Aaron is up and using the bathroom again without bothering to close the door.Time to set some boundaries here too. I'm fairly sure he has a significant drug habit, with all the pain he's in. But mostly he keeps it out of the front yard.there are no dealers coming to visit, and that's a good thing. Aaron heads back to his room.He looks like Hell today, so I know he's been out all night.
Long before the flood, in June of 2005, things had been deteriorating around the home place.I thought I could put up with most of it, but it was seeming such a heavy load.Here I was paying good money to rent a place that I loved mostly for the location.I loved walking down to the river with my guitar, or just going for a walk in the park to the north. But the place was physically falling apart, and at some point it started attracting a really bad clientele. I should make plans to move I thought, around the late summer of 2004.
Calgary, like most other cities has a big problem with illegal drugs.Only here it's fueled somewhat by affluence.A lot of guys go out to the oilfields to work and are only home every few weeks. There are a lot of people working construction in town as well.And both are fairly well known as having a lot of drug use.In he case of the oil rig workers, with them being gone a lot, there really is not much of a community.They often just land in town for a few days,with a lot of money and a big urge to party. Since the building I lived in was one of the cheaper accommodations available in central Calgary, it attracted a lot of these sorts of people. Not only those sorts, but also the people who service and abuse them. For a while some of the empty suites started to fill up. The one right beside my own brought in a new tenant,and that brought a whole bunch of new problems. From the beginning, the suite had a lot of visitors. By a lot, I mean sometimes thirty to forty a day in just the few hours I was there. And since I was working forty hours a week, I wasn't there, and awake a lot.
With my new neighbor, there came a series of other incidents. I began finding hypodermic needles all over the place.Mostly it was on the front lawn, but I started finding them in the building too. this had never really been a problem before, but by late 2004, it was. I even found one in the washing machine, down in the laundry room. Along with all of this there came to be signs that people had slept in the laundry room as well. And, worst of all, I began getting late night knocking on my door.The few times I answered, it was always someone looking to buy, always in a bad state of affairs, coming down off a high. It got to the point where I would sometimes get more than one visitor nightly.Once there was even a girl there holding a crack pipe and saying"I've got no money, but if you fill up this pipe, I'll do something special for you."
"No Thanks."
"Oh come on...I just need some shit. I'll be good to you."
"Why don't you just be good to me anyway.Just leave me alone and get some sleep...before I call the police."
Calling the police in Calgary is never a really good idea, because I've found them to be pretty much a useless entity, unless you've actually already been murdered, or your biggest pet peeve happens to be speeders which they hound incessantly with photo radar.Mostly, they just seem to be tax collectors.I know that calling them because of all the drug traffic is not even likely to draw a response.So I don't bother."I can put up with this...I can put up with it...I really can...just stay in my own suite and leave everyone else alone- who am I trying to fool."
Eventually I put a sign up on my door that said."This is not a crack house, nor a whorehouse,so please don't bother me. Please find the suite you want.It's not here." It usually took no time at all for someone to yank down the sign and throw it on the floor. One day someone replaced it with one of their own. " Why don't you move out and leave the rest of us here alone...you obviously don't like it here." It was held in place by a hypodermic needle stuck into the wood of the door. Things were, as the saying goes, getting real. They were about to get a whole lot more real.
After Sam left, a couple, maybe even a husband and wife came on as caretakers.They were decent enough folk, quiet and clean cut, with a rather no nonsense approach to running the building.The premises were cleaned daily and one of them was always home. For the most part there was not a lot of dealing going on on the second floor, because they lived right across from the suite that brought in all the traffic. So the traffic moved outside, which was a bit easier to live with. But then, they came to be expecting a child, and ours, despite a great deal of childish behavior happening, was an adult building. So off they went.
It's the replacement that brought most of the more serious problems with him.I knew there were some big problems as soon as the guy got there.I was told that he had just been released from prison, and it was easy to believe because he was a tough looking character.He could well have been sixty, or maybe only forty, but all used up.I'd see needle tracks on his arms all the time.So I resolved to just keep dealing with the building owner at his office.That had seemed to work well up until this point, and it kept me from running across this character very often.
But it was during this guys rather short tenure that some really unsettling things began happening.At first, I couldn't quite discern that anything really was happening, but I would just have a really odd feeling that things were not quite right when I got home. It had never really occurred to me that anyone might actually be entering my suite, but I came to the conclusion that it seemed to be true. I'd come home and there'd be wet footprints on the carpet, even though it hadn't started raining until after I'd been at work three hours. Or there would be some silt in the bathtub, and maybe a shampoo bottle would be sitting in a place where I thought I hadn't put it.Once, a can of beans seemed to be gone.But it could all be just my memory getting bad.It had never really been great in the first place. I could convince myself that that was true, because I didn't really know what to do with the alternative.Denial seemed as good an option as anything. But the incidents, if that's what they really were, kept right on happening, until I was almost certain I was having unwanted visitors. If I said that to anyone, I'd be called paranoid. Hell, I'd even think myself paranoid.But even paranoid people are not immune to people messing with them. Besides, it was already known that keys could be given out to people who didn't belong there.But that was so long ago...
With all of this going on, I decided to set things up for whoever my unauthorized visitor might be. I determined to find out if I was having visitors. This involved setting up items in such a way as to be able to tell, upon my return if they had been disturbed.So I would take the shower head and point it askew, either toward the ceiling, or toward the edge of the tub so that it would spray all over the toilet and floor. I'd lay out towels on the toilet seat just so, so I knew exactly what position it was in.The same with shampoo bottles, and soap, and books laid out on the couch or coffee table, and cans in the cupboard.And before I left, I would take pictures of everything with my phone.
This was all going down in the winter, and there was a lot of slush and snow. So one day I come home and find the carpet all tracked up again.But I couldn't really say for certain that I hadn't done that myself.I had my set up items laid out, and eventually they gave me an answer.Because of the pictures I'd taken, I was able to locate things to within an inch or so of where I knew I'd put them.And, as it turned out, on at least one occasion, things had been moved. This was more than unsettling, but still offered no real proof.
Then one day I came home, and someone was moving all the things out of the caretakers home.The man in the next apartment over was moving his stuff into the caretakers old suite, while a couple of men were moving things out.The man moving in was the newest caretaker. I stopped to make his acquaintance, and he told me,shall we say, the rest of the story: It seems that people had been getting unwanted visitors.According to the new caretaker, the owner had just fired the old one, the guy from prison.The story was that he had been allowing homeless people access to suites for the purpose of catching a few hours sleep and perhaps using the bath or shower, or even the stove. The extent of this whole thing wasn't really known, but the new caretaker told me about how it came to be discovered.The man who owned the building, also owned a couple of other buildings.It was in one of those buildings that he went one late winter day to show a suite, only to open the door and find it occupied by several homeless people.They quickly explained to him that they had no keys to the place, but had been let in by a man who claimed to own the building.He as charging them a nominal amount to occupy the suites, but there were also a fair number of people using several vacant, and perhaps occupied suites as well. So the end result was what I witnessed when I got home that day.
By now I was convinced I should move.But where to.And I hated moving in winter if it could be avoided.I knew to my satisfaction that there were some really disturbing things going on here, and I began not feeling very safe.I also got very irritable, and rather more reclusive than normal.Still I was convinced I was not being unreasonable about things at all.There were some real problems here, and I thought it unlikely that much would be changing in the very near future. I decided to wait a few more months.
Now I've been living up on The North Hill for about six months and the future here seems unsettled too.The Mormons, the distance from downtown, the drinking , the mess in the bathroom, the lack of privacy, that infernal Ikea bed- all are starting to bother me. Someday it will just all gather into a critical mass and I'll be out of here.But where to?I guess I'm just a generally dissatisfied soul, a malcontent maybe.Maybe I'll just find another town, maybe I'm a bit of a wanderer.Maybe I'll head east someday.
Long before the flood, in June of 2005, things had been deteriorating around the home place.I thought I could put up with most of it, but it was seeming such a heavy load.Here I was paying good money to rent a place that I loved mostly for the location.I loved walking down to the river with my guitar, or just going for a walk in the park to the north. But the place was physically falling apart, and at some point it started attracting a really bad clientele. I should make plans to move I thought, around the late summer of 2004.
Calgary, like most other cities has a big problem with illegal drugs.Only here it's fueled somewhat by affluence.A lot of guys go out to the oilfields to work and are only home every few weeks. There are a lot of people working construction in town as well.And both are fairly well known as having a lot of drug use.In he case of the oil rig workers, with them being gone a lot, there really is not much of a community.They often just land in town for a few days,with a lot of money and a big urge to party. Since the building I lived in was one of the cheaper accommodations available in central Calgary, it attracted a lot of these sorts of people. Not only those sorts, but also the people who service and abuse them. For a while some of the empty suites started to fill up. The one right beside my own brought in a new tenant,and that brought a whole bunch of new problems. From the beginning, the suite had a lot of visitors. By a lot, I mean sometimes thirty to forty a day in just the few hours I was there. And since I was working forty hours a week, I wasn't there, and awake a lot.
With my new neighbor, there came a series of other incidents. I began finding hypodermic needles all over the place.Mostly it was on the front lawn, but I started finding them in the building too. this had never really been a problem before, but by late 2004, it was. I even found one in the washing machine, down in the laundry room. Along with all of this there came to be signs that people had slept in the laundry room as well. And, worst of all, I began getting late night knocking on my door.The few times I answered, it was always someone looking to buy, always in a bad state of affairs, coming down off a high. It got to the point where I would sometimes get more than one visitor nightly.Once there was even a girl there holding a crack pipe and saying"I've got no money, but if you fill up this pipe, I'll do something special for you."
"No Thanks."
"Oh come on...I just need some shit. I'll be good to you."
"Why don't you just be good to me anyway.Just leave me alone and get some sleep...before I call the police."
Calling the police in Calgary is never a really good idea, because I've found them to be pretty much a useless entity, unless you've actually already been murdered, or your biggest pet peeve happens to be speeders which they hound incessantly with photo radar.Mostly, they just seem to be tax collectors.I know that calling them because of all the drug traffic is not even likely to draw a response.So I don't bother."I can put up with this...I can put up with it...I really can...just stay in my own suite and leave everyone else alone- who am I trying to fool."
Eventually I put a sign up on my door that said."This is not a crack house, nor a whorehouse,so please don't bother me. Please find the suite you want.It's not here." It usually took no time at all for someone to yank down the sign and throw it on the floor. One day someone replaced it with one of their own. " Why don't you move out and leave the rest of us here alone...you obviously don't like it here." It was held in place by a hypodermic needle stuck into the wood of the door. Things were, as the saying goes, getting real. They were about to get a whole lot more real.
After Sam left, a couple, maybe even a husband and wife came on as caretakers.They were decent enough folk, quiet and clean cut, with a rather no nonsense approach to running the building.The premises were cleaned daily and one of them was always home. For the most part there was not a lot of dealing going on on the second floor, because they lived right across from the suite that brought in all the traffic. So the traffic moved outside, which was a bit easier to live with. But then, they came to be expecting a child, and ours, despite a great deal of childish behavior happening, was an adult building. So off they went.
It's the replacement that brought most of the more serious problems with him.I knew there were some big problems as soon as the guy got there.I was told that he had just been released from prison, and it was easy to believe because he was a tough looking character.He could well have been sixty, or maybe only forty, but all used up.I'd see needle tracks on his arms all the time.So I resolved to just keep dealing with the building owner at his office.That had seemed to work well up until this point, and it kept me from running across this character very often.
But it was during this guys rather short tenure that some really unsettling things began happening.At first, I couldn't quite discern that anything really was happening, but I would just have a really odd feeling that things were not quite right when I got home. It had never really occurred to me that anyone might actually be entering my suite, but I came to the conclusion that it seemed to be true. I'd come home and there'd be wet footprints on the carpet, even though it hadn't started raining until after I'd been at work three hours. Or there would be some silt in the bathtub, and maybe a shampoo bottle would be sitting in a place where I thought I hadn't put it.Once, a can of beans seemed to be gone.But it could all be just my memory getting bad.It had never really been great in the first place. I could convince myself that that was true, because I didn't really know what to do with the alternative.Denial seemed as good an option as anything. But the incidents, if that's what they really were, kept right on happening, until I was almost certain I was having unwanted visitors. If I said that to anyone, I'd be called paranoid. Hell, I'd even think myself paranoid.But even paranoid people are not immune to people messing with them. Besides, it was already known that keys could be given out to people who didn't belong there.But that was so long ago...
With all of this going on, I decided to set things up for whoever my unauthorized visitor might be. I determined to find out if I was having visitors. This involved setting up items in such a way as to be able to tell, upon my return if they had been disturbed.So I would take the shower head and point it askew, either toward the ceiling, or toward the edge of the tub so that it would spray all over the toilet and floor. I'd lay out towels on the toilet seat just so, so I knew exactly what position it was in.The same with shampoo bottles, and soap, and books laid out on the couch or coffee table, and cans in the cupboard.And before I left, I would take pictures of everything with my phone.
This was all going down in the winter, and there was a lot of slush and snow. So one day I come home and find the carpet all tracked up again.But I couldn't really say for certain that I hadn't done that myself.I had my set up items laid out, and eventually they gave me an answer.Because of the pictures I'd taken, I was able to locate things to within an inch or so of where I knew I'd put them.And, as it turned out, on at least one occasion, things had been moved. This was more than unsettling, but still offered no real proof.
Then one day I came home, and someone was moving all the things out of the caretakers home.The man in the next apartment over was moving his stuff into the caretakers old suite, while a couple of men were moving things out.The man moving in was the newest caretaker. I stopped to make his acquaintance, and he told me,shall we say, the rest of the story: It seems that people had been getting unwanted visitors.According to the new caretaker, the owner had just fired the old one, the guy from prison.The story was that he had been allowing homeless people access to suites for the purpose of catching a few hours sleep and perhaps using the bath or shower, or even the stove. The extent of this whole thing wasn't really known, but the new caretaker told me about how it came to be discovered.The man who owned the building, also owned a couple of other buildings.It was in one of those buildings that he went one late winter day to show a suite, only to open the door and find it occupied by several homeless people.They quickly explained to him that they had no keys to the place, but had been let in by a man who claimed to own the building.He as charging them a nominal amount to occupy the suites, but there were also a fair number of people using several vacant, and perhaps occupied suites as well. So the end result was what I witnessed when I got home that day.
By now I was convinced I should move.But where to.And I hated moving in winter if it could be avoided.I knew to my satisfaction that there were some really disturbing things going on here, and I began not feeling very safe.I also got very irritable, and rather more reclusive than normal.Still I was convinced I was not being unreasonable about things at all.There were some real problems here, and I thought it unlikely that much would be changing in the very near future. I decided to wait a few more months.
Now I've been living up on The North Hill for about six months and the future here seems unsettled too.The Mormons, the distance from downtown, the drinking , the mess in the bathroom, the lack of privacy, that infernal Ikea bed- all are starting to bother me. Someday it will just all gather into a critical mass and I'll be out of here.But where to?I guess I'm just a generally dissatisfied soul, a malcontent maybe.Maybe I'll just find another town, maybe I'm a bit of a wanderer.Maybe I'll head east someday.
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