MonkeyPants

Solstice.

Today is the longest day of the year. Sunrise was at 5:07 AM. Sunset will be at 9:22 PM. And from today, the days will just get shorter.

One time, I went out with a bunch of friends on the solstice. We were excited about it. We talked about going somewhere to see the sun rise. We were young and didn’t need much sleep. It must have been a weekend night. At least some of us were employed. I hadn’t gotten the call from my boss to go up to Hardy yet.

We went to Boston Pizza at Metrotown and ate pizza and talked about where to see the sunrise. It’s, like, a special sunrise, we told each other. We have to see it. Cory fretted that we ought to have more girls than just Lisa and me. I can’t remember which one of us was sleeping with him at the time. Wil told us facts about how pagans celebrated the solstice. Todd remembered all the times he’d seen sunrises when he’d been awake doing drugs for three days.

We paid up and went to the parking lot where our cars were. It got dark. We said, ok, we have to find a great place to watch the sun rise. Stanley Park? Wrong alignment. Great for sunsets. Burnaby Mountain? Maybe on the trails? Cory’s roof? His dad would kill us. Then get us drunk on Polish moonshine and tell us about the jackrabbits he hunted as a boy in The Old Country.

We stood and debated for long enough that across the street, the sky slowly turned dishwater gray. We didn’t even watch the sunrise. We watched the dimming of the streetlights and the neon of Cactus Club, and saw the wig store and the work boot store slowly take colour as the sun rose. Without us watching.

Then we got in our cars and went home, because we were kind of tired.