Young Dads International Tour of March: The Diary

Friday
4:30am: Micah wakes the two of us up for our 6am bus to Vermont. Bellowing with rage, I undertake to murder him.
4:55am: Our little drama having played itself out, I put both contact lenses in the eyeball that I think is more likely to benefit from them, grab some stuff, and hustle mutely out the door. Micah follows. Already we have forgotten many, many pertinent belongings.
5:02am: The subway is far more crowded than one would expect at 5:02am on a Friday morning. We are surrounded by poignant little groupings and interactions that underline the simultaneous fragility and dignity of the human species. A man across from us with a cane is yelling in Spanish, I think about vaginas. “¡La vagina!” he screams, pointing at us, his bounteous mustache a-quiver. “La vagina del rey.”
6am: Success! After awkwardly loping through a number of subway stations, we arrive at our bus with minutes to spare. Nine hours to Burlington!
6:04am: In case you are wondering why it would take nine hours to get to Burlington, know that the bus is making all local stops on the way. I don’t mean local stops as in, New Haven, New Britain, Springfield. I mean, local stops as in, Squirrel Avenue At Quaint Lane, Barn Next To A Lake, Some Trees Seemingly Chosen At Random, More Trees.
8:23am: Fitful sleeping.
9:30am:
Micah: So was it a conscious choice, not bringing a toothbrush?
Jesse: I mean, that’s not the worst thing that could happen.
Micah: First thing in Burlington, we go to CVS and buy toothbrushes.
Jesse: It’s actually more important to floss.
Micah: Did you bring floss?
Jesse: I did.
Micah: You brought floss, so you figured, why bring a toothbrush.
Jesse: I just figured, with floss, for a few days, you’re all set.
Micah: You were gonna go this whole trip without brushing your teeth.
Jesse, defensively: I was gonna floss.
Micah:
Jesse:
Micah: That’s disgusting.
1:10pm: Small-scale chaos when our transfer, in White River Junction, Vermont, is complicated by the age-old transportation quandary of Too Many People, Not Enough Bus. Considering that all of us came to White River Junction on buses, one would think that Greyhound would be able to accurately predict how many of us would be expecting to leave White River Junction on buses. One would, it turns out, be a fool.
1:15pm: We are the last ones to make the cut. Micah addresses the driver, a Hungarian, several minutes after a heated dispute about whether “the New York bus got the shaft.”
Micah: Thanks, man. I wasn’t giving you a hard time, I was just trying to get some informatio
Bus Driver: You were giving me hard time!
Micah, angrily: I wasn’t giving you a hard time. Look: I wasn’t giving you a goddamned hard time.
Bus Driver: You give me hard time.
Micah: WRONG, ASSHOLE. YOU’RE WRONG.
1:32pm:
Micah: I feel like if Robbie was a girl, he’d have big boobs.
Jesse:
Micah: And if Matt was a girl, he’d have like no boobs.
Jesse:
Micah: That’s why they’re such a great team.
1:47pm: Actual title of Cosmopolitan article being read by nearby girl: “Sex That Makes You Closer: Moves That Will Start a Bonfire in His Pants—and His Heart”
3:15pm: Arrival! Johnathan, our liaison at UVM, picks us up at the bus station and drives us to the Davis Center, where we’ll be performing at Brennan’s Pub, a brightly painted cavern of wide-screen televisions and burger-munching co-eds. The drinking age is strictly enforced, and all patrons are limited to two beers per visit. We had difficulty processing this.
Jesse: So after the second beer, what happens.
Johnathan: That’s it! No more beer.
Jesse: So how long until that resets.
Johnathan: Uh… I think until the next day.
Micah: I don’t understand.
Jesse: Yeah, I don’t get that part.
Johnathan: You get two beers per day, and that’s the limit.
Jesse: But where do you get the third beer.
Johnathan: Not here.
Jesse: I’m confused by what you’re saying.
Johnathan: You only get two beers here. If you want more, you can’t get them here.
Micah: Oh, I get it. You have to leave, and come back.
Johnathan: The next day, sure.
Micah: What?
Jesse: What we’re trying to say is, we don’t understand your words.
5-7pm: With a show at 8:30pm, now is an excellent time to promote. But what’s this? I seem to have forgotten my patch cable at home. Time for an exciting sidetrip to a strip mall, where two creepily smiling octogenarians have a grimy 12-footer available for only $200. Awesome.
7:23pm: Wandering the campus, instruments in tow, we locate a table of guys playing with Magic™ cards. Our catchy, well-harmonized musings on the nuances of modern dating do little to distract them from their game. Our aggressive grabbing and tongue-licking of their cards: more successful.
8:30pm: Time for the show! And the house is packed. But wait—there’s a problem with the sound. Somehow we need an entirely new P.A. system. Micah and I achieve our beer quota and good-naturedly offer help/advice. Meanwhile, the students begin filing out, blissfully unaware that hilarity is nigh. “Young Dads,” we blurt at them. “We are Young Dads.” We do not specify what, exactly, this means. Some of them begin to run.
9:35pm: At last, the sound is fixed. Roughly ten students remain. All of them are members of the Program Board.
10:30pm: End of the show. It was one of our better performances. No audience member’s genitals were complimented or insulted, and as a result, we now have ten new fans. Let me just say this: those kids had a great time. At no point did anyone point out that they had essentially paid over $50/person of university money to give themselves a private show. Ha ha!
11:11pm: After some abortive wandering around downtown Burlington, we decide against carousing, and instead we turn in early for the night. I am not allowed to tell you where that sleeping took place. I will say this: “beds” were not involved. Nor was any kind of “residence.”

Saturday
4:10am: Furtive yet sanitary peeing.
9:34am: Rise and shine! With the stealth of groggy, achy pumas, we sneak out of an office building. Sporting enormous unwieldy bags, we make our way into a tiny, crowded diner, critically injuring some of the waitstaff. Micah has eggs, and I am looking pleased. Cuz we’re ’bout to run a list of INTERNATIONAL CURRENCIES.
10:45am: Busking on a cobblestone street. We will go on to make a bundle of money, mostly from 30s-ish men taking their toddler children out for a walk. In other words: young dads. Thanks for the support, guys! We live the dream so you don’t have to.
11:58am:
Policeman: Hey guys. Can I see a permit?
Micah: Ummm
Jesse: Sorry, we don’t have a permit. We can pack up and get out of here, if y
Policeman, peering into cajón case: How much you guys make?
Jesse: Huh?
Micah: I—I don’t, um, know.
Policeman: Because the fine for playing without a permit is $50.
Jesse: Guh.
Micah, clutching a thick wad of dollars: I think we have—I think we have three dollars.
Policeman: Maybe we can come to some kind of understanding.
Jesse:
Micah:
Policeman:
Jesse:
Micah: Oops! I dropped some of these dollars… on the ground.
Policeman:
Jesse: Well, they’re no good to us anymore.
Micah: Yup!
Jesse: So long, dollars.
Policeman: I’m gonna let you guys off this time, but you have to apply for a permit.
Micah:
Jesse:
Policeman: You guys sounded good.
Micah: Look: what the hell.
Jesse: Do you want a goddamned bribe or not.
2:40pm: Montreal comes into view.
Jesse: Okay, when we kick it off tonight, I’m gonna yell, Hello, Columbus, Ohio!
Micah:
Jesse: No, no, no: Mexico City.
Micah:
Jesse: Good evening, Mexico City!!
Micah:
Jesse: Then I’ll be all like: oh, sorry, I just took a hit of ketamine fifteen minutes ago.
Micah:
Jesse: As in: Special K.
Micah:
Jesse: And then I’m like, I’m totally peaking right now.
Micah: You have to either brush your teeth, or not talk near my face.
3:52pm: We arrive at Micah’s brother Daniel’s apartment, the cheerfully squalid home of six McGill students. Forests of beer bottles crowd the floors and all other surfaces. Two roommates are playing beer pong on a giant homemade construction of glass and beer caps. Another is absent-mindedly snacking from a bowl containing ancient slices of carrot and celery, awash in oily brown film. This is the Ground Zero of the Young Dads’ Canadian fandom. We are received as celebrities. Heroes, even.
6:48pm: Sound check at The Yellow Door, Canada’s oldest functioning coffeehouse. Essentially it is the medium-sized basement of a house on an all-residential street. There are doilies. The sound guy is an old, prickly hippie. He loudly admires my amp, and it is unclear if he is being ironic. Perhaps he himself does not know.
7:34pm:
Micah: We have to push the stickers, during the show. We have to promote the stickers.
Jesse: I think I’m going to do the Japanese voice, like: Ohhhhhh.
Micah: Maybe if we say they’re on sale.
Jesse: Hey: I want you to talk about how we have this huge fan base in Japan,
Micah: Because we’re changing our name.
Jesse: of like retired samurai men, and then I can be like, we’re sending out a message, and then you can just say whatever, and I’m like
Micah: We’re changing our name to Greenland. That’s a hilarious name!
Jesse: I’m like, ohhhhhhhh.
Micah: Maybe we really should change our name.
Jesse: That’s trife.
Micah: What?
Jesse: That’s trife. Trifling.
Micah: No one says that.
Jesse: What? Everyone says that.
Micah: You’re a moron.
Jesse: Ohhhhhhhhhh.
Micah:
Jesse: Hai hashi-masu MAKU-DAS.
Micah: YES.
8:45pm: A packed house! Daniel has promoted the living hell out of this show. The emcee, Holly, introduces us as Jesse and “Meeka,” which is funny because that’s a girl’s name. Then I have to tune. Somehow this takes an incredibly long time.
8:52pm:
Jesse: Hello Mexico City!!!
Scattered tittering. Much of the audience is stony-faced.
Jesse: Oops, my bad. I just had some Special K! And now I’m peaking.
Less laughter than before.
Micah: They think you mean the cereal.
Jesse: The drug, not the cereal.
No one is laughing.
Jesse: Takin’ a little trip down the K-hole.
An uneasy silence.
9:12pm:
Micah: Thank you, thank you. So, we’re selling these stickers for a dollar apiece. They’re on sale!
Jesse: Normally they cost four easy payments of $9.99.
Micah: We’re changing our name to Greenland.
Jesse: I’m just gonna translate that, for all of our samurai Japanese fans out there: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
Audience:
Jesse: HAI-MASHU-DAS. TOYOTA, HONDA. OHHH.
Micah: Ha ha!
Jesse: We call that one the Racist Bassist.
Applause.
10:32pm: Heavy drinking. Enthusiasm from all audience members surveyed. We decide to stop selling the stickers and just give them out for free, because they’re stickers. Why were we trying to get people to pay money for stickers? It is a question without an answer.
10:45pm:
Micah: The thing about Beatbox And a Bird is, we don’t think it’s that funny.
Jesse: Yeah. It’s our most popular thing, and we don’t know why.
Micah: We actually think it’s the stupidest thing we’ve ever come up with.
Jesse: It’s just Micah beatboxing, and me making bird sounds.
Micah: Ugh. I hate it.
Jesse: We came up with it, and we were like, that’s so stupid, we have to try it, but it’s not gonna work. But it did.
Micah: People laugh at it, more than they laugh at anything else that we do, but it’s not funny.
11:34pm: We venture into the night.

Sunday
1:01am: We make land at Frappé, a boisterous little club on the rue St Laurent. A mixed crowd is lurching to and fro across the dance floor. Many of them are undulating to the music, some suggestively, some abstractly.
1:35am: Gripping my ankles firmly, I am doing the Robot-Waddle around the perimeter of the dance floor.
2:01am: Micah squats next to a group of women and peers hostilely into the middle distance. They are attempting to ignore him. He remains there for ten minutes, saying nothing.
2:12am: I am doing a dance where you pretend that instead of legs, your body is supported by an inflexible metal tripod.
2:18am: Micah is doing the Pelvis Presley.
2:25am: Micah and I have pulled two chairs onto the dance floor and are simulating the sex act with them.
2:26am: Five chairs.
2:28am: Seven chairs, and my thighs are hurting. We are basically lifting seven chairs up off the ground and painfully bobbing up and down.
2:36am:
Girl: YOU GUYS AREN’T GONNA GET LAID IF YOU KEEP DANCING LIKE THAT.
Micah: WHAT?
Girl: NO ONE WILL TALK TO YOU IF YOU KEEP DANCING LIKE THAT.
Micah: DANCING LIKE WHAT.
Girl: DANCING LIKE A RETARD.
Jesse: YOU KNOW YURY?
Girl:
Jesse: YURY TELL US, DANCE! HERE DANCE.
Girl: I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO DO WITH THAT ACCENT, BUT IT’S NOT WORKING.
Jesse: YURY TELL US, HERE TO DANCE.
3:30am: A hearty meal of poutine, a Quebecois specialty of french fries, cheese curds, gravy, and bile. Delicious!
1:11pm: Dear Christ, the pain.
4:30pm: An afternoon of college basketball and feeble moaning draws to a close, as one of our fans drives us to the bus station.
4:45pm: Ha ha! Um, we seem to have forgotten our tickets. Somehow, there is no way of printing them up at the station itself. We will be taking the 9pm bus, it seems.
5:12pm: A triumphant return to Daniel’s apartment.
6:45pm: A meal of Thai food leads somehow to tears.
7:45pm: Return to the bus station! We are near the front of the line.
9:30pm: Departure.

Monday
4:30am: Arrival.
4:42am:
Micah: Can I just crash at your place for a few hours? Before work.
Jesse: Yeah, that’s
Micah: PLEASE NO OUT-LOUD TALKING WITH YOUR MOUTH.