It’s all a bit of a blur now, espe­cial­ly since we agree it feels like it’s been a year since my respon­si­bil­i­ties as a son and a cousin and a friend in Toronto. I do remem­ber try­ing to bal­ance the caf­feine — so I could be clear-head­ed and enjoy­ing myself — with the insom­nia that comes from hav­ing so much ener­gy every night. Also, these acts of guer­ril­la hap­pi­ness where mes­sages of hope were expressed through posters and spray paint. It would appear that van­dal­ism cross­es over into art only in cities with a sky­line worth men­tion­ing.

We end­ed up at the Ontario Science Centre twice, once as nerds and again as wed­ding guests, which worked out cause the only exhib­it we did­n’t get a chance to see one day end­ed up being the only exhib­it open to us dur­ing the recep­tion. The high­light is always the plan­e­tar­i­um though, in all it’s bean-bag, time-trav­el­ing glo­ry, the expe­ri­ence itself worth the price of admis­sion. With the excep­tion of a poor fac­sim­i­le of drag­on’s beard can­dy, every­thing worked out.

See that guy I was dat­ing his ex when his girl­friend was her best friend and she got jeal­ous that I did a big thing for my girl­friend and he felt humil­i­at­ed in front of every­one and his dad called my par­ents about the “slan­der” and imag­ine how hard that was when it’s dif­fi­cult just telling them we’re ear­ly.

As chance would have it, Dave got mar­ried to Jenny, and Jenny went to med­ical school with Alex, and two friends I met at dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent times in my life end­ed up with only a sin­gle degree of sep­a­ra­tion. I’ve been keep­ing in touch with Dave so when we final­ly got to see each oth­er, we were able to enjoy each oth­er’s com­pa­ny instead of try­ing to cram in all the time lost between us.

Lisa and I stayed at their swanky down­town con­do that night so we could car­pool and be kids again, tak­ing advan­tage of an open bar and acces­si­ble bal­cony, the kind of things that mat­ter when unwit­ting­ly con­front­ed with the reunion of an old clique.

Anthony¹, who wears his 3D glass­es at night, was our plan­e­tar­i­um pre­sen­ter. He also hap­pened to be work­ing as an ush­er for the cer­e­mo­ny, but being the respon­si­ble adult that he is, could­n’t join us out­side.

Your bosons are giv­ing me a hadron.

I agreed that dou­ble-fist­ing is unla­dy­like, but still refused to hold the sec­ond drink. If you hang around a life-size cutout of Commander Hadfield though, you don’t look like such a lush cause obvi­ous­ly he needs both hands to hold his hel­met.

This was the pic­ture we used to apply for the Trailer Park Boys cast­ing call. I’m still get­ting used to this ver­sion of myself, even though it’s been me for months now.

Every now and then I found myself con­front­ed with spec­tres of the past. I try to hide my feel­ings in those sit­u­a­tions, but this proves impos­si­ble when time is spent in such prox­im­i­ty over sev­er­al days, and Lisa inevitably saw me in my most vul­ner­a­ble moments. She’d rub my arm, or pro­vide a bit of per­spec­tive to com­fort me. Eventually, I real­ized I was no longer alone in the strug­gle, because she began to under­stand me on an impor­tant lev­el.

Through the dis­cus­sions and com­fort­able silences, I learned to love myself too. I believed in myself because she believed in me. This is how I know our sto­ries are inter­twined. She will always be a major char­ac­ter in my book, and this road trip the begin­ning of anoth­er chap­ter.

1. Lisa calls him Anthony Goldblum cause of build and dic­tion. [↩]