One early Saturday evening in late-August of my eighteenth year, I, my brother, and my best friend who lived up the street were sitting in his backyard, battling (futilely, always futilely) suburban malaise, which largely involved chain smoking and saying "what can we do?" over and over again. I don't know who thought of the idea, but either my brother or my friend mentioned that a trip out of town would, theoretically, cure our boredom, and the evening began to snowball from there. Why the hell not? we asked; my friend had his own vehicle, a Jeep Cherokee, and we all had some cash. That settled it -- we were going to get outta Dodge. A change of scenery always works wonders on the soul, even if one does there pretty much the same things one would normally do in their regular habitat. The only question was where? Again, I don't recall who came up with the idea (I'm pretty sure it wasn't me), but one of us suggested that, because my brother was the only one who could legally drink in Ontario, we take a trip to Quebec -- Hull, specifically -- where the drinking age is 18.
We got some clothes and other necessities together, packed a cooler full of steaks, chicken wings and other foodstuffs (avec condiments, sans condoms), made a quick trip to The Beer Store to pick up a case of Moosehead lager, and hit the road. Because my friend was driving and wisely chose not to drink while doing so, my brother and I, in a commendable show of solidarity, decided to hold off drinking as well, even though by the time we left my hometown it was already pushing eight o' clock and the drive to Hull would take approximately 5 hours. Around 11 or so, however, my friend -- whom for brevity's sake we will now refer to as E -- could sense our restlessness, and pulled off the road (I think it was at the Giant Apple) so we could crack open some cold ones. My brother and I drank 2 or 3 beers in about 20 minutes, and E even had one for himself.
By the time we were nearing Ottawa, my brother mentioned how cool it would be if we could have a look at the house in which we grew up, in Nepean. My friend didn't mind, and, amazingly, we were able to find it (only my luck in -- on my first night in Korea -- getting lost in Seoul and then miraculously locating the yeogwan at which I was staying ranks higher). We marvelled at how much the place had changed since we'd last seen it, over 10 years prior. Then we went up to the front entrance, rang the doorbell furiously, ran to the Cherokee, and sped off.
Kids.
After crossing into Hull, I think the plan was to find a place in which to spend the night; but after getting lost in the winding hills of southern Quebec, and with the hour as late -- or as early, depending upon how you look at it -- as it was, what we ended up doing was pulling off the road at a sort of highway alcove and drinking like the young, rowdy boys we were.
Shortly after 2, a pair of provincial police cars pulled in. We thought we were toast, seeing as how we all were drinking inside a vehicle, which, although stationary, I'm fairly sure is against the law. The cops were cool, though; after asking us what we were doing there, and us telling the truth, they told us to make sure we stayed there until morning. And that we did.
Easy to fall asleep in a car while drunk, hard to wake up in one, I've learned. It didn't help that E's Cherokee had black leather seats. When we awoke at around 8 in the morning we were baking like clams. I've never wanted a glass of cold water so much in my life.
The initial plan was to return to Burlington by Sunday afternoon, but we were all too tired and hungover, so, instead, after finally navigating ourselves successfully into Hull, we rented a room at the Holiday Inn. As sleepless as we were, none of us chose to catch any winks, because it was opening day of the NFL season. We went and got more (lots more) beers, filled the bathroom tub up with ice, and dumped them in. My brother, never known as one who paces himself well, started drinking at noon, and by 4 or 5 was out cold.
What fun is going somewhere new if one fails to soak in its local culture (read: its drinking establishments)? E and I agreed it would be no fun at all, so we showered (not together, Mr. Funnyman), hopped into our Sunday bests, and ventured out.
The first bar we went to was right next to our hotel. We both ordered margaritas. I'm not sure if that's considered unmanly by today's standards, but at the time I don't think it was. Even if it was, we didn't care (as you'll soon see).
We paid our tab and went outside in search of another watering hole, which didn't take long. "Hey, let's try this place," I said. "With a name like that you can't go wrong." The place was called, simply, Le Bar.
In concordance with the evening's theme of ordering drinks that may or may not be gay, we asked the bartender, a muscular young man with tight jeans and an odd haircut, for two Long Island iced teas. After our beverages arrived, we sat there for a couple of minutes, contentedly sipping our drinks through straws, then E surreptitiously lurched over the bar and asked the bartender in a whisper (or as much of a whisper as one can manage in a crowded bar) "so, where are all the cute girls?"
The bartender looked at him as though my friend was pulling his leg, but, after kenning that he was serious, politely invited us to take a good look around the place to see if we noticed anything odd. And that is when, finally noticing the abundance of males with nary a female in sight -- save for a few older women with short hair and lumberjack shirts playing pool at the bar's rear -- we realized we were in a gay bar.
After a brief tete a tete, we agreed that, gay bar or no, we'd stay until our drinks were finished and chalk up the experience as a lesson learned, namely that gay bars sometimes possess nondescript names and don't always have rococo titles, such as The Saucy Flamingo or Candy Floss.
Let that be a lesson to you from a man (a heterosexual one, I think) who writes under the Internet nom de plume Sparkles.
***
Fasten your seatbelts, bitches; it's time for some scatological scribblings:
1) Here at Psychedelic Kimchi, we -- and by we I mean I, although I'm fairly sure my partners in rhyme feel the same -- are very fond of one Han Chae-Young (한채영), and this is why we(I) weep silently in despair when we(I) take a gander at her Wikipedia page and find it almost totally bereft of pictures, links, and any remotely relevant information, such as her measurements and turn-ons. For shame, we(I) say. I'd make an effort myself to try to spruce the page up a bit, but, as we(you) all know, I'm as lazy as a sloth on life support.
2) I always laugh and dismiss the notion that living abroad in a non-English
speaking country negatively affects one's English-speaking ability or lexicon, however last week, while I was speaking with a colleague and was telling him about a segment of the Korean TV show Sponge in which they proved that cereal -- which contains iron -- can in fact be moved by a medium-strength magnet, I discovered that I am slowly growing stupider each day. I went on to explain that one could even see tiny pieces of iron if one were to look at a piece of cereal, say a single corn flake, under a...what's it called again? A telescope? A magnifying scope? Jesus, what the hell is it called!? What I ended up saying was "one can even see tiny pieces of iron if one looks at a piece of cereal, say a single corn flake, under a...um, a...if one were to magnify it."Of course, the word I was looking for was microscope. I had to look it up in the big book that has lots of words and the meaning of what those words mean when I returned home that evening.
3) If that last point didn't already make it clear, let me reiterate that I'm often slower than 5 o' clock traffic. To wit, only today did it dawn on me that Korean children waiting for the light to change at any given intersection sure do tend to bolt when it does so. Is this taught by their parents? In school? Because this is a new revelation to me, I don't rightly know yet how I feel about it. On one hand I think it's great, because kids running across intersections significantly decreases their chances of being hit by Frankenstein in Death Race 2000, aka your average Korean cabbie. On the other hand, I think it detrimentally affects their already shabby patience and makes them look like wild hellions running amok.
As an alternative, I've come up with a radical idea: it's called look both ways before you cross. Unorthodox, I know, but people also laughed at DaVinci when he was inventing a little device we now refer to as the telephone.
4) Is it unsound to grow my hair and stop shaving, with the hope that doing so will metaphysically increase the chance of a successful playoff run for the Miami Heat? I'm already halfway there: my mop is beginning to reach Steve Nash/Dirk Nowitzki/Pau Gasol/Adam Morrison-style proportions. Do you think my boss would say anything were I to grow a beard, too (pretending for a moment that's even possible, since a typical middle school kid could probably grow a more convincing buzz than I could)? I mean, it's not as though Koreans notice or make mention of stuff like that, right? Seriously, I could show up for work tomorrow dressed in polka-dot overalls and a straw hat, and I don't think anyone would so much as bat an eyelash.
5 (For Fighting)) My sincere apologies in advance if this and subsequent posts contain more crude language than usual. Chalk it up to the negative influence of me enduring more adult contemporary music than any normal man should be subjected to bear. Regardless, I really don't give a microscopic microscope if you take issue with my language, and humbly suggest you mind your own microscopic business. Go microscope yourself if that offends you.
Seriously, you can stick an amoeba underneath your microscope for all I care.
Love,
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