Montreal, famed sub-capital of the province of Quebec. A buzzing maelstrom of lights, a site aroil with strange moon people and Orwellian mega-screen advertising a la Times Square. A place where one can smoke just about anywhere inside, outside, and in-between (“Qu’est-ce qu’une ‘Non-Smoking Section’?”). A place where irritable drivers will make their irritation public knowledge in epithets spoken simultaneously in both nationally approved languages. A place virtually steeped in the history of French colonial lunacy, where old buildings juxtapose against brave new architecture, and all of it sitting atop a bed of young women. The streets are named after saints and provincial separatists, and beer is available at all the Depanneurs (corner stores) and bus stations. The best way to frame this city is to think of it as a French New York City where there exists a language barrier that makes both places equally unintelligible to the visitor. This, of course, is different from Canada’s English New York, Toronto, which is more like a grayer Seattle with a crippling case of cultural syphilis. So there I was, dear reader, a lost anglophone lost in a seething stew of babbling schizoids that had no problem mixing beer with Church.

I felt that Montreal was the perfect place to enjoy a makeshift Thanksgiving meal at one of their famous sandwich delis like Dunn’s or Reubens rather than with irksome members of family who never tire of the POW interrogation tactics of “so when are you going to land a real job?” The reply to such questions and others of their type is always a savage and stuttering attempt, like I’m three and just broke the lamp and have to explain myself under the parental sword of shame. And before you know it, this game of psychological attrition erupts into an orgy of tossed insults, sharp cutlery, beloved family pets, and ancient gravy boats that have been involved in this kind of tradition up through the generations. Rather than endure the losing standoff between the collective family interest v. my self esteem part 793, I say I’m on assignment, which sounds like it has overtones of something that pays money, the only justifiable extrication. Plus, many ex-girlfriends who had moved abroad were returning for this special weekend to spend with their families, and may have taken it upon themselves to unite en masse and subject me to the psychological terror of their own Nuremberg court. Myself unwilling and unable to answer for all my crimes to such a large body of vicious people screaming to have me marched up to the wall, took all I needed in a small carry-on and made a mad dash for the nearest bus station.

My journey begins, as all journeys do, at home in the dreary gray environs of Ottawa. Good friends are all away shooting morphine and pistols in Alberta or snorting cocaine foot-longs on their way to fiddler’s Fredericton and eastern seabord poverty. My day begins at around 11 in the morning when my housemate is blaring top 40 dreck from her slightly detuned clock radio, and is performing a loud and clumsy cleaning rampage. I load coffee into the maker plugged next to my bed, smoke a few cigarettes, read some O’Rourke, ease slowly into preparing mentally for the day, and consider my clothing options. I could wear the stinky CCCP t-shirt and army pants combo I danced in all night at the club that I just so happened to fall asleep in (the clothes), but I think the sweaty soviet factory look popularized by faux-Marxist college kids getting back at their parent’s generous trust funds will only earn me the froideur of those I want to get close to in an effort to get the word on the real action. I decide on the incognito I’m-one-among-you outfits of social camouflage: roomy skater jeans, a black t-shirt with a print of George Dubya that reads ‘American Psycho,’ black socks, black docs obscenely large bug-eyed sunglasses, long wallet chain, a blue sport jacket thrown over it all with a James Joyce button on the lapel, and a spike bracelet for each wrist. Normal, reserved, comfortable traveling gear. Federal law, however, prevents me from listing the contents of my carry-on shoulder bag and jeans pockets. And now for the bus, an out from an outlet.

I was geared for it, as much as anyone hungover with a few pots of coffee sloshing around in the guts could be in the grisly anticipation of being cramped into a hermetically sealed rolling behemoth, a sweat lodge where strangers coyly ignored each other like self-important coquettes. If there was a collective consciousness on this bus, it would resound with the one question, “what possessed you to take this mode of transportation rather than the faster, more luxurious air travel option?” You see, travel can be typologized into three main categories corresponding to income. The bus, or the proletariat chariot, is for people without the financial elasticity and wherewithal to jump cities at a single hop in an airplane or an all elephant-skinned interior limousine, but with enough cash-in-hand to circumvent the sad clown in the rain art of thumbing along the highway. Bus riders have this small luxury at their disposal, and a little money instills a certain degree of sense so that one may resolutely avoid the prospect of the hitch-hiker’s quandary of “will this man stab me in the eyes and leave me for dead at some abandoned barn? Will he tie me up in his cellar, force me to wear a leather tu-tu, and pluck cherries from his armpits with my teeth?”—Or, worse yet: “will this man drive me to homicidal wrath with a long lecture on his pitifully small investment on swamp land futures?” I try not to speak from direct experience if it can be avoided. The bus passenger is more denim than Armani silk, but less marked with greasy patches than the guy on the roadside you just streaked by and threw a beer can full of piss at.

Immediately before we left Ottawa, the coach operator (as the vehicle we were riding in was called a coach, yet was horseless and had all the charm of a packed dental office) gave the obligatory indictment spiel he gives before embarking on any trip, in English and French, that we were prohibited from smoking on the bus—which had the effect of reminding me of how much I wanted a cigarette right then and there and that it would be a long two hours plus until I could spark myself up toward relief. Two hours on a stuffy bus with strangers in denim, on a stomach performing auto-cannibalism, in a seat designed for a small poodle rather than a human being of 6’4”, in anticipation of landing in a place where a Martian dialect was spoken, was enough to give me an acute panic attack only a cigarette and a few jiggers of whiskey (also prohibited) would alleviate.

A small aluminum placard on the dash read: DO NOT SPEAK TO DRIVER WHILE COACH IS IN MOTION. Another prohibition. Was I on a rolling gulag or a motorized medieval monastery? Would all bets be off if the coach was not in motion? In an age that prized multitasking, the coach driver was a throwback to a time when it was insisted upon that an employee focus on one task to the point of obsessive psychosis; hence, the birth of accountants. This placard confused me for about fifty miles. Serious questions needed to be asked. Was there something about the coach being in motion that would render all the driver’s comments lewd, offensive, and obnoxious? Was he in some mysterious psychic bond with the hive brain collective of the machine itself that a disruption would doom us all? Would he become irately political and existentially aware, and decide to crash the bus into a gas station? My general conclusion was that this placard was a hard won success of the union bargaining unit, a demand on the part of all drivers to be spared the wretched agony of lonely passengers who would drive the poor driver to wit’s end having to endure monotonous prattle. So it probably turned out that the options on the table were exorbitant wage increase or sanity-preserving prohibitive placard of peace and silence. A choice was made.

This particular route to Montreal was buffered on all sides by a pleasant arboreal mural of autumn colour with a few pop-art worthy road kills along the way, and a few overpriced gas stations for the obscenely desperate.

Eventually, that morning pot of coffee launched a critical attack against the compromised walls of my aging bladder. A threshold was reached, and necessity gave motor to my movements. After making my wobbly way through a narrow aisle where a scarf would have made a suitable carpet runner, I reached the on-board water closet in the back, a hi-tech chamberpot of a room where the whirring and whining of the engine gives you the impression of being on an armed forces airfield while a fleet of F-16s are revving up for flight. The challenge comes when one must piss standing up, in a moving bus no less, and not fire hose everything but the small pinhole provided. Rattled about like a ball bearing in a spray paint can, I managed the balance and physical composure to mediate this operation and not miss—at least not too badly, all things being considered. The great joy of on-board facilities, other than the overpowering funk, is the feeling of communal knowledge. When you get out of your seat and egg-shell walk up that aisle like a self-conscious drunk, everyone knows exactly where you’re going, for it is the only reason to make such a journey. If you have to shit, you’d better save it. Only an asshole or a failed athlete goes in for a long shit, much to the detriment and fury of the other passengers who need to bleed their lizards.

Finally, off the bus, and a cigarette. Where to go? Old Montreal with its picturesque buildings of yore and the cobblestone walkways? To Westmount where the rich, snobby, and ex-Prime Ministers live? Aboard the Metro to destinations unknown? To the monolithic, ivy-laden campus of McGill University? I had come on a lark, with no plans, no direction, and so decided I would go where other confused and aimless wanderers went: downtown. I walked up Rue St. Denis, frequented a walk-up anarchist bookstore, and then made my way up the busiest street in all Montreal, Rue Ste. Catherine. What you must be given to understand about Montreal is that it is a seething underbelly of avant-garde fashion, and the residents have no qualms in dressing as if they are en route to Neptune for a rave. Ste. Catherine is a long, one-strip circus of street performers, sex shops, boutiques, mega-malls, head shops, and all of it girded on each side by a tightly packed wave of bodies. What struck me was how short people in Montreal tend to be. I was able to navigate quite easily by looking over the bobbing sea of heads. Also, like New York, there are places where pedestrians rule. The traffic lights are just ornaments or polite suggestions, but the people cross whenever they want, in large mobs that are capable of engulfing and trapping any poor motorist who is just trying to use the road in accordance with laws he has no choice but to abide by. Montreal cops have the disposition of police personnel in African countries that have a tenuous relationship with the democratic process. If you’re pulled aside and shown to be unfamiliar with the French tongue, be prepared to be lectured nonetheless in French, hauled off to the holding tank, and be treated with the hospitality one would expect in Devil’s Island.

While inching my way up Ste. Catherine, I was privy to a wonderful street scene, a violent spat between two middle-aged French Jamaican women. A spectator sport, it was a loud show that blocked traffic for blocks as people gathered around like any interesting street show. Montrealers enjoy being amused, and have a long and proud history of violence being funny. While this long tirade between what looked to be two friends carrying over a sudden argument from a clothing store into the street was happening in real time, the discerning Montrealers clapped in appreciation whenever one of the combatants pulled off a fast and mighty string of insults. Montrealers also appreciate long sustained verbal attacks that are clever and incendiary. Rather than merely being amused by a fistfight, the Montreal palette for humour demands that any physical violence be preceded by a heated exchange of wit. All was brought to a close when the police arrived and hauled the two off to French Canadian prison.

Montreal, like many French Canadian cities, has its history rooted in an almost dictatorial Catholicism. There are many people there today who had their most formative years of education under the tyranny of nuns doubling as instructors. This large scale socially repressive force has opened up the way to satire and inversion. In English, jokes about sex, race, and defecation have always been the rage. For the French, jokes about the Church and politics are where it’s at. In French, the word for shit, merde, is not really a dirty, socially unacceptable word. For the French, shit happens. The same goes for sex and the various words for taboo parts of the anatomy. This amounts to being able to speak of having shit on your cock to the grandparents, but Heaven spare you from a serious belting if you badmouth the nuns or take the Lord’s name in vain. Blasphemy evokes the same response in French as saying “fuck” would in an English grade school. But every French person, when they come of age, make blasphemous remarks up and down to the point where the Inquisition would have a field day. Another space that is opened up is the gratuitous openness of sexuality. Along Ste. Catherine alone, I counted over seven strip clubs. And we’re not talking about subtle establishments lodged in cellars off the street where one enters under concealment of night and trench coat collars up, but large neon signs bigger than Sony or Chapters with depicted scenes of carnal lust. One such mega-strip club establishment, Super Sexe, sports an elaborate neon front with Vegas style lighting and grandiosity, upon which is emblazoned forty foot tall, naked demonic vixens in tattered capes. Another club two doors down depicts a moving neon triptych of a man’s hand slapping a woman’s buttocks, her breast, and a lap dance. Most of them boast in tall, bright letters that ten bucks gets you “super contact,” and that there are at least 40 danseuse nues a night. One club boasted 175. A Montreal child’s education begins quite early just through an innocuous stroll through downtown. Object lessons of wickedness abound for those Mormons who need some degree of affirmation. Montreal is a city that is not inhibited by either the size or content of their store-front signs. The rampant commercial commodification of sexuality has been fused together as a direct result of repressive Church dogmatism in the socius.

All this sex for sale was making me tired, so I walked off the main strip and went to a self-styled dive known as ‘Madhatter.’ There, I stocked up on a much depleted beer supply, and ordered a club sandwich with fries. These fries were given with a side order of mayonnaise, the prospect of which would make my more Anglo-Saxon, health conscious counterparts’ hearts palpitate with fierce strain.

After a few rounds it was time to discover what Montreal had to offer in the way of a Saturday night. The problem with Montreal is that there is too much choice. One is split between hundreds of clubs, pubs, and bars all situated in the core of downtown. After the paralysis of multiple options subsided, I decided on attending a kind of lounge/rave act performance of 12 DJs and VJs honing their craft in a twelve hour long period of sensory overload. There was a plethora of video screens varying in size from computer monitors to wall-sized behemoths one would read about in Fahrenheit 451. Situated in a kind of warehouse dubbed “La societe des arts et technologie”, the place had a loungy, sit-down, minimalist neo-70s art deco feel, and large areas were divided up by black drapes and white tarp. Over three tons of electronic and digital equipment graced this event, and a phalanx of DJs working furiously in an open workshop supplied the images and sounds that would amuse us all. Attendees had no qualms about bringing their young children to get their dose of the scene, but what was most disturbing was the large influx of aging media types with press passes and all dolled up in their approximation of rave gear. They formed tight knots and whorls, pretending to be conoisseurs of a scene they couldn’t possibly understand. I couldn’t understand it either, but I was busy drinking and not pretending or posturing about as if I was up for a Pulitzer for my prize-winning in-depth reportage. I busied my eyes with the screens that relayed kitsch 80s video editing, scrambled porn sequences, inventive screensavers, various po-mo segues of urban life, fashionable neoist renderings of the chemical formulae for propane, and hypno-swirls not unlike a hippie dream fed through a Commodore 64. But eventually, I got bored. And tired. A few people danced, but the chairs were set up in such a way and the lights still too bright that one would feel self-conscious about busting a few moves to the strange new grooves issuing from the mammoth-sized speakers. Most people sat around and chatted, drinking beer or specialty fruit drinks from plastic party cups. Determined though I was to get the most out of the twelve dollar cover charge, I left to try another place. However, unless one oozes cash from every pore of the body, the jaunt will be a costly one. I found myself in a predicament where the cash was low and I had not yet procured a place to stay, and the last bus back was leaving at midnight. I was once again confronted by a disarming number of choices for places to drink, but I was too afraid that to choose one would mean I would miss out on what was happening a few doors over. So, in my infinite wisdom, I chose to close down my night. One of my lasting memories will be the old man dressed up in an Adam West Batman costume, doing a re-interpretation of the bat-dance to Donna Summer and creepy techno beats. I boarded the late bus and repeated the same damning process over again. Being on a bus is synonymous with being hung over a clothesline like a rug and beaten. Being on a bus after a long day of drinking is the same thing, except this time you’re a rug beaten with electric tongs.

You can’t exhaust Montreal in a night, or even a lifetime; it will exhaust you very quickly without prior, proper intoxication. It is a place where you can rave and wail like a lunatic in the depths of a hallucinogenic nightmare involving serpents and your mother, and still belong. No matter how cutting edge or crazy you are, you’ll only be adding to the rich and infinitely varied weave of Montreal’s psychedelic cultural tapestry. Montreal will always be cooler and quicker of wit than you could ever possibly be.