Is the weekend really almost over?
Friday night was drinking and bonding with Allie, one of my first friends here, I guess, aside from MC.
I hadn't realized just how big a difference being in a relationship at the start of a new city makes -- this is the first time I've tried to conquer a city and went about it backasswards this way.
For one thing, I haven't made nearly as many friends, nearly as quickly
but maybe
this might combat my usual complaint, of the phone always ringing and it never being a voice that I want to hear.
I get to choose them slower now, to wait for their eyes to light up just that way when they realize, and I realize, that we are meant for friendship, that we understand things in each other that the deepest part of our souls want to have understood.
Last night saw me sitting on a bus, from one Map Point to another, heading for an "underground" rave.
That really jaded animal that hides very very deep between the folds of my cortex was attempting to punch sharp talons through my enjoyment of this Toronto Adventure, attempting to convince me that this trek from one part of the city to the other, cold, late, surrounded by nervous seventeen year olds with the same shade of dayglo yellow hair and matching stretched piercings, was dumb. Not as good as when we organized our city buses out to the countryside.
Which is sheer horseshit. I was feeling out of place and trying to push it on something else.
I was feeling old and unhip, which, is also of the equine scatalogical persuasion, and reacting, rather than acting and I know I'm often hard on myself for this
but I've seen myself do so many fucking stupid things out of sheer ego-protective reaction, rather than conscious action that I'll just continue kicking myself in my virtual 'nads (because on the internet even I get to have testicles), shall I?
In any case, by the time we were skulking down the street in our assigned groups, one guide, six new arrivals (more meant drawing too much attention) I was enjoying Liv's shy glances backwards at the two old people, our guide had introduced himself in good old commune fashion, and we were nearing fences with holes in them and abandoned buildings and the atmosphere was starting to become less ridiculous.
When we were slipping and sliding down a steep dirt path under a bridge after having crawled single file through a hole in a fence, when Liv reached out to help me down that last step and squeezed my hand as I stepped past her
When we drew up to the building, and one of the little candykids exclaimed "you mean there really is a HOLE in a WALL?!?" just as I saw Mr. Pyke's coat and left leg disappear into it, I was already striding with a different confidence, not the "what am I doing here" uncertainty but
"I know this place"
and this time I was the one holding a hand out to a scared little girl and helping her through her first hole in her first wall.
Wandering past the DJ station, past the table displaying various piles of candy and sugar treats, we espied Mikey sprawled out in the dust at the far back of the abandoned building, beside a tinny little torch wreaking havoc in the shadows thirty feet above us.
Sitting down, I immediately stripped off my coat, unthinking.
I was cooling my body down to get used to the cold.
I was on the verge of hunting for a place to sleep when I remembered
I'm not here to camp out the night, I came here to party.
At the end of the party I'm going to crawl right back out that same hole and I'm going to climb back up that slope and back up the street and grab the all night Queen bus or a cab or something and crawl into a warm bed in a big house, the kind with particular assortments hanging on the walls.
I reminded myself of that every half hour or so, largely uninterested in the party itself, it was so quiet and I was so not into any substances for the night, I wouldn't have minded getting shitfaced drunk that night but a rave isn't the setting for that, I didn't feel like dancing, or really wandering around, except for a moment when I realized that the same tiny little Liv girl was the one doing swing-juggling with fire-chains and I went to ask her about technique, but I kept reminding myself of that
and spent the rest of my time adjusting my body temperature unconsciously, and staring up at the rafters, at the roped off corners where the squatters who had been in the building when the ravers arrived had sequestered themselves for the night.
Some time past two Sean and Sarah invited the remaining stragglers back to their place where we talked of hardware and music, get-to-know-each-other conversations, patter of laughter until four o'clock banished us into a cab and home.
Today we were up in time to luxuriate in bed, then off to lunch/brunch where I learned that mixing wasabi with mayonnaise (the SHanghai COwgirl serves it on burgers) on the first burger that I've eaten in well over a year, is a simply brilliant idea.
Wasabi Mayonnaise.
Climbing afterwards I learned a new trick for balance, and that the young man with the heavy piercings who'd spent the entire afternoon staring at me, was named Tim, and had been told to look out for "a curly haired blonde with lots of tattoos hanging out at the gyms" by a friend from MOntreal.
...I...I guess I look a little particular, eh? (I am unique, just like everybody else! Ahem.)
A little while later he was asking about good places to listen to Industrial music, and maybe if I'm lucky I'll run into him with MC at the Vatikin and he'll take part of that new group of friends that I've suddenly realized I've been wanting for.
There was also a DJ hanging from the walls with us, DJ Ondr�, and when I hunted down Adrian to ask who had done the phenomenal mix that was playing, he pointed him out and from there turned into an exchanging of information and demo CDs and if we're lucky Mr. Ondr� who's never DJed in this town before might just be doing gigs at Resistor some day, but that will be Mr. Pyke's doing. All I did was ask the first question.
Just like in the sushi restaurant this evening, where I talked too much and ate too well, just the two of us, where the service was traditional rather than american, where I sat too long staring at the kanji and upon my first chance asked
"what does that symbol over the door mean?"
"It is our logo" answered the owner.
"Yes, but I was wondering that the kanji was"
Whereupon erupted a creative conversation about waterfalls and waterfountains, including the sushi chef scribbling happily on a napkin to explain which part of the fountain kanji represents water and that the square above it means "clear".
I want to go back there, and sit at the bar where the chef slices the fish so delightfully, and chatter with him while we eat, he works, and his boss probably rumbles.
His smile was so wide I thought it was going to split my own face in two, whether it was the distraction he was enjoying so much, or whether he truly appreciated a gwailo's curiosity.
Either way, a delightful end to an adventurous, and all too swift weekend.
The wine and cheese on Saturday evening for Ian's birthday was another delightful thing, just as I was beginning to miss wine I got to taste some properly fine ones.
Unpacking more boxes of someone else's stuff in a house that every once in a while still feels too estranged for me to call home (although on some days I still manage to be monstre rather than mouse and look past the materialistic) was no fun at all, not Saturday afternoon nor more of it tonight, but it needs doing and when it comes time to do it for someone else, priorities shift somewhat and the most hateful task in the universe magically appears on my own todo list.
This makes sense if you speak english backwards the way I seem to.
My arms are too tired to make any more sense of what I'm saying.
Goodnight large world of which I continute to allow myself to be afraid. There is a MR. Pyke having an allergic reaction in the shower and I have this urge to go make sure he's alright.