My Most Memorable First Date

In the spirit of being newly single, I have been going on dates. As is the nature of the dating world, some encounters are more memorable than others.

It was a picturesque spring day, the sun was shining, the breeze was fresh, and everyone was enjoying the soft warmth of the air, good weather being a novelty to our city after a winter of endless grey rain. The plan was that I would first summit Seymour with my friends, Andrew and Dustin, during the first part of the day and then meet my date for yoga in the park and dinner on Commercial Drive.

The trek up Seymour was merry; we greeted everyone on the trail we came across with smiles and easy-going, friendly conversation. When eventually we reached the first summit, that sense of soul-quenching satisfaction arrived, and the brightness of the sun wasn't just a blessing and a gift, it was spiritual. Dustin sat on the first summit dharma-bum style while Andrew and I took off gleefully for the second summit, flinging ourselves down the mountainside, wading through the snow with great leaps, hoots and hollers.

At the second summit we roamed around like awkward, happy animals, chattering about our love for the outdoors and whispering a little about that feeling of loneliness we both have in the busy city down below. Wandering towards the outer rim of the peak, we saw an enormous golden eagle gliding in the wind. It is, I've been told, a very special omen to see a bird of prey in the mountains as they are said to be old souls. Other friends of mine who take to the mountains have spoken about sighting these large, majestic creatures who fly above the world, watching over us. After years of never seeing one, I too could finally meditate on the bird's silent flight and consider what it means to me.

On the way down we found untouched snow into which we could throw our legs and hearts, as though we could come out of it better people for revisiting what it is to be playful, carefree children. As always for me, it was with a little sadness that we arrived at the car and it was time to go back home. Despite this small regret, the joy of the day found us back at the house hours later where we sat on the deck with beer in hand, sunburns and sunglasses worn by all, still very pleased and cheerful about our hike up the north shore.

And so began the makings of my most memorable date.

Three beers down in my little body readily metabolizing the alcohol for all the exercise I'd had, and the degree to which I was already and unknowingly dehydrated. Three beers, buzzed, to be frank on the verge of drunkenness, and off I went traipsing through the city with a wild grin on my face to meet my date.

We met, and after a somewhat slurred apology on my part for being so prematurely intoxicated we had dinner (my meal: a salty vegetable pot pie) and two more beers, then went to a sunny park for a few hours of yoga. It was with the idea of watching a movie that we went back to Commercial Drive to rent a film. But first we stopped at a notorious Italian coffee bar where we drank large, rich, creamy Americanos and watched the old, creepy Italian men leer at the women walking the Drive and talk soccer amongst themselves. It was excellent. Nothing could kill my fervor for the day, nothing could slow the thrill I was riding from the beauty of the mountain, the eagle and the happy companionship shared by my friends, fellow hikers and first date.

It was during the walk back to his place when I began to feel it, at first a slam of fatigue, and then wave after wave of nausea. We arrived at his apartment and I saved face for about an hour, chatting and the like, but ever worsening -- becoming more exhausted and desperately sick to my stomach. You're dehydrated, you fool, I realized, and so began drinking warm water, hoping it wasn't too late to make a swift recovery as we still had a three hour film ahead of us. 

We started the movie, not long after which I had to hold myself in the fetal position, unbeknown to him that I was not relaxing, but trying to talk my body out of all the panicked lurching taking place in my gut. I tried to take slow, steady breaths. I tried to think my way out of being sick, imagined that I could have a balanced, functioning body if I could focus hard enough on what well-being used to feel like. But it was futile. I became light-headed, the room began spinning, and my stomach started making sharp, short motions to eject its contents, all of which finally forced me to start thinking less on how to feel better, and more on how to go about vomiting on a first date.

"I know this is going to sound strange," I said to him. "But I really need some fresh air. So you just keep watching the movie, don't come out with me, and I'll be right back."

"Ok..." he said slowly and confusedly, as I got up from the couch taking my corduroy jacket from my chilled, shaky, sunburned shoulders.

And then I felt it. I was going to be sick, right then and there. In keeping with the theme of being a fool, I did not make a dash for the bathroom. I instead ran out the front door of his apartment into the second floor hallway where I proceeded to vomit all over myself. All over my hands, my feet, and jacket. I remember standing in the hallway with a large pool of puke in my jacket, held like an offering in my hands should any resident come out of their front doors to see my shocked, sad, and sorry state.

And then I was running downstairs, because there was more to come. I exploded out of the building to puke in the bushes outside the main entrance. When that bout was over, for fear anyone should be coming or leaving their home, I crawled my way to the side of the building to dry heave, and then vomit some more. On all fours in the grass, like an exhausted, pathetic animal, I finally knew that it was over. I felt so much better. The vile poisons that are beer and coffee and salt had all successfully vacated my body with relish, and had you seen me I would have been wiping my face off with a wonderful sense of relief. Pushing the puke off my feet and dragging my hands and jacket on the lawn, I stood there afterward for a minute as it dawned on me that it wasn't exactly over -- I had to go back to my date.

After being buzzed back into the building, I stood in front of the lobby mirror searching for any missed spots of vomit on my clothing. Luckily most had been projected into my jacket, but one clump I found just below my collar bone which I flecked off outside before climbing the stairs. Back on the second level I kicked the little bit of sickness that had made its way onto the floor to the side of the wall. I peered at it a while wondering if, should he see it, would he put two and two together? There was nothing more I could do I decided, as confessing was out of the question given my careful construction of appearing to be calm, composed and feminine. 

When I opened his front door, he was standing in the kitchen staring at me.
"Are you ok?" he asked skeptically.
"Oh yeah!" I said a little too eagerly. "I feel great now. That was exactly what I needed to do."
"Wow," he replied. "I'm really impressed by how in touch you are with your body."

And so we began the movie again, as if nothing had happened. I sat for the rest of the night with a smile on my face for having successfully and secretly vomited all over my date's apartment building. To this day I'm still pretty sure he has no idea any of this took place during our first date.

ps - My apologies for not having any photos of our trek up Seymour, as I realized sadly that my camera battery was dead on the first summit. Here are some of my most recent photos of a jaunt south of the border with my mother. Tomorrow I'll be doing a summit in the valley, so photos of that and a post to come soon!

 

"Do you like mountains?" he asked me. I smelled like them -- pine sap and dirt, and my own sweat that had run down the rocks. I was sunburnt and still tremoring on the inside, yet he couldn't sense of any of this, the mystery of the day. I leant in close to him and smelled nothing, nor felt anything in that dark, noisy club. "They are my deepest love," I whispered for fear something else could be taken away, and then I left.

 The night of the day we summited Harvey, I stood at the chain link fence again, peering at the sea below. I was nearly drunk. Though I’d not had much, three glasses of wine some time ago, the alcohol had coursed through my body, slammed into my veins, and taken me swiftly to a place of high emotionalism. Here in the city I have obscure desires the least of which I understand, there in the mountains I am a more simple woman, and a better person. I stood at the fence missing everything all at once, the mountains, what I seem to leave there -- my childhood, and the innocence I once carried in my body and thoughts. Would it be pathetic to say I want them back?

I walked around the poorer parts of downtown, allowing the men and women of the street to wash my wounds that I had aggravated all over again, having picked at what I hate most in myself. Or maybe not what I hate, but what I do not know, what I cannot seem to understand about the girl living in my body. They are the people who see me, nod at me, tell me without words that I am here. I wandered around remembering the descent from the trees, how often I fell on my ass even once face first right into the snow beside a pine that held back from laughing right out loud at my clumsy awkward limbs and heart. Memories of trees and wandering, being reminded of their sunken eyes, missing teeth, how they seem to say we all have a very similar longing, though they went searching in all the wrong places. Trees full of grace up there, protecting the land and its inhabitants, but not too much of that here in the city. Not too much of that here.

I’ve been having dreams of everyone I know, as if something in me needs to reach out and touch everything for the first real time. I thought that would make sense because I have longed to have red shoes my whole life, which I bought only a few weeks ago, and because my mother has been dreaming of my death. She’ll flail into my room some mornings to make sure I am breathing, and I’ll sit up startled from the dreams where I’m seeing everyone and being a part of everything and not holding on to anything but my own ability to dream.

Everyone is back now. I was the last to leave and the first to come back. We ran to Farnia in the airport, down the hall where we weren’t allowed to go, but there she was so we ran to her and embraced, us three girls, us three friends, laughing and embracing for everyone to see just like a happy movie. And today Auntie Inver Lea is back from India, hanging on my neck a Nepalese amulet. And Shane, I imagine, is back too. Yet nothing is the same, and there are things you can know all along but might never know how to face. I’ve had phone calls that I’ve taken for granted, encounters with beautiful mountain men, and dear, magical homeless vagrants asking me for mints or telling me my heart, and peaceful wanderers sharing lemons and carrots with me. Long drives, rivers, and weeping. It’s all gone, and I have to wonder about that, wonder where  time goes when it reaches the shore, and play, and the outfits I wore when I hadn’t a care because I was a child swinging on monkey bars and rolling down hills.

I go up to the mountains from the city knowing that nothing lasts, then look around at the splendor of nature in this world and have to believe it exists because there is still hope I can go back down remembering, believing that I can exemplify old rock, and strong wood, the soft persistent water, the quiet snow, that I might descend among trees and live with the same grace and goodness in the world below.

This is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard: 

Who loves, raves. - Lord Byron

The last little while I have been wearing my long hair down and letting all sorts of beautiful strangers run their fingers through it. Though somehow I'm not feeling their touch or caress while being grinned at with all those teeth. In the city they’re hungry for something more than they know and while I remain unwilling to feed them, I likely don’t have anything to offer either except to bring forth my own longings.

Last night at a party in the industrial district of the city my girlfriend absconded to a dark corner with one of the two most beautiful men in Vancouver, or so I’ve been told. The theme of the night was circus carnival, so those in attendance wore outrageous and glittered costumes or exposed themselves under the paint of bright colors and outlandish designs. The top floor of the building held the dungeon where those who wished could take off what little clothing they wore, if any, to be hog-tied and swung in the air, pleasured with a feather, spanked with a paddle or jolted with an electric prong. I had never been to anything like this before, nor had I ever dressed the part. With every color of feather weaved in my hair, wearing a leopard print dress, black stilettos and mermaid blue glitter all over my eyes, I watched along with the others and swayed atop a table, soaking in the slow luxurious Indian beats of the room. The energy was that of the spectator: carnal, thick, and starving for more.

Throughout the night men and women would call out to me, and I thought to rush over to them, put my lips close to their ears and with an urgency I’ve never known tell them to call me by any other name but my own. For fear I should vanish into nothingness, should Kendra, the idea of my identity show itself in that place, I’d just stand there watching it float beyond my grasp and soon find myself without a body, without the desire to clamber up rocks and trees, to sink toes and fingers into the dirt, to drop little seeds into the earth and watch my own growth. They would be the authors of my disappearance, these strangers who will never know me, never know the depth of my love for lakes, rivers, streams, the vast space of mountains. They parade brightly for all to see, but shroud their hearts and disguise their movements, and I'm afraid when they devour me, I won't just cease to exist, but that I'll become this way.

After the carnival party, I wound down in a hot tub under the cover of night with my best friend and the two most beautiful men in Vancouver. I found myself turning my glistening back to them, thinking more about the sound of rain and the coolness of it, the breeze in the mild air, how I loved its touch against my face and the way it teased the branches and leaves of the overhanging trees.
“How erotic,” one of the men said, “that you two have never been nude in a hot tub before.”
I might have looked at him next to my best friend for a moment and considered his words, how they held no truth for me, how thrilled the two of them looked to have found each other. I went back to gazing at the night because I am the irritable cat who has been petted too much, and it would be uncouth to bite the hand stroking her.

I may live in the city, but it is not my home. My wild self is my best self, and I have yet to meet someone who brings this out in me. So far I am the only one who can, which pleases me in a way. For all the times I withdraw to drive long distances, venture into the cold and snow, climb up valleys of trees, river and rock, I just need to be lost for a while, playing and free. I'll be found some day walking through the woods, swimming in hot springs, perching myself on the top of great heights to watch over the world, humbly and in awe of all there is to see.

In a city of chaos, boiling over with absurdity, it is the only way for me -- to remain unseen. But I know the truth of my nature. I am simple. I long for what is real. All else remains a small matter of curiosity.

Once I was on top of this mountain napping when I heard a man say, "Cell phone bitches are ripping me off, but bitches don't care!" and I wanted to laugh aloud but I didn't as I was half-asleep.

I’m skeptical of people who seem to know who they are and I’m wary of those who profess to know too much about anything. I suppose you can know things like the periodic table and you can go on about that for a while or you can know how to work with tofu. People who cook with tofu but don’t really understand it produce something to the effect of what it is and what it sounds like: bean curd. I either have writer’s block or I’m forgetting how to live. Some pot smokers think they’re forgetting how to breathe. Who's to say what’s what?

“Truth,” said some professor the other day, “is what your friends let you get away with.”

The worst thing you could do is say, “Let’s agree to disagree,” unless we’re bickering over something petty. If we’re trying to deduce some ultimate truth, don’t be a distraction and point out that one of us thinks a certain way and the other another. But anyways, I don’t want you to think I’d argue about the nature of truth because I feel badly for people who think they are smart. They get all forlorn feeling  due to their intelligence, but the truth is that we are alone, the dumb fucks too. I just can’t handle people anymore, nor can I handle all the hipsters in this city with their skinny jeans, their stupid loafers, their ridiculous hair, their sad, mopey looks and their plaid blouses. Jesus Christ. I don’t like being in the city. There has always been in me a desire to be alone. My oldest longing is to own a small cabin in the woods and a canoe, tending to a little garden and keeping the company of dogs and trees and books. Yelling at tourists. Fucking city good-for-nothing tourists. Maybe I’d fuck the tourists. Probably. And then I’d read them things, conjure up some meaning for us and stick it in the air, let it linger in a room that smells like sex.

I never tell my mother anything about my life because quite frankly, I think she’s crazy. Yesterday my best friend Farnia (pronounced FAIR-NEE-AH) made the remark that if Hitler had had my mother in the Third Reich, we’d all be speaking German right now. We’re not joking. My mother is far too intelligent for our own good. Farnia has seen shit go down at my house. My mother has been to California twice to visit Disneyland and she’s not even American, yet somehow last week  a Californian Congressman leaves a message on her cell phone and says, “We’ll swoop in there and fast-track your paperwork” for whatever the fuck she wanted done with her friends. She is quite simply a terrifying woman. People in powerful positions revere my mother, reasons for which I am completely at a loss. She is strangely influential, which is why she and I are typically at each other’s throats as she is used to people listening to her and I despise people who can’t come up with their own ideas. I’ve done a whole slew of things, most of which I’ve never shared with my mother. Sometimes I fly to other provinces for a while and let her think I’m at a library in Vancouver. If I told her about the manner in which I conduct my life, I’d have to provide some rationale for it. And I don’t know why I do these things. I don’t have any answers.  Answers are for those pretentious hipster fucks I loathe so enthusiastically.

I hate to rag on my yoga teacher because I adore him, which I hate to admit since everyone admires him just as much as I do and I don’t like anything the yogic masses like as they’re these strange ethereal beings I’m quite positive never hear a word I say when they ask me how I’m doing after class. Anyways, I’m not ragging on my teacher Ryan -- I’m just using him as an example. One could say it isn’t his strong suit to be on time. And I think being rather inept at this suits him very much. He carried a watch around the entirety of yoga teacher training to be on time for everything and I thought this seemed very unnatural and detracted from the whole experience. If people are so eager for him to be their teacher, I think they should be prepared to wait a while for him. Being prompt is polite and boring. Making people wait is a good way to make them angry and he’d stir up every other goddamn emotion in us anyways, a quality of a good yoga teacher. He has a way of getting people all fiery and crazy and euphoric about being bendy and spiritual and upside down. And I mean, that’s fucking exceptional because most adults can’t even touch their toes. The night of the day I posted my love-hate rant on how absolutely bizarre I found yoga teacher training to be, Ryan and I were in the Blue Room, the stinking feral-cat-piss room, where he was standing on his head swinging from side to side and where I was relentlessly kicking up into forearm balance because I was hell-bent on nailing that pose. I fucked my elbows that night. Anyways, we were all yoga-swooney by the end of it and we said no hard feelings over my love-hate rant and we talked about our admiration for Kerouac and we discussed how absolutely trippy yoga can be and I asked him if he ever thought it was all in his head and I so liked his response that I smile over it whenever this conversation comes to mind. But I’m getting off-track. Actually I don’t really have a point.