Show Us Your Titsh! -- Saint Patrick's Day in Montreal
They say that, on Saint Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish.
Apparently the Irish are a bunch of drunks, because on the third Tuesday this March, everyone in Montreal who's ever sprouted a shred of pubic hair will be out and roaming the streets with a beer in his or her (possibly very small) fist.
In this libertine city of la belle province, there are several holidays that exist chiefly to celebrate the consumption of mood-altering substances, and Saint Patrick's Day is right up there with New Year's Eve and Easter.
Like any holiday, Saint Patrick's Day in Montreal is celebrated with a European joie de vivre coupled with a very Quebecois je ne sais pas pantoutte. Irish pride, sure. But Montrealers keep their priorities straight; March 17th in Montreal is first and foremost an homage to alcohol—something that nearly all Montrealers have in common—and it is feted with proportional vigor.
While the sun is still out, most of the city will stagger downtown, sipping at cans of Guinness or handles of cheap whiskey, or both (“a bird can't fly on one wing”). There they will shift from foot to foot, straining to focus their glazed eyes on the annual parade which features floats for nearly every major ethnic group in the city: Irish, yes, but also Native Canadians, Ukrainians—even Italians. Only the local Hasidic community is unimpressed; they prefer much harder drugs. Seriously, have you ever been to one of their parties? No?
As the sun begins to sink behind the cross at the top of Mount Royal, the hipsters of Plateau will blink back their hangovers and wake up early to roll joints, light cigarettes, and bike to the bars, where they start drinking Pabst at four pm and pretend as if this isn't what they do every day. None will deign to wear green, unless of course they're being ironic.
On Rue Crescent, drunk girls in short skirts will shiver like nervous chihuahuas, tottering on their too-high heels up the same narrow bar stairs that in three hours' time will see them wipe out, legs everywhere in anticipation of rescue by concerned and equally hammered friends.
Rue Sainte Catherine, as usual, will be packed with Dave-Matthews-listening frat boys from the States, who exit Supersex wearing white baseball caps and smelling of stripper sweat. Drunk, but charmingly thorough, they are careful to yell “show us your titsh!” at anything with long hair. In the village, rent boys on roller skates glide by in green daisy dukes, invoking images of ninja turtles with their fluttering bandannas and broad chests sprinkled with emerald body glitter.
By the next morning the streets downtown will smell of Bailey's and vomit. Faces are verdant and breakfast is a stiff glass of regret for the excesses of the night before. Teeth dulled with green food coloring will be diligently whitened with trays of bleach, and campus clinics will see a spike in appointments. Countless guys will be crushed to learn that the phone numbers they got were fake. No one gives a thought to the snakes in Ireland.
Morning-after regrets notwithstanding, Saint Patrick's Day is, perhaps, the second most wonderful time of the year. For Montrealers, it is a desperately-needed herald of warmer times to come. After months of frozen nose hairs and numb toes, there are buds on the trees, the girls ditch their leggings for patterned tights, and everyone is getting horny. Soon the snow with melt and all the dog shit of winter will thaw, perfuming the air with the hopeful aroma of springtime in Montreal.
