Kim in Vancouver: The Finale
As I said, I rarely went out in Vancouver because of the inevitable hassle it presented. Not to mention that between the program at school and my job at Starbucks, I was pretty busy most of the time (for more on this, see post: The Canucks Lose, But I Win). The last week I was there, I decided that I’d been a hermit long enough and it was time for me to grace the City of Vancouver with my always entertaining drunken presence. How the night life had survived without it is beyond me.
My last night there (I feel slightly nostalgic as I tell this tale) began at the BCIT dorms, where my roommate Shane and I were joined by one of my co-workers, Lillian and her husband, and then later by Tyler and Lu (two more roommates) and Sari (another co-worker). I hadn’t eaten much that day but that didn’t register in my one-track “let’s get drunk” mind. I began pouring blueberry vodka/waters like they were going out of style! If there’s anything I should have learned through my years of drinking and drunken nonsense experiences, it’s that I should always eat first. Nothing good ever comes of nights when I don’t. Ever. But at the very least, they make for amusing stories.
I noticed shortly after I began drinking that Tyler wasn’t around. It was his idea to go out to begin with, so where was he?
A side note about Tyler: I think he secretly hates drinking. For some unknown reason, he can’t drink much and I have my strong suspicions that he doesn’t enjoy it anyway. Confirm/Deny, Tyler?
I went and banged on the door to his room, ultra obnoxiously, but he didn’t answer so a few minutes later I decided to call him. To my surprise and utter dismay, he was SLEEPING! I don’t know how he didn’t hear me banging on his door, but that’s besides the point. This was the time for drinking, not the time for sleeping!
Tyler came upstairs shortly after and I was glad because it was time to get this drunken ball rolling, and I had ordered pizza upon realizing that I felt slightly tipsy after only three drinks (yikes!) so I figured I should eat at least a little bit. The two slices of pizza I ended up having didn’t prove to be enough to nullify my assholery for the night. But nonetheless, prior to it’s arrival, I was extra excited like I always am for food.
While I had polished off at least three or four vodka/sodas and everyone else had a drink or two, including Lu who had been getting ready and had a shower beer, Tyler hadn’t started drinking yet and he had been up for at least five to ten minutes. As precious time ticked by, Tyler didn’t go for booze. Instead, he whipped himself up a good ol’ 9 p.m. protein shake! He did have a drink or two after finishing the shake since Lu and I harassed him about getting into the party mood. In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing he had that shake before going out. Or maybe it wasn’t…I’ll let you be the judge of that.
After a few more drinks, it was time to go out. Lillian’s husband recommended we go to Lotus, and he had to “take care of business” there. My mind immediately raced to thoughts of drug dealing and other scandalous activity, but apparently he just had to drop off a CD. Far less exciting than I had hoped for. I really wanted to hit up Granville Street and check out the club scene there, since there’s always more people for me to befriend and more attention to be had, but consensus said: Let’s go to Lotus. We decided to take the bus to the SkyTrain and then head downtown that way. I was immediately opposed to this idea, since public transit makes me angry at life. Always full of “those people” preaching about something or handing out pamphlets about things I’ll never attend nor do I care about. Or the dreaded situations where “that person” talks to you and makes you most uncomfortable as you contemplate getting off immediately and switching buses or trains to avoid making Level One conversation with “that person” any longer. I was determined not to sulk that night, though. It was my last night in Vancouver and I refused to turn into a clone of an America’s Next Top Model contestant, crying and feeling sorry for myself when absolutely nothing in my life sucked. Also against my case was the fact that everyone else thought taking public transit was a great idea so I poured myself another vodka/soda and chugged it to mentally prepare myself for what transit could potentially have in store.
By the time the bus came, my last drink had hit me full throttle and it was I who was “that person” on public transit. Yelling obnoxiously and creating a giant scene, singing random songs off-key and horribly. Talking to people and complimenting them on random pieces of their outfits or hairdos, some extremely sarcastically and others with a grain of sincerity. I must have pissed off a few people at best. I noticed that everyone else in our group sat at the front of the bus, presumably to give the general public they impression that I was crazy and there were not in any way associated with me. Lu and I, who were clearly the loudest of the bunch, headed directly to the back in an immediate pursuit to make friends and to make a scene.
During the bus ride from the dorm to the SkyTrain, I mostly just yelled about nothing and sang. Once I saw that Sari and Lillian were sitting with another employee from the hotel at the front of the bus, I decided to have a conversation with her (which was mostly one-sided) from the back of the bus, telling her how great it was that we were going out and attempting to persuade her to join us. My attempts, which were mostly incoherent, went unrewarded and she headed off on an Eastbound SkyTrain while I was Westbound and was sure to let everyone within a 10 Block radius of me know it.
Once in the SkyTrain station, I decided it was an excellent idea to start talking to the Transit Police, and to tell them how great it was that they were serving and protecting me. I received a few requests from the group to stop my nonsense and just get on the train, but those Transit Police liked me, I know it. After I got on the platform, I began declaring my love for everyone on the Eastbound Train, including the girl who worked with us at the hotel. Everyone seemed to be quite responsive to my declarations of admiration for each and every one of them and I recall seeing smiles and waves coming from the train, which filled me with glee. I could have conveniently neglected to see a passenger or two attempt to throw a projectile at me and miss, but I’d like to think I was the star of the SkyTrain Show that night.
After getting on the train, my nonsense didn’t stop. It also didn’t slow down. It went full speed ahead and I started talked to every person in our train car. I found out one guy was from Scotland and headed to a party, annnnnd that’s about all I remember. Everyone else’s stories must have been dull because Lu and I decided the car we were in was boring, as we loudly declared, and ran into another car at the next stop. The next car was actually significantly more lively, which made me like transit a little more than I had an hour earlier. A group of guys in the car were also going to Lotus and I guess I felt some intangible bond between us because of it, since I seem to have deemed it necessary to tell them all about the reasons I didn’t like going out in Vancouver nor did I like taking the SkyTrain. I said hi to a lady that was sitting with her boyfriend and she gave me a death stare. Any ordinary person would have cut their losses and realized that lady didn’t want to be friends, but not me. I just decided that I had to “break down her barriers” and eventually she would see that I’m like Spanx: Uncomfortable at first, but after you get used to them, you wonder how you ever lived without them.
As I walked back in forth inside the train, greeting new passengers at each stop and saying goodbye to everyone who got off, I was sure to express my dismay for the fact that this lady wasn’t my friend every time I was within earshot. I also decided that loudly yelling Journey songs was a way to entertain not only myself but those around me. I don’t know what it was; my undying devotion to being friendly to everyone in the train, my singing, or my declarations that not having this woman’s approval were chipping away at my self esteem, but the woman finally smiled at me and laughed when I told a lame joke. “What’s red and goes up and down?” “A TOMATO IN AN ELEVATOR” har har har. I’m a regular comedian. My stop came sooner than it seemed to when I’ve taken the train sober mid-day. All the passengers staying on the train said goodbye to me, and I made my grand exit yelling some ridiculous farewell statement as I got off. I was a hit.
We headed in the direction of Lotus and all I remember saying for the entire walk is that there would be a line at the bar. No one really seemed to take me seriously, and I can’t really blame them because I had been saying dumb shit all night, but we arrived at the bar and there was a massive line. Lotus, like I said, is far from the other bars in downtown Vancouver but there’s two other bars directly beside it, Lick and Honey. Lick, as you can probably infer from the name, is a lesbian bar. I did not want to go there. I wasn’t showing enough cleavage, it would have been a lose/lose situation. I’d been to Honey once before but I didn’t like it and couldn’t remember why. In any case, getting to the other bars was a long ass walk and would have required us to get back on the SkyTrain or take a cab. Consensus says: Stay and go to Honey.
There were only about 4 or 5 people ahead of us waiting to go in, but the wait still seemed like an eternity. I mean, they don’t serve liquor outside the bar. I like Mexico because you can drink on the streets. That’s besides the point.
We got in maybe ten minutes after we got there and I was immediately reminded as to why this bar didn’t rank high on my list of favorite places to get intoxicated. They played Oldies. I’m a total Top 40 type of person. I can’t get enough Flo Rida. Something about Sugar Sugar and The Twist doesn’t get me in the mood to party. Oh well. We had gone too far, it was time to pump up the jam and just get drunker to bear with the music.
A couple vodka sodas, a vodka redbull, a jagerbomb, and a liquid cocaine later and the place seemed alright. Mostly because when I get drunk, borderlining on Loser Pissed, my attention span becomes similar to that of a hummingbird. Plus I started having to pee every two seconds and whatever genius designed Honey decided that only two bathroom stalls would be sufficient in a ladies washroom. Small bathrooms in bars piss me off, but TWO STALLS!? I should have just peed behind the cushions on the giant lounge couch we had staked claim on! Perhaps it would have been the incentive needed to add a stall or ten.
After bathroom trip number 50, I made some shocking observations: Tyler was MIA, Lu was off dancing, Sari had gone home because the last SkyTrain leaves Vancouver at 1, Lillian was texting, and Shane was still drinking. But where was Tyler? Shane told me Tyler was “really drunk” and had run off the bathroom. I don’t remember seeing Tyler again for the rest of the night, although I’m sure I did at some point. I remember dancing a little with Lu toward closing time, and I remember a brief conversation with Lillian about an after hours club called Gorgomesh. After hearing about this glorious place where I could party until 7 in the morning, I decided that Shane, Lu, and I HAD to go. Lillian was going to wait for her husband outside; remember he had gone to Lotus to drop off a demo of sorts; and Lillian graciously said she’d wait with Tyler outside and make sure he got home okay, since he was beyond done and there would be no after hours partying for him. She told me the next day that he puked on the sidewalk.
There’s a blank spot for a little while between closing time at Honey and where I start remembering us walking and if someone could fill me in, I’d be forever grateful. I could have done something amusing or legendary and can’t remember, thus detracting from my story! Lu and Shane were the only ones with me at this point and the thoughts that linger in my mind are those of Lu complaining her shoes hurt and Shane doing some silly walk. I was probably just yelling randomly about anything and everything as I tend to do.
Anyway, I remember leaving the club and then I remember us walking around a corner and seeing a 7-11. We had decided to walk to Gorgomesh despite the fact that none of us had ANY idea where it was and Lillian had warned us that it was expensive to get into and a long way away. Upon seeing the 7-11 sign gleaming in the night, we decided that Gorgomesh was a silly idea and loading up on junk food was a much better one. We walked into 7-11 and what I saw next made me laugh out loud.
Apparently some drunken fool had bought nachos and spilled them all over the floor. That’s not really funny. But the worker was trying to sweep up cheese sauce off the floor into a dustpan. The corn broom was creating horrible cheese sauce smears across the linoleum and turning it a horrendous shade of burnt orange. Oh geez…the things some people do. I ended up buying a bag of chips and a water, and Lu got an entire box of Pizza Pops. While I was waiting for her to microwave them, I guess I decided that since I had already paid for two items, it was buy 2 get 2 free night because I took a Drumstick ice cream thing and a container of candies. I would declare that at this point, I was loser pissed and had absolutely no inhibitions what so ever. Where the hell was Lance at this point? (see The Canucks Lose, But I Win for more about the lovely Sir Lancealot)
So low and behold, Lu microwaved the entire box of pizza pops while they were still in the box and plastic wrappers, lololol…which is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in quite a while. We went outside and hailed a cab New York style and the cabbie immediately put a stop to our shenanigans as I stared at him, sloppily licking my stolen Drumstick. I looked next to me and Lu was holding three pizza pops in her hand with no napkin of any sort, and Shane was devouring Mojo Fries, a whole plate of them. The Cabbie told us he wouldn’t take us unless we put our food in the trunk. Thinking I was being ultra sneaky, I shoved my open ice cream into my purse; an action that I would regret full heartedly the next day. Lu and Shane obediently put their food in the trunk, but I was hungry and I’m pretty sure having the Drumstick melt all over the trunk would have been a much worse life choice than completely covering the inside of my purse in chocolate. At least the latter didn’t cost me anything other than my dignity and some laundry detergent.
I hid behind the drivers seat and ate my Drumstick on the ride back to Burnaby. I don’t remember what we talked about, all I remember thinking that I should have taken a milk chocolate Drumstick instead of a dark chocolate one and then throwing my wrapper out the window (I’m horrible: a thief and a litterbug!) and then my memory jumps to trying one of Shane’s Mojo Fries when we got back to the dorms, which were so old and cold by that point that they were actually hollow… and super disgusting, can’t leave out that detail.
I didn’t puke that night but I passed out in my clothes immediately after we got back to the dorms, and spent my last night in my dorm bed drunk as drunk can be. We got home at about 4:30 and I woke up 5 hours later with a horrible headache, the spins, Rum Bum, and gummy candies stuck to my face and all over my bed. The worst part? I had to move out that day. I begrudgingly dragged my ass over to the gym and bought a Gatorade, which is like my hangover Kryptonite, and it gave me enough energy to get all the stuff out of my dorm room and into my car. I made the three hour drive to Kamloops without any issues except discovering the chocolate mess on the inside of my purse, which I had completely forgotten about. I pulled my sunglasses out to find they were covered in chocolate. All my coins were coated in chocolate also, as was my brush. Damn bad drunken decisions to hell!
It’s almost as though the magical effects of the Gatorade wore off as I arrived home because I started feeling like an absolute bag of shit. But regardless of that, I made my mark on the City of Vancouver. And Tyler made it home safely, aside from the sidewalk barf. I think he felt worse than I did the next day. My only regret is not buying a bigger water the night before because my mouth was drying than the Sahara. But I sure am glad I didn’t get a hotdog…the rum bum would have been upgraded to a Level 5 Global Alert if I had.
