above: this was a shot sadiq took of me to test the lighting during his photoshoot with bre. people apparently love this photo and it wasn’t even supposed to be a thing!
sadiq has taken a pretty keen interest in photography recently (he even bought a pretty neat, retro-looking camera and everything), so on Tuesday he asked me if i wanted to come with him to a photo shoot he was doing with our friend bre.
i hadn’t been out to hang out with people who aren’t members of my immediate family in so long, so i happily said yes.
we took the subway there, not sitting down to minimize physical contact with anything, and we noticed public transit already starting to get busy again. the train we were in didn’t even have those signs over every other chair saying they were out of service to encourage spacing out.
neither of us remembered to bring our masks so we were feeling pretty vulnerable. it’s so weird (or maybe not so weird) how a pandemic can so quickly create an atmosphere of distrust.
my building is trying to enforce a policy of one household per elevator (which usually amounts to 1 person per elevator at a time), and sometimes you can tell when people are really paranoid about everything.
sometimes the elevator door will open and someone will already be in it, and there’s an awkward moment when i can’t tell if it would be okay to join them, but usually you can register a kind of dull hostility before they start pressing the close button, which is fair. we really shouldn’t be taking any risks.
but the couple of times i have joined someone in an elevator, we’ve ended up laughing about how crazy everything’s gotten.
i remember coming back from a run and there was a woman in the lobby already waiting for the elevator, and when it arrived i had the full intention of waiting for the next one, but she said “do you wanna come in?”
and i said, “oh, are you sure you don’t mind?”
and she kind of gave a dismissive laugh before beckoning me inside.
i was sweaty, and probably smelled so i fel a litle bad about that, but it was still a nice ride up. i noticed her lcbo bag and asked “wine night tonight?”
and she said “yep, just by myself again,” and we laughed and she told me she was a photographer and we had some friendly chit chat. honestly, it was really nice just to have a simple encounter like that as if everything was normal and there was no reason at all to be worried about two people sharing an elevator.
anyway, we met up with bre at casa loma, and the weather was really nice and everything around us was pretty. they went about choosing outfits for the shoot and picking locations and i went about shooting my own footage pretending i was some sort of behind the scenes videographer. i was planning to release the footage with my latest video, but it already ended up being so long because apparently i don’t know how to stop talking (which i’m going to have to work on before i bore whatever audience i have to death).
eventually nellie came to meet us since she lives close by, and it was really nice to see her in person after so long.
my favourite part of the day was after they were done shooting and we were all just sitting around and hanging out on the grass.
it was nice to just be outside, feeling the fresh air and the sun on my skin, watching strangers walk by with their bikes and their dogs. weirdly, i miss being around strangers, and i know this sounds super conceited, but i miss feeling pretty to people i don’t know. it’s like that feeling i get in airports when i walk around in my comfy travel clothes looking like a whole mess, but i still feel super cute.
and it was honestly nice to just be able to talk with some close friends face to face about everything that’s been going on.
i haven’t really been in the best place for the better part of the last two weeks, but i’m finally starting to pick up again.
i’m starting to feel stronger and more myself, a little more centered and a little more reoriented. thankfully, bad moods are predictable and will always pass, and i get through them by remembering everything happens in cycles. you just gotta feel what you feel when you feel it, and then move on.
after a bit of chit chat, we said our goodbyes, and sadiq and i went to tim hortons before heading home. he got an ice coffee and i got not one, but two donuts, which i’d actually been craving for a while.
we stopped by my parents house so i could pee and grab some rice (i ran out), and my mom gave us a couple of coca colas to sip on our walk home.
and by the time we got home we were both so tired, even though we’d only really been out for three hours.
all in all, it was a really good day, even though it made me miss being able to do normal things in the summer.
i hope i appreciate these small moments more after this whole pandemic situation blows over.