Sleeping Around (16 page)

Except that I did have to wait and they didn't have any German beer. There was a queue just to get to the very orderly queue at the bar, which was being closely guarded by two security gorillas in bright yellow shirts. That's when I realised that the security men outnumbered the drinkers two to one.

When I did get to the bar, they seemed to be only serving Molsen in pathetically small white plastic cups. ‘Do you have any German beer?' I asked.

‘Yes, we have Heineken,' the barmaid said cheerfully.

‘Um, Heineken is Dutch.'

‘Same thing,' she chirped.

I grabbed my great Bavarian plastic cup of Canadian Molsen and joined the rest of the group who had procured a table near the queue for the bar. I looked around and spotted lots of large signs being closely guarded by the army of yellow-clad security buffoons.

NO LEANING OR STANDING ON
TABLES AND CHAIRS
DRESS CODE IN
EFFECT—CLEAN LOOKING APPAREL ONLY
NO ALCOHOL BEYOND THIS POINT
NO SMOKING
NO RUNNING

They could have had a ‘NO HAVING FUN' sign and it wouldn't have surprised me. I went up on to the dance floor for a bit of polka-ing with Danika's cousin Karen and as we passed a group of lads one dropped down onto the dance floor to do the worm. Twenty seconds later three security guards surrounded him, ordering him to ‘calm down'.

‘Canadians are a bit paranoid,' Karen told me.

Back at our table the conversation turned to couch surfing. I asked Jeremy if he'd had any other couch-surfing experiences.

‘I've had two German girls stay, but that's it,' Jeremy said. ‘Kitchener isn't really a tourist hotspot.'

‘They were probably lost,' said Jeff.

Jeremy had also couch-surfed his way down to Florida. ‘I stayed with two girls in Florida and there was a guy from New York already couch surfing there,' Jeremy said. ‘He was only supposed to stay for five days, but he'd been surfing their couch for three months. The girls were too nice to ask him to leave.'

By late in the evening most people were drunk and rowdy. Jeff was certainly drunk enough. He was standing by the dance floor with his arm around a cute girl when a huge bloke walked up. Jeff introduced himself, then said ‘Who are you?'

‘I'm her boyfriend,' the huge bloke grunted.

Jeff was probably only using the girl for support because we had to almost carry him out when we left. Six of us all piled into Karen's tiny car and, after dropping off a very tall girl who had been lying across our legs in the back seat, we stopped at a neat (stop it!) house in somewhere called Hagersville. Karen had three small children, but they were at their father's house for the weekend. That was a good thing because, boy, did we make a ruckus. As we drank bottles of overtly sweet vodka/pop mix I played Karen's guitar and belted out some tunes while Jeff belted out the contents of his stomach into the toilet.

Once Jeff had finished his yodelling, Jeremy carried him upstairs to bed. Well, when I say ‘bed', it was actually more of a cot than a bed. Jeff 's feet were hanging over the edge of Karen's baby daughter's bed, which came complete with a Princess Jasmine quilt and Snow White pillow. Jeff was just like a little baby, too: He was gurgling, he had vomit in his hair, he couldn't talk and he couldn't walk.

When I finally crawled into bed (I got the matching Cinderella quilt and pillow set), Karen tucked me in and said, ‘I'll leave the Princess Belle light on in case you get scared'.

Late the next morning we had a oh-my-head-hurts big greasy fry-up breakfast at Fireside Family Restaurant & Grill. As I hoed into my mountain of food I asked, ‘Is there any “Canadian” cuisine?'

There was an awkward pause.

‘Hamburgers?' Jeff suggested.

‘Um, I'm pretty sure they're not Canadian,' Danika said.

‘I know,' Jeff beamed. ‘Bacon and eggs!'

After much deliberation everyone decided that there was probably only one thing that could be classed as Canadian cuisine.

‘Maple syrup,' Jeremy said. ‘I think that's it.'

After picking up Jeremy's car from The House of Beer (and after Jeremy bashed a few things around in the engine), we drove out to see some Indians on the warpath. Not far from Jeremy's parents' farm was the Six Nations of the Grand River Indian reserve. All of the six nations—Mohawk, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora—were in the middle of a major uprising over a land claim dispute. The Indians helped fight the British in 1784, so the government gave them all the land for six miles on either side of the Grand River. There were only a few hundred Indians, so they said it was too big and gave it back to the government. Two hundred years later, and now with a population of more than 20 000, they decided they wanted their prime real estate back. In the past few months they'd gone to all the big houses on the riverfront and handed them eviction notices. They had also taken over a sub-division for a new residential development, blocked major roads and were throwing bottles at cars and people.

‘It doesn't matter if they throw bottles at this car,' Jeremy shrugged as we drove into the residential development. There wasn't much sign of the uprising, though. The restless natives had hoisted their protest flags up next to the ‘Display Suites Now Open' flags and a group of non-bottle-throwing Indians in jeans and T-shirts were milling about the entrance, but that was about it.

I could tell when we'd entered the reservation. We drove past the ‘Red Indian Mini Mart' and a billboard for ‘Mohawk Flooring—Check out our lamination'. The most obvious indication that we were in the reservation, however, was the large blinking neon signs advertising discount cigarettes. Because the Indians don't have to pay tax, selling cheap cigarettes is their biggest source of income. We drove through the reservation's main ‘town', which had two totem poles, one tipi and a large drive-thru cigarette shop called Red Indian Cigarette Heaven. The rest of the town was made up of modern houses with large American ‘trucks' parked in the driveways.

‘They also make money from stealing cars,' Jeremy said when I commented that the locals seemed to be doing all right from selling cigarettes. ‘People find their cars a week later burned out in a field and stripped of parts,' he explained.

As we drove out of the reservation we passed a truck abandoned on the edge of the road. Painted on the side of the truck in big red letters was: ‘YOU STEAL OUR LAND SO WE STEAL YOUR TRUCK'.

Imagine inviting a stranger you'd only met the day before to your family's Christmas dinner. That's essentially what Jeremy had done when he invited me to join his immediate family for Thanksgiving dinner. As with Juan's family barbecue, I was amazed that these kind couch-surfing folk didn't think anything of inviting a virtual stranger to such an intimate family occasion.

Even though Jeremy's family were incredibly welcoming when I arrived at the farmhouse, I did still feel a little awkward about intruding into their Thanksgiving celebrations. Well, everyone made me feel welcome except for Jeremy's older brother Rob. When I said hello to him, he just grunted at me. Everyone was in the living room, including Jeremy's mum and dad Janey and Albert, brother Steve and his wife and three kids (to three different fathers, Jeremy told me when I commented how different they all looked) and Rob the grunter.

We had only sat down for a few minutes when we were ushered into the dining room, which had large windows affording spectacular views of the surrounding hills. The table was already laden with huge bowls of mashed turnip, green beans, red cabbage, mashed potato, sweet potatoes, stewed apple, cranberry sauce and a giant jug of gravy. There was a round of applause as Janey brought out a massive roast turkey, which Albert dutifully carved up, and by the time my plate had completed its tour of the table I had a mountain of food.

I was sitting next to Albert, who was quick to tell me that the first Canadian Thanksgiving preceded the American Thanksgiving by 40 years (Canada's first Thanksgiving was in 1578). ‘It's a celebration of being thankful for what one has and the bounty of the previous year,' Albert said. Rob wasn't being very thankful, though. He didn't even look up from his food when Albert raised his glass to propose a toast.

After our somewhat gluttonous feast, the family kept chattering away while I struggled to stay awake. I was not just tired. I'd picked up a dose of CSFS (Couch Surfing Fatigue Syndrome). I was trying really hard to stay awake, but my eyes kept drooping and my head kept dropping, then snapping back up again. Finally, after a considerable struggle with the weight of my eyelids, I dozed off.

I woke with a fright as a huge plate of pumpkin pie was plonked down in front of me. How long had I been asleep? Thirty seconds or ten minutes? Rob seemed to be the only one who'd noticed that I'd nodded off, but he wasn't talking to anyone so I was okay.

As soon as Rob finished his dessert he said ‘I gotta go', stood up and left. He hadn't said a word the entire meal. We all sat around the table for a while after dinner, but I think that was mainly because we were all too bloated to get up out of our seats.

‘Rob doesn't say much,' I said to Jeremy on the drive back to his place.

‘Talking to him is like pulling teeth,' Jeremy said. ‘And I haven't seen him for four months!'

‘Does he have a girlfriend or a wife?' I asked.

‘No, he's gay. Everyone in the family is fine about it, but he's not.'

‘When did he come out?'

‘He told my parents when he was nineteen, but Steve and I didn't find out until a few years later. We only found out because when Steve was leaving home he was having a heated argument with Mom about whether he was sleeping with the girl he was moving in with. He said: “She's just a friend. What about Rob? He lives with two girls and you never hassle him.” “That's because the two girls are lesbians and Rob is gay,” Mum said.'

When I told Jeff that I was planning to go to Niagara Falls, he told me to ‘push all the American tourists over'. There was one small problem with his request. I couldn't see any American tourists. Or any other kind of tourist for that matter. Niagara Falls might get 18 million visitors a year, but I imagine not many of them get there via the three-hour local bus service from downtown Kitchener.

The North Niagara Bus Terminal was in the middle of several blocks of derelict buildings on the edge of town and I had to walk through the somewhat shabby suburbs to get to the falls. At least they were easy to find: I just headed for the source of the rising mist that was drifting languidly over the town.

Oscar Wilde described the falls as ‘simply a vast amount of water going the wrong way over some unnecessary rocks', but I can't see how he couldn't have been even a little impressed. Once I had conquered my inexplicable desire to hurl myself over the railings, I stood watching the cascade for ages, as if hypnotised. It was only after the gushing gallons prompted a very urgent desire to pee that I was able to drag myself away.

I eventually found the tourists. They were all joining me in wearing identical bright-blue plastic ponchos on the Maid of the Mist boat tour. As the boat approached Horseshoe Falls the buildings above faded in the mist, the roar of the cascading water grew deafening, cartoonishly perfect rainbows appeared in the enormous curtains of water falling above us and I was busting to go to the toilet again.

Perhaps Oscar Wilde would have been mightily impressed with the centre of town. Or blinded. Only a few hundred metres away from the falls was a mini Vegas, but tackier. The main drag, which was full of fairy-floss-eating children, was lit up with a dazzling jumble of bilious neon signs advertising a whole universe of worlds including Lego World, Super Hero World, Hot Dog World, Fun World, Dinosaur World (incorporating Dinosaur Mini Golf), Criminal World, Frankenstein World and WWF World. Perched on top of most of the ‘Worlds' were monolithic effigies of monsters, super heroes and a rather gross-looking hot dog. I was impressed. The Canadians had somehow managed to even out-crass the Americans. I thought I might check out one of the Worlds, but when I got closer to Frankenstein World I realised that it was actually just a Burger King masquerading as a World with a colossal Frankenstein on the roof eating a giant whopper.