Summer is here in force, and even though I'm slowly roasting to death I'm determined to enjoy every minute of it. Normally this season is a mixed bag. Sure, it provides some tremendous things that remind a man like me why life is worth living: Gorgeous bikini-clad women bouncing their way to the beach, late night cigars in plastic easy chairs, the shift in winter diet from heavy ales to lagers and white wines and champagnes...but I have a heart of ice that melts as soon as the temperature rises above freezing and leaks through my pores to make an obscene mess.
Exercise has helped, and carrying around 50 fewer pounds than I used to buys time in the sun before I turn into a puffy red-faced hog. Still, mine is not a body that is optimally designed for summer. This year is different, though. First, training to run a half marathon is forcing me to become close friends with sweat and heat and like a hostage with Stockholm syndrome I'm started to enjoy the mild discomfort of it all. Secondly I have a screen door again, and the reason that is excellent requires a few belts of scotch and a trip down memory lane.
Sometime around 2011 - three lifetimes ago - some thoughtless fool broke my balcony screen door during a barbecue. We were outside enjoying some sunshine and burgers when there was a loud crack and a twang as a flimsy piece of silver metal wheel flew past our heads. "Hit the deck!" I shouted as the door came off the rail and slammed loudly on the floor. "It's the goddamned Libyans!" (I had recently written some unflattering things about Colonel Ghadaffi in the dying days of his regime and he seemed like just the sort of rotten prick to dispatch one of his famous female assassins to get his own back).
In the end it turned out not to be a seductive Bedouin murderess but a dumb drunk, sliding the poorly constructed door faster than its design apparently allowed.
I called my bumbling landlords and reported the incident, which they promptly noted and then informed me they would do nothing: In a shell-game strategy straight out of the Stephen Harper and Michael Fortier school of facilities management, the balcony doors portfolio had been outsourced to a company which would come in, once a year, and perform all the year's necessary maintenance then. As it turned out, I had missed the window to get it fixed or replaced for that year by mere weeks.
"Bastards!" I shouted, but to be honest it never bothered me at the time. Ottawa's weather is so extreme that almost every month of the year you want your house sealed up as tightly as possible to keep the cold either out or in, and it would be unfair to say the loss of a working screen door had seriously crippled me. Still, my wife wanted it dealt with and it would be silly to have a spare, broken, screen door sitting on my balcony forever, so I had them put me on the list for a replacement and that was that.
Five goddamned years passed. The wife left me, I've grieved, developed a whole other almost-marriage, and watched it fall apart in that time. I've completed two different long-form census questionnaires since it broke. Gadaffi's been long dead and Libya has gone through a whole second civil war while I've been waiting. Every Province and Territory has had an election cycle, and both Stephen Harper and Michael Fortier long since swept away; all the while I haven't been able to enjoy the comforts of a screen door. Unconscionable.
I checked in periodically throughout the last half-decade, just to make sure I was still on a list. Oh yes! Any day now, they'd say, and I would smile because I knew they were lying. This year, however, they finally went too far: The Greedheads were compelled to justify this year's rent increase by outlining the extraordinary expenses they'd invested in the property. Sure enough, a million dollars on patio door repairs was right there on the front page of the document, which came to my door along with a form that announcing that my pre-authorized payment had expired and my rent was five days overdue.
I sent them a cheque, along with a letter copied to the Ontario Tenant Board containing some damning photos. "If you're going to make me shell out an extra half-percent to fix the patio doors," it read, "you should probably actually fix them." I then threatened to provide the deposition from my divorce, which had been dated in 2012, notarized, and clearly stated that the common-law marriage had fallen apart due to "Irreconcilable differences re: Fucking with the landlord over a broken screen door vs Just getting on with life and being a grown up."
The notice came swiftly that my door would be replaced and today it was finally installed. Victory!
So now I'm sitting here with my windows and balcony door wide open - screens letting the humid hot air waft in. It's made the apartment uncomfortably hot and even as I write this I can feel my gonads merging slowly right into the leather chair, but it's all worth it. The unit has excellent air condition and I don't even pay for it - a benefit for which I'm sure the bumbling landlords are kicking themselves for offering - and I'm sure that once the satisfaction of my personal vengeance has dulled and I get tired of picking up my balls I'll seal the place up and let sweet technology keep me comfortable.
But for now? Fuck 'em. It's summer right now and it should feel like it: There are beers to drink and cigars to smoke and summer nights to enjoy. In three months the United States will be in full-swing General Election mode and we can run for our drug dealers and assisted suicides and law suits then. I intend to enjoy this state of affairs until the last possible moment, sweat, sunburns, and all. How could anyone not?
