stop talking. you're sitting there in the loader's cab talking to yourself and your workers are laughing at you. it's what they have to do to get through. you work where, by the way?
New Year's was fine. I should tell you about how it went five years ago. I'd hosted a house party: lots of good people, me my usual shrinking shrieker. It works like this - take massive loads of drugs and huddle in a corner frightened out of your pants and shirt, then finally emerge from an alcohol-sodden chrysalis with a topspin of adrenalin just when everyone is calling for a cab. Last man standing - every time.
So I got in my car, looking for the next party.
Look. See, okay. Drinking and driving is not funny. But I can't get to the end of this story - and it is a funny story - without admitting that I got in my car after many, many many rob roys and some psilocybins and drove all the way across town. This is horrifying. But it gets funny. Because I was going to the fucking airport.
I worked there. I was a security guard. All day long I wandered the terminal - it was another company that contracted out the pre-board screening, we just kept our eyes out for crap - watching people get on planes. Eleven bucks an hour. There was no way I was going to get on one anytime soon, at that rate.
And so something must have lodged: a wish, a desire, a lust for travelling. Not being in a different place, but getting on a plane, specifically. Left alone in my house, party being over, the end of fun, and nothing to look forward to - I mean, no wonder people do drink and drive. There must be a sliver of them that wants the horrible thing to happen. That's why you'll never beat it by calling drunk drivers "stupid" or "irresponsible". Would you yell those words at someone perched on the lip of a high-rise?
Well I don't know how it works; maybe you would. I don't do it.
I drove, for maybe forty-five minutes. College radio being weird all the way down, keeping me where I needed to be to steer, to park, get out of the car. Employee parking lot.
Ever been to an airport at six-thirty in the morning New Year's Day? There is no reason for you, or anyone else to be there then. Unless you work there, or your boss is sadistic, or you like boring places when they're empty.
I wanted to fly somewhere. It was why I had come - escape. But I didn't have much money. And - well, I mean I was functioning, right, one leg in front of the other, waving hello at my co-workers, trying to hide the fact that I was totally apeshit - somewhere in my mind I must have cottoned to the fact that flying to Aruba was not on.
And so I bought a ticket to Calgary.
Calgary is a three-hour drive from the airport.
The ticket cost two hundred and fifty dollars. One way.
I was starting to come down there, in the departure lounge, absolutely conspicuous and hopeless like a year of cancer. Every once in awhile my work buddies would come around and chat, testing me, prodding my state. Things were starting to take a really really long time.
I boarded the plane. Behind me sat a man and his son, both melancholy in the morning dark blacking out the windows. Nothing in the overhead compartment for me, thanks. I'd thought to bring my walkman - funny, I hadn't remembered that part till now. A few slept. I had a drink - a Ceasar. Nonsense, but it seemed like the thing to drink on a plane at seven-fifty-five a.m. How did I get served? How did they let me on the fucking thing?
We took off, and the pull of it invigorated me, squeezing the last dregs of giddiness right out of me. The damn thing was over so quickly, and it was, absolutely, one of the best moments of my life. It was great, precisely because (I realized in the moment) it made no sense at all. What a ridiculous thing, I kept thinking. What a ridiculous thing! Let's go for a plane ride to nowhere! Whee-ha! I smiled all the way there.
Nine oh-five and the world's dumbest metaphor touches down in Calgary, spurting me forth in my party-sexy white shirt stained with rye and coke, eyes bleary as a yak's, legs so very tired. All of me so very tired. I thought: I know. I'll apply for a job here, with whatever security outfit they've got on, and I'll start pulling paycheques and find a dumpy basement suite and I'll never fucking go back, man. The day I moved to Calgary. I thought about it as I staggered around the equally empty airport with no shops open, no place to get a coffee... it even seemed like they'd hauled out all the places a guy could just sit down for one second.
The airport is built in a ring, you go round and round if you keep taking a left at the next corner. I slowly discovered this. Also: No exits. Weird thing. Did find the security office, though: little enclave shaped roughly like a piece of pie. No pre-board screening anywhere I could see. Warm smell of colitas rising up through the air, too.
I couldn't talk to the dude about a job because it was New Year's Day and everything was skeleton crew. The dude was at home, asleep. The skeleton crew were very sorry about that. I tried the RCMP post too, when I finally found that. I'm not sure why. I should've told them how I got there.
I. Could. Not. Think.
Found the Sky Shuttle kiosk, finally. I stood in line behind noone for about twenty minutes. Think about it: kinda indigent-lookin' fella coming down off something vicious, waving back and fordth, looking about to topple, hovering around your desk-counter thing. What would you do? If it had been me, I'd have ignored him and hoped he went away.
I finally made eye contact. When was the next one?
Half an hour away.
So long?
It's New Year's Day.
Indeed it is.
I hovered some more, hoping to stumble over a chair I could sit on. Not one materialized. I staggered another lap round the airport, retracing my steps. Where had I lost my shit? Oh, yeah, another city, you dumb fuck.
I took the shuttle to the hostel. I got a bed in a room with these two really noisy guys and tried to sleep through all their tooth-brushing and gargling bullshit. Tried for two hours just to shut my eyes. I finally gave up, grabbed one of the hostel's free maps, and made my way down, walking on dead legs to the Bow river. Somewhere along the way I found an open store, where I bought toothpaste and brush, and random goo for my inconsolable bed-hair. I sat on a park bench and brushed my teeth, rinsing with bottled water. I sat there for a bit, on the banks in the cold, trying to pretend I was having a moment.
I found a Humpty's, and settled down in the first crowd of my new life as a dead man, scuttling a fork over runny eggs and slurping coffee served in a cup so small it couldn't hold one of my jack-offs. Then I went to the phone and got my father.
Dad.
Hey son, Happy New Year?
Yeah, same to you?
What can I do for you? Like I was renting a car.
I'm stuck in Calgary, I'm broke, and I have to make it to work in five hours.
Oh my.
I flew here, and I can't afford to come home.
Oh gee.
Yeah.
Guess you had a wild one last night, eh?
I guess.
What do you suggest? Do you have a plan?
I don't know. I guess I've got enough for a bus ticket, but it won't get me there in time.
Hmm. Can you call your work and say you'll be late?
Yeah, I guess.
Well, maybe you should do that.
Yeah, I should I guess.
How are you doing?
Oh, okay. There's not much to do here, cause it's New Year's Day and everything's closed.
Oh dear.
Yeah.
You've made some miscalculations, I guess.
Yes.
Well, I hope everything is okay.
Everything's okay.
Okay. Well, good luck.
Okay. Thank you.
Alright. Bye.
Bye.
I went back to the hostel and gathered my shit. The Greyhound didn't stop at the hostel, which I thought was unfair. I spent a twenty getting to wherever the hell it did stop. The cabbie sensed my trepidation at the encroaching future, the future we'd all just given a new name last night, and suggested I either invest in or get a job working for Atco construction trailers.
I bussed it, a pile of shame. Then I had to take a cab from the bus station to the airport, where I was an hour and a half late for my graveyard shift. Noone really minded my being late. It was New Year's Day, after all. Not much was going on.
