| A Third Meeting with Khidr (2008) |  |
A couple
of months ago, my cousin Jimmy, who’s a
couple of years younger than me, got married; and before he did, he
had a
bachelor party thrown for him up in Montreal, at Clubb Sexx.
I didn’t mind
at all that I was invited. Montreal
is after all Montreal, and Clubb Sexx is a legend.
So at any rate,
the party goes up there in a five cars, because it’s a big party, and we head
over to the Northway through
NY, and go up from there.
We were lucky to get through the border because you now got to have
passports to go to
Canada from the USA, because of those 9-11 idiots.
Fortunately for us they put off the date they started to check such
things, and six of us made it over whereas if it had actually gone into effect
six of us would have been left on the US side
of the Canada border, and good
luck to them.
Anyway.
I had mine. From that trip
to the London. Oi.
Anyrate, we check
into the Motel 6 and then head off to Club Sexx, even though its only
mid-afternoon, and start getting
warmed up.
The dancers weren’t warm yet, but we didn’t care.
We were having a pretty good time, and as the booze
flowed we were
getting pretty lubricated. I
don’t know that the dancers ever got really lubricated, but a good number of
them pretended they was. As time
went by.
At some point,
several hours into the festivities, this razor thin blonde with a big rack comes
over to collect money from
our side of the stage, and I look over to my left to
half-notice the guy who is putting some money in her garter, and damn,
if it
wasn’t Khidr.
His eyes were
locked on the stripper, and only broke when she walked away; and then, he kinda
felt me looking at him
and then looked at me, and he queered up his face a
little bit, and then there was like this moment of recognition, and he
had kind
of this slow moving, full-body shudder as he recognized me.
“Monsieur, do I
know you?” he says, with a French
accent.
“You’re Khidr,
you kidding me? Like I don’t know you,” says I.
“And a French pretender to boot.”
“French,”
says Khidr, raising himself, “Is a state of mind.”
Which he says with a freakin’ French accent.
I never thought
it could get this bad. And so, I
sat back.
“Ain’t you
ashamed,” I says, “a man of your years in a place like this?”
“And how,” he
says with a French accent “do you think that I have lived to be such a man, as
you say, of my years?”
“If you don’t
quit acting like some frog, I’m going to pop you one.”
“Frog I am.
Pop away.”
It thought about
it for a minute, but it just plain wasn’t worth it.
And the bouncers were big for Frenchmen, who are usually
small, in the
movies.
“Alright.
I guess you got to pretend that you are someone that you pretend you are.
Just don’t rub it in, OK?”
“No pretense,
mon ami. In all modes and manners,
I am genuine.”
“That’d be a
first,” says I. “So how are you getting on up here, old man?
You running into any trouble about who you are?
“You mean that
how?” says Khidr.
“I mean,” I
says, “How is it up here in regards the religions and races, and such?
I mean,” says I, stammering a little,
“how hard is it being, well…
being an Arab up here in Canada? Being
a Muslim and all, up here. Is it
better or worse
than being in the US?”
“Well, in the
first place, I am from Caanan, and am not an Arab, and there is not much Anti-Cannanite
feeling up here, one
way or the other. And
also, I am not a Muslim, as you mean it.”
“You’re not a
Muslim?”
“I am not not a
Muslim,” says Khidr, shrugging. “I
am just not more Muslim than anything else.”
“You’re just
being coy with me,” I says. “The
only place I ever heard about you was from the Muslims.”
“Just because they are the only ones paying attention, doesn’t mean I’m one of them. Not that I’m not not one of them.”