Destination: Toronto
“He wanders toward the promised land. That is to say: he moves from one place to another, and dreams continually of stopping. And because this desire to stop is what haunts him, is what counts most for him, he does not stop. He wanders. That is to say: without the slightest hope of ever going anywhere.”
January 1, 2005
Happy New Year. "Jamie," said Brooke as we sat in my neighborhood bar. She had flown in from Amsterdam and was staying with me for a couple of days.
I looked up from my drink to see her shift her eyes and gesture over her shoulder. There was a stocky guy behind her, seated all alone at the bar and staring unabashedly in our direction. "See that guy?" Brooke asked.
"Yeah."
"He's staring like crazy."
"I know. I noticed him before."
"Why? What's he staring at?"
"You."
"I know. But why? I mean, he's not just looking. He's staring."
I wanted to tell her that the guy obviously couldn't keep his eyes off the most beautiful girl in the bar, which would have been impossible for anyone to deny for one simple reason. "You're the only girl in the bar," I said.
She looked around the room and realized I was right. "Ahh, yeah.”
But even though it might've explained the situation, it didn't make it any less uncomfortable, so when we finished our drinks, we left. The guy swiveled in his barstool as we passed and watched us walk out the heavy steel door.
"That guy was shameless," we said in unison.
We walked around my neighborhood and took pictures of graffiti and garbage. "Is it always like this around here?" she asked, referring to the scattered piles of trash blowing in the streets.
“Pretty much.."
Neither one of us was up for a big New Year's whoop-dee-do, but there was a party directly across the hall from my apartment, so after lounging for a little while, Brooke suggested we go.
We stayed for about ten minutes, then walked through the hallways to see if there were any other parties in the building. When we didn't find any, we went back to the first one, stayed for a rather casual—and certainly not accurate—countdown, ate some peanut butter cups, drank some water, then came back to my place, where we fell asleep to Easy Rider.
January 4, 2005
When I met Brook in Amsterdam a few months ago, she told me she was planning to visit her home in Toronto during a holiday break from grad school. I suggested she fly into New York, stay with me for a couple of days, and then I’d drive her to Toronto, where I was planning to go, anyway, to attend an old girlfriend’s same-sex marriage.
Thankfully, Brooke didn’t take much persuading. So we’re leaving in a few minutes to drive a hundred hours and a zillion miles, drink coffee, eat junky snacks, and tour the roadside pissoirs. While in Toronto, I plan to visit Raymi. too. Raymi said she hoped I’d bring her something American, and although I had an idea of "something American" to give her, Brooke made an alternate suggestion.
In any case, the longer I sit here writing, the later it'll be before we get there, and since we’re already getting a late start, I'm off. As soon as I can pull Brooke away from her own Internet addictions, that is.
January 6, 2005
It was a long ride from Brooklyn to Toronto, and we didn't cross the border until three a.m.— As soon as we did — and I mean the very second we crossed from the USA to Canada — it began to snow. Nothing big, no major storm or anything, but it was definitely snowing. The white flakes reflected my headlights and zoomed toward the windshield as if we were flying through space. The streetlights and distant signs caught the snow in their halos, creating fuzzy orbs that became the planets and the stars.
"We're in Canada!" exclaimed Brooke. It was another hour beyond the border crossing before we arrived at the hotel.
"Good morning, sir," said the chipper clerk at the front desk.
" Morning? Uh, yeah, I guess. Good morning."
There's so much to write about. Too many plots and subplots. It's more than I can type from the WiFi lobby of a hotel. But, as I said previously, aside from giving Brooke a ride and visiting my friend Raymi, Denise (aka Denver) is getting married on Friday. To a Brazilian woman. Denise and I dated a couple of years ago, and although things didn't work out between us, we remain good friends. She loves to remind me that I was the last man she dated. I’m not sure if that means I soured her on men, or if there were no other men to compare. Either way, it wasn’t long after we stopped seeing each other that she met a Brazilian woman online. And like most people who meet a Brazilian woman, she fell in love. They've decided to make it official. And where else do a couple of girls go to get married, than good ol' socially progressive Canada? I spoke to Denise on the phone before I left New York to get the details. A few minutes into the conversation, she interrupted me. "Aren't you going to ask me if I'm nervous?"
I laughed. "Are you?"
"Yes."
January 6, 2005
I wandered alone in the slush today. When I was feeling particularly lost and wet, I stopped in a Kensington Market coffee shop to warm up and stare into space. Halfway through my coffee, I was suddenly struck with the urge to write something, but I didn't have anything to write on. I dug out a pen and started scribbling in the margins of one of the free lefty newspapers that was lying around. The way I was scrawling illegibly in between the ads for alternative record stores and tai chi classes, led the guy next to me to think I was loony tunes. I could tell he was worried that I'd start blabbering to him about aliens transmitting CIA secrets into my brain. It made me self-conscious, so I got the bright idea to ask a studious-looking kid at a nearby table for a piece of paper. That means that what I should really be doing, is transcribing the chicken scratch from that paper into this post, but since I can't find what I'd written, what I'm writing right now will have to do.
January 7, 2005
I'm finding it difficult to blog from the hotel lobby, especially when Brooke won't get off my computer. "Can I just check my e-mail real quick?"
Brooke invited me out with a few of her friends last night. We started at the house of five girls for a preliminary drink before heading over to a bar called Queen's Head that smelled like puke. The girls were doing Tequila shots at the house — laughing and trading tequila stories. It seems like everyone has a tequila story. I had one, too, but since it involved a week-long stay in the intensive care until of St. Vincent's Hospital, and I didn't want to bring the party down, I chose not to share it. (I know I write a lot of posts about bars and drinking — and as a Type 1 diabetic, I’ll be the first to admit I drink more than I should — it might surprise people to know that I am a lot more careful than I make it seem.)
When we got to the bar, like I said, it smelled horrible. It was wall-to-wall people, and every single one of them had something to say about the smell. Despite the crowd, we managed to commandeer a table in the back near the DJ booth, where we piled our coats, scarves, bags, and hats into one big mound. While Brooke and her friends mingled, danced, and flirted their way around the room, I stayed put and talked to a girl from Singapore about the Tsunami. At one point, a couple of the girls came over to where I was standing, and the louder of the two asked if I was having fun.
"No," I said.
She was drunk as a skunk.
"Well what can I do to make you have a better time?" she slurred.
"Believe me," I told her, "The harder you try, the worse time I'm gonna have."
She didn't think I was funny and quickly disappeared into the crowd. The other girl had more experience with smartasses like me and wasn't as easily put off.
"Sex?" she asked. "Would sex make your night better?"
It wasn't a proposition; she was there with her boyfriend, and she just wanted to know what made me tick.
"Sure," I shrugged. "Sex is always good."
"Well, there are plenty of girls right here in this very bar, who would have sex with you for free."
"No kidding," I nodded. “Free?”
"Yup."
I thought for a minute. "Even if I had to pay for it, it's only Canadian money."
"I wanna go to a lesbo wedding! she said Raymi
"Then come."
"Can I take pictures?"
"I don't see why not. She’s not Madonna."
"Can I blog about it?"
"I’m planning to.."
Brooke, on the other hand, isn't so sure about the whole thing. "Won't she mind if you show up there with two girls?"
"No, Denise is totally cool. You'll see. Besides, I already asked."
Then again, Denise was nervous and distracted when I spoke to her, so it's possible she wasn't even listening. "Is it cool to bring some people?" I asked her yesterday on the phone. "I mean, I don't want to crash your special day or anything."
"It's not my special day," Denise giggled.
“It’s not?”
"Well, I mean, it is, yeah, but you know, it's fine.
Januray 9, 2005
Denise and Ana's friends got held up at the Canadian border and were late for the wedding, which meant the proceedings were short two witnesses. Raymi and I volunteered to fill in, signing the papers and standing next to Denise and Ana during the ceremony. As witnesses, Raymi and I were also in charge of holding the rings. We tried not to look at each other because every time we did, we found ourselves on the brink of hysterical laughing fits, so we mostly just stared at the ground and fiddled with the rings instead. We did still laugh here and there, but that's okay because Denise was laughing and giggling, too. So much so, she could hardly get through her vows. And anyway, the two gay guys that Denise met in the hall only minutes earlier, and had invited to watch, were crying enough for everybody.
Afterward, Denise, her new wife, and their friends who finally made it through customs, went one way, while Raymi, Brooke, and I went another. The plan was for everyone to meet for a drink later, but that never happened. Well, the drinks happened, they just didn't happen as a group. We were joined at the Horseshoe Tavern by a random drunk guy from Copenhagen whom Raymi met on the street during a cigarette break. When you meet someone from another continent and they seem a little weird, it's hard to know if it's just because you're not used to their manner, or if they'd be nuts even in their own country. But unless burning your parents’ house down is a rite of passage in Denmark, I'm gonna have to assume that the dude was out and out bonkers.
Raymi told him he looked like Legolas from The Lord of the Rings and asked him if he had a positive outlook. The guy said, yes, he did, but then, when Raymi’s friend Tyranny asked him about some obscure Nordic Death Metal band, his evil side came out.
When Legolas made a crack about black people, Tyranny laughed and rolled with it, but then he made a crack about Jews, and Tyranny rolled up his sleeve to show the guy his forearm tattoo. I don't know what it says, but it's written in Hebrew. (I know, Jews aren't supposed to get tattooed, but Tyranny plays by his own rules..) The Copenhagen guy looked briefly at the Hebrew writing, then pulled back the sleeve of his "Drunknmonkey" sweatshirt and said, "Oh, it's cool. You and I are okay because I have the same tattoo."
Legolas' new ink was still wrapped in gauze and cellophane, so it was impossible to read what it said, but you could see that it was written in an old Germanic font. "What's that?" Tryanny asked.
"It's my dog's name: Jaws. He's a pit bull, man. I love that dog."
Once Legolas stopped being funny and started being worrisome, Brooke, Raymi, and I got in my Jeep for a field trip to the Toronto suburbs so that Raymi could show us her natural habitat. As soon as the idea of driving to the suburbs was mentioned, Raymi called, "Shotgun." She said it again a minute later.
"Okay, we know, you already called it."
"I know. And I'm going to say it five more times, just so no one forgets.
January 9, 2005
Staying out until four a.m. with Brooke and Raymi is the equivalent of staying out till four in the afternoon with anyone else. By the time I dropped Brooke off at her friend's place and returned to the hotel, I was exhausted. Since I was driving, I hadn't been drinking much, but that didn't stop me from shearing off an overhead light with my roof rack in the hotel's underground parking garage. The clearance down there seemed awfully low, but since all of the "maximum clearance" signs were metric, I had no idea if my Jeep was too tall or not. The sudden bump, then creak and final pop of the light told me I was.
When the maid knocked on the door and woke me up the next morning, the last thing I wanted to do was check out and drive. And when I opened the curtains and saw a snowstorm, I nearly didn't. But Denise was expecting me at her post-wedding party in Utica, NY, and I didn't want to disappoint her. Besides, I'd already spent enough of my tourist dollars in Canada without adding an extra hotel night to the mix. So after a cup of the shittiest in-room coffee imaginable, I pulled myself together, navigated my way through the low-hanging pipes and lighting fixtures, and hit the road.
The streets were a mess. Wrecked cars lined the highway like mile markers, and the traffic barely moved. What should have been a five-hour drive was more like eight, but I finally arrived.
The party was an odd mix—about 20 guests in all. A Utica fireman on one end of the spectrum, and a pre-op transsexual on the other. Denise’s mom came to the party and had a blast, but since she's in denial about the whole "lesbian wedding" thing, they didn't cut the cake until after she left. I was so tired that at one point I had to take a nap. I threw myself down on the bed, next to everyone's coats, and crashed. An hour or two later, Denise’s sexy Colombian ex-roommate came in and woke me up. "C'mon, Jamie," she said, taking my hand. Is this a dream?
"They sent me in to get you,” she said.
Dirty trick. When I walked into the living room, everyone was engrossed in a game of Truth or Dare. I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes when a guy took a dare and had to give me a lap dance. He was drunk and was a little too into it for my taste, but rules are rules. When he was done, it was his turn to ask me: "Truth or Dare?"
"Truth."
"Okay. Out of everyone here, who would you most like to have sex with?"
"Not you."
"C'mon, answer the question."
At that moment, I didn't want to have sex with any of them. I just wanted to crawl back in the pile of coats, and snooze. But like I said, rules are rules, so I scanned the room and tried to decide. The massage therapist? Maybe. But her husband, the firefighter, was sitting right next to me. Denver's boss, the horny divorcee whose eyes seemed to say, "Pick me, pick me"? Not so sure. How about the Colombian hottie who woke me up? Did I want to be that obvious? When someone spilled wine on the new carpet, it broke the tension. The game lost momentum, and I never got to answer. But once things settled down again, the massage therapist whispered, "So tell, me. What was your answer going to be?" She pointed to the Colombian girl, who was lying face down on the couch, and mouthed, "Her?"
I shrugged and nodded, "Me too," she said.
Eventually, everyone passed out in one spot or another. I managed to score a prime spot on the most comfortable couch in the world, slept for a solid eight hours, then snuck out early this morning before anyone else was awake.
