The New Sense

Saturday, April 20, 2002

Well, whaddaya know! B— just left (2pm, Sunday). Thank god for laundry! I lazed around all morning yesterday — weird day, weather-wise: they said that it dropped from 27° to 1° between midnight last night and 3pm!!! I hoped it would start to rain so I wouldn't have to do the fucking laundry. It didn't, so I went to the laundromat. I read a whole issue of Vice while I was waiting. It's less cool than it was and more cool than the rest. While the clothes were in the dryer I stood outside to get some air. There was a small huddle of Germans outside their church on Pine. Probably a funeral, though I didn't see a hearse or anything. It would have made for a great Vice photo reportage. I guess they were at most ten years old during the Holocaust, so you can't blame them. Still, to look at them, you can imagine all kinds of things.
So I'm standing there, pretty much just staring at the Germans, when B— walks round the corner. I think I started stammering something about the laundry and the Germans, because he looked at me without saying anything, then turned and looked at the Germans. He seemed surprised that they had their own church, and actually took a few paces towards them. He stopped in the middle of the street, and they all turned to look at him. Then he did something very strange. He turned his back to them and closed his eyes. Right there in the middle of the street. It was almost like he was smelling something, though he wasn't sniffing the air or anything. A car came along Pine and started to turn the corner. Before I could yell out he took three very deliberate steps forward, still with his eyes closed, and stopped again. The car took the turn and missed him by about two feet. The Germans started mumbling to each other and walked away down Pine. B— opened his eyes and came towards me as if nothing unusual had happened.
I didn't know what to say. It was just a weird scene. I shivered and told him I was going to go back inside. There was something unnerving about what he'd done, but also something fascinating. He came into the laundromat with me and jumped up to sit on one of the washing machines. My clothes had finished drying so I started to fold them. I felt kind of uneasy. I really didn't know what to say to him. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably about three seconds, he asked me where I lived. I told him. He asked me if I had a roommate or lived alone. I was folding my underwear and felt the same tingle of excitement as the last time. "He's flirting with me!" I thought to myself. "This is good…this is good." Here was my chance to find out something about him, so I said, "No — you?"
He smiled that sexy half-smile. "I'm staying with a friend at the moment. I'm not sure how long I'll be in town, so I don't want to commit to anything." Wow! A no-strings-attached guy. Ten times sexier!
I finished folding and put the pile in the basket. He jumped down from the washing machine and offered to carry it. Cute. There is something kind of gallant about him, but I still said no. He held the door open for me and started walking beside me. We chit-chatted about mindless stuff — my shifts at Olga's, the weather — exactly the kind of stuff you talk about with a guy when you want to flirt but it's not an ideal situation. When we turned on Coloniale I realised we were about to have an awkward moment. Sure enough there was silence as I reached my building and leaned the basket against the wall while I fished around for my keys. He said, "May I?" and I gave in. He held the basket while I opened the door, and then it was the moment of truth. It really was just a moment though, because he marched right in and headed up the stairs. "It's number 4," I said, and followed him.
I opened the door and had a brief moment of panic, as I tried to remember what kind of state the apartment was in. I guess the advantage of picking up a guy at the laundromat is that you don't have dirty laundry strewn about at home, so it wasn't too bad.
This was getting a bit much for a Saturday afternoon, so I asked him if he wanted to go out and grab a beer. "At Olga's?" he said and I laughed, then explained about my days-off policy. The last thing I wanted to do was take him there, and have everyone winking and nodding at me, or Olga describing her day to him in repetitive detail. I wanted to take him where no-one knows my name. That's what you need sometimes — the anti-Cheers: "Where nobody gives a shit about you!"
At that point I was starting to feel a bit like a schoolgirl. But I'm 25, so I really needed a drink. In my panic to go somewhere far away from my usual haunts I remembered one time seeing a taverne on St-Hubert which I thought was hilarious because instead of a name the sign outside only said, 'Verres stérilisés', which means 'Sterilized glasses'!!! Now there's a selling point! Maybe they have an in-house dentist too, who benefits from the sterilisation policy to perform examinations between pints. The other good thing about Verres stérilisés (the bar itself) is that it's about a twenty-minute walk from my place. Lots of time to engage in more idle chit-chat.
When we walked past the German church (taking the non-Olga's route!) I asked him what he had been doing when he stopped and closed his eyes in the middle of the street. He said, "Listening to them."
"To who?" I asked.
"The Germans. Seeing what they were saying."
"Your hearing is that good?" I said, then remembered the barrel counting incident at Olga's.
"Yup — it's a blessing and a curse."
"And that's why you heard the car coming?"
"Uh-huh."
"Oh…"
We walked a little further while I wondered whether he was a freak, a show-off or a liar. He mostly looked at the ground while he walked and talked, which didn't make him any the more convincing (but for some reason made him cuter). Then I realised that there was another obvious question: "And you speak German?"
He definitely hesitated at that one. He was definitely thinking about what to say. "I grew up near a Jewish family who spoke Yiddish at home, so I picked it up from the kids. I guess I was at the right age to learn, like those kids who learn French or English playing street hockey in Montreal, yeah? Yiddish is very close to German. So I studied German at school, since I had a head start. Now I wish I'd put as much effort into learning French."
"But why were you listening to them?" I asked.
"Oh, out of curiosity. Because of my neighbours I have a soft spot for Jews, so I thought I'd listen in. You never know when something interesting might turn up."
"What, like they were all 8 year-old Nazis?!"
He paused for a few seconds. "Like I said, you never know when something interesting might turn up."
Strange guy. I thought about this, and why I'm attracted to strange guys, while we walked on. Seriously — is it the same for men? Are there men who are more attracted to strange women than normal ones? I guess. With me it's chronic, though. The out-of-the-ordinary, the mysterious, the quirky — come on, boys! Let me throw myself into your mysterious pools and drown in your murky depths. And that's what always ends up happening — I drown. What's worse is I work at a place which attracts those kind of guys. Sure, there are plenty of 5 à 7 business people and the McGill crowd (hardly mysterious!) but Olga and her bar attract much more than their fair share of musicians (probably wannabe's) writers (part-time wannabe's), actors (professional wannabe's) and artists (never willbe's). And nine times out of ten I'm attracted to them (at least the male, 20- to 40-somethings). That's not even counting the actual professionals: the admen, graphic artists, web programmers, film scouts, roadies and the like.
There's even something slightly strange about the way he walks, and I can't put my finger on what it is. He kind of drifts somehow. Maybe he's a dancer or something. Which makes me think — I have to ask him about his photography. We never mentioned it the whole day.
We chit-chatted the rest of the way to Verres stérilisés and went inside. Pretty dingy. Perfect. The waitress was hilarious in her seriousness. She must have worked there for 25 years. B— seemed to like the place, but was disappointed there was no Guinness. It was the regular crap: Labatt 50, Blue, Blue Dry, so we got a pitcher of 50, as I told him he was getting the authentic taverne experience that way.

Then we started the serious talk. The flirting talk. He asked me about life up till now. Suddenly it was 8 o'clock. Was I just waffling, or have I had such an interesting life? He certainly didn't look bored the whole time I was going on about the Eastern Townships, my parents' divorce, my year in Europe, but today I haven't a clue what I talked about for so long. Old guys came in and started making some noise once the hockey game came on TV. We were in the proverbial bubble. The waitress supplied us with beer and popcorn, and I'm pretty sure we could have lived off that for about three weeks while we listened attentively to each other, made funny comments and (I guess) engaged in all kinds of classic first-date body language.
He told me about his life in Vancouver, how he was adopted as a baby by a doctor and his wife, and how he is now trying to find his birth parents. I wanted to know what made him want to find them, and he couldn't really give me an answer. I felt that maybe being here in Montreal had something to do with it, but I'm not sure. What was weird was that he talked about Vancouver as though he didn't know when he'd go back. I had assumed he was on a vacation, visiting friends, or taking a year off, like I had done. But there was a definite distance in the words he chose. And when I asked him about girlfriends he said, "There was someone I was close to back then," which was a strange way of putting it, since he'd already said he'd only arrived here three weeks ago. I decided to drop it — I didn't want things getting too heavy. The whole point was that he was not just single, but carefree!
He was (helped by the 50, of course!) mesmerising me somehow. Just like when he walks, his body language is not quite normal. He uses his hands in a very deliberate manner and sometimes cocks his head, but not like he's listening, almost like he's smelling something. Maybe he does have super-hearing. At one point he turned round to ask the waitress for another pitcher and I could swear he started talking to her before he could see her, as though he knew exactly where she was.
I know we talked about art for a while, and I was surprised that he loves sculpture more than painting, while at the same time admitting to not know much about it. He mentioned a trip to San Francisco where he had seen some Rodins and some Henry Moores. It doesn't seem to really matter to him what style the sculpture is, which I had a hard time understanding, though I suppose people might say that they love the theatre or dance and not care whether they watch classical or modern performances. But fans like that at least know a lot about what they're a fan of. He hardly knows anything about sculpture in academic terms, but just loves it. I remember him trying to explain why:
"We're all so used to seeing things. We build the world in our heads out of what we see. Our language is all about how things look. When someone says, 'I see what you mean' no-one thinks it's strange, even though there's nothing to see. But it makes no sense to say, 'I hear what you mean' even though it's much more logical. No, to see means to understand. That's how important seeing is for people.
"And painting, drawing or photography are just visual representations. They are one person's point of view (see, even a 'point of view' is visual, though it just means an opinion). But sculpture is different. A sculpture is a thing, not a representation of a thing."
I didn't bother arguing with him from an art theory perspective because he was really into what he was trying to explain.
"It's three-dimensional, it has weight. It attracts."
So do you, B—. So do you.
"There is no privileged way of experiencing a sculpture. You can walk around it, look at it from above, from below. But most people just try to find the privileged viewpoint, then look at a sculpture as though it's a picture. They take away the third dimension. And no-one is allowed to touch a sculpture, even though the tactile experience should be part of the art."
I managed to show off a bit by telling him about how the cartoon image of a sculptor hammering away at a block of marble with a chisel isn't really accurate; that Rodin never 'made' any of his sculptures. What he was saying made me sound boring though:
"A sculpture is a reformulation of the world. It's like diving into the ocean, compared to staring at the waves on the surface or actually kissing someone compared to watching two people kissing in a movie."
Wow. That still impresses me today, and I'm sober now. Of course he was getting sexier with every word. It was eleven, so I asked him if he was hungry. He shook his head and at that moment I totally fell. He was a poor, mistreated puppy with nowhere to go. I just had to kiss him. So I did. I leaned across the popcorn-strewn table and put my right hand behind his head. He met me halfway and we kissed for about two minutes. Or twenty, I don't know. And what a kisser. All-time hall of fame. There are these big goons skating around on the TV earning millions a year for having the talent to hit a round thing with a stick. What the hell use is that? Here's B— — probably one of the most talented guys on the planet — and there are no sponsorships, multi-year contracts or winner's rings for him. It's a scandal that society doesn't know how to reward its most deserving members. Oh well, I guess I made up a bit for society's imbalances last night.
We tumbled into a cab and carried right on. All I remember of the ride home was more world-class kissing and the frankly bizarre realization that a Haitian cab driver was listening to something like an Armenian radio show.
We magically flew up the stairs and in through the locked door. Clothes started to come off, and I backed him into the bedroom. I tried to push him onto the bed and fall on top of him, but he stopped me. I wondered what the hell was going on for a second, but he turned around and moved the laundry basket off the bed, where I had left it in the rush earlier on. There was no way he could have seen it in the dark. Maybe he has some kind of super-memory instead of super-hearing, because the laundry certainly wasn't making a noise.
The rest was technically as good as the kissing but a lot hotter. In every way. Sometimes there are those occasions when it all comes together (hee-hee!) and this was one of those times. He's only 21, but boy does he know what to do with those hands! It had been a while (What? 3 months?) but I think I played my part just fine. Silver medallist to his gold. (Wow — I guess those Winter Olympics really had an effect on me!)
Who am I kidding? Enough of the funny stuff — we made love like I haven't made love for years. He's a great guy and a great lover. And he cuddled me all night and stuck around just long enough for it to feel real this morning…

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posted by Sara