The Montreal Trip Part Six

Last Time (Part Five):  The boys discovered poutine, Shawn finally showered, and the final member of our party arrived.

So where was I?…  Oh right, Part Six!… In which Anthony recounts the story of his crossing the border, we finally enter a Tim Horton’s, and the men declare it’s “Guys’ Night.”

So, as I was saying, we got back to the hotel with our Absolut, Pepsi, Orangina, and Blue right as Anthony was arriving in Montreal.  So we all ventured to the red room and Anthony took a shower before joining us in our Up the river, Down the river/Fuck the dealer playing.  He missed the beginning of our game in which we created a new game called “Fuck the Shawn.”

Shawn started as the dealer for the first round fuck the dealer.  Every time he was about to get off the hook, the third person would not only guess correctly, but they would guess the exact card on the first try. This went on for about twenty cards with our collective good luck and Shawn’s pretty terrible luck.  Seth finally broke the trend and that is when Anthony came back from his shower.

I was not prepared for the amazingness that was the story of him getting stuck at the border.

Basically, he actually got to the border around noon…  I don’t really remember which one and he wasn’t traveling the same way we did because he came from Massachusetts, so he probably entered Canada in Quebec, but I do know that he wanted to see us around two or three, so I think this makes the most sense…  (Yes, I did some map googling…  Yes, we’ve already talked about my being bad at math in case my time estimate is wrong…)

Anyway, he had a sketchy beard that everyone then made fun of (he shaved it off for the start of school, which I wouldn’t have known, but it’s complicated) and blamed for his being stopped.  Anthony pretty much confirmed that.

He basically had his entire life in his “chester the molester” van (I didn’t know people actually drove big, sketchy white vans) because he was meeting all of us up in Montreal and then going from Montreal back to school in upstate New York.  He had his laundry, a bunch of van stuff, a bong….  Yeah, he had a bong…

Apparently the border guards don’t like sketchy mustachioed and bearded men driving sketchy vans containing drug paraphernalia…  Who knew?

So the Canadian border patrol had him pull over to the side and they performed a full person and vehicle search.  They questioned what he was doing in Canada, if he was a smuggler, what he was doing with the sheets…

White linens…  They’re cheaper in America.  We’re starting a linen black market up in here.

Which brings me to our other main topics of conversation.

6.  Anthony being “chester the molester.”

7.  The weather.  (sometimes we’re boring too)

8.  Random bets.  (more on that later)

9.  Words that sound similar in certain situations…  (more on that later)

10.  Fuck the Shawn. (Shawn’s name eventually became interchangeable with everyone else’s depending on the situation)

Anthony ended up being stuck at the border for about two hours, which wasn’t really funny.  We  were there for five minutes and I got nervous…  I can’t imagine being there for two hours.

He started telling us about his full body cavity search and our eyes just got wider and wider until he started laughing and told us it was just a pat down.  He caught us all being hugely gullible (that’s what we got for giving him grief).  But the border guards did confiscate his bong and couple of other things…  Apparently it takes a long time to sort through a giant white van, and every piece of a grad student’s laundry.

We played a couple of rounds of up the river, down the river and then we all broke to change.  I wore an adorable purple top and Shawn pulled out the ironing board for a button down shirt.  He was cursing at it the entire time because he couldn’t get the wrinkles out.

So, I tried to change the subject.  “How do I look?”

“You look great.  Really sexy.”

“Even with the bun?”

“It’s cute.”  He went back to the ironing.  “Fuck this shit.”

“Shawn?”

“The ironing, not you.”

“Oh.  Want some help?  I’m a wrinkle removing pro.”

“I’ll get it.”

And then five minutes later, with his shirt still wrinkled, Shawn burned his hand.

He had enough sense to put the iron down on the ironing board in a standing position, but the next ten minutes went like this:

“SSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTT!!!!”  “FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!”  And the sound of unintelligible man screaming…  For ten minutes.  Man screaming is different from normal screaming.  An approximation might be “RAAAAHHH!!”

But mostly it was swear words he was shouting.

I got him a damp towel and asked if he wanted help ironing again.  This time he agreed and his shirt looked great, because, as I said before, I’m a wrinkle removing pro.

The boys gave him shit for not taking a woman up on her offer to do a woman’s job.  Blair and I scoffed.

Brent and I discussed my big goals for the night and I said I just wanted to get out.  He responded with “Doesn’t matter if you get out and get sick at the bars, you’d still get out to the bars.  You dream big.”  I dream big.

Anyway, we left after that and had to stop by Anthony’s van so he could get another shirt from it.  We, mostly the boys, made fun of his van.  I said “It really is a chester the molester van.”  I had been sure he was kidding.  The boys laughed at this.

We headed back down to Rue Ste. Laurent for the third time this day.  Anthony mentioned he was hungry, so Shawn and I went with him to the first food we could find: a Tim Horton’s.  We figured after his trip here, stopping to get some food with him wasn’t that big of a delay.  Everyone else went ahead to the bar.

“Shawn, Tim Horton’s!  Take a drink!”

“Deidree, this is still a terrible game.”

“It doesn’t seem so terrible to me…  This is the first one we’ve actually seen since we got into Montreal…”

“That also makes it pretty terrible.”

“Oh right, that is a short game, isn’t it….”

I don’t remember quite what Anthony ordered…  It was either a croissant or a breakfast sandwich, but I don’t know if Tim Horton’s stops selling breakfast sandwiches ever…  If they don’t, it was definitely a breakfast sandwich.

I asked Shawn about his hand and he said it was feeling a bit better and he could move it, so that was good news.

We met everyone else as some bar where there were already bottles of beer waiting for us.  They were either Coors or Bud, I don’t remember which one, but I distinctly remember them being an American beer.

We finished our beer and went to a pub next?  It was either the pub or the Pinq Taco…  I’m going to say it was the Pinq Taco because I really don’t remember anything happening there…  We went to the Pinq Taco, the boys laughed about the name, and that was pretty much it.

At the pub we had Guinness and managed to find a table, even though it was crowded because of the live music.  Blair and I took a bathroom break and discussed Seth and Shawn.  I complained a bit about how Shawn wasn’t really paying attention to me now and a Canadian girl told me I was awesome and I shouldn’t worry about him.  I was both grateful and mortified because I’ve been the crying girl in the bathroom (although I wasn’t crying this time) and I’ve been the Canadian girl comforting the crying girl (except not Canadian).  Neither one is a good one to be, really…  In any case, I was feeling a bit better after that and we went back to the boys.

Shawn spilled a beer on my coat.  We had a tequilla shot.  Ryan saved the day when the band’s microphone was falling to the floor and he pulled a superhero jump to save it.  And then we continued down the street.

We found a really long and skinny bar with awesome music.  But we weren’t there very long because the boys thought it was too crowded, which was depressing because I got to sing along and dance.  I think we were there for maybe half an hour or forty minutes?

Then Brent and Ryan were hitting on a girl, some girls?  I don’t remember if it was one or two.  It must have been two.  Shawn decided to help them and sent Blair, Seth, Anthony, and me on to the next bar because Blair and I were cold.  I was annoyed again.

We waited in the bar for them and they didn’t show up for a while.  I didn’t know if I should be angry, but Shawn was giving me grief for being cold (when he spilled beer on my coat) and wasn’t paying much attention to me.

The other boys eventually came, but that was when Brent and Ryan went on and on about wanting to do a guys’ night.  We walked around looking everywhere for a strip club.  I suggested bars as we passed them, but they weren’t having any of them.  Blair and Anthony were getting tired.  Seth decided he would go back with them.

“What do you want to do?”  Shawn asked me.

“I could go either way.  I have to make up for yesterday.  Is it guys’ night?”

Brent and Ryan were nodding.  Shawn looked at them and at me.  “I guess maybe it’s guys’ night?”

I lost two to one in favor of testosterone…

So they made sure that Seth had a key to the purple room and Anthony had a key to the red room, then the four of us left.

I grew increasingly annoyed as we walked in the cold and when we got back to the hotel, I sweetly asked Anthony if I could have the key to the red room.  He gave it to me without question… and then I slammed the door behind me.

He didn’t knock, I don’t know why, but maybe Blair said I “probably needed space.”

I was texting Steph about how I was upset and she told me to sleep on it.

So I slept on it, like a rock, like always…  And when I woke up the next morning, the boys were back.  I took a long shower and I was doing pretty well by the time I was done.  Showers fix pretty much everything!

Anyway, next time (and much sooner):  Where they serve dog in Canada (with rice!), why museums are so expensive, and Molson is Coors, y’all!