On Not Knowing Who Is Behind the Next Door You Knock On

Old friend asked me to come canvassing in Sliverville's worst neighbourhood last night. Not everybody knows it is Sliverville's worst neighbourhood but I do because I used to live there. The only time the neighbourhood has gotten any better from one day to the next in the last 100 years was the day after I moved out.

Bikers, whores, thieves and undercover cops were who we met at every door except one. She was a long term resident. Seen it all, motherfuckers, and then some.

We had knocked, not got an answer, and reached the end of her decaying driveway when she opened the door and yelled, "Wait! Come back!" Which of course we did.

She was bald, wrapped only in a towel, still covered in bubbles from her bath.

"I've voted Conservative my whole fucking life," she began. "But I'm voting for you motherfuckers this time and I'm going to tell you why. I've got cancer. Have to go to the clinic in Van six times a week and my husband can't take me because he has to work to pay the bills and I can't help him and Christy Clark just cancelled the province's funding to the cancer agency's ride programme. She fucked me when I'm down that bitch did and I know she is no different than the Liberals and Conservatives trying get themselves elected to fuck me some more."

She went on like this for quite a spell. My canvassing partner and I had tears running down our face. The woman telling us her painful story somehow did not. If it had been Christy Clark who had knocked on her door instead of us she would have taken off her towel and strangled her right there on her front porch.

That, my friends, was the most profound political moment of my life. Going to take a few more scotches tonight and a few more nights of the same before I get over it.