They had found a three bedroom apartment in Ottawa and were looking for a roommate. All I had been doing with my life while living at home was working, reading, writing and of course smoking quite a bit of pot in between coming home from the night shifts. I was working at a place called Nucomm which would be better known as a low grade call center located in the far west end of Brockville. Brockville is about a 10 – 15 minute drive west of Prescott. My father would drive me to work by day and my friend and co-worker Amanda would drive me home by night. I mainly worked the late shifts starting around 3 and ending most of the time around midnight. My routine at night had usually consisted of smoking weed with Amanda on the way home and then smoking a little bit more when I got home so I could be high minded and ready for a sound read. In fact one night I remember having a small zip lock bag full of psilocybin sitting in my room, so when I got home from my shift around midnight I lit some incense, got out all of my drawing pencils, pens, papers and books and went to town. I remember walking around my room a lot, examining the walls and writing frantic poetry in hopes that my parents wouldn’t walk into my bedroom to find me laying on the floor with a joint in my mouth and pupils the size of the moon. Naturally with my unsettled quest for sanctity I agreed with the motions but found them to be to tiresome and overdone. I was bound for things outside of my little world and moving was the stepping stone I needed to find out just what those new found adventures might be. In no way did I ever expect the path that had laid itself ahead of me.
We said our goodbyes to our families and friends and the old sheltered lives we had all been living in and packed up our belongings. We moved in to 1800 by the end of the summer when things were as beautiful as they come. The apartment was a dream, come true for us. We were situated on the 4th floor but the building was odd in this respect. Each individual apartment went as follows... After opening the door you were approached by either a set of stairs leading upward into the apartment or downwards. The sequence being that one apartment would be directing upstairs the next one directing down so each floor was technically two floors at the same time. All in all, when I say we were located on the 4th floor we were actually situated on the 7th due to the fact that our apartment had lead downstairs. We had three bedrooms, a big living room/dining room, and a tiny, little kitchen. The floors were made of hardwood leading into carpet in the bedroom area that divided itself from the living room with a single door. The balcony however was what held all of my love for our old apartment. The view was incredible, overlooking all of the Deerfield area as well as most of the outskirts of Nepean. The apartment was pristine and every single 18 year olds dream pad.
Moving day had proven itself to be quite the situation. Dylan’s mother Mary had decided to bestow upon us her entire living room set which included a massive, comfy, black leather couch and chair, a wooden coffee table, and an end table in lieu of her buying a brand new set for her living room at home. Everything else we had moved in was easily transported and manoeuvred except for this gigantic leather couch. We struggled hard, shifting it around in the elevator trying to fit the monster into the tiny steel box. After squishing it sloppily into the 4 man elevator the real dilemma had only just begun. The couch in no way, shape, or form was going to fit through our doorway. We had tried everything and by god this baby would not budge and butter was not going to solve this problem. Not giving in, we had all conjured up an idea.... We literally had decided to completely remove the front door and parade the couch violently through the doorway and down the flight of stairs into the apartment... Triumph! We could rest easy on that note but resting easy was not in neither Dylan nor my vocabulary that first summer night.
Tom had to head back towards Brockville for the night due to the fact that he had still another full load of stuff to bring up the next morning so it was Dylan and I for the first night. I remember what my bedroom had looked like that first night. I was sleeping on two fold out cushions because of the fact that there was absolutely no room to fit my bed in Tom’s parents’ truck and my dad was driving a newer model red, family Intrepid which had done its job fitting all of the smaller items I needed to take. I had one black dresser, a few posters from my old bedroom at home, a blue Ikea reading chair and a small T.V. that I never to this day recall using. After situating all of the furniture we had moved in, stacking all of the food in the cupboards, and rearranging our bedrooms, we were more than ready for a night of drunken debauchery weather Tom be there that night or not!
We had done it! Freedom alas!
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