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