FLYING WITH THE FRENCH ELVIS

Going to bed at 3:30 a.m. isn't conducive to getting up the next morning to sightsee no matter how high the thread count of the sheets. The Sun Queen suggested that we go to the underground mall which permits comfortable shopping during Montreal's subzero winters. But by the time he emerged from a coughing fit in the bathroom I had consulted Fodor's and suggested that we visit the botanical gardens instead.



We didn't get out the door until after 11 a.m. Fortunately, the Sun Queen agreed to his first-ever metro ride. The train whisked us from the nearby Peel Street station to the Pie-IX for just $2.75. The Olympic stadium, known as the "Big O" (or "Big Owe," for its enormous cost overruns) hovered over the metro station like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Oh yeah said the Sun Queen I heard that huge arm was supposed to retract the top of the stadium but they never could get it to work very well.

It did seem like a French folly--very interesting visually but not very practical. Now it's mostly used as a sightseeing spot and a restaurant. We could see a funicular reach the top in just 90 seconds as we walked to the entrance of the gardens. The short line to pay admission moved as slowly as the line at the Imax theatre the day before, once again severely testing a New Yorker's patience.

When one of the girls came down from Montreal last year and we were standing in line at a deli I had to tell her to make up her mind before we got to the front said the Sun Queen. Here they all think that ordering is a perfect time for chit chat.

Our ticket included admission to the Insectarium, our first stop. We found more than a dozen live insect displays in addition to hundreds of mounted butterflies from all over the world. An ant colony swarmed all over a decaying plant, carrying colorful pieces of leaves in their pinchers like flags. I learned that my body weight is equal to that of 3.5 million ants. I'd like to shed about 200,000. The other displays relied more on creepiness than activity to capture the fancy of children and adults alike: huge scorpions, cockroaches and walking sticks make you very thankful for the glass that encloses them.





The gardens themselves were just a day shy of when the price of admission changes for peak season. Even so, the roses weren't due to bloom for several more weeks. Fortunately, the exquisite landscaping of the Japanese Garden compensated for the lack of late spring blossoms. The Chinese Garden is the biggest outside of Asia and it offered several interesting structures, including a pagoda. Our leisurely visit was the perfect activity after an abbreviated sleep. The cool, sunny weather made everything sparkle.

By the time we got back to Peel Street, the Sun Queen was in the mood for a salami sandwich. He found it in the basement restaurant at Ogilvy's, a high-end department store whose Anglophilic name recalls a pre-separatist Montreal. I felt like we were a couple of ladies who lunched. My baklava was scrumptious.

During check out, I realized that the hotel bill for Saturday night was on his dime and avoided asking him how much it had cost. On the flight up to Montreal I overheard how hotels used to be a bargain when the American dollar was stronger.

A night at the Ritz Carlton would cost you only $150 US said one member of Project Latte to the other.

I can't imagine that the Sun Queen paid less than $500 Canadian, which works out to slight more than $450 US.

At the Air Canada check-in counter the chatty clerk excitedly informed us that we had a celebrity aboard our flight, Johnny Hallyday.

Who? asked the Sun Queen, clueless.

The French Elvis I answered.

See your friend is cultured teased the sexy clerk.

Hallyday wasn't hard to spot in the first class lounge. With his streaked hair, smoked skin and tight jeans, he looked like someone you would find lurking in the darkest corners of a leather bar. He earned my admiration, however, when he waited in line patiently with the other passengers instead of trying to cut it.

As soon as we were airborne, the chief steward, who surely ranked as one of the world's sexiest flight attendants (now there's a gay calendar!), asked Hallyday to pose with him for a cell phone picture. Hallyday graciously agreed to what could only be described as a Beauty and the Beast set-up.

Our late afternoon landing at LaGuardia afforded us gorgeous views of a sun-dappled Manhattan, taking us over Central Park and closer to the Empire State Building than I thought was possible in the post-9/11 era. The Sun Queen insisted I take the car service he ordered instead of the bus into the city.

As much as I enjoyed the trip, I can't say that I envy the life of a fashion designer. After awhile, all the expensive restaurants and hotels must become routine. Luxury is better appreciated by those who experience it only occasionally, I think.

JE ME SOUVIENS, INDEED

I didn't mind sleeping in even though we had gone to bed well before midnight because I knew we had a long day ahead of us, particularly if we were to hit one of the saunas on my list that I had cut and pasted from the Montreal Fun Guide. The Sun Queen hadn't recovered nearly as well from colds we had developed around the same time which meant that he spent a long time in his bathroom coughing before we went to breakfast at MB, a nearby cafe, following room service delivery of coffee and orange juice.

When I pulled out my wallet to pay for my pastry and coffee, the Sun Queen assured me that his expense account would cover it.

I thought you already owed them a few grand for overspending your account I said, uncomfortable as always with him picking up my tab.

Don't worry this comes out of another account he answered.

I believed him only because he asked for a receipt but announced that I was paying for tonight's meal come hell or high water.

The cute young concierge had mapped out a route to the Saint-Joseph Oratoire, a church that Fodor's suggested visiting only if you had a lot of time but one that had been recommended by one of the Sun Queen's colleagues.

It's really four churches in one explained the concierge after showing the Sun Queen photos of his renovated kitchen.

Many people will be praying he added, almost in warning.

Perhaps he thought the American infidels would be shocked by the sight of pilgrims ascending the middle steps in front of the church on their knees, no easy feat given its mammoth size. The church stands taller than either St. John the Divine or Notre Dame on Montreal's highest point.



Frere Andre, a sickly penance freak who reputedly healed hundreds of people, began building it in the early 20th century with funds raised mostly from rich American Catholics. Nearly a century later, he's still just one step shy of achieving sainthood. That must be a little bit like the limbo the church recently abolished.

Rather than rely on the Vatican to elevate him to sainthood on the grounds of his good works, Frere Andre decided to go the construction route. No surprise that the bottom-level church also serves as his final resting place or that he lived in humble, ascetic conditions above a nearby chapel. What better way to advertise your piety, especially with dozens of crutches, presumably left behind by the pilgrims he healed, lining the modest altar. Frere Andre never entered the priesthood and the St. Joseph-Oratoire looks to me like a monument to overcompensation or guilt about what he really did to the troubled youths who sought his healing touch.

It's all about Frere Andre he observed the Sun Queen as we climbed into a cab and headed for O'Blahnik's house in a neighborhood southwest of downtown.

She lived in a lovely renovated Victorian cluttered with what may very well have been her parent's antique furniture. I didn't understand how a paralegal placement business could maintain her lifestyle especially when I was introduced to her teenage son, mad for rap and basketball, upstairs.

Plus she never goes to work whispered the Sun Queen as we sunned ourselves in the narrow back yard. A patio and oval swimming pool filled almost all the available space.

A Polish neighbor who belly danced when she wasn't teaching joined us for the extravagant brunch. In addition to serving the simple Spanish omelet she had promised the night before but delivered as scrambled eggs, O'Blahnik put out salmon, pate, a selection of cheeses and pastries in addition to a delicious homemade fruit pie. Her son, who by this time had ridden off on his bicycle and returned with a black friend in tow, got the leftovers.

O'Blahnik kept barking orders at her extremely hunky hired hand. As he installed a new trellis on her second floor she kept soliciting the Sun Queen's opinion on her redecorating efforts. She had offered to drive us to old Montreal after brunch but when Jakob didn't finish the job in time, she enlisted the belly dancer. O'Blahnik seemed profoundly dissatisfied with the way her life had turned out. Did she and the Sun Queen share a bond of misery?

We began our tour of Old Montreal at the Notre Dame Basilica where the Sun Queen wanted to see what he heard were gold statues of saints. I implemented my strategy of paying for all the sightseeing costs. It cost me $8 for a five minute-visit, with no sighting of any gold statues although the linden wood altar was ornately decorated and quite beautiful.



City Hall where we saw the second wedding of many that day despite the Sun Queen's assertion that French Canadians don't put much stock in marriage. They do, however, believe in renting white Rolls Royces when they tie the knot. At Jacques Cartier Quai, which juts out into the harbor, he pointed out an architectural marvel on the island opposite. We later learned from pictures in a real estate office window that it was Habitat '67, a luxury development that resembled a honeycomb built by bees who, like everyone else, had dropped acid during the Summer of Love. I think it's the only site in Montreal that impressed the Sun Queen. He hates the city even more than his job.

We dutifully walked along rue St. Paul, gazing at the lovely old stone architecture. The Sun Queen pointed out all the fancy restaurants where he had dined and muttered about the lack of luxury shopping or excitement. I can't say that I was all that thrilled either, although there were plenty of interesting photo ops.







More out of guilt over declining to see Cirque de Soleil in their hometown, I agreed to go to an Imax documentary about the Alps that had been enthusiastically recommended by one of his co-workers. We stood in line for nearly an hour with hundreds of unbelievably patient people waiting to buy tickets for the Bodies exhibit that I have avoided in both New York and Chicago on ethical grounds. Did the people whose organs and muscles are on display give their permission?

There couldn't have been more than 25 people in the theatre which made the long wait particularly galling in retrospect. The account of an American mountain climber's determination to ascend the treacherous Eiger, the peak that had killed his father, combined Oprah and National Geographic with blinding visuals but I fell asleep anyway and missed the climactic helicopter evacuation of one of the mountaineers. Oh well.



The nap replenished the energy I needed for a night in the Village, a city-branded length of rue St. Catherine that is longer than the Eighth Avenue strip in Chelsea. It also has a much higher density of bars, strip clubs, sex clubs and saunas. At the Sky club the bartender warned the Sun Queen that a cosmo would cost $10. We ascended several flights to enjoy his cocktail and my Bleu beer on the roof deck. The chilly weather prevented us from jumping in the hot tub but we did have a great view of the gay strip and the Oscar Wilde Pub, surely the largest and tackiest gay bar in Canada.

After treating the Sun Queen to a prix fixe tapas dinner at Sasha that set me back $150--which included the most expensive bottle of wine I ever have paid for--I insisted that we go to the Campus strip club. I bought my first lap dance to celebrate my new well-paying job even if I don't have a start date. Actually I bought two in a purely sociological--or do I mean anthropological?--quest to explore dirty-old-man behavior.

The dancers mingled aggressively with the bar patrons in between performances, a big difference from my long-ago experience at the Gaeity. There, I avoided going into the room where the deals for private dances were made preferring instead to try my luck with a hot customer.

Quite by chance, I ended up standing next to a shirtless young guy with a lithe body, beaky nose and just enough facial hair to camouflage his essential androgyny. He seemed to be occupied with an unattractive customer around his own age but he kept looking at me through heavy lidded blue eyes and smiling. I thought it was odd that he purchased a beer for the other guy and was crushed when they left together for what turned out to be only a cigarette break.

He's my ride explained Matthew upon returning and gently caressing my back. We play hockey together. He has a wife and kids at home.

Then he told me how "nice" I seemed and explained how things worked.

For $10 a song I will take you into a private booth and dance for you will all my clothes off. For $20 I will do the same and you can touch me everywhere.

His teeth were too good for me to believe the hockey story but I asked the Sun Queen to lend me $10. Matthew grabbed me by the hand and led me to an concealed area at the side of the stage where another dirty old man was emerging with another dancer. He pulled back a black velvet curtain, revealing a carpetted banquette, and told me to sit down.

Treating the experience as an experiment (!) didn't diminish my enjoyment of Matthew's lean, hairless body and firm, round butt. Who cared if he didn't have an erection when he pulled down his pants. His face, butt and body were turn-ons enough and he got hard as soon as I began touching him during the second song. When it ended, I stood up in mid-grope and announced in no-uncertain-terms that I was ready to pay up.

If it hadn't been for his refusal to kiss or his heavy use of deodorant I might have been persuaded to put another $20 in the meter. Fortunately, even when he wiggled his naked butt back and forth against my crotch I maintained my self control.

I could tell he was a little disappointed.

Will you be taking good memories with you back to New York? he asked when he returned to my spot at the bar. Did you like my dick?

I prefer your eyes I answered. For me, sex is all about the connection with another person and the way you connect is through your eyes and your kiss.

Matthew seemed a little confused, perhaps even insecure about the size of his curved dick which wasn't nearly as large as those of the other dancers. I may be buying into the dirty-old-man mentality, but I think my comments had the desired effect of intriguing him.

And what would you be doing if you weren't dancing here? I asked.

I had to explain that I didn't mean the question literally, eliciting the information that he worked in a civil service job at a local military base and that he would love to spend a year in Paris, "the place we come from."

With that he and his friend excused themselves for another cigarette. A dancer whom I had ignored earlier when he began rubbing my back without so much as eye contact approached me again.

I guess I'm not your type he said when I finally turned to look at him.

No, you're not. I replied.

Well, you're not mine either he said, leaving angrily.

The Sun Queen asked if I was ready to go. Just as we were about to go downstairs, he pointed out Matthew. He and his friend were waving goodbye. I regret only that I didn't think to take his picture and then insisting that we head to the 456 Sauna instead of calling it a night.

Here's how to make your lap dance seem like a bargain: Pad around in your bare feet on a cum-stained carpet in a near-empty warehouse for several hours, finally succumbing, however briefly, to a hungry mouth at a glory hole. And make sure that your companion, who says he looks like a skinny Ben Franklin when he wears his glasses and lets his hair down, has sex with the only other attractive patron.

Je me souviens, indeed.

FREE TRIP TO MONTREAL

Thanks to the Sun Queen, who commutes to his job as an evening wear designer in Canada, I got a free trip to Montreal this weekend. Handsome young investment bankers carrying binders marked "Project Latte" surrounded me in the departure lounge, shooting the breeze about the flooding that delayed their taxis (and my city bus) to LaGuardia and their residential migration to the Upper East Side so that their children could more conveniently attend private elementary schools.



Students protesting the Quebec's government lifting of a tuition freeze clogged rue Saint Catherine, snarling traffic downtown. A trip that should have taken less than half an hour on the shuttle bus lasted twice that long. I finally reached the central bus station a little after noon. The surrounding blocks recalled Times Square of the 70s, with lots of sex shops, strip clubs and single-room occupancy hotels. In fact, the city doesn't appear to have done much sprucing up since Expo '67 and the '76 Olympics, perhaps because those events exhausted city planners and drained their coffers. The Quebecois separatist movement can't have helped, either. Why should the federal government invest in a province that keeps wanting to secede?

A poster advertising a production of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi caught my eye as I walked east toward the hotel. The Blue Light Special played a much cuter (and younger) King Wenceslas in a student production at HB Studio so I took a picture for him, sorry that he wasn't with me.

I arrived at Loew's Hotel Vogue shortly before 1 p.m. where I was given a key to the Sun Queen's posh suite and immediately chowed down on the fruit and biscotti that the hospitality staff had left for him the night before. After giving him a call at work, I decided to go to Mount Royal Park, one of the few sights he already had seen, and one at the top of my to do list because it had been designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. I entered on the western side of the park because it wasn't too far from the Notre Dame Des Neiges Cemetery , giving me a convenient opportunity to indulge my obsession for photographing cemetery tombstones.



A hive of activity awaited me inside the cemetery gates. With Mother's Day on Sunday, a lot of loving or guilty children were busy clearing away the detritus of their Christmas visits and decorating the graves with fresh or fake flowers. The French Canadians apparently go all out when burying their dead but as in life, you definitely get what you pay for. Some sections reminded me of the hotel were we were staying, immaculately tended and landscaped with the afterlife equivalent of 300 thread count sheets, while others offered no-frills accommodations, marked by a single wooden cross.



I don't know what it is about these places but I find them very relaxing and take great delight in their random collisions of elegance, tackiness and sentiment. Owen McGarvey, furniture maker for Montreal's 19th century middle class, built for himself alone a mausoleum high atop a hill, all but forgotten except for its size and location. Nevertheless, these were enough to make me Google his name a century later so maybe he knew exactly how to assure a kind posterity with no direct descendants (he could not have imagined, however, that a local labor union protest vehicle, postered with day glow CSN signs, would roam throughout his final resting place). Other more recent and much more modest burial sites revealed the passions of the deceased or sentiments of living family members with charming little details such as a miniature Boston Red Sox cap sculpted in marble or a row of stuffed animals that still looked cuddly despite their exposure to their elements.



In comparison, the metal cross that towers above Montreal in Mount Royal Park seemed decidedly ho hum. Aside from the spectacular views of downtown and the St. Lawrence Seaway from the summit, where I learned that Montreal is a French contraction of Mount Royal, the park itself disappointed me perhaps because only the gently curving road, built for horse carriages, was built according to Olmsted's specifications. Oddly enough, I spotted more wildlife in the cemetery, including a red fox and a disoriented raccoon.

Two hundred steep wooden steps helped me to descend quickly from the Park. My route back to the hotel took me down the steep hill on which McGill University sits. Surely a goat must be the school mascot with all the climbing flip-flopped students must have to do. I found the Sun Queen watching Dr. Phil. We spent 90 minutes or so catching up but the afternoon's exertions, the feat and the familiarity of my host's whine about not being adequately compensated left me nodding off more than once.

How rude! as the Encyclopedia of Camp, the Sun Queen's first choice for a weekend companion, might say if he weren't in Italy.

I perked up in time for dinner. It gave me some real insight into the Sun Queen's life away from New York. Our evening began just like the Cheers theme song in the hotel bar where everyone, including Francine, the bartender with curly blond ringlets and stylish eyeglasses, greeted the Sun Queen by name.

O'Blahnik, a zaftig woman whose long hair recently had been streaked in a way that recalled Farrah Fawcett, and the Misogynist, an emigre from Holland, were engaged with another woman who soon vacated her seat after giving me a look that I interpreted as No point of sticking around with these two homos.

A tall gin and tonic assisted me in making some excruciatingly dull small talk with the Misogynist who kept referring to the women he was dating as "bitches" as if he were a rap star instead of a balding, middle-aged white guy with a stutter. Although he claimed his father had been a member of the Dutch Resistance he never had heard of Black Book or Paul Verhoeven. Fortunately he went out for a smoke after that conversational dead end.

Meanwhile O'Blahnik seemed to be crying on the Sun Queen's shoulder. She cheered up when he invited her to dinner without telling the Misogynist although he must have known what was up when the three of us left together. O'Blahnik drove us to Joe Beef, the restaurant where the Sun Queen had made reservations for two lobsters. Lobster is right at the bottom of my preferred dish list so I was glad O'Blahnik had accompanied us if only because her taste for it left me free to order steak frites, the meal I had been craving ever since the Sun Queen invited me along for the trip.

The selection of a suitable wine from a blackboard dinner menu consumed most of the pre-dinner conversation once one of the restaurant's partners, an attractive young blond woman who thrust her breasts forward as expertly as she made our mouths water with a description of the day's specials. These included oysters that must have had a travel agent before they were consumed by us. Born in New England, but flown to Washington State where they were happily raised in clean, temperate waters, they had made their way northeast for our delectation. My fries were too big but I enjoyed the savory gravy on the hanger steak and cleansed my palate afterwards with the pannacote citron, topped with lemon sorbet.

O'Blahnik returned from a trip to the bathroom to report the fat, tattooed chef had warned her that he just had taken a dump. Imagine that happening at Per Se. She had the restaurant's artist-in-residence in tow who used a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer as a conversation prop with what he probably thought were a couple of American cash cows. He enchanted us with his easy masculinity and didn't seem to care which team we played for. Think Aaron Eckhart in Erin Brockovitch when he played Julia Roberts's sensitive biker boyfriend. Flirtation in combination with a $65 bottle of wine can be a powerful sales tool. If it hadn't been too dark to see the installation hanging above us, I just might have played along.

I didn't offer to help with the tab, which came to $375, figuring it only would complicate the Sun Queen's laissez-faire negotiations with O'Blahnik.

You are the most generous person I know she said, handing over some cash and insisting that we come to her house for brunch the next day. The Sun Queen threw the invitation into my court.

I definitely believe the only way you get a true feeling for another country is to see a native in their home I said when I realized there was no polite way to refuse.

As we left, O'Blahnik whipped up some drama when the chef, greeting new customers at the door of the nearly empty restaurant, declined her offer of a peck on the lips.

Don't be silly we chorused, getting into her car for a lift back to the hotel. Now that we've paid our bill, he's simply moved on.

O'Blahnik didn't stop complaining, however, a characteristic that came to define her by the time brunch was over on Saturday.

Ten minutes after returning to the room, I fell asleep on the couch, fully dressed. I awoke to find the Sun Queen already in bed with a radio softly playing what sounded like a combination of baroque and new age music. I climbed into the far side of the bed that we shared despite having separate bathrooms, marveling at the cocoon-like softness of the sheets.