Who was it that said "Women will be the death of me"?
Yeah well, copy me on that.
Here I am, three pints of Australian beer to the wind (which isn't much for someone who spent their adolescent years in Montreal) and what started out as a nice quiet evening hiding in the corner of the bar avoiding bad pick-up lines so that Seb can get to know the Quebecois...
...ended somehow at three in the morning, on stage, singing songs from Grease into a spittle-stained microphone.
I've been to gay bars before. I've been to karaoke bars before. I've even been to this particular gay karaoke bar before, so when Crystal blinked her big eyes at me and coerced the entire group into wandering a few blocks down to the "PolyStar"...
I figured I was in for an hour, maybe two, of bad whisky and listening in awe as Crystal tore up the stage with Edith Piaf.
Little did I know that she submitted my name on that little ticket stub.
When they called it out, I suddenly regretted not taking the scary balding-mullet guy up on his offer of extra pints cuz if you don't go up on stage at the polystar, you end up doing a strip-tease instead and frankly my abs aren't up to it.
So I meekly followed Crystal up onto the big scary stage to sing her favourite duet from Grease, which she's never been able to do since no one she knows can read english real good.
I got the "oo oo oo" parts down pat, I did.
I even did a bit of shimmying.
We got applause, of course, since maybe some small part of me saw it coming, and I knew ahead of time that the microphone on the left barely carried sound.
But when some stranger turned to me and said "hey, you shouldn't hide like that, you've got a nice voice"
Man.
Of course, the only person who'd ever said that to me before was David...
...and I still remember the slant of light on his face in his living room the first time I tried a halting repetition of three notes, huddled into the couch beside him. The first time I sang aloud. In a lifetime of hearing from my father that I was tone deaf and shouldn't even try.
Cripes. And now look. A monstre. Singing in public.
And not being run out of town, even.
Hours later, the bar open an hour past closing, I helped Crystal sing Edith Piaf tunes and "Like a Prayer" from just beside the stage.
Next time I promised I'd go up there with her.
And the midnight strip tease they do everytime?
Yeah well, I was clever enough to avert my eyes or I would've seen a lot more of Seb than I ever want to see.
Also on stage. Only naked as a straight man in a roomful of drooling queens, resplendent in their overly-fashionable garb.
Karaoke. Of all things.
My goodness. Next it'll be wearing skirts. Oh wait...
Meep.
And when a breathtaking Drew Barrymore lookalike leaned over and whispered that she loved my perfume...
I remembered that David had given me that as well.
He's given me so many things.