It’s difficult to make the people who work for US customs laugh.  After a five and a half hour car ride we made it to the Canadian border.  We stopped only once, and that was for a speeding ticket.  Eighty nine in a sixty five – I like to make good time.  I would later find out, when I sent in the form pleading guilty, that the ticket handed to me by Officer Eisenhandle would cost me three hundred and forty dollars.  It was worth it, though, for the toast we would make later that night.

I was driving (I always drove) when we pulled up to the customs’ window.  Nat was sitting shotgun and Keith was in the back; they liked to take turns.  “Let me see three IDs, boys” the customs official said, in a slightly French accent.

I handed him three driver’s licenses – one from New Jersey, one from California, and one from Florida.  Looking back, we were quite the eclectic bunch. 

“Which one of you is Lawrence?” the agent asked.

“I am,” I told him, trying to sound as innocent as possible.  I was innocent, but officers of the law tend to scare me.

“And whose car is this?” He asked.

“Mine.  Well actually, my dad’s,” I corrected myself.  Does he think I stole the car from my dad?  Shit.

“How long will you be in Canada?”

“Um, about a week I think.  No, five days.  A school week.  We’re leaving on Friday.”

“And what brings you to Canada for a week?”

“Nothing,” I said, because it was true.  We had rented a hotel for five days, but we really had nothing planned at all.

“What does nothing mean?” the officer asked, slightly annoyed by my response.

Before I got the chance to stammer out another answer, Nat cut me off.

“Debauchery,” was all he said.

The officer chuckled as he said, “Alright then.  Have a good time.”

With the windows still open and the car still in park, we blasted the song that had been playing on repeat for the last nineteen miles: the American Idol version of “God Bless the USA.” As I handed my friends back their IDs and I strapped my seatbelt back on, the US customs official couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of us three patriotic/idiotic/free ballin’ college students.  Maybe he laughed because we’re crazy, maybe he laughed because it brought him back a few years, or maybe he laughed because he hated us.  Whatever the reason, he laughed as we drove across the border to Canada.

In an effort to be diplomatic, we alternated between Canadian Celine Dion’s “I Feel Alive” and American Idol’s “God Bless the USA.”  We had a tendency to blast our music and leave the windows down (despite the extreme cold,) so we made many friends and enemies throughout the entire city of Montréal.  We would later find out that we made it onto local television.  “As the universities in the United States let out for spring break, many head north – increasing Canadian tourism.”  This was what the lead female correspondent read as a video of three American college students, stopped at a red light, danced as best they could in a car, to “I Feel Alive.”

We made it to a bar by eight.  We were nineteen at the time, so the primary reason we had come was for the drinking age.  When we walked into Mad Hatter for the first time, we did not know we would soon become regulars.  Our first beer was chugged to a toast of “Fuck the po-lice” that was loud enough for all to hear.  I finished my beer last, but I always finished my beer last.  “I’m an endurance drinker,” I would say to defend myself.  And I was.

By midnight we had consumed seven pitchers between the three of us.  Nat was a lightweight, so he stopped drinking after the first four.  But Keith and I kept going – limits were meaningless to us.  We were gluttons, and we were proud of it. 

Now that we were all in the right state of mind, it was time to find girls.  We took a table in the corner so that we could scope everything out, and we ordered some food.  It only took a few minutes to find the sole group of girls sitting alone.  They were three.  We were three.  We approached.

“Would you guys like some of our fries?”  Keith asked: a pathetic pickup line.  He always had the most courage in the beginning.  It never lasted long, though.  He would remain a virgin until twenty eight.

“Um, no, not really actually,” the cutest of the three responded.

“How about some conversation then?” Keith persisted.

“That would be great.”  So we sat.

These conversations are my least favorite of any type.  For three hours we talked about nothing.  I didn’t care where these girls lived, what they were studying, or what they’re favorite movies were.  And I know that they didn’t care to know these things about me.  But it’s a game, and it must be played.  So we did.

“Oh my god, you guys have a pool at your hotel.  We should definitely go swimming,” Keith said, still full of confidence.

The girls lit a joint on our walk back to their hotel.  We would soon find out that they were coked-out the whole time, but to be honest we didn’t really care.  The pool was closed, no surprise, so they invited us up to their room.  They had a bong (at least that’s what they called their empty twenty ounce Coke bottle, filled a third of the way with water), so I hit it.  I was ripped.

The saddest part of this whole story is that one of the girls was fat.  I’m not talking slightly overweight or a little on the pudgy side; she looked like a fucking manatee.  I didn’t care about her health problems or her low self-esteem; the sad part of the story is that none of us could bear to touch her.  For an hour the three of us fought over the cutest, I think her name was Jane, until Nat eventually won.  He always eventually won.  Then Keith and I decided to leave.  Keith wouldn’t hook up with either of the remaining two, and I thought they were trying to kill us.  It all seemed oddly perfect to me, like a set up.  And I was high.  One would think we would have been friends to each other, but apparently we weren’t. 

We would find out the next day that Nat had sex with the cuter two, while the manatee slept in the bathroom.  We would also find out that the girls were all seventeen and had slept with far more people than we ever would.  It didn’t matter though.  We were nineteen.  We were in Canada.  And it was only day
two.