A No-Bedroom Built for Two

I moved in with my now boyfriend after a month and a half of dating.

I'll give you a second to digest that.

You see, I'm used to the reaction received when dishing out this information.
When you tell this to someone, their eyes dilate rapidly as they try to swallow it. The polite ones attempt to quell the shock, rapidly removing their jaws from the hardwood - but in general there is a stunned awe that hits one's listener.

"Oh..." they say, "that's nice!"

It's a kind attempt, but the body language is a noticeable tell.

I am sympathetic to, and not at all offended by this response. Mainly because I was the first one to whom the craziness of this idea had become apparent.

I was at work - after seven or so weeks of dating my boyfriend - when his name popped up on my cell phone.

"Can you meet me at the station after work?" he'd texted, "We need to talk about something."

His slight variation on the classic slugger, "we need to talk" left my occasionally negative mind reeling, my paranoia off like a rocket.

Any girl with a lick of sense and a rom-com under her belt knows what "we need to talk" means - the outcome of what the Daily Mail described as, "the four little words that could kill your marriage."

I'd seen Clueless, and as a result I wasn't.
That said, "we need to talk" was a new ring to my ears.

I braced myself.
Armour was applied.

"We need to talk? I wasn't aware of this theoretically mutual need for talking!"
The internal practice conversations were numerous, mostly escalating to an irrationally defensive level of response.
Intermittently dispersed between practice scenarios were a smattering of self-directed pep talks of the I-am-Woman-Hear-Me-Roar variety.
"I am a confident, independent woman who doesn't need a man to define me!" I told myself, "Someone who doesn't want to be with me is someone I don't want to be with!"
I strategised the chocolate which would be purchased, the break-up songs which would be blasted, the feminist literature that would be read to reconsider him as nothing but an instrument of my oppression.

However, this thoroughly plotted girly cliche was severely derailed when I was, in fact, not broken up with.
In my rapid code-red response, I'd neglected to think that my Spanish boyfriend - for whom English is a second language - likely had no conception of the phrase's customary implication.
In fact, the reality was quite the opposite.

"I've been at your place so much that my landlady wants to room me with the other Spanish girl at the home-stay. For pretty much the same price," he said, "and I was thinking... if I'm going to share a room with a girl, I want it to be my girlfriend."

I didn't have a statement prepped for that one.

Not only had I never lived with a boyfriend before, I'd never lived with anyone.
Just a month into the lease on my "cozy" (by which I mean, fits-in-a-large-suitcase) apartment, I had not prepared mentally - or spatially - for a real estate proposal.

"Look," he said, "there's no pressure... but I need to tell her in a couple hours."

I was at a loss for words.

"What do you think?"

What did I think?
Aside from the sit-com-esque timeline of decision, I thought about my baron bachelorette fridge of diet soda, mustard, and sushi containers.
I thought about the embarrassing collection of cosmetics growing next to my comically large jewelry box.
I thought about the overflowing closet of fashion choices spilling into my bedroom - nay! - bedroom area.
I thought about the plethora of tiny, mortifying habits and mannerism which I would expose within the reality of cohabitation.

We talked, we did the math.
6 weeks, plus two people, plus one shoe-box sized apartment equals... what exactly?
It was an equation that left me wishing for Pythagorean simplicity.

"Sure!"

That's what I decided. I didn't have the certainty of "yes", and yet also lacked the unwillingness of "no".
I wasn't a deep-end leaper. I wasn't a risk taker.
I was an insurance-seeker. I was a helmet-wearer.
"Sure" was my bungee jump.

We decided on a month-long trial period.
In this way we could experiment without the crushing pressure of having no alternatives. If things went Titanic-level wrong, he could jump ship for the life raft of his old place. If things went splendidly, we could continue on-board the Love Boat.

It's important to note that while we were only six weeks in, we had spent exactly zero days apart since our first date. We loved spending time together and getting to know each other. We spent hours upon hours just talking, and considering the quantity of time we'd spent in each other's company, we were pretty well acquainted. That said, there are things you cannot learn about a person until you share a bathroom, a kitchen, and all remaining personal space with them.

The move itself was easy, to say the very least. Having just brought just two suitcases with him to start his new life across the Atlantic, and having acquired little of great size since he'd arrived, the load fit in the back of a mid-sized compact.
One packing session, one drive, the unpacking, and it was done.

The entire experience of The Move and its minimal scope seemed to betray the magnitude of the action upon our lives.
Two people were combining their worlds, embarking on a new journey, choosing to share each and every part of their lives in a space belonging to them both.
Somehow thirty minutes and a Toyota was a little anticlimactic.

But it was done. And he was there.

The creep of messiness was gradual. As my place became more and more our place with each passing day, so too did his things migrate from the suitcases, to the shelves, to the floor.
And the couch.
And wherever my foot was striving to land.

In an apartment where everything had previously coexisted at nearly perfect right angles, the seismic shift in organisational practices - for me - required a briefly medicated adjustment period.

The motto of the apartment became, "where's the remote?" as only one could ever be located at a time, if lucky.
Dishes accumulated at quadruple speed what with eating at home with increasing frequency. That, and my lazy eating-over-the-sink practice being unpalatable to the sensibilities of a Spanish foodie roommate.
Storage space became a tug of war, one which square footage declared neither could truly win.

He was introduced to my craziness and anal-retentive tidying strategies, and I realised that I was bunking with a less than fastidious apartment keeper on this front.
I needed to adjust to the change just as he was so sweetly adapting to my ways as well.

Despite this transition, the compromises of moving in together were completely dwarfed by the fantastic benefits.

Our couple-shopping not only was fun, but produced a fridge containing items that were neither take-out nor condiments.
Working together, chores fell in volume, as did apartment bills - much to the glee of my chequing account.

Some of the most delightful surprises of our merge I never saw coming.

Finding containers of deliciousness my chef boyfriend had made to make sure I had something after work.
The sweet note exchanges left around our tiny abode.
Waking only to realise, having dozed off on the couch, that he'd gingerly removed my glasses, carried me to bed, and tenderly tucked me in.

The best of all was the magnificent fact of him being there.

Formerly nothing-moments during the day, that would have been lost, were filled with our jokes and loving mockery. Seemingly insignificant seconds falling into the cracks gained weight because I was living them with my best friend.

But it wasn't until his trip to Spain, with two weeks of an ocean between us, that I realised how painfully empty the apartment was without him.
The silence cut through me like knife.
The apartment looked so barren - a sterility settling where his clutter normally lived.
I made a few futile attempts at placing random items haphazardly around, recreating his impact, but my attempt to reproduce his footprint was unsuccessful.

I knew with absolutely certainty when he came back, when I was bawling with joy in his arms at the airport, that I had moved in with the perfect person. I knew when my world shifted back into balance, when my heart swelled to the point of bursting, when it was him that felt like home rather than our (albeit flimsy) walls.

He came home to an apartment decorated for his return like it had been attacked by a stalker talented with a glue gun.
It was a disaster zone of boyfriendly debris almost the instant his bags were opened.

But when I stepped on his belt the next morning, impaling my foot with the sabretooth-like cincher in the darkness, I contained my boundless rage with my stifled agony.
I hopped to comically in the darkness to the bathroom, bracing myself on the counter as I caught my breath.
The next day we'd discuss leaving an obstacle-free path for my morning rituals. But in that moment, I savoured the pain radiating through me.

While it stung with the rage of a thousand killer bees (I can roughly estimate), it only resulted due to our collaborative doltishness and chaos. And as ridiculous as it may seem... that was kinda nice.

The Feminine Magique

In this room, I am the anomaly.
I'm a unique specimen, an exotic import - the "other" in the homogenized pool around me.
I can attempt to camouflage myself, but it's simply be a noticeable lie.
They see me for the intruder that I am.
While I may walk among them, I am not one of them.

Thus is the crisis of a woman in a Magic store.

You may be reading "Magic store" for something more traditionally oddball - a shop of illusions and tricks. A retreat for those tuxedo clad deceivers equipped with rabbit-filled hats and dove-laden sleeves. If only it were so pedestrian...

I was first brought into the depths of this dark, ominous world with the most casual of colloquial additions. On my first date with my now boyfriend, amid a slew of getting-to-know-you information, he swiftly dropped the bomb of his most prominent addiction.

"... and I play Magic the Gathering."

He slipped it into the list of hobbies like one would a dozen eggs while rattling off a shopping list.

My ears perked to the information he'd volunteered. Magic the Gathering had mostly escaped my radar. From what little I knew, I'd grouped it within the Dungeons and Dragons sector of my mind - which is to say, a level of nerdiness I'd rarely approached with a ten foot pole.

Now this is not to argue that I was without my own eccentricities or fringe taste. I possessed a relatively enviable Sailor Moon collection and was frequenting my local comics shop in exploration of the regular Wednesday deliveries. However, with the Magic universe introduced, we were descending to the basement levels of geekiness I had hitherto left untouched.

For some women this may have been a deal breaker, but for me it wasn't a problem for me in the slightest. I'd met a wonderful, suave, smart, funny, and kind man whom I adored. A unique and (possibly) unfairly stigmatized hobby was not an issue in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the quirkiness almost added to the charm he used to sweep me off my feet. And so, like the enthralled eventual girlfriend I became, I threw my hat into the Magic ring in the hopes of being welcomed into this otherworldly realm of creatures, spells, and exorbitantly expensive cardboard.

My boyfriend took on the role of Magic tutor with an enthusiasm that made it all the more worthwhile. He'd had no expectation whatsoever of finding a girlfriend willing to take an interest in Magic, let alone play at a competent level. This low bar was a comfortable hurdle height, but little had I known what I was getting into.

"I've been trying to find a rule book or something, but I haven't seen anything at all. Do you have one?" I'd asked.

"The first rule of Magic the Gathering is that there are no rules to Magic the Gathering."

The adorably bad Fight Club joke sounded like a goof.
It was not.

To my rule-following, law-abiding mind this made no sense whatsoever.
And yet, paradoxically and in spite of a baffling lack of text, I found no shortage of rules to nitpick.

In just a single turn lay the Beginning Phase, the First Main Phase, the Combat Phase, the Second Main Phase, and the End Phase. Within these progressive steps lay myriad tappings and un-tappings, draws and discards, cycling and dredging. Cards were categorized as Instants, Sorceries, Creatures, Planeswalkers, Enchantments. Each of these with separate actions and interactions whilst entering the battlefield, in play, and when leaving the battlefield. On top of which, each card had it's own effects and terms, leaving me reaching for my nonexistent Magic Lexicon more often than not.

"What does 'haste' mean?" I asked one day, eyes blinking with the blankness of a disoriented fawn.

"It means that when you play it, the creature can attack immediately."

He said it with a matter-of-fact tone which made my lack of game play fluency feel even more pronounced.

I paused.

"Why can't all creatures just attack immediately?"

"Because when they enter the battlefield they have summoning sickness."

Once again I was the dull tool in the potting shed.

"What's summoning sickness?"

"It's like..." he hesitated searching for the most simplistic breakdown he could find, "it's like the creatures are stunned and woozy from being conjured - because they are spells being cast after all - and they can't act until they feel better and less sick. They need to rest until your next turn."

He'd said it as best he could without condescension, and yet it still retained the tone one might inflect whilst explaining to a first grader why the kitty and the mouse just can't be friends.

I was irritated with the game's logistical nonsense.
I was frustrated being the dull crayon in the box.
But most of all, I was furious that my boyfriend's "unicorn has a tummy ache" explanation had actually been effective.

Ironically, though it was certainly a formidable task, honing my Magic skills proved a significantly smaller road-bump compared to others. On my Magic journey little else compared to the culture shock of entering it's world obstacle-wise.

Magic is a dude's game.
To say that it's male-dominated would be an understatement of unparalleled proportions.
I have more finger on my hands than women I've seen playing Magic.
There may be more leprechauns out there than women playing Magic.
As of yet, I have never played against a woman at Magic.

At the MTG Grand Prix - with 1,400 competitors - I shared a washroom with a maximum of 12 women, most of whom were spectators. While it makes for a spotless, convention centre sized lavatory - one you can (or dare I say, must) tap-dance through - it does not exactly add diversity to your opponent pool.

Being thrust into the Magic the Gathering community is akin to an immersive anthropological experiment on a good day, an animals-in-the-wild style documentary on a bad day.

The ven diagram overlap of "Magic players" and "men who cannot speak to women" being so strikingly high, I've played more than my fair share of games with less than 10% eye contact.
I'm most often scrutinized, underestimated, and on the other end of a fistful of sexism.

And yet, all things considered, I've had an utter blast at some of the comic and card shops where I've played Magic.
The players are some of the smartest fellows I've ever met, and the level of intelligence, witt, and an almost British level of Sarcasm among them is delightfully high.
To whatever extent I am marginalized or ignored, it is typically at the hand of an unintentional perpetrator. While warming these guys to my corny humor and conversational game play is at times a teeth-pulling endeavour, it's made me some of the sweetest guy-pals a gal could hope for. Breaking down their walls is rarely easy, but I am met half-way more often than not and pleased to do it.

I'm luckiest, perhaps, to have the magic amigos I do, as well as a boyfriend who welcomed me to and kept me in the geeky world he loves. I'm still the only girlfriend going to play - for a multitude of reasons. I carry twenty-sided die in my purse, and I'm proud.
I won't lie - I am hopeful that badgering my MTG bros to drag in new blood will eventually bring me some buddies with a lower Y chromosome concentration.

Until then, I am the solo roller sporting a mini skirt, and I'm okay with that.

Unless there's cos-play at hand.
Then all bets are off.

Let's Brunch This Thing

It's Sunday.
I wake, my hair a tangled mess, sticking persistently to my face.
My boyfriend snores beside me on the sliver of bed my sleeping form has allowed him, a result of an unspoken and unconscious slumber-diplomacy.
A quick hair comb, an eyeliner refresh and I return to my recently stirred boyfriend. Groggily, he wakes.
"Let's brunch this thing."

We'd wake on a typical Sunday morning to a rainy, Vancouver morning. Or rather, afternoon.
It is a not infrequent occurrence that we lose the morning hours altogether. Between my regular 8:30-5pm work routine and his 5pm-1am restaurant chaos, what little time we have is sleep deprived and few and far between. But Sundays are that magical vacation when our impossibly opposing schedules align. Thus, our brunch tradition was born - the perfect commencement to our mutually savored day of coupledom; a decadent rousing from those first solid hours of deep, weekend sleep.

I'm lucky that the somewhat "girly" breakfast/lunch substitute has never been an endeavor requiring girlfriendly arm-twisting. My Spanish boyfriend is a specimen without brunch bias. Having no societal Sex & the City background influence to taint his impression, and an additional genetically ingrained love of food, I'd found a veritable jackpot inclined towards my brunchy whims.

What with the infrequency of dining out together our lifestyles permit, brunch became a time of treating, and the Pinnacle Hotel's dining room fits the bill to perfection. Within lazy walking distance of our apartment, at a price point that is close to
or withing budget constraints, and at a level of luxury that we rarely indulged in, it became the trifecta of mid-morning meal magnificence.

As such, we embark upon our almost weekly haunt.
The room is busy to say the least, having arrived well before the cruel 2pm cut-off of this precious alimentary opportunity. No booth to speak of is free, save for the large one in the corner occupied by only a more than slightly sneering "Reserved" sign. I reluctantly resign myself to the notion that I will not be reclining into the smooth embrace of the red leather bench. We take the table near the window, my brunch sensibilities appeased by the pleasingly laid settings and fresh orchid that adorns the table.
(It is worth noting that this tragic location-based seating issue escapes any level of awareness from my boyfriend, a gentleman of more sane and less flammable sensibilities.)

I'm the first to notice the change at the table across from us. Three adult chairs exchanged for high-chairs. Together. In a row.
I am baffled as to how he doesn't see it and point out the development.

"So?" he asks.

So?
I fight my almost sexist take-away, but it's such a dude question I'm expecting a follow-up about how all shoes look the same.
I adore children, but having daycare-based work experience, I am well aware of the chain reaction of tiny humans when together.

The little ones arrive and disperse to their chairs from the caring hands of their parents. I'm immediately endeared by their adorable pudginess and impossibly tiny clothes, yet instinctively my ears brace for an auditory blow that I know is inevitable.

"I don't get it," he says, "they have their own crayons and sheets. They'll be fine."

Oh, the sweet naivete! Little does he know the ammunition these lovable projectors have been equipped with. They are not supplied with implements of invention, but waxy articles of dispute.

The first crayon hits the floor as if in slow motion, and as the dominoes fall my deja vu engages. I flash back to my days with the 35 rug-rats I enjoyed so much and the volume level that seemed of a greater magnitude than their miniature frames could produce.

Baby A looks baffled and distraught by his sudden lack of red crayon, grabbing that of his compatriot to the right. Baby B, alerted to the disturbance, realises how he has been wronged and begins to cry and swipe at his instigator.
Baby C, however, appears baffled by the scene, a charmingly unusual audience proxy in the scene. His befuddled expression gives him the look of an impressively small old man, scoffing at the immaturity of his fellow junior diners.
"What wrong with you?" his look seems to say, "We're in a restaurant for goodness' sake - get your acts together, pick up your crayons and act like babies. You're embarrassing me."

Finally, an adult at the table.

It isn't until this juvenile theatre has subsided, babies quelled and appeased by their parents, that we glance at the menu. The embossed, leather-bound tomb seems to sparkle in the changing light as it is brought back to life in our hands.

Despite our habitual adoption of this treasured tradition, we've yet to entirely absorb the menu.
It sings with the delicious possibility of flavours that only a brunch menu can supply: sweet, berry-doused Belgian waffles, eggs benedict on a bed of BC's own fresh smoked salmon, egg-white frittatas with avocado, feta and spinach, and poached eggs with Hollandaise and sauteed chorizo on a bed of curd-covered poutine.

Back into the rhythm of the morning, floating in the bubbly mimosa contact-high, I inquire with inquisitive delight, "So what are you having?"

He lightly drops the brunch menu. reaching for the regular lunch menu.
"I think I'll have the chicken sandwich."

It's a simple act. The subtle pushing aside of the artful options, and yet a slap in the face of the amalgamated meal.
More than anything, the choice is confusing. How, with the myriad magical options before us, on a menu available within such limited constraints, would one opt to go the route of banality?
It's like being offered the wardrobe to Narnia and saying, "Thanks, but my Ikea Fjell suits me just fine."
Why would you break brunch?

"What is it?"

He looks at me sweetly and takes my hand.
However brunch illiterate he may be, the man knows me well enough to see the disturbance. The slight surface ripples, he is keenly aware, are an indicator of the churning waters below.
He taps my forehead softly with his index finger.

"You okay up there?"

Like a spell shattering, I am immediately aware of the intense absurdity of my reaction.
The fog lifts - eye twitching subsiding - and I remove my dictatorial brunch conductor hat.
Brunch can't be broken. Brunch isn't about regulations.
Brunch lives outside the law. Brunch colours outside the lines.
People said, "we can't eat now, it's neither lunch nor breakfast!" and brunch came in to change the rules.

The waitress comes and we order. My order, the only one from the brunch menu, but that's okay.

In life you need to crack a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.
I know. I'm sorry. It's pretty corny.
But you have to admit, it's a pretty good yolk.