liquor in the front, poker in the rear*

i interviewed at the UW primate lab yesterday. the three women who interviewed me were extremely nice but i will not be taking the job. it pays over 5 dollars less an hour than what i currently make, for a 5 day workweek that starts at 7.30am and involves 95% cleaning shit. (there is no direct contact with the primates, primarily macaques; food and toys are offered through bars. macaques (which i am probably not even spelling properly) carry a strain of herpes virus that is fatal to humans, not to mention the olio of other zoonoses, including HIV and TB. the facility, spread over 3 eerily secretive facilities, houses about 700 primates altogether. i did not see any of that stuff. i was in a windowless conference room for the interview.) it was neccessary to have a perspective offered on my current job, which i really do love, and i am much more cognizant of what a sweet fucking deal i really have there.
afterwards i drove to vancouver. i have had trepidation about this for quite a while; it is a long haul towards disappointment if my passportless status shuns me entry. but yesterday was brilliantly sunny and i had a full tank of petrol and i went anyway. entry into canada was easy. the border guy asked me what my purpose was. "i want to get my mother some canadian candy for mother's day" i said. he took a quick appraisal of my filthy pink car, my stoner hair, and my lack of a passport, and waved me through.
and i was reminded anew of how fucking clean and orderly BC is. verdant green fields and enormous greenhouses line the highway. even the stench of animal urine north of surrey has an air of charm. the traffic entering vancouver did not faze me. cars are all very modern and clean. it was rush hour, of course, and the drivers surrounding me were in suits and dresses, sternly staring ahead. on the radio: a man walks into a doctor's office and says he has a problem 'down there', and pleads for the doctor not to laugh. the doctor instructs him to pull down his pants, whereupon the smallest penis he's ever seen is revealed- "smaller than a AAA battery!" the disc jockey elaborated. the doctor bursts into helpless laughter for the first time in his 30 years of practice. after 10 minutes he is finally able to compose himself enough to ask the mortified patient what brings him to the clinic. "it's swollen" says the man. this was on the radio. and it was then that i began to feel some rather uncomfortable culture shock: a shlumpy girl in a grubby car, snickering at the stupid joke whilst inadvertently raising my eyebrows at such unaccustomed 'bawdiness', shriekingly american, embarrassingly american.
i parked in a garage off burrell and began to walk. the only other times i have been to this city were with t, and every time we would have a horrific row and leave. i actually referred to it as "our fightin' city". once we secured a hotel room that I PAID FOR, only to leave an hour later, no refund. the drive from bremerton to yelm is not nearly so fucking long as the drive from vancouver to yelm, i assure you.
so walking around invoked memories: he would always buy a cuban cigar and light it on the sidewalk, which was obnoxious as hell. we drank fake absinthe at that place ("that's gross" he said, after one taste, and had no more.) once, during one of our tiffs, i went off by myself and stumbled upon the 'gay' neighborhood, and when he found out he asked me what the fuck i was looking for there.
and yesterday, pointlessly torturing myself with these ugly thoughts, i started to get really down.
shops were closing. i went into the iron-on t shirt place (* an option, with a coital sillouhete), fingered a decal of an amp dial that went to 11, and decided against it. went into several grocery stores, decided that my mother probably wouldn't dig ketchup-flavored pringles or a hulking bag of smarties, and bought nothing. i did procure exorbinantly expensive cigarettes (mainly for the gleefully morbid canadian warnings; my box has a picture of two doe-eyed children on the lid, "don't poison us" in block letters next to them) and a pack of gum. the 7-11 has bins of self-serve gummy candy. i thought of s. i smiled. i didn't buy any.
i left vancouver and started south. (total time in city: ~2 hrs, maybe less.) and upon hitting surrey for one last effort at canadiany mother stuff, i got INCREDIBLY FUCKING LOST. there was a north ramp to hwy 99 but no south, nowhere. i drove around for, oh, hours? the sign just before i exited the hwy listed the US border as 8 km away, which made it all so much more fucking frustrating. i got directions from 2 different gas stations. by the 2nd one i was nearly shrill. i ended up being about 20 minutes out of my way. i have no fucking idea how it happened. the odd thing about BC: there is a hub of shops and activity, and then... darkness. elk xing signs. construction. no other cars, except those with their brights flashing as they speed around me, the idiot girl with the filthy pink car and washington plates.
reentry to the US: i have never had a pleasant experience with US border patrol. they are always, unfailingly, beaurocratic blustering asshats. i was perhaps more flippant than i should have been, residually annoyed from my hours of bereftness in the bleak surreyscape. "i don't have a passport" i said. "when i crossed earlier today the man said i shouldn't have a problem with reentry." "they have nothing to do with us" snapped the border man. "that's canada. canada and the united states are two seperate countries. were you aware of that?"
i hope my look conveyed disgust in his unprofessionalism. "yes, i am aware of that" i said. i smiled.
he harrumphed and pretended to look at something on his computer screen. looked at my plates. asked if i'd bought anything in canada "like tylenol". (no, not this trip, thanks. codeine makes me nauseous.) "i bought some cigarettes and gum" i said, knowing that i was so FUCKING OBVIOUSLY AMERICAN that this was just an excercise for him at this point. he let me through. and i drove home, trying not to fall asleep, feeling that smothering abstract aloneness that comes from not really having a place in the world at one particular moment. the freeway was black and empty (after midnight by now) and i thought "no one in the world knows where the fuck i am." often that is a freeing notion. but last night it just made me rather sad.
*
lessons learned:
be happy with what you have.
travel with someone, and don't fight.
go to victoria next.