End O the Year

Well exams are over, the school year has ended, and my scheduled date of departure for home is this Tuesday. I had planned on spending my summer driving vehicles for my dad, teaching summer school special ed, earning money, and learning Chinese in anticipation for my voyage over there come August, where I would be teaching English in Shenzhen for a full year, but this exciting prospect has unfortunately faded into dark oblivion. Due to the Olympics, applicants (ie me) who are applying for teaching programs in China are required to have an undergraduate degree (ie not me). When I was informed of this I was devastated.

China was my warm, red, rescue beacon, the lucky break, adventure, change, that I had been waiting for and looking forward to. I had used the prospect of China to motivate myself to finish the year strong, after a semester of skipping classes, flunking tests, recklessness, drugs, despair, etc.

It worked too. I pulled myself out of the tail spin of failure, got an A in one class, and B's in the rest. But now there's no reward, nothing earned, nothing gained, nothing to look forward to for my effort.

I'm still planning on taking the year off, but I just have no concrete image of what I'll be doing. I'll probably go back to teaching autism again. Work for my dad. Maybe even find a job with state dept or the Smithsonian. The year off actually won't be that bad. I'll be able to indulge myself with subjects I want to learn about, not prescribed and required to read. I'll have some money in my pocket again. And Ill be able to escape to the woods and hills of Virginia again. Go kayaking, rock climbing, and hiking again. I have missed nature terribly since I moved to this city. The only escape is Mount Royal, which offers a serene view of the city skyline, but the park itself is too full of people, orderly, and welcoming. Its like central park, a quick escape from the hustle bustle of the city, but you still feel surrounded by it, an animal in a zoo cage. Its not the untamed wild of the wilderness.

I also hope to refine my writing this summer, as it has become an odious and painful activity. Words still have an appeal to me, as they are certainly incredibly persuasive and useful, when you have mastered the art of manipulating them, but words have somehow lost their allure to me. I want to write expressively, but there's this constant pressure to write impressively, and well to do that, it seems, you have to imitate or (to cover your tracks) synthesize the style of writing or writers that you admire, and I find that, (shameful is too strong of a word), unfortunate.

Montreal Hooligans

So things got pretty wild here in Montreal after the Habs won their first round in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

I came out of the library around 11 to see the celebrations. St. Katherine (the main artery of Montreal) was filled with exuberant fans and honking cars. Police soon showed up and lined up in front of the Concordia Fine Arts building. I assumed to protect people from breaking the glass windows and hurting themselves, but this soon showed itself to be a rather stupid move, since the crowd began to hurl empty beer bottles at them (thus increasing the likelihood of broken glass...). Things soon got even more out of control as word got out that cop cars on mcKay and St Katherine had been set aflame. When I got there everyone was stampeding away from the burning vehicles. I figured they were afraid the cars were going to explode, so I just kept pushing through the masses. When I got to the front I realized everyone was running from the riot police that had lined up at the intersection. You could walk right through their line though, so I slipped through and got a closer look at the burning cars and the rowdy crowd. Fire trucks showed up on the scene and started spraying the three burning cop cars. The police just sort of stood idly by, not really doing much of anything besides making a presence. A few kids near me started kicking in the glass of a reebok store and grabbed the mannequin in the display window who was wearing a Habs jersey and hockey gear.

Eventually more riot police showed up and the crowd started to disperse. I headed back to the library assuming the show was mostly over. When I finally headed home and walked down St. Katherine to see the damage, I was pretty shocked to see how many stores had been looted. A number of clothing stores had their windows broken into, some idiot smashed the window of a western union, then the two SAQ's (liquor stores) had had their windows smashed and looked severely raided. Broken bottles and trash littered the street. One guy I passed had manikin legs (presumably from the one I saw sabotaged)standing upright on his shoulders. A hobo had a manikin hand (presumably from the one I saw sabotaged) and asked me, rather wittingly, if I "needed an extra hand."

Anyways there's a bunch of videos on youtube of the whole affair. This one was shot further downtown from where I was (towards Peel and St Katherine I think):



Here's a recap that I saw them taping today, but it has some footage from last night (including where I was, tho I haven't seen me yet):



I think this just goes to show that mankind really is a synonym for stupid. Why you would want to destroy your town after your team won one for your town is beyond me. It was, confessedly, quite an entertaining spectacle however, since it was certainly something you don't see every day, but I feel bad for the shop keepers and officers who suffered at the behest of drunk, stupid, and unresponsible teens and young adults. Celebrating is one thing, but looting stores and lighting cars aflame is just plain senseless.

Moving In

Well I have officially moved off of my friend's couch and into my own room. No more post midnight wake ups to the sounds (usually moans) of my room mate's sex-capades, no more sore necks, no more having to pretend that my room mates room is actually my room (as it turns out a 'room' is a prerequisite for most girls if you plan on copulating with them; girls...so shallow) and then having aforementioned room mate walk in, the next morning, to two strange shapes doing the dirty before his very eyes, in his very bed. Ah yes a room of one's own, and this time, finally, of my own.

Last semester my friends suggested that I move in with them, I asked if one of them was planning on moving out, (which would explain their suggestion, since it would mean they had free space), but I was then informed that they had a 'storage room' which they could clear out, and I would then be able to move into for a mere $150 a month. I knew that I wasn't going to find a better deal than that, and, moreover, I knew all of the people in the apartment, so I said hell yes, and pretty soon I was cleaning out one hell of a mess. Once all the crap was cleared out the room seemed much bigger than it had originally appeared and living in it seemed like a humanly accomplishable feat. I still didn't have any furniture though, so I spent the majority of my day searching for mattresses, which, because of both economic and spacial limitations, was a search for something in between a single and a double (which would take up the entire room). I searched on craigslist for a while and found a liquidation sale of mattresses advertising singles, twins, doubles, queens, and kings, with prices ranging from $25-$300, and it was only .08 miles away from me. I convinced one of my room mates to accompany me and we set out on what would turn out to be a 2 or more mile trek, which was ultimately unsuccessful as the store manager soon told me that he didn't sell singles or twins because they were profitless products, which were also usually piss stained because, as he put it, "singles and twins are for children" (aka there goes your chance of getting laid buddy). So we metroed back to Atwater (the mall near our house) and I had a strange--later realized to be brilliant-- thought: 'hey, why don't I buy an inflatable mattress?' We decided to look in Canadian Tire, which is sort of the Canadian equivalent for Wall Mart, only they don't hide the fact that most of their products have been returned at least 5 times, and opened that amount if not more, as the worn out strips of tape holding each openable end of the box often evinces. I got lucky though and found that they had 3 inflatable air mattresses, one you just had to plug into the wall and then switch the inflate switch, but that one was actually out of its box, so I decided to go for the one that was foot pump inflated, and had only three strips of tape keeping it sealed.

We brought it home, took bets on whether or not the foot pump was a) still in the mattress and b) if it was, if it would work. Sure enough, against all bets, some group effort, and a lot of gesticulations resembling a country banjo jig, we finally got my mattress inflated.

It fit perfectly, but was 6 inches in length shorter than me, but it was actually surprisingly comfortable.

I got teased by all my room mates because they suggested that I would have to go through that country banjo jig, every time I brought a girl home, in order to inflate it, by which time any sexual chemistry between us would definitely be deflated...

I nabbed one of my room mates broken sliding closet door and macgyvered it into a make-shift desk (using the paint cans as a foundation),

turned an old red blanket into my curtain, and found an abandoned book shelf in an ally near by to fill out the rest of my apt room space. I personally think the room looks great and I couldn't be happier, and I think my room mates are all jealous of my inflatable mattress, because I keep catching them on it. The first night I spent here was pretty rough, since the huge window in my room wasn't yet covered by the curtain I made, and I didn't know how to work the heating, so around 6am I became so cold that I ran and jumped into my room mate nearest mine's bed. I shook and shivered for a good 15 minutes, before I was back to a healthy tepid temperature. The next night I was shown how to work the heating and was thus able to make it through the night (it was actually warm enough that I had to balance my body temperature with the ol' one leg out one leg under the blanket insulation trick to find temperaturelibrium).

The smallness of my room doesn't bother me much at all,
because our apartment is massive, especially the tv room,


so my room will basically be a place for sexing, changing clothes, and sleeping undisturbed. My room mates are all awesome, two guys and two girls--I've tilted the balance in favor of the former (which will hopefully mean that the toilet seat stays up).

Should be a great semester.

Snow Flakes & Church Aches

So I decided to spend my last day in Montreal reading in the magnificent chapel of Cathédrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde. I had originally planned on spending it in a Starbucks, sipping coffee and reading, but I eventually persuaded myself that a basilique would be far more grand. I picked up two books from my university's library, Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse and Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, and then made my way to the Cathédrale.

Unfortunately the weather was incredibly foul today. The wind was savagely gusty and the snow flakes had worked themselves up into a fury, so the walk was far less pleasant than I had hoped it to be. But I eventually stumbled upon the front steps of the massive facade and looked up at the row of saints, who have a beautiful greenish jade-colored hue, in front of the massive dome of the church. It was certainly a spectacle to behold and the cathédrale looked beautiful and wholly resolute in the swirling fury of snow and wind. I marched up the front steps and laboriously pulled at the heavy Gothic-styled doors. I stepped inside the rectangular corridor and marched another 10 steps to the next set of doors and was finally inside the chapel. It was absolutely herculean in size, the pews were all neatly in a row, the ceiling was arched and mesmerizing, and along the walls were various statues and paintings, the former of saints, and the latter depicting catholic missionaries "nobly" attempting to convert and save the indigenous savages, the Indians (one picture depicted a missionary in a canoe--who looked as if he had been inconveniently taken hostage by Indians--wielding a cross to the sky, while the Indian in front of him had his paddle cocked and ready to prod another Indian who was desperately clinching on to the side of the canoe, in the rough--and assumedly cold--waters). There were also two halves of a giant clam, which held holy water (which was almost unbearably tempting to drink, in my very thirsty state...)

I wandered around the mostly empty chapel, stopping and gawking at a number of items that were so gilded in gold that I sort of felt a self-pitying shame for my own species stupidity.


After wandering around a little more, I eventually claimed a seat in an empty pew among pews, and removed the two novels I had in my bag. Before I opened either one of them, a small yellow plastic bag with something in it, folded neatly on the shelf of the pew in front of me, grabbed my attention. I immediately began to fantasize that it had been left in that particular row, for a particular person, for a particular purpose, and was, therefore, curiously intrigued. I stood up and reached over the pew and grabbed the bag. Inside was a little black book with a very strange, mythical-esque, emblem on the front. A flood of fantasies now splashed against my mind--could this be a Da Vinci code object, with some secret message inside? could it perhaps be a book left by an Opus Dei member, revealing their secret practices?--but were quickly silenced when I opened the first few pages and realized that it was simply a hymnal book written in French... ah c'est la vie, why must anticipation always be better than realization? I slid the black book back into the plastic yellow bag, folded it, and put it back on the shelf of its original pew. I turned and picked up To The Lighthouse, flipped to the first chapter, and soon became wholly unaware of my surroundings, as I continued to read. The chapel was dark and only dimly lit by a few electric lanterns on the side walls and columns. I had to adjust my book in every which way, (like those toys that you have to jiggle around and maneuver in various ways in an effort to get the small metalic ball into the little crater), in order to evade the casted shadows that prevented me from seeing the words. Strangely enough, right as the thought 'Man I wish I had some more light' scrolled through my head, the overhead lights of the chapel flickered on and the entire room became brightly illuminated.


Its only too bad that I'm not a religious person, because if I were I could have entertained the thought that this was an act of God, looking over my shoulder, actually concerned with the amount of light I had to read with...who knows maybe he was.

I went back to reading and got through about 20 pages before I was distracted by an odiously loud and continuously irritating sound. I looked up to see what was responsible for this noise and eyed an old man, in a green, split-tailed coat, pushing a mop and bucket across the tiled floor. When he reached the middle of the chapel he stopped (and thankfully with him the noise) and began swabbing the tiles in an utterly audible silence.

I picked up where I had left off in the book, but was quickly distracted again by signals of discomfort from my derrière. Pews, as I'm sure all church goers are acutely aware, are incredibly uncomfortable (perhaps in order to keep the parishioners awake), especially when you, like me, have absolutely no meat in between the bones in your butt and the wood of the pew. I searched for a comments card in the small shelf on the back of the pew in front of me, because I thought it would be nice of me to inform this magnificent and gorgeous church how it might attract more parishioners: buy comfier seats. The only people that I had noticed wander into the chapel were old women, who were usually of equal height to the head of the pews, and incredibly amusing to watch shuffle by, because you wouldn't see them until they passed your row, and a few old men, who had by now inherited such a hard ass and numb nerves, that they were probably wholly unaware that the seats were uncomfortable. If I had found a comments card I would have also suggested that the church sell just a few of their golden relics (they had so many after all) in order to pay for a few rows of lazy boy chairs (which would be the front 5 rows, for the early comers), a few rows of leather cushioned couches (for the rest), and bean bags (for the children who could sit in the back, as they never pay attention anyways).

After a few more minutes had passed by I decided that it was probably best to relieve my aching arse from the torment of the wooden pew and made my way towards the front doors. The winter wind seemed still and the snow flakes looked weightless as they descended to the ground, it seemed that the weather had taken a turn for the better. I stepped out into the brisk, cold air and immediately learned that the winter wind had simply been waiting patiently for me on the stoop above the entrance, as it soon met my face with all of its excited ferocity.

Tomorrow I'd be home...

The One Night Stand

It was Friday night and the weekly woes that had been overcome needed to be forgotten. A bar, that sanctuary from stress and thought, was in order. Numbers were dialed, suggestions were offered, conclusions thus made, and plans were ultimately established.

The bar was selected and we marched en masse to the protected castle of liquor and beer. “ID please” said the looming tower of a man who guarded the gates, his face long and horslike. I wielded my wallet and produced my ID and was allowed to pass. The poignant smell of beer immediately filled my nostrils; the undecipherable chatter of conversations rattled freely off the walls, while glasses chinked together, and a live band played to an inattentive audience in the dimly lit, cozy and close quartered room—ah this was a bar!

I walked up to the decidedly attractive, rosy-cheeked bartender and pursing my lips firmly together, as if pulling back the bolt on a crossbow, released the word of my desire into her little question mark curled ear: [B]eer.

“What kind?” she replied rather bluntly, clearly failing to recognize that I wasn’t here to pleasure my palate with toothsome beers—I was here to get drunk!
“Whateva’s cheapest” I averred back to her.

She turned away from me and gripped the Moosehead stout with about the same lewd avidity as a hooker who grips a paying customer’s cock, professional and uninterested, and turned back to me and thrusted the golden gleaming glass of beer in front of me in exchange for a single sheet of paper which had colorful patterns and a handful of tens written on it. I raised the glass of beer in reverence to my lips and opened my mouth to let the golden stream slide joyously down my throat. “Ahhh” I murmured in utter satisfaction, followed by a burp and a hiccup. After some time passed my shoes came into view at the bottom of my glass, which meant another beer was in order, so I ordered another, and another, and another…until pretty soon my speech was becoming noticeably slurred, my footsteps uneasy, and the girls surrounding me unbearably attractive.

The ones closest to me were so tightly encircled with their backs to me that they may as well have been a horde of wilder beasts protecting a calf. And to make matters even worse I also noticed that they were speaking Quebecois…

“Bonzhur” I said in my thick vulgar Americanized accent, thus expressing the extent of words I knew in French “can I buy you gals a round of drinks?” They giggled at first, then exchanged more French words and giggles amongst themselves, and then the female closest to me finally addressed my inquiry and simply said “Oui.” I bought us a round and commenced in the standard ‘what to say amongst strangers’ conversation procedures, occasionally making jokes (which were either lost in translation or me+beer=not funny, since most did not produce laughter), but despite our linguistic shortcomings both they and I were too drunk to care what was being said. I knew, however, that I was going to start needing to strategically aim my words and actions if I wanted to ‘get-to-know’ one of these girls better. The girl in the rear of the group had let down her guard and was quickly flanked by some other stranger, who quickly started chatting her up. I had to advance quickly or else lose to the other guys who were hovering around trying to divide and conquer. At that moment the girl nearest me was shoved even closer as a guy butted between her and her friend to get a beer, a clever move, since he then capitalized on his preciously conquered territory by asking the girl he had just divided from the girl nearest me if she wanted a drink.

“What’s your name by the way” I inquired since the small talk had worn off.
“Celine” she responded in a beautiful feminine French accent.

Then I think I asked her if her last name was Dion (a tale to tell my friends), which in retrospect probably wasn’t as witty as it had seemed at the time, and she tried to teach me simple French phrases which I disastrously failed at, but she found laugh inspiring. Meanwhile I was keeping a trained eye on her friends who were still preoccupied with other boys, so I decided to ask Celine if she was hungry and wanted to get some ‘poutine’ (the key to every drunken Canadian girl’s heart). She said oui and so we departed.

The night was cold but the beer warmed our bodies and dulled our senses, so it was bearable. As we walked, stumbled, giggled, and gurgled, down the cracked and uneven sidewalk littered with fallen leaves which made a crisp crackle when trodden on, I knew that I had her, that she was mine to be had…she was my concubine, my pet, mon possession. I marveled at her long and savagely wild blonde hair, her soft ivory skin, and her eyes, those beautiful green eyes which twinkled with a curious innocence.

We inhaled the cup of poutine in our crazed hunger, scorching our tongues in the process. What a pair of kids we must have appeared to be. Shameful adults stripped of their social mannerisms and strictly adhered to behaviors of sobriety by the despotic and inescapable rule of beer. After we finished our artery clogging meal we departed once again, but this time it was her turn to move, to choose our next destination, and decide how the night would end. Would she let the lewd avidity of my bishop conquer the chastity of her queen, or would she send some pawn out, some excuse of having to wake up early in the morning, to block my bishop’s rapacious advance. She asked if I wanted to come back to her place. Her squares were left open, her Queen was checked, my bishop advancing. We climbed the stairs to her first floor apartment our thoughts muddled by beer and our bodies flooded with youthful aphrodisia. She fumbled around for her keys, opened the door to her apartment, and our lips soon met. Her lips were warm and wet and our slippery tongues rolled over one another, hers on top of mine, mine on top of hers, always unable to pin the other. Vraiment un adversaire formidable!

She pulled me towards her and slowly retreated backwards leading my steps, in this labial dance, towards her shadowy bed. The bishop got his queen.

When I awoke I could see the light of the rising sun elegantly tip-toeing across the room, slowly making its way towards the bed, then crawling up the covers and over us, until it illuminated the entire apartment. I turned and looked at my sleeping beauty, my reine conquise, and thought how funny it was that two complete strangers could be so blindly led by lust’s commanding hand to find themselves together the next morning in the same bed. How succinctly odd it feels to be a guest in a stranger’s bed! If only I could tip toe as quietly across the apartment as that sunlight, I thought to myself. I could make my escape without the slightest disturbance, without waking her up. I lay still, trapped like a soldier on a land mine, fearful to move, and stared listlessly up at the cream colored ceiling. The cold stranger sleeping next to me tugged on the blanket and rolled herself up into a warm cocoon. Her golden hair formed flowing streams in the wrinkled crevasses of her covers. Her breathing was quiet and heavy. I made my move. I slipped off the side of the bed. My feet made contact with the cold hardwood floor first and then I dragged the rest of my body slowly across the bed in the same fashion that one peels a band aid off of a healed wound. I found a scrap of paper and a purple inked pen and scribbled out the following note:

Celine,
last night was phenomenal. I didn’t want to wake you because you looked so peaceful and beautiful in your heavy sleep (and I don’t think I could have even if I tried because you ensconced yourself in your thick blanket!). I have to run to work, needless to say bathe and shave, so I can’t stay. Thank you for sharing your lovely bed with this unflattering stranger…perhaps we can do it again sometime. ; - )
Anyways enjoy the rest of your sleep!

Cordialement,

Adam

I laid the note on her pillow where my head had formerly been and then quickly turned and let myself out. The walk home felt shameful since one can always tell who had followed lust’s temptatious calling into the trap of spending the night at someone else’s place by the disgruntled, disheveled, and disconcerted look on the hung-over faces of fellow early morning passerbyers. Sometimes there’s even mutual nods of recognition and smirks when your eyes meet, a voiceless exchange that basically says “yeah…me too.”

After about twenty more minutes of walking I finally reached the front steps of my apartment building. The elevator courteously carried me up to my floor. I keyed myself in, slipped underneath the blanket of my bed, and murmured c’est la vie before permitting gravity to close the heavy curtains of my eyelids and sleep, that mysterious spell, take the reigns of my thought.

Fast asleep and dreaming, I slept through the day, and awoke to the setting evening sun. I watched as the amber sunlight slowly seeped away, a receding tide on a sloped shoreline, taking with it all of the colors of the room. After a couple of minutes had passed by I decided it was time to get up and face the night.

My pieces had been moved back to their original squares and the game...was about to begin againe.