Although I live in Toronto, I grew-up in Ottawa and last week I was invited to a party in that city at Chez Lucien, my favourite bar on the planet. It was impossible for me to make it back for the event, so I decided to see if I could arrange to be there via Skype. And so, with the cooperation of staff, I had them setup a festively decorated laptop at the corner of the bar I used to nightly inhabit. In an effort to make it interesting, we billed it as fortune telling booth, and armed with a set of Tarot Cards, I would tell the future of anybody who was game.
After catching up with staff and some friends, my virtual booth was opened up for business and I was pretty much ignored, just like on Chat Roulette. I tried to get Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund involved in the proceedings, but I think that this just made me creepier than I already appeared. However, one “dude,” a guy with a flushed face wearing sunglasses and a backward baseball cap, asked me, ” Computer man, should I go for Kathy tonight or just get hammered and let it slide?”
I made a display of shuffling up the Tarot Cards, pulled one one and began to explain that in order to find love he was going to have to expose more of himself to the women he was interested in than what he had been accustomed to. Really, I just wanted him to take off his stupid sunglasses, but people interpret oracles the way they will, so he took off his shirt, pumped his fist in the air and asked if any “hot chicks” wanted to do body shots off him. “It’s written in the cards!” he bellowed.
I felt like a surveillance camera, which was kind of cool. I’d just catch arbitrary glimpses of the party drifting by, every once in a while somebody shouting something out or swirling the laptop about the place as if dancing with me.
After a little while I was entirely forgotten about again. An old man (Pietro) with a drinking problem I remembered from back when I lived in Ottawa came in and sat down very near to the laptop, giving me a clear view of him. He didn’t look good, like he’d aged 20 years in the last six years since I’d been a regular. I shouted out to him, but he couldn’t hear me through all the noise and festivity, and so I called the bartender on the phone and got him to explain what was happening to Pete.
He didn’t remember me or seem in the least interested in chatting or playing my fortune-telling game.
“I already know my future,” he grumbled.
I asked him what it contained.
“I’m gonna die alone and drunk. Now leave me alone and let me drink in peace.”
I arranged to pay for his evening’s drinks with the bartender and then I signed-off, letting the man drink in peace.