A Donnelly Pub Joint

By Vandee

I’d like to say it started at the bar, but that’d be overlooking the other chemicals that coursed my system by the time I paid cover. Mushrooms they were, and likely a joint to harden the blow. The Douchey Bar, we called it. We in our thrift store tees and jeans that would’ve been cool a dozen blocks to the east.

That place was all ties. Former frat bros in sales jobs and whatever passes for Armani. They wear dark colors to blend into strobed lighting and roll up on short skirts unexpected-like. We scoff, as we are like to do, we being of a hipper set than these. And yet there are the chemicals: mushrooms having the effect of being stoked on life for me, rather than provoking conversations with things that aren’t there.

“Gimme a rye and coke.”

Everyone with me was drinking on me. 40G per annum having the effect of making it rain over graduate types. Funny how the tie-sporting douches were looking amicable given the current state of intoxication – nothing to hide, no pretense of hiding douchiness where the world can’t see.

“Look at me, I’m a douche!” he might want to say.

“Bro, tray of jagger bombs right now!” he actually did.

Shit, of course that’s what he orders. Who are you gonna share that tray with, bro? Ladies, likely. Or at least he’ll try for it. Likely succeed as well – well dressed and worked out, pulling up in some sports car and expensive shoes to buy $3 highballs.

I’d trade places in a heartbeat. This bro is the culmination of the Bush years. He’s grown up, traded popped collar for skinny tie top black suit. Ten bucks says he shotguns a beer and … oh shit there he goes. Keys out the pocket and into the foam. Shit he’s fast too.

My friends want to mingle – apparently they know people who are as out of place here as we are. I’m game, but I’m enjoying the crap out of the bro show. Mushrooms and I assume the best in everyone, even the douches.

So that was the scene at the bar. I was content, but anxious. I would have stayed to watch bros mack on suspecting ladies, but didn’t want to seem antisocial to my friends – they’re conversationing and I’m drifting off into drug land in this, the douchiest bar in town.

“I’m gonna eat Wendy’s on the Burrard Street Bridge.”

“You, you, uh, do that then, I guess.”

Out the door. Boozes have made me wobbly, but chemicals that night gave me sure-footed-brazened-swagger that was lost on everyone but me. This was my city, damnit, even alone. Sans iPod, but “hold me closer tiny dancer,” in my head.

A wasted night? Perhaps. Walking east on Broadway. I got Wendy’s, and Tim’s, and McDonald’s. Sick just saying that. The food is delicious, don’t get me wrong, but cataloging what I’m eating like that smacks of drunken absolutism:

“Man I drank like 15 beer, like 5 shots, two hits off gravity bong and still managed to bang Stacey in the third floor stairwell. Guys wanna go work out? Guys wanna go work out?”

– nobody likes that guy. I left THOSE types back at the bar, even though at the time mushrooms made theirs, and everyone else’s lifestyle, fascinating and amiable. Everyone was okay unto themselves, but that was with mushrooms; now I’m writing and realizing that the further I got from the absolute douche, the douchier I myself became. The further I drift from that state of mind, the more apt I am to dissect myself and others. And those qualities of me that flair up in stacks of fast food make me not want to be that guy – that guy with the tie