Chapter Eleven: Familiar with the Unfamiliar

We hit the Canadian border at around six o'clock that evening. I'd crossed a lot of borders in my life, so I was pretty good at untangling convoluted requirements to figure out what paperwork was necessary, but crossing a border with an RV and a trailer full of sets and sound equipment and merchandise was very different than crossing with a backpack and a laptop. We were travelling to Canada to do for-profit shows and sell merchandise. There were tax forms, work permits, equipment inventories, passports, forms and contracts from our promoters in Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa, and a bunch of other paperwork I barely understood.

I'd had help and advice from our promoters, from Blaine's agent, and from the Avonroy foundation, so I was pretty confident that we had every right to cross the border, but the fact that I was a US citizen who had only been in the USA for two days out of the last four years raised flags with the crossing guards, and thus a nightmare began.

I got questioned with surprising hostility for about an hour and a half, and then they searched every inch of our RV and trailer and demanded explanations for everything from the box of t-shirts in the trailer to the condoms in Rachel's purse to the prescription medication in Blaine's duffle bag. We ended up spending almost four hours at the border.

Needless to say, when we finally made it into Quebec, the celebration in the RV was one of extreme relief.

"Here's hoping we can get back across on Tuesday," Kurt said.

I shrugged. "We'll worry about that when the time comes."

I was pretty excited to be going back, since Canada had been the first country outside of the USA that I'd explored for Peregrination, and it had been in Canada that I'd fallen in love with travel.

We made our way towards Montreal, and Kurt, Rachel, and Blaine all kept looking out the windows excitedly, commenting on the French road signs and the speed limits in Kilometers.

I tried not to grin too much, even though I found their fascination with it all quite humorous and almost sad at the same time. I was so familiar with the unfamiliar that I felt more at home in Quebec than I had in the states, but I didn't want to seem smug or pretentious about it. I'd met a lot of people on my travels who felt that having travelled the world made them superior to people who hadn't. I refused to become one of those people. "Is this your first time in Canada?" I asked.

We'd all grown up within a two hour drive of Canada, but I'd been eighteen the first time I crossed the border, so I could hardly judge them if they never had.

"Yeah," said Blaine, "I was invited up for a music festival in Ottawa once, but I ended up not having the cash to get a flight."

Rachel said, "Me either."

Kurt nodded, "I have been, but not for a very very long time."

I still don't know if Kurt knew that I knew that his mother, who'd died when Kurt was a kid, had been French-Canadian. My step-dad, Burt, had told me about her once over pizza before a football game once in my senior year.

I said, "Hmm. Well, we'll have to do some sightseeing. How good is your French?"

Blaine and Rachel chattering in theatrically accented French. I knew bits and pieces of so many languages that I couldn't keep track of any of them, but I remembered enough about French to know that what they were saying was mostly nonsense. I grinned until I caught Kurt's eye; he didn't seem particularly amused.

Blaine seemed to notice at the same moment that I did, and he switched back to English quickly. He said, "Well, I personally think that we need to party tonight."

"I'll say," said Kurt, swiftly shaking off whatever it was that he was feeling, "We've got tons to celebrate. Finn's return, Blaine's graduation, our engagement, the premier of Soundtrack… I say we park the RV, find a pub, and have some fun."

Grinning, Rachel said, "I second that motion."

Exactly how we got from that conversation to me having sex with Rachel in a Montreal karaoke bar bathroom, I couldn't quite tell you.

"Fucking hell," she slurred, pulling her dress back over her shoulders and letting me zip her up, "I swear to God, I'm not usually this much of a whore."

I laughed, pushing her hair out of her face so that I could kiss her. "This isn't whoring," I tell her in all of my drunken wisdom, "This is just living life."

She giggled and lost her balance a little, leaning into me. "We're living, alright."

I kissed her again and she shakes her head. "Uh-uh," she said. "Come on. Karaoke time! When's the last time you sang a song?"

And then the next morning, as I went through footage on my camera for the vlog, I found a clip of Rachel and I belting "You're the One That I Want," to a crowd of jeering Francophones while Kurt snorted with laughter from the camera.

"Fuck my life," Rachel groaned, sitting down beside me as I edited the footage, "What happened last night?"

"Alcohol happened," I said.

She groaned again and said, "Never again."

I laughed, but it made my head hurt.

Rachel went into the bathroom to take a shower, and Kurt and Blaine both stayed in bed, muttering occasional hangover complaints while I rushed through my vlog and tour managing duties for the day.

About five minutes later, Rachel emerged from the bathroom in a rage. "That fucking shower is a piece of shit," she said, "I need a real fucking shower, please."

"What's wrong with it?" I asked, amused by her outrage even though I probably should have been frightened by it.

She said, "Well, first of all, the temperature won't regulate itself, so it keep going from hot to cold without warning… and there's not enough pressure to have a hope in hell of getting the shampoo out of your hair… plus it's too fucking tiny to move more than half an inch in anyway… oh my God, are you kidding me? How are we supposed to live like this for four months?"

I shrugged. "Most of the theatres we're going to will have showers in the dressing rooms. Some campgrounds will have them too. Don't worry about it."

She looked like she was going to scream. "Ew," she said, "Ew. Oh my god. Four months of public showers? Kill me now."

"Shut up, Rachel," muttered Kurt from his bed, "Shhh."

I nodded. "Yeah. Rachel, there's nothing we can do about it."

She put her and on her hip and gave an outraged sniff of fury. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the RV.

I caught Kurt's eye and quickly followed her.

"Come on, Rachel," I said, "I didn't mean to be mean."

But suddenly, she had her arms around me and was sobbing into my chest. Alarmed, I stood with my arms at my side and let her.

"I know that I signed up for this, but all I want is my own bed a warm shower," she told me, "I don't know how I'm going to get through sixteen weeks of this life."

We were only two days into the tour. If she was already feeling like this, we might be in trouble. I said, "You're hungover, Rachel. It's going to be okay. Trust me, you're going to get used to it."

She kept crying, and I had no idea what to do. It had been way way way too long since I'd had to deal with a Rachel freak-out, and I couldn't remember what to do. "Come on, Rachel," I said, "You get to perform in a beautiful play for audiences all across the continent. You're building your own future. Of course it's hard, but that's life. You know that."

She nodded, still snuggled against my chest. "I know. I know. I just need to hate it for a minute, okay? Don't lecture me."

So I let her cry some more and tried not to wonder if getting back with her so quickly hadn't been a gigantic mistake.