Mile-End First

This is the 1st blog post about me, a not so passable but still very sexy mature transsexual woman wandering in the streets of Montréal, Québec after landing in a shitty small room in a 65 room building following an eviction for renovations...

and after spending most time after transition locked away inside the apartment where I lived since 2015 and that I had to leave in a rush on July 5, 2021. It's not necessarily written in a chronological order, and I might (so it seems) be repeating myself. Excuse my English: not my 1st language.

Sixty-five rooms. Nine toilets in nine hallways, three stories, one main entrance everyone needs to use to come in.

That’s what it is.

With the managing woman shouting most days after one or the other tenant, starting at 11:00 am when she comes in.

I hear everything, we’re all crowded and packed in. I’m on ground level, just by the main entrance where the office is, and my two tiny windows letting no air in are right by whatever machine thermo pump or AC outside, I notice how noisy it is when it stops every now and then when it’s not too warm outside; I can hear all of the 64 other tenants, and their visitors discussing as they search for their key and fumble with the lock to open the door when they come in. Then the door slams shut… then someone comes out, the door slams shut again.

I just cannot stay in there, I need to go outside.

I bring my Lysol along and Scott-Towels to wipe the shower I have to share with 6 dudes a little bit. Down the hallway. Once cleaned, the shower is good though, very good pressure and plenty of hot water. The only very good thing of this… shelter of mine, I couldn’t call this a home ever.

Untangling  my hair is a lengthy task and I just cannot stand the janitor Nicole, shouting again after a tenant, or is it reverse?

No matter, they shout. She shouts even when she speaks to her husband, I mean… she’s loud.

So I grab my bags and PC and leave, my hairbrush in hand, hair still wet from the shower and the leave-on untangling treatment.

Every day is like this. There is always at least one tenant who is not happy, or who the management is not happy about. I walked 345 km in July just to be elsewhere.

It’s the only place I was able to grab after being evicted for renovations, what they call rénovictions, a new trend in Montréal; the landlords just hop on the rising residential market train, and throw people on the street to get more money.

Since I’m old and transsexual, and weird (other trans think I’m weird too), I wasn’t able to find a place to live. My credit is kaput, I’m poor, there are very few cheap apartments for rent, and no one picked me as a roommate after 6 weeks of searching and passing painful interviews with unopened people.

The fact that I’m transsexual wasn’t actually such a barrier, but my age though… and it’d be much worse if I looked my age.

The past 6 years I spent transitioning from man to woman. I say I'm 46, but I'm older than that. It passes though, people believe me on that. I remained mostly in my apartment all those years, I'm realizing that now that I’m outside all the time.

I’m starting out with this text here, 28 days after I left all my furniture except the microwave, and left with a duffle bag and three plants (I had like 40) hopeful that they would accept to rent me a room, otherwise, I would have been on the street, and I will follow with more blog posts to share what I have been living in the streets of Montréal as an old not very passing transsexual woman, and sharing the reactions I cause everywhere.

Excuse my French accent, English is my 2nd language. This city is bilingual, well in the Mile-End, it is.

I love the neighborhood, the Mile-End always has been where I landed after problems elsewhere. Thirty and twenty years ago. It feels like home, so… I have a shelter in my home, the Mile-End, which is the Western part of the Plateau Mont-Royal, a borough of Montréal.

In the past 28 days, I spent my time mostly on the Plateau, some downtown.

to be followed

Dominique Rock