Oh, now see, John? This is when I wish I could talk. I mean out loud, so you and Kit and anyone within earshot could actually hear me. So much comes out of a lifting fog, reminding me of the times where life’s blessings were particularly abundant. Where the phrase, ‘When you grow up’ actually has a meaningful payoff: experience, wisdom and even the humility that comes with regret. Knowing how to be grateful. Sharing out loud. It’s one of the few benefits of consciousness that I miss. That, and the taste of potato chips. And the hope found in the Canadian expression, “Eh?”
*
Many Americans, I previously among them, are under the fallacious impression that Canada is simply a more polite, northern version of the United States that happens to have a queen on its money. My time there proved to me just how myopic that characterization is.
The only accurate parts are these: Canada is to our north, and Canadians, almost across the board, are some of the friendliest people on the planet. For me, the rest of the distinct differences between the United States and Canada were subtle and took time to sink in. Sure, the language is English and the money spends in a familiar way. But even these two similarities are only that: similarities. I had lovely teachers who set me straight: “We’re not the States. Thank god!”
As the new creative director for a satellite branch of a multinational ad agency, I was welcomed in true Canadian fashion. The second night in my new apartment, Samantha Selznick, an eager and very young account executive, and Hugh Bartlett, her boyfriend, arrived at my door. I crawled over boxes to buzz them into the lobby and directed them to the seventh, or top, floor. They arrived with dinner, a selection of still-warm perogies and pickled eggs, the traditional pre-Easter dinner in Lithuania.
“So, you’re not originally from here?” I asked Samantha as I scarfed down my second egg.
“Oh, not from Vancouver. Winnipeg, born and raised. My parents—well Mum is from England and Dad is from what’s now called Croatia. But me? Canadian.” Hugh volunteered similar information about his family and their journeys to Canada after the First World War. What I learned from others, over time, was the rich heritage that poked holes in the assumptions many Americans have about the fabric of the Canadian populace.
If our office diversity reigned.
Terri, our head of HR/accounting was from Mumbai, settling in Canada with her husband, Lance, who emigrated from Melbourne. Both retained their native accents, and Terri often laughed, “We can’t wait to hear what our children will sound like when they start to talk.”
Our two account executives, Nigel and Kent were from Liverpool and Toronto, respectively. My creative partner, Ken, emigrated with his parents from Hong Kong.
The lovely people who would become my closest friends were all Canadian-born, but brought rich histories from their families and countries of origin that included England, Ireland, Russia, India, the Netherlands, and Australia. For someone born and raised in one state whose family roots went back four generations, I found myself soaking in the cultural heritage of my friends. This experience also drove home how woefully ignorant I was about the world and its people.
Fortunately, my Canadian colleagues and friends were patient and mostly kind. “You gotta remember,” they’d say, smiling, “He’s ‘Merican.”
They say that friends eventually find each other. In that discovery process, I found, as time passed, my original welcoming committee, having done their job well, fell back. New people came into my life out of happenstance, through effort, and as a counter to loneliness. I met men and dated off and on, though nothing seemed to stick.
Eventually, I fell into a group of friends who welcomed me in. New friends seemed fascinated with America, the neighbor they regularly referred to as “the elephant next door,” and wanted my comparative opinions on everything from politics to education to men to food. We never lacked for conversation. Or adventure.
Canadians seemed generally ready to go to no small amount of time, trouble, or expense to have a good time. Celebrations around events such as Halloween, Saint Patrick’s Day, Christmas, birthdays, new jobs, leaving, arriving, or just “It’s Friday!” were, to me, deliciously over-the-top but, more importantly, almost universally inclusive. For a newcomer like me, it meant everything.
Like the Aussies I met in Vancouver, Canadians marveled at the excessive priority that Americans put on work. To me, they had perfected the work-play balance. To that end, having endured one of Vancouver’s more rainy summers on record, my small but never dull group of friends and I were ready for better weather. Christmas was too far away. We wanted sun, and we wanted it now.
However, arranging four schedules proved to be difficult.
Barry Eames, affable and compactly handsome, was a freelance buyer for the Hudson Bay Company and part-time limousine driver, and could basically make his own schedule, but the rest of us were tethered to jobs and didn’t have the autonomy that Barry did. “How are you, sweetheart?” was his opening line for everyone from the beverage server to the hunky stranger at the bar that intimidated everyone. Except for Barry. Five-foot-five on a tall day, with grey strands salting his curly dark and thinning hair, what Barry lacked in conventional looks was trumped by his charm. “Did God give you those beautiful eyes, or are they contacts?” Nothing scared Barry. Especially after his second gin and tonic.
Shane McGuire, quiet and thoroughly Irish, worked in hospitality and had cobbled together a number of hotel jobs that, in aggregate, paid him well but demanded a lot of his time.
Shane, by the way, was handsome in the way that caused men and women alike to take a second look, stare, or both. Six-four, trim, impossibly handsome with thick, black curls that seemed carelessly, yet perfectly, groomed, Shane wore jeans just tight enough to hang dangerously at his hips without falling into the abyss of the obscene. He left his shirts unbuttoned just one button lower than anyone else could get away with, and he grinned at the effect, as if completely in on the joke.
He was aware of his exceptional looks but in a way that helped you understand that there was more to him than just his gently muscled physique and square jaw. He also was a great listener with compassionate blue eyes. I, like most gay men with a pulse, had an instant but harmless crush on Shane that we both acknowledged but allowed to fade with time.
Jamie Duncan, like Barry, flirted with the limousine business, but also dabbled in any number of other careers where exceptional looks and a naughty wit were a plus: catering, modeling, and bit-part acting among them. Unlike Barry, Jamie stood at six-three, was blond and gym and steroid built (“I’m just helping nature along.”) Jamie’s adorable five-year-old son, Henry, was the product of what Jamie referred to as “that brief, unfortunate incident,” his marriage to a lovely but equally confused twenty year old. Like Barry, Jamie also often drank to excess; unlike Barry, who just became a chuckling, sleepy drunk, Jamie, on a bad night, could become a loud, aggressive, insulting drunk. It was this Jamie whom I ejected from one of my solstice parties to the applause of the other eighty or so people in the room.
It was Henry’s presence that tempered Jamie’s drinking. Henry spent alternating weekends with Jamie; Jamie spent those weekends alcohol-free. It was non-negotiable.
In a strong nod to our strengths and despite our shortcomings, we were friends.
By the time we could synchronize our schedules for a long-weekend trip, we had missed the August long weekend, Labor Day, and Canadian Thanksgiving, which falls on the second Monday in October. Our stars aligned at Halloween, which, while not a statutory holiday, would have to do. We decided on Palm Springs, which rivals Canada for the most reasons to have a party.
Shane made some phone calls and reserved our rooms in the predominately gay Warm Sands area of Palm Springs that, I would later learn, was referred to as “Slut City” for reasons best left to the imagination. Palm Springs, according to Jamie, would have any number of private and public costume parties. He would pull strings with his entertainment connections and take care of getting us in.
I was put in charge of costumes. Barry, a cartoon fan and Dudley Do-Right junkie, proposed the idea of descending into the Lower Forty-Eight as Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Because the agency produced its share of TV commercials, our producers had access to wardrobe companies in town. After a few phone calls and no fewer than two fittings, the four of us headed south with head-to-toe authentic RCMP uniforms. Leaving the wardrobe shop, we each were required to sign an affidavit swearing we wouldn’t wear the uniforms in Canada. Apparently, it was a federal offense in Canada to impersonate the RCMP. Paperwork signed, we headed south. Stored in boxes in the overhead bins were our genuine beaver skin hats.
*
Opmerkingen