Steamrolled

Am I Spineless or Adventurous? You Decide

Steamrolled Part I

January or February 2013, walking home drunk after a night of heavy drinking with my then-girlfriend who lived at Manning and Queen, I was rounding the corner at Bathurst and Queen when a woman - older than me but not old - stepped in front of me and said “I’m coming with you.”

I glanced at her quizzically but she’d already started walking with me, matching my pace as if we knew each other. We didn’t know each other. I’d had my head down, my earbuds in (the old kind of earbuds, the ones with a cord), and my hands in my pockets. I wasn’t exactly making welcoming gestures. I’m not sure why this woman latched on to me, but she did. She started walking beside me, striding with purpose (I used to walk very fast…I no longer walk as fast as I did, but I still walk fast).

I looked at her. She was wearing a white jacket, blue jeans and sneakers and a bandanna over her entire head so I couldn’t see her hair. I wasn’t sure what to do. I wondered briefly if she was a sex worker but, though the northwest corner of Queen and Bathurst had a drop-in centre and was host to some illegal activity during the day, the place closed in the early evening. It was 2 or 3 in the morning, so I didn’t think she was a prostitute. I wondered how to go about asking without offending her. If she wasn’t a sex worker, she’d be offended that I asked. If she was a sex worker, she wouldn’t be offended at my guess but I’d have to disengage from her because I hadn’t exactly “hired” her nor did I have any intention of doing so. I’ve never “hired” a prostitute in my life and I’m not exactly sure how one goes about it. I don’t need to know.

We’d reached Bathurst and Willis already and she was showing no signs of going away so I took my earbuds out and queried, “umm…what’s happening here?”

“I’m coming with you,” she repeated, firmer this time.

“Um,” I was drunk and she was being so forthright I was taken aback. “But…I’m going home?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“But I don’t know you.”

“You can get to know me.”

I don’t know why I didn’t just say “I’m sorry. I don’t know you. I’m not comfortable with this and I am going home alone. You can’t come with me.”

It’s very easy for me to find myself steamrolled by authority. A certain tone of voice or a certain kind of assertive personality and bam…I’m off to Jonestown. I think I’d be very susceptible to the charms of a cult leader.

By the time we got to Dundas I’d gleaned that this woman was unhoused (that’s the new term for homeless…I’m not crazy about politically correct terminology but I actually like the term unhoused. It sounds better and it’s more accurate because quite often the unhoused might have a place to stay for the evening but no longterm stability which makes “homeless” less true than “unhoused.”)

Anyway, I protested meekly en route to my place, which was just a five minute walk up the road on the east side of Bathurst, south of College, just a few houses north of Nassau and Toronto Western Hospital. I wondered if maybe Western had some kind of homeless shelter that this woman had wandered away from, but nope. I couldn’t shake her. Again, I don’t know why I wasn’t more firm but for whatever reason, a few minutes after she’d glommed onto me at Bathurst and Queen, she was following me inside to my apartment.

My bedroom back then had a couch I usually slept on and a mattress behind the couch. The apartment as a whole consisted of the second and third floor of a house, and an unfinished attic on the fourth floor which had a loose mattress with no sheets. We let friends crash in the attic whenever they’d had too much to drink. It wasn’t exactly a guest room, being a bare mattress with no sheets and a single pillow, but it was shelter from the elements. My two roommates were fast asleep, they of the Mon to Fri nine-to-five life. I was still a student at U of T but I spent most evenings drinking (it’s not hard to finish schoolwork when drunk. In some cases, it even helps …one’s prose becomes more luminous and expansive when one has had twelve tall cans, which was my nightly diet back in 2013…twelve tall boys of Pabst Blue Ribbon…I was a hipster alcoholic).

So now I had a strange woman in my house and I wasn’t particularly comfortable with it but my roommates had locks on their doors and I had a lock on mine and there was nothing worth stealing in the common kitchen, so I figured I’d let the woman crash on our bare mattress in the attic and she could go her merry way the next morning. I informed her of the arrangements but she didn’t seem impressed. Too bad, I thought. Beggars can’t be choosers. What did she expect? The fucking Hyatt Hotel? She followed a random dude home and now she’s pissed she’s not being pampered?

“I’m hungry,” she announced.

“Okay. What would you like?”

“Do you have eggs?”

“Yep. How do you like ‘em?”

“Scrambled.”

“You got it.”

I started making eggs for…whatever her name was. (I still hadn’t learned it. I was trying to keep her at arm’s length so I deliberately didn’t ask. And she didn’t offer.)

While I was making eggs things took a turn. I can’t remember what we were talking about. I remember her taking out a phone (I didn’t have a cellphone back then…I had an aversion to them…an aversion that continues to this day…) and telling her shelter that she’d found somewhere else to stay that night and wouldn’t be coming back.

“Wait,” I clued in, “you have somewhere to go? Why do you need to stay here?”

She looked at me like I was an idiot. “Because my shelter is up near Eglinton? And I can’t get back there before the doors close at 3AM?”

“Oh,” I stirred the eggs. “Okay.”

“That mattress up there,” she said, nodding in the direction of that attic, “who has slept on it?”

“Um…on weekends sometimes a friend crashes up there.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Have any n***ers slept up there?”

I flinched. “What?”

“Have any n***ers slept up there?”

I was baffled. “Um…what?”

“Let me sleep with you. On your bed. I don’t want to sleep up there. Not if n***ers have slept there.”

“Okay…look…I’m not comfortable using that word.”

Her eyes bulged. She was instantly furious. “So n***ers have slept up there?!”

“I don’t know who has slept up there but I don’t call people-”

“Why? Are you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid of the word but I don’t like hearing it tossed out like a…toxic tennis ball. This whole situation is fucking crazy. I don’t know you…you just latched onto me and followed me home. I’m trying to be nice here and you’re being kinda mean and saying racist shit and it’s just…this whole thing is getting really uncomfortable.”

She stood up indignantly. “I can’t stay here.”

“That’s the first thing you’ve said all night that makes sense.”

“Step aside, please.”

“What? Why?”

“You’re making them wrong,” she pointed at the eggs.

“Huh?”

“I’ll eat them and go.”

“Oh.” That was just fine with me. Whatever got her out of my apartment with as little fuss as possible. I was a drunk 25-year old hipster student. I wasn’t running a shelter for unhoused racist people. I stepped out of the way.

The woman grabbed a nearby bottle of olive oil and poured several tablespoons onto her eggs (which were almost done cooking). I was perplexed but didn’t say a word. Just get her out. She turned the heat all the way up and began stabbing the eggs with the wooden spoon, then flipping them as the heat increased, until they started flaking and turning golden brown. Once the oil started frying and crackling, she turned the heat off and poured the greasy concoction onto a plate, then proceeded to fork the eggs, dip the eggs in the excess olive oil, and greedily shovel the eggs into her mouth. It was so gross I had to force myself to look away. She ate fast, thankfully, gathered her things in a huff, and stormed down the stairs and out the front door. I locked it behind her, trudged back upstairs to wash the dishes, had one last beer before bed and fell into a deep, drunken sleep.

Three or four months later I was in my bedroom when there was a knock at the front door. I went downstairs and opened the foyer door, which was about five feet away from the front door. I looked out the front door window and saw the unhoused racist woman standing there. She’d remembered my address. It was near midnight, some evening in April or May. She hadn’t seen me. She was looking off to the side. Remembering how weird that night had been and abruptly it had turned sinister, I quietly turned and closed the door, then tiptoed up the steps to my apartment. I learned my lesson the first time.

I know it seems like a very obvious thing: don’t let strangers follow you home and, once again, I have no idea why I wasn’t more firm with her. I know I felt a little sorry for her once I realized her unhoused status but that doesn’t mean I was responsible for her care. And she was obviously struggling with some kind of mental illness. I’m not saying that her racism meant she was mentally ill, but the abruptness with which her personality changed from agreeable to hateful certainly hinted at deeper problems. Anyway, that’s the story of the woman who steamrolled me and ate egg grease one night. I like to think I’ve become firmer with people but something happened last night that made me realize I’m still the same little boy whenever somebody wields their authority.

Steamrolled Part II

So I’m standing at the bus stop last night and it’s very cold. I’m stamping my feet and blowing on my fingers when a woman walks up and sits down on the bench and starts eating what I recognize to be Ethiopian food from a nearby take-out shop (that spongy bread, which is called injera, is as visually unmistakable as it is tastefully unmistakable). The arctic winds blew and traffic went by and the woman proceeded to daintily eat away while I continued to stand there, stamping my feet and blowing on my hands.

Then suddenly the woman stood up and said “eat this!”

She was holding a piece of injera with what looked like spinach and beets inside.

It was weird. A stranger saying “eat this!” is weird in almost any context so I shook my head automatically and said “no thanks!” That’s a normal response, I think. Aren’t we taught to say no to strangers who offer us food? Unless it’s Hallowe’en and the food is Snickers, of course. Or Lays potato chips. Or candy corn. One guy in my old neighbourhood used to give out cans of pop on Hallowe’en. PC Orange Soda. When he ran out of pop, he handed out $2 bills. Yep, that’s how old I am. My first few Hallowe’ens predate the Toonie.

I said no to the woman but she wasn’t taking no for an answer. She kept approaching me. “Eat this!” she cried.

She seemed friendly. She was smiling. She was older than me but not old. Her eyes bespoke no menace but still…I said no a second time.

“I’m okay. Really. I appreciate your offer, but I just ate.”

Still she kept coming until finally something in me gave in…just like that time the woman followed me home from Bathurst and Queen. Either I am spineless or adventurous. You decide. Or maybe both. The two things aren’t mutually exclusive. I think a certain kind of authority causes my defenses to collapse. My armor clanks to the floor. After all, I was kinda hungry. I hadn’t just eaten. I was just saying that to lessen the blow because this woman seemed so personally invested in me eating some of her Ethiopian take-out.

“Eat this!” she cried again. At this point she’s practically stuffing a handful of injera and veggies into my mouth.

To get my point across the third time would have been to switch from being thankful for the offer but declining to straight up being rude. The firmness I would have had to summon would have been indistinguishable from disrespect, and I just couldn’t do it. The woman seemed really nice, if a little too gung ho about making a complete stranger eat some of her Ethiopian take-out, so I finally shrugged and said okay. I knew she wasn’t trying to poison me. After all, she was eating from the same tray. So I took the food and ate some and it was really good. It was so good, in fact, I closed my eyes for a second to relish it. The flavor was fantastic and the heat of it was shockingly comforting. That particular bus stop sits on the crest of a hill and I swear to God the wind that slices across the top of that hill blows clear down from Baffin Island. It is positively arctic up there. The windchill factor is absolute zero. No exaggeration. I swear.

When I opened my eyes the woman was holding out the top of the take-out tray, the see-through part, and on it was more injera and veggies. She was offering me almost half of her meal. I couldn’t say no now. Spineless? Adventurous? Both? Neither?

“Are you sure you wanna give this to me?”

She nodded excitedly.

“Okay. Thank you.”

So I stood and she sat and we munched on our food. There was steam coming off of it. When we were finished she took out some napkins and handed me a few and we just started ahead contentedly. I didn’t feel beholden to her or that I had to engage her in conversation or anything like that. And it’s not like she started blathering away.

I wasn’t sure why she had been so friendly. I’m still not sure. Some people don’t like eating when other people aren’t eating, but I think she was just offering to be nice. Or maybe because maybe I looked like I was hungry. I don’t know.

This is not to say I’m going to make a habit of taking food from strangers. Maybe the lesson is twofold:

1. I don’t always have to close myself off from the world but
2. I should pay more attention to my gut instincts.

In the first circumstance I wasn’t comfortable from the get-go and it turned out…I was right to be. The woman was unstable and ultimately did me a favor by leaving. At the very least, I avoided an uncomfortable scene but who knows, she might have murdered me and my roommates while we slept.

In the second circumstance I said no automatically. It was a reflexive nope. But the lady last night didn’t have sinister intentions at all.

It’s a weird world out there.

If you follow this blog, you know that I used to hitchhike. With hitchhiking, you are at the mercy of the world. It’s not a convenient way to travel but it is a great way to learn about humanity. It’s also an excellent way to learn about yourself. All hard travelling teaches you about yourself. You learn a lot by letting things happen to you. It’s not a safe way to familiarize oneself with the human condition but it’s an education nonetheless.

I’m not advocating for letting people steamroll you. Because there are people out there who will take a mile if you give them an inch. I’m just writing about interesting shit that happens to me. Reader discretion is always advised. It’s up to you. Spineless? Adventurous? Both? Neither? Spineless with a caveat? Adventurous with a caveat?