late night talking
(for Simon)
“hey noah”
“yes?”
“catch!”
I turn my head to catch a donut hole being slam dunked into
my mouth
by the tallest
most English
and blondest
of all the world’s potential basketball players
we’re running up the Boulevard Saint Laurent
to Bar Biftek
we’re running because
we’ve run out of scotch
at 10 o’clock
on a Tuesday night
we’re running because
2 for 7 dollar g & t’s
we’re running because
it’s Montreal
in February.
having preempted a plan set for spring break
where we would find out what it’s like
“to get really drunk on expensive scotch”
my always optimistic billiards partner and i
are off to do battle
with the likes of Ted the not-pool-shark who eats too much
popcorn
and the scowling single-gloved Asian woman who brings in her
own cue
and who we’ve dubbed:
the black widow
later after vanquishing our foes
saving dollar after dollar by beating all comers
until the loonies pile up to a wopping 7
whole dollars
for
one
last
g
& t
later still we’ll race back through the cold
to his patio
with my hookah
to watch the ice storms
over apple tobacco
the agenda is simple:
drinking
laughing
smoking
8 o’clock Friday evening
3 weeks on
we’re cooking a feast of cheeses i’ve brought back from New
York
“Barbara Streisand and Paul Simon shop at Zeybar’s” i brag
and we too are now famous among our friends
for our bacchanalian Sabbath celebrations
tonight’s vinicultural choices have been informed by
recommendations
from Monty Python’s Guide to Australian wine
we sip chateau nuissau wogga wogga
and comment on the overtones of criminality and sub-par
rugby and left-wanting cricket abilities
which seem to characterize the nose and finish of all the
Coonawara Cab Savv’s
later among the wreckage of cheese-stuck pots
skewered baguettes
kirsch and grand marnier bottles
chocolate soaked strawberries and melon chunks
the shorter more semitic man of this pair
will succumb to his ancestral intolerances:
wheat and dairy
he will lay on the floor in a daze that most only accomplish
with the aid of strong cannabis or prescription lithium
Simon will console a concerned new dinner friend
“no, that’s just noah. He can’t eat everything”
later still
cigars will be drawn
i will rise from my stupor
and the mission will continue:
drinking
laughing
smoking
then it’s May on the back patio
crickety rotting beams
and raccoon visitors
newly gifted zippo lighter with an engraved promise of
future adventures
freshly cut monte cristo’s purchased just that morning
green plastic patio furniture procured the evening before
from the library of our school
and
very
fine
spirits
well beyond reasonable student budgets
more complex than the palates they’ll soon pass over
and older than the hands lifting them up to smiling lips
someone is asking my friend who he’ll stay in touch with
after university
when he neglects to mention me in his list
the query is raised and swiftly answered:
“noah? noah’s a bit like herpes, once you’ve got him he’s
awfully hard to lose”
later we will climb the fire escape ladder
to the roof to watch the sunrise
mist forming off the smoke stack in the distance
a giant geyser breathing heavy hospital exhalations
the sun reflecting off the tin rooftops
and sooty condominium windows
all of it occasionally obscured by the thick smoke leaving
our lips
with each short draw bringing closer
the red coaled tip
looking out at the pre-dawn lawn of nearby Mount Royal
the fog leaving moisture on the ground
enough for morning frosts
at the end of this cigar
ashes tap
wrists upend tumblers
sips are savoured
glasses are studied
a ballet of boys feigning manhood
a fresh pour followed by the clink of celebration
always look ‘em in the
eye for that first sip
21 years to this moment
in between manufacturing our grandest stories
and the
inevitable descent into referential living
-- never mind
that
stick to the
agenda:
drinking
laughing
smoking
9 years and 4
months from that day
we’ve come to
Scotland
the pseudo
celiac social working actor
and the newly
minted doctor of aerospace
on a
messianic mission of sips up the coast beginning at Arbroath
past castles
and rolling hills
up to cliff
sides and caverns
with a final
descent into Speyside planned for days 6 and 7
the
objectives are formidable and complex
drinking
laughing
smoking
on our final
night together
after an hour
spent fly fishing and exploring
we decide on
a perch atop a grassy bankside
overlooking a
lighthouse across the bay
guarded by a
heron
standing
centurion at its base
faces whipped
by North Sea winds
our tongues
will, for a moment,
cease their
flickering
stilled by a
giant Rattray sunset sky
the
cloudburst of bright purples
golden yellows
and blood
orange reds
a display so
stunning that any oral address
would both
destroy the moment
and
inevitably fail to offer up enough awe
the flask
will stop between us
our
exhalations will shift
from friendly
smoke-ring competitions
to meditative
smoke-stack upward waterfalls of vapour
and ash
each draw and each release is a clinking of glasses with the
sky
a silent
offering to such an impossible display of twilight cumuli
later
and later
still
we two are
still
and still
silent
the sky now
closed in
and dark
around us
the moon
reflecting a yellow fondue mess onto the waves crashing into the
embankment
the only evidence
of the evening’s earlier spectacle
is a thin
purple line clinging to the rooftops on the horizon to the west
i will fight
with my camera as I used to on the porch
for a
portrait to pair
with those of
our montreal days
i will fail
now as I did then
to capture
what it is to be befriended
to share
frenzy and adventure
to understand
and be understood
to relish an
evening so intensely that it fast becomes morning
to sip scotch by a riverside on a Sunday afternoon with a
serious agenda of
drinking
laughing
and smoking
