STN > CPH
My flight to Copenhagen is boarding in twenty minutes and I still have to change terminals, legally enter the U.K., clear customs, pass security, and find the gate. How do you say “I’m fucked” in Danish?
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Author: goodnightmere
Dan-ish
I saw it in a second-hand book shop last summer. Its pretty cover caught my eye and I know what they say about books and covers, but this one felt right. I paid twelve dollars and slipped my new hardcover into my yellow-shoulder bag. “Look what I just bought!” I squealed to my best friend, Natalie, when I met her for lunch. “The little book of Hig-ee, the Danish way to live well,” I recited the title, convinced I had the right pronunciation. “Hi-guh.” She corrected me. And so began our obsession with a word neither of us knew how to pronounce. A Danish word that is as strange as it is familiar – a feeling, rather, one that makes you feel safe and warm and cozy, like a blanket next to a fireplace or Jamie’s biceps on Outlander. Nat and I would tag each other in various Jamie and twinkley-light-Hygge-decor posts on Instagram, dream of travelling through Denmark together, and when my roommate, Sarah, and I hosted a Hygge-themed Christmas party, it was Natalie …
Episode 3: Slanted
What followed was a series of aggressive emails, threats to be sued for “damages,” lies about a sick sister from Italy, and less than 60 days to move out and find a new place in a city with a 1 % vacancy rate where I have a better chance of finding Tupac Shakur than an affordable home.
What Happens in Vegas…goes on the internet
“Ladies and gentlemen, there is no more alcohol,” the flight attendant announced. We were only half way to Sin City, but full of booze and tiny pretzels. It had been a long, cold winter-spring-winter, and as the plane touched down I could literally hear a teary eyed Kelly Clarkson sing, “some people wait a lifetime for a moment like thissss.” When my best friend suggested Vegas for her bachelorette, there were no questions – other than, “how can I afford this?” – and I promptly emailed my credit card and passport number to a lady from Flight Centre Bowmanville. The bride-to-be did all the planning, I just sat there refreshing my credit card statement, justifying every expense leading up to the trip with a healthy I-worked-two-Saturdays-in-a-row-therefore-I-deserve-this mentality. I don’t deserve anything. What I needed was a break and two miniature bottles of prosecco, thank you. By the time we checked into our hotel, I was both drunk and hungover from the sheer enormity that is the Las Vegas strip. Everything in Vegas is big. The casinos, …
Episode 2: Moving On
The three of us are a team. We stick together through the puke and the pain and the mess of it all. But tonight the team is broken and I’m afraid it’s my fault.
Slanted
When I moved to the city last year, I realized two very important things: people do cocaine, no one rollerblades. I am a member of the latter category. They call me Blade Girl – nobody calls me that. On the first of April, my mom and I packed two cars full of giant Rubbermaid containers and made our way to my new home; although, it wasn’t entirely new. I had been devising a plan to get back to Toronto ever since my parents pried my tiny-baby hands from the front steps of 79 Farnham Avenue twenty years ago. I’m not bitter, I just never forgave them for taking me away from my first love to a semi-detached in suburbia. Okay, fine, the burbs were actually a great place to grow up. It’s where I met my best friends, sort of lost my virginity, and peed myself while crying on the stairs because I couldn’t find the bathroom in this strange new place where all the houses looked the same – I was five. My parents …
Moving On
It’s two in the morning and my Dad and I are screaming at each other in the light of the bathroom. The other end of the hallway is dark and quiet, but on our side we declared war. My Mom, tired of listening to us, has gone to sleep in the basement – a house divided. We never fight, but judging by the way we are now, you would think we’re professionals. A flood of mascara dyed tears run down my face and sting my eyes. The tears make it hard to see him, but his words make it impossible. This isn’t him. This isn’t the man who ran behind my little two-wheel bike, the only one I trusted to pull out my loose teeth, the hero who caught my puke in his bare hands when I was sick in a fancy hotel room. Ahh, the joys of parenthood. Imagine loving someone so much you would catch their puke in your bare hands? “You would do the same for your kid,” they always tell me. I gag at the thought …
