Road Trip

I’d never been to an NHL game. That’s not much of a surprise; I was never much of a hockey fan (there’s a fair bit of subtext to that statement). I’ve watched games, but only while belly to the bar, the game just a prop to fill time between conversations. I may not have been much of a fan, but many of my friends were and most wanted to go see an NHL game, if they hadn’t already. Dawson too had made mention of it in the past, but he’d never actually come right out and suggested a road trip, either. Small wonder, as he’d never been to an NHL game, something that had probably been on his to-do list for years, if not decades.

One day the proposal came up: “What do you think? Do you want to go?”

“Can we get tickets?” was my only response. I’d always heard that Leafs tickets were hard to come by.
Dawson said he knew a guy that could get us corporate tickets. Corporate tickets? I imagined us seated in seats no further than five rows up from the ice.

“Alright,” I said, “I’m in. How do we want to plan this?” I asked.

Dawson wanted to wait before committing. He wanted to ask around some more, to see how many others might want to tag along. I think he wanted the trip to rival the Casey’s annual football crawl. I had my doubts, about that, thinking that the more people we had tagging along might make the prospect of getting enough tickets a serious concern. That said, I welcomed the thought of having more people along for the adventure. So, we’d wait and see how many tickets we’d need. I thought that prudent, so long as we didn’t wait too long. I had holidays to book, and the new year was fast approaching. He asked around. Many were interested; few had the money or could spare the time. The only takers were Joel and I. And Dawson’s brother. Dawson made his call. He got the tickets. Leafs VS Canucks.

“Are they good?” I asked. They were at the time, early in the season, but they had dropped in the standings as the season advanced. Then again, so had the Leafs. Neither were having a stellar year.
I left on my South African adventure. And returned. The date closed upon us. The game was only weeks away. Joel said he’d book the hotel.

“You’re sure,” I asked. “I can do it.” But he insisted. I suggested the Royal York. It was closer, and The Path led right to the ACC; we wouldn’t have needed to wear our coats on game day. But Dawson and Joel baulked at the idea, saying they couldn’t afford to stay at The Royal York.

The week arrived. I asked Joel if he’d called to book a hotel. I’m a worrier. I fret. I don’t like leaving things in other people’s hands. He said he had called on Monday and there was lots of rooms left. He had even found a hotel right across the street from the arena. I ceased to fret. The road trip was planned. We had tickets. We had accommodation. All we had to do was get there. I offered to drive. It was the least I could do, since Dawson had landed us tickets, and Joel had booked the hotel.

“What hotel are we staying at?” I asked mid-week. I fret. I needed to know where we were staying so better navigate to it once entering the city.

“The Primrose,” Joel said. The Primrose? I’d never heard of it.

“Where’s that?” I asked.

“Right across the street from Maple Leaf Gardens,” he said.

The Gardens? I asked my Dad. Where the hell is the Primrose? “The Primrose Hotel?” he asked. “I stayed there,” he said. “That’s nowhere near the ACC.” He showed me on a map where all our relevant addresses were in relation to one another.

I was pissed. I counted to ten. Done was done. I consoled myself that the Primrose was just off Yonge Street, close to Queen St. W. Subways were a stone throw away.

We packed our bags and hit the road Friday morning for Saturday’s game against Vancouver.

The drive was uneventful, despite our concerns. People had filled my head with tales of sudden snow squalls rising up and washing the world white, stranding vehicles for hours at a time. No such squalls arose. We arrived and parked in a car park a block from the hotel.

Joel was first to the Front Desk. “I’d like to book rooms for the weekend,” he said, credit card in hand.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the attendant said, “but we’re full.

“Excuse me?” I said to Joel. “I thought you said you booked the rooms.”

“I called,” he said, “and they said they had lots of rooms.

“You didn’t book?” I asked.

“They said they had lots of rooms.”

“Yeah,” I fumed, “they had lots of rooms a week ago.” I was livid. “We travelled to Toronto for the weekend without a reservation?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could Joel have been so stupid? Did he not know that hotels fill up? Apparently, he hadn’t. I was angry enough to abandon them and search for a room on my own. Not very charitable of me, but like I said: I was livid.

“Let me see what I can do,” the girl said. She tapped her keys furiously. Seconds seemed hours. The minute hand crawled. I was fretting.

She found a room. One room. Two double beds. Would that be alright?

No, it wouldn’t, I thought.

But it would have to do.

We had to share. Dawson and I also had to share a bed.

We shared until I woke up in the middle of the night, Dawson spooning me, Dawson’s arm wrapped around me. I freaked. I extricated myself, bundled up the coats on the floor, and stole the comforter off the bed. I can’t say I was comfortable. I can’t say that I didn’t ache when I woke.

We had hours to spare until Dawson’s brother was due to meet us, so we decided to play tourist. They wanted to go to the CN Tower. I wanted to go to Mountain Equipment Co-op. We compromised and went to the CN Tower. I hadn’t been up it since my Grade 8 trip, and really had no desire to, but I went with them, thinking that it had been a long time and I ought to stick by my friends in the big city.

I stuck with them until they were pouring over souvenirs in the gift shop. Time was getting short and I really wanted to go to MEC. I announced my desire to leave. They brushed me off. I left.

They were pissed at me when I returned to the hotel.

“Where the fuck did you go?” they asked.

I thought the answer obvious, my MEC purchases in hand. I really didn’t care that they were angry. I was angry, too. And I was hungry. I wanted to eat, and there was little time remaining before the game, with little time to hit a restaurant. But Dawson’s brother still hadn’t arrived. The clock ticked. The minute hand crawled on. Dawson’s brother walked in twenty minutes to game time, and we still had to travel down Yonge to get there.

We were late, half the first period gone when we gained our seats. Our seats were not together, either. And they were nowhere near the ice. We were, in fact, eight rows up from the camera. The hot dogs were expensive, the beer even more so. The Leafs were on the ice, but they hadn’t come to play. They lost 4-1. They were booed after a fourth power play without them taking a shot on net. I was ready to hit Yonge.

We had to go to the Brass Rail, apparently. The line-up was at least an hour long, so we went to Zanzibar’s instead. I bought the first and only round. I laid down a twenty for three beers, and was surprised when there was no change. They abandoned me for lengthy lap dances they could ill-afford. They wanted to stay. I didn’t. I put on my coat and said, “Suit yourselves,” so they left with me. A couple bars later, we discovered that the Primrose was in an odd neighbourhood. Not only were there an abundance of Ladies of the Night on every street corner, it was also an LBGTQ neighbourhood. We called it a night.

But not before Joel took pity on some girls he struck up a conversation with on the way back to the hotel, going back out to buy them each a cup of coffee. Or so he said. He wasn’t gone for that long, so he might have. I’ll leave that up to your discretion.

I took to the floor right off, leaving Joel his bed, leaving Dawson to share with his brother.
I awoke in the middle of the night to one or two of those Ladies of the Night prowling our floor, looking for some guy who had jilted them.

“Where the fuck is he?” one of them raged at the top of her lungs. “He said he was looking for some action!”

Their anger fading into the distance, never quite vented.

Maybe they were looking for Joel.