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Went out Sunday night, to the Pioneer Pub deep in Richmond to meet an old friend who is now a co-worker (I poached him from private), and another co-worker, who is also a friend. It was a long overdue evening. We had a number of beers and a few conversations. Some other wanderers arrived to the table, including yet more co-workers. Much merry was made. The night got too long—and, although I had told everyone who would listen that I would be out the door and in an Uber at 9:30, I left after midnight.

 

I had never been to the Pioneer Pub (the Pi) before. To get there, you go down to Richmond the normal way by train, same way I go to get to work. You get off at Brighouse (or, sometime apparently, Bridgeport—Maps kept oscillating between those two options of where to get off to catch a Richmond bus, but it settled on the former after awhile and so Brighouse it was), and then get on a bus (the 403, no matter which station you get off at) for a short ride.

 

I (let’s go back to the 1st person now) ran down the stairs from the platform and then across the street to where the stop was outside the Kam Do Bakery, and joined the loosely-structured line (more like a clump) there. I didn’t need to run, I had five minutes, but I tend to run for unfamiliar buses on long trips. It came on time, some time after I’d caught my breath. I boarded with the rest of the clump and rode it a straight shot into the relative unknown along Three Road (I work in Richmond, but I don’t know most of Richmond; I’ve only seen these stretches once or twice before and only ever from a bus window), and got off at Williams Road, in Broadmoor. There it was behind a parking lot and next to a bank. A bar like how they have them in on TV, and pretty quiet. I go to a table, sit down and take a menu, then change my mind about the table and go to another one, further back and in that raised area pubs will always tend to have. I notice all the many screens hanging above us are all playing various sports except for one that’s playing a poker game—bar like they have them on TV, see.

 

I message my friend who became a co-worker that I’m there, he tells me he’ll be there in under six hundred seconds. I set a stopwatch, get out the book on the Israel/Palestine conflict that I’m reading, and then I see him come through the door. The co-worker who became a friend comes in a few seconds later.

 

This scene will only last for as far into it as I can get before the train drops me off at my station.

 

I am on the Skytrain again. The man sitting behind me is eating eggs out of a plastic container. The man in front of me is changing his jacket.

 

Friend A orders a lager and a glass of Irish whiskey. Friend B orders the same pale ale I’m already having. (I have to be vague about this part because we’re not supposed to talk about the brands we sell). Friend C, another co-worker, might be joining us after his massage, if he’s still here. I remember him hearing about the potential of a massage appointment at work a few days earlier—he works mostly in the warehouse, he could use one.

 

I’m still not using names. I’ll have to start soon, or it’ll become strange and/or awkward. I’ll think about a solution.

For now, take the vagueness as an aesthetic.

 

Two of us order burgers, the third orders wings. I have already made it clear how early I will have to leave, because this is still very important to me at this point.

 

My station is next. King Edward. Not quite my local station, because there’s still a long bus ride ahead of me. But my station all the same. I know it well. I’ve known it long. I remember the corner it’s on from before any station was there. There used to be a Baskins and Robbins in the exact spot where the exit now is.

 

By the time my second beer and my burger is inside me, another has joined us… it was around this point? I’ll write it like that, at least. Another has joined us—Friend B’s former co-worker from the job he had before he joined us, when he worked in private. This friend’s friend had been seated nearby. Richmond is like a smaller town than it is, sometimes.

 

Friend C arrives over two hours later, about when I’m supposed to leave. Friend A mentions that it’s when I said I would leave shortly before this, but I want to stay to say hi to C and I say so. I say I’ll stick around just a bit longer, just for that. I never do look at the time again that night.

 

The organ bit from three quarters of the way through Close to the Edge washes over me like a more corporeal version of a divine chorus as I remember this and write it down. Then I look up from my phone and see the 33 across Cambie St and through the fog, about to arrive either ten minutes late or twenty minutes early, and I book it across the street to intercept it just as the angelic chorus of Yes members gives way to a jangling uproar of guitars. I make the bus. Sometimes the soundtrack life  provides is just that profoundly appropriate.

 

After I was already well and drunk, and so was everybody else, others began to drift to our table. Friend A has a gravitational pull, you see, especially after a few drinks. It’s like Dionysius climbs into him. Something more literary than physical about the presence he gets going, and random strangers will notice it and come to find their orbit. I compared him to Walt Whitman recently, and he didn’t understand why. I’m not sure how to articulate it myself, but it has something to do with that. Himself, he would like to be like Ingmar Bergman. This also makes as much sense as what I said.

 

We kept going in our universe. The bar emptied out. The bar closed. We emptied out. Friend B gave us a ride to our respective points of rest.

 

I had to be up again at five in the morning to be at work at seven. I got about four hours of sleep. This was the result of a series of notably poor decisions on my part and I make no attempt to pass it off as anything else.

 

I got to work on time and made it through, although not without a lot of misery. I was too tired to finish the lunch I brought and I felt sick most of the day. The number of beers probably also had something to do with that.

 

Both of the events I had planned after work canceled/postponed on me. That was probably a good thing, since it enabled to me go home and immediately fall asleep there. Got nearly two hours. Was still feeling out of it, but manageably so.

 

The big, continuing problem is rather that my lungs are unhappy with me now, from the dehydration and etc, and my asthma is staging a surprise appearance. That had been all kinds of fun.

 

That above was composed in three sections: the original short choppy thing this morning, then the long bit detailing that evening later on during my commute, and now as I type it all up before bed. The end of the piece seems like a grinding to a halt because I never bothered expanding any of that. My asthma is getting better, anyway—I drank a lot of tea today. It’s too late in the day to write about how work went, which is fine by me because I write too much about work in these. This is nicer.