Co-op Baby

I've lived in co-op housing for eight years, and for the first time since I left my parent's home, I'm going to be living somewhere else this fall.

I first moved in to Campus Co-op Residences Inc., downtown Toronto, 169 Lowther Avenue, room 201, in the fall of 2004. I was 21, back in school after a year-long hiatus that was the result of a disastrous freshman year. I had regrouped, saved some money, developed a wee fondness for booze, and was ready to strike out on my own. Liz, who I had met in first year, lived in 169, and she suggested that I apply.

I remember filling out the application. It's been a while, so I don't know if the questions are the same, but back in 2004, CCRI wanted to know a bit about you. Did I have any special skills? (I could snake a toilet, I offered.) How was I with conflict? (I tried to be easy-going, I said.) What was my budget? (500 a month? Was that enough? I could pay more!) I sent in my forms, along with a $25 application fee, and I waited.

What I didn't know was that, for almost as long as I lived there, the co-op struggled with chronic vacancy, so I was in like Flint no matter what. My rent was $536, due by the 4th of each month or in two lump sums at the beginning of each term. That included heat, hydro, the room, and food: four meals a week in a dining hall and house food for the rest of our meals. It was an unbelievably good deal. My room was teeny, but my mom and sisters and I painted it pink and yellow ("Cheery" and "Cheerful"). I stacked books on the radiator and assembled a loft bed. It was perfect: cozy, sweet, and all mine. 

I've always loved the co-op's houses: they're huge, often housing a dozen or so students and graduates in a mish-mash of vintage furniture, curb-scored cookery and absolutely hideous kitchens. The floors are usually hardwood, and even though the rooms are drafty, they have character. My current room, two houses after my little pink-and-yellow room, has huge east-facing windows and a massive built-in bookshelf. I have a row of plants on the windowsill and a walk-in closet. My last place was the entire third floor of a house, including a 400-square foot deck. There are also much smaller spaces, like the bedrooms stuffed under eaves or beside lonely boiler rooms. The co-op likes to put kitchens in odd places, like basement or second floors, and the bathrooms are always slightly damp. A real-estate agent might euphemistically say that the houses have character, while we can just call it like it is: these houses are crazy. 

That might explain why I've lived with so many crazy people over the years. Narcissistic acting students and economics majors have bunked with couples who had midnight fighting fits. I've lived with people who thought nothing of lifting a few DVDs off the living room table or a bottle of wine from the fridge. I've lived with alcoholics who drank cooking wine. I've risen from a movie in the living room to find the entire first floor, from the front porch to the kitchen, covered in the foulest-smelling vomit, the alcoholic housemate responsible passed out in his own urine at the end of it. I've lived with people who had loud sex, and people who referred to women as "you people." I've lived with girls who refused to eat, girls who walked around in nothing panties and a bra, girls who brought dozens of strange men home. I've lived with men who have used their size, their rage, or their maleness to cow their housemates. I've lived with folks who have literally brought vagrants home. I've had housemates who thought nothing of lashing out if I left dishes. I watched from the window one night as a housemate was loaded, screaming gibberish, into an ambulance in restraints.

Over past eight years, I've had probably about 100 different housemates. Some stayed for years and become close friends. Others, not so much. "The guy who wore those shirts with the huge neon $100 bills printed on them" will come up in conversation, and co-op friends will nod in recognition. We talk about the night we drank all the booze in the house (we replaced it the next day), and played Spin the Bottle on the fire escape. There are rules when you live with so many folks: don't sleep with your housemates (also known as "don't shit where you eat). Also, this aggression will not stand, man.

There have been transformative moments: the joys of free clothes (I seriously haven't done much retail shopping since moving in; my housemates are always moulting clothes and I pick them up), the challenges of four years on the co-op's board of directors. I bought my first vibrator with a gaggle of housemates. I drank much too much, and went into treatment. I lost weight, I gained weight. I had my first real boyfriend, and my first real heartbreak. I had sleepovers, ill-advised sex, make-out buddies, awkward movie dates, and I fell in love a second time.

It's impossible for me to sum up the whole co-op thing, because it's shaped me in so many ways: politically, sexually, personally, professionally. I've grown and regressed, made mistakes, made friends and enemies, and learned so much about my world that it staggers me that it's been eight years. Eight years. Man.

So next up, my boyfriend and I are going to live together. It's one of those amazing moments in a couple's story, one that could lead to an excellent future. It'll be a test of what we're made of: while we spend a lot of time together, we still have our own places to retreat to if we need to lick our wounds or breathe. On the other hand, I think this new intimacy will be good, since we function well as a team. We've got a shot at something really good, which makes leaving the co-op I've called home for almost a decade that much easier. 

List of Vices

I have a long list of vices. Here are some of them:

• Never admitting when I fart.
• Pinterest.
• Talking to myself in the shower.
• Carelessness with keys, sunglasses, and wallets.
• Chronically avoiding the green bin chore.
• Never hanging my towels up to dry.
• Reading in bed.
• Red wine.
• Not brushing my hair.
• A soft spot for ugly nail polish colours.
• Takeout burritos.
• Lecturing people on things that I know only marginally more than they do - this would be mansplaining if I had a penis, but I don't.
• Hectoring foreigners into trying on a Canadian accent.
• Not doing dishes. 
• Everything at the Bulk Barn.
• Wasabi peas.
• Coke Zero.
• Cheap books.
• Revenge fantasies, usually involving spit and a Bond-villain-like treatise on why I hate that person.
• Secretly hating yoga.
• Clothes that are too small but I keep trying anyway.
• Bad moods.
• Wearing my shoes until they literally fall off my feet in tatters. 
• Being slightly rude to people I've slept with's girlfriends.
• Self-loathing hangovers.
• Caramel cheesecake.

Cat Marnell Is All Over The Internet

Lately, I've been rubbernecking really hard at Cat Marnell, but I get the sense that she doesn't really mind. She's the recently-disgraced xoJane Beauty Editor, the one who got canned from Lucky and hired at Vice, all because of her prodigious, unapologetic drug use. She is skinny, blonde, dirty, coked-out, writes like Hunter S. Thompson on his laziest days, and has a rabid crowd of fans who proclaim that anyone who criticizes her writing style or drug use are haters of the highest degree. Marnell is well-placed (profiles in New York magazine and Page Six) and she enrages readers by being not very good at her actual writing jobs while being very good at talking about her drug use. Most of her articles, which skate between fiction and memoir, start with a description of what she's wearing; something is always stained. She is instantly recognizable as the one who is wasting her potential.

When I was younger, I would have admired Marnell's in-your-face fucked-up-ness. I was drawn to women who were brazenly, openly vocal about their horrible addictions: mine were so secret and poisonous that the girls who had the balls to even acknowledge theirs in public where automatic heroines. Bonus points if you could make me feel like I was missing out by not taking handfuls of illicit prescription drugs and burying myself in a duvet for days on end, emerging only to have exquisitely unsatisfying sex with graffiti writers and to cadge free drinks off unsuspecting tourists who had mistakenly read desire in my glassy come-down eyes.

Marnell's life, which at xoJane was presented in the guise of beauty product reviews that were mainly a forum for her to talk about how many drugs she was doing and how much she hated being "fat" (oh, to be fat at 102 pounds!), does have a dirty sheen of glam. At Vice, she's dropped the beauty-review pretence and focused mostly on her addiction. It's River Phoenix, it's Linsday Lohan, it's Courtney Love - one died, one slurrily denies her addiction, and one, maybe worst, became a bloated, rambling addict who swoops between the highest highs and the lowest lows. Since Marnell would probably rather take a runny dump in Times Square than see a Love-like future in her cards, her alternatives are to get really clean and find a life outside addiction—something she has promised she can never do—or die.

It's slightly disorienting to read a Marnell post, because I keep expecting them to show me something: something about her, or her place in the world, or a recognition that she, as a white-girl addict with a media job, has it pretty good. She rarely has to give blow jobs to people she doesn't want to, a "choice" many female addicts don't get to make. She orbits a world that is seedy and slightly cosmopolitan: trust fund kids partying with fashion editors who are sleeping with DJs who are selling drugs to younger sisters. If you've read Bret Easton Ellis, you've read Cat Marnell, and the "interesting" twist that she's a female writer loses its edge pretty fast.

In a bigger sense, addicts aren't pretty. I don't mean that in the way a former beauty editor might, although years of popping pills and snorting drugs will eventually ruin your face and body. Bad circulation will give you cankles, bulimia will provide you with a double chin, and those ropy addict tendons will stand out on your neck forever, even if you get clean.

But addiction also creates this funhouse mirror world where all you can see is yourself and your addiction. Sometimes, the drugs do what they're supposed to: make you feel good, normal, productive. Most of the time, especially when you're abusing or mixing or binging, the drugs and booze distort reality so that you believe that, if you could find the right cocktail, the right blend of powders and pills and smoke, you can be perfect, forever. The hall of mirrors has no room for things like a job, family, or friends - when the high is good, there's no reason to believe those things won't fall into place; when it's bad, there's no reason to believe you're worthy of even the most basic humanity. There is no space for anyone who isn't you.

Which, as well all know from tedious cocktail party conversation where the other person will just not stop talking about themselves, is boring. And being boring is a cardinal sin to someone who writes click-through driven blog posts. Marnell has placed herself between a rock and a hard place. She has flat-out refused to get clean, staking jobs, connections, and her own tenuous professional reputation on the ever-diminishing returns of her readership's interest in a blogger/scene girl's lifestyle. She could go the way of Nicole Richie (famous party girl and heroin user turned mom, wife, business mogul and fashion plate), but she will more likely follow a Whitney Houston-esque path: someone who has wasted time and talent in the fires of an death-drive addiction. Someone who knows the path that drugs will lead her down, and follows willingly, because hey, smoking crystal and swigging vodka make for great blog posts.

It will surprise no one to say that writers, especially bloggers, often mine their personal lives for material. Sometimes, like in Hunter S. Thompson's case, heavy drinking and drugging played a huge part in what he wrote about and how. Others, like Aaron Sorkin, basically ignore their addiction to focus on other material. In either case, it leaves a mark. Marnell's narrow focus (beauty, drugs) has only become narrower (drugs) as her star has risen.And if you haven't drank the Cat Marnell Kool-Aid (she's so pretty, troubled, and good at writing!), you end up feeling like you're missing something in all the hype - where is the stuff that's actually interesting?

I hope Marnell gives herself permission to get past the drug stuff, which sometimes seems to be the only stuff she's made of, and explore herself as a writer. I realize that I sound incredibly condescending, but it's true: I think she's intriguing, but her subject matter (Marnell, drugs, and Marnell's own drug use) are a total bore. Show me what you think of celebrity pop culture, or the 2013 S/S lines, or even, god forbid, the trials and tribulations of a person working hard to stay sober in the face of 15 years of drug use. I would be interested in that, but just another girl who has a good connection to both the internet and drug dealers? I'll pass.

Always Something There To Remind Me

A grateful summer round-up, because sometimes, despite historical evidence pointing to the contrary, summers can be pretty amazing.

• That the weather, while hot, hasn't yet been hot or even HOT! yet. There have been heatwaves, yes, but so far we've held the 56-with-the-humidex days at bay. Knock on wood that they don't rear their ugly heads this year (last year, in order to cope with days that pushed 60, I rode the subway all.day.long, which was pretty boring).
• Zevia Cola, which has caffeine and no aspartame. It tastes nothing like Coke Zero (my one true love!), but it's a decent replacement for when I'm suffering too-much-aspartame-related gutrot.
• The Iceland trip, which was amazing.
• That smoked fish is a thing, and I get to eat it.
• I've been getting adventurous in the kitchen, which has been pretty radical. Awesome sweet potato salads, delicious homemade ginger beer, lots of meat (I'm doing this half-assed paleo diet, which is leading to big meaty burps and some shed pound).
• My amazing boyfriend is so amazing. I generally dislike those blogs that are all like, "<3 u babee!" but seriously: I love this guy. We have little spats and we get past 'em. We have huge belly laughs, wonderful Sunday mornings in bed where we read the paper, movie dates, a clothes-shopping buddy system, and mad emotional support for each other. He is also damned handsome, super thoughtful, and I love being with him. Best.
• My continued employment. 
• I was published! I wrote a piece on my buddy's new bar, and she loved it and I loved writing it, because I felt legit, as a writer.
• The music this summer has been great. I saw Murder By Death, Childish Gambino, Of Monsters and Men (for free!), and Sigur Ros, rediscovered my semi-shameful love for Nelly Furtado, and got into GusGus. Solid wins all around. 
• I still notice when people are getting married/having babies, but I'm also really happy where I am right now (unmarried, childless), and feel less like I'm getting left behind by people who are younger than me. I can still dream of a fancy house, a wedding menu or a baby name, but I'm steadily becoming less panicked about not having those things. If it's meant to be, they will come. 
• As it turns out, cacti and peace lilies thrive under my care. Who knew?
• I generally feel really good: my friends, family, jobs and love are all sources of amusement, joy and good feelings. Lucky girl, I am. Thank you to everyone who makes that happen.

Iceland: Part Three

Continued from Part One and Part Two.

Sedisfjordur is an east-coast town that was home to about 600 people and an arts scene: when we drove past the town's border, we also passed a yarn-bombed tree. The woman who ran the hostel recommended Skaftfell Bistro for dinner, and that we have a drink at the local tavern. The bar, which had burned down a few weeks before our arrival, was temporarily relocated to the local library (!!), so after a meal of seafood and excellent chocolate-cardamom meringues, we checked out the library/bar. It was like drinking in your grandma's unrenovated-since-1972 basement, and very endearing. We did a shot of Brennivin, Iceland's alleged "black death" liquor, and staggered back to the hostel in the midnight dusk.

One of the best things about this trip was how much walking and hiking we did. Sure, we had trusty Ravmunder, our Icelandic RAV-4, and he was invaluable. But almost every day had a hike somewhere scenic and ever-so-slightly off the beaten trail. After lunch in Sedisfjirdur, we hiked for a half-hour and came across gorgeous streams and postcard-worthy waterfalls. It was pretty amazing. (If you hike for half an hour in Toronto, you'll be frolicking next to a Shopper's Drug Mart.) While I know that vacation-stuff and living there-stuff doesn't really overlap, it was a relief to not sit down for hours a day. That was a souvenir I was grateful to bring home: a renewed interest in physical activity. Jumping jacks and gym yoga sort of don't cut it when you've grown accustomed to scenic vistas and rivers.

Icelanders are like, "Ho hum, this is my backyard."

We left Sedisfjordur and headed to Hofn, where the local social scene seemed to be centered around the gas station. We went directly to the guesthouse and played about 40 rounds of Munchkin, the card game that kept us occupied for the majority of our trip's downtime. Hofn was a bit of a bust, but hey: every country needs its Windsor, its Flint, its Birmingham.

You know what's not depressing? Walking on a glacier. Tragically, the Vatnajokull glacier is retreating at about 30 meters per year; it currently covers about 8% of the country and can be seen from space. Semi-frequent volcanic eruptions means Icelandic glaciers aren't the pristine white snowcaps you might picture: they're covered in frozen soot and German tourists. However, much like tsunamis or waterfalls, the sheer size of glaciers is breath-taking, and I found myself marvelling at the abstract art-esque colour palette and the thrill of standing on something so ancient.

Abstract modern artists are like, "This is my jam," but they probably use different words to express that sentiment

.

After staying at a horse farm (where the dogs were mind-boggling cute and one of my travel companions accidentally zapped herself with an electric fence), we capped our trip with a visit to the Blue Lagoon. This was definitely the most touristy thing we did: there's a swim-up bar and all manner of accents were floating around the pool's perimeter. We dutifully glopped silica mud all over ourselves, and some of us might have taken advantage of the opaque blue water to engage in some PG-13 hanky-panky. The Blue Lagoon is sort of an upscale spa/hot spring/restorative swim experience, but it is damned relaxing.

The trip acted like a tonic: I left the country feeling relaxed and restored. There are huge chunks that we missed seeing—the Westfjords, for example—but nine full days was a good length to get sense of the country's size and scale and wild landscape. We lucked out with bright sunny weather, amazing hosts, and great travelling companions. Their propensity for smoked fish and flavoured sparkling water is enough to get me back on a plane ASAP; throw in some skyr cake and a cozy sweater, and I'm practically ready to swim there. I would go back there in a heartbeat. I would recommend it to everyone I know. It's amazing. It's Iceland!

Iceland: Part Two

Continued from "Iceland: Part One."

After Reykjavik, we headed up to Akureyri, Iceland's second most populous city with a whopping 18,000 residents. Honestly, I don't think we were expecting much, but the town was so.fricking.beautiful. Akureyri is at the bottom of a fjord, with giant hills - okay, mountains - overlooking the town. Our cabin was half-way up the mountain facing the town, so we had a view of basically....everything. The cabin was a dollhouse-sized little number with a teensy stove and a big-ass hot tub.

Pictured: everything.

Naturally, the much-anticipated hot tub refused to work. After pressing every button on the control panel roughly one thousand times, we ascertained that the tub wasn't full enough - a fact that, had we been using our common sense and sense of sight, we would have figured out right away. In a panic (if there's such a thing as a hot-tub emergency, we were having one), we called the brother-in-law of our AirBnB host. The brother-in-law, Flosi (yes, pronounced like a pony's name), arrived after a stilted phone conversation, took one look at the hot tub, and then started a bucket brigade. An hour later, the tub was full; the next morning, it was hot.

Not pictured: the coconut ice cream we ate in the hot tub like total bosses.

After poking around the town, we headed up to Grimsey, a teeny island that has the distinction of being bisected by the Arctic Circle. Dudes, we bundled up: hats, tights under jeans, big coats, mittens. And, while it was cold when we were on the ferry (cold and seasick), Grimsey itself was warm. Warm enough that we basically molted clothes as we walked, shedding layers of long-sleeved shirts and jackets. The island, which is home to about 90 people, is also where birds live: puffins, which are adorable and exotically pretty, and also arctic terns, which dive-bombed us as we walked.

Not pictured: kamikaze death terns.

The next day, we continued our streak of slightly unsettling natural adventures by heading to Dimmuborgir, a lava field formed by steam vents during an ancient volcanic eruption. The landscape there is beautiful, with tiny succulents and lichens growing on the rocks, and paths that required a well-developed ability to clamber. It felt like a velociraptor might come lunging out at us at any moment, but it was also beautiful.

Heading to Dettifoss was a different story. Outside the car, it was sterile rocks and grit as far as the eye could see. As we pulled off the main highway, I remarked, "Hey, it's sort of...smoggy out?" which was mysterious because we were not anywhere near a major city. The "smog" grew denser, and within minutes, we were in a full-fledged Icelandic sandstorm. The moon-like landscape and the roaring storm, coupled with the fact that we were heading towards Europe's most powerful waterfall, made me feel like we might have accidentally wandered into one of those sci-fi movies where Mars turns out to be haunted by angry ghosts. At Dettifoss's edge (because, again, all that was holding us back was a dinky little golf fence), I actually got kind of choked up. It's rare that we're confronted with such unmitigated natural power, and being so close was an intense experience. I left feeling like my soul had been scoured with Borax.

Not pictured: Darude

The rest of the time there was spent goofing around in bookstores, buying Icelandic sweaters, and eating fish. There's an excellent curry take-away joint, and we ate burgers and made stir-frys and drank Icelandic beers in the hot tub. Akureyri, to me, was the most "Icelandic" of the places we landed: cultural but not pretentious, friendly, and undeniably gorgeous. I want to go back there, and I want to take everyone I like with me so we can hang out on Grimsey and get hilariously unexpected sunburns.

Next week: glacier walks, seafood pizza, and the library that turns into a bar.

Iceland: Part One

Okay! Let's talk Iceland!

There was a free Of Monsters And Men show the day we landed, which was astoundingly good luck. That band, which has gotten pretty buzzy in the US and Canada, was giving a "we're so grateful to you all!" concert in Reykjavik's main park. It was advertised as a family event, and seeing many, many children at an event that went, daylit, until 11 PM, sort of drove home the message that this place is weird and special. They also had a jungle gym that was teeming with children 100% of the concert's duration, and people brought their dogs. It was pretty great. Later, we found out that 18,000 people had been there. I would estimate that about 16,000 of them were wearing sweaters like these:

That sweater is mad popular in Iceland.

Everyone there speaks English, but they all sound like elves. It's enchanting. (Okay, in fairness, if someone was like, "Canadians all speak English, but they all sound like rodeo clowns," I'd be pissed. Suffice it to say that the accent is charming, and their fluency is impressive. It is way better than, say, Alabama.)

The local Subway restaurant had a flavour called "Reggae Reggae," but it wasn't jerk chicken. I don't know what it was supposed to taste like.

"Kryddaðu tilveruna" translate to "spicy life!" HELPFUL.

Not having any real nighttime is simultaneous not super-weird and the weirdest thing ever. I kept anticipating that tonight would be the night when things got really dark, and that night never came. There is a period of about three or four hours between 11 PM and 3 AM when the sky gets pinky-orange and the sun dips below the horizon, but it isn't even what you could call "twilight." The sun takes about five hours to set and then pops right back up again.

In Reykjavik, there's a Big Lebowski-themed bar, where they serve 18 different versions of a white russian, and the minimum price is 1,700 krona, which converts into approximately 14 bucks. I found their currency to be totally confounding - it's as if everything is priced in pennies. After a few days I sort of relaxed and went with it, but it takes some getting used to. This is especially true in grocery stores, where prices seem totally absurd (1100 krona for a hunk of cheese?!) until you get to the candy aisle, where most things are between 60 and 150 krona and you feel like Willie Wonka has just handed you a wad of Golden Tickets. (Unfortunately, most of their candy seems to be anise-flavoured). Anyway, The Lebowski Bar was a shameless tourist rip-off, but I'm also super glad we went.

This is me, giving myself a high five.

We visited Gullfoss, which this crazy waterfall, and Geysir, which is a hot spring that shoots 100-degree water in the air every ten minutes or so. Both of these places had minimal approaches to safety. The most they really offered were these dinky little fences that came up to your knees and were made of rope; a tripping hazard, in other words. In Geysir, we went slightly off the path and discovered another, unfenced hot spring that was literally boiling. Attempts to touch it were followed by everyone jerking their hands away and hissing, "That's hot!" It was refreshing that the big natural-formation tourist attractions didn't assume that you were an imbecile that was going to touch the hot spring/get too close to the waterfall's edge, even though we totally did both those things.

The mid-level and cafe food food in Reykjavik wasn't really much to write home about, although I do want to give a shout-out to Cafe Loki's skyr cake. Skyr is a dairy product that's technically a cheese, but it tastes like Greek yogurt mixed with sour cream. Making a cake with it, plus rhubarb jam, plus whipped cream? Icelanders are geniuses. They also like smoked fish, eggs, and dense breads, all of which are things I like very much. Also, there are so many Thai places in Reykjavik.

Next week: misadventures in the hot tub, sunburns in the Arctic circle, and Icelandic sandstorms.