Last Friday, my friend, Lorraine, and I took a quickie weekend trip to my hometown of Montreal because she scored free train tickets, so she brought me, her teenage daughter and her friend.  Train rides are not bad!  In fact, Via Rail is almost too much fun.  The ADHD people are tuned into their laptops and those who aren’t have booze stashed under their seats.  And those that have the booze, sway in the corridor and speak loudly.  It turns out most men are uncircumcised and the ladies who love them don’t appreciate it.  This is what we learned on Coach Number 3, according to the foursome by the loo, somewhere around Kingston.

Neither here nor there, we arrived at midnight and my brother picked us all up and the three of them went to a hotel and I got to go bed in my favourite place to actually sleep in the world.  Y’all know I suffer from the insomnia.  I can fall asleep just fine, in the middle of a conversation even, but I wake up with those middle of the night ruminations that make mountains out of mole hills and cause me to toss and turn and scratch like a meth addict.  Brother has a tv room off the kitchen that has a couch that turns into a flat bed with no head-board.  There is also no door and the room is facing the hallway to the rest of the house.  The whole thing is awkward and quite public in the morning but it’s my special spot. There are actual bedrooms I could sleep in but for some reason when I am in there,  I feel safe.  Of course because it was so late and I was wired from train partying and I feel the itchiness of other people’s train dander, I am not so sleepy.  I was also overjoyed because I scored a reservation at the hottest restaurant in town, Joe Beef, for Saturday at 6:30.  So my first night was  restless.  I wake up early, watch morning tv which is the Lohan version of Parent Trap. I break for Lindsay Lohan, I feel so sorry for her, but that’s for another time.  I watch the entire movie until noon and want to Brunch! Lunch! Eat!  Drink!  But my peeps in their hotel down the street don’t answer the phone. 

I have learned to live with all kinds of frustration, let me tell you.  But hunger is not one of them.  I go to lunch by myself somewhere in Old Montreal at 3 Brasseurs which turns out to be a big old chain brew pub, otherwise known as 3 Brewers in Toronto.  My peeps in the hotel wake up and call me mid-chew.  They are ready to rock and roll.  It turns out that because the kids slept on the train ride the whole way, they were also bouncing all night and walked around and ordered pizza until 4.  The darkness of the hotel drapes and the beauty of urban white noise made them sleep like bears.

Lorraine and I meet up, the youngsters go shopping at Simons.  They pronounce it all kinds of ways, “Simmons”  “Simoh-z” so I don’t really know what they are talking about at first.  “Oh!  Simons!  Like Simon Says!”  I say.  I can tell they don’t believe me but off they go.  Lorraine and I go to Sir Winston Churchill Pub on Crescent.  Pronounced:  Win-STONE Church-HHHHILL, that’s just for taxi drivers.

Here is how our afternoon played:  We get a seat on a covered patio, with heat lamps, as you know the end of October gets quite nipular.  It’s mid-afternoon and the patio is really busy because there is a Habs vs. Leafs game on later that day.  Everyone is in a good mood.  There is a group of about a dozen men in their thirties at the other end of the patio.  There are a gregarious, mostly standing around, talking to two young women seated in a nearby table.  Lorraine and I order our beers and check out the guys in the group.  I like the big dumb looking one with the hat and she points out one with an ass that could carve butter.  “Oh my God!  He looks like Jon Bon Jovi with a proper haircut!”  He is something else.  And he’s chatting with the blond woman in the next table.

We sip our beers, continue watching and it doesn’t take long for Blondie and Jonnie Bon Jovi to be standing around together, poking each other the way kids do in the playground.  By the time we order our second beer,  the couple in question have their arms around each other and the  are making out like teenagers.  Blondie has somehow rolled the waistband down on her skin-tight jeans to expose a pink thong and two acres of ass flesh.  “Check out my tattoo!”  she shrieks.  It is one of those ubiquitous tramp stamps just above her thong tag but in order for all the guys to see it, it is imperative that her entire top comes off.  She bends over.  Her bra forgets its function, because it is too small, and her girls spill out.  Now these “girls” are mere toddlers so she doesn’t really get the reaction she hopes for, so she swings her hair around.  It becomes clear what she does for a living. 

Our waitress confirms this by giving us a play by-play.  “They are saying that they have to go to work at 5 and the only shifts that start at that time are in strip clubs.”  It’s almost 4:30.  Blondie and Jonnie are groping each other like the Titanic is about to sink.  I say to Lorraine:  “If those two go to the washroom to finish this off, I am going in!”  I felt they owed to us for over an hour of public foreplay.

It turns out they didn’t need any privacy.  As the other guys milled around, Blondie pulled her jeans down even lower.  Jonnie grabbed her from behind.  With his back to us, we watched his butt curl under, then thrust, and then again.  It’s actually happening.  The whole thing was watching like a Rottweiler on top of a blow up doll that looked like it was about to explode.  Blondie’s friend shut it all down, she was the sensible one, and fetched her purse so they wouldn’t be late for work.  They said their good-byes, no numbers exchanged.  It was awesome.  This could only happen in Montreal.  I think I might move back.

If not for random public fornication, then definitely for Joe Beef.  After the pub incident, we got to Little Burgundy by cab and in time for our 6:30 reservation.  It’s a small restaurant, apparently getting a reservation is like getting a golden ticket, but we all got  to sit at the bar (best place in any eating establishment) right in front of the oyster shucker.  We got the stories, and I bought the book, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef, and you should too.  Christmas is coming!   There are recipes and pictures of the city and the history of the real Joe Beef from the 1800s.  He was an ex-soldier and opened up a tavern to feed the poor.  “Red flag!”  said Lorraine, ” Never trust a man who wants to hang out with indigents!”  And she is right.    He had a plethora of  eccentricity that disguised his douchebaggery, ie. pickling his dead wife’s body parts and keeping a drunk bear as a mascot.  All in all, an interesting tale, worth a screenplay methinks!  Or not, maybe some bears should just stay sleeping.  And I am happy to say I slept really well that second night.  I bet Jonnie Bon Jovi did also.

And here they are, Fred and David AGAIN, two blog post in a row!  I am just way too in love: