Home is Where The Angst is

My apartment building is a shabby run down three-story walk up in downtown Calgary. It has fallen into a state of nearly tolerable disrepair. In some ways it’s like me. Not as good as I used to be, but still loaded with potential. (If you like the classics… and I use that terminology loosely) It’s a real fixer upper to be sure.

The building is a bit of an oddity in my neighborhood. It’s a strange hold over in a part of the city area, which has gone through a spate of consumer driven gentrification. Some people, mostly yuppies call it renewal. I do not.

The buildings around me are shiny testaments to the new soulless modernity. They have ridiculous names, like Chocolate and Colours; Prefab yuppie condos, for boring prefab yuppies.

There isn’t a single stitch of character amongst them. These condos exist in the same world where people make appointments to get their hair dried, or to buy jeans that cost as much as an ipad. (There’s a shop in my neighborhood that has 11 earth toned tee shirts on hangers and a desk and that’s It. 11… I counted them… WTF is wrong with people?)

 These buildings are to bricks and mortar, what the leisure suit is to haute couture. I like these buildings even less than I like my own. I stay in mine for spite I suppose. Yuppies stay for the edgy notion of being in “downtown”

But I digress…

From the outside of my humbled living space you can see it’s coldly ironic namesake. Gucci, which is best described as a cruel gesture from the building’s ownership. It’s more of a taunt. This building carries itself like a scolded child, with its shoulders hunched, and its eyes fixated at its feet. 

The thing I like most about my building, (which tops a very short list…) is the super who runs the place. He’s a fossil, a completely broken man, who, has clearly lived as hard as he could, for as long as he could.

Time seems to have the upper hand in his life. Its definitely got him by the balls. This man does not have wrinkles. This man has grooves. If I didn’t know better, I’d bet glaciers had been dragged across his face. Try and imagine Captain Highliner, but throw in a lot of emphysema for good measure.

I’m completely positive every morning is a total surprise for him. Every morning, he’s cheated death for one more day. Near as I can tell, He belongs in Valhalla. Perhaps he can guard the rainbow bridge. He probably built it. 

For as destroyed as this man is, he still has some greasy tricks up his sleeve. (He can be as slippery as they come.) He’s always around on rent day; seemingly without any respiratory issues, but on those days when something needs to get done, he can barely make it up over the stairwell. He has mastered the pathetic look, complete with an oxygen tank for a prop. He’s a vaudevillian master.

Still though, he has a scoundrel’s twinkle in his eye. I find I easily forgive his slippery ways.