any further infractions are not from my waste management.

Or is the homeless guy selling newspapers outside the LCBO right? He told me that he was in a similar situation a few years back and now, what he’s learnt from his AA meetings is that sometimes shit like this happens to teach us a lesson we didn’t know we needed until we got it. That’s karma neatly summed up in a sentence and it would accord with the 8 million other lessons I’ve been receiving since just before I booked my ticket.

It's a positive spin on this and one that predominates my attitude for now. Yet I'm still getting suspicious of other people's motives when I already know they're genuine. Now I remember what it’s like to let fear overtake reason. Staring at people, catching a gaze as they walk past me, I am throwing accusatory looks everywhere at everyone without at first knowing it. It's only reflected in their brutally returned expressions and only noticed if I move back into some kind of normal state of awareness.

Now at last I get the paranoid, quick-to-blame culture of people who feel themselves to be hard done by. If you can’t get resolution on someone who’s done you wrong, it can fuck up your relations with everyone else in the world if you let it. You can even become unnecessarily querulous and questioning of those who seek to do you right.

I remember when someone stuck his cock through a hole in the wall and tried to wank onto me in a disabled toilet in Uxbridge many years ago. I walked around for several days wondering if the guy who just walked past me and stared at me was him. No, it was the guy behind him who just stared at me. Or it was the guy walking behind me, following me and staring at me. Why were they all staring? What was it about me that everyone found so fascinating they had to stare straight at me? Did they all know a man had basically tried to shine my shoes with his own-brand polish the previous day? I’d better stare them out. Each and every man in the street. That way nobody will think I’m vulnerable and nobody will dare look at me. It's safe that way. I must've gone through a week like this and even to this day, every time I use a public toilet, something in me still hardens.

*cough*

Erlend Oye covering Lee Hazlewood - No Train to Stockholm

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