My first apartments
My first apartment was a bit of a consolation prize. I had made plans to move my life to Toronto for good, but there’s a god or two out there that like to laugh at such plans, and somehow I ended up in Montreal. Slightly begrudgingly, I moved into a pretty adorable apartment in a historic building with marble staircases, wrought iron chandeliers and stained glass windows. It was pretty, but tiny and too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, plus the windows would rattle every time a bus drove by, which was pretty much every 12 minutes. My mother paid my first month’s rent as an incentive not to move into the party loft apartment on St. Laurent I was actually coveting for another version of me I was interested in becoming. I wondered if I had made a mistake at first.
Technically, it actually wasn’t my first apartment at all. Or even my second. I think it was actually my ninth. My first apartment was when I was an 18 year old University student, thrilled to have finally escaped her suburb. So thrilled that I signed a 1year lease with a blond, goateed Dungeons and Dragons goth and a hippy girl who was having an affair with a 50 year old farmer. I recall 5 or 6 cats living there as well, but it was possible there was just one. Maybe even none but something smelled of cats. It is also possible the 50 year old farmer sired the cats. Those were the Debbie Travis years and I had a yellow sponge painted wall with a zebra print rug in my room. I think I had an outfit that matched and I definitely thought was a clever idea. My roommates agreed, from my interpretation of memory.
But that was a room really, not an apartment. My first apartment came a year later when I moved in with a more like-minded displaced suburbanist I met in University. The lady love of my life, to be more specific. The first apartment was the upper level of a home that an honest to goodness HGTV tv hostess lived in along with her gay brother, who she married. This was followed by moving to a larger apartment with another of our lady loves. So it was the two lady loves and I living beside a subway station parking lot where a local schizophrenic liked to hang out and guiltily eat rawhide dog treats. “I probably shouldn’t be doing this,” he would say as we walked by. I lived in the sweltering hot unfinished attic unfit for human survival, and we hung out on a vintage blue pleather couch so big we had to saw the legs off to get it in the apartment. We would sometimes get tipsy and throw oranges and plates from the window. One lady love would play Chopin on the piano while the other braided my hair. We organized our books on the built-in bookshelf by the colour of their spines and it looked harmonious. Life was good.
I had a few first apartments in other countries too. One in Scotland across the street from a castle and one in Poland across the street from a castle. The Scottish one was more of a questionable student thing, with an honest to goodness Swedish couple living in the closet. The Polish one was in a tower, accessed by a spiral stairway with rickety stairs and broken windows. It looked over a graveyard and was haunted by monks. You could hear them walk around on the tin roof when it rained. There was a Spanish first apartment too where I’m pretty sure I lived in the closet, only there was a window in it so it fooled the eye. The balcony was immense and larger than the apartment itself. We would lay on it on our backs like sunbathing cats and watch the swarms of swifts fly in shape-shifting clouds above our heads as the church bells took turns ringing.
My first honest to goodness apartment of my own was as a medical student. It was a tidy vintage condo and cute-ish but unremarkable aside from its location. It always felt very temporary. I actually ended up moving out of it down the street to save on rent by moving in with my classmate and her future husband, a ginger feral creature of sorts. It was actually a pretty sweet deal and I didn’t even mind the freshly killed, still warm rabbits in the fridge because he was such a good chef.
But the Montreal one, the real first one, felt like my first because it was all mine and I daydreamed about it before I moved in. I collected magazines with decorating inspiration, and chose paint colours and bought vintage fabrics from local shops to use as curtains or table cloths. It was also because I actually had an income instead of a building student debt and I paid for it with real money. I also feel that the apartment, more than a backdrop for the life I was to have there, was an actor and forced some of the events that followed. I firmly believe it led me towards love. One evening, sniffling and diaphoretic from some virus or another, I felt particularly unmotivated to leave said apartment. But my friend was throwing a party where she had invited a guy she wanted to set me up with. And it was 1 block away from my apartment. I had no excuse. It was too goddamn close to refuse. An oldmaid’s life lingered threatingly in my near future, and I didn’t know how to crochet. So I went to the party. I immediately walked past the guy I was supposed to be set up with in his business casual outfit and straight towards my bear-like future husband who was trying to charm ladies by the beer fridge. I swear, I knew he was the one before I even spoke to him. He just had this thing about him. It’s still kind of there when I squint.
We spent many happy hours in my first apartment, where he eventually moved in with me. I remember being blissfully and smugly delirious with joy during this time. I remember falling in love with Montreal as much as my husband. Riding my bike to work with the mountain ahead of me and the Olympic stadium behind me, the leaves starting to turn autumn colours and the unicyclists and sullenly beautiful Montrealers making the city look like a lovely scene I wanted to put in a snowglobe on my windowsill. I will always associate that joy with my lovely little “first” apartment that wasn’t really supposed to be but was anyway.
