When I was 20

It's January and it's crunchy snow cold. Hell-N and I have just moved to Montreal in a small 31/2 on Christophe-Colomb Ave. She is the very best friend I have ever had, and I find it funny that she's my boyfriend P-Trick's ex-girlfriend. I work hard, study, take mime classes, cook vegetarian dishes and keep house. Her mother comes by every week-end to tidy her part of the bedroom, pick up her dirty laundry and leave clean clothes and lots of food behind. Hell-N is so beautiful, easy going and free. I often admire her through the bamboo curtain. She is socially engaged and a communist... I'm ok with that, being a feminist, but her friends don't understand why I don't embrace their ideological views. They tease me and say I'm an individualist petite-bourgeoise and put me on their "brown"-list. I don't give a shit: their parents are all upper middle-class folks (university teachers, lawyers, surgeons, executives, etc.) and they all went to private schools. I don't even bother telling them where I come from and how I manage to survive.

I guess I catch pneumonia the night I throw all those nice white dishes on the wall after waking up to hear Hell-N and P-trick fucking right next to my bed. They find my reaction so... réactionnaire. I throw a coat over my nightdress and don't bother putting my boots on. I walk Christophe-Colomb from Jean-Talon to Des Carrières and end up on a porch on Des Érables St. My "Man" still lives there. Everything looks the way it did some five years ago. I can almost see his 750 parked in the kitchen for the winter. And all the white stuff he stashes in the little room. So, what’s next? Decisions, decisions... I turn around and walk all the way back to the apartment. I stay there until June, then move in with S-Urge. I haven’t seen Hell-N since and still wonder what kind of woman she is today.