It might be that every 20 year old in the world is beautiful, but somehow Montreal amplifies this. It\u2019s Friday at 12:30 and St. Laurent Boulevard is teeming.\u00a0 There are line-ups for chocolate shops and nightclubs, girls wearing skirts so tight that their knees seem pinned together stand on three inch heels, shimmering like heat mirages in the distance. A college kid in clothes his mother just bought for him is perfectly buzzed and sweeping into it all. Incredulous and gesturing wildly to his new friends, he\u2019s falling in love with a city, \u201c All the girls here are so beautiful!!\u201d he shouts, and it\u2019s as if his life is just beginning at this moment.<\/p>\n

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As Rachelle and I move through the crowds and against the grain, a jittery man with hair that had been cut out of an imposed, institutional necessity rather than the luxury of seduction, falls in step with us. He\u2019s in his late 30s and he\u2019s asking me for money, telling me that he hasn\u2019t been with a woman in five years and wants to take one out. Pleasepleaseplease, he begs. He\u2019s almost hopping with want, his eyes pleading– the unfairness of the universe written deeply into his every gesture.<\/p>\n

Walking toward us is a heavy, young man who looks like might work in a video store and along beside him is the most beautiful girl in the world. His body language is a little bit separate, like he knows he\u2019s not supposed to get too close, and there\u2019s a kindness, a sensitivity to the way that his heavy blonde hair falls and curls to his shoulders. He\u2019s shy, you can see that, and suddenly the most beautiful girl in the world grabs him by the hand and pulls him in to her and begins to neck with him right there in the middle of the sidewalk. It\u2019s the final scene in a movie, and time stops as we all fade like ghosts into the background and they glow, the radiant center of this moment that will never be forgotten or repeated.<\/p>\n

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