Kitsilano is one of Vancouver’s most expensive neighbourhoods. It’s where I live here.

And I have felt safer in innercity Toronto in the dark hours before sunrise than I do walking here after the sun has set. I’ve loitered on my own in empty playgrounds in Flemo at midnight and had lone men watch me swing on the swings and felt no fear, while here I sometimes steel myself before walking through these leafy streets, past these quiet and polite houses.

It’s 11PM and I go out for a walk. I stay close to the main street, try to force myself to avoid the alleyways, to stick where the lights are, try to force myself to trust this city, the way it goes dead still with the night. And here, where there are five pet salons in the space of two blocks, the insides of the entrances to the clothing boutiques are people’s homes. You always see the shopping carts first. Then you see the rugs encasing legs, except at first sight, the form is unformed, so you could mistake them for dogs curled up under blankets, and you still often do. And tonight I see the shopping cart and I see the blanket and I’m hoping, as I draw nearer, that he’s asleep, but he’s not. He’s awake, eyes open and mouth closed, sitting up with his back against the door, toque pulled low over his forehead and scarf up tight below his chin. And his hands — why must this one detail, above all the others, hurt most — are folded over his chest, like at the end of prayer, after you’re done asking for impossible things, in resignation or patience, surrender or hope. It’s grown colder in Vancouver than in Toronto, and it’s a deep physical hurt.

So I keep walking, trying to pretend like he doesn’t matter, like the fact of my seeing doesn’t matter, and I shoulder my way through a crowd of drunk boys, and there isn’t a single car on this street, but the stoplights blink green yellow red anyway, diligent and irrelevant. And I think against my will of yesterday, of being in court, under-dressed and over-invested. I think in colours, of the white walls and the brown benches and the orange jumpsuit.

In the daytime, the men — in this neighbourhood, the homeless are always male — mostly disappear, or else they stick to the back streets, like the one I walk through to get home. So we stay close to the thinnest capillaries of this place, away from the surface, where we conflict with the decor.

This neighbourhood is eerie. I do not trust it. I can never put my guard down here. It is too clean, too calm. It is artificial; no one can smile this steadily and this constantly without being a liar. Continue reading this entry »