Aftermath

It took 45 minutes for it to sink in.

I woke up and headed to the Cambie's breakfast eatery and got some diner food, then I went and sat with the crew. We watched the ubiquitous footage for a couple of hours. There was a pretty pointless newspaper piled up on the table. I read the sports headline. "Hey guys, great news! Michael Jordan's coming out of retirement." Joe laughed, at least.

I started reaching a saturation point. The repeated footage gave me nothing new, and there was nothing coming out of the newscasters' mouths that added any knowledge to the situation.

I wish I could remember the rest of that day...I just recall wandering around Gastown at one point and stepping into a nearly deserted pub. At some point the bartender said, "all right, that's about enough," and he muted the news. I thanked him.

That night, the crew went to the Blunt Bros. It was open mic night, and eventually, some hippie went up to the mic, and read a piece that amounted to an "I told you so" to the US...Not the best of timing. (I mean, it was open mic night at Blunt Bros. What else was going to happen?)

Talk of cancelling the rest of the run and heading back over the border started amongst us, and, again, I found myself in the minority. I wanted to stay, and I wanted to keep our original ending. Fuck it. It added to the wrongness of the comedy, which made it better for me. I think B agreed with me.

The others not so much, and I don't blame them, I must say. The material, as it was, would definitely cross the line, in terms of taste (but, I still wish for a remount, not that it'd happen, but it's a wish).

What followed over the next few days could best be described as pointless wandering. We went to see a movie; we'd visit downtown; Joe and I went to see a horrible pageant show at the fest; we played pinball all day, and Joe sold his soul to the South Park gods...

I'd been flirting with a local, and we made plans to meet on the 12th. We met up and she led me on a tour of the Castro...It was kind of awkward, but the Castro impressed me as a pretty cool neighborhood.

Time was coming, though, and if we wanted to get the rest of our money back, we had to make a decision. We called it quits. The emotional drain, tied to the bedbugs, tied to exhaustion, tied to the disappointing run...it was just too much.

We finally leave on Friday. I went to the breakfast joint for the last time, and I got into a discussion with the staff. I confess that I didn't necessarily want to leave, and they start telling me not to. That I could stay there and work under the table for a while, until something good came along.

This became one of those points in my life where I now wonder where I would be if I followed my instincts that day...I still think about it.

I came back, though, for better or worse. Joe's then fiancee (now wife) had been accepted to a law school in New York, and he left within a couple of months. C and her husband C moved to Chicago not long after. So did J and K. Skot got married...

We all moved on, essentially.

[Edited to add: As a final thought to the 9/11 trilogy, I can think of no better encapsulation of my thoughts than Keith Olbermann's latest diatribe. Lengthy and sometimes a little sanctimonious, Mr. Olbermann's words still strike deep into the matter of the Great American Duping of the 21st century. Thank you, sir.--tbo]