The party was a serious success. Approximately thirty people filtered through the apartment over Tuesday night, the last people arriving at half after midnight. We played the Game of 1000 Blank White Cards and made vicious eggnog. The present table was amusingly covered in odd things; a totem-pole with Mobil figures tied to it, a giant box marked Aardvark. Andrew walked away with the giant whiskey bottle full of jelly-beans that Ray brought, Lief received the paper making kit my mother brought and I got the bag from Nicole & Aiden what had the two pairs of elbow length gloves. Victoria and Dan were the first to arrive and the first to leave, then came Bob, Beth, Brian, James, Ray, Andrew, Aiden, Nicole, Dominique, Rowan, Ethan, Ian, Alli, Nate, Alex, Aaron, Derek, Antonio, Sophie, Kate, Lief, Jenn, Steve, Kalev, his pretty wife, M., with two of her cousins, my mother Vicki, my brother Robin, and two Matthew G’s, Goodbar & Glick, all in no particular order. Will wandered in with two of his friends, but they didn’t know what they were getting into and dragged him out soon after. I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed someone there, it was long list and a lot of people in my livingroom.
Bill, my ex, called and the game dissolved as I answered it, with no-one to keep on top of everyone. Matthew snuck into my room with me and was a delightful bastard into the phone, highly inappropriate, but he helped me pack, so I suppose we must forgive him. I admit that I hadn’t sorted a lick of clothing by the time people began arriving, my day taken with cleaning and finishing the final gifting touches. I was to do it Monday, but had fallen asleep at Brian’s. Not the most intelligent thing I’ve ever done, but it all worked out, so I’m happy. We were loud until the group split into two, with the gamer folk taking over James’ room to play a card game and the rest of us falling into various quiet discussions. Mass exodus was at midnight, but I was up until the next day with Dominique and Matthew. He caught a taxi around five, but she was the last to leave at approximately six:thirty wednesday morning. Ray arrived at eight and we were at the airport by nine. Useless, really, as they decided to not let me in. One collect call later, I was sitting outside with my book, a sad little mouse. The immigration man had yelled at me, calling me names, every word threatening me with a longer stay with some SWAT team men because I didn’t have a birth certificate, never mind that I didn’t have one last time I went down.
My mother came and picked me up, bringing me home for a ransack search, then downtown to finally get a new one. Ten minutes in an office and I had a new one printed out, the efficiency somehow creepy for a governmental office. We had time, so we stopped in the mall, getting her a pin for her hair before stalking into Taff’s for lunch. My second turn at the airport was easier, with kind officials who were on my side because they hated the man I’d dealt with earlier, who apparently every day is angry and uppity yet never does his paperwork. Everyone in line wanted to talk to me, everyone waiting had a look at the present I carried, a three-box tier of red velvet and crimson ribbon. The couple behind me was going to Disneyland with their grandkids and the people in front of me were going to Hawaii for their third honeymoon, insisting that when they were this time they were not going to turn on a T.V. set.
Now I’m in SoCal, arriving at night rather than in the blessed morning. It was amazing to actually see the city at night with my new eyes. Vancouver looks like a deep sea creature pulsing with luminescence, and L.A. looks like the nervous system to some great animal. I was the only person next to an empty seat on the plane, all the children aboard came to visit “the pretty lady with the purple hair, can I mommy?” The boy met me at the airport with a placard marked HOLMES and then he drove me home. This morning I find that I’m installed in a white-washed wooden beach-house apartment. It’s easy to imagine movie-perfect surfer boys living here, their girlfriends blonde and wandering around in towels and bikini tops. Not being one of those, I’m wrapped in a blanket, playing the game of ‘if I were a scotsboy, where would I hide the can-opener’. I want to move the computer outside to the deck, there’s a chair out there and it looks as if all I would be able to see is the aching cerulean ocean and the sky above it, but I can’t find any longer cords. It’s amazing, the horizon, a black-blue steady line stretching to the vanishing point in either direction. I wish I could record it properly, show it to everyone with the clean taste of the air and the siren sound of the emergency vehicles that have been screaming by all day. This doesn’t feel like December, this feels like spring.
