This Rogue’s Town . . .

Beginning in medias positum of my Memorial Day a la Montreal, let me draw your attention to the title I’ve chosen for this post because it pretty much sums up everything I encountered there the entire weekend.  As befitting any wanker pretentious enough to even bother writing a weblog these days, my blog headings are almost always song lyrics or titles and I drove up to Montreal directing my muse at Arcade Fire, Rufus Wainwright, and a host of other new or relatively recent artists whose sound suggests a very daring, but sentimental edginess.  It’s true that, in only three days, you can only encounter so much in the range of local musical tastes.  Montreal, as befitting its role as a college town, has some truly standout radio, but much of it was in French and, even then, the rotation was varied and infrequent.  As we crossed the Saint Lawrence on Pont Champlain, we were heartened to even find a little Gnarls Barkely making its way onto the public waves. 

However, the Montreal we kept experiencing over the weekend bore little resemblance to any of this, for better or for worse.  And if any single memory is to stand out for me as the most indelible from our entire stay, it will be hanging out on level four of a five level bar on dyke night watching women with spikey haircuts who appeared to be well into their fifties monopolize the dancefloor to a song I last heard on a tourbus somewhere in the Alsacien countryside in 1994. 

Yes, that was Montreal reduced to one single moment.  And, of course, "Ca fait rire les oiseaux" is a truly charming song that I admit I was excited to hear after so many years.   But for all the talk of Montreal being quaint, cosmopolitan, or world class, there was something truly and unmistakably insular about the place.  As though it were the rare large city with nothing left to prove, or perhaps that it simply stopped trying.  Or, most likely, a strange amalgam of the two; less the taciturn shut-in than the friendly eccentric neighbor who never mows the yard (though mowing will figure prominantly a little later on).

Le Drugstore, where geriatric lesbians dance feverishly to outmoded French pop, was where we first observed that something was amiss.  Not being much innured to the dyke bars of New York City, it didn’t set out much that the crowd was truly multigenerational, and counterintuitively getting older as we ascended one level to the next.  A similar dynamic could be found down Rue Sainte-Catherine at SkyBar, where a number of Le Drugstore’s patrons would continue their evening among decidedly more male-intensive environs.  SkyBar has all the accoutrements of a much more conventional gay bar . . . it also has pour nozles that severaly restrict the flow of alcohol into a drink.  Either that, or all Montrealers drink only 2 proof liquor.  Point is: this resulted in Mackenzi and I being not at all drunk after nearly six drinks.  That we were still functionally sober probably prevented us from fully appreciating the shere absurdity of Kool and the Gang being played in a nightclub where hardly anybody appeared to be between the ages of 23 and 30.  We did however, managed to keep ourselves stoked enough to better appreciate the vintage Celine Dion covers posted behind the bar. 

An agressive daytime routine the following two days offered us more insite via assorted other arcana: that nobody seems to make eye contact with anyone, that there never seem to be any wastebaskets yet strangely no litter, that the grass in all the public parks seems to have gone unmowed for an extended period of time.  Some local traits belied a charming flipside: while there appear to be few grocery stores, there are countless numbers of large, well-attended restaurants, the parks, while fallow, are always full, and the public seems to genuinely enjoy and make use of the city’s various spaces.  And while it’s true that people don’t often make eye contact they are friendly, open, and helpful when asked even the stupidest of questions. 

The city’s infrastructure, while not crumbling, seems strangely dated . . . or, more aptly, temporally disjointed.  Much of the city’s grand-projets arose around either of two events: the 1967 World’s Fair and the 1976 Olympics.  The Metro, while clean and efficient, is dingy, overly fluorescent, and more evocative of the one in Cairo than the one in D.C.  The skyline is underdevelopped and unassuming while architectural styles seem to jump in clusters from pre-war to the mid-60’s to the late 80’s.  I expect this trend to change by the end of this decade.  The Olympic Complex at the eastern end of the city is predictably underused, but it’s also hard to imagine that a Major League Baseball franchise called this stadium home until a year ago.  Locals may tell you that they feel the same way. 

And yet it’s a truly functional city: it’s not decaying in any way and, it bears mentioning, that the locals don’t seem to mind the place at all.  Missing is New York’s overbearing exuberance, L.A.’s self-absorption, Chicago’s cloying need to be noticed  I don’t know how much of this can be generalized to Canada has a whole.  That all the signage and street chatter were in another language only added to the effect. 

Other objections, I admit, amount to little more than petty cavilling: yes it’s true that clothing styles seem about four years behind the times but since when was that a crime? And the Goth/Renn Fair look remains very much de rigeur, but I’m sure if you tried hard enough in New York you may find the same thing.  And if you go to Canada at all surprised by the pervasiveness of Hockey as a pastime (this raver-ish guy Mackenzi met on the street seriously recommended we go visit the Bell Centre), then you probably have no business crossing the border anyway. 

And really, at the end of the day, a city where hardly anybody seems to be using cellphones, iPods, or really any digital devices really can’t be all that bad.  I’d probably go back.  And, if you’re interested, I suggest you do the same as well.  It’s an entirely bearable drive from New York and very reasonably priced.  Having a Frenchspeaker at the ready is simply obligatory unless you want to get lost and/or made to look like a total jackass the entire time there.  I’m available at reasonable rates if you so desire. 

Photographic evidence of our trip has been made available here.  As you will probably be able to tell, we got a little too excited about the Limited Edition Maple flavored Drumstick cones, as well as the poutine (fries topped with cheese curds and gravy).  The same really can’t be said about Tim Horton’s Combo # 5 . . .

. . . which, on the basis of what I’ve observed this weekend, I fear is being advertised via something Lou Bega-related.  Oh well, ca marche . . .

***Your Personality Is Like Cocaine***

You’re dynamic, brilliant, and alluring to those who don’t know you. Hyper and full of energy, you’re usually the last one to leave a party.  Sometimes your sharp mind gets the better of you… you’re a bit paranoid!

What Drug Is Your Personality Like?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatdrugisyourpersonalitylikequiz/

Off to Rufus Wainwright’s hometown for the weekend , where I’m told the sky is bigger, the clouds more dramatic, and the consonants silent unless followed by a vowel.  And where awaits us three days of frivolity, frollick, and . . . and . . . something starting with an "F" to signify the concept of "round the clock innebriation" but no matter . . .

Bonnes vacances, tout-le-monde!

As of today, I am officially a member in good standing of the Bar of the State of New Jersey.  I had my swearing in earlier this afternoon .  As you can no doubt tell from the pictures, "New Jersey" for these purposes is actually Union Square in all its trashy, pseudo-boho, mass-commercialized glory. Kaylynn of Expos T fame was gracious enough to recite my oaths.  Better still, the Union Square Partnership thought it would be the perfect time to start emptying out the trash.  I, of course, also got MAD PROPS for the underfed hipster who was kind enough to agree to take our photos from multiple angles. I tell ya, I’ve never felt more accomplished and thematically consistant before in my life!

Look out world, Hani’s a part of the perfession now! And judging from the way he did his swearing in, you really don’t wanna know what he’s gonna do to the rest of it from here on out . . .

Riddle me this, people: what would you say is worse? Dreaming about the Rule Against Perpetuities? Or being able, in said dream, to recite it word for word so that it’s the only thing you can remember when you awoke? Also consider that the dreamer in question does not practice property law, is now three months removed from his last bar exam, and that the rule (one of the most complicated in all of Anglo-American common law) almost never gets tested.  Just chew on that for a second . . .

. . . Okay fine, so I guess you’re saying I’m a huge DORK now right? Just because I dream about bar review classes? I mean, surely, some of you say some weird shit in your dreams too? No doubt far freakier than No interest shall vest, if at all, unless it vests within 21 years from a life in being at the time of the creation of that interest , right? Right?!

Aw, fuck the whole lot of you!! Alls I gotta say is I better be getting my oath cards in the mail sometime soon. 

I’ve gotten used to the canned speech, the semi-prepared remarks carefully calibrated to both make an impression on others and insulate myself from the vicissitudes of heartfelt accolade.  Or something like that, you know?

"You must be so relieved?!", people ask me

"Well, yes . . . yes", it usually begins, or with a more boyish, "Yyya"

"But, you know it’s not as though you’re overcome with a (write this down, folks, it’s important) EUPHORIC WAIVE OF RELIEF . . . sure enough, this often becames "a waive of eupohoric relief", but no matter . . .

"Instead, it’s hit me in fits and spurts" or "moment by moment" or "only slowly and gradually", whichever idiom seems suitable enough to express benign indifference to my own destiny. 

Sometimes it works.  And sometimes the narrative changes sharply from "Nothing to it" to

"There was only a 46% pass rate this time; very very low, even for New York.  Back in July it was 70%." This, predictably, gets followed up with an "And I posted a 25-point improvement on the MBE" which leads me inevitably to "I’ll be waiving into D.C. as well." Three bar admissions in one year.  Take that . . . my past!

And, indeed, somewhere between self-effacement and semi-sincere self-aggrandizement lay the words to express the past year of my life; words for which I am still grasping.  Words which will likely still be a long time in the offering.  Words, after all, are mere products, calculations, factors, component parts of thought, catalysts of memory.  We don’t necessarily need to use them, but of course the diversity and variety of human existance rely on the ability to break each and every soluble element thereof into something that can be shared, expressed.  Even the blind and deaf have methods at their ready to overcome obvious disabilities in verbal communciation.  The mute have much the same as well.  It is one of the most elemental of human needs.  And it is also a high luxury. 

As I find myself increasingly awed (and wearied) by the so much maddening chronology, I grasp for the words, and instead find images, subjugated similes, maybe a song lyric or two.  Both nothing elemental.  No words. Not yet.  Today’s CBS Sunday Morning covered the topic of design, with particular focus on Oak Park, Illinois and its unmatched collection of Frank Lloyd Wright homes.  Said and I spent a damp but relaxing afternoon there last August, during that fateful (and much too long) visit home.  I knew something was wrong; my mother was coughing far too much and acting somewhat erratic.  As Said would observe after the fourth phone call that day, "Jesus, do they have him on a curfew too?" 

For the meantime, however, we strolled the streets of Oak Park, in search of the Wright Museum and other landmarks on the way thereto.  This morning’s episode featured a profile on the fortress-like Heurtley House, which we walked past, and the complications appurtenant to the fixing up of Wright homes; lacking as they do of blinds, insulation, and places to hang pictures.  Oak Park, as is typical of Chicagoland in August, was muggy and torrential.  Said snapped a picture of me at the museum, I looked strung out and weary.  It showed.  It showed, having knowingly punted on two bar exams, and desperate now for a few hours away from that tower above the Earth.  I would grow to resent it somewhat less in the coming months, the more and more evanescent it would seem.  It was August

I had begun a feverish round of reading that August; some Eggers, some Auster, some John Kennedy Toole for good measure.  Aspirational reading at its most elementary, Richard Posner and Ngogi wa Thiongo a long-gone memory.  Soon enough, I’d be back in New York, to presumably find a job without a bar admission, to assuage an increasingly anxiety-stricken parent from afar, to swim outdoors at Lasker, to bike all the way out to Rockaway, to watch The Two Gentleman of Verona set to late ’60’s acid rock.  My hands, of course, were tied. 

In September, finding a job seigued dolorously and painfully into running a marathon.  In October, Running a marthon seigued dolorously and painfully into recovering from running a marathon.  In November, recovering from a marathon seigued quickly and painlessly to not passing the bar.  Not passing the bar seigued surreally and breakneckingly into finding a job.  Just in time to study for the retake. 

December through February.  December (cold) January (cold, scared) February (cold, scared, tired).  It was an intense and solitary approach, it hurt so very badly.  I walked into that exam knowing that I knew enough law.  The Javits Center coat check lost my two months worth of flashcards.  I will never have to sit for another bar exam again.  I can do with that. 

In March, they travelled, I rested.  In April, they returned . . . to the emergency room, where she was hooked up to nutrition and antibiotics.  She was frail and nervous when I went to see her.  She is dying. 

In April, I called Jeff as soon as I returned home.  He told me that I would do the right thing at the right time.  That it would do no good to beat myself up over my gut reaction.  That I would do the right thing.  That I had to believe in myself.  That he believed in me. 

In April, Jeff was hit by a drunk driver on the sidewalk outside his apartment.  The tire treads are still visible on the sidewalk. 

In April, Jeff was admitted to Bellevue Hospital as "Jeff, Unknown".  He was not carrying identification. 

In April, I went to visit home again.  My mother was no longer in the hospital and well enough to became self-excoriatingly angry about why I didn’t shave before I came to see her.  In April, I let my mom get self-excoriatingly angry over the state of my facial hair because I knew nothing I could say would change that. 

In April, I closed myself up in the guest room, the one overlooking Grant Park, and wept . . . just a little.  For myself, my family, my mother, Jeff. 

May began the following day.  I remembered to Rabbit-Rabbit. 

In May, bar exam results were available online.  Thomas wanted to celebrate, I told him I couldn’t look.  In May, I could only anologize my life to a ledge or a precipice.  It wasn’t until later that I worked up the courage to find out that I’d passed. In May, I had reached a point in my life where I became drained of the ability to hazard my hopes on good news. 

In May, my mother found out on her own. I’d hoped to surprise her the following weekend.  She found out on her own.  This was her favorite part about the whole outcome.  She is dying.  But she is alive.  She called it repeatedly, "the greatest Mother’s Day gift ever."

In May, I began reading to Jeff.  In May, Jeff’s eyes began opening, if for ever so briefly.  In May, we made eye contact, it registered.  What it registered I am not altogether sure.  In May, he squeezed my hand . . . alot.  In May, the third shift nurses wait outside his room to hear me read aloud.  In May, Lauren Ambrose told me how much she loved Arundhati Roy and that she couldn’t wait to see Jeff again in the hospital.  In May, the nurses spread rumours that he’s famous because one of his friends is a tv star.  In May, he broke the Bellevue ICU record for number of visitors.  In May, the stern Information desk attendant broke character and wondered how special he must be.  In May, she told me to tell him she said hi. 

In May, I will be going to Montreal.  I will

And there are still a few days left.  A few.  These coming days, months will produce a new array of images, feelings, memories, grievances, which one day will be filtered into words.  There will, understandably, be alot of filtering to do, and alot more coming.  I know that much now.  I am comfortable with it.  I have never been challenged more than in the past year.  I have never felt more emotionally complete.  I am incomplete.  Some will call this relief, closure, acceptance.  Words that have their time and place . . . just not here.  Not in this moment.  There are too many moments to go around labeling.  I’ll be fine jumping from one to the next for now, even if does leave me a little awed and wearied in the end.  And that mythical euphoric waive of relief will come when it must, if at all. 

***You Are Indigo***

Of all the shades of blue, you are the most funky, unique, and independent.
Expressing yourself and taking a leap of faith has always been easy for you.

What Color Blue Are You?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatcolorblueareyouquiz/

It finally happened, folks. Yesterday, on this (well, that) day in history, Hani Khalil began a race (a 5K for fucksake!) which HE DID NOT FINISH.  Let me repeat that in less uncertain terms so that we’re all on the same page: I, Hani Khalil, a 3:28 marathon pr holder, could not finish a fucking 4-mile race.  How oh how did this happen, you may ask? I don’t know, but you might want to take that one up with my quads, who decided, quite ingloriously, to close up shop for the day right around mile three.  I had started in the 6:30 pace group but by Maiden Lane I must have moved well into the 5 minute group.  A personal record was well in my sights, as the Wall Street Run began snaking into Battery Park for its final mile. 

Then right where Maiden hits . . . whatever fucking street that is, my quads caught ablaze.  This was pain and stiffness I had not experienced in any race I’d ever run, even during the most brutal, dolorous stretches of the marathon.  At first I was philosiphical about it, "Hani, you’ve gotta finish this.  Do it for Jeff, who can’t walk right now." My thoughts soon become more high-order, "This is a new pain.  Sure, pain will go away, but there will always be a new pain to take its place." At this point, the left side of my brain pulled rank and said, "You’ve crossed your lactic threshold, you stupid fuck!"

And so I hobbled on over to the nearest police officer to see if he could get me a race marshall.  I could no longer bend my legs enough to even walk normally, lurching very zombie-like.  While I waited for the race marshalls to arrive, I slowly slid myself into seated position along the side of some building, from where I had a front row seat to (what would be for me) the very height of humiliation: the entire rest of the race passing me by. 

A few passers-by had their fun with me: "Shouldn’t you be running?" or "What, you can’t even run a 5K?".  If it provides even the slightest scintilla of amusement to any of you, I robotically responded to that last one with a terribly defensive, "I RUN MARATHONS!".  When the race marshalls finally arrived, I was practically ordered not to re-enter the race so not to risk serious injury. 

Feeling lame, disappointed, and now possibly running late for a date, I hobbled my way back to the start line, where I picked up my bike to head home.  Seeing that I had left it fixed on the 6th gear, it was no longer a mystery to me just what I had done to completely wreck my legs by race-time. 

Later that night I would suggest that this was nothing short of me pushing myself to my physical limit, which is never a bad thing.  But, man oh man, did it have to happen during a 5K?! Good thing that score is never gonna get recorded.  I mean posterity is one thing, but pride, for these purposes, is simply inviolable. 

Jeff, who has never missed an opportunity to lecture me on my lack of flexibility (and my tendency to not stretch), I’m sure got a kick out of this when I told him about it all. 

Just to put everyone on notice: I’m officially having the plaster behind my headboard repaired some time next week.  I’d elaborate further, but the actual details (while still unseemly) are a bit on the gross side. 

Though, I should probably get my sheets drycleaned too, now that I think about it . . .

***You Are a Green Apple Jelly Bean***
Of all the flavors, you’re the most complex and the most real. A little sweet, a little sour, and totally tangy. People can’t describe you, but they love you!

What Flavor Jelly Bean Are You?
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