Introducing: Alcoholism

Slip, slup, slap,

drip, drop, drap;

crip, crop, crap.

molecules dance against the window to my soul;

atoms procreating; producing protons

and negating neutrons for the sake of a Friday night party.

Drunk on plasma; my electrons are stumbling across

the Void in a feeble attempt to find a home within a singularity.

It's a long walk home when your entangled partner

is two thousand galaxies away.

Hopefully this black hole spits you out somewhere that you want to be.

Mont-Royal. Matched only in splendor by Butt-Bead Village, Mont-Royal was my favourite region of Montrèal. One of the plateau's attractions, Avenue du Mont Royal, is a fantastic street garnished with dozens of local businesses, cute coffee shops and quirky restaurants. Here, we could finally study the anthropology of Montrèal.

The square outside the subway station was bustling, as per usual. A crew of Quebecois buskers lightened the atmosphere, pumping a beautiful melody through an accordion, a guitar and some beautiful vocals. Mustachioed men and women with their hair tied into buns stood entranced by the music; sluts rocking the new Montrèal fashion - booty-shorts riding so high that buttcheeks hung loosely and wedgies sunk so deep into the crevasse that bums seemed to become black holes - strode by with pretentious disregard. Two massive decorative chairs stood thirty feet high; kids hung off the armrests while parents chastised them.

The sound of Montrèal was different, too. Instead of being bombarded by the sound of English's simplicity, we were gifted with the sharp elegance of the French language as it floated through the air. We didn't have too much time to soak in the culture - me and Fern had to show Squanch and Hades why Montrèal was such a stark pit of depravity for hobos. There were three main reasons, and all revolved around alcohol:

• Availability: The shit was everywhere! Basically anywhere in the city, you're a block away from a dépanneur (roughly translated: corner store) which all stock beer and wine.
• Strength: Montrèal is the only place I've found 10.5% forties of beer readily available.
• Price: Five bucks and a quarter was enough for one of these forties, which is both good and bad. Five bucks can be made in ten minutes squeegeeing and a forty is enough to get one person pretty wasted, which can lead to an instantaneous alcoholic spiral.

Thirty bucks in hand, we certainly did get wasted. We grabbed five forties, traunched to the northern tip of Avenue Mont-Royal, and began climbing the spectacle of the region: Mont-Royal. It was tough to define Mont-Royal as a mountain, yet far too big to call a hill. Either way, it was beautiful to see the stark defiance of nature, Mother's resilience towards civilization baring its tree-speckled entirety. We climbed halfway up the mountain and set up camp, grabbed our forties, and popped the top off our next two weeks.

Hades and Squanch heeded our warnings - we had told them about the foul flavour of Molson ten-point-ones (we couldn't find Black Bull forties - the 10.5% whose flavour, while still equivalent to fermented horse piss, bested Molson's) but they were unprepared. Gags and retches ensued until they'd grown used to the flavour, at which point they were already getting drunk. Hey - you can't pay 5 bucks for alcohol of this potency and expect a good taste.

Within an hour, we were shitfaced and the significance of our arrival in Montrèal didn't seem so significant anymore. We were drunk, in a forest, just as we always managed to be when we arrived anywhere. It was around this point that I realized I was tired of drinking my way across the country; there were so many things to see and do (I drank the money I was going to spend climbing the C.N. Tower in Toronto, I chugged enough money to take me to Niagara Falls and back) but I was too busy getting wasted to appreciate them. Not to say that drinking's not fun - it is - but alcohol makes it easy it is to forget that other things are fun, too. Hell, when you enjoy sitting in the bush in the pitch black, yelling at empty spaces where you think your friends are sitting, you don`t need tourism to have fun.

Yes, we were shitfaced, and I was banging Squanch on the crinkly blanket of my tarp. Fuck - it didn't take me long to regret this decision, but not before repeating it a few times due to an inability to control the flow of blood to both my brain and my schlong.

For the time being, though, I was drunk, sweaty, and satisfied. Fernweh and Wade had fallen asleep to the rhythmic song of my thrusts, so me and Squanch figured we might as well, too. The distant rumble of cars was much more melodic of a sound to sleep to than the incessant raging of the beasts as the roared by on the bridge above us in Toronto. One rarely realizes how lame Toronto is until they leave, for it's easy to forget life outside Urbania. It's only when you leave that you remember how beautiful life can be.