I’ve been planning this journey for months now and today is the day that I finally get to do it. Each step, having already been meticulously crafted, will now be put to the test to ensure I make it to my destination both on time and in one piece (psychologically speaking). I would not consider myself a planner, just writing the word makes me shudder, but my inability to plan has certainly shaved days off of my lifespan from the stress of always being late. So for this trip I’m about to make, I became a planner. I know both what time I need to be awake and what time I need to be out of bed which of course are never the same thing. I know all the things I need to have in my black leather duffle bag to ensure my journey goes smoothly and at what time my feet need to be firmly planted on the other side of my front door and carrying me to my destination. The plan is in place, now I just need to execute.
My alarm goes off, that beautiful default iPhone alarm, and I check to see the time: It’s now 6:00 AM. I brush my teeth and finish packing my bag, now I just need to decide what to wear. I’m trying on all sorts of outfits, getting carried away with things like trying to match my watch to my tie. My second alarm goes off, snapping me out of a Paris fashion week fantasy and back into my dimly lit bedroom closet. Everyday since moving to Montreal, I’ve felt the need to dress like I was going to meet Ralph Lauren but given that I have to be out the door in 10 minutes, I’ll have settle for Joe Fresh. My entire wardrobe is now on the floor and while every inch of my room is covered in clothing I still have nothing to wear. I make an executive decision to dawn my ol’ reliables. I peel my pair of black Uniqlo trousers off the floor and put it on. These pants always give me a sense of comfort that I could only convey to a fellow former fat child. I unravel a white dress shirt and put it on as well. It’s so oversized I could probably fit another person in with me. “Well oversized is still in, isn’t it?” Now dressed, I step outside, lock the door, and take in the sweltering summer sun from the top of my spiral staircase. The time is now 6:30 AM. I have to be at my destination by 8:00 AM and Apple Maps tells me I’ll be there at 7:58 AM. Today’s journey is not for some elaborate vacation, I’m not attending a conference, and I’m certainly not going to any fashion event. Today is my first day commuting to my office in the West Island from my new home in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal and what better way to inaugurate such a day than in a crushingly narrow window of time.
I rush to the bike-share station next to my house to grab a bike. At the side of the road I see a long chain of giant silver chariots, all securely stowed in their anchors. I pull out my phone and fumble around with the app. “There’s an app for that!” they used to say, well what a bunch of bullshit that turned out to be. The app opens the camera on my phone and I scan the QR code mounted to the base of the handle bars. After a few seconds the anchor lets out a decrepit ring, releasing my bike. I back the bike out slowly onto the road and try to balance myself on the seat. My duffel bag suddenly feels much heavier as if several overweight squirrels climbed into it while I was distracted by my phone. I put both my feet on the pedals and with a gentle push, I take off. The air is so humid that whatever breeze I’ve managed to generate while riding does nothing to the pool of sweat forming above my eye lids. I read online that we’ve been experiencing the hottest week on record, a record which was set only a year prior, and I can really feel it. Thank you Exxon-Mobile. I’m riding down one of the biggest commercial streets in the city and it feels disturbingly quiet. Normally on a brilliant summer day like today, this street is packed with tourists trying their best to order food with the french they learned on Duolingo. Walking past the various cafes, “Je veux une croissant” can be heard from the sidewalk followed up by a “No this one sorry” but at this hour, the only sound I hear is a quiet trill of neighbourhood finches. I roll up to the bike parking next to the metro station and search for an empty slot. I’m both relieved and a little surprised to find the parking rack mostly empty. I assumed that biking to the metro would be part of most peoples morning commute but even the parking for personal bikes is empty. “Maybe people just walk.” I think to myself. I tap my transit card at the station turnstile and hoist my giant duffel bag over the gate. In the evenings these turnstiles are so busy you have to wage a war of eye contact in order to secure your turn but right now I can cross with ease. I make my way down the concrete staircase to the platform and receive quite the surprise. Staring out into the dark tunnel, I see literally nobody. “Il y a pas un chat” is an expression my father taught me recently and it seems apt to use here which translates to “There is nobody, not even a cat.” In my mind I expected the station to be packed with people all trying to get to work on time. I’m fortunate enough to get to work from home three days a week but maybe the people in my neighbourhood can do so everyday. Imagine that life: Never having to give up hours of your week so that your boss can watch over and make sure your work is being done with a smile. I could add some diatribe about how there are kids starving in Africa but I think even they would have a hard time having to spend 8 hours a day inside an office building only to speak to people through Microsoft Teams. I check my phone to see the time: It’s 6:45 AM. All of a sudden the tunnel becomes consumed by a violent roar. I look down the tracks and see a familiar blue smudge. It grows and grows until the silhouette of train forms. I see the chauffeur pass by, showing off all his riders like delicate sculptures posed behind a vitrine. The train slows to a stop and I step aboard. The only free chair I see is the one prioritized for the elderly and pregnant. Confirming that I am neither of those things, I decide to stand, holding on to nothing. I enjoy positioning myself on the train as if I was on a surfboard, keeping balanced as the train twists and turns through these decades old tunnels. If I have nothing, I at least have my inner child.
I’m taking the metro all the way to the end of the line, and as I leave the city centre, I see a change in who gets on board. Black pleated suit-pants are replaced with ill-fitting beige cargo shorts. Wide legged denim from Japan is replaced with the stretchy slim-fit kind from Cambodia. The French silence is replaced with pointed conversations in Spanish and intimate phone calls in Arabic. It’s 7:17 AM and I arrive at my station. The doors open and a sea of people pour out of the train and into the bifurcated stairwell. There’s an incredible contrast between this station and the one I started at. Everyone here has to work. And the jobs they work can’t be done over the internet. These people are working in factories, warehouses, and in the restaurants that serve the people working in offices like the one I’m going to. I ascend the stairs in lock step with all the other travellers, careful not to trip and cause a scene. Making my way to the surface, I trade the dark cavernous metro station for the bright, open, outdoor bus terminal. My eyes adjust to the early morning sun and reveal a long line of people waiting for the same bus as I am. I get in line get a whiff of cannabis. The smell of cigarettes is my usual neighbourhood aroma but sometimes life calls for something a little stronger. The bus pulls up to the stop and we all get on board. I get a shake of anxiety just before I swipe my transit card, hoping it doesn’t decline. I have no reason to believe it would but it’s now 7:30 AM and I cannot afford to miss this bus so everything looks like a source of friction right now. I pass my card over the reader and it sings back to me in an inviting tone, releasing me from some of my anxiety. I sit at the single row seat that faces forward and pull out my magazine. Ever since I started reading on the bus, I’ve noticed how many people are on their phones. I get it though. Why would anyone want to start their day with something exhausting? Work is going to be exhausting enough. But because my job isn’t so tiresome, I have the energy to read regularly. A habit that enables me to discover what I enjoy reading which gets me reading more. So to treat myself for this astute class-conscious observation, I flip to the section of this magazine that has a bunch of pictures of a man on his vacation in Eastern Europe.
Last night I woke up several times in distress. This often happens when I have an important engagement to make the following morning and is usually accompanied by dreams of me being late to said engagement. So this morning while I was very tired, the bit of energy I got from the bike ride kept me awake. But now as I sit calmly on the bus, I can feel my sleep investment slowly approaching a margin call. You know, the brain is a funny thing. I know what’s about to happen. I know that if I close my eyes, I will fall asleep but somehow I’m always able to trick myself into thinking I won’t. I check to see on my phone that I have a few stops to go before I reach my own so I make a deal with myself. “You get 5 minutes and then we stay up for the rest of the trip. Agreed.” So I put my phone in my lap, and let the world fall dark. The next thing I know, my eyes are opening to the window by my side. Nothing has changed. It’s the same seemingly infinite lanes of highway filled with all the same cars. I look to the other side and see all the same people. Maybe I honoured our agreement and only 5 minutes has passed. I check Apple Maps and see that the stop I was waiting to get off at was now several stops behind us. I feel my heart sink to the bottom of my feet. I knew this would happen. I collect my things and get up from the seat. The cortisol shooting through my eyes has given me all the clarity I need in order to find the stop button on the bus. I press it frantically and get off at the next stop. I walk to the bus shelter on the opposite side of the road to catch the next bus in the opposite direction. I’m trying to calm myself after having felt like the sky has just fallen on my head. “They won’t fire me. This meeting isn’t that important.” But missing this meeting is just another straw on the camels back and since the other people in this meeting, the people I work with everyday and who’s faces I never see, are hundreds of kilometres away, it’s hard to tell if the camels feet are buckling. I make my next bus and get to the office. It’s now 8:24 AM, 24 minutes late. I tell my boss that I moved and got lost on my new commute. The whole ride back to my missed bus stop I was imagining how this conversation would go. I always expect a harsh response from people so in my mind I try to imagine a scenario in which my tardiness could be more acceptable. Maybe I got hit by my bus instead of falling asleep on it. I wait in anticipation for his response only to see that he gives me a single thumbs up emoji on Microsoft Teams. I think the camel is still standing.
I’ve been working away at my computer when I’m interrupted by a deep growl from my stomach. I check the time on my computer, its 11:30 AM. I’ve only been working for a few hours but I’m already dying to leave. The excitement from the commute has worn off and I remember how much I fucking hate being in this office. When I used to commute to work by car, I would drive to the nearby strip mall to grab my lunch but now that I’m car-free, I’ll be walking to get my lunch. My options for food (and most everything else) are fairly limited in this business park/suburb. Large chain restaurants like La Belle Province, and a few locally owned business are what survives under this post-Covid retail rental market. I go outside and start walking to the mall where most of the restaurants are. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as having 500 people living in an urban area over a mile away from a supermarket. I think the neighbourhood my office is located in meets this criteria and could be considered a food desert and given how hot it is today and how little vegetation there is, I would also call it a regular desert. I arrive at this middle eastern grocery store, Adonis, at 12:00 PM and it seems like the rest of the West Island has as well. Everyone is buying groceries for the week or coming in for lunch. The delicious smell of roasted chicken and garlic draws me to the prepared food counter at the back of the store and I order myself a plate of chicken shawarma. I get my food and head back outside into the blistering sun, I’m standing in the parking lot and beyond the waves of large SUVs pulling in and out of the road, I see a black woman in wonderfully colourful dress walking with a bag of groceries in either hand. Most people leave this parking lot in their personal vehicle, shielded from the sun and encumbered only by the weight of their bodies. Both of us are leaving this parking lot encumbered by the weight of whatever we’re carrying but I feel embarrassed for complaining about the heat seeing that she’s got a lot more in her hands than I do.
I’m back at the office now, appreciating the air conditioning. I don’t have AC in my new place yet so having a cooling breeze is the one saving grace of going to the office. My chicken and rice plate I got from Adonis tastes fine but it has both rice and potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, I love both rice and potatoes but eating them together is like popping a few Ambian after a cup of chamomile tea. I finish my lunch and stand up to fend off the impending sleepiness. I walk up to the window across from my desk and watch the goings-on in the neighbourhood. There’s a new building that just finished construction and has people working on the landscaping. When I used to walk by the construction site I would hear the men shouting at each other in french. Now that the building construction is complete I don’t see those guys anymore but I do see a different group of people doing the landscaping. It’s about 30 degrees out and these men and women are wearing jeans, and large brimmed hats, planting trees and tilling the soil. I don’t hear them say much but when I do, it’s in Spanish. I wonder again if I’ve seen any of them on the bus with me but I realize because of the nature of their work, always in different locations and having to bring plenty of tools, they probably drive together. I wonder what their conversations on the job are like. Do they talk about the weather? Is there an annoying co-worker who always tries to make jokes that never land? I walk back to my desk and look up gardening jokes. “What did the soil say to the seedling? “I’ve got you covered.” If someone ever said this to me at work I would be covering them with soil.
Eventually 5:00 PM comes around and I’m one of the few people left in the office. When I was commuting to the office by car, I would arrive and leave much earlier so I could avoid the nightmarish Montreal traffic. And while my commute is longer now, it’s a small price to pay to no longer feel like I’m in “Mad Max: Fury Road” on my way home. Actually, since the Office Quebecois de la Langue Francaise (OQLF) mandate that films released in Quebec must have verbose french translations, I should be calling it “Maxime Mentale: L’Autoroute des Chauffards Furieux.” (Further research has revealed to me that the official Quebec release title is “Mad Max: La Route du Chaos” which is somehow even funnier.) It’s time to go home now but just before I do, I’d like to get a little workout in. I close my laptop and pack everything back into my black leather duffel bag. I badge out from the office and make my way to the little gym in the office building’s basement. It’s a small room with very little equipment but I prefer to workout before I leave the office because I’m always exhausted by the time I get home. There are windows into the gym from the hallway so that passer-byers get to wonder how I have any muscle at all if all they ever see me do is pose in front of the wall to wall mirrors. I finish my workout and take a quick shower using the tiny soaps I bought during my trip to Toronto several weeks ago. I have to be weight and space conscious with what I carry in my bag so the compact, body wash, shampoo and conditioner bottles are perfect. I used to leave my soap at the office gym but I stopped because people kept using it. I don’t want to be in the situation where I start showering only to find out I’m out of soap. While being unexpectedly soap-less sucks, it’s far from the worst experience I’ve had in an office shower. A couple times I’ve finished my shower only to realize I forgot to pack my gym towel and the only thing I had to dry myself with was paper towel. Do you understand what this kind of desperation does to a man? To debase himself into shearing his skin with what feels like sand paper when applied to a wet ass. It’s absolutely horrendous and I take extra caution to ensure it never happens again (this has since happened several times more). I haven’t dried myself fully because I’m anxious about when the bus should be arriving. I get dressed the best I can, struggling to pull my shirt over my head as it pulls back every strand of my wet hair. I check my phone to see the next bus is three minutes is alway. Plenty of time. After a certain hour, the bus only comes every 30 minutes and I will be damned if I have to spend any longer on the West Island than I have to.
I pack my bag back up and haul ass out of the office doors. In the distance, I see several figures gathering around my bus stop. They march slowly towards the bus shelter like soldiers returning to base after a difficult campaign. Their heads hang low and their feet drag as they try and forget that they fight in someone else’s war. With that many people waiting, I know that the bus can’t be far behind so I break out into a sprint. With each stride my duffle bag, now firmly clenched in my right hand, pulls on my leg like a small child trying to get your ear. Each pull risks taking me for a tumble onto the hot pavement. I make it to the stop as the bus pulls up and I hop on board. My eyes meet a few other riders, all with the same tired expression but few of the faces I recognize from this morning. I wonder if I should be making friends with these people if I’m going to be seeing them all the time. I sit down and hear a man playing Instagram reels with his phone speakers on full blast. This instantly destroys any desire I had for a bus-related friendship. If there are any social anthropologists amongst my readership, might I recommend a thorough examination of this genre of person? There’s an entire valley between those ears that remain uncharted. The bus ride home goes by slowly. Afternoon traffic in Montreal is somewhat manageable now that I’m not behind the wheel otherwise I would be pulling my still wet hair out. I rummage through my bag and take out the magazine I was reading this morning, a little crumpled but still in tact. I spend the bus ride reading about the aftermath of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The article details the harrowing story of a family who gave up everything to start a new life in Canada. I thought that by reading about someone else’s struggles, I could re-contextualize my own and that maybe this could make me feel like my life isn’t so bad. Maybe for some people the practice of gratitude is healing but right now I feel like this bus could swallow me whole. There is so much violence and evil in the world and I feel like I’ve just invited a trace of this villainy into my soul. I put my magazine back in my bag and put in my Airpods, hoping that this new Clipse album will make me feel better. They’re certainly a better remnant of the early 2000’s than destruction wrought by the Bush administration. I get halfway through the album as the bus pulls into the metro terminus. “This is culturally inappropriate!” blares in my ears as the the bus comes to a stop. “Merci!” I say to the bus driver as I step out of the bus doors and onto the scorching cement sidewalk. I walk across the bus terminal and break through the metro station doors. It’s now 6:40 PM and the metro is packed. It feels like the entire working world is gathered here, eager to get home in time to prepare themselves to do this all over again tomorrow. My ear can’t help but try and chew threw the hundreds of conversations happening around me. I’m trying my best to differentiate between the Vietnamese and Mandarine, the Spanish and Portugese and while I can’t be certain, I know well enough from the tone in their voice and the air between breaths that we’re all saying the same things. The voice of this city is created down here, hundreds of feet under surface. A marriage of concrete and rebar suspends the earth above us. It’s contours reflect our voices back to us and towards the surface, calling for all who aren’t listening. Beyond the voices, I hear the beginning of a howl. The metro is fast approaching and puts us all into a focused silence. The train slows to a stop while the car doors slide open. A familiar chime welcomes me aboard as I search for somewhere to rest my tired corps. I find a single chair in the crowd, calling for me like Joseph in the manger. I sit down and feel my body melt into the iconic blue plastic chair. The swooping curvature holding my back up like a ladle filled with warm soup. I feel so much more relaxed now that I’m not rushing to make my morning meeting. I’m looking out the window and see the silhouette of passengers blending together. The collection of cohesive outfits is now a mosaic of disconnected patterns and swollen frowns. As my view washes in and out with each stop, so does my focus. The strong but gentle pull of the train sinks me deeper into my chair and further out of time. At first I think my day is playing back to me, a projection of the routine I’ve just completed but I’m actually dreaming about tomorrow. I see myself getting up and getting dressed. Each part of the journey, from leaving the house to making each transit connection, all seem to blend together as if they all happened simultaneously. This dream now leaves me on the bus, feeling the same gentle touch of the sandman caressing my head. But instead carrying me to sleep, he speaks into my ear with a familiar voice and announces that I’ve arrived at the metro station by my house. I awake in a panic and see the doors to the metro car about to close. The light around the doors turns red signalling to me that I either leave now or end up with a new addition to my journey. I jump from my seat and pass through the doors just in time. I do a quick once over to make sure I’ve not left anything in my chair. I have my keys, my phone, my wallet, and my black leather duffel bag stuffed with everything it had this morning. I feel now as I did when I left my house this morning, tired and encumbered by the weight of everything I carry in my hands but still strong enough to do it all again tomorrow.