Popingay

Bonjour Bitches: Mute, drunk, & disorderly conduct; or, public unconsciousness

Within two days of arriving in Montreal I lost my voice. It remains to be determined whether it was the result of simple laryngitis or oral gonorrhoea (I put it at a 50-50 chance of either). However, embarking on a five-week adventure to learn and practice French seems a little ridiculous when you are barely capable of speech and sound somewhere between a 14-year-old boy going through puberty and a diner waitress who chain-smoked for the greater part of 50 years and refers to everyone as “sug”. It was quite pathetic actually. I had a squeak of a voice, and oral activities in class became me gesticulating wildly while making French-like whispers.

I did end up harbouring a secret fantasy of going around Montreal pretending to be a deaf-mute and thereby no longer obligated to practice French as much as possible since my French knowledge at the start of the program amounted to being able to ask for a drink and telling people to go fuck themselves—which in actuality are my two most commonly spoken phrases anyway.

I soon came to the compromise of writing a text in French (being a good little student and all) on my phone, and showing it to people to communicate. It was highly ineffective, and I briefly considered investing in a chalkboard strung around my neck.

Our first weekend after a school-sanctioned activity, our new Quebec buddies were up for some night-on-town madness and took a few of us to a Quebecois bar in the Old Town with an amazing cover band who seriously covered The Black Eyed Peas while making them sound good. There was a considerable amount of beer downed while we danced around in front of the stage, joined in a giant conga-line that stretched around the entire bar started by our little Quebec guide and her roommate, and watched while the two of them threw popcorn at each other on the dance floor. Basically the most fun I’ve had while unable to talk and listening to music that, 50% of the time, I could only partially understand the lyrics to.

However it would all go so horribly, horribly wrong.

There are several major milestones when drinking:

1. When you first feel the buzz.
2. When you’re past driving and basic inhibition limits.
3. When you’ve decided to fuck everything and just get wasted.
4. When you’ve crossed an invisible line and nothing will be right again.

While downstairs in the washroom I crossed that fourth line. The whole room spun around in a whir of colours, terrifying dizziness, and near-fainting, and I knew that I had to go. Not in a little bit, not after the next song. I had to fucking go right now because I had totally lost my shit.

As an experienced heavy drinker I was surprised I’d hit this line (I’m usually quite resilient), but in Quebec beer is the drink du jour and I was (at the beginning of the trip) an inexperienced beer drinker and severely misjudged my limits.

I ran upstairs and wrote a text that I had to go this second, I was fine, and I would find my way home. Amazingly I had the wherewithal to write a sensible French message (part of my theory that drinking vastly improves my French ability—more on this another time), and showed it to everyone. They were a bit concerned, but I waved it off and stumbled out the bar and into a cab.

In the cab I felt a familiar rumbling and knew that I would be sick. At this point the cab driver kicked me out of the cab after five minutes of driving to my residence (because he was a jackass and because I had lost the ability to see anything but desperate paths to vomit) and I stumbled out of the cab directly into traffic before finding my way to the sidewalk and getting my bearings. (If you think I may have an alcohol problem, this moment may end up in a letter you read to me while sitting around a circle with my loved ones—I actually didn’t end up vomiting when out of the cab, but I may vomit if you try that intervention bullshit on my ass.)

Now I knew two things:

1. I had no fucking idea where in the hell I was.
2. I was terrified I’d be picked up by the cops for being ridiculously drunk in public, unable to defend myself because my French is awful, and I had no voice even if I wanted to try.

My thought process went something like: “shit, fuck, motherfucking son of a bitch fuck what the hell do I—aaah!” as I noticed a couple of cop cars driving by. In retrospect their sirens were on and they probably had better things to do (like fight crime) than notice me, but I was scared nonetheless, and I had a sudden bolt of brilliance. I knew how to solve both my problems at once.

Because in front of me was a large city map that you find scattered about Montreal on the sidewalks. I could simultaneously find out where I was and how to get home, and hide behind it from the police (for some, still inexplicable to me, reason I thought the police were watching me).

The problem was that I couldn’t see straight for the life of me, and I was still paranoid about getting arrested in my first week in Montreal. So I did what any sensible person would do:

I smashed my face right up against the map.

With one eye closed I could make out details of the map, and as I rubbed my face around to figure out where I was, I finally put together both my current location, and how to get home, which, thankfully, was only about a 7-minute walk. After figuring that out, I seemed to have exhausted what little brain-power I had left, and I then woke up a few minutes later with my face against the map. Let me repeat that:

I passed out standing with my face mashed into a tourist map on the street.

Thankfully it was only for a few minutes, and thankfully I was not robbed, raped, or arrested. I stumbled home learning a valuable lesson about misjudging your limits with an alcohol you’re not overly familiar with.

I would end up going out the next night with reckless abandon (a story for another time), but by the end of the trip I learned to handle beer as well as I did any of my usual liquors, and I knew that I could bounce back from absolutely everything because fuck you alcohol, that’s why. You may have won this battle, but I most definitely won the war.