exit scene cast of characters

At some point in my apartment in the past month, fecal matter hit a spinning air circulator. For reasons I don't feel like rehashing and because I wanted to stay out of things, I decided to move out of my beautiful home and from my two best friends in the city.

I feel many things about this, but I don't think this is the proper forum to talk about the most important thoughts I have.

So I will talk about the trivial ones and the ones I will feel a sort of surface nostalgia for: the riff-raff that I'll miss, walking from the Metro station home every morning, every night and any time in between.

I'll miss walking past the guy in the cafe on St. Hubert and St. Catherines who can be counted on to be on one of the computers taking pictures of muscle-men on youtube with his camera. Godspeed, sir.

I'll miss the Tommy Chong-lookalike who wanders along meaninglessly with his head leaning forward, pushing a tiny dog in a kid's stroller.

I'll miss the enormously tall Sudanese brother with the tiny head, who wanders the park around the station selling drugs. He reminds me of one of those shrunken head guys from Beetlejuice. The guy is like 6'8, but I feel like a preschooler could palm his dome. I used to look at him and wonder how anyone so awkward and harmless looking could do what he does, until I saw him lose it on a guy who didn't have any money and now I keep my distance.

I'll miss the morphine freak, who still makes appearances every now and then. She looks puffier than she did when I met her a year ago, when I moved to town and bought her a coffee at the same cafe on St. Hubert and St. Catherine. She told me she had to apologize to the lady behind the counter, because she'd been kicked out earlier that week and she'd thrown things and yelled at her.

I'll miss the guy with the long white hair, who walks around like he's just killed somebody. I used to find him fascinating when I moved here because me and a friend had plowed through Twin Peaks and he is the spitting image of Bob.

I'll miss being accosted for weed by thugs every time I enter the Metro.

I'll miss the wound-up-like-a-toy junkie walk, the random drunken freak out on a telephone booth, the legless, hopeless cigarette smokers, the blazee busts outside the Metro station, the homeless sleeping outside the heating vents.

I'll miss walking past the lines of cabbies, smelling like cheap cologne pulled from a magazine ad, arguing about their fares, while they wait forever for a passenger.

I'll miss walking past the bus station and the couples crying or kissing and travellers taking in their first breath of Montreal and a hippy packing a surfboard into the back of a cab at the start of winter.

I'll miss the music or the spoken word wafting out the windows of L'Escalier.

I'll miss the syringes and vomit and piss and turds on the street because it reminds me of home.

I'll miss what has become the backdrop, the setting and the scene and what really is the ubiquity and consistency that has made up the first year of my life in Montreal.

At least at my new place, I'll be a five-minute walk from the best poutine in the world.