Dec. 5: The office

 I couldn't afford an apartment of my own, so I rented an office instead.

"What sort of business do you run?" asked the pleasant looking lady who managed the commercial building at 4515 MacLeod Trail South.

"I'm a writer," I said.

She handed me two keys. One was for the outer door. The other would open the door to my office.

My office.

It was January of 1996 and I had just celebrated my 23rd birthday. The rent for my office was $150 a month. My office was small, barely enough room to lie down in. It came equipped with an old wooden desk, a steel chair, and one electrical outlet. I lugged my big clunky computer there, plugged it in, and turned it on.

I was immediately jazzed by the prospect of unfettered and uninterrupted creativity. My office had no phone - the closest one was a pay phone on the street corner downstairs - so no one could call me and, perhaps more importantly, I couldn't call anyone either. There was no one to demand I stop writing so I could do chores or walk a dog or come for dinner. This was going to be unfettered me time. I believe I slept in that office a few times. It was uncomfortable because I didn't bring any bedding, but I was young enough and stupid enough to do it anyway, curling up in a ball on the beige carpet-smelling carpet and using my leather jacket as a pillow.

My office was one of about a dozen or so offices on the upper floor of 4515 MacLeod. You had to climb a flight of stairs to access it. When you opened the outer door, you walked into a small reception area that branched out into all the other offices. At $150 a month, mine was the smallest. There was a bohemian community of professionals there. There was a pediatrician who worked out of a big office on the main floor. There was an allergist too and a woman whose job seemed to consist of pointing a laser beam at colourful pictures of dinosaurs.

There was another flight of stairs that led up to the penthouse office, currently sitting empty and costing $800 a month. I commandeered that space later when I entered the Calgary One-Act Play Festival and suddenly, my troupe and I needed rehearsal space. It was cramped rehearsing in my small office, so I moved the actors upstairs. I thought we could get away with it because we rehearsed late at night after business hours, but one evening the pediatrician was working late and he called the office manager to complain about my transgressions.

I was warned to stay downstairs, to redirect all my activities into my tiny closet of an office. This I did. The pediatrician and I gave each other dirty looks whenever we saw each other.

There was a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise downstairs as well as a small convenience store run by an old Vietnamese couple. In that store was a small turnstile of paperback books. There was one book called The Private Dick. I bought it, honestly thinking it would be a good detective story. It was not a detective story. I knew, at the age of 23, that dick is a slang term for detective, but I should have known it was also a slang term for something else.

Somewhere in there, my best friend called me. He was in tears. His cat had died. That cat had been part of the family for more than a decade.

"I'll come get you," I said.

I picked up my best friend, we ordered a pizza, and we took it to my office to eat. We sat in folding chairs in my office, eating pizza and drinking Coca-Cola, and he talked about his cat for an hour. He asked me if I thought cats had souls. I didn't think they did, but I bit my tongue. He needed comforting, not my armchair theology about housepets.

The conversation morphed from cats to other things and I drove my best friend home around four in the morning and all was right with the world again.

The Calgary One-Act Play Festival came and I won the best original script award. Shortly after that, the office manager called to tell me that the entire building had been purchased and that I would have to vacate my office.

It made me sad. Warmer weather was coming and there was a 24-hour gym right across the street from the office. I thought I could make my office a de facto apartment. I couldn't shower there (there was only a communal bathroom with toilet and sink) or prepare meals there or entertain dates there or do laundry there. But I could write all night and go for a workout at four a.m. if I was so moved and I could continue sleeping on the floor. I dreamed that one day I might pen a cult novel and that someone would erect a plaque on that building that told the world that 4515 MacLeod was where a work of genius was created.

4515 MacLeod is still standing. A business called Urban Square runs out of it now. The Kentucky Fried Chicken is gone and a pharmacy stands in its place. The convenience store run by the Vietnamese couple is now a Halal meat and grocery shop. I drive by it whenever I am in Calgary and sometimes, I wave to the ghost of that silly 23-year-old man-child who thought he might get famous there.