It’s somewhere past midnight and the music has taken a bit of a down-tempo chill and I’m wondering why I stayed on at the bar after my friends left. I smirk to myself, remember the days when my friends and I didn’t leave whatever watering hole we had hunkered down in for the night: it was the ghastly glare of the ugly lights at closing that would ultimately tumble us out into the streets, talking wildly of nothing. So maybe I’m trying to recapture my youth, but I’m pretty sure it’s less about that and more that I don’t want to go home to my empty apartment just yet. Oddly, the bar had seemed more friendly and intellectual when I had been conversing with my mates, and as I sip my fourth? fifth? glass of Carmenere I realize two things: I’ve had too much red wine, and the friendliness and intellectual capacity that I had felt when surrounded by my friends existed solely because of my friends. They left me behind with some bar stars and a couple of aspiring drug dealers and the rest of the lot are just indistinguishable rabble.
“Fucking rabble,” I commiserate with my half empty (full? empty? full?) glass of wine and stifle a yawn. I wish I’d had the foresight to bring a book or a pick up a Georgia Straight before coming in so I could at least pretend to be engrossed in it instead of feigning interest in Sports Central or whatever channel it is that is being loudly and predominately displayed near the bar. But then I really didn’t anticipate hanging out alone in a bar on this particular Saturday night to begin with. I start to cast my vicious and cutting gaze around the room, playing the age old game, “who would you fuck?”. There are a surprisingly high number of candidates. I think this has to do with the quantity of wine I have quaffed, but we’re talking about the actual act of coitus here, not love and commitment. They are. Two. Distinct. Things.
“You look a little lost in thought, there,” he says. I have no one but myself to blame. He saw me do my little meat market trawl and here he is, ripe for the plucking.I turn and give him my best bemused, sardonic twisting of the lips and he takes this as an invitation to sit down across from me. In the ten seconds that have passed I have noticed that he is quite attractive, is likely less drunk than I am and has a certain amount of kindness in his manner. This is atypical.
“I’m John,” he tells me, wrapping his large, warm hand around mine and making me feel vaguely like I’ve been caught doing something untoward.
“August,” I respond, doing my best to appear confident and in charge of myself.
“So, August, how is your evening going?” he asks me with apparent sincerity. I typically pride myself to be able to suss people out rather quickly but am totally failing to draw a bead on this guy.
“It’s been a slice, but it’s winding down. I think it’s getting to be time for me to go,” I reply.
“I’m curious as to why you stayed on after your friends left,” he throws out there.
I’m momentarily thrown by the straightforward question as Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me” comes over the sound system. “Well, John, I didn’t quite feel like going home just yet. What exactly about that fact has drawn your curiosity?”.
“Well, given that you’re an attractive girl sitting alone in a bar on a Saturday night, I thought that perhaps you wouldn’t want the attention that your singular presence might no doubt illicit,” he replies smoothly.
I laugh loudly. “Shit, John. Did we just accidentally time travel back to the late eighteen hundreds in England? ‘My singular presence might no doubt illicit’ a lot of things, but I’m not really worried about it.”
“Fair enough,” John concurs, clinking his glass of beer against my fragile glass of wine. “You’re a fiercely independent woman enjoying a solitary glass of wine on a Saturday night and you want for nothing.”
I shake my head in mirth, and brush the resulting irritant of hair out of my eyes. “You surmise too much. Enough about me and why I’m drinking alone on a Saturday night. What’s your deal?” “Me? Nothing much. I’ve taken a sabbatical from my work and am taking a few months to drive across Canada,” he answers with such flippancy that I’m forced to believe him. I peg him for between five and eight years older than me. He has sandy blonde hair which is somewhat rumpled, though not on purpose, and two day’s worth of stubble which is very attractive on him.
“Ah,” I retort. “So did you start out in Vancouver?”
He laughs. “No, I’m from P.E.I. I’ve been in BC for over a week now. I’ll likely be heading back in the next few days.”
“You’ll have to forgive my drunken cynicism, but what job do you have that enables you to take a sabbatical for an undetermined number of months so that you might find yourself in the great expanse of our vast country?” I inquire.
John quietly assesses me for a moment and I realize I’ve been a bit sarcastic and biting with my line of inquiry. It’s what I do. “I’m an elementary school teacher,” he tells me. “I teach sixth grade. The reason that I’m taking some time away from work is because one of my students hung himself because he was being bullied at school. He came from a poor family and was quite overweight, so he was a natural target for the other kids at the school. I, uh, I saw what was going on but I didn’t think that it was so bad that he was feeling that the only way out was to kill himself.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “I had no idea obviously…”
“Well, you wouldn’t,” John shrugged. “It’s… yeah, it’s a pretty messed up situation. I don’t think that, as his teacher, I did all I could to prevent what happened. And then I started thinking about the disconnect from the time that I was a kid to what kids are facing today and… I don’t know… somewhere along the line things seemed to have changed immeasurably and I’m not sure if I have what it takes to be a teacher – to deal with some of this crazy shit – anymore. Hey, kids were shitty when I was growing up, but no one committed suicide.”
“So…” I began, wondering if I wasn’t entering into a conversation that was beyond the current capabilities afforded to me in my inebriated state. “What are you going to do? What are you hoping to find on your sabbatical?”
“Well, as corny as it sounds, I’m looking for some kind of reaffirmation of the overall greatness of life,” he gives me a half grin as the words spill from his mouth and he becomes aware of his religious zealot-like tone.
Feeling a bit brightened by his smirk I allow, “I’ve always found that that any reaffirmation of the overall greatness of life is easy to come by. And I’m quite surprised that you felt the need to take time off work to discover this fact.”
The waiter comes by as it appears that the contents of my glass have magically vanished again and John gives the universal twirl of his index finger to indicate another round even though I was slowly gathering the nerve to opt for a club soda. I still can’t get a bead on him: he’s very likable and honest and believable, but there’s got to be an angle. There’s always an angle.
“But enough about me. What about you? What’s your story?” he asks me.
I like that he doesn’t ask what I do since that’s the world’s most popular question asked by people that have a recalcitrant inability to come up with unique conversation (I am guilty of this), which is worsened further by the insinuation that we are little more than the jobs to which we attend.
“My story…” I ponder. “I actually have a lot of stories. I’m actually a pretty busy girl and I’ve got a lot on the go: I’m searching for religion; trying to appreciate and understand the necessity of evil in our society; and coming to the realization that there is a great life waiting for me to experience it, but I’m afraid.
“I’m John,” he tells me, wrapping his large, warm hand around mine and making me feel vaguely like I’ve been caught doing something untoward.
“August,” I respond, doing my best to appear confident and in charge of myself.
“So, August, how is your evening going?” he asks me with apparent sincerity. I typically pride myself to be able to suss people out rather quickly but am totally failing to draw a bead on this guy.
“It’s been a slice, but it’s winding down. I think it’s getting to be time for me to go,” I reply.
“I’m curious as to why you stayed on after your friends left,” he throws out there.
I’m momentarily thrown by the straightforward question as Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me” comes over the sound system. “Well, John, I didn’t quite feel like going home just yet. What exactly about that fact has drawn your curiosity?”.
“Well, given that you’re an attractive girl sitting alone in a bar on a Saturday night, I thought that perhaps you wouldn’t want the attention that your singular presence might no doubt illicit,” he replies smoothly.
I laugh loudly. “Shit, John. Did we just accidentally time travel back to the late eighteen hundreds in England? ‘My singular presence might no doubt illicit’ a lot of things, but I’m not really worried about it.”
“Fair enough,” John concurs, clinking his glass of beer against my fragile glass of wine. “You’re a fiercely independent woman enjoying a solitary glass of wine on a Saturday night and you want for nothing.”
I shake my head in mirth, and brush the resulting irritant of hair out of my eyes. “You surmise too much. Enough about me and why I’m drinking alone on a Saturday night. What’s your deal?” “Me? Nothing much. I’ve taken a sabbatical from my work and am taking a few months to drive across Canada,” he answers with such flippancy that I’m forced to believe him. I peg him for between five and eight years older than me. He has sandy blonde hair which is somewhat rumpled, though not on purpose, and two day’s worth of stubble which is very attractive on him.
“Ah,” I retort. “So did you start out in Vancouver?”
He laughs. “No, I’m from P.E.I. I’ve been in BC for over a week now. I’ll likely be heading back in the next few days.”
“You’ll have to forgive my drunken cynicism, but what job do you have that enables you to take a sabbatical for an undetermined number of months so that you might find yourself in the great expanse of our vast country?” I inquire.
John quietly assesses me for a moment and I realize I’ve been a bit sarcastic and biting with my line of inquiry. It’s what I do. “I’m an elementary school teacher,” he tells me. “I teach sixth grade. The reason that I’m taking some time away from work is because one of my students hung himself because he was being bullied at school. He came from a poor family and was quite overweight, so he was a natural target for the other kids at the school. I, uh, I saw what was going on but I didn’t think that it was so bad that he was feeling that the only way out was to kill himself.”
“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely. “I had no idea obviously…”
“Well, you wouldn’t,” John shrugged. “It’s… yeah, it’s a pretty messed up situation. I don’t think that, as his teacher, I did all I could to prevent what happened. And then I started thinking about the disconnect from the time that I was a kid to what kids are facing today and… I don’t know… somewhere along the line things seemed to have changed immeasurably and I’m not sure if I have what it takes to be a teacher – to deal with some of this crazy shit – anymore. Hey, kids were shitty when I was growing up, but no one committed suicide.”
“So…” I began, wondering if I wasn’t entering into a conversation that was beyond the current capabilities afforded to me in my inebriated state. “What are you going to do? What are you hoping to find on your sabbatical?”
“Well, as corny as it sounds, I’m looking for some kind of reaffirmation of the overall greatness of life,” he gives me a half grin as the words spill from his mouth and he becomes aware of his religious zealot-like tone.
Feeling a bit brightened by his smirk I allow, “I’ve always found that that any reaffirmation of the overall greatness of life is easy to come by. And I’m quite surprised that you felt the need to take time off work to discover this fact.”
The waiter comes by as it appears that the contents of my glass have magically vanished again and John gives the universal twirl of his index finger to indicate another round even though I was slowly gathering the nerve to opt for a club soda. I still can’t get a bead on him: he’s very likable and honest and believable, but there’s got to be an angle. There’s always an angle.
“But enough about me. What about you? What’s your story?” he asks me.
I like that he doesn’t ask what I do since that’s the world’s most popular question asked by people that have a recalcitrant inability to come up with unique conversation (I am guilty of this), which is worsened further by the insinuation that we are little more than the jobs to which we attend.
“My story…” I ponder. “I actually have a lot of stories. I’m actually a pretty busy girl and I’ve got a lot on the go: I’m searching for religion; trying to appreciate and understand the necessity of evil in our society; and coming to the realization that there is a great life waiting for me to experience it, but I’m afraid.
Oh, and I’m drinking too much. I feel as though I should tell you my last name. I mean, with an admission like the one I just gave you – not the drinking one – it seems that I ought to tell you that my last name is Patrick. And I’m also talking too much.”
John nods slowly as he summarily takes in my self-deprecating sense of humor and my overall reluctance to talk about myself for fear of being thought of as stupid or trite. Okay, maybe he doesn’t quite ken my fear of divulging personal details about my inner workings, but I’m allowed my artistic license. Even though I’m not an artist.
“You are a busy girl,” he agrees, raising a fresh pint of beer to meet my newfound glass of wine. “I’m glad I came over to talk to you. So let’s start with the first thing on your great, karmic agenda: finding religion – why are you searching for it?”
Of course the attractive guy from P.E.I. who will be heading back across the country in short order is glad that he came over to talk to me: who else would be? But I push my girlish, romantic ideals aside and try and come up with a plausible explanation as to why I am searching for a higher power.
“I want to believe in something bigger than me. I want to subscribe to something. I want there to be something available to me when all the other doors have been closed,” I admit, giving myself an invisible pat on the back for succinctness and eloquence.
“Why do you need to believe in anything but yourself? When doors are being closed in your face, you still have you. Do you not believe in you?” he posits.
Holy shit. Who is this guy? I laugh nervously as I run his questions through my muddled mind a couple of times. Wow. Why do I feel the need to subscribe to something greater than me? Why do I want to put my hopes and fears and troubles into the hands of some unseen and possibly non-existent power? Is it possible that I don’t believe in myself and it’s easier to foist the responsibilities of all things important onto someone or something else?
“I think there are three routes we can traverse down at this point,” I tell him. “I can tell you that I like unicorns and that rainbows are pretty and that can we please change the subject to something a bit easier.
Alternatively, I can bristle and take issue with the questions that you put to me about my faith – or lack thereof – in myself, but if two years of therapy hasn’t gotten me to the crux of that particular issue I doubt that you and I will resolve it here, tonight.
Lastly, I can put my ego on the backburner and admit to you, ‘random guy’ that I will not likely ever see again, that it is possible that I have problems believing in myself and that sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of a fraud and that I’m not being the best August that I can be.”
John leans back in his chair and scrutinizes me and I’m made to feel momentarily as though we’re locked in some adversarial chess match and I wonder what in the bloody hell am I doing here with a complete stranger, discussing things that I don’t even bring up to my closest friends when I could be home, drunkenly eating leftover Chinese food, cold, from the container and listening to Tori Amos. I stare back at him and I wonder if he’s married, if he has a girlfriend because I think he’s the kind of guy that you can wake up next to on a Sunday morning and a small conversation sparked by something read in the Globe and Mail over breakfast can constitute a major philosophical debate, and that he has a smattering of Taschen books, has at one time been a vegetarian and backpacked Europe in his late teens or early twenties. Man, I’m good at romanticizing people.
“I’d love to push the envelope, but I won’t. I just want to ask you one question: are you very critical of yourself?”
“You might say that,” I reply.
“Why?” he asks, leaning forward.
“That’s two questions,” I smile. “Are you a vegetarian?”
Without missing a beat he says, “No, but I was for a year in my late twenties.”
You can’t make this shit up. Then he asks me about evil and I tell him that I’ve come to understand that you can’t have great happiness without great suffering. I speak of his student that hung himself and say that in a roundabout way it likely had to happen so that some – or possibly just one – of his classmates came to either appreciate their life more through knowing him, or that perhaps it changed someone else’s actions and led them to be kinder and more considerate to others. I lay out the thing that I’m struggling with when it comes to evil: why does evil have to exist on such amazing and staggering levels? Like the Holocaust. Like child rape. Like animal abuse. Can’t we just have a little evil to keep us in line, to make us appreciate the good? Does it need to be evil of such epic and grotesque levels? John puts it another way: we don’t acknowledge the day to day good that happens. Every day we drive or take the bus to work and we don’t get killed in an accident and that is a veritable miracle, isn’t it? How many flights have we taken that didn’t crash? How many earthquakes did we not experience? He infers that I come from a healthy, loving family and he is right and he asks what it’s worth not to have been beaten or molested and to be healthy and to live in beautiful city in a beautiful country. For us to be here, now, it would seem that someone has to be struggling somewhat elsewhere and I say that’s a pretty heavy mantle to wear and that it’s really luck that I ended up here when I could be an eight year old orphan in Africa and he says it is luck and that it’s all sort of backwards and that now I should work towards earning that luck, or repaying the lot in life that I was arbitrarily dealt. I order my club soda.
“Who are you?” I bemusedly demand. “This is the best conversation that I’ve ever had with someone that I didn’t know. Or even someone that I did know. What is this?”
He smiles at me with that smile that is reserved for someone of whom you are both very fond, and amused by. I don’t want him to go back to P.E.I. I also know that I will never speak to him again because it will never be the same once he leaves. I want him to stay. I feel that he is resplendent with all the conversations that I would ever wish to have and that he has the answers to… something. To life? To understanding life? To blundering through life with a little more insight than that which I am currently accustomed?
"So you’ve driven across the damn country hoping to find something that reaffirms your belief about how great life is. You’re halfway through your trip: have you found anything that remotely resembles the answers which you seek?”
He leans forward and with great sincerity says, “Yes.”
John nods slowly as he summarily takes in my self-deprecating sense of humor and my overall reluctance to talk about myself for fear of being thought of as stupid or trite. Okay, maybe he doesn’t quite ken my fear of divulging personal details about my inner workings, but I’m allowed my artistic license. Even though I’m not an artist.
“You are a busy girl,” he agrees, raising a fresh pint of beer to meet my newfound glass of wine. “I’m glad I came over to talk to you. So let’s start with the first thing on your great, karmic agenda: finding religion – why are you searching for it?”
Of course the attractive guy from P.E.I. who will be heading back across the country in short order is glad that he came over to talk to me: who else would be? But I push my girlish, romantic ideals aside and try and come up with a plausible explanation as to why I am searching for a higher power.
“I want to believe in something bigger than me. I want to subscribe to something. I want there to be something available to me when all the other doors have been closed,” I admit, giving myself an invisible pat on the back for succinctness and eloquence.
“Why do you need to believe in anything but yourself? When doors are being closed in your face, you still have you. Do you not believe in you?” he posits.
Holy shit. Who is this guy? I laugh nervously as I run his questions through my muddled mind a couple of times. Wow. Why do I feel the need to subscribe to something greater than me? Why do I want to put my hopes and fears and troubles into the hands of some unseen and possibly non-existent power? Is it possible that I don’t believe in myself and it’s easier to foist the responsibilities of all things important onto someone or something else?
“I think there are three routes we can traverse down at this point,” I tell him. “I can tell you that I like unicorns and that rainbows are pretty and that can we please change the subject to something a bit easier.
Alternatively, I can bristle and take issue with the questions that you put to me about my faith – or lack thereof – in myself, but if two years of therapy hasn’t gotten me to the crux of that particular issue I doubt that you and I will resolve it here, tonight.
Lastly, I can put my ego on the backburner and admit to you, ‘random guy’ that I will not likely ever see again, that it is possible that I have problems believing in myself and that sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of a fraud and that I’m not being the best August that I can be.”
John leans back in his chair and scrutinizes me and I’m made to feel momentarily as though we’re locked in some adversarial chess match and I wonder what in the bloody hell am I doing here with a complete stranger, discussing things that I don’t even bring up to my closest friends when I could be home, drunkenly eating leftover Chinese food, cold, from the container and listening to Tori Amos. I stare back at him and I wonder if he’s married, if he has a girlfriend because I think he’s the kind of guy that you can wake up next to on a Sunday morning and a small conversation sparked by something read in the Globe and Mail over breakfast can constitute a major philosophical debate, and that he has a smattering of Taschen books, has at one time been a vegetarian and backpacked Europe in his late teens or early twenties. Man, I’m good at romanticizing people.
“I’d love to push the envelope, but I won’t. I just want to ask you one question: are you very critical of yourself?”
“You might say that,” I reply.
“Why?” he asks, leaning forward.
“That’s two questions,” I smile. “Are you a vegetarian?”
Without missing a beat he says, “No, but I was for a year in my late twenties.”
You can’t make this shit up. Then he asks me about evil and I tell him that I’ve come to understand that you can’t have great happiness without great suffering. I speak of his student that hung himself and say that in a roundabout way it likely had to happen so that some – or possibly just one – of his classmates came to either appreciate their life more through knowing him, or that perhaps it changed someone else’s actions and led them to be kinder and more considerate to others. I lay out the thing that I’m struggling with when it comes to evil: why does evil have to exist on such amazing and staggering levels? Like the Holocaust. Like child rape. Like animal abuse. Can’t we just have a little evil to keep us in line, to make us appreciate the good? Does it need to be evil of such epic and grotesque levels? John puts it another way: we don’t acknowledge the day to day good that happens. Every day we drive or take the bus to work and we don’t get killed in an accident and that is a veritable miracle, isn’t it? How many flights have we taken that didn’t crash? How many earthquakes did we not experience? He infers that I come from a healthy, loving family and he is right and he asks what it’s worth not to have been beaten or molested and to be healthy and to live in beautiful city in a beautiful country. For us to be here, now, it would seem that someone has to be struggling somewhat elsewhere and I say that’s a pretty heavy mantle to wear and that it’s really luck that I ended up here when I could be an eight year old orphan in Africa and he says it is luck and that it’s all sort of backwards and that now I should work towards earning that luck, or repaying the lot in life that I was arbitrarily dealt. I order my club soda.
“Who are you?” I bemusedly demand. “This is the best conversation that I’ve ever had with someone that I didn’t know. Or even someone that I did know. What is this?”
He smiles at me with that smile that is reserved for someone of whom you are both very fond, and amused by. I don’t want him to go back to P.E.I. I also know that I will never speak to him again because it will never be the same once he leaves. I want him to stay. I feel that he is resplendent with all the conversations that I would ever wish to have and that he has the answers to… something. To life? To understanding life? To blundering through life with a little more insight than that which I am currently accustomed?
"So you’ve driven across the damn country hoping to find something that reaffirms your belief about how great life is. You’re halfway through your trip: have you found anything that remotely resembles the answers which you seek?”
He leans forward and with great sincerity says, “Yes.”
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