Ode to Motreal
O! Canadian version of
Where once I came, in eighth grade on a class trip and took pictures on the way at Niagra Falls then, when I got here, we snuck out of the Holiday Inn we were staying in and went down Rue Saint Denis to get into a strip club with my 12 year old mates where we were more scared than excited when we glimpsed in the door, behind the velvet curtain.
O! How cold it was here when I came here to end my relationship with Chantal. With all the wind and sleet in January.
And even though it was October, how awful the time was I had with the next woman I came here with, that pretty much began here and ran through painful years. When we got here, she said
this is a mistake, I shouldn’t have come.
And foolishly I didn’t listen.
But then I almost got married here, at the Ritz Carlton. But they raised the specter of it being the Days of Awe, Lag B’Omer. Funny, they didn’t seem so Jewish when I came back to stay.
Not once, not twice, but thrice.
Then my actual wife, who used to stay at the Ritz, came with me and we stayed at the most wonderful auberge in Vieux Montreal. But we went by the Ritz so she could see the white geese in the central courtyard garden, that she remembered from when she was a little girl and her extravagant grandmother took her here, and to the real Paris, to the Tour D’argent and dragged her all around the Continent, in the footsteps of Adolpho.
And my beloved and I ate cheese on the roof and drank wine as the sun set over the
And walked in the park
By the expensive houses
With Mercedes S600 european models in their car ports.
And argued over which kind of chocolate bar to buy.
O
Where I know Serge, my trusty engineer, who I like in every way,
Except that he calls me Igor, possibly because of his accent
And George, the flamboyant executive producer.
Who laughs about how you can’t tell the difference between people who are
French Canadian
And Gay. Which was an old Jay Leno joke.
And even though he dresses in bolo ties and ruffled shirts, won’t stop telling me about how he goes to whores to cheat on his wife. So I don’t think he’s gay.
And Mike, with his pleated pants and somewhat horizontal front teeth, which make me sad.
And the other Mike, who likes to talk politics and reminds me of my cousin Dave. Who my dad calls Smilin’ Jack.