Common House Magazine

Rue Saint-Dominique is awash with loud, drunk people, and anyone on it gets the ominous feeling that they are right where they are supposed to be. Nothing better denotes the unholy university experience quite like a Saturday night in the shadow of a major campus—in this case, McGill University, and its surrounding community of kids vibrating with dissonance. The street feels like an artery, a living connection to the experience. Someone vomits in the gutter. Someone else is singing Oasis. I can’t really explain why I’m here, but it’s almost as intoxicating as the endless flow of alcohol to be on this street and in this neighbourhood. On a bench in a makeshift beer garden, put up by the bar in hopes of profiting off these crowds of problem children, I’m as pensive and attentive to my situation as ever. I’m accosted by my only friend here, one Bret Matheny, who recommends I put away my notebook and talk to some new people. In the spirit of our man Hunter Thompson, I’m drunk enough to feel confident and smart enough to be a real journalist. An open-door party on this very raucous street provides me with a “Where.” My watch tells me “When,” and Bret hands me another refreshing cold bottle of “Why.” The bouncer of this impromptu establishment (which is quickly becoming the source of commotion on this street) is Sophie, a woman with a vicious drunkenness of her own and a disarming lack of inhibition. I want to ask her why? Why have you opened the doors? Why are you the last line of defence between your humble and lovely apartment and the increasing unruly crowd of late-teenage alcohol enthusiasts? She speaks first: “You writing about us or judging us?” Sophie is bubbly—in voice and manner. She feels like a fixture of the street, a patron saint of student societal deviance. Of course, she’s also very confused by my frantic notetaking and urges Bret and me to enter the party and “get the fuck out of the way.” Up a seemingly infinite staircase, I am led past the blinding lights and abhorrent pop music of the living room and into the kitchen. Bret leaves me to my journalistic pursuits, or so he says. In a sharp contrast to the enveloping atmosphere of Rue Saint-Dominique, I am dreadfully awkward in someone’s kitchen. Now seated on the floor, praying for Bret to save me from my sins and rescue the notebook, I’m met with the easy eyes of a woman across the floor from me. We are the only people in this kitchen, sitting cross-legged like strange Buddhas in the temple of Coors Banquet and cheap pot. The floor is sticky with beer; the air smells like burnt toast and coconut body spray. I’ve got a million questions for her, and she doesn’t even know it: Why are you here? Do you feel strange in the kitchen? Who is Sophie? Who are you? Fuck, who am I? She moves before I can, and we strike up a conversation on the hilarity and confusion that is the kitchen. A strange, rightful “Where” for a very strange journalistic enterprise. Our conversation naturally shifts to music. Her ability to keep the conversation fluid is startling compared to the other people on the street, and I panic as I realize I have misplaced my pen, and this interview is blown. We talk about the Beatles, perhaps the greatest music act to play on this planet and the great common ground between this woman and me. She reveals her origin in the United Kingdom, though even in my drunken state, I picked up on the accent very early. I ask about her favourite Beatles record, my standard journalistic procedure for any strange and beautiful woman. With an excited tone, she reveals her love for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and I am impressed. Face to face with a proper scholar of the 1960s. My pursuit has now become highly personal. Somewhere between journalism and flirtation, I lose track of which is which. To my horror, Bret returns and removes me from the kitchen, with the sickening and painfully Gen-Z goal of “next bar.” He has become the antagonist. I never get the woman’s name. For proper journalistic purposes (we haven’t got a good “Who” yet), I denote her as Princess Diana—effortlessly regal, noticeably British, and a constant point of journalistic focus. She’ll never know about the writing or what it means. By the time Bret drags me to the aforementioned next bar, my mood has changed. The Hurricane I ordered goes warm as I pore over the notebook. Bret makes a joke at my expense. I’ve lived pretty strangely, but this may be the mecca. I fear and I loathe, and I feel very in tune with Rue Saint-Dominique. There’s something about the lifestyle here. Maybe I’m not alright. Maybe none of us are. Maybe that’s what keeps the street upright.