A Love Song for J. Alfred Prufrock

The wedding date is drawing near and Ben and Jef are itching to figure out what we are going to do for a bachelor's party. At first, we aimed for the stars: what is the one childhood dream of all boys, but few never attain? No, not a major league baseball player, Ben, Jef, and I were more of the listening-to-the-Violent-Femmes group than the wearing-jerseys-to-school crowd. Instead, we decided to go to Space Camp. They have Space Camp for adults and it worked for us.

Then we found out that it costs a hell of a lot of money, so that was out. The next step was to go to Birmingham, home of Space Camp, buy astronaut uniforms and walk around Birmingham's bars, completely wasted, and tell everyone that we were at Space Camp (or counselors as Jef suggested). Eventually, when flight fares for Jef and Ben came near the $1000 mark, that fell aside to "we will figure something out."

It looks like we are going to Montreal. I am happy with that. An ancestor of mine is the Thomas Jefferson of Quebec and there is a statue of him in some park somewhere in the old city that I saw once when I was a kid: there is a part of me that really wants to see it again.

Montreal is about an hour and forty-minutes away from Burlington. When our friend Raj got his license, we began pilgrimages into Canada on a regular basis. With each journey we would head a little deeper into the Great White North, inching our way to Montreal. First we travelled into a small town about twenty minutes over the border. We bought some soda, Raj bought some cough syrup for the codeine, and went back to the States. We did this same thing regularly. Eventually we made it as far in to reach "Cafe-a-Go-Go" -- a trashy little strip club about an hour from the city. We hung outside at two in the afternoon, wondering if we would get in. We chickened out and headed back to the land of Apple Pie.

It was during a sleep over that the decision was made that we were going to go all the way into the city: the Montreal bars and strip clubs would baste the United States' consumerism with advertisements during late night movies and Saturday Night Lives. It was the blonde wearing the silvery, shiny, skin-tight dress who smiled seductively into the camera, who waved a tiny hand that tapped into our pubescent minds. I don't remember which one of us announced it, but one of us said: "Fuck it! We are going!"

Club Foufons Electronique was our spot. They didn't care about the date on your driver's license. They only cared that your money was green and not Canadian-monopoly money and we were happy to oblige. We'd hang in this club for hours, into the wee hours of the Canadian morning. Talking to french speaking girls, getting phone numbers, and disappearing periodically for God-knows-what. We were young, we were wild, we were a Bon Jovi song with US currency in our pockets and no bills to pay.

We would wander around sometimes. We would hit the club circuit on Rue de la Montagne, lower St. Catherine Street, and such. One time, Jason mouthed off to some bikers and we had to run to our car, hiding in alleyways whenever we heard the rumbling of an approaching Harley, and tore out of Montreal and to the border within an hour.

We went back because we were children of the nineties and Lollapalooza came to Isle de St. Helene. We saw Smashing Pumpkins, Beastie Boys, The Boredoms, Parliament, A Tribe Called Quest, L7, and Weezer. Andy drank "mind juice" -- a psychedelic substitute beverage which was supposed to induce a slight hallucinogenic trip, but instead he vomited on some girl.

Montreal was our freedom place. It was a spot where we could live without fear of getting caught, we could leave our nerdiness behind us and become new people. It was an escape from our world and it was only two hours away. We would never tell each other of our limits. We would never hold the things we did there against each other. We never passed judgment. We never tried to remind each other that somewhere a little ways south was reality, and that we would have to return to it before the sun rose over Nova Scotia.

And now we are going back. We are bringing our bags under our eyes, our bald spots (at least Jef and I are), and our American money (which is worth nothing) and going back to Hab-Town. We want to see Club Fouf and go in regardless of what it is now (probably a Starbuck's) and walk down St. Catherine Street which I hear is cleaned up (no strip clubs... au revoir Clube Super Sex). Instead of hanging in clubs and keeping counts over twenty dollar bets, we are going to hang out in the parks and shops. We will more than likely end up at the Dubliner, Montreal's only Irish Pub (because it is not going anywhere) and, at some point, I will stare into the marble eyes of a long-dead blood relative who laid the seed for the city that will be surrounding me. We are bringing our responsibilities, our vows to significant others, and our new found adulthood and the constant voice in the back of our heads telling us that we are due back south before the sun completely disappears over Vancouver. I wonder if I will even recognize the place. And we will probably listen to the Violent Femmes during the car ride back into the States.

And in the room the women come and go
talking of Guy Lefleur.