We got to Blaine, the Canadian border, at around midnight. The first thing they asked us for was our passports and birth certificates. Neither of us had those tawdry things and we were incredulous and anxious about the request.
Jeeze we came this far for nothing...
They weren't supposed to require a passport until next year! we complained vehemently to the poker-faced guard working the booth.
But their demand for more I.D. than usual was just to scare us. They let us into the immigration processing area with just our state I.D.s. and instructed us to park the car and go to the waiting room.
When we got inside, we walked over to a counter where an older, dapper guard, looking like Robert Young from
Father Knows Best, takes our I.D.s and asks us a few questions.
"Why do you want to come to Canada?"
"Um, sightseeing," we respond. He arches an eyebrow at this, the code words, no doubt, for drug tourism.
"Any hotel reservations?"
"No," we murmur, a further nail in the coffin of our credibility.
"How long do you plan on staying in Canada?"
As long as it takes to sample the four grades of Bubble Hash, look over the Iboga roots they sell at head shops, maybe get into some of that naturally occurring apomorphine in the Blue Lotus flowers they sell next to the Salvia Divinorum everywhere: just stand on a Hastings street corner and SUCK IT OUT. Can't get any of that shit in the Great Christian Nation I'm from -- Oh, and interview a man you'd like to see in a cage for the rest of his life.
"A couple of days," we respond matter-of-factly.
"O.K. please go sit down against the wall, we'll get back to you shortly."
Within five minutes of sitting down, however, a bruiser guard swaggers over to the counter, the kinky straps and zippers of his uniform clanking and making a racket, announcing his presence to everyone in the room.
"We found some cannabis in the car," he announces to everyone lustily.
When I heard those words, my stomach dropped and time became slow motion, sirens in my brain were whooping -- I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride when it plummets. Everyone in the room immediately turns to us and scrutinizes us as deviants. We were no longer simple-minded tourists, but drug criminals. Our change of status was electric, a shock like touching an exposed wire. My biggest fear was that I would somehow never be allowed into Canada at all, a country that still maintained a modicum of respect for the individual (more than I can say, at least, for the Land of the Pee) and kept wondering if I'd be forever barred from entry as a result of a petty bust like this...
The guard asks us which one of us was driving and Chad identifies himself.
"Get over here!"
Chad walks over to a counter and the guard searches him roughly. A bag of weed is quickly produced from Chad's pockets, which remained turned out during his interrogation, so they looked like bunny ears, an act of medieval humiliation, like making him wear a dunce cap. Chad himself looking utterly defeated at the hands of a thug with legal impunity to molest him. The dope is given over to another guard who takes it into a back room to weigh it.
"You got anything else? Coke? Ecstasy? OTCs?"
"No."
Which concerts are those King Crimson CD's from?!
"When was the last time you smoked?!"
"Uh, this morning?"
Satisfied with Chad's answer, they tell him to go sit back down against the wall.
Chad looking a severely troubled man, alone in anguished thoughts.
(I later found out he wasn't as desperate as he appeared. He told me the fact that he wasn't in cuffs made it clear to him nothing serious was going to happen. Of course, he figured they might confiscate the car. In which case he would be out thirty grand, which did freak him out).
The guards play a good cop bad cop routine with us, the dapper guard from
Father Knows Best next to a dark haired bruiser who grunts in monosyllables and looks us over suspiciously.
It's worth noting that all the female guards looked like dominatrixes. Burly, hard-faced women ready to subdue and kill at a moment's notice. Happy to inflict pain on male victims. All the male Canadian customs guards looked gay to me: clean cut guys in kinky uniforms with straps, odd zippers and restraints. Dedicated Canadian customs agents...
"When was the last time you smoked?" he barks, rifling through my pockets.
"Uh, a couple weeks ago."
"You mean to tell me you're traveling with a guy who smoked his lungs out getting here, and you didn't smoke along with him?!" his face was less than a foot away from mine, eyes dilated in rage like a rottweiler protecting a biscuit.
I turned and said as apple-cheeked and earnest as I could, "I'm not interested in drugs, sir!" Which is true in the sense that anything from Pfizer is not on my to do list (on the way up to Canada Chad had required me to swig some Listerine, a subsidiary).
He looked at me severely, a Neanderthal out of a comic book, but said nothing in response to my bullshit, and continued his pat-down search.
It was kind of funny when the seated dominatrix going through my coat on the counter found a cache of my grimy foam earplugs in the top zipper pocket. Two pairs tumbled out on the white mica countertop; bright blue and purple, somehow looking like indecent sexual accessories -- yet further proof of my guilt, for some reason, in the eyes of these medieval guards.
Why does this character need two pairs of ear plugs?
When they didn't find anything illicit on me I was instructed to go and sit back down against the wall with Chad. It was announced to the entire room not to let either of us into the bathroom. This was said in the most dire tone imaginable, causing everyone to scrutinize us again.
Chad was taking our humiliating and medieval treatment poorly, hunkered down into himself, his eyes staring at the floor.
"There goes my life!" he blurted, thinking about the Biojetta they would most certainly impound.
A group of young Chinese women come in after us, accompanied by their swain. The guards only search the guy, have him take off his jacket, and pat him down. One of the dominatrixes squishes it thoroughly on the counter, as she did with mine, checking for contraband. During his molestation, he swivels his head to the girls seated alongside Chad, and talks jovially to them in Mandarin.
"Speak English!" growls the guard. That shuts the kid up. When questioned, he says he works at a Chinese restaurant somewhere in Vancouver.
It turns out one of the girls has no identification whatsoever. In broken English she claims she has an Australian passport somewhere in her luggage in Vancouver, or maybe Toronto, it's not clear.
The Canadian dominatrix is so harsh on her that one of her five companions wraps a protective arm around her.
"You have no identification on you
at all? Why should
I let
you in?
Why?!"
(The harsh look, the pitiless tone of voice, the tight uniform with kinky straps and zippers, reminded me of the BDSM personals of weekly papers everywhere. Yes, a good time could be had by anyone who likes it rough by bringing over a small quantity of pot, or conveniently forgetting to bring any identification -- and the loving slave wouldn't be charged a penny!)
The group claims they live in Vancouver and just decided on the spur of the moment to do some "sightseeing" in the USA...
Sightseeing, huh?
I don't know what became of them, or what their angle was, if any.
I'm summoned to the counter by the Robert Young guard, "They found some cannabis in the car. Was it yours?" he says imperturbably, like a priest asking for a confession.
"No."
"Who's was it?"
"I don't know."
He ignores my idiot answer and gets to the skinny: "Transporting illegal substances across a border is an international crime. At this point in time, you will be denied entry into Canada."
"Will I ever be able to come back?" I ask, Oliver Twist entreating for more gruel.
"It's not an exact science," is all he says, taking delight in the ambiguity. "Just drive around to the exit gate at the other side of the building, and I'll give you your I.D.s back."
