17 April 2010: Vancouver, Bolting

Mike, Gordon's roommate.  Frequently has dinner with his exes and drunk dials his recent ex Lor(r)i(e), who has a 4-year-old and lives in Portland.  Looks completely different with glasses on.

On my last night, I was dead tired from walking everywhere, and was tipsy on a couple of drinks.  Gordon, Natasha, and Matt (the other roommate, geography grad student, didn't talk with him much) wanted to go to the Treehouse, where there was a party.  I did not.  We cabbed it there, anyway.

I mentioned this to a couple of people before, but if there's anything worse than a hipster party, it's a hipster party with a treehouse, where hipsters can perch and literally look down at you as you enter through the yard gate.  My awkwardness meter went off the charts as I sensed the hipster density and bolted the first opportunity I got, which presented itself within 2 minutes.  I was disoriented, as I had no maps and had no clue in which part of the city we were, and asked a bicyclist where Main St was.  A newcomer herself, she seemingly flagged down a taxivan for me, and I lightly jogged after it.  Turns out the cabdriver was off-duty, but he pointed me in the general direction and said I could catch a cab on my walk there.  I expressed my thanks and started on my way.  1 minute later, the cabbie pulls up in his regular car and offers to give me a ride there, since he's heading back to Surrey anyway (apparently there's a huge Indian/Pakistani/Bengali population there).  Ever so grateful, I got in, and we chatted about Vancouver.  His Anglicized name is "Harry".  He didn't take the 8 CAD I tried giving him.  I gave him a strange shoulder-pat-hug because Harry's the best.

I got pie and headed back to the house, where I was alone and just made my sofa bed up.  An hour later, people crashed in, and this girl named Molly was nearly sitting on my lap, asking me if I wanted to party because she wanted to party.  She had that glassy-eyed look on her face, and I'm sure I looked like a doe in headlights. 

Mike led me down the stairs to the other sofa.  He was trying to avoid the after-party party himself, and closed the door and ignored all summons for him to re-emerge.  At some point in the night, he came out and put an extra blanket on me.  At this point I'm thinking, "Canadians (minus this 'Molly' broad) are the nicest!"

The next morning, I got pastries for the house and ate one slowly while spacing out because I did not sleep well.  Mike came up and had two cups of coffee and a scone, and we chatted.  He's a high school teacher in a Vancouver public school, teaching history and special needs kids.  There's a wheelchair-bound kid who causes a scene sometimes, and Mike has to kick him out by telling him to leave the room.  So the kid frowns, scowls, sighs, and huffs, and then you hear his wheelchair whirring as his motor helps move him out.  We laughed.

Mike used to be a History grad student, but, like me, he dropped out after his Master's, which we agreed was upsetting because we thought we had the next 6 years of our lives planned out.  He taught in Japan for 2 years, as well, and London, ON, is his hometown.  We talked about language extinction, US vs. Canada, and bossa nova, among other things.  He gave me a ride to the Canada Line to get to the airport before taking off for Washington state in his rental car to find trails with some naturalist girl he met at the party the night before.  She'll probably wind up another ex with whom he'll be having dinner.