MARCH STILL NEEDED
The summer I moved back to Hamilton was sweltering hot. A mere two weeks before the devastating Plastimet fire in July 1997, I found myself standing inside a shoebox-shaped room on the main floor of a gothic mansion, the selling feature of which was a single window overlooking a dank, narrow alley. My nostrils filled with the sickly-sweet scent of Lysol spray, a product that at one time was marketed as the hallmark of a clean, safe home, which, um … seemed not to be the case here.
Normally, I would have planned better. But my return to Hamilton happened quickly, before I’d had a chance to secure a proper apartment of my own. So I rented this fully furnished downtown abode — which did include a small kitchenette and private bathroom — for one month until I could get the hell outta there and into a space I could call my own. This was well before Airbnb, after all, so my options were somewhat limited.
And hey, it had a new twin bed from Ikea and a TV so it most certainly could have been worse.
But as I say, it was a hot summer. The fully-furnished shoebox apartment was not air conditioned. And the heat of the day, of the entire city, seemed to deposit in the small space so that when I finally entered after a stressful day of hustling as a freelance photographer, I would swing open the door and fall onto the bed, withering from the intense temperatures. The desktop fan was a joke.
I had to open the window. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew that opening a window on the main floor of any apartment that overlooks an alley is unsafe. It’s like leaving a door — or window, as the case may be — open for rapists and killers. But suffocating in the heat was not an option and I had to do something. So I opened the window that overlooked the then-dark alley, keeping the dusty horizontal blinds closed.
On the third or fourth night of sleeping with the window open, I was awakened by a noise. Grunting. Moaning. Sounds of a male voice on the other side of the open window; a thin mesh screen was the only thing separating us. I froze, terrified to move a muscle,
terrified that if the man on the other side of the window heard or detected any movement from my side of the mesh screen, he might turn his attention to me.
Back then, I assumed he had company, a silent partner whose time he had paid to keep. Even though I heard no other voice, no conversation, my brain wouldn’t allow me to consider other options. Just the one man and his friend. Getting to where he had to go. Loudly. It seemed to go on forever, even thought it was probably only a minute.
And only now, more than 20 years later, I can let my mind wander back to that event and grasp the fact that the man on the other side of the mesh screen might have been alone. That perhaps one or two of the dusty horizontal slats on the window was broken enough for him to get a glimpse inside my room as I slept. That the dark alley was a perfect cover to spy on a single female. That perhaps the landlord or property manager specifically targeted women for just that reason.
Or maybe it was a fluke event, a one-off, as it were. A dude. An alley. An itch to scratch. One I just happened to overhear.
The thing is, I don’t think so. I can go on forever about the pervs
and criminals a woman attracts when she dares to live, travel, eat alone — not to mention just walking around her own neighbourhood. I’ve even been followed while lugging around a pile of camera gear within spitting distance of a police cruiser. And yes, I’ve been followed while walking my 80-pound dog, too.
Last Thursday evening, a group of defiant folk who are sick and tired of women being treated like prey gathered downtown for the annual Take Back the Night rally, organized by the Sexual Assault Centre of Hamilton (SACHA). I didn’t attend this year but I have many times in the past. In fact, I attended my first Take Back the Night march back when I was a student, more than 20 years ago, well before that terrible apartment that reeked of Lysol. And we need only look at the recent rash of break-ins and sexual assaults in Westdale to understand why the Take Back the Night march is as necessary and relevant now as it was then.
And we’ll continue to need it, to march, to be vigilant. Until the day women can sleep soundly with their windows open on a warm summer night.