2001-05-11 - 1:16 a.m.

Its amazing to me how you can plan a night and think you know how its going to turn out - and then your life takes a turn and you meet people you never expected and BAM - the night is one of those strange nights you end up telling people about . . .

So I went to the bar (the Tantra Lounge) to meet Darren. I was really hot for this man.

(By the way - I have had 8 drinks before writing this, not that it matters)

But Darren wasn't there. So I ordered a Jack and Coke from the bar anyway, thinking to myself that I would have the one drink and then skidaddle. And as I'm ordering my drink this guy walks up to the bar and orders a drink and starts a friendly conversation with me.

It turns out that this guy (Russell Wayne Andre de Ch ----) is from the Northwest Territories. He's a native "Indian", about 30 years old . His accent sounds British and almost sexy. He is in Vancouver for 3 more weeks renewing his ferryboat liscense, which apparently he has to do once every 5 years. So we struck up a conversation and he tells me all about his life. How 6 months of the year he runs a ferry 8 hours a day across this little river in this town in buttfuck Canada. And the other 6 months of the year the river is iced over so the people just drive across it. In the meantime, he hunts geese,beaver, muskrat, and caribou - for FOOD.

No lie!

He was such a sweet person. His town had about 150 inhabitants and he knows them all, and all the people of all the little towns up and down the river. A very honest straightforward loving fellow. He told me stories all night - How his grandfather taught him to track animals, and to hunt. How he wrestled a caribou and slit its throat for the first time all alone at 19. How the river ices over in the winter and how it breaks up in the summer. How its light there 24 hours a day this time of year and dark all but 4 hours 3 months of the year. How in the 50s and 60s the children were forced to go to residential school run by missionaries and were abused. How he has a wife who left him and a 3 year old son who loves to ski-doo. How his anscestors went to sweat lodges and made rope out of river grass. How when they kill animals there they let them bleed on the ground for 2 hours before they collect them, to allow their souls to travel to the spirit world. How he was hired by the town to track and hunt a wolf that was eating the town's puppies last year. How he hunts and eats beavers (but he says although their tails are really tasty, they're also very fatty and will give you a tummy ache if you eat too much!).

And we talked about normal things too - like what we believe spiritually and how we think people ought to live and how we dream at night (He told me he dreams of animals and riding on his ski-doo !) and our philosophy of living . . . And you know what I realized?

That people are much more alike than they are different.

I read his palm. It was the first time he had ever had his palm read. And we went to a couple of different bars and he bought me lots of drinks and we had a good time. At the last bar, another guy came up to me and introduced himself and asked me if I was the Queen. He said I was so beautiful and I acted like a queen he wanted to know if I was the queen of the bar. And I realized something else . . .

That I'm a pretty attractive gal. And a good person to know.

I had a good time tonight. I'm seeing Russell again on Sunday. No big deal or anything - but I enjoy his company and learning about his life. I think I'm a good judge of character, I know a good heart and an honest person when I meet them, and I prefer to hang out with that sort of person even if they have never heard of Depeche Mode or Jack Kerouac.

It's trippy to think that there are so many people out there, that there are many people who would be "right" for me if I chose them. That at any moment I could keep to the path I'm on, and another me - a Hillary shrouded in mist of what might have been - is going off to fall in love and marry a native of the Northwest Territories and eating beaver for supper . . .

Life is long . . . or short! And either way it always surprises me. I'm glad I'm alive.