THE 11 DAY FAST
Once when I was living in a room in Toronto, I had no money for food. I slept on a coffee table, and worked out to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell, and Steve something’s Fly Like an Eagle album, on cassette. I didn’t want to go to the food bank, because I’d get lots of processed food there, and I figured I’d be healthier if I went on a water fast. So I fasted for 11 days, working out all the time.
At the end of my fast, Charlie wired me some money for a plane ticket to Montreal, two months rent, and some food. He’d hired me to work for him selling hashish. I broke the fast with a huge sweet juicy grapefruit. The plane ride took about an hour, and I spent the whole time enjoying that fruit. The steak and potatoes businessman sitting next to me was disgusted.
I rented a cold apartment near Parc Mont Royal, and bought vegetables and fruit, plus raw almonds. For two months, that was all I ate, raw, and I ate very little at that. I worked at Charlie’s apartment, selling hash, and cleaning his place when there were no customers. Charlie didn’t pay me to clean, but I just felt like it. I would take his dog Peugeot to the park in the snow sometimes.
I remember looking in the small bathroom mirror at my apartment and noticing that I looked gaunt, but I felt great. I didn’t sleep for those two months. I would lie down, and my mind would become a kaleidoscope of symmetrical colors. I had no confusion about anything. I made decisions easily. It’s like I was in touch with a universal logic. There was one crucial mistake I made though. An assumption I had, that tripped me up.
I had thought that Charlie was planning on getting clean from drugs and adopting children with me (He couldn’t have kids.), and being like The Waltons. He never said any such thing. I just believed what I wanted to. So one day, he comes over, and sitting beside me, he says “I just met this chick. She’s my dreamboat! I was in a record store, and she was working there. A few days later I was rolling (He was paralyzed, in a wheelchair.) down Park Avenue and she was coming up it, and she blocked my way. We went to Chalet BBQ and had chicken.”
I thought to myself. “Oh! We’re just friends to his mind.”. He left, and I immediately called Mike’s Submarine restaurant for a delivery of a meat submarine and a pizza. For months I just pursued processed food, and so much for being vegan. I was disgusted with myself, but I couldn’t help it. I had lost my bearings. I’d thought my future was spoken for, and then I find out it’s just a pipe dream.
Charlie’s other employee got busted. There was a sting, and he happened to be on shift. So Charlie moved the business to an apartment near his, where I was to live. He had me package and send a parcel of hash to British Columbia, and I used the wrong courier. The package arrived empty. It was an incredibly bad batch anyway, but what surprised me, and does to this day is that Charlie let it go. He’d been violent with me in the past, but he didn’t even tell me off for having used the wrong courier.
I only lived in that apartment a few days. I asked the building manager to turn the stove on for me. The knobs were off. It needed to be set up. I thought he was going to come into my apartment and set it up. I went out shopping on Park Avenue, and when I returned, there were fire trucks outside the building. I learned it was my apartment that had burned. The concierge didn’t turn the stove on directly. He went to a remote circuit breaker, and switched the power to the stove on, and stuff I’d had sitting on the disused stove caught fire. The apartment was ruined. The concierge came to tell me something like I had to pay for the disaster, but Charlie faced him down with the threat that he would get a lawyer. The guy left us alone.
So Charlie rented another apartment, in a complex of high rises called La Cite, where I would be the sole employee and would live. After a month or two Charlie and I had a disagreement about how he was entering the building. I was concerned about drawing heat, and I thought he was being too bold. So Charlie fired me, and hired a friend of his, Darcy, who ended up ripping Charlie off to supply a cocaine habit.
I moved to an apartment in Point St. Charles, a slum. It was a huge place in a house that was owned by the young woman who lived on the top floor. I don’t remember her name. I’ll call her Pamela. It was incredibly cheap. I put my weight lifting machine in the basement, and would go down there to work out among the many spiders. I had Charlie’s dog Peugeot. She seemed pretty unhappy. I was still always going after processed food. That was my constant obsession.
I started stripping again, but wasn’t making into work often, so money was tight. I would scrounge up what I could and spend at the nearest corner store on junk food. That, in turn would leave me feeling out of shape for stripping. I was hyper aware of any fat or cellulite. I was eating sugary, fatty, and salty foods, if you’d even call it food. That’s all I would eat while I lived in Point St. Charles. It did in my self confidence, because ideally, I would have been eating a raw vegan diet. I’ve always felt best that way.
Charlie’s friend Eugene came over, with his belongings, as he was itinerant at the time. He would cook peanuts in a wok he carried around with him. He gave me some money to share the apartment I think. I’m not sure about that, but I think he gave me $60. One morning, he flung himself on top of me, on my air mattress on the floor. Another time, he was drinking beer and mouthing off at me, denigrating me. It made me feel really bad, and I told him to leave.
He refused, and I called the police. They made him leave, although he said that he’d given me money. I wish I could remember whether he just planted that idea in my head, or if he really did give it to me. Anyway, I saw him riding up the hill on his bicycle laden down with his belongings, and Peugeot trailing in his wake. I didn’t trust him with Peugeot, so I got on my own bicycle and caught up to him. I don’t remember if she came back home with me, or if she continued to follow Eugene, but she ended up moving back in with Charlie.
Suddenly I started getting bug bites that were very itchy. It was horrible, and I wound up at La Chainon shelter for women, where I was quarantined and treated for scabies. Today, I know what was biting me, and it wasn’t scabies, but fleas, that didn’t have Peugeot around to suck blood from anymore. Some people don’t get itchy bites from fleas. I’m not one of them. I ended up, years later, adopting a dog, and I know from experience that if fleas have a dog around, I don’t get the itchy bites, but given fleas without a dog, I get it bad.
At any rate, the rash cleared up, and after a few weeks, I must have taken a stripping gig and made some cash, because I rented another huge apartment, this time in St. Henri, another slum. The morning after I moved in, I noticed my alarm clock was gone. It turned out that the back door wasn’t secure. Probably some kid had gotten in.
I bumped into Danny downtown, a kid I ran away with from Reflection, a Waredale temporary home for kids. Back then, Danny was innocent. But now, downtown, he was hanging out at a condemned house, doing hard drugs. It was my buddy though, so I invited him to my new insecure apartment, because at least it was livable. He promptly borrowed my bike and never returned it. I went to find him at the condemned house. He apologized for losing my bike.