Quentin Coyote (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quentincoyote) wrote2008-12-04 08:23 pm
quentincoyote) wrote2008-12-04 08:23 pm
And now I present: Quentin and Rex's Excellent Canadian Adventure! ^.^
So, in addition to Thanksgiving, this past weekend was also Rex's 18th birthday. Well so of course, we had to do something extra special, and for the longest time, he had wanted to drive up to Montreal, Quebec for it.
So, with hotel reservations, maps, and packed bags in tow... off we went!
Being a fan of shows like the Amazing Race, I've always been interested in seeing how people deal with traveling in a foreign country. Normally, Canada would be no big deal for Americans, but Quebec is a French speaking region, and rather proudly so, so nominally we knew we would be faced with the challenges typically associated with more exotic regions. Fortunately however, my husky is something of a language prodigy - he speaks both French and Spanish most excellently, and snippets of a few other languages as well, so I knew that we would be ok. As for myself, though very rusty by now, I also took French as my foreign language in school, so while I couldn't speak it nearly as well as Rex, I could understand it decently enough to get by. And, reading it was no problem for either of us. (Rex was really outstanding though. During the course of the weekend, several of the locals complimented him that he spoke almost like a native. My husky's so smart! ^.^ But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Lol... Such knowlege came in handy rather quickly, though. :-P We had no trouble at all on the 6 hour drive up, nor getting accross the border itself. However, very shortly thereafter, we somehow made a wrong turn off of our map... and somehow ended up in the middle of freakin' French Canadian rural NOWHERE! I'm talking, like, rundown abandoned farm houses, no tresspassing (in French) signs on many of the remaining ones, French Deliverance/Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory here. With our gas tank on a single line above empty.
We finally saw an actual person (there hadn't been anyone about for miles), coming out of his house towards the street, to take out his garbage, and we flagged him down. Our "Excusez-moi monsieur, parlez-vous l'anglais?" was met with a loud and resounding, "Non!"
Whoo boy, ok, here we go... first real test! So Rex took a deep breath, and decided on a French formulation for "We need gas, can you tell us where the station is?"
The gentleman's expresion visibly brightened, when he heard Rex speak pretty decent French to him, and he gave us directions that we totally managed to follow, and get to a station just in the nick of time. That kind of experience was repeated pretty often throughout the weekend, actually. Even in the cases where the people we met spoke English just fine, as long as we tried to speak French to them at least a little bit first, that almost always made them instantly that much nicer to us, and they didn't seem to mind switching to English for us at all when we faltered. Lol, it was kind of funny, actually... in a couple of instances, we totally saw some shopkeepers be rude and standoff-ish to people that came at them with English right off the bat and understood no French at all, and then those same shopkeepers were totally nice to us, and were still fine with helping us in English when we had difficulty. I have to say, I think we both kind of enjoyed that. It made us feel cultured and accomplished. ^.^
But in any case... Without much further ado, we finally made it into Montreal, found our hotel, and were all ready to paint the town red!
As it so happens, Montreal has fairly large and famous gay district in it, kind of like The Village in NYC. And it is called, appropriately enough... Le Village. This was the main area we mostly intended to go to, and we'd purposely selected a hotel that was fairly nearby. It was only like 5 pm by this point, so we set out on foot to go look around, and, sure enough... if you've ever been to the Village in NYC, or the Castro in San Francisco, or any other such large metro gay area, you know that unmistakeable vibe that you get from them... :-P
Well, it was no different here, and as soon as it hit, Rex and I looked at each other, and were just like, "OMG, c'est très fabuleux ici!!!" XD
***
So yes, though.. Le Village was very cool, full of all these little head shops, and cafes, and bars and clubs and restaurants and such. We spent a lot of time window shopping, and browsing around for things to do later in the night, when the night life would kick into full gear. We were wearing typically furry clothing, and had on our leather studded collars with each other's tags on them. It was kinda funny, in that even in "Le Village", we seemed to stand out. We had multple people, quite a few times over the weekend, stop us on the street to compliment us and say how cute we looked together. :-P It was nice.
Anyway, we finally settled on this nice little italian restaurant for dinner, which had just the right amount of upscaleness to it, while actually looking "good", and not merely pretentious and touristy, and was quite popular by the crowds, it seemed. We had a very nice waiter, who we kind of got the impression that he was a little bit très fabuleux himself, if you know what I mean. :-P We asked him what some fun things to do that night might be, and he wrote down a whole list of bar and club suggestions, including "Mado", which is this apparently rather famous drag queen bar in Montreal (Rex already knew about this, and we'd intended to go see the show. But, more on that later.) Being that the drinking age in Canada is 18, Rex was totally able to have drinks with me in the restaurant there, which was really nice. And, being as we'd told the waiter it was his 18th birthday, at the end of our meal, the restaurant suddenly started playing "happy birthday", and all the waiters started clapping and singing (and the patrons joined in as well), and our guy brought Rex a big tiramisu cake, with a lit sparkler in it. It was totally awesome! :)
After dinner, we did a little more window shopping, went into this sex shop, called "Le Priape", and looked at various fetish wear for a little while, before walking back to the hotel for a quick rest before going out again for the night.
Oh yeah, and on the way back to the hotel, some guy on the street tried to sell us drugs in two different languages. :-P We were walking up the street, and this really shady looking guy is standing there on the corner as we pass by. He says something to us in French that we don't quite understand, but we figure whatever it is, we don't want to get involved, so we both pretend like we have no clue and keep walking by. So then the dude trys again, following after us, and switching to thickly accented English: "Hey, do you guys need somesing?" LOL! :-P We're just like, um... no... thanks. and just keep walking.
***
So anyway, after a quick freshening up, back to Le Village we went, and found the aforementioned Mado's, and proceeded to check out the show. This was indeed a fairly popular place - a very mixed crowd, with plenty of straight out of town tourists, guys and gals both, local regular gays, and of course, plenty of drag queens as well. Rex and I found ourselves a place at the bar fairly close to the stage, and had some drinks while we waited.
Lol... and once again... somehow... even though we're in a DRAG QUEEN bar, in the middle of French Quebec, somehow, Rex and I still stand out, apparently. :-P
Once again, we had a number of people compliment us on how cute we were together. Just a few straight girls at first. And then, this one guy comes up, and says he couldn't help but notice us from across the bar. And as it turns out, this guy was one of the co-owners of Priape - the fetish store which we'd gone into earlier! :-P So he talked to us for a little while, and was very nice. And then after that, this actual *drag queen* comes up to us and says, in very thick French Quebecois accent, "Oh, but you two are so very beautiful together! Just keep doing what you are doing!"
And then, S/he notices Rex's bag... Rex has this little backpack, which looks like it's a husky plushie. Lol... So.. apparently, she (incorrectly) thought that this meant that Rex was a babyfur... Or well, not 'babyfur' per se, since nobody here really seemed to know about Furry unless we explained it to them. But I guess, the regular non-furry gay equivalent of babyfur. (And no offense intended to any of our friends out there who may be babyfurs, but just for clarification's sake, Rex is not one.) But anyway though, she got real excited when she saw this thing, and was all like, "Mon dieu, but I am a baby too!"
Lol... And then, she proceeded to tell us how her girlfriend (we saw her girlfriend over by the other end of the bar where she pointed, who may have been an actual transexual, I wasn't sure,) changed her diapers, and who was on top, and various other things that they did. :-P And Rex and I are trying to be nice and polite, but the whole time it's all we can do not to just burst out laughing! XD *facepaws*.
Not too long after that, we decided to go outside for a bit of fresh air, and we ended up talking there for awhile more with the above mentioned drag queen, along with a new trio of REALLY GAUDY drag queens who were hanging outside of the club's door, and who were all high as hell, as they were openly passing around a joint between them. :-P Lol... apparently, the gaudiest one of them all, and apparently the leader, thought that our collars meant that we were actually "slaves" looking for masters, or something like that... whatever such things might signify to some regular non-furry gay world gays, I guess. (this was also significant to something which happened the next night, but more on that later.) But anyway, she was really funny, and oh my god was she gaudy, with her huge platform shoes, and dress, and hat, and tons of pancake makeup, and just everything. :-P
Anyway, after a little while more of that, we decided to continue on with our bar hopping adventure, and moved on to this other place called Studs, which we'd seen earlier in the day, and which our waiter from the restaraunt had also told us about. Studs was quite a different flavor from that of Mado. This place was full of Manly Men, with capital M's. It was apparently quite popular, and though very large inside with multiple rooms and bars, was still packed pretty much to the hilt. But yes, very manly men all. There were people playing pool, dancing, loud techno music, very much obvious cruising going on, and generally would have not looked very much different from the rowdiest of NYC's regular straight bars. Except that the clientele here were all men. Oh yeah, and the gay porn on all the tv screens.
Anyway, we mingled all around in there for awhile, and once again we together seemed to draw a lot of collective interest. We developed a habit of going everywhere either hand in hand, or pulling each other by the belt or collar to make an obvious show of our togetherness. :-P We finally settled on one of the three bars inside there as our favorite, and settled down to a whole bunch of drinks. As we were getting more and more drunk, I started ordering a couple of shots, and meanwhile rex starts happily shouting, "Dix-huit ans! Dix-huit ans! J'ai dix-huit ans aujourd'hui!" (18 years! 18 years! I'm 18 years old today!) And the bartender's all like (in french), "18 years? Congratulations, happy birthday!" and he pours Rex, me, and himself a round of shots, and we all down them together. It was pretty awesome.
A little while after that, we went outside for more fresh air and a smoke. (yes, we did smoke a little bit while there, but we're quit again since we've been back.) Anyway, we're hanging out there and talking, and this other guy there comes up to us and starts chatting with us. He had longish hair, and was kinda cute. He was a Quebec native, and his English was a bit difficult for him, and heavily accented. Still though, with a combination of him trying in English, and us trying in French, we were able to converse pretty well actually. He started telling us about living there, and his house on a lake somewhere, and the area in general.. His name, we learned, was Dominique.
Lol.. Alright, now... normally in situations like this, I've kind of gotten used to people especially having an eye for Rex. And the way this is going, I'm kind of expecting this guy to start hitting on him more overtly. Also, especially since Rex's French is much better than mine, and they were the two of them having a much easier time of communicating. However, all of a sudden... he kinda starts leaning on *me* more, and in fact all of his body language, which has now become rather flirty, seems to be getting directed right square at me! At one point, it just became too blatantly obvious, so Rex kind of amusedly says to him, "So you're into 'bears' huh?" And at that point, Dominique smiles and looks at me and says, "...I'm into people, their personalities, their auras..." And before I know it, he's leaned into me and starts totally making out with me! :-P Lol.. I was totally caught buy surprise... but it was pretty good actually, so I returned the enthusiasm. After about ten seconds of that, we broke, and.. lol, I don't even remember what we all said, I was still so surprised, but we were generally just laughing about it all. And then he pulls me in for some more, and I in turn pulled Rex into it too.. So there we were, the two of us, in freaking Quebec, randomly making out together with a guy we met at the gay bar. It was quite clear that Dominique would have been very ok with taking us somewhere, or us taking him back to our hotel... But, nah... We were already pretty drunk, and we figured that what little we had done was just about the right amount of risque adventure, before crossing into maybe a little too sketchy territory. Heh, it was still a fun moment, though. ^.^
Lol, alright... well maaaaaybe we did cross that line a little bit, shortly thereafterwards, actually. But, it was not with Dominique. After a little more time in Studs, we decided to move on to another item we'd marked for our possible itinerary - a bar and dance club called the Tools Club. Rex had identified this earlier as a possible point of interest, when we'd been browsing around for places to go, because one of the Tools Club's claims to fame, is its "backroom playroom". Yes, with all that that implies. We thought it might be hilarious and quite the adventure to go check that out, and though we decided it better that we *not* get ourselves involved in whatever might be going on back there, maybe at least the two of us might do something there with each other.
Well anyway, we got there, checked the place over, and the front of the bar at least was actually kind of empty. (Did get another compliment from a lesbian there, though.) But, we did find the play room, and each paid our two dollars to go in... lol.. and.. wow.. So, like, it was this big open space, which they'd purposely partitioned off to make this very labyrinthine series of twisty corridors and ally ways... and like, dark... completely dark! Barely enough light to make your way around in, without the liberal use of feel. Kind of the point, I guess. :-P
Lol... So we're like OMG this is soooooo sketchy, what the HELL are we doing here? And there are other people in here too, for sure, all skulking around in the darkness... and it was just so... ummm yeah. Funnily enough though.. as near as we could tell, there wasn't actually anybody naked or doing anything. It just seemed like everyone else was also milling around, checking people out, seeing who would make the first move, I guess. Lol... So, Rex and I are like... Really? REALLY? Do WE, have to be the ones to be the life of the party HERE too? Are WE the ones who have to come here to freaking Quebec to get something started up in this bitch? :-P We decided that that idea was totally funny. Soooo... we find ourselves the darkest of dead end ally ways, giggling to ourselves are we really gonna do this..? Aaaaand... we're just about to start, but before the first zipper comes down, there appears right on queue this silhouette at the entrance to our little alley... quite blatantly staring right at us in our direction, though we couldn't see a thing about him, except for his outline... and we're like, ummmmm.... And then the guy walks right over and to the side of us, and just stands there... like.. RIGHT there, like a foot away. Rex says that he felt him brush up against his leg.. and we're just like um LOL NOPE! FUCK THIS, THAT WAS FUN, BUT LET'S GET THE FUCK UP OUTTA HERE NOW! ;-P Yeaaaaaah... So, we beat our hasty retreat outside, and went back to studs for a little while, where we just sat and laughed about the whole thing. Finally, we stumbled very drukenly back to our hotel together, for a much needed rest after our very full day.
***
The next day, we did a number of much more traditionally touristy things all around the city. We had crepes for breakfast (mine were nuttella and ice cream - delicious!), did a bunch of window shopping, went to an art museum. There was this one store called Weedstock, where absolutely everything there was made of hemp - all the clothes, pants, shirts, jackets, hats, bags, everything. (Get it? Weeeeeeeeed stock? Eh? Eh? *nudge nudge*) And I have to say all of it was of rather extremely high quality, too. I was rather more impressed than I expected to be. Rex got himself a very nice backpack-ish manbag sort of thing. Way nicer than a lot of things I've seen in some regular department stores, even.
Had lunch at a little local pizza and fast food dive, where Rex had a beer and chicken fingers, and I had poutine (yumm!)
Went out to dinner again at our same little italian restaurant which we'd liked so much the first time.
Aaaand, finally it was time once again to venture out to our big ticket items of night life! Tonight, the main event was Campus, a gay male strip club, right next to Mado's from the night before, in the middle of Le Village.
Now, I had never been to a strip club before... at least, not one that actually allowed full nudity as Montreal apparently does. But, it was pretty much exactly what you'd imagine such a thing to be. Lots of really well built, impossibly gorgeous stripper/dancer guys, doing exactly that on stage, and also milling around the general (much much less impossibly gorgeous :-P ) crowd of patrons, chatting them up, getting them to buy drinks, and taking them off into the club's own 'back rooms' for lap dances.
Upon getting in there, we were intercepted almost right away, by this very cute, and very sweet and nice (and yes, also impossibly well-defined) red headed guy, named Danny. Danny was a lot of fun. Yeah, this was his job, but, Danny seemed to have fun with it, and he always had a smile in his voice and a sparkle in his eye (and of course, the everpresent cute French Quebecois accent as well.) He escorted the two of us over to a table and sat us down. Lol.. and he proceeded to tell us, that, if we wanted, the club had those back rooms, and he could take us there and give us a lap dance, and that it was full nudity and full contact. Lol... *facepaws*
Heh.. we thanked him, and said we'd think about it, and he left us alone for a little while, while we had some drinks, watched the dancers on the stage, and genereally people watched around the club. Once again though, we apparently were observed, as well as were observers. After a little while, Danny came back to sit and chat with us some more. He said that a number of the dancers working the main room had noticed us, and our collars. In fact, apparently some of them had thought (as the one drag queen had from the previous night), that that must have meant we were both "slaves" looking for "masters", and were initially unsure that we were 'together' at all. :-P We tried to explain Furry to him a little bit, but when he said, "what, you mean like, 'Bears'?" We were just like no no, when you go home and can get on the internet, look up "Furry". But, we explained that for this, if you see someone wearing a collar but with no tag on it, that typically means that they are looking for someone, but if they have tags, particularly matching ones like ours, that means that person is taken and spoken for. Lol.. I can only hope that he did go the next day and look up Furry, and that it blew his mind, the cute french canadian stripper!
Anyway though, after all that, Danny made his pitch to give us a lap dance once again. He seemed to like us rather a lot. (Don't get me wrong, obviously this was his job and all. But, he did seem to come back up to us a lot, and stay longer than with most of the other people he did.) This time we accepted, and allowed ourselves to be dragged to the back for... whatever might ensue. :-P LOL! And.. ayup, that was a lapdance, alright! Once we were in our own little private curtained booth, he got himself totally naked, and was flexing all his muscles for us, and sitting in our laps and rubbing himself on us.. he had muscles in places that I didn't even know you could have muscles. Not like, crazy way overbig disgusting muscles, but, probably the hardest and most well defined for a 'regular sized guy' that I've ever seen. And he was talking to us and asking doesn't this or that part of him look so nice, and he's such an exhibitionist, can't we tell? and encouraging us to touch various parts of him. Yes, those parts too.
And then at one point, he's like, in his cute french accent, "You can bite on my nipples a little bit if you like... but, not too hard because I am sensitive!" So we did.
And then he turns around and starts flexing his butt cheeks, and says, "you can nibble a little bit on my ass if you like.." Lol.. So we did that too. Together there, one cheek for each of us! :-P
And then just a little bit after all that, he (very politely, lol... almost apologetically) told us that he could hear that "two songs" had played since we started, and that was the standard time, and so now we owed him 40 bucks each. Lol... they don't tell you at all what you're gonna pay, until after you've actually done it. All part of the game, I guess. Still, We've had a friend tell us of a time he spent much more, to do much less, at a regular American strip club, so I guess it was all good. ;)
Anyway though, after that, Danny lead us back to our orginal table back in the main room. On the way there, I suddenly felt my collar get grabbed and YANKED from behind, and I'm all of a sudden being dragged back to the back rooms by another one of the dancers! Lol.. I guess he hadn't gotten the memo that we weren't "slaves" yet. :-P But I was like nununununooooo, thank you, and made a break back for my husky. Heh, the dancer seemed a little bit miffed.
But anyway, so then we're sitting back at our table again, drinking some more, talking, and observing, when another completely new dancer comes up to us. This guy was like, the exact polar opposite of our Danny. Whereas Danny was sweet and cute and playful, this guy, Ricky was his name, was all macho arrogant, aggressive, forward tough guy. You know the steriotype where "straight women love assholes"? Well, this guy apparently must have been there to serve the gay male equivalent of that.
And so, he starts grabbing on to Rex's collar, like the other one had done to me, and starts going off on (in thick tough-guy french accent) how he's gonna make Rex his bitch, or something like that, I dunno. And Rex just laughs at him, bats his hand away, and goes, "You got it all wrong buddy - I'm on top!"
Lol.. My husky's so good when he takes control of a situation. Haha, this was going to be good! ;)
And so, the guy's like, "oh what, you want to tie me up?" But Rex is just casually dismissive of him again. I can see that look in Rex's eye... that look that says, "HA HA Oh look - new fun chew toy! :D "
So this of course just makes the guy try even harder. It's like, he can't believe he's being so easily turned down or something. He's all like (french accent, remember), "You know why I am the best? You know why I will rock your world tonight? Experience! That's right! I've been doing this for 21 years! I'm way better than that guy that was with you before. [*gasp!* you just insulted our Danny like that? Oh no sir, this is not going to go well for you at all!] I've done every thing there is. I'm famous in this town, everyone knows me!" And on and on, and rah rah rah blah blah blah blah blah.
And Rex just looks at him and goes:
Rex: "You know what I find really sexy?" (Oh boy, here we go!)
Ricky: "What is that?"
Rex: ...
Rex: "Modesty."
...
Bwaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! I practically choke and spit take on my drink and start laughing under my paw...
And then:
Ricky: "What is that? I do not know this word?"
Rex: "Yeah, I know."
Ricky: (who had now noticed me trying not to burst out laughing) "...this is a good thing, this 'mo-des-ty?'"
Rex: "Oh yes, very good."
Ricky: "Do you know, what is it in French?"
Rex: "Don't worry... You wouldn't understand it in French either."
...
AAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! XD XD XD
*sigh*
I love my husky so much. :)
lol.. yeah, so that was totally awesome. So then Ricky walked away, looking kinda pissed and kinda confused. He later did a few more near but not too near walk bys, looking slightly more pissed. I like to think that he asked one of his dancer friends what it meant, and they told him. Hopefully Danny! XD
And Danny himself, as I said, did come back to sit and chat with us a few more times. I think we must have been being probably really more nice to him than he was used to. Like, we were actually talking to him and asking him about his life and stuff, instead of being all like 'ooh baby yeah man meat!'
At one point, we asked him if he had a boyfriend, and though he kept his smile, he actually looked a little bit sad at that. And he was like, no... you know, who would want to date a dancer, and be worried and argue about what they were doing every night? *sigh* lol.. poor thing. We actually felt a little sad for him. A little later, the final time he sat down with us, he leaned in close to us, and said (french accent), "Listen... do not repeat this, but... if you want, I can take you two into the back again with me, and you could... suck me... and I could give you a very good time tonight..."
Lol, *blush, facepaws* That much, you are not supposed to do. I'm sure it does happen plenty though, and the establishment just looks the other way. Still though, despite as much of this being his job as it was, he seemed a little bit wistful about it, and we kinda like to think that he chose us as a little bit more special than most of the people he deals with. He seemed genuinely sad when we kind of begged off and said "we'd think about it," and he went away again. We wondered privately to each other if this was perhaps like, the closest kind of approximation to real human contact that he could really get. It was kind of heartbreakingly sweet, in a fucked up sort of way. And very sad.
At this point... I suppose I should point out that I actually didn't find anything about the strip club even remotely sexy at all... not even Danny's lapdance, as nice as he was to us. For me, this was all just more like OMG, look at this funny crazy stuff we're doing together, and, as a good story now. But seriously, it's just not the same thing in a place like that. When one of these gorgeous guys comes up to you, it's because they're expecting money. At least, if someone comes up to you in a bar or in at least regular life or whatever, then they're doing it because of you. Not the same thing at all.
We decided that we'd had enough for the night, and that it was time to move on. We wanted to say goodbye to Danny, but we didn't see him. (heh.. probably in the back room again. :-P ) So we told our bartender to say goodbye to him for us, and that we enjoyed our night very much.
And to tell him, that he was much better than Ricky.
After that, we went back to Studs for awhile, found our favorite bar tender again, more shots, got hammered again. This one old, like, 62 year old guy started talking to us, and telling us about how he'd never realized he was gay until he was 50, and how he had two sons that were really cute and looked just like Tom Cruise. Lol.. Jesus :-P *facepaw* This other guy started talking to Rex in French, and rambling, and making this weird... half-moan half small scream like, "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" More mumbling, and then "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" The bar tender and a couple of the other locals came up to us and asked if the guy was bothering us, and made him go away. But eh, other than that, not too much else special to report at Studs that night. It was a good time. We eventually stumbled home drunk back to our hotel again. On the way home, we ran into that really gaudy drag queen in front of Mado's again. She had a hat on her head that was an exact replica of Notre Dame cathedral.
***
So the next day, it was time to make the drive back home again. We wandered around just long enough to find a decent place for lunch, packed Rex's car, and said our goodbye's to this city which had been so wonderful to us. It was really and truly awesome, and we will defintely be coming back again sometime! We're gonna try to find some other things we didn't do there yet, as well. Like perhaps the Six Flags park that is there. Or, maybe even climb Montreal (the mountain the city surrounds) itself! :)
On the way to the border, we stopped at this big.. 'last chance' store, I guess you could call it. The typical sort of thing you expect at any border, where they sell things you can't get anymore once you cross. As had become our custom, we entered the place, greeting and saying a few words to the shopkeeper in French first, thus assuring ourselves preferred treatment.
And she heard us talking rapid fire to each other in English, but again trying French with her, so she switched to english for us for the most part when needed, and was really nice and helpful to us. A little while after we came in, a french speaking person came in and asked to use the bathroom, and she said something like "oh sure it's right over there," in french. Then, seriously, like not even five minutes later, some young American sounding guy came in and was all like, "Excuse me, could I use your bathroom?" in English, not even trying French at all. And the lady was totally like, "Nope, sorry, it's closed for the winter, there's a gas station down the street." I'm pretty sure she saw Rex and I look at each other and smile at that. Lol... She totally would have let us use the bathroom if we'd asked, I just know it.
Anyway, I got two bottles of maple syrup, yo! Let me repeat that: I got two bottles of MAPLE fucking SYRUP! Not corn syrup, with fucking maple flavor and shit in it, MAPLE FUCKING SYRUP! You know what it says on the ingredients? It says: "Maple [fucking] Syrup" Period! The End! FUCK YEAH, son! THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!!! ^.^ They're in the shape of a fucking maple leaf, and I can now tell you that they taste ORGASMIC on vanilla ice cream! FUCK YEAH!!
I also got some delicious hard maple candies. (Ingredients: "Maple syrup, sucrose" Period, the fucking end.)
Rex got himself a keychain with a Quebecois flag, a giant actual cloth flag, and a Canadian hocky jersey. Which I must say, he looks pretty smokin' in, eh? ^.^
Aaaaaanyway... we then continued on the long drive home for real. Crossed the border once again without incident, and proceeded to go for the next several hours through the vast expanse of nothingness which is the upstate New York highway system.
As some may know, it snowed rather heavily that night. it started not long after we were on our way. It was rather pretty at first... but it got fairly scary, rather quickly. The sun's down by like 5:00 now. We were almost at 6, before we'd barely made a dent into upstate. The snow was starting to stick, and it was pitch black outside. And, there are no street lamps at all on that highway, for almost its entire lenght, nor even headlight reflectors embedded into the street. Pretty soon, it was getting almost impossible to even see the lane stripes at all, or even which way the road was going. There were hardly even any other cars at all, so we couldn't even go by watching them in front of us. The best that Rex could do was to try to follow the slightly 'ploughed' tracks of other cars that had come before us. But even those had obviously had trouble staying in the lanes, so the whole thing was shaky at best. We'd soon gone from starting to nervously joke about it, to beginning to become actually scared. Rex was concentrating real hard on following the road and driving carefully, saying he was getting a really bad feeling, and I was straining to see the rumble strips on the side of the road, and where it was curving, through the bizzare combo of whiteout and blackness.
Then all of a sudden... it happened so fast, I'm not even quite sure what happened. But like, all I know is, I think Rex was trying to make a slight adjustment to stay in the lane.. we were going at like 50 miles an hour in this shit, but still there were some other cars behind us riding us, trying to pass us.. And all of a sudden, I can feel the car start to fishtail!
...And it's not stopping!
No, we're definitely spinning out! We're definitely spinning around, oh my god! It was one of those moments where time seems to slow down and stop for an eternity... The car spun out, past 90 degrees, a full 180! We're facing backwards now, still skidding, still out of control, and there are cars coming at us! The one behind us narrowly missed and whizzed by us on the side, and our car's still sliding to the left! And now we're off the road, sliding down sideways and backwards down the steep steep incline, into the wide ditch/field that separated the north and southbound lanes. And it's really steep, and the car is shaking, and I'm cleanching my teeth and I've got my hand braced against the top of the ceiling, and I'm absolutely certain that the car is going to roll over!
And...
I'm... calm. Oh my god, I'm terrified, but, there is nothing that I can do whatsoever. The car is now going to do, or not do whatever it is going to do, and there's nothing I can do to change that. That thought comes.
We're going to die.
...And I'm ok.
I don't want to die. But, I am here, together with who I want to be with. I've had a good life. I am happy with who I am, and the things that I have done. And, I've found and am with the one that I want to be with until the very end... even if that end comes right now. This long, considered thought flashes at length, through my slow-time brain.. I turn and look at Rex, and I can see the same thought in his face. His eyes lock with mine, and he shouts, "Quentin, I love you!" and we clutch at each other for dear life.
...
The car does not roll. It makes it upright to the bottom of the ravene, and evens itself out at last, spins around one more time completeing the last 180 of the circle, before slowing and coming to a full stop. We are shaking and trembling. But, we are alive. We did not even hit anything. Full time slowly resumes, and we burst with relief, and nervous laughter, and hugging and checking to make sure we're ok. Finally when we calm down enough, we get out to check around the car, and, miraculously it seems to be perfectly intact. We wait for a little while, like, what are we supposed to do? But, no other cars or police have arrived. And both of us have absolutely zero cell signal there. So... we decided to just see if we can carefully just drive back up out of the ravene.
It takes us one or two tries, but, we were able to do it. Tsk, lol... and just as we get back on the road, of course, THEN we see cop lights suddenly light up behind us. So, we pull over to the other side of the road again, and the cop comes to check us out. After we explain what happened though, we're still obviously shaken, he check us and the car out, and tells us to go on and be careful.
Rex drives us another couple of miles to the first rest stop we see, and we take some time there to just calm down and collect ourselves. Rex calls his mom, and I call Fal. When we finally get the nerve up to get back on the road, I took over the driving cause Rex was just so shook up. It was still extremely scary for most of the rest of the way back, but I tried to be so careful. And in the end, we were finally able to make it back all the way home without further incident. Along the way though, we totally saw like seriously another five or six cars that also slid into the ditch.
But, we're okay. We made it...
...
And... WE HAD THE BEST TIME OF OUR LIVES! :D What a truly wonderful, amazing weekend, with the person I love the most. I could not have asked for a better partner, lover, friend, for any of it. Even the scary part there at the last, all worked out in the end, and was just more proof to me, as if I'd needed any more by now, that I am truly with the person with whom I want to share the rest of my life.
I love you baby, so very very much. More than I have words to say. Thank you, for being you. For being with me. For everything... I love you, I'm so proud of you and who you are, and I don't care who knows it.
Here's looking forward to many many more years of adventures together! :D
***
Oh yes, and P.S. With a hat tip to Snowie and Steph, Dire, Diana, Woody and a few others... SAFE! ;)
So, with hotel reservations, maps, and packed bags in tow... off we went!
Being a fan of shows like the Amazing Race, I've always been interested in seeing how people deal with traveling in a foreign country. Normally, Canada would be no big deal for Americans, but Quebec is a French speaking region, and rather proudly so, so nominally we knew we would be faced with the challenges typically associated with more exotic regions. Fortunately however, my husky is something of a language prodigy - he speaks both French and Spanish most excellently, and snippets of a few other languages as well, so I knew that we would be ok. As for myself, though very rusty by now, I also took French as my foreign language in school, so while I couldn't speak it nearly as well as Rex, I could understand it decently enough to get by. And, reading it was no problem for either of us. (Rex was really outstanding though. During the course of the weekend, several of the locals complimented him that he spoke almost like a native. My husky's so smart! ^.^ But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.)
Lol... Such knowlege came in handy rather quickly, though. :-P We had no trouble at all on the 6 hour drive up, nor getting accross the border itself. However, very shortly thereafter, we somehow made a wrong turn off of our map... and somehow ended up in the middle of freakin' French Canadian rural NOWHERE! I'm talking, like, rundown abandoned farm houses, no tresspassing (in French) signs on many of the remaining ones, French Deliverance/Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory here. With our gas tank on a single line above empty.
We finally saw an actual person (there hadn't been anyone about for miles), coming out of his house towards the street, to take out his garbage, and we flagged him down. Our "Excusez-moi monsieur, parlez-vous l'anglais?" was met with a loud and resounding, "Non!"
Whoo boy, ok, here we go... first real test! So Rex took a deep breath, and decided on a French formulation for "We need gas, can you tell us where the station is?"
The gentleman's expresion visibly brightened, when he heard Rex speak pretty decent French to him, and he gave us directions that we totally managed to follow, and get to a station just in the nick of time. That kind of experience was repeated pretty often throughout the weekend, actually. Even in the cases where the people we met spoke English just fine, as long as we tried to speak French to them at least a little bit first, that almost always made them instantly that much nicer to us, and they didn't seem to mind switching to English for us at all when we faltered. Lol, it was kind of funny, actually... in a couple of instances, we totally saw some shopkeepers be rude and standoff-ish to people that came at them with English right off the bat and understood no French at all, and then those same shopkeepers were totally nice to us, and were still fine with helping us in English when we had difficulty. I have to say, I think we both kind of enjoyed that. It made us feel cultured and accomplished. ^.^
But in any case... Without much further ado, we finally made it into Montreal, found our hotel, and were all ready to paint the town red!
As it so happens, Montreal has fairly large and famous gay district in it, kind of like The Village in NYC. And it is called, appropriately enough... Le Village. This was the main area we mostly intended to go to, and we'd purposely selected a hotel that was fairly nearby. It was only like 5 pm by this point, so we set out on foot to go look around, and, sure enough... if you've ever been to the Village in NYC, or the Castro in San Francisco, or any other such large metro gay area, you know that unmistakeable vibe that you get from them... :-P
Well, it was no different here, and as soon as it hit, Rex and I looked at each other, and were just like, "OMG, c'est très fabuleux ici!!!" XD
***
So yes, though.. Le Village was very cool, full of all these little head shops, and cafes, and bars and clubs and restaurants and such. We spent a lot of time window shopping, and browsing around for things to do later in the night, when the night life would kick into full gear. We were wearing typically furry clothing, and had on our leather studded collars with each other's tags on them. It was kinda funny, in that even in "Le Village", we seemed to stand out. We had multple people, quite a few times over the weekend, stop us on the street to compliment us and say how cute we looked together. :-P It was nice.
Anyway, we finally settled on this nice little italian restaurant for dinner, which had just the right amount of upscaleness to it, while actually looking "good", and not merely pretentious and touristy, and was quite popular by the crowds, it seemed. We had a very nice waiter, who we kind of got the impression that he was a little bit très fabuleux himself, if you know what I mean. :-P We asked him what some fun things to do that night might be, and he wrote down a whole list of bar and club suggestions, including "Mado", which is this apparently rather famous drag queen bar in Montreal (Rex already knew about this, and we'd intended to go see the show. But, more on that later.) Being that the drinking age in Canada is 18, Rex was totally able to have drinks with me in the restaurant there, which was really nice. And, being as we'd told the waiter it was his 18th birthday, at the end of our meal, the restaurant suddenly started playing "happy birthday", and all the waiters started clapping and singing (and the patrons joined in as well), and our guy brought Rex a big tiramisu cake, with a lit sparkler in it. It was totally awesome! :)
After dinner, we did a little more window shopping, went into this sex shop, called "Le Priape", and looked at various fetish wear for a little while, before walking back to the hotel for a quick rest before going out again for the night.
Oh yeah, and on the way back to the hotel, some guy on the street tried to sell us drugs in two different languages. :-P We were walking up the street, and this really shady looking guy is standing there on the corner as we pass by. He says something to us in French that we don't quite understand, but we figure whatever it is, we don't want to get involved, so we both pretend like we have no clue and keep walking by. So then the dude trys again, following after us, and switching to thickly accented English: "Hey, do you guys need somesing?" LOL! :-P We're just like, um... no... thanks. and just keep walking.
***
So anyway, after a quick freshening up, back to Le Village we went, and found the aforementioned Mado's, and proceeded to check out the show. This was indeed a fairly popular place - a very mixed crowd, with plenty of straight out of town tourists, guys and gals both, local regular gays, and of course, plenty of drag queens as well. Rex and I found ourselves a place at the bar fairly close to the stage, and had some drinks while we waited.
Lol... and once again... somehow... even though we're in a DRAG QUEEN bar, in the middle of French Quebec, somehow, Rex and I still stand out, apparently. :-P
Once again, we had a number of people compliment us on how cute we were together. Just a few straight girls at first. And then, this one guy comes up, and says he couldn't help but notice us from across the bar. And as it turns out, this guy was one of the co-owners of Priape - the fetish store which we'd gone into earlier! :-P So he talked to us for a little while, and was very nice. And then after that, this actual *drag queen* comes up to us and says, in very thick French Quebecois accent, "Oh, but you two are so very beautiful together! Just keep doing what you are doing!"
And then, S/he notices Rex's bag... Rex has this little backpack, which looks like it's a husky plushie. Lol... So.. apparently, she (incorrectly) thought that this meant that Rex was a babyfur... Or well, not 'babyfur' per se, since nobody here really seemed to know about Furry unless we explained it to them. But I guess, the regular non-furry gay equivalent of babyfur. (And no offense intended to any of our friends out there who may be babyfurs, but just for clarification's sake, Rex is not one.) But anyway though, she got real excited when she saw this thing, and was all like, "Mon dieu, but I am a baby too!"
Lol... And then, she proceeded to tell us how her girlfriend (we saw her girlfriend over by the other end of the bar where she pointed, who may have been an actual transexual, I wasn't sure,) changed her diapers, and who was on top, and various other things that they did. :-P And Rex and I are trying to be nice and polite, but the whole time it's all we can do not to just burst out laughing! XD *facepaws*.
Not too long after that, we decided to go outside for a bit of fresh air, and we ended up talking there for awhile more with the above mentioned drag queen, along with a new trio of REALLY GAUDY drag queens who were hanging outside of the club's door, and who were all high as hell, as they were openly passing around a joint between them. :-P Lol... apparently, the gaudiest one of them all, and apparently the leader, thought that our collars meant that we were actually "slaves" looking for masters, or something like that... whatever such things might signify to some regular non-furry gay world gays, I guess. (this was also significant to something which happened the next night, but more on that later.) But anyway, she was really funny, and oh my god was she gaudy, with her huge platform shoes, and dress, and hat, and tons of pancake makeup, and just everything. :-P
Anyway, after a little while more of that, we decided to continue on with our bar hopping adventure, and moved on to this other place called Studs, which we'd seen earlier in the day, and which our waiter from the restaraunt had also told us about. Studs was quite a different flavor from that of Mado. This place was full of Manly Men, with capital M's. It was apparently quite popular, and though very large inside with multiple rooms and bars, was still packed pretty much to the hilt. But yes, very manly men all. There were people playing pool, dancing, loud techno music, very much obvious cruising going on, and generally would have not looked very much different from the rowdiest of NYC's regular straight bars. Except that the clientele here were all men. Oh yeah, and the gay porn on all the tv screens.
Anyway, we mingled all around in there for awhile, and once again we together seemed to draw a lot of collective interest. We developed a habit of going everywhere either hand in hand, or pulling each other by the belt or collar to make an obvious show of our togetherness. :-P We finally settled on one of the three bars inside there as our favorite, and settled down to a whole bunch of drinks. As we were getting more and more drunk, I started ordering a couple of shots, and meanwhile rex starts happily shouting, "Dix-huit ans! Dix-huit ans! J'ai dix-huit ans aujourd'hui!" (18 years! 18 years! I'm 18 years old today!) And the bartender's all like (in french), "18 years? Congratulations, happy birthday!" and he pours Rex, me, and himself a round of shots, and we all down them together. It was pretty awesome.
A little while after that, we went outside for more fresh air and a smoke. (yes, we did smoke a little bit while there, but we're quit again since we've been back.) Anyway, we're hanging out there and talking, and this other guy there comes up to us and starts chatting with us. He had longish hair, and was kinda cute. He was a Quebec native, and his English was a bit difficult for him, and heavily accented. Still though, with a combination of him trying in English, and us trying in French, we were able to converse pretty well actually. He started telling us about living there, and his house on a lake somewhere, and the area in general.. His name, we learned, was Dominique.
Lol.. Alright, now... normally in situations like this, I've kind of gotten used to people especially having an eye for Rex. And the way this is going, I'm kind of expecting this guy to start hitting on him more overtly. Also, especially since Rex's French is much better than mine, and they were the two of them having a much easier time of communicating. However, all of a sudden... he kinda starts leaning on *me* more, and in fact all of his body language, which has now become rather flirty, seems to be getting directed right square at me! At one point, it just became too blatantly obvious, so Rex kind of amusedly says to him, "So you're into 'bears' huh?" And at that point, Dominique smiles and looks at me and says, "...I'm into people, their personalities, their auras..." And before I know it, he's leaned into me and starts totally making out with me! :-P Lol.. I was totally caught buy surprise... but it was pretty good actually, so I returned the enthusiasm. After about ten seconds of that, we broke, and.. lol, I don't even remember what we all said, I was still so surprised, but we were generally just laughing about it all. And then he pulls me in for some more, and I in turn pulled Rex into it too.. So there we were, the two of us, in freaking Quebec, randomly making out together with a guy we met at the gay bar. It was quite clear that Dominique would have been very ok with taking us somewhere, or us taking him back to our hotel... But, nah... We were already pretty drunk, and we figured that what little we had done was just about the right amount of risque adventure, before crossing into maybe a little too sketchy territory. Heh, it was still a fun moment, though. ^.^
Lol, alright... well maaaaaybe we did cross that line a little bit, shortly thereafterwards, actually. But, it was not with Dominique. After a little more time in Studs, we decided to move on to another item we'd marked for our possible itinerary - a bar and dance club called the Tools Club. Rex had identified this earlier as a possible point of interest, when we'd been browsing around for places to go, because one of the Tools Club's claims to fame, is its "backroom playroom". Yes, with all that that implies. We thought it might be hilarious and quite the adventure to go check that out, and though we decided it better that we *not* get ourselves involved in whatever might be going on back there, maybe at least the two of us might do something there with each other.
Well anyway, we got there, checked the place over, and the front of the bar at least was actually kind of empty. (Did get another compliment from a lesbian there, though.) But, we did find the play room, and each paid our two dollars to go in... lol.. and.. wow.. So, like, it was this big open space, which they'd purposely partitioned off to make this very labyrinthine series of twisty corridors and ally ways... and like, dark... completely dark! Barely enough light to make your way around in, without the liberal use of feel. Kind of the point, I guess. :-P
Lol... So we're like OMG this is soooooo sketchy, what the HELL are we doing here? And there are other people in here too, for sure, all skulking around in the darkness... and it was just so... ummm yeah. Funnily enough though.. as near as we could tell, there wasn't actually anybody naked or doing anything. It just seemed like everyone else was also milling around, checking people out, seeing who would make the first move, I guess. Lol... So, Rex and I are like... Really? REALLY? Do WE, have to be the ones to be the life of the party HERE too? Are WE the ones who have to come here to freaking Quebec to get something started up in this bitch? :-P We decided that that idea was totally funny. Soooo... we find ourselves the darkest of dead end ally ways, giggling to ourselves are we really gonna do this..? Aaaaand... we're just about to start, but before the first zipper comes down, there appears right on queue this silhouette at the entrance to our little alley... quite blatantly staring right at us in our direction, though we couldn't see a thing about him, except for his outline... and we're like, ummmmm.... And then the guy walks right over and to the side of us, and just stands there... like.. RIGHT there, like a foot away. Rex says that he felt him brush up against his leg.. and we're just like um LOL NOPE! FUCK THIS, THAT WAS FUN, BUT LET'S GET THE FUCK UP OUTTA HERE NOW! ;-P Yeaaaaaah... So, we beat our hasty retreat outside, and went back to studs for a little while, where we just sat and laughed about the whole thing. Finally, we stumbled very drukenly back to our hotel together, for a much needed rest after our very full day.
***
The next day, we did a number of much more traditionally touristy things all around the city. We had crepes for breakfast (mine were nuttella and ice cream - delicious!), did a bunch of window shopping, went to an art museum. There was this one store called Weedstock, where absolutely everything there was made of hemp - all the clothes, pants, shirts, jackets, hats, bags, everything. (Get it? Weeeeeeeeed stock? Eh? Eh? *nudge nudge*) And I have to say all of it was of rather extremely high quality, too. I was rather more impressed than I expected to be. Rex got himself a very nice backpack-ish manbag sort of thing. Way nicer than a lot of things I've seen in some regular department stores, even.
Had lunch at a little local pizza and fast food dive, where Rex had a beer and chicken fingers, and I had poutine (yumm!)
Went out to dinner again at our same little italian restaurant which we'd liked so much the first time.
Aaaand, finally it was time once again to venture out to our big ticket items of night life! Tonight, the main event was Campus, a gay male strip club, right next to Mado's from the night before, in the middle of Le Village.
Now, I had never been to a strip club before... at least, not one that actually allowed full nudity as Montreal apparently does. But, it was pretty much exactly what you'd imagine such a thing to be. Lots of really well built, impossibly gorgeous stripper/dancer guys, doing exactly that on stage, and also milling around the general (much much less impossibly gorgeous :-P ) crowd of patrons, chatting them up, getting them to buy drinks, and taking them off into the club's own 'back rooms' for lap dances.
Upon getting in there, we were intercepted almost right away, by this very cute, and very sweet and nice (and yes, also impossibly well-defined) red headed guy, named Danny. Danny was a lot of fun. Yeah, this was his job, but, Danny seemed to have fun with it, and he always had a smile in his voice and a sparkle in his eye (and of course, the everpresent cute French Quebecois accent as well.) He escorted the two of us over to a table and sat us down. Lol.. and he proceeded to tell us, that, if we wanted, the club had those back rooms, and he could take us there and give us a lap dance, and that it was full nudity and full contact. Lol... *facepaws*
Heh.. we thanked him, and said we'd think about it, and he left us alone for a little while, while we had some drinks, watched the dancers on the stage, and genereally people watched around the club. Once again though, we apparently were observed, as well as were observers. After a little while, Danny came back to sit and chat with us some more. He said that a number of the dancers working the main room had noticed us, and our collars. In fact, apparently some of them had thought (as the one drag queen had from the previous night), that that must have meant we were both "slaves" looking for "masters", and were initially unsure that we were 'together' at all. :-P We tried to explain Furry to him a little bit, but when he said, "what, you mean like, 'Bears'?" We were just like no no, when you go home and can get on the internet, look up "Furry". But, we explained that for this, if you see someone wearing a collar but with no tag on it, that typically means that they are looking for someone, but if they have tags, particularly matching ones like ours, that means that person is taken and spoken for. Lol.. I can only hope that he did go the next day and look up Furry, and that it blew his mind, the cute french canadian stripper!
Anyway though, after all that, Danny made his pitch to give us a lap dance once again. He seemed to like us rather a lot. (Don't get me wrong, obviously this was his job and all. But, he did seem to come back up to us a lot, and stay longer than with most of the other people he did.) This time we accepted, and allowed ourselves to be dragged to the back for... whatever might ensue. :-P LOL! And.. ayup, that was a lapdance, alright! Once we were in our own little private curtained booth, he got himself totally naked, and was flexing all his muscles for us, and sitting in our laps and rubbing himself on us.. he had muscles in places that I didn't even know you could have muscles. Not like, crazy way overbig disgusting muscles, but, probably the hardest and most well defined for a 'regular sized guy' that I've ever seen. And he was talking to us and asking doesn't this or that part of him look so nice, and he's such an exhibitionist, can't we tell? and encouraging us to touch various parts of him. Yes, those parts too.
And then at one point, he's like, in his cute french accent, "You can bite on my nipples a little bit if you like... but, not too hard because I am sensitive!" So we did.
And then he turns around and starts flexing his butt cheeks, and says, "you can nibble a little bit on my ass if you like.." Lol.. So we did that too. Together there, one cheek for each of us! :-P
And then just a little bit after all that, he (very politely, lol... almost apologetically) told us that he could hear that "two songs" had played since we started, and that was the standard time, and so now we owed him 40 bucks each. Lol... they don't tell you at all what you're gonna pay, until after you've actually done it. All part of the game, I guess. Still, We've had a friend tell us of a time he spent much more, to do much less, at a regular American strip club, so I guess it was all good. ;)
Anyway though, after that, Danny lead us back to our orginal table back in the main room. On the way there, I suddenly felt my collar get grabbed and YANKED from behind, and I'm all of a sudden being dragged back to the back rooms by another one of the dancers! Lol.. I guess he hadn't gotten the memo that we weren't "slaves" yet. :-P But I was like nununununooooo, thank you, and made a break back for my husky. Heh, the dancer seemed a little bit miffed.
But anyway, so then we're sitting back at our table again, drinking some more, talking, and observing, when another completely new dancer comes up to us. This guy was like, the exact polar opposite of our Danny. Whereas Danny was sweet and cute and playful, this guy, Ricky was his name, was all macho arrogant, aggressive, forward tough guy. You know the steriotype where "straight women love assholes"? Well, this guy apparently must have been there to serve the gay male equivalent of that.
And so, he starts grabbing on to Rex's collar, like the other one had done to me, and starts going off on (in thick tough-guy french accent) how he's gonna make Rex his bitch, or something like that, I dunno. And Rex just laughs at him, bats his hand away, and goes, "You got it all wrong buddy - I'm on top!"
Lol.. My husky's so good when he takes control of a situation. Haha, this was going to be good! ;)
And so, the guy's like, "oh what, you want to tie me up?" But Rex is just casually dismissive of him again. I can see that look in Rex's eye... that look that says, "HA HA Oh look - new fun chew toy! :D "
So this of course just makes the guy try even harder. It's like, he can't believe he's being so easily turned down or something. He's all like (french accent, remember), "You know why I am the best? You know why I will rock your world tonight? Experience! That's right! I've been doing this for 21 years! I'm way better than that guy that was with you before. [*gasp!* you just insulted our Danny like that? Oh no sir, this is not going to go well for you at all!] I've done every thing there is. I'm famous in this town, everyone knows me!" And on and on, and rah rah rah blah blah blah blah blah.
And Rex just looks at him and goes:
Rex: "You know what I find really sexy?" (Oh boy, here we go!)
Ricky: "What is that?"
Rex: ...
Rex: "Modesty."
...
Bwaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!! I practically choke and spit take on my drink and start laughing under my paw...
And then:
Ricky: "What is that? I do not know this word?"
Rex: "Yeah, I know."
Ricky: (who had now noticed me trying not to burst out laughing) "...this is a good thing, this 'mo-des-ty?'"
Rex: "Oh yes, very good."
Ricky: "Do you know, what is it in French?"
Rex: "Don't worry... You wouldn't understand it in French either."
...
AAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! XD XD XD
*sigh*
I love my husky so much. :)
lol.. yeah, so that was totally awesome. So then Ricky walked away, looking kinda pissed and kinda confused. He later did a few more near but not too near walk bys, looking slightly more pissed. I like to think that he asked one of his dancer friends what it meant, and they told him. Hopefully Danny! XD
And Danny himself, as I said, did come back to sit and chat with us a few more times. I think we must have been being probably really more nice to him than he was used to. Like, we were actually talking to him and asking him about his life and stuff, instead of being all like 'ooh baby yeah man meat!'
At one point, we asked him if he had a boyfriend, and though he kept his smile, he actually looked a little bit sad at that. And he was like, no... you know, who would want to date a dancer, and be worried and argue about what they were doing every night? *sigh* lol.. poor thing. We actually felt a little sad for him. A little later, the final time he sat down with us, he leaned in close to us, and said (french accent), "Listen... do not repeat this, but... if you want, I can take you two into the back again with me, and you could... suck me... and I could give you a very good time tonight..."
Lol, *blush, facepaws* That much, you are not supposed to do. I'm sure it does happen plenty though, and the establishment just looks the other way. Still though, despite as much of this being his job as it was, he seemed a little bit wistful about it, and we kinda like to think that he chose us as a little bit more special than most of the people he deals with. He seemed genuinely sad when we kind of begged off and said "we'd think about it," and he went away again. We wondered privately to each other if this was perhaps like, the closest kind of approximation to real human contact that he could really get. It was kind of heartbreakingly sweet, in a fucked up sort of way. And very sad.
At this point... I suppose I should point out that I actually didn't find anything about the strip club even remotely sexy at all... not even Danny's lapdance, as nice as he was to us. For me, this was all just more like OMG, look at this funny crazy stuff we're doing together, and, as a good story now. But seriously, it's just not the same thing in a place like that. When one of these gorgeous guys comes up to you, it's because they're expecting money. At least, if someone comes up to you in a bar or in at least regular life or whatever, then they're doing it because of you. Not the same thing at all.
We decided that we'd had enough for the night, and that it was time to move on. We wanted to say goodbye to Danny, but we didn't see him. (heh.. probably in the back room again. :-P ) So we told our bartender to say goodbye to him for us, and that we enjoyed our night very much.
And to tell him, that he was much better than Ricky.
After that, we went back to Studs for awhile, found our favorite bar tender again, more shots, got hammered again. This one old, like, 62 year old guy started talking to us, and telling us about how he'd never realized he was gay until he was 50, and how he had two sons that were really cute and looked just like Tom Cruise. Lol.. Jesus :-P *facepaw* This other guy started talking to Rex in French, and rambling, and making this weird... half-moan half small scream like, "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" More mumbling, and then "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" The bar tender and a couple of the other locals came up to us and asked if the guy was bothering us, and made him go away. But eh, other than that, not too much else special to report at Studs that night. It was a good time. We eventually stumbled home drunk back to our hotel again. On the way home, we ran into that really gaudy drag queen in front of Mado's again. She had a hat on her head that was an exact replica of Notre Dame cathedral.
***
So the next day, it was time to make the drive back home again. We wandered around just long enough to find a decent place for lunch, packed Rex's car, and said our goodbye's to this city which had been so wonderful to us. It was really and truly awesome, and we will defintely be coming back again sometime! We're gonna try to find some other things we didn't do there yet, as well. Like perhaps the Six Flags park that is there. Or, maybe even climb Montreal (the mountain the city surrounds) itself! :)
On the way to the border, we stopped at this big.. 'last chance' store, I guess you could call it. The typical sort of thing you expect at any border, where they sell things you can't get anymore once you cross. As had become our custom, we entered the place, greeting and saying a few words to the shopkeeper in French first, thus assuring ourselves preferred treatment.
And she heard us talking rapid fire to each other in English, but again trying French with her, so she switched to english for us for the most part when needed, and was really nice and helpful to us. A little while after we came in, a french speaking person came in and asked to use the bathroom, and she said something like "oh sure it's right over there," in french. Then, seriously, like not even five minutes later, some young American sounding guy came in and was all like, "Excuse me, could I use your bathroom?" in English, not even trying French at all. And the lady was totally like, "Nope, sorry, it's closed for the winter, there's a gas station down the street." I'm pretty sure she saw Rex and I look at each other and smile at that. Lol... She totally would have let us use the bathroom if we'd asked, I just know it.
Anyway, I got two bottles of maple syrup, yo! Let me repeat that: I got two bottles of MAPLE fucking SYRUP! Not corn syrup, with fucking maple flavor and shit in it, MAPLE FUCKING SYRUP! You know what it says on the ingredients? It says: "Maple [fucking] Syrup" Period! The End! FUCK YEAH, son! THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!!! ^.^ They're in the shape of a fucking maple leaf, and I can now tell you that they taste ORGASMIC on vanilla ice cream! FUCK YEAH!!
I also got some delicious hard maple candies. (Ingredients: "Maple syrup, sucrose" Period, the fucking end.)
Rex got himself a keychain with a Quebecois flag, a giant actual cloth flag, and a Canadian hocky jersey. Which I must say, he looks pretty smokin' in, eh? ^.^
Aaaaaanyway... we then continued on the long drive home for real. Crossed the border once again without incident, and proceeded to go for the next several hours through the vast expanse of nothingness which is the upstate New York highway system.
As some may know, it snowed rather heavily that night. it started not long after we were on our way. It was rather pretty at first... but it got fairly scary, rather quickly. The sun's down by like 5:00 now. We were almost at 6, before we'd barely made a dent into upstate. The snow was starting to stick, and it was pitch black outside. And, there are no street lamps at all on that highway, for almost its entire lenght, nor even headlight reflectors embedded into the street. Pretty soon, it was getting almost impossible to even see the lane stripes at all, or even which way the road was going. There were hardly even any other cars at all, so we couldn't even go by watching them in front of us. The best that Rex could do was to try to follow the slightly 'ploughed' tracks of other cars that had come before us. But even those had obviously had trouble staying in the lanes, so the whole thing was shaky at best. We'd soon gone from starting to nervously joke about it, to beginning to become actually scared. Rex was concentrating real hard on following the road and driving carefully, saying he was getting a really bad feeling, and I was straining to see the rumble strips on the side of the road, and where it was curving, through the bizzare combo of whiteout and blackness.
Then all of a sudden... it happened so fast, I'm not even quite sure what happened. But like, all I know is, I think Rex was trying to make a slight adjustment to stay in the lane.. we were going at like 50 miles an hour in this shit, but still there were some other cars behind us riding us, trying to pass us.. And all of a sudden, I can feel the car start to fishtail!
...And it's not stopping!
No, we're definitely spinning out! We're definitely spinning around, oh my god! It was one of those moments where time seems to slow down and stop for an eternity... The car spun out, past 90 degrees, a full 180! We're facing backwards now, still skidding, still out of control, and there are cars coming at us! The one behind us narrowly missed and whizzed by us on the side, and our car's still sliding to the left! And now we're off the road, sliding down sideways and backwards down the steep steep incline, into the wide ditch/field that separated the north and southbound lanes. And it's really steep, and the car is shaking, and I'm cleanching my teeth and I've got my hand braced against the top of the ceiling, and I'm absolutely certain that the car is going to roll over!
And...
I'm... calm. Oh my god, I'm terrified, but, there is nothing that I can do whatsoever. The car is now going to do, or not do whatever it is going to do, and there's nothing I can do to change that. That thought comes.
We're going to die.
...And I'm ok.
I don't want to die. But, I am here, together with who I want to be with. I've had a good life. I am happy with who I am, and the things that I have done. And, I've found and am with the one that I want to be with until the very end... even if that end comes right now. This long, considered thought flashes at length, through my slow-time brain.. I turn and look at Rex, and I can see the same thought in his face. His eyes lock with mine, and he shouts, "Quentin, I love you!" and we clutch at each other for dear life.
...
The car does not roll. It makes it upright to the bottom of the ravene, and evens itself out at last, spins around one more time completeing the last 180 of the circle, before slowing and coming to a full stop. We are shaking and trembling. But, we are alive. We did not even hit anything. Full time slowly resumes, and we burst with relief, and nervous laughter, and hugging and checking to make sure we're ok. Finally when we calm down enough, we get out to check around the car, and, miraculously it seems to be perfectly intact. We wait for a little while, like, what are we supposed to do? But, no other cars or police have arrived. And both of us have absolutely zero cell signal there. So... we decided to just see if we can carefully just drive back up out of the ravene.
It takes us one or two tries, but, we were able to do it. Tsk, lol... and just as we get back on the road, of course, THEN we see cop lights suddenly light up behind us. So, we pull over to the other side of the road again, and the cop comes to check us out. After we explain what happened though, we're still obviously shaken, he check us and the car out, and tells us to go on and be careful.
Rex drives us another couple of miles to the first rest stop we see, and we take some time there to just calm down and collect ourselves. Rex calls his mom, and I call Fal. When we finally get the nerve up to get back on the road, I took over the driving cause Rex was just so shook up. It was still extremely scary for most of the rest of the way back, but I tried to be so careful. And in the end, we were finally able to make it back all the way home without further incident. Along the way though, we totally saw like seriously another five or six cars that also slid into the ditch.
But, we're okay. We made it...
...
And... WE HAD THE BEST TIME OF OUR LIVES! :D What a truly wonderful, amazing weekend, with the person I love the most. I could not have asked for a better partner, lover, friend, for any of it. Even the scary part there at the last, all worked out in the end, and was just more proof to me, as if I'd needed any more by now, that I am truly with the person with whom I want to share the rest of my life.
I love you baby, so very very much. More than I have words to say. Thank you, for being you. For being with me. For everything... I love you, I'm so proud of you and who you are, and I don't care who knows it.
Here's looking forward to many many more years of adventures together! :D
***
Oh yes, and P.S. With a hat tip to Snowie and Steph, Dire, Diana, Woody and a few others... SAFE! ;)
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Glad ya had a good time yotey,
Fuji
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Haha, Weedstock.
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I can has excellent adventures plz? kthxbye!
Totally going to get yelled at for this
Bleh.
Also, you're a freakin' cradle robber, you know that? :P
Re: Totally going to get yelled at for this
I mean, if someone from Mexico went to visit America somewhere, knew no English at all, and then not only that, but actually got indignant that whatever American he talked to wouldn't and probably even couldn't speak Spanish back to him... the American would be like are you fucking kidding me get the fuck outta here. And yet, that is the attitude that most Americans seem to take, when they travel to foreign countries. I can understand some of those places getting a little miffed sometime. :-P
As for that last, *shrugs* see my comment to Zelox below.
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Must have been nice to experience that 'out of comfort zone' visit due to language.
Rex's response to Ricky is priceless, and it is good to read you had a good time. Especially memorable with fear at the end, which you portrayed well, even though as you were writing it obviously survived, still sucked in.
The experiences with Danny and the local turned me off actually. I don't know, just, eh.
Danny was portrayed through your writing as hurt more than anything else, potentially craving actual human contact rather than the forced for sale which would normally be offered. One of the reasons I can't possibly enjoy strip clubs right there, they aren’t doing it for you, it is just... money, really.
Anyway, glad to read that you have a good relationship. Just turned 18 eh', was there ever a point you felt like a cradle snatcher? ;p
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Anyway thanks, glad you liked the story. :)
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Anyway, looks like I may just have to meet you both eventually. And it will be interesting, if that ever happens.
Thanks for writing the story, it was a good read.
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Mmm, instant heart attack!
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DALE.
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Awesome adventure...and this "cradle snatching" business...
I've often heard that even the French consider the Quebecois to be assholes, but in light of your observations, I suppose they're probably mostly alright? Just continuously pissed off that everyone thinks they're assholes and treats them like one.
Now, about this "cradle robbing" business...
Having met Rex myself, I have to say the following:
1. He's brilliant. In every sense of the word.
2. He's CENSORED
3. *ahem* He's also far, FAR more mature than most of the people I've met in the furry community, and a good deal of the non-furs that I know.
Rex is a man in every sense of the word. He's polite, honorable, demure and respectful of everyone he meets. He knows bullshit when he hears it, and he's polite enough to let it slip by until he's sure they've spouted enough to choke themselves, and then he let's them have it with both barrels. His poise is quite unshakable, and he has a strong aura of command that would make him an excellent officer in the military.
He's going to be VERY successful and I predict, very powerful.
He is also everything you have ever wanted, and always deserved. So if anyone wants to accuse you of robbing the cradle, just laugh. Because in the end, based on what I saw of you two in the short time I got to spend with you, there was no cradle-robbing here.
I will warn you, though...
The amount of jealousy you are going to face is only going to get worse. There is going to be a LOT of this kind of crap, and the legions of miserable, jaded and shrivel-souled revenants, both young in years and otherwise, are going to try and take you and Rex down. They are going to swarm around you both like biting flies, trying to get their ounce of blood.
Never forget what they are, my friend. And deal with them accordingly.
Re: Awesome adventure...and this "cradle snatching" business...
And yeah, I know that the haters will be hatin'...
So believe me, I plan to be quite insufferable with how amazingly happy I am, how I have everything I ever wanted, and how my life is totally so much awesomeer than theirs, and they can hate me with every last fiber of their ugly, jealous little hearts! :D
Re: Awesome adventure...and this "cradle snatching" business...
Yes dear, but don't forget what your husky finds to be sexy in a man. *wink*
Re: Awesome adventure...and this "cradle snatching" business...
Seriously though... What Rex really wants is someone that can actually match him. And so do I. :)
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LOL. It's always the small things that are the biggest giveaways.
Sounds like an amazing trip. Yea travel!
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Anyways this was a fun entry to read. That Saturday evening me and my mate were downtown too at the bar Aigle Noir. Then we headed elsewhere. We passed by Mado that Saturday and saw the crossdresser boi with the chapel hat.
As for interesting it was kinda funny how your furry dog collars were mistaken for slave collars, Also find it funny that the person that serviced you at Campus was named Danny. One of the guys I know indirectly here is also named Danny and took runner up in a Rubberman contest. Another Danny I know is a bear that works at the Eagle. So it seems a bit of a common name in Quebec.
Oh and so you know the hill is Mount Royal :P It has an English name.
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I had chills reading about your trek in the snow...
However, the best part definitely has to be Rex telling off Ricky like that. That's some sharp wit right there. I honestly wish more people valued modesty. People who have egos and push it in everyone's face are just...ugh
Not that cockiness can't be sexy sometimes ^^
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Yeah, Rex is good at what he does... and he's very sexy doing it. ;)
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I LOVED Rex's come back that was awesome! :)
The trip in the snow though was terrifying, but nice to know you two made it out safe in the end.
I am sure Rex is as witty as you and others have said but I haven't had the chance to really talk to him...or you for that matter. Going to have to fix that in the future. :)