Squibbles

The glory of Tamtams became of less importance as we became aware of a more immediate distraction - the one within our heads. Butterflies were starting to beat their wings against the insides of our skulls and we decided we should probably get away from the huge group of people at Tamtams. It was nice to trip in smaller groups.

We could no longer call our mushroom trips that, though - the trip, the journey, had pretty much ended the night before. With Hades' decline into insanity and Fernweh's growing intolerance to the group, the adventure had pretty much come to a shitty, anticlimactic standstill. Still, we pumped ourselves full of substances in hopes that drugs would fuel some sort of bonding.

Fernweh's snide remarks about Hades were starting to grind me. I understood that Fernweh was an irritable person and I was very patient (strange how we had formed such a strong relationship - we both had much to learn from each other.) but the way he spoke to me about Hades made me feel obligated to share his hatred. I didn't, and that was the reason I was irritated myself. There was nothing else for us to talk about, and understandably so - being trapped travelling with a group half full of people you hate tends to be a pretty prominent bother. Still - couldn't he put the negativity on the back burner?

No, this was no longer an adventure, but a perpetuation of our own stupidity - with two new contributors to boot. We'd encountered Steve and Darcy, two of Squanch's friends from Toronto. They matched her intelligence nicely.

Steve we'd met once - he'd appeared under our bridge in Toronto one night, failed to woo us with senseless drunken statements, and invited himself to join us for the night by stumbling to the ground and passing out. We didn't see him the next morning. Darcy we'd never met, and hardly planned to meet again (though unfortunately we did a month later when he was missing half his hand.)

Hades, in his relentless and spontaneous generosity, had welcomed the two into the trip and provided them with psychedelia. Hades and Fernweh stayed on the mountain to grumble and babble with the two newcomers while me and Squanch went to go squeegee up some beer money. We found a small group on the closest corner to Tamtams - a stoic blonde dude, shirtless and wearing leopard print pants and a couple of preppy native girls enjoying the spectacle.

We made enough for a few forties with plans to bring them up to the mountain. Unfortunately, the nature of Montrèal prevented us from doing that right away - since it's so easy to make money, you can rack up enough for another 40 before you've even finished drinking your first one. Following that cycle we drank three or four forties on the corner until Fernweh got so upset about us waiting around that we found ourselves heading up some backtrails towards the mountaintop.

After whipping up a quick bonfire, the night got crappy. Squanch, being the only girl, became the target of Steve and Darcy's inebriated infatuation. Sexist slurs were uttered, arms were left lingering over contemptuos shoulders. Eventually, we had to tell the two to fuck off, ta which point Steve got up, tried to fight Fernweh, and promptly fell over like a dead tree and passed out.

Darcy, hindered by the loss of his creepy pal, decided to stop hitting on Squanch and went to bed - we quickly followed suit, eager to end the evening and finish drinking in the morning to make sure we weren't clear-headed for a full day.