After work I stalked out of the house for New West yesterday, hours late to Jenn’s Bridal Shower. I sat on the train in a hopeful panic. Will they still be there? Do I have Marcella’s buzzer number? If not, will the balcony door be left unlocked? Can I even climb to the third floor in these particular shoes? I tried to write about how I feel about my relationships, about the people in my life. I wanted to magnify emotion until it seared the page, explain to myself the complexities, but instead I was distracted, wracking my mind for my lack of white feather-boa gift. She’ll forgive me, I decided, as I swung off the train.
Kim saw me as I trudged up the monstrous hill and waited for me, holding a boy in check with her. I’m assuming it’s her beau, though I could be wrong. She assured me that people were still present let me in the back door, choosing herself to continue outside rather than navigate the ridiculous stairs that riddle the building. Navi opened the door, with Marcella behind her, bright colours startling almost after the drab hallway. Jenn was in the living-room, sitting in a small sea of pastel bags filled with fluffy paper and satiny nightwear. (There was a frog, yes, an inimitable frog this time; apparently a “pyjama holder”. In go the sex toys, I say, she was also given a beginners bondage kit.)
I left smiling, but weighted. I reflected that time is starting to insist on cajoling my life in some semblance of continuity in spite of my refusal to think ahead to summertime. There’s so many moments between then and now. I might have travelled, I might have visitors. There are a numberless strands of option rendering, far be it from me to cradle any assumptions past that I continue to love those I love.
At Commercial I pulled myself from imagining Bill and I across the street, two oddly moving figures in black trenchcoats waiting for a bus to take us home, by singing with a stranger at the bus-stop, a drunken man named Zod, and his two friends. They were going to the Masquerade, an option I had discarded for the hour, but they didn’t know where they were going, didn’t know what neighbourhood they were about to harmlessly wander into, so out of a sense of fun and responsibility, I plyed my trade as local guide and pointed us to the Maritime Centre. We arrived fifteen minutes before the party ended. I shucked off my dress, made wings out of leftover shimmer plastic paper from Jenn’s, and wandered. I regret arriving so late, the floor was slick from dancing, it must have been serious fun.
R.C. found the whereabouts of an after-party and when the hosts began flicking the lights, Travis and I set off to find it, temporarily collecting again my people from the bus at the 7-11 up the road. We left them there, setting off across a field with our slurpees, then over an unnecessary fence, not finding where we needed to go, of course, but having fun. There didn’t seem to be anything at 1800 block Triumph until, as we were giving up, some cyclists in costume pedalled past. We called out, asking where the party was. They didn’t know either until one of them found it just around the corner. They returned with his passenger missing and chivalry kicked in. It might not be our party, but stranding small girls isn’t particularly a good idea. We grouped and got the buzzer number off someone on the porch. Finding the apartment was easy and exactly where we’d been looking for.