Beautiful Losers

Another drab, grey day. This isn’t the respite from a string of sunny days I used to enjoy. This is just mediocre hell. Man, the weather sucks.

I feel I should own a pair of those glasses that throws UV rays or something on you to enhance your mood. I would love that.

Last night was Axel’s “one night only” in Montreal. In the end, he’ll be leaving tomorrow morning, so I guess it’s not really one night only. But in spirit it is, I think.

How strange it must be to return to the place where you grew up, but haven’t been back to in 6 years, and haven’t lived in for seventeen. Everyone has changed; you’ve changed. And still, some things have got to remain the same.

Sitting in a booth at Blizzart’s last night, my historically old friend Hilary said all we were missing was a visit from Andrea Pahl. There was Jon Webb, our old neighbour and sometime friend of my brother’s, who probably hadn’t seen him in 20 years. I have been waiting for that particular encounter for a long time. I wish I could have seen his face, although apparently it was a bit anticlimactic, but that only reinforces my notions of what’s happened in all that time. Hilary was my friend, but my brother’s age, and he used to chase her around and try to kiss her. Years later, she commented she wished he would try again. It’s always great to see Hilly. Andrea Pahl, who was not there, was Axel’s best friend back in the day, and it’s true, it would have been spectacular to see that reunion.

I wonder, though, if anything has changed that much since the 1980s. Aren’t we still the same people who ran around backyards in the dark; who pointedly ignored each other’s rival gangs from 10 metres away; who sometimes coincided for an anxious game of truth or dare?

We’ll go back to Montreal West tonight for dinner at the Paradis, on Percival, middle block. We’ll sit in a house two down from where the Webb’s used to live, and across the street from Andrea Pahl’s old place. We’ll examine the spot where our own garage used to be and was torn down by later owners of the house. And across the street from that is Hilary’s old house. We won’t know the people who live in any of these houses anymore. But, honestly, I think nothing will have changed. Which is actually kind of too bad.