Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
The night I met Allison I was sitting in an expat bar in Prague. It was a low-lit room with predictably bohemian purple cushions on the ground for seating. Drinks were served by a bartender named Dragan who was both intense and sexy in a medieval sort of way.
Flirting with Dragan was the perfect initiation to the cobblestone city for a lonely Canadian girl who was finding romance to be as scarce as soft toilet paper.
I was deep in conversation with a Hungarian writer when Allison walked in. The Hungarian was one of the first people I'd met when I arrived in Prague a month earlier. That made him my oldest friend on the continent. Allison also clearly knew him: She plopped down on a pillow beside us and launched into a rant against a spiteful roommate. Her oblivious assumption that she wasn't interrupting anything important was the first black mark against her.
For the next two hours I managed to hate Allison – and it was for all the right reasons. First, she was a classic American beauty and could easily have been a model for a Norman Rockwell painting. In comparison, I was angular. A Picasso at best. Second, although she was clearly upset, she smiled more frequently than I remembered to breathe. She assumed people were going to like her, and that was fodder for my dislike. The last reason was based purely on nationalism: Allison was an American, and I'd maintained a lifelong belief in the superiority of Canadians. In my mind, Canada was a Scandinavian country that had drifted a little to the west.
I tuned in and out of their conversation. It was like listening to Radio Free Europe during Communist rule – it wasn't always in range. And Allison's story did echo a theme of oppression; her rogue roommate had apparently locked her out for two days.
I wasn't surprised she'd ended up living with someone unstable. Prague was not only a hub for writers, it was a mecca for misfits. Expats have often left home because they are unhappy, running away from half-finished university degrees or relationships that ran out of love.
Oddly, I had been drawn to Prague by an obsession with Czech writers. Milan Kundera and The Unbearable Lightness of Being were an irresistible pull. I was also fascinated by a country that elected Vaclav Havel as president. The dissident playwright had led the country through the Velvet Revolution against Communist rule in 1989.
At some point in the evening, probably while I was gazing at Dragan's elegant profile, I realized Allison had gone to the bathroom. I turned to find my Hungarian friend staring at me in a meaningful way.
He was as bold as a Soviet tank: "She needs a place to stay."
"Sounds like it," I replied, not sure why he was pointing this out to me.
"You have two beds in your apartment," he stated loudly, as if I were a greedy capitalist.
"But it's only one room!" I sputtered. It was true I had an excess of beds in my furnished bachelor suite, but it had only a water closet; the shower was conveniently located in the kitchen (if you weren't afraid of electric shock you could reach for your toast without letting go of your loofah).
"It would only be for one night, until she finds another place to stay," my Hungarian friend promised.
Perhaps I'd drunk too many glasses of cheap wine or perhaps, after four weeks of sopsky salat and dumplings, I secretly craved the company of someone who understood the glories of peanut butter and chocolate-chip cookies. I finally shrugged in defeat. I'd come to Europe to meet persecuted writers. Instead I was inviting an alumna of a U.S. college sorority to share my hot plate.
A half-hour later, I was riding the subway with my new temporary roommate. If it had been up to me we'd have passed the ride in silence, but Allison had an aversion to not speaking. Surprisingly, I actually found myself enjoying our conversation. Like me, she was a voracious reader and soon we were debating whether it was possible to be a feminist and enjoy the works of Kundera. It didn't take long for us to stumble upon our mutual admiration for Dragan and the discovery that he'd flirted intensely with both of us was a source of amusement rather than resentment. That night, tucked up in single beds at opposite ends of my cramped concrete room, we traded stories about the cultural collisions we'd experienced in Prague: having to buy small squares of toilet paper from old women in public washrooms; waiting two hours in line to buy a subway pass before finding out you had the wrong paperwork.
When the clock in the tower of a medieval church struck 2 a.m., our fevered happy conversation showed no sign of abating. I realized I was a Canadian who had moved to the Czech Republic to meet my American soulmate. It was like a League of Nations that actually worked. And in that dark room full of our bright words, I decided to embrace this gift of friendship from an unexpected quarter. Allison and I shared my tiny apartment for six months, until she went home to Maryland. She taught me how to laugh without caring who's looking and to ride the subway without worrying about the destination. She was my own velvet revolution.
Jean Paetkau lives in Victoria.