Tales Of Baz: Vermont wedding

Maurice,

If parties are tennis matches, then I am a man for the fifth set.

The party was dying and I was there at the end blowing at embers, trying to get a fire going.

My heart set on a game of drunk table tennis. I had managed to prise the promise of that from the bridegroom, Patrick.

I walked out to the drunk bus and confirmed that the good man could indeed drop me at my hotel at the end of it all.

Then the party petered out, table tennis was done (1-1) and most good people had left and so I left, carrying my suitbag, my totebag, and my best worldly cosmopolitan farewell on my sleeve, to go to the drunk bus,

but it had left.

I stood looking into the deep dark night.

I trudged back disconsolate wondering whether I would ever get back to my hotel, whether I would get back to the airport, whether I would ever get back to Canada. I nearly burst into a rendition of "Air Canada, our home and native line", hummed to the tune of O Canada, a somewhat popular song in these parts.

But I kept my music within and mumbled about, now sounding craven, now sounding brave.

The groom wished me a good luck as if I were at southampton dock sailing on the unsinkable Titanic. He said something about an inflatable mattress somewhere. I laughed heartily and spoke of the stars above and the grass below me, invisibly tipping my hat to dear old Robert Louis.

But it was clear there was no curvaceous creature around to provide creature comfort ... and I was in a barn in Vermont, missing my date with the Hilton hotel.

O Canada!

There was a sofa-like sofa-like sofa and I fell asleep on dreaming of a California blonde I once knew in Kobenhavn. Thank goodness for the summer ... It was not hot and there were no horses in said barn. If there are to be no creature comforts, let there at least be no creatures.

But that was not to be. Half way through my nocturnal adventure, Dave Carlson crept in and spread himself all over the floor. He had been getting to know Ginny on a comforter somewhere on the muddy manure.

It wasn't raining and so it shall remain one of life's great mysteries why he decided to show up to share the barn with Baz and leaving Ginny tossing, turning, dreaming in the mud.

I'm convinced he introduced himself as Cunningham.

And so we come to six thirty in the morning.

I awoke that morning with the inner thighs of my trousers clinging to my inner thighs. It was no accident - the two had been in close proximity all day long. There had been sweat. They clung to each other like long lost lovers in some remote barn in Vermont.

I, on the metaphorical side of this lonely ring, was left to wrestle with inadequate description, a lack of reliable transportation, and a general feel that Michael Jackson, up there in heaven, had probably
forsaken me.

I went to the reception of the inn, was treated with kindness and respect, and made to feel entirely human, the re-creation of the man from the barn-borne beast. I ordered breakfast, ate heartily and tipped generously, a huge deal, considering the cheap bastard I've always been.

I begged a ride to my hotel from Warren, a man who dishes out deadpan humour, like it's on fire-sale, for free.

Still unsure as to who I actually got to know at the wedding, I slunk around looking at the scenery, the gorgeous Vermont scenery, and tried not to stare at the gaggle of people rushing off to dive into lake Champlain for an early morning, freeze it all off and slosh about.

I wondered whether Warren would really take me. Would I ever see the Hilton again, and the suitcase that it contained?

Then I started writing this note, in the lobby, somewhat washed up, in the best sense of that phrase, and I wondered- is this like export
sales ?