Part Two: how I became a kid pushing his own stroller

. . . and so, there I was, in Helsinki, surrounded by five, maybe six, beautiful, blonde Finnish girls."

At a backyard party in Toronto, with about 30 local hipsters, and fresh off a plane from Paris, I am speaking to an exgirlfriend, telling her this story.

"Uh uh," she says, smoking with arms crossed, one hand extended to her lips, her eyes scanning everywhere, in flits.

"I mean really fucking beautiful," I say, I go on. "Can't really even believe it, you know. Oh! And they are all, like, 18! 18 years old, anyway ..."

"Right... um hmm, figures," she jokes, briefly making eye contact, discerning, scrunchy eyes, understanding and emmitting a sense of history, there.

"And so ... well I was with them because there was no fucking way I was going to spend my last night in Helsinki smoking and drinking gin and tonics, you know, just watching these people in these horrible clubs, so I went up to a few girls and we started talking. Next thing I know there's five of them, and it's one of the girls' birthday's, and before you know it I'm acting like I know this one Finnish MTV host, and since I speak English, I go up to him and we start to talk, and I like become an immediate hero..."

"Right, amazing, umm, do you want one of these?" Handing me a cigarette; three or four noisy people around us, and just as many conversations.

"And we are all having an amazing time now. And we're walking towards this kareoke club which they all know, and really want to go to, and then all of a sudden a guy comes down the street, racing down this cobble stone-paved hill, and I don't see it, but you hear a big like thump, and then a smack. And there's a crowd of people around him. . . "

She's not really listening.

"... and so when I get closer, we see he's laying there in the pavement, and not moving, and there's this line of blood coming from his head, trickling down through the cobble stone street. And he is fucking dead."

"What! He dies?"

"Yeah he dies... for a while he kind of opened his yes I guess, but then he just fucking faded, and people were freaking out, calling the cops, and everything."

"That is so awful. This is an awful awful story."

"It was horrible. It was horrible but wait," she doesn't seem to want to hear more. "There's somethign so beautiful about to happen . . . it seemed like minutes later, but his girlfriend comes riding up from behind, and she just jumps off her bike and lets it go riding away down the street, and she gets down in the street, getting his blood all over her, and she just weeps and holds his head in her hands."

"That is awful awful, I don't like this story."

"Wait wait wait. It get's better."

***

After we left the crowd, it was about 11 p.m. and the sun was casting a weird grey-blue haze, like cloudy daytime, across the city. We have already forgotten about the dead man, mostly, and we are drinking and shouting and making jokes in the mostly empty streets.

We arrive at the kareoke bar and it is fantastic. I don't remember all the names, but something like Annie, Neah, Kay, sort of simple and pseudo-biblical I guess. A very kind man is pleased to meet me at the bar and we talk about Toronto for a little bit. He's shy and dressed all in black, and sweaty, and going bald already, although I would say he's just only 24. I buy him a beer and shake his hand and wish him a nice night. He's fantasticaly excited and hugs me and buys me a shot before I leave the bar to join my lady friends.

The joy and laughter we experience, I mostly just watching, after we all sit down and the performances start. . . it's like I'm at the centre of that giant spinning thing the poets talk about, a giant spinning wheel or world (or whirl), where people are laughing and the "bolts they coming loose;" it's that phenomenal sense of rebellion in the face of chaos, the little but divine thing it is to be happy in such a world, falling apart for ever.

This foggy vision I have, of the whole room spinning, there's a clown on the stage, barely singing to the Finnish rock song, and his friends are watching and cheering; and the birthday girl (Julia?), she has black hair - the only one - and black eyes, and a truly cherubic but electric glow, like bacchus baby angels, drinking, and all our feet tangled together in some astounding, joyous knot.

On the dance floor there's this one model-looking short-skirt girl. Tall, beautiful, and dancing with her ugly girl friend. I'm not sure exactly, I know I wasn't trying any pick up lines, but all of a sudden she is yelling at me, and telling me to "just fucking go! Just go."

I decide to stick around, since I'm insulted she would think that I was beign some creep, when really I was just trying to have a good time, and dance a bit, to ride this feeling of joy I had. But she's insistent, and obviously getting very upset with me.

"Look, your not that hot," I say to her, trying to imply my non-interest.

"Yes I am, you fuckign asshole. Fuck. Just leave!"

I tell her I plan on using the dancefloor, too, and indicate with a circle motion around me the area I plan on staying, but she doesn't relent, and finally (I was wonderign what was taking so long), her male friend, or boyfriend - a thin, but wiry, finn - comes up to me: look, I better just fucking leave right now, no problems, or else there's going to be fuckign serious problems.

I tell him to fuck him self and he, with one fast, hulk-like swing, punches me in the gut. As I'm stepping back a bit, wondering in some confusion what to do, my little bald friend materializes from behind, like some guardian gargoyle. He has flung him self on my attackers back, biting his neck, I can see the blood drip from his teeth, as he wails and scratches on the guy's kidneys with his fists. The brute falls to the floor, and my balding friend is now kicking his face in, looking up at me and smiling, through a giant, bloody grin.

***

I can't remember her name. She was one of the five Finns and she walked me nearly all the way home. The sun by this time was out in full, but it was four a.m., and we were both very drunk. I left her when we got to the dock yard, deciding not to kiss her goodnight, and walked away without looking back.

I looked with affection at all the tall ships, quietly rocking, and all the rusted old ice breakers, as I walked along the catwalk of the old city marina, headed back to spend my last night on the sail boat.

This sail boat was supposed to take me through the Baltic - we know. But I am walking and wondering and wondering. And the ships are so slowly rocking and it is all so peaceful and wonderful wonderful. In my pocket is a ferry ticket and the next day I was supposed to board a ship and head to Tallinn, and then to Riga.

Suddenly it strikes me I have no interest in going to either of these places. It strikes me like a church bell breaking the quiet of an early morning.

All of a sudden I am sure that there's one place I should go to. It is like a million tiny bells now, ringing inside of me, I am so excited, for this is the place I have meant to go to all along, and isn't so wonderful that I didn't even really plan on going there, that it was all some huge accident, all some quiet drunk walk home from a Helsinki kareoke bar? And the man who died. . . Isn't Paris, well, isn't that the best way to go ... not planning it ... and so in the rapture and laughter of a death and a kareoke bar, I called the airport and made a reservation for the next flight.

I stayed up for the next few hours, and hung around the dock yards to watch my ferry leave for Tallinn. I lifted my hat, since I was wearing an old beaten up traveler's hat, and saluted my ferry as it left me behind at the dock. And after some coffee and some jam pastries near the fish markets, I stumbled onto a plane, and left.