Montreal

baby I'm a pro at letting go

I went with Karen to Montreal over the May long weekend.  It was perfectly parallel because we became friends five years ago when we went to Montreal for a class trip in the first month of the university program we were both in. Back then I was a stressy wreck from moving across the country and living on my own for the first time, and what? They wanted me to go to another province - an entire different province than the one I was in now, which was already an unfamiliar place - and learn some shit about community gardens? As if!

But Karen said I should take kava and I did and it helped. When graduated, she moved to Montreal for a couple of years to work, before moving back to Toronto last year. And we were going to go back to visit. My friend J’s boyfriend was turning his apartment into an Airbnb, and he let us stay there for free over the weekend.  I’d been to Montreal once before the class trip, so this was my third time, but every single time I’m awed by the buildings, how they’re all the same perfect height and have the cutest staircases, and are all designed a little bit differently but still fit together seamlessly. Everywhere you walk it feels like the streets are exactly as they should be, no empty gaps or ugly sections. Just parkettes and street art and local shops and trees.

We got there on Saturday, wandered, went out with a bunch of people, ate. One of the women’s boyfriends was from France, and I asked if they spoke French at home.

“Yes,” he said. “We try to at dinner, while we are enjoying the pleasures of the table.”

Jesus, everyone said, because there’s French and then there’s Paris French.

The woman went out with us after, once everyone had left, and said that her boyfriend had once got upset with her and said, “Do you know it’s been five days since we made love and three days since we have kissed?”

She said no, she didn’t keep track. Maybe romance is best saved for the dinner table.

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On Sunday, we met up with some women and went to Bota Bota, which is a spa right on the harbour looking out over old Montreal. It’s got huge outdoor hot tubs, indoor steam rooms and saunas, and ice baths in wood barrels to dunk in between each station. I thought it was going to be bored (you just wander from station to station for hours), but by the time we were done, I was more related than I’ve ever been before. 

No one else would go in the ice baths, but those were my favorite. If you get past the shock, there are a few moments before the cold starts grating on your bones where your whole body wakes up. I was so warm when I got out afterward, but not warm like the claustrophobic cave of a steam room, warm like it was coming from inside me.  It would almost be worth the drive just to go there again. And again. Just to go there every weekend. I want to live there now.

That evening, we met up with J and some other people at Dieu du Ciel. I asked Karen what it meant. She learned Swiss German after working in Switzerland as an au pair 15 years ago, but she never learned Montreal French. She said she thought it meant two sons, but it turns out it means something about the sky being god.  Good beer and bad food that was trying to be good food.

I was exhausted after a full weekend of meeting new people. I’m basically a black belt at small talk, but newness drains me like a sieve.  I was at a table with Karen, J and another guy that I’d met a few times, but I was just too tired to talk. I always wonder if it’s the same way for shy people who don’t generally talk a lot, but when I’m not talking, I’m not engaged. I especially notice it all the times that I have gotten laryngitis and been literally unable to speak - without a voice I feel like I’m standing on the other side of a river with no bridge between me and everyone else. Do quiet people feel that way constantly, or are they just better able to feel connected without actively contributing to the conversation?

I showed everyone the OKCupid message I’d just got (basically “you seem cool, we should meet in person so you can prove you’re not a dude pretending to be a woman.”)  and laughed about it. J asked what I was looking for and I didn’t know how to answer. Nothing, really. I like being around people who are in relationships but I don’t know that I actually want to be in one myself.

Eventually more people showed up until there were more people that I didn’t know than people I did.   J texted me from across the table and asked if I wanted to go somewhere else. I did, and the two of us left the group and went to a queer karaoke bar. It was bigger than it looked from the front window and had a bowling alley that was used for the stage.

J’s the perfect person to go to karaoke with because she wanted to sing even less than I did, and let me tell you - I did not want to sing in front of anyone. Instead we held up the wall and made fun of everyone from the corner of the room.

A woman with long, curly curly black hair sang Piece of My Heart and rocked it. Like, maybe she hadn’t just swallowed a fistful of nails so she wasn’t full on Joplin, but she was incredible.

An overeager ginger kid went up after her. It seemed like Baby’s First Trip to a Gay Bar and he was giddy with excitement.  He sang All By Myself terribly, like even at top volume he couldn’t fully express his level of exhilaration. Everyone still applauded wildly while he walked around with diva hips, squawking.  I could imagine him imagining what the night would be like. How he’d be free and open and out. He’d come with an older woman, who I imagined was straight but had been in love with a gay man when she was young, and knew the right place to take the kid.  He probably thought it was going to be like on Glee, him getting on the stage, blowing everyone away with his voice. Attracting the attention of someone in the crowd. He bounced from table to table after he finished singing, and eventually his friend gathered him up and took him home. I think he’ll remember the way people clapped for him.

Two women tried and failed to rap The Real Slim Shady. The host of the bar butchered Scream and Shout, but he stripped down to only his underwear (his jeans caught around his ankles, where he was still wearing shoes) and had a surprisingly good body.  The amazing woman came back absolutely destroy None of Your Business. She even did the outro like exactly how it sounds on the CD.  J and I stopped making fun of the group of guys who were obnoxiously standing right in front of us to sing along with her.  It was a good night, it was really, really good.

J’s boyfriend worked as a bartender at a lesbian bar, and that Sunday night they were having a private event.  By the time we wandered by, ready to meet up with Karen again, it was 2 am. Most of the people from the event were gone but there was still $1,000 on the tab, so he invited us in to drink for free. 

I was already a little tipsy, and I knew I had to drive 6+ hours the next day so I took it easy, but “easy” was still shots and drinks and sangria and more shots.  At one point we got Amaretto Sours that had cherries with stems and I asked if anyone knew how to tie them into a knot in their mouths.

“No,” J and Karen said.  “Can you?”

“Yeah.”  I showed them and tried to teach them how to do it themselves, but they couldn’t.  I kept added knotted cherry stems to the pile in front of me.

“Laura,” J said when I pulled another knot out of my mouth. “You’re in marketing, you should be marketing yourself much better.”

“Just go around with a jar of cherries at all times, like, hey, look at what I can do,” Karen said. 

It’s just about getting the little knob at the end of the stem between your teeth.  Me and the ginger kid are lucky to have friends who want the world to see how awesome we are, even if maybe we’re not actually as awesome as our friends think.

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Karen was probably still drunk when we drove back home on Monday.

At one point she mumbled, “Stinging Nettle.”

I looked at her.

“Oh,” she said.  “I was trying to see what plants I could identify in that field. I accidentally said that outloud.” She stuffed a handful of Nibs in her mouth. “Do you want me to take over driving for a bit?”

“I’m good,” I said.

i love it when they come and go