A Stone too Far

So I got up at 6:30 AM yesterday to haul my sorry ass downtown (which is like a misnomer here, since EVERYWHERE is downtown) to play in a Go tournament. For those who don't know, Go is an ancient board game played by people with aspirations of being ancient bores. In my more deluded moments I like to think I'm one of the few Go enthusiasts with social skills and a sense of humour that doesn't involve pointing out people's grammatical errors when they talk.

I won two and lost two games. I learned some things about the game, but I learned a lot more about the kind of PEOPLE who play it. Imagine a room full of overweight disfigured geeks with food-stained clothes and an unhealthy fascination with binary programming - said atmosphere humming with a kind of weird nasal neighing laughter - and you've got a go tournament hall.

Someone a lot weaker than me started huffing and hawing and being a total dick as I tried to explain a concept to another player. Being insecure and awkward is one thing, and lord knows that described me for the vast majority of my own life thus far, but there's something really foul smelling about people who have no sense of humour or charm to compensate for their lack of social graces - and I'm not just talking about body odour!

I went home after the "award" ceremony ("Can I get everyone's attention please? The winner of the tournament is _____!" *insert modest clapping* "Here's your free Go book. Thanks everyone for coming!" *insert weird neighing laughter as crowd mills awkwardly around the exit*). Madeline and I then went out to this nice little bar called Buttermilk. We'd been there before, and a country band had been playing. I don't like country music, but they were tight.

No band this time, but we started drinking and before long we found ourselves talking to this guy "Henry" at the bar. A fourty-year-old dude with great taste in music and a wicked sense of humour. Bought us some drinks and chatted us up for an hour. Fantastically nice guy. Madeline got his e-mail and then lost it.

We also met some other Americans. One was a DJ who doubled as a high school counsellor or something like that. Another one had a duel with me to see who had the stranger name. Knoerschild or something like that. I think he won, but I won the dance off later in the night. I vaguely recall someone describing my moves as "fluid like water", which I felt was pretty flattering.

The last one was a philosophy and political science grad who'd been all over London and Paris and Spain and seemed like a genuinely cool guy. Good looking too!

The rest of the night is shrouded in blackness and drunken staggering, which admittedly had been our plan from the very beginning. I recall observing that New York was like the coolest two blocks of Ottawa stretched out for miles and miles and miles. On the way home we crossed a roundabout that honestly looked like it had been airlifted from Belgium for the express purpose of Europifying Brooklyn. It sent a chill down my spine how similar it looked - even the corrugated metal gates covering store entrances looked the same.

All in all I have to say this town is fucking incredible.