Chapter 9: Rolling Face in the Plains of Abraham

So I got there. Natacha and Alexandre walked up as I exited the concourse. Alexandre was wearing a black redingote drinking from a can of Pabst; Natacha was wearing a nice dress tightened with a belt, laughing into the phone. The first thing I say in my awkwardness after what’s ups and handshakes is “Natacha, you are taller than I expected”—she took it lightly and laughed.

We begin to walk through the streets. In his thick French accent, Alexandre tells me, in fact commands me, to chug the rest of his beer and I toss it empty onto a grate. He is telling me things slowly and drunkenly, walking with his hands in the pockets of his dress pants, and Natacha next to him is frolicking and giggling drunk, cooing to him that the mop on his head needs to be cut. Already, a small unassailable smile came firmly across my artless eighteen-year-old face. I’m here, I tell myself, this is happening.

Alexandre seemed like everything I expected him to be, and as the week went on I watched every single unbelievable fact get confirmed: he really was a dandy who snorted coke as much as he composed classical music, he really did destroy a fountain with sixteen year-old girls, he really was wealthy – not as wealthy as his bragging seemed to suggest, but not poor either –, he really was the magnificent piece of shit I had drunkenly discussed philosophy with online until four AM all of the previous summer.

From the Via Rail station I make my way around the stony walls and canons and quaint smallish buildings that decorate this city, trailing my guides to Rue Saint-Jean, following this street of bars until reaching Le Pub Nelligan’s where I put my bag in a corner and sit with them drinking green, good-tasting Ricard pastis that taste like black licorice. Alexandre then purchases four shots of whiskey for me and swats at Natacha’s hand for innocently touching one; I say “nah it’s fine” and watch Alexandre recline uneasily, staring at Natacha as she takes his guest’s shot. Altogether we purchase a round of Jägermeister shots and drink them down with more pastis. All of this within a couple of minutes, we walk out to a back patio to smoke and talk about Kanye West’s recent comments about Nike (“YOU DON’T HAVE THE ANSWERS” and “I AM SHAKESPEARE IN THE FLESH” and “We all slaves. We all slaves. And ya’ll ain’t experienced nothing right here but a moment from a movie out of Glory […] we slaves to Nike, we slaves to Benz, we slaves to public perception…”) I lean back in my chair, “man I’m in Canada!” Alexandre glares at me: “No, you’re in Québec. Qué-bec, not Canada.”

Out of nowhere some kid comes up to us saying “Hey Alexandre, what’s up?” and complains about the production of last night’s Molière performance. I inspect him, a short kid in a sweater and a flat cap. “This is Finn,” Alexandre said, pointing to me. “A friend of mine from America.” I later found out that Alexandre barely even knew him, and it becomes clear that Alexandre is greatly respected by his peers for his degree of culture, a concept totally unfamiliar to me. We leave with the Molière kid to another bar up the street, order a pitcher of dark beer and sit with it for half an hour, discussing the autobiographical nature of Notes From Underground and Crime and Punishment till one in the morning. Eventually the kid got up to go so we made our way back to Alexandre’s apartment. On the way a group of girls coming out of a bar asked us how to use “lmfao” in a text so I told them it was a strong phrase and to use it sparingly; the guy with them asked me if I was American and told me he liked the “Bostin redsowks.” I told him, “oh not me, I’m from New York. New. York.” pointing to myself, “we don’t like them. We like the Yankees” “Oho no?” and as we all left and departed I noted with astonishment that people actually talk to each other here, unlike in New. York.

Alexandre showed me the guest bed I was to sleep in with a flourishing disclaimer that he allegedly had coke-fueled group sex with his friend and two German girls in it a few months before. I shook my head and fell asleep.

* * *

I woke up. Alexandre had gone to class, his last exam of the year. Only Natacha was there. I took a shower and put on fresh clothes, a few layers since it’s still cold in Québec in early May. I made fun of my worried mother over a bagel with peanut butter, and Natacha laughed with sympathy for her. While I waited for her to get ready, I explored the apartment. A Joan Miró painting hung framed on the wall of the kitchen; volumes of Plato, Aristotle, and Parmenides in Greek lined the shelves in the living room, and a glass table bore the complete works of Nietzsche in German—his father had completed a PhD in Philosophy in Europe, “but now he just works as a city planner and watches hockey,” Alexandre had told me. Natacha and I headed out to exchange my cash for Canadian dollars, and with them we bought cigarettes, wine, and apple cider. The first legal alcohol purchase of my life: Natacha explains how all the Québécois youth had been going to bars since they were 16 and had built up tolerances. Alcohol is an intrinsic part of life there, to the point that it’s relatively normal to drink wine during the day—I picture them like French Russians, piling on the alcohol like blankets to face the cruel weather.

* * *

“I doon’t understand how she could do dat every day.”

Natacha and I were drinking the wine and hard cider on the Plains of Abraham, the field where the forces of New French, under the command of Montcalm, lost a decisive battle and effectively sealed their fate to be subjects of the British Crown. We were out of sight, down the hills, surrounded by the leafless trees of Canadian spring. Noon had just passed, the only people around were old couples and mothers with their children sitting or walking around the scene. The water, darker and bluer than what I was used to, rocked in front of us, flashing light from the sun. Natacha was lighting a cigarette with her mini lime green Bic lighter, seriously concerned about the banker we had seen earlier when I was converting my money.

“Dat must be terrible. She spends her whole laife working dat horrible job and is still unhappy.”

I looked at her and at the black dress she was wearing, the lime green Bic lighter in her hand, the dead leaves, weeds, and trees. She was narrowing her eyes about this banker, strange eyes recalling something Asian but obviously not; she was Mexican and French, which combined for a beautiful face that usually smiled but was currently lost.

“I don’t know what I want from de future but dere must be some way to avoid a job like dat.”

“The one lady spends her days behind that counter and the old one we saw coming here lays on her lawn chair on her fifth-floor balcony, chilling, probably drunk,” I said.

“Ahahahah, yas, she is living de good laife.”

“Nothing but the best.”

“Nothing but de best! Nothing but de best for us, ahahah.” She drank from the bottle of cider. “Dat was so funny when it popped, ahahah.” Before, she began to open the bottle and paused, forgetting to resume, and a minute later the cork exploded our conversation and we sat laughing heavily at the light.

We were getting hungry so we killed the cider and got going. A little gold ornament shined as I walked up the steep; I ripped it off the twigbranch and brought it with us.

She asked if I had a girlfriend. I said that I had just gotten out of something of a relationship and told her the story of Jess. She listened quietly with an expression of disconcertion. Halfway through my speech I realized the sad look on her face: I lessened detail and gradually halted speaking, feeling that I had somehow hurt her. We crossed the street absorbed in inner dialogue; neither of us spoke but we discussed rapidly with the newly-formed internal images of each other.

“Dat is so sad.”

“Yeah well… there is a lot I’m not telling you either—,” here I lapsed into memory with bitterness rising to my mouth, bitterly thinking, closing my eyes self-ashamedly but opening very soon after with self-certainty. In and out we spun around confidence; we danced around respect for those we held close.

“Dat is just… so horrible. Her laife. Why did we fall in love with dees people?”

“I don’t know.”

* * *

“I love dat house,” Natacha said, pointing to color-paint walls and poles of a Victorian. “De person that lives in dere has been there for so long, but when she leaves I want to move in and have fifteen kids in it. I want to be a mother. I loove children.”

“Really?” I said with hopeful affection. How different she was from Jess. “I could see you being the best mother,” said with a laugh.

“Ahahah, yees, I’d love to raise fifteen wonderful beautiful children. Really I do. But not for a looong time. I can’t drink with keeds . . .”

Near her apartment the wind began to blow and it blew up her dress and an old man watched as she tried to pat her dress back down with girlish laughter and she begged, “Finn, help me!” Laughing, I took her handbag as she fought against the wind to keep her underwear hidden from the old man. I found her sweat jacket inside the bag and gave it to her which she took and zipped tight against her flailing dress . . .

* * *

I poured wine into a jelly jar while Natacha was in the bathroom, leaving a glass for her on the counter before stepping out to the screened-in back porch to smoke a cigarette. First Natacha, then Alexandre, back from his exam, joined me in drinking from the wine. We sat down in the plastic chairs out on her porch and the midday sun soaked the porch in weightless light as light came flickering forth periodically from the flicking lighters. Natacha’s MacBook lit up on Alexandre’s lap after he turned it on to show me a song.

I realized that Alexandre and I so far hadn’t actually talked much. There were the few hours of yesternight, but I spent the entirety of today with his girlfriend which he was now asking about.

“It was fun,” I replied, “we bought some cider and drank it in a big field, the..?”

“Plains of Abraham.”

“Plains of Abraham. Oh, I was supposed to ask what that is all about since Natacha didn’t remember.”

“That’s where we fought and lost our final battle against the Anglos. Daym mayn Natacha how didn’t you know that.”

“I was also talking to her about our conversations on art; the acceptance of mediocrity; saying how I’d love to make ornamented unironic stuff but that the subject matter is a problem.”

“I don’t think it’s a problem. I’m writing a play in Alexandrine meter about the Book of Judith, which is, ah—"

“Yeah I remember you saying that. Sounds nice, but ah don’t you feel it would go against your comments about the pomposity of writing about mythology in modern times?”

“No, because uh, I’m not religious. And the play is about humans interacting, mankind. And their culture. It doesn’t have to do with religion, it doesn’t enter religious metaphysics.” He opened YouTube. “You’ve got to listen to this. Do you know Peggy Lee?”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of him.”

“Well, clearly not, since it’s a woman.” The audio loaded. “These are the most beautiful lyrics I’ve ever heard, I think.”

“These?”

“Yeah.”

I leaned forward and listened closer. It was “Is That All There Is”? A piano, and then a beautiful feminine voice speaking over it:

“I remember” “when I was a little girl” “our house caught on fire…”

Strings

“…watched the whole world go up in flames…”

“and when it was all over I said to myself, is that all there is to a fire?”

“Is that all there is?”

And seamlessly transitions from prose to poetry and jazz:

“Is that all there is?

If that’s all there is, my friends

Then let’s keep dancing;

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball.

If that’s all there is –––”

Zarathustra scene’d back to me; the last seal:

“are not all words made for the heavy?

Do not all words lie to the light?

Sing, speak no more!”

The death of God. The scene with the higher men drinking, casting all of it onto life, wishing for life’s eternal return. The dancing. The inversion of tragedy. The seizing of futility. The knowledge of joy.

“Is that all there is to love …?”

The conquering of religion,

“If that’s the way she feels about it,

Why doesn’t she just end it all?

Oh no, not me, I’m not ready

For that final disappointment,”

and the conquering of nihilism – nothingness is an incorrect response, life is the thing.

“If that’s all there is my friend, then

Let’s keep dancing!”

Sing, speak no more!

“Let’s break out the booze and have a ball.”

Dionysos against the crucified.

I sat trying to convey the impression. Completion, strong and simple, resounded in me. There it was: the conclusion of meaning in a beautiful song of forty lines, it was light, it was dancing. No need for discourse; to trace conclusions was enough. The only important thing was the transition from the prose:

Is that all there is?

to the poetry:

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep daaancinggg.

“Lo, there is no above and no below! Throw thyself about, – outward, backward, thou light one! Sing! speak no more!” No truth, no distress. No seriousness, no answers. We stepped over the grave of pale thought.

* * *

It’s night and we’re in Alexandre’s apartment and I shake his friend Armand’s hand and we have some food then Henri comes in and I shake his hand he makes a clicking noise with his mouth and says “ey man I’ve finally met chu” so I leave with him to the backyard and drink some vodka while smoking cigarettes discussing our planned trip to Louisiana this summer and he’s down as fuck and he’s filled with life and says how happy he is to meet me in hushed serious tones and Alexandre comes out filled with life and Natacha shows up and Armand trails behind laughingly and now it’s celebration with these Québécois kids on Friday night dancing with the joire de vivre lights while New Jersey sat in a living room depressed.

Natacha left for the weekend we said our goodbyes and went to Pub Nelligan. Henri pissed on a building wide open along the way and we’re debating when to take the MDMA, tonight or tomorrow morning. Henri and Armand are saying tomorrow but we kinda wanna do it right now and slowly they’re convinced for right now so we go about the operations of right now, namely: (1) go to two more bars and get drunker; in one of those bars a sixty-year-old man put a condom in my pocket and said “Si tu as la chance!” (2) buy two more capsules from the kid by the side of a convenience store (3) go to Alexandre’s apartment where the other two capsules are stashed in an envelope that’s hidden between the pages of a Flammarion edition of Kant’s Fondements de la métaphysique des mœurs, taking them out with haste and pop all of them.

We rush out of the house with leftover nerves, from the dim of his room to the dim of the stairwell out to the streetlight then streetlight then the whole damn city all lit up looking like a huge French village preserved in time mixed with ugly brutalist buildings and beautiful old mastery interposed with beautiful American buildings this city has it I say to myself scraping the insides of my coat pockets fastly and greedily as I follow them gliding a huge staircase that leads downtown with lights and traffic visible out in the distance but right now it’s just streetlights orange and room lights up in buildings and plane lights overhead phone lights cropping up from shadows and as everything lights up the city becomes a weightless revolving cluster of stars and forms black barely giving support to my beating chest and clammy skin. We’re headed for a party that sounds sketchy and unlikely since Alexandre and Henri seriously fucked up there last time, got someone angry, something like that, either by taping seed packets to a cat or punching the ceiling in? but we go anyways and on the way realize we forgot to drink water.

Car lights bus lights billboard lights shining on Verizon ads MACY’S Henri runs into a pizzeria and gets denied a cup of water so drinks from their bathroom faucet instead, movie theater flashing, flashing lights and stoplights flash from red to green and everyone’s moving until we get to the shitty apartment the party’s at: the door opens and is shortly slammed in their faces. They knock again. The big guy, friend or boyfriend or brother of the fifteen-year-old chick who’s hosting it, looks real surprised to see them again until they ask for cups of water. The door slams then reopens a few minutes later with two cups that we immediately down as kids watch from the windows with confusion and curiosity. We leave the party and park lights back into the main street with cab lights and Jeep lights and Audi lights and now all this brightness is looking awesome and the awesomeness that I feel wisping and pinching in my chest but everyone else claims to not feel it yet so I keep quiet. Armand and Henri meet these girls and talk for what feels like fifty minutes as Alexandre and I pace around them. I’m feeling really happy, I have to admit, not only because of the drugs in my head, at least not completely, but also at the idea of the dancing and lightness of life and the physical light bouncing around and the world’s beauty and the beauty of tragedy and for once I am feeling like an activist against misanthropes and for once I think I’d choose torture over suicide just to see the lights of life a little longer.

We keep going and saying yes, I feel it now in variations, continuing uphill, rising with the pleasure, back upwards to higher airs, the uptown staircase between his apartment standing mountainous to us slugs out of breath, stopped to lie panting ere climbing the fucker.

Flowers and shrubs, tugged around by the breeze, reflect the streetlight’s orange glow, making bright sunlight out of our rest area otherwise dark in the warmevening of winter’s thawing. Two steps at a time. The faraway alarms and horns soften gently as we ascend, going forth, t’wards the wealthy, away from the poor – remarks often heard from these three, “de poor fucks live back downtown,” we're already sweaty and by the time we get inside to his father's apartment we are sweating a shitload. In the middle of conversation Alexandre takes off his shirt: I see that as a great idea and do the same and the other two take theirs off as well. Now we're sitting around Alexandre’s kitchen table shirtless talking extremely, like each word is a rush and every sentence structure produced is an injection. I observe how thin they are, as thin as me, and they say “people are like that here; it's normal” – my entire life I've been worrying about being too skinny compared to the fat fuck modern Americans around and I am dumbfounded that I could let such a thing affect me, especially now that these people view it as something that only comes to people like them and should be praised and we start discussing the future in near-yelling volumes, talking about our travels to come, celebrating that we’re done with high school, misquoting from various books, slamming the table when another makes a good point – Henri grabs a pen and paper and starts writing down everything Alexandre and I say. The gold ornament from the twigbranch catches my attention and I begin playing with it like crazy, focusing with ease on both its glitter and Henri’s intense droning. Alexandre starts writing while discussing something with Armand, Henri and I hone in on our own conversation about Jack Kerouac and the Beats, “so hilariously absurd this is” I think to myself, rolling face and ranting about life, history, art, the fear of sociality––

“Why aren't we like this all the time?” Henri asks.

“Because humans are afraid of each other,” I say.

“Really man, you think so? Hmmmm dass interesting, yeah man!”

Mumbles, shouts, etc.

“But I think I like dat, dat dere are social constraints, you know?”

“I don’t like that,” I say. “I wish to yell hello!, I wish for no boundaries among mankind.”

“Really? Das something. You should really read Rousseau.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, you would love him.”

I grab a pen as he is speaking:

A Bacchanal.

We gather 'round Alexandre’s banquet

The sweat comes pouring out;

Ascending ecstasy!

More sweat comes pouring out.

The Geist’s thick barriers are gone,

The wild taking-off of skin's protect,

And now the primal's uncovered face

Is clashed against the mind,

Finely-structured once

Before in times of sober fright.

Bacchus, madness, headless joy!

Lightning of soul

Lightning of soul

Lightning of soul, create, destroy!

Kanye, madness, headless joy!

Lightning of soul

Lightning of soul

Lightning of soul, create, destroy!

Henri and I drank so much water out of fear that we'd get holes in our brains that we had to puke it up. Midsentence I feel nauseous and run to the bathroom—I puked pure water. Henri vomits for real which Alexandre said “is some fucked up shit.” In one movement we carry our discussions and chairs with us onto the balcony which hovers just ten feet above the street. Alexandre rests his leather Oxfords on the railing and picks up his guitar, gently playing over the city. The fresh air calmed us down and we sat in total ease, talking into the night, chainsmoking and drinking cups and cups of water, listening to music and looking at paintings. I took the laptop from Armand and looked up Vivaldi’s cantata Cessate, Omai Cessate.

And as we're listening the overreaching calmness edges me in with harpsichord as wallpaper and the strings collapse onto me as otherworldly drapery as the whelming poet comes availing, singing beautiful songs; Andreas Schöll enters:

Cessate, omai cessate

rimembranze crudeli d'un affetto tiranno

(Cease, now on cease

Memories of cruel tyrannical love)

But in the ecstasy the lyrics’ incomprehensible Italian flows as understandable emotion, bitter and entering the mind as raw and witnessed moments; wrapped I am in strong and wide-ivory simplicity, part sublime and part formless excess, slowly bridging our purposeless materialism to the religiosity of the music's epoch; but the music is secular, so both us in the godless current and them in the ascended street-heavens meet at the angle of our intoxicated jollity, going beyond the crypts of our humanity to taste ripe Life, Who is nevertheless no stranger to sorrow; likewise the harpsichord chomps, chomps and chomps and the violin dredges up weariness like charred bodies releasing scent; Armand Henri and I silently enjoy while Alexandre speaks quietly, poetically mumbling about Vivaldi's compositional technique and that thing Vivaldi is talking about, that thing all men feel grabbing them from behind, forcing us to cast gazes into our pasts, wishing the lovers we've known wouldn't tear at us so violently. Schöll sings the aria, telling us that those who love will feel endless pain, without cure or hope, until their deaths on Acheron’s black shore, shouting like Bacchants—we nod in acceptance.

The street is empty, the parking space in front is vacant; the only noise occupying the space comes from us and our music which sparks unevenly from the shitty laptop speakers laying between my legs.

While Alexandre strums his guitar I type "charles mingus black saint" into the YouTube search bar and click the first result, the full album. I push the laptop forward and turn the volume up and say "this shit is awesome" as the drumtaps begin their rattling. Henri to my left leans to the screen and says "yeah man, is dis liek Coltrane?" And I respond with a nod and add "but better," memories from my Coltrane-praising jazz musician friends surfacing and Hoff telling me, against the bad audio of the mini-van speakers and the loud heat coming from the air, "I don’t really... like this" and Foz agreeing with him and Poco saying "would you just listen to it?" The saxophone gears up gradually against the percussion, another horn sounding back, then the percussion fully kicks in to be overridden by a range of horns; these sounds drowned by a louder and more tragic brass voice, Baritone versus Schöll, creating images relatable to what's before us: people abusing power, arrogance, heartbreak, society's clumsiness, business’s faults, the undeserved pain we receive—all this unified into the famous shaking howl of mankind, a loud WHY, an Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani writhing atop the back-and-forth swaying mass, calling out for someone to tell us that it'll be alright; not to remove the pain, but to assure us, to stop our wandering, to put us into fearless dream. Armand asks, "Ho, what is this?" so I give him the computer.

I lean back in the chair placing my legs on the railing, letting the rapids of energy lap at my skin and empty out my pores; gray-brown darkness shifts against my eyelids' backdrop pumping with completion and thanks unto the earth, heart-beating in joy to issues brought up by my new friends sitting around me, waves of nerves crashing to the ascending horns and drums which all of a sudden pull away and I stop breathing but it comes back fast and I begin to pant like I couldn't breathe as fast as the art demanded; it gives up and howls more, wearier, —and Alexandre changes the song.

Oh, the mountain top

Oh, the visions stop

Like a birdcall from the murk this voice begins oooohing about the human race and love; I am told of a Canadian band called Timber Timbre, “This is good shit, they are from Montreal,” he says proudly, which reminds me that I am actually in the woods, momentarily interrupted by civilization, that all around are running streams and crooked logs and that this voice is coursing throughout it oooohing as the wilderness’s headmaster. I am placed back on the ground, among my fellow men and women, experiencing the same things they do and letting our heaviness out in birdcalls, our muses being the mercilessness of existence, and the slamming repeats like work is being done and is halted for gentle strumming and waiting, the singer reflecting on his upbringing with the girl he loves, and he returns to conclude he is merely one of God’s many creatures: “I love you like a mountain.”

A girl they knew came by and started talking to them from the street within arm’s length. I lean back and smoke with Alexandre, listening to him talk about his life, and I am at once loving everything he’s saying and eyeing the girl at the railing thinking how cool it is that the people of this city talk to each other as one large group, as if the people living here are actually people, folks with the desire to know each other, endless roamers of curiosity and experience, festive patrons and matrons who want joy, events, blessedness and especially unified frenzy; where everything is alright, where there are no unfixable worries, where everything will be just fine is sang like commercial jingles—and we run out of cigarettes. Between us we probably had forty cigarettes at the start of the night. They were all gone. Fucking shit. At three in the morning a group of huge-pupiled, cool sweat-drenched, black coat-wearing shady motherfuckers descend upon a convenience store so Armand can buy a pack to relieve the MDMA-induced nicotine addiction equivalent to a lifelong chainsmoker.

I am smoking one of Armand’s cigarettes and listening to him struggle with his English, telling me about the buildings around, explaining the governmental ones, what they serve, and I really am loving how historical and political Armand seems to be, maybe not in profession yet but in spirit, and I am trying to take it in but this infinite pulsating is causing me to burn inwardly and I feel like saying to him, yes keep going, get it all out, please! tell me everything, faster! why the stumbling? But he breaks off and suggests to us all a plan, yes! finally, Armand’s action! So we started walking to his place. I faintly remember walking through a park but it’s all hazy in that pitch black vague midnight.

The plan was to go on the roof and look over the whole city; the building was enormous and it'd be beautiful at the top. We walked up the staircase, panting and heaving. Alexandre and Henri, slowly climbing the stairs in exhaustion, me following Armand who finished his lecture. I began playing “In the Flowers” by Animal Collective from my phone full blast: the MDMA made this unreal, almost too much, a thick amount of euphoria, the music, which normally sounds like magic, felt absolutely transcendental, Panda Bear’s voice like a fairy between the noises which sounded like if swerving lighthouse beacons made sound; I could feel the tilting sound physically, leapt from tilting-beacon harp—just after the intro which sounds like pumping goo; the birth of a creature, a real living organism and its first breaths, it’s beyond music—building, building, then the line, if I could just leave my body for a night—ENDLESS beauty coated with ECSTACY and SHRIEKING pitches, magical with joy, slamming onto my head and numbing until I couldn't feel my feet, couldn't feel the stairs—I only wanted to get on the roof as soon as possible and rejoin the world to see the whole city glistening there underneath me, but with me; there we could be dancing, no more missing you when I’m gone, O, if only I had someone I could feel this way for! Life, if only Thou would join together what is beautiful! to hold you in time, –––

The roof never happened: once we got to the top Armand finds the door locked. He messes with it for a minute, and then heads back downstairs. “Holy shiet mahn,” Henri says with his French accent, the vowel drowned out by the last letter, “that music was fucking crazy. Let me play it with earphones.” He sits there stunned for a minute. “Alexandre, you must hear this shit. 2009 you said? Five years ago? Goddamn.” Alexandre’s eyes opened wide. He was sitting against the wall with his knees up, his arms over them, linked by his hands, and his eyes open, and his face was his mind taking in the music.

Armand came back to tell us he couldn’t find the key and that we might as well go into the apartment. We followed him down the stairs and into the tight hospital-like hallway. The inside was that of an American living room and kitchen linked together and placed in Québec. There were two bay windows, each big enough to sit on: after Henri went into the bathroom, thinking he was going to puke but making it, he sat in the windowsill on the right, and Alexandre sat in the one beside. They couldn’t see each other but I could see them, sitting on a chair in the middle of the room. Somehow the conversations led to Albert Camus and his books – I think Henri was studying him in school. He was asking Alexandre and me questions about it, saying that he didn’t quite understand the meaning of L’Etranger.

“Well,” I began, “I view the book in three parts. The first part is where Meursault is submerged in pure, passive nihilism. He simply floats by, he wills nothing, he has no passions for life; when his girl asks him if he wants to marry her, he says, “If that will make you happy,” or something along those lines… and then tragedy occurs, the killing of the Arab, the sun gets in his eyes and you have the opening of the second part, which forces him to enter into Life considered seriously, expressed in the book physically by the court system, by the priest figure telling him to believe in God, by the trial itself being morality.”

“Mmmh, yes yes, I agree, indeed. It es all very perfectly placed, indeed!” Henri roars.

“and then, and then,” I am stroking my hair like mad, “and then the third part is the last two pages of the book, really the last paragraph, where he claims that his mother must have wanted to “live it all again” and “opens himself to the gentle indifference of the world, so much like a brother really” – the world is without good and evil, just like him, but recognizing this familial relation gives him strength, the absurdity of existence and the absurdity he has within come together in joy, and he finds the courage to affirm his fate, he wants the people to hate him, he desires what he has been absurdly forced into and greets it with a Falstaffian laugh.”

“Mmmh ok ok,” Henri scratches his chin and shakes his head up and down, “I get dat and I liek it. “

“Mmmh yes,” Alexandre says, “basically, uh, what Camus is, is de affirmation of life tru its meaninglessness, the pissing into the void because he can. But, my main question for Camus is – why humaneesm? I have asked dis to soo many peepal and dey can’t answer me dhat.”

“Humanism?”

“Yes, as he expresses in his political side, like in L'Homme révolté, um,” he looks at me, “de man in revolt”?

“man of the revolution”? suggests Henri.

“I’m not sure I know that one.”

“Okay, well, anyways, in dis and oder works he pushes for humaneesm and I do not understand it. Why does absurdeety declare mankined and not just his Own? Whence cometh humanitee?”

“Oh, it’s called The Rebel in English,” I remember.

“Oh mayn, Da Rebel?”

“Haha!”

“Dat’s retarded,” Alexandre says happily, grabbing his knees and rocking.

“Okay,” I say, skipping over the first of what will be Alexandre’s many jabs at English translation, “I see what you’re saying. Perhaps because Camus simply wants to—I mean, Camus is not held to a philosophy of rules. I don’t even think Camus is a philosopher.”

“Neidher do I,” Alexandre replies. “He is just a writer. He is a poet.”

“So because he does not adhere to metaphysics, he can do whatever he pleases. It is just him. Embracing the absurd leads to nothing other than his own enterprise.”

“Dhen why de fuck should we give a shit about what he commands of us politically? I don’t give a fuck about humaneesm and the misery of the mob.” I stare at his aristocratic posture with intrigued apprehension.

“Dis man you are talking about, who is he?” Armand asks.

“Alberr Camu, he was a French writer from de twentief century, who said, uh,” and Alexandre went off into three or four sentences in French.

“Ah, d’accord.”

“But yeas, Finn, I agree wit you, I have said dis before in fact, dhere is no metaphysics in Camus’s works, it is just fiction. Camus, as an artist himself, explains himself by saying the artist’s vocation is to “open prisons and give a voice to the sorrows and joys of all.””

“Yes, and by saying he is not a philosopher, I don’t mean this negatively. I mean the opposite; he knows it’s all over. Now it is only art, and man gazing into the absurd.”

“Dis is just, ooh,” Armand says, “just, beautiful, you kno, profownd. To look past eet all, all de horrors, … I find dis awesome, trulee.”

“Yeah… but you must understand it has no philosophical substance at all,” I say flatly.

Alexandre and Henri laugh at this. Everything had been said and we were getting restless, so Alexandre and Henri lead Armand and me out the back door, out under wet scaffolding with blue tarp hanging and swaying off the sides, into the calm, quiet street. It turned out that we had been inside for close to an hour: the early morning sun was tinting everything blue; the night was over and our highs were waning, causing the come-down depression molly is known for. It hadn’t hit yet, so as we slowly returned to Alexandre’s place walking on the wet streets, it rained while we were indoors, a gloomy, sobering mood came over the empty city and I think I felt what those 19th century French must have felt every day of their lives.

We resumed our spots on Alexandre’s balcony. Henri likened us to “no good stoop kids” as Alexandre’s father pulled up in a silver Jeep and parked in the spot before us.

“‘ello boys,” he said in English.

“hello” “hi” “hey” “hello.”

He got out and opened the hood, pouring in some antifreeze.

“Do you know how to do dat?” Alexandre asked me.

“Nah,” I said. “I don’t know too much about cars.” I thought about my old Mercedes at home, how I had to get it checked for its stalling problem. I wondered about the road trip ahead.

His father closes the hood and walks inside. They start subtly bugging about their pupils, Henri saying he has to go home but “not liek dis,” Alexandre saying he doesn’t want us all to go inside looking fucked up. We actually appeared to be fine, we discovered after looking into the glass, so we went inside but straight to his room and stationed ourselves in various spots. Henri and Alexandre sat down on the mattress together; Henri picked up a book and Alexandre his guitar. Armand slouched on the ground by their feet grinding his teeth back and forth. I looked through Alexandre’s books.

“Yo what de fuck man, your eyes are steel huge.”

“So are yours,” Alexandre replied to Henri.

“Why’d you guys say dey weren’t? I can’t go home liek dis, my parents would question da fuck out of mee.”

“Because eet was light outside so your pupils shrunk.”

By that point I was ignoring them, sitting on the ground looking at my phone, feeling like absolute shit. I asked them if they felt depressed.

“Yeah man, kinda! I feel liek, just sad maybe, cold. Eet’s not good, whatever eet is.”

“No. I never get depressed after molly. But once I popped eet with Natacha and de next morning she said she wanted to kill herself because she felt so awful.”

“Oh shiet,” Henri said.

“Yah, I am feelin dat tooo,” Armand spoke finally after clenching his teeth for ten minutes.

I went to the bathroom to take a piss and saw his father on the way. I politely said hello and he smiled and nodded his head, saying nothing. After looking myself in the mirror for thirty seconds I walked back into the bedroom and realized Alexandre was lying on the ground stoned on ecstasy only a few feet away from the man who raised him. A feeling of disgust appeared in my gut.

“Finn, Finn, do you see dis? look, they point to the blinds hanging in front of the window, do you see liek lines moving around and sheet?”

I stared blankly at the blinds. There was a long pause.

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Not really.”

“How about de lamp? Is dere liek a wire goin around eet or someding?”

“Mmh, nah, not really.”

I look over at his bookcase and remember my 25i trip, seeing the spines twirl in beams.

“Do you see anything weird when you look at those books?”

“Yeah man, I see it,” Henri answers, squinting behind his glasses.

“Yeah, sheet mayn.”

“This drug is half a psychedelic right?” I ask.

“Yees. Near de end of de highs I always trip, eets fucking awesome.”

“I’m tired.”

“Are you Fieen? Well good luck tryin to sleep because you cain’t!”

I lean on the wall and blink a few times. I feel my arms, stroking my skin which feels grimy.

“Is it true you don’t shower as much as Americans?”

“Haha, yah, mayn sometimes I go liek tree days without showering.”

“I shower a lot,” Armand says.

“NO YOU DON’T! Haha what are you saying man,” Henri laughs.

“Dis guy is a dirty peece of shieet,” Alexandre laughs hard, “he never fuckin cleans himself.”

Armand attempted to argue and then gave up. He looked to the floor. I felt pity for him.

“I have to work in liek four hours,” Armand says.

“Ohoh dat fucking suuucks, ahah.”

“Do you have a job Alexandre?” I ask.

“No, never worked in my lyfe and hope I never have to,” he says. I thought of the picture he had on Facebook of him mockingly wearing farmers’ clothes in the countryside.

“Do you Finn?” Henri asks.

“Yeah, I tutor a kid in middle school and before that I worked for a landscaper.” There was a pause.

“Alright guys I’m gonna try to sleep. I’ll probably see you in ten minutes,” I said and headed into the guest room.

* * *

Alexandre, Armand and I are walking to a liquor store. I successfully slept for an hour or two. When I woke, all feelings of depression were gone: I was simply hung over. Henri had left and Armand and Alexandre were sitting on his bed still looking at the blinds when I came into the room. Alexandre had us “plan” our beer run without his dad knowing—his dad doesn’t care about his drinking as long as it’s not before lunch time, he explains. We waited around, “planning” for an hour, and then left to buy a pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. “Henri and I calculated eet and you get de most amount of alcoholl for de cheapest price with Pabst.” His dad drove around the corner as soon as we came back into view; we celebrated by drinking half the pack and then decided we needed to buy rum, which is what we are doing now.

* * *

Armand hung around for the entire day, skipping work. Alexandre and I talked about Homer and Mozart and he pulled up Caravaggio paintings on Google images as Armand sat sleeping in a kitchen chair. “Dhis one is immense,” he said, pointing to the screen. At this point I knew nothing about paintings. “It is Christ being taken by the Roman guards; Judas has just kissed him, revealing him to the Romans and solidifying his treachery; not Christ but the soldier’s armored shoulder, Rome itself, is in the center, shining. Christ looks away, as he is not of dhis world, dhis Rome.” “And his disciple looks away in rapture, away from Rome,” I suggest. “Dhat is John, knowing that Christ prophesied dhis; he is experiencing horror at sin and at Christ’s omniscient divinity.” Alexandre gets up and begins pacing around his kitchen table as I am pacing counter-clockwise; he goes on a rant about how the Iliad is superior to the Odyssey, for while the latter is full of monsters and domestic disputes the former is solely concerned with the interaction between gods and men. I connect this to Joyce’s Ulysses, which despite being modeled on the Odyssey returns to this dynamic found in the Iliad, man on his lonesome path trying to make out the contours of a murky God who has disappeared but whom he spies in the sea and in the chamber rooms of brothels and bars. He nods deeply and affirms. “You must study the Greeks more; so must I; everyone must study the Greeks, we must learn Greek.” I am both fascinated by the sheer amount of knowledge that Alexandre has and his sharpness in discussion—that is the real thing of note. None, I mean none of my friends or anyone else from my hometown cared about this stuff, or even knew about it. The simple lack of the feeling of alienation was enough to satisfy me. I watch him twirling a pen around in his hand, walking in circles contemplating, and then calmly mumble to himself, “yes yes, that’s good, yes, indeed” and pace back to his seat where he jots it down on a piece of paper, throwing it into a pile of papers by his bedside. “Yes, Finn, indeed, we must write, you know dat? We must, we have much to share, yes yes, much to share indeed! But I’m tired so ah, wake me up when you want to go to a bar or somedhing.”

I decided to close my eyes for a little bit.

* * *

We all woke up around ten at night. Armand left after being denied the rum that Alexandre and I bought. It was just Alexandre and I in his apartment alone. As our conversation progressed from concepts to real life we walked out his sliding glass door and sat on the balcony, taking sips out of the rum bottle.

“All metaphysics is bullshiett and you know eet.”

“Yeah but I drift back toward it, feeling a pull even though I know it’s not real… there must be something there, heaven, the ultimate answer, eternal recurrence, whatever it may be.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps because it’s impossible to get rid of its presence.. in order to say anything at all, make any art, you find yourself in any one of several philosophies. No one can escape it. Every person sees the world through a particular lens. To value anything, we play into this.”

“It is not so.”

“How could it not be? Even by saying no, affecting this cool pose toward the idea of meaning, you fall into one of these philosophical frameworks, like how one adheres to an emotion.”

“Okay, okay, list some of dem.”

“Absolutist contempt for the meaning of this world, like Christianity, like Pascal, like Plato.”

“I’d go up to him and punch him in de face.”

“Or the relational transcendence of any one meaning in Leibniz.”

“Punch dem in de face.”

“…and the skepticism in Pyrrho…”

“Punch. Him. In de face.”

“And the lapsed Catholicism in the Decadents.”

“Punch dem.”

“And the lapsed Puritanism in suburbs.”

“Punch dem, man, fuck dem, piss on dem, fuck dem all.”

“I see what you’re saying,” I reply, “But you don’t have any higher reason for living? I mean, neither do I, but, if death awaits us all, no matter what we do, and there is no purpose to any of it, why do anything at all?”

“Dis shit mayn, philosophy, metaphysics, knowledge, eet’s all discourse, eet’s fuckin’ words. Eet is interesting, yes, but if you actually let eet consume you you’ll get all caught up in dis bullshit dat means nothing and you’ll forget about laife. Nietzsche almost has eet, you know, he builds eet all perfectly but den he adds on de eternal recurrence which, if only Gay Science had been written, Heidegger would be right in saying eet’s posed as a psychological test, but we know dat in Zarathustra eet’s impossibly pressed as fact, physical and metaphysical fact… Dis just goes back into eet, back into da System, back into ideology, under Hegel… As Hegel contains all systems of thought, adding on a concept over it all like dis makes eet all philosophy again…”

I am silent for some time. “I like that… and I know you don’t say this with bitterness, because I know you, I know you’re joyful…”

“Yees. Indeed.”

“But weren’t you depressed just a few months ago?”

“No. I mean, not for a long period of time.”

Again I paused. “You said you weren’t raised with religion, right?”

“My parents didn’t tell me about religion until I was twelve.”

“Perhaps, because of my religious upbringing and then the need for meaning after I lost faith, I feel like I need something, to secure the foundations of purpose, you know?”

“Shh, shut up and be quiet. Look around you,” he motions about the balcony and into the street. “Do you see any of what we’re talking about here? This absolute, relationalism, Plato, Leibniz, any of it? No, it’s all in your head. This here” – he waves his arm about – “is what matters.”

I wanted to agree with him, but I wasn’t so sure. Just as there was a light gleeful bell resounding at the weightlessness of this, there was also a deep ominous strain underneath.

* * *

Art and the sublime took over and became the true subject of discussion, with all of philosophy becoming background noise. We made a frozen pizza for lunch so we didn’t have to go out. He read from Longinus’s On the Sublime on his laptop; I read from a translation of his Judith play; he read passages of his translated Montherlant; we listened to baroque and talked about /mu/; we drank coffee mixed with rum for breakfast and wrote; we stayed up all night drinking beer and discussing girls, stories about ourselves and people we knew, the future, as well as literary ideas, the postmodern age, the line between presenting the contemporary and expressing a transcendental artistic aim.

His dad was bringing his girlfriend over so we moved to his mom’s, who was not home; she was spending a few days in Montreal. Her apartment was very well furnished, stately, standing high above the city, eight flights of external stairs to reach her balcony, opening into a landing beside the living room’s large red and black rug that outlined the beautiful couches, the library with Jung and Proust chilling beside each other—she was a community college literature teacher—and the coffee table with a planter on top that enjoyed the sunbeams entering through the large window dressed in whiteish curtains.

On the walk over, I was telling Alexandre more about my thoughts on Zarathustra, having just finished it. “But what do you say to those who’d say it is nothing but the writings of a madman suffering from syphilis?” “That’s bullshit—he didn’t die of syphilis, it was a brain disease he inherited from his father.” At this point Alexandre had rejected the study of philosophy, viewing it as a thing of his past. At that age, kids change their mind so much that each month seems like an millenium. This month, he wanted nothing to do with it, and only wanted to write poetry. “Yet at the same time, I woke up the other morning and decided I want to be utterly contemporary. I hate dwelling in the past among ancient subjects. I want to write like Bret Easton Ellis, about the things that matter to us now, light stuff like social media and parties. But I want to keep to the high caliber of the poetry of that past while doing it.” “You have to reread the book. That’s exactly what it’s about.” “What do you mean?” “To effect this lightness, and keep the high register, you need to understand Nietzsche. I don’t think you’ve understood it.” “That may be so,” he said thoughtfully. “I’ll have to read him again. Maybe I will bring it with me to America.”

* * *

Natacha had left town to babysit her nephew and was now coming back. She would be stopping by sometime tonight to drink with us; Henri as well. Relaxing on the balcony, pointing to the mountains in the distance, suggesting to climb them and receiving a “fuck that mayn,” – we were interrupted by a sighting of Natacha frolicking down the sidewalk at which Alexandre leapt from the chair and leaned over the railing exclaiming “Natacha!” like a child. She waved and was answered by directions to the backyard with a request to go through the back porch’s door and unlock the front that had been closed by accident and remained so by laziness. She greeted us from within the apartment, a hug for him and smile for me and a “so are we drinkeeng tonaight?” for the both of us.

We mixed some vodka with cranberry and came back out to Henri in a big green overcoat scratching his bearded chin with one hand and swinging a six pack of beer with the other, “who’s down ta driiink?” and he sits down with us, Morrison Hotel playing, and describes his previous homecoming to soaked instruments and bed after the night we popped molly: “I came home already feeling depressed because of de, de MDMA, and my parents were waiting for me pissed man, fuckeeng pissed off, telling me that I had left da sun window open in my room and dat all my shit was wet. Man, dat, dat was fuckeeng horrible. So depressing, damn man.” He cracks open a beer, fixing his round glasses, “Ay Alexandre you’re a real deekhead, you know dat man? A real fuckeeng asshole.” Alexandre laughs and gives a sly “why’s dat” and receives “dat letter? Real fuckeeng funny. Dis guy, Finn, dis guy is a real good friend, you know dat? A real good friend! Did he tell you about punching me in de mouf?”

“Ahah, he mentioned it about a month ago.”

“Yees, dis guy, a real good friend, punched me in da fuckeen mouf for hitting him while drinking. So he runs into a room and locks da door for half an hour, hearing me on de odder side try to lure him out so I could beat de shiet out of him. But! But, when he punched me in de mouf it fuckeeng chipped my tooth bad and my mouth was bleeding. So I had to go to da dentist’s. My modder sent him a letter asking for him to pay and guess what he does! He fuckeeng sends back a two-page letter defending his case in de most ridiculous writing claiming that he shouldn’t have to help. He told her to picture if I had done dis to anodder kid.”

“It was imitating Cicero’s prose,” Alexandre said laughing.

Henri wasn’t actually all that mad and went right with the “real good friend” Alexandre into the kitchen to make drinks. I’m chugging from a can of beer and lay down on Alexandre’s bed two rooms away; Natacha comes in saying “Heyy Finnnn,” portentously and I respond with “what’s up?” as she sits down next to me, forcing me to sit up, then whispering into my ear: “so, um, did you and Alexandre liek, have sex wit each odder last night or anydhing?” My eyes widen, thinking waaaait WHAT did you just say? but just say “uh wha? No, no not at all… why…?” She replies that she was “just curious” and hints that he had had bisexual relations before, to which I shrug and sip my beer. Must be some French people shit.

We all go to the front balcony again but Alexandre and Henri leave quickly to go back inside, leaving Natacha and me alone.

“Ah, this week has been so fun… so renewing. I feel changed because of you guys, you know that Natacha?”

“No, why do you say dis?”

“You guys just have such high spirits… you are so different from the people that I know. Everyone at home is so depressed. And the girls, you are so different from the girls I know Natacha.”

“Why?”

“Because you have,… the perfect womanly spirit. You are kind and warm, you have nothing of malice within you. You are gentle as well as humorous, lively yet also calming. You are everything that someone would look for in a girl,” I say, slurring speech, pouring it all out like a novice fool yet with a newfound bravery, pressing on and on.

“Why do you say such nice dhings,…? I mean, no one… has ever said such nice dhings to me.”

“I don’t know, not for any reason, you’ve forced me to say them, I think, and, I would kiss you right now, not out of desire, like wanting to kiss you for the kiss itself, but just to show how much I enjoy the girl that you are.”

“Well, you can…”

Sitting on the balcony railing, I leaned over as she came closer; kissed her on the lips and felt her lips answer. I slightly back away and feel her lips tighten, her bottom-lip sliding underneath mine, her upper-lip entering my mouth. I move my lips on hers, kissing her, once, twice, just like this, kiss again and again, her lips moving with mine, but I slightly pull away in a feeling of regret, to feel her pulling my lips back and I say no, we can’t. I knew Alexandre wouldn’t be angry, since he is who he is, but the shame, the worry, some vague principle stops the impulses and forces me to stand up and move away from her eyes.

I hear voodoo music playing from the living room stereo as I’m going inside, oh shit, they know about Exuma? Walk in to see Alexandre and Henri drinking from these long beer glasses turning the music up and dancing; Natacha asks “Oh Finn you know Exuma too?” and Henri adds “yeah you know de nig music?” There was this casual racism to them which was surprising to me; racism was common among kids whose parents worked for the fire department, but never among people who prided themselves on education. I liked it, it added to the general irreverence for morals. Little did I know what was to come. I reply “of course!” I CAME DOWN ON A, LIGHTNING BOLT Exuma yells and I join them moving to the music, damn!, how did this happen? would I expect this at all a year ago? would I ever have thought that such people exist? four people transformed into native pagans caressing their excess of spirit afore and above the nighttime’d city . . .

We all take a shot then we each chug a beer then we take a shot which I spill on a manuscript “fuck I wanted this” and I pick it up and it’s folding up and limping under the heavy brown rum- splatter which is smearing the black ink and Alxandre shouts and picks up the manuscript “you’re fine mayn, chill, let’s go to a bar” so we put on coats and walk outside but first we wanna have a few beers and smoke a cigarette so I shove my hand into my skinny jean pocket and pull up a pack with a diseased lung on it—"these fucking liberal Canadians and their cigarette packs” Alexandre says, and it’s true, it’s the most disgusting thing in the world to see this shit when you’re trying to smoke that the disgust turns into anger and the anger makes me want to smoke more just to spite them for doing something so stupid—open the top and pinch the butt of a Camel Turkish “gold” (there aren’t Golds in Canada but they sell them as such, I cannot wait to show them real Turkish Golds) and burn the other side then stick it in my mouth as I’m taking a gulp of beer.

We hear footsteps sounding from the stairs and we think it’s a neighbor but it’s too close so maybe it’s Armand but instead of Armand or a neighbor or perhaps even his mother we see two police officers with stern looks on their faces and their hands at their hips inching at their batons like what the fuck are you going to do beat us? but they’re talking in French so I have no idea what everyone’s saying although I know Alexandre must be saying some smartass sarcastic shit by the look of his face and I continue to drink as all of this is going on around me and laugh as if that is equivalent to demeaning the black-dressed cops beside me who are now walking back down the stairs being trailed by mumbling insults given by Alexandre and Henri who explain to me that we were apparently being too loud and that Alexandre’s neighbors across the street that we saw earlier must’ve complained as they apparently always do.

We finish our drinks and move on into the city heading for the bar and things start to blur and haze, I know I’m stumbling on the sidewalks shouting something or other and there are some homeless guys who I look at and wonder how they must deal with the cold and then I know we are in the bar and I know once inside that I sit at the bar and order something but I don’t know what and then I know I’m puking into a toilet, knees on the ground. I hear Alexandre and Natacha somewhere outside in the hallway, Alexandre laughing, Natacha yelling, “Finn, Finn, you done yeet?” “YeAH” I let out. I get up, wash my hands, dry them, then wash my face, looking in the mirror and feeling the great deal of sobering that I just went through and chuckle and stumble into the hallway to see Alexandre alone drinking from a glass.

“Natacha left cause I, eh, heh, slapped her ass, so uh, let’s go mayn!”

“Alright, let’s go, alright. Where’s uh, Henri?”

“He went to a girls place, yes yes.”

He opens the door and we step outside, breathing in the cool evening air.

“So, Finn! Yes Finn. We are traveling dis summer, correct?”

“As long as nothing gets in our way, absolutely.”

I stumble near a bush and save myself from falling.

“Nice, right, good! So, we are using your car? De Mercedes? Ya?”

“Yeah… suuure but it ah, . . . not good shape, you see…”

“Ah who cares dhough? But we’ll look at eet, yes, we’ll look at eet. As I have said, as we have stated many times, many times indeed! we must travel dis summer; Henri, he is an experienced traveler, you know dis? He made a fake ID and trashed a Vegas casino bathroom drunk last summer, climbed around the Grand Canyon, met a playwright, all dis awesome shiet. We must do dese things, you know? He has to come wit us. After you leave, we shall come in June, as we discussed, yes?”

“Yes, yeah, after I graduate, that’s right, you’ve told me, all about Henri traveling,… yes. And that sounds good, you need to meet these Orville kids, man, the kids from my home town… ahah!”

“Mmmh! yes Finn, we need to bring one of your friends, who shall it be? Ah, we will figure dis out in good time, yes yes. But, Finn – we have much to share, you know, I dhink togedher we could make some great shiet, you know? By togedher I mean reflecting ideas, of course, stuff liek dat. You are me on a human level, by which I mean in the most brodherly level without de bullshit of nation and language, you know dis? I cannot relate to anyone as well as I can to you. Very similar indeed, yes… but you are serious Finn, serious, and I can never be serious,… you know how you say dis, dat I shall teach you de Lightness? De weightlessness? De dancing? Well, perhaps!, perhaps you should teach me to have this Seriousness as well.”

Alexandre and I are stumbling around, taking the long way home, and I check my phone to see a missed call from Natacha; I open the voicemail putting it on speaker and hear her, as drunk as possible, asking when we’re coming back since Alexandre’s door is locked, but Alexandre is saying we must meet this girl nearby who he has been bringing us to. I ask with tongue in cheek if she’s single and if I can hook up with her and he tells me I’m way too wasted but that he wants to hook up with her, so we get to her place and knock on the door but there’s no answer.

We need cigarettes so I stop in a convenience store and buy a pack and he goes in after me to buy one and in that meantime I smoke one and look into the sky, smiling, feeling that it is all past me, all the troubles of home, of my parents’ divorce, my father – I don’t want to admit this – who is an asshole, a bad father, a scoundrel as Dostoevsky calls Fyodor Pavlovich, as he has turned out to be, and yet still I love him, love him as I always had, when he was a great father, an overabundant love comes out of me for him: a tear comes to my eye and I wipe it, a tear not from sadness, though it is from emotional woe, but rather a shedding tear, yes, a tear of shedding, shedding the belief that what is rotten and ugly in the world is not ugly and rotten at all; in fact it is beautiful, the world as glory-filled, shedding the horribly despairing feeling that life is somehow a mistake, a worthless mix of mistaken causes and effects…

I stumble, still wiping tears, feeling myself steeled, blooming over with life and art and newfound friends, and ah! What will the future hold! What truly is the matter? What is truly wrong with our lot? Suffering is raised to be the refutation of life… but suffering says nothing! It is part of the whole! Life is whole, the world is interconnected… it is only man who separates life into categories, suffering and joy, when life is in actuality a chain, a city of connection, no one point showing more than the rest, all necessary, all highs and lows together pointing to one sign: that joys needs sorrow, that there is something deeper than joy and sorrow… this deeper thing: all existence, eternity, life itself, the life force that pulls man to heights, that creates all great things, that sails ships to distant lands, that makes wandering spirits into Men again…

Alexandre comes out, stumbles to the left, presses his hair back with his hand and lights a cigarette, puffing on it and fixing his redingote, walking slowly to me with one hand in his coat pocket.

A bum comes up to us as we are walking down the street and says, like a friend would, “you guys wanna buy some Adderall?” Alexandre and I look at each other and at the same time reply “sure” and take out two ten dollar bills and give them to him. We pop it without second thought, and it only took the walk of a block away from his apartment to have us racing with discussion and yesing and ah!s and Natacha is up on the balcony waving down to us and we climb up to her.

After ascending the stairs Alexandre unlocks the apartment and brings Natacha into his room and closes the door. I, ascending in highness, sit down on the couch and fervently search through Wikipedia pages, reading massive articles like it’s sex, shaking my feet around, massaging my head, drumming my fingers on my chest, losing myself in the imagery I’m taking in until I see them coming out of their room an hour later even though it felt like five minutes had passed. Natacha sits next to me and laughs at me vibrating, saying, “yees I dhought Alexandre seemed especially active tonight! Ahahah.”

I laugh with her and talk with her and somehow the conversation leads back to Jess and I explain a woman far to a woman near. When Natacha gets up to go back into Alexandre’s room to sleep with him I begin to write a prose poem:

In Québécois darkness, Want's desire

Possessed the pale descriptions' emergence:

Explaining woman far to woman near

Reclined cognition under history.

The act of sharing love with comely youths

Produces certain truths unreached by whirls

Of heavy words and restless systems; such

Knows more than science, thought, theology.

Aloud she read F. Scott

Increasing the orgiastic joy

And ornamented perfection;

My holding requested her wealthy

Speech’s surrender; I get the throw

Of her arms 'round my bust

And her limp fingers tapping at my skull's back

Ending with her head planted on my collar,

Not to yield to me, nor yielding to her wider fate,

But to piss in the face of such death

For right after she somehow drank back

The stamina that was vacant from her hull

And once again ‘possessed by intense life’

Upheld as a jesting prophet the script

Proclaiming triumphal the height

Our mate contained to all beneath

As with the love of her book's heroes,

A true copy to my possession of this dancer

Who disappeared once I leaned to grab;

Lyrical lines were drunkenly sung

As she osmosed her movement with mine

Capturing the combination’s rung of rhythm and rhyme,

Endless pulsations between our centerpieces

In continuous ecstatic increases;

Joy's little wishsongs were cast from the tower of

Gold suspended above the commonplace

Circumstances of our everyday lives.

The focus of my mind's attention was at once

Her body

And the chants that she had been singing,

Enjoyment gauged by the tone and tempo

Of her reading

Paperback flaps shivering within her

Childish hands above my head;

It came into my life like that,

Running up stairs and laughing

Then running home and leaving;

"All is well" is spoken in stutters,

Shrugging at cries wailing nostalgic

Who as many dissolves to one

Conjecture – Should I hold to every face?

I tryn’t think about that kinda stuff.

Distortion without any real lens, beyond us,

A confused bend, much like the fences that

Wrap around the backyards and roll with the

Changing duration and distance of

Attachment one has with others;

Glimpse then cessation

A familiar transition, sang

Just enough for the rapid

Resurrection of glad decision, a

Prologue for the yanking to

Thorn fine incision:

Sometimes it felt soft

Then slid away like insects leave marks

Chopped and mangled like the

Roads we drove in the dead of winter.

I attempt reflect of regret: “reinvent

My recall to concept,” hope for memories to

Become static,

Absent of pleasure erratic and stimulation artistic;

Heaviest burdens are not questions like

“thought or feeling?”, “body or chants?”,

But the ceaselessly upsetting event of

Departure: that such connections are

Rolled away, all after serving as

Enduring remembrances

Of springtimes and Decemberances

Swept and scattered from the hide of some

Dead lover’s lawn and split apart

By the straightrazor of passage,

A delicate exhibition of scenes locked

With air of heaven eternal, cluttered and

Pockmarked with once-beaming faces -

‘Here, understanding failed to serve this high fantasy,

But now my want and will were turning,

Like a wheel that is turned in equal measure

By the love that moves the sun and the stars’

Beatrice ad astra, a peak, a scurrying thing,

Propelled in front of my vision, backwards in time,

Swirled up into all else that’s receding.

* * *

I never fell asleep that night. I felt the speed all the way through ten AM and spent the morning collecting beer cans scattered around Alexandre’s apartment and reading. He and Natacha were in his room sleeping, I tried my hardest not to make noise but I was so pumped, filled with excitement. I calmed myself, edited my poem; went to the bathroom picked up Bloom’s Shakespeare with my hands shaking, the book his mother kept on top of his toilet because, as he explained with derision against the English, “Shakespeare is meant to help the bowels,” I closed it shortly after due to inattention. I scrolled down the whole poem, questioning how I had written that oddity, attributing its bizarreness to whatever changed in me that weekend. The poem speaks: beauty receding from me; I cherish it through memory.

I spent about an hour editing the poem in between composing nonsensical tweets with only one not saved as a draft. I stood up and cast a grin on the scene. The light of daybreak’s sun had burst through the window and painted the room in golden light, suspending floating dust with its fingers; the new brightness washed away the thoughts of yesterday from my brain, and slowly I approached this work of light where my eyes felt gladdened by the sun, gradually discerning faint light skirting off faraway buildings, light of the disappearing moon, glimmering light still making its way over the far mountains on the horizon. Québec City, now waking under the heat, has a certain atmosphere of light celebratory ritual, a mass of life for those who’ve tunneled through wintered moors and wish to ascend the newfound steep; looking around it from high uptown, moments of such high spirits…, and there were Alexandre and Natacha coming from their room yawning and stretching, myself unmoved at the window.

“How’d you guys sleep?”

“Mmh we slept good! Do you want breakfast Finn?”

They got dressed. Before breakfast, which I didn’t have anyway, we went to his back porch and drank some rum and beer and the Death Grips’ song “Hacker” played off his laptop. Post-Christian shit. I was getting a little nervous about missing my train but decided against stressing, as Alexandre kept saying: “everything was fine and everything had always and will always be fine.” Post-chicken-or-the-egg-addiction shit. We locked up and followed the back deck’s stairs down into a neighbor’s yard which we cut across. Natacha asked to see what I had written after I explained how I spent my night, so I gave her my phone. I was walking with her, asking her about her ex-college (our destination) and why she had dropped out. Sink or swim, who fucking cares. Now on a busy street, Alexandre slowed down and lit a cigarette.

“Last night was great. Do you remember punching me in the kitchen?” he asked.

“Yeah, and it wasn’t hard—I just had to ‘cause you were being a faggot, and I was trying to convince you to read the Norse.”

“I know the Norse.”

“Well you need to like them.”

“No, they were pieces of shit with no art.”

I exhaled, giving up; there was no use in arguing after a week like this.

As time ran out, everything slowed down; worries were evened out by trust, and happiness absorbed both. The world became peaceful again. I admired society as we walked through her: the people working for a good life, the children learning about each other in the parks, the big Victorian house where Natacha would have her fifteen babies all lit up by the sun. Everyone seemed to be in tune with the same acceptance of life that I was slowly learning to take hold of and I began to feel like I was part of it rather than a pale outsider. The college was in front of us. Young men and women lay in love in the grass in the shade of the spreading trees, smiling at each other, getting ready for the warmth of the summer. Gladly I held the door open and followed my friends into the academic building, quiet, its books being closed and locked away until autumn. Alexandre left Natacha and me to talk to his professor. Along the way to the library Natacha bought a wrap, asking if I wanted any as we walked up the stairs, to which I replied “no” since I had no appetite.

“Mmh, you’re just like Alexandre.”

“What do you mean?”

““Oh I don’t need food, just beer and cigarettes. I’m on a liquid diet dude,” ahahah.”

“I’m not usually like this,” I said and laughed. “I’m exhausted from this bastard.”

“He’s too crazy, I really fear for him, you know, laike, I don’t want him to ruin his laife or himself…”

In the computer lab we tried to log onto five different computers to print out my new tickets and all of them weren’t getting to the print screen. The one that finally worked told us that she had no money left on her school card, and while slightly panicking she realized that we spent it all by logging onto the different computers and laughed about it, easing the worry. She walked over to some kid stationed next to the printer and asked him in sweet French with big eyes if she could use his computer for a second. He replied “oui” and backed away quickly, motioning her to his spot, only to see me jump into the chair and open my Gmail account. I printed everything, grabbed it out of the machine, hot under my grip, told him “thanks” in frank English, and left praising in a faux-Catholic hymn “thanks be to God for Natacha.”

I sat alone at the students’ coffee house waiting for both of them to return. It was noon by the time Natacha came back from seeing a friend and five past twelve when Alexandre was finished. So with haste I said by goodbyes to Natacha.

“Goodbye, Natacha,” I said with the warmest feeling and hugged her. “I guess I won’t be seeing you this summer then, but we’ll figure something out.”

“Bye Finn, yes, we will see each other again. Not-ting but the da best! Ahahah.”

Slowly Alexandre and I realized just how short on time we were. We quickened our pace as he told me about his professor’s theory that Oedipus Rex contained every tragedy ever made, and his other theory that American baseball represented the American Revolutionary War and football the American Civil War. I asked if there was evidence of this. “No, eet is an intellectual game you see, he says things like this and it gets published because it is interesting.” And so on and so on and I let his words fall on my ears listening instead to the singing birds and passing cars and watched life glowing, everyone with something to do, hurrying to catch something.

Then we were running through the streets with my heavy bag. I took out my wallet; no Canadian dollars. I spent it all. No bus. By the time we passed his apartment there were only twenty minutes left, so we began to sprint, trading the bag back and forth to bear the weight. The sun beating down on my eyes; my stomach had nothing but beer in it, my lungs ridding smoke, the bag pulling at my shoulder; I warded off any considerations other than getting there. All too absurd, all insanity, insane wonderful vitality.

I missed my train by five minutes. The next would depart in two hours. Alexandre asked if I wanted to go back to his apartment instead of waiting alone. I told him to go back without me. We shook hands, “see you in a month” he said, and walked away.

The train ride back to Montreal was sleepy but by no means dreary. As if paralyzed, my body refused the slightest movements; my eyes swiveled against my stiff face, looking without thought. My mind refused to read. If there was thinking at all, it was only a series of solemn conclusions submerged in full lightheadedness. I have been baptized… yes… a “decadent” baptism this has been… I’ve had the spirit of… youth, and of life, revealed to me, through that city, through him, through his friends…. I’m now concerned not with whys… only earth... As I sat grinning firmly out my window, watching civilization fade into endless farmland, spanning for miles between mountains, rich with soil and old with history, I could only feel the blessedness that is life, how wonderful it is to be part of such a thing, how wonderful that the farms of Québec merge without blinking into the east coast of the States, where I call home.