Popingay

Bonjour Bitches: The gayest cowboy since Brokeback Mountain

Being born and raised in a city whose main source of pride is the annual largest rodeo in the world, you can say that being a cowboy is in my blood. If by being a cowboy you mean putting on a pink cowboy hat, getting wasted, and making out with guys. I am determined to bring more gay to cowboys than the release of Brokeback Mountain.

Which is why, when our Montreal school-sanctioned activity for the evening promised a trip to Rodeo Rock’n’Bull, I felt compelled to go there and defend my cowboy honour. Only hours before I had another one of my, I suppose you could say, “episodes”. Thankfully I wouldn’t be alone in defending my redneck roots as the all-fabulous Kaitlin in my program hailed from Northern Alberta, and was further into redneck territory than I could ever go. She’s the Patsy Montana to my Dolly Parton (or whatever the hell analogy fits in here—I assume since country music doesn’t qualify as legitimate music, my thirty-second Google search was enough).

What we would find out is that a Quebecois rodeo was kind of like the Epcotting of our Western roots in that it’s a close approximation that was completely hilarious to us. (If you want a similar experience, visit your country’s pavilion in Disney World; seriously, you won’t stop laughing).

If you wanted, you could proudly take a photo of you riding a cow. On a saddle. Like a horse. Because apparently there was a shortage of horses, and cows were the next best thing. And the food proudly featured Quebec staples of beaver tails and poutine, which had as much relevance to country-western cuisine as fois gras.

I was, however, really excited to show off my near-mastery of the Cadillac Ranch line dance that was driven into my brain in childhood gym classes, only to find that the open and exhibition line-dance areas were actually people doing the Electric Slide to Ricky Martin. I don’t even have a witty comment on that, I’m just as confused as you are.

Perhaps the highlight of the night, though, had everything to do with the prominent, centrally-located mechanical bull that was open for riding and gave me the chance to satisfy my every Coyote Ugly dream (that’s a country-esque reference, right? Wow I’m bad at this). Because this got to happen:

 Making the world’s worst o-face, and, for the first time, not riding a penis.

I’d like to believe I successfully defended my cowboy heritage by not being thrown off a bucking mechanical bull immediately, and I lasted long enough to go up a couple levels of crotch-smashing delight.

But at the end of the day, my inability to string together even the most basic of country-western jokes proves that I am much better suited to riding cowboys than being one.

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.

On the road again

Just a note to clarify some things. After getting back from Montreal at the beginning of July (see: Bonjour Bitches), I hit a kind of writer’s block and hadn’t written anything after my whirlwind few weeks in Quebec.

I went back to work for a month, and now am on the road again. I’m in Europe! I flew from Calgary through Frankfurt to Prague where I drove down to Budapest. Of course this is all with my family so I’m anticipating a greatly increased need for alcohol and psychotropic medication.

I’ve also written/am writing Bonjour Bitches to go over some fun experiences in Montreal. Funny experiences rather. So while you’re seeing those entires, they will be interspersed amongst entries on my travels here in Europe.

I will also have some random/nothing to do with my life posts in my usual ridiculous style. I don’t generally write about my life directly so much, but with all the traveling I’ve been doing I’m feeling a bit discombobulated and felt like sharing some of the experiences.

So this wasn’t funny or even particularly engaging at all. But I probably should’ve been more clear from the start.

So to recap: I’m in Europe, I was in Montreal, and I’m writing entries in the past and present at the same time.

Now I’m confused.

Bonjour Bitches: I’m Homeless

After deciding at the absolute last minute (read: 10 days before) to go to Montreal for 5 weeks, I jetted off to the land of French and poutine.

Upon arrival I can tell you 4 things:

1. It was absolutely unnecessary for me to pack any sweaters as my current outfit had plastered itself to my person like a second skin after what observers can only assume to be my taking a shower in my own perspiration, thank you nearly 30 degree Celsius weather with ridiculous humidity.

2. Taking the bus from the airport to downtown neither ascertaining the stop I needed nor listening to the bus driver’s announcements and instead to my iPod and the dulcet tones of Ke$ha (my soulmate) was probably not the best idea—though for the record I got off at the right place.

3. After arriving at Beri-UQAM and blithely staring at the map for a brief moment (which, by the way lacked a “you are here” or “tu es ici” notation) deciding to head out in a random and unconfirmed direction dragging my suitcase, a garment bag, and my sweaty person was an even worse idea. I would eventually give up and when running across a Metro station scream “thank god!” and hop on a metro train to my residence which was right on the Metro line, and would have been easily reached should I have gotten on it when dropped off at a freaking Metro station already instead of galavanting down some random street in the hopes of finding it. I’ll have you know that I was heading in the right direction though.

4. My increasing desire to speak in Frenglish and pepper my sentences with wholly unnecessary and inappropriate French words was probably going to get me stabbed.

I did end up at my residence, though, where I was promptly told by the front desk clerk that I was not on the list for the Explore program.

Fuck.

The front desk clerk (later to be established as completely useless) was throughly unconcerned with my plight, and stared at me in wonderment as though should he continue to ignore my registration forms and confirmations that I would hopefully wander away and let him get back to doing absolutely nothing. No one could seem to resolve my issue (while they checked in a series of happy other Explore program students as I stared in envy) and after much humming and hawing (it was a Sunday and no one was available to prove I did, indeed, exist) they elected to get me a solo suite to live in until such a time as I was assigned to a room. I should probably mention that it took another couple days before I was actually assigned to a room (and even then they forced me to move to another residence building).

So while everyone was busy getting to know each other, meeting roommates and making friends, I was going solo in a room of my own. If you thought this would be license for unapologetic boning, you’d be wrong. I instead sat around the apartment in my underwear under the fan in a desperate bid to cool down. I was sweaty, in my underwear, and on my bed. So sort of the same thing really.

I’d later go for a nearly 3 hour walk down Ste. Catherine where I got to see a man dressed in sweatpants look around behind him before ducking into a brightly-colored doorway marked “Nude Massage”. I immediately called everyone to tell them. Because I’m mature that way.

Bonjour Bitches

Well, internet, it’s been a while. I don’t like to stay too far away in case I start to develop into a real person or some other such nonsense, but the past month and a bit has been a blur of alcohol, fun, and French. Oh. Mon. Dieu.

At the end of May I got a last minute acceptance into the Explore program, a Government of Canada bursary that gives students the chance to study French at a university in another city. This government-sponsored program took me to Montreal for 5 weeks of French-language exposure (read: exposure to excessive consumption of alcohol and Montreal smoked meat [read: penis]).

While in Montreal I didn’t take a single minute to stop enjoying myself to sit down and be sober let alone write, but the collective experience means that I get to introduce to you my newest segment: Bonjour Bitches: a collection of my adventures as a raging Anglophone insisting on running around through Montreal speaking only in Frenglish, or for the francophones: franglais. In true Kris-fashion I managed to offend speakers of both national languages, and I’m pretty sure that makes me more Canadian than eating maple-soaked beaver tails while cutting down a tree and boning a polar bear dressed as a Mountie in an igloo.

My school and residence was also only 2 blocks away from the gay village. So you know this’ll be good.

To be perfectly honest it was the experience of a lifetime, and the people I met, and the fun that I had will make a lasting impression on me. IN fact, as I was going through some of the photos from the trip I can barely keep myself from crying I miss it so much. But enough of the mushy stuff, maybe I’ll just be able to explain what the hell is going on here:

  Boobs make everything sexy.

Or not. But I can sure say I look damn good with boobs. And that is pretty well the defining theme of the trip.