Some signs can't be trusted

I'll admit it. Constant reassurance is ... reassuring. That's why I accept all signs I'm headed in the right direction in moving to London. Give me horoscopes; give me British comedy on North American airwaves; give me snow in England. All signs say "Go!"

Anything to the contrary, I ignore.

According to Jung's personality tests, I'm an Idealist. A very particular kind of Idealist – my peers comprise as little as 2% of the population. The Idealist in me wants that to mean I'm special, but really it just means 98% of the world thinks I'm a flake.

Still, there are occasional esoteric votes against my move to England my blinders can't obscure.

One's on Montreal's Saint-Laurent Boulevard, at the exact point I paused to hug my friend D after our good-bye breakfast. He was promising to visit me and offering that reassurance I so appreciated, when he noticed a new shop just across the street.

"London!" I yelled.

"Actually," he said, "it reads, 'London't.'"

Filthy perks of London

I have a lot of baggage, and I'll unload it on my boyfriend as soon as I get the chance.

When he picks me up at Heathrow, he'll help me haul my weight in luggage back to his flat – 120 lbs of my favourite things, the maximum allowed by Air Canada. My life in England begins with this simple recipe: one part each, person and parcel.

Empowered by Customs with an entrance stamp, I'll begin the travel equivalent of a Walk of Shame via the London Underground. My eyes will be red from the sleepless overnight flight and good-byes. Nothing about me will be especially fresh, and with politely peripheral glances, everyone on the tube will see I didn't exactly make it home last night. I won't be home again until I make a new one. But first, I have a few more things to purge, a long way to travel, and a job and a flat to find.

Fitting twelve years of living in Montreal into a duffel bag, a backpack and a rolling carry-on is proving challenging, and expensive. Everything I didn't pay to have shipped to my parents' house in Nova Scotia, I undersold to friends.

I'm going to do my best to forget about the moving company – L & B Déménagement et Entreposage, whose driver demanded $500 in cash when my shipment arrived two weeks past schedule, exactly 30 per cent more than I'd been quoted – because I don't want the fire-breathing dragon in my belly to incinerate the butterflies.

Besides, that was weeks ago. Since then, I've been camping out at my friend, Cathy's, and living among piles. A seismic heap of clothing is graciously smothering my enormous, unsorted stack of "important" papers, and I really hope they die.

Tomorrow, I'll carry another bag of donations to the vintage boutique, attempt to sell my printer, and store my bike in a friend's basement until I can sell it through Craigslist this spring. Then, I'll buy health insurance, say a few good-byes and drink.

That should leave plenty of time for panic.

I know I've made the right decision, and it'll be great living and working in a city where English is the first language for once. All that gooey love stuff I'm feeling will smooth the transition, and there'll finally be perks to monogamy. Filthy, filthy perks.

Meanwhile in London, my boyfriend's getting ready to incorporate me into his life. Beyond helping me pimp my CV, he's prepping his roomies for my arrival, and customizing our happy place – a bedroom oasis. Best of all, he's added an original Nintendo Entertainment System to his games corner, so I can play Super Mario Brothers when the fog and flurry of London is too much. I'm not going to pretend he bought the NES for me, but I'll enjoy it as much. We are, after all, about to switch to the ultimate two-player game.

My "real" friends love me anyway

Pranking friends and mocking people from afar has never been so easy, now that Facebook is on the scene.

Cathy's never really pregnant like her status line occasionally suggests, by the way. She's just left her account open on the computer in the main room again. I'm sure she'll appreciate your concern and congratulations regardless, so don't be discouraged by the truth.

It's up to you whether to harness the power of social networking sites for good or for humour, but faced with an opportunity, my path is clear. What wasn't clear, was whether I'm allowed to heckle web-specific Facebook "friends" just the same as I do my real friends.

Last night, I tried it and now I know better.

Before going out to meet people refreshingly off-line, I checked Facebook for a totally legitimate reason – to find a phone number – and by compulsion, became distracted by my "friends" status updates. Several were posted by people I love, and others by those with whom I share some nebulous association – an acquaintance from a flight to Nova Scotia, a partier from New York, a hostel-mate from Buenos Aires, or the Home Hardware cashier who attended high school with my sister. Some are ex-boyfriends. Some know my ex-boyfriends. A few play in bands with them.

The status which caught my attention at that particular moment read:

[Bandmate-of-a-guy-I-dated] is cancelled [his lame band] show.

Reading the grammatical error aloud like the snotty third-grade bookworm I still am, I reminded Cathy we'd both dated this band's members. Then we agreed to never, ever speak of it again.

"Their show is cancelled? THANK GOD!" I joked to Cathy, and further mused, "I should write that as a comment on his update..."

"DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!" she said, vibrating a little. Good ol' Cathy; she's always got my back.

We laughed hard enough at the prospect that I forgot I wasn't serious. Surely, he'd see the humour, I thought. By the time Cathy left the room, I'd forgotten there was any reason at all not to comment, for just long enough to follow through. Laughing to myself, I typed in "Thank God!" and hit enter. I sat back and waited. As the page loaded very, very slowly, my smile faded. Contextual details oozed forth from the dankest sludge of my recent memory, and I began to panic.

For every great joke, there's an oh-no moment. It's the silence before the laughter, while the audience susses out whether you're funny or just another inappropriate effing a-hole. I had enough time to see I'd be the latter.

Before going for the jocular, I really should have taken into consideration just how much the band's head man is devoted to hating me – because it's a lot. Over time, he's penned volumes of personalized hate-and-blame email, especially for me.

Months ago, determined to wring some humour from the fiasco, I read excerpts of his impassioned, somewhat frighteningly obsessive work at an open mic night for love letter readings at a Mile End cafe. I got the shock-and-awe audience response I'd wanted. After that, I guess I just forgot.

Last night, I remembered. And I realized that not only would my comment not be well received, but I risked reigniting the rubber of the smouldering, molten tire which was the end of that noxious relationship. No one would read this tongue-in-cheek comment as it was intended. No one.

So you can imagine my relief, when the page finally loaded, to realize that while my comment posted successfully, I'd accidentally done it from Cathy's account. It was her smiling face, not mine next to this terrible comment – karma for having encouraged me. Now, not only is she "pregnant" on occasion, but she's a complete effing a-hole. That'll teach her to log out before she goes to the bathroom.

Just another pretty face

Chances are, if you're my friend or have anything in common with me at all, you didn't pick up the July issue of Clin d'oeil – Quebec's premier French-language fashion magazine. And you definitely wouldn't have read the article on horoscopes, fortune-telling and dating – the one I'm in.

To readers of the magazine, I'm just another pretty face. Just another woman turning to the stars for reassurance that her next boyfriend won't be deceitful, controlling, unfaithful, crude, inconsiderate, selfish or homosexual, like the last one.

They'll commiserate with this image of me, and join the ranks of what French-Canadians apparently call ésotérico-girly girls. You know, women with more faith in tarot cards, dice, clairvoyants and Rob Breszny's Free Will Astrology than their own instinct – the kind of women you'd never want to date.

Ahem.

While I didn't have anything to do with the actual content of the article, I'm its mascot. The illustrator commissioned for the feature, a close friend, asked if I'd be willing to pose as a reference model, so he could draw me. All I had to do was drink tea, play with props, and feign excitement and wonder at dating in the New Age. Feign excitement and wonder at dating? I've certainly done that before. This time I'll get something out of it, I thought, and volunteered for my own selfish reasons.

Firstly, although I was only slightly more qualified for the task than the standard wooden drawing figure, by virtue of having eyes and hands – I just wanted to be able to say, "Yeah, I've modelled." But mostly, I wanted to see myself through someone else's eyes.

My friend showed me some of the sketches before they were approved for print – over beer on his balcony, back when the world was sunny and warm – but it wasn't until yesterday, when I met him to say good-bye before I leave for London, did I remember to ask for a copy of the magazine.

And here I am, as he drew me. In the illustrations, I'm pretty. My nose seems smaller. My boobs seems bigger. And it seems I'd be willing to do anything for love.

In twenty days, I'm boarding a plane to Heathrow to be with a man I met via Facebook. So, if nothing else, at least that last part is true.

Why we gotta fight?

Outnumbered by the band members, Ricky did what he always does – he ripped off his shirt. In most bars on Crescent Street, that would get you kicked out, but this one caters to the dregs of downtown – schizophrenic alcoholics, drug dealers and the university crowd. And Ricky, who falls into categories one and two, owns it.

Set to the right soundtrack, I'd argue the scene was wildly homoerotic. Five sweaty, dishevelled men surrounding one other, half-naked and panting. Anyone could mistake this potential brawl for a more invasive sort of gang bang. I'd never mention that to Ricky of course, so as to avoid having my pinky fingers mailed to my parents.

Anyone who knows Ricky, knew what was to come next. Some knew word for slurred word. Ricky, who is almost always in the wrong, has a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card, which is ironic because he's spent a lot of time there. To play it, he strips down and gestures toward his mangled torso.

"I've been shot three times and stabbed five!" he announces. "Why we gotta fight?"

The look on his face says, "We're all just people, so let's just chill out and be friends."

This particular night, after holding the band's drum kit hostage, he was playing that card again. The show was over, the dance floor was empty, and these guys were drunk and exhausted. Letting Ricky freestyle on their equipment until he drank himself unconscious or sober wasn't anyone's priority but his own.

While his words and face were friendly, Ricky's scars shouted, "You should've seen the other guys!" The band backed down thinking maybe no one ever saw those other guys again. They grabbed their gear and left.

I waited for my friend to finish up behind the bar, so we could get out of there, too. She poured Ricky a pint for his nerves, and I witnessed a road map of veins smooth into the contour of his massive head. I stole a few sideways glances at his eight uneven scars, and marvelled that he is still alive.

Shot three times? Stabbed five? At what point do you ask yourself, "What am I doing wrong?"

(I'd include a picture of Ricky at his bar, but I'd rather keep my pinkies. You'll have to settle for one taken in an Irish pub. The monsters there were smaller.)

My happy place or yours?

When people tell me I'm crazy, it comes out in a sing-song tone. You know the one. I'm sure you've heard it from a few friends if you've ever met "someone special" on the internet, drunkenly applied the 5-second rule to pizza, or dated a girl with "DAN'S BEEF" tattooed on her ass.

It's how friends react when they're pretty sure you're screwing up, but glad you're taking one for the team. If not for the shit you pull, they'd be stuck talking about the weather and, oh I dunno, something important. Your friends might worry about you, but they also can't wait to tattle. It takes the focus off them, for the last time they effed up.

So what if you threw up that "perfectly good" ham sandwich, or if you missed your plane despite having "plenty of time" to get to the airport? Sure you woke up on a beach in Southeast Asia stripped of your trainers, passport and pride, but "that chick was really hot." I'm sure most of the time you're trouble-free, but no one remembers when things are just alright. That's why extreme sports and alcohol exist.

Oh, and working visas for the UK.

My friend Christina thinks I'm insane for moving to London. "It's damp and expensive," she says, far more crudely than that. She lives in Mexico where it's sunny year-round, and she's paying $50/month for rent (which she earns making jewellery). She gets water from a hose in the yard and her home is made of cement and sticks. See, she's actually crazy. She's also hilarious and happy. Maybe I'm nuts to sell all my shit and move to England, with nothing but a few good friends, a laptop and a working visa to my name. But I'd be more crazy not to.

I'm not so different from Christina. Our happy places are just really, really far apart.

(Meet Christina and her husband, Luis. Mel Gibson tried to recruit him for Apocalypto, but Luis didn't want to cut his hair. They used to live in a little hut on the beach in Mahahual, but then a hurricane ate it.)

Reason I love to travel #5

Travel has taught me that some blessings are extremely well disguised, especially in Guatemala.

Tempering any expectations of a smooth trip from the highlands to the islands, before departure we watched a mechanic crawl under our bus with a hammer and some duct tape. So, Cathy and I bought some "emergency" beer for the road.

Not an hour into the journey, when the engine caught on fire and the bus filled with noxious fumes, we were already glad we had. Waiting in the rain for the rescue bus was easier to bear with beer, if only because it made the locals laugh. With us or at us, we didn't care.

Later than sooner, the promised bus arrived, and we were finally back on the serpentine trail to Guatemala City. The next hour of the trip was remarkably hassle-free.

Then, traffic stopped dead. The sun went down, the driver turned off the bus, and we waited in the dark. Passengers began sharing food with hungry strangers, and I rationed my water. A few people gathered round to watch Cathy and me play Crazy Eights by the light of my head lamp; that's how bored they were.

We had no idea why we were stuck there, but we knew we'd missed our connection. We'd have to spend the night in the frighteningly dangerous and mostly filthy capital, if we ever got there. There was no remaining "emergency" beer, not even a working toilet. Our positive attitudes were positively tried.

Eventually, the driver announced the nature of the traffic jam. A mudslide had buried a major section of the road ahead and we were caught on this side of it. When we finally started moving again, on a single lane cleared by bulldozers, I saw the blessing in being off schedule:

Trapped on this side or that side of a mudslide, is a helluva lot better than trapped under one.

Pee: The curse in the cure

As it turns out, my grade school bullies were right. I do eat worms and drink pee.

It's fair to suggest their twisted little minds planted the idea in my head. As a squeamish child, I'd never have come up with that on my own – not unless one of those stones they threw knocked me in the worms-and-pee section of my brain. It's possible.

To my credit, the acts didn't manifest quite as my bullies imagined. The worm was Mexican and travelled via souvenir mezcal to a Friday night in Montreal. The bottle housed only one worm, so, to my horror my friend Cathy sliced through its middle and offered me first choice of ends – a version of Heads-or-Tails impossible to win.

"Aaaaaaarghaaawwwaaawwwaaaaarrrrrrrgh!" I retched with the wrinkled grub in my mouth.

Though equal in size to two aspirin, it hadn't occurred to me not to grind its tiny leathery, jelly-filled body into a putrid alcoholic pulp before swallowing – not until I did just that. I feared I'd see that worm again.

It's a matter of perspective whether that's the most disgusting thing I've ever had in my mouth. I'd argue the virus (which has still has control of my sinuses) tops the list, but you might suggest pee as a fairly strong contender.

As I've explained to many a revolted family member and friend, I didn't actually drink pee – not intentionally – though a few drops inevitably escaped down my throat when I swallowed as reflex. It was the more palpable alternative to vomiting. The only way to avoid swallowing a little pee would be to not gargle it at all, which is what most have suggested.

Come to think of it, only two people have ever suggested otherwise, and neither was my friend. Still, they seemed to have my best interests in mind. Suffering the onset of strep throat while travelling solo through rural El Salvador, I was ill and desperate enough to try nearly anything – even pee.

"Do YOU gargle YOUR pee?" I croaked at my hostel-mate, an Austrian kiteboarder, from the nest I'd made in my hammock with all the blankets I could find. Over tea and sniffles, he'd spoken of pee's healing properties and I was positively scandalized.

"It really works," he answered, looking anywhere but back at me.

"Ewwwwwwwww!" I taunted. "You're a pee drinker!"

"It really works," he said again.

"Well, I could never do it," I announced, not realizing "never" would only last until the next morning, when I was sufficiently desperate.

I was still miserable in my hammock when a young Korean couple arrived later that night and, hearing me complain of an ever-worsening sore throat, suggested their grandparents' cure-all: gargling pee. No way, I thought and headed to bed, only to wake up, swallow some razor blades and think, Maybe way. Beside my bed was a plastic cup.

If I was going to do it, I intended to do it right, so I'd never have to do it again. The pee, as it was explained to me, should be the first of the day, so the vitamins and minerals it contains are as concentrated as possible. Knowing this, I procrastinated in bed for a long, long time that morning. When I could hold it no more, my decision was made: I would pee in the cup and think about it.

Battling three decades of cultural conditioning, social convention and a general aversion to pee in my mouth, I managed to rationalize the remedy, and cleared my head enough to bring the glass to my lips. Pretend it's tea, I told myself. It won't be so bad. But it was.

It was so bad, in fact, that sipping pee and vomiting in the sink seemed to happen in the very same moment. I don't think I expected it to be quite so hot, and it tasted nothing like tea at all. There was no turning back, though; I'd already crossed a line and there was plenty more pee for another try. And another. And another, until I finally managed to gargle.

"This better be worth it," I said to the new pee-mouth me in the mirror. I reloaded my toothbrush with minty-fresh paste a few times while I brushed and brushed and brushed and brushed, and pondered having lost my pee-ginity. Back in my hammock, I fell asleep to my newest mantra: "I am so hardcore."

Hours later, my throat was better. All better. "Shhhhhhhit!" I yelled, suddenly aware of the curse in the cure. Now the keeper of a terrible secret, with every instance of a sore throat, I'd forever be forced to consciously choose to suffer, or to gargle pee. The line of separation between the options is arguably blurry.

While I don't regret my decision to buck convention concerning pee remedies (and join the ranks of Madonna, Gandhi and British actress, Sarah Miles), at the end of the day, there's one convention I'd have been better of to heed. You know the saying: "What happens in *holiday destination* stays in *holiday destination*"? No longer are my grade school bullies teasing me about eating worms and drinking pee, but the torch is carried by my family and friends and others I've made the mistake of telling, which, as of now, is everyone.

Thankfully, half of you won't believe me.

The final countdown

What is 4 x 24? Fewer hours than I have to purge two years of living from my apartment, that's what.

In four days, a French PhD student will be sleeping in my bedroom. Actually, she'll be doing whatever she wants in there, and I suppose she'll do it anywhere she wants, just like I did. She might even do it on my sofa. I won't be here to stop her. No matter what she does, I'm sure I did it better.

Ninety-six hours to transience and my house is still full of furniture, art, cookware and crap. You'd think losing all your belongings and mooching off friends would be easier. Don't people do it all the time?

Yesterday morning, I signed a contract with movers who've agreed to transport my antiques and irreplaceables back to Nova Scotia where my parents will reluctantly, but thankfully store them. Then, the new tenant arrived to see what of my furniture she'd buy, and last night I hosted a giveaway/livingroom sale I called, 'Dinner and Dibs'.

Basically, I sorted through all my things, lured some close girlfriends to my house with the promise of a home-cooked dinner and gave them first pick of everything I'd rather not pay to store or transport to England. Whatever they didn't want, I forced on them, like an annoying salesgirl working on commission. "Oh, Pyrex cookware is timeless, and would go so well with this sailor's cap!"

I'm stuck with a few dining room chairs, which I rescued (read: pilfered) from the basement of this building. At the time, I wondered why anyone would abandon something so nice, but now I see that furniture fate is inescapable and, chair by chair, they're going right back to where I found them so someone else can wonder the same. There are also some leftover books, deceivingly titled and disappointingly academic, from my university years: Pornocopia and Public Sex (among the less scandalous untouchables, Anthropological Theory and The Mass Media in Canada). Most everything else is claimed and awaiting pick-up.

Perhaps the greatest marker of the evening's success is having finally uncovered my house keys – one of life's little conveniences – which have been missing beneath the chaos for nearly a week.

The crumbs I'll be donating to the local mission today, and by Sunday, all evidence of my life here and my ongoing battle with mice and my creepy neighbour will be completely gone, save for bits of furniture the new tenant bought, that red paint I spilled in the sink, and the stack of papers that fell behind the fridge. These little accents will add to those left by the previous tenants: the good luck charm bolted into the oak frame of the doorway, unidentifiable trinkets lodged in the radiator, and little poops left by midnight visitors – the furry rodent kind, not the freaky weirdo sort.

Ninety-five hours to go...

Monogamy, and dys-sex-ia

"I told him, 'If we're going to be monogamous, I think I want to get a DUI,'" confided my friend Cathy – a barely recovering commitmentphobe with her first serious boyfriend in years – "and he just stared back at me like an idiot and didn't say anything. Can you believe that?"

She sipped her pint and waited for a reaction – for me to express disgust, incredulity, and ultimately validate her annoyance with him – but I could believe it, and I, too, stared back at her like an idiot.

"Do you mean 'IUD'?" I ventured, remembering she's dyslexic and the words-and-letters section of her brain has a tendency to go rogue. "As in 'Intra-Uterine Device', the birth control method? Or, 'DUI', the acronym for 'Driving Under the Influence', the crime?"

"Oh my gawd," she said, already cackling.

"Basically," concluded our new friend, Rax, "you told your boyfriend that the thought of being in a monogamous relationship with him makes you want to drink yourself stupid and get behind the wheel of a car. How was he supposed to react?"

Merrymaking with mischief-makers

I love to travel solo, but when the little monsters asked to accompany me on my first trip to England and Ireland, I couldn't refuse. I really couldn't. They're monsters, and I just can't risk responsibility for inciting their wrath. Thankfully, my best friend in London agreed to help chaperone the unpredictable and tactless duo during my three-week sojourn. The monsters helped us make no friends. No friends at all.

Click here to see the monsters' most terrible vacation memories, and read their captions to learn why monsters think "England, Ireland suck".

Monsters no pay, no see nada, originally uploaded by Kate Savage. Monster photos are a collaborative effort of Kate Savage and the lovely main photographer, La Perla Esperanza.

Sixty minutes in a London pub, some degree of separation

"Kyahnahseetahayah?" frothed the Rugby-sized pub regular. His substantial ass imagined itself small enough to wedge in next to me on the over-sized chair in the London pub.

"Can you sit here?" I repeated for clarification, but said ass was already testing the possibility and subsequently established, at the misfortune of my left thigh, that no, he physically couldn't. "You can sit there," I suggested with a lubricating smile, pointing at a seat a few meters away. To compromise, he slid himself onto the arm of my chair instead, where his giant body eclipsed my view of anything else in the pub and proceeded to emanate noxious fumes. I met the degree of his lean with my own in the same direction so as to avoid contact with anything more intrusive than the spray of his saliva.

I'd chosen the seat nearest the window, both to watch the time on the tower clock outside and to maximize daydream opportunity with a clear view of a bustling London street. In an hour, I was to be at the Liverpool Street tube station to meet my new boyfriend after work, and I intended to enjoy a moment of solitude over a cold, bubbly pint of cider. We were heading to the English countryside, to play house alone together for a few days before my return to Canada, and he was really all I wanted to think about. As a wise English band once said, however, "you can't always get what you wah-ahnt."

"Yer prittay," sprayed my new companion, his eyes entirely out of sync, neither directed at me. "I'm Welssssshhhhhh," he said, hoping to create an allure of exoticism that might win my favour, or failing that, any woman's favour, despite his probable impotency to follow through with anything beyond ordering more pints to spill on his bar-rag of a shirt. "Have you met people from Wales before?" he frothed for the third time, this after we'd established, more than once, that I was Canadian and not offended that he'd assumed I was American. Boring him off, my usual tactic, didn't seem to be working.

"Leave the poor girl alone," his friends called from across the room, from somewhere behind this fleshy barricade of man. "She's not interested in a drunken idiot, you drunken idiot."

I liked them straight away. "I've met drunken idiots all over the world," I said, "and three of them happened to be from Wales."

"Reeeeeh-leeeeeh?" he said, leaning closer, ignoring that I was the fourth person to call him a drunken idiot since he'd made his introduction. His arm was around my back now, but I didn't particularly mind because the added support prevented him from toppling over and smothering me. Still, I edged forward to avoid coming into contact with whatever was making his skin damp.

"Two at a wedding in London this past weekend, and one in Argentina," I clarified in monotone.

"Argentina!?" he boomed. His enthusiasm made up for my complete lack. "What was his name?"

"Caden," I answered, because it was easier than saying, "Stop talking." I checked the time again, and alternately gulped cider and covered the glass with my hand to protect it from spit-spritzing.

"Caden [So-and-So]?" he asked, slightly more sober. "The one from the Welsh pet food empire?"

"What?" He finally had my full attention, though my brain didn't immediately allow me to understand how, on my first visit to the United Kingdom, I'd managed to encounter Caden's older brother's best friend in a random London pub around the corner from the Liverpool Street tube station. Within minutes, I was on some stranger's mobile talking to Wales. "It really is a small world, " I said to the brother of a traveller I'd met, and maybe smooched, at a Buenos Aires hostel two years earlier, "Say 'hello' to Caden for me."

My sixty minutes alone in a London pub was up. I grabbed my bags and ran to the station.

Liverpool Street Train Station, originally uploaded by RonDeeView.

The right people

Here's yet another reason why it's good to make friends with photographers.

How Ireland nearly did my head in

Generally, guided tours aren't my deal. Something to do with not being a herd animal, and something else to do with the risk inherent in entrusting my life and happiness to a potentially overzealous herdsman whilst crammed into a minibus with any sort of mammal for hours at a time. Very few scenarios can push me to a guided tour, like fear for my life, for example – as was the case in a Salvadoran national park at night – or a desire to see more of Ireland than Dublin pubs through the creamy blur of Guinness goggles, which is exactly how I found myself on a minibus just a few days ago.

In the spirited stereotype of a city with a best friend from London – the one who insists on being referred to here by her exceedingly ridiculous pseudonym, La Perla Esperanza – I reasoned that an organized outing might not be quite so abysmal as I feared if it meant we'd be able to enjoy a little Irish countryside. Within moments of our departure, however, we knew we'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.

Our guide was also our driver – an arrangement we later realized was the only sure way to guarantee his personal safety. Otherwise, surely there was risk of mutiny, with passengers shoving the microphone dangerously far down his throat, or up the alternative, if we thought doing so wouldn't put us at risk of death by gruesome highway pile-up.

For seven hours, this man babbled. When he didn't have anything relevant to say, he filled what should've been peaceful moments left to appreciate picturesque pastures and gently rolling hills in quiet reflection, with personal opinion and brash commentary concerning all matters from biofuel to gender roles. When he ran out of opinions, he resorted to nonsense, which eventually degraded to gibberish – evidence, I believe, of a clinical disorder.

"Dublin isn't a big city," he said. "You've all been to Manhattan. You live there, probably."

"I'm not sexist, but..."

"Red and yellow are warning colours. Warning colours, people. Red and yellow."

"What do you know collectively about dogs?"

"I'm your fairy godmother without wings."

Then he announced the country of issue of every foreign license plate we passed.

"Let's just get out," I said to my friend before we'd left city limits. "We could just get off the bus right now and catch a city bus back." She laughed, but I was serious, if not panicky, and more than willing to cut my losses at the 25 euros we'd paid and just make a run for it. She's got resolve, though, and encouraged me to develop some – we stayed. Precisely two hours into the tour – the exact amount of time it took the last lubricating vapours of the previous night's whiskey to dissipate – I began losing the will to live.

Usually, I'm quite good at coping with annoyances – or, as a therapist once called it, completely disassociating – but my normal capacities were compromised, my ears couldn't process the flood of constant and pointless anecdotes and misinformation. We went manic, our eyes rolled unrestrained in their sockets, and we laughed so as not to cry. OK, maybe I cried a little.

"Shuuuuuh-uuuuuh-uuuuuh-uuuuut up!" was the sound of my every exhale.

"No!" was our collective response to his every rhetorical question.

By hour six, we were at the tipping point, another minute of asinine chatter and I might not have recovered. We needed silence like we need oxygen. The damage done was very nearly permanent.

Ironically, it was herd animals that saved us, allowing us a few moments of respite when they were needed most. The guide had begun playing a selection of easy listening Irish tunes, the worst versions available in all of Ireland, alternately inserting clips of the Braveheart soundtrack, and ranting that Dutch drivers are especially bad, when a flock of sheep loomed into view. "There's Ireland for you," he rolled his eyes, and stopped the minibus full with its mostly catatonic passengers. "Go take pictures," he said, like it was our idea, and that the idea was really, really stupid.

So, we did.

From London with love

Skanky half-naked bush-dwellers

The first time the security guard caught me in my underwear, he made me put my clothes back on. The second time, he was a little more lenient.

"You're not allowed to be here," he said. I was standing knee-deep in a pool of water, just below a mini-waterfall – a scene suitable for low-budget porn, on the island built for Expo '67. It's been party central for 41 messy years and now plays host to all Montreal-area music festivals, including Osheaga.

"Oh, great," I sassed. "I suppose you're going to tell me I'm not allowed to take my pants off either."

"Put your clothes back on," he said, straight-faced and ever stoic. I pretended I didn't understand what he was saying while my friends attempted to distract him, but he out-waited me and I gave in. Being under-dressed put me at a disadvantage in this stare down; otherwise, I totally would've won. Out of respect for his authority, I waited for quite a while after he'd gone before stripping off again.

The way I see it, it's the promoter's fault for planning an outdoor concert rife with the devil's music on an island park with hidden brooks and ponds that look entirely swimmable in the dark – even if you've seen their filth and reeds in the daylight (hours earlier), back when you still knew better.


Besides, between the excitement of seeing Iggy Pop thrash his leather-draped skeleton around the stage for an hour and my roommate's bottomless flask of whiskey, we're lucky we weren't involved in anything worse than petty nudity and illicit swimming. I mean, of course, aside from that very unfortunate incident of theft, in which we were implicated, not as thieves, but as skanky, half-naked, bush-dwelling whores.

To our credit, we'd been on relatively good behaviour all night. Most of the night. Or, at least some of the night. Not until the final band played to the dwindling crowd – and we were saying hello and good-bye to people we'd lost much earlier in the day – did our reputations take a sharp and exhilarating turn for the worse.

It was then that an old friend joined us, along with the young mother of his child – a woman with whom we share a tumultuous past and who has only fairly recently softened enough to concede that she might actually like us, or, that failing, at least started making efforts to fake it. We settled in together at a picnic table by the water.

Whiskey banter filled any and every gap in conversation and we did our best to appease everyone, but it was proving somewhat challenging. The young mother, on this rare night out, wanted nothing more than to go home, and our friend wanted nothing more than to hang out just a little longer. Understandably, she won the battle of wit and will and he agreed to leave as soon as she returned from the washroom. As she walked off, he ran to the bushes (presumably to water them), and we decided it was a good time to escape for a swim.

Following the short path through the bushes to the water's edge, we peeled off our skirts en route and then realized we weren't alone. Polite as ever, we cleared our state of undress with the amorous couple we'd interrupted, and only then did we pare down to the basics. We hadn't yet made it into the water when our friend – the one with the girlfriend whose jury was already out on us – rushed over.

"Do you have my girlfriend's bag?" he asked, somewhat panicked. He'd left it on the table and in the few moments we'd been gone, someone had stolen it. Somehow, it seemed rude and insensitive to hop into the water while he was still registering his misfortune, so we just stood there in our underwear in front of him. "We don't have it," I said.

"Shit!" He stared at us in disbelief, and he was still staring at us in disbelief when his girlfriend, the woman who had only recently started pretending to like us, rounded the corner and saw us there, mostly naked, with the father of her child.

She yelled for the passing security guard (about the missing bag, not us), and that was when he, once again, saw us clearly intending to swim. Thanks to her distracting aura of billowing anger and hatred, however, the young mother inadvertently saved our all-but-bare asses, and he let us be. I'm sure she'd take back that favour if she could.

"COME!" she barked at our friend, and he rightly ran to her side and they left. Snap! I suspect we're the last people to have seen him alive. We thought about that for a moment, and we thought about how many different ways the story could be retold, concluding that in no version did we seem like anything but skanky, half-naked, bush-dwelling whores. Still, our consolatory swim was glorious.

"Why isn't everyone doing this!?" we shouted, revelling. "They must know something we don't know," I joked, as we drifted away from shore. It was meant as rhetoric, but in saying it, we realized it might be true. Racing back to shore, we spit out all the filthy water we'd taken on while laughing about how, the trouble with drunken public swimming is that it sobers you up just enough to realize you're an idiot.

When we got home, soaked-through bottoms and all, my roommate wrote an email to another mutual friend, our friend's band-mate, as a preemptive defense for our role in the night's events, however they may be relayed. It read something like this:

"I didn't steal that girl's bag. The rest, unfortunately, is true."

The real thing

I've finally found what I've been not-so-secretly looking for all my life. It's the sort of thing that either is, or isn't. That you find or you don't. And now, I have it. I really might be the luckiest girl in the world.

On quite a few occasions, I've thought I'd found it – stomach-flipping sure I'd found one – only to look a little closer and see that one part was missing, one essential bit, the kind that changes everything. That's the difference between magic and the ordinary.

Very early on, I've been faked out by a few sneaky tricksters and opportunists, but they couldn't hold it together for long and always revealed themselves as the grade school con artists they were. I've fallen for their trickery, I'll admit that, but only because my hopes were high and my primary character flaw is that I'm willing to forego most things for excitement and adventure. I could probably still be fooled into believing you had one for me, too, but only because my primary good fortune is that, despite my high hopes, enough has gone right for me that I'm not entirely jaded – but dishonesty is no foundation for luck OR love, and tricksters' names I don't recall.

In the park yesterday, lazing in the grass with some best girlfriends, I realized I'd really found one, and the moment was cathartic for more than just me. "I stopped believing they really existed," said my friend, Cathy (a catch who couldn't be caught, not until recently, and she's barely admitted she's fallen for a certain worthy and talented rising Canadian artist), "...but you finally effing found one."

"I know," I said, smiling [insert adjective for a huge grin, overwhelming sense of fulfillment and renewed hope for the world]-ly. "Yet, there it is."

It happened exactly how I'd heard it happens, where and when I least expected, and right in front of my face.

Kiss, or just Tell

"I told my parents you're my girlfriend," he casually announced, mid-conversation, like I shouldn't be surprised.

"What!?"

It was ten years ago. He was a writer/editor for Vice Magazine when it had just gone glossy – back when one of its co-founders still lived behind a curtain at the office, before its headquarters moved to New York, and my friends and I were occasionally recruited for minor publicity stunts as basic as disrupting media interviews and giving the impression that the Vice office was always overrun with girls vying for laps to sit on. I'm sure there's more truth to that now, but back then they lured us in with a pretty-please, free swag and beer.

"Yeah, so we're going to have to share the same bed." He said it as though it was an unavoidable complication, a necessary evil we'd suffer together, all the while avoiding my fuming stink-eye. "Otherwise, they'll catch on," he shrugged. If I'd ever doubted I might be the sort of girl guys could take home to their parents – Nineties-era spiky hair and all – it ended there.

We were on our way from Montreal to Ottawa by bus – my first visit to our nation's mediocre capital – where we'd be staying with his parents. He was smart to bring this up then, with an hour of the ride remaining to justify himself and rally my support. He'd been trying to get into my pants for a while, but it had never quite worked out, and I was still naive enough to think he'd give up trying and just be my friend. Still, he was very funny, sweet, and clever enough to play on my love of the absurd, so I agreed to go along with his act for the weekend, as deceitful as that was. Besides, his family was already expecting me, as his girlfriend, and there'd be light fanfare at the gates. What else could I do?

"You might have to kiss me to make it believable," he said. Add euphemism to cliché and he'd taken the inch I'd given him and was trying to slip me some tongue through it, resulting only in more stink-eye.

Over coffee, bacon, toast and fruit the next morning, I felt a little guilty. It wasn't hard to say nice things about this friend to his parents, but my thoughts were all scrambled from my sudden promotion. Like any new job, it takes a while to get into it. His dad was very sweet and very British and after breakfast, he took us to the garden to show us his flowers, then strategically excused himself, leaving his son alone with me, the stand-in, in the romantic setting.

"I think they're watching from the window," said my friend, nervously glancing back over his shoulder. "Quick. Kiss me." I put my arm around him instead, and we stood there awkwardly, backs to the house. If he didn't mind making his parents think he was dating me, I didn't mind having them think he'd chosen a prude.

His 17-year-old brother was the first to figure us out, but that was weeks later, maybe months, while visiting in Montreal. Eventually, he told his parents that we just didn't work out, or that's what he said he told them. For all I know, he told them I'd gone the way of the gay – he has been known to bend the truth, and he did have an apparent creative flare for it.

We lost touch when he moved to London to become an editor or something for a more respectable magazine, but just recently, as all modern friendships go, we reconnected via Facebook. He looks great, and happy, and hooked-up. His status says he's "In a relationship", and this time, I think I really believe him.

Better bedtimes to come, surely

There's a bull penis in my bed and it smells awful. That's my situation.

My friend Mike would say I'm telling you this because I'm from a small town - just like the one he's from, but a few miles down the coast of Nova Scotia and minus several thousand people. Since the fishery died, not much happens outside of lobster season, so living there, we learned to self-entertain by perverting the mundane into pseudo-events worth talking about, though worthiness is debatable. Leaving out just the right important details, a skill passed from generation to generation of Maritimer, is something we do if only to force you to say, "What!?", so we can keep talking.

Now I live in Montreal - an overwhelmingly magnificent city with a population literally 10,000 times that of my hometown - where real scandals happen all the time. I could tell you about any of them, but old habits die hard and I just want to prattle on about the crusty old bull penis in my bed. The dog jumped up to chew it there. Arguably once the ultimate symbol of male fertility, it's now a dried up stick of rawhide, and it stinks.

At the pet store yesterday, I was reading its list of ingredients at the cash and got as far as, "All-natural, free-range, organic..." before the clerk cut in to say, "...bull penis. Trust me, you'll want to double-bag that sucker."

Now my dog has penis breath, and for the official record that is everlasting web archives, my bed has seen better days.

Speed-dating: Alien or Predator?

We were sprawled in the grass, me and a close guy friend (read: ex-intermittent lover), drinking Czech beer from brown paper bags when I brought it up. It was one of the first real days of spring---sunny enough to make you feel guilty for not spending every last second in a city park, and not quite warm enough to fully enjoy.

"I'm thinking of trying speed-dating with some girlfriends, you know, for kicks," I said. I was talking myself into it because I'd already promised to go with them, and we'd already childishly, unethically and without concern for the feelings of others, made side bets on the outcome.

"Everything I know about speed-dating, I learned from Alien Loves Predator," he said, and gave me a run-down of the basics as interpreted by a comic, further interpreted by him.

While an awkward evening of asking all the wrong guys inappropriate questions would make a story, good or bad (and I am usually a sucker for that), the more I thought about it, the more I feared complete humilation. "What if no one checks my box?" I whined for reassurance that the little adventure wouldn't go hideously wrong, call up karma, and crush my self-esteem.

"Well, you don't have to worry about that for two reasons," he said. "First, you're a total flirt. And second, no one will detect your neuroses in under 10 minutes."