Wet Hands.

Drunken Simulator.

There are five minutes left in the first period of what will go on to be a Habs blowout win. We’ve come to the hockey game as a little treat to Elliott (his birthday was the other day), as well as to ourselves, for completing what has been by far our largest tour ever.

I stand shoulder to shoulder with my Montreal Canadien brethren, and slowly extend my hands towards the air dryer.

No dice.

Once again, my seemingly average extremities have failed to elicit any response from the germ blower. A crowd of hockey sweaters slowly shuffles past me on all sides, having no problems drying their own hands at machines that look and seem the same as my own. Eventually, after fidgeting my fingers and waving my palms up and down long enough that I begin to feel the second-hand embarrassment of those around me, I cut across to the dryer next to mine and grasp at another man’s air crumbs. I catch a second or two of a breeze before the machine shuts off again. I sigh, wipe my hands on my pants, and head back towards our seats. Behind me, I can hear the sound of my machine finally coming to life, like a dog hearing its owner’s car coming up the driveway, excited by the dancing digits of another, better-handed man.

I don’t know why, but this has been a theme on this tour. Of course, many much more important and interesting things have also been a theme on this tour: Yahtzee, for starters. The lifeblood of our trip across Canada, by all accounts, was everybody’s favorite five-diced game. It made us friends across the country and cemented some nights into the legend of our collective band history. It’s also my father’s favorite game, and it was really special that we got to spend some time playing it with him and then take it on the road with us.

But for whatever reason, the theme that has stuck with me more than any is that I can not get a fucking air dryer to work. The Commodore Ballroom, En Route bathrooms, restaurants from Golden to Manitoba, it seems as if some cosmic instructions have been disseminated to the hand dryers across our nation with a singular objective: keep this guy’s hands wet as hell.

Fuck you.

I walk with this thought for a while. Turning it around in my mind like an uneven ball, examining the lumps and divots.

The distance between the bathroom and our seats is almost something worth writing a feedback card about. Had I needed to pee any more urgently, I might have had to break into a half-trot or canter. But now, going the other way, it’s kind of nice that I have some time alone to reflect.

I haven’t really been alone since Vancouver over a week ago, now that I think about it. It’s been four dudes crammed into van and hotel room, restaurant booth and back stage hallway. I’ve gone heavy on the melatonin every night and shoved my used socks into the depths of my duffel bag - praying it might solve the problem of the used sock smell. It’s hard not to be romantic about music.

We never fought. That’s interesting. It’s not like we’re prone to arguments, I don’t think we’ve ever had one that wasn’t just us drunkenly yelling about such and such band (all bands are equally amazing), or me just yelling about politics (remember politics?) But being in such a tight space all the way across the country, I’m impressed that none of us hit a breaking point.

That’s a good sign.

Therapists would say that’s a bad sign.

It’s not actually true that we never fought, though. Physically, we were absolutely going for it. Night after night, we sparred. Grappling with one another to determine the strongest, highest endurance member of Dumb Crush (and Ryan). Who would embody Milo of Croton? Who would rise to the prestige of Brock Lesnar? Who would absolutely fuck up their shoulder, a human part crucial to the playing of almost all musical instruments?

I’m not prepared to answer any of these questions. At this point, I’m unsure really where I stood in those rankings. I know I biffed it in Edmonton, but in Winnipeg, I snapped and, while yelling something like “I demand respect”, I tried to fight two full-grown men at the same time. The hand dryers of the country have me feeling like I need to prove myself.

Anyway.

This walk is really long.

I grab my phone and unlock the screen.

It opens to a photo I had taken just moments earlier.

The puffy faces, the glassy sheen in the eyes. This is what our whole band looks like at this moment.

These are telltale signs of a bit of a bender.

I’m not proud of this element of the tour. Health is obviously my number one priority, more or less, sometimes. But the fact of the matter is, we were drinking beers at all of these shows.

And that tends to wear on somebody.

And it’s pretty obvious, physically.

About an hour before the game, sitting in a bar, I pointed out these exact physical characteristics. Staring into the glassy eyes and puffy faces of my bandmates, we laughed in an “oh god, what are we doing?” sort of way.

So, as I stood at the urinal, 60 seconds before trying to dry my hands, and looked up to see these two, I felt it was a sign from god.

I laugh, and send the pic to the group chat.

We will be changed men now, I think to myself.

How long is this walk?

Is the game still on?

It’s only the first period.

I think about my brother.

He’s here with us tonight at the game. He moved to Montreal a few years ago, so we don’t see each other as often as we did when he lived in Toronto, but we tend to pick things up right where we left off.

We’ve always been close, and I’m only now realizing how much I took for granted that, for most of our lives, we experienced our family through all of the exact same moments.

Visits across the country to Ontario from Salt Spring Island.

Family road trips down the West Coast, staring out at the crater of Mt. St. Helens, where I seriously said out loud, “I can’t believe the information center survived the explosion.”

Getting stopped by military men with machine guns on the highway in Sonora, and being young enough that we just thought it was cool.

Even when our parents split, we always flew back to the West Coast together to see Dad.

These days, we’ve started experiencing family more individually.

He lives in Montreal, just down the street from my mom, and our schedules don’t usually line up to make the trip out west at the same time. Naturally, that gives us our own perspectives on things, and it feels strange not getting to share that part of our lives in the same way anymore.

So moments like these matter even more.

I’m glad he’s here.

I’m glad they’re all here.

Imagine if they weren’t?

Just me, drunk, wet-handed, and alone.

At a Habs game, no less.

And my French is terrible.

I was going to say my French is terrible these days, but who am I kidding? It’s always been bad.

Even though I did four years of immersion francais back in middle school.

And even though I spent a couple of years living here in Montreal.

Even though when I have a couple beers, I tend to try my darndest to string sentences together avec confiance.

But I’m no good. Should have tried harder, I guess.

Instead, I’m here, feet from the pretzel stand, lost in translation.

Visibly invisible.

Maybe the hand dryer just didn’t understand me.

I think I found our seats.