Coming at the world riding up the 98 to Whistler with Vandy. There are BC Transit guys conversing about an arrested BC Transit driver who was drunk and beat up his girlfriend.
We’ve prepared for a party, Whistler-style.
Credentials. Tickets. Wallets (with credit card still intact). DnB Nor hat. Some pocket-sized recreation. A flask. Money. Papers.
Love to Ernie and Lynn L. for the birthday present of Men’s 4-Man Bobsleigh tickets … all as part of the plan, thoughts to action and a letter to them soon; perhaps some cookies.
Nick and I are both trying to get a feel for what will go down, this is nearly impossible. Things start well.
Prepare for re-living your 22nd birthday experience; I’ll opt myself in for comparison.
We purchase our first .375 of Canadian Club Whiskey (the last time I legally use my credit card) from the BC Liquor Store … cross the hall to purchase a mix; found embodied by Kiwis speaking a “language I don’t understand,” I tell them, to start our flirtatious conversation.
The pretty Kiwi feigns being offended by being called pretty; she’s flattered, set’s out the cosmos for the night when we casually ask where she’s headed for the night.
“Merlins, in the Upper Village, a bar” she says.
“What will I be buying you there?” pushing things while I can while the checkout line isn’t busy.
“A Lemon & Paeroa (L&P),” (she cannot spell paeroa, so she calls her Kiwi friend over for assistance) who also introduces “rangimarie” (peace) & “aroha” (love), “kia ora” (hi!) to my vocabulary. Most excellent.
Globalization in action at a cash register in Whistler, BC.
Some Alaskans on a bench.
Further up the Stroll we go.
Fire and Ice Remix Show, the announcer’s been working at it, (“I could draw you a graph but that would be boring”) as he tells the stoked crowd about the linear relationship between the love shown to the team of riders flying through the flames and the crowd’s reaction.
B.Traits is playing, and things have been set in serious motion. Vandy and I both fall in love with her. We’re at the epicenter of dancing and on-camera watching the fire-tossing entertainers, feeling the heat of the butane fly through the air – we’re pushed against the metal barricade by the throb of the crowd. We wait for Traits with one goal: to bring her to Minneapolis.
But Whistler is never stagnant; I’ve been here for a month and some and its fresh, all I’ve ever wanted.
B.Traits slips into the GLC bar without talking to us. It’s ok; we caught a PanPacific resident complaining about the noise “with a child trying to sleep.” Minor detail.
To the queue we go.
Chasing fame; connecting cities, I can sense it now, now as I write but then-now too. “I’m a journalist from Minnesota – I would like to go speak with B.Traits. I’m not paying cover,” I tell the money-collector and her henchmen. “I need five minutes in there.”
Initial efforts blocked. “No.”
“But I’m not going to drink or stay. I promise,” sincerely speaking to them.
“Here’s what I’ll do. Let me see some ID – I’ll give you ten minutes. If you’re not back by then, we keep this twenty-dollar cover. Financier pays, also proclaims to be my photographer. We run up the stairs. The club is pulsing. People look at you like you just walked in the club, too uncool to be at such a place before you’ve bought a drink.
Racing through my mind to find B.Traits. A quick scan. A loop of the bar isn’t required. We spot her heading into the ladies room.
“Hey! DJ! Hey! Come back here!” She turns.
“Where have you traveled to before? Ever been to the States? Minneapolis?”
“No, not to Minneapolis.”
“We loved your look, the energy, everything. Whose your agent? (Write that down). What do you do?”
“Make music and travel.”
“You’re coming to Minneapolis. We love you, we’ll be in touch.”
Leave. I laugh loudly and manically out the way out past the bar past the stares. Looks can’t bother me. Past the second set of bouncers. The cover collectors are surprised. What was supposed to take ten minutes took seven. Recollect our cover. Cannot be stopped. The energy is too great.
Back to the BC Liquor store. There are four minutes left. Our second .375 of the night; the same cashier. Sitting on the bench again, we’re approached for free cover again to Tommy Africas, sure, and coat-check the whiskey.
The loss of the credit card, but not happiness, has been set in motion.
I don’t know how but we meet some Austrians or Germans or Italians, or a combination of those (“I’m from Germany but I don’t speak German!!”) one kept saying. I tell them we’ve got pretty girls to meet in Merlins; they become our new best friends.
Financier buys two pitchers for the five of us; I spot or they spot me, two Norwegians. I’m probably quite intoxicated. But that doesn’t matter. They are very special Norwegians; they are the wax technicians for the Norwegian team. One of them is from HØNEFOSS, the other; unknown. Haarvard and Svein Anders. Wow. National secrets, though I pry, to the wax for the day on the 24th when the Norwegians took second.
I know we return back to the Lower Village, back to Garfinkels, I cannot read the rest of it.. I believe I talk to Kilpo, Wold and Brady in there someplace?
On the bus home with beautiful Kaitlin I’m forced to show my driver’s license to her; it is here I realize I no longer have my card. I think it was lost intentionally? Last used sober, aware of loss in that fine line. I hope the things the individual who used it found happiness in it. Karma will probably catch up.
“Be in love with yr life.”
Meet as many strangers as possible. Norwegians, Kiwis, Germans (but not real Germans), Canadian drum and bass beauties; bond with a fellow Minnesotan, love life again.
I feel younger turning 22 than I did 21.
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