Night 1:
Did you ever see “Synechdoche, NY,”
that truly mind-bending movie with Philip Seymour Hoffman? I'm here
to tell you that Schenectady, NY, the real town, and its surrounding
villages, are just as weird.
Tonight I pulled into the motel near
the Albany Airport, ready to have a lovely night in a quaint little
hamlet. After a nap and an attempt to make me NOT look like I had
been driving for the last four hours, I took a long ride down a
two-lane road. I passed a lot of people on porches, setting off
illegal fireworks, beating their kids, and fighting over the last
cold beer. I passed a biker bar named Humpy's boasting karaoke every
single night. Humpy's. I pulled through a depressed sort of ghetto
and came upon 2 blocks where the roads narrowed and there were fake
facades on the old buildings. Brand new trees, plopped in plastic
planters painted to look like actual terra cotta. Brand new parking
meters that don't actually function. Two restaurants (both closed), a
CVS, and a movie theater. Not a soul in sight. Wait, sorry. At the
next intersection, up where the manufactured town turned back into a
concrete, tired hood, there was a woman in an oversized pink t-shirt
and no bra on, fighting with her significant other, a man who was
seventy years old if he was a day, smoking a blunt and cursing.
Shirtless.
I knew at this moment that I would not
be spending a darling evening in Schenectady, NY. I knew what I was
going to do: hop in the car and drive like hell until I got back to
the mini-mall which featured a P.F. Chang's and a Regal Cinemas,
right where Albany turns into Colonie. The rest of the night was
nothing to speak of – satisfying dumplings from a Chinese fusion
chain, and a late viewing of “Magic Mike,” which was about ten
times less magic than I was hoping it would be. Frankly, I feel a
little dirty and disoriented. I'm looking forward to a good night's
sleep, a questionable breakfast at Denny's, and three-and-a-half easy
hours north to my true destination, the place I belong – Montreal.
Night 2:
Today was my first almost full day in
Montreal. I wonder if it will ever not be disorienting to hear French
spoken everywhere with little English curses and proper names
sprinkled in. it's like having amnesia with 2-second spurts where you
remember absolutely everything. Fleeting, distracting, but you're
always looking forward to the next one.
After a two hour nap (otherwise known
as me trying to figure out which channels work on the TV), I headed
out for dinner to a recommended restaurant by my hosts, Sushi Mikado.
After a lovely walk down Rue Sherbrooke, then Rue St-Denis, I looked,
but did not find. Three sushi restaurants, but none called Mikado. I
walked into one, seeing as it was the busiest, and hoped I took the
right chance.
I didn't.
It was an all you can eat sushi house
where nobody pays attention to you and the rice is overcooked. My
food was fine, until I got a piece of something un-chewable in my eel
roll, and decided it was time to bounce. My standoffish waiter
informed me that all you can eat sushi palace would cost me $22, but
I gave him a look. A look that clearly meant, “I had no idea this
place was all you can eat because my French is awful. I barely ate
any food and I want to leave. Don't do this to me.” he made my
check a-la carte and if I understood French, I know he would have
said to his waiter friends, “This poor fool from the States. Learn
to read!” the same way we make fun of people from New Jersey when
they can't drive or park or walk down the sidewalk. I was the silly
American saying, “merci, desolee, merci, desolee” when all they
could think was, “give it up, sister. Just say thanks and go back
to your hotel.” I seriously should have consulted my guidebook
closer. I had seventeen restaurants highlighted in that neighborhood
alone.
After that I did what I do best in
strange cities – I took in a movie. Tonight it was “Take This
Waltz,” another movie where Michelle Williams walks around being
simultaneously adorable and depressing. Seth Rogan also tried his
hand at a semi-dramatic role, but I realized that his earnest puppy
dog face and serious under bite make it impossible to take him
seriously. Ever. It looks like he's about to launch into baby-talk
all the time, and in this movie, it sure didn't help that he actually
did. I did enjoy the Michelle Williams part of it, but I'm going to
say this – I'm not sure if this movie made me believe in love more
or less. I know it wasn't supposed to be sad, but when it ended, I
cried like someone had just smacked me really, really hard. The
premise was simple and not unexplored – Michelle and Seth are
married, and they have happy moments and stupid moments and moments
when everything the other person says is awful and wrong. Michelle
meets Mystery Guy and he's amazing, either because he's actually
amazing, or because she knows nothing about him. It almost doesn't
matter. Almost. Because she's married, she does nothing, but this
doesn't stop her from meeting him illicitly, and it doesn't stop him
from graphically describing a sex act to her for twenty minutes in
broad daylight in an empty bar. After endless minutes of her staring
into space because she loves two people at once for different
reasons, they finally admit they're in love, Seth suffers the
consequences, and then Michelle and Mystery Guy legit get together,
which we know thanks to a montage of some seriously graphic fuck
scenes.
The movie goes on for twenty mostly pointless minutes after
that, showing the clumsy clean up of a failed five-year marriage and
the inevitable decline of a hot fling into another mediocre
relationship. What I'm not sure of here is what I was supposed to
take away from this. There are a few possible lessons. Everything new
becomes old, so stop chasing shiny stuff and leaving the dull because
it will all be dull one day? Love is amazing and rare, so it's OK to
leave the person you've been semi-happily married to for five years
if you find something better and more intense? Go with your gut?
Don't go chasing waterfalls? I seriously have no idea.
What I do know
is this – at the end, when Michelle goes back to the tilt-a-whirl ride where they play The Buggles and spin you around too fast, the
site of quite possibly her most intense, pressurized, feverish moment
of desire with Mystery Guy, and she spins around alone, trying to
recapture that sense of dizzying wanting and insane, dopey happiness,
I just wanted to die. I felt like someone punched me in the gut.
There's so much glitter and music and noise in that scene but it's so
desperate, so empty, so unbelievably familiar, like when you go back
to an amazing restaurant for the second time and nothing's quite as
good. You order the same thing, you sit in the same booth, but the
little ball of fire that made you want to jump out the window is
gone, and you feel like you might need to go to a million more
restaurants before you find it again. That's how I'm feeling right
now, as I sit on the terrace of my little apartment and watch happy
couples amble down the street, giggling and drunk after dinner. Like
there a million restaurants ahead of me, but only one amazing meal,
and I don't know if I have the energy to go find it.
