The New Adventures of the Tsawwassen Twenty-Somethings in the City

I grew up in a small Baptist town.



Having recently relocated to the big city of Vancouver, I'm starting to fully comprehend what this means. A small town, along with any other group of people confined to a small space, is not unlike summer camp. The first day of summer camp is always the most important, because it immediately situates you with a group of people that you may or may not want to meet. Despite any objections, you're forced to befriend or make quick peace with those in your troop or cabin, and that's the best you'll ever get for the entirety of your stay. Every other cabin will automatically set up a barrier protecting themselves from the likes of you, and certainly the likes of your inferior cabin-mates. There are people in these cabins that are probably more suited to your persona, but it doesn't matter. Even if your soul-mate is two cabins over, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it, because they're in cabin 22, you're in cabin 24, and the only proper solution is to hurl insults at each other for having the gall to be staying in another wooden shelter. This doesn't faze you, of course, because every single scientific and divine reasoning has convinced you that cabin 22 fucking rules, and cabin 24 is full of future homosexual gaylords of the apocalypse. Probably agnostic too, the fucks.



In this case, the small town of Tsawwassen could be seen as one giant cabin 22, and its neighbouring town of Ladner as one giant cabin 24, chock full of sodomites who snort ketamine while calling forth the great Beezlebub. As anyone from Tsawwassen will attest, including myself, this is all true. Our cabin of Baptist "strip mall hell" is clearly the superior force, and all others be damned.



It was like this for about 11 years, and then I graduated high school. We pretend to look at this as the first big step into the real world, as our valedictorian will repeatedly assure us. In truth, it is a momentary migration to another cabin. In my case, this was Victoria. There are four years there, along with a bunch of other cabin-mates who bought into this whole "moving along" phase, only to find ourselves back in Cabin 22 with a bunch of degrees, and no real ambition. Of course, this does not apply to everyone, as there are those select few freaks of nature who decide to try out another cabin in hopes of furthering their education or experience. These traitors, or "fucking motherfuckers," disappear for an indefinite amount of time only to return a few years later sporting Armani suits and cell phones with headsets (assholes). But they're just stopping by, you see. Communal living is for the dedicated, and there doesn't seem to be such a thing as a visitor's pass in this cabin life.



I read a statistic that most people in their twenties are far more comfortable living with their parents now than they were ten years ago. This would apply to those who have effectively been labeled "The Rose Crew," due to their constant club meetings at the town's one and only pub. There are those in school, those freshly graduated, and those working right next store in one of the town's countless strip mall boutiques and services. Most of them work at the White Spot. I joined this crew for a few months while working at the Rogers Video, which seems to be the most hipster-like locale in Tsawwassen. I call it my "Kevin Spacey" time. No responsibilities, and no future. It's a good feeling.



Thanks to lucky circumstances (read: getting hit by car a year ago and getting free money), I was able to afford to move out of this commune, and into the big city of Vancouver. I learned a lot about big city living from television shows like "Friends" or whatever Jennifer Love Hewitt piece of shit pilot that was on that week. It's funny to observe the lead characters in these shows when they first arrive in their chosen metropolises. Their first instinct is, in every show, to walk around at night looking up at buildings with big smiles on their faces while Green Day plays in the background. This is followed by the inevitable raising of the arms in victory, coupled with some slow motion spinning with eyes closed. They have their first day of work at the fashion magazine, where they learn they have a long way to go to reach the top. Thankfully, they can return to their flat, where they live with the hunky-mullet guy who just got out of a serious relationship, the African-American woman with absolutely no good storyline in the entire series, and the super-gay guy who gets one episode to himself before the viewers complain that the show is getting too racy, and they're worried about their daughters growing up to be homosexual men.



My show consists of no such job, and four flat-mates, including a bouncer, a security guy, a sort-of mortgage broker, and a porn king who I have seen fully clothed maybe once or twice. That makes me the super-gay African-American mulleted writer.



But this is only the pilot, and the show doesn't get good enough ratings, so we restart the program that made us all famous in the first place: The Cabin 22 show.



When I say that Tsawwassen is an independent eco-system, I'm not using hyperbole. Each creature in this system can not survive without its fellow inhabitants, so any grand move to the big city includes bringing every other life-form available with you, often into the same house. Hell, everybody in my house is from Tsawwassen, but I'm not ready to concede this as anything other than mere coincidence.



In a way, Tsawwassen never really ended. Tsawwassen was the first season of Saved by the Bell where they were at some junior high in Minnesota. The lame characters were filtered out, and the most interesting students (and the principal, for some reason) all moved to the rich Palisades in Los Angeles. Hilarity ensues, ratings are high for the daytime pre-teen slot.



In other words, Tsawwassen moved to Commercial Drive.



I was leaving a cheap pizza place on the Drive when one of my old friends walked up to say hello and catch up on recent news. A minute later, another friend living in a different area of the Drive walked up and joined us for the quick convo. I then returned to my other friend's house in the other part of the Drive, where about twenty of my former schoolmates are all sprawled out on his living room floor watching an action movie. Thank hell we're all different and better people.



Moments like this make up what I call the "magic" of Vancouver. It's when any coincidence, such as a chance encounter with an old friend, finding five bucks on the ground, premature ejaculation, or any other "magical" event occurs that wouldn't likely happen in a small town. This prompts the action where you raise your arms, close your eyes, and start spinning in slow motion to the song, "Time of Your Life."



Cabin-mates are filling, but you branch out. You try to make new friends in new and bizarre social cliques. I went to a "Vancubz" event, which includes a group of mostly overweight, hairy, gay men shooting the breeze over a plate of disgusting buffet food. The group consists of all matters of personality, and it's a hard place for a person like me to make friends. I only have about one or two gay friends, and I have no idea how to get along in a group of thirty. One half of the group thrives in sarcastic half-wit, and speaks entirely in sexual innuendo:



Me: "Do you have the time?"



Him: "Stick it my face and slam it!"



There's a quarter of the group that seem to have wandered over from the prime timer's club, trying to score a piece of young ass for their own self-satisfaction. Some of these guys are wearing kilts.



There's an eighth of the club that are skinny, bald, wear glasses, and are shaking out of some untold angst. I'm convinced that these men are former pedophiles, and can blow up squirrels with their minds.



Then there's me and the other eighth, and we just don't know what to do in these damned situations. It would seem ideal for us to form our own crew, but we're much more comfortable returning to our designated friend hotspots, where everything is so fucking familiar.



I do have a point with all of this.



I was feeling stood up on a Friday night very recently. A gentleman friend was supposed to meet me for a movie and a drink, and he didn't show up or contact me at all that night. Feeling bummed, I went to a mod club where a Cabin 22 alum was celebrating her twentieth birthday. I get into the bar, and everyone is drunk, and screaming:



"It's Max! WOOOOOO!"



"Oh my god, I spilled my drink! WOOOOOO!"



"This song sucks! WOOOOOOO!"



"Dance with me! Oh, shit I feel sick...WOOOOOO!"



"Come here, you hot piece of ass!"



As my cabin-mates began dry humping and lap-dancing me in a sort-of ironic orgy, the feeling of security and safety that I felt was indescribable. To quote a great LCD Soundsystem song:



We're your friends tonight.