The worst thing Christa and I can do for a plan is to make that plan in the first place.
History has revealed time and time again that our adventures only triumph on a get-up-and-go basis; when one calls the other and says, “Hey, let’s do this right now.” And the other says, “Okay. See you in five.”
These spontaneous hang-outs usually lead to making plans for the next day, but those plans never come to fruition. It’s not like it’s a disingenuous “I’ll totally call you...” We are always legitimately excited about our future plans, and always have full intentions of following through. But then the next day comes and something in both of us decides not to call the other – a silent but mutual understanding that it’s okay; we’ll see each other next “hey, let’s do this right now...”
I heard The Trews were playing Portland, Maine. It was the first time they’d be anywhere remotely near the east coast since they’re visit last September and I was seriously contemplating making the trek across the border.
I called Christa a week in advance to ask if she wanted to go. As is our initial reaction to any plan proposed by the other, she immediately said yes. And as is always true, I was legitimately excited and had full intentions of following through.
A few days later she called me to say that she was scheduled to work on Friday, the day of the concert, and Saturday, the day after, so wouldn’t be able to go. I asked if she could switch the shifts. With renewed fervour, like she hadn’t thought of this herself, she said she would definitely do that.
Well, a couple more days passed and every time I asked if she’d found someone to work she would say, “No, not yet” in a way that told me she hadn’t even asked. This was the case right up until the night before the concert, when I called her in a last ditch effort to follow through on some plans for once.
“I’ll go to work in the morning and I’ll ask around then. I'll get off early. I’m sure it will be fine.”
The morning she was referring to was some twelve hours before a concert that was six hours away was set to begin.
I had my doubts.
I went to bed that night pretty much accepting that I wouldn’t be going to Portland to see The Trews; that I would have to wait a couple weeks until I got to Kingston. And I suppose that is pretty easy to accept, so it really wasn’t much of a problem. It was more of a slight disappointment, easily surmountable.
Friday morning I got a call from Christa. Miraculously, she’d gotten someone to cover the rest of her shift that day, and her whole shift the next day. Now, by then I had already accepted the fact that it wasn’t going, and already firmly justified it by listing all the logistics we hadn’t thought out anyway – namely, where would we stay and how would we pay. So when I got the call, I was in that mind frame, so I said I didn’t really feel up to it anymore.
I guess that was the only way it could have worked. We both had to break the plans to stay true to our spontaneous nature. Once we had both resigned to our silent and mutual understanding, once we had both accepted this was not happening, it opened the door for “Let’s do this right now” to come in. I made that call about five minutes later, after some slight reconsideration.
Less than an hour later, we were on the highway, blasting Regina and The Hip as we’re prone to do. I’d packed a bag of possible outfits for the concert and a toothbrush. Christa had packed pasta, some fruit and a toothbrush. Unfortunately, our oranges got confiscated at the border by a guard whom we suspected of simply having a vitamin C deficiency when he told us, “You can keep the bananas.”
We got to Portland much earlier than I’d expected, around six at night. The concert wasn’t until ten. I wanted to go to the venue first to make sure we got tickets. I was worried about that ever since my friend Meghan had called me just as we had been leaving Fredericton. When I told her I couldn’t help her kidnap an ornamental chicken (don't ask.) that afternoon because I was driving to Maine, she said, “Well, have fun! I hope it’s not sold out!” She laughed after she said it, but the statement filled me with a cold fear of an unconsidered logistic that was ultimately beyond my control. What if we drove all that way just to be turned away at the door?
It turns out, I really, really, really didn’t have anything to worry about. But that comes later...
Portland is a lot like Saint John. It’s right on the water, so it has that seaweed and salt water smell. It’s got old architecture and cobblestone streets and every store in the city seemed to sell highly specific and highly unnecessary items – like ‘Tis the Season, a shop that sold Christmas decorations all year round or Utopia, a store with nothing but white art deco chairs.
We walked up a street to The Big Easy, a hole-in-the-wall type bar with a creaky little sign marking it. The doors were propped open, so we walked inside. The stage was right inside the door and the first person I saw was Jeff, then Jack. They were both on stage in the middle of a sound check. Sean was up there too, hidden behind his drums. Colin was sitting on a bar stool on the other side of the room, sipping water and chatting with the owner of the bar.
“Hi,” Jack said when he saw us, stopping whatever he was doing to look at us with the vacant wonder of a baby. In fact, everyone stopped what they were doing to look at us.
“Umm... hi... sorry to interrupt... we were just going to buy some tickets to tonight’s show...”
“Okay, come on in!” Jack said, stepping off the stage and leading us over to the owner. “These girls want some tickets,” he announced though clearly everyone had heard us in the silent room.
I started talking to the owner and Colin watched us, his arms crossed and a little smile on his face. As the conversation continued, I began to feel awkward that I hadn’t acknowledged that the lead singer of my favourite live band was one foot away from me. I glanced at him and he was still looking at me, smiling. I nodded. I felt better. I continued talking to the owner.
He basically told me there were plenty of tickets left, so we could just buy them at the door, although he gave us an alternate option of going to some store that sold concert tickets, but it would cost $2 extra in surcharges. “Maaaan, fuck that. We'll just come back,” I said and I heard an amused “Heh” from the barstool beside me. I looked at Colin. “Well, seriously!” He laughed again and shook his head.
"Anyway..." I said. "Later."
“Yeah," he laughed again. "See ya tonight, Erin.”
A lot of things happened in the next three hours. There was an old-fashioned general store with cheap Budweiser, an Irish pub with prison bathrooms, a vagrant youths shanty town where everyone played busted guitars, a basement bar where it seemed a requirement for all wait staff to be heavily tattooed, anddrinking the cheap Budweiser in a parking lot on the wharf while two middle-aged couples did the same thing on the other side of the parking lot.
We went back to The Big Easy just after nine, when the doors opened. The bar was empty except for three guys. We didn’t know it then, but they were the opening band, and also the only other people who would be in attendance to see The Trews that night.
We sat at the bar a few stools down from them, and the bartender greeted us with a “Welcome back, ladies. How ‘bout a drink on the house?”
That singular gesture is exemplary of our entire experience in Portland. It’s like all the nicest, coolest, most incredible people decided to move to this one city and surround themselves in a blanket of awesomeness where people go out of their way to make strangers feel important to them.
Christa and I had the added bonus of automatically being fascinating to everyone we met because as Canadians, we were exotic. I didn’t see a difference; I didn’t hear a difference, but they would request to hear certain words then giggle gleefully when I said it.
Take one of the opening band members – the guitarist, whose personal style seemed permanently set in 1990, making the awkward transition from hair metal to grunge and who spoke in a gruff and manly voice, but sometimes inexplicably put on a campy gay voice and dole out snappy gay witticisms. He would frequently stop me mid-sentence to get me to repeat certain words.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute... say ‘about’ again.”
“About?”
“Aaaaahahahaha. I love that. About!”
“Yeah, about...”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahaha.”
We were saying it in exactly the same way.
The singer – whose name I seem to recall was something mystical and vaguely effeminate, like Gabriel or Felonious – wore a silk shirt with a gaudy pattern that looked like a bastard of a Hawaiian shirt and a couch from the 1970’s. He laughed at everything I said and asked far too many questions about me, so I had a suspicion that he was gunning to sleep with me; a suspicion that was only confirmed when I came back from the washroom at one point to be informed by Christa that he’d asked her if she would be okay alone in Portland if he whisked me away for a night of sweet, sweet lovin’. Like I could be whisked. In that shirt? Please.
The third member however - Myka was his name - seemed kind and charming enough that when he offered for us to crash at his place after the show so we didn’t have to pay for a hotel room or (more likely) sleep in the car, we half-considered it.
In the end, we declined the offer and he left after their band played. Christa and I had been waiting for the place to fill up, but it was nearing midnight and not another soul had come in. With Myka gone, that meant the number of audience members was smaller than the number of people in the band.
I thought I’d seen The Trews enough times that I had run out of firsts with them, but this was certainly another one, and perhaps the most bizarre to date. Christa and I stood five feet from the stage, taking full advantage of the generosity of space as we danced around and sang along to every song.
I could tell they were grateful we were there. As terrible as it must have been to play to a near-empty room, it would have been a lot more terrible for them had there not been two people enjoying their presence so completely. All five watched us with amused grins for most of the show, probably because there was no one else to look at.
We bought them a couple rounds (Christa stepped onto the stage with five beers cradled in her arms and walked around the stage, distributing them to each while they played Fleeting Trust, like she was hosting a party all of the sudden). I would yell out requests which Colin would shrug at then comply and J’nangus would occasionally pause the show for a few minutes to have a conversation with us over the microphone.
After the show was over J’nangus and Sean packed their stuff into the van while Jeff and Colin sauntered over to the bar and sat with me to chat. I can’t honestly say I recall a lot of the conversation, except for fighting with Colin over whether his X ring is cooler than my T ring (It is, but I couldn’t let him know I thought that), which launched him into unsolicited stories of growing up in Antigonish with Jack and J’nangus. And I remember Jeff was laughing at everything I said and asking too many questions about me.
Jack came over and asked if I wanted to go for a smoke with him. I excused myself from the other two and went outside with Jack. Again, I don’t remember much of our conversation except the overall impression that he was much more lucid than I’d ever seen him, and much more talkative than I’d ever imagined he could be. I remember him trying to convince me to come to Boston for the show the next night because it was their last night on the American tour and there was going to be a blinder afterwards.
I told him we’d see; I’d ask Christa about it. It was then that I realized I hadn’t seen her since the show had finished. I called her cell phone and ended up finding her at a pizza place down the street with Myka. He’d come back at closing time because he was genuinely concerned about our safety and well-being. Well... perhaps it was not genuine, but if it wasn’t, he can fake genuine masterfully. I said we’d just drive straight back to New Brunswick and he reluctantly let us go after fruitless efforts to convince us that was a bad idea.
It probably was a bad idea to make a six hour drive at five in the morning a long day and night of driving and partying, but I did it anyway, downing coffee and smoking cigarettes the whole way to stay awake while Christa slept from Portland straight through to Woodstock, New Brunswick.
Regardless, we made it. Made good time too.
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