A Year of Solitude: COVID Living in a Cabin

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April 15, 2020

High in the Laurentians

I yelled at my husband on the street today. A stranger stopped and asked us for directions. I kept walking. Matthew, my husband, paused to help, standing less than six feet from the man. “Oh my God, stand back!” I shouted. I grabbed Matthew by the arm, pulled him away, and suggested to the stranger that if he was lost, he could use his smartphone. When I apologized to Matthew at home, I explained that everything is stressing me about Toronto these days: opening the door to our condo lobby, touching the buttons on the elevator, passing people in the halls. The virus could be anywhere. It’s a conversion we have had before, like after I called Matthew “reckless” for picking a stray nickel up off the sidewalk. “Try to relax,” he told me. I said, it’s hard. I feel nervous every time we go out and the scores of shuttered storefronts depress me. “I want to leave,” I said, referring to our vague plans of escaping to our cabin in the Laurentians. “We can’t,” he replied. A simple truth. Quebec has closed its border to Ontario. Fine. I will continue distracting myself the same way everyone is: eating too many carbs, watching too much Netflix. 

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Go Here (Post Covid): Sao Paulo, Brazil

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Lina Bo Bardi’s house in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Before Leaving for Sao Paulo, an acquaintance who used to work in Brazil suggested I pack both an old cell phone and an empty wallet, and that I stash my real phone and wallet in my underwear. When the pickpockets eventually got to me, he explained, they wouldn’t leave with anything valuable.

Another person, originally from South America, set the odds of being mugged at 60 per cent, whereas a close friend told me the odds were closer to 100 per cent, noting that her mom and sister were robbed on separate occasions while visiting Brazil. Possibly seeing my cheeks blanch with fear, she added, “but you’re going to love it, I promise.” I kept wondering how someone like me, an anxious traveller at the best of times, would “love it,” given the numerous warnings.

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Oh, Heyyy, Pharrell

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Pharrell Williams is perhaps best known for two things: producing ultra-catchy earworm songs like Happy, and that enormous, Mountie-esque hat he wore to the Grammys hat a few years back. But he’s also a design nut, having tried his hand at furniture with a chair called the Tank; shoes, with sneakers for both Chanel and Adidas; and fashion, including sweaters made from upcycled ocean plastics for G-Star Raw. Recently, he unveiled his largest design project to date, a two-tower condo development in Toronto, done in collaboration with architects IBI Group and interior design studio U31, called Untitled. The Globe talks to him about the difference between making music and buildings, the power of curiosity, and why diversity makes design better.

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I’ve Been Out Walking (in Jamaica)

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Palm trees in Montego Bay, Jamaica

I passed by many things while walking from my grandmother’s rental apartment in Montego Bay, Jamaica to visit her in a hospital three kilometers down the road. A Hard Rock Café. Five-star hotels with aspirational names like Secrets, Breathless and Sunscape Splash. An old yacht club with abandoned boats sinking into a scum-filled bay. Luxury villas locked like prisoners behind steel bars. A taxi rank with drivers offering rides, drugs or both. A cruise ship terminal with idling jeeps and buses about to whisk vacationers on eco-tours. A police station with a long line of women and girls waiting to see their husbands and fathers who had been arrested in a recent wave of anti-gang raids. A restaurant where I once sat and listened to the pop pop pop of a nearby semi-automatic and tried to pretend it was fireworks. Fragrant gardens. Rank garbage. A gas station. People sitting in the shade of royal palm trees, trying to escape the heat of the day.

Despite all the things I saw, I mainly felt one thing. Fear.

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The Best Places to Snorkel in Grand Cayman

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Spotts Beach, Grand Cayman

Grand Cayman is perhaps best known as a Caribbean tax haven where the world’s rich and infamous stash their zillions. But not all visitors come for banking. For a long time, I’ve been going for the beaching. For good reason. My grandmother used to manage a hotel on the island, but even though she’s long since retired, I keep going back because Cayman has the Caribbean’s best coastline, with miles of bright white sand next to turquoise water.  Under the sea is even better: wildlife — turtles, eels, barracudas and rays — can be seen a short swim offshore, flitting between sea fans, shipwrecks and tons and tons of coral. The best part: I don’t use a pile of Scuba gear to take it all in — just a simple snorkel mask and flippers that I bought in Toronto. Here, my six favourite places to snorkel offshore in Grand Cayman.

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My Gay Cayman Life

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in Graynd Cayman, January 2020

2020

Two young women holding hands, skipping in the sand, a rainbow kite trailing behind them catching in the wind. They stop, turn and kiss each other. Two photographers click their shutters, capturing every moment. 

“They’ve just become engaged,” explains one of the photographers in an American accent. 

“Congratulations,” I say as the women pass.

“Thanks,” the women say in unison, without looking at me, only looking at each other, arms so entwined it’s hard to tell whose limbs are whose.

I watch as the group moves down the beach, the photographers taking picture after picture, turquoise waves rolling in the background. It’s a perfect day. Azure sky, palm fronds rustling, calm sea. I just pray there is no one around who will say anything, do anything to wreck their loving scene.

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Oh, Heyyy, Felipe Pantone

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Filipe Pantone in his studio in Valencia, Spain

Felipe Pantone, the trendsetting artist from Valencia, Spain, knew that the tattoo on his left forearm was a mistake even before sitting down to have it done. The design, which he got in 2017, features a kneeling lady, naked except for a lightning bolt flashing across her insanely curvaceous body.

“It’s my worst one,” the 33-year-old confesses before noting a design on his right arm that’s much cooler: criss-crossed lines that create a rippling moiré effect.

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Why I Hated the Cottage as a Teenager

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View from my cabin at Lake Manitou

I remember the exact moment when I decided that I would never go back to my family’s cottage ever, ever again.

It was August 2000. I was 16 and sick of visiting the dusty, drafty old place in Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains. Its incessant mothball smell was get­ting to me, especially because it never seemed to keep out the moths.

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Why Fighting Over Furniture Can Be a Good Thing

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My new couch

Four years ago, when my partner and I bought our first condo, we decided not to spoil our new space with the old, worn-out Ikea futon we had in our rental apartment. We were both happy to leave the couch on the curbside when we moved, but it was a full four years before we agreed on the style and budget for the replacement. He likes Danish-made, authentic mid-century-modern furniture, whereas I like affordable.

We didn’t actively search the whole time; no relationship needs that kind of aggravation. In fact, in most of our sofa-free days (during which we still had chairs – in case it looks like we spent years lolling haplessly on the floor), we were similar to the 15 per cent of Americans who avoid visiting furniture stores with their other half because they know that they’re more likely to come home frustrated with each other than toting new decor,

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Zac Posen Makes Good Cookies

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zac posen cookie

Zac Posen pays extreme attention to detail. I know this to be a fact. Not from the fashion designs which brought him fame. The 38-year old New Yorker hand-crafts clothing for beautiful women — Uma Thurman, Claire Danes — to grab best-dressed headlines at the Met Gala and the Oscars. Whereas I’m a not terribly fashionable man.

Instead, I gleaned his commitment to precision when I tried to follow the chocolate chip cookies from his debut recipe book, Cooking with Zac. The first indication was that I had to brown the butter in a pan until it looked like “deep mahogany with a hazelnut scent,” he writes — a necessary extra step because “with so many cookies in the world, it’s the fine touches that count.” The second indication was that I had to hand-press the chips into the top of the dough to achieve “a polished and professional look.” Clearly, this is not a recipe for a lazy baker.

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