I thought I start the series of “Women I once dated” (WI1F) with someone I didn’t really date.

It wasn’t that long ago, but it seems like an eternity has flowed down the river since. I was convalescing after a major disappointment with what felt, at that time, as the “love of my life,” Julia. The fact that I realised that I only had myself to blame made it all the more painful.

I had just come back from spending a Christmas in St. Martin and fell down from a peak of unrealistic expectations about “our” love that had built up in my mind with no basis in reality. She wasn’t who I wanted her to be and there was no chance she could ever become that, so when a friend called me to suggest we spend New Year’s Eve in Montreal I jumped at the opportunity. The six of us took the bus (or train, or car, can’t remember) and we were a few hours later in the hotel room, checking out newspapers for where to find a nice club. I pushed for a Goth club – industrial was en vogue and my heart had just been broken to pieces. We also “visited” Montreal but did not really enjoy it: it was much, much colder than Toronto and than what we had expected and our skimpy clothing could hardly hide our virtuous shaking.

While waiting in the line-up (also, a bit earlier as well, to be precise), it occurred to me that the sole set of casual clothes I had taken with me in the hurry to leave, were not only unfit for the famous coldness of the city but also too casual for the club scene. Judging by the looks the bouncer was giving us, it was quite clear that we weren’t going to make it in, as my friends were similarly dressed. It was quite late and our entertainment situation was getting desperate. Then there was some sort of council, a bunch of people seemed to discuss our fate and we were allowed inside. The cover was steep for those times, but this was the only Industrial / Goth club we could find in the newspaper listings, it was, after all, NYE and we were happy to make it in. This, by the way, happened long before Aronda.

All I wanted to do inside was to get drunk and dance myself into oblivion. I didn’t care what I looked like, I didn’t care that some women were watching and found me attractive, I didn’t care that my dancing was likely far less pleasing for others to watch than for me to melt in. I wanted to forget, I wanted to lose myself in the industrial rhythm. Unfortunately, the DJ seemed to have changed his mind as they started playing more French songs, few of them Goth or Industrial – mostly happy tunes.

I didn’t care much about the music though. I was dancing with my eyes closed, dissipating the pain within the music, when I was treated to a rude awakening. This girl came to dance with me out of nowhere and, before I knew it, she was grinding against me very intimately. I really wasn’t thinking about women at that time (one of my few such moments that I can actually recall) so it took me a while to understand what was going on; I tried to play along to what seemed like a rock’n’roll moment. She seemed very French: shy, childish, brunette and impulsive. I bet she had a few shots to build up the courage to go straight to me and do that.

By the time I woke up from my dynamic stupor she was very close and there was a glimpse of self-defeatist panic in her eyes. There she was, putting herself on the line, making the first step, embarrassing herself in front of her friends, with some big guy who was not responding to her advances because he was either too dumb or too gay.

I offered to buy her a drink. She talked to me in French, I answered, she said something else, I answered back, then she said something very quickly, as French people do, and my untrained ear couldn’t make sense of it all. I might’ve asked her how old she was (or she asked me); turns out she was close to my age. I asked her to repeat slowly and she seemed stunned with the realization that I’m not French, then disappointed. “Are you an Anglo?” she asked with a strong French accent. “No”, I replied, revealing my Eastern European background. Her dismay watered down a little but the enthusiasm was gone and panic seemed to return to her beautiful eyes. I helped her out of her faux desperation by chatting dismissively about my origins and once the smile returned, I suggested we get our drink.

This was becoming interesting. Women found me generally attractive and it seldom happened for me to go out and not find someone to leave the party with, but it was the first time I was picked up in this manner (in Montreal for sure, and possibly my entire life). My curiosity peaked: is this the Quebecois way or was she somehow special?

She didn’t want a drink, but I needed one, I was thirsty and not nearly drunk enough for what was to come. Just like earlier with my clothes, I tried to make a compromise between a drink that was refreshing, had alcohol and I could share with her so I ordered a Singapore Sling. The barista took my order and she left as well. I presumed she was going to refresh herself. I was all alone at the bar and I waited a very long time – it seemed like forever – before I got my drink. The girl was still nowhere in sight (slipped into another movie perhaps?) and I was beginning to think I lost her. Meanwhile, I was having the worst Singapore Sling I’ve ever had.

After I was done with that crap, I went looking for her. I was feeling sick, and this girl seemed to have lost interest or regretting her initial move. It may have been an opportune moment to bail out of that ill-conceived adventure, but by then my predatory instincts had awakened. So did a monster in my tummy, unfortunately. Just before leaving, I had to go to the washroom, where I let out all the evil accumulated in the previous year. I needed my tummy to behave, so I performed some quick Yoga exercises that had helped me in the past – squeezing your abdomen and essentially pressing your belly button against your spine with your abs. If you’re curious, it’s an exercise also shown in Croaziera by the boss or his woman, if memory serves me well.

Out of the club, she leaned against my arm. I was cold, had a strange tingle inside, was in a foreign city with a girl who may have been a psycho on my arm and yet it was obvious that she expected me to flag a taxi, which I did. My memory gets blurry afterward, but I do remember her lying on her sofa face down, with her dress wrinkled and high up, exposing her thighs, me sitting in her ottoman in-between bathroom breaks with my desire fighting my explosive diarrhoea, the latter winning. I woke up early, still on the couch, and flushed her toilet once more (probably the 8th) before leaving, just to be sure. Sadly, this is not an euphemism.

On the way back to Toronto, as I reminisced about that night’s events, I realised that back in the line-up I had noticed in my peripheral vision how a girl accompanied by 3-4 other men noticed me, took a step back smiling and then went to talk to the bouncer whom she had probably known. It was the same girl who picked me up which meant that the most likely reason why we got in is that she liked me. It seemed that her friends didn’t, as the drink had probably been spiked with more than Benedictine.

In the years that passed since, I went back to Montreal, looked for her and finished what at first couldn’t, but that’s a story for another day. That night probably still is the most fucked up New Year’s Eve I’ve ever spent.

Sources / More info: to-Goth, mtrl-Goth, mysp-mtrl-Goth