Flight of Aquavit (16 page)

mother during her visit than I had. If only they

could talk and fill me in.

I headed back to the kitchen. On my usually

unburdened stovetop island were three pots of

various sizes. With the stealth of an international

spy I lifted off each lid and inspected the contents.

Borscht. Boiled potatoes. Mushroom sauce. I

picked up the pot of mushroom sauce by its han-

dle and headed for the fridge thinking she really

shouldn’t have left these out overnight. I opened

my fridge and was stopped short. There wasn’t a

square inch of free space. How had this happened

in only two days? I stared at the quarts of cream,

bunches of celery, rows of salad dressings, jars of

pickles and beets and cabbage and other unidenti-

fiable preserves, and even more pots filled with

who knew what. I returned the mushroom sauce

to the stovetop. That’s when I noticed the package

on the counter next to the stove. It was a plate

covered in foil with a note, written in my mother’s

halting script, taped to the top. It simply said, “For

eating for you.”

I peeled back the foil and my eyes couldn’t

believe what they were seeing. Before me was

124 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

something that resembled a bucket’s worth of

fried chicken stuffed inside a blanket. The blanket

was actually some sort of naan-looking bread or

flapjack thing and it was barely secured around no

fewer than four slabs of deep-fried, battered chick-

en cutlets, several stems of green onion, a couple

slices of ham and some sliced tomato. In order to

keep it from falling apart my mother had creative-

ly tied slices of cooked bacon, pinned down with

toothpicks, around the…the thing. Each end was

oozing with a reddish, lumpy sauce, now coagu-

lated on the plate. And suddenly I knew what it

was. Despite all the rest of the food around the

house, my mother had created this dish—her

new and improved version of a Badass Jack’s

wrap. I couldn’t wait to taste her jerk sauce.

I heated the lump in the microwave, then

handed each dog a fake bone treat that they held

delicately in their teeth as they followed me to the

other end of the house and into my cozy den. As I

entered the room and closed the door, I flipped the

switch that ignited the gas fireplace and watched

brother and sister head towards it like bees to a

grove of freshly blooming caragana. I slipped into

the nook created by my desk and several well-

stocked bookshelves and set my wrap, fork and

knife and pile of napkins in front of my laptop.

For a moment I watched Barbra and Brutus luxu-

riate in the heat of the fireplace as if they were

sunbathers in St. Tropez, and took my first bite of

my mother’s wrap. It was, as was everything

made by my mother, to die for. It tasted like no

other wrap, or for that matter anything else I’d

Anthony Bidulka — 125

ever eaten. But it was fried-goodness good on a

polar cold night. After demolishing about half of it,

I turned my attention to the computer. It was time

to try my luck finding SunLover. Daniel Guest

had told me he’d met his Bare Ass Beach con-

quest on the internet through a website called

gays.r.us. Although I’d heard a lot about chat lines

and I even have a friend who met her husband on

one, I’d never tried them out—not out of some

antiquated sense of morality, I just hadn’t found

the time.

As I logged onto my browser homepage, typed

gays.r.us into the search box and hit enter, I felt a

giddy sense of excitement, as if I was about to

delve into an undiscovered world. And I was. In

seconds I was presented with a screen that warned

me I was requesting adult content and gave me the

chance to back out if I wasn’t totally committed to

this course of action. I dutifully read the dis-

claimer and told the computer to keep going.

Naughty boy. I cocked my head to the side to lis-

ten for sirens or my mother’s footsteps. I heard

neither. Another click or two later I was given sev-

eral web page options each offering a meeting

with hot young guys. Would they send them in

the mail? Tempted but not easily fooled, this was

not what I was looking for and I knew I’d have to

start again.

I returned to the browser page and entered

new search parameters: gay chat. Several key taps

later I was directed to a menu asking me to choose

from amongst a list of “floors” on which I could

chat. “Men International—English” seemed the

126 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

closest to what I was looking for so I clicked on

that. An officious-looking dialogue box asked me

for a member name and password. I wasn’t

expecting this. Was this going to cost me money?

A monthly fee perhaps? I wondered if Daniel

Guest would mind a $15.95 charge from gays.r.us

showing up on his Visa every month? And was it

my imagination or were the dimensions of the dia-

logue box actually growing and the intensity of its

words brightening as the seconds passed while I

tried to make a decision? I had this image of a

gays.r.us security guard sitting at a computer out-

side the gates of the gays.r.us complex monitoring

my attempt to enter and waiting to see if I was a

man or a mouse—did I belong or was I an out-

sider? Being one who rarely fears to tread, I hit the

button indicating my willingness to become a

gays.r.us member. As it turned out, the member-

ship was free, but I had to come up with a mem-

ber name and password. I looked over at my furry

companions and went with Brutus and Barbra

respectively. I would have gone the other way

around, but I didn’t want the other chatters to

think I was a girl.

After muddling through a few more sets of

clicks and double clicks I found myself at a screen

which listed gay chat room options from Brasilia

to Yugoslavia. It intrigued me to think there were

young Yugoslav men sitting in front of computers,

just as I was, trying to hook up. Some of the loca-

tions even had sub-set rooms designed for partic-

ular chatter needs. There were rooms for chatters

with certain sexual proclivities like foot fetishists

Anthony Bidulka — 127

and water sport enthusiasts or those looking for

communication with other chatters of a certain

age (Ottawa Teens Only; San Francisco Men Over

Fifty) or even geographically specific locations

(Toronto Riverdale; Vancouver Yaletown). I guess

some people are willing to travel only so far for

sex. I slowly scrolled down the list, amazed at the

breadth of chat activity, and low and behold, in

the Canada section, I found two rooms for

Saskatchewan—one

simply

labelled

Saskatchewan, the other Saskatchewan 30+. I

clicked on Saskatchewan 30+. A room counter on

the upper part of my screen told me there were no

participants in this room. I chuckled to myself.

After all, what self-respecting gay man would

admit to being over thirty if he didn’t have to? I

clicked on the Saskatchewan chat room. There

were thirty-six participants. Not bad. It was late

on a Thursday night, but apparently the

Saskatchewan cyber gay scene was hopping.

I quickly figured out that, without actually

entering the room, I could see the nicknames of

the current participants in the room and even read

their bios (if they’d bothered with one), but I

couldn’t interact with them. To do that, I’d have to

come up with a bio of my own and ask to be let

into the room. I scrolled down the list of thirty-six

nicknames. They ranged from actual names like

George and Dan to more creativity-challenged

pseudonyms such as Guy in Saskatoon or Out of

Towner. And then there were the descriptive alias-

es like Gym Jock, Hairy Bear and Banger in

Bangor with a few in-your-face monikers like Sit

128 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

on my Face and Footlong thrown in for complete

clarity. I saw Horny in Humboldt, Rammy

Rancher and even a Climax Here but no SunLover.

What to do?

I decided if I was in for a penny I might as well

get in for a pound. I knew I’d need to create my

Brutus bio before entering the chat room. If I was

trying to trap SunLover, I’d have to set bait as best

I could based on what Daniel Guest had told me

about their encounter. Obviously SunLover had

been attracted to Daniel, so was that the physical

type he went for, or did he simply go for anyone

willing to meet at the beach—which, given current

weather conditions, would be a tall order.

Reviewing the bios of some of the other chat room

participants, I noticed quite a diversity in what peo-

ple were willing to say about themselves depend-

ing on what message they wanted to send. Some

went with complete disclosure, to the extent of

revealing information that looked like it’d been

gleaned from a gays.r.us job interview. Likes, dis-

likes, physical attributes, type of sexual or non-sex-

ual activity the chatter was seeking and, if you were

lucky, accompanied by a photograph (usually noth-

ing more titillating than a face and chest shot). Most

went with something a little less committal, giving

a line or two of physical description—26, bl/gr, 5-

11, 175, gd lkg—or physical desire—Lkg for r/t,

b/j, d/t. This was dating in the twenty-first centu-

ry—impersonal, cyber-connected and chock full of

short-form words and acronyms. I wondered if

there was a glossary of these terms somewhere that

everyone knew about except me.

Anthony Bidulka — 129

I thought about what to say in my bio and

decided in the end that vague was in vogue. I

typed: “Attractive guy looking for same for dis-

crete fun.” I read and reread my entry, changed it,

changed it back, checked the spelling of discrete

and changed it to discreet and finally decided to

go for it. I hit the Enter Room button and suddenly

another screen opened and I was in the world of

Saskatchewan gay chat. A lot happened at once.

Apparently while I was busy debating my

gays.r.us identity and not formally in the

Saskatchewan chat room, I was not privy to

changes as they occurred. There were now forty-

two chatters in the room and as I scrolled down to

the bottom of the list of nicknames now displayed

on the right-hand side of my screen, I saw that

many of the original thirty-six had come and gone

while I was lollygagging. And for that sloth, I’d

never get to meet All Man in Alsask or Big Baloney

in Balgonie who’d obviously found what they were

looking for and logged off. The area of the screen

meant for conversation was alive with typed mes-

sages involving maybe half a dozen of the room’s

occupants. They seemed to be talking about a

movie they’d just seen. Did all these people know

one another? Wasn’t this chat room stuff supposed

to be about sex or were all forms of entertainment

open for discussion? I had actually recently seen

the film in question and was considering typing in

my own review when the next line of dialogue

read: “Hi Brutus.”

They saw me. They knew I was there.

Suddenly I was nervous. I felt as if I’d just

130 — F l i g h t o f A q u av i t

arrived at a party where I didn’t know a soul.

Then Burt55 wrote, “Welcome Brutus” quickly

followed by “Hey, Brutus” from Downtown Dick.

How nice. How hospitable. Very friendly. I was

about to respond when a new box appeared near

the upper left-hand side of my screen. The header

told me it was a private message from someone

called Looking For Luv. He wrote, “How r u?” A

second box popped up partially covering Looking

for Luv’s message and most of the original

Saskatchewan chat room screen. It was from

Dandy Randy. He asked, “Busy?” Then a third

from Can Do in Canwood, also asking if I was

busy. My speakers were beeping and dinging and

bonging as the world of Saskatchewan gay chat

enveloped me and swallowed me whole like a

snake on a gopher.

My first intention was to type in polite

answers, but I couldn’t find which of the many