From TORONTO,
March 23rd, 2010
So here I was, sprawled on the skeptical sofa, watching women's moguls through a veil of tears, and suddenly thought, I've gotta get outta here and own me some podium.
I know what you're thinking. Veil of tears??? Norton, our savvy old crony, surely when a relationship ends you just laugh, light a cigarette and call out “Next!”. You can't feel heartbreak like us mere mortals over here. Why, you're....you're....The Tourist! The skeptical one... Remember?
And the answer to that, my worried little friends, is that I don't feel heartbreak like anyone else. My heartbreak is HUGE. Thundering. Of epic proportions. The Tourist does heartbreak like no one does heartbreak.
I weep the most enormous tears, wail the biggest wails, yell at the neighbours, kick dogs. I don’t merely tear at my beautiful ebony hair; I set it all on fire - and grow it back within the hour. I fling things around my apartment, yelling, “Out of my way!” and “Shut up, you!” I wake to discover I’ve eaten three entire pillows out of madness and hunger for affection. I hurl all my pots and pans and the contents of my fridge out on the floor, because loud noises comfort me. I stare at one wall for hours on end, then cover it in feces and smears of dijon mustard.
I gnash my teeth, whatever that means.
It’s all either not a pretty sight, or intensely beautiful, depending what you’re into. I’m a weepy, snotty, angry whirling hurricane. Of love.
And on the seventh day, I walk into the Flight Centre, demanding to be flown somewhere.
In this case, Vancouver.
VANCOUVER, 2010
DAY ONE
I arrived in town with my Olympic gear (sweatshirt, t-shirt…alas, no coveted red mittens) and my excited Olympic grin secretly tucked away out of sight. Arriving from afar, I was expecting a grumbly, unenthusiastic Vancouver full of people who just didn’t approve. I thought I’d be conspicuous in my CANADA shirt. That only outsiders would be seen in such things.
I’d imagined the fans consisting of a few Japanese tourists ducking through as angry locals pelted them with organic yogurt and spelt (it’s a B.C. thing).
….Until I realized the gear (and the spirit) was EVERYWHERE. Who can hold onto boring old grumpy ideals when there are gold medals flying around? And when Alex Bilodeau and Jenn Heil are so darn cute?
I was staying with my buddy Christine Oakey, who was working for the Olympics (at VANOC headquarters, spending very long days saying, “Go here.” “Don’t go there.” “Stop picking your nose”). Mackenzie Muldoon (similarly bossing people around at the curling facility) was crashing on the couch. Except for that evening, Oakey and I would scarcely see or speak to one another at all until three days after the games, despite literally sharing a bed at night. It was a king size bed, and we didn’t even spoon. Perhaps we communicated telepathically, between the wee hours when I would crawl in and five a.m. when she would crawl out.
But that night, we went to the victory ceremony. Sadly, no canucks were receiving medals that night, but we yelled and whooped at Russians and Chinese and other types with great enthusiasm. It was “Newfoundland Night” at BC Place, which meant a whole lotta Sean Majumder, lots more fiddling, a song or two from Hey Rosetta among others, and a headlining performance by Great Big Sea.
That was fun, if made slightly trying by the presence of a very small, very drunk young diehard Great Big Sea fan standing right behind me, whose mouth was exactly at my ear-height, and who wailed along off-key to every word, even the singer’s impromptu riffing. I miraculously managed to hold onto my Olympic spirit and not wring her drunken little neck.
Oddly enough, I’d spent the previous evening at the C.R Avery concert at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto, listening to songs all about Vancouver; now here I was in Vancouver, listening to a guy sing about Newfoundland.
After that we were deposited onto Robson street, where Oakey went one way (back to work) and I went the other: into the throngs celebrating the Canadian men’s hockey team’s defeat of Slovakia which moved them onto the final against the US.
It was fucking insane. Crowds of running, singing, high-fiving crazy people going absolutely wild. I remember thinking, It can’t get any crazier than this. What’s gonna happen if (when) we win the final? What will people do then? Blow themselves up? I guess this is ten and the knob goes to eleven.
It was a bit much to be alone in. After four thousand high fives and getting puked on once or twice, I started to feel infinitely lonely, and so slid into a coffee shop on Granville, to eat cheesecake and listen to an Irish guy play the guitar and wail about lost love. That was more my speed. As a backdrop to the music, you could still hear constant screaming in the streets outside; I started to play a game of pretending that everyone out there was being attacked by zombies as we sat in a café, waiting for the end to come.
DAY TWO
…Included a trip to Atlantic House on Granville Island, to see Nova Scotia’s own (excellent and rather dreamy) Matt Mays, though Oakey and her coworkers weren’t awake enough to last until he came on.
One of Oakey’s friends, an expat Brit, spent about an hour trying to figure out my accent – eventually bursting out with “I’ve got it! I know who you sound like: That scientist guy from the Simpsons!” (The guy who says “Glavin” all the time.) And then explained that it was just that I have “a very intellectual way of saying things”. Which may be the nicest way that I've been called a nerd.
When those assholes left, I got to spend the the rest of the evening with my real friends – a bunch of young yahoos from Coquitlam that I’d met in the lineup while waiting for Oakey and her gang. Perfectly friendly, gentlemanly yahoos, who couldn’t believe their luck in suddenly having a girl to hang out with, without pressing it. One of them, though, the most weavingly drunk one of the bunch, felt a constant need to grind my gears about being from Toronto. First he wanted to hassle me about being a Leafs fan; when I told him I didn’t really follow hockey, except during the Olympics, Go Canada, he switched to ridiculing people from Toronto for not even caring about hockey.
He asked if I followed lacrosse. I said no. He scoffed at that. I asked him “Do you play?” He told me he used to, before he decided to just go fuckin’ drinking every night. I eventually got to the root of his resentment: some lacrosse team from Toronto that was better than his lacrosse team had come out here and kicked his lacrosse team’s ass…and “they thought they were pretty fuckin’ great”. I pointed out that it was sports, not a tea party, and that if he had won, he would have thought he was pretty fuckin’ great, too. He almost conceded on that one, and was soon lifting me in the air during the Matt Mays show and nearly dropping me on people’s heads. Score one, snooty girl from the centre of the universe. Winning them over, five drunk boys from Coquitlam at a time.
DAY THREE
…And final day of the Olympics, I straggled over to my pal Mike Wasko’s house in Kitsilano for the game. Saw a sign for THE BEST CINNAMON BUNS IN THE WORLD as I stepped off the bus, so I had to take a detour, obviously, and was just coming out with my box of sticky goodness (insert…dirty joke here) when the bar next door erupted. First goal Canada! I ran the rest of the way to Mike’s place, leaving a trail of icing sugar and excitement in my wake, and got to watch the rest with a quality group of Wasko’s family, friends, a sandwich buffet and mimosas. (You got style, Wastich, my friend.) The buffet proved a valuable distraction; whenever the game got too tense, someone would declare, “I can’t take it anymore! I’m going to eat meat!” Except for Yurij, who kept threatening to walk around the block and was watching most of the proceedings from the next room, by the door, ready to flee….and whom everyone kept admonishing to stop being so goddamned Eastern European and have some faith.
Well, you know what happened, obviously, and obviously it was glorious.
There at Mike’s place, a contingent of us leapt into Sarah Cobb’s car and headed downtown where, indeed, the knob had been turned to eleven.
We wandered around, soaking it in and grinning ‘til our faces hurt. At least my snooty Toronto face did - I’m not used to that kind of thing.
(That second one is Cobb, almost passing for me.)
I must say, I do appreciate the ferocious return of the high five; it indicates people forgetting that they're too cool for such things. The sun is shining, we are the champions - what's not to high five about?
The cops stood in the middle of it all, grinning and receiving high fives themselves, looking proud as anything. A few of them , though, were just a-twitchin’, waiting for something to go wrong. One sports bar had imported some snow, the only snow in town, and had it piled out front. Some dude scooped up a handful, threw it at someone…and was immediately tackled by police! When I lobbed my modest snowball (gently, friendli-ly, at Nick Wasko’s feet), handsome, tall, grey-haired Officer Doom was instantly in my face, letting his presence be known.
“Haya doin’?”
“Great, officer! How about you?”
“I’m worried. Remember ‘94.” (When the Canucks lost the cup and downtown erupted in riots.)
“Yeah, but everybody’s happy this time!”
“Well they started off happy then, too.” (????)
“I’m sure it’ll be fine. Everybody’s celebrating!”
“….You’re not from around here, are you?”
Maybe he was just trying to pick me up.
I'd love to know the numbers on how many people called in sick the next day (or just didn't show up for work).
We headed back to Mike’s place after an hour or two, to watch and ridicule the closing ceremony. It was so stinky (though I actually didn’t mind the Buble-and-the-beavers bit; it was every other stinky thing)….but valuable for this: it made me realize how lucky it was that the opening was so good. Thank God they saved the shite for when no one was watching.
DAYS FOUR THROUGH ELEVEN
The 2010 games over and life returning to normal, suddenly everyone was talking about something that any theatre professional instantly recognized as post-show depression. It was getting news time even, Brian Williams referring to the sadness and sense of loss spreading across Vancouver, and VANOC offering counselling to staff to deal with it all being over. My theatre friends working at the Olympics were used to this kind of thing: closing a show, saying goodbye to friends made and moving on…but for poor Joe Volunteer, having just participated in two weeks of the greatest show on earth, the feeling was new and devastating. Like a little kid leaving summer camp and bawling as her parents drag her away from her pals (unless she went to smelly Brownie camp). PSD for everyone!
People on the Skytrain looked wistfully around, wondering if anyone would high five them today. Someone in line at Shoppers Drug Mart saw someone else buying a half price Quatchi (Olympic mascot) keychain and sighed, “Wasn’t it awesome?” “Yeah…where were you for the game?” “I can’t believe how quiet it is now,” people kept saying.
Perhaps the saddest thing I saw was a city bus with its sign scrolling, “GO CANADA GO! SORRY…OUT OF SERVICE”. Okay, it seemed really poignant at the time.
As for me, I was feeling mostly okay, if occasionally blindsided by some stupid thought such as, That's it. Where am I ever gonna find another man who doesn't snore?
I was looking good, which added some spring to my step. As is always the case in such climates, my skin was all dewy; my hair had acquired a wave.
My postgames consisted of a lot of sightseeing, some visiting with friends (Hi there, Nadia! Good to see you, Challenor!), surprise Oscar night in Victoria with my stepmom Liisa and her family, and some good old fashioned B.C…exercise. See, you thought I was gonna say “bud”, didn’t you? Okay, that too. But mostly exercise.
And walking through Stanley Park one day, I felt really good. Like breakthrough good.
There you are, face to face with the mountains and trees, the ocean and sky…and you can’t help but think: Look at how small I am. How paltry are my problems. And look how beautiful the world is. There are worse things to be than alone. And, thinking these wonderful positive thoughts, you turn around and nearly smack right into this:
And then you cry for eighteen minutes.
I soon realized it was a marker for a path and, while certainly a kick in the shins from God, not only that. I decided to bravely follow the path, imagining it could still include me, one who, while not technically a “lover”, not right now, not in the classic sense of the word, was still a lover of nature, of life, of the mountains and sky….et cetera. The sun was falling rapidly as I ventured deep into the woods, hoping I would get to the other side before getting lost in blackness. And then industrious local rapists started jumping out from behind the trees, one after the other….so there was romance to be found in lovers lane after all! How sweet!
(Romantic post-ravagement idyll)
A day or two later, I did the “Grouse Grind”, a trek to the top of Grouse Mountain in North Van that I proudly finished in an hour and a half instead of taking the other option of giving up halfway through and rolling back down to my death. Oakey had heard it was “just a bunch of stairs", to which I answer, “Sure, Oakey...maybe if you're, say, Lance Armstrong or a mountain goat.”
In case you doubt me, here’s a word from Wikipedia, which never, ever lies: “(The Grind) is an extremely steep and mountainous trail that climbs 853 m (2,799 ft) over a distance of 2.9 km (2 mi), with an average grade of 30 degrees. The trail, nicknamed "Mother Nature's Stairmaster", is notoriously gruelling due to its steepness and mountainous terrain. - Total Stairs: 2,830.” So there.
Thank God for signs like this to let me know I was actually getting somewhere:
And ones like this, that made me feel dangerous and cool:
At the top, before lunch and hard-earned cider at the restaurant, I trekked around some more, and found myself walking down a grassy ski hill as skiiers slid down next to me. That was weird:
DAY THE LAST
While arriving at the airport drunk isn't exactly what I’d call a plan…it seemed to work for me. Wasko and I'd spent the evening previous at an improv show, and later in his kitchen, consuming whiskey and shouting at each other over topics far and wide. (Even though we agreed on almost everything, we still managed to get all hopped up and wave our arms around.) After hours of this, Mike finally squinted at the clock and said, "Hey what time's your flight?" I shouted, "AAAARGH!" and ran. I had two hours to cab home, pack my bags, wash dishes, and get to the airport to be scanned and prodded for a seven am departure.
The drunkenness allowed me a remarkable level of humour through the usual ordeal. I giggled my shoes off and barely stopped myself from saying, "Most action I've seen in weeks" as security was groping me for drugs. I swaggered though the terminal with that all-knowing, drunk girl leer we know so well, then flirted with my cute young seatmate, Eric, until falling into a satisfyingly deep sleep most of the way across the country. This could be the beginning of a bad habit or even a series of arrests, but it's what I'm doing from here on in.
THE NOW
And then I got home and the hurt hit me double. I was done running around and back on home turf, where the memories lived. Back to the couch, still carrying that broken heart, and now with a lot less cash to keep it warm.
There was the Paralympics to watch, but while CTV had coverage, it mostly played highlights, and rather silently, without anyone to provide context or tell you what the hell was going on. I’m not actually enough into sports to dig that.
I need colour commentary. I need juicy tidbits to keep me interested. Like, “Michael Such-and-such is a role model to many, having overcome his blindness AND cerebral palsy to become a world-class skier…but it’s a little-known fact that he murdered six people last year”…..or “Curler Helen So-and-so is a big one-legged slut who left her husband for her coach this month”…Stuff like that.
I liked the Paralympic closing ceremony, but when it came to the Sochi stuff, it begged the same question: The Russian anthem is about twenty-seven minutes long – are they gonna do something about that before 2014?
It also kind of made me laugh that one of the musicians featured sang a tune the refrain of which was, “You may think you’ve got it all, but it could be a pebble that makes you fall”. I imagined one of the athletes having a sudden flashback and freaking out: “It WAS a pebble that made me fall! That's how I got my spinal cord injury!”So now it’s all over folks, nothing to see.
I could try to mitigate the sadness by jumping in bed with the next supermodel who happens by…but then, whoever gets to touch this body inevitably grows addicted and wants it 24 hours a day. And I'm not ready for that kind of schedule yet. (Not that my people aren't reviewing applications.... Operators are standing by.)
But hey, back when Mister Miyagi had me paint his fence, I did learn a thing or two about patience. Sometimes you just gotta wait this shit out.
And I really am getting better and better every day. (Except when I'm not.)
Wax on, wax off,
The Tourist
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*odium
n.
- The state or quality of being odious.
- Strong dislike, contempt, or aversion.
- A state of disgrace resulting from hateful or detestable conduct.
BONUS SHOT:
Darth Fiddler, downtown Victoria
