BRC
It came up a while back, and eventually made it on to the blog. Now it’s time for the big time. It’s time time to tell the story of the BRC. Ray was good enough to correct me of a few of the details. For reasons that should become obvious, my recollection of the evening wasn’t as clear as it might have been.
It started with a trip to Ottawa. This was back in the Ingenia days, when I was running a Victoria-based office for an Ottawa-based company. Every once in a while, it was required that I show face back at Head Office. This time, I was heading back for a grand total of 23 days. I remember the number well, since 23 straight days of drinking turned out to be enough to give me a case of the DTs when I got home. Yes, I had a problem. And yes, it was job-related.
The flight from Victoria to Ottawa was a hideous one. This was a small company, so though I should have been pleased that it was a direct flight, I really, really wasn’t. First, it was a redeye. It left Victoria at midnight, and arrived in the national capital at 7am, local time. Say goodbye to your night’s sleep. Second, it was Canada 3000. Since there wasn’t room for my legs otherwise, I was always sure to get an aisle seat when flying Baggage Class. This usually left me with a deadened shoulder, from being hit with the drink cart half a dozen times.
Now, you would think that since this discount carrier’s 5-hour flight started at midnight, that they would simply dim the lights and let you snooze all the way to the National Capital Region. No such luck. Not only did they offer both drink and meal services, they also had a movie, and insisted on trying to sell you earphones so you could listen to the damn thing. So even on flights where there was no screaming baby, it was impossible to get any shuteye on the way.
And of course, on the trip in question, there was a screaming baby. Right behind me.
So I arrived in Ottawa at 7am, bloodshot and sleep-deprived, just in time to rent a car and drive straight to work. It was my first day there, so we took it easy. We only worked 11 hours that day. And then, after work, we headed for the pub. And by “we”, I mean Ray.
And so, to make a blurry story short, we began to drink. And drink. And drink. And, since this was the days of 1am bar closings in Ontario, sometime during the course of the evening we decided it would be a good idea to go to Hull. That way, we wouldn’t have to stop drinking.
And so Hull it was. If you don’t know it, allow me to quote from the mighty Wikipedia:
The Promenade de Portage, a main street in the centre of Hull, was notorious for drunken revelry for many years due to less-restrictive Québec laws on bar closing times, minimum drinking age, sale of beer in corner stores or dépanneurs and sale of pornographic films which attracted crowds from more-conservative Ontario directly across the river.
We rolled out of whatever pub we happened to be drinking in at the time, hopped into the nearest cab, and asked him to take us to Hull. Just then, I happened to glance back at the sidewalk we had just vacated. Three girls were wandering by. One of them was a little large…
This was enough to set the cabbie off, for what, to this day, is still the funniest damn cab ride I can almost remember.
“So you like dem big, do ya?”
The cabbie had a thick, Jamacian accent.
“Uh, what?” I cleverly retorted.
“I used to have dis girlfriend. She was huge. And she had dis Beeeeeeeg Rubbah Cock.”
As if the phrase “Beeeeeeeg Rubbah Cock” said repeatedly with a thick, Jamacian accent isn’t funny all by itself, this story came with hand gestures, of the “it was theeeeeees beeeeg” variety. All the way to Hull, we were regaled with the story of the Beeeeeeeg Rubbah Cock. As Ray recalled it:
“And get dis mon, she fuck around too! I tell her, how you fuck around? You fat, you ugly, and you keep a beeeeeg rubber cock in your purse!â€
All good stories have an end, and in this one, our hero had to give up the girl. It turned out there was just no way to compete with an inanimate object of that girth.
We pulled up at our watering hole, and paid for the world’s funniest cab ride. I don’t think either of us managed to get a word in edgewise the whole time. The subsequent evening in Hull went better than expected—that is to say, we didn’t wake up in jail. Eventually, however, it came time for us to find someplace to sleep. We hopped into a cab, and told the driver where Ray lived. One very blurry (and considerably less funny) ride later, we pulled up to his place.
We stumbled upstairs, and I did what any good friend would do after a no-sleep, end-up-in-Hull, Beeeeeeeg Rubbah Cock night out in Ottawa.
kj · PDDCCCXIX
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Candidate for “Best Story Ever“, I say!