Ready, Aim...

[talktooloose]

In the comments to my last post, a few people asked me about the fire I was in. Here's the tale:

I lived with my parents until I was 23—in hindsight, a rather over-extended adolescence. Two classmates, Nadia and Philip, lived over a luggage store on funky Queen St. (before that stretch became upscale) and needed a third resident. Apparently Keanu Reeves had been their roommate. Apprently I would do as a replacement.

I was a pretty shy and sheltered guy and surprisingly still closeted considering I had just finished a drama degree. So, moving into funky land with two scenesters was as nerve-wracking as it was thrilling, but I was ready to grow up. That same week, I started working as a transcriber for the Ontario Legislature through my temp agency. So, I moved in on Wednesday and for three days I woke up on Queen Street and marched through the lovely May morning sunshine up University Avenue to Queen's Park, the legislature building.

I felt on top of the world.

Friday night, my roommates and I subwayed out to the Kingsway Cinema (now deceased) to see a cool movie (I forget which—could it have been "Repo Man"?) and we generally acted giddy and happy to be together. We talked until three in the morning at the kitchen table and then went to bed.

At 7 in the morning, our doorbell started ringing madly and someone was pounding on the door. I thought, "Shit, one of Nadia's friends is OD'ing on heroin or some other Queen St. crisis". She and I both staggered out into the hall and there was acrid blue smoke hanging thickly in the air.

"Get out, get out," she yelled and I slipped into automatic pilot. I ran into my room, closing my door behind me, pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed my backpack and headed back to the hall. Thirty seconds had elapsed, but now the smoke was so thick you couldn't see the far wall. Thousands of pieces of vinyl luggage were burning one floor beneath us.

I ran for the staircase, dimly aware of Nadia in front of me. Running down two flights of stairs, I remember being surprised how clearly I could hear people on the street shouting at us even though the door ahead was closed. When I reached the doorway, I found it to be open. The stairway had just been too thick with smoke to let any light in.

It was a big blaze for a small building and all together ten trucks arrived, pouring water into the front windows of our aparment for hours (onto Nadia's vintage clothes). I avoided the TV reporters who wanted to interview me and eventually got on the subway and went home to my parents' house.

I blew my nose on the subway and the tissue turned black.

My pull-out couch bed was ruined but most of my stuff survived. Next time you're at my house, ask to see the spread in the dictionary that was open on my desk. The pages are dark grey with clear white areas where coins and my nail clippers were sitting.

I had a lot of fire dreams in the months that followed, usually as morning approached and since then, the idea there may be a fire in the house can still occassionally get to me at five in the morning.

One thing that has always bothered me... as I dressed, as I ran out of the burning building with Nadia ahead of me on the staircase, at no point did I wonder where Philip was. He was fine, as it turned out, but I never checked before I rushed off to save my skin. It never even crossed my mind.

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