The Closest I'll Ever Come to Heaven...

The difference between a regular hotel and a bed and breakfast is not so much the breakfast itself, but the fact of having to eat it with the other guests the morning after you’ve had loud, disruptive sex and kept them all from a good night’s sleep. A hotel’s relative anonymity means you might get some wall-knocks in response to your bed-rattling, curtain-swinging, sheet-crumpling session, but you’ll never have to face them the next day and ask them to please pass the jam.

Awkward French toast aside, we did pass a lovely night in an old converted barn, now living a torrid second life as a bed and breakfast cum yoga studio cum photo gallery. Snow was falling on cedars, and on pines, and firs, and on anything else that had the audacity to be outside. Soon, that would include us. Because obviously -24 degree weather would inspire anyone to shed their clothes to wander around outside in frostbite country, and not only enjoy it, but pay for the privilege too. Some have called it folly, others call in torture, but the business card says simply Le Nordik – spa en nature\outdoor spa.

The principle of Le Nordik is easy to grasp: hot, cold, rest, repeat. The hot part is happily obliged: either you sit in a hot tub nestled among the rocks and trees while snow collects on your eyelashes, or you lie about in the Finnish sauna (“Dehydrates strips of caribou while you relax!”) or you breathe in the goodliness of the steam bath (“Tastes like menthol!”) And then, once you’re good and sweaty, in order to achieve the ultimate relaxation, close the pores, and fully detoxify, comes the cold: literally, a hole is chopped through the ice on the lake and you jump in. Or, for the more romantic-minded, you may luxuriate under the iciest waterfall that will ever constrict your balls and pinch your nipples. Either way, it’s a deep freeze that chills to the bone. And if the shock stops your heart for more than the expected 30-45 seconds, the staff have hooks on long poles, perfect for fishing frozen corpses out of environments more suitable for polar bears. Just kidding of course. Polar bears aren’t that crazy.

For those of us who survive the jaw-clenching cold and are too incapacitated to make a screaming escape to the car comes a restful reward. You can flop yourself down on a lounge chair, or warm yourself by the fire in the gazebo, or stretch out in a room full of mats that plays host to the most wonderful thing I’ve ever witnessed – adult nap time. And then you do the whole thing over again, And again, for as long as you can stand the mind-blowing bliss.

God it was good. It was so good. It was fat-free chocolate-covered pretzels while you shop for pricetag-free Manolos on the first day of a three day weekend good. Andrew and I stewed in the hot tub for so long that our fingertips passed pruney and broke new territory in raisin land. We scuttled between stations in just our bathing suits and our flip flops, neither of which, in case you’re dense, do much to cut the cold. We had robes and towels, but they grew icicles after their first use and became slushy articles of discomfort that we were better off without.

Logically, I knew that it was -24, but I never really registered it. Hot tubs have amazing thawing capacities, and making out in hot tubs is truly divine. I was too blissed out to even mind my wardrobe malfunction. Predictably, I fell out of my impractical bathing suit. But since it was just the one boob, I doubt if it even counts.

After several hours, we fortified ourselves with wine and cheese so that we could withstand the travails of a massage.

It was the kind of massage that elicited the kinds of appreciative noises that could easily be misinterpreted by anyone listening in. This is supposing that my groans were now drowned out by the ubiquitous canned sound of fake birds fake chirping in the background – constantly. The funny thing is, Le Nordik is tucked away in a forested setting and has no need for nature fakery. Perhaps if the real birds are taking a day off from this freeze-your-nuts-off weather, we could just, you know, muddle through somehow without them. I doubt I’d be sitting in the hot tub all tense and nervous thinking God damn, if only there was some imitation bird to be had!

At any rate, I have now seen nirvana, and I’m hooked. By the end of the day I nearly did a face plant into my injera, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay for paradise.

Baa baa black sheep, have you any Grey Goose?

Le Mouton Noir, it calls itself, which is a funny name for a bar, especially a bar that appears to be mascotted not by a black sheep at all but by an aloof pug named Fred. Okay, I made that last bit up. There is a pug, but the bugger couldn’t be bothered to properly introduce himself. But I suppose his name could be Fred. Nobody ever told me it wasn’t.

The Black Sheep Inn, misnamed or not, bills itself as a “musical destination” in rural Quebec. It’s the kind of place that has ski-doo parking out front and boasts nachos with “red sauce” as the highlight of its limited menu (and indeed, when they arrive, the sauce is exactly that – unidentifiable and yet unmistakably red). To show that we’ve paid, the backs of our hands are stamped with a bingo dauber, and with that, we are absorbed into the crowd.

I drink rye & diets; I don’t need to ask for a drink menu to know this isn’t a martini kind of place (if nothing else, the unironic wood panelling screams it sufficiently). Andrew is happy to continue with his love affair with stout, and this is just the place to indulge him. The tables are sticky and wobbly so we hold our drinks and don’t make the mistake of resting our elbows more than once. I feel overdressed in my jeans and t-shirt because I am not visibly sporting thermal underwear.

The first (of three) bands is setting up, and I am quick to notice that they are the kind of band who wear “interesting” sweaters and drink tea instead of beer. The singer tunes her saw. Yes, you read that right. Her saw. With the bow of a violin, naturally. But I am disappointed during the performance because the saw never makes an appearance. However, I am delighted that the fuzzy sweater has disappeared and she has donned a rather affected pair of white leather gloves that she swishes around moodily while on stage. She breathes a “bonsoir” to us from under her tousled hair, and visions of Edith Piaf dance before our eyes. My opinion is further improved when an accordion player is invited to join them on stage. I now believe that if you’ve never seen anyone wail enthusiastically on an accordion, then you’ve never really lived. Have you ever seen someone really feel the accordion? I’m talking spastic, eyes-closed intensity here. Whew.

Next up to bat was a fun and funny folk singer named Bob whose protest songs are directed towards dogs, who discouraged applause after a song, delightfully entitled “How to Build a Fence”, about the literal building of a fence, the fancy kind, with a gate that swings and everything, by saying Oh don’t clap, that song only had 2 chords so it really wasn’t that hard, and who dazzled with such insightful lyrics as If singing the blues is a gift, next time I’d rather have a toaster. You just can’t lose with shit like that, and I could have listened to this guy all night long.

It seems to me at this point that the acts tonight are a bit incongruous, but hell, this place has an African mask on the wall beside a dart board that’s beside a Che poster that’s under a disco ball that’s hanging next to a dusty ceiling fan. You might think that clashing is an intended theme of the mouton noir, but when you get a load of the waiter in his ear-flap toque, and the dog who sits his ass on the bar in flagrant disregard of any health codes, and the audience members who bang their beer bottles on the table instead of clapping, you begin to have an understanding of a sense of belonging that no bar in the city will ever have.

The, ah, headliner, if you will, goes on last (duh), and we’re apparently supposed to know that he was once in Blue Rodeo, but the only thing I recognize him from was his frenetic accordion playing earlier in the night. The accordion, it seems, was just the tip of the iceberg with this guy. He sets up a multi-media show that is accompanied variously by him on the guitar, the keyboard, and of course, the accordion, which continues to be my favourite. He really breaks that fucking shit out, he plays it like he means it, and I doubt that I will ever recover from the haunting tune that played during the death of a hand puppet. Although come to think of it, he may have almost been upstaged by a video of an older man beat-boxing so maniacally that I nearly mistook it for an epileptic fit. But then he closed the show with a tour de force on the piano so amazing that even he couldn’t stay in his seat, thus cementing his title of Coolest and Most Bizarre Thing I’ve Seen Since At Least Last Tuesday, And Maybe Longer.

And through it all, the premature clapper showed us her approval before it was ever appropriate. There’s always one in every audience, isn’t there? They over-anticipate the end of each song and clap way ahead of time, as if it were a race. Well, she won. Every damn time. Her early applause drowned out the best bits of every song, and some of it was so ahead of time that I would mistakenly attribute it to the fact that maybe one man in ten managed to zip up before exiting the washroom, but no. She just wanted the artist to know that she liked the show before any of us other fools did.

And then it was time to put our snow suits, get on our snow mobiles and make tracks homeward. Except not. Being out-of-towners and wearing galoshes-less shoes, we opted for a car in the direction of our B & B because – oh yes – if you thought my night at the Black Sheep Inn was awesome, well then hold onto your socks for my next instalment , which is even awesomer.

Anti-Social

The walls are red, the plates are square, and the pan-fried calamari is spiced with cumin and pretension.

It’s not a bar.

It’s not a restaurant.

It’s a lounge.

You know you’re in a lounge when they don’t just plate food, they present it. Presentation involves disguising the fact that “dinner” consists of only 4 shrimps by stacking them vertically. Vertically! It’s brilliant, really. I can hardly believe I’ve wasted so many meals eating plain old horizontal food; things just don’t taste as good when they’re not piled on top of each other. And if there were just 4 little shrimps sitting forlornly on my plate, my brain might think “Four shrimps! What a rip-off!”, but when they’re artfully arranged into a leaning tower of shellfish, my brain thinks “What a delightful mountain of deliciousness!” Presentation doesn’t stop at stacking though; it also includes an ostentatious and often inedible garnish that usually looms larger than the main course itself.

You know you’re in a lounge when the wait staff is hired to stand around looking pretty – literally. Their main qualifications include trendy haircuts, cute dimples, and an all-black wardrobe. Once they’ve nailed the “I don’t hurry because I’m pretty” work ethic, they move on to the “I’m just doing this until I get my big break” attitude and the “God you people fucking bore me” look. Then they mostly stand around discussing their love lives and car payments while customers starve and eventually get their own drinks.

You know you’re in a lounge when they use some pompous euphemism for French fries on the menu. Call them frites all you want, but I know the truth: you’re just too goddamned lazy to come up with an imaginative replacement for them. Who do you think you’re fooling?

You might be in a lounge when some of the tables and chairs are replaced with – get this! – couches. You know, for lounging. And for sitting awkwardly in your dress, wondering how many germs are lurking in the fabric, and increasing spills by 86% (because what else would you do with your $18 martini other than have half of it coat the already-sticky, definitely-wobbly, and more than an arm-length’s away side table?) And please note: when I referred to “replacing” those tables and chairs with sofas, what I really meant was not removing them at all but just squeezing them into the already-tight dining space. Because if someone’s ass doesn’t brush your spaghetti carbonara, you’re not really living it up. But boy, if you’re strewn on a sofa, you must be having fun. You might actually start harbouring the delusion that you are “funky” or “with it” if you’re the kind of desperate middle-aged man who hasn’t realized yet that’s tragically out of touch. But there is nothing inherently cool about couches. Hey lounge: know who else has couches? My grandma. And she also serves drinks, and trays of compartmentalized food we used to call the cheese and pickle platter, but I suppose if we started calling them “tapas” then she could start charging us a cover, right?

You might be in a lounge if the nicest thing the newspaper reviewer could think of to say was “Dan Aykroyd ate there once!” and Dan Aykroyd probably had the right idea. A lounge is a place to see and be seen, and then retreat to your hotel room, crack open the mini bar (where drinks are so much cheaper) and have a shawarma delivered to you from across the street.

You’re probably in a lounge if the menu uses an excessive amount of quotation marks. For example, the menu might offer seared “rare” yellow fin tuna. You expect that quotation marks tell the reader something unusual is happening here: either you have a reservation about using the word, or you’re using it ironically. In this instance, we may guess that the tuna is not exactly served rare. However, when the same menu includes a dessert comprising of carrot cake and “frosting”, I really start to wonder what is so objectionable about the supposed “frosting.” Putting random quotation marks around things makes them sound ominous. Like maybe you shouldn’t trust the “frosting.” Like maybe someone’s pulling a fast one on us with the “frosting.” Like maybe it’s safest just to skip the “frosting”, if that is it’s real name.

You’re likely in a lounge if you hear the word ‘atmosphere’ thrown around a lot. Posh is what these places aspire to be; coolness is a great way to justify the exorbitant prices, and possibly the only way, especially when other negligible factors such as the quality and (god forbid you should ever leave a lounge sated) quantity of the food just don’t cut it. In fact, you’re almost certainly in a lounge if you pay 138$ before taxes and tip for a drink, an appetizer, an entree and dessert, and you still leave hungry.

You might be in a lounge if there’s a special menu that comes after dinner but before dessert. In another world this might be accurately named the cheese menu, but you’re in a lounge, so nothing is ever so easy. Instead they have to call it Quebec Thermalized cow milk, with triple cream, and bloomy rind. Because to call a rose by any other name....I mean, you’d still order it if they said they’d thrown a couple of cheese slices over some saltines and microwaved it, right? Oh, excuse me, they would never stoop so low as to serve it with mere crackers. In a lounge, it’s served with fig-walnut bread or some other snobby carbohydrate. That’s another thing about lounges: you’ll notice that everything on the menu has to sound at least vaguely disgusting, or else you’d never know you were eating something "innovative."

I'm not a hater, though.
Oh no.
I can bring the shi-shi with the best of them. I can drink martinis that took 30 minutes to arrive at my table like nobody's business. I can cross my legs and accidentally knock the napkin off the lap of a lady sitting 3 tables away and apologize with a big phoney shit-eating grin like you've never seen before. I can fit right in.

Just promise me we can stop at McDonald's on the way home.

Holy Hell.

Either Dante miscounted, or hell is expanding.

Currently, hell has circles dedicated to gluttons, misers, and sodomites where they undergo punishments supposedly commensurate with their sins. But I'm here to tell you there are things worse than boiling blood, demon whipping, and marinating in human shit.

The tenth circle of hell is called Bikini Village.

The good news: I'm going to Punta Cana!
The bad news: I'm going to Punta Cana!

Luckily (or unluckily, maybe), I'm not going until March, so I either have 2 more months to search frantically for that which does not exist (ie, a bathing suit that doesn't make me want to "drop" radios in my bathwater) or I have 2 more months to cancel Punta Cana and book some sort of arctic vacation instead. Nobody every broke out in hives because of how they look in a parka.

And the thing is, I don't really mind how I look in bathing suit.
I just mind how I look in a bathing suit under fluorescent lighting in a dressing room when the only colour on my entire body is the little red lines from the elastic on my socks.

I think it's fairly popular to blame our own bodies for the fact that swimwear just doesn't do us justice, but I will pass the buck if there's a buck to be passed, and I blame the suits.

I'm not disputing the fact that nobody ever told my hips that I didn't want children, and so they grew thinking that I might one day give birth to a litter of small volkswagons and are thusly proportioned. That part is true. But am I the only hippy woman walking around? No, I am not. In fact, if you sit outside of Bikini Village for 10 minutes, you will see every shape and size imaginable walk by, some of which will mystify and stultify, but walk by they do. But 30 seconds inside Bikini Village, and you quickly realize that bathing suits are cut to one shape, and it ain't mine, and it may not be yours either. Four more minutes inside that store, and you will hear cursing from the dressing rooms, witness crying by the mirrors, and see reluctance at the cash register.

I'm too short to fill out the normal swim suit, so either I put my boobs into the cups and let the torso portion just pool around my stomach unflatteringly, or I tie the boob holes around my neck and smooth out the tummy part. It's not a choice I wish on my worst enemy.

And all bathing suits make it evident that the swimwear people and the Brazilian wax people got together and conspired against us. Your normal grooming just won't do. Bathing suits ride up into territory you didn't even know you had - and when that ultra-white strip of skin is inevitably newly hair-free and exposed to sunlight in the first time in forevah, it's going to burn like a motherfucker.

But going on vacation is fun!
It's just that next time, I'm going to save myself a little sanity for the beach and book myself into one of those nudist resorts.

Christmas Who?

It's not that I'm going all bah-humbug on the holiday, just that someone had to work it, that someone being me, and so I'm in Christmas-oblivion until the 27th, which is when my celebrations officially begin.

I celebrated Christmas Eve with all the somber reverence due to the birth of baby Jesus, in a greasy spoon called Zak's Diner, home of excellent home fries and uncomfortable seating. Andrew took me there when I got off work at 7am and it's as close to Christmas dinner as I've come. And no, that's not a complaint. Although I did raise my eyebrow ever so slightly when the waitress asked how he wanted his eggs, and he said "Scrambled."

"What's wrong with scrambled?", he asked.

"Nothing," I said, "if you're 12."

Frankly, he deserved a good ribbing after I had inspected his driveway earlier and declared that reindeer had definitely been afoot (ahoof?).

"No," he said, "we just have rabbits."

Now, granted, I had just got off a night shift and I was exhausted and bleary, but that's still no excuse for him to think it possible that I might confuse reindeer and rabbits. I'm not that blonde.

"Well if you're not referring to the tracks in the snow, then what do you mean?" he asked.

"I smell them" I said.

"You smell reindeer?"

"I smell magic!"

So then we kissed goodbye and he sped off toward his hometown, an 8-hour drive he managed in just 11, which sounds ass-backwards, but this is December in Canada and all things considered, he made good time. I have it on good authority that he is currently drinking generous portions of scotch while making awkward conversation with his Nana and trying to tune out Anne Murray's screechy Christmas album.

Meanwhile, I went to work on Christmas Eve in my fuzzy Christmas jammies, ready for all manners of office antics with just a pinch of party, but instead I spent the night alone in the dark while my coworker stretched out on the yoga mat and intermittently snored and ignored the annoying ringtone\alarm on his phone. For 7 fucking hours.

Merry Christmas to me!

Christmas day meant little more to me than the rest I'd need before heading back into work, but after approximately 47 minutes of sleep I discovered that any more would be impossible. Awesome. Nothing says Christmas like a nice glass of Redbull, I've always said. Maybe I could crush up some candy cane and give that a snort for some extra energy and a brief but minty ride on the festive train.

My youngest sister, bless her little heart, has spread Christmas cheer via text. She has sent blurry images that I assume are Christmas-related along with enigmatic updates such as "Now we're playing spoons!"

When I wrote back that I hoped that meant that our grandfather was attempting something by Beyonce, she (to my disappointment) clarified that spoons were not being played musically as I had imagined, but rather, it's an ill-named card game. Or a well-named card game, for all I know. But still.

If you think I sound grinchy, then you clearly don't know me very well.
This is how I always sound.
I'm an inspired complainer year-round.
It's part of my charm. Trust me.

Actually, I don't so much mind working through Christmas. I'm a contractor, which means I work for myself, so I could have had it off, but then someone else would have had to sacrifice their plans.

Andrew and I celebrated the night before he left by feasting on thai food and watching half a movie before he stoked my fire with his yule log.

And my mother has generously offered to host "Christmas: The Sequel" upon my belated arrival.

So I might not be roasting chestnuts on an open fire tonight, but I'm making pancakes and watching Hamlet 2, and you know what?

That ain't bad.

Happy holidays to all.
xo

Puppy Love

When Andrew picked me up last night he said "Wow, you look really great", which is more or less what he always says when he picks me up. He'd said an approximation of that very same thing the night before, but I was more willing to accept it then, being decked out in a little black dress and heels. Later that night, sitting on the leather sofas at Social, martini (deliciously named Anika Sky) in hand, he told me that my breasts looked "particularly fetching". And yes, he really said fetching.

But that was Saturday night; last night, Sunday night, I was wearing cords, and let's face it - no one looks sexy in corduroy. It's a functional fabric favoured by us citizens of colder climates. It is not h-a-w-t.

Obviously the response to "You look good" is "Thanks" but I tend to go with something like "I know!" instead. And I do know. Someone as gorgeous as I am, as smart as I am, as funny as I am, with such impeccable taste, unimpeachable opinions and superior skill at almost anything worth being skilled at (from the proper pouring of a stout to the impressively flawless removal of red wine stains from suede) will obviously become accustomed to receiving compliments. But that hasn't made me very comfortable or particularly gracious at accepting them. (Incidentally, my mother once wondered aloud how someone so conceited came from her womb, which made me wonder if someone this beautiful can really be said to be "conceited". Conceit implies that the self-flattery is excessive or worse yet, imaginary. Conceit, therefore, belongs to the uglies. Us good looking people who know we're good looking are simply self-aware. And that's a good thing, right?)

Anyway, after Andrew and I finished arguing about whether I looked dishy, we drove to his friends' place because their dog just had puppies - twins! - and we were eager to bask in their cuteness. At just 3 days old, the little tan ball of adorable sat in my palm with room to spare. It snuggled up to my chest and sighed contentedly. Andrew's puppy, however, mewed a little and squirmed against him. Perfectly understandable, of course, since they're newborn, still blind, and unused to being away from Mummy's nipples. Mine was the anomaly of course, but I've yet to come across a male who wasn't happy to nuzzle at my breast.

I didn't volunteer this perfectly reasonable explanation of my puppy success though, because I was meeting Andrew's friends for the first time and I was on my best behaviour. In fact, sometime before we pulled up (and possibly partly prompted by my repeated use of the word CUNT in the previous post), he'd warned me not to use the word pussy. So, after dating for a couple of months now, Andrew has pegged me as:

a) the kind of girl who can really rock a pair of cords; and

b) the kind of girl who would randomly insert inappropriate vagina-substitutes into conversation with complete strangers.

And he's not really wrong, on either count.

Earlier I had fucked with his hair a bit because he looked like he was about to sit for his school portrait. It's hard for anyone to compete with my new haircut ("the most punk-ass in the 613" according to my stylist) but when he asked me if he looked dangerous I had to admit that maybe "responsible" was a bit more accurate.

"Coming from you," he said, "I know that's not a compliment." It's difficult for most people to think of responsible as being an insult, but again he's hit the spot. This kid, he's starting to know me. And this fact, slightly startling on its own, was compounded by having occasion to talk to my ex this week. My laptop was stolen last weekend and I needed the serial number from him for the police report. On a manic high last summer, he'd promised to finally return my things, box up what was most important to me, and get it to me right away with a side of divorce papers. Six months later, I haven't seen any of these things materialize, but after watching my life be torn apart by his bipolarism, I guess I'm just a bit beyond disappointment these days. We've since had months of silence in the interim, which is not something I really regret. His curiosity got the better of him though, and he initiated our first conversation since August. I was surprised to find that the 8 years we'd spent together had somehow...dimmed. The feelings I once had for him, both the loving ones and the angry ones, have evaporated. I was struck by how strange I seemed to him. He doesn't know me anymore.

He doesn't know me anymore!
Even more shocking to me: someone else knows me now (and I don't just mean biblically). I mean that I can tease him in that way that I have and not worry that he'll fall apart. He gets my scathing sense of humour. He knows where I like to be rubbed, and why I can't just put a lid on a cocoa and pretend it's a white hot chocolate. He already knows that I'm never wrong, and that if there's any sort of competition between us, I will win.

Especially if it involves puppies.

Ode to Vulva

I remember very clearly one of my earliest classes in the psychology of sexuality because it consisted mainly of a 3-hour slide show of penises.

Penises, penises, penises. I'd certainly seen my share (perhaps even several shares) live and in person by that time, but to see them disembodied, out of context, in all their glorious shapes and sizes, in various states of arousal or flacidity, some straight and skinny like a fleshy misplaced bolo tie, others gently curving like a piece of mushy unappetizing fruit, it was simply too much.

Too much!

The next week I was bravely back in the lecture hall, pen in hand, optimistically thinking that I might actually be taught this time (although it's possible that the only note I took that entire semester was "Clitoris rhymes with Doris"), and that I probably wouldn't miss sausage all that much, now that I could no longer bring it to my lips when lo and behold, the unending penis slide show was followed by an equally lengthy one on vulvas!

This time, after bearing witness to literally hundreds of vulvas, I felt rather enlightened. Up until that time, the only vulva I'd spent any quality time with was my own, and I left with a heightened appreciation for just how goddamned cute mine was. Still, I went home to a hand mirror, a camcorder and some well-placed throw pillows that night just so I could admire her some more.

Mimi and I (that's her name) have had some very, very good times.

Very, very.

Well, I suppose that makes it sound like the good times happened just between me and Mimi, and that's not what I meant.

Though it is equally and absolutely true.

If I'm supposed to feel some measure of shame in admitting that, I don't.

Mimi is so pretty that you can't help but be drawn to her - such a luscious shade of pink that I'd gladly wear it on my lips if only Revlon could get their shit together and weren't so adverse to printing "Jay's Cunt" on the sides of their tubes. Personally, I think it has a nice ring to it.

Yes, I said cunt. Sometimes I think it's the only word really worthy of it: powerful, arresting. Cunt.

She's so affectionate it breaks my heart, always striving to be the best that she can be.

My vulva, myself.

I love her.

Things I Recently Dropped in the Toilet: A Poem

The shampoo
Luster and shine guaranteed
Now with green tea extract;

The toothpaste
No longer so minty fresh
Still recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists;

Nail polish, extreme blackcurrent
Sank straight to the bottom
And looked like sunken treasure;

A whole roll of toilet paper
Quickly took on water and went glug glug glug
Fished out a soggy, pulpy mess;

A happy rubber duckie
Who looked so homey in his new pristine pond
That I left him there until I had to pee;

A candle shaped like a shoe
Extinguished with a mighty splash
Never to be lit again;

The ring right off my finger
Seemed to be committing suicide
But I rescued it and closed the lid, thus saving others as well.

Flush.

I'm not mental, I'm mentally hilarious.

I work as a crisis counsellor. Basically, people call me and I talk them out of killing themselves. Or at least, I hope I do.

I'm not really trying to make light of it. It's just that after months of hearing horrific disclosures involving all manners of abuse, sex crimes, broken hearts, abandoned children and lost souls, you're just not the same person and you do what you can to survive it. There are days when I come home and cry. There are days I come home and run myself a hot bath to cry in. There are other days I pour myself a glass of shiraz, run myself a bath, and sob as I gulp wine greedily. But despite these challenges (and maybe a tiny bit because of them), I love the work I do.

I even love the fact that I get to do it at night. People become desperate creatures at night and every time the phone rings, I know I have the potential to save a life. What I love a little less though is the toll that working nights takes on your social life. My schedule goes like this: I work 7 nights in a row, get 3 days off, work another 7 in a row, get 4 off. By the fifth night, you feel a little undead. It's been forever since you last saw the sun, you have no idea what the idea of "suppertime" is anymore, and you have a personal vendetta against all banking institutions which are open only in the narrow window during which it is imperative that you sleep. Mercifully though, I am right now enjoying my 4 days off, Sat-Tues, or as I refer to them, Saturday!, Sunday!, Monday!, Tuesday!

The Saturday and Sunday I reserve for what we counsellors have taken to calling "filling up the reservoir" after a particularly cheesy workshop, but really consists of making sure we don't burn out or wind up in need of crisis counselling ourselves (both happen with frightening frequency).

Saturday was a lovely day. I sacrificed sleep in order to be among the people, and I hit up an indie craft fair where I spent my money on such silk-screened gems as a pair of panties that say "Eat Local" and a tie that has a TV set admonishing the masses "Read a book you dipshit." These are the things you risk missing out on if you do the "healthy", "logical" thing and sleep when you're exhausted. Saturday night I went to Gatineau to visit a friend, play some poker, and eventually, when I was drunk enough, embarrass myself at Guitar Hero.

Driving home, we were already a fair piece down the highway when my girlfriend rang my cell and said Jay, you forgot your wallet on the stereo. Andrew was kind enough to turn the car around and allow me to retrieve it without laying on the guilt. Did I mention that having a fucked up sleep schedule really messes with your memory? It does.

Sunday morning I made my way home before the sun had even risen after spending the night not sleeping in Andrew's bed. I went home and crashed for less than two hours before springing back up in order to enjoy Another! Day! Off! Andrew and I spent a blissfully quiet day on my living room floor drinking wine and laughing.

On Monday I should have swung into high gear in order to get around to all those errands that are particularly hard for those of us who work the night shift: grocery stores, passport offices, postal outlets, banks, even the laundry room in my building, they're all open hours that are only convenient to the majority but sadly not the totality of the people.

But....I didn't. I had finally allowed myself a few consecutive hours of sleep before waking up and realizing that I needed to be getting ready to get to my friend's house if I had any hope of being in the vicinity of "on time".

And I was, barely, but still. And I had a great night. I am blessed with friends who hardly complain at all about my schedule. I knew that the next day would be crazy for me, now having to pack 2 busy days worth of errands into just the one, but I managed to put that stress out of my mind and just enjoy myself. I work hard, and I deserve some quality down time. I got back home quite pleased with myself, started steaming milk to make some white hot chocolate, ran a bath and realized....I had once again left my wallet behind.

I never do that, but I've now done it twice in three days and for all I know Sunday was safe only because I never left the house. I sat in the bath panicking. No cash, no debit card, no credit card, no gym membership, not even my lousy laundry card to my name! The Christmas shopping that so desperately needs to get done? Forget it. The stamps that need to be bought? ID that needs to be renewed? Arms that need toning? In fact, the whole damn list of things begging to be checked off? Nope, none of it.

It sucks.

And yet, I have accidentally given myself a gift.

I have nowhere I can go and no means to do anything. I will be forced to spend the day at home, alone. For the first time in a long time, I will truly relax. I will sit, and read, and eat cookies, maybe watch movies, maybe nap, probably open some wine and turn the Christmas tree lights on. I might even call my mother! It will be the complete opposite of the day that my to-do-list requires, but it will be the exact day that my tired soul has been longing for. Sadly, I all too often leave myself off the list (while scolding clients who do the same) but my unconscious has apparently identified the need and has worked hard to ensure that I treat myself to a real day off.

Thank you, dear wallet, for saving me. This act of deliberate sabotage is the most selfless thing an inanimate object has ever done for me.

Today I will shower in the dark with expensive body wash.
Today I will touch flame to virgin wicks.
Today I will go panty-less in order to preserve what clean laundry I have left.
Today I will savour every last minute.

The glory days of a bi-hockey couple.

He's handsome and thoughtful and has great taste in music, but he's deeply, deeply flawed.
Andrew cheers for the wrong hockey team.

No, I take that back.
The Ottawa Senators are not just the wrong team, but the worst team.
The rivalry between Toronto and Ottawa is legendary. Politely referred to as "the battle of Ontario", fans use much more colourful language in the stands.

But with a twinkle in his eye, he invited me to the game, and despite the fact that I felt fairly confident that it could spell an end to our relationship, I accepted.
Foolishly.

He picked me up wearing a StinkySens Volchenkov jersey and hardly batted an eye at my skirt and white leather motorcycle boots (if you doubted for a second that I was the kind of girl who'd wear a skirt to a hockey game, then get the hell out). But when I ditched my coat in the car to reveal my own jersey, he lifted an eyebrow. My blue and white should normally repel his red and black, but instead they brushed together as his hand in the small of my back led me up the steps towards the monstrosity that feels entitled to sell beer at $12 a glass.

The ticket-taker was the first of many skeptics.

Are you two sitting together? she asked.

Apparently, I replied, rolling my eyes.

But otherwise I bit my tongue, which is not normally one of the many things I like to do with my tongue, but in a sea of Sens fans on their home turf, I know when to pick my battles. Plus, I didn't feel like getting jumped.

I wasn't the only Toronto fan in the building, but I was sitting in a section saturated with Senators sweaters (Andrew has season tickets, natch). I expected some ribbing, and I got some. I also got lots of high-fives from the Leafs fans pouring down periodically from the nose-bleeds in pursuit of more beer. One Leafs fan in particular was very vocal in his approval of my jersey. He went so far as to berate Andrew.

Dude, he says, if you're going to sit beside this lovely lady, you should have worn the blue and white.

I smirked.

Andrew grunted.

Or at least, he did the first time.

The second time he got razzed by this guy, he was a little less amused. The first period of the game had been intense, the Sens scoring within the first 4 minutes and the Leafs tying it up just a couple of minutes after that. The boys behind us shouted their anti-Leafs sentiments in their smug french accents while Andrew and I engaged in friendly one-upmanship. If he was on his feet clapping, then I'd be jumping up and down doing my damndest to drown him out. And then we'd make out and ignore the ice completely. It was good.

It was good up until the persistent Leafs fan showered me so strongly with compliments that he talked himself into proposing marriage, down on one knee on the concrete steps of the Scotia Bank place in a foam cowboy hat and face paint. Hawt. He took my hand and looked into my eyes and, refusing to be rejected, he assured me that though Andrew may have splurged for better seats, the real fans were further up in the stands, and that he'd have a seat saved and warmed for me when (not should) I choose to join him.

Equilibrium was not restored until a Sens fan threatened to throw me down the stairs. The entire section, witnesses all of them to the awkward scene that failed to end in an engagement, erupted in laughter, enjoying having put the Leafs fan back in her place and their energy carried them through a battle into overtime and finally a (surprising) Ottawa victory in a shoot-out.

We spilled out into the crazy-packed parking lot after the game in a sea of jubilation. Andrew grabbed my hand in the crush and we strolled happily towards where we estimated the car to be parked, having already mostly forgotten which team lost and which team won, when yet another random person stopped us in our tracks.

This one though congratulated us.
If a Leafs girl and a Sens boy can still be holding hands, I have hope for this world yet. Anyone can get along together if you guys can.

So, beacons of hope that we were, we drove home together to rip the offending shirts off our backs and do the things that make us forget that we have any differences at all, except the anatomical ones that we tend to quite enjoy.

Where the men are, sort of.

There were better bars, more worthy bars, deeper into the bowels of the market, but I was wearing spike heels and a dress so short it barely (maybe not even) covered my girly bits, and there was wetness bordering on snowness starting to fall, and our bellies were full of sushi and sake so we just wanted a dark corner to sit in and drink in and wait until it was late enough to go home and fuck.

These are all perfectly good reasons for accidentally watching UFC, I swear.

The cover charge at the door of a pub should have given it away, I guess, but I was distracted by the the 42:1 ratio of men to women and Andrew couldn't wait to get in somewhere (anywhere!) warm enough to remove my coat and get another look at my Grecian dress ("Grecian" meaning very low cut in the front and very very low cut in the back), or rather, the things falling out of my Grecian dress.

The UFC, if you have the good fortune not to know, is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which in theory involves a couple of scantily-clad mixed martial artists going at it until one of them just can't go anymore. If this sounds homoerotic to you: ding ding ding. However, the UFC seems to have some unspoken rule about not engaging anyone who is even remotely good looking, so if you're looking for the male equivalent of mud wrestling, keep looking. In fact, I would wager that mud wrestling involves more grace and more athleticism and possibly more testosterone than the UFC on any night. But maybe that's just me.

Supposedly, back in the glory days of the UFC, the only rules were no biting, and no eye-gouging, which led to brutal, bloody fights that John McCain likened to "human cock fighting", which apparently was a bad thing. Now there are more fouls than you can shake a stick at, which includes not shaking your stick and also: no head butting, no hair pulling, no groin attacks, no fish hooking, no spitting.

And they call that a fight? Come on! My six year old sister and I got dirtier than that on the concrete floor of our basement when we couldn't agree on who would be Barbie and who would be Ken.

The fighters enter the arena to the tune of their favourite CCR song, high-fiving the eager pre-pubescent crowd. Then while scowling menacingly (but not convincingly - if you want convincing, I refer you once again to my Mom's basement when someone has just eaten the last poptart) the fighter is undressed. The official rulebook states that a fighter's gloves must allow fingers to grab and grapple, but somehow they are unable to remove their own shirts. Someone in the entourage actually has the job description of Official Shirt Taker-Offer of the UFC. Shirtless (disappointingly), they climb into the ring, which isn't a ring, but an octagon-shaped enclosure called (brilliantly) The Octagon.

The fight starts and the bar is packed tight all around us, violating all fire safety codes and also the warning that keeps crawling across the bottom of the big screen TVs that says pay-per-view is for individuals only and it is expressly forbidden for public viewing, such as that in bars. Wings and nachos are being consumed in vast quantities and I appear to be the 1 in 400 not drinking beer. The two fighters in silk shorts dance around each other for much of the "fight", and action is so scarce that just lunging at an opponent is enough for the beery crowd to erupt in cheers and jeers. Andrew fails to find anything amusing in watching former high school bullies wail on each other, but I encourage him to take a closer look.

These are not the bullies, these are the outcasts. The official and exclusive beer of the UFC is Bud Light for a reason. These are the dudes that were picked on and swirlied and stuffed into lockers in high school. These nerds are getting revenge, and using the UFC to show that their tap-dance\karate lessons were not in vain. Through the miracle of steroids and spending every Friday and Saturday night in an otherwise empty gym, the dweebs have got their day.

I kicked a girl, and I liked it.

During the emergency evacuation, our chicken balls, which were left behind, had gone cold, the lo mein had congealed, and the wontons were now floating unappetizingly in room-temperature soup. While others may see the aborted scene as a sad case of night-gone-wrong, we couldn't help interpreting the events somewhat more favourably.


Rewind 2-3 hours: the night starts innocently enough...


knock, knock


"Come in, come in."


kiss, kiss


"Have a seat, grab a drink, try not to mind the fact that I'm still not wearing a bra."


It may seem like casual entertaining to say the least, but Rory is the kind of friend who, when I accidentally stepped out of an Urban Behaviour fitting room topless, informed the crowd that it wasn't "anything she hadn't seen before."

So, while she unburdened her soul of all the troubles a girl can accumulate in 48 hours, I finished dressing under her steady gaze, and between smoke breaks on the balcony, did my hair and my makeup too. And when she'd confessed herself into exhaustion, we topped up the drinks and headed into more light hearted territory, otherwise known as my life, the soap opera.

Rory, like lots of my friends, lives vicariously through the sordid stories of my random rendez-vous-ing but is suspicious as to how I actually manage to accidentally meet so many strange characters. The best I can ever manage by way of explanation is "I don't know! It's not like I have a lesson plan for spontaneity. It just happens." Luckily, statements like that do not diminish statements like "...and after we chased the chipmunk back up the tree, we introduced ourselves and then made out." It sounds a little crazy in the retelling, but I like that my life is a mix of fantastical and unpredictable.

So as I was wrapping up a story we've since dubbed "The disarmingly hot guy who wears UFC jammies to bed and whose number is now deprogrammed from my cell", the only thing louder than our giggles was the grumblies in our tumblies.

Being the domestic goddess that I am, we ordered some chinese.


And then we went down to the lobby of my building to make sure no one abducted our dinner, remarking on "that buzzing noise that kind of sounds like someone's smoke alarm" as we left.

When we got back (10? 15 minutes later?), paper bag of hot delicious MSG-soaked goodness in hand, the noise hadn't abated. In fact, as we were sitting down, maybe half an egg roll in, the noise seemed to get louder. Still largely unconcerned, I decided that the least I could do was poke my head out the door, and that's what I did, and was rewarded with the sight of one neighbour pounding on the noisy apartment's door. When it was finally answered, smoke billowed out.

Hm.


That chicken fried rice is looking mighty good....

But then the lady who answered starts yelling "Call the fire department! Save the animals!" as she neglects to keep her tattered bathrobe closed while lugging large crates containing (I hope) pets out into the hallway and then into the elevator. A man's voice, coming from within the offending apartment bellows "There's no fire, don't get so worked up" and reassures the growing crowd with "She just passed out with something on the stove."

And she has somehow "slept" through 20 minutes of smoke alarm. Riiiiiiiiiight.


Anyway, the woman, now that she's conscious, is now "agitated" enough to pull the building's alarm, which means the fire department's on its way and 187 people are about to be very grumpy.


* Note: When I say "slept", and "agitated", you can pretty much assume I mean "stoned out of her fucking mind."

So we leave our dinner but take our drinks and evacuate calmly. Not a drop was spilled despite the urgency of the alarm and the people rushing past us in the grimy stairwell.


As soon as we hit the cool night air, I say to Rory "If this turns out to be a real fire, I'm going to very upset, because I just left my baby up there!"


* Note: When I, a single, selfish, independent woman say "baby", you can pretty much assume I mean "laptop."

And then a man comes out the front doors with precious cargo under each arm, and declares that "Just in case, I brought my babies."

* Note: gay man babies = laptop + cat

So we're all standing around, watching the firemen take an elevator up to the maybe-fire (which I thought was a fire-safety sin, but what do I know?), some of us in post-work-pajamas, some of us in states of anger and disbelief, and some of us sipping from swirly straws feeling kind of amused about the whole thing.


And I start playing "meet the neighbours" with a guy who's standing off by himself in a hoodie and a puffy vest, looking like he maybe had better plans than watching his building go down in flames tonight.


Actually, he admits, he'd been home sick from work all day. The fire thing is kind of a pain in the ass, as he'd had to peel himself off the couch and actually mobilize. Rory and I volunteer brilliant information about ourselves, such as how I first came to meet the building's superintendent on my very first day as a tenant because I'd turned on the taps in my shower and then couldn't turn them back off, and how Rory had had a similar near-fire incident when she'd accidentally let a pot of carrots boil all the way down, scorching the pot, which she then for some unnamable reason placed on a carpet, thus burning a hole right through it.

Brilliant way to introduce ourselves, no?

Eventually the fire fighters exit the building unheroically, no women strewn over any shoulders, not even a scared kitty reunited with joyful owners, and even more disappointingly, none drop trou or so much as remove a shirt to reveal achingly chiseled pecs and a waxed-smooth toned torso as those calendars would have you believe.

So, Rory and I race up the stairs although at this point the chinese food can't get any colder. The night has derailed nicely and as we pass the chicken balls and red sauce between us, we debate who should tell which parts when we inevitably drunk-dial some lucky friend to tell them of our night's events.

But then we get stuck on one salient point: the guy. The guy named _______. Who lived on the ______ floor. Who told us his job was _________ and originally came from _______ and had moved to the building last ________.

And then I pointed out to Rory that she'd actually been with me on one of my patented randomly-meeting-people adventures, and look how badly we'd done! He should have been eating gross egg rolls with us right that very moment, but we had failed.

Well, not quite failed, not yet.

I got out the construction paper and the markers, and we went to town.

An hour later, we were making asses out of ourselves, papering the building with our posters: the mail room, the elevators, the stairwell, the front lobby. We were thorough. We put up whatever random facts we could agree on, and offered some of ours in return (Gushing shower girl and burnt carrot girl want to see you again!). We hoped that he possessed a sense of humour, or at least felt kindly disposed towards stalkers.

"Only people in the movies do this kind of thing" we agreed, but did it anyway, not quite capable of the stealthiness we strove for. It didn't matter if it didn't work, the fun was just in doing it, and enjoying it, and seizing the little joys that life puts in your path.

We hugged as we parted, as we always do.

"When are we doing this again?" she asked.

I'm pretty sure we'll never have an exact repeat of the night, and that's okay. I'm also pretty sure that life still has plenty of surprises left for both of us, and that those surprises tend to multiply in magnitude when we come across them together. And I'm delighted that our twosome seems destined to become a trio since the guy was very quick to respond to the posters and doesn't want to wait until the next fire to do it again.